Some Bitter Taste (24 page)

‘I would say that he had been dead for approximately twelve hours.

‘I was called by Sir Christopher’s secretary a little before eight and, since I had two urgent house calls to do, I arrived at L’Uliveto at about nine-thirty.

‘He was in his bed, where the boy who looked after him found him when he came into the room as usual at around seven-thirty A.M.

‘The body was composed and the bed tidy. The final stroke would seem to have occurred during sleep.

‘I saw no suspicious circumstances whatever. I would have alerted the appropriate authorities had I done so. Sir Christopher had been a very sick man for some time and his death was in no way unexpected.

‘You will find that an autopsy will confirm the cause of death as an ischaemic episode, possibly accompanied by some haemorrhaging, given the somewhat hardened condition of the arteries.’

And it did. The pathologist had looked at Maestrangelo and the marshal across the half-exposed corpse. The sawn-off circle of skull had been sewn back in place with large black stitches.

‘What about the head injury?’ Maestrangelo asked.

‘Superficial.’

‘And the arm? The fingers?’

‘That’s your department. He didn’t do that falling out of bed.’

With the cautionary tale of Sara Hirsch in mind, the marshal said, ‘He was meant to keep calm and quiet because of the risk of more strokes He’d had rheumatic fever as a boy. If somebody attacked him, twisting—breaking—his arm, could that have … you know ‘Upped his blood pressure, increased his heart rate, precipitated the blockage of the artery and its rupture? That what you’re after?’

‘I … yes.’

‘No.’

‘No … ?’

‘Not a chance. Look here.’ The pathologist lifted the cold, waxy limb. ‘What you can see on the underside is postmortem lividity—’

‘Just a moment.’ The captain looked at the mottled red patches, then at the pathologist. You can confirm that he died on his back?’

‘I can confirm that he was lying on his back for many hours not long after he died but postmortem lividity takes time to become visible and if the body’s moved in time and the process is not too far along, gravity will do its work and blood will settle according to the new position. Be that as it may, my point is that there’s no real bruising on the dislocated shoulder or broken fingers. These are
postmortem
fractures. Why would anybody twist the arm of a dead man? It’s an undertaker’s trick.’

‘No, no …’ Those big stitches reminded him of that hairdresser … he hadn’t seen her since they moved Enkeleda. ‘No. He called me to tell me about it. Refused to bury the man. He’s an ex-carabinieri, you see ‘Then I can’t help you. Undertakers sometimes have to do it, as you know, if the limbs aren’t composed immediately after death and rigor mortis causes difficulty in dressing the corpse.’

‘He didn’t dress it,’ the captain pointed out. ‘He just called us. And the man supposedly died in his bed, most likely in his sleep. The body was composed when his own doctor examined him and wrote the certificate.’

‘As I said, it’s a job for you.’ He had pushed the drawer back into the refrigerator.

It was still raining. The marshal stood outside the French windows, sheltered under the porch, waiting. He found that if, instead of looking up at the misty, deceptive sky, he watched the leaves of the climbing roses and wisteria framing his view he could detect the tiny movements as fine raindrops touched them.

A job for the carabinieri. One that could get you in real trouble if you didn’t do it thoroughly and even more trouble if you did.

Well, it wasn’t the marshal’s responsibility and Captain Maestrangelo was just the officer for it. ‘Acting on information received, they were obliged, given the standing of the subject, to go through the proper motions to establish the circumstances of his death. An HSA report’—homicide, suicide, or accident, but he didn’t spell that out—'a routine procedure,’ with apologies to all concerned. The right man for the job. The marshal could have done without being there at all. Waiting for the captain to pick him up after lunch, he’d had a call from the prosecutor’s office. Rinaldi had gone out and was being followed in an unmarked car on Viale Petrarca.

The prosecutor himself had come on the line when he’d explained his problem.

‘Don’t worry. I’d prefer to leave him on a long leash. Call me when you get back and I’ll let you know where he goes.’

Up at the villa, the young gardener had opened the gates, acting as porter, this being August, as he’d explained.

He said, in lowered tones, ‘There’s quite a crowd here. I’m glad to see you. I thought, to be honest, that they’d have had the decency to wait until he was dead—but then, they had no scruples last time, when his father was in hospital, so I shouldn’t be surprised, I suppose.’

This time, it was the marshal who said, ‘We’d better have a talk later.’

‘Just give me a shout. They’ve told me to open up the lemon house again. Opening the stable door rather than shutting it. They didn’t do him any harm, did they?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I’ll ring up to the house to announce you. Go in at the central door. Naturally, there isn’t a servant in the place. You’d better get inside quickly, there’s another storm brewing.’ Thunder was rumbling around the hills and there was a hot, damp wind blowing. When they got out of the car outside the house it was very dark.

They were inside the mosaic hall with its dusty fountain when, with a deafening crack, the storm broke and the deluge began. Even in the gloom they had no need of any directions. There might have been no servants but there was a single light coming from a room to their left, the one where the marshal had glimpsed a boy in tears and Porteous’s hand slowly massaging.

Men’s voices were loud beyond the open door, not raised but loud with authority and self-importance. It was the captain who asked permission and entered, the marshal following and remaining a step or two behind.

The rain beat on the tall windows as the men in the room fell silent, a questioning silence on the part of the officials from the tax department and the men from the ministries of fine arts and of monuments, a silence of fear on the part of the thin, fair boy standing a little apart from them. But neither the captain nor the marshal looked at these people. The three men in the centre of the group drew their attention, the space around them electric. The eyes of Porteous and the smooth young lawyer were alert but confident, those of Rinaldi defiant. He’d had the time it took for them to come along the drive to prepare his expression but his face was red.

‘Good afternoon, Signor Rinaldi,’ the captain said. ‘Gentlemen …’

One way or another, they all made some answer. Or did Rinaldi not speak? The marshal didn’t really notice. His big eyes had registered the long sitting room, its dusty brocaded chairs, its tapestries. But Rinaldi only made a fleeting impression, that of a long-sought-for road sign in the dark, pointing … Renato Rinaldi …
'Dear Renato, whose taste for fine paintings and statuary has always guided my own
—
more so than my father’s’…
pointing to a fourth face, the face that held his attention as the captain began his discourse. Next to the beautiful woman, painted full length in oils, in her garden.

“When you go into the house, look at her portrait in the long drawing room … the most beautiful woman I have ever seen … there’s a portrait of my father, too…’

This one, too, full length in oils. Indoors in evening dress. The father. That was who held the marshal’s gaze. Young still, handsome, James Wrothesly, in his prime. There was no mistaking those eyes, that black determination, that unwavering stare. It was Jacob Roth.

Now Rinaldi was talking.

‘The tax office asked me to assist with the valuation since I’m familiar with the collection so, naturally—’

Unthinking, his eyes never leaving Jacob’s, the marshal touched the captain’s sleeve, interrrupting. ‘We need to call the prosecutor.’

The captain looked at him. It was enough. Without a flicker of change in his habitual grave expression, he asked that they be shown to the room in which Sir Christopher was found dead and, once they were there, that they be left alone. Porteous, who accompanied them, was clearly unwilling to go but, if he had thought to protest, one look at the marshal’s face sufficed for him, too. He went, closing the door.

The marshal was breathing heavily. Smells, sounds, images filled his head. Faces staring at him with intensity in life, faces mutely, blindly reproachful in death. The dark stink of a death camp, the perfumed light of a garden …

And the captain needed explanations, logical connections, words, so many words …

He did his best as his eyes photographed this new picture, the invaded room, its pretty furniture pushed aside, the big oak bed with the covers tossed to the foot, the imprint of its grave burden still visible. A wheelchair parked nearby. And the painting! Sara’s painting, no longer diminished to flat black and white strokes and patches but alive and dazzling. Water lilies …
'And if I watched them long enough …’

‘Guarnaccia…’

‘Yes. I’m still trying to take it in myself. My son once showed me something in one of his schoolbooks. A sort of trick picture. You could either see it as an orange-coloured silhouette of a chalice or else the black ones of two faces. You were always looking at the same thing, only it depended how you looked at it but, anyway, you could never see both at once, even for a split second. I don’t know if you follow me …’

The captain looked desperate.

‘I’m sorry. That painting in the drawing room came as a bit of a shock to me but I realise it probably shouldn’t have done. When people change their names they always cling to something, don’t they? Sometimes the same initials, a middle name. You probably understand that better than me.’

‘Guarnaccia, before the prosecutor gets here, I need—’

‘Yes. Wrothesly. It’s a bit difficult for me to get my tongue round it but if you see it written down—and, after all, I did see it written down—it’s there, isn’t it? His real name. James Wrothesly, Sir Christopher’s father, was Jacob Roth. He made a fortune taking advantage of his fellow Jews fleeing from the Nazis in the thirties. Then he changed his name, perhaps in England, and married a rich young woman, brought her here, and had a son by her. But he had left a young Jewish girl pregnant in his father’s house above the shop in Sdrucciolo de’ Pitti. Sir Christopher and Sara were half brother and sister. There was trouble over the inheritance. We know what happened to Sara but…’He went close to the big bed, staring down at the imprint. ‘What happened to you?’

Once the prosecutor arrived, Porteous and young Giorgio were called in to describe the events surrounding Sir Christopher’s death. It was clear from the start that Porteous had no problems about this at all. Only the boy was nervous and careful to speak only when spoken to. For the rest of the time his eyes were fixed on Porteous as he talked smoothly on. They were all on their feet. No one seemed inclined to sit down in this room.

There was very little to recount, it seemed. Sir Christopher had spent the last day of his life in much the same way as many preceding ones. He rose early, helped, as was usual, by young Giorgio, and spent the first part of the morning on the dining terrace overlooking his late mother’s garden, his favourite spot and conveniently close to this room. When it became too hot outdoors he was brought inside and the boy read the daily paper to him. He ate very little lunch but otherwise appeared quite normal. He lay on the bed and slept for a while. There was a storm brewing in the afternoon which prevented his being outside. Again the boy read to him from the newspaper, which Sir Christopher, having lost the full use of his right hand after the last stroke, could not manage alone. After looking through some business papers between six and seven, as he generally did, he had a light supper and was helped to bed. He didn’t complain of feeling ill. On coming into the room at about seven-thirty the next morning and opening the outer shutters and the French windows, the boy discovered that Sir Christopher was dead. He called the secretary at once. Of course, there had been some deterioration recently, but naturally Sir Christopher’s death, coming as it did without any immediate warning signs, was a terrible shock.

‘Naturally,’ the prosecutor agreed.

‘I should imagine it was,’ the captain said, and they both looked at the marshal.

What did they want him to say? All this talk and the boy’s face … he’d been watching the boy’s face, remembering how that day he had cried. He was afraid now, afraid and distressed. Not the other fellow, though, talking and talking, sure of his ground, confident. So why lie, then? The boy knew.

‘When you left him that evening, what was he doing?’

‘He was’—a glance at Porteous—'he was sleeping, I think.’

The marshal, too, turned his attention to Porteous.

‘And what about during the night?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘I should be asking … Giorgio, isn’t it? I should be asking you. I imagine Sir Christopher relied on you if he needed to get up in the night.’

‘Yes.’

‘How was it managed? Where do you sleep?’

Giorgio pointed out a servants’ door, camouflaged with the silk hangings on the walls. ‘In the corridor out there. There’s a small room where I sleep and a bathroom.’

‘And that’s the bellpull there near the little desk? So far from the bed?’

‘No. I mean yes. That rings in the kitchen. Sir Christopher used a brass handbell. I could hear it easily. He kept it with him outside, too, in case he needed me.’

‘And that last night, did he need you?’

‘I … no … not that I remember.’ His face flushed, his eyes again seeking those of Porteous but no help was forthcoming there.

‘Isn’t that a bit odd? Or did he never get you up?’

‘Usually he did, yes.’

‘Once a night? Or twice, usually?’

‘Twice.’ It was almost inaudible above the noise of the storm.

‘Did you say twice?’

‘Yes.’

‘You could tell his mouth was dry. The marshal loosened his hold a little. ‘Well, the doctor said he’d been dead a good twelve hours when he saw him so that would explain it, wouldn’t you say so, Captain?’