The Etruscan Net (7 page)

‘
Come si chiama la piccola animalia dei boschi
–’ said Tessa. The Sindaco looked blank. Tessa imitated a squirrel. The Sindaco beamed. ‘I know him.
Coniglio
.’

‘No, not rabbit. Squirrel.’

Broke thought, the Germans might not have been gentlemen. But they were damned efficient fighters. He was remembering the half section they had trapped in a farmhouse above Lucullo, in the foothills of the Appennines. Thirty partisans had closed in at dawn. There were seven or eight Germans, a foraging party, under a Corporal. They had placed a sentry at the corner of the building, and the rest of them were asleep in the barn.

‘They had a band,’ said Miss Plant. ‘A brass band with trombones, and cornets. And a huge instrument that went oompah-oompah, can you imagine it? And they marched up and down the Lungarno, completely upsetting the traffic, not that there was much traffic in those days.’

‘A weasel? A stoat?’

‘No. Not a weasel or a stoat. Daddy! What is the Italian for squirrel?’

They had stalked the sentry, and Guido, who had been a horse-slaughterer’s assistant, and boasted his prowess with the knife, had stabbed him, but had bungled the butchery and the sentry had screamed. Within five seconds the Germans inside the barn were on their feet, and returning their fire. Five seconds! No chance of rushing them. Get under cover, and pick them off as they showed themselves. The sentry had tried to crawl back to the barn, and the partisans had been such rotten shots that it had taken a dozen rounds to finish
him
off.

‘And if you tried to walk on the pavement,’ said Miss Plant, ‘the silly little officers kept pushing you off into the gutter. Or trying to. I had to be very firm.’

‘Squirrel? I’m afraid I don’t know. Broke will tell you.’

Who had suggested incendiary bullets? Could it have been Marco, now so stout and so respectable, with his easy politician’s manner? Someone had suggested it, and in five minutes the straw in the lower barn had been well alight. When, at last, it was a choice between being burned alive or being shot, the Germans had tried to surrender.

‘A squirrel? Broke?’

That had been the worst part. Particularly the smell, in the burning barn –

‘A squirrel?’

– when, at his insistence, they had gone in to pull out any of the Germans who might be wounded but unable to move. And had found the youngster with bullets through both his legs, and his clothes and body alight. Like the lobster on his plate, with its red crust, charred black in places from the hot grill –

‘Broke. Are you feeling all right?’

‘Let me look after him,’ said Elizabeth. ‘You get on with your lunches. Don’t let the lobster get cold. It’s delicious. Have mine put back in the oven for me, Daddy.’

Luckily he had died very quickly. He would have died anyway. There were no doctors up in the mountains.

They were in Elizabeth’s car, and she was driving it very competently. By the time they reached his house, he was himself again. The old grey past had disappeared and he was securely anchored in the present.

‘What
a stupid thing to do. It’s weeks since I’ve had a turn like that. The doctors had some name for it. It’s to do with the blood supply to the brain. It’s psychosomatic.’

‘What does that mean?’

She had brought the car to a halt in front of the house and neither of them seemed anxious to move.

‘Medical jargon. It means that it isn’t anything physical that brings it on. It’s just that some coincidence starts me thinking about the past – a train of thought starts up inside my head, and I find it’s running away on its own, and I can’t stop it. The train, I mean.’

‘A train accident.’ They both laughed. ‘Which particular coincidence started it this time? Or can’t you remember?’

‘It was talking about the Germans – and meeting the Sindaco again – oh, and the lobster.’

‘Lobster?’

‘I can’t explain that bit. It’s rather horrible.’

‘Then please don’t,’ said Elizabeth. ‘I don’t want to be put off lobster for the rest of my life like Miss Plant. It’s one of my favourite foods. Will you be all right now?’

‘Absolutely. When this thing’s over, it’s quite over. I’m as fit as a fiddle.’ He demonstrated his fitness by jumping out of the car. ‘
And
rather hungry.’

‘Then come back and finish your lunch.’

‘I don’t think I could face that. Tina’ll knock me up something.’

Tina met him at the door of his flat, with an anxious face. ‘What has happened? Why have you come back so soon? You are not well?’

‘I had a little turn,’ said Broke. ‘It was nothing. I’m all right now.’

Tina burst into tears.

‘Come on,’ said Broke. ‘It’s not as bad as that.’ He patted her awkwardly on the shoulder. ‘You can’t cook my lunch if you’re crying into the spaghetti.’

‘You would like something to eat?’ The thought cheered her up at once. ‘I will cook it for you. It will not take a moment. You can have a piece of melon whilst I cook the pasta.’

Food, thought Broke, a woman’s sovereign remedy for all ills. If you are tired, eat. If you are worried, eat. If you are dying, you can at least die with a full stomach.

Elizabeth did not hurry back to the Consulate. By the time she got there the others had finished their lunch, and were taking coffee in the drawing-room.

‘Your lobster’s in the oven,’ said Tessa.

‘If you don’t mind,’ said Elizabeth with a slight shudder, ‘I don’t think I will. Just a cup of coffee, please.’

‘How is Broke?’

‘He’s all right, Daddy. He’s been having turns like that, ever since his wife died.’

‘Sad,’ the Sindaco said, ‘to lose a wife, at his age. But he is young enough to marry again. He is the sort of man who needs a wife to look after him.’

Sir Gerald said, ‘What happened to his wife? I heard some story about an accident.’

‘What happened,’ said Tom Proctor, ‘was that she was coming home, in her car, early one evening, and a lorry was coming the other way. There doesn’t seem to be any doubt at all that the lorry was being driven scandalously fast. A farmer, whom it had passed half a mile back, said it was “blinding”. I think the truth of the matter was that the driver was in a hurry to get home for his tea and his favourite television programme. He came round the corner, in the middle of the road – not a very wide road – saw the car, much too late to stop, and hit it head-on. Mrs Broke died in hospital twenty-four hours later. The lorry driver was unhurt.’ Tom Proctor added, in a voice which was deliberately devoid of expression, ‘She was pregnant at the time.’

‘I hope they put him in prison for a long, long time,’ said the Sindaco.

‘In England we don’t put lorry drivers in prison. His Union briefed good Counsel for him. There were no witnesses of the accident itself, only things like skid marks, and the damage to the car, and those can always be interpreted in different ways. He was fined twenty-five pounds for dangerous driving. The Union paid it. That was when Broke decided that England was no longer a country he could live in.’

Elizabeth said, ‘What a horrible story,’ and choked over her coffee. She was very close to tears.

‘It must have been a hard decision,’ said Proctor. ‘Because Broke is English of the English. In fact, he’s a bit of an anachronism. He’s the nineteenth-century European’s idea of an Englishman. Inarticulate, basically sure that all Englishmen are twenty per cent better than all foreigners, tiresomely honest, upright, rigid, and un-
simpatico.
’

‘That’s not fair,’ said Elizabeth.

‘My dear Miss Weighill,’ said the lawyer, ‘you do me an injustice. I didn’t say that Broke
was
that sort of man. I said that was what he appeared to be. There is an obverse to the coin. After all, his grandfather was Leopold Scott–’

‘I knew him,’ said Miss Plant, waking up from her after-luncheon snooze. ‘He painted a picture of my mother’s three Dandie Dinmonts. It hung in our nursery.’

‘He was a very successful artist,’ said Proctor drily, ‘and he bequeathed a large sum of money, and a measure of artistic talent, to his daughter, who was Broke’s mother. She encouraged the artistic side of his nature, which is unquestionably there, buried under layers of conventional Englishry. Did you know that he was an accomplished violinist?’

‘I confess,’ said Weighill, who had been following this with all the interest of a connoisseur of human nature, ‘that Broke had never struck me as a sensitive person. It’s true that he runs a bookshop and art gallery, but I had always thought of him as more of a businessman than an artist.’

The Sindaco said, ‘Might that not be because you did not know him before the death of his wife? A thing like that can change a man. Most of us have two sides to our nature. A tragedy like that can bring one side to the top – perhaps permanently, who knows?’

Elizabeth got up and started to collect the empty coffee cups. Her father opened his small, whale-like eyes a little. This was a job which was normally left to Antonio from the kitchen. As the door closed behind her, he said, ‘There is very little permanency about human nature, you know.’

‘You are quoting D’Annunzio,’ said the Sindaco. ‘Did he not observe, “There is nothing permanent in life except death”?’

‘One of my uncles,’ said Miss Plant, ‘turned his face to the wall in 1890, and never smiled again.’

‘What made him do that?’ asked Tessa.

‘I’ve forgotten the details,’ said Miss Plant. ‘It was something to do with cricket.’

Tenete Lupo studied the report in his hand. It was a business-like, if negative, document.

Reference to the message of last Monday, received in this office at 21.15 hours relating to the reported arrival of two men at the Central Station. Enquiries have been made at all Hotels and Pensiones and the registration particulars of all indigenous incomers there have been checked.

(Even Tenete Lupo, attached as he was to official language, felt that ‘indigenous incomers’ was going rather far. He underlined the phrase lightly in pencil to remind him to talk to Carbiniere Scipione about it.)

No one corresponding in any way to the two men concerned has been traced. It is respectfully pointed out that there were a number of trains leaving Florence later that night for Bologna, Milan, Faenza and Arezzo, in addition to trains returning in the direction of Rome. It is therefore most probable that the two men in question had business to transact in Florence and, having transacted it, proceeded to their destination later that evening.

Tenete Lupo studied the report carefully. Scipione was a keen and painstaking policeman. Apart from the ‘indigenous incomers’, it was a good report. On second thoughts he crossed out the words ‘most probable’ in the last sentence, and substituted ‘possible’. This seemed to him to commit them less.

The next thing was to decide what to do with it. There was, on the shelf beside his desk, a large box file labelled ‘Miscellaneous’. This seemed to the Tenete to be the appropriate destination, and he placed the report carefully in the file, and restored the file to the shelf.

Thursday Evening: The Zecchis at Home

Just as wild animals who have moved to strange hunting-grounds will quickly tread out their private paths to the water-hole, will fix hours of eating, drinking and sleeping, establish places of watch and places of retreat, weaving a pattern based partly on instinct, and partly on experience, so did the two strangers establish themselves, falling into a routine of fixed times and places.

They rose late, from the rooms they occupied in the Pensione Drusilla, and made a careful toilet, which involved lavish use of hair oil, after-shave lotion and eau-de-cologne. When dressed and perfumed they strolled out to the café near the end of the Ponte Vecchio, where they took their pre-lunch drinks, and from there to another café, where they ate a large midday meal. In the afternoon they slept. At dusk they rose again, making a second, and equally careful, toilet, the tall man finding it necessary to shave twice a day. Thereafter they visited a ristorante for drinks and the evening meal, which they took late. Before eating, the stout man would have bought copies of every morning and evening paper on sale, and these he spread over the table, marking the day’s prices on the Rome stock-market, and occasionally commenting on them. The tall man read the racing results.

Their movements after supper depended on whether they had a rendezvous, for business purposes, with Maria or Dindoni, in the café in the Via Torta, or whether they were free to pursue their own pleasures.

They had taken a woman each, picking her from the wares on sale at a brothel in the Via Santissima Chiara which they had visited on their second night in Florence. There had been a difference of opinion with the protector of the women over the commission to be offered, and an argument had developed in the hall of the establishment. The stout man, as usual, had done the talking. After a while the tall man seemed to tire of it. He had walked out into the street, where the protector’s new Fiat
Mille Due Cento
stood by the kerb, had jerked open the bonnet and, with a small blade which had suddenly appeared in his right hand, had severed all six of the plug leads before its outraged owner came charging out to stop him. The tall man had kicked him, putting out his knee cap, and then, squatting beside him as he lay, in agony, on the pavement, had said, slowly, and clearly, as to a child. ‘The inside of a car can be mended at a garage. The inside of a man cannot.
Capite?
Understand?’ After which there had been no trouble.

As dawn was beginning to pale the sky, the two men would come padding back separately to the pensione, for which they had been provided with a side door key, and would fall asleep as Florence was waking around them.

That Thursday evening it was nearly eleven o’clock when they reached the café in the Via Torta. They found that Dindoni had not yet arrived. They settled down to wait.

Approximately half an hour earlier Tina had walked down the Via Torta. She had been spending the evening with her uncle and his family, who had a house near the Porta Romana, and the young people had escorted her home, saying good night to her at the corner of the street, within sight of her own turning.

At the corner was a sports car, with the hood up. As she passed it, the door swung open, and a voice said ‘Hello there, Tina.’

‘Hullo,’ said Tina, ‘and good night.’

‘Come,’ said Mercurio, ‘that’s no way to speak to an old friend, who has been waiting nearly an hour to see you.’

‘You must have little to do with your time if you waste it like that.’

‘Maybe. Maybe not. But there is something I thought you would like to know.’

‘I doubt it.’

‘It does not concern you. It concerns your father.’

‘Oh? Perhaps you may tell it to me then, only be quick.’

‘I shall tell you nothing if you stand five yards away. Jump in beside me, into the car. It’s all right. I shall not drive off with you.’

‘If you tried to drive off with me,’ said Tina, ‘I would pull the steering wheel round, and smash your pretty car into the wall.’

‘I don’t doubt it. So, since you have nothing to fear, get in and let us, at least, be comfortable.’

He held open the door of the car, and Tina, after a moment of hesitation, got in, moving immediately across to the passenger’s seat. Mercurio sat down beside her. She said, ‘Well, your scene is set. Begin.’

Mercurio was fidgeting with the steering wheel. He seemed to be more nervous than she was. He said, at last, ‘Your father has done much work, in the last few years, for my father. Both carving and restoration–’

‘The Professor has been very good to him,’ agreed Tina. ‘And to you, too, from what I have heard.’

‘Oh, he’s a good-hearted man,’ said Mercurio. ‘But there is a limit to the best of good natures. A week ago, when your father was handling a fine Etruscan krater, which was to be repaired, he dropped it, and it was broken, beyond repair this time. Again, when he was carving a fine piece of alabaster, the chisel slipped, and split it. It could not be used for the purpose intended. It is not your father’s fault. That is well understood. But his hand is no longer as steady as it was, nor his eye as true.’

‘Why are you telling me this? And what is it to do with you?’

The Professor is very fond of me. He listens to me. He respects my judgement. If I were to say to him, Milo Zecchi has done good work for you for many years. He is now near the end of his working life. A suitable thing would be to pay him a generous pension, equivalent to what he can earn by working – then I think he would see that it is just, and would agree.’

Tina thought about this. She seemed, in some curious way, to be in command of the situation. She said, ‘That is a very practical idea. It has been apparent for some time that my father is not well. If possible, he should stop working, and rest.’

‘That was my idea exactly.’

‘And you could procure it?’

‘I could almost cetainly procure it.’

‘And what would the charge be?’

Mercurio turned his head, but made no move towards her. When he spoke, there was an odd note of appeal in his voice. He said, ‘I would ask that you come out with me, sometimes, in the evening.’

‘To come out? Where to?’

‘To the cinema. To the restaurant. To dances. Wherever you wish to go.’

‘And when the cinema, or the eating, or the dancing, was finished?’ There was a note, now, of mockery in her voice.

‘I would take you back.’

‘Take me where?’

‘To your home, of course.’

‘Would it be part of the bargain that I should make love to you?’

‘Only if you wished,’ said Mercurio humbly.

Tina burst out laughing. ‘Only if
I
wished,’ she said, at last. ‘That is a very curious proposition. I have never found before that the girl was given much option in these matters. It is a delicate proposition.’ She was still laughing as she got out of the car. ‘I will think about it, Master Mercurio.’

Behind her, she heard the car start up, and she laughed, gently, again.

When she got home, she found a family quarrel going on. Her mother was in front of the kitchen stove, arms akimbo. Her father was sitting in his chair, his face set. Tina recognized the symptoms, and prepared to retire, but her mother summoned her in with an imperious gesture.

‘See if you can talk some sense into your father’s thick head.’

‘If he won’t listen to you, he will certainly not listen to me.’

‘Try all the same. Together, we may prevail. He has two ideas in his head. First, he desires very much to have the advice, and the assistance of Signor Broke.’

Tina looked puzzled. ‘Was it not for that,’ she said, ‘that he came down here the other night?’

‘Just so. The Signore came all the way down here. He agreed to talk to your father. Which was kind of him, for one can see that he is a gentleman, and a busy gentleman too, much occupied with his own affairs. To come down here was very accommodating.’

‘Then–?’

‘Wait. The Signore went across – as you will recollect – to speak to your father in the workshop. The two men were together. They had the evening in front of them. And what did they discuss?’ Annunziata paused, for effect, raised one hand solemnly in the air, and spat out the word – ‘
Nothing.
’

Milo opened his mouth, as if to speak, and then shut it again.

‘They were together for an hour, and they talked of nothing, or nothing to the point. They discussed tombs, and bulls, and the art of carving in bronze, and wine, and the weather, and the price of cabbages.’

Tina said to her father, ‘But why?’

Her mother said, ‘Why? Because there is another idea in his stupid old head. He concluded that it was not safe to talk,
because Dindoni might be listening, from the floor above.
’

Tina thought back. Then she said, ‘That is impossible. For we ourselves saw him go out.’

‘He could have come in, by the back way, and up the stairs to his room.’

‘They would have seen the light.’

‘Not if he had crept back in the dark.’

‘Yes,’ said Tina. ‘And he’d do it, the miserable little rat. Had you any reason to think he was there?’

‘I heard him,’ said Milo. ‘It was a small noise, but I have good hearing. He was there, all right, with his ear to the floor.’

‘Then, if you must speak to Signor Broke, why not bring him here, to this room?’

‘How could I presume to bring him all this way again?’

‘No,’ said Tina. ‘That is true. It would be an act of presumption. If you are to see him,
you
must go to him.’

‘You will ask him?’

‘Certainly. Tomorrow morning.’

‘He will agree?’

‘How can I tell? I can only ask him. You will have to come up to his apartment.’

Annuziata said, in tones of exasperation. ‘That is yet another idea that he has. That he is being followed.’

‘Followed?’

‘By men. He sees them everywhere.’

‘Little green men in pointed hats,’ said Tina with a laugh.

‘It is not a joke,’ said Milo angrily. ‘They are there. I have seen them. They watch me, all the time. If I try to go near Signor Broke’s house, they will find some way of stopping me, I know it.’

The two women looked at each other. Annunziata said, with a touch of helplessness in her voice, ‘You see how it is.’

‘But there is, perhaps, a way,’ said Milo. ‘That is, if the Signore would agree. It is asking much of him. Tomorrow I go to the Doctor’s house, in the Via Marcellina. I am one of the last patients of his evening surgery. By the time I come away, it will be dusk. He has a back door to his surgery, which leads out, through the garden, into the smaller street at the back. Sometimes his patients do not wish all the world to know they are visiting a doctor. Even if the front of the house is watched, the back will not be.’

‘Can you not understand,’ said Annunziata, and now she was angry, ‘that these men exist only in your imagination?’

‘I have eyes in my head–’

‘It is an affliction of old people. They imagine that everyone is watching them, following them, listening to them.’

‘It is
not
my imagination.’ The old man was shaking, with rage and frustration. ‘A dozen times, now, I have seen them.’

Tina laid a hand on his arm, stroking it gently, as she might have stroked an old dog. ‘Go on with your plan,’ she said, and the look which she gave silenced her mother. ‘Tell us about that. You had left Doctor Goldoni’s house by the back gate. What next?’

‘I will walk along to the top of the Via Canina, above the cemetery, where there is a little turning space. Cars stop there, by day, to admire the view. But at ten o’clock at night it will be empty. If Signor Broke would drive there. It would hardly take him five minutes, from his house in the Viale Michelangiolo. We could sit in the car, and talk, without fear.’

Tina said, ‘Very well, I will ask him.’