Death of a Dutchman (4 page)

The doctor had paused and now he lifted the patient's eyelids.

'I'm afraid it's far too late,' he said quietly. Tt was you who found him?'

'Yes . . .'

'There's some response but it won't last. Apart from the heart attack I'd say he'd probably taken a massive dose of sleeping pills, and to try and pump his stomach now would kill him. Is the old lady his mother?'

'A neighbour who's known him since he was a child. Actually, she's old enough to be his grandmother. Is there any chance he'll come round before . . . ?'

'Not much. Why? Do you think there's foul play involved?'

'Don't you?'

'I wouldn't like to say without further information. However, I can inject a stimulant and we'll see . . .

'It won't harm him?'

'It's either that or letting him sink into a coma.'

Signora Giusti pushed herself towards the bed, and the Marshal brought a chair up for her, wheeling her own out of the way.

'Toni! What's happened to you? Tell me what's happened?'

She wanted to touch him but his hands were covered in dried blood, the hair wet and streaked with vomit. She took her tiny handkerchief and wiped his face with small dabbing movements as she must have done when he was a small boy with rheumatic fever.

'Toni . . .'

His colour, especially about the lips, was slightly better.

The old lady's shaky, age-spotted hands went on dabbing and stroking as though she could soothe away whatever was happening to him.

'Toni, it's me.'

It was as if the man's eyes opened by her willpower rather than his own volition. He was evidently unable to focus on any of the faces surrounding him.

'It's me, Toni, your old
mammma.'

The man's lips and fingers twitched slightly. He might have been trying to speak or it might have been the effect of the drug. His lips were parched and one of the Brothers came forward with a little water and wet them.

The doctor, who was preparing to leave, looked at the Marshal and shook his head.

The senior Brother had slipped away quietly, and he came back now with the priest from Santo Spirito. The Marshal touched Signora Giusti gently.

'The priest is here. But if his father was Dutch, perhaps . . .'

'No, no, he was brought up a Catholic. His mother .. . I dressed him myself for his First Communion.'

The priest unrolled his stole and put it on carefully. He beckoned the youngest brother, saying in a stage whisper:

'You know how to help me?'

The boy nodded and took his place beside the priest who whispered again, this time to the senior Brother:

'If you would find me a bit of linen, anything at all, so long as it's clean . . . and a little water . . .'

He was an old man and not at all perturbed by unusual circumstances, or by occasionally having to welcome or dispatch his parishioners in a hurry with the aid of a hastily rinsed jam-jar and a tea-towel.

A small jug of water was produced, a scrap of bread from Signora Giusti's kitchen, and a white damask cloth from the marble-topped chest of drawers in the bedroom. The priest spread the cloth on a small bedside table, laid out his silver containers and lit a candle.

The dusty shaft of sunlight from the one unshuttered window lit the bed and its half-naked occupant, and the small bent figure of the old lady beside it. The priest in his white surplice and purple stole murmured a
confiteor
and then moved forward into the sunbeam and lifted his pale hand to grant the Dutchman a plenary indulgence and the remission of all his sins.

'In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.'

'Amen.'

The three Brothers knelt down in the gloom at the foot of the bed with a faint rustle of their black cotton gowns and a click as their dangling rosary belts touched the marble floor. The Marshal's pale bulk was just visible, very still, in the far corner of the room.

The priest turned and whispered to the boy who handed him the tiny silver container of oil. He dipped his thumb into it and made a cross on each of the Dutchman's eyelids.

'Through this holy oil and through His everlasting mercy, may Our Lord Jesus Christ forgive you all the sins you have committed with your sight.'

'Amen.'

The boy wiped away the oil with cotton-wool while the priest anointed the nostrils.

'Through this holy oil and through His everlasting mercy . . .'

A little whimper escaped the old lady's lips, but she was probably unconscious of it, her eyes fixed on the Dutchman's face, not following the movements of the pale, dry hand that gently touched the parched lips and the ears in turn and then reached over towards the wrist she was holding.

'. . . Forgive you all the sins you have committed by your touch . . .'

The cross of oil glistened in the palm of the bloodied hand. The boy dabbed it away and, at a glance from the priest, moved down the bed to uncover the feet, rolling back grey silk socks.

'Through this holy oil . . .'

The old lady's eyes never left the dying man's face. Perhaps she was seeing not the man but the little boy she had nursed through his fever long ago.

The half-lit room was musty and airless, and the Marshal, who had not eaten or drunk for many hours, felt his mouth uncomfortably dry. He ought to be formulating a report in his mind, but the stillness of the room and the priest's rhythmic movements and droning voice were hypnotic. The noise of children and dogs running round in the piazza below came from another world where people were waking from their siesta and going about their business.

'For the sins you have committed . . .'

'Amen.'

The priest wiped his thumb on the small piece of bread and held his hands over a silver bowl to let the boy pour a trickle of water over them.

'Our Father . . .'He continued the prayer silently, and the only movement was of dust revolving in the shaft of sunlight, until he raised his head and continued aloud: 'And lead us not into temptation.'

'But deliver us from evil.'

Another rustle and a faint chink as the Brothers got to their feet. It was over. The priest and the boy were quietly packing everything they had used, including the scrap of bread and the stained cotton-wool which had to be taken back to the church and burnt. There was no sound or sign from the Dutchman who must surely die any minute. The Marshal slipped out of the bedroom, hoping to find a telephone in one of the other rooms. It was obvious that this wasn't going to be a job an NCO could deal with and he would have to telephone Headquarters who would send an officer to take charge. He found a phone in the sitting room where the white shapes of dust-sheeted furniture were visible in the shuttered gloom. The line was dead and he had to creep back into the bedroom to get the keys to Signora Giusti's flat.

'Hello? Guarnaccia, stazione Pitti . . . yes, again . . .'

But that first call, from the Pensione Giulia, seemed to have happened in another age, so strongly did the dying man dominate everyone and everything in his immediate surroundings.

'And you'll inform the Public Prosecutor? Yes . . . no, there's no need; the
Misericordia
will take him straight to the Medico-Legal Institute. And there's no great hurry. . .'He didn't want the whole bustling crew turning up before the poor man was even dead. Although perhaps by now . . .

But the Dutchman was still alive. The priest had left and the senior Brother was sitting beside the bed holding one of the dying man's arms while Signora Giusti held the other. The Marshal came and stood beside her, wondering whether, at her age, she could take all this upset.

'Signora . . .'

'I'm all right. Leave me here with him.'

Perhaps this time he recognized her voice. He couldn't have seen her for his eyes remained closed, but he spoke suddenly in a firm, almost normal voice:

'Mammina?'

'I'm here. I'm right beside you. You're going to be all right.'

'It wasn't her.' There was silence for a while. Then he said wearily, 'Pain . . .' Shortly after that, one eye opened slightly and stayed open while his last faint breath rattled weakly in his throat and stopped.

CHAPTER 2

"What about his suitcase?'

'Take it with you" as it is. And this, and these keys . . .'

'Oh! Luciani! Take care of these!'

'Try and open that shutter. The light in here . . .'

'Make way, will you? The doctor's arrived . . .'

The flat was crowded with people, some of whom were carrying things away, and others who were examining things on the spot, all of them raising clouds of dust everywhere they went. The photographer's flashes lit the bedroom intermittently. When the doctor came up he had to step over the scratched, black metal coffin that was blocking the narrow passage. It wasn't Professor Forli, but a younger man who had just become his assistant. He was very reserved and formal and didn't chat to anyone as Forli would have done while preparing to make his examination.

The Marshal had said his piece, taken Signora Giusti back to her flat and returned, as unobtrusively as he could, to watch the technicians at work. It was a business he disliked, this dismantling of a person's life to examine it under a microscope, and he could not have said himself why he was still there. He knew he was in the way as he pushed along the corridor to the kitchen to watch a white-coated man systematically collecting the remains of a meal and an almost empty pot of coffee. There were coffee grains all over the floor and a lot of dried blood under the table.

The latest person to arrive was the Substitute Prosecutor, the jacket of his white linen suit swinging open, his striped shirt a little tight about the paunch. He was but of breath and pink in the face from hurrying up eight flights of stairs, and not a little irritated at having been disturbed after a heavy luncheon-party and made to rush about in the heat looking for his registrar.

"Well? Tell me?'

He hardly looked at the officer in charge as he spoke. The Marshal came back to the bedroom doorway and watched. He didn't know the officer, who was very young and a little nervous. Could it be his first case? At any rate, after making his report he continued to give his men orders but glanced worriedly at the Substitute Prosecutor each time, as if expecting approval or correction.

'In other words, a suicide,' said the Substitute Prosecutor, after listening with unconcealed impatience to the young doctor's solemn and meticulous preliminary report, 'albeit a messy one. Changed his mind half way, d'you think?'

'It's possible. But there are one or two things . . .'

'Well, the autopsy should clear them up.' He turned back to the officer: 'Who is he? Do we know?'

'A Dutchman—or rather, Italo-Dutch. He was born here in Florence of a Dutch father and an Italian mother, both deceased, but there is a surviving stepmother, present whereabouts unknown but thought likely to be in England, according to the next-door neighbour here who knew her well. He has a wife and a mother-in-law in Amsterdam. We're going through his papers now for the address.'

'Hm. Good.'

The young officer glanced gratefully at the Marshal who remained silent and impassive in the doorway, his eyes occasionally scanning the room.

The Substitute Prosecutor was anxious to leave, but the Examining Magistrate still hadn't turned up. Waiting, he said:

'A Dutchman. There won't be any diplomatic repercussion? He wasn't. .. ?'

'No,' the officer said, 'I don't think so. He was a jeweller and goldsmith, quite well-to-do, nothing more.'

'Good. Well, let his wife know as soon as possible. Best do it through the Dutch Consulate, Via Cavour . . .'

It was a struggle to get the metal coffin down the staircase, and all four Brothers were perspiring under their black hoods by the time they reached street level. The crowd stood back and watched it loaded into the
Misericordia
van, and the Marshal, who had followed it down, heard them murmuring:

'Poor old creature . . .'

'She was over ninety, of course - . .'

'Even so, they say it was suicide ... or worse, and the place is full of police . . .'

The shops around the piazza were rolling up their metal shutters, the noisy signal that they were about to open for the evening. But the heat, at five o'clock, was just as intense as ever, and the suffocating blast that had hit the Marshal as he came out of the dark doorway dismayed him. He had never got used to the humid heat of Florence, so unlike the dry, burning days down south, even though he had been there six years, not counting his days in the non-commissioned officers' school.

The heat never seemed to come from the sun but to rise in oppressive waves from the heated stones of the buildings, imprisoning the city in a hot cloud that got progressively sweatier and more exhaust-laden as the day went on. The feeling of asphyxiation was so intense that the Marshal often felt the urge to open a window in order to breathe, and then he would remember that he was outside.

On the opposite side of the piazza stood the cool-looking bar, large and tiled, that sold drinks and homemade ice-cream, but when the Marshal reached it he saw that the cash desk was thronged with half-dressed young tourists queuing for receipts before choosing their ice-cream. The only alternative to queuing would be to sit at one of the white tables under the trees and be waited on, but,he couldn't see himself doing that. It would cost double, anyway.

He made his way out of the piazza and eventually found a bar with no queue, a small, dark place with a pinball machine in the back and hundreds of assorted, dusty bottles on the shelves. The proprietor, whose grey hair was cut
en brosse,
wore a faded maroon jacket and a bow tie, as if he had once worked in a big restaurant.

'A coffee and a glass of water.' He took a couple of brioches from the clear plastic box on the bar.

'Hot,' remarked the barman, by way of conversation. 'We should be at the seaside, not working. But I don't go anymore, what with the crowds and the expense. It said on the news last night that, apart from your pensione or whatever, you need between eighty and a hundred thousand lire a day at the seaside.'

'I can believe it.'

'Five thousand a day just to go on the beach, deck-chair and umbrella and whatnot, ice-cream for the kids twice what it cost last year—mine are grown up, thank God, and they take their kids camping.'

'Good idea,' said the Marshal, munching.

'That's what I say. Even so, things are not what they were.'

'They're not. How much do I owe you?'

'One thousand exactly—there are some charging twice that price across the river but it's madness, that's what I say. Where's it all going to end if we're all greedy ..."

The Station was very quiet when he got back to Pitti. The downstairs office was empty, and the only sounds were the whining of the fan and a spasmodic tapping noise, interspersed with long, thoughtful pauses. There was no need to ask who it was.

'Aoh! Ciccio!'

The Marshal was smiling, as everyone did, just at the thought of the roly-poly fair-haired boy. He soon appeared, lolloping slowly down the stairs, his shirt collar open and his tie askew.

'You're all alone?'

'Yes, sir. Lorenzini and di Nuccio went out in the van to collect the post.'

'Any calls?'

'No, sir.'

It was always the same; if there was a desirable errand to do such as collecting the post which came up by courier from General Command in Rome, or even going round to the mensa to collect the lunches, Gino would let the other two go. But when it came to going for bread or water to the grocer down in the piazza there would be the usual argument about whose turn it was, followed by Gino's saying cheerfully, 'I'll go.'

The Marshal looked at his watch.

'Have they been gone long?'

'Not very long.' Gino blushed, knowing as well as the Marshal knew that they would find five minutes for a quick coffee and a chat with old friends and acquaintances.

'And what about you going for the post now and then? Don't you like to have a chat to the other lads occasionally, eh?'

'I've got my brother, Marshal.' Gino smiled, pink with pleasure.

It was true that they never lost an opportunity to be together. Sometimes they went to the cinema, sometimes they just walked round town. Sergio, the elder brother, had been admitted to the non-commissioned officers' school. Gino, as a consequence, worshipped him more than ever, if that were possible. But nothing the Marshal could say would persuade him to apply for admission to the school himself.

'My brother has all the brains,' he would say. 'He's always been brighter than me.'

'But you've got to think of the future. It's no joke having to retire at an age when you've still got young children to bring up.'

'But nobody would marry me, Marshal. Sergio's always been the good-looking one of the family.' And he would blush more furiously than ever.

The Marshal brooded over all his lads, but he had a real soft spot for Gino who reminded him rather of himself at the same age. He too had been a peasant's son, overweight and awkward. But not, he reflected now, quite so naif; it took a northern country bumpkin for that. Gino had never seen a foreigner before he joined up. Well, he was still very young, there was plenty of time for him to change his mind.

'I'm going to have a rest for half an hour.' He patted the boy on the shoulder and opened the door that led to his quarters. 'No doubt the others will be back by then. I'll have to go out again afterwards and finish my hotel round . . .'

In the cool, dark living-room where the shutters had been closed all day, the Marshal took off his jacket and shirt, sat down in his armchair, and heaved his feet on to a stool. He had thought he wanted to sleep but he found himself wakeful. It was only peace he needed, to let certain images roll through his mind. Some of them returned repeatedly: the humped figure behind the door, a nervous, black-hooded boy carefully rolling back a grey silk sock, lumps of vomit swirling round in the water under a running tap . . . and that tiny noise that had sent him running to the bedroom. Had the man been conscious? Had that tiny noise cost him enormous effort? Other images appeared, too: of the man blundering around the flat . . . 'Crashing about as if he were in a temper.' More like a wounded animal. . . And he had cut his hands, somehow, and then tried to bind them up clumsily with a towel. Suicide . . . why should the Substitute Prosecutor think that? Surely it was obvious . . . But perhaps he didn't know yet about the woman. Had he told the officer in charge about Signora Giusti's having heard a woman? If he hadn't . . . what a terrible mistake . . . how could he have forgotten a thing so important. . . the woman . . . He could see her malicious little eyes, her tight lips, that smirk of selfish satisfaction as the priest raised his hand to give absolution . . . Yet surely, she hadn't been there then? The Dutchman had said it wasn't her . . .

The Marshal realized, seconds before it happened, that he was falling asleep after all.

Di Nuccio's voice woke him with the suddenness of a gunshot, although he had only spoken quietly out in the office. The Marshal's mouth was dry and his head throbbing. There was a heavy pain in his arms and across his chest caused, he realized as he got slowly to his feet, by having slept with his fists clenched. It was like waking from a nightmare, though he had no recollection of having had one. He took some deep breaths and staggered to the bathroom to splash cold water on himself and to try and unjumble the thoughts that were knotted in his head. Ridiculous to get into such a state over nothing. Of course he had informed the officer about Signora Giusti's woman—and what a grim picture he had conjured up of her in his half-sleep! The thought of the tight-lipped face he had invented made him shudder as he put on a clean shirt. He went through to the kitchen and heated up the remains of his breakfast coffee in the hope of waking himself up properly and clearing his brain. He drank off the two inches of thick, scalding coffee in one mouthful and got into his jacket; he still had work to do. But the headache and the nightmare heaviness in his chest stayed with him throughout an evening of plodding from hotel to pensione through the still sweltering, ice-cream-splattered streets, of going up in lifts lined with red carpet or disfigured by graffiti, and going down staircases smelling of new paint or stale cooking, of reaching for the blue register in reception halls where the scraping of cutlery in half-glimpsed dining-rooms reminded him how late it was and how little he had eaten all day.

'The trouble is,' said the Marshal, addressing his absent wife, as he often did, 'I don't like the way that man died. I don't like it at all . . . Right, that's ready for the salt.'

The last remark referred to a large pan of water which had begun to boil furiously. He spooned the salt in and watched it froth up and dissolve, then slid a thick fistful of spaghetti out of their cellophane wrapping and spun them with surprising delicacy through the bubbling water. Of the two meals in his culinary repertoire he had chosen spaghetti al pomodoro rather than bread and cheese, partly because he was very hungry and partly because it was more cheering and so worth the extra heat that the boiling pan would cause. The night was just as still and suffocatingly hot as the day, and there was no point in opening windows to let in warm air and mosquitoes.

The Marshal, having got back late from his rounds, was pottering round the little kitchen, wearing his vest and a worn old pair of khaki trousers. He took from the cupboard a new jar of the tomato and herb preserve which his wife made every summer, packing the jars in a cardboard box for him to bring up to Florence on the train. It was the last jar; in August he would be going home for the holidays.

On top of the cupboard the television was switched on, but with the sound barely audible. The Marshal got more comfort and company out of the noise from upstairs where the lads were playing cards, to judge from their disjointed murmurings and occasional arguments, to the accompaniment of Gino's radio. The radio was a present from his brother and his most prized possession, though he always let the others choose the programmes.

'God, this heat!'

That was Lorenzini opening the window above the Marshal's kitchen and then shutting it again in despair.