The Disappearance of Signora Giulia (6 page)

Instinctively he threw himself to the ground. He heard running from two or three sides, then the Commissario’s voice calling Pulito and, in the sudden silence, one more shot from the revolver.

As soon as Fumagalli could move, the Commissario and Pulito were already helping him up from the ground, afraid that he was wounded. He wanted to know what had happened, but Sciancalepre hurried him towards the villa.

They ran up the stairs and into the house. Fumagalli realized that the scream had come from his wife, who must have been on the balcony and heard the shots. In fact, Emilia was in the hallway, pale and panting. When she saw her husband she felt brighter, but despite all the encouragement to go back to bed, she wanted to hear what had happened.

Sciancalepre was the only one to have seen anything, and he was disinclined to offer much in the way of explanation. He would only say that while he’d been following Fumagalli’s return across the lawn, he’d become aware that the shadow had reappeared at the door of the coach house. In a flash, he’d seen it throw itself towards Fumagalli, a powerful club held aloft. He’d immediately shot into the air, arresting the follower’s
intentions – or he’d certainly have smashed Fumagalli’s skull in with the club.

The shadow had fled towards the wall of the villa Sormani, still holding on to his weapon. A few moments later the Commissario had shot blindly in that direction. Then, uncertain whether the heavy blow had hit home, he felt he should help Fumagalli up.

After this brief summary, Sciancalepre was off in a hurry. He took Pulito with him, refusing the offer of a final sip of cognac, and immediately ran to the piazza to look at Esengrini’s windows. There, on the second floor, over the office, one light was on in the apartment where the lawyer lived alone.

The Commissario rang the bell, said his name into the entryphone, and immediately heard the click of the automatic entry latch. He left Pulito downstairs while he went up and rang at the door of the flat.

Esengrini came to open the door without making Sciancalepre wait. He was in pyjamas and dressing-gown. Passing through the hallway on his way to the drawing-room, Sciancalepre saw a lamp alight on the night table in the bedroom, and a newspaper on the floor. The lawyer, meanwhile, had sat down in the armchair and welcomed his visitor as if this were a normal visit in the middle of the day.

Sciancalepre was a bit lost for words. ‘I’ve come at this time of night, rather inconsiderately, but to put my mind to rest. Esengrini… it’s come to my attention that every now and again, someone creeps into your daughter’s villa at night. Since we know it’s not thieves, I thought perhaps it might be you? I knew someone who suffered from insomnia and at night, he used to walk about in other people’s gardens in order to pass
the time – until he took a bullet from a guard. Could it be that you go there from time to time with the key to the gate? Who knows – perhaps to imagine that you’re still the owner of the villa?…’

‘My dear sir,’ the lawyer replied, stretching out in the armchair, ‘I understand your suspicions and your concerns, and I realize that you’ve had to go beyond what was requested in my first charge of abandoning the marital home. Besides me, my wife’s disappearance has involved the police, the law, public opinion… Three years have gone by and it’s perfectly reasonable to ask why she’s never shown any sign of being alive. I myself have thought about everything you have, albeit from another point of view, and with the confidence to exclude myself from a list of probable murderers – if there was one. So I completely understand this visit of yours at one in the morning.’

Sciancalepre seemed relieved. He got up and took his leave. As the lawyer accompanied him to the door, he noticed a huge cherrywood club with a bone handle in the umbrella stand – a solid tool, with which one could kill an ox.

He stopped, took the club from the stand, held it up, tried it out as a walking stick and then brandished it, grasping it near the head. Esengrini watched him calmly.

‘Fine club,’ Sciancalepre commented.

‘I take it whenever I go out at night,’ the lawyer explained. ‘It was my father’s: the stick is cherrywood and the handle’s from a deer. A deer’s horn!’ So saying, he arched his brows and watched the Commissario, his smile forced.

Sciancalepre put the club back in its place, said his goodbyes – excusing his intrusion once again – and left.

In the street he began going over the events of the night and wondering how he should put them in the report he’d have to write up. More than a report, it was his duty to file a charge for attempted murder by persons unknown. He almost regretted that he hadn’t had the courage to confiscate the lawyer’s club, which might constitute a piece of evidence. If he had, however, one could no longer have spoken of ‘persons unknown’.

So how could one show that the nocturnal visitor was Esengrini? The legal authorities would in any case make this conclusion. But with what proof?

Sciancalepre had more or less completed his report by around eleven the next morning and was just polishing it off with the phrase, ‘This record will be followed by further investigations, still ongoing, to establish the identification of the suspect, etc., etc…’ when the door to his office swung open and Fumagalli literally ran into his desk. Pale as death, he gasped out the astonishing words to Sciancalepre’s face: ‘Signora Giulia… she’s been found! Found! There’s no doubt that it’s her. Even her suitcases are there.’

It was five minutes before he’d caught his breath enough to continue.

‘This morning,’ he said, ‘the builders went into the grounds as usual to continue their work on the garage. I came down late because I hadn’t been able to get to sleep until dawn, and I went to see last night’s scene of the crime. I picked up the three bullets you’d fired from off the ground, then went to look at the wall of the villa Sormani where our secret guest entered.

‘I noticed that around six or seven metres from the gate there’s an iron stirrup fixed at the height of one metre on the boundary wall. I climbed up the wall and saw that the ground on the Sormani side of the park is at least one metre higher than it is in our part of the park. It would be easy, even for an old person, to cross over from the villa Sormani into ours
using the protruding iron stirrup to jump over the wall, and then return the same way.’

‘But Signora Giulia?!’ The Commissario was at the very limit of his patience.

Fumagalli went on. ‘While I was trying to scale the wall, one of my builders called me. I went over to the clearing in front of the coach house and saw that they’d finished uncovering the paving stones. The builder took me to a square manhole they’d opened by removing a large stone fitted with a ring. Demetrio, who was there, said it was a cistern for collecting rainwater. The cistern and its manhole had been hidden for at least thirty years by the grass that had grown over the old courtyard.

‘Looking down into the cistern, you could clearly see a large suitcase. The builders told me that as soon as they’d removed the manhole, an intense smell of fungus and mulch came out of it. Nearer the opening, there was an odour almost like a damp forest floor. I sent someone to fetch an electric lamp and I went down into the cistern where there were five centimetres of water. A little further on, a human form appeared under the beam of light. I saw two feet in women’s shoes, two thin shin-bones… and, as I shone the light along the body… the face of Signora Giulia, easily recognizable. It didn’t seem possible that I could make her out so well when she’d been in that grave for three years. They had to pull me out of the cistern because my own legs wouldn’t hold me up. I had them shut it up again immediately and I ran right here.’

They remained silent for a few minutes. Sciancalepre was thinking.

The report stood in the typewriter, wanting only a few concluding lines. Now he knew how he should complete them.
Speaking more to himself than to Fumagalli, he reconstructed the facts: ‘The lawyer Esengrini, having discovered his wife’s affair with Barsanti, wrote him the famous letter in order to persuade him to get out of the area. When Thursday came along, realizing that his wife was preparing to leave for Milan and that the situation was ongoing, he came back from court and confronted his wife, telling her everything he suspected. I can almost hear him: “You go to Milan, you run to Emilia’s school, then you take a taxi to viale Premuda to such and such a number where Luciano’s waiting for you…”

‘I can see it all. Accusations, counter-accusations, then the sudden fury, maybe after her heartless confession. His hands on her neck… he loses his mind for a moment… and seconds later her limp body falls to the ground. He’s momentarily terrified, he’s confused – and then he comes to, with the lucid rationality of a legal man, an expert in crime and evidence.

‘Through the cellar – so as not to cross the internal courtyard – and into the park, dragging the cadaver behind him – or rather, carrying it in his arms… I’ve thought about this journey so often, always wondering where it ended up. And lately I’ve walked the park so many times, looking for a grave – I’ve even brought a trained dog along. But Signora Giulia was lying underneath a stone, with its edges sunk into the ground and grass clumps carefully rearranged over it all. Who could have dreamt of this cistern!

‘So the lawyer went out through the cellar into the park, reached the coach house, removed the clumps of grass, opened the manhole, which he knew about, and threw the corpse into the void. Then he went back to the house and faked her escape. He packed her bags with some linens and a few clothes, filling
the overnight case with jewellery and other small items. One of the cases was too large and wouldn’t go through the manhole. So he took a smaller one, leaving the other in his wife’s room. After having thrown the suitcases into the cistern he closed it up again, stuck the grass clumps around it in the right places and went back into the house.

‘All of it had to have happened between midday and one, after Teresa had gone home. And here the account tallies, because Teresa said that she was in the lawyer’s house that morning to clean as usual, just as always. But Signora Giulia sent her back, telling her to return at eleven. At eleven, when she returned, she hurried to finish in half an hour since she didn’t have to prepare lunch on Thursdays: Signora Giulia, who was leaving by the two o’clock train, set the table herself and at twenty to two went off, leaving everything in a mess.

‘Teresa came back at two, cleared the table, washed up and worked with the other maid who always came at around two since Signora Giulia liked to be alone in the house in the morning. All went perfectly: between midday and one. At two-thirty he was with me, reporting the drama. He’d been waiting from one-thirty: time to get himself together. He told me he hadn’t even eaten. I’m sure he hadn’t!’ And with that, Sciancalepre got up.

‘Let’s go there,’ he said. ‘We’ll stop first to pick up a doctor, the magistrate and a registrar, and we’ll identify the body. The rest will take care of itself.’

Just in case, he sent a sergeant and officer Pulito to watch the lawyer’s office and house, with orders not to lose sight of him if he left the house and to stop him if he got into a car. Then he set off for the magistrates’ court with Fumagalli.

The magistrate, having been filled in, in turn phoned the public prosecutor’s office and asked for advice. He was told to go ahead and apprehend Esengrini as soon as the body had been identified.

Just as the group was leaving the magistrates’ court to head for the villa, Esengrini came through the door, Sciancalepre’s two men some distance behind him. He calmly went to look at the papers on a case set for the next day. It wasn’t a dramatic encounter. Fumagalli, who wasn’t speaking to his father-in-law, had gone on ahead.

‘Where are you off to? Some crime scene?’

The magistrate cut him off. ‘Sir, you’re coming too. We’re going to your daughter’s villa to look into something that concerns you.’

The lawyer looked at his son-in-law, who’d stopped with his back to the group. He looked at the Commissario, who’d lowered his head. He put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Have you found something?’ he asked in a hushed voice.

‘Yes,’ the Commissario answered, ‘something crucial.’

Meanwhile, the sergeant and Pulito had approached, and Esengrini realized that he’d been followed from his office door. Without another word, he set out with the group beside the Commissario. No one, seeing them go by, could have imagined what was going on.

There was hardly anyone about. It was a Thursday. Another of Signora Giulia’s Thursdays.

When they arrived at the entrance in via Lamberti, Esengrini was let in second, after the magistrate. Emilia was in the house but she didn’t know anything was up; no one had told her yet about the find. The squad went down the flight of stairs and
into the park as far as the coach house. They arrived in the clearing, where Demetrio and the two builders were standing at some distance from the closed-up manhole, waiting.

The magistrate asked for it to be opened. More lamps were brought and the Commissario produced a torch from under his overcoat and gave it to Pulito, ordering him to climb into the well and bring out the two suitcases.

It was a long and difficult operation. Esengrini stood by stiffly, looking down into the opening. He indicated recognition of the suitcases with a nod. The suitcases were placed side by side and opened. One was stuffed with crumpled linens and slimy, wet clothing. The overnight case contained just two small purses: one was empty and in the other there was a lipstick, a rusted compact, a tissue, some keys, a pair of gloves and a wallet which was opened in order to take out the bit of cash that was in it: six thousand lire in total. There were also a few cards in it, a photo of Emilia, an identity card, a little notebook. Everything was soaked with water and mud, and coated in coffee-coloured mould.

After a thorough examination of the suitcases, the Commissario entered the cistern. The magistrate lay down on some newspapers spread over the ground around the opening and put his head into the void. He could see a dark form illuminated by the torch, apparently floating on a veil of black water.

After an hour’s work the body was brought up and laid out on the ground with the help of the two builders. They had to use a canvas, because the limbs were falling off.

Fumagalli had gone up to the house to stop his wife – who might have become suspicious or been told something by
Teresa – from coming into the park and being confronted by the scene. He’d also telephoned a photographer at the magistrate’s request, and shortly afterwards there were photos of everything, especially the cadaver.

There was no doubt about its identity. Esengrini was the first to say: ‘It’s her.’

Her face, once so pale, had turned honey-coloured and transparent. Her undamaged hair spread over the ground, and from between the trees a ray of sun threw over it a warm reflection, so that it might almost have been confused with the dry, crumpled leaves spread across the lawn.

Her clothes were faded and practically moulded to her body, like those of a statue. The graceful, lively figure of Signora Giulia was no longer recognizable in that form. Stretched out along the ground, she looked like a dressed-up skeleton. A pool of putrefaction, which the paving stones couldn’t soak up, slowly formed around her. Her hair alone seemed immune to transformation; it was loose in a way no one there had ever seen apart from her husband. Her head seemed like that of a young girl, and except for the empty eye sockets strongly recalled her daughter’s face around the cheekbones and forehead. When they moved her, a thick, dark liquid flowed out of the sockets. Her golden wedding band was removed from her ring finger. Inside the circle, the date of her wedding was still legible.

The corpse was taken to the morgue for an autopsy, and in order to get it out, the gate on the country road was opened. The old key hanging on the nail in the coach house still worked. The van arrived, and Signora Giulia made her last journey.

The magistrate, the registrar, the Commissario and Pulito remained, along with Esengrini and the two officers. There wasn’t much joking in the conversation that followed.

‘Esengrini,’ said the magistrate, ‘I’ve telephoned the court and informed them fully. They suggest a provisional arrest. I don’t know what to say to you: you’ll defend yourself. Sciancalepre will accompany you to the cells. Let’s go out by the gate – that way we’ll avoid onlookers.’

Sciancalepre felt no need to speak. He stood beside the lawyer, head bowed. Then, leaving the magistrate at the end of the pathway, he went the short distance to the cells with his prisoner. The guard let them through, as on so many other occasions, thinking that they needed to speak to someone inside.

Instead, his mouth agape, he had to welcome the lawyer himself amongst his guests.

His orders carried out, Sciancalepre went straight home. For the first time in his life, he wasn’t thinking about his spaghetti at that hour. His head whirled with a jumble of thoughts and problems. The jewellery hadn’t been found, either in the suitcases or at the bottom of the cistern, even though it had been thoroughly searched.

In the records, there was an inventory of the jewellery Signora Giulia had taken with her. Esengrini himself had reconstructed the list: four diamond rings, three pairs of earrings, a strand of pearls, a diamond necklace, two pins set with precious stones, a watch and two bracelets also set with diamonds.

Sciancalepre could recall the jewellery by heart. He’d seen it who knows how many times on the poor woman. Where had all that stuff gone? He thought about making a detailed search of the lawyer’s house and office and felt some hope. And suddenly it occurred to him that neither he nor the magistrate had charged Esengrini with the crime of homicide; and that Esengrini hadn’t made the slightest admission of being the perpetrator of the crime. He’d attended the identification of the corpse as an interested bystander, but had never shown any sign of confusion.

At table he gave his wife the news. The plate she’d been holding fell to the floor.

‘How was Signora Giulia?’ she asked.

‘Falling apart, poor thing – it was indescribable! Those empty sockets… Only her hair was untouched. At least there was no smell. She was all shrivelled up…’

For the time being, Esengrini’s arrest was a simple matter of police custody. But that afternoon Sciancalepre decided to complete his report with an explicit charge for the murder of Giulia Zaccagni-Lamberti and of the attempted murder of Carlo Fumagalli. He went to the public prosecutor’s office to deliver his report in person, stopped by police headquarters to accept the chief’s congratulations and then went back home.

Two days later the public prosecutor, having notified Esengrini of the two charges against him and the warrant for his arrest, went to M—— for the questioning. At the old district prison of M——, built one hundred years before by the Austrians, Esengrini was brought into the little room reserved for judges and lawyers – without tie, shoelaces or belt. And yet his natural distinction was in no way diminished. On the
contrary, an air of being both offended and annoyed heightened the pitch of his words and the looks he gave.