Auntie Poldi and the Vineyards of Etna

by Mario Giordano

  “I did so,” she told me, “because the same thing applies to criminology as to sex: a bird in the hand—”

  “Is worth two in the bush,” I said.

  She gave me a look. “Bear that in mind.”

  The old upholstered furniture and Moroccan pouffes in the living room had been slit open, and great wads of stuffing covered the flagstoned floor and the rugs like foam on a beach, mixed up with the remains of smashed vases and lamps. Next door to the living room was a studio in which Madame Sahara had received her clients. Obviously the villa’s former private chapel, it was a semicircular room facing the garden, with a vaulted ceiling and a library of old books, most of which lay scattered across the floor, together with papers and documents. Occupying the centre of the room was a heavy, circular oak table and four massive chairs, and in one corner stood a dainty rococo chaise longue. Clients may sometimes have reclined on it when pouring out their hearts to Madame Sahara. Or perhaps she had used it herself when recovering from an exhausting séance.

  Whatever the truth, that same chaise longue was now occupied by the motionless form of Signora Cocuzza.

  She looked even paler and greyer than she did in her most melancholy moments. Her eyes stared into space, and a thread of drying saliva was visible in the corner of her mouth. No sign of any blood.

  Poldi dashed over and felt the inert woman’s pulse, then put her ear to the parted lips. “She’s alive!”

  “Dio mio!”

  Poldi patted her friend’s cheeks. “Signora! Signora, can you hear me?”

  Patting proved ineffective, so Poldi resorted to firmer measures and slapped her hard on both cheeks. That did the trick.

  The signora gave a start. “Porca Madonna!” she said, alarmed by the sight of Poldi’s face only inches from hers.

  “Don’t worry, signora, it’s only me. Don’t be frightened, all is well.”

  The sad signora took a few moments to recover her senses. Her eyes roamed the ravaged room as if she couldn’t recall how she came to be there. It wasn’t until she had sipped a glass of water that she got her bearings and recovered her memory.

  “I . . . I took a photo,” she whispered. “With my phone.”

  But the phone wasn’t there any more. The aunts combed the whole room and Totti eagerly sniffed the chaos, but the mobile phone did not come to light.

  “He took it off you, of course,” said Poldi, “after he knocked you out.”

  What had happened? The sad signora had only a fragmentary recollection.

  “I’d taken up my observation post,” she began, “but there wasn’t much to be seen. Nothing at all, actually. It was rather boring—sorry, Donna Poldina, but it was. But then! Then I spotted a movement at one of the upstairs windows. Just for a moment, more a kind of shadow, I’d say. Well, I wasn’t sure. Maybe it had been a reflection or the curtain moving, I really wasn’t sure, but I couldn’t take my eyes off that window from then on, know what I mean?”

  Poldi sighed. “Didn’t we agree that you’d call headquarters at once if you spotted anything?”

  “I know,” Signora Cocuzza admitted contritely.

  But she hadn’t, and she was loath to say what on earth had come over her. The thrill of the chase, I suspect. At all events, after a brief few minutes of uncertainty and hesitation she had got out of her car.

  “Well,” she confessed, “all I meant to do was cross the road for a closer view of the window, you understand, but . . .”

  “But then you went inside,” Poldi amplified, “seeing as how the gate was already open and the front door likewise.”

  “I’m feeling really poorly, Donna Poldina.”

  “Think yourself lucky, my dear. You could have ended up dead. Never mind, though. What happened then?”

  In a nutshell, what happened was as follows: Signora Cocuzza crept into the house. Step by silent step she toured the rooms and used her mobile phone to photograph the universal devastation. She kept her ears pricked for the smallest sound, but heard nothing, and in the end became convinced that she had only imagined the movement at the window, the way one sometimes does. Anyway, she eventually discovered something in the studio that captured her attention to such an extent that she promptly took a photo of it. She was so preoccupied that she failed to hear someone coming up behind her. All she was aware of was a sharp pain in her neck, and then she’d felt as if someone had pushed her off a cliff into a big, dark chasm.

  Poldi heaved another sigh.

  “He gave you an injection. It’s a miracle he didn’t kill you.”

  Signora Cocuzza made no comment on this—after all, it wasn’t her job to theorise. Feeling simply happy to be alive, she even managed a faint smile.

  “What was this exciting thing you discovered?” Poldi asked eventually.

  “Names,” said the signora, and a look of triumph came into her eyes.

  “Names?”

  “Yes, at least I think so. Names on a kind of list.”

  “What sort of names?” Poldi asked. “Try to remember!”

  But the signora just shook her head. “I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Poldi lied.

  “Is that bad?”

  “No, my dear, of course not.”

  “You may be right,” Signora Cocuzza said archly, “because it’s lucky I’ve still got this.” So saying, she triumphantly produced a small piece of folded paper from a pocket in her skirt and handed it to Poldi. “The whole table was littered with these pieces of paper, all bearing names. I pocketed one of them before photographing the rest, and then, well . . . pow!”

  Poldi almost wrenched the paper from her hand. She was about to unfold it when . . .

  “What the devil’s going on here?”

  A familiar voice. A smoky voice filled with sicilianità, ill temper and suppressed passion.

  Poldi swiftly palmed the folded scrap of paper. Turning, she saw Montana standing in the doorway, and behind him, as if permanently stapled to his heels, Detectives Zannotta and Console.

  Montana’s question was understandable in a way, coming from a homicide chief who enters the home of a murder victim and finds the place completely trashed, and in the midst of it his own lady friend, whom he has recently and quite reasonably told to keep out of things. But no, she blithely tramples all over the clues and evidence with the help of her three sisters-in-law, her brother-in-law, a dog and a neighbour on a chaise longue, all of whom look guilty, even the dog, with the sole exception of his lady friend. All she says is “I know what you’re thinking, Vito, but I can explain everything.”

  7

  Tells of the truth in the corner of a person’s eye, and of lists. Poldi makes away with something else and philosophises about optical illusions. An old acquaintance visits her, bringing unwelcome news from the management of fate. This boosts the forces of the subconscious and points Poldi in the direction of a suspect who had yet to appear on anyone’s radar. And this, in turn, leads her back to Santa Venerina and a renewed recognition of the age-old Sicilian relationship between actuality and appearance.

  “Wow!” I said, highly impressed, when Poldi described the whole episode to me later. “And then?”

  “Well, you can imagine. A volcanic eruption is a warm breeze by comparison. I mean, the man is a detective chief inspector and a Sicilian, which means that every emotion, from love to rage, is multiplied by two. Men like him aren’t to be measured by normal human standards. They’re human volcanoes, and I know what I’m talking about. Only very special people can cope with them.”

  “Let me guess. People like you, for instance?”

  “You can keep your sarcasm. Even a man like Vito Montana wants to be loved, but most women crack up because they can’t endure such passion, such fire. You need to have a strong, sensual personality like mine, because I know a thing or two about pain and passion and volcanoes.”

  “Of course, Poldi. Well, how did he react? Did he go berserk, smash the place up and drag
you through the house by your hair, singing arias from Otello?”

  “Get away with you!” Poldi sighed. “Mind you, it’s a nice idea—I might have enjoyed it. No, the first thing he did was send Teresa, Caterina, Luisa, Martino and the dog out of the room. They were only too pleased, as you can imagine. Totti especially, because an animal like that can sense the dark forces of violence that linger at a crime scene like the smell of frying fat in a burger bar. Next, Vito got rid of his two stupid sidekicks and shut the door on them. And then . . . well, the balloon went up.”

  “Meaning?”

  “I won’t go into detail now. Suffice it to say, he made such a din, the curtains fluttered and I was afraid he’d blow Signora Cocuzza out of the window. She’s tougher than she looks, though, I noticed that. Well, when he’d calmed down, he pulled up a chair and sat down, but all he said when I made to sit down too was ‘No, not you.’ Signora Cocuzza promptly jumped to her feet, but he growled at her to stay put. ‘What difference does that make, pray?’ I said. He didn’t answer, just demanded to know what had happened in every detail. So I told him.”

  “Truthfully?”

  “Of course, what else? But first I asked him why he hadn’t turned up before. It was getting on for evening and the murder had occurred early that morning, which meant that Madame Sahara’s house had stood empty for nearly twelve hours.”

  “How did he react to that?”

  “He didn’t like it, I could tell. Of course, I realised he’d been investigating nonstop in the interim, and he may have treated himself to a little well-earned siesta between times. ‘But,’ I said, ‘you must admit, Vito, that if you’d been quicker to seal off the house and put it under guard, Signora Cocuzza wouldn’t have risked her life and we wouldn’t have had to come here, the whole bunch of us, and all the nice clues to the murderer would still be here.’ Pow! That hit home. He almost blew a fuse again, did the signor commissario, but he couldn’t fault my reasoning.”

  “And then you were a good girl and handed over that list of names?”

  Poldi cleared her throat and took a sip of whisky.

  “Well, Poldi?”

  “Well . . . somehow I forgot about it in all the excitement. That was quite understandable.”

  I sighed. “Honestly, Poldi, you’re . . .”

  “I’m what? Feel free!”

  I grinned at her. “You’re a cool cat.”

  My Auntie Poldi thought so too. She tweaked her wig straight with a satisfied air and topped up my glass. Then she slid a small piece of folded paper across the table.

  “Is this it?”

  “Open it.”

  I unfolded the piece of paper. It bore a short, handwritten list of names. A very peculiar list of names.

  Easton Ros

  Rena Sotos

  Stan Roose

  Astor Enos

  Santos Roe

  Rosa Stone

  “What sort of names are they? I mean, who would be called that?”

  Poldi shook her head. “It’s obvious you’ve no talent for criminology. So, what’s the first thing that strikes you?”

  I stared at the list. “They’re English names. Or American.”

  “Very good. What else?”

  “Well, as I say, they look odd.”

  “All right, but you’re German too, so that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Go on, what else do you notice?”

  “Two women, four men.”

  “Cento punti. What else? What’s the most striking thing about the list—the thing that turns it into a genuine lead?”

  I stared at the list in perplexity, devoid of ideas. “Phew . . . Give me a clue.”

  My Auntie Poldi did not, of course, do me that favour. She retrieved the piece of paper.

  “Don’t worry, I didn’t catch on right away either, I admit. But once you do, it’s like these picture puzzles in the newspapers, where you look at them for long enough and wind up seeing a naked woman. They’re optical illusions.”

  “Optical illusions? Naked women?”

  She sighed. “The same rule applies whether you’re talking about love or criminology: if you really want to see your object of desire, stop staring at it, you’ll only blind yourself. You must aim off a little. Why? Because the truth reposes in the corner of your eye. Bear that in mind.”

  If anyone knew this, it was my Auntie Poldi.

  When Poldi got back to the Via Baronessa after that long, unpleasant and eventful day, tired and groggy and vaguely suspecting that she’d finally overstepped the mark with Montana, all she wanted was to flop down on the sofa and get wasted. However, when she walked into her salotto, having fetched a bottle of grappa and a glass from the kitchen, the sofa was already occupied by Death, the apparition that haunted her from time to time, who eyed her disapprovingly.

  “Well? At it again, Poldi?”

  He hadn’t changed a bit since their last meeting. Still looking ill and overworked and on the verge of a burn-out, he was wearing shabby grey tracksuit bottoms and a grimy grey hoodie bearing the logo of an American university, with the hood, as was only to be expected, pulled down low over his face. Poldi, who found this get-up unprofessional, assumed it was a kind of leisure-time look. Death also smelt a trifle sweaty, which Poldi hadn’t noticed during their first encounter. It suggested a neglect of personal hygiene. Or a glandular problem. Did she really want to be escorted into the hereafter by such an individual? If Death looked so scruffy, what would the aftermath be like? Still, leisure-time look or no, it had not escaped Poldi that he’d come equipped with the clipboard holding his to-do list, so he seemed to be still on duty. And that was enough to put the wind up anyone.

  “I mean,” Death went on in his nasal voice, “not that it’s any concern of mine, but I’m surprised you feel like hitting the bottle so soon after your fall from grace last night.”

  “What business is it of yours, pray? You sound like my nephew from Germany, and that’s not meant as a compliment.” Poldi deposited the grappa bottle on the coffee table and sat down beside Death, taking care to do so gently, for fear of catapulting him into the air.

  “Thanks for being so considerate,” he said through his nose.

  “Got a cold?”

  He made a dismissive gesture. “Don’t ask. In this job you catch your death.” He chuckled hoarsely, promptly choked and had a coughing fit.

  Poldi rolled her eyes. “All right, so it’s time, is it? Where do I sign?” She wrenched the clipboard from the hand with which he’d been nervously tapping his list the whole time.

  “Hey!” he cried in dismay, trying to snatch it back.

  No easy matter with an opponent like my Auntie Poldi. She wasn’t the type to let things go.

  “This is against the rules!”

  “I don’t give a shit about the rules, my lad. If I’m already as good as dead, I’ve nothing left to lose.”

  “But you may have.”

  “Oh?” Poldi let go of the clipboard in surprise. “What does that mean?”

  “It’s not your turn yet!” Death cried irritably, and he clasped the clipboard to his pigeon-chested bosom as if it were the love of his life. “How often do I have to say it?”

  “So what? I mean, in that case, what are you doing here?”

  “Might I have a glass of water? Just tap water, please.”

  Poldi looked at him searchingly to see whether he was messing her about, but he made a thoroughly calm and serious impression, so she rose with a sigh and went into the kitchen.

  “Let it run, please,” Death called after her.

  “There’s only water from the jerrycan, but it’s fresh. Acqua di Torre, finest-quality mineral water.”

  “Don’t go to too much trouble on my account.”

  Poldi handed her pallid guest his glass of water and waited. Death drank it in precise little sips, and it dawned on her that the universe had chosen its greatest pedant to wield the scythe and snuff out the candles.

  “Better?”


  Death shrugged. “It tasted awful, but never mind.” He put the glass down carefully and readopted an official tone of voice. “My reason for being here . . .” He cleared his throat and started again. “The truth is, I’m far exceeding my authorised remit—in fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if it cost me my job. Still, nobody else is eager to take it on, so I’d probably wind up with everything back on my plate.”

  “Stick to the subject,” Poldi admonished him. She was becoming rather nervous.

  “Well,” he said reluctantly, “since we’ve recently built up what I might describe as a rapport, I thought I ought to put you in the picture about certain, er, changes in the structure of fate.”

  “Changes?”

  “Well, the board of directors is currently engaged in submitting the whole of fate to an activity analysis aimed at an increase in the effectiveness of risk management while simultaneously achieving a reduction in staff. Overmanning and structural problems have arisen, and these are now to be rectified in the course of a transformative process.”

  “What the hell does all that mean?”

  Death tapped the death list on his clipboard. “There have been one or two, er . . . lifespan adjustments. The bottom line is that these will lead, staff-wise, to greater productivity and, in terms of the balance sheet, to a significant increase in operational results.”

  Poldi’s blood ran cold. “So what you’re telling me is . . .”

  “That you’ve less time than originally specified. Yes, sorry.”

  She gasped for breath. “How much less are we talking about?”

  “Afraid I’m not allowed to divulge any information on that score, you know that, Poldi. Just this: the clock is ticking.” Death was now looking positively disconsolate. “Hey, it wasn’t my decision. I’m only responsible for the transfer, but I thought it would be fair to drop you a little hint. A little tip from me to you: Carpe diem, if you know what I mean.”

  Poldi knew. “So the Almighty feels like pruning his vines a bit, is that it?”

  “Well, you’d be surprised what the Almighty feels like, or you will be sooner or later. In your case sooner, as I said.” Death got up off the sofa. “Anyway, I must be going. Thanks for the water.”