The Marshal Makes His Report Page 12

  For some reason, Dr Martelli came into his mind, not because she lived in the Ulderighi house but because of something else she’d perhaps said—no, it was all those ornaments. She’d said what they were but he hadn’t caught the name. The point was that she’d said she wasn’t fond of the stuff but it had been her father’s, that she ought to get it valued. Her whole flat cluttered up with stuff she didn’t like but was tied to because it was all bound up with the memory of her father. Well, the Marshal’s children might or might not inherit a decent flat and a bit of something in the bank but there was no danger of their being saddled with a roomful of knick-knacks!

  He opened the window a little and let in the warm breath of the laurel-scented morning. The sun, by this hour, had moved beyond the far right wing of the Pitti Palace, leaving the Marshal’s corner in the left wing bathed in cool shade made deeper and more refreshing by the presence of so many trees. The physical pleasure of looking out on such a morning without the necessity of sheltering from it behind dark glasses for the moment blotted out all the Marshal’s current problems. After all, you had to take the bad bits along with the good, and most of the time he liked his job. He had a fatherly affection for the lads who passed through his hands and he got on well enough with the people in his Quarter. It was a decently paid job and, above all, safe and respectable. His father, a peasant farmer, would have given his eye teeth for such a job.

  Even as he thought these words he realized that they were not truly his own but his mother’s. His father had died before he enrolled, just before, and it had been his mother who, with tears in her eyes, had said, ‘It’s a good job, safe and respectable. Your father would have given his eye teeth . . .’ Had he joined the army because of what his father would have liked to do? Pushed that way with greater force because his father had died? You never know when you do something what the real reason is. You don’t think . . .

  ‘We inherited their dreams . . .’

  The same thing. Those two orphans, William and Catherine Yorke, adrift in a foreign country to fulfil their parents’ dreams of freedom and the artistic life. The parents, of course, had stayed firmly in their safe jobs until they died. You could fight against the pressure of your parents when they were there to fight back, but when they were dead? How can you fight against the influence of the dead?

  Behind the Marshal the door opened without a preliminary knock, which meant Lorenzini. ‘There’s a telephone call for you.’

  ‘Well, put it through.’ The Marshal continued to gaze out the window. ‘Marshal . . .’

  He turned then. ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s the Public Prosecutor’s office.’

  Lorenzini’s expression, which had every reason to be saying a silent I told you so, showed only sympathy and dismay.

  Well, the Marshal, too, was dismayed but, after all, what else could he have expected? It was true that the case had been played down for the press but everyone in Florence was speculating on the death of someone so important— or should he say the husband of someone so important. Word was bound to get back either from the Medico-Legal Institute or the prints lab at Headquarters.

  He sat down before picking up the receiver and waved at Lorenzini to indicate that he should stay. It wasn’t a long conversation and the Marshal contributed little to it beyond the occasional grunt of assent. When he hung up, all he said to Lorenzini was that his HSA report was to be delivered to the prosecutor’s office by noon the next day, after which the preliminary hearings judge could issue his decree consigning the inquiry to the archives. The body of Buongianni Corsi was to be released and buried on Saturday. The Marshal communicated all this without a hint of expression in voice or face.

  Lorenzini, uncertain whether to leave the room or risk trying to satisfy his curiosity, at last ventured to say, ‘In that case . . .’

  ‘In that case what?’

  ‘I just—I mean, this Leo chap. Should I still—’

  ‘Follow him.’

  ‘But there’ll be nothing in your report to warrant it, I imagine. So you might call this, as it were, a separate inquiry.’

  The Marshal stared at him, or rather through him, his eyes as blank as the windows of an empty house.

  ‘You can call it what you want. And there’ll be nothing in my report. Nothing. What should there be?’

  ‘I don’t know. You seemed sure that the patch on his face—’

  ‘Hypostasis is the business of the doctor who examined the body.’

  ‘Yes, of course. I only thought . . . I’ll start following him then, tonight.’

  ‘Thank you. The presence of two carabinieri is required at the funeral in view of the presence of the archbishop, the chief public prosecutor, etcetera, etcetera.’

  Lorenzini waited a moment but his chief made no further comment, so he left the room and closed the door quietly.

  The Marshal returned to his place at the window and gazed calmly out, his big shoulders rigid as if braced against an approaching blow.

  ‘Eternal rest give unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him. May he rest in peace.’

  ‘Amen.’

  The priest, circling the coffin behind the officiating archbishop and sprinkling holy water, was the one the Marshal had seen entering the Palazzo Ulderighi the other day. The family confessor. The family chapel. The chapel was a few doors away from the house and, to judge by the stale cold air inside it, had not been opened for years. Indeed, were it not for the presence of the Marshal and one of his boys it wouldn’t have been opened to the air yet, since the family entered it from some passage directly connected to the house and passing unseen through the buildings between. This was common enough and, in the case of the Ulderighi, a necessity after the death of the unfortunate Francesco. An Ulderighi didn’t pass through the streets in the sixteenth century without risk.

  ‘For Buongianni and for the souls of all the faithful departed . . .’

  The Marshal was standing, the small congregation seated on hard chairs which made him remember the concert, the little gold chairs, the young man on a stool near the door whose name he had by now forgotten. On the opposite side stood the lad he had brought with him. A youngster doing his national service who couldn’t help forgetting himself so far as to stare down at the important personages seated near him and up at the frescoes on his right. The chapel had no windows and was lit only by a couple of dim electric bulbs and a lot of beeswax candles whose flickering gave life to the figures in their soft glowing colours on the walls. The fresco nearest the Marshal was largely incomprehensible to him but, at a guess, it would seem to have been some sort of Ulderighi family saint seeing visions on her deathbed. Who the saint emerging from a corner of the bedroom wall was he couldn’t be sure, but the woman saying the rosary by the bedside of the dying woman was certainly the famous Lucrezia. Was the dying woman her mother, then? No, she was dressed as a nun. An aunt then, or somesuch.

  ‘Let us pray.’

  The Marshal ducked his head. He was shivering in his thin summer uniform and it was difficult to imagine the warmth of the June day outside. Every now and then his right arm fell to his side and brushed against the pocket where a sheet of paper was folded out of sight. He didn’t want to think about the notes on that piece of paper, only to know it was safely in its place and invisible. He didn’t want to think about it because he didn’t know what to do about it. He needed time to think in private. He’d do better to think of something else for now. But what, after all, could he think about with Corsi there in his coffin? Against the drone of the requiem mass his thoughts drifted in repetitive circles. The reality of the corpse nailed inside its last resting place, the nightmare of the limbs that wouldn’t settle, the eyes that watched him, the parcel of clothes that started it all. The shoes. He had been right, or so he’d thought at first when the phone call came.

  Well, you were right. He was carried. Lovely glossy shoes, lovely clear prints. My compliments. Still, you were wrong about the other b
usiness.

  What other business? There was no other business. I just wanted photos of the prints.

  Well, that’s what you were wrong about. Oh, I know you said just collect the prints, no point in putting them through the computer. Well, I did, just to be sure. No point in doing half a job. If there was nothing, there was nothing. But there wasn’t nothing. Your man’s got a criminal record as long as your arm.

  But he can’t have . . .

  Can’t he? Theft, grievous bodily harm, robbery with violence, grievous bodily harm again and a nice case of robbery with rape. I ought to explain that our friend is not a thief. He’s paid to go along in case any rough stuff’s required and he usually sees to it that it is. One of those brutes that enjoys it, know what I mean?

  Yes . . . yes, but I don’t understand—

  Usually known by his nickname, Tiny.

  Tiny . . . Somebody told me The Baby.

  The Baby? That’s the football player. Everybody knows him! He’s got no record—not that he doesn’t merit one but he’d be taken off the team so he’s always protected. Not that he gets up to anything as lethal as our friend Tiny, just the odd scuffle, bit of admissible bloodshed on the pitch. No, no, these prints are Tiny’s, real name Gualducci, Rolando Gualducci. I haven’t read you his full record, it’d take all day, but the man’s a killer who up to now has been lucky, you know what I mean? I bet that whoever owns these shoes is looking the worse for wear after an encounter with him. Or are they his? Don’t look like his style.

  ‘Eternal rest give unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him . . .’

  The mass was nearing its end.

  The Marshal hadn’t enlightened his colleague. He was in need of enlightenment himself. It was a shock. Yet why should it have been such a shock? He had already thought that Leo, the porter’s son, had been the one to drag Buongianni Corsi by the feet, whatever the reason, whatever else he might have done to Corsi first. Instead, it had been a certain Rolando Gualducci. What difference did it make? He looked around him now and he knew. The family. The family chaplain, the family chapel, the family retainers. It would have been natural to call in Leo to help with . . . with whatever had happened, even so relatively innocent a deed as covering up a suicide. But Tiny, now. Tiny was another story altogether . . .

  He’s paid to go along in case any rough stuff’s required . . .

  So who paid him? Why did they want him in case? Who even knew him? The Marshal thought he knew the answer to the last question at least. The only person within the Palazzo Ulderighi likely to know Tiny was Leo. Two of them . . . to do what? Just to move a body? Leo could have done that by himself. How difficult would it be for two big men to fake the suicide of a third? Close to the Marshal’s face Lucrezia held her rosary between delicate white fingers, her eyes raised to heaven, ignorant of the vision towards which the dying nun stretched out her feeble arms.

  ‘Go, the mass is over.’

  ‘Thanks be to God.’

  Thanks be to God was right, thought the Marshal, stretching his cold stiff knees, and he nodded at his boy to go out with him before the coffin. As he reached the door, feeling for his sunglasses ready for the glare outside, his stomach gave what must surely be an audible growl of hunger. Why on earth he should have developed such an urgent appetite in the middle of the morning he couldn’t quite understand until he made the connection with the mass. He was very much a weddings, funerals and christenings man himself who left all that sort of thing to his wife, but a lifetime of Sunday mass attendance left its mark. For years the words Ite missa est had conjured up his mother’s Sunday roast rabbit with rich herb-scented gravy. What an odd business life was. Here was he, suffering nightmares about the burial of Corsi and now, with the coffin being manoeuvred rather clumsily into the back of the hearse, he was thinking about roast rabbit.

  Grateful though he was for the warmth of the street on coming out of the icy church, his car, which he hadn’t been able to park in the shade, was boiling inside and both he and his boy opened their windows as quickly as they could. The journey to the cemetery wasn’t long. Corsi was to be buried at San Miniato, surely the most richly endowed church in the city and certainly the most exclusive cemetery. It stood on the side of the hill overlooking the left bank of the Arno and its gilded marble façade glittered so brightly in the morning sunshine that it hardly seemed real.

  The Marshal parked in a discreet patch of shade outside the high gates and watched the hearse drive slowly in along the wide gravel avenue followed by the cars of the mourners. He was under no illusions as to the role he was playing. A uniformed presence. The chief public prosecutor rode behind bullet-proof glass with his personal bodyguard and the archbishop’s car was followed by four plain clothes policemen. Nevertheless, the Marshal was glad to be there and all but invisible. This was his one chance to get a good close look at the Ulderighi, all of them, and he intended to make the most of it. Until now he had been kept away from them and the fact hadn’t displeased him. He had been too afraid of the Marchesa. Not just afraid of the influence she had and the damage she might do him, but afraid of her personally. That day he’d told her of Corsi’s death he had stood no more than a foot away from her and yet, afterwards, he couldn’t have said exactly what she looked like. He had watched her face, even registered her thoughts and reactions, but her presence had overpowered him to the extent that he didn’t know now whether her eyes were light or dark.

  ‘Stay here.’ He left the boy in the meagre shade of a cypress tree.

  And Neri, the son. He wanted to get a look at him and see for himself whether he looked sick or crazy or both. Yesterday he would have balked at this, too, but today was different. Today there was a slip of paper in his pocket headed ‘Gualducci, Rolando aka Tiny’, and everything had changed.

  A Benedictine monk was stationed near the family tomb awaiting the arrival of the cortège. He wore large black-rimmed glasses that gave him an owlish look and the instant the coffin came into view he began to bustle about officiously. Once or twice his glance caught the Marshal as though he was wondering where to put him, but the Marshal kept just enough distance to be out of earshot of the whispered orders.

  The coffin was placed at the entrance to the tomb. Then the Marshal saw Neri Ulderighi for the first time. What had he expected? He wasn’t sure, but certainly not what he saw. Neri was bigger, bulkier somehow than so much talk of his weakness led one to imagine. In fact, had he not been standing beside his mother with the priest supporting his arm on the other side, the Marshal would never have guessed who he was. There was hardly time for this to register before other people on the Marshal’s side of the coffin obscured his view and he was obliged to shift his position as surreptitiously as possible under cover of the Archbishop’s prayers which he hoped would hide the noise of his footsteps on the clean gravel. There. He could see them both now . . . and an older woman standing beside the Marchesa, perhaps the aunt. She looked sick, the Marshal thought, her face chalk white with reddish bags under her eyes. She was leaning on a stick.

  ‘Remember, man, that thou art dust and unto dust . . .’

  He shifted a little further. As he had imagined, the old aunt’s legs were swollen. But Neri, Neri was so unexpected. His stance was that of a middle-aged man. The aunt stood there rigid with the help of her stick. The Marchesa was as upright and immobile as the white marble angel whose wings reared up behind her head against the blackness of a cypress tree. But Neri, even with the priest supporting or restraining him, was restless. His head was never still for an instant. How old had they said he was? In his early twenties at any rate. His hair, blond like his mother’s, was already thinning. The head that was never still but bobbing and jerking, this way and that, as if in search of something, was too big even for that large and rather flabby body. He might have been an imbecile, yet the Marshal could just make out his eyes and they were bright and intelligent.

  ‘May his soul and the souls of all the faithful departed, th
rough the mercy of God . . .’

  Just a little nearer. He might never get another chance . . . When he did get nearer he was yet again surprised. The bright eyes, the unquiet stance, the jerking head, all had a very simple explanation. Neri Ulderighi was weeping.

  The Marshal’s eyes scanned the rest of the mourners. There was a family group, parents and a small girl, who looked as though they didn’t quite belong, though they must, from their position, have been close relatives— Corsi’s relatives, that must be it. The unfortunate Prince Consort had a family of his own and the Marshal had never given them a thought. There were a number of people in deep mourning who might well have been further branches of the Ulderighi family. Then some obvious city dignitaries, some of whom the Marshal recognized and some he didn’t. The family retainers . . . Grillo looking very strange in his tiny suit. He couldn’t see the old tata but no doubt she was far too old and frail to go out . . . Leo! That must be Leo, it couldn’t be anyone else. Thick-necked and bullet-headed. His hair was shaven, no doubt so that no one could grasp him by it on the field. His parents weren’t visible but they would be there somewhere. The retainers hadn’t been in the chapel, only the family and the important guests. There was no sign of any of the tenants.