The Disappearance of Signora Giulia (3 page)

What we won’t do to hang on to a relationship that’s slipping away from us, an image of fading love. So sad! Perhaps Sciancalepre had done something similar himself… It didn’t bear thinking about.

He couldn’t get any more out of the concierge that would help him identify Luciano Barsanti. The building manager didn’t know anything else either. So he went straight to the town registry office. Nothing. Luciano Barsanti was one of those types who don’t register in a new town, but maintain official residence in their native town or city instead. The kind who move from one place to another without leaving a trail in the local records.

Nevertheless, Sciancalepre could imagine Barsanti, and he felt sure that sooner or later he’d put a hand on his shoulder:

‘Police! Come along with me, young man.’

Back in M——, Sciancalepre put the results of his busy days and his trip to Milan on a long list. He added a point to form an uncertain line snaking across Italy – now towards Rome – in search of poor Signora Giulia. He always called her that, poor Signora Giulia, when talking to himself. At home, whenever he put down his fork after consuming his daily serving of spaghetti or tagliatelle, he answered his wife’s questions with the same words: ‘Poor Signora Giulia! What was she thinking about? How could she do it? Oh women, women!’ He shook his arms over the table and glanced intently at his eight-year-old daughter beside him, already fearing for her future. His own wife didn’t worry him; she was close to fifty and extremely secure after ten years of untroubled marriage.

But he didn’t say ‘Poor Signora Giulia’ to Esengrini when he visited him in his office every few days towards evening. With Esengrini, he spoke only of the undeniably disappointing results of a search conducted throughout the whole of Italy with Signora Giulia’s photo. Esengrini himself had provided the photo, and Sciancalepre had a copy pasted on the cover of the file kept locked in his desk. Each day, when he opened the drawer, those sad eyes looked up at him, as if begging him to persevere.
Don’t give up
, they said to him,
look for me, don’t lose heart. You’ll find me.

The more the Commissario thought about Signora Giulia’s disappearance and the details his investigation had turned up, the less he understood the matter. With whom had she fled? Not with Fumagalli. Not with Luciano Barsanti, at least not according to the letter. Of course, it could very well be said that Barsanti and Signora Giulia had arranged the letter between them, convinced that the gardener’s wife would give it to Esengrini – as if Signora Giulia had said indirectly to her husband,
I’ve got out of there, I’m with a man, and it won’t do for you to look for me or start a scandal. There’s no going back. Have the separation papers prepared with me as the guilty party. Do whatever you want but forget me, and I’ll forget you.

And yet, it couldn’t have been like that. What about Emilia? Was it possible that her mother was no longer concerned about her? Why didn’t she at least send a few postcards? Why didn’t she write to one or two friends to justify her actions? He closed the drawer angrily, gave the key a twist and got up, restless.

He’d gone back to Esengrini’s house many times, looked the place over from top to bottom, around the grounds, in the greenhouse and in the abandoned coach house. There was nothing to offer him the faintest lead.

Meanwhile, the month of July had arrived. By now fifty days had passed since the disappearance of Signora Giulia. One morning, the post brought Sciancalepre a telegram and a large envelope from police headquarters. The telegram couldn’t be anything other than the usual reports that did the rounds.

He opened the large envelope. It was the poster sent from police headquarters every year at the start of the swimming season:

‘The Chief Constable calls attention to the police rules and disciplinary sanctions established by the penal code for the protection of public decency. Bathers must refrain from entering the water in residential areas and must wear street clothes in bars, restaurants and other public places. The wearing of bathing costumes is prohibited in the streets, etc., etc.’

He then opened the telegram and sank down on the wooden armchair; the large envelope containing the poster fell to the floor.

‘Rome, Police Headquarters. Information concerning the search for Giulia Esengrini and Luciano Barsanti: yesterday Luciano Barsanti applied for a passport, giving his address as via Agamer, n. 15, Rome. Awaiting instructions, etc., etc.’

‘Got him!’ cried the Commissario, for once renouncing his own dialect in favour of the local one, as if to address the people of M——, who’d been waiting two months for the diligent Commissario to succeed. After a couple of telephone calls to police headquarters and to Rome, he prepared to strike.

The following morning found him on the express train to the capital.
I’m going to get Signora Giulia
, he said to himself.
I’m going to get her and bring her home, if everything goes well.

Before leaving he’d called on Esengrini with some urgency. ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘we’ve made some headway. I have reason to believe that your wife is in Rome – with another man, unfortunately, a young guy she’s been writing to without your knowledge. I can’t put it any other way.’

The lawyer tried to find out more, but Sciancalepre wasn’t about to reveal anything. Esengrini took him by the hand and pleaded, ‘Sciancalepre, we’ve known each other for ten years. You know who I am. Tell me what’s going on!’ But to no avail. The Commissario knew his trade. Yet he felt he had to tell Esengrini the name at least: Luciano Barsanti. The lawyer remained indifferent. It was the first time he’d heard it.

‘He’s the man your wife’s with,’ the Commissario explained, ‘and if you want to help me get my hands on him, you’ve got to make an accusation – this time, of adultery. Without it I can’t surprise them at home. You know that better than I do.’

Esengrini sat down on the spot and recited to him the charge from the official form:

‘The undersigned, etc., etc., having reason to believe that she, his wife, etc., etc., is in Rome, where she is cohabiting with a Luciano Barsanti in via Agamer, n. 15, lodges complaint against Giulia Zaccagni-Lamberti, married name Esengrini, and against her correspondent Luciano Barsanti, requesting all investigations and such verifications as may bring the crime to light in flagrante, etc, etc.’

He made it without hesitation. He wanted to get to the bottom of the matter, move towards a separation and sort out all his dealings with his wife. They’d have to go through the arrest of the guilty and then the withdrawal of the charge (already planned) in order to procure the separation order with her as the guilty party. It was the necessary route, as well as the only possible one. As for pardoning his wife or letting her back in the house, Esengrini wouldn’t even think of it, something Sciancalepre noticed.

With the charge in his pocket, the Commissario travelled to Rome, looking around at the Etruscan hills as he passed through Chiusi.
Who knows how many cuckolds there were, even in Etruscan times!
he thought. He tried to follow the history of adultery from the time of Adam forward, and came to a single conclusion: that horns had always been the real cause of all evil. In fact, they are at one and the same time the devil’s distinguishing feature and the symbol of conjugal infidelity! Could it be any clearer?!

Sciancalepre considered himself a psychologist manqué, and among the various states of the human mind and their multiple reflections in the psyche he claimed to have studied those of unlucky husbands in particular.

‘If you think about it, being betrayed is a desirable situation, one that’s peaceful, even restful,’ he’d say to his closest friends. ‘The trouble lies in uncertainty or doubt – when one fears the worst but isn’t sure. When you’re sure, your fear is at an end. The anxiety fades away and a certain calm takes its place.’

Thinking along these lines, he turned back to Esengrini’s problem and asked himself what he, Sciancalepre, would have done in his shoes.
I’d have poisoned her
, he mused,
or shot her on the spot, at the right moment. No one could have argued that it wasn’t a crime of passion, and I could get off with a few years
. But he had to reject the idea that the lawyer could kill his wife: he wasn’t a passionate man, Esengrini, and he had too great a horror of violence. Killing his wife and getting rid of the body wasn’t something he’d do. A doctor could have done it, but not a man who’d always lived by the book.

Upon his arrival in Rome, Sciancalepre went to police headquarters to enlist the aid of a couple of officers, and
then made a visit to the area around via Agamer. The road itself started from one of the main piazzas in the suburbs and meandered out towards the countryside. Number 15 was halfway down: a five-storey building full of office workers but without a concierge. Across the road, a space had been cleared for the construction of another apartment building. It hardly seemed like Rome at all. Where was the Colosseum? The Lateran Palace? The Forum? Not having had time to stop in the centre, Sciancalepre felt like he was in a city with no name or history. A wretched, swarming anthill, the place for runaways, wanted men and vagrants.

He looked at number 15’s pigeonholes. There it was, the name Luciano Barsanti, on the third one.
I’ve got him
, he thought. He ran up the stairs to find Barsanti’s apartment – third floor on the right – and then looked over the plan for that night.

He was already on the spot by seven that evening, opposite number 15, in an old Fiat 1500 borrowed from headquarters in Rome. Officer Rotundo dozed at the wheel, his driver’s cap tilted over his eyes. Behind him, Sciancalepre and Officer Muscariello sank back in their seats, smoking. To pass the time, the Commissario made Muscariello tell him a bit about life in Rome.

Every now and then someone went into or came out of number 15, ordinary people of no particular interest. When it got dark around nine, Sciancalepre had them move the car in front of the building’s entrance so he could see who was coming and going.

At around ten, a couple came from behind the car and entered the hallway of number 15. Sciancalepre hardly had
time to see the shape of a handsome young man and that of a woman who could have been Signora Giulia. He waited for his heartbeat to settle before leaving the car and going to the opposite side of the road, pretending to look for the best place to take a leak. All the while, his head half turned towards the building, he watched the third floor from the corner of his eye. He saw the lights go on. They were trapped now! He only had to let a quarter of an hour pass by while they got comfortable. And sure enough, ten minutes later in one of the third-floor rooms: a pink light. It had to be an
abat-jour,
a little alcove light.

Sciancalepre felt in the pocket of his jacket for the paper with the official charge and made a move towards the car. He left Rotundo at the entrance and went up to the third floor with Muscariello.

He pressed the doorbell. After what seemed like an eternity, a peephole opened almost imperceptibly, and a man’s voice asked, ‘Who is it?’

‘Police!’ said the Commissario, his mouth at the jamb. ‘Open up now or we’ll break down the door.’

The door opened immediately, and a young man of about twenty-five stood in the opening looking serious and worried.

‘Let us in!’ Sciancalepre shoved the young man aside. Muscariello followed behind him, his hands in his jacket pockets. Sciancalepre moved the youth between them and pushed the door to. Then, standing in the hallway right under the young man’s nose, he said rapidly and quietly: ‘Luciano Barsanti, you’re under arrest. Come with me to the bedroom.’

His head down, Barsanti led the Commissario towards an internal room. As they got closer a woman stuck her head
defiantly through the doorway. Sciancalepre stopped in his tracks and stared at her.

He couldn’t stop looking at her, so anxious was he to make up for all the time that had elapsed since Signora Giulia’s disappearance, and to come to grips with the changes she must have undergone.

But nothing could have explained such a radical transformation.

Sciancalepre didn’t want to admit it even to himself, but this woman wasn’t, and never had been Esengrini’s wife.

He turned to Barsanti. ‘Who is she?’

The woman answered, ‘I’m the wife of Fasullo, the MP. What do you want with me?’

Sciancalepre had pulled the charge from his pocket but it occurred to him that as far as this situation was concerned it was just a piece of paper. Sure, it mentioned Barsanti, but it certainly couldn’t be applied to this specific case. ‘In that case…’ he murmured to himself, ‘in that case…’

He knew he was in a pickle. He’d rushed into things, albeit with an accusation in his pocket and a watertight warrant. But he found himself to have surprised only one of the accused in a crime not covered by the official charge.
This
crime was being committed with someone else; so it was
another
crime, and not the one specified by the current accusation. And now he had the wife of an MP in front of him! He wasn’t sure what to do.

Noting his embarrassment, the woman began to breathe more easily. ‘So where are we?’ she asked. ‘What’s Italy come to if you can’t pay someone a visit without informing the police?’

‘Pardon me, madam,’ the Commissario humbly offered. ‘I’ve acted in accordance with a standard warrant. It’s just that
there’s been an error. A partial error, since Signor Barsanti is under arrest and must accompany me to police headquarters. As for you, madam, I can only offer my apologies. Report to your husband, the MP, that there’s been a misunderstanding, a mix-up of persons, and that I’m sorry and beg his pardon. As far as I’m concerned, you can go now. Where may I take you?’

‘I don’t need any help!’ the woman screeched, heading towards the door.