The Marshal Makes His Report

by Magdalen Nabb

  ‘Glissade—assemblé—glissade—assemblé—glissade— jeté—temps levé—pas de bourrée! Glissade—assemblé— Glissade—assemblé . . .’

  ‘Marshal . . .’

  Only as he pressed the button to spring the gates did he bethink himself to say, ‘No, no . . . I don’t think you’re in danger . . . because he’s not.’ And he was gone.

  ‘Marshal . . . ?’

  He looked at Lorenzini, frowning in an effort to remember what he’d said. His young brigadier’s face showed that he had been waiting some time for an answer. Not knowing what the question had been, the Marshal got up and followed Lorenzini out of the office door to the waiting-room on the assumption that there was someone there he must see to. The small room with its marble-tiled floor and neatly arranged leather armchairs was empty. The magazines on the low table lined up with military precision. The answer wasn’t here.

  ‘You’ll go, then?’ Lorenzini seemed a bit anxious. ‘Those two boys on patrol are too young to deal with that sort of thing. You’re the only person who . . .’

  ‘I’ll go.’ He’d got it now. He buttoned his jacket and slid his sunglasses from the pocket. ‘Call the boys in.’

  ‘I thought they should stay. The woman insisted—’

  ‘Call them in. And don’t go off duty. When I get back I want to talk to you.’ He pulled the heavy door to behind him and stumped off down the stairs.

  It was practically next door, but if Lorenzini had given him the address he had forgotten it and it was lucky for him that the boys he had called back were coming out of the street door across the piazza as he came down the slope of the car park. One of them was dabbing at his left hand with a handkerchief as the Marshal came up to them.

  ‘What’s happened to you?’

  ‘One of them scratched me when I was trying to stop her attacking the old woman. My God, I always thought marital scraps were the worst.’

  ‘Disinfect it as soon as you get in,’ the Marshal said.

  The two lads went off up the forecourt, giving vent to their astonishment and indignation as they went. The Marshal rang a bell and was admitted to a dark and narrow staircase. He climbed towards the sound of the conflict.

  It took him only a few minutes to establish order and insist that all the parties be seated and remain seated. The two women, both dressed in black, were red with fury. One still had tears in her eyes. The one man present was wearing a dark suit that was too tight for him, which was odd, given that he was very small. He was holding his hat close to his chest and pressing himself back against the wall, perhaps hoping to become invisible or at least forgotten. The Marshal would have felt sorry for him, but as a country-bred man he knew well enough that if there had been an acre of land in dispute the harmless-looking chap would have been scratching and spitting with the best of them. God knew there was little enough to fight about in this poor little flat that seemed to the Marshal to smell strongly of drains. He had known the old woman who’d lived there, a neat and busy little soul who suffered badly from bronchitis. Every winter was expected to carry her off, but she had died in the heat of a June day, he didn’t know what of, and the funeral had been that morning.

  The tearful woman, who turned out to be a sister, blew her nose but let the tears run and trickle down her neck under the collar of her flowered frock.

  ‘It was a promise,’ she said, ‘practically on her deathbed.’

  ‘Deathbed my foot!’ The fat sister-in-law sitting beside her shot a disgusted look at her tearful neighbour. ‘You hadn’t been near your sister for months.’

  ‘It was last winter. Her bronchitis was so bad I thought then it was the end. I was the one who came and nursed her.’

  ‘Came to be in at the kill, you mean. Vulture!’

  ‘Now, now . . .’ A faint protest from the man, who immediately tried to vanish into the wall again.

  The Marshal looked at the fat woman who sat now in grim-mouthed silence, clutching a huge black bag of imitation leather between her stout legs. It was the tearful sister, making an attempt on the bag, who had scratched the young carabinieri. The Marshal cleared his throat.

  ‘Now then—’

  ‘Ask her where all the bedlinen is,’ commanded the fat woman.

  ‘I don’t begrudge her the bedlinen,’ the brother said piously.

  ‘Oh, don’t you? And what damn business is it of yours? Your sister didn’t have a rag to call her own when she married our Ivo and that bedlinen came from my bottom drawer, every piece of it hemmed by my mother—’

  ‘That’s as may be, but I gave her the lace tablecloths as a wedding present and they should come to me!’

  The lace tablecloths, the Marshal knew, were in that big black bag with the bedlinen. He’d been allowed a glimpse. His mother had had similar cloths, used, if at all, on first communion days or at wedding feasts. They had to be sent to the nuns who looked after the altar cloths to be laundered. The ones in the black bag had never been used and were still in their tissue paper and boxes. The old lady had no money for entertaining, but she used to spend a few coins from her pension on feeding the stray cats in the Boboli Gardens behind the Marshal’s station in the Pitti Palace. She always looked so frail.

  It seemed best to let these women have their say. They would run out of steam at some point and he knew exactly what to do then. In the meantime, the louder they shouted, the better he liked it. He could almost wish the scene would never be over so that he wouldn’t be left alone with the knowledge of what he had done an hour ago. He didn’t yet know why he had done it. Every reasoning force within him protested, had protested even as he’d driven the car out of the city instead of going into his office. His very own heartbeat had made its audible protest as he made his request with apparent calm and drove away with his parcel to Borgo Ognissanti headquarters. He had lied again, and again obtained what he wanted—or he would when the answer came from Rome. Why had he done it? He knew what he was risking. He could think of no answer except that someone else seemed to have made the decision against his will, and now he was going to have to tell Lorenzini and swear him to secrecy and he knew just the expression with which the younger, brighter man would look at him.

  He looked at his watch. Lorenzini should have been at home by now. It wasn’t fair to keep him waiting any longer. The quarrel was petering out. He got to his feet and the family group fell silent, watching him for signs of sympathy or at least partiality. His face, expressionless, told them nothing. His settlement was brief. It began with a warning against prolonging the matter and letting it get into the hands of lawyers, which would cost them more than the value of what they were squabbling over. He then suggested that the silent brother divide the goods fairly but that the sister should have first choice of one of the divisions. Then he left them and went back to face Loren-zini and admit to what he’d done.

  Six

  The tiled corridor with its faint but unpleasant sickly smell stretched out into the distance, apparently without end. The Marshal’s feet made no noise as he plodded forward, clutching his parcel under one arm. He had, he knew, been walking for quite a long time. The parcel was getting heavier but that wasn’t because he was tired. He knew why. Sweat was breaking on his forehead at the thought but he kept walking forward. Sometimes he passed people who looked at him in silence and he could tell that they knew, or at least suspected, about the parcel. The brown paper wrapping didn’t deceive anybody.

  The weight dragged at him.

  ‘No . . .’

  He whispered the word as if in an attempt to prevent the parcel’s becoming what it must become, but there was someone directly behind him, perhaps following, who said clearly, ‘That’s Corsi’s body.’

  ‘It isn’t my fault,’ the Marshal tried to say, but he wasn’t sure that anyone could hear him. His breath was short and his heartbeat very loud. He kept walking since he didn’t know what else to do. A man in a long green smock and Wellingtons was wiping over and over at a tiny stain on the wall
of the corridor which nevertheless did not vanish but got gradually wider. He didn’t pause in his work or look round when the Marshal reached him, but he knew what the parcel was and he said, or thought aloud, ‘If you take him out of here you’re responsible.’

  But how could he turn back? He’d signed for the parcel, even told lies to get it. They wouldn’t accept it back now.

  Outside on the steps he saw traffic streaming by as though this were a motorway, though there was no noise.

  There were people about but nobody stared at the Marshal and Corsi now. It was fortunate that he was dressed, that the parcel had contained clothes, though they weren’t the clothes he’d been wearing when he died. The Marshal was sure that they should have been but he couldn’t deal with that problem now. He’d thought he had a car with him but now it seemed that he hadn’t. How was he to manoeuvre the body on to a bus?

  No one took any notice. No one helped him, but the shame and fear at what he was doing made him imagine the sort of thing they must be thinking, and besides, where was he going to go with his terrible burden? He couldn’t go home. He thought of his commanding officer at Headquarters but was filled with deep embarrassment at the thought of asking for help there. You couldn’t just keep a dead body like that. Something had to be done. He must find out what the proper proceedure was and get rid of it . . .

  ‘Try to walk a little . . .’ He was so tired of supporting him, but when he looked at the purplish white sheen on Corsi’s dead face, stained dark on one cheek, pity overcame his embarrassment. ‘Just a few steps, if you can. I can’t manage any more by myself.’

  They struggled forward together. It had got too dark to see properly and the Marshal kept walking without any idea of where they were going until the thought came to him that he could solve the problem by making for the Palazzo Ulderighi, if that was where the body belonged. Shouldn’t the family take responsibility for it?

  He began to walk a little faster, but in the darkness beside him the voice of the dead man spoke from the depths of an unbearable sadness.

  ‘Don’t take me back to that house.’

  ‘All right, I won’t. I promise you I won’t.’

  But where could he take him? He should surely be buried . . . wasn’t that what usually happened? He couldn’t go on half dragging the poor man around indefinitely. The weight of the man’s grief was getting too much to bear. They had buried his mother the Marshal remembered now, down at home in Sicily after her last stroke. She had lain upstairs in the front bedroom of the old house and then people had come and buried her. You weren’t meant to have to do it all yourself. He had never had to carry his mother around like this, he would have remembered.

  So he struggled on as far as the old house and when he had with difficulty found his way in the dark to the front bedroom he laid his burden down on the big bed.

  The dead man’s limbs composed themselves but the eyes remained watchful. The Marshal insisted, ‘You have to stay here.’ Couldn’t he understand? ‘I can’t help it. I can’t go on carrying you about with me.’

  The eyes were closed. The Marshal covered the body with a sheet. Then he went downstairs and waited, sitting in his mother’s old place. He was holding his breath, unable to judge how long he must wait. The important thing was that Corsi must stay still—had he closed the door? A first faint noise came from the room above. The Marshal’s fists clenched on the worn arms of the chair and beads of sweat covered his brow as he stared up at the ceiling.

  ‘No . . .’

  But there was no mistake. He could hear footsteps, slow and hesitant at first, but then quite normal. He was coming down the stairs. The Marshal jolted his big body forward in the chair, seeking its arms for support now but finding only empty air.

  ‘No!’

  ‘Salva!’

  He was blinded as the light went on. He sat hunched forward in the bed and felt his wife’s warm relaxed arm go around his shoulders.

  ‘You’re soaked to the skin. You’ve never got a fever at this time of year!’

  He was too dazed to answer her, the horror of his dream was still real.

  ‘I’ll get you a pair of clean pyjamas. Have a bit of a wash, you’ll feel better.’

  ‘It was only a nightmare . . .’ He got out of bed and went to the bathroom. His wife’s voice followed him.

  ‘Well, what do you expect, eating sausages at ten o’clock at night?’

  ‘Eight o’clock.’ She always exaggerated.

  ‘Don’t tell me you couldn’t have come in for your lunch if you’d organized yourself properly. I’ve told you before: let those young lads do the running about. That’s what they’re there for. I offered to cook you something light for your supper, those Tuscan sausages are like lead on your stomach and as for what they do to your liver . . . You could have had them for lunch tomorrow . . .’

  The scolding voice comforted him, pushing the nightmare back into the darkness where it belonged.

  ‘Will you make me some camomile tea?’

  He didn’t follow her into the kitchen but padded off along the marble-tiled corridor in felt slippers and went through to his office. The parcel from the Medico-Legal Institute was lying where he had left it on his desk.

  The expression on young Lorenzini’s face was exactly as he had imagined it would be. Amazement, a touch of pity perhaps, and that something you could never quite define that created a cold empty space where before there had been contact. The something that told you you’d cut yourself off from the others. It would have been better not to have to tell him, but he had to have help.

  ‘I want him followed. You’re the only person I can trust.’

  ‘But the clothes . . . You’re not really going to deliver them to the Marchesa?’

  There were times when the Marshal, much as he liked and respected Lorenzini, would have preferred a fellow Sicilian to work with him. Someone a little more mellifluous, more tactful, who wouldn’t have dreamt of asking direct questions on such a delicate matter. Florentines, now . . . They stared you straight in the eye and just asked. How did he know whether he would really deliver Corsi’s clothes to his wife? That had just been the most plausible way of getting hold of them. He was, theoretically, in charge of an HSA inquiry.

  Much of the Marshal’s discomfort came, he knew, from a sort of hangover left by his nightmare, and it was the nightmare, too, which convinced him that no one would ever ask for the dead man’s clothes because nobody cared enough to think of it. But he couldn’t explain that to Brigadier Lorenzini. He was hardly likely to start relating his nightmares. In any case, all that mattered was the shoes . . .

  Instead of answering Lorenzini’s question, he said, ‘I asked for priority at the fingerprint lab. I won’t get it, but at least they’ll get a move on and with any luck I should have something by tomorrow afternoon. After that I’m stuck. This Leo’s been picked up more than once and may well have had prints taken but they’ll have been destroyed. The Marchesa’s seen to it that he has no criminal record. That’s why you’re following him. We’re coming up to the biggest match of the tournament and he’s going to get a lot of aggro every time he goes out. If he so much as sets foot in the Santa Croce area they’ll try and give him a sufficient going-over to put him out of action for the match. He’s a bouncer in some club. Find out which and park yourself nearby. That should be sufficient since he sleeps during the day. He’s bound to have trouble with his customers sooner or later that you can mistake for a fight. Don’t go after him alone, call for reinforcements. Remember, he plays Florentine football. Built like a tank and behaves like one, I imagine. He knows he can get away with it because of the Marchesa. So watch him, and if he so much as raises his fist in a threatening gesture pull him in, get his prints, then let him go. Fortunately, he’s not noted for his brains. Apologize nicely.’

  When Lorenzini had left the Marshal got up from his desk and went over to the window, where he stood for a long time staring out at the laurel hedges of the Boboli Garden
s without seeing them or anything else. The trouble was that if Leo, the porter’s brutish son, wasn’t noted for his brains, neither was the Marshal himself. He noticed things, that was what the English lad William had said. He noticed things. That was true enough. But the things he noticed were just ordinary things. It was all very well to remember Corsi’s glossy evening shoes which would likely as not carry clear prints if anybody had dragged or carried him. But if he were right, and if the prints turned out to be Leo’s, what was he going to do then?

  Here is an end of all my woes and a beginning of your own.

  They could carve that on Corsi’s tomb as far as the Marshal was concerned. It was true enough.

  Don’t take me back to that house.

  How was it that you could invent such a distinctive voice for someone you didn’t know, had never spoken to? That was a funny thing. And the truth was that since his dream he no longer thought of Corsi as a man he didn’t know but as a man who had no other friend in the world except himself. His wife had only wanted his money to restore and maintain that great house— perhaps that’s why the Marshal felt close to him. He was convinced, as his dream showed, that Corsi hated that house as much as he did himself. Not his wife but the house, which exacted tribute of blood and money from every generation. It wasn’t that he was beginning to believe in the Cinelli curse. He wasn’t the sort to take any notice of that sort of thing, but even so, what an inheritance . . .

  His own kids wouldn’t have problems like that because he was a nobody, but then what about the little old dear who used to feed the cats? She was a nobody all right and they’d fought like vultures over her few sheets and tablecloths. The house had been rented . . . They ought to buy. His wife brought the subject up periodically and of course she was right. Living in barracks was all very well, but when he retired they had to have somewhere to go and that meant keeping up with the rise in prices. They should have done it long ago but they always got stuck over the question of where. Prices in Florence were astronomical and they had always talked of going back to Sicily some day. Weren’t they kidding themselves? The boys wouldn’t want to, there was nothing for them down there. They would want to go to university in Florence with their friends. They ought to get on with it and buy something here, but the prices . . . it would cost over three hundred million for a small flat. Three hundred million . . . what would the Ulderighi house be worth? He couldn’t even begin to imagine. Billions. But billions meant nothing to the Marshal. A sum of money doesn’t have any real meaning unless you can say just what it could do or buy. The Marshal knew that a million meant the gas bill and the electricity bill and the phone and so on for two months, but what a billion meant he couldn’t have said. Imagine the cost of running a palazzo—and you couldn’t sell it, whatever it was worth, because it was a nine-hundred-year-old inheritance.