Death of a Dutchman (18 page)

She seemed much too small for the high, old-fashioned bed, her tiny face sunk into the huge pillows. Above her, the dusty mahogany cherub warned them to be silent. The three of them tiptoed out to the corridor.

'Will she be all right?' the Lieutenant asked. 'Shouldn't she have a doctor?'

'I don't think so,' said the young woman. 'It's only a little bruise on her hand. I put the bandage on to make her feel better.'

'What happened exactly?' the Marshal asked.

'She wet herself in the night,' answered the young woman with an embarrassed glance at the Lieutenant. 'It happens sometimes. She tried to get up and see to herself and she slipped. She ought to be somewhere where she's looked after all the time, but it's donkey work trying to get her to leave this house for a month during the summer, and we'll be very short-staffed before long with the holidays starting. I was hoping you might have persuaded her . . . she seems to think a lot of you.'

So the Marshal, too, had escaped her vicious tongue, like the Dutchman's family. He could feel the Lieutenant's eyes on him saying, 'And you wanted to accuse her . . .'

'I did what I could,' he said, 'but she's afraid of being robbed.'

He could have kicked himself, remembering that the social worker herself had been accused of fishing under the mattress.

The young woman picked up a bundle of wet bedlinen and a nylon nightdress from which all the colour had long since been washed away.

'If there's nothing further ... I want to take these down to the laundrette while she's still asleep . . .'

The Marshal looked with innocent expectancy at the Lieutenant, who eventually forced himself to say, 'If I could just ask you one or two questions . . .'

A single bell was tolling out in the piazza and the Marshal, hearing it, mumbled vaguely, 'I'd better go down . . .'

He felt, rather than saw Lorenzini come into the church, trying not to clatter, managing, nevertheless, to knock over a pile of requiem mass leaflets from the end of the bench as he got in. They began whispering.

'Well? Did you keep her in sight?'

'Yes, all the time. But she did go out and I had to take a taxi. Will it be all right?' Meaning would he get the money back.

'Yes, of course." The Marshal resigned himself to paying for it.

'Where did she go?'

'To the Palazzo Vecchio. I waited outside for a bit, since there's only one public entrance, then I decided to follow her in.'

'That was stupid of you; you could easily have lost her inside.'

The Palazzo Vecchio again. Then she must have had a real reason . . .

'I didn't lose her. I caught her coming out of the Registry.'

Why should she go there? Surely the Medico-Legal Institute would have registered the death, and if not, then Signor Beppe who organized the funeral . . . though she might have wanted a copy of the death certificate. Was that what she'd wanted yesterday? No wonder she was furious then! In trying to shake him off she had made herself too late. He remembered the office workers coming out as they arrived. Funny. She must surely have known they closed at twelve . . .

'You didn't find out what she'd asked for?'

The Registry was a long room where Kafka-like queues of people waited wearily for computer print-outs of their civil status, which they needed for everything, from applying for a passport to enrolling each year at school. There were always quarrels among the irritable queues, or at the desk where some unfortunate person, having waited two hours or so, would be told he hadn't brought the right documents with him to enable him to get the document he wanted. The Marshal could imagine Signora Goossens standing grimly in one of those queues with that tight-lipped, self-righteous look on her face. Perhaps it wasn't a certificate of the stepson's death that she wanted; it could well have been a copy of her marriage certificate or some other document relating to whatever happened years ago—her husband's death certificate?

'You didn't see which counter she came from?'

'No. I wanted to stay and ask but I would have lost her.'

'You did right.'

The small congregation sat down, and one or two people turned to wonder what all the whispering was about at the back. These included Signora Goossens who started visibly at the sight of the Marshal's familiar bulk. Had she thought she would be free of him after her visit to Headquarters in the role of the grieving relative? One person on the front row remained standing longer than the others; a woman very smartly dressed in black, her wavy hair a false pinkish blonde colour. It was sure to be the Dutchman's mother-in-law, a Protestant, ill-at-ease in a Catholic church. She always stood or knelt a little after the others, after a covert glance around her.

The Marshal looked briefly at his watch.

'Go back there, will you? To the Registry, I mean—you might just make it before they close. You'll have to run, it's a quarter to twelve already. Then go straight back to Pitti; I'll phone you there.'

Lorenzini tiptoed out, this time without knocking anything over, but pulling the great door closed behind him with a crash that echoed through the whole building.

It was criminal, the Marshal thought, slipping on his dark glasses as the funeral party emerged into the overpowering midday heat, to ask anyone to run anywhere in such weather, but a taxi would have been slower because of the amount of traffic and the one-way system, and the Registry only opened in the mornings and tomorrow would be too late.

There was some embarrassment over the cars.' Signor Beppe had ordered two, one for the family and the other for himself and the people from his studio. The other goldsmiths and jewellers who had been invited were in their own cars. Signora Goossens and the Dutch mother-in-law had never met, so Signor Beppe had quietly to play the diplomat and persuade them into the first car together. They settled themselves at opposite sides of the back seat in silence. They looked very much alike from the back, the Marshal noticed, though the Englishwoman was much smaller.

'That would be the Dutch mother-in-law, I expect,' said a small voice at the Marshal's shoulder.

He turned. It was the blind flower-seller, standing with his face turned up, listening.

'I shan't go to the cemetery, of course, but I thought I'd come across and hear the service. The priest spoke very nicely, I thought.'

'Very,' agreed the Marshal, who had been too busy with Lorenzini to hear a word of the brief sermon.

'Of course, you were busy with other matters,' remarked the blind man blandly. 'Any news yet?'

'No . . . not really . . .'

The hearse was starting up its engine.

The blind man made the Marshal feel clumsy and unobservant, but now it seemed he wasn't quite so observant as all that, because he said:

'I was hoping Signora Goossens might have come over, to tell you the truth. Even in such sad circumstances, it would have been nice to have a little chat like in the old days. Still, it's a long journey, no doubt, from England, and perhaps nobody let her know . .

'We let her know all right.' The Marshal opened his car door. 'And she was in the first car with the mother-in-law. Perhaps she wasn't in the mood for chatting.'

'In the first car? Yes, there was another woman who got in before the mother-in-law . . .' He turned his pale face in the direction of the cars which were starting to move. 'But you're wrong, Marshal. It wasn't her.'

'For crying out loud!' raged the sweating Marshal, slamming his car door repeatedly and uselessly. The blind man was tapping his way slowly back between the market stalls to his alcove of flowers. The car door closed at last and he made off in pursuit of the funeral cortège, catching it up on the other side of the river. 'It's all deliberate, it must be! They're all going out of their way to confuse me. They must be hiding something. They must be in cahoots with those wretched women. And somebody must have something to gain from all this. They must have! Well, if it wasn't her, it was her sister, and if it wasn't her sister, it was her. We'll charge them both is what we'll do!'

He changed down as they began the steep climb up to Trespiano where, above the hospital city, the red and white radio masts stalked across the wooded hilltop against a dazzling deep blue sky. The slopes below were covered by the cemetery.

'Which one of them did it is almost irrelevant. For all I know they might have travelled on each other's passports. But I'll have them both!' His fist crashed down on the steering-wheel. 'By God, I'll have them both!'

They were at the cemetery gates.

When the Dutchman's coffin was being slid into the
loculo
beside that of his parents, the Marshal stood right behind Signora Goossens, breathing down her neck which was blotched with nervousness. The plaque commemorating old Goossens and his Italian wife had a little vase attached to the front of it containing a few long dead flowers. The Marshal wondered who had put them there. The woman didn't so much as glance at it. When the sealing of the
loculo
began, the Marshal slipped away to the administrative building and asked to use the telephone.

'Gino? Listen, I won't be back to lunch—has Lorenzini got back yet?'

'Not yet. Marshal, there's been a call for you from . . . wait . . . the Pensione Giulia. The proprietor wants a word with you. He seemed nervous.'

'So he should be.'

'Sir . . . ?'

'Nothing. He'll have to wait. He knows very well Thursday's my day off; he's probably just trying to annoy me. If he calls again, tell him I'll ring him when I get back.'

'When will that be, sir?'

'I haven't the faintest idea. Don't worry, I'll be in touch with you. I have to go now. Ciao, Ciccio.'

The red icon lamp had been lit on the front of the
loculo
and the funeral party was coming towards the office. The Marshal noted that it was Signor Beppe who handed in the print-out of the death certificate and a photograph. From these the inscription and ceramic picture would be made and put on the front of the Dutchman's place in the wall. Had Signora Goossens collected the death certificate for Signor Beppe? He could have asked her to do it when he phoned last night, but it seemed unlikely. It was essential to draw him aside as soon as possible and ask him.

The Marshal managed to waylay him as they came out of the main gates of the cemetery. Only the hearse had driven in; the other cars were parked in a travelled lay-by outside on the slope.

'Was it you who collected that death certificate you've just handed in?'

'Of course. Yesterday. I arranged everything.' He made to get into the car.

'Wait . . . What did old Goossens die of?'

'Heart trouble. He died in hospital. Why? Is something the matter? Excuse me, Marshal, but are you feeling all right? We were standing so long in the heat that I don't feel too brilliant myself . . .'

'No . . . no, I'm all right. Tell me, Signora Goossens and her sister . . . would you say they were alike, I mean that they looked alike?'

'I suppose so . . . yes; it's just that they were so different in character that one didn't remark it. Signora Goossens was a little bit plumper when she was living here—always blamed Italian food, fond as she was of it. Living in England she seems to have slimmed down again. She's not the cheerful soul she was in those days, but I suppose we're none of us getting any younger . . .'

Here we go again, thought the Marshal, mopping distractedly at his broiled neck. 'You're quite sure it is her, are you?' he asked aloud.

'
What?'

'You're quite sure it's her? You don't think it might be her sister?'

Where was the blasted woman anyway? The first car was leaving with only the mother-in-law in it.

'I don't understand . . . her
sister?'

'Yes, her sister!' A nameless idea was rising in his mind, and his gorge with it. Where was she . . . ?

'But of course it's not her sister! I don't see what you're getting at!'

That's why she hadn't known her way round Bobili all that well, why she hadn't known what time the Registry closed . . . but what a fool she had managed to make of him, even so! But the nameless idea was still at the back of his mind and he knew before it happened that Signor Beppe was going to confirm it.

'I'm getting at the sister,' he persisted. 'That's clear enough, isn't it?'

'No, it's not, not to me. I don't know what you mean, but I know that's not the sister, that it's Signora Goossens! I know it for the same reason you know it!' Signor Beppe was red in the face. He looked at his workmen for support in this ridiculous situation. They were all peering up from the car, the driver, too.

'You've asked me about it enough times!' expostulated Signor Beppe. 'The woman's dead, for heaven's sake, she's been dead ten years! I told you that after the funeral Signora Goossens—'

'After
her
funeral? For God's sake! I thought you were talking about old Goossens's funeral!'

'But that was the year before. It was after that that Signora Goossens invited her sister out here and then the sister died—if it had been old Goossens's funeral I'd have been there, wouldn't I? And Toni would have been there... well, everybody round here knew the sister died . . .'

'Well, nobody told me! And ten years ago I wasn't here!'

He spun round on the gravel and ran heavily in through the gate, running the handkerchief round his neck as he went. They watched him for a few moments, baffled, until the driver said, 'Shall we go?'

'I suppose so.' Signor Beppe got into the car and it pulled away from the gates. All except the driver were craning their necks and shading their eyes to look back.

The Marshal's khaki-clad figure thumped along rapidly, sometimes churning up gravel, sometimes grass, as he sought short cuts. After a while he stopped, looking this way and that. The graves went on as far as the eye could see, miles of them. The place was deserted under the merciless midday sun. Not a bird or an insect broke the silence of death among the grassy humps and cracked jars' of half-rotted flowers. The burning rays beat down upon the Marshal's back where a large patch of sweat had already soaked through his jacket. His breath was loud and painful.