Cara Massimina

by Tim Parks

  21

  It was late August, an ominous thundery day, and Morris, sweating in his new black suit, was following respectfully at the rear of the procession as they carried the coffin through the cemetery to the family vault. When a hand fell lightly on his shoulder.

  ‘May we have a word with you, Signor Duckworth?’

  Inspector Marangoni stood plump and sombre-faced beside his wiry, moustached assistant.

  ‘If we can leave the family alone for the very last rites and drive down to the Questura, there are one or two things we’d like to talk to you about.’

  So they had found him out at last. For which of the crimes? He mustn’t confess until he knew what they knew.

  The three men walked back down the white shingle paths of the cemetery. The policemen had left their car outside the gate. (Could he say she’d fallen, banged her head?)

  ‘But I’ve been invited to the supper afterwards,’ Morris managed to get out now, to test the water.

  ‘Don’t worry, this won’t take a moment.’

  The tone appeared to be cynical. Morris was obliged to climb into the car, the same kind of Alfa Romeo Gregorio had, he noticed. He felt surprisingly resigned. At least they weren’t beating him up.

  ‘The thing is’—it was the only remark anybody made during the short trip and Inspector Marangoni made it—‘there are one or two things that don’t add up about this whole affair.’

  They sat in a small blank empty room and Tolaini, the assistant, went out to get something. The tape recorder for the confession most probably.

  In two months of burning sunshine Inspector Marangoni hadn’t managed to get a tan. His balding head was pale under the room’s fluorescent light as he leaned across the table.

  ‘Did the Massimina you knew used to pluck her eyebrows?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’ He mustn’t fidget. He must sit perfectly still.

  The assistant came in with a small metal box, set it down on the table and opened it.

  ‘This,’ Marangoni said, lifting out a lock of hennaed hair. ‘Would you say it was hers?’

  ‘No,’ Morris said, ‘Mimi’s hair was just very dark, near black.’

  ‘Did she wear necklaces?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘Anything you remember in particular?’

  ‘No.’ It wasn’t the way he would have gone about the questioning, Morris thought. And he began to feel curious.

  ‘This?’ He lifted out the St Christopher.

  Morris looked at it quite coolly. ‘No. I don’t think so.’

  ‘Signor Duckworth, the young girl found in Sardinia, plucked her eyebrows, had this colour of hair, wore this charm. She . . .’

  ‘Then it isn’t her,’ Morris said quickly. ‘It must be somebody else, there’s been . . .’

  ‘It is her, Signor Duckworth. The dental test was conclusive.’

  Morris waited. What did they want from him? What did they know?

  ‘What’s more, the corpse we found in Sardinia was pregnant . . .’

  ‘No,’ Morris cried.

  Inspector Marangoni held up his hand. ‘Only a week or so. Most probably she didn’t even know. But pregnant she was.’

  He sat still as stone.

  ‘Let’s throw in one or two of the other strange facts in this case. The red tracksuit in the station in Vicenza, the get well card from Rimini, the ransom picked up in Rome, a mysterious phone call to her mother which doctors tell us was probably made at least in the last days before her death, then the discovery of the corpse in Sardinia of all places. And one other thing. Shortly before becoming seriously ill, the girl’s grandmother withdrew three million lire from the bank, apparently to buy a wedding present for the eldest daughter. That money has never been found.’

  Three million, not two, Morris noted. Never trust anyone. Probably as well he hadn’t risked . . .

  ‘So what does that all add up to, in your opinion, Signor Duckworth?’

  Morris looked the heavy man in the face. It added up to life imprisonment, obviously. But he shook his head.

  ‘Doesn’t it seem to you a rather strange kind of kidnap where the girl learns to pluck her eyebrows, henna her hair and gets pregnant, where the kidnappers are so lax in vigilance that they let the girl send get well cards and phone home?’

  ‘Yes,’ Morris said humbly. Though he hadn’t been lax. It was just impossible trying to do everything on your own. And then, taking a plunge, he tried: ‘If I didn’t know her better I’d say she’d taken the money and then gone and run off with somebody else.’

  Morris waited. Inspector Marangoni was watching him.

  ‘What we want to know from you,’ he said, ‘is who that somebody was.’ There was an agonizing pause before he continued. ‘The point is that the family absolutely refuse to consider this possibility and they haven’t been at all cooperative with lists of friends, etc. They even refuse to believe the medical evidence of the pregnancy. Now, if you can offer anything at all on her friends, habits, the places she visited and so on, or if you can very discreetly get something out of the family, we would be . . .’

  And they took him back to the funeral party.

  Morris had expected dust and ashes and a sorrowful, mournful silence of desperation and horror. And instead there was laughter and tittle-tattle in the Trevisan household, plentiful cocktails and spicy help-yourself titbits on silver trays. He was annoyed. The least you could expect was sobriety.

  He went for a solemn handshake with Signora Trevisan and instead she hugged him, she pressed him against her bosom, she wept, but not sobbing, simply shedding tears as she spoke, and she said it was a terrible terrible thing that would haunt her all her life long, but at least it was over now, at least they knew the worst and the doctors had said from the way the blow was struck the girl couldn’t have known anything about it. Probably done while she was sleeping. And she and the family had really done everything they could, and the police too, she thought. There was nothing on their consciences, nothing they need reproach themselves with, and they must remember that. There was no point in feeling guilty. Vengeance was the Lord’s and the Lord would find the murderer out.

  She was probably thinking, thank God it was dumb little Massimina, and not one of the other two, Morris thought.

  ‘Oh, by the way, Morris, could I have a little word with you afterwards? I was wondering if you could do me a small favour.’ And she smiled through her tears.

  Morris nodded politely, without the slightest curiosity. He supposed he could afford the woman a favour if it was nothing too time-consuming. He had a lot of business to be getting on with and he wanted to make a brief trip to England for a couple of weeks to buy his father a flat and show him who knew how to be a success in the world.

  He sat on a stiff, straight-backed chair, keeping as aloof as possible from the small group of friends and relations, and was surprised when Paola, the middle sister, came over to talk to him. She didn’t mention Massimina at all. She talked about Antonella’s imminent wedding with Bobo and how expensive it was all turning out to be and the cost of redecorating their flat in the centre and how difficult it would be to have fun after, after . . . this. Her eyes blinked, but were quite dry. Did she have a fidanzato herself, Morris asked, or was she going to be left alone when her sister moved out?

  Paola blushed—rather softly and sweetly, Morris thought, rather as dear Mimi would have. No, she said, she didn’t have a boyfriend, but her eyes didn’t move and held his for a second, soft and brown. Her cheeks had the same shape as Massimina’s, only not a freckle.

  Morris poured himself more Verdicchio and helped himself to mushrooms.

  ‘Actually, I’m going to England next week for a while,’ she went on quickly, lowering the eyes now to show her long lashes. ‘To get over it, I suppose. I’ll be studying English. In fact, that was the favour Mamma was saying she wants to ask you. We heard that you were going back to London and she thought, maybe, you could travel with me.’ She sm
iled. ‘Poor Mamma’s terribly worried about us being outside alone after all this.’

  ‘Of course,’ Morris said cordially. It would be infinitely better to visit his father with a girlfriend, he thought, and one couldn’t mope over the dead forever.