The Marshal at the Villa Torrini Page 16

  Trees . . . a country lane . . . Vittorio. Still, the memory wouldn't surface, at least not as far as his brain. It surfaced as far as his stomach, bringing a feeling of fear and nausea that he repressed. Clearly he didn't want to remember and yet Forbes was provoking him to it. It was absurd! What connection could there possibly be . . . ?

  'It's a sizeable amount of money and, of course, there are other considerations, the chief of them being that she was intending to leave him and from what I've seen of Forbes . . . Can I offer you a cigar?'

  'No, thank you.'

  'Hope they don't bother you. Now this Forbes character . . . There was a paternity suit but the girl's parents refused to let her marry him. Payments are being made by Forbes's parents but they want nothing further to do with him and it suits them that Celia Carter took him off to Italy. That all sounds in character, I'd say.'

  What if it wasn't a connection that had to do with facts, but only with feelings? Because he had to admit, though he was reluctant to do it, that a similar feeling of fear and nausea had been building up inside him for some time, and that he was trying to smother it, trying not to acknowledge its meaning, just as he tried not to acknowledge the memory of Vittorio, trees, a country lane. How long had he been feeling like that? He couldn't pinpoint it. After he'd talked to Father Jameson, perhaps . . .

  A fit of coughing interrupted his thoughts. He was enveloped in a cloud of Fusarri's cigar smoke.

  'All right, Guarnaccia, point taken. I'll try and hold out without my cigar for ten minutes. Open the window, if you like—I'm sure Eugenia won't mind—and then, for goodness' sake come and sit down.'

  The Marshal did as he was told. He opened the window. The noise disturbed a small bird which darted out of the vine covering the wall of the house and flew away chattering angrily. Then the Marshal remembered.

  'My feeling is that once we've got our thoughts in order we should go over there and face him with it. A confession's our only hope, obviously, unless somebody has a brainwave about how he did it. What about it, Guarnaccia?'

  Getting no response, Fusarri looked inquiringly at the Captain who, more than a little irritated, called his Marshal to order. 'I don't think we're getting your full attention on this. Guarnaccia—Guarnaccia, are you feeling all right?'

  'Yes, sir.'

  'Good. Now I'd like to be a bit surer of my ground here and what isn't clear is his current behaviour, all this drawing attention to himself, these bizarre episodes—I take it we can rely absolutely on Signora Torrini's account of today's events?'

  'Ah! Dear Eugenia!' Forgetting his promise, Fusarri lit up and blue clouds issued forth again. 'Yes, well, I'd say you can rely on her telling the truth and nothing but the truth, but not necessarily the whole truth, if you see what I mean.'

  'I'm not sure that I do.' The Captain wasn't surprised that Guarnaccia couldn't cope with this sort of thing. He'd forgotten himself how difficult it was.

  'What I'm trying to say is that dear Eugenia wouldn't tell a lie. If she says there was a violent quarrel over there at the barn and that she was seriously afraid the daughter might meet a similar fate to her mother's, then she certainly meant it. And if she says that Forbes then came over here and tried to buy the Villa Torrini, frightening her to death in the process, then I'm sure that's what happened. All I'm saying is that she's elderly and very upset, and that there are things she will have failed to notice or forgotten to mention in the telling of it, and we must allow for that."

  'Yes, of course. Well the best thing would be for one of us to go over it again with her tomorrow when she's had a little time to calm down—you don't think her son ought to come and stay with her?'

  'Giorgio? Hm. He'd come if I insisted and leave after the first half-hour or the first quarrel whichever was the sooner. Better leave Giorgio out of this. He's still furious with her about the priest—Guarnaccia, are you sure you're all right?'

  'Yes, the priest . . . ' Shocked out of his reverie, he automatically repeated the Prosecutor's last words the way the teacher used to make him do at school, because at school was where he was in his head.

  'The priest . . . yes, she did say that first night I came here that she'd called the priest and that Giorgio was furious. But there was no priest here so I never quite . . .'

  'There you are, that's precisely what I'm telling you!' Fusarri smiled bright-eyed at the two of them. 'She called the priest all right but that was months ago. She called him to stop him ringing his blasted bells—and I quote—at six in the morning and waking her up when she often only got to sleep at three, being an insomniac. She told him his parishioners had alarm clocks and if they were foolish enough to go to mass at all, let alone at six in the morning, they could damn well set them. I gather from Giorgio who went round to the church to apologize, that he needn't have bothered since she forgot to announce herself, just said her piece and rang off. The amazing thing is that the unfortunate priest, young and full of missionary zeal, then called her to apologize, in the hope of coming round and bringing her back into the fold. He was saved from an unpleasant interview by the fact that she only answers the phone at one o'clock when Giorgio checks in to see if he's still a martyred son or a newly orphaned heir. Anyway, since he hasn't forgiven her and it's still a bone of contention, she mixed it in with the Celia Carter business as if it had just happened. That's what we have to guard against.'

  Poor Signora Torrini had indeed been terrified, not so much by the row, and the sight of young Jenny fleeing the barn in hysterics, as by Forbes's attempt on her house. Having endured his good deeds against her will so often in the past, she was far from convinced that his offer to take the place off her hands at a generous price wouldn't come about whether she wished it or not. This time she had called the Marshal and then 'dear Virgilio' for good measure. The Marshal himself had asked the Captain to be present, telling himself that he'd soon need to ask him for at least one extra man. Telling himself a good many very logical things other than the truth, which was his need to have the Captain by him because of a growing sense of foreboding which had something to do with a memory he would rather keep repressed.

  Well, now it was out. He had sat down because somebody had told him to, but he got to his feet again now with a sigh. His slightly bulging eyes strayed again to the window.

  'Wait here,' he said, since he had to do this alone.

  He didn't notice the Captain making to follow him, his face red with annoyance, or Fusarri's delighted grin and restraining gesture. Nor, seeing Fara down there in the car, did he register that he hadn't left him waiting upstairs. As he hammered on Sissi's door he was oblivious of those who watched him. Maestrangelo and Fusarri from the open window to his left, Fara from the car, Forbes from behind the lattice-work of the barn.

  Only Sissi, opening the door to him, understood.

  She wasn't smiling. She followed him as he walked past her, her little eyes watchful.

  'Couldn't it wait a day? She's in a bad way just now.'

  'Where is she?'

  'The bedroom. There. We understand each other, she and I.'

  'Yes.'

  'Should have got out. Only answer. I used to dream of some terrible accident, my mother's face scarred for ever so I'd feel sorry for her. Look after her. One good thing about old age. I'd be ugly now anyway. Ha! Families. You don't think I should stay?'

  'No.'

  'Shan't listen. Don't want to. It's a bad business. Look at me: I haven't cried since I was seventeen. That's what people do to you. Better without.'

  The Marshal knocked on the bedroom door and went in, closing it behind him.

  CHAPTER 10

  She hadn't heard him. She was asleep. She lay facing him on a rumpled quilt, her forearms crossed protectively over her chest, her knees drawn up, trails of waving blonde hair covering the pillow beneath her creased, tear-stained cheek and clinging to the black wool of her sweater.

  Still, his entrance must have disturbed her troubled sleep because she turned with a de
ep shuddering sigh and stretched out on her back, her arms still crossed over her breast. She muttered a few words which the Marshal couldn't catch and then lay immobile. In that position she might have been an effigy on some mediæval tomb such as the Marshal had so often seen. But no knight in repose lay beside her, his last battle fought, his pointed toes turned hopefully towards heaven. And where else could you turn, when it came down to it? Who else could be called to comfort her, in the moment of the Marshal's distress, if not a Father Jameson? He thought of Mary Mancini, but she was Celia's friend. You needed someone who could go beyond that, someone who could pity the girl a little, and blame her mother a little for too much love.

  His own mother, now . . . He was in his forties and it had taken all these years and this for him to begin to appreciate her ability to cope, to comfort. Half her attention on the weekly wash, reducing tragedy to the level of the missing button, the poor-yielding cow, the crying child. Deal with it and carry on. That's life and the rest is death, the only incurable evil. If he'd appreciated her then he would have told her all of it, not the censored version. Of course, thinking back now, she might have guessed it all and kept her counsel. Knowing him as she did, how could she have believed he'd wept in distress just because of the disturbed bird's nest? But that was what he'd told her.

  'We climbed up, and Vittorio . . . and Vittorio . . . he touched one of the eggs—but why did the bird fly away like that? Why didn't it stay and peck him? Why didn't it peck his eyes out? Why? It just flew away as far as it could, singing and swooping about! It was stupid! It should have pecked his eyes out and made him fall out of the tree!'

  And she had dried his tears and asked no questions. She must have known. How could she not have known that a boy, even at his tender age, didn't cry because some bird had flown its nest and sung its heart out to no avail. She had washed his scraped legs and told him that the mother bird had been trying to distract them, that in her ignorance, her wild behaviour was designed to take their attention from what she didn't want them to see.

  But Vittorio, laughing, had turned back and looked down at him and, laughing and laughing, stuffed the birds' eggs into his mouth and crunched.

  'They're not eggs! There are birds inside! You can't!'

  He had dropped down, barking his shins, taken to his heels and run, but the image of those hairless little embryos crunched between Vittorio's bloody teeth followed him until he vomited in the dusty yellow road, and he couldn't hate Vittorio because Vittorio was hungry and had asked him for his snack, but his mother had told him not to give it, so he couldn't confess . . .

  But only the female offers its life for its offspring. Perhaps that simple fact of nature had delayed him so long as he watched the elaborate gyrations of Julian Forbes, trying to attract his attention to false vices. He had only been trying to protect himself, to keep the Marshal distracted from the one truth that pointed to his guilt, the one woman, if such he could call her, who had not refused him, who had reasons of her own for accepting him, and who now knew she'd been used in her turn. Now there was no one to forgive her. Celia Carter, grieved beyond human endurance at her betrayal by the only two people in the world she had loved without question, had forgiven her, but she was dead.

  The Marshal would have given a lot to believe that the tears drying streakily on Jenny Carter's fair cheeks were tears of grief for her mother but he knew in his heart they were for herself, and that was the saddest thought of all. He roused himself to face it and spoke:

  'Signorina!'

  She opened her eyes but they were drugged with sleep and didn't, at first, register his presence.

  'We have to talk.'

  She saw him then, but without surprise, as though he'd been there when she'd cried herself to sleep. She sat up and let her stockinged feet drop over the side of the bed.

  'What time is it?'

  'Ten to six.'

  'She told you, didn't she? Sissi told you . . .'

  'No, no . . . She didn't tell me.'

  'But you know?'

  'Yes.'

  All trace of that rigid composure of their last meeting had gone. Her face was blotched and creased with crying and her shoulders sagged forward under their burden of hair.

  'I'm so miserable. I wish I were dead instead of her . . .'

  'That's no way to talk when you've your whole life in front of you.'

  'What life? Where am I supposed to go? What am I supposed to do! I've got nobody!' She broke into fresh tears but made no attempt to cover her face. Saliva trickled from her mouth to mingle with the fast rolling tears. Her nose was running. The Marshal offered her a folded white handkerchief but she whipped her face away angrily.

  'What am I supposed to do! He doesn't give a sod about me!'

  The Marshal sat down on a round-backed chair with a nightdress and underwear thrown upon it.

  'You've known that for a long time, now, haven't you? He must have broken it off before Christmas when he tried to stop you coming over for the holidays. Isn't that true?'

  'Only because he was scared of her finding out! Only because she had all the money, because she—'

  'No, no . . . And what about the others?'

  'What others?' Her swollen eyes flashed into jealous life.

  'Didn't you know that, in his rage at his feeling so inferior to your mother, he tried to go to bed with each of her women friends in turn?'

  'I don't believe you.'

  'Ask them. They refused him, of course. They thought a great deal of your mother. Then, presumably, he decided to try you. Something of hers he could take, a lesser version of her he could control. When did it start?'

  She didn't answer him at once, as though still taking in what she'd just heard. Her hands were curling into tightly clenched fists on her knees and her breathing was uneven.

  'I'll kill him . . .'

  'Why? Didn't you have the same idea? To steal something that was hers? You could have had any number of boyfriends of your own. When did it start?'

  'I was still at school.' She didn't look him in the face.

  Horrified though he felt by this girl's behaviour, the Marshal, too, felt murderous about Forbes. After all, she had been only a schoolgirl.

  'I suppose he helped you with your exams?'

  She nodded.

  'But you couldn't have seen much of each other once you were at university and they were living out here.'

  'He used to come to London. He was supposed to be trying to get journalistic commissions, stuff like that. We stayed in the house there.'

  'In your mother's house. And when you came here?'

  'She was out a lot doing her own things, research for books and stuff like that.'

  Stuff that fed, housed and clothed them, while they . . .

  'I wanted to tell her, then we could have gone away together.'

  'Living on what?'

  She shrugged. 'We'd have managed.'

  'But he wouldn't?'

  'No . . . ' Her face collapsed in misery. 'I thought he was bored with me because I wasn't as clever or as interesting as her. Then when I came they made me sleep here! Nobody cares about me! Nobody! Why don't you arrest him? He killed her! He killed her in the end to get me!'

  'No . . . ' The Marshal hardly dared breathe. If she insisted on lying, her evidence against Forbes would be less than useless, a hysterical accusation that would be thrown out of court in minutes. He had to make her tell the truth but he didn't know how.

  'This man,' he began gently, 'has already taken from you your mother who loved you, your peace of mind, your youth. If he gets away with what he's done he will also take a large amount of money which should be yours and which came originally from your father. Do you remember your father?'

  'I . . . yes . . . ' That seemed to quieten her.

  'He provided for you, through your mother. Both of them loved you. Forbes told your mother what had happened between you when he'd decided which side his bread was buttered on and wanted to be rid of you. If yo
u want to know how much your mother suffered because of it, go and talk to a priest called Father Jameson.'

  'She never went to church.'

  'No. But, you see, she was desperate and there was no one she could tell. She was ashamed.'

  'Of me?'

  'Perhaps. I think of herself, of admitting that the two people she practically worshipped hated her and were making a fool of her. In any case, she told no one except this priest, a stranger, and so she preserved your reputation.'

  'What's the difference, now? You know.'

  'Yes. I know. But there's no reason why anyone else should. Forbes killed your mother because she had announced that she intended to leave him. Her lawyers will confirm that because she had made an appointment to see them about it. She didn't give a motive. There's no reason why anyone has to know.'

  'What if he tells?' She wiped a hand over her wet face and this time accepted the white handkerchief.

  'He can't afford to tell. It would double the seriousness of the case against him and ensure his being found guilty and getting a very much heavier sentence. No, he won't tell.'

  She sat in silence for a moment, blew her nose and pushed back the strands of hair that clung to her wet face. Then she looked him straight in the eyes. 'In that case, how come you haven't arrested him?'

  'For one very simple reason,' the Marshal said, 'I don't know how he did it.'

  'Don't you?' The girl let out a bitter, disgusted laugh. 'Well, I know, nobody better. And he knows I do, and even when I told him so, he still wouldn't have me. Is it true what you said about him and my mother's friends?'

  'Yes, it's true.'

  'He attacked me when I said I'd tell.'

  'We'll see that you're protected.'