Some Bitter Taste (12 page)

‘Of course not. I wasn’t here but I’m sure everyone working in the house was fingerprinted. That’s because they have to be excluded, and only unidentified fingerprints and those found where they shouldn’t be need checking.’

‘They think here it was poor Giorgio. That’s because he’s Albanian. The housekeeper keeps going on about letting foreigners in the house. In front of me, of course.’

‘If she’s that distressed about it perhaps I should have a word with her while I’m here.’

‘She’s distressed all right. Hers were the only prints in Sir Christopher’s father’s bedroom and she knows it. She looks after that room herself. It’s never used except when Sir Christopher gets sentimental and goes in there and communes with his dead father. She lets him in and she’s actually
heard
him. She has the keys, so you see…’

‘Keys can be copied.’

‘I know. And thieves wear gloves, which housekeepers don’t. His hairbrushes … I ask you … what an idea. Well, it’ll all be dropped now, I suppose. Of course, if the housekeeper does leave it’ll suit some people … I suppose you know all about the big robbery a few years ago?’

‘Yes. You seem to know a great deal about everything yourself.’

He laughed quieuy. ‘Oh, yes. Gardeners work in pairs most of the time, you know, and we have to have something to talk about other than the greenfly problem. Well, here you are. I’ll be surprised if you get to see him. They say he was very ill yesterday and this morning. Upset, I suppose, poor chap. I think he’s a good man. All the workers here like him and I go by that more than anything. In any case, I’d really like to go on working here after … I hope you do see him. The head gardener says, and the housekeeper as well, that he’s really taken by you. My name’s Jim, by the way. We must have a talk one day …’

The marshal didn’t get to see Sir Christopher, or even the disgruntled housekeeper. He had just started wondering if the young gardener had hopes of the marshal’s putting in a good word for him—which was ridiculous, though he liked the lad—when Porteous appeared in a doorway and the youngster melted away as if by magic, without another word.

‘I’m sorry but Sir Christopher is unwell, very unwell. I fear you’ve had a wasted journey.’

‘No, no.’ The marshal showed Porteous some sheets of paper from a plastic folder. ‘If you would give this to Sir Christopher to read and sign—it’s the official report of the robbery. The copy is for him to keep for the insurance.’

‘Yes, yes. His lawyer will see to all that. He’s with Sir Christopher now.’ He hesitated and evidently had second thoughts about turning the marshal away quite so brusquely. ‘Follow me.’

Not to the kitchen offices this time, at any rate. After the high-domed hall with the mosaic floor and dry fountain they had turned left and walked through dim corridors for some time in silence before the marshal was left waiting outside the door while Porteous slipped into a room. His hand remained visible as he held the door slighdy ajar. The marshal, though trying his best, was unable to distinguish a word of what was said until Porteous had come out and walked off in a hurry, telling him to wait. Then the door began to open again and Sir Christopher’s voice was audible, high-pitched, weak, and anxious.

‘The small bequests particularly—’ Was that what he said? ‘Maul … becess … pe-ic-yery.’ He kept repeating it. Was he drunk? Was that why the marshal had been sent for and then not admitted?

‘Don’t worry. I’ll have everything drafted for tomorrow.’

‘Pe-hicu-yery!—’ All those bottles in the garden that day. Perhaps the marshal, influenced by the sleepy beauty of the summer garden, had been romanticising and it wasn’t the approach of death that made Sir Christopher close his eyes and forget their presence but an excess of alcohol. The English were said to drink a lot.

An almost inaudible murmur and the lawyer appeared, closing the door softly behind him. The marshal’s big eyes bulged at the sight of him. The man had extraordinary deep blue eyes and thick, soft lashes, remarkable enough in themselves, but what surprised the marshal was his youth. Surely the lawyer of a man as important as Sir Christopher should be someone mature, experienced. Of course, he might just be a junior partner from a large firm. A very prosperous-looking one, mind you. Or else it was the marshal showing his age again.

‘You have something for me?’ He took a gold pen from his inside pocket and, with a plump, manicured hand, put a tiny signature on one copy of the theft report and kept the other without comment. He guided the marshal back for most of the way he had come with the air of someone leading a bear on a chain.

‘Straight across the hall…’

‘Thank you. I can manage from here.’ He hadn’t hurried, taking the opportunity to peer up into the gloom of the frescoed dome and walk, almost on tiptoe, close to the fountain. He wondered if it was ever turned on and decided not. The marble bowl was dry and dusty.

‘No guests now because of Sir Christophers health, poor old sod.
’

The whole place, in the marshal’s opinion, looked dry and dusty and very sad. A noise from his right attracted his attention. Somebody was crying. A light was burning beyond partly open double doors. A boyish voice protested something the marshal couldn’t understand though he made out one or two words. Then the same voice dissolving into tears. The marshal stood still. He saw a hand, Porteous’s hand, he was sure of that, making a small repetitive movement. A face turned into the light. The upturned face of a young, tearful boy. Porteous was touching his shoulder, making not so much a patting movement as a tiny, circular massaging one.

At that point the marshal had walked back as quiedy as he could to the doorway he had come through, then started across the hall again with heavy steps. When he passed the double doors this time they were shut.

In the hospital at one in the morning, none of this seemed real as he told Lorenzini about it, more to distract himself from the news they were waiting for than anything. It didn’t make much impression. Lorenzini just shrugged.

‘So they’re all homosexuals including this Sir whatever-he-is. And if stolen hairbrushes are all he’s got to worry about—’

‘And his health,’ the marshal reminded him. ‘They said he was very bad yesterday and today.’

‘So they got a lawyer in?’ Lorenzini, a dyed-in-the-wool Tuscan, spoke as he found. ‘You’d think they’d call a doctor.’

‘Yes, you’d think so … Of course I was only there a minute. They probably had the doctor at some point, but I get the impression he’s more agitated by who to leave his estate to than by the fact that he’s going to die.’

‘Wish I had his problems—is that nurse looking for us?’

She was, but only to send them away. ‘If she’s still alive tomorrow the surgeon will have a scan done and decide if he should operate.’

‘Is there much chance that she will be alive?’

‘No, but if she is she’ll have a grim future in front of her. If you can get us that identification we’d appreciate it.’

‘Of course. We’ll be in touch.’

They stretched their limbs and left the cool of the big waiting room for the suffocating night outside. The young carabiniere had been left in the driver’s seat and it was easy to tell from his voice and slight unsteadiness when he got out to return to the backseat that he must have dozed off and was worrying about it.

Nothing was said to him. Lorenzini drove them back to Pitti and set off home in his own car. The marshal, feeling for his keys, could not remove from his head the images that filled it in turns. That trusting smile as she tottered towards him—what had she been saying? Who did she think he was? Then the floppy little body, poor rabbit ready for skinning. As he let himself in quietly he prayed that the faint click of the door would wake Teresa so that she would talk to him.

‘Salva?’

She didn’t talk much at first. She listened to him tell her about the girl, looked carefully at his face, then let him get washed and into bed and brought him some camomile tea with honey in it.

Then she got into bed, leaving the bedside lamp on so he could drink his tea while she talked. It didn’t matter to him what she said. She’d never understood that, and when they were much younger he had sometimes offended her by saying what a chatterbox she was. He didn’t say it unkindly; he wasn’t even making fun of her. He was just amazed at the pleasure she took in talking to him since he didn’t know how to chatter himself.

‘Don’t stop. I didn ‘t mean you to stop.’

I’m wasting my breath if you’re not listening to a word I say.’

‘That’s not true. I am listening, I really am.’

She was right. He wasn’t listening to a word she said, he was listening to her—her voice, her presence, her affection. One of those permanent misunderstandings that occur in all lasting marriages, lasting because they lead not to understanding but to acceptance. So she took his cup and went on talking to him, sensing his need, talking first of what had happened and then meandering on quietly, naturally, to their own problems, especially Giovanni’s next school, to those of other people, family and friends, winding down with a coda on the minutiae of her day—Totò getting eight in his math test, the plumber who hadn’t turned up. He kept hold of her as she talked, needing to feel the vibration of her voice against his chest as well as to soak in its comforting murmur. His heartbeat became calmer and his breathing more relaxed. After a long time he fell asleep. In his sleep he sensed her absence, a cooling, and knew she had gently extricated herself from his bearlike grasp and switched off the bedside light.

The story of the girl thrown out on the motorway, given that she was yet another Albanian prostitute and not even dead, warranted only a small paragraph on the local news page of
La Nazione.
It wasn’t the sort of thing that sold newspapers. It had happened too often, and those not working actively against it reacted to it no more than to the dogs who would meet a similar fate at the start of the August holiday. The paragraph had been cut out and put on the marshal’s desk for him when he came back from the Land Registry with disappointing results. He was glancing at the cutting when Lorenzini came in.

‘This report came for you.’

The marshal took it. ‘Did you find Dori or Mario at those numbers I gave you?’

‘Mario. I left a message and he called me back about an hour ago. Not married yet but it’s definitely on and the girl’s who you thought she was. Dori had heard about it. I’ve found the copy of Dori’s letter to her in our files. Name’s—wait, I’ve got it written down but I can’t pronounce it—N-D-O-K-E-S—first name’s Enkeleda and she’s eighteenish. Problem is, this address is no use to us. It’s care of the contact for shipping the girls over here. It seems she’d already run away from her family in some mountain village in the north, to escape an arranged marriage, when Dori met her.’

‘Nobody’s going to be looking for her then, are they? She’s already dead for them. Give Captain Maestrangelo the address for the Lek Pictri file. Bring me the name and I’ll call the hospital and see if there’s any change.’

There was no change. The girl had not regained consciousness. The surgeon was to operate next day. After he put the phone down, the marshal couldn’t avoid the image of that limp little body or the thought that, quite apart from the Albanian question, youngsters travelled all over the world these days and if one of his children should get run over in some foreign country—well, he wouldn’t have it. They were going nowhere alone until they were mature adults … only, when did you stop thinking about your children as children, when did the fear go away? Did it go from one day to the next? Did it ever go when you saw the things he saw all the time? He knew that some of his colleagues went so far as to have their teenaged children followed, afraid of drugs, bad company. That was wrong but, if he got really frightened, wouldn’t he do it himself?

Before him on the desk lay the autopsy report on Sara Hirsch. Hardly a change of subject to cheer him, but at least one which must concentrate his attention.

It did more than that.

To the Public Prosecutor for the Republic, Florence.

On the 15th inst, the undersigned pathologist, Dr. Federico Forli of the Medico-Legal Institute of Florence, was called to Sdrucciolo de’ Pitti 4 to make an external examination of the cadaver of HIRSCH SARA, and following that was asked to proceed to a dissection of the said cadaver. In response to the specific requests of the magistrate, my findings are as follows:

1) Death occurred approximately seventy-two hours previous to discovery.

2) Cause of death: cardiac infarction of the left ventricle…

//

The marshal sat back in his chair, relieved. Sara Hirsch had been to see him on Monday, had gone home and called her lawyer as she’d said she would. She had shown the cards she had up her sleeve, and that same evening, as the autopsy and the neighbours agreed, someone had entered her flat and threatened her to try and obtain those cards. She had heart trouble as the grocer had said. She had died of fright. She had died by mistake. If she’d coughed up the combination to the safe when they held the knife to her throat she would still be alive and trying to get the marshal or some psychiatrist to believe her story without really telling it.

The autopsy went on to give an account of the wounds Sara Hirsch did not die of: a superficial knife wound on the left side of the throat, lifting a flap of skin upwards; a scalp wound and contusion of the skull where her head had hit the marble floor. Most of the blood loss was from there, as the photo file showed. Scalp wounds bleed profusely but this one had not bled for long. The heart attack had been a big one. The prosecutor would now order further detailed reports on those superficial wounds through which the dynamics of the victim’s death could be reconstructed.

The marshal was more concerned with what followed. Had they hesitated? A dead body had been no part of their plan. Their plan had included a threatening postcard, warning visits to the flat, the knife in the entrance hall, things—except perhaps the knife—that spoke of an unscrupulous landlord …