The Marshal Makes His Report (13 page)

‘I’m not sure,’ the Marshal said, getting to his feet, ‘that I’ll need to—’

He was interrupted by a very sharp knock at the door.

‘William! William, are you there?’

It was Dr Martelli, surprised to find the door opened to her by the Marshal who was on his way out.

‘Oh. Have I interrupted . . .’

‘No, no . . . I was just going.’ He reached in his top pocket for his dark glasses.

‘What’s the matter?’ asked William, looking round the Marshal’s big shoulder.

‘That bloody woman!’ hissed the doctor.

‘Oops!’ William hurried her in and shut the door. ‘That courtyard has ears.’

‘This whole building has ears,’ said Dr Martelli, ‘and I suspect that awful Grillo but you can never catch him at it. He knows everything that’s going on on every floor but he can’t use the lift and I’ve never once seen him on the stairs—I must get back, I’ve a queue of patients, but as I had a message for you I came in now to give myself a minute to cool off. I cannot stand that Ulderighi woman any longer. She just tore a strip off one of my patients for leaving the big doors ajar. Would you believe it? A tiny little frail thing of eighty who couldn’t hope to shut those great doors without five people to help her. I can’t stand it! The cheek of her when there’s a porter there, paid for by us, who instead of looking after the doors is forever in fancy dress up there buttling!’

She clenched her small fists and clapped them to her temples with a mock scream of genuine fury.

William looked puzzled. ‘She’s surely not entertaining, not already.’

‘I wouldn’t say so, not entertaining. But I’ve seen a fleet of lawyers go up there while I’ve been letting my patients in and out. At least they looked like lawyers to me but some of them may have been bankers
and
did you see who was here early this morning?’

‘I was out at rehearsals.’

She was telling it all to William but the Marshal could feel that it was directed at him. She wasn’t, he thought, a wicked woman, by any means. He rather liked her. But he was quite sure that she had an understandable desire to see the Marchesa get some sort of comeuppance.

‘Builders! Oh, not the actual workmen but there was an architect, the one who I used to see when I first moved in, and somebody from the Ministry of Fine Arts taking photographs and measuring. They’re obviously going to restart the work on the façade. So!’ She turned directly to the Marshal now. ‘I hope that report of yours turns out the way she wants it, because it looks as if she’s already spending the insurance money.’

‘No,’ William said, ‘there’d be no need of that. The Corsi inheritance is something enormous. She can restore the whole place now if she wants to. Hugh was telling me that yesterday. The insurance money can’t matter to her but the scandal would.’

‘Do you think they can have read the Corsi will so soon?’ the doctor asked.

‘Not without my report,’ the Marshal said. And they hadn’t, now he thought about it, given him a deadline. Not that they should, but in a case like this it was surprising they hadn’t tried.

‘She’ll have no trouble borrowing on an inheritance like that. Flavia, I gave the Marshal some tea, though he didn’t like it. Can I give you a cup?’

‘God, no! My patients! I’m going—oh, I came to ask you to tell Catherine if she does get back this weekend to come round to me on Monday evening about six, not in the morning. I’ve cancelled everything in the morning so I can have a long weekend away. You won’t forget?’

‘I’ll write it down—are you going too?’ This to the Marshal, who was adjusting his hat as Flavia Martelli hurried back to her patients.

‘I must get back.’ There were a lot of things in his head, images rather than ideas, that he wanted to sort out by himself.

‘But you will come back and meet Catherine? And I wanted you to come to the theatre—wait.’ He fished in his pockets until he found what he wanted. ‘There you are. Two free tickets so your wife could come.’

‘That’s very nice of you but . . .’ He stared at the tickets before putting them inside his black notebook. ‘Didn’t you say . . . Well, won’t it be in English?’

William’s face fell. ‘You don’t understand any English?’

The Marshal’s face fell too and he reddened a little.

‘Well, a word or two, you know. Good-morning and that sort of thing . . .’ But he recognized the expression on William’s face. He’d seen it before on his own little boy Totò’s face when the Marshal hadn’t been free to go and watch some little effort they’d put on at school. So he said, ‘My wife does a bit better than me . . . and then there’ll be the costumes and so on. I’m sure we’ll enjoy it.’

He’d done the right thing. William produced a pro-gramme with a synopsis of the action in Italian. It was, he explained, all geared to people learning English.

‘I meant to give a ticket to Flavia—Dr Martelli—but she was so steamed up about the porter I forgot. Still, if she’s going away for the weekend . . .’

‘She certainly gets steamed up,’ the Marshal commented, dabbing at the bridge of his nose with a big white handkerchief ready to put on his glasses.

‘Well, you can’t blame her. I think she gets a lot of stick one way and another. Anyway, she’s right about the porter, he should see to the door instead of playing the butler.’

‘I’m surprised he doesn’t mind himself. He didn’t look too comfortable when I met him up there, yet he hadn’t a wrong word to say about the Marchesa.’

‘Ha! I bet he hadn’t—have you seen their son?’ William had been holding the door ajar but he shut it again as he said this.

‘Well, I haven’t met him . . .’

‘Looks like the side of the cathedral only bigger.’

‘He plays in the football tournament, I gather.’

‘And could do as the prize if they painted his toenails gold and put a garland of flowers round that great neck. The best thing to do when you see him approach,’ said William, lowering his voice, ‘is . . . Run away! That’s what I do. However, I’m small and sensitive with it. Now the point about the porter’s buttling is this: their bonny bouncing baby—his name is Leo but his nickname, if you’ll believe it, is Baby—has had a spot of bother now and then with the forces of law and order. I don’t know all the details but there was one incident that got into the papers. He was peaceably slicing people up with a broken bottle in some club or other and when the police arrived and interfered, with his game, he must have lost his temper. Anyway, whether in temper or just playfulness, he knocked their heads together, took their staffs and used them to break up their squad car. Bit naughty, eh?’

‘So he has a criminal record?’ The Marshal was fishing for his notebook.

‘Ah no!’ William wagged his finger and grinned. ‘Ah no, no, no. Baby hasn’t got a criminal record because if Baby had a criminal record he wouldn’t be able to play in the nice football tournament and playing in the football tournament is the thing that Baby likes best. So these things have to be hushed up. Sh! Not a word.’

‘I see. The Marchesa.’

‘The Marchesa. So if she wants her porter to dress up as a monkey and swing across the roofs he’s going to do it to keep his little gorilla out of the nick.’

‘And the gorilla himself might . . .’

The Marshal stopped. William’s pitted face had turned pale. The Marshal put a hand out to steady him. ‘Here, sit down. I didn’t mean to frighten you.’

William did sit down. ‘You haven’t seen him. He really is frightening and if he had something to do with Corsi’s death and I put you on to it, they’ll all know by this time!’

‘How could they know? They know I’m here, but I’ve been to see everybody, not just you.’

‘Grillo!’

‘He saw us come in here, but even so . . .’

‘Catherine found out. He always knew everything and she found out—’ He jumped from his chair and pulled at a little brass handle on the back wall. ‘It’s locked.’ But a noise as faint as a mouse in a wainscot followed his words.

‘I see,’ the Marshal said. It was normal in all such great houses to have, in some discreet corner, a servant’s door camouflaged with frescoes to blend in with the wall and well away from the room’s real entrance. These tiny doors led off a separate staircase so that the servants need not be seen except when absolutely necessary. ‘Have all the rooms on the courtyard got service doors?’

‘I don’t think so. Just on this side, chiefly so that Grillo can get from his lair to the gun room next door to this. You can bet your life he was listening in.’

‘Where else can he get to from his passage?’

‘Out into the street, of course, through the old tower entrance and up into the tower itself to look after Neri’s needs. I think into the Ulderighi apartments as well. There’s bound to be a door connecting the new part of the building with the tower at some level.’

‘Yes . . . yes, there is.’ The Marshal remembered his first visit, going ‘up there’ and the porter’s wife returning with the medicine.

‘All those stairs . . .’

She had gone by some back route, not by the main staircase. The Marshal’s face had taken on a heavy blind look.

‘Do you think I’m in danger from that brute?’ William wasn’t joking any more.

The Marshal only stood there, solid, unseeing and silent.

‘Do you?’

But the Marshal still didn’t answer. He turned slowly, adjusted his hat and opened the door.

‘Of course if I were as big as you and had a uniform . . .’

William’s voice followed him softly across the music-filled courtyard. It was only the ballet music now and a woman repeating, angrily, to the rhythmic thumping of a sharp object:

‘Glissade—assemblé—glissade—assemblé—glissade—
jeté—temps levé—pas de bourrée! Glissade—assemblé—
Glissade—assemblé
. . .’

‘Marshal . . .’

Only as he pressed the button to spring the gates did he bethink himself to say, ‘No, no . . . I don’t think you’re in danger . . . because he’s not.’ And he was gone.

‘Marshal . . . ?’

He looked at Lorenzini, frowning in an effort to remember what he’d said. His young brigadier’s face showed that he had been waiting some time for an answer. Not knowing what the question had been, the Marshal got up and followed Lorenzini out of the office door to the waiting-room on the assumption that there was someone there he must see to. The small room with its marble-tiled floor and neatly arranged leather armchairs was empty. The magazines on the low table lined up with military precision. The answer wasn’t here.

‘You’ll go, then?’ Lorenzini seemed a bit anxious. ‘Those two boys on patrol are too young to deal with that sort of thing. You’re the only person who . . .’

‘I’ll go.’ He’d got it now. He buttoned his jacket and slid his sunglasses from the pocket. ‘Call the boys in.’

‘I thought they should stay. The woman insisted—’

‘Call them in. And don’t go off duty. When I get back I want to talk to you.’ He pulled the heavy door to behind him and stumped off down the stairs.

It was practically next door, but if Lorenzini had given him the address he had forgotten it and it was lucky for him that the boys he had called back were coming out of the street door across the piazza as he came down the slope of the car park. One of them was dabbing at his left hand with a handkerchief as the Marshal came up to them.

‘What’s happened to you?’

‘One of them scratched me when I was trying to stop her attacking the old woman. My God, I always thought marital scraps were the worst.’

‘Disinfect it as soon as you get in,’ the Marshal said.

The two lads went off up the forecourt, giving vent to their astonishment and indignation as they went. The Marshal rang a bell and was admitted to a dark and narrow staircase. He climbed towards the sound of the conflict.

It took him only a few minutes to establish order and insist that all the parties be seated and remain seated. The two women, both dressed in black, were red with fury. One still had tears in her eyes. The one man present was wearing a dark suit that was too tight for him, which was odd, given that he was very small. He was holding his hat close to his chest and pressing himself back against the wall, perhaps hoping to become invisible or at least forgotten. The Marshal would have felt sorry for him, but as a country-bred man he knew well enough that if there had been an acre of land in dispute the harmless-looking chap would have been scratching and spitting with the best of them. God knew there was little enough to fight about in this poor little flat that seemed to the Marshal to smell strongly of drains. He had known the old woman who’d lived there, a neat and busy little soul who suffered badly from bronchitis. Every winter was expected to carry her off, but she had died in the heat of a June day, he didn’t know what of, and the funeral had been that morning.

The tearful woman, who turned out to be a sister, blew her nose but let the tears run and trickle down her neck under the collar of her flowered frock.

‘It was a promise,’ she said, ‘practically on her deathbed.’

‘Deathbed my foot!’ The fat sister-in-law sitting beside her shot a disgusted look at her tearful neighbour. ‘You hadn’t been near your sister for months.’

‘It was last winter. Her bronchitis was so bad I thought then it was the end. I was the one who came and nursed her.’

‘Came to be in at the kill, you mean. Vulture!’

‘Now, now . . .’ A faint protest from the man, who immediately tried to vanish into the wall again.

The Marshal looked at the fat woman who sat now in grim-mouthed silence, clutching a huge black bag of imitation leather between her stout legs. It was the tearful sister, making an attempt on the bag, who had scratched the young carabinieri. The Marshal cleared his throat.

‘Now then—’

‘Ask her where all the bedlinen is,’ commanded the fat woman.

‘I don’t begrudge her the bedlinen,’ the brother said piously.

‘Oh, don’t you? And what damn business is it of yours? Your sister didn’t have a rag to call her own when she married our Ivo and that bedlinen came from my bottom drawer, every piece of it hemmed by my mother—’

‘That’s as may be, but I gave her the lace tablecloths as a wedding present and they should come to me!’