Death of an Englishman (2 page)

'She's dead,' murmured the Marshal, his great eyes fixed on the stooping figure outside. He had taken the time to call next door on his way out and the gardener had opened up, his eyes red, his face dark with beard. He had been preparing breakfast for the children, as his wife was still down at Via Romana.

The group round the body was breaking up. The Captain from Headquarters who was in charge of the case came out of the bedroom, where his technicians were working, and regarded the Substitute Prosecutor with a raised eyebrow. The other turned his own eyes heaven-ward. There was no need to say it. That this had to happen so near the holidays …

'And no chance of its being a suicide,' sighed the S.P.

'Hardly. Shot in the back and no weapon found.'

'Well, do what you can …'

Do what you can to clear it up by Christmas. The S.P. shook hands with the Captain and with Professor Forli who was also ready to leave and was closing his bag. The Marshal turned and looked at him hopefully:

'D'you think you could—'

'Nothing,' said the Professor automatically. 'Not until after the autopsy—other than what you can see for yourself. And then a lot will depend on our knowing what time he last ate … Let's hope he eats in a restaurant—it seems likely, he was obviously a bachelor.' The Professor, an elegant, grey-haired man, glanced at the prevailing squalor around him with evident distaste.

'Actually,' said the Marshal humbly, 'that's all a bit beyond my scope,' and he sat down heavily on a dusty antique chair and mopped his brow. 'I was going to ask you if you could give me anything for this fever.'

''Flu?'

'I suppose so.'

'What have you been taking?'

'Just aspirin.'

The Professor felt his pulse, 'You ought to be in bed.'

'I know.' The Marshal's glance went involuntarily to Carabiniere Bacci, rising and falling gently on his well-polished heels by the french windows and slapping himself nervously with his kid gloves.

'I see.' The Professor had followed his glance.

'And I've a Brigadier off sick and my only other boy's already on his way home.' It was the same everywhere at holiday times, the inexorable trickle southwards, as steady and as inevitable as sand running through an egg-timer, leaving museums, hospitals, banks and police stations severely understaffed.

'We're in the same boat,' sympathized the Professor. 'I'll prescribe an antibiotic—but I warn you, you'd better take it easy. Let the lad do your running about and leave this business to the Captain.'

'You needn't worry about that. Stolen handbags are about our limit at Pitti; he won't want me. I'm just keeping an eye on this boy. The sooner he's safely back in Officer School the better. They seem to come younger every year. I must be getting old.'

'Well, try and get some rest, anyway, and drink plenty of fluids.' Both of them noticed at the same time the almost empty whisky bottle standing by the parchment lamp. 'Not that stuff.'

'I've never tasted it.' The Marshal drank half a litre of red every day with his evening meal, never more nor less, and a drop of
vinsanto
on Sundays.

'And no wine, either, while you're on this.' The Professor was reading the Marshal's mind as he wrote. He passed him the prescription and gave a pat to the enormous shoulder. 'Bear up.'

'Captain … ?' One of the technicians was crouching in a corner of the room, examining some object there. The Captain went over to look. A blue and white majolica bust, the head of an angel. The technician was gently brushing away some dust to reveal a piece of string encircling the neck.

'Oh no …' said the Captain softly. He didn't relish the complications this was going to cause.

' 'Fraid so, sir …' He pulled on the string and brought its lead seal into view.

The Captain stood up. 'Get someone over from Pitti, will you? Try Doctor Biondini, the director of the Palatine gallery, he should be there at this time. He'll probably be able to tell you something immediately, but if not, ring me at my office as soon as you hear …'

When the Captain had gone back to the bedroom, Carabiniere Bacci went over to the crouching figure and asked timidly: 'What's happened?' He looked at the small lead seal. 'What does it mean?'

'Trouble,' said the technician. 'Rome …' As if the two were synonymous.
'Can I have the lights over here
? Try and keep out of the way, lad, will you …'

'Can we shift him yet?' The porters had been hanging about for over an hour and a half. The floor outside the flat was littered with cigarette ends and their conversation was becoming desultory.

'With the fillet on it, mind you, and rare. Nothing with it except maybe a dish of shallots done in plenty of butter, sweet and sour.'

'Onions make me ill, I never touch them.'

'You can take him,' said the Professor, hurrying out to catch up with the Substitute Prosecutor and invite him to breakfast in a bar.

The porters began to manoeuvre the considerable bulk of A. Langley-Smythe on to their stretcher, and the Marshal noticed that he was wearing trousers under his dressing-gown and that there was not a lot of blood, although a small patch of it had trickled on to the corner of a Persian carpet that lay before the fireplace. The porters left with their burden, their loud voices echoing in the stone passageway. The Captain and his men were closeted in the bedroom again, where they seemed to have found something of interest. The Marshal and Carabiniere Bacci were left alone in the living-room.

'Carabiniere Bacci.'

'Yes, sir?'

The Marshal's eyes were closed, his large, damp hands placed squarely on his knees as if to keep himself steady, 'I want you to do one thing immediately. Do it properly and do it quickly.'

'Yes sir.' Carabiniere Bacci clicked to attention on the stone floor. Flinching slightly, the Marshal handed him the prescription and said: 'Go out into the piazza, to the chemist next to the stationer's, and get this filled.'

'Yes, sir.' Carabiniere Bacci drew on his gloves, took the prescription delicately between two fingers and strode elegantly towards the door.

'And be quick about it!'

'Yessir!'

The Marshal sat where he was, his large watery eyes open now but expressionless, taking in everything around him. The room was overfumished, in a strangely haphazard fashion, and dusty rather than dirty, the sort of claustrophobic dustiness of attics and junkrooms. The furniture was a motley collection of styles and periods, all of it very antique and much of it too large even in such a high, spacious room as this one. There were some oil paintings that hadn't been hung, just propped against the walls on top of the furniture. The only pieces that looked settled there were the desk and the worn leather chairs before and behind it, on one of which the Marshal was now sitting, and an enormous old armchair, upholstered in faded red velvet. The velvet cushions were squashed into somebody's habitual sitting position and an English newspaper was half pushed down the side of the seat. The chair was by the stone fireplace where the remains of a wood fire lay cold in the grate. The hearth was littered with cigarette ends. The Marshal was tempted to sink his aching limbs into the velvet cushions but the imprint of the Englishman's body was too evident. He sighed and went on looking around him. 'Very nice,' he said softly, regarding the marble statuary on either side of the fireplace. The two figures, their deep folds heavily accented by dust, looked Roman but they might have been Florentine copies. Very nice, even so. A rich man, then, but living on the ground floor … he stared out again at the empty courtyard, his great bulk as still and his great eyes as sightless as those of the marble figures.

'Boh!' He thumped the padded arm of his chair, raising a little cloud of dust, and heaved himself up to take a look in the bathroom. The place hadn't been cleaned for some time. Dirty underwear was lying in the bidet and on the floor. There were lumps of toothpaste and greyish patches of shaving lather around the sink and a rusty streak down the bath where the tap was dripping steadily. Automatically, the Marshal tried to turn it off but without success.

'Marshal?'

'In here.' There was a faint but unmistakable smell of vomit.

Carabiniere Bacci stood in the doorway holding a white package. His bright brown eyes took in the state of the bathroom, but he said nothing except: 'Shall I keep the keys?'

'No—yes, the Captain will want them, I suppose.'

While waiting for the Captain they glanced into the kitchen. There were used coffee cups in the sink, a small coffee-maker on the spattered stove. A fridge contained a small box of milk and half a packet of slightly rancid butter. In a metal cupboard they found a jar of freshly ground coffee, English jam, expensive plain biscuits.

'Old England Stores,' said Carabiniere Bacci, 'In Via Vecchietti.'

The Marshal looked at him.

'That's where he would buy these things.' He blushed. 'My mother sometimes buys tea there.'

'Tea?'

'Yes.'

'Tea
?'

'They have their own blend.' Carabiniere Bacci's face was scarlet but he had no intention of trying to explain the historical Florentine predilection for all things English. He reached down a cannister from the corner of the cupboard. 'Old England Breakfast Tea.'

'Hmph,' said the Marshal.

'Shall we go?' suggested the Captain from the doorway. It was only after he had given the keys to the guard on the door and instructed him to lock up after the technicians that anyone noticed the small figure waiting patiently in the shadows, along the flagged passageway.

'Cipolla,' murmured the Marshal in the Captain's ear. 'The cleaner who found him. His wife died last night so if you could—'

'I see. Come along to Pitti with us, will you? The Marshal will take a statement from you—come on, come on! Put down that bag of rubbish and let's go.'

'It's not rubbish, Marshal.' The little man was afraid to address the Captain personally. 'It's the stuff from the courtyard, things that people drop from their windows and terraces … clothes-pegs mostly and children's toys, and bits of washing sometimes …'

'Put it down,' said the Marshal gently, 'wherever you usually put it, and come along with us. We'll get you a coffee and grappa on the way, you look as though you need it.'

The little man hung his polythene bag on a hook by the lift door where the tenants would collect their belongings, and followed them out, blinking, into the damp, noisy morning. The Marshal put on his dark glasses. The bar on the corner of the little triangular piazza was still busy, its glass counter piled high with breakfast sandwiches and brioches, the coffee-machine steaming non-stop.

'What can I give you, Marshal? Three coffees, is it?'

'Four.' The little cleaner refused to eat anything; the others bought brioches but the Marshal couldn't swallow his. He was too hot and feeling worse by the minute. They stood at the counter near the steamy warmth, gazing out of the open door at a long white coach from Germany that was carrying Christmas shoppers and had got itself wedged across the triangle, unable to negotiate the scattering of illegally parked cars in the centre of it. The driver must have come along by the Pitti and then tried to make the sharp turn back into Via Maggio to make for the river. The cars he was holding up, some of them far out of sight, were blasting their horns in fury while a patiently despairing
vigile
in a tall white helmet tried to help him back up without breaking a shop window, and to persuade the owners of the parked vehicles to come out of the bar and move them.

'Can't even have breakfast in peace in this city,' remarked one of the latter loudly, dabbing delicately at his mouth with a paper napkin and ostentatiously taking his time.

'Have a bit of patience, can't you?' pleaded the young
vigile,
looking in from the doorway.

Those shopkeepers who had no customers, and some who had, came out to watch the familiar spectacle. The dignified, grey-haired stationer stood with his hands behind his back, shaking his head slowly at the disorder. The Neapolitan meat-roaster, to whom the stationer did not speak, mopped his brow on a stained white apron and grinned gold-toothily, the flames of his wood fire flickering diabolically behind him. The jeweller watched beside his Alsatian dog. Normally, the Marshal would have been in the best of spirits, murder or no murder, at being out in the piazza enjoying the mingled smells of woodsmoke and roasting beef, coffee and toast, instead of being shut in his office at Pitti. But today the noise and confusion made his head spin and he was relieved when they paid for their coffee and left. The Captain's car was on the sloping forecourt.

'Wait for me here,' he told the driver, 'I shall want to go back to Headquarters in about fifteen minutes.' As they walked on he told the Marshal, 'You'll need to inform the British Consulate, they'll get in touch with his next of kin, if he has any—and you might send your Carabiniere to the English church and library for me—somebody should know something about him …'

The main doors of the Pitti were open now and a few winter tourists and school parties were going through the central courtyard to the galleries and the Boboli Gardens beyond.

'You must know this little area better than anyone, so if you can tell me anything about the tenants of that building before I question them …'