Montalbano's First Case and Other Stories

by Andrea Camilleri

  “Why don’t you come in while I’ll go and get dressed,” said Montalbano, disappearing into the bathroom.

  When he came out, he found his visitor standing on the veranda, gazing at the sea. The morning was shaping up to be crisp and colorful.

  “Can we talk out here?” the priest asked.

  “Of course,” the inspector replied, marking another point in the priest’s favor.

  “I’m Don Luigi Barbera.”

  They shook hands. Montalbano asked him if he wanted some coffee, but he declined. The inspector’s own desire for a second cup faded when he noticed that the priest looked agitated, as though anxious to tell him what he’d come to tell him and at the same time reluctant to broach the subject.

  “What can I do for you?” the inspector prodded him.

  “I came looking for you at police headquarters, but you hadn’t come in yet. One of your men was kind enough to explain to me where you live, and so I took the liberty of coming here.”

  Montalbano said nothing.

  “It’s a delicate matter.”

  The inspector noticed that the priest’s forehead was now shiny with sweat.

  “A week ago . . . a person . . . who’s dying, wanted to confess. And this person revealed a secret to me. A grave misdeed, for which an innocent is paying the price. Well, I persuaded this person to get rid of this burden—to talk about it not only with God but with fellow humans. It wasn’t easy. I encountered fierce resistance, outright rebellion. Finally, last night, with God’s help, my powers of persuasion prevailed. Since I know you by reputation, I thought you might be the right person to . . .”

  “To what?” Montalbano asked rudely.

  Was this priest kidding, first thing in the morning? To begin with, Montalbano didn’t like serial novels and would never let himself be dragged into one. And this whole business seemed just like a serial novel from the simple mention of a secret, a grave misdeed, an innocent in prison . . . And he was more than certain the rest of the repertoire would follow: the mistreated little orphan girl, the wicked, handsome young man, the thieving protector . . . Secondly, people on death’s doorstep so scared him, stirred up something so dark and deep inside him, that when he encountered one he felt ill for the rest of the day. No, he wanted absolutely no part in this story.

  “Look, father,” he said, standing up to let the priest know that it was time to leave, “I thank you for your faith in me, but I have too much to do to . . . Come by the police station and ask for Inspector Augello. You can tell him I said he should look into this case.”

  The priest looked at him with eyes like those of a calf on its way to the slaughter. And in a voice so soft it was almost inaudible, he said:

  “Don’t let me carry this cross alone, my son.”

  What was it that so struck the inspector? Was it the choice of words? The tone in which the priest said them?

  “All right,” he said. “I’ll come with you. But are we sure we’re not going to a lot of trouble for nothing?”

  “I guarantee you that this person will tell—”

  “I wasn’t referring to that. I meant: Are we so sure the dying man will still be alive?”

  “The dying woman, Inspector. Yes, she’s still alive. I made a phone call before coming here. Maybe we’ll make it in time.”

  Since they’d decided that the inspector would follow the priest in his own car, Montalbano was unable to ask Patre Barbera any more questions. And this lack of information made him feel more and more upset. He didn’t even know the name of the woman he was going to see, and the strangest thing about the situation was that he was about to meet a person whom, after a few hours had passed, he would never be able to see again.

  Patre Barbera headed towards the outskirts of Vigàta. Once on the road to Montelusa, he turned left, in the direction of Raffadali, and a couple of miles later he turned left again, drove through a large iron gate and onto a well-tended lane lined with trees, and finally pulled up in front of a large villa.

  “Where are we?” the inspector asked after getting out of his car.

  “This is a home for the elderly, Inspector. It’s called La Casa del Sacro Cuore, the House of the Sacred Heart, and is administered by nuns.”

  “It must be pretty expensive,” Montalbano commented upon seeing a gardener at work and a nurse pushing an elderly man in a wheelchair around the gardens.

  “Right,” the priest said drily.

  “Listen, before we go inside, tell me something. First of all, what’s the . . . the lady’s name?”

  “Maria Carmela Spagnolo.”

  “What’s she dying of?”

  “Old age. She’s dying out slowly, like a candle. She’s over ninety.”

  “Does she have a husband? Children?”

  “Listen, Inspector, I really know very little about her. She became a widow rather young in life and has no children, just a nephew who lives in Milan and pays the bills here. I know she was living in Fela, and then sometime after her husband died she moved abroad. She came back to Sicily five years ago and was admitted here.”

  “Why here?”

  “That I can explain. She came to this home because an old childhood friend of hers was already here, though the friend died about a year ago.”

  “Was the nephew informed of this?”

  “I think so.”

  “I hope you don’t mind if I have a cigarette.”

  The priest threw up his hands. Montalbano was looking for every available reason to delay the moment when he would find himself face-to-face with the dying woman. For his part Patre Barbera couldn’t understand why the inspector wasn’t taking more interest in the case.

  “And don’t you know anything else?” asked Montalbano.

  The priest looked at him very seriously.

  “Of course I know more. But what I know was told me in the confessional. Understand?”

  And so the serial novel continued. This was the scene where the priest couldn’t reveal the secret confided to him in the darkness of the confessional. Bah, the only solution was to get it over with quickly, listen to the ravings of an old lady no longer in her right mind, and then take himself out of the game.

  “Let’s go.”

  The place looked like a ten-star hotel, if such things existed. Nuns with rustling gowns were fluttering everywhere. An elevator as big as a bedroom took them to the fourth and top floor. The sparkling corridor gave onto some ten rooms. From one of them came a desperate, continuous lament, from another some music from a radio or television, and from another a feeble feminine voice singing “C’è una chiesetta, amor / nascosta in mezzo ai fior . . .” The priest stopped outside the last door in the hallway, which was half-open. He poked his head inside, had a look, then turned to the inspector.

  “Come,” he said.

  In order to take a step forward, Montalbano had to imagine that there was someone behind him pushing and forcing him to move. In the room there was a bed, a small table with two chairs, a stand with a television on it, and two comfortable armchairs. And a door giving onto a bathroom. All extremely clean, all in perfect order. In a chair beside the bed sat a nun reciting the rosary while barely moving her lips. Of the dying woman only the small birdlike head was visible, her hair nicely combed. Patre Barbera asked in a soft voice:

  “How is she doing?”

  “She’s almost on the other side now,” the nun replied in a singsong voice, getting up and leaving the room.

  Patre Barbera leaned over the tiny head.

  “Signora Spagnolo! Maria Carmela! It’s Don Luigi.”

  The old woman’s eyelids didn’t open, but fluttered a little.

  “Signora Spagnolo, I have here with me that person I mentioned to you. I’m going out now so you can talk to him. I’ll come back when you’re done.”

  The old woman didn’t ope
n her eyes this time either, but merely nodded ever so faintly. While walking past the inspector, the priest whispered:

  “Be careful.”

  Of what? At first the inspector didn’t understand. Then he grasped perfectly what the priest was trying to tell him: Be careful, because this life is dangling from a nonexistent thread, an invisible, very fragile spider’s thread that your tone of voice, or a sudden cough, might suffice to sever irreparably.

  He approached the bed on tiptoe and sat down cautiously in the chair.

  “I’m here, signora,” he said in a soft voice, more to himself than to the dying woman. And from the bed came a voice very feeble, though clear and effortless, and apparently without pain.

  “Are you . . . are you . . . the right person?”

  “Actually, I wouldn’t know,” he felt like saying, but luckily managed to restrain himself. How can anyone say with any certainty, to anyone, in any situation, “I’m the right person for you”? But perhaps the dying woman meant simply to ask whether he was a man of the law, someone who would make proper use of what he would learn from her. The old woman must have taken his silence for an affirmative answer, since she finally seemed to make up her mind, and with some effort moved her tiny head that little bit necessary to communicate this, while her eyes remained closed. Montalbano leaned his upper body towards the pillow.

  “It . . . wasn’t . . .”

  It wasn’t . . .

  “. . . poi . . . son . . .”

  It wasn’t poison . . .

  “Cristi . . . na . . . wan . . . ted some . . .”

  Cristina wanted some . . .

  “And . . . so . . . I gave . . . her . . . some . . . but . . .”

  And so I gave her some, but . . .

  “. . . it wasn’t . . . it wasn’t . . .”

  It wasn’t what?

  “. . . poison.”

  It wasn’t poison.

  In the absolute silence of the room, unbroken even by noises or voices outside, Montalbano heard a sort of hissing at once far away and near. He realized that Signora Spagnolo had just sighed deeply, feeling perhaps liberated from the weight she had borne for so many years. He waited for her to resume speaking, to say something else, because what she’d said was not enough, and he didn’t know how to begin to go about understanding.

  “Signora,” he said very softly.

  Nothing. Surely she’d nodded off, exhausted. So he got up ever so gently and opened the door. Patre Barbera was gone, but the nun was there, standing a few steps away and still moving her lips. When she saw the inspector, she approached.

  “The lady has fallen asleep,” he said, stepping slightly back. The nun went into the room and up to the bed, pulled the old woman’s left arm out from under the covers, and felt for the pulse. Then she took out the other arm and wrapped the rosary she kept attached to her sash around the old woman’s hands.

  Only then did the inspector realize that those gestures meant that Signora Maria Carmela Spagnolo was dead. And that with that hissing noise she’d freed herself not of the burden of her secret, but of the burden of life. And he hadn’t been afraid. He hadn’t noticed anything. Perhaps because there hadn’t been any of the sacred solemnity of death or even its everyday, horrendous, televised desecration. There was only death, simple and natural.

  Patre Barbera returned after the inspector had smoked two cigarettes one right after the other.

  “See? We got here just in time.”

  Right. In time to swallow the bait, feel the hook catch in his gullet, and know for certain that it would be a long and difficult process to dislodge it. He’d been tricked. He looked at the priest almost resentfully. Patre Barbera seemed not to notice.

  “Was she able to tell you anything?”

  “Yes, she managed to say that what she gave a certain Cristina was not the poison she’d wanted.”

  “That corresponds,” said the priest.

  “With what?”

  “I wish I could help you, I really do. But I can’t.”

  “Well, I helped you.”

  “You’re not a priest bound to secrecy.”

  “Okay, okay,” said Montalbano, getting into his car. “Have a good day.”

  “Wait,” said Father Barbera.

  From a slit in the side of his frock he extracted a sheet of paper folded in four and handed it to the inspector.

  “I had the administrative secretary give me everything they had on Signora Spagnolo. I also wrote my address and phone number at the bottom.”

  “Do you know whether they’ve informed the nephew?”

  “Yes, they told him she’s passed away. They called him in Milan. He’ll be in Vigàta tomorrow morning. If you want . . . I can let you know what hotel he’s staying in.”

  The priest was trying to make it up to him.

  But the damage was done.

  2

  “Chief, beckin’ yer pardin, but are ya feelin’ okay?”

  “I’m fine, Cat. Why do you ask?”

  “Ah, I dunno . . . Iss like yer there but yer not.”

  Catarella was perfectly right. He was there in the office because he was talking, giving orders, and thinking, but in his mind he was still in that small, clean, painted room on the fourth floor of an old folks’ home, beside the bed of a dying ninety-year-old woman who’d told him . . .

  “Listen, Fazio, come in and close the door behind you. I have to tell you what happened to me this morning.”

  When he’d finished, Fazio gave him a doubtful look.

  “And according to this priest, what are you supposed to do?”

  “Bah, I dunno, start investigating, looking . . .”

  “But you don’t even know when or how this poisoning business happened! It might be something from sixty or seventy years ago! And was it something known to the public or did it remain hidden inside some posh household with nobody ever hearing about it? Take it from me, Chief, forget about it. I wanted to talk to you about yesterday’s armed robbery . . .”

  “Let me get this straight, Salvo. Did you tell me this story because you want my advice? Are you asking me whether you should get involved or not?”

  “That’s right, Mimì.”

  “Why are you playing games with me?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “You don’t want any advice! You’ve already made up your mind!”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah! Is there any doubt that you’re going to dive headlong into a story like that, with no beginning or end? And an old story at that! You’ll probably be dealing with people a hundred years old, or almost!”

  “So what?”

  “You love to wallow in these journeys back in time. You have a ball talking to old folks who can remember the price of butter in 1912 but have forgotten their own names! That priest was a shrewd one. He took one look at you and sized you up to a T.”

  “You know what, Livia? This morning when I was in the shower the doorbell rang. I went and answered the door without any clothes on, dripping—”

  “Wait a second, I’m not sure I got that. You went and answered the door completely naked?”

  “I thought it was Catarella.”

  “So what? Isn’t Catarella a human being?”

  “Of course he is!”

  “So why do you want to inflict the sight of your naked body on another human being?”

  “Did you say inflict?”

  “That’s what I said and I’ll say it again. Do you think you’re the Belvedere Apollo or something?”

  “Tell me something. When I’m naked in front of you, do you think I’m inflicting the sight of my body on you?”

  “Sometimes yes and sometimes no.”

  This was the start of another of their ritual telephone quarrels. He could keep pretending no
t to notice, or he could make the whole thing take a nasty turn. He chose the former path. He tried to say something funny, but it came out flat, since he was still feeling offended, and so he ended up telling Livia the whole story.

  “Do you intend to pursue it?”

  “Bah, I dunno. I thought about it all day. And in the end I’ve been leaning towards not doing anything.”

  Livia let out an irritating giggle.

  “Why are you laughing?”

  “I dunno, just laughing.”

  “Oh no you don’t! You’re going to explain to me why the hell you came out with that little sconcica giggle!”

  “Don’t you talk to me like that, and don’t speak in dialect!”

  “Okay, sorry.”

  “What’s sconcica?”

  “It means mocking, derision.”

  “I had no intention of mocking you whatsoever. It was a giggle of pure and simple observation.”

  “And what were you observing?”

  “That you’ve aged, Salvo. Once upon a time you would have jumped right into a case like that. That’s all.”

  “Ah, so now I’m old and flabby?”

  “I didn’t say you were flabby.”

  “Then why do you maintain that the sight of my body is some kind of torture?”

  This time there was no stopping a full-blown spat.

  Lying on the bed, he read the sheet of paper the priest had given him earlier that day.

  Maria Carmela Spagnolo, daughter of Giovanni and Matilde née Jacono, born in Fela on September 6, 1910. Had a brother, Giacomo, four years her junior. Her father was a successful lawyer and well off. She was educated at a boarding school run by nuns. In 1930 she married Dr. Alfredo Siracusa, a rich pharmacist in Fela who owned land and houses. The couple had no children. Widowed in 1949, by the middle of the year Maria Carmela had sold everything and moved to Paris to live with her brother, Giacomo, a career diplomat. She subsequently followed him around to his various new posts. Then the brother died, leaving behind a wife and a son. Maria Carmela continued living all over the world with her nephew, Michele, a bachelor who’d become an engineer for the Eni energy giant. When Michele Spagnolo retired and settled in Milan, Maria Carmela requested to be admitted at the Casa del Sacro Cuore. She left all her money (and there was a lot of it) to her nephew—on the condition that he see to his aunt’s needs for as long as she remained alive.