Death in Autumn (14 page)

'What happened?'

'That was when it all started, when he came. It's true that I didn't know she had a son. In all those years she'd never said. Then he turned up. She was so agitated and she had nobody to tell except me. That was when she showed me the photographs—not those, I'd already seen those, but the ones of her husband and the little boy. When he turned up she changed completely. She wanted to make a new life for herself and the boy. She talked of nothing else. She said it would make up for everything.'

'Did she tell you the truth about her father?'

'No. She didn't explain herself. She was very agitated and she talked more about the future than the past.'

'She intended to break off with Becker?'

'Yes, she wrote and told him so.'

'And he came to see her?'

'Yes. It was the first time he'd ever been, I wasn't lying. But by the time he arrived everything had changed.'

'Because she'd found out the boy was an addict?'

'Not just that. All he wanted from her was money. She said he hated her for having abandoned him. In the end she was afraid of him. He'd asked her for an enormous sum and said he'd leave if she gave it to him.'

'Did she believe him?'

'I don't think so. In any case she was terrified.'

'Did she admit to you that he was blackmailing her?'

'Blackmailing? No, just that he demanded money. It's not the same thing.'

'As demanding money with menaces? No. But that's what he was doing. She was frightened, you say, so I suppose when Becker arrived she told him?'

'She'd decided to give him the money in the hope that he'd really go.'

'But she was afraid of him and she let Becker go and meet him in her place?'

'Yes. He took cash. That was the end of it. She never heard from the boy again. After that Hilde resigned herself to going on with the old life.'

'Where was the necklace that night? On the bed?'

'On the floor.'

'You've never stolen anything in your life before, have you?'

'No.'

'What on earth did you intend to do with it?'

'I didn't think, not then. I just saw it lying there . . . Afterwards I thought of selling it at one of those auctions they do on the private TV stations, but I didn't even know how to go about it.'

'It's worthless, do you know that?'

Querci only stared at him, uncomprehending.

'It's worthless,' the Marshal repeated. 'Junk.'

There was silence for a moment. The registrar and Querci's lawyer were both writing rapid notes. It was Querci himself who broke the silence. Perhaps he wanted to get it over with.

'I knew you hadn't found the photographs, or you would have . . . That day when I came in for my shoes and heard about the seals being removed I went up there. I knew she kept them hidden but I wasn't sure where.'

'Nobody saw you go up?'

'Nobody noticed. The receptionist went in the back, to the bathroom, I suppose, and I said goodbye to him, but instead of leaving I went upstairs. I only intended to get my own photograph but then somebody came in. In the end I took the whole packet and ran.'

'And then you thought of getting rid of the necklace?'

'Later. I thought of throwing it in the river but if somebody had seen me ... I wanted to put it back in the room, to undo what I'd done. And I knew you couldn't have looked in her hiding place or you'd have seen the photographs. I was too scared to try and sell it, anyway. Does my wife know?'

'Yes.'

'She'll be better off without me.' He didn't mention the little girl.

When they took him away the embarrassed young lawyer stood up and looked about him uncertainly, as if wondering whether he should shake hands with some of the others who were present, but since only the Marshal noticed his hesitation he left with a vague 'good morning' addressed to nobody in particular and unheard by anyone.

The Substitute dismissed his registrar, indicated the chairs opposite his desk to the Captain and Guarnaccia, and sat looking at them, his hands clasped beneath his chin. Maestrangelo was in no hurry to explain himself. He took time first to observe the raised eyebrows, the slightly pursed lips, and decided that the Substitute was more amused than annoyed. It was stupidity and dullness that annoyed him, not cleverness, and he was well aware ofjust how clever the Captain had been, Maestrangelo was sure of that. For not only had he produced the solution to the Querci case, he had engineered things in such a way as to put one over on the Substitute himself and had made Guarnaccia the protagonist so as to disarm him in the case of a complaint from Sweeton's father.

The two men looked at each other. The Marshal looked at his knees.

'Was there any problem with the English judge?' inquired the Captain, as though nothing of note had transpired in the last half-hour. Which amused the Substitute even more.

'No,' he said, pausing to glance at the Marshal, 'there wasn't. The boy explained the circumstances of his little accident to his father in my presence. He's now out of hospital and both he and his father are prepared to remain here until such time as we call the boy as a witness. And now, if it wouldn't be asking too much, perhaps you'd tell me something about the case in which he it a witness. I'm a little vague on that point.'

'The Becker case,' replied the Captain equably. 'You'll have my report in a few days.'

'Ah. A double homicide, I take it. And do we have a motive?'

'Suppression of witnesses, sir.'

'Suppression of witnesses. Witnesses to what? Maestrangelo, you don't have another corpse tucked away that you haven't found time to mention to me?'

'No, sir. I don't.'

'Good. You seem to me to be capable of anything—though perhaps it's the Marshal here I should be asking.'

The Marshal only raised his big eyes and stared at him in silent incomprehension. The Substitute abandoned his flippant tone.

'Well, Captain? Witnesses to what?'

'Theft, sir. Or rather, a series of thefts perpetrated in thirteen European cities over a period of approximately twelve years.' He took a telex from his pocket. 'I got in touch with Interpol early this morning. That's a very brief summary, the full information should come through later today.'

The Substitute glanced at the telex and then put it to one side. 'You'd better begin at the beginning.'

The Captain began in Mainz, with the highly intelligent, cold-blooded practical joker who liked an audience and who had openly kept two mistresses.

'He and the two women left Mainz, not together and not at exactly the same time but all within a year. Hilde Vogel came to Florence, where she hoped to settle with her father. The other woman whose name was Ursula Janz we know nothing of. According to rumours among the people of Mainz, Becker went either to New York or to Amsterdam. My guess is that it was Amsterdam, that he already had his new life planned. He had dealt in jewellery for years and knew his stuff. He needed to learn cutting.'

'If that's true, it won't be difficult to check.'

'In the eight years or so that this case has been on file at Interpol I imagine that the police of the countries concerned must have tried to check. Whoever taught him would have been very highly paid for both his skill and his discretion.

And judging by Becker's recent form, I doubt if the cutter was allowed to outlive his usefulness.

'Once he had the skills he needed Becker's method was very simple. He would enter a jeweller's shop and choose a stone which he wanted to have set for his "wife". He knew the jewellery business and would talk with the jeweller at some length. He was well dressed, distinguished-looking, intelligent and eminently respectable. Having ascertained the weight and cut of the stone and examined it carefully he would leave, promising to return in a day or so with his wife. Then he would make a copy of the stone. Back in the shop, the original stone would pass from the jeweller to Becker to the wife. The stone they passed back was the false one. Becker and his wife would leave the shop to arrange for payment through a bank, perfectly normal since no one carries that sort of cash about and a cheque from an unknown person wouldn't be accepted. In some cases the theft wasn't discovered for many weeks, in one case it was six months. It all depended on when that particular stone came to be sold or set.'

'Hm . . .' The Substitute leant back a little in his chair and thought for a moment. 'What makes you so sure Becker's your man?'

'A number of things. His accomplices, first of all. As you see from the telex, there must have been two of them, in some instances a tall blonde, in others a small dark-haired woman. In each case the accomplice was fluent in the language of the country where the theft took place. We don't know about all Hilde Vogel's trips over the last twelve years but the ones we do know about coincide with thefts in those countries. It's probable that she was fluent in French as well as Italian. We know from Querci's statement that the other woman in Becker's life spoke perfect English. That stuck in my mind, I must say, since it seemed an odd thing to be so jealous about.'

'He must have paid them well—they couldn't have had much of a life, these women.'

'In my opinion, sir, he had a much stronger hold on them than just money. They must both have been in love with him and perhaps even afraid of him. Not only did they have no life of their own because of working for him, they had to tolerate each other's existence, as they had all those years ago in Mainz. Obviously money came into it too. Hilde Vogel hadn't enough to live on when she left home and her father had nothing and didn't want her anyway/ 'A strange life to choose, even so.'

'She had nothing else. Then her son turned up.'

'And Becker killed him, in your opinion?'

'Yes. She must have confessed everything to the boy. We know from John Sweeton that Christian was sure of getting a large amount of money from her because of something he knew about her. By the time Becker turned up, having received her letter saying she wanted to break with him, she was frightened enough and, I suppose, upset enough to tell him what she'd done and let him take over. The day after Christian's death, the morning after, to be exact, Becker walked into a jeweller's shop on the Ponte Vecchio, returned there two days later with his accomplice and committed another theft.'

'A remarkably cool character, if this is all true.'

'Whoever did those thefts had to be remarkable in many ways. It was the description of Becker's character that made me suspect him.'

'Well it's a convincing enough story, but why kill Hilde Vogel? And why a month later?'

'I don't know why he killed her. We may never know. As for why a month later, that could just be to leave a gap between that and the theft. If so, he was unfortunate because the two stories broke together. Not that anyone noticed at the time.'

'This jeweller, can he identify the Vogel woman?'

'I saw him this morning on my way here. I showed him her photograph.'

'And . . .?'

'Nothing. He's not sure. He remembers her being tall and blonde and very talkative—that would be to distract him while Becker passed him the counterfeit jewel, no doubt. But it was summer and she was wearing sunglasses. He can't remember her face at all.'

'I see.'

The Substitute picked up the telex again and looked at it in silence. The Marshal had sat patiently through this conversation he didn't consider himself competent even to think about. Now he glanced surreptitiously at his watch.

'All in all,' the Substitute said at last, 'we haven't a scrap of evidence against this man, have we?'

'No, sir,' replied the Captain, 'and we probably never will have. He still has another accomplice and there's nothing to prevent him from carrying on for many more years.'

'Well, send me your written report. All we can
do is
to keep the file open and wait for developments. Is the mother-in-law still here?'

'Until tomorrow—that is, if you're willing to release the boy's body.'

'I don't see why not. What about the woman's body? Surely if it's her daughter-in-law . . .?'

'I don't think she wants to take it back to Germany. She may change her mind, of course.'

'Arrange for me to see her tomorrow, will you? I may as well tell Sweeton he can take his son home. I don't think he's going to be needed as a witness for some time, if ever.'

The Captain said nothing. He and the Marshal got to their feet. Outside on the steps of the Procura the two of them stood for a moment beneath the great baroque facade, watching the traffic streaming by in the rain. The guard on duty hitched up his submachine-gun and gave them a brief salute.

'I'd give a lot to know why he killed Hilde Vogel,' the Captain said, putting on his hat. 'Even if we never find him.'

But the Marshal was thinking about Querci.

'I have to get off,' he said. 'I'm picking my wife up at the station.'

And they made a dash through the rain to their cars.

The Marshal lay in bed, his eyes wide open. He could hear his wife still moving about in the next room. His mind rambled over the events of the day and sometimes further back. He could hear the rain still falling heavily on the trees and gravel outside and imagined it filling the ditch that ran down from the fort to the dark swollen river. The thought made him shiver. What was his wife finding to do all this time? She had been busy from the moment she arrived, unpacking boxes full of tomato preserve, jam and fresh oranges and lemons. He'd have done better to take the van to meet her instead of his little Fiat. She had filled the kitchen to overflowing within minutes and had begun to cook immediately. Three or four times he had found an excuse to leave his office and come through to see what she was doing.

'You're getting in my way, whatever do you want this time?'

'A glass of water.' The first thing that came into his head, just like a little boy!

After supper he had pretended to read the newspaper, sneaking a glance at her every so often as she worked on a red sweater she was knitting for one of the boys, pausing occasionally to spread the piece over one knee and stroke it flat with her fingers, looking for non-existent mistakes.