The Murdered Banker

by Augusto De Angelis

  “Marchionni?”

  “Naturally. Isn’t he going to be your father-in-law? When are you getting married? Isn’t he very rich, Marchionni?”

  The other man violently shrugged his shoulders and started pacing again.

  All at once he stopped.

  “De Vincenzi, you’ve made me talk and I didn’t want to. I came here in order not to think. Two hours, you said? OK—fine. But if you ask me where I went for two hours in the fog? I don’t know. I walked. I suddenly found myself in the Galleria. And I came here, to see you.”

  “To the police station,” De Vincenzi tossed out sarcastically.

  “Yes, of course. To see you, not the station. It was a distraction. You might have had a good crime to tell me about. And a good crime, my man, would have been a way for me to stop thinking about my ruin.”

  De Vincenzi had barely had time to notice Aurigi’s ominously dark tone and aspect when the black telephone on the table rang three times. Angry and lacerating, like three desperate screams.

  2

  Via Monforte… fort—

  “Hello?”

  De Vincenzi went to sit down at the table and took up the receiver. Aurigi turned his back to him and stared at the calendar.

  “Yes, the flying squad… it’s me… Hello, Maccari… Go ahead, tell me… No, wait.” He picked up a pen and drew a pad of paper towards him from across the table.

  “Go on, I’m writing… Good… Monforte… fort—”

  De Vincenzi stopped speaking but continued writing in silence. With difficulty, he repressed a shudder. He shot a quick, terrified glance at Giannetto, who still had his back to him, before bending his head over a sheet of paper. For a moment it was as if a great space had opened up in his brain, but he instantly mastered his confusion and when he spoke again into the phone, his voice was calm and steady.

  “OK… I’ve got the number… and the name, too. Is he dead? I understand. You’ll wait for me, of course… I’ll come immediately… I’ll bring the officers I have here—but be ready to leave me some of yours. Goodbye.”

  He slowly put down the receiver. His look was harsh, his jaw tense.

  “What is it?” Giannetto asked. He turned round and at the sight of his friend’s face he repeated almost fearfully, “What’s happened?”

  “Nothing! Business, ordinary admin. So you wanted a good crime, eh?”

  He pressed the bell button, still staring at Aurigi.

  “Why was it tonight that you were wanting a good crime?”

  “Me? But what’s got into you, De Vincenzi?”

  “Are you sure you were walking around for two hours?”

  “But of course. I told you so. Why does it matter now?”

  Short and stocky, with legs too short for his square, muscular body, Sergeant Cruni appeared at the door.

  “You called for me, sir?”

  “Yes. You and three other officers. A taxi. Right away!”

  Cruni leant forward in a kind of bow that was both acknowledgement and leave-taking and made as if to go.

  The inspector shouted after him: “Send Paoli in to me.” Then he grabbed his overcoat and put it on.

  “Are you going out?” Aurigi said. “I’ll come with you.”

  “No. You can’t. Wait for me here.”

  “Why do you want me to wait for you here? It’s almost three. I’m going home.”

  However controlled he might be or resolved not to see in his childhood friend anything but a case that involved both his reason and his duty, De Vincenzi was visibly shaken. He repeated almost unconsciously, “Home? To your house?”

  Aurigi looked at him, surprised. “Well, yes. Where would you like me to go?! But what’s the matter with you, Carlo? Are you going mad?”

  “Does it seem like that to you?”

  He was about ready to arrest him and subject him to questioning: that might have been one way to proceed. But at once he decided against it and it was with a cold voice that he said: “No, don’t go away. Wait for me here. I implore you. I’ll have something to tell you when I return.”

  The other man shrugged.

  “As you wish. Why should I go home in fact?”

  He smiled. Sat down.

  Officer Paoli appeared at the door. “I’m here, sir.”

  De Vincenzi put on his hat, waved to Aurigi and hurried for the door. Paoli moved aside. The inspector whispered a brief order to him and left.

  The officer was startled and now stared with professional curiosity at the man in evening dress who was sitting quietly, drumming his fingers on the inspector’s table.

  “Are you keeping me company?”

  “If it doesn’t disturb you.” The officer’s tone was neither sarcastic nor rude; it was, rather, obsequious.

  “Bother me? Have a seat.”

  And he pushed an open cigarette case across the table towards him.

  “Here are the others, God willing. That’ll be it for tonight.”

  The bell rang. An officer got up from the armchair and slowly made for the door.

  The drawing room was brightly lit. Too brightly. It was the kind of light you’d have at a reception, or for a surgical operation. The three doors were wide open: the one on the left, which led to another room, a small parlour; the one on the right for the dining room; and the one behind, which opened onto the entrance hall.

  The other officer shrugged. “Well, it’s better in here than at the police station.”

  Inspector Maccari appeared at the door to the drawing room: pudgy, round and full of bonhomie. He had his hands in his pockets, but his tense face betrayed a sense of horror, pity and anxious concentration, which contrasted strangely with the easygoing manner of a good bourgeois.

  He stood at the door and looked straight through his officer. He was talking to himself, mumbling through his teeth.

  “Well! An ugly crime… and anyone who understands the first thing about it is doing well! Why did this poor devil come and get himself killed just here?”

  He noticed the officer sitting in front of him and looking at him, perplexed. He blinked, as if just waking up.

  “Have you searched everywhere, you men?”

  “Yes, sir, a first look round.”

  The officer got up and when he was next to Maccari he said dejectedly, “Anyway…”

  “Anyway, they’ll take it away from us, eh?”

  “That’s right. You called Inspector De Vincenzi, didn’t you, sir? The flying squad… HQ will take on the investigation directly. It’s a serious crime. They leave the break-ins and robberies to us.”

  The inspector twitched involuntarily, almost violently.

  “And thank God, this time.”

  “Oh. For me… but does this crime really seem that opaque to you? The name on the door… the name in the deceased’s pocket… the door wide open, no signs of a break-in… lights on…”

  Maccari interrupted him good-humouredly. “Turned off, lad!”

  “But no, sir. They were on, all of them just like now, that’s how we found them, the entire apartment lit up like day.”

  “Right. And it was dark… Dark! The lights were on but it was dark, lad… and something wasn’t right, something creepy in the dark, mark my words. It’s not over. I’m telling you myself, this story has hardly begun.”

  De Vincenzi appeared at the door on the other side of the room. Behind him one could see the eager faces of the two officers he’d brought with him.

  “Good evening, Maccari.”

  “Hello. Excuse me for having disturbed you, but I couldn’t have done otherwise.”

  De Vincenzi looked around. He immediately fixed on the chandelier, which was all lit up, and he blinked in the glare, as he’d come from the fog in the streets.

  “Imagine… and then… you don’t yet realize what a good thing it was for you to call me… I’ll tell you later.”

  He looked around once more.

  “It was all like this?” he asked.

  “Everything
,” the other man responded, and in his voice was a hint of condescendence. Maccari knew what his younger colleague would be looking for. Signs, clues, footprints, cigarette ash, the scent of the room… And for that matter, he wasn’t laughing, either.

  But he wanted to make things clear.

  “As it happens, I arrived only a quarter of an hour ago. I looked around. I realized something wasn’t right and I telephoned you immediately. You’re young, with a career to forge. Me?” He smiled bitterly. “By this stage… And what’s more, the dead bother me. I’ve seen more than one in my life… quite a few, perhaps, certainly too many for my nerves. What do you want? I can’t stand the living. If I were bloodthirsty, I’d kill, I would! But a man… a body fills me with pity, terrifies me.” He shuddered and turned to look around, as if to change the course of his thoughts.

  “Yes, everything as it was when we came in. The telephone is there at the entrance. You’ll have seen it… I telephoned emergency to send a doctor. But there was only one of them, and he had to alert his colleague at home. He’ll come when he comes. The man’s dead; he can wait. Would you like to see him?”

  Out of professional habit De Vincenzi had left his hat on. The house wasn’t a private place just then; it was a crime scene. So he stayed in the middle of the room, his hands in the pockets of his overcoat. Yes, he’d have to see the deceased sooner or later. But first he had something else to say to his colleague.

  He did not hesitate, even if a slight trembling sharpened his voice.

  “Did you know, Maccari, that this is the apartment of Giannetto Aurigi? And in one of those coincidences that never cease to surprise me, so strong is my impression it’s only chance that guides us, Aurigi is my old friend, schoolmate, and just this evening—”

  He stopped. Why tell everything?

  “It doesn’t matter. What is important, however, is that precisely because Aurigi is my friend, it’s all the more necessary that I keep my nerve and avoid making errors right from the start. I already sense that if something escapes me, I won’t find it again. It’ll be better if I go slowly and cautiously.”

  He took off his hat, feeling warm now. He put it on the table and sat down. “Fill me in.”

  Maccari had been staring at him as he listened, scrutinizing him in the way fat, jolly people do, with half-closed eyes. He seemed to be winking, though he wasn’t smiling. But when he spoke, his words were veined with irony as a matter of course.

  “Yes, I know, that too is one method, you young ones follow a method these days. But hold on… I’ve studied, myself, a bit late, but don’t think I’m doing it to learn. I’m doing it in order to get a feel for how many errors I’ve made or avoided over the last thirty years, ignorant as I am.”

  “Dead bodies make you bitter, Maccari.”

  “No. Hang on… I myself was hoping to cite a rule for your method. Here it is…” And he enunciated as if he were reciting a verse he’d learnt by heart. “The value of a fact lies not in its rarity, but rather in how common it is, and before claiming to reveal what is invisible to the eyes, it’s a good idea to work on revealing what is all too visible—and which, for that very reason, does not attract attention.”

  He’d sidled up to De Vincenzi, now turning the irony back on himself.

  “Good, eh?”

  “If only one could always do that. And so?”

  “So, less than an hour ago, I received a phone call: ‘Come quickly to 45 via Monforte… there’s been a murder!’ ‘Who is phoning? Hello? Hello?’ But I was cut off… with these private phones, one can’t check where the call is from, you know. I was somewhat dubious. I confess that at first I thought it was a joke. Then I said to myself: if I walk over there and find nothing, there’s less harm done than if there were someone dead and I didn’t go. I got here and found the door partly open, the stair light on as it usually is all night in these grand houses, and not a soul… But the main door was partly open, right? That was when I realized that this was no joke. The porters’ lodge bolted… the porters asleep. I go upstairs and as I pass the first landing, Fanti says to me: ‘Do you smell that?’ An odour, in fact, like gas, but it wasn’t gas, it was gunpowder, cordite. However, they hadn’t fired in the stairwell, because if they had I’d have found the whole place awake. On the second floor, two doors, one closed, the other open… this one here… and one could see the entrance hall lit up. On the door, the name of Giannetto Aurigi. I go in. In the entrance hall, not a thing, but all the lights on. We turn around. A closed door down there. The servant’s room, evidently. Empty. The servant’s blue-striped waistcoat and his trousers and jacket were all thrown on the bed. That area, as well as the entrance, the kitchen: empty. In there, the dining room: dark—the only dark area. And empty. Nobody here. There, another sitting room, and stretched out on the floor in front of the sofa, a dead man.”

  He’d spoken hurriedly, working himself up, and he stopped to catch his breath. De Vincenzi was listening to him, trying to follow his words and not think about the riot of sensations and sentiments stirring in him.

  Maccari started up again. “A dead man. A bullet hole in his temple, a trickle of blood on his face. The man was in evening dress. I search him…”

  He looked in his pockets and pulled out a small wallet in green Moroccan leather. He felt it a bit and then held it out to his colleague.

  “Here it is. This is his wallet. Small because of his evening dress. Inside there are five hundred lire and seven or eight calling cards.”

  De Vincenzi took the green leather wallet and opened it. Without rushing. Without curiosity. A strange state of mind had taken hold of him, numbed him: he had to see, he wanted to see, and he hardly could—or, to be precise, he slowed his movements, as if he wanted to delay their effect.

  “Mario Garlini!”

  He found the calling cards first and read out the name. He shuddered.

  “He’s a stockbroker.”

  “He was, you mean. Now he’s a dead person. Yes, just like that, he was a stockbroker. But he was also more. The Garlini Bank was his. They say his net worth is thirty or forty million.”

  Maccari shrugged and shook his head. Thirty or forty million: a lot! He’d never see that much. But this man would never see that amount again. When it came down to it, there wasn’t any difference between them now. He lived without all those millions, and thus he didn’t really live. The other man was dead and his millions were his no longer. Maccari was depressed that night, and he said to himself: We’re dead, both of us.

  But aloud he only said: “Bah! Now he can’t use it any more.”

  For the sake of saying something, De Vincenzi asked a question, the simplest he could think of in order to get the investigation going.

  “Any signs of a struggle?”

  “None. Not even an overturned chair. He must have been shot while he was sitting. His body slid to the floor.”

  “The weapon?”

  “Nothing. If they didn’t hide it somewhere in the house, which seems to me unlikely, they’ve taken it away with them. That would explain the smell of gunpowder on the stairs and it would suggest that the person who shot fled as soon as he’d fired.”

  “And then?”

  “And then… What do you mean? I immediately felt this was a serious matter, and not just because of the dead man’s thirty or forty million. Something doesn’t feel right about all this. Don’t ask me what, because I don’t know. It’s only my impression. But it was so strong that after I phoned for the doctor, I immediately rang you. Hurry up with it! Since I can, I want to stay out of it.”

  De Vincenzi got up. He grumbled, trying to follow Maccari’s logic: “Bah!” But he forced himself to shake off the numbness that had come over him and continued.

  “Didn’t you have the porters woken up? Didn’t you ring at the apartment next door?”

  “No. But you’ll have seen: the door is being watched and there’s an officer on the landing.”

  “I saw…”

  He sud
denly went deliberately towards the door on the left, the one that led to the parlour. He looked at the dead man, but it made no impression on him. Only he asked himself, as if resenting the dead man, Why did he die? It was, naturally, a question without an answer. But in a sense there was an answer and De Vincenzi formulated it to himself, turning towards his colleague to observe, “He was still young.”

  “Thirty-five, thirty-six. Young.”

  “Did you search him thoroughly?”

  “No, we didn’t want to move him. I was waiting for the doctor.”

  De Vincenzi turned to look around the parlour. The usual: a blue sofa and two armchairs; a table, a sideboard, some pictures, no photographs. At the end, facing them, was another door. He didn’t want to cross the room right then.

  “And that door?” he asked.

  “The bedroom.”

  “Lights on?”

  “Yes.”

  “The bed?”

  “Made up. With the sheets turned down and the pyjamas laid out, ready. It’s clear that he hadn’t lain down.”

  “Is that the last room in the apartment?”

  “No. Another door. It was closed. I just looked: the bathroom. It appeared empty to me.”

  Sergeant Cruni had remained at the door in the entrance hall with Officer Rossi. But they were watching and listening. At that moment, De Vincenzi felt himself being watched and he suddenly called out.

  “Cruni!”

  Gratified, the sergeant stepped forward.

  “Go and look in the bathroom.”

  Cruni hurried over.

  De Vincenzi turned to Maccari.

  “The streets are wet outside because of the fog. Did you find any footprints?”

  The other man pointed at the floor. “Can’t you see for yourself? Not a thing! They came by car, one would gather.”

  Silence fell between the two men.

  Maccari buttoned up his overcoat, preparing to go. De Vincenzi removed his. Too warm in that apartment: even the corpse in the room next door had not gone cold. The atmosphere was heavy, burnt. The air in the radiators was too hot—they weren’t letting the steam out, just retaining it. It was dry. That was the feeling! It was a feeling of dryness De Vincenzi had in his mouth. Between the joints of his fingers, too, he had that sensation. He wanted to act. He would surely have continued to question Maccari if he hadn’t heard the bell at that moment, and a voice at the entrance saying: “Open up! It’s the doctor.”