Some Bitter Taste Read online

  ‘No.’

  The marshal fell silent and stayed that way. He stood there, immovable, solid, staring, taking his time in examining Rinaldi. White hair, wavy, rather long, resting on his sweatshirt collar. Red face, crinkly eyes that gave him ajovial look. Bit of a tummy on him. You could see from his hands as much as anything that he was nearer seventy than sixty but he was wearing blue jeans. A vain man whose vanity wasn’t confined to camouflaging his age. He probably enjoyed risky and lucrative deals, executed with panache. Maybe had a couple of such deals on hand right now, but even if one of them concerned the ‘she’ in the crate, he would laugh at the idea of the marshal’s posing any threat to him. He’d be right, too. But then the marshal didn’t want to pose any threat. He just wanted to embarrass the man into saying something, anything, about his neighbour so as to put an end to the marshal’s discomforting silence. The length of time this took was always in inverse ratio to the victim’s intelligence and education. There were men who would hold out through interrogations, trial, appeal, prison, death. Rinaldi didn’t make half a minute. A very cultured man.

  ‘Look, I’m sure you know the saying ‘no smoke without fire’. In your job you must be used to hearing gossip and interpreting it.’

  ‘Oh, yes, yes.’

  ‘So there was—not a row—but, shall we say, a coolness, arising from the fact that she tried to sell me something and the offer I made she found insulting. I’m sure if you look around you, you’ll understand that the sort of thing she had would hardly …’

  ‘Oh, yes, yes. Very high-class stuff this, very.’

  ‘Quite. You must have been in her flat. Need I say more? Perfectly understandable, of course. Sentimental value probably and if she was hard up and needed to sell she may well have felt slighted, which would cause her to speak ill of me.’

  ‘I see. I don’t think I’ve heard anybody say she actually spoke ill of you. You did buy the candlesticks though, in the end?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘I’m perhaps mistaken. I heard she had these candlesticks and they’re not there now so I was assuming … still, if you didn’t offer enough maybe she sold them to somebody else. Yes, that’ll be it. Were you at home the evening she was killed?’

  ‘I understood you didn’t know when she was killed, that she’d been dead for some time.’

  ‘Monday evening. It was in this morning’s paper.’

  ‘I see. I don’t buy a newspaper every day.’

  ‘Not even when your neighbour’s been murdered?’

  ‘Not even then. Since I hardly knew her I don’t feel involved. Incidentally, I spoke to the public prosecutor on this case this morning. He arrived shordy before you. Turned out we’d met before. Some dinner party or other.’

  ‘Oh dear. Arrived before me, did he? I’d better join him at once. I expect we’ll be seeing each other again. Good morning.’ And he walked into the grocer’s next door.

  In the grocer’s, the owner, Paolo, left his cheerful son in charge, gave the marshal a chair in the storeroom behind the shop, and rang the bar in Piazza Pitti for a tray of coffees to be delivered. They had a good talk.

  ‘Did you ever hear about a quarrel—or, as he calls it, a coolness—between Rinaldi the antique dealer and Signora Hirsch?’

  ‘A row or a coolness? I wouldn’t call it either. She was in tears, I do remember that. She came in here right after, crying.’

  Signora Hirsch, one minute all elegance and dignity, the next crumpled in tears.

  ‘I said to her, I said, “Signora, you go on up and my boy’ll bring your shopping up. The water’s too heavy for you, anyway.” She had angina, you know.’

  ‘She did? You know that for sure?’

  ‘I certainly do. My wife’s the same. Hasn’t worked for years. She has to be careful and that’s what I said to Signora Hirsch. I said, ‘You want to be careful. No need for carrying heavy stuff up those stairs as long as I’m here. And no good getting upset, either,” I said, “it’s not worth ruining your health for.” Am I right?’

  ‘I—yes. What isn’t?’

  ‘That business of the facade. Well, the roof too, of course, and I’m not saying that won’t have cost a bob or two.’

  ‘And that’s what the trouble with Rinaldi was about? He did say she was hard up—she must have owned her flat then, if she had to pay for repairs like that … Funny … he said she tried to sell him something and he told her it wasn’t worth what she expected.’

  ‘Poor thing. Well, she managed somehow. The work’s been done, as you see. And she’s dead, anyway. As long as you’ve got your health there’s nothing else worth fretting about.’ Paolo leaned forward to speak in confidence, his face pink, his smiling eyes very blue. ‘This is nothing you don’t know, anyway, but my daughter was at that dinner party Monday evening with her husband. You know, at number 6. Now, he’s an architect, my son-in-law, and he knows Rossi who lives on the top floor above Signora Hirsch and he was there, too, so when there was all that racket from next door my son-in-law suggested he and Rossi go round there and intervene. We couldn’t help thinking after, would they have been in time to save her?’

  ‘I really don’t think so. I think it was probably over for her by then if they were removing the safe.’

  ‘Too late to worry about it now, of course, but you can’t help thinking … Shall I send for more coffee?’

  ‘No, no … but thanks very much for the coffee and your help.’

  ‘Anytime. We’re always here.’

  Trudging up to the second floor, hat in hand, the marshal considered the phenomenon of the Florentine dinner party. It didn’t seem to matter which circuit you were on, the same gossip circulated. The grocer who knew the architect who knew the neighbour … The journalist who knew the barman who procured boys for the marquis who married the American whose cleaner also worked for a translator who knew the journalist … And the stories got better as they travelled so that the last version was barely recognisable as being based on the first.

  The seals hung loose, the door was open. The marshal found the prosecutor sitting on the unused double bed with a pile of documents in front of him. He looked up, smiling, and spoke quiedy.

  ‘Ah, Marshal. Good morning. And what can you tell me about our friend Rinaldi downstairs?’

  ‘He says he knows you.’

  ‘Yes, he told me that, too. At some dinner party that must have slipped my mind. Could be true, of course. I have no memory for that sort of thing. What else?’

  ‘He says he was never in this flat. He also says her stuff is worth nothing, not up to his standard as we know, having been in here. He said he barely spoke to the victim but admitted he’d had a disagreement with her. He said it was about something she’d tried to sell him.’

  ‘What was the something?’

  ‘Wouldn’t say.’

  ‘But the grocer would, I’ll bet.’

  ‘He said the argument was about repairs to the building.’

  ‘Condominium row. Classic. Marshal, sit down.’

  The marshal lowered himself carefully onto a round-backed brocaded chair beside the bed. The sort designed to hold a carelessly thrown negligee rather than one hundred ninety-eight pounds of carabiniere. In these frequently occurring circumstances he tended to sit up very straight and let his feet bear much of his weight.

  ‘I thought you were the best person to talk to those two,’ continued the prosecutor. ‘I had two men from Borgo Ognissanti do a door-to-door check. After all, they had to cany that safe out of here. Nobody noticed a thing, I’m sorry to say’

  ‘The shops were shut and it was supper time,’ the marshal said, recounting the grocer’s story, ‘which would practically leave only tourists on the streets.’

  ‘I’m afraid you’re right. Now, I’ve heard this woman came to see you. I want to know why.’

  ‘I’m sorry but I don’t exactly know why.’

  The prosecutor considered him for a moment, then, popping a tiny unlit cigar
in the corner of his mouth, said, ‘Sorry about this habit. Trying to give up. I hold out as long as I can. It helps. Now … your commanding officer thinks very highly of you, do you know that?’

  ‘Yes. I know he does but I’m afraid he sometimes overestimates me. I’m no great shakes at investigating. Bag snatching and stolen bicycles are what we get at Pitti Station.’

  ‘And the occasional murder.’

  ‘These things happen. Now and again. You’ve got to expect that in a city.’

  ‘Well, Guarnaccia, I’m inclined to believe your commanding officer. Maestrangelo’s a good man. He’ll be a general one day. He’s also known you a long time—have you ever seen him smile? Oh, never mind, just a thought. I think he’s the most serious man I’ve ever met in my life. I hear that among journalists he’s known as The Tomb. Anyway, I intend to follow his advice. You bring me your observations and any information you collect and I shall refrain from asking you questions beginning with Why. All I ask is that you don’t keep your observations to yourself, no matter how muddled or inexplicable you may imagine them to be. Is that reasonable?’

  ‘I’ll do my best.’ That was true enough. He always did his best but his best wasn’t much. And as for presenting himself at the public prosecutor’s office and saying he had a funny feeling about something or other—well, he could see himself!

  ‘Your best is all I ask for. In turn, I’ll do my best to wait until you are ready to talk and not annoy you with my impatience. There’s very little press interest in this murder except as a space filler so we need fear no pressure from that quarter. Also, I am a very patient man, which is why we haven’t come across each other before now. Until last year I was a children’s judge, a job which requires, as you can imagine, a great deal of gentleness and patience.’

  The marshal was mortified, remembering the business of the Rossis’ child. He tried to remember exactly what he’d said but couldn’t.

  The prosecutor understood and smiled. ‘You were right to be cautious. In the case of perhaps ninety percent of my colleagues you’d have been right. So, Guarnaccia, shall we get to work on reconstructing the life of Sara Hirsch?’

  Five

  The marshal was waiting. He waited standing, hat in hand, in the dim coolness of a spacious, shuttered room, breathing in a cloying scent of beeswax. The heavy furniture reminded him of long-ago days when he was an altar boy. Starch and incense, the Host sticking to his dry tongue, hot jam oozing from the brioches they were given for breakfast … There was a cupboard just like that one where the bottle of Marsala for the mass was kept. Vittorio, whose dad was dead, had dared them to take a sip.

  You’ll go to hell.’

  ‘I will not. It’s not the blood of Christ until after the consecration.’

  ‘Well? It’s still wine for the holy mass, it says on the label.’

  “Who cares?’

  You’ll go to hell!’

  Had he really taken a sip or just pretended? They had all stepped back and turned away from him. He didn’t have his breakfast with them. It pained the marshal now to remember that, since the boy was half starved. The other boys said he ran all the way home crying, and one boy said he’d been sick, green sick, which meant he was possessed by the devil. How did they know? They’d all been sitting together stuffing down their warm brioches so how could any of them have seen? Vittorio hadn’t come to school on Monday morning but he wasn’t ill because they’d seen him afterwards by himself in a vineyard on the way home. He was ripping bunches of grapes from the vine, crushing them against his uplifted face, biting and sucking, chucking the remains and reaching for another. Purple juice dribbled down his chin and arms. The September sky was clear and blue but it must have rained before because he remembered how Vittorio’s shoes with no laces were sunk deep in the clay soil and the big yellowing leaves were stuck to his bare legs. He never appeared to serve at mass again and everybody said it was because his mother was a prostitute.

  Not much Christian charity in sight there. And yet … the quiet coolness of this place, the order and tranquillity … he’d have waited, soothed, for an hour, but he soon heard footsteps on the dark red tiles.

  ‘Marshal? I’m sorry but we like her to sleep for a while during the hottest hours. She’s still very shocked, as I’m sure you understand. She needs to rest and eat as much as possible before the hearing. Of course, I’ll wake her if it’s absolutely—’

  ‘No—no.’ The marshal, his mind filled with the Hirsch case, at first stared at the nun, as tall as himself and very thin and agile-looking, without understanding her. Then he hastened to reassure her that he wasn’t there to talk to the Albanian girl they were sheltering and explain his errand.

  ‘I see. Then we must look through our records. And perhaps Sister John Dolores can help you. She was here in those years, I know. Please sit down. I’ll give you a little more light.’ She went to open the windows and pushed the slatted brown shutters further apart, lifting their lower flaps to let in light without heat. They were almost the height of the room, and the marshal was struck by her slim, strong hands and the grace and precision of her movements. He was a clumsy man himself and such things always impressed him. How old would she be? He wasn’t much of a hand at guessing any woman’s age and a nun was impossible. Sister John Dolores, when the two of them joined him after a further pleasant wait, was very old. She was also sick, or had been, and walked very slowly with the aid of two claw-footed sticks because both her feet were turned inwards. Her eyes, behind ugly glasses, were bright, her memory sharp. Once seated at a table, with the help of the entries in the big book placed before her by the other sister and the two baptismal certificates presented by the marshal, she was able to reconstruct what little she knew of Sara Hirsch and of her mother, Ruth.

  ‘Sister Philip Anthony keeps our records on a computer these days. I’m too old to learn …’

  ‘I’m the same,’ said the marshal, his sympathy for this rather formidable woman increasing at once.

  ‘Here … I recognise my handwriting. So long ago … . Ruth came to us at the beginning of 1943, though I remember she had been in Florence for some time. She came from Prague, sent by her father, who I believe had business contacts here. They naturally wanted to save their daughter. They themselves died in the camps. They could not have imagined how things would go here at the end. No one could. No one believed that the race laws passed so suddenly at the end of 1938 would be applied. But they were applied. Ruth herself was reluctant to come to us but her foreign passport would have made her noticeable. It was a problem for us, too. Hiding Italians was much easier. We baptised them and nothing more was necessary, at least until the Occupation. It was obviously much more complicated with foreigners who needed Italian documents, too.’

  ‘Was that possible?’

  ‘Sometimes. For Ruth, yes. Many others, of course, remained stateless when their own countries fell to Communism. In Ruth Hirsch’s case there was the additional problem of her condition. The safest way to hide her was to dress her as a novice but, as you can imagine … However, we succeeded and the little girl was born and baptised here in 1944 as you’ve seen.’

  ‘How did she contact you?’

  ‘Through the Jewish community. Like many others she came to us through Cardinal Delia Costa, who was in contact with the Jewish community through Mayor La Pira. More than twenty convents in Tuscany collaborated and we were able to save many people. We could perhaps have saved more if it weren’t for the unwillingness of many Jewish families to consider themselves at risk until it was too late …

  ‘Ruth and little Sara stayed here until the deportations began. It became too dangerous since there were searches, checks, all the time and we couldn’t have explained the child. We moved them to one of our houses in the country, an orphanage, along with such other children as we were hiding. Here is the record of Ruth’s transfer.’

  ‘Sister Perpetua … that’s what you called her? Did she ever speak of the child’s father?’r />
  ‘She told us they had been separated by the war. She spoke of him as her husband …’

  ‘But you didn’t believe her.’

  ‘She was eighteen when the child was born and she had already been in Florence, as I said, for some time. She would have had to have arrived here and married almost at once. It is not for us to judge. We must thank our Lord that, however tragic the cause, we were able to baptise them both.’

  The marshal, feeling unreasonably defensive about Sara, whose birth and death had been attended by such violence, said, T understand from her neighbours that Sara’s mother was married—that is, she had a photograph of her mother and father. There was another child, too, I think. She talked of a brother …'Judging by the sister’s cold eye, he wasn’t making a goodjob of her defence. He gave up. ‘Did she leave you immediately after the war?’

  Sister John Dolores turned the big pages and sought an entry with a dry white finger.

  ‘January 15th, 1945. She had no money and no home up to that point.’

  ‘And then? Someone provided both? You think the father—’

  ‘I’m sorry, Marshal, I can offer you only the facts recorded here. You will appreciate that we do not allow ourselves to indulge in speculation.’

  ‘I beg your pardon. It was only your opinion that I—she was murdered …’

  ‘I will pray for her.’

  The marshal turned his hopeful gaze on the younger nun. ‘She never visited you in later years? To thank you?’

  But the only answer was a glance down to the record book whose pages Sister John Dolores was turning.

  ‘A donation, a substantial donation, was received, as you see—“On the part of Ruth and Sara Hirsch”—in September of 1946. That is the last entry concerning her.’ Sister John Dolores had to be helped to her feet, the claw-footed sticks placed at her sides.

  The marshal thanked them for their help and said he would see himself out.

  When he joined the prosecutor in his office his dissatisfacton must have been evident if unspoken. Quite forgetting his promise, the prosecutor began, ‘But why? What reason could they have for hiding anything from you? Oh, dear. Just go on.’