Blood Curse

LI

The next morning, on his way to headquarters, Ricciardi carried on his shoulders a heavier burden of sadness than usual. Another day had gone by since Calise’s ferocious murder, and bitter experience had taught him that time was his worst adversary.

Just like his own accursed visions, the murderer’s footprints were fading away, gradually being erased by the overlay of new ideas, of different emotions. Moreover, the investigators’ movements put the guilty parties on notice, allowing them to make counter-moves of their own.

And as if that wasn’t bad enough, last night, once again, the shutters across the way had remained shut up tight. Perhaps Enrica had suffered from a relapse of her mysterious illness; that’s what his imagination had suggested. Or worse, she was so deeply offended that she no longer even wanted to see his shadow at the window.

He was groping in the dark, and that stirred up a thunderstorm in his thoughts and in his heart, one that he couldn’t put to rest.

As usual, he had arrived early, much earlier than the others. The officer at the entrance wasn’t catnapping this time, and with a military-style salute, he strode out to meet him.

“Buongiorno, Commissa’. There’s a young lady upstairs who wants to talk to you. I let her go up; she’s waiting for you in the hall outside your office.”

Ricciardi’s heart jumped up in his throat at the thought that this could be Enrica. With a nod to the officer, who stared at him, taken aback by the look of fright on the commissario’s face, Ricciardi headed toward the broad staircase with his eyes on the floor. Then he looked up, terrified and hopeful at the same time.

It wasn’t her.

The girl who sat waiting for him on the small bench in the hallway was very young. She looked vaguely familiar somehow; Ricciardi decided he must have seen her recently, though he couldn’t remember where. She was modestly dressed, with a dark overcoat that was too heavy for the now mild temperature, a nondescript hat perched on her upswept hair. In her hand was a bundle wrapped in newspaper pages. When she spotted him coming, she rose to her feet but didn’t walk over to meet him. He gave her a quizzical look. She was the first to speak.

“Buongiorno, Commissa’. I have something I wanted to tell you, about the. . the misfortune that befell Carmela Calise.”

That morning, Maione came in early, too. His alcohol-fueled chat with the Serra di Arpajas’ doorman had yielded some new pieces of information that he wanted to discuss as soon as possible with the commissario. And besides, lately, work was the only place where he felt relaxed.

He’d stayed by the bedside of the little girl’s father for a while the night before, without managing to shake the unpleasant sensation that something there required further explanation, though he couldn’t pin down exactly what it was. Perhaps it was Rituccia’s composed resignation; she hadn’t shed a single tear, and was sitting far away from the bed, probably because she was repelled by the corpse. Or it might be the relative indifference of the dead man’s fellow workers, who stood cap in hand, awkwardly shuffling their feet, clearly eager to leave. Or possibly the genuine sympathy that Filomena displayed as she reassured the girl, telling her that from that moment on she would be like a second child to her. Or maybe it was the fact that everyone was staring at him with morbid curiosity, as if he were coming to take on a role of social significance comparable to Filomena’s disfigured beauty.

Whatever the reason, the minute he was able to, he’d left to head home, promising the little girl, Gaetano, and Filomena that he’d take care of things, dealing with the contractor that employed the victim to make sure that his daughter was paid the indemnity that was due to her.

When he turned his key in the lock of his apartment door, for once arriving at a reasonable time for dinner, Maione was greeted by the wall of ice erected by Lucia. This wasn’t the usual silence made of memories; that much he’d realized immediately. It contained a new kind of fury, reminiscent of the quarrels they’d had during the first few years of marriage. Plates slammed down on the table, no tablecloth, no napkins, cold soup left over from the children’s lunch. In response to his one tentatively offered conjecture-whether by chance his wife might not be feeling well-he received a flashing glare and a dry “I’m feeling just fine.” Hissing, conclusive. Neither of them had spoken another word, and she’d spent the rest of the evening in the company of her repressed fury, he accompanied by a vague sense of guilt.

When morning rolled around, bringing with it a persistent headache inherited from the night before, he had walked out onto the street with a sense of relief, without realizing that a gaze made of two parts rage to one part affection was following him from the window.

Once he had arrived at headquarters, he went straight to the commissario’s office and was shocked to find sitting before him, with a newspaper-wrapped bundle in her hands, the very same person who constituted his principal piece of news.

Both Ricciardi and Maione had seen Teresa the day before; she had opened the door, shown them inside, and served them tea. With her fine housekeeper’s smock and her starched headpiece, she hadn’t struck the trained eyes of the two investigators as any more remarkable than the furnishings and ornaments in the front hall. But now, even though she was dressed in a nondescript fashion, she took on a certain personality.

After saluting, Maione signaled to the commissario that he wanted to speak to him. Ricciardi excused himself and left the room with the brigadier.

“Commissa’, yesterday I had a long chat with the doorman of the palazzo, and after a beer or two-which I paid for out of my own pocket, of course-he coughed up a lot of interesting information. First of all,” he began, counting off the points on his fingers, taking hold of the fingertips one by one with his other hand, “the good signora, so simple and modest, is having herself a nice little affair with a stage actor. Everyone knows about it, and according to the doorman, so does the professor, but he pretends to look the other way.” At this point, the limber fingers of his right hand released their grip to make the twin horns of the cuckold, Italian shorthand for a man whose wife is cheating on him. “Next, he told me that he’d heard from the cook that the signora wouldn’t do a thing, not a single blessed thing, without the permission of the old fortune-teller-that is, Calise. The chauffeur would have to drive her there as many as three times a day, until she started taking her own vehicle, a red sports car, a brand new Alfa Romeo Brianza, bright and beautiful as the sun. It seems that in the last few days before the Calise was murdered, there was even a fight between them; nobody could understand what they were saying, but they were shouting, and people could hear them out in the street. Last of all, the most interesting piece of news, is what I heard about the signorina sitting in the other room, who’s been their maid for the past two years. You want to know what it is?”

Ricciardi shook his head.

“Well, in your opinion, which is it: do I want to know or don’t I?”

Maione put on a false air of contrition.

“Then I’ll get right to it, Commissa’. The signorina who’s sitting in your office has been to see Calise every week for a long time now. She showed the doorman a sheet of paper with that address, along with the name; he was the one who told her which streetcar to take the first time she went.”

Ricciardi and Maione went back into the office. Teresa, with the package clutched to her chest, was waiting for them, staring into space. The commissario addressed her politely.

“Tell me, Signorina, what can we do for you?”

The woman spoke in a low voice, little more than a murmur.

“My name is Teresa Scognamiglio, Commissa’. The dead woman was my aunt, my mother’s older sister, may her soul rest in peace. I gave it a lot of thought, before coming to see you; I care about my job and I don’t want to be sent back to my village in the countryside. And I know that after coming here today I’ll never be able to go back to work there. But I couldn’t keep quiet. My aunt’s spirit in the other world wouldn’t leave me alone, it was making me crazy just like my grandmother, God rest her soul.”

Her eyes had filled with tears, which began streaking down her cheeks. Ricciardi and Maione exchanged a glance. The brigadier comforted her in a fatherly tone.

“Signorina, tell us what you have to say. We’re all ears.”

In response, Teresa simply set the newspaper bundle on her lap and started unwrapping it. She pulled out a pair of elegant men’s shoes with the soles encrusted and stained. She set them on Ricciardi’s desk, side by side, perfectly aligned. Then she looked up.

“I know who it was. I know who killed my aunt.”