A Dead Man in Naples

by Michael Pearce

  And that would have been easy. Many of the bassi had half-doors like those of a coach house, which folded open and remained open all day. Often they opened on to the street, indeed, were often pulled half across the street, protruding like fences or walls and marking off not just the working space for each basso but also a kind of extra living space for the family. Children played there, the wife prepared her meals there. Elderly relatives sat there, for most of the day, moving only from sunshine in the early morning to shade at noon.

  And, everywhere, hanging from windows and balconies, dangling sometimes into the bassi themselves, were clothes, newly washed and quickly drying, but almost at once, especially when, as was usual, there were small children in the family, as quickly replaced.

  Hard, then, to see a man hurrying down the street.

  And he might not even have been hurrying. He might have taken his time in a basso and then sauntered out some time later.

  Even so, with all these people about, someone must have seen him. But how could Seymour prise that out of them? In London it would have been simple. (‘Just making a few routine inquiries.’) But here he was not a policeman, he was just a stranger casually chatting.

  And in Italian, too! Seymour was fairly fluent in Italian but his command of the language wasn’t quite up to this. For a start, the Italian they spoke in these back streets was not the Italian he knew. It was dialect, a Neapolitan language of its own. He had met it at the snail restaurant. The carpenter and the acquaiolo spoke it habitually. But they also spoke, and shifted into it for his benefit, a standard Italian. The people he tried speaking to in the street were nearly incomprehensible, especially if, as was often the case, their reply came from a mouth practically without teeth.

  But that was not the most difficult part. The difficulty was that as soon as he got near the subject of the killing (‘Just at the end of the street!’) they clammed up. Was it, he wondered, simply the usual tactic of the poor, to keep your mouth shut and your head down when something came along that might cause trouble? Or was it usual reaction of a close-knit community to a stranger and, especially, a foreigner? Or was it something else?

  As he came out through the gate of the Porta he saw the Marchesa coming across the piazza towards him. She was with a group of smartly dressed young men.

  ‘Why, Signor Seymour! How nice to see you!’

  ‘And nice to see you, Marchesa!’

  ‘You see,’ the Marchesa said to the young men, ‘he speaks Italian!’

  ‘Why shouldn’t he speak Italian?’ one of them said.

  ‘Because he’s an Englishman. And a policeman. He has come out here to find out who killed Scampion.’

  ‘I am here on holiday,’ said Seymour. ‘With my fiancée.’

  ‘A most charming and beautiful woman,’ said the Marchesa. ‘I recommend you all to make her acquaintance. Especially as you seem to have mislaid your own fiancées.’

  ‘It’s no joke, Luisa,’ said one of the men.

  ‘You have left them behind, I know. To guard the hearth and await your return. But cannot you do as sailors are supposed to do? Why not have a fiancée in every port?’

  ‘We might have other things on our mind when we get to Libya,’ one of the men said. Seymour thought he recognized him. Umberto, was it? One of Vincente’s bicycling friends.

  He looked around, Vincente wasn’t there. He could well have been, though. Seymour guessed that they were all young officers.

  ‘Oh, you are serious!’ said the Marchesa. ‘But, then, you have just been to Mass.’

  ‘So have you, Luisa,’ one of them pointed out.

  ‘No, not me,’ said the Marchesa. ‘I just went there for the singing.’

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t say things like that, Luisa!’

  ‘That’s the trouble with Mass: it depresses you for the day,’ said the Marchesa.

  Several of the men sighed.

  ‘We have just been to a Mass,’ the Marchesa told Seymour. ‘For those going out to Libya, and for those who have already gone.’

  ‘And for those who have already gone and now will stay there,’ said one of the men quietly.

  The Marchesa, conscious of the reproof, turned away and began talking to some of the other officers.

  Two of them came up to Seymour.

  ‘Is it true, Signor? That you are a policeman?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And have come here to find out who killed Signor Scampion?’

  ‘Among other things, yes.’

  ‘I hope you do,’ said the man he took to be Umberto. ‘He was a good friend of ours.’

  ‘A bicycling friend?’

  ‘Not just a bicycling friend. We met in other ways, too. But not only here. We knew him in Florence.’

  ‘And in Rome,’ said the other young officer. ‘I used to meet him at parties. But I didn’t really get to know him until I got to Florence and he started to come to our meetings.’

  ‘Meetings?’

  ‘We used to meet regularly. A group of us. To discuss things. Serious things, I mean. Not just any old things. It wasn’t just a social club.’

  ‘What sort of things did you discuss?’

  Umberto laughed. ‘Life. Italy. Religion.’

  ‘The big questions,’ said his friend.

  ‘You are not, by any chance, members of the Sursum Corda?’

  ‘Well, yes, we are,’ said Umberto, surprised. He turned to the other officer.

  ‘Isn’t that interesting?’ he said. ‘Here’s another Englishman who knows about us.’

  ‘Another? Scampion was the first, I take it. Was he actually a member?’

  ‘Not a member, no. He couldn’t be. There is a religious issue. But he used to come to our meetings.’

  ‘He was a serious man,’ said the other officer, ‘and we hoped that in time he would come to see things as we did.’

  ‘He saw so many things as we did,’ said Umberto. ‘It was surprising in an Englishman. Because the things seemed so deeply Italian. The need for Italy to raise its head again. And redeem itself.’

  ‘After that disgraceful war!’

  ‘The Abyssinian one?’ said Seymour.

  ‘Call it by its proper name,’ said the other officer. ‘Defeat: that’s what it was.’

  ‘And you hope that you can, perhaps, put that right through the war with Libya?’

  ‘We will put it right.’

  ‘In that case I am surprised. That Signor Scampion should identify so strongly with your cause.’

  ‘We were surprised, too. But, you know, he was a man of generous enthusiasm. And I think he was fired in the way that we were fired. By the same ideals.’

  ‘And by the same person.’

  ‘The same person, yes.’

  ‘We were fortunate in that our soirées were attended by a very remarkable man, a poet and a visionary.’

  ‘Visionary, yes. He was certainly that. We were all inspired by him. And I think Signor Scampion was, too.’

  ‘It wasn’t just a narrow thing, you know.’ said Umberto. ‘Not just a question of Italy. It went much wider. It was a question of recognizing ideals and values that have been lost. And I think that struck a chord with Signor Scampion.’

  ‘He was a good man.’

  ‘I could hardly believe it when I heard.’

  ‘I could hardly believe it when ‘These Neapolitan streets!’

  ‘And when he was on an errand of mercy.’

  ‘Errand of mercy?’ said Seymour.

  ‘So it appears. The lads were talking about it after the race last Saturday. You see, he had been out with us that morning, the morning he was killed. Normally, we have a glass afterwards, but this time he didn’t want to. He said there was someone he had to see. “A lady?” someone said jokingly. “Yes, a lady,” he said, but quite seriously.

  ‘Of course, we all started teasing him. “No, it’s not like that,” he said. “It’s something I’ve been asked to do. To help her.”

  ‘Of c
ourse, that didn’t stop the teasing. But he wouldn’t say any more. He just smiled, and then rode off. But afterwards, when we heard, we remembered it. And some of the boys felt we ought to look into it. But others said no, it was a private matter, perhaps even a question of a lady’s honour. So we didn’t. You haven’t come across the lady in question, have you? In your investigations? Because if you have, and something has been left uncompleted, we’d like to know. If it’s a question of money, say, we’d like to chip in. We feel we have a certain responsibility, you know. He was one of us. Almost.’

  ‘It’s going to be big,’ announced Giorgio.

  ‘If it happens at all,’ said Giuseppi.

  ‘Oh, it’ll happen,’ Giorgio assured him. ‘Both sides have issued their challenges and somebody from the Reds is coming down today to approve the course.’

  ‘The Yellows have an unfair advantage,’ said Giuseppi. ‘They know the course. In fact, they’ve been riding it for weeks.’

  ‘The Reds know the course, too,’ said Giorgio. ‘They ride that way when they come down.’

  ‘It’s not the same thing,’ said Giuseppi.

  ‘No, it’s not,’ put in Maria unexpectedly. ‘The Yellows have been racing it. The Reds have just been riding it.’

  ‘Well, they seem to have accepted it,’ said Giorgio. ‘And if they don’t like it, they can turn it down this afternoon.’

  ‘There’s a lot of interest in the race in Naples,’ said Francesca.

  ‘A lot of money put down on it, too, I’ll bet,’ said Maria.

  ‘The fools!’ sneered Giuseppi. ‘They’ll lose it all.’

  ‘Only if they’re betting on the Reds,’ said Francesca.

  ‘It’s their duty to bet on the Reds!’ said Giuseppi fiercely.

  ‘It’s your duty not to bet at all,’ said Maria. ‘How much money have you got? Give it to me!’

  ‘I need some!’ protested Giuseppi. ‘For a cup of coffee.’

  ‘For a glass of beer!’ said Maria. ‘No! Give me your money.’

  Grumbling, Giuseppi turned out his pockets. Maria scooped up the change and took it away.

  ‘I’ll lend you some, Grandfather,’ said Francesca. ‘Then you can bet. You’ll have to repay it, of course.’

  ‘Well, that’s not unreasonable.’

  ‘At a suitable rate of interest.’

  ‘Capitalist!’ cried Giuseppi.

  ‘Francesca, you cannot do this!’ said Giorgio, shocked. ‘Lend money to your grandfather at interest.’

  Lend money to your grandfather at interest.’

  ‘I lend to you, don’t I?’ said Francesca.

  ‘Yes, but that’s quite different.’

  ‘I thought you were the man with money, Giorgio?’ said Giuseppi slyly.

  ‘I am,’ said Giorgio. ‘Only sometimes I am short.’

  ‘Are you going to bet, Giorgio?’ asked Giuseppi.

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘On the Yellows, I suppose?’

  ‘My heart is with the Reds,’ said Giorgio unctuously. ‘However, my head is with the Yellows.’

  ‘You’d do better to listen to your heart,’ said Giuseppi.

  ‘And lose my money? Actually,’ said Giorgio, a little shame-facedly, ‘I’ve already lost my money. I bet Lorenzo that a pigeon wouldn’t shit on Pietro’s head. He was standing just in front of the Palazzo, you see, where there’s a lot of pigeons up on the pediment. I thought I was safe. Pigeons don’t usually shit on people’s heads. This one did.’

  ‘Do you want me to lend you some money, Giorgio?’ asked Francesca.

  ‘Well –’

  ‘At a suitable rate of interest,’ said Giuseppi.

  Francesca took some paper and began to write down calculations.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Deciding how much interest I’m going to charge. And what the odds are.’

  ‘What!’

  ‘Since I’m lending to both sides, I ought to be able to make a profit,’ said Francesca, ‘no matter who wins.’

  ‘Jesus, Francesca!’ said Giuseppi and Giorgio in unison.

  Seymour was still thinking about how he was going to get information out of the inhabitants of the bassi. It wasn’t just the language difficulty: it was also how he could somehow manage to outflank their suspicions. What he needed was some kind of pretext for asking his questions, a pretext which they would all understand and be sympathetic to.

  At last he thought he had hit on it.

  He went down the narrow street behind the Porta del Carmine until he came to the water shop. Like the snail restaurant, it was not so much a shop as a base. The acquaiolo had parked his wares in the middle of the street, just where the street took a useful bend and from where the acquaiolo would command the approaches in both directions, visible, and audible, to all.

  His wares, like those of the snail-shop owner, again did not amount to much. They consisted of a huge tank which during the day was pulled out across the street, forcing the traffic to slow, and at night was pushed back against the wall. The tank contained the acquaiolo’s working supply of water for the day and fed a small urn from which he actually supplied his customers. The urn stood on a little table and was lovingly polished every day. In front of it was a row of enamel cups. Beneath the table were the goatskins in which the acquaiolo fetched his water, in the morning on a small donkey, during the day on a yoke carried across his shoulders.

  He greeted Seymour with a big smile.

  ‘How are things?’ he said.

  Seymour took him by the arm, looked up and down the street, bent closer and said, in a low voice: ‘I’m working on it.’

  ‘Working on . . .?’

  ‘The numbers. I’ve been thinking over what we said. It was so close that I think I could be almost there. There must be just some tiny feature that I’ve not allowed for. Something I’ve not taken into account on the numbering.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘That’s just the trouble!’ said Seymour. ‘I don’t know. But what I’ve come round to thinking is that it must be something to do with what happened on that day, the day the Englishman was killed. It could be anything. The last person the man met as he was running away afterwards. A basso that he went into. Children – could it be anything to do with children, do you think? I mean, they’re all over the place. That could be significant.’

  ‘Well, it could,’ said the acquaiolo doubtfully. ‘But –’

  ‘You see, that’s the problem. I just don’t know. It could be anything. So I’ve got to ask around. What I feel is that if I hit on it, it would jump out at me. It would sort of announce itself.’

  ‘Well, it might,’ said the acquaiolo. ‘But –’

  ‘What I feel I’ve got to do is ask around. Generally, because it might be anything. I’d like to ask people if they remembered anything about that day. Anything that stood out. Or, perhaps, did not stand out particularly. Just anything. But details. I feel it’s got to be a detail, something particular. That’s what the number’s looking for, isn’t it? It’s got to be some detail that makes it stand out from other numbers.’

  ‘Well, yes, I suppose –’

  ‘But if I go down the street asking people for any details that they remember from that day, they’ll think I’m loony, won’t they? But if I could find a way of letting people know why I’m doing it, they might be sympathetic.’

  ‘Oh, I think they would! But you mustn’t tell them too much, you know, or they’ll all be doing it.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t want to tell them too much. I won’t tell them anything specific. Just that I’m trying to look for a number.’

  ‘I think they’ll certainly be interested. And I’m pretty sure they’ll want to help, once they know.’

  ‘But, you see,’ said Seymour, ‘I’m worried because I’m a stranger here. I was wondering if you would mind putting in a word for me. Just let them know what I’m doing and why I’m doing it.’

  ‘I’d be glad to,’ said the acquai
olo.

  Just at that moment the carpenter appeared, on his way to the snail restaurant, and they decided to go with him.

  Seymour explained the situation.

  The carpenter understood it at once.

  ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘The number is a good number. I’ve said that from the start. It just needs something adding. And it’s got to be a particular, hasn’t it? I mean, it would be no good if it was just “a man”. It’s got to be a particular man.’

  ‘That’s why I thought: a man running away,’ said Seymour.

  But it didn’t bite.

  ‘Of course, it doesn’t have to be a man,’ said acquaiolo. ‘It could be a woman. Your wife, for instance,’ he said to the carpenter.

  ‘No, I don’t think so,’ said the carpenter.

  ‘It could!’ the acquaiolo insisted. ‘Theoretically, I mean,’ he added hastily.

  ‘No, I don’t think so,’ said the carpenter. ‘And I’ll tell you why. The number has got to fit in with the other numbers. And my wife wouldn’t fit in with anything.’

  ‘The other thing it could be,’ said Seymour, lowering his voice, ‘although I don’t quite know how to get this in, and maybe it’s best not to go down that route anyway, is –’

  He dropped his voice to the merest whisper, so that they had to put their heads in close to him.

  ‘– Our Friends.’

  They started back.

  ‘No,’ said the carpenter hastily. ‘No, I really don’t think –’ ‘Best not to go down that route,’ said the acquaiolo.

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t,’ said Seymour. ‘But if you think about it, it’s not such a bad idea.’

  ‘It’s a very bad idea,’ said the carpenter.

  ‘But that’s just the point,’ said Seymour. ‘Everyone knows it’s a bad idea. So maybe it’s a good one.’

  ‘I’m not sure that I’m altogether following you,’ said the carpenter.

  ‘No one else is going to go down that road, are they?’ said Seymour. ‘And maybe that’s what the number wants. Otherwise it would be paying off for everybody.’

  ‘Yes, well, I still think it’s a bad idea,’ said the carpenter.

  The acquaiolo, however, was becoming more enthusiastic.

  ‘You could be on to something,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘It has to be something special doesn’t it? And Our Friends –’ ‘Just keep your voice down a bit,’ said the carpenter.