The Witch of Napoli (28 page)

Alessandra arrived in England, she was weak and ill, and was met with unrelenting hostility and skepticism. Her powers failed, and in her desperation to avoid embarrassment she succumbed to temptation.

Lombardi brought to the interview a petition signed by fifteen Continental scientists. Alessandra deserved one final test. The Society could set the rules – but the test should be held in Italy. Renard’s name topped the petition. Negri, Fournier, and von Weibel had also signed it. Gemelli was the only person from Lombardi’s university to sign it, but Sapienti added his prestige to the petition.

It worked.

On Sept 17,
La Stampa
ran a front-page editorial backing Lombardi’s demand for a retest. Rome’s
Messaggero
echoed the call a day later, joined by the
Corriere della Sera
in Milano. Then newspapers all across Italy joined the fight – Genoa, Bologna, Florence. It’s easy for an Italian to hate the British. Besides, it was a story that could sell a lot of papers.

Down in Naples, Venzano doubled his coverage in the
Mattino.

Doffo came up with a series of clever cartoons viciously lampooning John Bull as a pompous, arrogant bully – when the British consul in Naples showed up at the opera, he was booed by the audience. That earned Doffo a standing ovation in the newsroom and box of Havana double coronas from Venzano.

I pummeled Huxley with an article about Ile Ribaud – a breathless, I-was-there account describing how Huxley had tried to intimidate Alessandra on the train, and how she spat in his face (she slapped him, but spitting sounded more dramatic), and how our gallant Italian sailors had chased the effete Brit back to his first class cabin. How the sneaky limey had snuck into Alessandra’s room when she was gone and rummaged through her bags, how he was left dumbfounded by Alessandra’s astonishing answers to his Machiavellian history trick, and how the spirits yanked the chair from under him and dumped him on his ass – “
with a squeal of surprise, the British Torquemada flailed his arms and tumbled backwards, landing with a thump on the well-padded seat of his tailored English trousers
…”

Venzano loved it. We were selling 3,000 papers a day and crushing the
Piccolo
. Our newsboys started yelling “Alessandra! Alessandra!” every time a new edition came out. People came running.

Up in Paris, Renard blistered Huxley in an interview in
Le Figaro
. They had all agreed to sign a joint statement if Alessandra produced unexplainable phenomena at Ile Ribaud, but the duplicitous Englishman reneged. Perfidious Albion! Skepticism was welcome, but “
Science requires an open mind, and humility in the face of new facts. Monsieur Huxley has demonstrated neither in his investigations
.”

But we were getting nowhere. The Society sniffed its nose at the criticism and the clamor for a new test. We were foreigners, and the British don’t take criticism from foreigners.

Then Sir Arthur Conan Doyle sent his famous letter to the editor of the
London Times
. The celebrated British author was a member of the Society, and had even conducted a ghost investigation himself. He was just beginning his conversion to Spiritualism at that time. He chided Huxley for his behavior in France, quoting his famous detective Sherlock Holmes who told Watson in one of his novels, “When you’ve eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” Get on with it, he growled. The Society needed to accept the challenge, create an experiment where fraud was impossible, then let
Signora
Poverelli show what she could do.

On November 2nd, All Souls Day, Venzano walked into the news room with a huge grin on his face.

“
Attenzione
!
Attenzione!
Listen up, everyone.”

Typewriters stopped clattering, editors stopped screaming, writers stopped scribbling. We all looked up. Venzano waved a copy of the
London Times
.

“Congratulations, gentlemen. They’re coming to Naples.”

“Who’s coming to Naples?” shouted someone in the back of the room. Venzano roared with laughter.

“The
Inglesi
, you idiot!
Signor
Huxley and the London Society for the Investigation of Mediums!” The Society had agreed to one sitting, the week before Christmas, winner take all. He flung the
Times
into the air. “We’re going to sell a lot more papers, gentlemen.”

The very next day, Venzano called me into his office and handed me a telegram he had just received from Lombardi. Lombardi was coming to Naples and wanted to see Alessandra.

“Bring me the story,” he smiled. “I’m saving you a spot on the front page.”

M
adame Dubonnet’s maid opened the front door a crack and peered out at me.

“Go around the back,” she hissed. “You’re not allowed to call at the front door.” She started to shut the door. Then she saw Lombardi standing there, dressed in his suit and tie, walking stick in hand.

“Begging your pardon,
Signore
,” she exclaimed, her face turning red. “I most certainly did not mean you.” Bewildered, she looked at me, then at Lombardi. “Is Madame Dubonnet expecting you, sir?”

“I have not come to call on Madame Dubonnet,” Lombardi declared. ”I’m here to see
Signora
Poverelli.” The maid looked at him blankly.

“Alessandra,” I said. “Your laundress.”

“Oh!” she said. Flustered, she turned and called into the house “Monsieur Gronchi! Monsieur Gronchi!”

She turned back to us, nervously wringing her hands, then decided to usher us into the parlor. Madame Dubonnet had money. The room was beautifully decorated with antique French chairs and Persian carpets, and a vase of red and white geraniums graced the marble mantel. A delicate walnut escritoire sat in front of a tall, silk-curtained window where Madame Dubonnet undoubtedly sat to pen her
billets-doux
to Venzano when her husband was off traveling.

“How may I assist you,
Signore
…?

We turned and there stood the butler who had stiffed me the day Alessandra came begging for a job. This was going to be fun.

Lombardi handed him his card. “Professor Camillo Lombardi. I’m here to see
Signora
Poverelli. Bring her here immediately,” Lombardi ordered.

Gronchi stared at me dumbfounded, then turned to Lombardi and bowed. “
Si, certamente, Signore
.”

I hopped up off the sofa. “I’ll go with him,” I said to Lombardi. I couldn’t wait to see her again. I had stayed away because I was afraid Pigotti had put a tail on me.

As we hurried down the hallway, Gronchi grabbed me by the arm.

“She stole some money from the gentleman, no doubt. Is that why you’re here?” He wagged his finger at me. “As soon as this matter is settled, I want you both gone!”

When we got to the laundry, Alessandra was on her knees, bent over a washtub, surrounded by baskets of dirty sheets. She had lost weight, her face pallid and thin. She didn’t even look up when we stepped inside. Her hands were red and raw, and her hair stringy and damp from the heat sent up by a big copper kettle of boiling water behind her. She wiped her brow with a forearm and returned to her scrubbing. On a string around her neck hung Bastet the cat.

“Get up, woman!” Gronchi kicked her with his shoe. “Follow me!”

Alessandra looked up.

“Tommaso?” she cried. She struggled to her feet and hugged me. She looked at Gronchi, then me. “What’s going on?”

“Shut up and follow me!” Gronchi snarled. He turned and headed back to the house. Alessandra wiped her hands on her skirt and hurried after him. I bent over, picked up the bar of soap Alessandra had dropped, and followed them back to the parlor.

“Here she is,
Signore
,” Gronchi announced. He pushed Alessandra into the room. Lombardi was standing at the window, his back to us. He turned and Alessandra gasped.

“Camillo…?”

She started towards him then stopped, and fell on her knees. She reached forward.

“Oh Camillo! Forgive me!” Tears streamed down her cheeks as she opened her arms to him. “Forgive me!”

Lombardi reached down and pulled her up into his arms, kissing her fiercely, tears of joy on his face. He cradled her in his arms. “Let’s start over, shall we?”

Gronchi stood in the doorway, gaping at them.

I walked over, pulled out the bar of soap from my pocket, and shoved it into his hand.

“The lady quits. Do your own fucking laundry.”

I
stared at Huxley through the viewfinder of the camera.

The last time I had seen him in England, he was wiping Alessandra’s spit off his suit. I’m sure he thought it was the last he would see of her. Instead, here he was in Naples, among the unwashed, forced to face her one last time.

Huxley had arrived on December 8, the Feast of the Immaculate Virgin, the start of the Christmas season in Italy. The Queen Victoria Hotel was decorated English-style for the holidays – greenery on the mantels and a Christmas tree in the lobby. In the piazza outside the hotel, shepherds and angels were hovering over a Nativity crèche waiting for baby
Gesù bambino
to arrive, and the
zampognari
with their bagpipes were starting to panhandle outside churches.

“Who’s Huxley talking to?” Fabio asked. Venzano had hired Fabio to replace me as a photographer.

“The guy on the left is from the
London Times
,” I said. “The fat guy in the bad suit is an American,
New York Herald
.

“
Ma va' là
!” he whistled. “You’re kidding me! All the way from America?”

“The desk clerk told me they’ve got 20 reporters booked in the hotel – Italy, France, England, Austria, Switzerland – shit,
two
from Germany.”

“
Bonjour
, Tommaso.”

I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was Henri from the
Tribune de Genève
. He had done the great story on Alessandra’s sitting in Geneva with D’Argent.

“Where’s Monsieur Lombardi? I want to do an interview with him and Alessandra.”

“Sorry, Henri. They didn’t come.” I thumbed towards Huxley. “They don’t need to hear this blowhard.”

Henri tucked his pencil into his notebook. “I don’t know – he looks pretty confident.”

Claudio from
La Stampa
was taking a piss in the men’s room when I walked in.

“So Tommaso – our Alessandra’s going to show the Brits a few tricks?” He finished and walked over to the wash basin. “The guy from the
Times
told me the London bookies like Huxley. I told him I had 500
lire
that said they were full of shit.” He ran a comb through his hair and shoved it back in his pocket. “Tell Alessandra the boys at
La Stampa
are behind her.”

A gruff voice piped up from the stall. “The English can kiss my Italian ass.”

Claudio winked at me. “Carbone – from the
Messaggero
.” He turned to the stall. “Wipe your ass and grab your pen, Geppetto. The show starts in five minutes.”

Every chair was taken when I got back. The
Piccolo
photographer had jammed in next to Fabio, and I elbowed him out of the way. The three German reporters had camped out in the front seats after breakfast – all business, those guys. The Italian reporters, as usual, were lounging around in the back of the room, yakking away.

“
Buongiorno
, gentlemen.”

Huxley’s booming voice cut through the chatter and everyone fell silent.

“Most of you know who I am. Nigel Huxley, chief investigator of the London Society for the Investigation of Mediums. You know why we are here. To test
Signora
Alessandra Poverelli – again. The Society has agreed to one final test, here in this hotel, on December 21st. We will be returning to England the following day, where we will celebrate the Christmas holidays – and the termination to this ridiculous charade.”

“Charade?” It was Claudio from the back of the room.

A look of exasperation crossed Huxley’s face.

“
Signora
Poverelli is a fraud. She has no supernatural powers –she has tricks. She was exposed in England. That should have been the end to it, but she sells newspapers, so you scandal-mongers demand a retest.” He sneered. “Well, the story ends in two weeks, because your little, jumped up Neapolitan trickster will produce nothing. I guarantee it.”

The German reporters were bent over their notepads, scribbling furiously.

Huxley gestured to a trio of men standing off to the side. “These three gentlemen will ensure that
Signora
Poverelli gets away with nothing.”

He had assembled a hell of a fraud squad. Archer was a professional magician with thirty years on the London stage, and an expert in what Huxley called “the psychology of deception.” He would be watching Alessandra for any misdirection or substitution of hands. Hardwicke was a sandy-haired Scotsman who specialized in mechanical devices used in séances to produce raps and taps and levitations. According to Hardwicke, sometimes they were built into the furniture, but usually they were smuggled into the room by a confederate of the medium. He had even written a book on them –
Gambols with the Ghosts. Tricks for Producing Spiritualistic Effects
. Farthing was an older, soft-spoken man who ran the Society’s Glasgow office. He had spent two decades investigating mediums in Scotland.

“We caught
Signora
Poverelli in England – and frankly, it wasn’t all that difficult,” Huxley sneered. “We are prepared to embarrass her again.”

Scattered boos and catcalls erupted from the back of the room. Huxley ignored them.

Henri raised his hand. “Will Dr. Lombardi be in the room during the sitting?”

Huxley nodded. “Yes – as an observer only. We are allowing him to choose two additional observers.

“Has he chosen them ?”

“One will be Dr. Charles Renard. The other will be Tommaso Labella
,
the photographer from the
Mattino
who accompanied
Signora
Poverelli everywhere on her tour. However, he will not be allowed to bring his camera or other mechanical devices into the sitting room.”