A Dead Man in Naples

by Michael Pearce

  She found it difficult to speak.

  ‘. . . things that I think now he was deliberately keeping from me. That betting slip. That dreadful woman, the Marchesa. I knew about her, of course, but I did not suspect that their relationship was . . . as I think now that it was. And then . . . then that other woman. Not an Englishwoman. Not even . . . not even . . . an Italian!’

  ‘Miss Scampion –’

  She held up her hand. ‘I know what you are going to say, Mr Seymour. That I should not jump to conclusions. But how can I not conclude when the evidence was before my eyes? I saw them, Mr Seymour, I saw them! But I refused to believe it. I kept on denying it to myself. But then when he died it was as if his death suddenly unlocked a flood of things that had been there all the time and that I had refused to see, but that all came crashing down on me when we moved to Naples.’

  She looked at Seymour. ‘And so, Mr Seymour, I shall not be sorry to leave Naples. Especially now after what you have told me. I shall be leaving at the end of the week after completing my arrangements. There are one or two things in the house that I still have to dispose of but that should not take long. Father Pepe is coming over later to take the rest of Lionel’s things. And then I shall say my farewells.’

  She held out her hand to Seymour. ‘Thank you, Mr Seymour, for enabling me to keep my promise. For I am sure you have had a hand in all this.’

  She turned to Chantale. ‘And thank you, my dear, for your patience with a silly old woman.’

  She gave Chantale a quick, unexpected kiss on the cheek. ‘I am sure that you will be more successful in managing your life than poor Lionel was. May I wish you every happiness together? And I hope that your husband will bring you as much comfort as he has me.’

  Bruno was waiting for them in the pensione when they got back.

  ‘It is all right, is it?’ he said. ‘You saw her go?’

  ‘We watched,’ said Seymour, ‘and saw her go. And I don’t think anyone else was watching too.’

  ‘God be praised!’ said Bruno, sitting down and putting his head in his hands.

  ‘She will be safe now,’ said Maria.

  ‘I hope so, I hope so.’

  ‘You love her, don’t you, Bruno?’ said Maria gently.

  He raised his head. ‘Yes. But – but she doesn’t love me.’

  ‘It may come, Bruno.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘It won’t. It won’t. I know that now. I had hoped . . . But she told me.’

  ‘She may change her mind.’

  ‘She won’t.’

  He looked at Chantale. ‘You were right, Signora. You tried to tell me but I would not hear. She has a mind of her own, and it is not my way inclined. She said there was too much distance between us. And she did not like what I did – those I worked for. She said it would come to evil. And she was right.’

  ‘Bruno –’ began Maria.

  He shook his head. ‘There is blood on my hands, Maria. She didn’t know it, but there is.’

  ‘You say these things, Bruno, but –’

  ‘You say these things, Bruno, ‘No, Maria. She was right.’

  ‘At least,’ said Seymour, ‘there is not now going to be more blood on your hands.’

  Bruno gave him a startled look.

  ‘No,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Bruno,’ said Seymour, ‘what was the job they were going to ask you to do?’

  ‘I – I cannot say.’

  ‘I will say it if you don’t.’

  Bruno looked at him in anguish.

  Seymour nodded.

  ‘Go on,’ he said.

  ‘To kill Jalila,’ Bruno said.

  ‘Bruno!’ gasped Maria.

  He turned towards her. ‘It is true, Maria. But I would never have done it.’

  ‘Of course you wouldn’t, Bruno! Of course you wouldn’t!’

  ‘Why did they think you would?’ asked Seymour.

  ‘Because in Naples you do what they tell you,’ said Bruno simply. ‘And –’

  He stopped.

  ‘There was another reason, wasn’t there?’

  Bruno shuffled.

  ‘It was a Neapolitan matter, Signor,’ he said awkwardly.

  ‘A question of honour?’

  ‘They thought so,’ said Bruno bitterly. ‘And others thought so. That is important, because if the world thinks so, then your own honour is called in question.’

  ‘And your honour was called into question?’

  ‘Not just my honour,’ said Bruno hoarsely.

  ‘Tonio’s?’

  ‘Tonio’s. And hers.’

  ‘Jalila had done something to bring your honour into question?’

  ‘Yes. I could see that it would,’ said Bruno agitatedly, ‘and so I spoke to her. I warned her. But she was angry with me and said there was no question of . . . of what I thought, and others were saying.’

  ‘And did you believe her?’

  ‘Yes. Yes!’ said Bruno passionately. ‘My heart spoke, and I believed her.’

  ‘And you were right, Bruno!’ said Maria hotly.

  ‘Yes, you were right,’ said Seymour.

  ‘But . . .’ said Bruno.

  ‘Yes,’ said Seymour. ‘But . . .’

  ‘I knew she was pure,’ said Bruno, ‘and couldn’t be anything but pure. And true to Tonio. Nevertheless, what had been seen, had been seen, and could not be denied. It couldn’t be her fault. So . . .’

  ‘It must be his,’ said Seymour.

  ‘Yes. He must have tricked her, taken advantage of her innocence. And ignorance of Naples.’

  ‘It did not happen as you suppose, Bruno,’ said Seymour. ‘He was innocent, too. He was trying to help her. As someone had asked him to.’

  ‘They were seen –’ began Bruno.

  ‘They were both warm people, Bruno. And perhaps they went further than they should. But in their hearts they were as innocent as you know Jalila to be. He was just giving her money. From someone else. As he had been asked to do. That is all it was.’

  ‘Who is this person?’ demanded Bruno suspiciously.

  ‘You know him.’

  ‘Why was he giving her money?’

  ‘For the same reason as he had given money before. Through you and Marcello.’

  ‘Alessandro?’ said Bruno incredulously.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It cannot be!’ said Bruno.

  ‘Nevertheless, it was so,’ said Seymour. ‘Why he sent her money again at that point, I do not know. Perhaps because she had written a letter to thank him, and it had reminded him of her. And he was pretty sure she would be in need. He had no great opinion – unjustly, perhaps, – of your ability to support her. So he sent her money.’

  ‘By the Englishman?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Bruno looked stunned.

  ‘Whom you killed, Bruno, believing that he had wronged Jalila.’

  ‘God forgive you, Bruno!’ whispered Maria.

  ‘Was it so?’ gasped Giuseppi.

  ‘It was so,’ said Bruno.

  ‘But . . .’ said Seymour.

  ‘But?’ said Bruno, turning to him.

  ‘That wasn’t the only reason why you killed him. Or even the main reason.’

  ‘No,’ agreed Bruno.

  ‘You killed him because you had been told to kill him.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Bruno. ‘That is so. I hesitated when they told me. And they mocked me and said: here is a real virgin! He will not kill even to save his honour, and the honour of his friend! So I killed.’

  ‘You went up behind him,’ said Seymour, ‘when he was standing at the Porta del Carmine. You knew he often went that way after going out on his bicycle, because you had seen him when you were collecting in the street behind the Porta. Perhaps you had even seen that he sometimes stopped at the Porta. You hid behind the pillar and then stabbed him. And then you ran down the street and hid in a basso. Where you were seen, Bruno. As people will tell.’

  ‘This cannot be, Bruno!’ said Mari
a.

  ‘It can, Maria. And it was as he says.’

  Seymour took Bruno first to the consulate, where he picked up Richards, and then to the central police station, where he gave Bruno into custody: in Richards’s presence, because he wanted an official witness and knew that a consular one would be harder to deny, should the Camorra try to intervene. Although he thought it likely that, for someone as minor as Bruno, they would not even bother.

  ‘But why,’ said a still bewildered Richards, as they walked away from the police station, ‘did they get involved in the first place?’

  ‘They were asked to,’ said Seymour, ‘by someone they knew, who had probably done favours for them in the past and was in a position to do more. He himself had come from Naples and was, I think, a pretty tough customer. He might even have worked for them in the past and they could have gone on working together since. I suspect they knew each other pretty well, so when he asked, they had no problem in agreeing.’

  ‘But why did he want them to kill Scampion for him? Scampion! Good heavens, a man less likely to get across someone to that extent, it would be hard to find!’

  ‘He knew something, you see. He had found it out by accident while visiting the army base, and he was about to reveal it to the press. Your informant was quite right. Only what she – and it was a she, wasn’t it? The Marchesa? – didn’t realize was that it was not the general press he was going to reveal it to but a specialist press, the bicycling press, where, because of the vicissitudes of Italian politics, and, more particularly, bicycling rivalries, Scampion knew it would receive maximum attention.

  ‘He had discovered, you see, that someone was shipping arms out to Libya under the guise of them being bicycle parts. And shipping them to the Libyans, Italy’s enemies. You can imagine the furore it would have caused if it had come out. Heads – and the heads of big people – would have rolled. Big business interests, with all sorts of high-level connections with politics, were involved.

  ‘It had to be stopped. And this was the way it was decided to stop it. By arranging for Scampion to be murdered. And once it became clear that he had been transferred to Naples, the way of doing it was obvious.’

  ‘You knew,’ said Seymour accusingly: ‘so why didn’t you stop it?’

  ‘I knew it was possible,’ said the Marchesa. ‘But that was all. When Vincente told me he’d blurted it all out to Alessandro, about the package, I tried to get him to shut up. I told him to forget about it. I mean, what the hell difference would a small quantity of arms make: given that a war was going on. But it was too late. He had already told Alessandro enough to allow him to guess the person he had to thank. And silence.’

  The Marchesa shook her head.

  ‘I knew it was possible,’ she said, ‘but I couldn’t believe, somehow, that it would happen. That Alessandro would actually do it. I didn’t, in fact, think he would until it was too late.’

  She was silent for a moment. ‘When I heard, well, I was very angry. I tried to think what I could do. It would be no good going to Alessandro and having it out with him. What would that achieve? No one would believe me. The police were in his pocket. All that would come of it would be a blanket indifference and possibly a hole in the sea for me.

  ‘But I had to do something – I felt I had to. I couldn’t just leave it. Not little Scampion. So I tipped off your Ambassador.’

  ‘But Alessandro, the man who really killed Scampion, will get off scot-free?’ said Chantale.

  ‘I am afraid so,’ said Seymour. ‘I won’t be able to pin it on him.’

  But someone else had been able to.

  Vincente came rushing up.

  ‘Where is Luisa?’ he demanded.

  ‘I was talking to her just a few moments ago –’

  ‘Where is she? Does she know? Has anyone told her yet?’

  ‘Told her what?’

  ‘That her husband is dead!’

  ‘Alessandro?’

  ‘He was found yesterday. The news has only just got here. It came to me at the base because – because, well, the army has its own system of communications, you know, and everyone knows about me being Luisa’s cousin, and that Luisa was here –’

  ‘Just a minute,’ said Seymour. ‘Alessandro is dead?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘And do you know . . . how he came to die?’

  ‘Yes! Oh, it is awful! He was murdered. Stabbed. While he was sitting in his office. They found him lying there. On the carpet!’

  ‘And . . . do they know who did it?’

  ‘A man was seen. Apparently Alessandro knew he was coming. They had instructions to let him in. Otherwise they might not have done. He was a rough-looking man, you see. Of course, Alessandro saw all sorts of people – but he had given instructions and so they let him in. And then the man came out and rushed down the stairs, but they did not go in – they were waiting for Alessandro to tell them, you see – but he didn’t, and after a while, a long while, someone – and there he was! Murdered! Oh, what will Luisa think? What will she say?’

  What she said was:

  ‘So!’ With shock, and then, after a long, hissing intake of breath, again: ‘So!’

  She shook herself, as a dog shakes itself after going into water.

  ‘So someone caught up with him at last! Well, it was bound to happen sometime. You could not go on as he did. Eventually it would catch up with you. He always said it would. “In Naples,” he would say, “you are always only one minute away from the knife.”’

  She shook herself again. ‘But I thought he was . . .charmed. Could get away with anything. That was because he always did get away with things. Always! “One of these days you won’t,” I used to tell him. “Of course, I won’t,” he said. “It’s luck. You have a run with Lady Luck and then the bitch deserts you. She always will desert you in the end. You know that, if you are a Neapolitan. But you can have a good run before the end. You know that, too, if you are a Neapolitan. And so it’s worth it.”’

  The Marchesa gave her shoulders a shake. ‘It was a good run with him, the lucky bastard! But in the end his luck ran out. As it always does.’

  She turned away.

  ‘I hated him,’ she said, over her shoulder. ‘And loved him. And he hated me, and loved me. I suppose. And now he’s gone! In a typical way, a cheating way. When no one was expecting it. I always thought the police would catch up with him first. But there was no chance of that. He’d got them worked out. Coming from Naples, he would have. So there was never any chance of that, really.’

  She stopped. ‘Unless, of course, they came from outside and he’d not had time to bribe them.’

  She looked at Seymour.

  ‘Are you anything to do with this?’ she demanded.

  ‘I hope not,’ said Seymour. ‘But I think I know who is.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Bruno. ‘I did it. When I went up to Rome. I went to him in his office, I thought he might not see me so I sent in a message. “I am the one who dealt with the Englishman.” That was the message and it was enough. He had told them to let me in.

  ‘“What is your name?” he said. “Bruno,” I said. “I remember now,” he said, “you are a friend of Marcello’s.” “And Tonio, too,” I said. “You asked for my help,” he said, “and I gave it. Why do you come to me now?” “Because there is some mistake,” I said. “You helped me with Jalila before; and now it is said that you have ordered her to be killed.” “Things have changed,” he said, “since I agreed to help her.” “She is still Tonio’s widow,” I said.

  ‘He sat there for a moment playing with a pencil. Then he said: “Who sent you?” “No one sent me,” I said. “I came to you man to man to put this right.” “You do not come from friends in Naples, then?” “No,” I said. “They don’t know.” “Bruno,” he said, “in my day Neapolitans were not fools. How has it come about that things have changed?”

  ‘I did not know what to say. He looked at me curiously. “Is it true,” he said, “that you are the one w
ho saw to the Englishman?” “Yes,” I said. “Well, perhaps you are not quite as stupid as I imagined,” he said.

  ‘He thought. And then sighed.

  ‘“Or perhaps you are,” he said. “Bruno,” he said, “did you think this up between you? Or did she think it up for herself?”

  ‘“I don’t know what you mean,” I said.

  ‘“You didn’t decide between you to put the squeeze on me? No, I see you didn’t. Then she thought it up all by herself.”

  ‘“She didn’t think anything up by herself,” I said. “She’s not like that.”

  ‘“But she did, Bruno,” he said. “She wrote to me.”

  ‘“I don’t know anything about that,” I said.

  ‘“No, I’m sure that you don’t,” he said. “You’re a good boy, Bruno. Now go home and forget all about her.”

  ‘“She’s Tonio’s widow!” I said.

  ‘He sighed. “For Christ’s sake,” he said. “Don’t you understand? She knows something that I don’t want people to know. That Englishman told her. That was why he had to be removed, so that he couldn’t tell people. That was why my friends had to call on you in the first place, Bruno. I had hoped that would be an end of it. But then I got this letter. She said that she had been talking to him. That was all right. I had told him to, I had told him to give her some money from me. Well, that was a mistake, and not like me. But I thought, well, maybe she needed it, and for Tonio’s sake . . .

  ‘“But, you see, she said she had been talking to the Englishman. And that set alarm bells ringing. What did they talk about? Marcello had told me she was a good girl and a true wife – hell, you had told me that, too – so I knew it couldn’t be what you might think. And then something she said in the letter – that something was on his mind. Hell, I knew what was on his mind. It was on my mind, too, and I knew I had to do something about it. I had to stop it getting around. And what she was telling me was that it had got around, that she knew about it. She didn’t actually say it but what she meant was obvious: it would get around unless I coughed up.”

  ‘“She’s not like that,” I said. “She’s an innocent.”