The Marshal at the Villa Torrini Page 14

  While that in itself was nonsense, it was true that he'd neglected the lad, embroiled as he was in his own troubles. If he was happy sitting there taking notes, well, it was harmless enough and might even turn out useful.

  He had only just registered the fact that the piano music had stopped, when the door opened quietly and the girl was standing there. The diminutive Sissi, all but invisible behind her, must have given her a push.

  'Go on!' Before shutting the door she added with some emphasis, 'I'll be right here!' Though who among them she thought might require rescuing was unclear.

  Both men had stood up when the door opened, and now they hovered uncertainly, expecting the girl to tell them to sit down again or at least be seated herself, but she didn't move. She remained very still, her hands folded in front of her, looking at them. She seemed utterly composed but there was a rigidity in her stance that suggested otherwise. There was no avoiding the Botticelli image, despite her wearing faded jeans and a worn black sweater. It wasn't just the long heavy hair, more something to do with her stillness, watchful and self-contained.

  It was the Marshal who had to suggest they sat down. Even seated, she didn't lean back in the big chair but remained upright, her back as rigid as ever, her brown eyes fixed on his. She folded her long white hands quietly in her lap. The Marshal, prepared for her silence, was startled when she was the first to speak.

  'I don't want to talk about her.'

  'Your mother? Of course, so soon after the funeral . . . I'm sorry we had to do this, but it is necessary.'

  She received this in silence, no longer looking directly at him but at some point in space to one side of him. He tightened his grip on the hat parked on his knee and with a little cough insisted.

  'You're very young and you've had a bad shock, but you're old enough to realize, I think, that we're obliged, in the circumstances, to make inquiries . . .'

  Nothing. When it came down to it she didn't look old enough. She had the air of a child, obedient but unresponsive, so unresponsive that it crossed his mind that perhaps she wasn't normal. He'd seen mad people retreat into their own heads like that—yet she was at university and neither Mary Mancini nor her daughter, sane, sensible people, had suggested there might be something wrong with her. He sighed inwardly. His only experience of a wall of silence so impenetrable was with dull-witted and patently guilty criminals. That brute Saverino had been one of them. Hadn't opened his mouth until the trial. It had been the pathetic little Pecchioli who'd told all.

  With less tough characters a few days in the cells often did the trick, but he could hardly lock up this fair and delicate creature. He tried another tack.

  'What I'd really like to talk about is you.'

  'Me? Why should you be interested in me?'

  It wasn't much but it was better than silence. 'I'm sure a lot of people are interested in you, in how you're feeling, what you intend to do.'

  She shrugged her shoulders.

  'You'll continue at university?'

  A shrug, this time evidently meaning, 'I suppose so.'

  'You'll be independent now, economically and . . . in every way. You might feel there's something else you'd prefer to do.'

  'I'll never do anything!' She almost shouted it at him and her face changed colour. She was surely about to cry. The Marshal gave an unhappy glance at the door, knowing that Sissi would be listening in. This was going as badly as his visit to Forbes, when, trying to work his way around dangerous areas, he had set off a mine with an innocent remark about the furniture. Well, so be it.

  'I'm sure that's not true. You have every advantage. You're obviously a bright girl, studying at university— Italian, isn't it?'

  A nod.

  'Which you already speak well. You're very pretty and you'll have more than enough money for your needs. Most girls would envy you.'

  Her only response was a downward twist at one corner of her mouth whose meaning was not lost on the Marshal. Though often accused of not following what people were saying, he was always aware of what they were thinking. That disdainful little smirk said that he didn't know what he was talking about.

  'Have you given any thought at all to a career?'

  'I'll have to teach, I suppose.'

  'But you don't want to, judging by the way you say it.'

  He wondered how she imagined she'd be able to teach without the aid of the spoken word. He looked at her hands lying one over the other, smooth and flawless with short, very white nails. Not a tremor. They lay as still as dead birds. He had a distressing feeling that he wasn't just dealing with shyness or even a chronic lack of confidence, that the apparently perfect creature was somehow irreparably damaged. Her mother, who had loved her, had grieved for her as a lost child. When he looked up at her face again she stared back at him accusingly.

  'You're not interested in me, you're here because of my mother and how she died.'

  'Do you know how she died—I mean, do you know any more than we do?'

  'How should I know? I wasn't even here.'

  'You might know from Forbes.'

  Silence. A silence that might have lasted indefinitely if the Marshal, as much to break it as anything, asked, 'You aren't disturbed by my carabiniere taking notes? He can leave if you prefer it.' But she only shrugged. Fara looked at the Marshal for guidance but he, too, shrugged. What was the point? He might as well stay. The poor lad hadn't written a word, anyway. What was there to write?

  'Did you quarrel with your mother, Signorina? At Christmas, or a little before?'

  'No.'

  'But she was very distressed at that time about you. Had you been in some trouble in England?'

  'No.'

  'You can't think of any reason why she should have been so distressed about you?'

  'She was disappointed in me, I suppose. I'm not as bright as she expected.'

  'And was Julian Forbes disappointed in you, too?'

  Silence.

  'He used to help you with your school work, your friend Katy told me. Did he get bored with you because you were not as bright as he expected, either?'

  That, at least, touched a spot. She stared at him in hatred and her face flushed deep red.

  'He didn't want you here any more, did he?'

  'It was her, she was the one who wrote—'

  'No, no . . . I can promise you that she was deeply grieved about it. If you fought with your mother and accused her—'

  'She even sold my bed!'

  'No. He did. He was very jealous, my dear, and he wanted himself at the centre of everything. You shouldn't have blamed your mother. I realize that it's an unhappy thought for you now that it's too late to make up your quarrel, but it's important for you, and will be throughout your life, to know that your mother loved you very deeply. And you did come for Christmas in the end, didn't you?'

  She nodded, again with that downward twist of her mouth.

  'Your mother must have been the one who told you to come.'

  She nodded miserably.

  'I suppose it wasn't a very happy visit after what had happened. It may be that, in the end, your mother decided to leave her husband because of his rejection of you. Doesn't that say that she cared a lot about you?'

  She was staring past him in silence again. The Marshal persisted a little while longer, chiefly in the hope of persuading her to go and stay with the Mancini family, but he elicited no further replies. Her tension disturbed him deeply. He had in a fairly long career dealt with many bereaved people. Some were hysterical, some unbelieving, some collapsed from the shock and others almost attacked him physically as the bearer of bad tidings. Never had he encountered this paralysing tension. It was affecting him so badly that he had to bring the interview to a close. It was a relief to get to his feet and make for the door with Fara behind him. The girl didn't move from her chair. Sissi opened up as he was reaching out his hand for the doorknob.

  'I could hardly hear half of it,' she complained, 'I'm always having to tell that girl to
speak up—when she does speak—but I didn't think you'd have been a mumbler.'

  As they returned to their car by the. lemon pots in their furiously snapping polythene shrouds, they glimpsed the worried face of the Signora Torrini gazing down at them from an upper floor window. There was no sign of life in the barn, no face behind the lattice-work.

  'We're not going in to see him, then?' Fara ventured to ask.

  'He's not there,' the Marshal said, 'there's no fire lit and it's well below freezing point.'

  Fara looked up. It was true that no curl of smoke was coming from the chimney. The sky above, seared by the icy wind, burned a deep, pure blue such as was never seen in summer.

  'I wish I lived in this place,' Fara said, gazing out at the villa as he turned the ignition.

  'The people who do,' observed the Marshal, 'don't seem to be enjoying it much.'

  The Marshal lay in bed rolling the day's images through his mind and enjoying the sound of Teresa chattering to him as she pottered in and out tidying away their day.

  'The fishmonger says they'll never in this world dare arrest the hunchback—he always calls him that, never uses his name, but of course he's a communist, so . . . but that retired professor was in, I forget his name but you met him once at the opening of that exhibition so you know who I mean, he buys a lot of fish, doesn't care for meat, and he said that that written defence he'd submitted to the magistrates was a typical Mafia document, the language used, the reasoning, everything—do you think he'll ever be arrested? Salva? Salva!'

  'What? I don't know . . . ' He plugged himself into the conversation and ran it back a bit. 'You didn't make any comment, I hope?'

  'Of course not. I must say it's nice to have the boys back.'

  It was. They'd burst in, sunburnt, grubby and noisier than ever. Dropping rucksacks, polythene bags and anoraks in a trail through the flat, shouting each other down with stories, complaints, jokes and confessions, it had been like having the tramontane rip straight through the house. Now all was peace as they slept the sleep of the exhausted and contented.

  There had been one brief interlude of discontent, however, only shortly after their arrival. Teresa brought it up now as she slid into bed.

  'Why didn't you let them go, by the way?'

  'What?'

  'Why didn't you let them go for the end-of-trip pizza with all the others tonight? The teachers were going, they'd have been all right.'

  'They've just had a week's holiday.'

  'Well, it was only to round it off. It was a nice idea.'

  'They have too much. They're spoilt.'

  'Even so, it's not like you. You usually like them to enjoy themselves.'

  She received no further enlightenment on the subject and so left it at that, to observe after a few minutes' silence, 'Have you noticed how quiet it is?'

  'Mm?'

  'I was thinking it was because the boys had gone to bed but it's not. The wind's dropped.'

  It was true. Not a sound disturbed them from outside their shutters.

  'Thank goodness for that.'

  'Thank goodness is right,' Teresa said, turning over and settling down. 'It was so tiring battling against it. It should be lovely tomorrow if it doesn't cloud over again right away.'

  'It won't.' He lay awake after her, turning over some doubts in his mind. He wondered whether it had been the right thing to let Fara go over later to take a look in at Il Caffé in case Forbes turned up and . . . well, and what? He hadn't wanted to discourage the lad and it was true that he'd been inconspicuous and that Forbes would never recognize him out of uniform . . . well, it couldn't do any harm . . .

  The other thing he had doubts about was much less clearly defined. He had been sure all along that Forbes had murdered his wife and now he was sure why. She must have decided to leave him. If she had, he'd have been jobless, homeless, penniless and by all accounts friendless. Another golden goose like Celia Carter wouldn't be easy to come by. Even so, he wasn't convinced. He felt he was seeing all the component parts of the picture but not seeing the meaning that held it all together. When, later, he did see it, he was forced to admit to himself that he'd been trying to avoid it, that he preferred on this windless, peaceful night, to push his doubts to one side and concentrate on getting a good night's sleep.

  After all, he reasoned, as he slid deeper into the warmth of the big bed, it didn't much matter what he knew or didn't know since he had no hope of ever proving anything. Before he quite dropped off he opened his eyes to check that the alarm on his bedside cabinet was set. It was. The luminous hands said a quarter to midnight. He closed his eyes.

  Out in the still winter night, the temperature climbed steadily. Needles of gold light glittered in the dark waters of the Arno beneath the Ponte Vecchio where the silence of the deserted city was being rudely broken by Julian Forbes, drunk and bloodied, resisting arrest by the police.

  CHAPTER 9

  'How long did he stay at Il Caffé?' The Marshal sat down at his desk as he asked the question. The pink-faced Fara had barely let him get into the office, so full was he of his story.

  'Not so long, not much more than an hour. I got there well before him. He arrived at half past ten.' He consulted his notebook, 'Ten twenty-seven.'

  'And was this girl with him or did he pick her up there?'

  'She came in with him. He was all over her. He insisted on trailing round the whole room to speak to everyone he knew and introduce her. He was feeling her the whole time, and she looked a bit uncomfortable, but she didn't stop him.'

  'And where were you, that he didn't spot you going around like that?'

  'Up on the balcony. It's tiny, just four tables lined up, but there are potted palms and stuff and very low lights, romantic. The only thing was they're all couples up there, so I felt a bit stupid, anyway . . . When he'd buttonholed everybody he could think of they sat down near Galli who was there with a tall blonde woman.'

  'His wife.'

  'I suppose it would have been, he didn't talk to her much. He didn't talk to Forbes much either and you could tell he didn't want him there, kept turning his back and getting deep into conversation with another journalist—I don't know his name but I've seen him around. I saw him going into court the other day when I was waiting for you. Forbes kept trying to butt in, but Galli must have said something pretty sharp, so in the end he gave up and started slopping all over this girl he was with. Then he managed to persuade another girl who was leaving to sit down and have a drink with them. After that, he had an arm round each girl and was talking nineteen to the dozen. I couldn't hear what he was saying because there's always music playing. The second girl was the first to leave. I don't think Forbes wanted to move but his girlfriend persuaded him.'

  'Was he drunk?'

  'I suppose . . . I don't know. He looked—feverish. You know? Excited. I suppose he might have drunk a lot of wine at dinner before going there, but he only had two drinks— marc de champagne both times, I heard the waiter. I don't think anybody'd be likely to get drunk in that place because there's nothing costs less than eight thousand lire . . .'

  He tailed off, embarrassed. The Marshal fished some money out of his pocket. Fara's face got redder.

  'I didn't mean . . .'

  'Take it. You can't afford that, son. I should have thought on. You didn't keep the receipt?'

  'Of course, but I threw it away when I got in. I wasn't intending . . .'

  'Well, another time keep it. So, you don't think he was drunk?'

  'Not really. Like I said, he was excited. He started raising his voice a bit, and I think that's why the girl wanted to leave.'

  'He was raising his voice at her?'

  'Oh no. I think at Galli. I think Galli must have offended him, though I couldn't hear. Then he turned his back. Forbes shouted then. I heard him say "a bunch of hacks", which meant the journalists, I suppose, then he pointed to himself, prodding his chest, no doubt telling them he was something a cut above. Luckily the girl managed to get him
out and I rushed downstairs to follow them. I didn't know, of course, about the bike.'

  The bike was one of those enormous efforts—Fara apologized for not being well-informed enough to distinguish the make—with engines as big as a car's, and bristling all over with accessories.

  'He must have bought it that day. It glittered with newness.'

  When he saw the two of them mount the monster motorbike, Fara had intended to give the thing up and cross back to the Pitti.

  'Only they went the wrong way, roaring along the Via Guicciardini towards the Ponte Vecchio. I knew they wouldn't get far before they were stopped, going back up a one-way street like that. So I strolled along, listening. The streets were very quiet because, at that time everything's shut round here except Il Caffé.

  'And were they stopped?'

  'Of course they were. I didn't see the very start of the business, but once I heard the commotion I started running. Evidently he'd managed to get between the bollards that keep the traffic off the bridge. I heard a whistle blow, a bit of a roar and then a crash. When I arrived on the scene a little group of spectators had appeared out of nowhere, so I mixed in with them and watched.'

  'What was the crash? Had he come off the motorbike?'

  'From what I could gather he must have got on the bridge and two municipal police—a man and a woman—had waved him down. I suppose they whistled when he didn't stop, and when I arrived they were yelling at him that he could easily have killed them. As it was he'd run into the bollards at the other end. The girl hadn't a scratch on her, but Forbes's face was bleeding and one of his hands, too. He was hysterical, screaming at the police that it was their fault and they would pay for it. They asked him for documents but he refused to show any, saying the British ambassador was a personal friend of his and that he would see to it that they lost their jobs. He went on like that for a bit while they were waiting for a patrol car to come and pick him up.'

  'And you still don't think he was drunk?' The Marshal didn't want to discourage the lad who, after all, had done a good job, but he couldn't have much experience of the different ways drunkenness can take people.