The Monster of Florence (14 page)

“Pull yourself together,” the Marshal said. Then he remembered that the youngster was his superior officer but there seemed little point in adding ‘sir’ to such a remark. “It’s as well not to get too involved, just get on with the job.”

“I intend to. I really intend to.” Bacci fixed his earnest gaze on the Marshal. “I’ve got a number of books, English and American. I’m going to read up all the case histories available, for a start. After all, none of us knows anything about this sort of thing.” Bacci the perfect student. He hadn’t changed much since he was eighteen.

The Marshal was saved from having to comment on the idea of looking for the Monster in a bookshop by the return of Simonetti and the other men.

The Suspect, when they brought him back, was quieter, though his face was still red and his forehead creased in a deep frown. He kept looking about him as though hoping to see a way out. He kept his voice lowered this time round, presumably on the strict instructions of his lawyer, maintaining an injured whine.

“It’s not true that I’m a Peeping Tom, I’ve never been a Peeping
Tom. What time have I got for stuff like that? I have to work for a living, I’ve worked like a slave all my life. Anything I’ve got I’ve sweated for, putting a bit aside each week the way I was taught. D’you think I’ve got time to be trailing around the countryside at night when I’ve been breaking my back all day? I’m a sick man, the doctors can tell you that, a sick man, not a Peeping Tom. I’m being made a victim of and anybody who says I’m a Peeping Tom’s out to get me with their lies.”

The tears were rolling fast again, though he didn’t sob aloud the way he’d done before. His head lolled sideways and his big fists clenched and unclenched themselves on his fat knees.

“What sort of man would want to be watching other people? You’d have to be sick to get any excitement out of that. I’m a normal married man.”

“A normal married man?” repeated Simonetti. “Who raped his own child? You said before you were a sick man which sounds more like the truth.”

“He’s twisting my words!” wailed the Suspect, waving an accusing hand at his tormentor and appealing to the others. “He’s taking advantage of me because I’m a poor ignorant peasant and he’s clever!” He began crying again.

“No, no, no,” counselled his lawyer, getting hold of his shoulders in the hope of restraining another violent outburst. He didn’t look as though he was going to be successful, but before the outburst could happen there was a commotion at the public entrance.

“What is it?” shouted Simonetti angrily, peering through the gloom.

The guard showed his face. “I’m sorry, sir.” He vanished again.

“I’ll deal with this.” Simonetti stamped down the steps of the stage and strode down the room.

“Well, well,” murmured Ferrini in the Marshal’s ear. “Journalists. What a surprise.”

The Marshal said nothing, feeling, like the unfortunate Suspect, that Simonetti was too clever for him and that if he wanted to manipulate the press that was his business.

A photographer wandered into the room alone and made his way towards the stage. So, he must be letting them in. No one else appeared and voices were still raised outside the room. It wasn’t like Simonetti to waste so much time and surely his decision on this had already been made one way or the other?

The Marshal was staring down the room, wondering at the delay, half listening to the row out there, half to the urgent murmurs of the lawyer to his sniffing client when the first flash went off.

“You bastard!” screamed the Suspect, jumping up from his chair and overturning it. “You’ve got no right to do that! You’ve got no right!”

He raised his fist and started towards the photographer, his face crazed and purple, his menacing figure outlined against the mutilated corpse. The flash went again and the photographer leapt off the stage and ran.

“You see?” interrupted Marco, impatient of the Marshal’s slow reading.

“I haven’t finished …”

“There’s no need to read all of it, it just goes on like that. You do see what it means? The records are not clear at all. I think the picture is really genuine.”

In the Marshal’s opinion, he was believing what he wanted to believe, but since we are all of us guilty of that he only said, “Is it mentioned at all?”

“You mean by name? There’s no specific mention of a portrait of Anna Caterina Luisa dei Gherardini, no, but there are all these portraits listed as Portrait of an Unknown Lady as this or that mythical character. Add to that we know he painted the ladies in waiting and I know from my mother that Anna Caterina was a lady in waiting …”

He followed the Marshal’s gaze to the painting propped on an easel. “What do you think of her?”

“Well, I don’t know … She’s very pretty but that frock’s a bit funny.”

“Oh, she’s not dressed as a lady of fashion of her time—she’s meant to be Flora.”

“Ah. With all the flowers. Well, it’s very nice.”

The face was smooth and round, the lips a deep red cupid bow. Pink and white and yellow flowers were twined through her hair and her head was tilted a little down to the left to let one shining ringlet curl over her bare shoulder. Her breast was as plump and white as a dove’s and only just touched by the coloured draperies held in place by a pale hand from which more flowers spilled.

“There’s another almost exactly like it of Lucrezia Corsini. I went to see it yesterday. He did two of her, one almost full-length and the other to the waist like this one. Only the position of the hands
changes. Anyway, now you’ve seen her—oh dear, I wish there was somewhere you could sit. I’m sorry—wait a minute …”

Marco began pushing piles of drawing paper off a crate of some sort. The studio was full to bursting point with paper and equipment but apart from the father’s antique desk there was no furniture.

“There, can you manage with that? I can’t tell you how grateful I am that you found time to come. I’d almost given up hope. I must have called four or five times and I’m afraid your brigadier—what’s his name again?”

“Lorenzini.”

“Lorenzini, that’s it. He must be sick of me calling, but you’re out all the time.”

“I know. I meant to try and get here last week, but it’s not easy at the moment with one thing and another.” The Marshal lowered himself cautiously on to the crate, but it seemed solid enough.

“Is it really him?” Marco perched on the edge of the cluttered desk.

“What?”

“That photo that was in all the papers …”

“Oh.” The Marshal sighed. “I really don’t know …”

“He looked violent enough, I must say. And it’s true, isn’t it, that there hasn’t been another murder since he’s been inside?”

“Almost true. He was still free in the summer of eighty-six and eighty-seven and there were no murders then so that’s far from being proof. The papers can invent anything they feel like but we need proof.”

“But you must have some or you wouldn’t have accused him. You know, to be honest, I find it impossible to imagine
anybody
doing what he did. But then, imagine somebody raping their own child. When I read that article I decided I should stop complaining about my father. Anyway, let me tell you where I got this.” He patted the book which he’d been showing the Marshal and which still lay open beside him on the desk. “I got it from Benozzetti!”

“He’s been and gone? I thought—”

“No, no, he’ll be here shortly. But what I didn’t want to tell you on the phone was that I went to see him first. I waited and waited and it looked to me as if he’d decided not to bother so I took my courage in both hands and followed your advice and went there. You won’t think it needed much courage, I know, when you’re spending your time with your Monster, who looks as though he’d slit your throat as soon as look at you, but even so, I was pretty nervous about it. So much depends on her.” He nodded toward the portrait of his ancestor. I’ve got to get this place properly set up. Look at that—I’m working on the computer on the floor! Luckily I’ve got a bit of work in from a firm of architects in Modena. It’s well paid enough, but it’s only draughtsman’s work really, and until I can get the money to finish setting up here, I can’t receive a client, even if I’m lucky enough to get one. So, I went there with bated breath and, do you know, he was really nice to me.”

“Why shouldn’t he be?” The Marshal shifted a little on the hard crate, trying not to cause a landslide amongst the stack of large folders that was leaning against it.

“Don’t worry about that stuff, it won’t break. I’m sorry about the cold in here, but I suppose my father never used the place except for storing stuff. I’ll have to buy a heater of some sort.” He was wearing three sweaters but his hands were bluish, even so. “Anyway, I don’t know why I didn’t expect him to be pleasant but I didn’t. Perhaps because you didn’t like him.”

“He probably didn’t like me,” pointed out the Marshal, “though it struck me that although he didn’t take to me he seemed glad enough to have somebody to talk to. You were a better audience, I should imagine.”

“Because I’m my father’s son, you mean?”

“I didn’t mean that but you might be right.”

“He’s an interesting character, you know.”

“I never doubted it.”

“Anyway, he showed me some of his own work which, to be honest, was pretty old-fashioned stuff, though well crafted. And he was restoring something that looked to me like Mantegna.”

“And you’re sure he was restoring it?”

“Oh yes, he said so, and he told me about his early years in Rome when he was learning restoration from some old chap there. He kept saying things like, ‘If I’d only had a son like you,’ and stuff of that sort. A lot of artisans are that way, don’t you find? And even if they do have a son, the son usually couldn’t care less about learning a craft. No money in it these days. I felt sorry for him in a way, shut in that weird studio, seeing nobody. He seems to have no friends, no family.”

“But it’s his own doing,” pointed out the Marshal.

“I’m not so sure—well, in a way it is. It’s just that from one or two things he let drop I’ve an idea he’s not altogether to blame. He was put in an institution when he was nine, that’s one thing that came out—oh, he wasn’t complaining about it. On the contrary, he said he was happier there and that he’d been able to learn to draw.”

“He was an orphan?”

“No. Definitely not because he said he went back home to his parents—a father and stepmother, his own mother died when he was a tiny kid—when he was fourteen. I was the one who brought the subject of parents up. I still find it difficult to talk about my father without my hackles rising. What surprised me was that, even though they were friends, Benozzetti didn’t defend him.

‘
Get away from them as soon as you can!

That’s the thing to do. Get away.
’

“As if he’d quite forgotten my father was dead. Did you notice, when you met him, a weird scar round his ear?”

“And a piece of the left ear missing.”

“Of course, it’s your job to notice things … Anyway, he was ranting on about parents—he does rant, doesn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“It would drive you nuts if you had to listen to him for any length of time. So, he went on and on until he was purple in the face and at the end he said, ‘Your father left you his studio. My father left me this!’ And he pointed at that scar. Then he went dead silent. I was pretty sure he wished he hadn’t let that out. He practically pushed me out the door after that. If you think about it, the
scar, being taken away from his parents—a head injury like that might have made him—you know, odd. And it did cross my mind that maybe all those years he was in some sort of clinic. If he blamed his father, maybe it was a road accident, something of that sort, and his father was responsible.”