The Marshal at the Villa Torrini (16 page)

'Torrini.'

'Torrini, yes. Well, I did mention it to the Colonel and, as it happens, he knows her. Delightful woman, very beautiful, he said, in her day, a bit daffy now.'

'Yes.'

'Well, she's the last person to try and interfere with the course of justice, as they say. He's all right, you know, Fusarri, even though he's a bit odd.'

'Yes.'

'What will you do with Forbes now, boot him out?'

'Yes.'

'I'll let you get on, then, and be in touch when I've talked to Fusarri.' He hung up.

Only when he'd hung up himself did the Marshal have a vague feeling that perhaps he hadn't been very forthcoming with his answers. But the thought was pushed to the back of his mind by an idea about Forbes's behaviour. Not a clear idea—it had almost been clear while the Captain was talking, but he'd lost it. All he could remember was that it had something to do with his poor little friend Vittorio, but what the devil the connection had been he couldn't for the life of him work out. He tried working back logically through Pecchioli who, when he was being cross-examined, had first brought Vittorio to mind, but it was a dead end and he had to give up.

Still frowning and shaking his head at his own incapacity to think logically, he got up and went to the door. Lorenzini had parked himself outside it, facing the two leather armchairs and the low table covered in magazines that filled the small space between the Marshal's office and the door and so constituted the waiting-room. Forbes had taken up his habitual 'None of this bothers me' position, leaning well back with his leg crossed over, affecting to read the official carabinieri magazine, holding it at a distance and pointing his beard rather than his glance at it. Lorenzini stood back to let the Marshal out.

'Get on to the municipal police,' the Marshal told him quickly. 'They picked him up last night. Get their end of the story—and then warn that young lady off.'

'Of course—you don't think it might be more effective coming from you? I mean . . .'

'She won't know the difference. Just got here. You'll have to speak English to her.' The Marshal beckoned to Forbes without a word. Forbes stood up, said something to the girl and strode, his head a little too high, into the Marshal's office.

'Sit down.' He didn't pretend this time.

'You're getting quite famous,' the Marshal informed him, taking his own seat. 'News of you coming in from everywhere. I hear you've bought yourself a motorbike.'

'Yes. It's something I always fancied doing—and the sort of thing to do while you're young. You probably know by now that my wife was considerably older than me. We lived rather a quiet life.'

It was fortunate that the Marshal's Sicilian blood told. His face betrayed nothing of his reaction to this remark.

'I know you'll pardon my asking—you know how it is, once a policeman, always a policeman, even in ordinary conversation—how did you pay for it? A cheque? Cash? Promissory notes, perhaps?'

'I—I paid a deposit and . . . Promissory notes, why not?'

'Why not, indeed. Of course the law comes down very hard . . . Still, anyone with a regular monthly income can make their calculations accordingly . . .'

Forbes's lack of a monthly income at this point was left drifting on the air. It was a long shot, since Gelia Carter might well have provided for this by a banker's order which would still be effective. The silence indicated otherwise.

'Ah well,' the Marshal went on cosily, 'you'll have inherited a goodish bit of money, I dare say.'

'Enough.' Forbes's expression was supremely arrogant but still his eyes never quite met those of the Marshal whose unblinking gaze was fixed on the quivering figure before him.

'Usually takes six months or so to prove a will, though, or does it? I'm no expert. Nobody ever left me anything except their relations and funeral bills.'

'I can imagine.'

'Yes. Well, six months soon passes—and I've heard that the lawyers are usually reasonable about advancing a bit of money, if only to pay for the funeral—Ah! When I think about it, our investigations might have messed things up a bit there. Now that I think about it, the Public Prosecutor will have been in touch with—oh, but there's the young lady, your stepdaughter. No reason why they shouldn't advance money to her. That means she'll pay for the funeral.'

'She did, as a matter of fact. Why not?'

'Yes. Of course, you'll be able to reimburse her when things get sorted out . . .'

'What things?'

The Marshal chose to ignore this. 'Well, what are your plans now?'

'What?'

'I'm sorry. You were kind enough to call on me so I thought . . . I didn't intend to pry into your business. Just a sociable inquiry, you know. I thought you might be thinking of buying a house . . .'

The pale eyes met his for a fleeting instant and veered away. Young Fara wasn't far wrong. They were feverish.

'I have got my eye on something, as it happens, but I'd prefer not to mention it until it's settled, if you don't mind.'

The Marshal, face bland and innocent, opened his hands in total submission. 'You'll think I'm prying again. No, no . . . it was just the carpets that made me think . . . natural association, as you can imagine.'

'I can imagine, yes. Those stuffed frogs from Sotheby's have been talking. Well, it's a lot of fuss about nothing. I'll go round there and collect them when I have time. At the moment, I've rather a lot on my mind, you know that.'

'I do, indeed. Was there anything else?'

'What?' Forbes looked alarmed. It was clear that he had quite forgotten that he was the one to initiate this little meeting. Now he didn't know how to get out of the room.

The Marshal, who found his presence oppressive in the extreme, decided to help him. 'I don't want to delay you for your appointment with the British consul . . .'

Forbes had been trying, during the last part of this conversation to tip his chair back in a careless attitude. When the Marshal suddenly got to his feet and came round the desk towards him he almost fell backwards. The Marshal, it was true, was three times his weight, but it wasn't so much that as his presence, his gravity, that made Forbes dither. Beads of sweat appeared on his temples, though the room was not too warm. Saving himself from falling backwards, he jumped to his feet and was swept towards the door merely by the force of the Marshal's stare.

'Allow me.' The Marshal opened up. 'Your girlfriend seems to have deserted you.' He stopped on the threshold of his office and watched Forbes scuttle in silence across the bit of waiting-room where Lorenzini waited at the door and ceremoniously saluted him out, following the retreating figure with a grimace.

'The girl left,' he said, locking the door.

'So I see. What did she have to say for herself?'

'She was furious. Seems he told her he was coming here to report the theft of a camera. She got wind there was something up, and I told her she was right, there was. She's only eighteen. Beats me what an eighteen-year-old sees in him.'

'He gives them pointers.'

'Eh?'

'That's what he says. You'd have to be no more than eighteen to fall for it, his great knowledge of Florentine art and history and what-have-you.'

'What's that got to do with it? He looks like he couldn't get it up to me.'

'Yes. Well, people are peculiar. It's not our problem. What we need to know is why he brought her here.'

'Just trailing her along?'

'Oh no. No, no. He brought her to show her to me.'

'But why—Well, yes, as you said, we don't know why.'

'Hm.' The Marshal turned back to go into his office. 'That's the trouble, damn it. I do know why, I just can't remember . . .'

He closed the door. Lorenzini stared after him for a moment and then turned to the duty room, shouting, 'Fara!'

'Mortified! I'm just mortified! Nobody ever comes to see me and now all of you are here and I can't even—'

'Eugenia!' Fusarri put an arm round her and almost carried her to the door of the sitting-room to eject her.

'If I could just offer you a cup of tea! If I'd known before one, when Giorgio calls, I'd have told him to organize something with Doney but although I make tea for myself it's a teapot for one and I can't possibly reach the top of the cupboard where the others are—there's an English one—Doulton—and a Japanese one that Giorgio—'

'Eugenia!' He shut the door on her. 'Ha!' He made a pretence of mopping his brow. 'Ye gods!' He fell into a deep armchair opposite Captain Maestrangelo. The Marshal stood at the window, his large, black uniformed shoulders blocking most of the light, staring out in silence. Fara was out there in the courtyard, in his usual place in the car. Given the presence of the Captain and the Prosecutor, there was nothing else for it. Directly below the window the sun was warming the polythene shrouds of the lemon trees, the uneven stones of the yard, the red roof of the little barn. For the almond tree it was too late. The tiny unfolding buds were dropping around it, their frail pink petals burnt brown by the bitter wind. Beyond the bare lines of the sloping vineyard lay an olive grove, its silvery leaves pale against the glossy brown folds of a ploughed field. Far below, the city of Florence spread its terracotta roofs and marble towers against a backcloth of blue hills. Even after all these years, the Marshal never tired of looking at it. At this distance, filthy pavements, unemptied rubbish skips, traffic jams and the stink of drains and exhaust fumes ceased to exist. At this distance it was a paradise and the gentle warmth of the sun and the quietness lay over every- thing like a blessing. Except for the almond tree . . . 'This is the fax from her lawyer's office—that's your copy, Maestrangelo—and there should be one with a translation attached for Guarnaccia who seems to be admiring the view . . .'

Trees . . . a country lane . . . Vittorio. Still, the memory wouldn't surface, at least not as far as his brain. It surfaced as far as his stomach, bringing a feeling of fear and nausea that he repressed. Clearly he didn't want to remember and yet Forbes was provoking him to it. It was absurd! What connection could there possibly be . . . ?

'It's a sizeable amount of money and, of course, there are other considerations, the chief of them being that she was intending to leave him and from what I've seen of Forbes . . . Can I offer you a cigar?'

'No, thank you.'

'Hope they don't bother you. Now this Forbes character . . . There was a paternity suit but the girl's parents refused to let her marry him. Payments are being made by Forbes's parents but they want nothing further to do with him and it suits them that Celia Carter took him off to Italy. That all sounds in character, I'd say.'

What if it wasn't a connection that had to do with facts, but only with feelings? Because he had to admit, though he was reluctant to do it, that a similar feeling of fear and nausea had been building up inside him for some time, and that he was trying to smother it, trying not to acknowledge its meaning, just as he tried not to acknowledge the memory of Vittorio, trees, a country lane. How long had he been feeling like that? He couldn't pinpoint it. After he'd talked to Father Jameson, perhaps . . .

A fit of coughing interrupted his thoughts. He was enveloped in a cloud of Fusarri's cigar smoke.

'All right, Guarnaccia, point taken. I'll try and hold out without my cigar for ten minutes. Open the window, if you like—I'm sure Eugenia won't mind—and then, for goodness' sake come and sit down.'

The Marshal did as he was told. He opened the window. The noise disturbed a small bird which darted out of the vine covering the wall of the house and flew away chattering angrily. Then the Marshal remembered.

'My feeling is that once we've got our thoughts in order we should go over there and face him with it. A confession's our only hope, obviously, unless somebody has a brainwave about how he did it. What about it, Guarnaccia?'

Getting no response, Fusarri looked inquiringly at the Captain who, more than a little irritated, called his Marshal to order. 'I don't think we're getting your full attention on this. Guarnaccia—Guarnaccia, are you feeling all right?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Good. Now I'd like to be a bit surer of my ground here and what isn't clear is his current behaviour, all this drawing attention to himself, these bizarre episodes—I take it we can rely absolutely on Signora Torrini's account of today's events?'

'Ah! Dear Eugenia!' Forgetting his promise, Fusarri lit up and blue clouds issued forth again. 'Yes, well, I'd say you can rely on her telling the truth and nothing but the truth, but not necessarily the whole truth, if you see what I mean.'

'I'm not sure that I do.' The Captain wasn't surprised that Guarnaccia couldn't cope with this sort of thing. He'd forgotten himself how difficult it was.

'What I'm trying to say is that dear Eugenia wouldn't tell a lie. If she says there was a violent quarrel over there at the barn and that she was seriously afraid the daughter might meet a similar fate to her mother's, then she certainly meant it. And if she says that Forbes then came over here and tried to buy the Villa Torrini, frightening her to death in the process, then I'm sure that's what happened. All I'm saying is that she's elderly and very upset, and that there are things she will have failed to notice or forgotten to mention in the telling of it, and we must allow for that."

'Yes, of course. Well the best thing would be for one of us to go over it again with her tomorrow when she's had a little time to calm down—you don't think her son ought to come and stay with her?'

'Giorgio? Hm. He'd come if I insisted and leave after the first half-hour or the first quarrel whichever was the sooner. Better leave Giorgio out of this. He's still furious with her about the priest—Guarnaccia, are you sure you're all right?'

'Yes, the priest . . . ' Shocked out of his reverie, he automatically repeated the Prosecutor's last words the way the teacher used to make him do at school, because at school was where he was in his head.

'The priest . . . yes, she did say that first night I came here that she'd called the priest and that Giorgio was furious. But there was no priest here so I never quite . . .'