“Elvira knows I get up early so for me it was no great sacrifice.”
Soneri moved his face close to Chiastra’s. “The place was filled with gas. If I hadn’t let it out, you’d have been blown sky-high the moment you pressed the buzzer. It would seem that Elvira did have something urgent on her mind – getting rid of you. So the question is, why?”
The colour drained from Chiastra’s face, and a tremor ran through his body, causing even his lips to tremble. They seemed to want to open, if only he could find the words. The commissario looked hard at him and repeated, “Why? You’re not even the heir.”
Chiastra seemed petrified, his face fixed in an expression of fear and his eyes gazing into the darkness of the room. He reminded Soneri of Pitti as he stood next to the now-cold heater under Elvira’s menacing gaze, and the comparison made him realise how much women were in charge of this whole story. He blew out his cigar smoke and a neat little cloud drifted towards Chiastra’s face, but he did not move an inch.
“When did she call you?” the commissario asked, in an attempt to proceed systematically.
Chiastra shook himself and seemed happy to get back to basics. “Last night, but it wasn’t Elvira who called. It was a man. He introduced himself as her father.”
“What did he say?”
“To come this morning, when I would find something Ghitta had left for me.”
The commissario was about to ask more about this man when he noticed a tear in Chiastra’s eyes, although there was no sign of pain in his expression. The tear had been shed with seeming indifference, as though from the branch of a freshly cut vine.
Soneri changed tack. “Do you really not know who Rosso is?”
The old man shook his head.
Soneri prompted him. “Fornari, known as Rosso in Lunigiana, and ‘the vet’ in Monchio.”
Chiastra seemed genuinely surprised, but the commissario had observed too much play-acting to willingly abandon his suspicions.
“Why had he taken to threatening Ghitta?”
“If it really is Fornari . . .” Chiastra seemed to lose his way. “With him, there was a conflict of interests.”
“What kind of interests?”
“Houses, land. He wanted to buy a farm which had once belonged to the Landi, a noble family, the most powerful in Monchio, but Ghitta got in ahead of him and ‘the vet’ was beside himself. He wanted it at any price, and by any means.”
“But Ghitta wouldn’t sell? But what did it matter to her?”
Chiastra heaved a sigh which might have been a sign of impatience. He was struggling to dig up old histories and retell tales that seemed to him obvious. “You really had to know her. I’ve told you she was desperate to be thought better of in the town than she was. That farm had once been the property of nobility, do you understand? It wasn’t a matter of a house and a bit of land. What interested her was that at long last she would appear to be on top. They could carry on thinking of her as a worthless woman if they liked, but they also knew she was in command.”
In the silence which followed, it occurred to Soneri that no man has a more efficient jailer than himself. He tried to imagine Ghitta’s fixed and vain idea, rooted in her brain like a cyst, of refashioning a reputation for herself.
“I don’t understand why that farm mattered to Rosso.”
Chiastra gave a bitter smile. “A party membership card doesn’t change a person. He said he was a communist, but those who’ve got an education mix more easily with their own kind than with people like Ghitta or me. He was the veterinary surgeon. He always spoke approvingly of the common people, but he never had to live like them.” Chiastra gave another deep sigh, and continued, still with the same bitter smile on his lips. “When you get to my age, commissario, you begin to tally up what you’ve achieved, and if there’s something missing, you find some self-justification or you’ll never have peace of mind. I understand the vet. Everything had gone wrong for him – his ideals, his career on the mountains and even that wretched son of his. After all that, he must have been thinking of at least constructing a tomb worthy of spending his final years in. All that was left of what he had dreamed of being and doing were wealth and reputation, and he held tightly on to those. And anyway, the rich always remain rich, at least in their minds.”
“But from that to making her afraid of him – Ghitta was used to battling over questions of self-interest.”
“Oh, she could have eaten fire, but this time she had too many people lined up against her. Fornari must have known what was going on around here, and maybe he had even threatened to make it all public.”
“Bribes, wife-swapping . . .”
“Ah yes, I don’t know if he had spies or if that other one . . .”
“Who?” Soneri asked.
Chiastra shook his head in a sort of tacit accusation. “Elvira Cadoppi. She lived with Rosso’s son. Ghitta thought she could keep her under control with the threat of evicting her family, the ones in the village, but it was not enough. Perhaps the vet had already found another place for them to stay.”
“Do you know Desolina Galloni in Monchio?”
“Of course. She’s a tenant of Ghitta’s, but . . .” he interrupted himself, waving his hand about, palms upwards.
“I know, but quite often groups of young people, including Rosso’s son, used to go there. Why was that?”
Chiastra seemed uncertain. “It seems they could have a wild time. They came from as far afield as Tuscany. They all met up, and would hang out in Desolina’s for a bit.”
“Was this during the holidays?”
“No, mainly at the dead times of the year. It seems they’d no work to go to.”
“Was Andrea Fornari there too?
“He was the only one who was always there, trotting about like a servant, but maybe he was only trying to be hospitable.”
“Do you think they tried to get rid of you because you knew about all these goings-on?”
Chiastra stretched out his arms. “How would I know? Obviously my time hadn’t come.”
“But you do know a lot, and you didn’t tell me everything the first time we met.”
“I didn’t think it was important. I still don’t believe the vet had anything to do with it. He can fly off the handle, but there’s no real harm in him. He and Ghitta were good friends for a long time.”
Chiastra was gazing around as though trying to find his way. Soneri got to his feet and suddenly felt the accumulated exhaustion of a night without sleep.
“Did Ghitta really not leave me anything?” Chiastra said in a faint voice.
Once more the commissario saw a tear appear in those eyes, which remained impassive, and the thought occurred to him that the promise which attracted the old man to that place was even more cruel than any havoc the gas might have wrought. Having nothing more to ask him, he let Chiastra go and watched him from the window as he made his way towards the bus station. He tried to imagine what it must be like to be nearing the end of your days and find yourself betrayed by the one person who had given your life some meaning. Perhaps Ghitta had endured too much pain to be able to concern herself with other people, or perhaps she was no better than those she was surrounded by.
When Soneri went out, the frost had put a layer of white over everything, and a wind was blowing which made his ears freeze. He turned into Borgo del Naviglio, glancing as he passed at Bettati’s lighted window, on the other side of which the barber was sitting on the revolving chair reading his paper. When he heard the door open, he turned round but nonchalantly carried on reading.
“You’re up early,” he said without looking at him.
“I haven’t even been to bed.”
“They’ve caught three terrorists in Tuscany,” Bettati said, holding out an article in the paper. “They’re searching for others. They’re citing the Dallacasa case. Seems someone’s started talking about the past. Maybe it was a sympathiser with the old guard, but they’re not releasing his name because he’s a t
urncoat who’s decided to cooperate with the magistrates. Anyway, it seems more and more likely that we’re talking about a settling of scores among extremists.”
Soneri moved nearer to read the article, but he was too confused to be able to concentrate on the words.
“Did you know about an apartment in Borgo delle Colonne that Cornetti was renting from Ghitta?”
“I thought he had a lover there.”
“Did you see him go in and out very often?”
“Not me personally, but others did.”
“On his own?”
“Come on! There was no end to the toing and froing, young folk mainly, maybe students, because nobody round here recognised them.”
“There’s a suspicion that Cornetti was being blackmailed ever since he gave up financing the far-left groups, and that the shot that killed him had its roots in some political fracas or other.”
The barber pulled off his reading glasses, and went over to the heater to put his hand on it. “Anyone who speaks like that didn’t know Cornetti. He was full of contradictions, but he managed them well enough. He got by on pure instinct. He was a communist and a businessman, he was a member of a party of moralists, but he had many affairs. He financed extremist groups because he saw in them the passions he’d felt in his twenties, but then he would trot along to the Teatro Regio and sit in the boxes hired by industrialists. You had to take him as he was.”
The mobile interrupted their conversation. It was Juvara. “Commissario, there’s been a call from the office of a lawyer, Zurlini, in connection with the will.”
“What has that got to do with us?”
“He wants to know what to do and he asked if Fernanda Schianchi has been traced.”
“You know what to tell him? If she hasn’t turned up within ten years, he can apply to have her declared dead.”
“I know, but there is one outstanding question, and he wanted to know how to proceed without interfering with the investigation.”
“What outstanding question?” Soneri asked in growing irritation. In the meantime, he had left the shop and was crossing Piazzale San Francesco where the statue of Padre Lino, the Friar of the Poor, stood.
“The one relating to the Landi farm.”
The question stopped Soneri in his tracks. “Outstanding in what sense?”
“Three months ago, Aristide Fornari raised an action to have the sale to Ghitta declared null and void. There was a dispute between the two. Now that she’s dead, the lawyer wants to know if he can proceed with the business of the will, which includes the farm, or if he should drop everything.”
“Tell him to ask the magistrate,” Soneri said, his thoughts already on other matters. He instantly reconsidered what he had just said. “When was the action raised?”
“Mid-September. Is that important?”
The commissario winked, as if Juvara could see him. “Everything fell apart at that moment, that’s the truth,” Soneri muttered as he wandered around the Piazzale in front of the Old Prisons, without knowing which street to take. He was about to switch off when Juvara spoke again.
“Commissario, have you forgotten there’s a glass of wine this evening at the questura?”
“What for?”
“Like every other year, the day before Christmas Eve.”
“I’ve nothing to drink to.”
“Everybody’ll be there, to exchange festive wishes.”
“That’s exactly my point. Can you see me raising a glass to Chillemi? Anyway, it’s not true. The only ones who’ll be there are the unlucky ones who couldn’t get the time off.”
“Commissario, I can take your place in here for anything else, but when your presence is needed, I can’t . . .”
“Alright. Let’s say it’s a moral obligation.”
“We’ll have a glass of spumante, grab a canapé or two, and afterwards perhaps we’ll exchange genuine good wishes between ourselves in the office.”
“We’re going to need all the good wishes we can get,” Soneri said, thinking of Ghitta and Rosso. Everything started from there, from the disturbance of a balance which had held for years, concealing under a surface of apparent provincial banality a world of corruption, ferocity, vendettas and failures. But what was really wearing him down was the realisation that that dark zone was his too. He was compelled to walk in it, perhaps coming up against the certainty of having confused appearance with reality.
The feud had originated in September with Rosso’s threats and Ghitta’s counter-threats, and with the blackmail in which she found the satisfaction of revenge and the legitimisation of her new dignity as superior. Was that the motive? If so, what had Ghitta threatened to do? Once she was out of the way, another had feud started over the clumsy attempts to re-establish the traffic of backhanders and furtive couples in a pensione which had lost its mainstay, all unfolding in a world festering like a corpse being eaten by worms in a grave. Had the malaise occasioned by living in that state of putrefaction been more fearful than the spectre of bankruptcy, and had that factor driven Cornetti to shoot himself? Or perhaps the bankruptcy had been total, both of the company and of ideas?
He walked about, not even feeling hungry. A cloud of depression descended on him, adding to his exhaustion. He crossed the Ponte di Mezzo, came within sight of the monument to Filippo Corridoni near the Rocchetta and then proceeded down Via Massimo D’Azeglio as far as the Chiesa della Santissima Annunziata. He turned into Via Imbriani, and from there into Borgo Marodolo, which was so narrow that not even the mist could get into it. He looked closely at the name plates on the doors and had no trouble in picking out the house belonging to Pitti’s mother, Gina Montali. He stood back for a few moments to examine the façade marked by deep wrinkles on which the straw-yellow shades typical of the houses in Oltretorrente could still be made out. At that point he heard a soft, timid voice behind him. “Don’t ring the bell. My mother would start asking questions.”
“She might ask you why you stay at home in the evenings nowadays.”
Pitti looked nervously over his shoulder, and then said, “Could we go somewhere else?”
“You afraid I might be taken for your lover?” Soneri said ironically.
Pitti blushed before moving off without a word.
“Would you like to arrange a meeting in a quarter of an hour in the chapel of Sant’Egidio?” Soneri said, still speaking in a tone of mockery.
Pitti accepted the jibe with indifference. In company he was accustomed to receiving slights and being given orders, but as he walked at the commissario’s side dressed in that absurd garb, as though he were a baronet fallen on hard times, Soneri felt a surge of pity. Everyone had their part to play, and Pitti’s was a caricature. They went into a café in Pizzale Picelli, another place which recalled the libertarian past of revolts and great figures who were now forgotten spectres looking out from marble plaques at the entrances to streets in a city without memory.
“This will be the first Christmas without Ghitta,” Pitti said, his eyes fixed on a decorated Christmas tree next to the bar. He sounded like a widow.
“Did you use to spend Christmas with her?”
“The afternoon, every year without fail.”
“And who else came along?”
“Oh, so many people! Her close friends, and when there used to be students around, some of them would stay on for Christmas.”
“Was Cornetti there? Signora Bernazzoli? Chiastra? Fernanda Schianchi? Elvira? What about Andrea Fornari? You know Fornari well, don’t you?”
Pitti looked at him, intimidated by his almost threatening tone of voice.
“You should know him,” he murmured quietly.
“Of course,” Soneri said, but in a different tone. “What kind of relationship did he have with Ghitta?”
“He lodged with Fernanda, and you didn’t see much of him. At Christmas he greeted everyone, but then he went off with Elvira to Monchio.”
“Where is she now?”
“Probably som
ewhere in the mountains. She goes back to see her family in the festive period,” he said, with a tremor in his voice.
“And what about you?” The commissario poked his chest with the two fingers which held his cigar. “Where will you be going? I should warn you that there’s a smell of gas in Ghitta’s pensione.”
Pitti turned pale and began to tremble. The commissario noted how his fingers struggled with the coffee cup the waiter had put down in front of him. He was an easy victim. All it took was for someone to raise their voice to terrify him. Nevertheless, he attempted an improbable diversion. “Gas?” he said, in a very poor imitation of surprise.
“Don’t pretend you didn’t know. It doesn’t suit you.” Soneri’s peremptory tone caused Pitti’s resistance to crumble entirely. He saw Pitti’s cheeks swell out as he made an effort not to vomit. He put his hands over his eyes as they filled with tears. The commissario kept his eyes on him as he relit his cigar, aware that he still felt some sympathy for him.
He put an arm round his shoulders. “Now tell me everything,” he said calmly. Pitti shook himself and looked at him gratefully. “It was my fault. I lost my head,” he began in his low, sorrowful voice. “I wanted to disappear, but at the same time, I was outraged with Elvira. Ghitta was the only person who didn’t treat me like a servant, so when they killed her, they killed my dignity as well. You saw what I had to put up from Elvira, didn’t you? And I’m certain that treacherous bitch had something to do with the murder,” he said bitterly.
Soneri considered these words briefly, then returned to the central facts. “What did you want to do? Why switch on the gas, and then switch it off again?”
“And that allowed you to understand everything? That one strange fact?”
The commissario nodded, but then he added. “I still don’t understand why you brought Chiastra into it. Hasn’t he been through enough already?”
“Poor man, but it might have been the best solution for him too. It was what he wanted, after all the other things he’d put up with. That was why I had no scruples. I wanted to use him to get my revenge on that woman. They’d all have blamed her since Chiastra went about sticking his nose in everywhere, and knew all about those bizarre meetings organised by Fornari up in Monchio. The old man blabbed too much in the village, as Elvira well knew because she’d heard him a couple of times on the telephone expressing his concern about them. She was so sure of her power over me that she threw caution to the wind.”
A Woman Much Missed Page 20
