The Marshal and the Madwoman (19 page)

'It wasn't a foolish idea at all. Tell me, did you hope to find anything in particular?'

'I thought perhaps a photo of little Elena.'

'Ah . . .' said the Marshal, satisfied, 'exactly. But you didn't find one?'

'No. And unfortunately I didn't have a photo of her myself, which I regretted very much then and do now. I'm afraid I didn't find anything and the whole thing turned out very embarrassing because I was in there searching about when who should walk in but Anna's sister. You can picture my embarrassment, knowing how it must look . . . Still, she must have accepted my explanation since she came up to my flat and stayed some time confiding in me. It was she who told me that little Elena's body had been found in the cellar of a house two streets away. She'd just been to identify her.'

'And the husband?'

'It was some days more before they recovered his body which had been carried much further away. I didn't mention him since I couldn't be sure how much she knew and she was already very upset. I soon realized that it was Anna she was most upset about rather than the child, whose death she seemed to accept philosophically. Of course she wasn't so close to the child even as I was. She didn't visit all that often. Anna once mentioned to me that she had a very difficult life with her husband and that they didn't see each other as often as they would have liked because of him. It seems the sister was quite the business woman. According to Anna, she took after their father. I could well imagine it was true. That day was the first time I'd seen her and despite what she'd gone through, I still got the impression of a very strong character who knew what she wanted. Not a bit like Anna who was very delicate. She was well dressed, too—like everyone else in those days she'd had to come through the streets in Wellingtons but she had a very good fur coat on. I can't afford good clothes myself but I have an eye for them. She was a very well-bred woman, not the sort to confide in people too easily, but no doubt she was glad of a friendly stranger to unburden herself to that day.

' "If there's one thing I've always been terrified of," she told me, "it was something like this happening to Anna. I'm a very different character and goodness knows my life hasn't been easy, but I can take it. I don't know how well you knew her but, believe me, the smallest mishap was enough to unbalance her."

'I said I'd realized that.

'"But you perhaps don't know the cause of it. My sister and I were born into a very comfortably-off family but we had an unfortunate childhood. My mother died when we were quite small. I was nine and Anna was only five. That in itself is enough to cause insecurity in any child, of course, though no one really considered such things in those days as they do now. But, unfortunately, Anna was alone in the room with her mother when it happened. A heart attack, quite sudden. We don't know whether Anna called for help but we do know that she stayed there, standing beside her mother's body until my father arrived home and walked into the room. Anna wasn't crying, she was just standing there very white and still. Of course, it may be that she had called for help, because as it happened there was no servant within hearing distance. It was only the day after that I was informed of my mother's death. We were kept apart, we children. I suppose somebody thought it best. Since there was no female relative available or willing to take on the responsibility of two small girls we were sent to a convent. Because I was the elder, Anna relied on me as she would on a mother, though I still wasn't ten years old. In my opinion, she never really recovered. Perhaps she should have had professional help but it wasn't the fashion then and the nuns were more strict than kind. From that day to this I've always feared for Anna, always known she couldn't face even the smallest of life's crises. When she met Chiari and wanted to marry him my father was very much against it. An artisan, you can imagine ... I was the one who convinced him. Chiari was such a steady, calm person, just what Anna needed. With the problems she had, that was all that mattered in my opinion, and I never regretted having supported her. Now this . . . she'll never recover from this. But whatever happens, she'll always have me. As long as I'm alive she'll never be alone and she'll never want for anything, I swear that before God."

'I never saw her again.'

'And Anna?'

'It was a very long time before I saw Anna. Very shortly after that I was obliged to go to Switzerland where my father had been taken seriously ill. I stayed there for some months until he died. When I got back life had returned to normal here. It was wonderful the way help poured in from all over the world. Nevertheless, it was the fact that life was normal again that made me feel the loss of little Elena, that was when it really hit me for the first time. I suppose that was because there had been too much turmoil before. It was a small thing that brought it home to me. I was queuing in the fish shop downstairs one Friday morning and one of the women was recounting the story of some terrible tragedy, I think it was in Wales. I didn't hear the whole story so I don't know the details but apparently all the children in a village were killed. It must have happened around the time of the flood because this woman was saying that the parents had sent all their now unwanted toys over here for the children of Florence. I was on the point of opening my mouth to say "Then perhaps little Elena ..." I stopped and said to myself "She's dead."

'That night, I confess, I had a little weep. The next day I made inquiries about Anna.'

'Had she been transferred by then?'

'Yes, she had. It seems she'd recovered her health but, as her sister had feared, not her senses. I asked for her at Santa Maria Nuova. They said she'd never spoken but that on a number of occasions she had tried to throw herself from a window, always just as it was going dark. It had been decided that she should be transferred to San Salvi, but her transfer had been delayed for some time because she still needed hospital treatment.'

'To her skin, by any chance?'

'Yes. You knew that? It all came off, you see, because of her being in that contaminated water for so many hours. There were all sorts of chemicals in it. They said her skin came off in ribbons but that it grew again quite satisfactorily without any lasting ill-effects. Then they transferred her.'

'And so you went to see her in San Salvi?'

'Only twice, I'm afraid. She didn't seem to recognize me and she never spoke. One of the nuns told me she'd taken to sweeping the place all day long. There had been more attempts to throw herself from the window towards dusk. I didn't have the courage to go a third time, besides which, not long after my second visit, my mother-in-law began to sicken and she moved in here with us.

'The last time I had news of Anna was on the second anniversary of the flood. Seeing the old news reels on TV, I got to thinking about her and I called San Salvi. They told me very kindly that it was pointless my feeling guilty about not going to see her since she recognized no one, not even her sister. It seems she'd begun to speak again but that her language was aggressive and obscene, especially to the nuns. I thought I could understand that, though I said nothing. I wondered how the sister was taking it. I'm sure that if she hadn't had problems with her husband she'd have had Anna at home, no matter what her behaviour. Well, I suppose she must have recovered to some extent if they eventually let her out. I wonder what happened to the sister? It said in the paper Anna was living alone when she died.'

'Alone, yes. And in great poverty.'

'In poverty? I'm surprised at that, after what her sister said to me that day.'

'In view of what you've just told me, it is surprising. She may have had money hidden that we haven't been able to find.'

The Marshal got to his feet. All of a sudden he'd had enough of sitting in this dark, tidy room. He wanted to telephone the hospital and he felt a need to be on his own and think over all that Signora Santoli had just told him. Even with all his other preoccupations, he was aware that this dignified and lonely woman was sorry to see him ready to leave.

'If you don't mind my asking,' she said, 'when is the funeral to be?'

'I don't know, to be honest, but I can telephone you when I do, if you like.'

'Thank you.' They went out into the hall and she wrote her number for him on the neat, empty pad by the telephone.

'I'd appreciate it very much,' she said as he buttoned the slip of paper into his top pocket. 'I'd like to go to the funeral. After all, she was once part of my life. One clings to small things as time goes on.'

'Yes,' the Marshal said, 'you're right. I think that's why it struck me so forcibly when I didn't find a single snapshot or memento in her flat, what you tried to find for her after the disaster and couldn't.'

'It's true, her whole past had been wiped out. She did have one thing, though; you've reminded me of it, though she may not have kept it. The second time I went to San Salvi I took her the article from the paper that told her story. I thought it might shock her into speaking. After all, how can we ever be quite sure that the mind is wandering in darkness all the time? It's what I feel about my mother-in-law. How do I know that at some fleeting moment she isn't aware, aware of what's happening to her and aware that I'm here and caring for her? It's often only that that keeps me going. It had no immediate effect on Anna, that page from the paper, but I left it with her because you never know.'

'Did it have the sister's name and address on it, by any chance?'

'I'm certain it did, but I can't remember it, I'm sorry.'

'That's all right. I can get it from the newspaper's archives. I don't think Anna did throw it away,' he added, 'but it's gone now.'

'I'm afraid I haven't been much help to you.'

'You've been a great deal of help. I'll let you know about the funeral.'

When she had shut the door after him he heard her saying very gently, 'AH right. It's all right. I'll come and sit with you for a while now.'

He walked down the stairs and out into the heat. He had an idea now who the man he was looking for might be and it wasn't a man with a limp. The only thing that still puzzled him was how had Clementina found out?

CHAPTER 10

It was dark in Clementina's tiny kitchen. Perhaps there was going to be another storm. The room was so close after being shut up so long in the heat that the Marshal opened the small window, letting in some damp air and the smell of approaching rain. That didn't make it much lighter and pressing the light switch produced nothing. They must already have sent someone from the electricity board to disconnect the power until the next tenant signed on. The Marshal wondered who the next tenant would be. They could hardly expect to rent the flat out in its present condition. The gloom was a nuisance, though he had little enough to do. He opened the table drawer which had once puzzled him and now puzzled him no longer. He opened it to its fullest extent but he didn't touch anything. The sheet of newspaper from the back had gone, as he expected. Why she had kept it there all those years was not so clear. On that question turned the point of just how crazy she really was. Had she, as Linda Rossi had said and Signora Santoli suspected, had periods of lucidity when she remembered her past and could compare it with her present? It was more comfortable to think of her as completely crazy, and so oblivious. Perhaps it had been more comfortable for her, too, to let herself sink into madness during her years in the asylum so that it became a habit. Nevertheless, she had kept that page from the newspaper for twenty years almost. That and the photo of her in her madness, brandishing her sweeping brush for a young reporter. Somebody had taicen away the wrong cutting after killing her, removing her present instead of her past by mistake. A mistake that hadn't much mattered as long as her death was reported as a suicide.

Anna Franci and crazy Clementina . . . He'd phoned Galli as soon as he'd got back from Santa Croce to ask for the page from the archives.

'I'll see to it for you. I know just where to lay my hands on it because I dug it out the night I wrote that first piece on her.'

'I wish you'd told me about it.'

'I wish you told me she'd been murdered! But seriously, I'd have told you if you'd rung back when I was in. I forgot about it after that because I never did write it up. Some character from San Salvi called me and convinced me to write about her being a patient there. All the same to me, as I told him. Neither story was much cop for this season. A nice juicy scandal with a spot of sex and violence is what sells the paper in the holiday period, that and the Bingo competition. And I suppose you think your job's depressing. I'll send you a copy over.'

The Marshal closed the drawer and walked slowly through the flat. The bedroom was even darker because the shutters were closed. He wasn't looking for anything now, just taking possession of the place for a moment. Up to now someone had always got there before him, as they had at the asylum, removing all trace of Anna Franci and her story. Someone sharper than himself who had always managed to be a step ahead. The murder story had only broken in this morning's paper and yet by then he had already taken the precaution of sending his gorilla-like henchman up here to get rid this time of the right bit of newspaper evidence. How had he known so soon? The Marshal couldn't believe it was a coincidence. It was true you could get the first edition of the paper shortly after midnight at the central station, but if that was how he managed then he must have been doing it every night to be sure. He had a lot at stake but it still seemed far-fetched . . .

'In any case,' said the Marshal quietly in the silence of the dark little bedroom, 'I'll find him.' He took a last look around and then let himself out, locking the door. At any other time, in any other mood, he might have paused to wonder why the keys had been returned to him by the Prosecutor. They had been on his desk when he got back from Santa Croce, a wordless message of recapitulation. But he didn't pause to wonder about that or anything else. He was no longer assailed by doubts or by anger at his own lack of intelligence. He was conscious of Bruno, still and silent in his white hospital bed, of Clementina, once Anna Franci, now shut in a refrigerated drawer, and of a respectable-looking grey-haired man whom he intended to track down by the end of the day. That was all. That was if you could call it 'conscious'. His wife, after sitting opposite his silent bulk all through lunch, had tentatively said, 'I'm sure that by this evening Bruno will have come round from his operation. You'll see.' He hadn't even answered.

He stopped on the stairs and rang the bell of the Rossis' flat. No one opened the door and he went on down to the street to cross the square and go into Franco's bar. Franco was behind the counter and the smile with which he had begun to greet the Marshal faded from his face.

'What's the matter, Marshal? You look a bit strange— has something else happened?'

'I want to know the name of the owner of that house.'

'Clementina's flat? I couldn't tell you. I think it's all dealt with through an agency. The Rossis—'

'They're out.'

'Has
something happened?'

'No.'

The Marshal turned and went out again. He was vaguely aware of having produced an odd impression. He liked and respected Franco, who had been a big help to him, and he wouldn't have liked him to think he was being funny with him because of the midnight gambling business. He could have gone back and explained, but he was plodding onwards and these vague thoughts weren't enough to stop him. Nothing would stop him now until he'd done what had to be done.

He heard the thunder begin as he climbed the stairs to his Station and unlocked the door. Di Nuccio appeared immediately.

'I just telephoned the hospital. They've operated and they said it all went as planned.'

'Is he conscious?'

'No. Not yet. . . There was a call for you—just a minute.' He disappeared into the duty room and returned with a slip of paper. 'The Tenants' Association, it came from. A woman. She said it was important.'

'Hm.'

'Shall I get the number for you?'

'No.'

'They said—'

'It doesn't matter.' He couldn't deal with the Rossi problem now but he would call the Tenants' Association after he had been to visit the man in the cells over at Headquarters. They could probably even tell him who the owner of those flats was. Everything in good time. He couldn't let them delay him now and they'd surely try to. He'd already promised to appear at the hearing and that would have to suffice for the moment.

'I have to go out again,' he told Di Nuccio.

'What time will you be back?'

'I don't know.'

'Because there was a girl here wanting to see you and she said it was very urgent.'

For the Marshal only one thing was urgent: catching up with a respectable grey-haired man who was always one step ahead of him.

'Tell her to come tomorrow morning early.'

'I'm sorry, Marshal, but I didn't know—I've already told her to come back today towards six. I thought you'd be in.'

'Well, I might be.' He looked at his watch. It was 4.10. 'I might be . . .' He walked into his office and sat down at the desk, pulling his battered typewriter towards him. Di Nuccio hovered in the doorway.

'What is it now?' He slid a sheet of paper into the machine and tugged at it because it was crooked.

'That girl. Well, she wouldn't tell me what she wanted, insisted on seeing you. She said you knew her. All I want to say is that I believed her when she said it was urgent. She was crying buckets—I've never seen anyone cry like that.'

'Oh,
that
girl. . .' The Marshal began to type and Di Nuccio stared at him, puzzled, then went out and shut the door. He would have stared even harder if he could have seen that the Marshal, with two plump fingers, was typing his own name and address straight across the page, time after time, sometimes varying it with a line of random letters and numbers. When he'd filled five pages he stamped them all here and there with various rubber stamps from his drawer and then pushed them into a large envelope, satisfied.

'The Prosecutor's on his way over here to question him, if you want to wait.'

'No. I'll go straight down.'

The officer called in a young Carabiniere. 'Show the Marshal down to the cells.'

'Yessir.'

The Marshal followed the boy in silence, watched him as he unlocked the door and stood back beside it, keys in hand, to wait. He stepped inside and heard the door lock behind him.

The man was lying on the narrow bed, smoking. He didn't bother to move, only watched the Marshal with narrowed eyes through a skein of smoke. His shirt was open to the waist and the thick mat of hair on his chest glistened with sweat.

The Marshal's big, bulging eyes were equally watchful and wary. He couldn't afford to make a mistake, even less so than his opponent who was now grinning at him confidently. There was one small hard chair in the cell and the Marshal sat down on it after placing it as far away from the bed as possible. He didn't speak, just went on staring at the gorilla-like man on the bed, sizing him up. It wasn't difficult. They'd shown him the man's record upstairs, but even without it there was no mistaking that he had spent more time in prison than out of it and that crime was his way of life rather than his profession. He had never gained anything much from it and never would, but it was the only life he knew. His only defence would be to deny everything and no amount of clever questioning would budge him, as it might someone more intelligent who'd try to balance possible gains and losses and follow some lawyer's advice in the hope of a lighter sentence. He was brutal and probably touchy. Brutal enough to stand his ground against all the odds and touchy enough to be unnerved already by the Marshal's unexpected silence so that he was the first to break it.

'I've got nothing to say to you.'

'Keep quiet, then.' The Marshal went on staring.

'I've said all I'm going to say. I broke into that flat because I knew it was empty and since I didn't steal anything—' 'I'm not interested.'

'So what are you here for?'

'I've got something to tell you.' But he didn't tell it.

The man, whose name was Bruti, dragged at the last half-inch of his cigarette and rolled sideways to stub it out on the floor.

'Got any fags you can give me?'

'No.'

He rolled on his back and stared at the ceiling. A fly settled on his chest and he slapped at it. It circled above him and settled there again.

'You could suffocate in this bleeding hole. When are they going to transfer me to Sollicciano?'

'I don't know.'

He would be happier once he was settled back in prison with plenty of old friends around him and the familiar routine. He'd only been out eight months.

'Bastards!' The remark was aimed at nobody in particular but probably included all policemen and flies.

'Is that where you met him? In Sollicciano?' asked the Marshal.

'I thought you weren't interested.'

'That's right. It doesn't much matter. I can find out, anyway.'

'Find out, then.'

'I will, I should have asked him but I didn't think of it at the time . . .'

There was no reaction from Bruti. Probably it was wishful thinking on the Marshal's part that made the glistening chest muscles appear to tense up.

'Funny,' he went on, 'I wouldn't have thought that you'd be the sort to let yourself be pushed about that easily.'

'Nobody ever pushed me about.'

'He's clever, that's the trouble. People like you should stick to their own kind. You know where you are with them. Get yourself involved with somebody too smart for you and you're bound to end up taking the rap.'

'For what?'

'In this case for murder, to name but one charge—I suppose you've had a judicial communication for Clementina's murder?

'That means nothing.'

'No. At least, it didn't mean much at the time when there was no real evidence against you, but now they'll charge you. I thought I should tell you that. What you do about it is up to you, but it didn't seem right to me that he should get off scotfree while you spent the rest of your life inside.'

'I don't know who you think you're talking about.'

'Suit yourself. I just thought it fair to tell you. You'll be charged before the day's out.'

'Charged with what? You've nothing on me except that I broke into an empty flat and stole nothing because you interrupted me.'

'So we did, but then, there was nothing in there to steal, was there?'

He didn't answer.

'Well, as I say, suit yourself. If you want to stick to your story, that's your business. It's true that as long as there was no evidence, no motive and no witnesses, it was the best thing you could do. The only trouble is, as I said before, the chap's got brains and you haven't.' The Marshal flicked at the large envelope which he was holding on his knee. 'He even went so far as to say you were mentally deficient—I suppose he was still annoyed because you took the wrong newspaper cutting the first time. Is it true that you can't read?'

An accusation of murder had had no effect but this question made Bruti's face darken and his eyes glitter dangerously.

'Nobody said that!'

'That you're mentally deficient? He said it all right. I'm not saying I altogether believed him but you did take the wrong cutting and I know you can't read, anyway. It's in your file. I wouldn't worry about it much, if I were you. It's nothing compared to some other things he said. I'll be honest with you: I didn't believe much more than half of it, but that's only my opinion. It doesn't help you much because he's bound to have some fancy lawyer who'll have no trouble convincing the judge. It's plausible enough, what he says, and with your record . . . Well, he'll be sitting pretty once you're behind bars. He'll have not only got what he wanted, he won't even have had to pay you for the job. He hasn't paid you, has he? What you don't seem to understand is that he was never going to. I may have given you the wrong impression. Perhaps you're thinking that something went wrong and that he turned on you to defend himself. That's not the way it was. He was the one who came to us with this story.' He flicked the envelope again. 'That was the way he planned it, haven't you understood yet? You were the ideal mug, with a record as long as your arm. Once you'd done the job for him, all he had to do was come and tell us all about it.' He began sliding the five typewritten and much stamped sheets out of the envelope, frowning. 'He's a clever customer all right. . .'