Death in Springtime (8 page)

'Marshal . . .' The Captain was backing away.

'All right.'

'I'll go up and see if they're ready to lock up . . .'

The Marshal sat down in the gloom at the plush-covered table and faced the tearful woman across a bowl of plastic fruit. Her rolled-up handkerchief was already soaked through but she went on twisting it round and round in her fingers and dabbing at her wet face.

The Captain's men were already clattering down the broad stone staircase, ignoring the slow old lift. He turned to join them and then heard the telephone ringing inside the flat. The door was still open until the weeping woman should come up and lock it. He ran along the carpeted passage and into the drawing-room where he picked up the phone without speaking. After a moment a man's voice said in Italian:

'Is it you?'

There was no point in not answering so he said:

'Do you want to speak to Miss Maxwell?'

The caller hung up.

CHAPTER 7

'What sort of time would it have been?'

'Between eight and eight-thirty.'

'At that time I'm usually taking the children to school.'

'I know,' said the Marshal patiently, 'that's why I thought you might have seen something.'

The woman pondered, pushing the baby's pram to and fro absently.

'It's so long ago . . .'

'Almost three weeks ago.'

'If you'd asked me nearer the time . . .'

'You weren't here. We've already checked everyone in the piazza once.'

For all the good it had done. It was the same story every time: nothing at all until at last the significance of the date went home— ' But that was the day it was snowing, don't you remember?' 'Yes, I remember.' 'It was in the paper. They say the world's shifting on its axis, there could be another ice age.' 'But did you notice . . .?'

It was never any good. They had only noticed the snow. Now it was Signora Rosi's turn.

'Wait a minute! You said the first of March? But that was the day it was snowing, I remember now!'

There was no point in getting angry. After all, what did the Marshal himself remember about that morning other than the snow? Time and again he had rolled the scene through his memory. It was a knack he had. If anyone asked him what had happened on a certain occasion he wasn't able to tell them right off because he never put his memories into words. Yet, given time, he could roll back any given scene like a film and look at it again, stopping and starting the images at will, examining areas and details that he hadn't noticed at the time. It was a slow process, of course. He had a reputation for being a bit slow-witted but it didn't perturb him in the least. He was accustomed to it from his schooldays since his wasn't a memory system that made a good impression on harassed teachers or impatient examiners, especially as it didn't work at all with books.

He let Signora Rosi go on her way, wheeling the baby through the courtyard of the Pitti Palace into the Boboli Gardens to take the afternoon air along with the other mothers and babies of the Quarter.

The sharp bright sunshine, accompanied by cold winds and interspersed with long periods of heavy rain, had at last given way to real spring weather, warm sunshine and feathery showers. The Marshal crossed the sunny forecourt towards the shadow of the stone archway and into his office, where he could take off the dark glasses which he always had to wear when the sun was out. He sat down heavily at his desk and sighed. The first warm weather always had this same effect on him, a feeling of elation followed by a bad bout of homesickness. At home in Syracuse it would be quite hot by now, the almond blossoms and the big purple thistles blooming. Hot enough to sit out in the Piazza studded with big brown and green palms against the rose-coloured stucco of the buildings and perhaps try a first ricotta ice-cream. He gazed dully out of the little window at a dark, neatly-clipped laurel hedge and the gravel path where the black cars were parked. What was he supposed to be thinking about? That morning in the snow . . .

Slowly he ran through the scene, saw the big flakes falling, the boy in the white apron scattering sawdust, the cars coming towards him. He stopped, remembering. A car was coming towards him, signalling. Someone in the back was holding a map. He had been through it before and had already told the Captain he was sure that was the car, though he hadn't looked at the driver and front passenger, having been distracted by the map and by watching the traffic coming from all three directions because he wanted to cross over. It wasn't all that much help, anyway, as far as tracing the kidnappers was concerned, but it did mean that on that point at least the Nilsen girl was telling the truth.

It was something else that was bothering him, something illogical that he couldn't explain to the Captain until he had explained it to himself.

Again he saw the car signalling, signalling to turn right into Via Mazzetta which was the route south out of the city. Then he was crossing the road and the long ochre-coloured palace came into view with the snowflakes falling slowly in front of it to land on the roofs of the cars parked on the sloping car park in front. A Sardinian piper was coming towards him. Just one. No matter how he looked at it, it didn't make sense. It was true that there were usually two of them together and he remembered thinking at the time that the other one was probably in a shop begging. Even so, it was all wrong. He tried again. The piper was coming towards him wrapped in a black cloak, playing . . . what had he been playing? The Marshal couldn't for the life of him remember that. Normally you didn't think about it. At Christmas they always played 'You came down from the stars' and at Easter they usually played a Pastorale, and what with the roar of the traffic and the crowds of chattering shoppers or tourists it was practically impossible to distinguish the tune except in short bursts. Everybody just assumed that that's what they were playing. Nobody took much notice. Some Florentines liked them because they were picturesque. They would give them money and accept the little religious pictures or good luck messages that the shepherds handed out. Others hated and ignored them, saying they only came down to the city to steal. Certainly nobody had been taking any notice of this one—but then, hadn't he been playing very badly, anyway? And what would he have been playing? It had been neither Christmas nor Easter. The Marshal could recall no hard and fast rule about it but he couldn't think that he had ever seen the pipers during Lent. It always seemed that they reappeared around Palm Sunday when people were pouring out of the churches carrying little sprays of olive leaves that looked silvery in the hard sunlight.

The piper that morning had only worn an ordinary shepherd's cloak, not the short swinging cape, long white woollen socks criss-crossed by leather straps . . . Well, not all of them had those things . . .

This wasn't helping at all. If the piper was early, he was early. But if he had nothing to do with the kidnapping of that girl it seemed to be too much of a coincidence that he should have appeared just then. Nobody he had questioned had seen a second piper. But then, only three people in the whole piazza remembered seeing the first one! That was the snow again . . . Odd that the Captain had thought it would help. It had done nothing but distract everybody. The kidnappers couldn't have chosen a better day.

The Marshal would have liked to turn this problem over to the Captain who could have applied some brains to it. The only thing that stopped him was that he couldn't decide exactly what the problem was. Either that Sardinian's being there was coincidence or it wasn't— and, for goodness' sake, if it wasn't—

'Marshal?' His young Brigadier, Lorenzini, clattered down the stairs and put his head round the door. 'It's half past two.'

'Yes.' The Marshal looked at him unseeingly.

'That road accident. The doctor said the driver should have come round from the anaesthetic by now.'

'Yes . . .'

Lorenzini waited and then asked: 'So do you want me to go and take his statement?'

'Yes—no. Send Di Nuccio. I'd rather you stayed here in case I have to go out.

'All right. Oh—Cipolla's sister came round when you were out before.'

The imprisoned man's sister was married to a gardener in the Boboli and lived just next door.

'She said if you could spare an hour . . . she'd just come back and said he was very low and asking for you. I did explain to her that you were on this case—'

'That's all right. I'll manage to get round there . . .'

'She left something in the kitchen for you, I think.'

She always did. Some soup or little homemade cakes, convinced that as a grass widower he couldn't cope. His wife down in Syracuse was of the same opinion. In fact, he managed perfectly well if you didn't count a certain lack of variety in his evening meals and the fact that he was forever missing the lunch that the boys brought over from the mensa dead on twelve-thirty.

'Should he take the van?'

'Who?'

'Di Nuccio. To the hospital?'

'Yes.' Now he'd lost track of what he'd been thinking of completely. And besides, there were two things bothering him at the same time and he had assumed that the second problem nagging at him had been Cipolla. But now that Lorenzini had mentioned him he realized that it wasn't. It was something more closely connected with the piper . . .

He leafed through the stack of notes that was the result of their questioning everyone in the area about what they had seen that morning. Almost every interview ended with 'I don't remember much except that it was snowing . . .' or words to that effect. Almost every interview— but there was somebody he wanted to go back and see. That was it. It stuck in his mind because she was the one person who, of course, hadn't mentioned the snow, hadn't even noticed it because of being stuck in 'that gloomy hole' as she put it herself, day in, day out, and that evil husband of hers never there,
never]
But he slept there, didn't he? The Marshal had called back a number of times and each time the woman's sobs had had a note of triumph in them.

'You see? I'm alone all the time. I'm the one who's always here to let you in, you can testify.'

But she hadn't let the kidnapper in, she could swear to that because, having pressed the switch, she always put her head out to see who was coming in since there wasn't a housephone. The first person she had opened up for that morning had been the postman at five past eight. It always was. And he had put the post in her hand personally as he always did. The Marshal had made a point of checking on that because although the Florentines spent a small fortune on electronic locks, bars, security doors and burglar alarms they quite often pressed the switches and opened up the lot to anybody with the wit to ring the bell and call '
Telegramme
!' The thief, having got past ninety per cent of the gates and gadgets blocking his way, would break into one of the flats in the building. Not the one whose bell he had rung, of course.

The Marshal stood up. If that wretched woman's husband wasn't there today, he would search the city until he found him, however slight the hope that he might know something. The woman was more concerned with gathering evidence for her divorce than with the truth, and she was determined to browbeat everyone into believing her. He buttoned up his black jacket and slid a hand into the top pocket for his sunglasses, calling up the stairs to where Lorenzini's typewriter was clacking rapidly:

'I'm going out!'

No. 3 was directly opposite the palace, only a minute away, but he was stopped twice by tourists whose thick German accents he couldn't begin to understand, and then by having to settle a violent argument between two drivers who had managed to crash while manoeuvering their cars out of their parking spaces. He eventually gave this one up and left them both threatening the car park attendant, but it took him half an hour to cross the street and ring the bell at No. 3.

Just as she had said, the porter's wife opened up the main door and the inner gate from her room and then poked her head out. Her door was set back so that she didn't see him until the was past the cars in the centre of the courtyard. He gave her no time to start crying.

'I want to speak to your husband. And if he's out—' she was reaching for the handkerchief in her apron pocket—'I want to know where he is. If he really has got another job, as you say, I want to know where.'

'Do you think he'd tell me? He hasn't spoken to me except in anger for nine years!'

'Then how are you going to prove in court that he's breaking his contract here by working somewhere else?'

'I know he works in a restaurant. I know that. But only from my neighbours, not from him.'

'Which neighbours?'

'The porter's wife at number five.'

'You go round there talking to her?'

'How can I? You know I'm stuck here all day.'

The Marshal had seen them as they stood gossiping in the street at an equal distance between the two buildings f so as to keep their doors in view, but it would be a waste of time trying to get her to admit it.

'So she comes round here for a gossip?'

'She comes to see me.'

'How often?'

'Quite often. When she can.'

'Every day?'

'Usually when she goes shopping . . .'

'Every morning, that is.'

'If I had a husband like hers—even so, underneath they're all as bad. If I had my time over again—'

'How does she know where your husband works?'

'Because she's seen him with her own eyes! And she'll testify—she's as good as said so, unlike some who don't—'

'If she's seen him with her own eyes she knows which restaurant it is.' Blood out of a stone! The Marshal was red in the face. They should have known all along that she was lying but everyone was in a hurry to get away from her embarrassing tears and her insistence on their testifying to this and that.

'It's somewhere in Piazza Signoria ...'

The Marshal opened his mouth and shut it again. There weren't that many restaurants in Piazza della Signoria. It was quicker to go and ask there. He banged his hat on and stumped off through the courtyard, muttering, 'I'll give her testify . . .'

It turned out to be the restaurant nearest to the Palazzo Vecchio. There was only one couple lingering over coffee and cigarettes. All the other tables had been cleared and had clean white cloths on them. The head waiter was putting his coat on. The Marshal found his man sweeping up in the kitchen. He was as surly and unprepossessing as his wife and about half her size. To avoid losing his temper the Marshal said it himself along with his first question: 'It was the morning that it snowed . . .'He was prepared for a battle if the porter turned out to be as difficult a customer as his wife. He needn't have worried.

'I remember. Yes, I did open the door for somebody when I was leaving for work. It's unusual for anybody to ring at that time. I thought perhaps it was the postman come early. My wife was in the bathroom.'

'Who was it?'

'I've no idea. Nobody came in so perhaps it was a mistake. I was going out anyway and I was a bit surprised to find nobody there.'