By My Hand (6 page)

Ricciardi asked, without breaking step:

“What did you find out yesterday, from the neighbors? Any interesting information about the lives of Signor and Signora Garofalo?”

“No leads, Commissa'. Apparently he, Emanuele Garofalo, was a centurion of the port militia: you know, that Fascist agency that's based down at the harbor and oversees the transit of goods as well as monitoring fishing. He'd been promoted a couple of years ago, the accountant was telling me, that Finelli. It seems that the promotion was for special merits, though he didn't know what they might have been.”

Ricciardi nodded, and went on walking.

“Merits, these days, means that he spied on someone. Well, what else?”

Maione continued, huffing and puffing to keep up with his commanding officer.

“The neighbors confirm the family's complete integrity and respectability. I would guess that, since he was a member of the Fascist voluntary militia, they were afraid to say anything bad about him. I heard too many lines like ‘he was a wonderful person,' and ‘respectable people.' All too perfect, in other words. Even the doorman, that Ferro, was far too deferential. Could it be, Commissa': not a single piece of gossip, no backbiting at all?”

Ricciardi shrugged his shoulders, thinking of the courteous welcome that the woman's corpse, its throat cut, went on offering:
Hat and gloves?

“Maybe it's the truth, how can we know? Was there anyone who went to see them?”

“Not many. Her sister, a few of his colleagues, dressed in those odd new uniforms with the tassel on the hat, suppliers of various kinds. They entertained little if at all, according to what the neighbors had to say.”

“What about the woman? What was she like, what kind of personality?”

Maione waved his hand vaguely.

“Ah, they had even less to say about her. A fine woman, serene, always smiling, unfailingly polite. She went out only with her husband, she was very attached to her daughter, a good housewife. No one ever heard a raised voice or even a loud conversation coming from that apartment.”

“So, no news,” Ricciardi snapped. “Everything was perfect, all peace and quiet, no trouble in this family's life. Until one fine morning just before Christmas someone walks in, stabs them both to death and floods the house with blood, breaks the Saint Joseph in the manger, and leaves. A slight flaw, a wrinkle in an otherwise orderly day.”

“Isn't that the way it always is, Commissa'?” Maione remarked bitterly. “Everything's fine, until something goes wrong. And the one who's left in the lurch is this poor child, who has no one on earth but an aunt who's a nun. She'll have to live in the convent, and maybe she'll become a nun herself.”

“Or maybe not, Maione. What can you tell me about the aunt?”

“Nothing, Commissa'. She seems to be a fairly unusual sort, to judge from what I could gather from the half-statements of Ferro and the neighbors. A petite but energetic woman, always on the move, with a strange voice, like a trumpet. She's Garofalo's wife's older sister: no other siblings, and he had no siblings either. In other words, this aunt is the only family that little girl has left.”

 

The convent entrance was a small doorway set in a very tall gray wall, in an narrow lane running toward the Villa Nazionale. The incessant sound of waves crashing against the breakwaters could be heard from down by the beach.

After showing their badges through a peephole, Ricciardi and Maione were welcomed at the entrance by a novice who led them to a freezing waiting room, bare of all furnishings save for a prie-dieu in front of a painting of the Madonna. A window looked out onto a large garden, with tall trees tossed by the wind. A faint gray light filtered in.

After a few minutes, during which Ricciardi looked out the window and Maione inspected his fingernails, the door opened and a nun entered the room. The woman said nothing; she walked to the middle of the room, appraised Maione dismissively with a quick glance, and rested her gaze on Ricciardi. After a long silence, Maione coughed awkwardly and ventured:

“Good morning, Sister. I'm Maione, Brigadier Maione, and the commissario here is Commissario Ricciardi, from the Naples police mobile squad. We're here to see Sister Veronica, the sister of Signora Garofalo, Costanza Garofalo. There is supposed to be a little girl, as well, and . . .”

Keeping her gaze fixed on Ricciardi, the nun spoke. And she spoke in a shrill, piercing voice, very much like fingernails dragging across a blackboard.

“The little girl is named Benedetta, and she's my niece. I'm Sister Veronica, of the Reparatrix Sisters of the Sorrow of the Blessed Virgin.”

The woman looked nothing like her sister, who had been slender and of average height, with features that even in the rigor of death could be seen to be delicate and refined. The nun, in contrast, was short and stout, red-faced with a snub nose. Her voice and her posture—her body wobbled slightly back and forth—served to complete a fairly comical picture.

Maione, to break the tension, approached her and respectfully extended his hand.

“Sister, our condolences for your loss.”

After a moment's hesitation, the nun offered him her hand and the brigadier bowed to kiss it. He found himself touching a small thing clammy with sweat, whose stubby fingers barely protruded from the sleeve of the black habit, and he had to overcome a surge of disgust and the temptation to drop it after a quick squeeze. He got away with miming a kiss an inch or so above the hand, and then he took a quick step back, abandoning the field to Ricciardi. Maione had been excessively heroic as it was, and now he was done.

“Sister, we sent an officer yesterday to inform you of what had happened at your sister's home.”

“Yes, and just in time, because I was about to take Benedetta back to her parents. This isn't the first time I've had to keep the child here with me; I let her sleep on a cot in my room. She's always happy to stay, we're very close.”

Ricciardi studied the nun's face, trying to read her emotions.

“Could you tell us about any of your sister and your brother-in-law's acquaintances? Anything that could put us on the right track . . .”

“I don't know a thing about my sister and her husband's life. He was an ambitious man, he thought about nothing but his work, and they didn't do a lot of socializing. I was in charge of the child and her education, in collaboration with my sister. That's all.”

The shrill sound of her voice, childish and earsplitting, contrasted with the adult harshness of her words. Ricciardi persisted.

“But your sister might have told you something in confidence, I don't know, she might have talked to you about threats or disagreements that she or her husband may have had with someone.”

The nun went on wobbling, and then said:

“Commissario, I had nothing to do with the affairs of my sister and her husband. I saw him rarely, and then only in passing; he was always at work, as I told you. And since my sister lived very much in his shadow, I never discussed anything with him but a single topic: my niece. And her education.”

Ricciardi met the nun's gaze and held it. Maione dragged his foot over the floor, like a restless mule.

“Would I be mistaken if I guessed that you didn't much like your brother-in-law, Sister?”

The nun's round red face opened up in a sad smile.

“To dislike someone you have to know them, Commissario. And I doubt I saw my brother-in-law more than four or five times in all. What with the party assemblies and his work for the militia, he was never home. And now he's dead, and it's his fault that my poor sister is dead, too, and my niece will now have no one but me, a nun.”

Ricciardi focused on this last sentence.

“Why do you say ‘it's his fault'?”

Sister Veronica held his gaze.

“He was the man of the household; he was the important one. As I told you, my sister was nothing more than a shadow in their home. Whoever it was, you can be certain that they had it in for him, and if they killed my sister, too, it's only because she happened to be in the way. Your officer yesterday told me something about how they were found: my poor Costanza merely answered the door. The one they wanted was him.”

The wind reverberated in the garden. The temperature in the room seemed to go down even further.

“What are you going to do now, with your niece?” Ricciardi asked. “What are you going to tell her?”

The nun looked out the window.

“She's a strong little girl. I'll tell her that her parents have gone away on a trip, and then little by little I'll give her some hints, and eventually I'll tell her that they were both killed in an accident, something romantic, a ship that sank, a train that ran off the tracks in some far-off exotic country. And in the meantime, I'll try to give her the best life possible.”

She stopped for a moment, then turned her gaze on Ricciardi again.

“My sister was very sweet, you know, Commissario. She was a delicate, peaceable, educated woman. She deserved a long life, grandchildren, a comfortable old age. I prayed for her, and for my brother-in-law, all night long. It seems impossible that I'll never see her again.”

Silent tears began to run down her face. She pulled an enormous handkerchief out of her habit and blew her nose, with the grotesque sound of a toy horn at Carnival; but neither Maione nor Ricciardi felt like smiling.

After a pause, she asked:

“Do you have to . . . do you want to talk to the little girl? I beg you, I'd like her to find out the way that I told you before. She's so small, only eight years old. Her world consists of fairytales and heroes. I don't want her first experience of the real world to be confronting the blood of her parents.”

Maione looked at Ricciardi, who nodded.

“Don't worry, Sister,” Maione said. “We have no need to speak with the little girl, and even if we did need to ask her a few questions, we wouldn't have to tell her what's happened. Keep her here, in any case. We might need to talk to her in the coming days.”

“
Grazie
, Brigadier. It won't be easy. Christmas is coming, and she'll want to know why she can't return home. I'll send someone to gather her things: her clothing, a few dolls. It won't be easy.”

Ricciardi began to take his leave.

“Let us know, Sister, if there's anything you need. You or the little girl.”

“There
is
something we need, in fact,” Sister Veronica replied, quietly. “We need for whoever did this to pay, and to pay dearly. So, Commissario, what I'd ask of you, on behalf of my niece and myself, is to find the men who killed my sister and my brother-in-law.”

When they got outside the wind had stiffened and the sea roared, invisible, from beyond the Villa Nazionale, but they both felt they were in a pleasant and hospitable place.

“
Mamma mia
, Commissa',” Maione said, “that voice cracks your eardrums. And that hand . . . you have no idea! Phew . . . disgusting, damp, squishy. Poor little kid, the daughter; she's been left to stay with a strange creature.”

Ricciardi sighed.

“But at least one who loves her. A better fate than that of so many of the
scugnizzi
that we see on the street. Let's not waste any time, Raffaele. We have to decide what line of action we're going to take, and we don't have much to go on. You heard what Sister Veronica said, no? We have to find the murderers.”

H
e knew he'd find him there, and sure enough, there he was. Sitting at the far end of the big room, his eyes lost in the empty air, a glass in hand, while the others sang around a cracked, out-of-tune guitar.

He crossed the tavern to reach him, waited for an invitation to sit down that never came, and then took a seat on a stool. The clamor of the merrymaking was deafening. A tavern down a narrow lane near the harbor on a Saturday night.

He looked at him for a long time, then he said:

“You could at least say hello to me. Do you know the risk I'm running, coming here? They could see me.”

The other man replied, slurring his words, without lifting his gaze from the empty air.

“Well, who asked you to run that risk? Go on, get out of here. That's what you do best, the lot of you.”

The newly arrived man slammed his fist on the table, making the bottle clink.

“And what you do best is whine and complain. I'm here to ask you just one question: Was it you? I have to hear it from your lips.”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” the drunk murmured. “And I'm not interested to find out. I told you before, get out of here and leave me alone.”

The music broke off suddenly and two men started arguing furiously. The tavernkeeper moved fast, grabbing them both by the shoulders and tossing them out into the street. The guitarist resumed playing.

“So, was it you? The wife, Anto' . . . was that necessary, the wife, too? And did it have to be done that way?”

In the eyes of the man who had been called Antonio there was a gleam of interest.

“What are you talking about? Speak plainly!”

“I can't tell if you're toying with me or not. All things considered, maybe it's better that I not know. So let's just pretend that you don't know anything, and I'll go ahead and tell you. Yesterday morning Garofalo and his wife were found murdered. Stabbed to death, the pair of them. Is that clear, now? Now you know. If I were you, I'd get out of town; the first freighter for America, and it's goodnight Irene. That's what I came here to tell you, and now my conscience is clear. Good night, Anto'. You can finish getting drunk now.”

He stood up and left, shoving his way through the drunken dancers.