Death of a Dutchman (8 page)

'He'd quarrelled with his wife,' the Marshal admitted. 'She didn't want him to make this trip. She's going to have a baby soon. But what I thought was, if it bothered him so much, why not go home? He's not going to kill himself for that.'

They had come back out to the main doors and now they absent-mindedly turned and started back along the broad corridor.

'Of course, it depends,' said the Professor, frowning, 'what the trip was for. I mean, your problem may well be that, not the wife.'

'I heard it was a business trip . . .'

'In that case, I suppose you'll be looking for whoever he did business with.'

'Do you think he killed himself?'

'Strictly speaking, he died of heart failure. That's what I put in the report. It's not for me to make judicial pronouncements, and if the young woman's pregnant..."

'It's not for me, either, to make pronouncements; I just wanted to know what you thought. Those wounds in his hands ... he tried to bind them up . . . they were important to him, his hands, being a craftsman.'

'I follow you. If he'd intended to die, it would hardly have mattered. But, you know, he may well have been totally confused at that stage. He'd still be very groggy from the first dose. There
are
anomalies, I agree. He took the first dose immediately after his meal —and that I don't like. I understand he'd just arrived here and so must have bought the food he ate, probably on the way from the station. He must have gone to two shops, one for the cheese, ham, coffee and bread, and another for the peaches . . .'

It brought back the previous morning vividly: the almost deserted market, the pungent odour of basil and ripe tomatoes, the cheerful stallholder in his big green apron reaching for the'large peaches in their grassy tray...

'Now, your suicide is a self-abusing sort of person. A person who's obsessed with himself, punishes himself when things go wrong—or abuses his own body to punish someone else. He's likely to have a history of self-neglect, or of excessive fatidiousness, and an unbalanced attitude to food. This man, on the other hand, chose himself a very nice meal, visiting two shops to do it, despite, presumably, being rather tired after a long journey. Anyway, to continue to reconstruct the thing as I see it: he eats, and eats well. He then drinks coffee—not the Italian coffee which he bought, but Viennese coffee of which your people apparently found no further trace in the house—we'll come to that problem in a moment. Having drunk the coffee
with the barbiturate dissolved in
it,
anomaly number three—why bother?—he then doesn't go to bed, anomaly number four—does he want to die on his feet with all his clothes on? Shortly afterwards he gets sick. He staggers to the bathroom, turns on the tap and starts vomiting. That's normal. He's already absorbed plenty of the stuff and he hangs there over the sink feeling wretched until he falls asleep with his head in his own vomit. That's normal. The sink blocks and fills up. He wakes up, choking. That's normal, though he could just as easily have drowned. Then he starts ransacking the bathroom cabinet, tumbling out every old bottle of medicine in there. Why does he do that? He was covered in ancient cough medicine and hair oil. What's he looking for?'

'I don't know . . .'

'I do. Never get so fascinated by the extraordinary that you miss the ordinary. I tell my students that every time but ninety-nine per cent of them will never learn to obey that simple rule.'

'No,' agreed the Marshal, "they won't. It's too dull.' But it was his golden rule, too.

'Two aspirins!' announced the Professor, stopping in his tracks abruptly. 'I say two; it might have been three, but I doubt if it was more. Traces in the stomach lining and in the vomit, taken at the same time as the coffee and the first massive dose of barbiturate! And when he's been sick, confused and doped as he is, he starts scrabbling through the medicine cabinet, smashing everything in sight. What does that tell you?'

'It tells me,' said the Marshal, a trifle grumpily, 'what I already knew. He didn't know about the barbiturate. I suppose if he'd been smoking too much, and after the journey, too, he had a headache and took some aspirin from the bathroom cabinet . . .'

'And then he got sick, very sick, he realized he was doped.'

'So he thought he'd poisoned himself, that the aspirin wasn't aspirin, and he'd no idea what it might be. And his phone wasn't connected so he couldn't call for help . . .'

'I should think, anyway, that he was barely
compos
mentis
at that point,' said the Professor. 'He could hardly Stand; there were cuts on his knees which indicate that he must have fallen a number of times in the bathroom among all that broken glass where he lost one of his slippers, according to my assistant, and then again in the kitchen where he spilled all the coffee he'd bought.'

'Why that . . . ?'

'He was no fool. He knew he should try and keep himself awake, and I suppose the package of coffee was still where he had left it on arriving—it was spilt mostly just around the cupboard on the left inside the kitchen door according to your chaps. He wasn't capable of making it, of course . . .'

'No,' said the Marshal quietly, 'but what an effort he was making to stay alive.'

'Perhaps. But at that point, anyway, he gave in, sat down at the kitchen table and fell asleep among the remains of his dinner. Your people brought me samples of the blood that was under the table and the traces of vomit where his head had lain. The next thing we know is that he wakes up—this would be about an hour before you found him next day—having slept off most of the barbiturate, but rather weak, he's lost quite a lot of blood, goes to the sink—maybe he still feels sick—and finds in the sink the coffee-pot with the remains of the Viennese coffee in it. It's nasty and it's cold and there isn't much of it, but he has to wake himself up enough to get help. He drinks it and it kills him. The last straw. His heart gives out."

'Would he have noticed how nasty it tasted, not then perhaps, but the first time?'

'Have you ever tasted Viennese coffee, so called? I can't believe the Viennese would drink it; it's flavoured strongly with figs.'

The Marshal grimaced.

'Quite. And this was a very thick, strong brew, lightly sugared in the pot, not in the cup—he added more sugar in the cup. Remember he was already upset, even the first time, and not very likely to take much notice—but I bet he didn't care for it, all the same.'

'Then why should he . . .'

'Why does anybody eat or drink something they find unpleasant, rather than spit the stuff out?'

'I suppose —' the Marshal pondered a while—'out of politeness.'

'Correct. Do you think he had somebody with him?'

'Why do you ask?'

'Well, I know only one person ate and drank, but it's odd that no further trace of that coffee was found, not even a container for it, and the police lab found a hair on his lapel. Woman's. Been tinted and waved.'

'You don't think it could have been his wife's?'

'I know it wasn't. I've seen her photograph. She's a natural blonde, almost white. Doesn't mean much, of course; he's just as likely to have picked it up in the train. I just thought that if there was a woman involved . ...'

"There may have been,' the Marshal said cautiously, in case any of this should get back. 'The old lady next door thought she heard a quarrel and a woman leaving, but she didn't see anything... and she's ninety-one . .. it's all very vague and nobody wants to cause his wife any more grief if it's not absolutely necessary.'

'You needn't worry about that—at least, I shouldn't have thought so. I said that the hair was tinted and waved, but these vanities apart, it was a grey hair.'

'It was?'

'Certainly. I don't know if it's any help.'

'It may be.'

'Of course, your own lab can give you more details, if you go round to them.'

A look of puzzlement was beginning to form on the Professor's face. The Marshal quickly distracted him.

'Perhaps, if this woman exists, she was responsible for the strange coffee . . .'

'And for the barbiturate in it—well, it's only a hypothesis, but fascinating, all the same, fascinating.'

'A hypothesis? You mean you personally don't think... ?'

'Exactly, my dear Marshal, I don't think, I only look, and look hard! It's up to you people to do the interpreting. The fact is that people do behave oddly, and it isn't always possible to follow their train of thought when they're under stress. Our Dutchman was under stress, remember that—all those cigarettes. He was apprehensive; maybe something went very wrong with him. I can only tell you what happened, not why, or even how. For all you or I know he may well have taken the stuff deliberately, got in a panic when the vomiting brought him to, fallen asleep, and then got up the courage to take another dose in the morning.'

'He would dissolve it himself?'

The Professor shrugged. 'Some people hate taking tablets.'

'And where would he get it, if he didn't normally . . . ?'

'Has anybody checked?'

'I don't know . . .'

'I should have thought somebody ought to, but that's your department. Even if you .don't find out, though, what does that prove?'

'Nothing.'

'You don't think it was suicide, I gather?'

'No, I don't.'

'Well, to tell you the truth, neither do I. But we can only go on the facts, and the trouble is, Marshal, that, strictly speaking, we only have two facts: one, the rather dubious one of a hair that could have come from anywhere, unless you find a suspect; the other, the rather more intriguing one of the two aspirins—like sprinkling yourself with a glass of water before throwing yourself in the river, what?'

They were nearing the exit again. The Professor stopped talking suddenly and flushed.

'Pardon me. I've just realized how long I've kept you talking, and you were saying you had to go round to the police labs . . . I'm afraid they'll have gone home.'

'Wasn't urgent,' mumbled the Marshal.

'I do beg your pardon. I tend to go on a bit once I get going. The clockwork Professor, my daughter calls me. Well, I'll let you get on.'

After this unwonted confidence, the Professor turned and started off down the corridor. The Marshal was too embarrassed to stop him but the porter, without even looking over his newspaper, called out, as if automatically:

'Professor!'

'Yes, what is it?'

'You were going home.'

The Marshal got out first and slipped into his car, pretending not to notice.

'Cause of death, heart failure,' he muttered to himself as he drove back towards the city centre. In the dusky streets, lamps were lit outside restaurants where tables were set out among potted shrubs. Waiters were squeezing between them with plates held high above their heads, and woodsmoke drifted on the warm air, carrying the smell of grilled steak. Lamps were lit, too, along the river, where sky and water were fused in the same midnight blue and turquoise, and bats wheeled about under the shadow of the Santa Trinita bridge.

'Cause of death, heart failure . . .'

The Santa Trinita bridge is one way, but the Marshal drove along to it and stopped.

'I'll just have a word with that young lady on the corner ..."

He didn't get out of the car, just opened the door and called:

'Franca! Oh!'

She came towards him, blowing clouds of smoke like a peroxided dragon. Her fixed smile faded when she saw who it was.

'What's up?'

'Nothing's up. I want some information.'

'Now then, what do I know . . . ?'

The Marshal was sitting in the kitchen in his old slacks and vest. It had been after ten when he got home and now it was almost midnight. He had cleared the formica table after eating bread and cheese, fetched in a sheet of foolscap and a pencil from the office, and sat down, frowning. He hadn't written anything on the paper in over an hour.

It reminded him of summer nights when he was a schoolboy. It must have been June he was thinking of because there were so many fireflies and because he was doing homework, which meant school hadn't finished. His mother used to clear the big kitchen table for him after his sister had gone to bed. He could remember very clearly the rough patch on the straw-bottomed chair that always left a red pattern on the backs of his legs, and the voice of his father and the other men coming from beyond the small, barred window, still unshuttered though it was already dark and the green fireflies winking. He would sit with his stockinged feet on the lower bar of the chair, always keeping his head down a little to look as though he were concentrating on the long piece of poetry he had been set to learn by heart. His mother would punctuate her brisk tidying and shoe-cleaning, saying 'That's right, you study; you get nowhere these days without studying. Your cousin Carmelo always studied.' Carmelo had been accepted into a seminary, his future was secure. 'You keep on studying, you don't want to spend your life slaving on the land like your father.'

Little did she know that all the time his big eyes were following her every movement between the stove, the sink and the storeroom, while his ears strained to catch every word of the conversation of the men who sat on the wall outside, gossiping and smoking under the stars. They were too far from the village to go to the café.

And each time his mother opened the storeroom door, he waited for the faint whiff of greek hay, mixed with the musty smell of the rabbits huddled in their cages.

Looking back on it now, he saw his father as having been perfectly contented until the day they moved to the village after his retirement. After that he was disorientated and he soon fell, sick and died. Now it was his mother, after having agitated so long for the move, who couldn't remember where she was, and whined like a small child to be taken home.

The fact remained that in those long-ago days he had never got much homework done, and he wasn't getting much done now. The lined paper was still empty.

The rhythmic sawing of the cicadas in the Boboli Gardens behind the palace was probably contributing to his fit of nostalgia for the country. But there was nobody out there gossiping under the stars. The garden gates were locked at sunset; this was Florence. The Marshal got up to close the inner shutters and then sat down determinedly.