Everyone in Their Place

V

Water. With this horrible heat the plants need lots of water. All of a year’s work, all the tender care and hard work can be wiped out if you forget to make sure they have plenty of water in these pitiless days. The sun, such a necessary ally in other seasons, becomes your worst enemy: it sucks the life out of the leaves, just as it does out of the muscles of human beings.

And you, my sweet little friends, can’t cry out for help: if it weren’t for me, you’d die, singed, desiccated, your branches extending toward the heavens and begging for a refreshing drop of rain. It’s been seventy-six days today since it last rained. Seventy-six days that your lives have been in my hands: leaf by leaf, bud by bud.

I am the one who waters you, and I water you in the morning, before the sun gets too high and starts ranging across the terrace in search of damp spots to bake dry. I wish I could sleep, or even lie sprawled out in my bed, eyes wide open, thinking. Remembering. Planning things that may prove impossible. But I love you, my dear silent friends, and love, as everyone knows, means sacrifice. So I get out of bed, I get the bucket, and with trip after trip down to the fountain, I give you the gift of another day of life. None of you can move, your place is here on this terrace. And I who can move, I take life and give it to you.

It’s wonderful to see the way you thank me, with new scents and new flowers. And you give life yourselves, just listen to the insects, the festival of buzzing in the air. This is the miracle, life as it multiplies, dividing itself into a thousand parts. Every one of them in its place, every one of them playing its part.

It’s a marvelous thing to be able to give life. You become God. And you’re God when you take life, too.

Ricciardi and Maione, after giving orders to Camarda and Cesarano not to let anyone in or out through the street door, followed the tiny doorman into the courtyard. Along with his diminutive stature, shrill voice, and enormous nose, the way the man walked was ridiculous too: he took short, bouncy steps, like a series of halfhearted leaps; his oversized uniform billowed on his back and with every movement his hat slipped to one side or another, only to be straightened with both hands, the tips of his fingers protruding from too-long sleeves.

The courtyard was hardly as vast as those that Ricciardi had seen in other aristocratic palazzi; then he realized that the space was restricted by a huge flower bed in the middle of it, planted with hydrangeas. Noticing that the policemen were admiring the flowers, Sciarra said without slowing his pace:

“The flowers, eh? He’s obsessed, the son of the duke. . that is, the young master is quite fond of them, he insists that we have flowers all year round.”

Ricciardi took a look around, making a mental note to undertake a more thorough examination of the place later, and noticed four large columns, one at each corner of the courtyard. Quite handy, in a pinch they could offer shade and shelter. To an overheated tradesman, for instance. Or to a murderer.

On a line with the street door, but at the far side of the courtyard, a broad staircase led upstairs. Just inside the entrance, on the right, was a little doorless room containing a small table and a chair. Maione spoke to the doorman:

“Is that where you sit, when you’re on duty?”

“Yessir, Brigadie’, exactly so. Whenever the street door is open, I sit there without fail.”

At the foot of the staircase two women were walking toward them; one was enormous, both tall and broad, with a white apron over a light blue smock, hair tied up into a bun behind her head. Her face was pale, with a patch of red on her neck, and she was wringing her hands; there was no mistaking the fact that she was overwrought. The other one, younger, was skinny and angular, and she wore the black work dress of a scullery maid; she was sobbing, dabbing constantly at her eyes with a filthy handkerchief.

“This is Signora Concetta, the housekeeper,” said Sciarra, making the introduction by extending his dangling sleeve in the direction of the huge woman; “and this is my wife Mariuccia, who cleans house.”

Maione touched his visor.

“Brigadier Maione, from police headquarters. Commissario Ricciardi, commander of the mobile squad. Concetta: and your last name would be?”

The big woman replied in a whisper. She had been instructed always to speak in a low voice in the palazzo and, overwrought though she might be, she could hardly break the habit.

“Concetta Sivo, at your service. As Peppino just told you, I’m the housekeeper here in the palazzo. Her grace the duchess. . I was the one who found her, that is, who saw the deed that had been done. The horrible thing.”

At the housekeeper’s words, the maid burst into another series of hiccuping sobs. Her husband touched her arm, as if to support her. Ricciardi broke in.

“I’ll need all three of you to remain on call, make sure none of you leaves the palazzo for any reason whatever. By the way, are there any other exits besides the street door? Tradesmen’s doors, cellars, any other points of egress, in other words.”

“No, no, Commissa’, no other exit. You either leave by the main door or inside you remain. Unless you jump out a window, but the lowest one must be twenty feet off the ground.”

Ricciardi raised his eyes, and as he looked up the stairs, he sighed imperceptibly.

“Well, let’s go up. Signora Sivo, show us what you found.”

The jasmine hedge is a wonderful thing in the summer. It’s not just the perfume, though I could never tire of inhaling it, sweet and light as it is, a smell that stays in your nose for an hour after you’ve left. It’s the color, that dark green punctuated with white, the little pointed leaves. I like the fact that it’s thick, I like that it covers the terrace from view, that it ensures that from the outside world, even from the bell tower of the church across the way, the picture of this house is one of greenery and flowers. That everyone may think it’s a beautiful place. A place without sorrow. That no one may know that this is a place filled with death.

After the first flight of stairs, there was a gate on the right enclosing the entrance to the main floor, and behind it could be seen the open door. The gate swung ajar, and from one of its bars hung a heavy chain, with a padlock fastened shut at one end.

On the left, the staircase continued upward. Ricciardi asked: “Where does it lead, this staircase? What’s upstairs?”

The housekeeper replied under her breath:

“First there are our bedrooms, mine, then the doorman’s and the maid’s with their children, four little ones. Then above that is the apartment of the young master, the son of the duke.”

“Then who lives on this floor?”

“Only the duke and the duchess live here. The duke is bedridden, he’s very sick. His bedroom is at the far end of the palazzo, all the way down, while the duchess’s bedroom is on this side.”

There was shade on the landing but the heat was intense all the same. The bells had finally stopped ringing; the silence was now broken only by a woman’s voice, singing somewhere in the distance. Ricciardi asked:

“Where did you find the dead body?”

At the sound of the words “dead body” Sciarra’s wife sobbed even louder into her handkerchief. Her husband gripped her shoulder with one hand, his hat askew over his forehead. The housekeeper replied:

“Right here, in the first room. The anteroom, really. On the little sofa.”

“Have you touched anything? Is it all just as you found it?”

The woman furrowed her brow.

“No, I don’t think I did. That is, I touched the duchess, I called her. Then I called Mariuccia, and Mariuccia called Peppino. We tried to wake her up, then we saw. . we realized. . well, now you just come in and you’ll see what we saw.”

Ricciardi looked toward the half-open door. It was one thing to run into the Deed by chance, while walking down the street or by happening to pass by the site of an accident; it was quite another matter to go looking for it intentionally. This was the real sacrifice that he made: choosing to take onto himself all that pain and grief, allowing the last terrible shudder of departing life to coil around him and through him like a bloody mist.

He nodded to Maione; the brigadier was accustomed to the commissario’s working methods, which never varied. He’d enter the scene of the murder alone, he’d stay there for a few minutes, and then he’d emerge. Simple. As for Maione, he needed only to guard the door, and make sure that no one else came into the room.

He’d never be willing to be the first to enter the scene of a murder with the commissario; nothing on earth could persuade him to do it. Maione might be a big, strong brigadier who wasn’t afraid of a thing, and he might be fond of his superior officer, but he’d never have the guts. And that was that.

At the far end of the hall, stretched out in the bed where he’d certainly die before long, Matteo Musso, Duke of Camparino, listened to the silence that was broken only by the rattle of his breathing. It wasn’t normal for there to be all this peace and quiet, not on a Sunday. From the tightly fastened shutters, he should have heard the laughter of the children playing in the piazza, the chattering of the housewives emerging from mass, the shouts of the strolling vendors selling spasso, the blend of walnuts, hazelnuts, and lupini beans that would brighten the dining room tables after Sunday lunch.

In short, he ought to be hearing the sounds of life. The same life that was abandoning him now. Instead: all this silence.

And solitude, of course. But that he was used to. Aside from the nurse who came twice a day, to give him those useless injections: as if you could stop death, instead of just putting off its arrival.

What silence, thought Matteo. The silence of death. Perhaps after all death had come to the house before its time. Perhaps it came in through another doorway: a door that no one expected.

Wheezing and gasping, the elderly duke smiled an obscene smile.