The Marshal Makes His Report

by Magdalen Nabb

  The woman’s face was still blotchy and a rolled-up handkerchief was clenched in her fist. She didn’t so much as look at the Marshal, let alone answer his greeting. She sat herself down at a formica table and stared reproachfully at her husband.

  The Marshall persisted. ‘Very fond of your employer, were you?’ But she didn’t answer.

  ‘She’s bad with her nerves,’ the porter repeated.

  He still didn’t offer them a chair. It was all wrong. In the Marshal’s experience a couple like this one, shut in all day, bored and probably underpaid, would be only too glad to settle down at the table there, perhaps with four glasses and a bottle of vin santo between them, and spill the dirt on their employers. It was the chance of a lifetime to be the centre of attention and get all their accumulated grudges off their chests. Instead of which they wanted the Marshal and Lorenzini out, and quick. Yet it could hardly matter to them whether Corsi had died by accident or by his own hand.

  The Marshal’s face was bland, expressionless, his voice reassuring as he addressed the woman.

  ‘There’s not much we need to ask you.’

  He asked little and learned less. They had last seen Corsi when he left with the Marchesa the evening before to go to a dinner. They had opened up for them on their return but without looking out. They had heard the lift go up. They hadn’t heard any shot.

  ‘What time was it when they came in?’

  They looked at each other and hesitated. The woman opened her mouth but her husband put in quickly: ‘Lateish. I went to bed at one more or less and I’d been asleep, I don’t know how long but the lad wasn’t back, so it wasn’t four in the morning, I can say that.’

  ‘The lad?’

  ‘Our boy, Leo. He’s a bouncer in one of the clubs. They shut about four and he has breakfast before he comes home so it’s half past four or quarter to five when he gets in.’

  ‘And that wakes you, I suppose?’ He didn’t add ‘though a shot, of course, wouldn’t’ but he might as well have done because the porter was immediately on the defensive.

  ‘Well, it’s bound to, isn’t it? He has to come through. We sleep in here, on that.’ He indicated a divan. ‘It makes a double bed.’

  ‘And your son has the bedroom?’

  ‘He has to sleep all day. How else could we manage?’

  ‘He’s a good lad. He’s always been good to his mother and to him.’ The woman had dissolved into copious tears again and was plying her handkerchief.

  ‘Pack it in, will you?’

  But there was no stopping her.

  ‘That’s right! Never a good word for him but you’ve no objection to the money he brings in.’

  ‘I’ve never taken a penny of his money. It’s you—’

  ‘Yes! Me! It’s me he gives it to and where would we be if he didn’t? It’s all very well shutting your eyes to it!’ She dabbed at her own eyes but the tears continued to flow. She blew her nose and said to the Marshal, ‘He bought me that.’ She stabbed the air with her handkerchief in the direction of the draped washing-machine. ‘Only the other day he bought me that washer.’

  ‘He doesn’t want to know that!’ The porter made to raise his fist but thought better of it and pushed both hands into his pockets.

  The Marshal felt the closeness of the four walls, imagined this quarrelling going on day after day, year after year. Three of them in this tiny place, with its accumulated smells of cooking, the son in bed most of the day.

  Then the dressing up to serve the Marchesa’s friends. They hadn’t much to lose but he knew they weren’t going to risk losing it any more than the dwarf was. It was a roof, a living, both of which were hard, almost impossible, to come by in Florence. He felt pretty sure the Marchesa had paid them to say nothing, or promised to.

  ‘I don’t think we need you any longer,’ he said. What was the point? He was wasting his time. He knew it and so did they. When they were outside the door they heard the quarrel continuing and the supper plates being slammed on to the table. This noise was drowned almost at once by an echoing series of piano chords.

  ‘Oh! Oh, that’s right. I’d heard you might be on your rounds. Sorry if I didn’t hear you right away.’ The musician, dressed in white linen trousers and a crisp striped shirt, looked cheerful, even amused, as he let the Marshal in.

  ‘That’s all right.’

  Two grand pianos faced each other in a carpeted room lined from floor to ceiling with shelves filled with volumes of sheet music. A lamp was lit on one of the pianos, for this room, too, was devoid of windows.

  ‘Do sit down.’

  They sat on a white divan that stood against the wall, the only seating there was. It was so very low and squashy that the Marshal wondered as he sank into it whether he would ever manage to get up from it. The young musician leaned back happily, propping one leather-slippered foot on to his knee to exhibit an expanse of smooth leg, and fixed the Marshal with a bright and wicked eye.

  ‘So! Family dirt is what you’re after, isn’t it?’

  ‘Well . . .’ It was true that that’s what he’d been hoping for from the porter, but when it was put to him so bluntly he felt a bit embarrassed.

  ‘No?’

  ‘I . . . in a way, I suppose . . .’

  ‘Well, there’s oodles of it and I’m in rather a wicked mood today!’

  The Marshal, red and uncomfortable, wished he’d sent Lorenzini here instead of to the dwarf. He’d never be able to deal with this. As it turned out, he didn’t really have to since ‘Dear Emilio’, once launched, hardly paused to draw breath.

  ‘I suppose you want to know whether the Prince Consort shot himself so that it can be proved that he didn’t for the insurance—well, of course he shot himself, who wouldn’t in his place? Needs courage, naturally, and I wouldn’t have said he had much of that myself, but then she had it to spare and probably gave him a helping hand. Oh dear, now you look shocked. But you don’t know the people you’re dealing with!’

  ‘I—’

  ‘But you were there at this afternoon’s débâcle, I saw you. That, just that alone, should give you an idea!’

  ‘You mean the concert?’

  ‘Concert? Those aren’t concerts that she has every Sunday, my God, no. Now, how shall I put it? You must imagine La Bianca—the Marchesa Ulderighi to the uninitiated—as a sort of high priestess of musical appreciation and yours truly as the acolyte brought in—for a small consideration—to distinguish between one note and another on her behalf. A lady with so many heavy social responsibilities can’t be expected to concern herself with the trivial or artisan aspects of the art of music. So: I play them a gramophone record— avoiding anything they might recognize and be able to hum—and I then seat myself at the pianoforte and analyse it. I explain it to them while they fix me with expressions of well-bred attention and think to themselves, “Isn’t Bianca musical!” ’

  ‘And is she?’

  ‘Well, you know, it’s my opinion that she might be if she gave any time to it—I’m being desperately generous, considering what happened this afternoon—but the son’s got a talent, squashed to death but it’s there, and if he gets it from anywhere it’s from her. However, be that as it may, the amount of time she does give to it is about equal to the amount of time she would spend choosing a lipstick, that is, sufficient to establish that it’s of acceptably good quality, the right brand and becoming to her. She’s sufficiently well informed to be able to make an intelligent remark at a first night and to know when to keep quiet and avoid a gaffe in the Ninì style. You must have heard Ninì’s famous one about Chopin, it was all over Florence!’

  ‘No—if you don’t mind my asking—’

  ‘You must have heard it. Just after Christmas when I gave my Chopin recital and of course all the dear old bags from Bianca’s Sunday afternoons wanted tickets, but Ninì, the contessa—absolutely my favourite of them all—came up to whisper in my ear, ‘It won’t all be lieder, will it?’

  He shut his eyes and w
as shaken by a gale of merriment so heartfelt and infectious that the Marshal couldn’t help his own expression lightening a touch though he hadn’t understood the joke. He waited, hat planted on his knees, until the laughter subsided and he had the young man’s attention, to say: ‘You mentioned something that happened this afternoon. If you mean my arrival on the scene—’

  ‘No! You mean you didn’t notice? But you’d have died! I don’t know how I kept a straight face through that lecture, I really don’t, and I didn’t dare catch Simone’s eye. He was livid, but I’m used to these people and I couldn’t help—even if I think about it now—’ Thinking about it now he was again shaken by laughter that left his face pink and his eyes watering.

  ‘Simone’s my friend, you understand. Well, needless to say Bianca’s Sunday afternoons are desperately exclusive but Simone particularly wanted to come today, so yesterday I asked her—note that I didn’t just bring him along, I asked her. So, you can imagine the position she was in. She didn’t want him but, since she had to have me or there’d be no Sunday afternoon, through gritted teeth she said yes. And then she found a solution to mollify her exclusive friends. I can’t believe it yet though I saw it with my own eyes. Simone was allowed in, but—he wasn’t allowed to sit on a gold chair! Can you believe it? He was given a nasty little stool right by the door so that he looked as though he were there to sell tickets!’

  Though he had seen the young man on the stool by the door with his own eyes, the Marshal did find it rather difficult to believe.

  ‘Perhaps the other chairs were all full . . .’ he murmured.

  ‘Fifteen of them were empty. Fifteen! Poor Simone, but how can you not laugh at the mentality of these people? Well, I can’t help but laugh but I must say I wouldn’t care to be in your shoes. I’d help you if I could, but I imagine you’re only meant to help cover up whatever happened.’

  ‘You could help me find out what it is wants covering up.’ Almost despite himself, the Marshal was beginning to like Emilio. He was intelligent, something he always admired, and a musician, too, and he seemed to know the Ulderighi people without being prejudiced against them or even frightened of them. ‘Do you seriously think he killed himself?’

  ‘I do. He wasn’t like her, you know.’

  ‘He wasn’t?’

  ‘No, no. Different sort altogether. He came of an old family himself, of course, or she wouldn’t have married him, but unlike the Ulderighi, the Corsi accepted the new world and got on with surviving in it. An old family that made new money. Follow me?’

  ‘The apéritif business?’

  ‘Exactly. Well, somebody had to pay for the upkeep of all this.’ He shot a bright ironic glance at the ceiling above his head. ‘So he coughed up the ready while Bianca pretended, at least on the surface, that nothing had changed since the days of Cosimo De’ Medici.’

  ‘Well, if he was happy doing it . . .’

  ‘He was miserable doing it, take my word.’ He threw open his long white hands. ‘The outdated pride of the Ulderighi sucking the enterprise of the Corsi dry. And for what? If the son had been anything decent—No, he was miserable. They led completely separate lives, probably both had lovers but very discreet. There’s still a country house, you know, though the Ulderighi have lost just about everything else they owned, including the land which now belongs to the next estate. He used to go there a lot to shoot—’

  ‘Why did he keep his guns in town, then?’

  ‘Oh, the place is shut up except during August. You can hardly keep a gamekeeper on when all you’ve got left is your back garden. He goes out there a lot but he’s usually a guest in somebody else’s house. She only goes in August because it’s not socially acceptable to be in Florence in August, but they never went there together. I’d swear he shot himself and I don’t blame him.’

  ‘But did you hear him?’

  ‘Hear? Oh, I see what you mean but I can’t help you there. I spent the night at Simone’s flat and we came round here together in time for this afternoon’s lecture, so that’s no help to you, is it?’

  ‘No. No . . . Well, I’ll leave you to your practising.’

  ‘Will you be going to see the other tenants?’

  ‘I’ll see them, yes . . .’

  ‘For all the good it will do, is what you’re not saying. Well, you never know. I’ve been here less than a year. If you find somebody who’s been here longer—or at least someone who was in all night . . . But as you say, or don’t say, for all the good it will do . . .’

  Out in the courtyard the daylight had faded. The square of sky far above still glowed with the dusky greenish light of a summer evening and one star glimmered there. But the spent light didn’t penetrate to the centre of the great building and the colonnade was already in deep shadow as the Marshal began to walk slowly round it, his step falling in automatically with the rhythm of the music which had begun again almost as soon as the door had closed on him.

  He passed a door with no sign on it and no bell. By his reckoning that ought to have been the room of the old nurse, the ‘tata’, who was reputed to be stone deaf. Would she even hear him if he knocked? In any case, he didn’t pause there but continued round the corner and stopped before the doctor’s surgery to read the hours engraved on a brass plaque. She wouldn’t be there at this hour on a Sunday. He could of course go up to the third floor and try her flat. But he walked slowly on past the broad staircase and the porter’s lodge to come out of the colonnade at the gates. As he did so, the light in the huge iron lantern over the entrance came on. A light-bulb so weak that it only seemed to accentuate the gloom. If there was one thing that annoyed him about the Florentines almost as much as their hard cynicism it was their obsession with economizing. He walked on past the English girl’s empty studio and the unmarked door of the gun room. Hearing muffled voices as he reached the dwarf’s tiny door in the far right corner, he remembered Loren-zini’s response to his grumbles on the subject. One of his jokes about the three Florentines sharing a boiled egg and quarrelling about what to do with the leftovers. Well, with any luck Lorenzini would get more sense out of Grillo than he’d been able to do.

  Having completed his round and reached the music studio again, he stepped out from the colonnade and approached the stone well in the centre of the courtyard. It was covered by a heavy wooden lid with an iron ring in the middle. Very heavy. He couldn’t shift it an inch, never mind lift it. How many hours did that fellow practise? The music, which had been pleasant company at first, was now getting on his nerves. He also felt a prickling at his back as though someone were watching him. He turned to look but all the doors were shut. Even so, he could have sworn . . . Perhaps the old ‘tata’ wasn’t as deaf as she was made out to be and had taken a peep at him. Natural enough, and if it hadn’t been for that blasted everlasting piano music he’d have heard the door. He kept an eye on it for a while but it didn’t open. He ought to go in and see her. After all, it had to be done sooner or later, might as well get it over with.

  This piece of advice to himself went unheeded. He was feeling uncomfortable. He stood for a moment staring round him at all those closed, dark-varnished doors, with a peculiar feeling of being at once inside the building and yet shut out. Still, he might as well be, for all his presence mattered to the place. Or surely, he should rightly say, to the family. It wasn’t what he’d thought, though. It was the place, this great house, that gave a sense of malevolence and he wished he were out of it, out of it for good and away from that music. With a sense of relief he at least managed to pinpoint the problem. It was certainly the music he’d heard this afternoon when he’d gone up there. That was all it was, an unpleasant association with the dead body, the icy face of the Ulderighi woman and his own anxiety at having made a fool of himself in front of the chief public prosecutor. Yes, it was the same music, he remembered it perfectly now. Thinking he’d heard instruments and it turned out that there’d been a gramophone . . . a flute, he thought he’d heard—but surely, that was a f
lute? Emilio, alone, behind his closed door was still playing, but from some other direction, from somewhere above, the melody was being tentatively picked out by a flute.

  The Marshal remained by the well, looking up. The first and second floors were a blank, the tall brown shutters were all closed. On the third floor one rectangle of yellow light shone out. That could only be the doctor or the artist chap with the funny name. Not that there was any law against their playing the flute but he could swear it wasn’t coming from there. Somewhere higher up, if anything, it was so faint. He backed round the well and craned his neck. Above the corner where the dwarf’s door was, the building was much higher. There was some sort of tower at that corner silhouetted against the blue-green darkness of the summer night where more and more stars were appearing. Well, if the flute was being played up there, where he could make out two windows without shutters, it was being played in the dark.

  ‘Enough’s enough,’ muttered the Marshal. Enough of the whole lot for one day, the Marchesa Ulderighi and the chief public prosecutor included. And especially enough of this great prison of a house with its grim lines of columns, its closed gates and shutters and that single dismal light. Let it keep its secrets to itself if that’s what it wanted. With loud decisive steps that rang out on the flagstones the Marshal approached the dwarf’s door and hammered on it with his big fist.

  Three

  ‘Salva! What are you thinking of? You’ve got every light in the house on!’

  The Marshal only grunted something incomprehensible from the bathroom. His wife, Teresa, waited a moment and when he didn’t emerge she slid the shirts she was holding into a drawer and went out of the bedroom, turning off the central light and one of the bedside lamps as she went.

  When he joined her in the living-room she was watching television by the light of a small lamp with her knitting in her lap. He switched on the chandelier.

  ‘What’s the matter? Are you looking for something?’