Some Bitter Taste (8 page)

‘I’ve got the prosecutor on the other line now. Hold on,’ Captain Maestrangelo said.

The marshal held. Of course, he didn’t have a suspect, not even a shadow of one, but he wanted to go through her papers this morning and find both her brother and her lawyer without delay. He realised that he had as yet told no one about the bag-snatching episode, which would suggest that a stranger might have had her keys, rather than that she had opened the door to her killer.

‘Marshal?’

‘Yes. There’s something I should have mentioned—when the victim came to me, she reported having had her bag—’

‘It’s your case. Tell the prosecutor. He’ll be at the Hirsch flat in fifteen minutes and wants you to check on the two shops below before you join him—but I’d like you to postpone your visit to Sir Christopher rather than give it up. I’ll make your excuses myself and get the fingerprinting done this morning. I’d send somebody else but he’d take it very badly, you know, and I wouldn’t like there to be any repercussions … Guarnaccia?’

‘Yes. Yes, I’ll do as you say, of course.’

‘Is there a problem?’

‘No … I think. If we move fast on this Hirsch case, we can get to the bottom of it. She led such a confined life that—’ He was amazed at himself. He was no detective. What was he thinking of to claim he could solve a case he knew nothing about yet? The captain would wonder what had come over him. It was embarrassment which made him so far forget himself as to say whatever came into his head so long as it changed the subject. ‘You haven’t told me … this business of Sir Christopher. Are we just obliged to put up a good show for an important foreign resident? I’m sorry, I was just wondering, because in that case I only need to make a courtesy visit, as brief as possible. You see what I mean. To tell you the truth, since they haven’t a hope of recovering the stuff and have warned us off accusing any of the staff, I don’t see why they called us at all. These people must think we’ve nothing better to do.’

‘They do think that, if they think about it at all, which I doubt. I’ll be frank with you, Guarnaccia. Of course it began as a matter of courtesy and I’ve told you why I came along. Pay him the courtesy of the visit he’s asked for, however brief, if not out of respect for the uniform we wear then out of respect for his sickness and his age. You have always had more patience with age and loneliness than anyone I know.’

‘And this good man, too…
’

‘Yes. He’s not old, though.’

‘No, I suppose by today’s standards … and they say he’s ill but he could go on for years with the best care.’

‘No.’

‘No? He told you more about his illness? Despite being embarrassed about it?’

‘No. He didn’t tell me much but he wasn’t embarrassed about it at all. No, no … he’s dying and he knows it.’

‘He said that?’

‘No.’ No, no, no! The marshal wanted to be let off. The Hirsch murder, with its background of Sdrucciolo de’ Pitti, with the Rossis and the local shopkeepers as witnesses, he could deal with. He might not solve it—not a scrap of evidence had come to light yet—but he knew where he was, he knew what to do. Why couldn’t the captain send some smart young officer to the villa, one of those military academy types from a good family who would drink tea with the Englishman and not fall over his own boots in the flower garden.

And this good man, too. Willlseeyou again?’
That sad, almost pleading look before Sir Christopher turned away.

What did people want, what did they expect of him?

‘You’ll really come and see me as you promised?’
Signora Hirsch’s frightened eyes. He wanted to concentrate on her now but it was a bit late, wasn’t it? He had forgotten her for days.

‘And this good man, too …’
Sir Christopher would die. That’s a road we all have to travel alone. What help could he possibly be?

‘Guarnaccia?’

‘I’ll go as soon as the prosecutor can spare me.’

He got up, put on jacket and holster, lifted his hat from its hook, checked with Lorenzini, and started down the narrow stairs, already feeling for his sunglasses. The sky was almost colourless, the glare enough to have his eyes streaming in seconds. He went down the side of the palace forecourt in the shade offered by a high wall. It didn’t help. The heat was all-suffusing, the air was stagnant. Sometimes, when it was like this, car tyres made the wet sound of a rainy day but it didn’t rain, except sometimes for a minute or two, a few fat drops that rose as steam on the instant to increase the Turkish bath effect. The marshal walked slowly. He didn’t want his shirt sticking to him. He didn’t want to get so distressed by the suffocating heat that he would start forgetting things and lose his patience. If you lose your patience in July you’re not likely to get it back again until after your evening shower. And to think that people paid good money to suffer not only all this but the stress of an unknown city and a language they couldn’t speak.

“You’re holding the map upside down!’

‘I’ve told you I’ll go in no more shops!’

‘Mum, I’m thirsty!’

‘A very important collection of paintings and I don’t want to hear another word out of either of you until—’

‘Did you
have
to let it melt all down your front?’

Without understanding a word, the marshal recognized these complaints as they drifted around him in a dozen languages. He stood waiting to cross the road, muttering as he did every year, T don’t know what they come here for, they’d do better to stop at home.’

There was a traffic pileup and the marshal gave up waiting and wandered across the narrow road between the cars and the inevitable chorus of horns.

Sdrucciolo de’ Pitti was a haven of peace in comparison. It was cluttered with parked mopeds and bikes and it was occasionally necessary to flatten yourself against the wall to let a white Mercedes taxi by, but otherwise you could walk in the middle of the paved alley and you were away from the worst of the noise. Rinaldi, the antique dealer, was at his door, looking down the street as though expecting someone. He turned and spotted the marshal coming down, though.

‘Ah. I heard about the Hirsch woman. Come in if you think I can help you. You’ll excuse me if I keep an eye on the street? I’m waiting for a delivery. Very good men, the best there are, but with things of great value, you understand …’

‘Of course. Why don’t you see to that. I’ll go in and wait, then we’ll talk.’ Once inside, the marshal almost regretted having suggested this. He liked looking round places unobserved, not to mention observing people from behind. But ‘things of great value’ was an understatement in this case, as would be ‘bull in a china shop’. So he removed his sunglasses and kept very still. Only his huge all-seeing eyes scanned the long, dark room with its deep red polished floor, gilded frames, and weathered statuary. Rinaldi’s broad back excluded most of the spent light from the alley. A fancy lamp with a silk shade made a golden pool on a tiny inlaid desk where Rinaldi must habitually sit. There was no clutter, only an elegant desk set and a silver box of visiting cards. The rasping engine of a three-wheel truck at the door announced the expected delivery. Rinaldi came inside. He looked as anxious as a mother cat, and his hands clenched and unclenched as two huge men struggled with a crate that was almost as tall as a human being and clearly a great deal heavier. The men’s faces were red with strain and they gasped for breath.

‘Down! Put her down! I can’t make it…’ They stood the crate on its end in the centre of the small room and bent double, heaving, clutching their chests. One of them, whose greasy blond hair was tied back in a ponytail, was sweating so much that big drops rolled down his nose and splattered onto the polished floor. The dark head of the other was shaven but it gleamed with wetness even so. ‘I thought we’d never get her on that truck. Next time it’s got to be three men … Jesus…’

‘There isn’t a third man I can trust like you.’ Rinaldi seemed barely able to breathe himself. ‘You must get her through to the back for the restorers.’

They did it, too, though the marshal feared they might have heart attacks in the attempt. The crate was broken open and he caught a glimpse of sculpted draperies. These disappeared under sheeting and the men reappeared, shutting the rear door behind them.

They left without being paid, an almost invisible signal passing between them and Rinaldi. The marshal was used to this sort of thing. He was investigating a murder and they were trying to hide a cash payment without receipt from him. Half the trouble in any investigation was caused by people hiding things from you that were self-evident and that you didn’t care about anyway. The two most common were tax dodges and adultery.

The marshal decided to distract Rinaldi at once.

‘If you don’t mind my asking, do you always call the crates of stuff you get delivered “she"?’

‘What…? Oh, I see.’ Distracted and relieved. ‘Inside that crate was a statue of the goddess Athena. Very much a ‘she’. And very much damaged by pollution, I’m sorry to say. I imagine you’re looking for information about what happened upstairs but I’m afraid I barely knew the woman.’

‘Yes, well, I’ve heard she was very reserved, didn’t chat much with her neighbours.’

‘Not at all, as far as I’m concerned.’

“You never visited her?’

‘Never. “Good morning, good evening” in the street or on the stairs, nothing more.’

‘Really? Probably just gossip, I suppose, but somebody mentioned a bit of a disagreement…’

‘As you say, people gossip.’

‘No disagreement then?’

‘No.’

The marshal fell silent and stayed that way. He stood there, immovable, solid, staring, taking his time in examining Rinaldi. White hair, wavy, rather long, resting on his sweatshirt collar. Red face, crinkly eyes that gave him ajovial look. Bit of a tummy on him. You could see from his hands as much as anything that he was nearer seventy than sixty but he was wearing blue jeans. A vain man whose vanity wasn’t confined to camouflaging his age. He probably enjoyed risky and lucrative deals, executed with panache. Maybe had a couple of such deals on hand right now, but even if one of them concerned the ‘she’ in the crate, he would laugh at the idea of the marshal’s posing any threat to him. He’d be right, too. But then the marshal didn’t want to pose any threat. He just wanted to embarrass the man into saying something, anything, about his neighbour so as to put an end to the marshal’s discomforting silence. The length of time this took was always in inverse ratio to the victim’s intelligence and education. There were men who would hold out through interrogations, trial, appeal, prison, death. Rinaldi didn’t make half a minute. A very cultured man.

‘Look, I’m sure you know the saying ‘no smoke without fire’. In your job you must be used to hearing gossip and interpreting it.’

‘Oh, yes, yes.’

‘So there was—not a row—but, shall we say, a coolness, arising from the fact that she tried to sell me something and the offer I made she found insulting. I’m sure if you look around you, you’ll understand that the sort of thing she had would hardly …’

‘Oh, yes, yes. Very high-class stuff this, very.’

‘Quite. You must have been in her flat. Need I say more? Perfectly understandable, of course. Sentimental value probably and if she was hard up and needed to sell she may well have felt slighted, which would cause her to speak ill of me.’

‘I see. I don’t think I’ve heard anybody say she actually spoke ill of you. You did buy the candlesticks though, in the end?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘I’m perhaps mistaken. I heard she had these candlesticks and they’re not there now so I was assuming … still, if you didn’t offer enough maybe she sold them to somebody else. Yes, that’ll be it. Were you at home the evening she was killed?’

‘I understood you didn’t know when she was killed, that she’d been dead for some time.’

‘Monday evening. It was in this morning’s paper.’

‘I see. I don’t buy a newspaper every day.’

‘Not even when your neighbour’s been murdered?’

‘Not even then. Since I hardly knew her I don’t feel involved. Incidentally, I spoke to the public prosecutor on this case this morning. He arrived shordy before you. Turned out we’d met before. Some dinner party or other.’

‘Oh dear. Arrived before me, did he? I’d better join him at once. I expect we’ll be seeing each other again. Good morning.’ And he walked into the grocer’s next door.

In the grocer’s, the owner, Paolo, left his cheerful son in charge, gave the marshal a chair in the storeroom behind the shop, and rang the bar in Piazza Pitti for a tray of coffees to be delivered. They had a good talk.

‘Did you ever hear about a quarrel—or, as he calls it, a coolness—between Rinaldi the antique dealer and Signora Hirsch?’

‘A row or a coolness? I wouldn’t call it either. She was in tears, I do remember that. She came in here right after, crying.’

Signora Hirsch, one minute all elegance and dignity, the next crumpled in tears.

‘I said to her, I said, “Signora, you go on up and my boy’ll bring your shopping up. The water’s too heavy for you, anyway.” She had angina, you know.’

‘She did? You know that for sure?’

‘I certainly do. My wife’s the same. Hasn’t worked for years. She has to be careful and that’s what I said to Signora Hirsch. I said, ‘You want to be careful. No need for carrying heavy stuff up those stairs as long as I’m here. And no good getting upset, either,” I said, “it’s not worth ruining your health for.” Am I right?’

‘I—yes. What isn’t?’

‘That business of the facade. Well, the roof too, of course, and I’m not saying that won’t have cost a bob or two.’

‘And that’s what the trouble with Rinaldi was about? He did say she was hard up—she must have owned her flat then, if she had to pay for repairs like that … Funny … he said she tried to sell him something and he told her it wasn’t worth what she expected.’

‘Poor thing. Well, she managed somehow. The work’s been done, as you see. And she’s dead, anyway. As long as you’ve got your health there’s nothing else worth fretting about.’ Paolo leaned forward to speak in confidence, his face pink, his smiling eyes very blue. ‘This is nothing you don’t know, anyway, but my daughter was at that dinner party Monday evening with her husband. You know, at number 6. Now, he’s an architect, my son-in-law, and he knows Rossi who lives on the top floor above Signora Hirsch and he was there, too, so when there was all that racket from next door my son-in-law suggested he and Rossi go round there and intervene. We couldn’t help thinking after, would they have been in time to save her?’