Death in Autumn (8 page)

As he sat down again at his desk the telephone rang.

'Yes?'

'Marshal Guarnaccia for you, Captain.'

'Put him through.' What could he want at this hour?

Surely not another drug death?

'Captain?'

'Speaking.'

'They told me you were still in your office, otherwise I'd have left you a message for tomorrow.'

'Something's happened?'

'No, no, nothing . . . Have you got somebody with you?'

'No, nobody.'

'I see. Even so, I suppose it could wait until tomorrow. I imagine you must be busy or you wouldn't be in your office at this hour . . .'

When the Captain explained to him what was going on, he said: 'In that case I'll come over right away if you don't mind. It's about the Vogel case . . .'• And with a cough and an incomprehensible mumble he rang off.

Bemused, the Captain got up again and stood by the window. He'd been mistaken, then. Yet he could have sworn Guarnaccia had gone off on some scent of his own and had abandoned the Vogel case. If that were so, then something had caused him to change direction again. Perhaps the dead boy's parents had turned up after all. Well, he would soon know. The Marshal's little white Fiat came chugging along Borgo Ognissanti and turned in at the gates. The Captain sat down to wait.

The trouble was that once Guarnaccia had lumbered in and sat himself down on the other side of the desk he evidently didn't know where to begin.

'I don't know where to begin, to tell the truth .. .' The Marsha] stared fixedly at his knees.

'Begin at the beginning,' the Captain suggested, wondering what on earth he was going to come out with that could be so complicated as all that.

'It's difficult to explain exactly . . .'

Because for the Marshal there was no beginning. There were just people, and a certain number of images fixed in his mind. A pair of gym shoes sticking up in a ditch with the water bubbling around them carrying fallen leaves away; the musty, neglected villa; all those photographs of missing youngsters pinned on the consulate notice-boards; and the nice woman in the tidy flat getting on with her cooking as she said, 'Perhaps because I've got a son that age myself.. .'

And, if the truth were told, what was preying on his mind most of all was that an hour ago he had suddenly remembered what it was his wife had asked him to do that morning. He should have gone across to the Middle School in Piazza Pitti and registered his two boys there. Instead of which he had not only forgotten to do it but had spent the entire day inwardly fulminating against neglectful parents. It was that which, in the end, had made him decide to ring the Captain. He was so full of remorse at his own stupidity that he needed the Captain's confirmation that what he had been doing all day was important. Otherwise he would have waited until he could arrange all his feelings and suspicions into some semblance of logical order.

Now he was sitting there with a jumble of pictures in his head and the Captain waiting patiently in front of him. With an effort of will he raised his eyes to fix them on his superior officer and started his story in the middle.

'This afternoon I went to the Medico-Legal Institute.'

When the Captain made no response but only looked at him inquiringly he carried on, sometimes letting his big eyes rove over the spacious office, sometimes staring down at his knees, and every now and then watching the Captain's face and wondering what sort of impression he was making, if any.

After all, there was nothing you could call concrete. He had set out for the Medico-Legal Institute with no clear idea in mind. He just felt the need to see the faceless boy again, get closer to him. Even so, when the idea did form itself, it seemed as if it had been there all along.

Professor Forli was always a willing talker and, though he hadn't yet begun work on the autopsy, he accompanied the Marshal himself. They had faced each other over the body that lay in its cold storage drawer.

'We store dismembered parts separately,' Forli had explained as he pulled the drawer out. 'But since there's practically nothing to see from the shoulders up I suppose you wouldn't be interested.'

'No, no . . .'

'If the smell's too much for you I can get you a mask.'

The Professor himself was evidently immune to it.

'It doesn't matter,' the Marshal said. He was so preoccupied as to be barely conscious of the bad cheese smell anyway. He stared down intently at what remained of the boy, seeing the tell-tale puncture marks on the greasy yellow arms.

'He's very thin,' he murmured after a moment.

'Most addicts are. Though this one probably hadn't been at it long. There are no scars on the thighs. I'll probably start work on this tomorrow if nothing more urgent crops up in the meantime. The trouble with your saponified corpse is that once it dries out it becomes very fragile, chalky, so the sooner I start the better. Nevertheless, I can tell you now that he'll be a mess inside and there won't be much I can tell you.'

'But if he's so well preserved . . .'

'The process works from the outside in, which is a help in the case of superficial markings like these needle scars but no help at all if you're interested in what he last ate, what state of health he was in, and so on.'

'And the cause of death . . .?'

'Matter of luck.' The Professor shrugged. 'In this case we've got the evidence in front of us that he was an addict. Added to which, the circumstances in which he was found, in an area popular with addicts, and the lack of documents, suggest an overdose. His friends would abandon the body as a matter of course. But I can't prove it for you. There'll be nothing left to analyse of his liver and the blood, too, will have decomposed. There's no flesh left on the neck and face, for instance. What if somebody strangled him like the fur coat woman? It's unlikely, but what I'm saying is I can't prove otherwise.'

'No . . .' Was it then that the idea had suggested itself, or come to the surface of his consciousness as though it had always been there? It wasn't that he thought the boy had been strangled, though that, too, might eventually turn out to be a possibility to explore.

Now he looked at the Captain, watching him carefully as the other waited for him to come to the point. He could still drop the whole thing as being too vague but he went on guardedly.

'The autopsy report on the Vogel woman ..."

'Yes?'

'You haven't still got a copy?'

'The Substitute has it at the Procura.'

That had been stupid, the Marshal thought. There must have been another copy at the Medico-Legal Institute. It would have been enough to ask the Professor. That way he could have mulled the thing over before sticking his neck out.

'I was wondering,' he said slowly. 'You gave me a summary of it but you didn't mention ... I wondered if she'd ever had a child.'

'Yes,' the Captain said. 'She did.'

'How long ago? Did it say?'

'If I remember rightly there was a scar mentioned dating back fifteen to twenty years.'

The Marshal relaxed visibly and he no longer minded letting the images tumble out just as they came.

'The thing is that when I talked to the woman who'd seen Signora Vogel in the restaurant with a young man, almost a boy . . . well, what I had at the back of my mind was that if the woman herself was there with her son, what was to stop Signora Vogel being there with
her
son . . . only I didn't know that she had one. And then, that woman wasn't stupid and you can usually tell when you see a mother and son together . . . But you see, Signora Vogel's been living here for fifteen years. What I'm getting at is that if it was her son, then, even so, she hardly knew him. They couldn't have had that sort of relationship ... I don't know if I'm making any sense at all.'

'Go on.'

'Those boys at the villa ... I still think you should talk to them. I'm not competent. One might have known her, he wasn't paying rent . . . And then there's another who disappeared shortly after he arrived here. He's supposed to have gone to Greece, but even so . . .'

'You're thinking this dead boy could be one of them? That he may be this woman's son? But she might have had a daughter, for all we know—and this boy you say went off to Greece, he had an English name.'

'That doesn't really prove anything if you'll pardon my saying so. And then there's the other one. We don't know anything about him. He wasn't on your list of tenants or the agent's either. I haven't any real proof, it's just that things started to happen about the time those boys arrived . . .'

That was true. The visit of the grey-haired man, the boy in the restaurant . . .

'But she wasn't killed until a month after that and that boy was already dead then,' the Captain pointed out.

'I could be mistaken,' the Marshal insisted, his face and voice saying the opposite.

'I'll go out and take a look at this villa.'

'With a warrant,' the Marshal added, addressing his knees.

'With a warrant. But I hate to think what the Substitute's going to say—'

The telephone rang.

'Yes?'

'We've got him, sir! But we don't know what to do now.

We can't arrest him
inflagrante
because—'

'What's gone wrong? What did he take from the room?'

'That's the trouble, sir, he hasn't taken anything, so—'

'I told you not to disturb him! To wait until he came out!'

'We did wait, sir, but he came out empty-handed. What could we do? We can't arrest him, can we? Not just for being in there. After all . . .'

'No. You can't. Bring him in.'

'Should we—'

'Bring him in!'

The Captain slammed the phone down, his face white, his fingers tapping the desk. For a while he quite forgot the presence of the Marshal, who sat very still and silent. When he got control of his temper again he said shortly:

'They're bringing Querci in.'

'Hmph.'

'If he won't talk I'll arrest him for reticence. If he'd only found what he was looking for in that room!'

'Maybe he—'

'I'll not only arrest him for reticence, he'll get a judicial communication for the murder.'

'It's always possible that . . .'

'I'm going to ring the Substitute now. He's the one who wanted action, so let him get out of his bed and see some!'

The Marshal decided he'd stuck his neck out enough for one day. He got to his feet mumbling something about getting back and the Captain let him go, not without a vague feeling of relief that he wouldn't be around when the Substitute turned up. But he only recognized that little weakness in himself much later when he found time to regret it.

CHAPTER 8

'The incident in Milan. I'd like to hear your side of the story before anything else.'

'I don't suppose you'll believe me. I don't think anybody did, not even my wife, even though the matter was dropped.'

'Presumably the manager believed you.'

'He helped me. He's a distant cousin of my wife's. That's why she went to work up there. It doesn't mean he believed me. He helped me because of my wife, the family. Otherwise . . .'

'I'd like to hear your side of it, even so,' the Captain persisted gently. His anger had left him the minute the grey-faced night porter had been brought through the door.

When they had asked him the formal questions,
Do you
intend to answer! Do you intend to tell the truth!
he had only said yes to the first. At the second a few beads of perspiration had appeared on his upper lip.

'It was eight years ago ... I suppose you already know that.'

'You were the receptionist on day duty then?'

'Yes. The woman . . . had been in the hotel three weeks. She'd been flirting with me all along but only in a bantering sort of way. The usual thing.'

'But then she went further?'

'You understand the sort of woman I mean. Well-off and bored, not as young as she was. A man in uniform who's paid to be at their service ... for them he's no more than a toy. I don't know if you understand what I mean.'

'I understand.' The Captain had come across one or two of them himself in the course of duty. 'There are some men who aren't averse to taking advantage of a situation like that,' he said.

'I'd been married only a short time and we had just found out my wife was expecting. What's more, she was still working in the hotel.' There was no anger in his mild voice but his face had reddened.

'What happened to precipitate things?'

'She rang for me to go up to her room one evening. I was just about to go off duty. I remember I was to accompany my wife to the doctor's because she'd been feeling a bit off colour. The first few months were difficult for her.'

'And you went to this woman's room?'

'I didn't think anything of it, to tell you the truth. She'd asked me to post a letter for her on my way home. You see, I was used to her sort of behaviour and I'd never had any real trouble in that line.'

'What did she do when you got there?'

'In the first place she wasn't dressed—I still didn't catch on because it was the time when the guests were getting ready for dinner. She'd just had a shower, she said. She was wearing a bathrobe. She gave me the letter—there really was a letter—and then she asked me to have a drink with her. She kept a bottle of whisky in her room.'

'Did you refuse?'

'Yes, but she took no notice, just went on talking and poured two drinks. She put both of them on her bedside table and lay down. The bathrobe wasn't fastened . . .'

'What did you do?'

'At first I just stood there staring. If I'd thought on before going up there I'd have managed to get out before that, but she caught me unawares and I couldn't do anything but stare. If I'd handled things better, not been so embarrassed, I could have passed the thing off easily enough. If only I'd realized sooner! I wasn't thinking. I was a bit worried about my wife and I just wasn't paying attention. She told me to come and get my drink. I thought I could manage to drink it down in one and get out fast. But when I reached out my hand she took hold of me and made me touch her. That was when . . . she wasn't young, you see. She was a good-looking woman and always well-dressed, but her breast was . . . very soft and limp ..."

'You were disgusted?'

'No. Not disgusted, honestly not that. Just surprised because I'd only ever known young girls—before I was married, I mean. In any case she must have read the expression on my face and since I stood there without making a move she sat up and started abusing me. I realized when she came closer to my face that she must have had a few drinks before I arrived. She ripped off the bathrobe. "
What's the matter, am I too thin for you? Not as good as your tubby
little wife, is that it? Do you know how many men would like the
chance you've got
—
and not men of your class and breed, either
7" All of a sudden she began laughing hysterically.
"So that's what
it's come to.
¹
Turned down by a creature Ukeyou}"

'She was still almost laughing but she took a vicious swipe at my face. All I did was to try and grab her arm to stop her but she was too fast for me, with the result that I scratched her forearm very slightly and her left breast. I tried to quieten her. After all, the people in the adjoining rooms must have been able to hear her. They did hear her, as it turned out, and the evidence, of course, was all against me. They heard a scuffle and her screaming and when they came to the door to see what was the matter they saw her naked and scratched and crying, pushing me out of the room, and me resisting because I was still hoping to calm her down. I suppose I can't blame anybody for not believing me. I probably wouldn't have believed it myself.'

'She claimed you'd attacked her?'

'Yes. The manager was called immediately. There was a terrible scene.'

'But I understand there was no official complaint made. Our people in Milan have no record of one.'

'Even so, she insisted on calling the carabinieri. By the time they arrived she'd passed out. She must have drunk a lot, I suppose, but I've often thought since that she was playacting and that she'd had second thoughts about telling her story officially, as it were. After all, that would mean I'd have to tell my side of it, with the risk that I might be believed. She left the next day. I think the manager let her off her bill provided she took the matter no further. He also told her I'd be removed from the hotel and I suppose that satisfied her more than anything.'

'And you moved to Florence?'

'The owner of that hotel had just bought the Riverside and was sending the manager down here. I came with him and my wife gave up working since she wasn't too well anyway.'

'They made you night porter, or was it your choice?'

'It was the manager's decision. That's why I'm sure he never believed my story. I have less contact with the guests than I did. I admit that for me it was a relief, even though I was paid less and there was a baby on the way.'

'Nevertheless, you had quite a lot of contact with one guest, it seems.'

'It was what she wanted, and after last time I was afraid . . . Am I going to be arrested?'

'That depends on what you tell me now.'

But the warrant was lying before the Captain on his desk. Needless to say, the Substitute Prosecutor had only stayed just long enough to sign it and had gone off to his bed with barely a glance at Querci. If the latter should be arrested or detained he would return to question him the next day at his convenience.

'Was it the same thing all over again with Signora Vogel?'

'No. It wouldn't be fair to say that. Fair to her, I mean, and now she's dead ..."

She wasn't just dead, she'd been murdered and thrown in the river.

Must be some sort of loony.

I don't know whether the editor would wear it
. . .
not if she was
just nuts.

That foreigner in a fur coat job.

The only person who showed any delicacy or respect for her was this quiet, frightened man sitting before the Captain with a warrant for his arrest on the desk between them.

'Were you lovers?'

'No. She was an intelligent woman, sensitive too, even though she liked to hide
it.
It's true that at
first
I was afraid of another episode like Milan but that wasn't any fault of hers. More than anything, she needed someone to talk to . . . No, not even that because she wasn't much of a talker except on rare occasions.'

'Did she ever talk about her past? When she lived in Germany?'

'Once or twice. I know her father was killed during the war and that although she was very clever at languages she never got a chance to go on with her studies. Instead she went to work in a shop so I suppose they were short of money. Her mother died of some illness not long afterwards. Then I think she married but she never talked about her marriage or about her life after that. Only about her childhood.'

'Did she ever mention a child?'

'No, never. And I had the impression that she either divorced or was widowed quite young. She was always vague about it and 1 never pressed her. Even so ... I told your Marshal that there was certainly a man in her life but I'm sure it couldn't have been her husband.'

'You also mentioned another woman.'

'Yes. But I can't tell you any more than I told the Marshal. It was always just hints here and there. And a lot of what I'm telling you I only guessed or assumed. For instance, I think she must have married somebody fairly wealthy because to live at the Riverside costs money.'

'And her father being killed in the war, was that just guesswork or did she say so?'

'I'm pretty sure she said so.'

'Did she mention a villa to you? A villa near Greve in Chianti?'

'No, never.'

'It was owned by her father and he died only a few years ago.'

'I see.'

He showed no anger even then. There were dark rings under his eyes and it was probable that he hadn't slept properly since the day the Captain had visited his home to ask a question that might well have seemed like a pretext. It wasn't difficult to imagine him lying awake in the mornings in a darkened bedroom with his wife's typewriter clacking in the next room and the neighbours quarrelling beyond the thin walls.

'She may have had her reasons for not telling me about it,' he said gently. 'After all, I never told her about Milan.'

'Nevertheless, if all she wanted was someone to confide in, it seems pointless to have lied to you.'

'Everybody lies, even to the person nearest to them, don't you think? In any case, I don't think it was a question of having someone to confide in. I said before . . . It's not so easy to explain, but I lived alone myself, in Milan, before I got friendly with my wife. It's the little things that make you lonely. Having nobody to grumble to at the end of a bad day, nobody to make you a hot drink when you catch a cold. Whenever she had 'flu or a bad head I would go to the chemist for her, that sort of thing. And there's loneliness for affection, too. I'm not talking about sex, just everyday affection, some sort of physical contact.. .'

'And was there this sort of physical contact between you and Signora Vogel? You said you weren't lovers.'

'I told you, it's not a question of sex. We would talk about it sometimes but that's all. It made for a sort of intimacy that didn't do any harm and over the years we got used to things as they were.'

'In all those years, then, you never touched her?'

'I would massage her neck sometimes if she had a headache. Whether you believe it or not, we were more like brother and sister than anything else. Living alone as she did . . .'

'It was her choice to live alone, presumably.'

'I don't believe so. I'm sure she was disappointed with the way things were, that she had expected something better, maybe from this man I mentioned, but things had dragged on year after year.'

'So you massaged her neck,' the Captain said slowly, 'in the reception hall?'

'What . . .?'

'That's where you told the Marshal your little chats took place. That she slept badly and would come down to talk to you. And you, of course, wouldn't leave your post.'

The atmosphere in the room changed quite suddenly. Until then they might have been having a friendly talk. Now the beads of sweat reappeared on Querci's upper lip but he looked cold. When he didn't answer the Captain continued: 'You went to her room?'

'I ... I don't remember . . .'

'You went up there on the night she was killed.'

'I didn't see anything, anything at all!'

'You went up there and either you saw what happened or you killed her yourself.'

'No! No, no!'

'Because if someone else did it and you were at your post you had to have seen that somebody not only coming into the hotel but going out with the body.'

'I didn't see anything, I didn't see anything!'

'Everybody lies. You just told me that, didn't you?'

'Yes. But I'm not lying. I didn't see anything. I swear that's the truth, whatever else . . .'

'Whatever else?'

'It's the truth.'

'If you didn't do it, what are you so afraid of? What were you looking for in her room tonight?'

'Nothing.'

'And last time? Were you looking for nothing then, too? It was you who searched the room the other time, wasn't it?'

'I don't ... I can't remember.'

'What were you looking for tonight?'

'Nothing. I swear it's the truth.'

'I'm going to take that room apart until I find what you were after. If it's there, I'll find it. That can only make things worse for you.'

'I can't help it. I'm telling the truth. I wasn't looking for anything.'

'And you didn't see anything. Who came to see Hilde Vogel the night she died—somebody you know?'

'No.'

'Somebody you don't know? A boy or a man? Which?'

'I didn't see anything! How can I tell you what I didn't see?'

The Captain slammed his hand down on the warrant. 'Do you know what you're doing? If you swear nobody came to see her that night you're leaving yourself as the only suspect!'

'Nobody can prove I killed her when I didn't.'

'No. Nobody could prove you attacked that woman in Milan if you didn't. Did that prevent you losing your job?'

'No.' He was trembling now and his lips were dry and caked.

The Captain rang a bell. 'Bring some water and two glasses.'

As soon as Querci had drunk a little of the water he went on with the questioning even though he had little hope of getting anywhere. If the porter had invented some story, any story, it would have been easy to break him down, but he invented nothing. He went on saying 'I don't know,' 'I don't remember,' 'I didn't see anything.'