A Rich Full Death (4 page)

And Beatrice? She, left alone once more, began to realise the problems that her mistress’s death was likely to cause her. Isabel Eakin was a foreigner; where foreigners are involved there are always complications; these are not likely to be diminished when the foreigner in question is young, beautiful and has met a violent death. The remedy, clearly, was to fight fire with fire — bring in another foreigner to deal with these problems in the high-handed foreign way. And so she sent a lad from a nearby farm to summon Mr Browning.

Yes, indeed! I too sat bolt upright and wide awake at this astonishing intelligence. So did the police official.

‘We are so fortunate as to have several thousand foreigners here in Florence,’ he commented, with a flicker of a smile. ‘Why, out of so many, did you send for this one?’

A pointing finger reduced Mr Browning to the status of an inanimate courtroom exhibit.

And now, for the first time, Beatrice faltered—fatally. Thus far everything had been said calmly, smoothly, naturally; with some understandable confusion in places, but no sense whatever of embarrassment or difficulty. Yet now her eyes roved restlessly about, determinedly avoiding Mr Browning’s—who for his part was looking at the girl with unusual intensity.

‘I don’t know,’ she murmured at last.

‘Don’t know?’

Talenti had dropped his teasing manner.

‘Do you think I can be fobbed off with such stuff, my girl? If you can’t do better than that, I’ll have you locked up in the Bargello until you do know. But first I’ll give you one more chance. Why did you send for this man?’

Browning made to speak, but the official peremptorily silenced him. The maid started to weep. At length she spoke, almost inaudibly.

‘He was a friend.’

‘Oh, he was, was he? Your friend?’

I glanced at Browning, who sat strained forward, the image of a man in an agony of suspense.

‘A friend of the family,’ Beatrice replied between sobs.

‘But what are you saying, you stupid girl?’ the gate-keeper suddenly burst out. ‘What friend of the family? I see everyone who comes to this house. For example, I know
you
well enough,’ he said, turning to me. ‘But as for this man’—pointing at Browning ‘I’ve never seen him before in my life!’

The police official stared bleakly at Beatrice.

‘So, you have lied. That much is sure. Do you know the penalty for lying to the authorities?’ He paused, terribly, for a moment. ‘Now then, for the third and last time I ask you—why did you send for this man?’

The poor girl looked at Browning, and then at the policeman, and then back at Browning. I had not noticed before—one doesn’t, of course, with servants—how beautiful she was, with very distinct features, a full figure, and long raven-black hair. Finally she spoke, in a wavering voice.

‘He was a friend … of the signora.’

And she nodded at the table where Isabel’s body lay stretched out.

The mocking little smile appeared for an instant on Talenti’s features, and was gone.

‘I see,’ he replied blandly. ‘Well, Signor Browning—what have you to say?’

After a long silence Browning asked if he could speak to the official alone, and to my surprise—and disappointment—this was granted. Browning then quickly scribbled a note, which he handed to me with the following words: ‘Mr Booth, I implore you, as one gentleman to another, to deliver this to my wife as soon as possible. Will you do so much for me? It will prevent much needless suffering. But say nothing of what has happened here, I beseech you! I am, of course, completely innocent—as will very soon be established.’

I expressed my wholehearted belief in this, and promised to deliver his note immediately. Then, having supplied my address to the police, I reluctantly left the villa.

On my way home I tried to make some sense of what I had witnessed, and in particular of Browning’s declaration that he was completely innocent—which very naturally provoked the thought ‘innocent of
what?’
Of any relationship with the deceased woman? Then why should Beatrice so plainly have tried to conceal this fact? Why struggle to conceal from the police—with all the dangers this entailed—a relationship which did not exist?

No, surely what Mr Browning must have meant is that there was a connection between him and Isabel, but that it was not a guilty one. The fact remains, however, that it looks bad—and this impression is not diminished by the fact that he is evidently striving to conceal the whole affair from his wife. This was confirmed by his note, which I took the liberty of reading before handing it in—falsehoods were in the air, after all, and I felt justified in knowing just exactly which one I might be taking responsibility for spreading. ‘I have been detained longer than expected—do not wait up for me—will explain all tomorrow’ was the gist of the thing. Fortunately I was spared any need to tell untruths myself, merely handing Browning’s note to the servant and continuing home to bed.

I slept badly, tormented by doubts, questions, hopes and fears, and was awakened at six o’clock by the characteristic Florentine din of a bullock-cart passing by underneath my window. It is now almost nine, and with the sunlight streaming into the room last night seems little more real than a bad dream—it suddenly occurs to me that the answers to all the mysteries I have so laboriously described may well be known by now. I shall therefore lay down my pen and go and seek them out, in hopes of concluding this letter in a more satisfactory fashion than with a mere series of question marks.

Tuesday

Has it ever happened to you, while going through old papers, to hit upon some youthful journal or memorandum, full of shallow certainties and easy courage? If so, you will be familiar with the mixture of contempt and pity which I now feel on scanning the above lines—the difference being that these were penned not six-and-thirty hours ago!

Judge from this the intensity of the changes that have taken place in so short a time: truly I may say that most of the things I thought yesterday have been unceremoniously seized and stood on their heads, leaving my own in a state of utter bewilderment. Believe it or not, Prescott, I find myself in the extraordinary situation of aiding and abetting Mr Robert Browning in an attempt to pervert the course of justice!

But this is not the way to set about it. ‘First things first’ must be my motto, if I am to make any sense of all.

By Monday morning, then, as I mentioned, the storm had quite blown over, leaving a clear sky and crisp sunshot air—one of those splendid days, harbingers of spring, that make one feel like crying out aloud ‘The South! The South!’ Needless to say, I restrained any such impulse, but nevertheless my heart was high as I strode through the streets of Florence. Poor Isabel’s death seemed a distant memory, a horror of the night, and my grief had become almost an abstraction. Nature’s compensation for the loss of our loved ones is a renewed sense of our own vitality. ‘Alas, that she is gone!’ I sighed, and back came answer, ‘Rejoice, that you remain!’ At such a moment, on such a day, simply being alive is reason enough to exult; and I exulted.

The streets of Florence are a spectacle of which one never tires, but that morning every scene produced an effect overwhelmingly rich and deep and full of life. The profusion of anecdote and incident which assails the eye here may be partly explained by the way in which the aristocrat here lives cheek by jowl with the pauper, the merchant with the artisan. There is no ‘good’ quarter, with the result that you see more in the time it takes to stroll the length of one average street than you will in a week elsewhere; and all bizarrely juxtaposed with the greatest nonchalance: grave burghers in fur-lined capes discussing the real unpublished news of the city in discreet murmurs; a locksmith at work on a creaky old door; a brace of counterfeit Madonnas set out in the street, awaiting the framer’s art; a ringing laugh, a cutting jibe, a sullen retort; chickens being throttled, plucked and suspended on strings; a peasant woman carefully sprinkling water to freshen her horde of green vegetables; meat being hoisted in a basket on a rope towards an inaccessible window from which a face peers anxiously down; a distinguished-looking gentleman complaining loudly that the watch he has been sold keeps stopping dead at five to five every day; a priest scurrying along on some urgent mission of life or death; a soldier with a prisoner in guard; a girl with big grave eyes who leaves her work for a moment to watch you pass.

And when at length you reach the river, and the huddling mediaeval walls fall back to reveal San Donato hill with the monastery, and the great reach of glinting water bridged by the quaint old Ponte Vecchio (which is apparently to be pulled down any day now) and the snow-capped mountains in the distance—well, to my unphilosophical eye it all seems a quite sufficient justification in itself for the existence of the world.

Once beyond the river, however, this mood of unreflecting joy waned, deserting me altogether as I approached the Guidi palace. I had set off thither without much thought of the difficulties of my enterprise, but as I drew nearer to my goal these became only too evident. What did I think I was about, setting off thus blithely to pay a morning call on Mr Robert Browning? Even assuming that this gentleman was prepared to receive me at such an hour, it would almost certainly be impossible for us to discuss what had happened the previous night, since his wife was bound to be present. Moreover, I realised, it was more than likely that I featured in whatever story Browning had dreamed up to account for his late return home—the servant to whom I had handed in the note had recognised me, and this would have had to be explained. To blunder in and attempt to improvise my part in this domestic comedy was to risk my entire standing here. At one stroke I might become a social leper, persona non grata wherever I turned, the man to whom no one would ever again be at home!

On the other hand, the fact remained that I absolutely had to know the outcome of Browning’s interrogation and the police enquiries into Isabel’s death; and since an approach through a third party might equally give rise to embarrassing questions my informant could only be Mr Browning himself.

The only solution which occurred to me was to wait until Mr Browning left home, and then approach him in the street. I accordingly made my way to a small café on the other side of the Rome road, ordered a large dish of coffee and settled down to read the morning paper—keeping a careful watch on everyone who emerged from the Palazzo Guidi.

I had not been there very long when I became aware that I was not the only person thus employed: in the doorway of a church opposite stood a man lounging in a painfully self-conscious fashion, whom I recognised with a shock as one of the policemen who had been at the villa the night before!

For a moment I assumed that the fellow was spying on
me
, but I soon realised that his attention too was fixed on the building opposite. This naturally redoubled my curiosity, but I was obliged to contain myself in patience for the best part of an hour before I spied the stocky figure of Robert Browning emerge from the cave-like entrance to his lair into the strong sunlight and deeper shadows of Via Maggio.

I had devoted some thought to what the police agent might do at this juncture, and what my best course would be if—as indeed proved to be the case—he were to follow Browning. To have two of us dogging the poet’s footsteps was manifestly absurd, yet now Browning had emerged I did not wish to risk losing him. I therefore crossed the road and dashed down a side-street opposite, past mangy cats and beggar brats—for though the Brownings face the Grand-Dukes’s palace, the alleyways behind are plebeian in the extreme—to the next street, where I turned right and continued my headlong course, lungs bursting—thank heaven they are fully mended now, and can support this kind of exercise!—as far as the Trinity bridge. Thanks to my exertions, however, I arrived at the bridge before Mr Browning, and was leaning over a parapet contemplating the turbid waters of the Arno when he passed by—at which moment I turned and greeted him with as convincing a show of natural surprise as I was capable of.

‘You are followed,’ I told him, indicating with a nod the spy who had just hove in sight at the end of the bridge, struggling to keep up with the foreigner’s brisk pace.

A look of deep dismay crossed Browning’s features.

‘Have you time for a coffee?’ I enquired without pause. ‘I would like to hear how last night’s little drama ended.’

‘All the time in the world,’ he replied.

And indeed all his earlier haste, his sense of purpose and bustle, had quite evaporated. Where had he been headed so urgently, I could not help wondering, that he would not go now he knew himself to be watched?

We strolled up Via Tornabuoni as far as the famous Doney’s, where somewhat to my disappointment—for I naturally had no wish to make any secret of my familiarity with Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s husband—he insisted on taking a table in a small room at the rear of the premises, where the scions of noble Tuscan families fallen on hard times come to read the news-sheet and drink coffee strained from grounds that have served already for the brew of rich barbarians. In the end, however, it all worked out as well, or even better, for some half dozen of my friends saw us pass through the main saloon together, and then retire to the intimacy of the back room to pursue matters we did not wish to have overheard.