The Marshal and the Madwoman (8 page)

'I doubt that. I'll have a word with Mario, then, making it sound casual.'

'Don't get too complicated. Tell him the truth, if you like. As long as it doesn't come officially from me nobody's obliged to do anything about it. Understood?'

'Right.' But Di Nuccio looked disappointed. He liked a bit of intrigue to make life interesting but the Marshal preferred him to reserve this taste for his dealings with women, which, from the snatches of conversation the Marshal picked up, should have provided enough intrigue for anybody's needs.

When Di Nuccio had gone he sighed. With a business like this he'd have been glad to have his young brigadier, Lorenzini, with him, a straightforward lad and bright, too. But Lorenzini had left for the seaside with his wife and small baby yesterday morning. He would have to make do with Di Nuccio, half a dozen or so young regulars with very little experience, and, God help us, Bruno the artist—or rather, the cook.

And, to his dismay, he realized that the temperature had already risen and sweat was beginning to trickle down his back. Why the devil did a thing like this have to happen in August?

'You know what it's like in August,' said the voice at the other end of the line apologetically.

'Of course,' the Marshal said, keeping his temper with difficulty. 'I'm in the same situation, with so many men on holiday, but—'

'Then you'll understand. I can't say at this point how much of a delay there'll be, but there are three other postmortems which have precedence, so . . .'

'I realize that, you told me last time I called, but the point is I need as much information as possible before the story breaks that it wasn't a suicide. Otherwise it wouldn't matter so much.'

'Well, frankly, I've already spoken to the Prosecutor on the case and I must say he didn't seem so concerned as you are.'

So that was how things were. A prosecutor who was neither use nor ornament, the sort who then came down on you like a ton of bricks when things went badly.

'Have you spoken to him about it yourself?' went on the other.

'No . . .'

'Well, that might be your best bet if you really feel it's that important. It may be that if you can convince him he could put pressure on at this end. You know there's not much I can do.'

'I suppose not.'

'If you want so speak to the doctor about his on-the-spot findings . . .'

'No, there's no need. I was there. That's not what I want to know.'

But what
did
he want to know? he thought as he hung up. He knew the most important thing: that Clementina hadn't gassed herself.

'I want to know who she is,' he answered himself aloud. He would also have liked to know if she'd ever had children. That photograph business was still sticking in his mind, though, needless to say, he hadn't mentioned that in his preliminary report to the Prosecutor this morning. Was there any point in trying to get him to put pressure on about the postmortem? There was no harm in trying. He might have read the report by now. The Marshal mopped his brow with a handkerchief and dialled. The Prosecutor hadn't read his report. It was apparently still lying on his desk unopened, according to the registrar who answered. He was in court at the moment but would certainly receive the Marshal's message as soon as he was free. 'He's got a very heavy workload, and this being August . . .'

The most important thing in the heat is to keep your temper. Once you let it boil over you feel ill for the rest of the day. To distract himself from the Prosecutor and the postmortem, the Marshal doggedly ran his finger down the list of things he had set himself to do, looked up the number of Italmoda and dialled it. But no sooner had it started ringing than he felt a rising tide of anger against the Public Prosecutor's office and all who dwelt therein, with special reference to the sort of substitute prosecutor who didn't so much direct an inquiry as sit on it, only shifting every now and then to derail it when it was going along nicely without his help. And all the talk there was these days about their defending their precious autonomy. A good deal less of it was what they needed, and some sort of outside watchdog to keep them under control. A bunch of prima donnas, that's what they were, and not above such childish tricks as calling the police in on a case to spite the Carabinieri and vice versa. 'Keeps them on their toes.' He'd actually heard one of them say it. Well, if this one wanted a scene, he could have it—no, he couldn't! He'd keep perfectly calm, that's what he'd do. Blast the man—and blast the people in this office who couldn't be bothered to answer their phone! A fine way to run a business. No wonder the country was going to the dogs.

The ringing at the other end went on and on and the Marshal's head felt fit to burst. Suddenly he slammed the receiver down and slumped back in his chair, passing a finger under his damp collar. Of course nobody was answering the phone. Whoever heard of an office being open in August? He shut his eyes and tried to breathe slowly, but his heart was beating too fast, and somehow his breathing insisted on keeping up with it. He'd done it. He'd boiled over. If he had any sense he'd just go quietly on with his routine work and let Clementina's case hang fire until September when it was possible to work properly because the world was functioning again. Of course, if he did try that on, the Prosecutor would appear from nowhere and start harassing him. He went and closed the window and switched on the fan. Then he switched the fan off again and got his jacket from behind the door. There was one possibility left on his list, and if the day was going to be that sort of day then he might as well go on blundering through it. Why spread the agony out over two or three days? He poked his head into the duty room as he left. Bruno was holding forth.

'A wok, since you're so ignorant, is a special sort of pan with sloping sides—'

'All right, all right, but we haven't got one,' said Di Nuccio, stabbing at the switchboard with a plug.

'No, but I'm going to get one as soon as the shops open.'

'I'm going out,' interrupted the Marshal, and shut the door.

Down in the entrance, he blinked in pain as the light hit his sensitive eyes and he fished out his sunglasses. Only a very few cars were dotted about the sloping courtyard in front of the Pitti Palace and the tourists rambled about freely in their bright new holiday clothes. Someone had dropped an ice-cream which had melted into a slimy pink and brown puddle around a sodden cone. He walked slowly down and crossed the road to take a short cut down a dark alleyway. The streets smelled sweaty and the large ochre stones of the high buildings shimmered with heat. He crossed Piazza Santo Spirito, where the absence of market stalls had a depressing effect. There was just one peasant farmer in from the country with a few limp-looking greens for sale on a small table. An old woman was poking about in them, grumbling.

It was cheering to find Franco's bar open. The butcher and the greengrocer wouldn't open until tomorrow. The Marshal stepped under the scaffolding in front of Clementina's building and rang the first-floor bell. A trickle of sweat rolled slowly down between his shoulder-blades until it reached his belt. Another was forming at the bridge of his nose under the sunglasses. He dabbed at this one with his handkerchief, replaced his glasses, rang the bell again and stood back a little in the road.

'They're out,' said a voice behind his head. He turned. Pippo's wife, Maria Pia, was leaning out of the window, dangling a dripping white shirt. 'I think they've gone to her mother's.'

'Oh yes? And where would that be?'

'Arezzo.'

'Arezzo . . .' If they'd gone that far they'd be gone all day. And surely, when he'd told them he'd be back the young man had said, 'Tomorrow would be better.' Much better. They'd be gone! Well, he might have expected it, the way things were going today.

'You don't know when they'll be back?' he called up.

Pippo's wife had pegged the shirt to the line hanging below her window and was squeaking it along on the pulley to make room for another.

'Moh . . .' she said with a shrug, and a second shirt sent a flurry of cool drops down on the Marshal's upturned face. 'Oh dear . . . watch out!'

'Good day to you,' said the Marshal and turned away.

"Bye,' she said, and then as an afterthought called out, 'Franco might know!'

So he might. But if they were out they were out, and what the Marshal needed, as those few cool drops had reminded him, was a shower. And maybe a cup of coffee, too. The heat had gone to his head to the extent that he couldn't care less that the wretched young couple had gone off. All he cared about was getting in off the hot streets and under a cool shower. That was all he wanted now.

What he got was a waiting-room full of tourists, one of them an elderly lady who was crying quietly into a paper handkerchief.

'Thank goodness you're back.' A harassed-looking Di Nuccio put his head round the duty room door and the Marshal glimpsed two more tourists in there behind him.

'There's been a pickpocket at work in the galleries and as these people are all foreigners and can't understand a word I say this is going to go on for ever.'

The elderly woman went on crying quietly and the rest of the group all turned reproachful eyes on the Marshal, as though it were his fault that their holidays had taken this unexpected turn for the worse. His first thought was that, given the sweaty condition of his shirt, he wouldn't be able to take off his jacket before tackling this lot. His second thought was that at least there was somebody else working in this heat and, judging by the row of woeful faces before him, the pickpocket had had a more successful morning's work than himself.

'You haven't even glanced at the paper.'

'It's late . . .' He buttoned up his collar and picked up his jacket.

'Well, you came in late for lunch so I don't see why you can't have ten minutes' rest. There's an article about Clementina . . .'

'Hmph:

'They've given her almost half a page.'

'What. . .? It doesn't say anything—'

'Oh no. The headline says suicide. I suppose there isn't much news, so . . .'

'Well, I haven't time to look at it.'

'I just thought you'd be interested.' She was disappointed. He knew that she was feeling more and more at a loose end as time passed without the children, and it was beginning to weigh on him as much as the weather.

It was with this in mind that he said, 'We'll go out for an hour after supper,' remembering that it was because of Clementina that they had missed their walk out the night before. A logical sequence of thought, as he pointed out later, that needed a woman's convoluted mind to interpret as a snub. This came out towards nine in the evening when supper was cleared away and they were on the point of going out. The idea had been to take the paper with him since they intended to find a not too expensive cafe where they could afford to sit outside, a privilege that doubled the price of a drink.

'What d'you mean, you threw it away? You never throw it away the same day.'

'Well, I did today,' she said calmly.

Which didn't stop him stumping around the house, grumbling under his breath, apparently still looking for it.

'What are you doing, for goodness' sake? I've thrown it away, since you said you didn't want to read it.'

'I said I hadn't time to read that one article at that one moment!'

'Are we going out?'

'Going out? What's the point of going out?'

Being accustomed to what she privately referred to as his 'brown bear act', his wife went into the bedroom to touch up her hair and put a bit of lipstick on. As she took a white cotton jacket from the wardrobe she could still hear him growling to himself in the middle distance.

'These things wouldn't happen if everybody did what he was supposed to do . . .'

A remark familiar to the boys upstairs. He occasionally forgot that his wife wasn't one of them. When she was ready she picked up her handbag and they left in sedate silence.

At twenty past nine they were crossing the bridge and the lamps came on, stage-lighting the embankments and making the water glimmer. As was their habit, they paused to look down at the river.

'That boy . . .' he began suddenly.

'I suppose you mean Bruno. I don't know why you let him worry you so much. I think he's a lovely boy and so cheerful.'

'He's taken up cooking. Whatever next?'

'And why not? He's such a nice boy.'

'Nobody's saying he's not nice, but for goodness'sake . . .' As usual, he tailed off, baffled.

At which point his wife felt safe in saying, as they strolled on, 'I'm sorry about the paper.'

'Hmph.'

'It was a good picture of her, too, poor old thing.'

'What?' He stopped in his tracks and stared at her.

'I said it was a good picture of her. The one in the paper. Very like.'

'Come on!'

'What are you hurrying for?'

The broad street between the bridge and the cathedral was warmly lit and the tourists strolling out from their hotels after the evening meal filled the air with a heavy mixture of perfumes and after-sun cream. The Marshal and his wife all but crashed into a heavily built and finely dressed couple who turned to stare after them.

'Excuse me . . .' mumbled the Marshal, when they were already well out of earshot.

'Where are we going in such a rush? Salva?'

'The nearest open bar. I want to see that paper.'

But the bars and cafes in this area served the tourist trade and didn't find it necessary to provide the local paper. The Marshal glowered at a tray of drinks being taken to an outside table at one place, garishly coloured drinks in outsize glasses with paper flags stuck into the fruit floating on top. 'Good God . . .'

'We should try a side street,' suggested his wife.

They found the sort of bar they wanted in a culde-sac not too far away.

'Have you got today's
Nazione?'

'Of course. It's in the back, I think. I'll get it for you.'

'Good. You can pour us a drink first, in that case.'

There was a jug of Sangria on the counter which looked tempting. They were each sipping a glass of it when the barman came back to say apologetically, 'I'm afraid my wife must have taken it home with her . . .'