The Marshal Makes His Report Page 7

  ‘Not as common as Smith, I agree. Actually it’s a corruption of Fitzdieu.’

  And he was forty-eight! Who would have thought it?

  ‘Thank you.’ He handed the passport back and got his notebook out. ‘I believe you’re painting a portrait of the Marchesa Ulderighi.’

  ‘Yes. Would you like to see it?’ He hurried from the room, cleary delighted to show off his work. There was something childlike about his anxious expression as he carried the canvas in and set it up on an easel for the Marshal to see.

  ‘It’s nowhere near finished, you understand, and with her being in mourning now . . .’

  ‘It’s very like her,’ the Marshal felt safe in saying.

  ‘Hm. I’m not satisfied. It’s the length and curve of her neck and the soft fall of hair that interest me—you know the Winterhalter portrait of Elisabeth of Austria? The pose is taken from that because there is a resemblance, but only a physical one. Bianca has a much stronger character.’

  The Marshal got up and came closer. The woman in the painting was looking back at the viewer as though inviting a glance at two heavily framed paintings hanging on the wall in the background.

  ‘Lucrezia Della Loggia and Francesco Ulderighi,’ Hugh Fido informed him. ‘Painted to celebrate their betrothal but they never married and the paintings are still hanging in Bianca’s drawing-room.’

  ‘If it weren’t for the clothes . . .’ the Marshal said, amazed.

  ‘They could be the same woman? Well, there’s nothing so surprising about that. That’s where Bianca inherited her looks from.’

  ‘And do you work on the painting in the Marchesa’s drawing-room . . . I mean, with these two other pictures behind her and so on?’

  Hugh Fido laughed. ‘No, no. I made sketches of the portraits, but I work on the painting here. I don’t think Bianca would appreciate smears of oil paint on her furniture—and be careful yourself, incidentally.’

  The Marshal looked down at his uniform but it seemed unspotted.

  ‘You get on very well with your landlady.’ The word, applied to the Marchesa Ulderighi, sounded ridiculous as soon as he’d said it and he felt rather foolish, but persisted. ‘Better than some of her other tenants.’

  ‘Oh, you mean Flavia. Well, she gives Flavia a gigantic inferiority complex. Bianca, you see, is that very rare phenomenon, a real lady and a real woman.’

  ‘That’s as may be,’ said the Marshal, whose inferiority complex in the face of the Marchesa was much worse than Dr Martelli’s, ‘but some of her points are valid. Doesn’t it bother you that you pay such a high rent and that you’re not allowed to use the lift, and that the porter—’

  ‘Oh God, Flavia has been spitting fire. Just try to imagine, Marshal, what it means, after nine hundred years of glory to have to break up your house and let it as flats.’

  ‘Why did she?’

  ‘Money, of course. Marshal, strictly between the two of us—and I really mean that—I rather think Corsi had started keeping a tighter hold on the purse strings of late on the grounds that this place should start paying for itself. The biggest thorn in Bianca’s side is the dancing school, of course, not only because of the constant comings and goings but because they’ve got the best reception rooms in the house because of their size. They’ve also got the most beautiful ceilings, as you may have noticed.’

  ‘I haven’t been in there. It’s my business to talk to people who were in the building between Saturday night and Sunday afternoon when the body was found.’

  ‘That’s right, yes. Including me, of course. Well, I was here.’

  ‘Did you hear any noise or disturbance?’

  ‘A shot, I suppose you mean. But no, I’m a heavy sleeper.’

  ‘Sleeping pills?’

  ‘Oh no. Just that.’ Hugh Fido pointed to the whisky bottle standing among a clutter of books and magazines on the low table between them.

  ‘Ah. You don’t like Italian wine?’

  ‘I love it. Wine with dinner. A glass of whisky at bedtime. Helps one to sleep through people’s shooting themselves—I suppose that’s what he did?’

  ‘So does everyone. It may have been an accident. Have you lived here long?’

  ‘In this house? About a year.’

  ‘No. I meant in Florence. In Italy.’

  ‘Oh.’ Fido relaxed in the deep armchair and crossed one gangly leg over the other. ‘From the minute I could get away. Practically from the day I left Eton. I decided at the age of fourteen that I wasn’t having anything to do with all those appalling English girls whose idea of conversation is a sort of donkey-like braying interspersed with hysterical giggles and who lose their virginity in the saddle—I can see that none of this means anything to you, but then you’ve probably never been to England.’

  ‘No, no . . . I haven’t.’

  ‘You wouldn’t like it. There’s far too much sexual ambiguity—I’m not referring to homosexuality, nothing ambiguous about that—no . . .’

  The Marshal, barely listening to all this stuff he couldn’t understand anyway, was gazing down from the tall window into the courtyard. The porter was opening the inner gates for someone. Nobody entered. A box was handed in, groceries it looked like. The porter went and rang the bell on the dwarf’s door and Grillo appeared to take it from him. As far as the Marshal could tell, not a word was exchanged so probably there was no love lost between the two of them. Grillo looked after the young master, they said, probably even cooked for him, all those groceries were never for one person. Why didn’t he eat with the rest of the family? The Marshal’s gaze travelled up from the base of the tower where Grillo had his lair to the first window of Neri’s rooms at the level of the roof of the renaissance building. The brown shutters were open and behind the glass a white face was looking back at him. The distance was such that it was impossible to swear to it, but the Marshal was convinced that the eyes in that white face were staring straight into this room. Almost as if this must prove him right, he shifted in his chair, leaning forward to make it obvious that he was looking up. The face vanished.

  ‘You know what I mean?’

  With a start, the Marshal tried to pick up Hugh Fido’s incomprehensible discourse.

  ‘It’s a very particular sort of ambiguity. Plump, rather limp men with high peevish voices married to jolly, straight-legged women with masculine jaws and voices like referees. I don’t know what causes it but I know I don’t want any part of it. I like women who are women!’

  The back of the Marshal’s neck began to prickle hotly at the thought of the mural behind him. It wasn’t enough to face the other way. The whole of this great room with its hot colours and over-luxurious plants was alive with sexuality.

  ‘You’re looking restless,’ the painter said, smiling. ‘I’m afraid I’m wasting your time, but as there’s nothing useful I can tell you . . . I suppose if I’d heard the shot you could have established the time of death and so on. It’s really a great pity that Catherine’s away. She actually lives down there and right next door to the gun room, so that would have solved your problem for you—without, of course, resolving whether it was an accident or not. The family’s hoping for a verdict of accidental death, naturally?’

  ‘This girl Catherine, how long ago did she leave?’

  ‘Mm. I can’t tell you to the day, Thursday or Friday, perhaps. She was going to a course or convention or some such thing on restoration.’

  ‘Well, thank you for your time. I’d better get on.’

  The painter got up to show him out and the Marshal kept his eyes firmly fixed on his back as he followed.

  ‘Thank you again.’

  ‘It was a pleasure.’ Fido held out his long thin hand. ‘And don’t take me too seriously about England. If you go for a holiday you’ll enjoy it. You’ll like the parks, there’s so little green in Italian cities, and your wife will enjoy the shops.’

  Well, he was a nice man, very nice really, and then he was an artist so you had to make allowances. He�
�d said some funny things, especially about the English— but then he was English himself and they were a bit peculiar, all of them.

  The Marshal plodded on down the great cool staircase, puffing unhappily as he went as though he were climbing rather than descending. There was a distressing feeling in the pit of his stomach, a mixture of excitement and dismay. It could be that it was still the effect of Fido’s painting, since the images were still strongly imprinted on his brain. Yet it couldn’t be only that because there was some other feeling mixed in and it felt very much like fear. Fear of what?

  The last turn on his descent brought him to the broad landing where the gigantic family shield hung. He paused and stared up at it. Orange, red, gold and green. Burning hot colours like those in the artist’s studio. These had a film of age and dust on them but they were just as powerful, and the menacing effect of the shield’s looming forward as though about to crush him was just as strong as it had been the day he came across it by surprise. Was that the source of his fear? The Ulderighi could certainly crush him and his family with a fleeting blow, the way you might swat a fly that irritated you. But he was doing his best not to irritate, wasn’t he? Going through the motions, not finding out anything. In the absence of strong proof to the contrary a verdict of accidental death was inevitable. And why not? Why should he feel angry about it? Why be in revolt about it? Even if the poor man did shoot himself, what was the good of a scandal? What was so very awful about covering it up, if cover it up was what they were doing? There was no sense in the way he felt.

  He stood there, feet planted wide apart, his hat turning and turning in his big hands, staring up at the shield, his breath still short and distressed.

  ‘There’s something not right,’ he murmured to himself. ‘Not right at all . . .’

  A splutter of laughter exploded behind him and he turned just in time to spot two very tiny girls dash past him and round the staircase out of sight, where they let their suppressed giggles loose in a gale of merriment at the memory of the fat uniformed man talking to the wall.

  Four

  ‘Marshal Guarnaccia from the carabinieri!’ He raised his voice even more but the old nurse peered out from her lair with narrowed, crafty eyes.

  ‘You can’t come in.’ She was almost bald and her few remaining white hairs were scraped back and skewered with a multitude of thick black hairpins. Her lower lip hung loose, dropping a thin trickle of saliva on one side.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he shouted, ‘I just have to talk to you. It won’t take a minute.’

  ‘This is the Palazzo Ulderighi!’ she shouted up into his face. ‘What are you doing in here? I don’t know who you are. Be off!’

  What was he supposed to do? Put his foot in the door like a salesman? He tried again.

  ‘The Marchesa sent me. She wants me to talk to you.’

  ‘The Marchesa lives here with me. This is the Palazzo Ulderighi. I don’t know you. I don’t know who you are.’

  He shouted his name again, peering into the small room over her head. One entire wall was a mass of tiny red icon lights illuminating small pictures. Apart from the infirmity of her great age, she was evidently something of a religious maniac. Oh Lord . . .

  ‘Be off! Be off!’ He stepped back a pace as she raised her stick to him while supporting herself against the door jamb. ‘Do you hear me? Be off or I’ll call the police!’

  The door slammed in his face.

  The Marshal mopped his brow, replaced his hat and turned away. He didn’t lose his temper. He had endless patience with the old and knew that the harridan who threatened him with her stick one day would quite likely invite him in for a coffee the next as if nothing had happened. Even so, his distress and apprehension still lay heavily inside him as he crossed the courtyard and made for the gates. He was anxious to get out of the building which so oppressed him. The gloom and the interminable piano music—and surely today it was coming from somewhere new? He paused as he passed the foot of the staircase. It was coming from up there and a loud woman’s voice was calling out instructions over it. The dancing school, that would be. That must have been where those two little girls were going, running up the stairs late for their lesson.

  As he went on to the gate another bunch of girls came in at the great doors. Older girls, long-legged, wearing baggy T-shirts and carrying large bags slung over their shoulders. The Marshal opened the gate and stood back to let them in. They all seemed to have very long hair. All of them were chattering loudly and he remembered the Englishman’s remarks, imagining the Marchesa’s icy face if she should encounter them. He went through the gate, hearing their voices echoing loudly on the staircase, then fading as they turned the first corner. As he reached the great doors he found that the girls had left them ajar, surely another bone of contention with the Marchesa. As he reached for the handle the door began to open of itself. Expecting another group of girls, he stood back, but it was a young man who entered, wished him a pleasant good-evening and stepped smartly through the gates using a key. The Marshal stared after him. He had met all the tenants and that, if he was any judge, was never the Ulderighi son and certainly not the porter’s son, either. He looked too . . .

  ‘What the devil!’

  The young man, whoever he was, had let himself into Catherine Yorke’s supposedly empty studio with a key.

  ‘Blast!’ The gate slammed closed a second before he got to it. Why was he so slow? He was forced to ring for the porter to readmit him. The porter looked none too pleased and not a little surprised.

  ‘I thought you’d already—’

  ‘Open up.’

  Once inside he drew close to the porter and glowered at him. ‘You told me the English girl’s flat was empty, the studio there.’

  ‘It is empty.’

  ‘I’ve just seen someone go in with a key. Who was it?’

  ‘I didn’t see anyone.’

  The Marshal turned away from him with an impatient grunt and crossed the courtyard. Whoever was in there wasn’t alone. He was talking to someone, his voice raised in anger. As he reached the door the voice dropped suddenly. He paused on the step.

  ‘Yet she must die . . . No . . . Yet she must die . . .’ An inaudible mumble and then: ‘Put out the light!’

  The Marshal rang the bell.

  The door opened and he was confronted by the young man who had passed him at the gate. He held a glass in one hand and a book in the other and was staring at the Marshal with a look of faintly surprised inquiry.

  ‘Could I have a word with you?’ the Marshal said, frowning.

  ‘Of course. Nothing wrong, is there?’ When the Marshal didn’t answer, he added, ‘You’d better come in.’

  The Marshal stepped inside without a word. The room was as small as the gun room next door and was just able to contain a single bed, bookshelves, a worktable, a shower alcove and one armchair.

  ‘Have the chair,’ offered the young man.

  ‘No . . . No, thanks. I understood from the porter that this room is rented by a young lady, English. Catherine . . .’ He felt for his notebook.

  ‘Yorke,’ said the young man. ‘Catherine Yorke. I’m her brother, William.’

  ‘Ah . . .’

  The other was evidently waiting for some sort of explanation. When it wasn’t forthcoming he pointed out: ‘If you saw me coming in, then you saw me use the key. You couldn’t have thought I was breaking in. Besides—excuse me for asking—why are you here at all? I mean, has something happened? I’ve just arrived from Venice, so . . .’

  ‘Yes, I see. Well, I beg your pardon. Nothing for you to worry about. There’s been a . . . an accident. Buon-gianni Corsi died in the room next to this between Saturday and Sunday. He may have been cleaning the rifle that killed him. At any rate it’s my duty to establish whether his death was accidental and so I’ve been making a few inquiries of the tenants. I was given to understand that this studio was empty . . .’

  ‘I see. That’s a turn-up. A nice man, too, I t
hought, and I know Catherine liked him a lot.’

  ‘She knew him well?’

  ‘Fairly well, I should think. She was doing some work for the family. Various documents and stuff that were damaged in the flood—Good Lord! You mean when you saw me come in here you registered me as a suspicious character?’

  ‘No, no, I—’ Then he remembered the raised, angry voice he’d heard. ‘You were talking to somebody when I rang the bell.’

  ‘Talking? But there’s nobody . . . Oh! Oh, do sit down—I’m sorry, I can see you’re a carabinieri but the ranks are beyond me . . . ?’

  ‘Marshal Guarnaccia. It’s quite all right, I—’

  ‘No, please! Please sit down, Marshal. You have to give me time to undo this terrible impression I’ve made, walking into a flat not my own and starting an argument with the empty air—threatening murder, like as not, wasn’t I?’

  ‘I don’t know if—’

  ‘Oh yes I was! Listen!’ He put his wineglass on the worktable and raised his free hand to declaim:

  ‘Yet I’ll not shed her blood,

  Nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow

  And smooth as monumental alabaster—

  Yet she must die, else she’ll betray more men.

  Put out the light, and then put out the light.’

  The Marshal, seated now in the only armchair, stared with bulging eyes at the young man who now dropped his arm and laughed.

  ‘Othello! You must know Othello!’

  ‘Ah. Verdi’s opera . . .’

  ‘Well, as you like. There’s an English version, you know. Anyway, we’re giving a performance here next week. I belong to an English theatre company in Venice. Mostly we do things designed to help Italian students studying English literature at the Liceo and the university, so we choose the plays we know they have to study. So! I was rehearsing, that’s all.’

  ‘And you have your sister’s keys?’

  ‘Ah! Not to be deflected from your original point, eh? Yes, I have my sister’s keys. I always have my sister’s keys and when we play in Florence I sleep here.’ He caught the Marshal’s glance at the one narrow bed. ‘Underneath there’s another that slides out.’ He waved his glass. ‘Can I offer you something to drink? This is only water but there’ll be wine somewhere.’