Death of an Englishman (15 page)

The Captain tried to give them instructions while dealing with the over-anxious Biondini.

'Where do I sign? Surely we've done this one twice already?'

'Yes, it has to be in triplicate … and here … leave that, I'll fill in the dates later …'

'Captain?' Jeffreys looked in again. 'I think this lady …'

'Please excuse me, I just wanted to ask something.'

Seeing Signora Cipriani hovering behind Jeffreys, the Captain thrust the papers at Biondini and went to the door.

'The child … ?'

'She's here with me … you said not to leave her alone, so … It's just that I was wondering if it was all right for me to go to the hospital once Vincenzo gets home … after lunch. Poor Martha—'

'No. I'd rather you stayed in the building until I'm certain there's no further danger—and don't open your door to anyone.'

'Yes, of course. Poor Martha, and at Christmas … her daughter is arriving today … I wanted to offer …'

'Yes, I understand, but I must ask you to stay here for the moment. I'll let you know as soon as I can—and do keep the little girl with you.' Giovanna was hovering in the open doorway of the lift where she had evidently been told to stay. Every now and then she peeped out and threatened Jeffreys with a pink water-pistol. The Captain watched them shut themselves in the lift and go up, then turned to the technicians. 'I know it's a lot to ask but if you could get me something on paper, however tentative, by this afternoon … I have to see the S.P. at three unless I can put him off …'

The Marshal was brooding in his office chair. A copy of Carabiniere Bacci's report on the finding of the body was before him on the desk. Carabiniere Bacci stood beside him. His coat was unbuttoned but the Marshal had said, without looking up, 'Don't take it off,' and had gone on brooding over the report. At last he sighed and sank back a little in his chair. 'You're going to have to write this report again.'

'Sir … ?'

'Write it again. Accurately.'

'Yes, sir … But the Captain was with me when—'

'The Captain, unfortunately, was not with you when you first went to Via Maggio, otherwise …'

'But I thought … they said that Cesarini—'

'Is helping the Captain with his inquiries. But he didn't kill the Englishman and he probably doesn't know who did. Only you know that.'

Suddenly, Carabiniere Bacci's pale face turned red. He began to shake.

The Marshal turned his great eyes on him sadly. 'Bring me Cipolla. He should be back from the cemetery by now.'

'Cipolla …'

'The cleaner.'

'Yes, sir.'

'We're going to take his statement again, you and I together. He was very frightened, Carabiniere Bacci.'

'Yes, sir.' He was whispering, his throat too dry to speak.

'He wanted me. I was ill, it's true, but I admit I was glad to be out of it … not to be the one … I'm not competent … and he was frightened of you, of the Captain. Bring him to me, Carabiniere Bacci, and apologize for doing it on the day of the funeral. Tell him I'm here and I'm waiting for him. That he can tell me.'

'Yes, sir,' whispered Carabiniere Bacci.

The Chief had watched Jeffreys fight off his exhaustion and, having seen him succeed, suggested that they go off for lunch and a rest.

'D'you know what I'd like more than anything, Jeffreys? I'd like a beer. Do you think there's any chance of getting one?'

'Easily.' They were crossing the river in a squad car. 'I'll ask him to drop us at the bar near the Christmas trees, then we're only two minutes from the vicarage.'

'And Felicity's shepherd's pie.'

'Exactly.' Neither would ever have believed that they could be on such friendly terms. Each had seen the other hard-pressed, the Chief morally, Jeffreys physically, and found they had a fighting spirit in common. Now they were both feeling very English and very homesick. The idea of getting in a quick beer before lunch had a familiar appeal.

The barman was standing on a little stool unhooking one of the blue and silver boxes containing Christmas cakes which hung in clusters from the ceiling.

A bus driver was drinking a glass of red wine in the far corner and recounting a story heatedly to three listeners. He had a small dressing on his forehead.

'Isn't that the driver … ?' The Chief was looking hard at him.

'Yes, I'm sure it is.' Jeffreys tried to catch what he was saying.

'… Well, you know how narrow it gets once you pass the junction … hardly room for two people to walk—the bus is a write-off, I reckon.'

'Did you hit the windscreen?'

'I may have done, it's difficult to remember …' In fact, he had fainted after being rescued and had banged his head on a Carabiniere car wing-mirror. 'Nor would you with a gun in your back …' He broke off, realizing that he had seen the two Englishmen who were staring at him last night at the police station. He turned away and continued in more subdued tones.

'Feeling better, Jeffreys?'

'Much better.'

'Shepherd's pie, then, if we're not too late.'

Walking down to the vicarage, they agreed to ring the Consulate and see if there was any chance of a plane home. If the case was going to drag on they had every excuse for going home for Christmas and reporting on the changed state of affairs in the case.

'All the same,' said the Chief, as they waited for the vicar to answer the bell, 'I wouldn't have minded a word with that fat chap we saw this morning. He looked to me like someone who knew something he wasn't telling.'

And the Captain, standing at the window in his office, waiting for the results of the search and the paraffin test that were being carried out in the emergency hospital of San Giovanni di Dio next door, waiting for something, anything, that might placate an irritable Substitute Prosecutor at three o'clock, was beginning to think the same thing.

The Marshal stood up when he heard the door opening.

'Leave your coats here and come through to my quarters where we won't be disturbed.' He led the way, taking them right through into the kitchen. He sat them down at the little kitchen table, took a bottle of
vinsanto
from a painted cupboard on the wall and set three glasses out. When he had filled them he sat down heavily on his own straight-backed chair and drank his
vinsanto
off delicately, in one draught, forgetting the doctor's advice completely. He placed his hands squarely on his knees and spoke softly to the table: 'We don't s… we don't want anyone else to get hurt … and there's something I don't know …' He tailed off and then looked up, fixing the little man with his great rolling eyes. The cleaner gazed back at him with his permanent expression of humble surprise beneath the spiky black hair. 'Tell me now, Cipolla, before you tell me anything else … what did you do with the gun?'

CHAPTER 2

'I threw it into the courtyard, Marshal.'

'Why?'

'I suppose I was frightened.'

'Were you trying to hide it?'

'I don't think so … I only threw it just outside the french window. I just wanted to get it away from me. I was going to give it to you when you came, but …'

'But I didn't come.'

'No.' The little cleaner glanced worriedly at Carabiniere Bacci, not wanting to offend.

'But I did come later.'

'Yes, Marshal, but I'd been sent outside …'

'Why didn't you ask to come in?'

The cleaner looked at him uncomprehendingly. The idea that he should have interrupted officers, professors, experts, photographers … when he'd been told to go and stay out of the way in the courtyard … he couldn't even understand the question. The Marshal left it and went on.

'So what happened to the gun then?'

'I picked it up, Marshal.'

'Out there, in front of the window, while we were inside?'

'Yes.'

'Did you pick it up to conceal it somewhere?'

'Conceal it?'

'Yes, hide it?'

'But … no. I picked it up because I was tidying the courtyard … he told me to …' Another apprehensive glance at Carabiniere Bacci.

'I see. So you tidied up. What else did you pick up?'

'The usual things. Clothes-pegs, mostly, and a sock and two handkerchiefs dropped from somebody's washing line. And a toy gun, pink plastic … but I couldn't sweep up like I usually do because …'

'Because you didn't have your brush,' finished the Marshal, remembering his dream. The familiar figure of Cipolla always had a brush and bucket slung over his right shoulder. 'And what did you do with all this stuff you picked up?'

'Put it in a polythene bag, as usual, and then I waited for you to come out so I could give it to you.'

'But you didn't give it to me, Cipolla.'

'No, Marshal …'

'Why not?'

'You told me to put it down,' he whispered, 'and come with you to the station …'

'But you could have
said,
surely, to me?'

'Yes … but I was … the others were there … so I just did what you told me. I thought it didn't matter anyway …'

'Didn't
matter?'

'About telling you just then. I thought you were arresting me.'

'You thought …? What, the whole time? Even in the bar?'

'Yes.'

'Have you ever
been
arrested, Cipolla?'

'No, Marshall' His face reddened.

'No, I don't suppose you have. So, you put the bag containing the gun down in the entrance hall?'

'By the lift door, Marshal. I always put it there so that people can collect their things and some clothes-pegs—everybody drops those and nobody has a key to the courtyard except the Cesarini. There's a little hook by the lift door. I always leave the bag there.'

'And didn't you worry afterwards about what would happen if the gun were left there like that?'

'Is that what happened to that poor woman? But I thought—there were so many policemen there searching—I thought they'd have found it.'

So they would have done, but it hadn't been there when they searched the entrance and when they got to the courtyard he had hung it on its hook in the hall. Nobody, in the meantime, had taken the slightest notice of the little cleaner.

'Well, Carabiniere Bacci?' The Marshal rolled his eyes round and settled his gaze on the young man who had begun by being rigid and red in the face and was now pale and drawn.

'Yes, sir.'

'Is that what she was bending over to do?'

'Yes, sir, I realize now …'

'Oh, you do?'

'It's just that I wasn't actually watching her, sir. But now I remember the noise … she must have been feeling in the bag.'

'Clothes-pegs?'

'Yes, sir, I remember the rattling now.'

'Go and find the gun, Carabiniere Bacci.'

'Yes, sir.'

'And try not to shoot yourself.'

'Yes, sir.' He got up abruptly and went out;

The Marshal sighed and rubbed a weary hand over his face. He kept his hand there and his eyes closed for a while, not wanting to start. Then, in silence, he refilled their glasses.

The little cleaner didn't speak but accepted the drink passively.

He looks so calm, thought the Marshal. Ever since it happened, he's looked so calm … But then he remembered Cipolla as he used to be, trotting rapidly across the Piazza in his black smock, hair on end, bucket and brush slung over his shoulder. Dodging about the city among the big palaces, nodding to friends, acquaintances, employers, sweeping his way down staircases, rubbing industriously at great brass doorknobs, polishing a plate glass window which might contain one article of clothing with a price tag equal to his year's salary … this calmness wasn't real …

There was something about the image of Cipolla's old self that put the Marshal in mind of the little English lady, living alone, tripping across the Piazza trying to carry those picture frames … People on the fringes of life, never really included. Even as a murderer Cipolla hadn't made an impression, everybody had ignored him as they always had. The meek don't inherit much in a country where you have to be a genius to survive, let alone get anywhere. The Marshal felt tired. He would have liked to send the little cleaner about his business, ignore him like everyone else had done, and take himself off to bed. But tomorrow was Christmas and a twenty-hour train journey lay before him, and the cleaner's hollow eyes were watching him, patiently, humbly, waiting for the Marshal to do something about him, knowing nobody else would. Each time … directly after the murder, that few seconds in the entrance hall when Cipolla had held the gun in a polythene bag under their noses, then in the blocked funeral car … that white face, the humble, hopeful eyes … had he only meant to wait until after the funeral and then, if the Marshal still hadn't come for him … ?

'What were you going to do, Cipolla? Tonight, once your sister and brother-in-law had left?'

Cipolla lowered his eyes without answering, like a child caught on the point of stealing jam. All his reactions seemed to be on a child-like level, an imitation of the adult response, not fully developed. Was that perhaps why everyone ignored him when anything serious was afoot? As if they told him, 'Go out and find something to do, stay out of the room while the grown-ups talk.' It could also have a lot to do with his being so tiny. Had he felt like an adult when, for a few seconds, he'd held a gun in his hand and fired? Or had that been an imitation too, the man's death more or less an accident? To be followed by a child's attempt at suicide which might or might not succeed … probably not, depending on what …

'What was it to be, Cipolla, the river? The bell tower?'

Giotto's marble
campanile
was used quite frequently by suicides who were past caring about anyone who might be walking or driving in the busy square below.

'Not the
campanile,'
whispered Cipolla, still with lowered eyes. 'I read in the
Nazione
about that old man …'

A man of eighty-four who had left a note saying he was exhausted with the struggle of trying to exist on a pitiful amount of money which was hardly enough to feed his little black and white dog. He had jumped from the bell tower and crashed through the windscreen of a car, killing not only himself but the young girl who was driving. No one had thought of the dog until neighbours heard it whimpering two days later. There was no food in the house.

'I didn't want to hurt anyone. I've done enough harm already.'

'The river then?' No answer. So it was to have been the river. 'And you're what? Forty-two years old?'

'Yes, Marshal.' He was sitting very still and upright. The unruly hair accentuated the impression of a school-boy. It was impossible not to think of Cipolla as the Englishman's victim. But the Englishman was dead and Cipolla was not, and the Marshal had a job to do, though he had never liked it less.

'How old were you during the war?' he asked suddenly.

'About six when it finished.'

'Can you remember much about it?' He shouldn't be asking these questions, and yet, it was a way of giving him some attention.

'Only bits, mostly towards the end when we had to leave. Our house was bombed.'

'Couldn't you find shelter in the city anywhere?'

'My mother thought we'd be safer in the country … she had a sister who lived further north, near Rome. She said there'd be food there, that there was always food in the country.'

'And was there?'

'No. For a long time we used to collect wild beet and fennel and nettles and boil them.'

'Bread?'

'For a while, until the flour ran out.'

'How many were you?'

'Four, including my mother.'

'And your aunt?'

'We never found her. The cottage had been bombed. Part of it was still standing and had been used by soldiers. The furniture had been used for firewood and there was a large hole in the roof. We lived in the barn until the planes came.'

'Which planes?'

'Every sort. English, German, American. They flew low and fired at anything that moved. I suppose there must have been soldiers about but we never saw any. There was bombing, too. I remember a lot of fires.'

'Did you know which side you were on?'

'Which side … ?'

'The planes that came over, did you know which side you were on in the war?'

'I don't think so … my mother used to curse all of them, Italians too, for trying to murder her children. I only knew I had to hide and keep still if I heard planes. I knew I was hungry.'

'What happened next, when you left the barn?'

'I'm not sure. A lot of moving about. We ended up in Rome because my mother said her sister must have gone there along with all the other refugees whose farms were ruined. I suppose she must have been killed but I can't remember whether we ever found out … I don't know how we lived in Rome but eventually we went back to the country where my mother and my brother and sister worked on a farm. I was the youngest …'

'I didn't see your brother at the funeral?'

'No, he emigrated to America as soon as he could, that is, as soon as I was old enough to work too.'

'Did you like farm work?'

'No, I hated it. I hated the country.'

No wonder. After his first experience of it. Boiled nettles and strafing aeroplanes.

'How old were you when you first came to Florence?'

'Fourteen, a little more.'

'And you came alone?'

'Yes. It was the first time I'd ever been anywhere by train.'

'Did your father … you had a father?'

'He was killed in Greece.'

'Go on. Tell me about coming to Florence. Where did you stay?'

'In a hostel. The priest at home arranged it for me. I started by doing some cleaning work in a church here, but I soon found plenty more work and, eventually, a cheap flat in Via Romana.'

'And then you got married?'

'Not then, later. First my mother died and my sister came up here to live with me. She got a job in a
trattoria
run by some people we knew from Salerno. Then when she married Bellini she had her own home next to you …'

The Marshal glanced at a white bowl with a plate on it standing on the refrigerator.

'And then you married?'

'Yes.' A strange look came over his face as they approached the present. Sooner or later, he must break down … better here than among strangers at Headquarters … even so, it might be wiser to wait until Carabiniere Bacci—and where the devil was he anyway? The Marshal filled their glasses.

'Drink it up,' he said, watching him. How different would Cipolla have been if he'd had food when he needed it? If he'd grown to a normal man's size? It was useless to speculate. And there were thousands like him.

'Who insures you? You work for so many people all over town.'

'Nobody … I've got a small policy and we try … and we tried to save a little. We had no children, you see, so—Milena couldn't—'

'So you both worked and saved … ?'

'No, no … it wasn't like that …' He began to talk faster, loosing his hands from his lap to accentuate, to explain.

It may be, thought the Marshal, that he's never really talked to anybody about himself in his life … or else it's the
vinsanto.
It was true that his face was a little pink.

'It wasn't like that. I didn't want her to have to work. My mother killed herself working to bring us up alone … And then, what could she have done? Cleaning like me? She only had elementary education. And she had no children. It's one thing to do unpleasant work when you've got the pleasure of children to buy for, there's some point in that, but for her to do that sort of work and only me to come home to … Besides, I thought it would be good for her to live like a "Signora", be a bit special … Other women, you see, sometimes upset her—it wasn't that they meant to, I suppose they couldn't help it …'