The nose and the face, thus abandoned, turned slightly to one side, as if she couldn't fight any more. The face! resigned to the will of Death, seemed outraged by those scratches, by marks of fingernails, as if he had taken delight, the killer, in disfiguring her like that. Murderer!
The eyes had become fixed in a horrible stare: looking at what, then? They looked, looked in a direction you couldn't figure out, towards the big sideboard, the very top of it, or the ceiling. The underpants weren't bloodied; they left uncovered two patches of thigh, two rings of flesh: down to the stockings, glistening blond skin. The furrow of the sex ... it was like being at Ostia in the summer, or at Forte dei Marmi or Viareggio, when the girls are lying on the sand baking themselves, when they let you glimpse whatever they want. With those tight jerseys they wear nowadays.
Ingravallo, his head bared, looked like the ghost of himself. He asked: "Have you moved her?" "No, sir," they answered. "Have you touched her." "No." Some blood had been tracked around by somebody's heels, soles, over the wooden parquet, so you could see that they had put their feet into it, into that swamp of fear. Ingravallo became infuriated. Who did it? "You're nothing but a bunch of hicks!" he threatened. "Lousy goatherds from Sgurgola!"{9}
He went out into the hall and the vestibule: he addressed Doctor Valdarena, slumped on a chair, a kitchen chair, with Pompeo who hovered over him like a kid sticking to his ma. The concierge wasn't to be seen; she had gone down to her lodge maybe; they had called her. "Well, what are you doing here?"
"Doctor Ingravallo," Valdarena said, his voice serious, calm, and yet pleading, accepting the interrogation as an obvious necessity, looking the other man in the eye. "I had come to say good-bye to my cousin, poor Liliana . . . she wanted absolutely to see me before I left. I'm leaving the day after tomorrow for Genoa. I think I even mentioned it —that I was going to live in Genoa—when you were here, that Sunday, for dinner. I've already given up my room."
"For Genoa!" exclaimed Don Ciccio, absorbed in thoughts. "What room? . .."
"The room where I live, Via Nicotera number twenty-one."
"He happened to be the first . . ." Santomaso, one of the policemen, said. "He was the first to come in here, anyway," Porchettini confirmed. "Then they called the station . . ."
"Who called?"
"Why ... all of us together," Valdarena answered. "I didn't know where I was or what I was doing. There was me, a man from the floor above, all the women. The concierge wasn't here. Her lodge was shut up."
"You were the one who ... who gave the alarm?"
"I came up: the door was open a little way. 'May I come in?' I asked. 'May I?' Nobody answered."
"Where was the concierge? You didn't see her, then? And did she see you?"
"No. No, I don't think so."
La Pettacchioni returned and confirmed all. She was on Stairway B, doing her daily cleaning. She began at the top, naturally. In reality, besom in hand, she had stopped first to chat a bit on the landing, with Signora Bolenfi of the fifth floor, Stairway B: the widow Elia Bolenfi nee Gabbi from Castiglion dei Pepoli: (gabby by name and gabby by nature). Then she went on up, with her broom and her bucket. She went "just for half a sec" into the home of the general, Grand'Ufficial Barbezzi, who lived in the penthouse apartment: to straighten up a little. She had left the bucket outside, with the broom.
A little girl, who had gone up to the Bottafavis, the Felicetti's little girl it was, who always had to go and say "good morning" to the Bottafavis every day, after which they would give her a sweet, well, Signora Manuela showed her into the vestibule, and asked her was it true or wasn't it: and she, with a little simpleton voice, confirmed that it was true, that she'd seen only two women, who were coming down the steps. They had two shopping bags, one each, like they were going marketing. "They looked like they were from the country, to me," la Pettacchioni added, from her fund of wisdom.
"What women were they?" Ingravallo asked, absently. "Show me your hands!" he said to Doctor Valdarena. "Come over to the light." The young man's hands seemed perfectly clean: a white skin, healthy, warm, faintly veined: suffused with the warmth of youth: a signet ring of yellow gold, with a stupendous jasper, and in the jasper an initial: on the right ring-finger, it stood out, solid, imposing, ready to seal a letter, one would have said, a secret avowal. But the right cuff of his shirt . . . bloodstained! in the corner: from the gold of the cuff link to the cuff's edge.
"This blood here?" Ingravallo said, his mouth twisting with revulsion, still clasping that hand by the fingertips. Giuliano Valdarena blanched: "Doctor Ingravallo, believe me! I confess: I did touch poor Liliana's face. I bent over her: then I knelt on one knee. I wanted to caress her. She was cold! ... Yes, it was to say good-bye to her! I couldn't help myself. I wanted to pull down that skirt of hers, my poor cousin! in that awful condition! But then I didn't have the courage ... to touch her a second time. She was cold. No, no. And then . . ."
"Then—what?"
"Then I thought, I realized I didn't have the right to touch anything. I ran outside. I called. I rang the bell opposite. Who is it? Who is it? they said. It was a woman's voice. But they wouldn't open."
"They were right. Then what?"
"Then ... I yelled again. Some other people came down ... or came up. People came, that's all I know. They wanted to see for themselves, too. They started to scream. We called the police. What else should I have done?"
Don Ciccio stared at him, hard, and let go of the hand. His grimace of revulsion persisted, a slight contraction of the nose, of a single nostril. He reflected for a moment, still looking the man in the face. "How come you're so calm?"
"Calm? I can't cry. For years I haven't had any reason to. Not even when my mother ... she married a second time and went to live in Turin. The tip of my cuff must have grazed the wound, her neck: I guess it had to . . . with all that blood! I have to leave day after tomorrow; I've already been given my instructions. I felt like I was leaving home, my own family. I wanted to see her and say good-bye, poor, poor Liliana. Poor ... so splendid and unhappy, she was!" The others remained silent. Don Ciccio scrutinized him, sternly. "A caress! My God! I didn't have the strength to kiss her: she was so cold! Then I went out; I almost ran away. I was afraid of death, believe me. I called for help. The door was open, like a ghost had disappeared through it. Liliana! Lilianuccia!"
Ingravallo bent down and looked at the other man's trousers, at the thigh, the knees: on the left knee, a slight trace of dust.
"Where did you kneel down? With which knee?"
"Ah ... by the buffet, the little one. Let me think now. With the left knee. Yes. To keep from kneeling in all that blood.
Don Ciccio glared at him, doggedly.
"See here, Doctor Valdarena, you've got to tell me everything the way it really was. Trying to use your imagination ... at a time like this ... in this place . . . you can figure it out for yourself, can't you? ... it would be a bad mistake."
"Why, what do you mean? I'm telling you just what happened. Try to understand me."
"What's supposed to make me believe you, eh? Let's hear it. I'm all ears. You're the one who has to give us a trail to follow, in our investigation here. For your own good."
They reported to Ingravallo that Gina, the ward, had come back from the Sacred Heart at that very moment. On Thursdays school let out at one: for lunch. Balducci was supposed to get back from Milan the next day ... or maybe from Verona. Ingravallo had a try with the young girl in tears, but he got nothing out of her: after her coffee and milk, before eight, she had said good-bye to her "Mamma," had received the usual morning kiss with the usual question: "Do you know your lesson today?" She had said yes and had gone out. For the present she was handed over to the neighbors, later somebody could probably take her to the sisters: now she went to the floor above, to the Bottafavis; la Menegazzi was too alarmed and upset to be of any help to the little one. A yellow wisp of mustache seemed bent back to her nose. She hadn't had time to fix her hair: what she had on
her head looked like a wig made from corn silk and tied in ribbons. She said that this building had a curse on it. She invoked Maria Vergine with her eyes red, sunken, squeezed tight. She said, and kept repeating, "Oh, seven-teen's the worst of all numbers." The little girl who had met the two women on the stairs could furnish no information concerning them. Her big eyes wide, "yes," she would say, or "no," poor kid, her lips numb with the fright she felt, seeing that big, black head of Ingravallo who, she decided, must be the man with the sack who carries off bad little girls when they won't stop crying. It was finally established that the two women had gone up to see the lawyer, Cammarota (fourth floor), or rather to see his wife, to take her two fresh cheeses: they were bimonthly suppliers of fresh cheese.
They tracked down Cristoforo, Balducci's clerk. The news shattered him, like a thunderbolt. He had gone out at seven-thirty, after a coffee-with-brandy which Signora Liliana had gently forced on him: he couldn't drink milk, it never agreed with him. Yes, a little before Gina, who went off to the Sacred Heart at eight. He couldn't face the awful sight: "I can't look at her." He made the Sign of the Cross. Tears dribbled down the somewhat wrinkled skin of his face. He had been assigned some errands by Signora Liliana, poor lady: to pay a bill, to buy two brooms from the broom-maker, get some rice, wax for the parquet, take a bundle to the dressmaker. But first, however, he had had to go to the office: to open the office: dust off the desks. Officer Ingravallo wouldn't let go of him. In fact, he charged Grabber to have a fine old chat with him: in the meanwhile Giuliano was invited to remain at the disposal of the police.
The investigations continued on the scene of the crime in the early afternoon: with the main door of the building shut, the door of the apartment shut, with reinforcements of police, with Sergeant Valiani of the scientific office and with the armed intervention of the fingerprint bureau. The tenants and even the concierge herself were asked not to linger on the stairs, "to allow greater freedom of movement to the investigations," and to remain, on the other hand, insofar as possible, "within reach" of the squad. The coroner appeared after five-thirty. The attorney general's office had taken official cognizance of the crime shortly before four, via the various offices, via Doctor Fumi and the chief of police. The good Cristoforo, the variopainted Menegazzi, the little Gina, former artilleryman Bottafavi, and handsome young Doctor Valdarena were heard alternately and simultaneously. But "the crime" remained shrouded in mystery, as the late editions said finally, in a paper which had managed to bring off the scoop, shouting the news along Corso Umberto. The reporters, wangle as they might, couldn't get past the door of the Balduccis. But at the smaller entrance to the building, however, they had caught Sora Elodia, of Stairway B, who, well, was rather jolly, as she usually happened to be, on Thursdays and Sundays. She was making eyes at the policemen, who only laughed in her face.
It was established that none of the building's tenants could furnish clues as to who might have been the author, or authors, of the crime. No one, except the little girl, Maddalena Felicetti, had encountered people on the stairs: not even Valdarena; nobody had seen him, either. He was a Doctor of Economic Science—Ingravallo was well aware of this—and employed by Standard Oil. For some time he had been stationed at Vado Ligure, then in Rome. Now he was preparing to move to Genoa, and also to be married. He was engaged to a Genoa girl, a snappy little brunette, whose photograph he produced: a certain Lantini Renata. Of excellent family, naturally. According to the excellent family, he "was terribly in love," our Doctor Valdarena, Signorino Giuliano. Balducci had spoken about it to Ingravallo, meeting him in Albano at the Cantinone tavern, with some jovial allusion to hot young blood, as well as the chronic lack, which afflicted the young man, of a few sheckels, which ought to stick to his fingers, at least in part; and yet money fluttered through them regularly, like butterflies from the fingers of an Apollo: the Apollos you see in the park, of marble. Balducci had dubbed him a "good-looking boy" (no need for references on this score): "with his degree in economic science," top grades and cum laude, too, but always broke, as is so often the case with those who want to teach others .. . how to handle the economy: a little short of the ready . . . shorter than a Roman cousin—not to mention a Genoese father-in-law—would have wished. "No, no, he isn't living off of short loans; but you know how it is, at his age, with all the temptations there are around: you understand, a boy like that ... if he isn't hard up for money, he can't be very hard up for the other thing." Ingravallo was grim-faced, that evening, in Albano: the rosy-cheeked indulgence and, indeed, the male solidarity of Balducci, the husband, a toothpick between his teeth, to Don Ciccio betrayed too easy a digestion ... of the product of Empedocle e Figlio, maybe. That carefree, after-dinner rosyness of the commercial traveler, the hunter with a pair of new boots ... by God, it had finally exasperated him, he who came from years of poverty and hardship, from the barren Matese mountain, progressing to the procedures and the red tape of the law, a humble and dogged investigator of events, or of souls, in the law's name. He had glanced at Balducci: "the horns are growing on your head right now!" he thought. "An atoll of coral, that's what's growing on you." And instead he had sighed: "Ah, these women!" his face grimmer than ever under his astrakhan mop. And Giuliano, now, sat in the best drawing room. With two cops keeping him company.
A good-looking boy, the Signorino Giuliana, in there: rather lucky with women. Rather. Yes. They pursued him in swarms, buzzing around him; they fell on him, all together, nose-diving like so many flies on a honeycomb. And he was plenty smart too: he had a line, a hypnotizing mirror, a way all his own, so natural and, at the same time, so strange . . . that he charmed you with the greatest of ease. He pretended that he neglected his women, or even that he was bored with them: too many, too easy! and he had something much better in his grasp. He played the smart male, the you-bore-me role, at times, or the haughty; or the young man of high-class family in Via dei Banchi Vecchi, or the clever businessman who didn't have time to waste on chat. Depending. A matter of chance. According to his mood. Matching the suit he happened to have on. Following the inspiration of the moment. Depending on whether he had gold-tipped cigarettes or whether he was out of cigarettes altogether, or whether he had just bought some, but a pack of smelly Nazionali. He played the spoiled child. Sometimes he was as fickle as a weather vane. So he neglected them then, sure, the flirty ones. And that was what made them lose their minds. He granted his favors after much reluctance on his part, after infinite longing and swooning on the part of the victim, drawing out the mad abandon or exhausting any evasive indocility through an erogation of pseudo-symptoms (in reality, suggestions) alternating and contrasting, yesses and nos. He loves me, he loves me not. I want you, I don't want you. And, in any case, to the rare, predestined, and with mysterious deliberation, selected women, he conceded himself: like Divine Grace, the Eternal Health of Jansenius. At times, by contrast, with sudden violence: and to the total confusion of all plausibility. There! Just when everyone had turned the horoscope in a different direction. Boom! He plunged hawk-like on the most resistant hen of the whole coop: as if to punish her (or reward her) with this dazzling deviltry: to rescue her from some recondite weakness in her being, from some ignominy . . . existing prior to this magnifying election. In such case, the gratitude of the magnified could swell to the stars: like her fear, or even perhaps hope, of an encore.
Ingravallo, as you might have expected, even before the arrival of the coroner, in view of the way the events stood, had decided to take Valdarena in. Only later, the morning after in fact, the district attorney's office transformed his state of custody into temporary arrest and arranged for the respective warrant, after the arrest had in effect taken place, and with the subject of the warrant already in Regina Coeli Prison. Until late in the evening the chief and the two experts of the criminological bureau did not desist from their investigations, nor from photographing the deceased. They had brought everything they needed with them. There was no question of telegraphing Balducci, since his
return was imminent, nor alerting the various police stations to have him traced: Milan, Padua, even Bologna, because he had to go also to Padua. Cristoforo, the widow Menegazzi, who couldn't stop cooing over the disaster, Bottafavi, Signora Manuela and her hubby, the one from the milk company, offered to go and meet him in a body at the station; he must be spared a shock, prepared in some way. The relatives? A telephone call at noon . . .
The relatives were officially "advised of the event" late in the evening, but Ingravallo, already that morning, had forbidden the men to let them in. Renewed investigation and precise autoptic observation both by the head man Don Ciccio and by Sergeant Valiani . . . well, to tell you the truth, they didn't amount to much. Oh, of course, some signs of theft. But no weapon was found. Still various drawers and such, when you looked in them, told you that there was something up. They apparently weren't so innocent, as they looked from outside. Weapons, no. And no clues to any, except for the red drops on the floor, and that blood . . . tracked by heels. Near the sink, in the kitchen, the tiled floor was wet, with water. A "very sharp" and completely missing knife was probably the instrument most capable of operating in that way. The drops, rather than from any murdering hand, seemed to have dropped from the knife itself. Black they were, now. The unexpected flash, the cutting edge, the brief sharpness of a blade. In her: alarm. Certainly he had first struck all of a sudden, then worked on the throat, insisting, and on the trachea, with ferocious confidence. The "struggle," if one had taken place, can have been no more than a wretched jerk, on the part of the victim, a glance, terrified and immediately imploring, the hint of a movement: a hand barely raised, white, to avert the horror, to clasp at the hairy wrist, the black, implacable hand of the homicide, his left, which already dug its nails into her face and threw back her head to free the throat further, to bare it entirely, helpless against the gleam of the blade, which the right hand had now produced, to wound, to kill.
That Awful Mess On The Via Merulana Page 8
