The Disappearance of Signora Giulia (10 page)

‘It was in this way that Fumagalli and Emilia noticed their nocturnal visitor and tried to catch him. Esengrini didn’t suspect it, and the night he saw his son-in-law walking round the park he tried to kill him with the club, thinking that Fumagalli
was alone. If there hadn’t been any gunshots, he’d be answering for two murders now. And his decision to kill his son-in-law in that way wasn’t a rash one. If the club had struck home, who would they have accused? Certainly not him. Some thief, or, actually, probably me. However, the work adapting the garage from the old coach house would have been halted and Signora Giulia’s grave would never have come to light. Signora Emilia would definitely have left this house, where both her mother and her husband had mysteriously been murdered. Everything would surely have remained in the dark for ever.’

Sciancalepre was stunned. Foletti’s version was no worse than Esengrini’s and certainly just as plausible. In any case, thinking he could at least accuse Foletti of stealing the jewels, he asked, ‘So where were you going with the jewellery?’

‘Yesterday I climbed up the tree to get it after you spoke to me about the search, and I stuffed it in my pocket. I was going to put it up the drawing-room chimney, and you’d have found it there because I would have seen to it that you did. It would have constituted decisive proof against Esengrini. Actually, he might have hidden it in that spot on the day of the murder, since when I found it the little box was covered with soot. Since I was sure that Esengrini had committed the murder, I felt I was collaborating with the law by piecing together the evidence against him. The status quo, as they say.’

Sciancalepre wasn’t sure what to do, but he declared Foletti under arrest anyway and took him into custody. He then phoned the investigating judge who hurried to M——, where he took down the gardener’s long deposition.

Over the following days Sciancalepre challenged Esengrini with it. Esengrini listened calmly, nodding his head
continuously. Asked by the judge what objections he might raise, he responded: ‘None. It’s a good theory. Except that it can so easily be overturned. Foletti admits to having solicited the favours of my wife: there’s your motive for the killing. Seized by a jealous passion, he put himself in my shoes as the cuckold and wrote the threatening letter to Barsanti. He forged my signature on it, tracing it from the document found on my table. It’s easy for him to say that I fabricated that letter in order to furnish advance proof against him. However, I’d have needed to know about his passion for my wife! And it doesn’t follow that I did, even if he says so.

‘The jewellery made quite a journey! Up the chimney – then, with the coming autumn making him fear that the fires would burn the little metal box and it would all fall down onto the hearth, he buried it in the greenhouse. Seeing that I was searching diligently in the grounds, even with a plumb line, he thought to put it in the cedar where I certainly wouldn’t be climbing. The hiding place was perfect since that cedar is very dense and never loses its foliage.’

‘Now then,’ the judge asked, ‘you admit that your wife was killed in your house and buried in the cistern, and that the signs of her flight were faked?’

‘I’m sure of it. And I don’t see how anyone besides Demetrio Foletti could be accused of the crime.’

Having presented the lawyer’s contradictions to Foletti and obtained from him the same admissions, and, naturally, having put the counter-accusations to Esengrini, the judge resorted to a confrontation.

The confrontation took place in the prison cells of T—— where the two detainees had been transferred. It was less dramatic than expected. When the gardener was brought into the room where the lawyer already stood before the judge and the clerk, he greeted the magistrate correctly. Then, to Esengrini: ‘
Buongiorno
, Signor Esengrini,’ to which the lawyer responded, ‘Hello, Demetrio.’

Esengrini’s depositions were read out to him. Asked if he would confirm them, he answered, ‘From the first word to the last.’

‘Therefore,’ the judge concluded, ‘you indicate Demetrio Foletti, present here, as the killer of your wife.’

‘Demetrio Foletti is my wife’s murderer,’ the lawyer confirmed.

Then Foletti’s depositions were read out to him, and he, too, confirmed them. When he was asked who had committed the murder, he answered, indicting Esengrini: ‘The lawyer.’

The judge had to acknowledge that apart from the reciprocal accusations, there was no other exchange between the two detainees except on the matter of the letter to Barsanti.

‘How often,’ Esengrini asked Foletti, ‘did you copy my signature with my permission on requests, citations, even bills, by tracing over a document held against the window?’

‘Countless times, Signor Esengrini. But not on the letter to Barsanti, which I never typed out.’

‘So then, would I have traced my own signature!?’

‘Of course, Signor Esengrini! Who else would have? Only
you
had a motive for creating a document with which you could accuse me.’

‘Bravo. But explain this: once I sent that letter to Barsanti, how could I hope to come into possession of it again, in order
to save it as proof against you? You know – or perhaps you don’t – that the letter was returned to me by sheer coincidence? That it was found years later in Milan, inside a piece of furniture sold at auction?’

‘That’s as may be. But it could also be that you imagined Barsanti would take greater care with the letters he received. And since Barsanti was going to be found one day or another, you could have asked him to produce the letter so that you could deny having written it, claiming I’d written it instead, having forged your signature. And that’s exactly what you did do, using a document lying around in your office that day. The game was set, even without the miraculous recovery of the letter.’

‘Capital theory!’ returned the lawyer. ‘One can’t deny it. Except that it’s also possible things happened as I said.’

Given that further confrontation was pointless, the judge closed proceedings and sent the detainees back to their cells.

But he put to himself a difficult question: which of the two should he send to trial at the court of assizes? Should he send them both back? One of them was surely innocent, and just as surely the other one was guilty. Weighing the evidence over and over, the judge found the scales equally balanced. He ended up sending them both back to trial charged as accomplices to murder and attempted murder. Knowing, however, that they would both be acquitted.

The trial was unspectacular. Imperturbable, the two accused repeated their parallel declarations point for point. The one was just as contented as the other with the official defenders, who both got away at the close of the hearing with addresses of only five minutes each. The same public prosecutor had requested the acquittal of both men due to insufficient proof, since he was unable to demonstrate any plot or cooperation whatsoever between them in the execution of the crimes specified in the charge: the murder of Giulia Zaccagni-Lamberti, and the attempted murder of Carlo Fumagalli.

On the day of the trial, Sciancalepre and the investigating judge, who had conducted the case, were in the city in order to interrogate a detainee on remand. Their duty executed, they were walking down the administrative corridor just as Esengrini and Foletti entered the registry office to collect their valuables and complete the final bureaucratic formalities of their imprisonment.

‘They’re leaving,’ said the judge, his hand on Sciancalepre’s arm. ‘Going home.’

A short time later they saw them head for the exit, accompanied by a guard. The judge and Sciancalepre followed behind, careful not to overtake them.

Once through the door, the lawyer and Foletti turned left along the wall of the prison towards the city centre. The judge
and the Commissario kept them within eyesight while slowly walking along the pavement, side by side. Without a doubt they were talking, but not looking at one another, their words lost in the din of the traffic.

‘I’d give ten years of my life,’ said Sciancalepre, ‘to hear what they’re saying to each other.’

When they reached the end of the prison wall, Esengrini and Foletti stopped for a moment. Then, like two duellists turning their backs and measuring the prescribed distance, they turned in opposite directions, one to the right, the other to the left, still walking in step.

Did you know?

Initially published in 1962 as a serial in a Swiss local newspaper,
The Disappearance of Signora Giulia
was the first of Piero Chiara’s novels to appear in print, although he had published a number of novels by the time it was made available in book form in 1970. Chiara later revealed the town of M——, where the story unfolds, to be inspired by Porto Ceresio on Lake Lugano, close to the border with Switzerland. The name of the book’s detective, Sciancalepre, comically suggests ‘lame hare’ in Italian.

It was perhaps the dramatic setting of Chiara’s childhood – on the picturesque shores of the Italian lakes – that helped to lend such a distinctly cinematic quality to his writing, full of chiaroscuro scenery and colourful characters. Chiara was quite a character himself, and worked as a court employee, journalist and teacher before retiring early to dedicate himself to writing. A politically engaged man, he was forced to flee to Switzerland in 1944 after the Fascist authorities issued a warrant for his arrest (rumour has it that he had installed a bust of Mussolini in the dock of his local courtroom).

One of Italy’s most celebrated post-war writers, Chiara wrote novels, short stories and poetry, which won him more than a dozen literary prizes, and were adapted into countless films and TV series. He even took to starring in some of these himself, playing the role of magistrate in the TV adaptation of
The Disappearance of Signora Giulia
. The Premio Chiara has since been established in Italy as an annual literary prize that rewards writers of short stories.

If you’d like another slice of classic Italian crime, look no further than Augusto De Angelis’s intensely dramatic
The Murdered Banker
– marking the brilliant debut of the sophisticated Milanese sleuth, Inspector De Vincenzi.

If you’d prefer something completely different we can recommend Leo Perutz’s
The Master of the Day of Judgment
– a spine-tingling, hallucinatory Conan-Doylesque mystery set in Austro-Hungarian Vienna.

Augusto De Angelis

The Murdered Banker

The Mystery of the Three Orchids

The Hotel of the Three Roses

Boileau-Narcejac

Vertigo

She Who Was No More

Piero Chiara

The Disappearance of Signora Giulia

Martin Holmén

Clinch

Alexander Lernet-Holenia

I Was Jack Mortimer

Leo Perutz

Master of the Day of Judgment

Little Apple

St Peter’s Snow

Soji Shimada

The Tokyo Zodiac Murders