Death of a Dutchman Read online

  She cupped her hands under her sunken face and cast about her in despair at the pathetic remains of her prosperous, bourgeois world; the photographs in their silver frames, the sad decorations round the picture of the Pope, the rickety kitchen table with its checkered oilcloth cover.

  'I'm too old, too old,' she wailed. 'I ought to be dead ... this is what it comes to in the end, if you outlive your time.'

  'Now, now, Signora. Now, now . . .'

  'You don't know. You can't imagine what it comes down to. I'm nobody. I'm just an old woman, any old woman. I've no social position, no place in the world, no personality. There's nothing left of me. There's nobody left who knew me when . . . There's nothing to be said about me except that I'm ninety-one.'

  'It's not true that you've no personality,' said the Marshal truthfully, for her viciousness was known and sometimes even feared. But then, he realized, that was probably deliberate, her bid to be recognized as a person instead of patronized as just another 'old dear'.

  She was weeping now. The handkerchief she pulled from her pocket was an old lace-edged one, badly torn and stained but with her initial still visible on it. He pushed the cakes towards her, not knowing what else to do.

  'I don't like the chocolate ones,' she snapped.

  'Then here—' he turned the tray round—'there's a vanilla one left.'

  She sniffed and took it, pushing it down between sobs.

  'What sort of things did you not want to tell the officer yesterday?'

  'Just little things, family things. Things that were told me in confidence, you understand. A youngster like that . . . well, you're a family man, I can tell. A good family man, not the sort to dump his old mother in a hospital, the way they do nowadays—is your mother still alive?'

  'Yes, yes, she's still alive,' murmured the Marshal, although she's in very bad health . . .'

  'But you're not the sort to dump her in a hospital and go off on your holidays?'

  Her wily old eyes, glittering with tears, were piercing right through to his conscience. It was uncanny the way some women knew by instinct where to prod so as to cause the most pain, even when they knew nothing at all about a person.

  'No, of course I wouldn't . . .'

  That sort of instinct was perhaps what made a good detective, an instinct for which questions to ask of a suspect, where to put the pressure. But in any case, he didn't have a suspect. He didn't have the instinct, either; but Signora Giusti did, and she knew-more than anyone about the Dutchman and his family. If he could only keep her to the. Subject! But no, she was off again on her reminiscences.

  'I suppose you've got children. I never had any. How she gloated over that! It was the one thing that induced her to speak to me at last. The husband was no better— I suppose he was jealous because we were rather well-to-do, and that bitch of a sister of mine wouldn't be likely to let him forget it. He was a railway clerk, nothing more. Oh, he became some sort of head of department in the end, but they always had to be careful about money, while of course my husband was an engineer and was very highly thought of, as well as highly paid. There was money in the family, too, naturally; I wouldn't have had him otherwise. I could take my pick, I can tell you, with my looks. We inherited all our silver, apart from wedding presents, it had been in his family for years. And now it's almost all gone ... If I'd had children who could have supported me . . . I'll never forget the baptism party, and that pompous little idiot of a husband of hers in his stiff collar that looked as if it was going to choke him . . .

  ' "We're grateful to Our Lord, Maria Grazia, that he's sent us a son to comfort us in our old age." What a fool! And she just stood there simpering with the child in her arms, not troubling to hide her triumph. The son was killed during a bombing raid when he was in Rome during the last war, anyway . . .

  'We left their wretched baptism party as soon as we decently could, but although you could say the big quarrel ended that day, we never became close.'

  'What started the quarrel?' asked the Marshal, not at all sure who she was talking about but hoping somehow to find an opening.

  'Jealousy. They say money's responsible for most of the trouble in the world, but if that's true then jealousy comes a close second, and jealousy between sisters is the most vicious of all, and the most unreasonable. After all, I couldn't help having the looks I was born with. Oh, but I was beautiful!'

  She glanced across, bright-eyed, at the photograph of herself, as though it were of someone else.

  'And the offers I had! Do you know I'd received five proposals of marriage by the time I was seventeen? What do you think I should have done? Refused the man I wanted to marry just because my sister, who was three years older, couldn't get herself a husband at any price? Was my life to be ruined, I ask you? It wasn't that she was ugly, you know, but she had a sour temperament, no gaiety in her. Eventually she took to being pious, never away from church and forever doing good works. Then she takes the first man who offers himself. He looked like a draper! I ask you! I couldn't resist calling him her draper when I went home to visit —never directly, you know, just a little teasing. I'd ask her how he was and then bring the conversation round to the new season's silks, asking her advice and then asking her what he thought and whether she couldn't get something for me at a discount!'

  She went off into peals of laughter, rattling among her cushions, and the Marshal wondered how the unfortunate sister had kept from strangling her. On and on she went, and each time he tried to bring up the Dutchman, she would make some tantalizing remark and then plunge into more unpleasant reminiscences. He began to wonder how the Lieutenant had fared yesterday. It seemed unlikely that he had got anything out of her, but the Marshal was willing to bet that she hadn't dared play with an officer the way she was playing with him now.

  There seemed little doubt that she was doing it quite deliberately, for she was unquestionably sound of mind and not rambling inadvertently. It could be, of course, he thought more charitably, that she was just trying to spin out his visit as much as possible. The social worker had been leaving when the Marshal arrived, having left a cold lunch prepared. It was only ten o'clock now, and a day of sitting alone, looking out at the gloomy courtyard, was all the old lady had to look forward to. If she had anything to tell, she would make the most of it, spreading the information over as many visits as possible.

  He had hoped, at first, that her distress at the death of her beloved Toni would induce her to help him find out what had happened, but now he was beginning to understand a little of what it meant to be ninety-one years old. She had buried all the members of her own family, and seen off all her friends and enemies one by one. She was ready to die herself. For her, the division between the living and the dead was not the same as for a young person; the dead who had been part of her own world and who had known her in her hey-day were more alive for her than the living generations for whom she didn't count. It didn't distress her that the young Dutchman should be dead so much as that, once again, she had been left behind . . .

  'It was the same thing there, you see, jealousy.'

  'I'm sorry . . . ?'

  'I thought you wanted to hear about Toni's family. You said that's what you came for.'

  She was teasing him, now he was sure. She had noticed his gaze wandering and had immediately begun to talk about the Dutchman. She evidently intended to drift off again, now, but the Marshal suddenly leaned forward with his large hands on his knees and stared at her fixedly, saying very deliberately:

  'Jealousy of whom?'

  His sudden change of attitude disconcerted Signora Giusti, and she answered him obediently:

  'I was talking about Toni's stepmother, Signora Wilkins, as she was before she was married to Goossens. All that trouble she had with her sister, her elder sister, there was a year between them, it was all jealousy and I told her so. It could have been my story over again, only with them it happened twice, in a manner of speaking. Not that Signora Wilkins took it the way I did; she wasn't on
e to tease or take advantage—oh, you needn't look surprised, I know my faults; I've always been selfish and I've always had a sharp tongue in my head, and I might as well admit it now that my life's over and it's too late to reform. But Signora Wilkins is a very different sort of person. She was good-looking in her younger days, but never played on it, if you know what I mean. She married first, just as I did, but she married a man who had virtually nothing except ideas and energy. I don't think her family was too pleased and the sister was downright scornful. Reading between the lines, I'd say that she was sweet on young Wilkins herself but she wasn't going to marry anybody without money and position, not she. Well, the wedding came off and I gather that the young fellow did all sorts of jobs before he got his idea.'

  'What sort of idea?' Would they ever get to the Dutchman?

  'I'm telling you, if you'll listen. It seems that in the northern part of England they make cloth, something like Prato, I imagine, an industrial area, cotton and so on. Well, like in Prato, the local people could buy cloth for almost nothing, buying straight from the factory, the end pieces and pieces with a tiny fault, whole bales sometimes. Anyway, Wilkins was up there travelling for a firm and he got this idea of buying up this stuff and taking it south to where they lived—don't ask me to pronounce it, I couldn't begin to try. He could sell it down there for twice what it cost him and it would still be a good bargain compared to shop prices—I used to laugh to myself when Signora Wilkins talked about it. After all, she really did marry a draper, didn't she, of a sort? That's why I've never mentioned to her about the jokes I used to make about my sister. It might have offended her . . .'

  The Marshal pondered on the Englishwoman who had managed to bring out what good there was in Signora Giusti's selfish little heart. She must have been something special because nobody else seemed to escape that sharp tongue.

  'And did he do well?'

  'He did more than well, he made a fortune. It was an awful risk at first, because of course he had to give up his job. She had savings but not much; they only had a few months in which to make a go of it. He started off by carting the stuff down on the train in -suitcases, and she would go with him and help him—and she hadn't been brought up to a life like that, I can tell you; I think her father was a solicitor. They travelled to the north and back three times a week and then he stood in the marketplace with his suitcases open on the floor; they didn't even have a stall. But people fought to get at it, she used to tell me, fought to get at it! It was all fine quality stuff, you see, usually with some tiny, almost invisible fault running through it. There was brocaded upholstery, sheeting, towelling, everything . . .

  'Before long they got a stall and then a little van. They never had children but as soon as they were comfortably off he insisted that she stay at home. She was more sorry than glad because those first few hectic years when they were always exhausted and often hadn't enough to eat were happy ones. Even so, she agreed to stay at home and they soon had such a large house that she was kept busy. The business got bigger and bigger and he took on some assistants so that he could cover more than one market at a time. But he still did all the buying himself; he had no desire to be just a businessman who left all the active work to others.'

  The Marshal was beginning to understand. Apart from the difference in trade, it could have been the Dutchman. Did the Dutchman take after his father? If so, he could understand why the father and Signora Wilkins had married. But that must have been much later . . .

  'What happened to him, then, this Signor Wilkins?'

  'He died rather suddenly. She was heartbroken, but they'd had a good many happy years together by then. They used to travel a lot, she loved to tell me about that. She'd seen the world—even sailed up the Congo once in a cargo boat, can you imagine? It wouldn't suit me, all those black men, and it couldn't have been very clean, but her eyes used to light up when she talked about it. Oh, the hours we spent chatting together. If only she'd stayed here . . .

  'They loved Italy more than any other place; they had their first real holiday here, and after that, wherever else they went they always spent some time here every year. They saw more of this country than you or I are ever likely to. They used to drive round, stopping wherever suited them. They learned the language, too, and read a lot-nothing studious, you know, but stories and histories of the places they visited. They were never happier, she always says, than when they were,here, as is only natural. I've never been to England myself but they say the weather's very grey and there's no wine grown. I'm not a great wine-drinker myself and never have been, but imagine there not being any . . . it's not civilized . . .'

  'No, no,' murmured the Marshal, trying to imagine a grey world without vines but not succeeding. It seemed to him unlikely.

  'Anyway, when Wilkins died of a stroke, she came and settled over here. They'd often talked about it as something they might do when he retired.'

  'She must have been a very courageous woman, to set out on her own and in such sad circumstances.'

  'Of course she was courageous! She'd had the guts to marry a man with nothing, against her family's wishes, and to work like a slave with him when she hadn't been brought up to it. Of course she was courageous—not like some I could mention who—'

  'And the sister,' interrupted the Marshal firmly, 'did she marry, as yours eventually did?'

  'Ah! She got what she deserved—not that she thought so. She married for money, a man a lot older than herself. She was even barefaced enough to say to Signora Wilkins that she fully expected him to die before too long and leave her comfortably off! After that she thought she'd find somebody she liked better! But all her grasping ways did her no good at all; her husband fell ill but he didn't die, not for eleven years! It turned out he was a diabetic but nobody had known, until one day he crushed his finger in a door. He had it dressed but it didn't heal. Instead, it began to stink—gangrene! Can you imagine? He lost part of the finger and started treatment for diabetes, but it got steadily worse. By the end he'd lost a leg and his eyesight was failing rapidly. So, instead of quickly inheriting his money, she had to nurse him. It doesn't bear thinking about, the sort of life she led him once she found out that there wasn't any money either! It seems he'd fancied himself as a speculator, and once he was bedridden and she took over his affairs she found that he had nothing but a lot of worthless shares. She had no choice but to write to her sister, who was settled out here by then, and ask her for money. I gather they were even in danger of being evicted, of having their mortgage foreclosed. At any rate, Signora Wilkins gave her money, I don't know how much, and the use of her house in England. She told me she was glad to have somebody living in it; that it was immoral to leave it standing empty and she couldn't bear to think of selling. But I warned her, I said, you'll have nothing but trouble from that one. I'd seen it all before. She's jealous of you, I told her— Goossens was on the scene by then, so that was another reason for jealousy. But poor Signora Wilkins, she wouldn't have it. She wouldn't see wrong in her own sister—I sometimes think it was because there was no evil in herself that she couldn't recognize it in others. It doesn't do to be that innocent in this world. But then, she was happy herself and wouldn't wish anybody ill.'

  'Where did she meet Goossens?'

  'Here in this house. She took the flat below—not the one on the right where that old witch is, the one on the left where the young couple live now. Goossens and little Toni were up here across the way, as you've seen. His first wife was Italian but she died of cancer, poor creature, when the child was only ten. Toni, I ought to call him Ton but I never do, spent a lot of his time here with me while his father was downstairs in the workshop.'

  'So that was his place, in those days?'

  'Certainly it was. He started it. He was from Amsterdam and he had a business there, but he'd always come to Florence, mostly to buy designs. He was a good craftsman and said so, but he was no artist, and Italian design, he used to tell me, is famous the world over. He was a cutter, hims
elf, and would bring stones to the jewellers down here and buy designs. When he met and married his Italian wife they lived in Amsterdam for a while but it seems she never settled. She'd never been abroad before and spoke no language but Italian . . . and then the cold ... So, eventually, he set up a workshop downstairs and he bought this flat up here.'

  'Was his wife in the jewellery business, too?'

  'She was a designer. He'd always admired and bought her work—but don't think it was a marriage of convenience because he wasn't that sort. He grieved for years when she died. It was a sad household for that little boy. It was just after she died that he was taken badly with rheumatic fever.'

  'At least he had his mammina.'

  'I did what I could, but I wasn't young, you know, even then. Think about it: when Toni's mother died he was ten and I would be sixty-one and already widowed. I couldn't be running about. Goossens still travelled a lot between here and Amsterdam. He'd put a manager in the workshop up there so as not to have to leave the child too often, but he was still taking up designs and bringing down stones to cut here. I looked after the child, but he would never sleep here. I always went over there . . . even when he had the fever ... It often crossed my mind that he couldn't bear to leave the house empty ... as if he thought his mother might one day come back. It's hard to believe in forever at that age. Anyway, you see why I've always had their keys . . .'

  'And did you,' asked the Marshal, remembering the ringed word on a sheet of foolscap, 'give him—the son, I mean—your keys, for this flat?'

  'Of course. He still has them . . . had them . . . poor Toni. . . why didn't he come to me? I don't understand it at all.'

  'I believe he was trying to. He had your keys in his hand, if I'm not mistaken, when I found him. Do you mind if I get a glass of water?'

  She was silent until he sat down again, shedding a few tears that, this time, were not tears of self-pity. She was absorbed in her memories and didn't notice when the window below opened again for a duster to be shaken out into the shady courtyard.