The Disappearance of Signora Giulia (4 page)

Sciancalepre sent Officer Muscariello behind her to tell Rotundo, still guarding the front door, to let her go undisturbed. Then he turned to Barsanti.

‘You and I are going to have a few words now at headquarters.’

In an office at the station, Sciancalepre began the interrogation. First of all, identity: Luciano Barsanti, twenty-six years old, born in C—— near Livorno, company rep for colours and finishes, etc., etc.

Then he asked, ‘So, you were living in viale Premuda in Milan?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you were seeing women there as well!’

‘From time to time. I’m young…’

‘Were you seeing married women too?’

‘It might have happened.’

‘You’re right it happened, young man! You were seeing Signora Giulia Esengrini, and every now and then you wrote her a letter and sent it to M—— in an envelope addressed to Teresa Foletti. I have those letters right here in my hand. Go on, keep talking…

‘What’s to tell, if you already know everything? It’s true. I met this woman one afternoon on the train between M—— and Milan. Then – you know how it goes… we met a few times in a café, struck up a friendship…’

‘Go on, tell me about this “friendship”!’

‘The first time, we went to a
pensione
I know around via Mario Pagano. Then she began to feel uncomfortable, and I had to find a little apartment.’

‘With money she gave you?’

‘I don’t earn much as a rep. And she was the one who wanted it. I got bored right away, but she was sentimental and said that if I left her she’d throw herself into the lake.’

‘Well, lake or no lake, Signora Esengrini has gone missing, and it’s your job to tell me about it.’

‘Me? But what do I know! After the letter from the lawyer, I gave up the flat and left for Rome. I didn’t want any further trouble.’

‘What letter?’

‘A letter written to me by Signora Esengrini’s husband. He told me he knew all about the affair, everything, that he’d had us followed, and it was better for me to leave the area and forget about his wife. You get the drift! I was out of there in less than eight days. The rental contract had expired, so I sold the furniture and cleared out and came here to Rome. Actually, the day before I got the letter from the lawyer, his wife missed our usual Thursday rendezvous for the first time. It’s obvious that her husband stopped her coming. In his letter he warned me, “Make sure you don’t tell my wife I’ve written to you!” So I wrote to her acting the dunce. I feigned surprise that she hadn’t made the appointment and told her I was leaving for Rome. A few nice lines, to soften the blow…’

‘Where’s the lawyer’s letter!’ shouted the Commissario.

‘The letter? I don’t know. I threw it out. You think I’d carry something like that around with me? What good would it do? I throw all my letters away. Even the ones Signora Giulia wrote to me every week.’

The interrogation went on for several hours, and Sciancalepre was convinced that Barsanti was telling the truth. He warned him, for caution’s sake, to register any future movements with the police and to make sure they could find him in case he was needed. He recorded the deposition with great precision and then, with these few papers, he disappointedly turned back the way he had come earlier with so much hope.

Now, he said to himself as the train crossed the Apennines,
Signora Giulia seems almost like a ghost. If she didn’t go after Barsanti, she didn’t go after anyone else. And she definitely didn’t throw herself into the lake. She would have left a letter. And one doesn’t take two suitcases on a suicide mission… At this stage, he thought, I’m going to scratch out the word ‘fled’ and write ‘disappeared’ on her file.

The following morning he went to see Esengrini.

‘Wrong track. No trace of Signora Giulia. Barsanti was there, but with someone else. Get this: the wife of an MP! You can take comfort in that.’

The Commissario recounted for Esengrini every last detail of the expedition, and when he got to the bit about the letter, he asked him, ‘So you never heard his name, this Barsanti, before I spoke of him to you?’

‘Never.’

‘And yet,’ the Commissario continued, ‘you wrote him a letter. He told me himself. Unless he dreamt it!’

‘Impossible! It’s not true!’

After this meeting, which ended a bit frostily, Sciancalepre realized that his investigation into Signora Giulia’s disappearance would have to go down another path – and that Esengrini would not be as cooperative as he had been thus far.

He started by issuing a search warrant in a different tone from the first one. Then he called the gardener, Demetrio Foletti. He ascertained that Foletti knew nothing about the postal services his wife had provided for Signora Giulia and, in an effort to get to grips with the atmosphere in the Esengrini household, he got him to talk at length. But he just had repeated to him things he already knew.

Foletti was a man of about forty, exceedingly loyal to his employers. He’d always been the gardener at the villa, starting when Signora Giulia’s parents were still alive. After their death, around ten years ago, he’d begun to make himself useful, during his free time, in the lawyer’s office. Fascinated as he was by legal matters, he became something of an office employee. He went on various errands, took phone calls when the typist was busy, welcomed clients, and now and then managed to give his legal views to some who, seeing him amongst all the codes and official forms, considered him to have a smattering of legal knowledge or at least the rudiments of its practice. He moved from garden to office, gradually neglecting the grounds with which neither the lawyer nor his wife could be bothered, and applied himself with better results to the more impressive
responsibilities of clerk and trusted employee. It was therefore he who knew most about the lawyer’s family relationships, after his wife, Teresa, who’d acted as cook and housekeeper.

There was someone else at the Esengrini’s house fairly often, a young girl called Anna who did the washing and other heavy work. But Sciancalepre learnt little from her. He got much more from Foletti, in whose opinion Signora Giulia was a saint and the lawyer a great man. All the same, it had seemed to him that their marriage had been cold and distant. The lawyer was gruff and didn’t know how to be affectionate, while Signora Giulia, who’d lost her mother at fifteen, was a romantic who craved affection and understanding. There’d never been any scenes between them, just long silences.

The Commissario learnt from Foletti that the palazzo Zaccagni-Lamberti, as he called it, was an old property in Signora Giulia’s family, and that at his death ten years earlier her father had left the house and grounds to his young granddaughter, Emilia.

The Esengrini Affair, covered at length by all the papers, had run into the ground. The Commissario was intrigued by the somewhat romanticized version of the story published by an illustrated magazine. The journalist hadn’t neglected to come up with a few theories about Signora Giulia’s disappearance: that she was being held in Milan by someone who’d met her during one of her Thursday rendezvous; that she’d fled abroad with a mysterious lover; or suicide. Sciancalepre hoped that the article, illustrated with several dated photos of the via Lamberti and the park, and a pretty portrait of Signora Giulia
and Emilia – who looked extremely like her mother – might fall under the fugitive’s eyes. If her eyes were still open on the world… But he was beginning to doubt it, and every time he received a photo of another unidentified female corpse, he studied the features scrupulously, in fear of making a terrible discovery.

After a month, he renewed the search warrant for Signora Esengrini and decided to wind up the case with a detailed report. He then transferred the file to the public prosecutor’s office, leaving the conclusion to the legal authorities.

Following a review of the investigation, which could do nothing more than repeat the main questions, the public prosecutor authorized the archiving of the papers relating to the disappearance of Giulia Esengrini, née Zaccagni-Lamberti.

Emilia had now left her school at the Ursuline Convent in Milan for good and enrolled in the university. In the autumn she’d begun taking courses there, and she now made the trip to Milan almost every day.

In the well-to-do homes of M——, everyone was still talking about Signora Giulia. She’d become a sort of ghostly presence at the usual gatherings. They talked about her until the spring, when the wound slowly closed over.

Emilia went to all the usual dos at family friends’, occasionally accompanied by her father. Sometimes the lawyer bumped into the Commissario at one or another of the houses. On such occasions they tried to avoid each other, and before long, the guests soon understood that it was better not to invite these encounters. Even if they had not, Esengrini thought it over, and after making a few appearances, he stopped going to the gatherings. Instead, he slowly withdrew, also cutting back considerably on his professional commitments. If he’d been considered somewhat gruff before, he soon became known for being reclusive and misanthropic. No one was able to say that his wife had dishonoured him except the Commissario who, though he knew about Barsanti, had kept his mouth shut, even with his own wife. All the same, the spectre of a crime was perhaps worse; inexplicable, but enough to throw a sort of dreadful suspicion on Esengrini.

Emilia, reserved and seemingly indifferent, got on with doing all the things young people of her age do. Intolerant of older people, she kept to a few friends from university who regularly made the trip with her from M—— to Milan, and there she widened her circle a bit more. She went home with some of them to listen to records, happily drank the odd whisky and loved trying out all the new dances.

The last time she’d travelled from Milan to M——, before the summer holidays, she found herself sitting across from a young man of about twenty-eight who said he knew her. She didn’t remember anything about him, but he reminded her that two years earlier he’d been at her home and had seen her in the best houses in M——. He finally introduced himself as the engineer Carlo Fumagalli – a nice guy, and very different from her usual university crowd. A bit overbearing and somewhat unprincipled, but attractive.

They saw each other again a couple of weeks later for a game of tennis. Fumagalli stayed in M—— for the entire summer. The sailing club had been given the go-ahead to begin building a small marina and the engineer, an expert in this type of work, was overseeing the work. As a member of the club, Emilia saw Fumagalli continually during the long summer afternoons, and on one of them they went out sailing for a long time with some friends.

As the boat turned towards the harbour, suspended on the last breath of wind, Emilia, seated at the back, leant her head on the tiller, which Carlo was holding, while the others were all at the prow or else halfway down the boat watching the sunset. Emilia felt something touch her hair. It wasn’t the wind, which had almost dropped by now… it was Carlo, gently
winding his fingers through it. She turned to look up at him and smiled. The boat tacked, and a little later let down its sails in the small marina under construction.

The relationship didn’t go anywhere all summer, but just before Emilia began the regular journey to Milan once more, the two bumped into each other one day in the street. Fumagalli told Emilia he’d soon be returning there, and suggested that they could meet some afternoon at a café in via Montenapoleone. Emilia agreed and proposed a day.

They met in the café two afternoons a week. Little by little, Emilia distanced herself from her university friends, becoming solitary and detached like her father. Even in the train, she’d find a compartment at the rear where her companions wouldn’t follow her, excusing herself by saying she had a lot to read.

One evening she found Sciancalepre in that compartment. They made the entire journey together, and for the first time, Emilia spoke about her mother. She’d realized by now that there was something strange about her mother’s disappearance, and she wished she knew what was in her father’s heart. But it was something she’d never been able to ask him because she felt intimidated – or perhaps because she understood it was something they must never discuss.

‘It’s a mystery. A mystery!’ said the Commissario. And he tried to get her to speak, asking what her father thought about it. ‘Did you read the papers?’ he asked.

‘Yes, I read them. But I don’t believe any of their speculations. In any case, as far as I’m concerned, my mother’s dead: I can feel it.’

Truth to tell, Sciancalepre also sensed it, but he didn’t want to think any more about the case. The folder, with the
photograph of Signora Giulia fixed to it, was still in his drawer. Formally, the case was still open, but the paper in the file was starting to yellow and surely some day soon one of his successors would send it to the archives. And Sciancalepre was expecting a promotion – which would mean a transfer.

Another spring came along, followed almost immediately by a hot summer.

The marina for the sailing club was now completed, but Fumagalli returned to M—— for his holidays. He spent his days with Emilia at tennis or in the boat, and in the evenings danced with her on the terrace of the Hotel Europa. No one was close enough to Esengrini to be able to tell him how familiar his daughter had become with the young engineer from Milan. But she told him herself in the autumn, after starting her third year at university.

Esengrini started violently, as if someone had prodded him from behind, when Emilia said briefly after supper one evening that she was set on becoming engaged to Fumagalli.

‘No.’ He was firm. ‘I will not give my consent.’

In vain, Emilia insisted that she was serious about marrying. Her father, increasingly obstinate, declared himself absolutely against the marriage. Realizing that it was useless to insist, Emilia stopped talking about it. But she went on seeing her unacknowledged boyfriend. They got together even on Sundays now, since he spent his days off with her on the lake, having settled in the area.

The lawyer didn’t find out a thing, though he couldn’t be sure that his prohibition was being respected. A wall of coldness
had arisen between him and his daughter. They almost never spoke any more, and the few necessary words they did exchange took on the tone of reciprocal lashings.

Once, no doubt irritated by the incessant phone calls his daughter received from Milan, Esengrini said, ‘Whoever disobeys me scorns me, maybe even hates me.’

‘Why don’t you tell me where my mother is!?’ Emilia screamed, herself shocked by this unexpected outburst.

After this exchange, the lawyer’s house became a tomb, icy and silent. Emilia went in and out as if it were a hotel, and Esengrini for his part withdrew in the evenings, tired and fed up with everyone who treated him with exaggerated respect while whispering behind his back.

Corrado Sciancalepre knew that Emilia and Fumagalli considered themselves engaged, and would certainly marry just as soon as Emilia came of age, when she wouldn’t need her father’s consent. Probably even Esengrini was aware of his daughter’s intention, but he never gave any sign of having changed his mind about a marriage he didn’t want to hear spoken about. And in fact, no one did speak to him about it, because it was known that Fumagalli had been seeing Signora Giulia and could in some way be connected with her disappearance. Even Emilia knew it; Fumagalli had told her himself to explain her father’s attitude. Naturally, he kept it to saying that he’d known Signora Giulia and that they’d met a few times in Milan – with the result that he, too, had been questioned at the time of her disappearance. But he’d been unable to give the police any leads, since his encounters with Signora Giulia had been casual and innocent. They’d met in a café on corso Monforte where the engineer habitually went for tea at
around five and where, by sheer chance, Signora Giulia went too while waiting for the evening train to M——.

By this stage, everyone was waiting for Emilia to announce her marriage as soon as she turned twenty-one, Sciancalepre in particular. He had a funny feeling that this marriage was going to stir things up again, and that something new might surface now, nearly three years after Signora Giulia’s disappearance.

The date both feared and expected approached. Emilia turned twenty-one on the 18th of June but already, a month before, she’d begun requesting the necessary papers for the marriage. It was celebrated first thing in the morning on the 21st in the little church of San Rocco, which sits in the hills above the town of M——. No one was invited to the ceremony and no one was forewarned – except for Sciancalepre, who went on a mission to see Esengrini the same morning at the couple’s request.

The new couple went away immediately following the wedding ceremony. Emilia had spent several days packing a bag for the journey, which she’d sent to a childhood friend so that she could pick it up on her way back from the church. She put it in the boot of Fumagalli’s big car, sat beside her husband and left for a secret destination. A few days later, their closest friends gleaned from their postcards that the couple had gone on honeymoon to Switzerland, to a little hamlet whose very name – Beatenberg – seemed to promise the peace and perfect happiness Emilia craved after the long years of study and solitude with her father. One could see from the postcards that the village was opposite the Jungfrau.

Right after the departure of the two young people, Sciancalepre went to see Esengrini, whom he found in a state of extreme depression. He struggled to get a conversation going.

‘This is the second escape, Sciancalepre,’ the lawyer said, ‘and you had a hand in it yourself this time!’

Sciancalepre explained how Emilia had thought through her decision. And he stuck to the view that under the circumstances, it was the best possible solution, since nothing could be done about the tensions between Esengrini and his daughter, which were by now unavoidable.

Esengrini had known something was going on from the letters addressed to Teresa Foletti by Emilia, and he began to insinuate, in conversation with Sciancalepre, that there must have been a secret understanding between mother and daughter. Perhaps his daughter, if not actually in cahoots with her mother, knew a bit more than he did about her disappearance.

Sciancalepre didn’t accept the suggestion. He discussed the situation that had arisen in the Esengrini household and the new reality that prevailed after Emilia’s wedding, and made it clear to the lawyer that his daughter intended to take possession of the house and its grounds upon her return from the honeymoon. They were now her property, according to her grandfather’s will. In fact, her father’s guardianship was nearing an end, along with his administration of her property, by dint of her marriage and coming of age.

When Esengrini had taken in Emilia’s decision, he realized that his continuing presence in his rooms had become untenable. He had a month before the couple’s return, and he calmly prepared himself to say goodbye for good to the home he’d gone to live in after his own marriage. He bought
a large apartment in a new block that rose over the lakeside square and moved there, together with his office, his files and household furniture.

Sciancalepre, following everything in the guise of trusted intermediary for both parties, was in contact with Beatenberg, and when Esengrini had cleared himself and his things out of the old villa Zaccagni-Lamberti, he alerted the couple that they could return.

Fumagalli and his wife came back to M—— a few days later, but only for the short time necessary to begin remodelling and restoring the house, in particular the empty wing where Emilia’s grandparents had lived. For the time being, they were staying in Milan with Carlo’s mother while he went back and forth directing and overseeing the work. The house was ready in a month, and the flat previously inhabited by Emilia’s parents was shut up in its existing state, as well as the lawyer’s office, which faced via Lamberti.

The renovated apartment retained intact its eighteenth-century furniture and overall style; only the bathrooms were modern. The park was left neglected and was now entrusted to the scant attentions of the good Demetrio, who still frequented the house, even though he’d followed the lawyer to his new office, where he continued to act as his secretary. For her part, his wife entered the service of the new signora, and the rhythm of former times was re-established.

The villa’s salons were opened up to guests. On beautiful summer evenings, Sciancalepre went once more with his wife, and so did Commendatore Binacchi with his wife and daughter, by now a hopeless spinster. The neighbouring Ravizza and Sormani families came with their sons and daughters, and
the presence of a few young married couples helped to liven things up. At least twice a week, the Fumagalli couple returned the visits, and the life of the small town went back to being as fashionable as its old habits and daring new innovations – television, waterskiing and rock ’n’ roll dancing – would permit.

The marriage was the happy result of a love match, and in common with many other young couples the Fumagalli put off having children so as not to bring too soon an end to the carefree life. They were completely absorbed in their happiness, content with the immense house their youthful enthusiasm had brought to life once more, which they were slowly exploring from cellar to attic. They never felt the need to use the grounds. They looked at the park from the courtyard terrace or their balcony as if it were a body of water, fascinating and treacherous. On moonlit nights, after their guests had left, or on returning from an evening with friends, the two young people stood on the large balcony off the master bedroom, facing the gardens. Leaning on the railing, they looked at the old trees lit up with the moon’s glow, the grown hedges forming an impenetrable thicket, a few milky white spots on the path between the plants, and the two huge magnolias on the first level under the double flights of stairs, their every leaf glittering.

Autumn had begun and one night, home late, they went out as usual onto the balcony and watched the moon throw its light over a park shrouded in darkness, then withdraw it as it disappeared behind a moving cloud formation. The bedroom lamps were off and Emilia stood silent for several minutes, as if drawn by the shifting moon, before abruptly gripping Carlo’s arm.