Mimi's Ghost (33 page)

If there were moments in his life upon which, however things ultimately panned out, Morris would be justified in looking back with nothing short of immense pride, then this was to be one of them. Brought most cruelly to bay in this squalid municipal hospital bed, his back to the wall, his handsome features disfigured, and not even in possession, as he had been on other occasions, of all the nasty facts that now needed to be juggled into some plausible illusion, Morris Duckworth, as Morris would later have occasion to think, nevertheless performed most perfectly. Indeed, the word breathtaking would hardly be out of place, though Morris was not such a fool as to arrogate all the credit for such a performance to himself. For quite definitely it was
her
voice he heard prompting him now,
her
perfume he smelt. Quite definitely it was Massimina who simply dictated what, dancing at the end of a plank over tumultuous seas, he now contrived to repeat.

And behind Mimi, presumably, was . . . well, God.

‘Colonnello' - he took a very deep breath, as if expecting to go under for a long time - ‘Colonnello, it is unkind of you to make fun of an obsession that I appreciate is horribly morbid, even aesthetically distasteful, but which my analyst assures me is one of the most common the world over. At least among those, Colonnello Fendtsteig, who have had the good fortune to love someone and be loved by them in return.' He paused, then with dreadful assurance simply talked on into the unknown, went right over the end of that plank, expecting the very worst of course - the billowing waves, the suck of the undertow - only to find that, like his dear Saviour before him, the monstrous waters calmed beneath his feet, the storm responded to his rebuke, allowing him quite serenely to stroll across the deep, to walk, to talk his way to the other side.

Mimi was holding his hand.

‘My version of events, if you will allow me to offer an amateur's humble opinion, is as follows; and if, as you will no doubt protest, I haven't offered it before, this was merely, as you shall see, out of a sense of loyalty to my colleague and a genuine affection for his poor wife.'

He paused, amazed to discover that he wasn't even seasick, though quite how he was going to step over the next wave was not as yet clear. As usual, he had planned nothing. But this was his genius.

Mimi was beside him.

‘Bobo, that is my colleague, Signor Posenato, had for some time been very, er, how shall we say, restless about his life. He felt trapped, nervous. He was afraid that the imminent death of Signora Trevisan would condemn him to what he felt was a miserable existence running a tiny company with little hope of expansion. And' - here Morris lowered his voice, looking up hard at the screen curtain, as if his eye might penetrate it and discover Antonella's hearkening ear - ‘although in previous interviews I may, as I said, have denied this for reasons of loyalty, I do have reason to suspect, though I cannot be sure, that most of all he was restless because
there was another woman
in his life.'

Fendtsteig was rubbing two fingers back and forth on his chin waiting, expecting another mere diversion, such as that with Dionisio. He hadn't realised as yet that Morris was acting under divine afflatus.

The truth is that Bobo was frequently in the factory, or rather the office, at night-time. Yes, at night-time. He frequently seemed flustered and distracted. He often spoke harshly or excitedly to people without their being able to understand why. Hence these ridiculous stories of his arguments with me.'

‘Signor Duckvorse, if I may interrupt, these are the kind of subjective impressions which it is all too easy to invent and which no one could ever possibly verify.'

‘If necessary,' Morris sailed on, ‘chapter and verse can be added at a later date. The purchase of a savage dog, for example, was no doubt intended to discourage interruptions when he was with his mistress in the office at night.' There was an idea! ‘His opposition to my suggestion that we set up a night shift probably had a similar basis. But for the moment I will give you just the broad outline of what I have long suspected is the true state of affairs.'

He had no idea what this might be, but at the same time was quite convinced that, even as he spoke, it was about to reveal itself.

‘I got my first inkling when Ispettore - is he an ispettore? I get so mixed up - Ispettore Marangoni informed me that the police had received an anonymous phone call suggesting that something drastic had deservedly happened to Bobo, Signor Posenato. But when I realised the other day that our guard dog at the factory had been poisoned I became sure of it.'

He nodded his head twice briskly, despite the pain, like one who is at last saying and at the same time discovering what he knows must be true. ‘Yes, when I saw that poisoned dog I was convinced, and I would then have told you my suspicions - I mean, Colonnello Fendtsteig, I was myself concerned that these poor
extra-comunitari,
however inappropriately they may have behaved prior to the event, were being wrongly charged -yes, would have told you myself, if I hadn't heard that Bobo had already solved the problem by sending that letter.'

In a state somewhere between ecstasy and vertigo, Morris suddenly realised what his dear Mimi had quite probably been trying to get through to him for days now: that they would
never
discover the corpse. That was his trump card. That was the plank that extended to an infinite horizon. Without a corpse one could simply go on speculating
ad infinitum,

‘Mi scusi,'
Fendtsteig interrupted, but at last with a hint of genuine interest and concern now, albeit coated with irony,
‘mi scusi,
but I can't follow you. What exactly are you trying to tell me?'

A reasonable question.

‘Bobo faked the whole thing and ran off with his mistress,' Morris invented abruptly. Then, like an animal who has given birth after considerable and painful effort, he immediately proceeded to lick the little creature he had produced with love and amazement. ‘Consider, Colonnello: his body hasn't been found; not even his car has been found.' Morris began to fill in, even caress, the details, already quite sure that they must all, without exception, fit. Otherwise Mimi wouldn't have told him to say it, would she? ‘In fact, Colonnello, the only indication we have of there being any foul play is the mess in the office, a bit of blood that anybody could have produced, an easily staged interrupted phone call to the police, then an anonymous phone call, and finally a ransom letter, which, as you point out, was probably written because Bobo, who as I said is a charming person, was most upset to find that two people were being unjustly accused of his murder. But most conclusively for me,' Morris said, though he still wasn't quite sure why, ‘there was this business of the poisoned dog.'

‘Ah,' Fendtsteig sighed. ‘You are now going to explain to me the poisoned dog. I am most impressed, Signor Duckvorse.' But his eyes narrowed dangerously.

‘You see, when he first planned his escape,' Morris began a long and winding uphill slope, not sure if the ridge ahead was the last or just one of a series, ‘I can't imagine that Bobo foresaw the problem of having to write that ransom letter and the other ones that will doubtless follow. That is, he couldn't suppose that the police, as you so rightly pointed out, would be so stupid as to accuse these two poor immigrants on the slimmest of circumstantial evidence.' Out of deference to Fendtsteig, Morris did not say, though he felt it was implied, that equally Bobo could not have imagined anybody would be so stupid as to suspect Morris himself. ‘Now, the fact is that in one of the filing cabinets, there in the office, under, let me see if I can rightly remember, yes, what was it, “Trevisan, Massimina”, quite simple, in one of the filing cabinets, there is, or rather' - and here Morris took an immensely deep breath - ‘I suspect well find
there was,
a collection of the documents regarding Massimina's kidnap. Do you see what I am trying to get at now?'

Fendtsteig did not.

‘If the person,' Morris said, discovering the truth even as he was inspired to pronounce it, ‘who wrote that letter was not Massimina's kidnapper - and why should such a person wish to draw attention to a previous crime by repeating the same ruse? -then it must have been someone who had immediate access to those letters. Bobo, as I said, had them on file in the office, since it was he who acted on behalf of the Trevisan family during the whole horrible affair, ignoring, may I say, all the sensible advice I tried to offer. My guess is that if you go back to the office you will find the file, but not the letters.
He needed them to fake the one he wrote.'

Fendtsteig stared glassily through his spectacles. At least Morris could be sure now that the carabinieri hadn't found the letters in the coat, although at the same time, what he had just said convinced him that somebody else had.

And it wasn't Bobo.

Fendtsteig said: The dog?'

Morris opened his mouth, but for a moment Massimina seemed to have deserted him. Why on earth would Bobo have killed the dog in such circumstances, for Christ's sake?

The dog?' Fendtsteig repeated.

‘Obviously he couldn't risk breaking into the office himself,' Morris realised. ‘He paid somebody else to do it. Who was duly warned about the dog. Or maybe it was his mistress even. How can I know? Since the damn thing was so fierce they tried to poison it.'

There was a long silence between them. Dionisio pushed his trolley back up the ward. Came the low moan of some patient or other trying to get used to his mutilation. Finally Fendtsteig stood up. He straightened himself to his full slender height in the proud uniform. Once again he submitted Morris to a cold and penetrating stare.

‘Signor Duckvorse, everything you have said to me will be meticulously checked. Let me warn you here and now, however, that I believe not one word of your absurd inventions. On the contrary, I am more than ever convinced that this affair can only end with your being charged and convicted of the murder of your brother-in-law. It is merely a question of time before the crucial evidence falls into our hands.'

Watching him out, Morris couldn't help feeling that the man was probably right. Either that, or he himself would have to
invent
some evidence that simply wrapped the whole thing up once and for all in some other way. . . .

But quite what and how, he had no idea.

Mother had always called him ‘her beautiful boy'. It was one of the reasons she was so wonderful. She always, always made him feel attractive, adorable. Mother adored Morris. Morris adored Mother. Each to the other was entirely beautiful. So that if Morris was for ever to remember his encounter with chicken-pox, it was not so much because of its belated coincidence with a miserable puberty, as because of the time, coming down the stairs for the cream that was supposed to stop the itching, he had heard her voice over the television saying to his father: ‘Yes, he looks like a scrofulous little monster.' And that beloved voice was laughing.

Morris had stopped shock-still on the stair. Not only was she laughing, but her laughter was mingled with the cruder, deeper cackle of his father, who said: ‘Serve him right for a week or two, vain little pansy.' To which his mother, with a complicity Morris could never forgive her, replied: ‘Perhaps you're right, Ron. Anyway, it can't do him any harm.'

Couldn't do him any harm! To look scrofulous! Monstrous! And she had called the old pig by his name! An obscenity Morris hadn't heard for some very long time. ‘Ron.' If there was one thing worse than being called Morris, it was being called Ron. Though the old beer swiller would never have appreciated that. He wasn't sensitive to such things. Turning abruptly, Morris had rushed back to his room to find himself in the mirror in the wardrobe door. Under the forty-watt pallor his father always imposed as part of the long war of attrition against Morris's ‘reading habit', his features presented a lurid battlefield of acne and pox spots. The clean, fresh blondness of his normal self was quite lost, quite unimaginable. But Morris had forced himself to look all the same, forced himself to savour his ugliness, to appreciate exactly what it was that after all these happy years had caused his mother to betray him like this. And with Father of all people! For the problem with ugliness, Morris realised as he stared it in the face, his own face, was not so much that it rendered one unattractive, both to oneself and to others, but that it encouraged a complicity, or even conspiracy, amongst others against oneself.

Looking in the bathroom mirror now, with the wraps finally off and the truth at last taking something of its shockingly permanent shape, Morris's first reaction was not rage, horror or even plain sadness at his lost beauty, so much as fear, fear that these livid scars, this unnatural skin texture and the general if elusive loss of symmetricality could only stack the cards the more heavily against him. Wouldn't Paola be eager to be rid of him now? Morris had always sensed how much her being attracted to him depended on his physical beauty. Might she not start to air some of the suspicions she quite clearly had. Fendtsteig, after all, needed only the barest whiff of evidence to be setting his teeth into the grisly truth.

And Antonella? Would she be so sympathetic still? Mightn't she see this ugliness as the revelation somehow of an inner spiritual ugliness? Did Morris see it that way himself? (Up to a point perhaps, though he had never subscribed to anything quite so ingenuous as Platonism.) And Forbes? Why should Forbes love him any the less merely because he had lost his fair complexion? Yet Morris felt he might. He might. Perhaps even Kwame would be less amenable, and reasonably so, especially if he sensed that all the other vermin were abandoning the good ship Duckworth.

The truth was, Morris himself felt less confident without the talisman of what had been an undeniable beauty, those moments when he glanced in a mirror over somebody else's shoulder, or perhaps only in a plate of glass, a window, a tabletop, and saw that he was fairer than they, brighter than they, younger and healthier than Marangoni, infinitely more composed and attractive than the likes of Fendtsteig and Bobo.