Everyone in Their Place

XVII

Looking through the plateglass window, Giulio Colombo saw Enrica arrive, and noticed how she resembled her mother: in just two days he’d been subjected to two assaults on his tranquility, and for two different reasons.

It seemed harder for him to face his daughter, because he felt guilty about what he’d done to her; the evening had hardly been a success, precisely because of the girl’s stubborn refusal to join in the conversation. In fact she’d spent nearly the entire dinner grimly looking out the window, despite her mother’s best efforts to draw her out by praising her domestic and cultural gifts. As far as that goes, he himself hadn’t been particularly impressed with the Fiores’ son, a fairly superficial young man who had bored him stiff with a lengthy disquisition on the latest automobile models: there was no topic on earth that attracted him less, as he was a diehard proponent of the belief that those horrible noisy contraptions were irreparably ruining his city.

Nor did the situation improve after dinner, when they all went to sit in the drawing room: while the mother took command of the conversation, gossiping relentlessly about the entire city and in particular about the talk of the town, the murder of the duchess of Camparino, the son sat down practically on top of Enrica, and whispered in her ear incessantly; an unseemly approach, especially considering it was the first time they’d met. Giulio had given signs of annoyance, but one angry glare from his wife was enough to stop him cold, and so he sat there obediently, pretending not to notice what was happening. Poor Enrica had scooted over as far as she could, closer and closer to the armrest, pursued implacably by Sebastiano. A genuine nightmare. Once the three guests had left, Giulio had heaved a sigh of relief and then braced himself for the inevitable argument, but Enrica had immediately withdrawn into her bedroom without even wishing him goodnight. That was the first time he could ever remember that happening: his daughter’s goodnight kiss was a consolation he sorely hated to miss.

And here she came now. Her expression, usually so sweet, was grim and set. Giulio wondered whether there was a reason that everyone had it in for him. He sighed and prepared for the clash.

Ricciardi and Maione, on their way back from Palazzo Camparino, were still in bad moods; but at least their work was distracting them from their personal problems. The interviews with the duke and his son, instead of clearing up any details of the case, had only stirred new doubts. Maione seemed especially baffled.

“Commissa’, what do you think of this? The duke certainly isn’t strong enough to break a couple of anyone’s ribs, he might not even be capable of getting out of bed. Still, I don’t know if you noticed, the housekeeper obeys him like a lapdog, and she’s plenty strong.”

Ricciardi walked, lost in thought.

“Yes, that’s true; and there’s another thing: the Sivo woman, who kept us company close to the duke the whole time, stopped at the door with Ettore, she didn’t even come in. And the room struck me as remarkably messy, while the rest of the palazzo is clean and tidy. I’d like to understand the relationship between the two of them.”

“I’d like to understand what relationship there is between the father and the son, Commissa’. The fact that the son doesn’t want to be called ‘Duke,’ for example, seems important to me. And then the father, when you asked him, said, ‘Yes, I have a son,’ full stop. It seems curious to me.”

“That’s true, you’re right: that’s an odd thing too. No doubt about it: a nice case of family togetherness. All of them held together by hate.”

Maione continued to be baffled.

“But why, after ten years, would either the duke or his son have wanted to kill the duchess? By then, the situation was what it was, everyone was minding their own business. The duchess had her journalist, Ettore was cultivating his plants, and the duke was dying in his bed.”

Ricciardi had seen too much in his time to believe in stable situations.

“Why, haven’t you ever seen things change all of a sudden? A situation that you always tolerated, and one day without warning you can’t take it anymore. A word, a chance phrase. Maybe even the heat. Or an object, a piece of jewelry; and you lose your temper, you grab a gun, and you shoot.

“And then you recover your senses, you wake up from the madness, and you try to put things back the way they were, taking advantage of the fact that you know the house and you can make it all nice and orderly the way it was. Of course that’s happened to me, Commissa’. As for the piece of jewelry, you’re thinking of the duchess’s hand, aren’t you? I remember exactly what Doctor Modo told us: dislocated finger, abrasion on the other finger of the same hand. And I noticed that you asked the duke about the ring. I meant to tell you that the portrait in the young master’s den was wearing a ring: if you ask me, that was the first duchess, God rest her soul, she had the same nose as her son. And that’s the ring that’s disappeared.”

Ricciardi ventured a half smile.

“You don’t miss a thing, do you? Even in this heat, and as hungry as you are. The only thing that strikes me as strange is the silence. If there was a struggle, as it would seem from the contusions on the body, then there must have been an argument, and in fact the killer put the cushion on her face to keep her from screaming. How could it be that no one heard a thing, inside the palazzo or out? It was nighttime.”

Maione smiled and shook his head.

“Commissa’, you’re underestimating the neighborhood festas, it’s obvious that you’re not from Naples. We common folk have nothing but those festas, when it comes to having fun: we sing, we dance, and we misbehave until dawn. Believe me, you can’t hear a thing for a mile around, at least. And the festa in the Santa Maria La Nova neighborhood is especially famous. There’s the bonfire of old wood and a sort of tarantella contest: if you stop dancing you lose. The local girls spend months and months on their dancing dresses. You have to trust me on this, they could have sung the entire third act of La Traviata in the duchess’s anteroom and nobody would have heard a thing, not even from the room next door.”

Ricciardi wasn’t so sure.

“Well, fine, maybe nobody could hear. But getting into and out of the palazzo is no simple matter, and the festa was going on right outside the front door. Can you imagine that no one noticed a thing? I don’t believe that the murderer dressed up as a tarantella dancer. I can’t figure it out, there are certain details that make me think of a well-planned murder and there are others that point to an impulsive fight.”

Maione, mopping his brow, shrugged his shoulders.

“It’s not necessarily so, Commissa’. If the murderer was moving quickly, he could get in and out without any trouble. No question, Sciarra’s children were eating, as usual, handfuls of semenzelle in the middle of the festa, and the front door was wide open; or else, and this is a possibility worth considering, the murderer actually came in with the duchess. We haven’t even talked to ‘Yours, Mario,’ yet, have we? Capece was at home here, from what we’ve heard.”

“You’re right. Until we’ve talked to Capece we can’t say a thing. Late this afternoon we’ll go to the Roma and talk to him, journalists work at night, right now we wouldn’t find a soul. As for me, I’m going to go eat a sfogliatella at Gambrinus. What are you going to do, go on playing the fakir? Make sure you don’t wind up like the famous donkey: just as he’d almost learned how to go without eating, he up and died.”

Maione sighed.

“Sure, sure, Commissa’, make fun all you like. The way things are going, the less I eat the more I sweat, and the tighter my jacket fits me. One of these mornings, I’m going to lose my patience and lock myself into a trattoria, and nobody’s going to stop me then. You go ahead, take your time; I’ll wait for you back at headquarters, I’m going to go assign those lazy bums a few jobs to do. I’ll see you later.”

Livia had asked the carriage driver to leave her at the Largo della Carità: she wanted to take a stroll and take in the city.

Even the brief ride in the open carriage had been exciting, she’d pulled up her veil and the breeze on her face, with the smell of salt water and flowers, had been an unexpected, priceless pleasure. It was very hot, but it didn’t bother her: she’d waited too long for this morning to let minor considerations such as the weather ruin it for her. Before long, unless unforeseen developments intervened, she’d be looking at the reason she’d come back to this city.

She’d calculated her timing carefully: she wished to run no risks. She’d make sure she got to Gambrinus ahead of the usual time when, as she remembered perfectly, Ricciardi came in to eat his quick and solitary meal. This time, she thought to herself, even if he wasn’t expecting it, he’d have company. The street was just as she’d remembered it, broad and crowded. A number of dark, ragged children clustered around her, begging for coins. Laughing, she reached into her clutch bag and grabbed a little small change; then she flung it far away, the coins landing in a tinkling cascade, glinting in the sunlight; like a school of fish chasing a chunk of bread, the scugnizzi leapt at the coins with a collective shout.

Along the way the woman, striking and elegant as she was, attracted the attention of at least four men, who whistled after her and tossed off admiring comments. She was accustomed to attracting attention, but the explicit approach, so typical of the Neapolitans, amused her. And she also liked the sober elegance of the women that she saw on the street, even those who were less well-to-do but still strove to present a pleasing appearance. Not all of them, of course.

In particular, when she was already quite close to Piazza Trieste and Trento, and Gambrinus, she crossed paths with a tall young woman wearing tortoiseshell glasses; the young woman was walking briskly and she crossed the street ahead of her; she noticed that she had a natural elegance and a nice body: she could guess it from her long legs. Nonetheless, Livia decided, she wasn’t making the most of what she possessed. She’d undermined her best qualities with an antiquated dress, an old woman’s hairdo, and especially with a grim expression that didn’t suit her at all. Idly, she guessed that the young woman had some reason to be irritated.

Not Livia: she felt perfectly happy, and at peace with the world. She smiled at the sunlight and walked toward the Gambrinus and its café tables.