A Dead Man in Naples (13 page)

She shook her head. ‘But it wouldn’t do,’ she said, ‘not for a singer. Babies and a career don’t go together. However,’ she said firmly, ‘money does.’

‘And that was your choice?’ said Chantale.

The Marchesa shrugged.

‘I had no choice,’ she said. ‘Not if I wished to get out of the world the Foundling Hospital condemned me to.’

‘With hindsight,’ said Seymour, ‘looking back now: which man, no doubt of many, if things had been different, would you have chosen to have children by?’

The Marchesa laughed delightedly.

‘Well, there’s a thought!’ she said.

She considered. ‘D’Annunzio? No. As a lover, fine; as a father . . .’

She shook her head. ‘No, I really think not. He would have been hopeless. And what an example!’

She thought some more. ‘Roberto? My first husband? No, not really. He gave me the title but there was not much chance of him giving me anything else. The line was pretty exhausted by the time it got to Roberto. No chance, I would say.’

She thought again.

‘You know, this could go on for a long time,’ she said.

‘Alessandro?’

‘Alessandro? Hmm. He would clearly have loved it, of course. Indeed, he suggested it. “But haven’t we left it a bit late?” I said. “A few years ago, perhaps.” But, you know, even then . . .’

She shook her head. ‘“Why add to the bastards already in the world?” I said to him. “A son might turn out like you.” That angered him. “Or a daughter?” he said. “Mightn’t she turn out like you?”

‘I have to admit that was a consideration. I wouldn’t wish a fate like that on any poor girl.’

She shook her head again. ‘So Alessandro, no. On reflection, definitely no. So who then? Surely among the many men I have known there must be somebody? Of course, my standards are high. Speaking theoretically, that is.’

She gave a little, delightful laugh.

‘You know,’ she said, ‘I think in the end it would probably come down to that little Englishman.’

‘Scampion?’

‘Yes.’

‘The one you gave the lottery slip to?’

‘You should have seen his face when I gave it him. It was as if I had given him – well, let’s say myself. He would have given me pure devotion. Well, that’s something you don’t come across very often, and I certainly never have. Not pure.

‘But the thing is, he would have offered that to our children as well, and that’s what you want. That’s something Alessandro would never have been capable of. He would have loved them, yes: but possessively, greedily, jealously. But disinterestedly? For themselves alone? I think not. They would just have been an extension of him. The poor little buggers would never have had a life of their own. And suppose one of them had been like me? Always kicking against the pricks. And that, of course, brings me back to Alessandro . . .

‘No, Lionel – a misnomer of a name if there ever was one – wouldn’t have been like that. He would have been a proper father. Such as I never had.

‘And, just think about it,’ she continued, though, excitedly: ‘I could have left them with him while I went out and got on with my life. Safe in the knowledge that I was behaving responsibly. Because certainly they would have been better off with him than they would have been with me. No, little Scampion it is. Definitely.’

On an impulse, Seymour said: ‘Would you like to meet some admirers of yours?’

‘Not much,’ said the Marchesa.

‘They go back a long time. To the time when you first started singing opera in Naples.’

‘Ah, well, that’s different.’

He took her to the snail restaurant.

‘I wonder what they’re like now,’ she said, almost wistfully.

‘Would you like to try some?’

‘Why not?’ said the Marchesa.

The carpenter and the
acquaiolo
were sitting at the table. They looked up, stared, and then jumped to their feet.

Ernesto reeled, then recovered.

‘You honour me,’ he said, ‘Margareta.’

‘Margareta!’ said the Marchesa. She smiled. ‘So I am not entirely forgotten, then?’

‘You will never be forgotten!’ said the snail-shop owner, fervently.

The carpenter was still staring.

‘This cannot be true!’ he said.

‘He said he had seen you,’ said the
acquaiolo
, ‘but I did not believe him!’

‘You have come back to us, Margareta,’ said Ernesto.

‘I should never have left,’ said the Marchesa.

‘It was only right that you should take your talent to the world!’ declared the carpenter.

‘The world!’ said the Marchesa. She shrugged. ‘The world is not that special a place.’

‘But your voice,’ said the
acquaiolo
, ‘that is special!’

‘No longer,’ said the Marchesa. ‘It grows old, as we all grow old.’

‘Oh, no!’ they all cried in unison. ‘You will never grow old, Margareta. Not in our hearts.’

‘Thank you!’

She laughed. ‘But even hearts grow old.’

She sniffed. ‘But do the snails grow old?’

She sniffed again. ‘Can I try some?’

Ernesto, hand shaking, ladled some into a bowl and then watched anxiously.

The Marchesa tasted, reflected, and then tasted again.

‘They do not grow old,’ she pronounced. ‘They are as I remember them. Or,’ she said meditatively, ‘even better.’

‘It’s the water,’ said Ernesto. ‘They want to change the water. To bring it in, in pipes. But my water comes from Alberto here, and it is special.’

‘The snails are special, too,’ said Alberto modestly. ‘Ernesto gathers them every morning, early.’

‘I would like some more, please,’ said the Marchesa.

‘Well, that was all right!’ said the Marchesa, pleased, as they walked away. ‘So they still remember me! I told you, didn’t I, that they were my people?’

‘You did,’ said Seymour. ‘And that Naples was your place.’

‘It is,’ said the Marchesa. ‘Still.’

‘And yet you have also said something different: that Naples was an awful place, the last place you wanted to come to when you were exiled.’

‘Be sent to,’ corrected the Marchesa. ‘By my bastard husband. There is no contradiction. I love Naples and I hate it.’

‘Why did your husband send you here?’

‘Because,’ said the Marchesa, ‘he knew that I would hate it.’

‘And that you loved it and would find old friends here.’

‘You don’t know my husband!’

‘I’m beginning to. I was wondering if he asked you to look them up. And give them a message.’

The Marchesa looked at him.

‘Oh, ho!’ she said. ‘Is that the way the wind blows?’

She looked at him again. ‘No, he didn’t give me a message to deliver. And if he had, I wouldn’t have delivered it.
Any
message. From him or to them.’

She shook her head.

‘All that was a long time ago,’ she said. ‘That was one of the things I wanted to put behind me. And I had never really had much to do with it. The Hospital kept me away from things like that. And then when I went to Venice I was out of their reach. Of course, when I started singing professionally, I couldn’t entirely escape it. Especially when I sang in Naples. But someone like me was always handled with kid gloves, if I was touched at all. I knew about the other side, of course, as everyone who grows up in Naples does. But I wasn’t close enough to it to know anyone . . .anyone I might give a message to.’

She shook her head. ‘The only thing Alessandro told me when I left was to go and dig a hole in the sea.’

There was a sudden bustle in the
pensione
and baskets appeared full of children’s clothes.

‘What are we doing to do about all this?’ said Giuseppi, gesturing towards the baskets.

‘Get Matteo to carry them on his cart,’ said Maria.

‘Wouldn’t that tell people that Jalila is moving?’ asked Francesca. ‘And then couldn’t they find out from Matteo where she had moved to?’

‘We could ask Matteo to say nothing,’ said Maria, doubtfully.

‘Matteo is a blabbermouth,’ said Giuseppi.

‘I can walk,’ said Jalila.

‘With all this stuff? And with the children?’

‘I must leave the stuff behind,’ said Jalila determinedly.

‘I will go with you,’ said Giuseppi. ‘I can carry it.’

‘No, you can’t,’ said Maria. ‘And, anyway, wouldn’t that give the game away, too?’

‘I know!’ said Francesca. ‘Let’s get Giorgio to carry it.’

‘Wouldn’t that amount to the same thing?’

‘No,’ said Francesca. ‘Giorgio is not as close to the family as Grandfather is. And also . . .’ She thought. ‘Couldn’t we pretend it was something to do with the race? Giorgio is working on that already. He could borrow the cart, put Jalila’s things in it and then put something to do with the race on top. Some of those water skins, for instance. He could say he was taking them out to places along the route. And he could go separately, not with Jalila, and so no one would connect them.’

Maria looked at Francesca approvingly.

‘That’s a good idea, Francesca,’ she said.

‘I’ll go and get him,’ said Francesca, and ran off.

Jalila sat down on a chair.

‘Biscuit!’ said the little boy.

‘Come with me,’ said Maria, taking him by the hand and leading him off into the kitchen.

The little girl came up to Chantale.

‘Can I touch your hair, Signora?’ she whispered.

‘Can I touch your hair, Signora?’

Chantale bent her head.

‘Why should it be like this?’ said Jalila, bewildered. ‘What have I done? What has Bruno done?’

Seymour had been asking himself that, too. What had Jalila done that the Camorra should so suddenly have turned against her? Giuseppi and his friends taking their name in vain, the pension, surely all that was nothing to them? The fact that she was an Arab? But that didn’t seem to have mattered much in practice in Naples. It hadn’t mattered much to Alessandro in bringing her here in the first place –

He stopped.

‘Jalila,’ he said, ‘you sent a letter to someone in Rome. What did you put in it?’

‘My thanks,’ said Jalila, surprised. ‘It was to my patron. My thanks for bringing me here. I had written before, of course, to do that, soon after I arrived. I had used the same letter-writer as I knew he could do it. But this time I was thanking him for the money he had sent me through Signor Scampion. I should have thanked him before. For that and for Signor Scampion’s kindness, when he was so unhappy himself. About the war. I told Signor Alessandro that. I said it was the action of a good man who could think of others. And I said how cruel it was that he should have died in the way that he did. God would not let it go unpunished. That was all I wrote, Signor Seymour. That was all.’

Chapter Thirteen

Jalila went off hand in hand with her children.

Giuseppi wanted to go with her but Maria shook her head.

‘People are used to seeing her wandering about with the children,’ she said. ‘If they see you with her they’ll wonder why.’

‘Just part of the way,’ Giuseppi persisted. ‘To make sure she gets out of the city safely. The first part is the dangerous part.’

Maria shook her head.

‘Not you,’ she said. She thought for a moment.

‘Bruno?’ she said.

Then she shook her head again.

‘Not Bruno,’ she said. ‘They may be watching him. I know they say it’s all right between him and them now, and he says it’s all right. But I don’t trust them. And while it may be all right for him, it’s not all right for her. Best leave him out of this.’

Chantale suggested Seymour.

‘And I could go with him,’ she said. ‘People are used to seeing us walking around and they wouldn’t think anything of it. And they don’t associate us with Jalila.’

That was thought acceptable and, soon after Jalila left, Seymour and Chantale set off after her, keeping a discreet distance behind. They followed her to the edge of the city and watched her start out on the white, dusty road that led through fields and olive trees to the distant hills where the village was. There was nothing in either dress or appearance – she was no browner than the occasional man she passed working among the olive trees – to distinguish her from any other woman going out from the city to visit relatives in the mountains. It came to Seymour that she fitted in. Or would do, if only they would let her.

‘I am beginning to think,’ said Miss Scampion, ‘that perhaps it would be as well if I returned to England.’

‘I think you may be right, Miss Scampion,’ said Seymour. ‘It would be better to have family and friends around you to support you.’

‘Here everything I see reminds me of Lionel.’

‘It cannot but be painful.’

‘I have been staying on,’ said Miss Scampion, looking hard at Seymour, ‘in the hope that I would see whoever was responsible for his death brought to justice.’

‘I think that time may not be long deferred, Miss Scampion.’

‘Do you really think that, Mr Seymour?’ she said sharply. ‘Or are you just telling me that to fob me off?’

‘I really think that.’

Miss Scampion sighed.

‘If I could be sure,’ she said. ‘If only I could be sure.’

‘I think you can be confident.’

‘There is something particular that makes you say that?’

‘There is.’

‘Will it be soon? But perhaps I shouldn’t ask you that.’

‘I expect the police will shortly be in a position to charge someone with your brother’s murder. Of course, it could be months before he comes to trial.’

‘It would be enough,’ said Miss Scampion, ‘to know that someone was being charged. I would feel that I had fulfilled my promise. I promised myself, you see, – I promised
Lionel
– that I would not leave Naples until I had seen the man who murdered him being held responsible.’

‘I think that time might not be far distant, Miss Scampion.’

‘Then I can leave. And perhaps I
should
leave.’

‘Perhaps you should.’

‘I think of Lionel every day,’ she said, ‘but, you know, I am becoming more and more confused. It was all simple once. We were so contented together. I thought I knew him as well as the palm of my own hand. But lately I have come to feel . . . to feel that I did not know him as well as I thought I did. There were things . . .’

She found it difficult to speak.

‘. . . things that I think now he was deliberately keeping from me. That betting slip. That dreadful woman, the Marchesa. I knew about her, of course, but I did not suspect that their relationship was . . . as I think now that it was. And then . . . then that other woman. Not an Englishwoman. Not even . . . not even . . . an Italian!’

‘Miss Scampion –’

She held up her hand. ‘I know what you are going to say, Mr Seymour. That I should not jump to conclusions. But how can I not conclude when the evidence was before my eyes? I saw them, Mr Seymour, I saw them! But I refused to believe it. I kept on denying it to myself. But then when he died it was as if his death suddenly unlocked a flood of things that had been there all the time and that I had refused to see, but that all came crashing down on me when we moved to Naples.’

She looked at Seymour. ‘And so, Mr Seymour, I shall not be sorry to leave Naples. Especially now after what you have told me. I shall be leaving at the end of the week after completing my arrangements. There are one or two things in the house that I still have to dispose of but that should not take long. Father Pepe is coming over later to take the rest of Lionel’s things. And then I shall say my farewells.’

She held out her hand to Seymour. ‘Thank you, Mr Seymour, for enabling me to keep my promise. For I am sure you have had a hand in all this.’

She turned to Chantale. ‘And thank you, my dear, for your patience with a silly old woman.’

She gave Chantale a quick, unexpected kiss on the cheek. ‘I am sure that you will be more successful in managing your life than poor Lionel was. May I wish you every happiness together? And I hope that your husband will bring you as much comfort as he has me.’

Bruno was waiting for them in the
pensione
when they got back.

‘It is all right, is it?’ he said. ‘You saw her go?’

‘We watched,’ said Seymour, ‘and saw her go. And I don’t think anyone else was watching too.’

‘God be praised!’ said Bruno, sitting down and putting his head in his hands.

‘She will be safe now,’ said Maria.

‘I hope so, I hope so.’

‘You love her, don’t you, Bruno?’ said Maria gently.

He raised his head. ‘Yes. But – but she doesn’t love me.’

‘It may come, Bruno.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘It won’t. It won’t. I know that now. I had hoped . . . But she told me.’

‘She may change her mind.’

‘She won’t.’

He looked at Chantale. ‘You were right, Signora. You tried to tell me but I would not hear. She has a mind of her own, and it is not my way inclined. She said there was too much distance between us. And she did not like what I did – those I worked for. She said it would come to evil. And she was right.’

‘Bruno –’ began Maria.

He shook his head. ‘There is blood on my hands, Maria. She didn’t know it, but there is.’

‘You say these things, Bruno, but –’

‘You say these things, Bruno, ‘No, Maria. She was right.’

‘At least,’ said Seymour, ‘there is not now going to be more blood on your hands.’

Bruno gave him a startled look.

‘No,’ he said quietly.

‘Bruno,’ said Seymour, ‘what was the job they were going to ask you to do?’

‘I – I cannot say.’

‘I will say it if you don’t.’

Bruno looked at him in anguish.

Seymour nodded.

‘Go on,’ he said.

‘To kill Jalila,’ Bruno said.

‘Bruno!’ gasped Maria.

He turned towards her. ‘It is true, Maria. But I would never have done it.’

‘Of course you wouldn’t, Bruno! Of course you wouldn’t!’

‘Why did they think you would?’ asked Seymour.

‘Because in Naples you do what they tell you,’ said Bruno simply. ‘And –’

He stopped.

‘There was another reason, wasn’t there?’

Bruno shuffled.

‘It was a Neapolitan matter, Signor,’ he said awkwardly.

‘A question of honour?’

‘They thought so,’ said Bruno bitterly. ‘And others thought so. That is important, because if the world thinks so, then your own honour is called in question.’

‘And your honour was called into question?’

‘Not just my honour,’ said Bruno hoarsely.

‘Tonio’s?’

‘Tonio’s. And hers.’

‘Jalila had done something to bring your honour into question?’

‘Yes. I could see that it would,’ said Bruno agitatedly, ‘and so I spoke to her. I warned her. But she was angry with me and said there was no question of . . . of what I thought, and others were saying.’

‘And did you believe her?’

‘Yes.
Yes
!’ said Bruno passionately. ‘My heart spoke, and I believed her.’

‘And you were right, Bruno!’ said Maria hotly.

‘Yes, you were right,’ said Seymour.

‘But . . .’ said Bruno.

‘Yes,’ said Seymour. ‘But . . .’

‘I knew she was pure,’ said Bruno, ‘and couldn’t be anything but pure. And true to Tonio. Nevertheless, what had been seen, had been seen, and could not be denied. It couldn’t be her fault. So . . .’

‘It must be his,’ said Seymour.

‘Yes. He must have tricked her, taken advantage of her innocence. And ignorance of Naples.’

‘It did not happen as you suppose, Bruno,’ said Seymour. ‘He was innocent, too. He was trying to help her. As someone had asked him to.’

‘They were seen –’ began Bruno.

‘They were both warm people, Bruno. And perhaps they went further than they should. But in their hearts they were as innocent as you know Jalila to be. He was just giving her money. From someone else. As he had been asked to do. That is all it was.’

‘Who is this person?’ demanded Bruno suspiciously.

‘You know him.’

‘Why was he giving her money?’

‘For the same reason as he had given money before. Through you and Marcello.’

‘Alessandro?’ said Bruno incredulously.

‘Yes.’

‘It cannot be!’ said Bruno.

‘Nevertheless, it was so,’ said Seymour. ‘Why he sent her money again at that point, I do not know. Perhaps because she had written a letter to thank him, and it had reminded him of her. And he was pretty sure she would be in need. He had no great opinion – unjustly, perhaps, – of your ability to support her. So he sent her money.’

‘By the Englishman?’

‘Yes.’

Bruno looked stunned.

‘Whom you killed, Bruno, believing that he had wronged Jalila.’

‘God forgive you, Bruno!’ whispered Maria.

‘Was it so?’ gasped Giuseppi.

‘It was so,’ said Bruno.

‘But . . .’ said Seymour.

‘But?’ said Bruno, turning to him.

‘That wasn’t the only reason why you killed him. Or even the main reason.’

‘No,’ agreed Bruno.

‘You killed him because you had been told to kill him.’

‘Yes,’ said Bruno. ‘That is so. I hesitated when they told me. And they mocked me and said: here is a real virgin! He will not kill even to save his honour, and the honour of his friend! So I killed.’

‘You went up behind him,’ said Seymour, ‘when he was standing at the Porta del Carmine. You knew he often went that way after going out on his bicycle, because you had seen him when you were collecting in the street behind the Porta. Perhaps you had even seen that he sometimes stopped at the Porta. You hid behind the pillar and then stabbed him. And then you ran down the street and hid in a
basso
. Where you were seen, Bruno. As people will tell.’

‘This cannot be, Bruno!’ said Maria.

‘It can, Maria. And it was as he says.’

Seymour took Bruno first to the consulate, where he picked up Richards, and then to the central police station, where he gave Bruno into custody: in Richards’s presence, because he wanted an official witness and knew that a consular one would be harder to deny, should the Camorra try to intervene. Although he thought it likely that, for someone as minor as Bruno, they would not even bother.

‘But why,’ said a still bewildered Richards, as they walked away from the police station, ‘did they get involved in the first place?’

‘They were asked to,’ said Seymour, ‘by someone they knew, who had probably done favours for them in the past and was in a position to do more. He himself had come from Naples and was, I think, a pretty tough customer. He might even have worked for them in the past and they could have gone on working together since. I suspect they knew each other pretty well, so when he asked, they had no problem in agreeing.’

‘But why did he want them to kill Scampion for him? Scampion! Good heavens, a man less likely to get across someone to that extent, it would be hard to find!’

‘He knew something, you see. He had found it out by accident while visiting the army base, and he was about to reveal it to the press. Your informant was quite right. Only what she – and it was a she, wasn’t it? The Marchesa? – didn’t realize was that it was not the general press he was going to reveal it to but a specialist press, the bicycling press, where, because of the vicissitudes of Italian politics, and, more particularly, bicycling rivalries, Scampion knew it would receive maximum attention.

‘He had discovered, you see, that someone was shipping arms out to Libya under the guise of them being bicycle parts. And shipping them to the Libyans, Italy’s enemies. You can imagine the furore it would have caused if it had come out. Heads – and the heads of big people – would have rolled. Big business interests, with all sorts of high-level connections with politics, were involved.

‘You knew,’ said Seymour accusingly: ‘so why didn’t you stop it?’

‘I knew it was
possible
,’ said the Marchesa. ‘But that was all. When Vincente told me he’d blurted it all out to Alessandro, about the package, I tried to get him to shut up. I told him to forget about it. I mean, what the hell difference would a small quantity of arms make: given that a war was going on. But it was too late. He had already told Alessandro enough to allow him to guess the person he had to thank. And silence.’

The Marchesa shook her head.

‘I knew it was possible,’ she said, ‘but I couldn’t believe, somehow, that it
would
happen. That Alessandro would actually do it. I didn’t, in fact, think he would until it was too late.’

She was silent for a moment. ‘When I heard, well, I was very angry. I tried to think what I could do. It would be no good going to Alessandro and having it out with him. What would that achieve? No one would believe me. The police were in his pocket. All that would come of it would be a blanket indifference and possibly a hole in the sea for me.