Poisonville (10 page)

I slipped the keys back into my pocket and started walking. I needed to clear my head, think logically about Filippo. By the time I walked out onto the piazza, I was ready to rule him out as the killer. Giovanna had said that she had become the slut of the man who had ruined her life. And that couldn’t be Filippo. If anything, it was the other way around. And she would never have made love with him. I knew that deep down. The man who killed her had also been her secret lover. He had killed her because Giovanna had decided to confess everything to me. And he had chosen to drown her rather than let that happen.

The next morning I hung a sign on the front door of my law office: “Closed for Mourning.” My father took care of all my scheduled hearings in court; he unleashed all his young lawyers and paralegals to fill in for me. As I walked down the street, I withstood the inquiring gazes with nonchalance. Even though I knew I was innocent, I was still relieved to feel certain that Filippo’s new statement would eliminate me as a suspect. I walked over to the Visentin law office. After exchanging a few polite phrases of condolence with the secretaries, I finally managed to get into Giovanna’s office and close the door behind me. I sat down at her desk, and I observed my own smiling face—in an elegant frame next to the computer—and I wondered where I should begin my search. There must have been some traces of her relationship with her lover. A note scribbled in her desk diary, an email, a private note. And the telephone, of course. But the investigators would take care of examining the phone records. I began by rummaging through the desk drawers. Nothing there. Then I started the computer, and looked through her email messages—luckily, they weren’t password-protected. There was only business correspondence. I was on the wrong trail. There was a knock at the door. It was Inspector Mele. He sat down across from me, in a blue-grey office chair. The chair was a tad too modern for the austere style of the law offices.

“Find anything?” he asked with a smile.

I shook my head.

“I’ve already gone over it with a fine-toothed comb,” he told me. “But I certainly could have missed something.”

He set his police hat down on the table. With slow and carefully calibrated movements, he turned the hat around and tucked his black leather gloves into it. Then he unzipped his police jacket. “This morning, Filippo Calchi Renier, accompanied by your father, went to see Zan,” he said in a neutral tone of voice. “He retracted his earlier testimony, and now he has removed all suspicion from you. Luckily, he has fully recovered his memory, and, in the end, he was even more precise than you were. While Giovanna was being killed, the two of you were reminiscing about the good old days.”

The sarcasm, too, was carefully calibrated.

“You don’t seem very convinced.”

“It’s obvious that you two came to an understanding after your little brawl in the café, but that doesn’t interest me. It wasn’t either of you. Of that I am quite sure.”

“What about Zan?”

“He’s happy to have you out from underfoot. He’s afraid of your father, as you well know.”

“And you?”

He shrugged. “The worst they could do is transfer me. If I’m lucky, they’ll send me back to southern Italy, where I’m from.”

The inspector sat in silence, staring at me. I felt uncomfortable.

“She was murdered by her lover,” I blurted out after a couple of minutes.

He nodded in agreement. “Probably, but the only male fingerprints in Giovanna’s house were yours. Doesn’t that strike you as odd?”

“He must have wiped them off . . .”

“Without wiping away the others?” he asked, doubtfully.

He had a point. That made no sense. “What about her diary, and the phone records?”

“I shouldn’t tell you this, because the investigation is still in progress. But we haven’t found anything solid.”

“That can’t be. Giovanna and her lover must have communicated somehow.”

He spread his arms in resignation. “I can’t figure it out. And in any case, I have to obey Zan’s order, I have no freedom of initiative.” He picked up his hat and gloves and got to his feet. “Well, now you know how matters stand,” he said, heading toward the door.

“How did you know I was here?”

“I had you followed,” he answered flatly. “But after Filippo Calchi Renier’s new statement, the order was revoked. I’ll see you tomorrow at the funeral.”

“The killer will be there too,” I ventured in a small voice.

“The whole town will be there,” Mele shot back.

A little later, my father arrived as well. “Everything’s taken care of,” he said. “You’re no longer under investigation.”

“Now it’s up to you, Papa. You have to make that phone call. Zan has to begin investigating for real.”

“Don’t worry about that. I’ll get busy, today.” Then he looked around the room. “It seems impossible—to walk into this room and not find Giovanna,” he said sadly.

“She told Carla Pisani that she wanted to confess everything to me, because she had become the slut of the man who had ruined her life. Who do you think she could have been talking about?”

Papa sat down on the same office chair where the inspector had been sitting just a few minutes earlier. He ran his fingers through his hair. “I couldn’t say. When I read your friend’s statement I was very surprised. Maybe that’s Pisani’s interpretation of the facts. You know how witnesses can react under pressure.”

“No,” I answered decisively. “Carla repeated Giovanna’s exact words. I’m sure of it.”

“Then I can’t understand how this lover could have ruined her life. The whole episode with Alvise goes back fifteen years. Ever since then, Giovanna had put her life back together, with hard work. She had a degree in law and a promising professional future—”

“And tomorrow she was going to become my wife.”

“Exactly, as you can see that statement just doesn’t make sense. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have an appointment with a client.”

I sat there a while longer, lost in thought. Then I took my photograph off the desk and tossed it into the trash.

Beggiolin reported on Filippo’s change in testimony during the lunch hour news show. Oddly, he used a very sober tone in his reporting. Then he aired a sidebar about me. I saw myself in my lawyer’s robes, in court, delivering a summation. Beggiolin must have considered me innocent, because he used unfailingly positive language. The message to the town was unmistakable and would be duly accepted. After announcing the funeral, scheduled for the following morning at ten, in the church of San Prosdocimo, however, the television reporter engaged in a little extra dollop of muckraking. Quoting an unnamed but highly reliable source, he talked about the semen found in Giovanna’s body. He made no further comment, but he did stare for a few extra beats into the lens, with a cynical smile impressed on his lips.

I got rid of him by punching a button on my remote control, and then I moved into the kitchen. I wasn’t hungry, and my stomach was queasy with tension. I peered into the fridge and rummaged through the pantry. I decided to make a plate of pasta with butter. Whenever I was sick, that was the dish my mother would make for me. A pat of butter, a little milk, and grated parmesan cheese. I had decided not to leave the house until the funeral. After lunch, I’d take a couple of Giovanna’s sleeping pills. I wanted to knock myself out and just stop thinking. Instead, as soon as I had drained the pot of bowties, Carla rang the buzzer.

“Have you already eaten?” I asked her at the door.

Her only reply was to try to punch me in the face. I grabbed her wrist. “Whoa, take it easy. What’s that for?”

Carla was panting with rage. “So you made a little arrangement after all, didn’t you? First you accuse each other, then you swap alibis.”

“Get out of here, you don’t know what you’re talking about,” I snarled at her. I tried to shut the door, but she wouldn’t let me.

“I should have known this is how it would end up. The Visentins and the Calchi Reniers can’t afford a scandal. So that’s how you arrange things. Tomorrow, they’re going to bury Giovanna, and the truth will go down into the grave with her body. This town will never change. And you’re no better than the rest of them.”

I seized her by the shoulders and started to shake her. Her purse dropped to the floor, and she stared at me in fright. I let her go. She bent down to pick up her purse, and then turned and fled down the stairs.

“Don’t you ever dare speak to me like that again,” I shouted after her.

I tossed the pasta into the garbage. I was furious. I wanted to run out the door after her, I wanted to shout into her surprised face that, more than anything else, what I wanted to see was Giovanna’s murderer in handcuffs, flanked by a pair of Carabinieri. It was as those thoughts ran through my mind that a light shone into my mind. I suddenly glimpsed the price I would have to pay to ensure that the murderer went to prison. At the trial, the killer would tell the court all about his relationship with Giovanna. The lawyers and the prosecutor would want to probe for further details. How had they first met? How many dates? How often did they make love behind my back? The killer would swear that he loved her and never wanted to hurt her. In the eyes of the court, Giovanna would be remembered as his woman. I would fade into the background. The pathetic figure of the cuckolded fiancé, demanding justice. As a lawyer, I immediately reckoned up the likely sentence. Sixteen years, give or take a few. That was the price set on Giovanna’s life. I forced myself to take a hard look at my consience. Was I really willing to pay that price for revenge?

I seized a bottle at random from the tray and poured myself a glassful of liquor. I gulped it down with the sleeping pills.

Pale rays of sunlight illuminated one of the coldest mornings of the year. My father, Prunella, and I followed the hearse as it left the morgue.

“This was supposed to be the happiest day of my life,” Prunella said suddenly, breaking into a doleful silence.

Right. This was supposed to have been a day of celebration. I would have stood waiting for her by the altar, and she would appear at the head of the aisle on my father’s arm. She would walk slowly down the aisle, smiling and nodding her head at various guests. I slipped a hand into my pocket, and my fingers touched the case containing the two wedding rings. I had decided to have them buried with her body.

Inspector Mele was right. Giovanna’s funeral was a spectacle that no one in town would miss for any reason. Those who had been unable to find a place to sit in the church itself crowded the church courtyard and a substantial portion of the main piazza. The citizenry watched our arrival in silence. Many made the sign of the cross when they saw us. When we stepped out of our car, we were approached by our closest acquaintances and by the leading citizens of the town. Selvaggia, elegant in her black overcoat with a fur collar, hurried to embrace Prunella. Filippo stood off to one side, in isolation.

“My poor Prunella,” she exclaimed loudly. “Misfortune seems to follow you everywhere. But you’re always so strong.”

Her voice and her face were intently acting out the role of a bereaved Contessa, but her eyes told an entirely different story. Selvaggia never missed a chance to settle old scores. Prunella noticed it, and reddened with fury, but she was quickly surrounded by her prayer group, which immediately struck up a hymn to the Lord, and accompanied her into the church. I followed close behind the coffin, resting one hand on the dark polished wood. I wanted to be sure that everyone saw that the cuckold had decided to follow his destiny to its logical conclusion. Carla was already seated in the front row. She made a big show of ignoring me. Don Piero and Don Ante stood waiting by the altar. The old priest conducted the ceremony. He recalled Giovanna with a short but affectionate speech. He concluded by warning the murderer that he would face the Lord’s wrath. Prunella and her friends distinguished themselves with a series of prayers recited with a level of fervor that struck me as unsettling. Their arms flung outward in imitation of Jesus Christ on the cross, and their faces turned heavenward clearly irritated Don Piero as well; from time to time he glared angrily over at the group.

When the coffin was carried out of the church, my hand was still there, resting on the gleaming cherry wood. Beggiolin pointed me out to the cameraman, who took a long steady shot. It was at that very moment that Inspector Mele came over and shook my hand firmly. Mele had also decided to transmit a precise signal.

Beggiolin raised the microphone to his lips. “The whole town has turned out to pay tribute to Giovanna Barovier; it is certainly not mere rhetoric to speak of a young life shattered in the bloom of youth, just a few steps short of the crowning dream of love with her own Francesco.”

Beggiolin was capable of staining anything with just his tone of voice. I wanted to pound his face with both fists, but this was neither the place nor the time for that.

When the coffin was loaded onto the hearse, as if by magic El Mato appeared, kneeling and crying out: “Now I understand! Now I’ve figured it out!”

Mele gently seized him by the scruff of the neck and handed him over him to a pair of young Carabinieri.

Half an hour later it was all over. I walked away from the cemetery with an image in my head of the gravedigger who had sealed the tomb with cement strolling away, lighting a cigarette as he went.

I had been slumped on the sofa for hours. My mind was buzzing with images from the funeral. Faces familiar and unknown. Among them was the murderer—of that I felt certain. Perhaps he had even shaken my hand and expressed his sincere condolences. But I hadn’t singled out any prime suspect. The killer would have to be charming, elegant, young, and a member of the upper crust. I knew Giovanna well. She had strong opinions when it came to men and the social circles in which they moved. Mele probably didn’t know quite what to look for. Lovers communicate in secret codes. If they were bold enough to meet at Giovanna’s house, they must have had some way of being certain I wouldn’t walk in on them. I ransacked my memory for the perfect times to meet behind my back. On Tuesdays I played volleyball on the covered field at the country club, and then, after the usual quick stop by the wine bar, I went straight to bed. But I always called her before falling asleep to say goodnight. How many times had she whispered sweet nothings over the phone to me while he lay at her side, breathing, waiting? I pictured her to myself, her hair damp and matted after a bout of lovemaking. Tuesdays might very well have been their standing date. Then, there were times that I had to work late in my law office, preparing a case. On those evenings, perhaps, she alerted him.