The Marshal Makes His Report (8 page)

‘It’s quite probable that his health is poor and that he could be, as you put it, a bit strange. As I say, I’ve never seen him. As far as I know, he doesn’t go out. Emilio’s seen him, though, because when he’s feeling well enough he does appear at the Sunday afternoon music lectures—and Catherine’s seen him a few times. He collects coins and medals or something of that sort and she took him some things she found among the flood-damaged stuff down there. She didn’t seem to think he was all that strange. He spent all his time at his desk by the window messing with his coin collection and watching the world go by in the courtyard below. I know she felt sorry for him, but she also said he was highly intelligent. Oh . . . ! You surely don’t think—’

‘No, no. I don’t think anything of the sort.’

She looked disappointed. It was evident that a Crazed Son Shoots Father story would vindicate her feelings about these people. The Marshal had enough trouble on his plate without starting rumours of that sort within the Palazzo Ulderighi.

‘The official feeling is,’ he lied rather pompously, ‘that the victim died by accident while cleaning a rifle. Naturally, I have to make these inquiries so as to be sure there was no possibility of his having taken his own life.’

‘Well,’ said Dr Martelli, unabashed, ‘I suppose you know your own business best, but even so—’ she leaned back in the big white chair and pushed back a bunch of crisp brown curls—‘nobody will ever convince me that it was anything other than suicide. Quite ridiculous. Going down to clean a gun at two-thirty in the morning.’

‘We don’t know that he did.’

‘I’ve just told you that I heard him!’

‘You heard the lift.’

‘What? Ah . . . You’re right. Well, as I said, you know your own business best. What time did he actually die?’

‘I don’t have an autopsy report yet.’ He didn’t add that he’d never have it. He was feeling very uncomfortable with himself. This woman was far from stupid and he didn’t much care for reciting official lies to her while she observed him with lively and intelligent eyes. But it wasn’t just that. It was—

‘I can’t make you out,’ she said, interrupting his thoughts as she observed him. ‘This accident story—it’s exactly what a family like the Ulderighi would claim, as much to avoid a scandal as to collect the insurance, and of course if it’s the official line you have to give it out in just the way you did and in just the tone you did. That far I can follow you. And yet you really seemed to mean it when you rejected my suicide theory and even more the suggestion that the son or somebody might have been responsible.’ She was almost but not quite laughing at him. ‘So! What in the world
do
you believe happened?’

It was fortunate that the doorbell saved him from having to reply because he didn’t know the answer to that himself.

He looked at his watch as she was answering the door. He should get on. There was no point in spending more than the minimum time necessary on these visits since he wasn’t meant to be finding out anything. The Martelli woman was talking rapidly to whoever had called on her. Talking rather under her breath, it seemed to him. Was she talking about him, sending someone away because of his presence? ‘Come back later when he’s gone and I’ll tell you all. He seems to be a bit stupid and contradicts himself all the time.’

That wasn’t what he was hearing. He couldn’t make out a word. He was getting paranoid, that’s what. This house did something to his nerves, made him uncomfortable in his skin, unsure of himself.

‘It’s Hugh!’ Dr Martelli re-entered the drawing-room, followed by a very tall man with limp brown hair and a crumpled linen suit. ‘Hugh Fido. I mentioned him before, didn’t I? The painter from the flat next door.’

‘Oh . . . yes. Yes.’ The Marshal got up stiffly, clutching his hat.

‘Please don’t get up for me. Hugh Fido. Pleased to meet you. Flavia says you’re coming to talk to all of us about Corsi’s death. Are you coming to me now?’

‘If it’s inconvenient . . .’

‘Not at all. Flavia, is that all right for Friday?’

‘Of course. I said so. I can’t believe you really need me, but I’ll be there with pleasure.’

‘Fine. Great. Er . . . Marshal, is it? If you’ve finished here I’ll take you next door to the studio.’

‘If you need me again, do come back.’ Dr Martelli touched the Marshal’s arm lightly as he left. ‘It was interesting talking to you—Hugh, I must tell you afterwards about a theory we worked out about the way things function in this house. It’s absolutely fascinating. I’ll invite you for a drink after evening surgery and tell you all about it.’

The Marshal, following the Englishman, was amazed at his lankiness. He really was extraordinarily tall. Nor was he the very young man he had seemed at first sight. The hair that fell forward over his eyes as he fitted the key into the lock was greying at the temples. He was probably as old as the Marshal himself, but looked twenty years younger.

‘Do come in. Where would you like to sit? Let me move this stuff and we’ll sit on the sofa, it’s the most comfortable spot.’ He lifted a pile of art magazines, foreign newspapers and catalogues and, finding no uncluttered surface to place them on, dropped them on to the floor. The Marshal was staring about him in amazement. He had never seen so much colour, so much elegant clutter, so many paintings, drawings, sculptures. Mountains of discarded sketches were piled on pieces of antique furniture, one whole wall was painted with a mural of prancing naked figures in a garden vivid with huge flowers, and everywhere in the long, light room grew plants that trailed and twisted and climbed and intertwined and cascaded.

‘It’s a bit untidy, I’m afraid,’ the painter said, watching the Marshal’s face.

‘Oh no . . . Well, yes, but it’s very interesting . . .’ His voice tailed off as his glance came round again to the mural and took it in better than the first time. Most of the figures in it were involved in or observing with glee an explicitly depicted orgy.

‘It’s . . .’ What on earth had he intended saying? Why hadn’t he kept his mouth shut? He could feel himself blushing and wished to God he’d noticed that thing better before accepting a seat on this sofa where they would have to face it for their entire conversation.

‘Allegorical.’

‘Eh?’

‘The mural. That’s perhaps the word you were looking for.’

‘Ah. Yes. I expect . . .’

‘Actually it’s not a mural. It’s detachable, since of course this is not my own flat. Still, I’m very dissatisfied with the figure of Spring. I wanted her to be spread out in a sort of limp—limp’s not the right word—
abandoned,
yes. Abandoned, giving attitude on this great soft heap of flowers. But I think—possibly because of the problem of the pose and wanting to keep the pudenda fully visible—I’ve made her right leg look too stiff. It really should be open and relaxed, not in tension like that. I don’t know if you understand what I mean.’

This was terrible. Pornography, when he came across it in the course of duty as he sometimes did, left the Marshal feeling cold and disgusted. But this was something quite different and he was feeling anything but cold. He was hot and distressed and sweat was starting to trickle down the inside of his collar.

‘Would you mind showing me your passport?’

‘My passport?’ Fido looked puzzled. ‘Well, of course, if you need to see it. I’ve got a five-year police permit if you—’

‘No, no. Just your passport will do. A formality, that’s all.’

And the minute he was out of the room the Marshal got up and looked for somewhere else to sit. It wasn’t easy. There were a good many attractive-looking armchairs but they were all occupied by papers and books. In the end he removed an ashtray and a glass from a bamboo stool and sat himself gingerly on that to wait.

Fido came back with his passport, giving the Marshal an odd look as he handed it over.

‘I’m afraid you can’t be very, very comfortable there.’

‘That’s all right.’ He opened the passport. ‘British nationality.’

‘Yes. Ahem . . . I don’t want to appear fussy but I do think you’d be more comfortable on a chair.’

‘A stool’s fine.’

‘Yes, of course, but it isn’t. Isn’t a stool. I mean, it’s more of an occasional table, if you follow my meaning.’

The unhappy Marshal got to his feet. He wasn’t going back to that sofa, though, not at any price. The effects were only just wearing off. Frames were removed. He was given a chair near a tall window.

‘If you don’t mind my saying so, it’s a funny sort of name, yours. Not English-sounding.’

‘Not as common as Smith, I agree. Actually it’s a corruption of Fitzdieu.’

And he was forty-eight! Who would have thought it?

‘Thank you.’ He handed the passport back and got his notebook out. ‘I believe you’re painting a portrait of the Marchesa Ulderighi.’

‘Yes. Would you like to see it?’ He hurried from the room, cleary delighted to show off his work. There was something childlike about his anxious expression as he carried the canvas in and set it up on an easel for the Marshal to see.

‘It’s nowhere near finished, you understand, and with her being in mourning now . . .’

‘It’s very like her,’ the Marshal felt safe in saying.

‘Hm. I’m not satisfied. It’s the length and curve of her neck and the soft fall of hair that interest me—you know the Winterhalter portrait of Elisabeth of Austria? The pose is taken from that because there is a resemblance, but only a physical one. Bianca has a much stronger character.’

The Marshal got up and came closer. The woman in the painting was looking back at the viewer as though inviting a glance at two heavily framed paintings hanging on the wall in the background.

‘Lucrezia Della Loggia and Francesco Ulderighi,’ Hugh Fido informed him. ‘Painted to celebrate their betrothal but they never married and the paintings are still hanging in Bianca’s drawing-room.’

‘If it weren’t for the clothes . . .’ the Marshal said, amazed.

‘They could be the same woman? Well, there’s nothing so surprising about that. That’s where Bianca inherited her looks from.’

‘And do you work on the painting in the Marchesa’s drawing-room . . . I mean, with these two other pictures behind her and so on?’

Hugh Fido laughed. ‘No, no. I made sketches of the portraits, but I work on the painting here. I don’t think Bianca would appreciate smears of oil paint on her furniture—and be careful yourself, incidentally.’

The Marshal looked down at his uniform but it seemed unspotted.

‘You get on very well with your landlady.’ The word, applied to the Marchesa Ulderighi, sounded ridiculous as soon as he’d said it and he felt rather foolish, but persisted. ‘Better than some of her other tenants.’

‘Oh, you mean Flavia. Well, she gives Flavia a gigantic inferiority complex. Bianca, you see, is that very rare phenomenon, a real lady and a real woman.’

‘That’s as may be,’ said the Marshal, whose inferiority complex in the face of the Marchesa was much worse than Dr Martelli’s, ‘but some of her points are valid. Doesn’t it bother you that you pay such a high rent and that you’re not allowed to use the lift, and that the porter—’

‘Oh God, Flavia
has
been spitting fire. Just try to imagine, Marshal, what it means, after nine hundred years of glory to have to break up your house and let it as flats.’

‘Why did she?’

‘Money, of course. Marshal, strictly between the two of us—and I really mean that—I rather think Corsi had started keeping a tighter hold on the purse strings of late on the grounds that this place should start paying for itself. The biggest thorn in Bianca’s side is the dancing school, of course, not only because of the constant comings and goings but because they’ve got the best reception rooms in the house because of their size. They’ve also got the most beautiful ceilings, as you may have noticed.’

‘I haven’t been in there. It’s my business to talk to people who were in the building between Saturday night and Sunday afternoon when the body was found.’

‘That’s right, yes. Including me, of course. Well, I was here.’

‘Did you hear any noise or disturbance?’

‘A shot, I suppose you mean. But no, I’m a heavy sleeper.’

‘Sleeping pills?’

‘Oh no. Just that.’ Hugh Fido pointed to the whisky bottle standing among a clutter of books and magazines on the low table between them.

‘Ah. You don’t like Italian wine?’

‘I love it. Wine with dinner. A glass of whisky at bedtime. Helps one to sleep through people’s shooting themselves—I suppose that’s what he did?’

‘So does everyone. It may have been an accident. Have you lived here long?’

‘In this house? About a year.’

‘No. I meant in Florence. In Italy.’

‘Oh.’ Fido relaxed in the deep armchair and crossed one gangly leg over the other. ‘From the minute I could get away. Practically from the day I left Eton. I decided at the age of fourteen that I wasn’t having anything to do with all those appalling English girls whose idea of conversation is a sort of donkey-like braying interspersed with hysterical giggles and who lose their virginity in the saddle—I can see that none of this means anything to you, but then you’ve probably never been to England.’

‘No, no . . . I haven’t.’

‘You wouldn’t like it. There’s far too much sexual ambiguity—I’m not referring to homosexuality, nothing ambiguous about that—no . . .’

The Marshal, barely listening to all this stuff he couldn’t understand anyway, was gazing down from the tall window into the courtyard. The porter was opening the inner gates for someone. Nobody entered. A box was handed in, groceries it looked like. The porter went and rang the bell on the dwarf’s door and Grillo appeared to take it from him. As far as the Marshal could tell, not a word was exchanged so probably there was no love lost between the two of them. Grillo looked after the young master, they said, probably even cooked for him, all those groceries were never for one person. Why didn’t he eat with the rest of the family? The Marshal’s gaze travelled up from the base of the tower where Grillo had his lair to the first window of Neri’s rooms at the level of the roof of the renaissance building. The brown shutters were open and behind the glass a white face was looking back at him. The distance was such that it was impossible to swear to it, but the Marshal was convinced that the eyes in that white face were staring straight into this room. Almost as if this must prove him right, he shifted in his chair, leaning forward to make it obvious that he was looking up. The face vanished.