The Murdered Banker

by Augusto De Angelis

  She paused and looked at De Vincenzi as if begging him to understand her and let her keep quiet about what she didn’t want to say, or couldn’t say.

  “Yes. She burst into tears and told me my father wanted me to marry Giannetto Aurigi. I was crushed. My first instinct was to rebel. Apart from anything else, I didn’t feel up to playing a part in some awful farce. But then…” She fell silent, her heart beating.

  “What about Altieri?” asked De Vincenzi.

  “Ah.”

  She moved away, went to the sofa and sat down, seemingly lost in thought. Trembling, she kept an eye on the dining room door.

  Then she turned to face the inspector and spoke to him in a high voice, continuing her account without interruptions or gaps.

  In her mind, unfortunately, there were no gaps.

  “The first time I came to this building to visit Aurigi—I had to come here—I saw Remigio at the door. He was waiting for me. He told me he lived here, so I would always have him near. His suffering was boundless. He was a martyr, I’m telling you! It went on for two years, then a few days ago the horrible anguish of this drama was unleashed. And then last night’s terrifying events… and then today… the awful present, which seems to me—”

  “What drama?” asked the inspector, leaning towards the young woman. “What drama unfolded—”

  “No!” she screamed. “No! I can’t tell you! I mustn’t!”

  She stared at De Vincenzi, who kept coming closer to her, trying to read her mind through her eyes, and waved her hands in front of her as if to shoo him away.

  “I’m the one who killed Garlini! I’m the one who killed him!”

  She fell silent, in agony.

  De Vincenzi moved away from her. He was annoyed and his face was tense.

  Once again, he felt the truth escaping him.

  That story had only served to distract him from the crucial point of his investigation. And it had allowed the young woman to recover and to entrench herself behind her heroic and pointless lie.

  Ah, no! He would get to the bottom of this.

  Her youth, already tormented by suffering, pained him. But someone had died. He had a duty, and there was also the absolute necessity—which he’d taken upon himself—of saving Aurigi. All the more so now that he knew Aurigi to be unhappy, his masculinity impugned, his heart wounded.

  Everything she’d told him was probably genuine. In fact, he considered it to be true and sincere. But it didn’t explain the murder, it didn’t explain her presence in the apartment on the very night of the crime; and, above all, it didn’t explain the phial of poison.

  And then there was the other person, all the way upstairs. Someone whose existence suddenly seemed to throw a glaring light on events. Someone who must know something—since how could he have slept easy while, only a short way away, the woman he loved was involved in a cruel tragedy?

  He would take action.

  He looked at the woman. Of course! He would begin with her.

  11

  Pain Beyond Pain

  The parlour door opened and Count Marchionni appeared on the threshold.

  His face was tense, his eyes flashing. With trembling lips, he stood silently watching his daughter and De Vincenzi. Both were seeing this horrible incident through to the end.

  After the briefest of pauses, De Vincenzi said decisively, “Well then, signorina, I’ll talk about it. But it will be more painful for you, because I’ll have to resort to logic rather than fantasy in order to reconstruct the tormented workings of the brain. And it will be brutal, because I’ve had to hunt for the truth, looking into things and beyond appearances.”

  Marchionni took a step forward to intervene. His voice was cutting. “Appearances can be deceptive, Inspector!”

  De Vincenzi calmly turned round and asked bitterly, “Do you want to hear?”

  “You are proceeding in an irregular manner. What value can there be in a confession extorted from a woman by your methods?”

  The remark hit the inspector like a blow to the chest. He flinched, and the blood rushed to his cheeks. He hurried towards the dining room door.

  “Well, if you want it like that, we’ll do things the regular way.” He knocked at the door. “Open up! It’s me, the inspector.”

  The door opened immediately and the officer appeared. De Vincenzi shoved him aside roughly.

  “Go! Go over there… into that room… wherever you like.” He pushed him towards the entrance hallway, closed the door behind him and rapidly retraced his steps.

  “Aurigi! Aurigi! Come here.”

  Giannetto appeared, still in evening dress, his face tired, his look dazed. As soon as he saw Maria Giovanna and the count, he moved away from them in an effort to defend himself. He backed off, but De Vincenzi made him stay.

  “No! Come in.” He pushed Aurigi to the centre of the room and looked at the count as if in challenge.

  “There you go, we’re almost all here. Do you consider the proceedings to be regular now, Count Marchionni?”

  “I don’t think so!” the old man declared. “I’ve heard about the investigating magistrate and I know the penal code.”

  De Vincenzi immediately replied, with some irony, “And do you also know Tardieu’s classic tract on the symptoms and course of prussic acid poisoning?”

  “What are you going on about?” asked the count.

  Maria Giovanna leapt forward and cried in a petrified voice, “No! Not that—you have no right!”

  But De Vincenzi didn’t hold back.

  “I’m saying”—his tone was icy—“and I have every right to say, Count, that last night your daughter dropped a phial in this house which had enough prussic acid in it to kill half a dozen people.”

  “Were you here last night?” the count yelled at Maria Giovanna. But it was a desperate plea more than anything else.

  “She was here,” said De Vincenzi, interposing himself between father and daughter, “while you were at the Savini or the Clubino.”

  The count and the inspector confronted one another.

  “How can you deny it if your daughter admits it?”

  The other man replied sarcastically, “She also confessed to having killed Garlini!”

  “Absolutely. And yet she did not kill him. We can agree on that. But what makes you certain, Count, that she did not kill him?”

  Marchionni hesitated very briefly before shrugging. “She wouldn’t have been able to.”

  “Why don’t you also say that she had no motive for killing him?”

  “What motive could she have had?”

  “I asked you!”

  “Only one person had any interest in killing Garlini.”

  “Is that what you think?”

  “Him!”

  “As a matter of fact,” De Vincenzi resumed with some force, “Aurigi, too, has admitted to killing him. Don’t you think two confessions of guilt for one crime are too many? And doesn’t it seem that your implacable desire to accuse Aurigi is… inexplicable?”

  “My daughter is melodramatically sacrificing herself for a noble love.”

  “Do you really think so? In any case, the sacrifice was pointless.”

  The two men’s discussion unfolded quickly, and Aurigi now addressed Maria Giovanna in a shaken voice.

  “But why? Why? Why did you want to do this? Why did they bring you here?”

  The young girl got up, so pale she was trembling. She staggered, answering as if in a trance, her words like those of a sleepwalker. All her conscious effort was focused on containing her inner turmoil.

  “Giannetto! Giannetto, I’m about to behave very cowardly towards you—by speaking up too late. If I’d spoken to you earlier, perhaps none of this would have happened.”

  De Vincenzi instinctively moved away. This drama, he knew, was moving like a living thing, and had passed into the hands of these two individuals tossed about by destiny. For a short time he could do nothing but watch. But he understood things well enough to list
en from a distance, his soul in his eyes.

  Marchionni wanted to intervene, but he couldn’t, restrained by a force beyond his control. He sensed that something new, different, even worse was about to happen.

  “What do you mean, Maria Giovanna?” Aurigi asked in terror.

  When the answer came, it was terrible.

  “I don’t love you, Giannetto! I have never loved you. I have always considered you only a friend… a good friend.”

  Aurigi, already physically exhausted, did not immediately take in the meaning of her words. Like a whining child, he asked plaintively, “Why are you saying this, Maria Giovanna? Do you, too, feel the need to renounce the past now?”

  “No. Have you asked yourself why I’m here? Well, I’ll tell you. I came because remorse drove me here. Remorse for having induced you to do what you did.”

  Aurigi wrung his hands, as if to banish an obsessional vision. He went towards Maria Giovanna and was about to shout when he noticed De Vincenzi and Marchionni. He kept quiet.

  The young woman continued.

  “Remorse for never having loved you and for letting you believe that I did… and for having misled you. It’s the truth, Giannetto. I was going to marry you only because you are rich… because I thought you were rich… and my father needed a rich man to help him.”

  The count clenched his fists. “Maria Giovanna, I forbid you!” he hissed.

  Maria Giovanna threw her head back. The more humiliated she felt as a result of her confession, the straighter and taller she stood.

  “What would you like to forbid me, Papa? I cannot remain quiet, I can no longer keep quiet! Do you think it won’t come out tomorrow? Now… Oh! No, they’re going through our lives… right into the depths of our souls… I would have preferred to keep quiet, too, I did for some time. But I see now that it is no longer possible to hide the truth.”

  She faced Aurigi once more.

  “Our family’s situation was precarious. A beautiful façade, and behind it ruins. A palazzo, servants, but the weight of the daily struggle to prop up this semblance of wealth nearly crushed us.”

  She went on, concealing nothing and overwhelmed by the pangs of the horrible confession she was making to Aurigi, whom she’d deceived and who she believed she’d driven to murder.

  “Until a few years ago, I ignored the tragic and heroic struggle my mother and father were making: land sold off here and there, economies… silver, pictures, expensive furniture, all sold off far from here and replaced with silver-plated brass and copies. Then came the time for my mother’s jewels to go, then debts.”

  She turned, pointing to her father, but there was nothing of the accuser about her.

  “He’s struggled with a courage I admire. He hid everything from me, he’s always hidden it. And now he’s suffering even more because he knows I know. My mother had to confess it all to me. She told me I was my father’s only hope! Nothing but a good marriage could save us—my good marriage. And so, since they thought you were rich, Giannetto, since they told me that only you could save us, I consented to marry you… I became your fiancée.”

  She’d said everything, but she added with a sob, “Only… only I hadn’t reflected that you actually really loved me and that sooner or later the moment would come when I would have to make this horrible confession to you.”

  Stooped under the weight of her words, the count heard Maria Giovanna out. When a sob interrupted her sentence, he suddenly found the strength to react.

  “Enough! Enough! Not a single word of what this crazy girl has said is true. As proof, there’s the sheer fact of the state in which Aurigi finds himself. Had I wanted a rich son-in-law, I wouldn’t have chosen him!”

  Another silence followed—full of anxiety.

  Maria Giovanna made a move towards her father. Tenderly, as if she were trying to convince him, she said, “Are you trying to say that he tricked you, Papa? That you’ve been hoodwinked? Yes, that’s true. We did believe Aurigi was rich; perhaps he himself did everything he could to make us believe it. But I feel as responsible as Giannetto for what happened in this house last night. That’s why I came here. It wasn’t right for me to abandon him; I couldn’t do it. I didn’t love him and I don’t love him, but he believed in my love to the extent that he’d have killed so as not to lose me.”

  Giannetto practically leapt at Maria Giovanna. He was livid, his face tense, his muscles pulsing as he struggled to contain the explosive violence of his passion. He grabbed her wrist and the voice that issued from him was inhuman, a hateful hiss.

  “How do you know I’m the killer? How can you say that? Even at this very moment you’re playing some sort of hellish comedy in order to get rid of me! You slu—”

  De Vincenzi watched the miserable argument between two absolutely desperate souls with detachment. Now he came up behind them. Conscious that Giannetto could no longer control himself, he took his arm and squeezed it so hard that Giannetto was forced to let go of Maria Giovanna’s wrist.

  “Quiet! Be quiet, Giannetto.”

  Violently, he pushed Aurigi as far away as he could.

  “Quiet!”

  When he saw Giannetto leaning against the wall, his eyes dull, his mouth suddenly downturned, he turned to Maria Giovanna and caught her just as she was about to faint. He gently led her to the sofa and made her sit down.

  Silence fell over the room once more.

  De Vincenzi was always the first to break it.

  Leaning over Maria Giovanna, he spoke tenderly, “Last night, Contessina Maria Giovanna, you were in this house.”

  The young woman bent her head.

  “Why were you here? You must tell me everything now.”

  But Marchionni intervened decisively.

  “I will speak, Inspector!”

  “No. Not yet,” said De Vincenzi, his voice anxious. “The moment will come for you to speak, Count Marchionni. But it’s not now.”

  “But it’s my right, by God!”

  “No! I’m telling you, only one man here in this room just now has the right to question, and that’s me. A crime has been committed, let’s not forget that. Though there may be other details surrounding this decisive fact, which have moved the wheels of social justice, other personal tragedies that to each of you may seem fundamental, or for each one of you seem the central fact, I must concern myself only with the crime and its author. Anything else matters to me only in so far as it illuminates the situation. You must keep quiet now, Count Marchionni, or I shall be obliged to escort you elsewhere.”

  Marchionni shut up.

  The inspector turned once more to Maria Giovanna. His voice was steady. “Contessina, you dropped a tube of lipstick in this room and a phial of prussic acid over there, in the bathroom. How I could ascertain that it was you who dropped the phial, I didn’t know. It could have been you or someone else. What I’m saying is that I had no proof. I immediately guessed it, but I had no proof until you yourself confessed to me. And now I know it was you. Therefore, you were here last night. You didn’t kill Garlini, but you were here. Do you want to tell me how and why?”

  Maria Giovanna raised her eyes to De Vincenzi, and in them he read a desperate plea.

  He answered her look. “Yes, yes, it’s both necessary and essential. Anything that can still be saved will be saved only if you speak.”

  The young woman said with a sigh, “I came here to meet Garlini.”

  “You knew that Garlini would be here in this house at midnight?”

  “Yes.”

  De Vincenzi was about to ask another question, but he looked at Giannetto and hesitated. Then he made up his mind.

  “Did Garlini know you were coming?”

  Aurigi jumped to his feet. “No! What are you saying? Maria Giovanna knew about Garlini through me. She’d noticed that I’d been worried and agitated for several days, that I was seriously distressed. In a moment of excitement last night at the theatre, not knowing how I was going to pay Garlini more than a half million,
I told her everything… my situation… the appointment with Garlini at my house… the time, and that I would have to pay Garlini the total that night. I got him to wait until midnight, although he wanted the payment yesterday afternoon. Seeing my ruin as inevitable, I confessed to Maria Giovanna in a moment of weakness that I’d asked Garlini to come to my house at midnight in order to—”

  His voice broke down and it was De Vincenzi who continued coldly, “Keep going! To kill him. Keep going.”

  “Yes,” said Aurigi. “I wrote him a note that afternoon, telling him I was counting on his promise to wait until that night, and telling him to come, because I was ready to honour my obligation and pay him the sum. Garlini had to file the end-of-the-month balance yesterday, and if my overdraft had appeared on it I would have been ruined, so I wanted to ensure that he would hide it. I was ready for anything.” With a grimace, he said: “Even to kill him… but not in here, naturally, I’m not such an idiot! I would have done it outside. There you have it.”

  De Vincenzi stood in front of him, looking him straight in the face.

  “And Signorina Maria Giovanna knew this?”

  “Yes. My nerves were shot, I had a moment of weakness. In the afternoon there’d been a terrible scene with him—with Count Marchionni. At La Scala, I lost control of myself when Maria Giovanna questioned me. I told her everything and then fled the theatre… and came here.”

  The inspector summed it up in a frosty voice. “However, you did not kill him.”

  “It was too late! I never carry a watch. I thought it wasn’t even eleven-thirty, and yet I got here and saw by the pendulum clock over there that it was half past midnight. There was no one in the house. I thought Garlini had been and gone, after ringing the bell futilely. I waited until a quarter to one, and then I left. I thought I was going crazy. I walked around the city without knowing where I was going… I felt like the cold was doing me good, but I was suddenly overcome by mortal exhaustion. I needed to think about nothing, to sleep, to forget, to erase myself. So I came to see you at the police station. I had no idea where to go at that hour. I was afraid of going back home, afraid of being by myself. In the back of my mind, I thought you would protect me if I were near you, and I wouldn’t kill anyone. I can’t explain it to you, but that’s how it was.”