The Marshal and the Madwoman Read online

  The Marshal and the Madwoman

  Also by the Author

  Death of an Englishman

  Death of a Dutchman

  Death in Autumn

  Death in Springtime

  The Marshal and the Murderer

  The Marshal's Own Case

  The Marshal Makes His Report

  The Marshal at the Villa Torrini

  The Monster of Florence

  Property of Blood

  Some Bitter Taste

  with Paolo Vagheggi

  The Prosecutor

  The Marshal and the Madwoman

  * * *

  Magdalen Nabb

  For the Master of Equilibrium who

  did so much to maintain mine whilst this work

  was in progress.

  First published in Great Britain in 1988

  Copyright © 1988 by Magdalen Nabb and © 1999 by

  Diogenes Verlag AG Zurich

  Published in the United States in 2003 by

  Soho Press, Inc.

  853 Broadway

  New York, NY 10003

  All rights reserved.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Nabb, Magdalen, 1947-

  The marshal and the madwoman / Magdalen Nabb.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 1-56947-340-4 (alk. paper)

  1. Guarnaccia, Marshal (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Mentally ill women—Crimes against—Fiction. 3. Police—Italy—Florence—Fiction. 4. Florence (Italy)—Fiction. I. Title.

  PR6064.A18M29 2003

  823'.914—dc21

  2003045795

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAP TER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 1

  In spite of themselves they paused at the edge of the stone kerb. There wasn't a car in sight, not even the distant sound of an engine, but the gesture was automatic, so much so that they even hesitated before stepping into the empty narrow road, disorientated by having nothing to battle against. If they had wanted to they could have walked down the centre of it, but the overpowering heat of Florence in August kept them close to the buildings within the strip of shade offered by the eaves high above.

  'Taken all in all,' Marshal Guarnaccia said, once they'd strolled across, 'there's a lot to be said for it. I'm glad we decided as we did.'

  The Marshal and his wife had taken their holidays in July, travelling down to their home town in the province of Syracuse with their two little boys and afterwards leaving the boys there with the Marshal's sister for the month of August when he had to be back in charge of his station in the Pitti Palace. Now it was early afternoon, siesta-time, and at this hour more than any other they sometimes felt like the only two people left in the city.

  'It'll be cooler if we cut through here.'

  They entered a gloomy alleyway so narrow that the sun never penetrated it. Their footsteps echoed.

  'If only there were a few more shops open . . .' the Marshal's wife murmured.

  'We've managed all right up to now.'

  I've managed, you mean. Yesterday I had to walk right across the city to find a butcher's and they say it's bound to get worse after the fifteenth when the few people who've stayed open until now are sure to shut.'

  'We'll eat out more often, like we did today. I enjoyed it.'

  'Today's your day off. We can't go round looking for an open restaurant when you're on duty.'

  'That's true.'

  'Apart from the expense. Mark my words, the only places that will stay open are those after the tourist trade. Bad food at top prices. No, no. We'll manage. They say the paper's going to list the shops that are open in each Quarter. Besides, I've still some preserves left. It's not as though we have to eat meat every day. People managed during the war.'

  'Aren't you exaggerating a bit?'

  'It's no joke to trail round the streets when it's a hundred and odd in the shade looking for an open shop—not to mention carrying the stuff home from miles away.'

  'If you'd learn to drive—'

  'We've been through all that. The traffic in this city's a one-way nightmare, and as for the ring roads! I'd die of fright at my age.'

  'Not now, though.'

  'What do you mean, not now?'

  'The traffic. There isn't any.'

  'That's true . . .'

  They came out, blinking, into a main street where a blast of heat enveloped them and put a stop to their conversation. They'd reached the top of the sloping forecourt in front of the Pitti Palace and were turning left to go through the big iron gates before she said again, 'It's true. I hadn't thought...'

  Their own little Fiat was parked alongside the squad car and van.

  'Even so, at my age . . . And who'd teach me? These schools cost a fortune.'

  'Salva!'

  'Mm.'

  'Say something—or do something!'

  The Marshal blinked and looked about him from behind his sunglasses.

  'Just take your time,' he suggested after waiting a bit.

  'And don't keep saying take your time—can you imagine what it would be like on a normal day with a queue a mile long behind me, hooting, and the traffic policeman marching up to me blowing his whistle? The entire city would have been choked to a standstill by this time and everybody blaming me. If only it weren't so hot! I'm melting into the seat. I told you we should have waited until it got cooler.'

  'It gets dark,' the Marshal said reasonably, 'before it gets cool.'

  'I'm not driving in the dark, and that's that.'

  'No.'

  'Now, I'm in gear. Am I? I am. Clutch—no, handbrake. I should have looked in the mirror but—it's going—no. Salva, for God's sake!'

  'Have a bit of patience.'

  'Patience! Anybody would lose patience with you, sitting there like a great lump of stone with your hands planted on your knees. You might be watching television. How can you teach me to drive if you don't speak? I've been stalling at this junction for the last half hour—it's going!'

  'I think you'd better stop.'

  'And go through all that again? I shan't stop again until we get home if I can help it.'

  'Well. . . Via Romana's one way. Stop and back up. You were supposed to turn right.'

  'What? Why didn't you say? The brake ... If I'd hit anything—you'll have us both killed.'

  'Just back up a bit.'

  'I would if I could find . . . There's a car coming towards me! Salva!'

  'He'll wait.'

  'We'll be killed. This is not reverse. If anything happens to us, the children—Now he's backing up and I don't blame him. If you'd help me instead of sitting there—there we are. Now, how do I steer backwards? I wish I'd never got into this. You're impossible! If anybody sees us I'll die of shame. Now I can go down here—or can I? The indicator, I didn't remember the—Well, it's too late now. You might have said something. He's following me. Why is he following me? Do you think he's annoyed?'

  'I expect this is the way he wants to go.'

  'Well, I'm not going any faster. Should I?'

  'Do as you like.'

  'And don't tell me to take my time. It's true what they say, that husbands shouldn't teach their wives to drive. They haven't the same patience a stranger would have. They always lose their tempers. He's still behind me.'

  'Don't worry.'

  'Don't worry? This was all your idea, remember that. Learning to drive is for young people. A woman of my
age with children to think about can't—Salva, look at all those people in the road! What am I going to do? I'll have to stop —I'm stopping. I can't park, you know, you'll have to do it if they don't move. Isn't that one of your squad cars? Where are you going? Don't leave me here!'

  'Wait for me.'

  The Marshal got out, extricating his big body from the small Fiat with difficulty. They were at a crossroads and the tail end of a car jutting out from the narrow road to the right was indeed one of the squad cars from his Station. The Marshal pushed his way through the noisy crowd and tapped at the driver's window. His young brigadier, Loren-zini, was inside, talking into the radio. When he looked up and saw the Marshal's big eyes staring in at him from behind sunglasses he wound down the window.

  'How did you get here so quickly? I was just calling in.'

  'What's going on?'

  'Nothing serious, just two neighbours quarrelling.'

  'But the whole street's out here!'

  'I know. Bruno's trying to quieten things down.'

  'I didn't think there were this many people left in Florence.'

  'Just as well there's no traffic. I don't think Bruno's getting very far. He's too young to have much authority, and anyway, they don't care much for police interference in this area.'

  'Why call us in, then?'

  'They didn't. We were just passing on patrol and found the street blocked.'

  The Marshal straightened up. 'Leave them to it, it'll soon blow over.'

  Lorenzini poked his head out. The noise level was rising and young Bruno was invisible among the jostling crowd.

  'It's a bit difficult. It'll look bad now if we don't clear the street—and then that woman's stark naked which is what's causing more than half the trouble . . .'

  'What?'

  'She's not all there.' Lorenzini tapped his head.

  'Where is she?'

  'Up there.'

  'Good grief. . .' The Marshal pushed his way forward towards a building fronted by scaffolding, the lower part of which was screened by green netting.

  'Let me through.'

  No one took much notice, neither stepping back for him nor preventing him from pushing past them. He wasn't in uniform and none of them knew or cared who he was since he wasn't one of them. He couldn't see Bruno and he noticed that the women were doing most of the shouting. A group of men in shirtsleeves stood around the door of the house under scaffolding and one of them was hammering on it with his fists.

  'You fuck off!' screamed a hysterical voice from above, 'Leave me alone!'

  'You should be ashamed of yourself using language like that!' bellowed a stocky little woman who was digging her elbow into the Marshal's stomach, 'and cover yourself up, for goodness' sake!'

  The Marshal was staring up with the rest of them. The window of the second-floor flat, though not large, reached down to floor level with a small railing along the bottom of it. The woman standing up there, obviously the one Loren-zini said wasn't right in the head, was waving a defiant pink fist, sometimes at the crowd below, but mostly at the window opposite which, in such a narrow street, was only a few feet away. She wasn't entirely naked since she had some sort of house frock or overall on, but it was unfastened and swung back so that her fat pink body was displayed as unconsciously as if she had been a two-year-old in a tantrum.

  'Pack it in, Clementina! Close your shutters and let's have some peace round here.'

  The crazy woman did at one point reach out for the peeling brown shutters and slam them towards herself, only to throw them open again so as to launch another volley of abuse.

  It was impossible to tell what the quarrel was about, and the woman opposite, whose voice was even more raucous than the crazy woman's, was only partially visible since her window was smaller. Perhaps she was deliberately remaining hidden, because a good many of the people below were getting more furious with her than with her opponent.

  'You're making her worse, leave her alone!'

  A dark head poked out over the sill and the Marshal saw a glint of spectacles and a face red with anger.

  'She should be locked up—I've put up with more than I can stand! And whoever's ringing at my door can stop it because I'm not opening up!'

  The Marshal twisted round and tried to push across to the door opposite to see if it might be young Bruno who was ringing her bell, but his way was blocked by the broad back of a man taller than himself. He heard a furious voice say, 'Who the hell called the Carabinieri?'

  'God knows . . .'

  Another concerted appeal was made to the madwoman to cover herself up and produced another stream of foul language which had the same air of innocent defiance as the woman's childlike nakedness.

  Although the pushing and shouting was getting worse and the heat was obviously contributing to everybody's irritation, the Marshal knew that there was no real danger, recognizing that the whole thing was a ritualized regular occurrence and would end when everybody got bored with it. Unfortunately, a man's voice in front of him then shouted up to the bespectacled woman, telling her to let the poor mad creature be and not to be such a bitch.

  Then another voice said, 'That's my wife you're calling a bitch.' And when the Marshal turned round to see who it was somebody hit him in the eye.

  'Cold water's the only thing, just hold it there. You'll have a nice black eye, though. I'll make you a coffee.'

  The Marshal's rescuer was the huge man who had blocked his view and who turned out to be the proprietor of the bar on the corner across the square from the house where the trouble had been. He'd brought the still dazed Marshal inside and sat him down at a brown formica table to get his wits back. The Marshal said nothing but held the cold compress to one of his large, rather bulging eyes which was swelling perceptibly. It was lucky the blow had knocked off his sunglasses rather than breaking them or things would have been much worse.

  Everyone else was outside where a few more tables were arranged in the road. They were celebrating the end of the quarrel or consoling themselves for the end of that day's entertainment, but their conversation was drowned by the noise of the television that was switched on in the bar, though nobody was watching it. The few people other than the Marshal who had taken refuge from the heat were playing pinball. The air was thick with their cigarette smoke.

  'Here's your coffee. How are you feeling now?'

  'I'll be all right.'

  'How did you come to be mixed up in it? You don't live round here.'

  The Marshal told him who he was.

  'Sorry. Well, you're not in uniform so ... I can't imagine who called you in.'

  'Nobody did. My lads were just passing.'

  'They'd have done better to carry on.'

  'The road was blocked.'

  'That's right. Well, these things happen. No harm done —sorry, I shouldn't have said that. It's a pity you got bumped into like that. It was an accident, of course.'

  'Of course.' There didn't seem to be much point in pursuing the matter since he hadn't seen where the fist came from and it was meant for someone else, anyway.

  A cackle of female laughter broke into the men's conversation outside. All the other women had disappeared indoors but the crazy woman, having got herself dressed but still wearing bedroom slippers, had come down to the bar and was being teased by the men outside.

  'Give us a kiss, come on!'

  'You keep your hands to yourself.' For some reason she was carrying a sweeping brush and she raised it threateningly.

  'Go on, give us a kiss.'

  The big barman had sat himself down beside the Marshal.

  'She's not all there,' he explained. 'Poor soul. They go too far tormenting her but the trouble is she eggs them on. She likes the attention.'

  'What was the fight about?'

  'Pigeons, same as usual.'

  'Pigeons?'

  'She feeds them. Right there at the corner under Maria Pia's window and they leave their droppings all over her little balcony and her plants and her wa
shing. There are hundreds of them.'

  'And is that all?'

  'More or less, only one thing led to another. It was Maria Pia's turn to give Clementina some dinner and she'd given her a bowl of minestrone. Then, when they started quarrelling over the pigeon business, Clementina threw the bowl out of the window and smashed it—oh Lord, somebody's blocked the No. 15 bus again.'

  A horn was sounding repeatedly out in the road.

  'It must take years off a man's life driving a bus in this city,' commented the barman, 'what with narrow streets and people parking in the middle of them, though there's little enough traffic today, I'd have thought—where are you going?'

  The Marshal had jumped to his feet with surprising agility for one so heavy and the cold compress had fallen to the floor.

  'My wife . . .'

  She was in tears. He drove the car home himself, so she was able to give her full attention to telling him what she thought of him. By the time they were halfway home she'd finished and fell silent, except for an occasional snifffollowed by an application of the handkerchief. As they came up Via Romana, where every shutter was down and the street deserted, he risked opening his mouth:

  'The shops were all open back there, did you notice?'

  The hot weather continued unbroken, despite the weather forecasters who predicted a storm. There were storms all right, but only in the north, and for three nights in a row, the Marshal and his wife, watching the news over their supper, saw waterlogged fields, and cities brought to a standstill by the downpour with deep water swirling around abandoned cars. In Florence, not a cloud appeared in the sky. The hot air got heavier and steamier as though the sun itself were sweating at its efforts, and the heat shimmering from the stones of all the great palaces combined with the sweltering glare to distort the vision of anyone foolish enough to go out without sunglasses. The Marshal, whose eyes were allergic to sunlight—it made them stream with tears—never went out without dark glasses. He rarely went out at all, but stayed put in his office at the Pitti Palace Carabinieri Station dealing with dull paperwork, drinking too much mineral water which only made him sweat more, and changing his khaki uniform two or three times a day.