by Grace Brophy
“What the hell do you mean, Alex? Of course, we’re on the same side,” the questore replied to Cenni’s earlier outburst. A thin film of perspiration stood out on the questore’s brow. “You’re taking this personally. Some of us think you’ve lost perspective. This woman, the Croatian, it all points to her, particularly now that we have this.” He picked up the suicide note that Amelia Casati had written to her husband and waved it under his senior commissario’s nose. “Remember, Alex, it was your decision not to tell the family that the niece was suffocated. Maybe that was a good thing and maybe not, but I gave in to you. Now I’m in the hot seat! We’ve just been handed a chance to bail out and you’re balking!” He stopped, pulled out a handkerchief to wipe a drop of sweat from the tip of his nose, and continued. “It’s because of this”—he waved the letter again—“that we know the Croatian was the last person to see Minelli alive. So who else could have smothered her? Assisi cemetery is hardly the Rome railway terminal!”
Cenni stopped drumming his fingers on the questore’s desk and responded. “She has a name, Carlo, and it’s not the Croatian. The name is Sophie Orlic, and she didn’t murder Rita Minelli. Or if she did, it’s not yet proven. Consider this. If Sophie Orlic did smother Rita Minelli, why the hullabaloo to abort the investigation? Some tests are not even in yet. What’s another week matter, unless someone’s worried about what I’ll learn in that week? And who’s that someone? It’s not Umberto Casati.”
The questore interrupted. “How’d you come by that, Alex? It’s his niece who was murdered. Now, the wife’s a suicide. It makes sense that he’d want the murderer caught. And he’s got the connections to make it happen. Who else but the count?”
Cenni considered the question and the questore. How closely tied was Carlo to the attempted cover-up? He claimed that the pressure was coming directly from headquarters in Rome, that he had no idea who was pulling the actual strings. Why risk it? Cenni decided. He’d keep his own counsel.
“Can’t say for sure, Carlo, other than that Casati appeared genuinely touched that Sophie Orlic had risked her own safety to help his wife. It’s just a hunch; I’m probably wrong.”
The latter was the first of two concessions that Cenni made to the questore. The questore made two concessions as well, both under the threat of blackmail.
“You’ve got five days to prove her innocence, Alex. Five days—not a second longer. After that, the evidence goes to Priuli. We’ll let him decide if there’s enough there to bring the . . . that woman to trial.”
The questore had also agreed to stop talking to Fulvio Russo, also at Cenni’s insistence. “I mean it, Carlo. I don’t want that shit to know anything that’s happening in this investigation. And keep Batori in line as well. If you or he talks to Fulvio again, I’ll—”
“Si, si, si, I heard you perfectly—you’ll resign! I’ll keep my word, Alex, but you’d better keep yours. Resign if you have to, but no newspapers.”
Cenni exited the questore’s office in a concentrated rage. He’d bought himself five days, but at a cost. If he should act on his threat to resign, he’d to do it without involving L’Unita. Five days to prove Sophie innocent and Fulvio guilty.
Carlo had seemed sincere in his belief that it was Umberto Casati making the calls to Rome, and Cenni hadn’t argued the point. For the next five days, he’d work alone. Carlo was far too ambitious to risk anything for one of his men, even his favorite commissario. Cenni was convinced that Fulvio Russo was trading on his brother-in-law’s clout, that Giorgio Zangarelli was the one in Rome pulling the strings.
Returning to his office, two down from the questore’s, he slammed the door, rocking it on its hinges. Two could play at that game! He sat down at his desk and swiveled his chair to look out the window. Fulvio was standing next to the guard’s shack, probably waiting for a driver to bring his Ferrari around. Pretentious prick!
The government in Rome fed itself on corruption: money, power, raccomandazioni. How else could an incompetent like Fulvio become a commissario di polizia? The so-called Second Republic was no different from the first, the deep pockets were just deeper. Alex was heartsick at the absurdity of it all and at his own presumption. Alessandro Cenni, lone ranger, fighting the power brokers, and for a straniera. Fool is more like it, he thought. He opened his bottom drawer, rifling it for the pack of smokes he kept for emergencies, and spied his crumpled handkerchief, still in the wastebasket. The cleaning staff was on holiday. Italy isn’t such a bad place to live after all, he reflected. He patted his breast pocket where he’d filed Paola Casati’s confession. Corruption comes in many flavors, as Fulvio would soon find out.
26
AS THOUGH HIS day were not wholly ruined by Fulvio’s visit to the questura, his mother took her shot at it when she telephoned him shortly after 10:00. “Madeleine called me early this morning to complain about your grandmother. Hanna was drinking again yesterday, a full bottle of champagne for afternoon tea. And later she forced Madeleine to open a bottle of Brunello Reserve, from your grandfather’s special collection, two hundred euros, at least! Drinking with some woman that Madeleine’s never even heard of, a Grazia Russo! That’s not an Umbrian name, darling, not one of our crowd.
“Madeleine says the woman is a friend of yours,” his mother continued, the tone now gone from warmly concerned to coldly accusing. “This is serious, darling! (Back to warmly concerned). Madeleine’s threatening to leave, to return to Marseilles. She says your grandmother’s too old and too weak to live by herself and too eccentric for her to stay with. É Vero, Alex, Madeleine said crazy, not eccentric. I’ve tried to be a good daughter. You know I have. I’ve invited your grandmother numerous times to live with me, and even before your father died, to live with us. Perhaps it’s time to consider one of those nursing homes.”
His mother’s last remark was meant to annoy him; she blamed her sons for indulging their grandmother’s whims. Hanna Falkenberg would never live in a nursing home and absolutely never with her daughter-in-law. She would leave Italy first, perhaps return to Sweden to live with one of her equally eccentric great-nephews. But his mother wouldn’t want that either. Hanna was still the largest shareholder in the family’s chocolate business. She had contributed half the capital for the startup in 1935 and a good part of the labor for nearly sixty years. She was still listed as titular head on the company’s letterhead. She would cut his mother out of her will, and anyone else, even her adored grandsons, who tried to force her into a nursing home. Fourteen years ago his grandmother had given up a full professorship in Etruscan studies at the University of Perugia—forced out because of politics, not age— and she was bored. She did not wear old age gracefully. She refused to sit still and collect knitting patterns.
His mother was right in one respect. He had asked his grandmother to invite Grazia Russo to afternoon tea. He needed to know where Russo had been on Good Friday. According to Sergeant Antolini, Russo had left the Assisi station well before four o’clock. Cenni couldn’t ask his colleague directly if he had an alibi, and his suspicions alone were not enough to have Russo declared a murder suspect. His grandmother had a wonderful manner with other women when she tried, although she didn’t try very hard with our crowd as his mother referred to the society women of Perugia. Cenni had counted on Hanna using her charm and advanced years to disarm Grazia into dangerous confidences.
The second call came from his grandmother ten minutes later. “Sorry, darling, I have a huge hangover and Madeleine’s not talking to me. She let me sleep in and I asked her very specifically to call me at nine. Bitch!” Alex told his grandmother that he already knew about the hangover.
“A bitch and a snitch!” Hanna responded, and laughed dolefully. “I suppose she deserves some sympathy. She hired on as French maid to a docile old lady, a Signora Cenni with white curls and crocheted collars on your mother’s say-so, and got herself a Swedish termagant. She handed in her notice this morning. Well, I’ll miss the wild strawberries! Perhaps I should hire a Swedi
sh masseur, someone willing to wrestle me for the champagne bottle. But no matter, love. I got the information you asked for, although I don’t think it’s exactly what you were hoping for. Russo was with his wife at the time the American was killed.”
His grandmother was besotted with Grazia Russo, Cenni realized after hanging up the telephone. Hanna insisted that Grazia was telling the truth, that Fulvio Russo had been with his wife most of Friday afternoon, and definitely between the hours of 4:30 and 6:30, the hours that Cenni considered crucial.
“But how is it possible, Hanna?” her grandson had exclaimed. “He rarely goes home in the evening, certainly not on a Friday evening.” It was a standing joke in police circles that Russo wouldn’t recognize his own wife without an Identikit.
But Hanna insisted that Grazia was telling the truth, that Grazia and Fulvio had been at home Friday evening during those two hours. “They were expecting a visit from Grazia’s brother, who had telephoned a little before four. He said he had something very important to discuss with both of them and he wanted Fulvio there when he arrived. Fulvio had another appointment but he canceled it after the brother-in-law called. Grazia overheard him; she had the idea that he was talking to a woman. Grazia was so happy. She planned to cook dinner herself, for the three of them. White sole! She loves to cook, something that beast rarely lets her do. He prefers their French chef. And then the brother never showed up. Shortly after six he called to say he wasn’t coming, that he was late for another meeting. Fulvio left the house twenty minutes later, didn’t even wait to taste her dinner. Told Grazia he was having dinner with the count and wouldn’t be home until very late. The beast!”
Perhaps his grandmother should get a Swedish masseuse, someone with a strong Nordic will, Cenni reflected, after hanging up the telephone. French maids were too timid. After two bottles, even he would have trouble separating fact from fiction.
27
CENNI FELT ODDLY nervous as he pulled into the parking lot directly behind the church of St. Xavier in San Benedetto. He had telephoned Rita’s “Gianni,” now identified as Father Sebastian Breci, immediately after his meeting with Fulvio and the questore. Their conversation had been brief, friendly, and cryptic. Much had been left unsaid that needed saying, and he was genuinely surprised at his reluctance to say it. He’d been so sure that he’d conquered the tendency, ingrained in early childhood, to cower before the fathers of the Church. But apparently not. He had to remind himself again, as he had that morning, that Rita’s priest was just another witness in a murder investigation, worthy of no greater regard than any of the other witnesses and, recollecting the disapproval registered by the Brooklyn taxi driver toward the wayward priest, of no lesser regard either.
The door of the rectory opened wide before he reached the porch, and Cenni knew instinctively that the man standing in the open doorway was Rita’s Gianni. He was quite tall—two or three inches taller than himself—with long graceless limbs. Even from a distance, Cenni could see the priest’s bony wrists hanging down a few inches below the cuffs of his black robe. If Cenni were inclined to judge the looks of other men, he would have said that the man in the open doorway was ugly, fantastically ugly even, with thinning lank hair of a nondescript brown, an amazingly hooked nose that a kinder person might call aquiline, a sharp longish chin, and an Adam’s apple of a size clearly visible above the Roman collar. The priest’s only attractive feature was a pair of wide-set blue eyes, startling in their intensity of color. But then Father Breci smiled, extending his hand in welcome, and his gross features were transformed into a radiance of warmth that Cenni imagined would encompass the whole of humanity. He decided at once that he liked Rita’s Gianni.
Father Breci spoke first. “Buongiorno, Dottor Cenni. I asked our housekeeper to hold back lunch so you could join us. Father Mario, our curate, will join us as well. Afterward we can retire to my study for a private conversation.”
Cenni had no wish to be disarmed by wine, food, and fine talk and later find himself needlessly gentle in his questioning, and he declined.
“Thank you, Father, that’s good of you. Unfortunately, I have less than an hour to spare; another appointment,” he explained politely. “I’m sorry to keep you even longer from your food, but if you don’t mind . . .” He hoped his smile conveyed his intent, No hard feelings, but I’ve a job to do.
Father Breci indicated his acceptance of the commissario’s agenda by leading him straight off to his study. As soon as they were behind closed doors and seated, Cenni began, in medias res.
“As you already know from the newspapers and our telephone conversation earlier today, Rita Minelli, a forty-five-year-old American from Brooklyn, was murdered on Good Friday in the Assisi cemetery at some time between the hours of four and eight in the evening.” Cenni reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a folded paper, a fax by its appearance, which he opened and read aloud.
“On Good Friday, between the hours of four and six, Father Sebastian Breci was hearing confessions in the Church of St. Xavier. Between six and seven on the same evening, he was in the rectory of St. Xavier preparing to say mass, his presence verified by his housekeeper and his curate. Between seven and eight, also on the same evening, he said high mass in St. Xavier, witnessed by a few hundred of his parishioners.” Cenni refolded the paper and shoved it back into his pocket.
“An incontrovertible alibi, Father, particularly as it was provided by the San Benedetto Municipal Police. But I’m not here to establish your whereabouts on Good Friday. I need your help to find Rita Minelli’s murderer. And I regret that in doing so, I may cause you some small embarrassment.” He paused a moment and observed the priest with anxious attention.
Father Breci looked grave, and with a slight inclination of the head indicated that he understood the significance of Cenni’s last statement.
He exhaled in relief. The priest was not going to dispute his relationship with Rita Minelli.
Cenni continued, “We found two diaries in Signora Minelli’s room. From the first, we know that she’d had a brief affair in Brooklyn with a priest, whom she’d first met when he visited her mother to administer the last rites. From the second diary, we know that she’d met this same priest, by accident, in Florence just a few weeks ago, on March third, to be exact. From further information, obtained from a hotel proprietor in Fiesole, it appears that she and the priest stayed overnight in the hotel, in the same room,” he added, and realized that his cheeks were burning. “We have reason to believe, Father, that you’re the priest described in Rita Minelli’s diaries.” Cenni stopped and looked to the priest for confirmation.
“Yes, that’s right, Dottore. But to counter your directness with some of my own, I’m puzzled as to how knowledge of my friendship with Signora Minelli will aid the police in finding her murderer. Our time together was very private, and I’m reluctant to violate that privacy, for her sake as well as my own, unless you can convince me that it serves a need beyond satisfying the voyeurism of the police or, just as likely, an obsessive need to tie up loose ends to no purpose. I am not a suspect in Signora Minelli’s murder, as the fax you just quoted from clearly indicates, and which, I gather, was provided by one of our local police officials, a parishioner of mine no doubt, perhaps someone whose confession I hear, or one of the officers I take coffee with. . . .”
Cenni felt his cheeks color again as he listened to the priest. He knew at once the reason for the priest’s bitter words and interrupted.
“I’m sorry, Father, I should have made it clear that the investigation by the San Benedetto police with respect to your whereabouts on Good Friday was based on a request by the questura in Perugia for the name of a local priest with a disposition to Formula One racing. We requested the name of any local priest who may have been away from San Benedetto between the evening hours of four and eight on Good Friday. I believe the wording of the request was something to the effect that we had a speeding ticket to deliver and two very angry officers who wanted to make t
he delivery. There was no mention in our request of a murder investigation or of you in particular.”
Cenni watched as the priest readjusted his attitude. Again, the radiant smile!
“I see, of course. Very considerate of you, dottore. I don’t read the dailies very often, you know, but Father Mario left his copy of Monday’s La Repubblica on the sitting room table and I happened to see Signora Minelli’s picture. It wasn’t until then that I even knew of her murder. Rita was a friend, dottore, and I feel her loss to an extraordinary degree,” he said sadly.
“I called my bishop immediately after seeing Rita’s picture to inform him that I would be calling the police and why, but unfortunately he was away for most of yesterday and didn’t return my call until a short while ago. In the meantime, you called me.” Then he digressed. “I’m rather curious. How did you find me? I never gave Rita my name or my address, so that information wouldn’t have been in her diaries.”
“We had two sources, Father. The first was the Church of St. Francis in New York City, which was mentioned in her diary. The parish gave us the names of priests who had visited in June; your name was among them. But we actually found you by contacting the Etrusca Detective Agency in Perugia. A receipt from the agency for three hundred euros was found in Signora Minelli’s purse.”
