He dialled the number and spoke to the switchboard operator:
‘I’d like to check three telephone numbers for a police investigation, please. I’m Vice Questore Luigi Renzi from Rome Police Headquarters. Good, the three numbers are… Thanks a lot, Signorina, you’ve been very helpful… Good news, Boldrin, we’ve found the numbers of a lawyer named Cassese, of a good carpenter named Sannizzola, and, last but not least, of Cavalier Sandri, assistant managing director of the Italy & Argentina Bank.’
‘Pagelli’s bank! Ostrega! Holy Bread!’
‘Indeed.’ Renzi smiled quietly.
‘So, there is a connection with the banker’s disappearance?’
‘Possibly.’ Renzi was far more calm and thoughtful than the easily excitable chief inspector. ‘But we can’t say for sure before re-interrogating Sabelli and Marchetti.’
‘I will recall them immediately!’
‘Wait a minute, if you please.’ Renzi always preferred to take stock and weigh the effect of each new clue in an imaginary ledger before proceeding. ‘Before any more questioning, it is helpful to summarise any suspicions we may have about each of the individuals on board.’
The chief inspector’s sigh merely expressed his total distrust of any form of logical deduction:
‘If that’s what you want.’
Renzi tried to be persuasive:
‘That way we can decide who will be questioned again by me. Please correct me if I don’t have all the facts crystal clear in my mind… Apart from the three witnesses you released, we have twelve people on board. Comandante Girini is of excellent character and never left his place before the banker’s disappearance became known. Secondo Pilota Vandelli has an excellent record as well and he, too, never left his place before landing. The mechanic Franceschi was in the luggage compartment and left it once very briefly, after the banker was locked in the toilet, and a second time when the passengers gave the alarm. Signora Sandrelli or Antonini—.’
‘Both names are false! The Rome Police don’t know anything about a Signora Sandrelli or Antonini….’
‘Of course, but remember also that she never left her seat! Signorina Arteni—.’
‘I asked for information about her, too!’
‘Good, so we can decide if we wish to question her again... Vallesi never left his seat… excuse me, he left it to pay a brief visit to the cockpit before the banker’s own deadly visit to the toilet! The Martellis… Yes, yes, I will hear their rigmarole for myself. I adore stories about dying uncles and scheming maidservants!… Bertieri, or Pagelli….’
‘A very fishy and slippery customer, this one.’ Boldrin seemed quite affectionate towards his old foe. ‘I bet—.’
‘Don’t bet anything, please. He never left his seat!’
‘In any case, I asked for information about him from the Italy & Argentina Bank. I’m not at all persuaded by his trip to Tunis, and I would love to see that Tunisian reporter’s face!’
Renzi had a mysterious smile on his lips:
‘Oh, there’ll be a Tunisian reporter’s face, you can be sure! And so we arrive at Sabelli and Marchetti, two supposed corn tradesmen taking a plane trip for not very convincing reasons. Sabelli visited the toilet before Agliati. Afterwards, Marchetti tried to open the locked door several times, but would he have attracted so much attention to himself if he’d really been involved in Agliati’s disappearance? And in any case, he only left his seat for a few moments….’
‘You seem to be forgetting the famous phone numbers in his suitcase,’ said Boldrin zealously.
‘I eagerly await his explanations about them.’ Once more Renzi dismissed the good chief inspector’s suggestion with a pinch of concealed irony. ‘So that only leaves us with the mysterious bank teller Larini, who was able to leave Rome on a full plane, thanks to the mechanic’s kind intervention. How did he justify his urgent departure?’
‘He’d been asked to carry some urgent documents to the Palermo branch of Metropolitan Bank. They were very important and secret papers, and had to be carried by a confidential courier.’
‘We shall check his story, of course,’ said Renzi slowly, as if he were trying to grasp some unforeseen meaning in the words Boldrin had just uttered. ‘But the good bank teller, too, remained in his seat, in full view of the pilots.’ There was another moment of hesitation, then he continued:
‘Is there anything else, Commissario?’
‘No, I’m afraid not,’ sighed Boldrin.
Renzi added in a more lively tone:
‘We must remember also to check out the banker. After all, he’s our leading actor, isn’t he? He was an Italian citizen, wasn’t he?’
‘He’s Italian by birth, but when he established himself in Athens some years ago he took Greek citizenship.’
‘We shall ask about him in Greece, then.’
Boldrin sighed once again. Apparently he was not all that interested in Agliati’s past history:
‘Of course, and in the meantime you’ll question the Martellis, Sabelli and Marchetti, Vanna Sandrelli—.’
‘And Signorina Arteni,of course. But I think I can spare our lady in red further questioning.’
‘Wouldn’t it be better….’
‘If you please... but could you repeat her two names again?’
‘She called herself Signora Sandrelli.’
‘And her maiden name was Antonini? Good….so we agree about the new questionings, do we not? Sorry, now I’m going to interview the reporter! ’
So saying, he left the office; only when the echo of his footsteps had faded did the sighing chief inspector find the strength to raise himself from his throne.
4-TWO FRIENDS
Renzi looked through the first door to his right.
Seated at a table in the middle of the room, the tall, blond and lean Flight Commander Girini was speaking in a brief staccato to his second-in-command, an utterly insignificant little man who limited himself to nodding his approval. The man seated some distance away from them with the dark, calm face and traces of grease and oil on his hands was obviously Franceschi, the mechanic.
Renzi closed the door softly. A hubbub of voices drew his attention towards the part of the room where the passengers were gathered. Pagelli-Bertieri, the two other tradesmen, and the fortyish middle-class couple were seated near the door. Larini, the teller, was sitting by himself, looking very isolated. Signorina Arteni and the woman in red were seated near the window, with Vallesi standing next to the girl, leaning against the glass pane. He was looking at her so intently that he only noticed Renzi after the latter had called out to him:
‘Hi, Giorgio!’
‘Oh, Luigi! Are you here to—.’
‘Yes,’ Renzi interrupted him hastily. ‘La Tribuna dispatched me as soon as they heard the news.’
‘Ah, La Tribuna… good!’
Vallesi was too astonished to say anything, but Renzi was doing the talking for the two of them:
‘Ah, you lucky fellow! You were on the spot! Could you introduce me to your lady friends?’
Giorgio spoke immediately to Marcella:
‘Signorina Arteni, may I introduce you to my great friend Luigi Renzi?’
He realised grudgingly that he was overlooking the lady in red and so he repeated the introduction, mumbling her name unintelligibly.
‘I imagine that you were trying desperately to not speak about the mystery?’ observed Luigi jokingly.
‘Quite so,’ replied Marcella gaily, giving him a beautiful smile.
‘I confess that in your company, Signorina Arteni, it would be wiser to find far pleasanter arguments of conversation…but your wonderful eyes could be equally suited to read a mystery novel or my newspaper tomorrow!’
The lady in red’s hazel eyes watched the gallant Renzi, scandalized, whilst Marcella accepted the compliment and mumbled simply:
‘My wonderful eyes... Thank you very much.’
Vallesi muttered something, trying to hide his discomfort, but Luigi was
too pleased with his own little comedy:
‘Please, Giorgio, I’m working!’
Suddenly the lady in red seemed to rouse herself:
‘Are you a reporter? The newspapers will print the names of the persons….’
‘All the names that we shall discover in any possible and impossible way, Signora. I confess that I asked Giorgio to introduce me to both of you....’ He smiled at the two ladies. ‘Also to learn your names. But now I must rush to use my very useful information!’
He pushed his friend out of the room, finally facing the latter’s protests:
‘May I know the meaning of this farce? Why did you want to be introduced to—.’
Renzi smiled ironically, pleased:
‘To your new conquest? Don't you find it quite natural that I would want to know the passengers of that mysterious flying boat better? Particularly because they seem to be very interesting… in every possible way.’ He smiled again.
Giorgio seemed almost as scandalized as the lady in red.
‘Don’t you understand when I’m joking any more? But I’m totally serious when I tell you that Signorina Arteni is very beautiful,’ Renzi added, as a wicked sting in the tail. ‘Ah, if I could be really a Tribuna reporter, and not the Roman police official sleuth! The poor detective wanting to know really what happened has nothing in hand, whereas the lucky reporter has everything he needs: a mysterious disappearance, a very modern and novel setting, two beautiful ladies….’
‘The woman in red,’ mumbled a perplexed Giorgio.
‘Sorry, but you could at least be clearer when you pronounce her name!’
‘How can I be clearer if I’m pronouncing a name I don’t know?’
‘Pity, I’d hoped you’d be better than poor old Boldrin, pushing a beautiful lady to confide her secrets to you.’
Vallesi gaped at the new, but perhaps not too stunning, horizons of suspicion opened by the news:
‘She refused to give her name to the police?’
‘Worse: she gave two names and both of them are false!’
‘I told the chief inspector that she seemed very nervous. She was apparently eager to get to Palermo, and never took her eyes off Agliati!’
Giorgio was now very enthusiastically on the lady in red’s trail. Apparently he was pleased with himself for having noticed something about her. “Something”! Luigi had forever wanted to cancel that irritating, utterly depressing, silly word! Someone once said that the Italian dictionary is made of only two words: “thing” and “stuff”. Against the lady in red he had “something” and nothing more. And he also had “something” against Signorina Arteni, the girl in blue... Something, always only something!
‘Boldrin had told you that Pagelli was very suspicious about the beautiful girl’s agitation when Agliati’s long absence was noticed by the passengers. She was astonished that it was a banker that had disappeared, apparently….’
Luigi pointed wickedly at his friend:
‘Signorina Arteni, too, was suspicious? Did you notice “something” about her?’
‘I don’t know anything at all about her. I only met her on board!’
Luigi smiled, noting Giorgio’s habitual infatuation with some girl… He would never change! He was on the verge of telling him that she had refused to inform the police about her reason for travelling to Palermo, but he was happy to remain silent when Vallesi himself hastened to change the subject, returning again to the lady in red:
‘I tell you, Luigi, the lady in red was very agitated about the banker….’
‘And the banker himself was very nervy and agitated as well, wasn’t he?’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that; he was simply not too pleased to be constantly observed by her… And she gave a false name to the police?’
‘She called herself Signora Sandrelli, but Boldrin noticed the initials on the bag were VF! And her maiden name apparently was Antonini, so….’
Vallesi was very thoughtful:
‘I noticed her bag, too, as you can well imagine. A green bag with a red dress!’
‘I can readily understand your horror.’ Luigi smiled at his friend. ‘But I don’t think that the disgustingly clashing bag was stolen. And I’m not that interested in the mystery of the bag. Quite possibly it has no connection at all with the banker’s disappearance. And in any case I've just solved it, and am only waiting for a phone confirmation about it….’
Hearing a phone ringing, Luigi went back into the office and re-emerged in the corridor, looking very pleased with himself.
‘I can confirm to you that the lady in red is called Vanna Ferrari; that she’s married to an engineer named Adolfo Ferrari, and she lives in via del Tritone….’
‘So the VF bag really is hers!’
Luigi eyed his friend. He seemed strangely astonished, possibly because he'd hoped for far more sensational news.
‘But how did you find her real name?’
Renzi smiled knowingly at his friend again, ready to play the master detective:
‘It’s very simple: she gave the police two wrong names, Sandrelli and Antonini, which counts against her, and neither name corresponded to the initials on the bag. During the flight she seemed very nervy and agitated, and she was very hysterical during Boldrin’s questioning. Her answers were extremely ambiguous and completely contradictory. Which means she can't be your typical hardened criminal.’
‘So, an anxious and very excitable lady is being questioned by a policeman. She wants to hide her name, so she has to find another one. When she’s asked about her maiden name, she suddenly needs to find a second invention, but she’s not used to lying and her imagination is not at all fertile or swift, so she quite understandably falls back on a name familiar to her. It seemed very likely that the maiden name she gave was actually the right one. She was on her way from Rome to Palermo, and if there wasn’t a Signora Sandrelli or a Signorina Antonini in Rome, as Boldrin had verified, maybe there was one in Palermo. So I asked the Palermo police about a Signor or Signora Sandrelli or Antonini, having a married daughter living in Rome, and they found a widow named Antonini with a daughter named Vanna, living in Rome and married to an engineer named Ferrari.’
Renzi was clearly very pleased with himself.
Giorgio remained silent, trying to grasp the consequences of the discovery:
‘Well, my congratulations, but we don’t know yet why she’s flying to Palermo and why she acted in such a nervous and mysterious way. Why was she so anxious? Why did she lie to the police? Why did she hide her real married name?’
Vallesi was trying to push his friend along that path, and he was also trying to convince himself that it was the right one.
‘I hope you won't assume she’s innocent, just because you succeeded in identifying her!’
‘Certainly not, but we do know something more about her, in any case.’
But Renzi wasn’t thinking about the lady in red but about Signorina Arteni, and her actions once she was freed. So he was very happy to see her again in the chief inspector’s office.
She was with an older man, who was angrily confronting poor old Boldrin, and who was clearly her father. He was not particularly tall, but he was well-built, with rich, smooth grey hair. He looked at Renzi with pale grey eyes under thick, dark brows. At fifty or so, he was still a very good-looking man. Boldrin introduced the assistant commissioner:
‘Dr.Renzi, may I present Signorina Arteni and her father, Commendatore Arteni?’
Arteni made a frosty bow, and Marcella’s impudent eyes twinkled beneath the rim of her hat:
‘I've just had the honour of being introduced to a very famous Tribuna reporter. What a lucky day for me!’
Boldrin was astonished by her remark, and Luigi smiled at the amusing and charming girl. But her father was looking angrily at his watch:
‘So, before we go, I’m very happy to thank you, Commissario, for your kind understanding. We are returning to Rome, now, but rest assured that if we can help your inve
stigations in any way....’ He bowed again frostily to Renzi and made a triumphant exit with his daughter on his arm. Certainly, the man had no love for the police, and in particular Luigi Renzi.
‘Sorry, Dr.Renzi,’ mumbled poor old Boldrin. ‘Commendatore Arteni took a train from Florence immediately, once he found out that his daughter had been detained in Naples. He met her in the lobby and asked to be introduced immediately.’
Renzi bit back a list of not-too-friendly questions and instead asked:
‘Did he know the purpose of his daughter’s trip?’
‘He seemed quite informed about it, but he only spoke vaguely about very private family reasons, and clearly didn’t want to be more precise in his explanations. But we had nothing against her, she couldn’t possibly… and we’d already decided to release her anyway.’
Renzi cut through his excuses rudely:
‘Did you know that I’d identified the lady in red?’
He was very satisfied by poor old Boldrin’s amazement. After his explanation, he continued:
‘And now we can re-interrogate the Martellis, Sabelli and Marchetti.’
Boldrin asked for Signora Martelli, and we shall not describe her here, leaving it to the reader to imagine a middle-aged woman who hadn’t even been beautiful at twenty, and who was embittered morally and physically by a gloomy, grey life enlivened only by small neighbourhood quarrels, alongside a dwarfish, feeble husband whom she dominated completely, even as she was unable to push him up the social staircase to a head clerk’s position. Boldrin asked her to explain the reason for her trip to Palermo and a torrent of words gushed out:
‘Ah, Commissario, you know, there is our uncle, my Augusto’s poor mother’s stepbrother, who’s now more on the other side than on this one, if you see what I mean. He’s no longer a spring chicken, his age is a big burden for everyone, and with a double pneumonia, you know… Of course we knew that he was ill, but not how ill, and it's a long way to Palermo, Commissario, you can’t go to Palermo every day, can you? But early this morning we got a cable informing us about his very serious state of health. He’s practically dead and buried, it’s only a matter of days if not hours.’
The Flying Boat Mystery Page 4
