Everyone in Their Place

XII

This is the worst time of the day. The time when the sun shows no more respect for those who can’t seek shelter, when the sun is at its most merciless. It is I who must help you all, and I move into the shade those of you that I can, the geraniums, the begonias. The hedges, the jasmines, bougainvilleas, and ivies; all I can do is watch you as you consume your reserves, the water that I gave you this morning. You have to stay there. In your place. Everyone in their place.

And what’s my place? Here, with you. In this empty palazzo, empty room after empty room, silence upon silence. A palazzo filled with ghosts. He too is a ghost. My father. I don’t remember him like this, gasping and wheezing in a bed, fighting a losing battle. I remember him big and strong, laughing happily with Mamma. Mamma. Mamma. What an enchanted word, a word that I utter not with my mouth, but with my heart a thousand times a day.

Mamma, you know. You know that the most important thing is love. It’s love that gives you the place you occupy. You always used to say that to me, that love was your true home, your true country. But you never explained what to do, if that love is somehow wrong.

Now she’s dead. Dead, Mamma. Just like you. Just like my father, even if he’s still there, gasping. And maybe just like me, and my mistaken love.

I open the drawer in the secretary desk, the concealed spring-operated drawer. I take out the ring. Your ring, Mamma. I clean it again, to make sure that there’s no trace of her filthy blood. That it’s just the way it used to be.

When it was on your finger. Mamma.

Ricciardi was thinking how paradoxical it was that the places where the Deed gave him the fewest visions should be hospitals and cemeteries. But then again, it made perfect sense: it was passions and strong emotions that generated violent deaths, not pain; and what inhabited those places was primarily pain.

He’d decided to wait for the results of the autopsy at the entrance to the mortuary, at the rear of the building. The hospital was ashamed of death, and so it did its best to hide it. Death represented a failure, a defeat.

Groups of people in tears, faces ashen with weariness and suffering. Women dressed in black held up by grim-faced boys, turned into grown men in the space of a few hours when confronted with loss. Parents, sons and daughters, wives, husbands. Regrets, words left unspoken. Memories.

Ricciardi stood to one side, unable to avoid being a witness to more pain and grief. He couldn’t have said which was worse, the dull repetition of the departed’s last emotion or the abyss into which the survivors were plunged.

The mortuary door swung open and Doctor Modo emerged, drying his hands on the hem of his stained labcoat.

“Well, look who’s come to bring his sunny smile into this place of suffering. Ciao, Ricciardi: welcome to our little theater. Were you so eager to see me again that you couldn’t resist or do you think that the atmosphere of the morgue suits you better than the one at police headquarters?”

“Sooner or later someone’s going to notice that the atmosphere of police headquarters suits you better than the hospital does. And I’ll have to come get you, and I’ll throw away the key after I do. How did it go, are you done with the duchess?”

Modo smiled broadly.

“Oh, we had a long talk, your client and I. And she gave me lots and lots of information, but it’s all very, very confidential. I’m only authorized to release it if provided with a lavish dinner, your treat.”

Ricciardi shook his head.

“At last. Concealing evidence. I knew that would be the charge that would finally allow me to put you away where the sun doesn’t shine. And considering this heat, I’m even doing you a favor. Fine, fine, but we’ll have to meet at the trattoria near police headquarters; I’m waiting for Maione, who has some information of his own. Which he’s giving me free of charge.”

Maione hadn’t managed to pry any other interesting information out of Bambinella; in particular, he’d tried to find out something else about the other residents of the palazzo and their habits, but as far as he could tell there was nothing more that his informant could add to what he’d already told him.

He’d only detected an instant of hesitation when it came to the duke’s son, Ettore; Bambinella knew that the man stayed out very late practically every night, and that sometimes he slept somewhere else, though she had no idea where he might go. Maione had decided that, since the man was a scholar, the circles he frequented were unlikely to have anything in common with Bambinella.

In the terrible afternoon heat, hungrier than ever, Maione decided to go see Ricciardi and apprise him of the results of his investigations. He found the commissario in his office, waiting for him.

They traded accounts of their day: the commissario shared with the brigadier his impressions of the conversation with Garzo; Maione informed Ricciardi of the information he’d gathered in the neighborhood around Palazzo Camparino and from Bambinella. Ricciardi sat there, thoughtfully, fingers knit in front of his mouth.

“So everyone thinks it was Capece who did it. Sometimes, the most obvious solution also happens to be the right one: after all, life isn’t a novel. We’ll have to question him.”

“Yes, Commissa’, but we’ll have to move cautiously. You heard what that ignorant boor Garzo said, no? We’ll wind up putting him on the alert and then he’ll reach out to someone in high places and the next thing you know they’ll put a gag order on us.”

“You’re quite right. We’ll move carefully, at least as carefully as we normally would. Tomorrow we’ll go to the palazzo and talk to the two surviving dukes, and we’ll see what they have to tell us. Among other things, from what you tell me, there seems to have been bad blood between husband and wife, stepmother and stepson.”

Maione scratched his head with the handkerchief.

“Did you get anything from Doctor Modo? I checked the shell against the models that we have in our archives, and it’s just as you expected: a Beretta 7.65 from the war, not the old model but the pistol they issued to officers toward the end, in ’17; there are still thousands of them in circulation. Nothing unusual about it. I sent two policemen to canvas the room from top to bottom, nothing else emerged. The murderer only fired that one shot.”

Ricciardi nodded agreement.

“That extortionist Modo said that he’ll report on the autopsy only if I buy him dinner. Why don’t you come along, it’s the trattoria near here, at Santa Brigida; that way you can hear too.”

Maione turned paler still.

“No, Dotto’, I’m not hungry. If anything, you can tell me about it tomorrow.”

“No, I insist: four ears are better than two. And after all, when have you ever had a problem with eating twice? I don’t want to stay out late tonight either. Let’s hear what Modo has to say and then we’ll go home.”

Maione resigned himself.

“All right, at your orders. But I’m not going to eat anything. I’ll just watch you have dinner, then I’ll eat at home.”

Enrica sensed something strange. Her mother had returned from her walk and seemed excited: she’d brought a bouquet of flowers and had told the housekeeper to get out the fine silverware and polish it. She’d tried to find out the reason for such lavish care for the dining room table on an ordinary day of the week and in response had received nothing more than a nervous giggle and a shrug.

When Maria was like that, there was no point in insisting, as Enrica knew all too well; but she could sense a strange uneasiness. At a certain point she saw the woman who normally came to do her mother’s hair enter the apartment; at that point she asked whether there was some special occasion that she knew nothing about, and she was told that the woman was there for her.

Her eyes opened wide, and before she could say anything in response, she was told:

“And put on your best dress. We’re having guests for dinner tonight.”

Along the short stretch of road from police headquarters to Via Santa Brigida, where they had an appointment to meet Doctor Modo, Maione and Ricciardi encountered only a few living souls and one dead one. The living ones were boisterous young boys on their way back from the beach, their clothing wrapped in dripping bundles, barefoot and wet-haired, who were filling the air with loud laughter and rude bantering. The dead man, whom only Ricciardi could see, of course, was dissolving slowly in the massive heat with his heavy jacket, dating back to the end of winter.

He was a construction worker who’d fallen off the roof of a palazzo, where he’d been repairing a rain gutter. With a back curved right round like an umbrella handle and with blood gushing from his mouth, he kept saying:

“It’ll hold me, the cornice will hold me.”

Famous last words, thought Ricciardi, as he did every time he passed by him, averting his gaze. Maione misinterpreted his superior officer’s expression.

“What is it, Commissa’, do you have a headache, too? My head’s been spinning like a top for the past few days.”

Ricciardi replied:

“In fact, you’ve been looking a little peaked, for a few days now. Are you feeling all right?”

“Sure, sure, I’m feeling fine, but I’m eating less. And in this heat. .”

“I understand, and right you are to do so. But I’m just as hungry as ever, hot or cold. And Modo, as you can see, feels the same way. There he is, waiting for us.”

The doctor was already sitting at one of the small outdoor tables on the sidewalk, beneath the awning that provided shade from the last rays of the setting sun.

“Oh, here comes my dinner now. My dear Brigadier, are you joining us tonight? That must mean the coffee’ll be your treat: I wouldn’t want to do you wrong.”

Maione smiled.

“Buona sera, Dotto’. Sorry, I’m sitting this one out, strictly a spectator. I’ll listen to you talk and watch you eat. No one said anything about paying.”

Ricciardi took a seat; to the proprietor hovering nearby he pointed to the bowl of baked pasta that towered in front of Modo.

“The same for me, if you please. Now then, Bruno; can you talk to me about the duchess or would that ruin your appetite?”

Modo chewed with his mouth full. He shook his head.

“There’s nothing on earth that could ruin my appetite. On the Carso front, I ate under a hail of Austrian shells: it’s a simple matter of survival. So let’s talk about your client: a very lovely woman, who was in excellent shape despite her age, which I’d place at roughly forty or so. Am I right?”

“Forty-two, to be exact. She was born in 1889, on January 15th.”

“She had the body of a young girl, believe me. From what they tell me, she was a woman who drove men crazy. All right then, first let’s talk about the bullet. You saw it, someone shot her through the cushion: there are fragments of cloth and even feathers in her brain, along the trajectory that ends in the sofa’s backrest. Fracture of the frontal bone, occipital bone, etc. And there’s no doubt that her heart was still beating, when she was shot.”

Ricciardi leaned forward, having caught the careful phrasing.

“What do you mean, her heart was still beating?”

Modo snickered, his mouth still full.

“How nice, to have an attentive audience. What I mean to say is that clinically speaking, the lovely duchess was still alive. But only clinically.”

“Which means? What are you saying, clinically?”

“Well then: your murderer, perhaps to keep her from screaming, had pressed a cushion good and hard over her mouth and nose. So the Signora was already dying of suffocation. Practically speaking, she was in her death throes when she was shot.”

Maione was impressed.

“Excuse me, Dotto’, and just how can you tell? I don’t know, from the lungs, the throat. .”

Modo shook his head.

“No, no, Brigadie’, nothing that internal. You can see from the face. The red patches around the mouth and neck, for instance. And certain little spots on the inside of the eyelids, which are known as ‘petechiae.’ Those are veins and capillaries that rupture as the victim struggles to breathe. It’s a typical mark of suffocation.”

It occurred to Ricciardi that the image of the duchess, which kept uttering its phrase about the ring, had a nice round bullet hole in its forehead, so that when she was shot, she must have still been alive. He asked:

“But if she was suffocated, how could it be that she was still clinically alive when the murderer shot her?”

Modo shrugged, without breaking pace as he ingurgitated the baked macaroni.

“Evidently, the murderer wanted to make sure he’d done the job. You can’t always be sure, when you kill someone, that what you’ve done is really irreversible. Perhaps he thought he’d been recognized. Or as long as he was at it, he wanted to make sure the gun worked. In any case, they had quite a struggle.”

Maione was again surprised; struggling to tear his eyes away from the spaghetti sauce that the doctor was mopping off his bowl with a chunk of bread, he said:

“What are you saying, Dotto’? She looked like she was just sleeping, the duchess.”

Modo, who had wiped his bowl completely clean, leaned back in his chair with a broad smile.

“You weren’t expecting that, were you? The duchess was rearranged, nice and comfortable, so that the bullet hole in her forehead lined up. The autopsy was quite informative, this time. In any case, it all must have happened in quick succession. The woman died between midnight and two in the morning, on the night between Saturday and Sunday. There’s no question about that.”

*

You shouldn’t have laughed. If you hadn’t laughed, I wouldn’t have done it. I loved you, desperately. I’d never have hurt you.

You never understood my pain, my despair. Perhaps I never possessed you; but I always felt that you belonged to me, since the very first time I met you. And I’ll never see anything as beautiful as your smile, your face cradled in my hands; I’ll never feel anything as marvelous as you, breathing in my arms.

I wish I could explain to you how horrible it was to see you catch another man’s eye, trigger his smile. To feel you turning your charm elsewhere to chain one man to you, and then another, and another still. Without respect, without any consideration for me. But I would have put up with anything, as long as I could keep you close to me. Because I loved you.

But you laughed. You laughed right in my face. And I couldn’t take it.

Ricciardi asked:

“Well then, what else have you discovered?”

Modo raised his hand, counting on his fingers.

“One: two broken ribs, not from trauma but from pressure. Someone placed a curved object on her chest, possibly to hold her still. A knee, for instance. Or something else, who can say? Two: four broken fingernails, on both hands. And no trace of skin, which means that she tried to grab a fully dressed body or something else, again, who can say? Three: her left hand, truly in very strange condition. The ring finger with a nice deep cut, bleeding: evidently, someone tore a ring off. Middle finger, sprained, without hematoma. Someone pulled on her finger after she was dead, perhaps trying to take another ring. Or perhaps. .”

Ricciardi concluded, sarcastically:

“. . something else, who knows what. So what else do you have in store for us? I can see from your face that you still have a surprise.”

Modo smiled like a little boy.

“Your client, my dear sad Ricciardi, had a tear on the inside of her left cheek. Someone had beaten her, before killing her.”