The Marshal and the Murderer

by Magdalen Nabb

  'That's right. But only when there's nobody else there, so nobody knows. You won't tell him?'

  'No, no . . .'He thought for a moment.'He doesn't come to see you here.'

  'For a while he did but I don't think he'll come any more, not now.'

  'Why is that?'

  'He liked to look at the Signorina but now she won't be coming any more, will she?'

  'No, she won't be coming any more.'

  'Will they put her in the cemetery?'

  'Yes.'

  'That's where they put my baby. Will she be put near my baby?'

  'No, a long way away, near her own house.'

  'That is a long way, she told me. But not across the sea.'

  'No, not across the sea. Did your brother come last week to see the Signorina?'

  'Yes. He used to say how pretty she was. He used to say that she liked him and sometimes she used to go and see him. She used to smile at him, and at me, too. She used to smile at everybody.'

  'That's right,' the Marshal said, 'she did.'

  'Even Robiglio, and he's a spy.'

  'Robiglio? He came here, too?'

  'No.'

  'Then how do you know?'

  'My brother told me.'

  'Well, perhaps she didn't know he was a spy. Do you know what a spy is?'

  'Somebody wicked. He was sick afterwards, my grandma told me. She used to say he was as sick as a dog afterwards and that he tried to hide his face from her and that the whole room was full of blood and they drank all the wine in the house.'

  'Who did?'

  'They did.'

  'You don't know who they were? Do you know why the room was full of blood?'

  'No.'

  'You weren't here?'

  'Yes, I was.'

  'But you can't remember what happened?'

  'I was asleep.'

  The Marshal would have been tempted to dismiss all this as the ramblings of a lost mind, but he had a double reason for not doing so. First of all, he had thought the same thing about her story of the baby which had turned out to be true, and secondly because he remembered that Robiglio had been involved in something nasty during the war. If this was the something concerned, then there must be a more reliable source of information somewhere and there was no point in pursuing it with Tina. Perhaps it was this vague and disturbing story that caused the feeling of anxiety he had felt yesterday to return and obliterate his morning optimism. A feeling that if they didn't get there in time something was going to happen. He got to his feet.

  'Are you going away?' Tina loked about her as if hoping to find something to distract and delay him as the picture of her baby had done, but he put on his hat and moved to the door.

  She shuffled after him pulling at his coat sleeve.

  'Aren't you going to touch me?'

  'What?'

  'Aren't you going to do something to me?'

  'No . . .'

  He heard her draw in a sharp breath and her shuffling steps came to a sudden halt. He was already in the corridor and he turned to look down at her, surprised that his answer should have caused such a strong reaction. But he was mistaken. Her habituated ear had caught a sound he hadn't noticed and her face was red with fright.

  The front door was opening and silhouetted against the bright light from outside the Marshal saw a small dark figure holding something bulky. When the door closed and they were all enclosed in the evil-smelling gloom he saw that this must be Tina's husband standing as still as a suspicious animal and staring at them in silence, a dark, rat-like little man in a greasy black beret, carrying a big bundle of grass under one arm.

  'Good morning.'

  The marshal's greeting was left hanging in the air and nobody moved. Then the small man's mouth widened in a threatening leer directed at Tina and showing two widely spaced brown teeth. Without a word, he turned and opened the door of the room where the animals were kept and vanished.

  The Marshal went to the front door and opened it, turning to take his leave of Tina, but she, too, had disappeared. He went out, blinking into the daylight and put on his sunglasses.

  There was still no sign of Berti and he hovered there a moment outside the studio, watching the traffic stream by and wondering whether to wait.

  A muffled, high-pitched sound behind him made him turn and look back at Tina's house, frowning. He saw nothing but the little black cat, or rather its eyes, glittering in the gloom behind the bars. Perhaps he had imagined the noise. He strained his ears but there was nothing but the dull sound of the traffic. This place was getting on his nerves. The anxiety was rising inside him no matter how he tried to reason it away. But the noise came again and this time there was no possibility of his having imagined it. A frightened wail, desolate and barely human. His first thought was that the hare he had seen fattening in the barrel was being slaughtered, but he knew it wasn't true even before he remembered the big bundle of grass. Then he heard a man's voice raised in anger though the words were indistinct. He caught only the odd phrases:

  'How often have I told you? Well? Well? Imbecile! Keep your stupid mouth shut!'

  Then the terrified wail again.

  He took a few steps towards the door and then stopped. If he went in there and intervened - even supposing somebody opened up for him, which was unlikely - he would only make matters worse. He couldn't stay there for ever and once he left . . . What was the use?

  He got into the car. He couldn't stand to wait here for Berti. Niccolini would have to see to it.

  But as he drove round the big curve the first thing he saw was Berti, coming down the steps of Moretti's factory with his slow spidery walk and a stack of plates in his arms. Parked below the wall in front of the terrace was a truck, and the big man in the woollen hat was lowering a huge red pot down to someone standing in it surrounded by heaps of straw. The Marshal braked, putting on his indicator. The only way to get over there was to turn in in front of Robiglio's gates as Berti had done. He glanced down the drive at the big house with the seven lavatories but no one was looking out today, as far as he could see. He turned and drove across to Moretti's, parking in front of the truck. The blue car was parked behind it and Berti was loading plates into the boot, but the Marshal didn't approach him at once. Having got out of his car on the side near the wall, he was able to see something which had been invisible from the road because the truck had been in the way. Someone had used a can of red spray paint, probably during the night, to write in huge uneven letters along the wall below the terrace the word MURDERER.

  The Marshal was standing at the window in Niccolini's office looking down at the square. The rainwashed bronze statue of the partisan shone in the winter sunlight, but for the rest the town had the air of someone facing the day unwashed and uncombed after getting reluctantly out of bed. The sunshine only served to accentuate the crumbling facade and peeling shutters whose brown paint had faded almost to grey under the frequent rains. In Niccolini's office, at least, everything was spick and span. The walls were newly whitened, the desk polished, and a tall rubber plant of military bearing stood sentry in one corner of the floor.

  'That's done!' announced Niccolini, bursting into the room rubbing his hands together. 'And I think we've done right. I'm sure we have. Always best to be on the safe side.'

  The Marshal's anxiety subsided a little. He suggested to Niccolini that they put a guard on Moretti's factory, and Niccolini, when he heard about the accusation sprayed on the wall, had agreed that it might well be necessary, saying, T don't like the sound of that, I don't like the sound of it at all . . .'

  By this time a. squad car was on its way to the factory and the Marshal felt able to recount something of what he had discovered since the two of them had parted company the previous day. His recent chat with Berti outside the factory had produced nothing concrete. Berti had not denied that he had picked up the girl from Moretti's on previous occasions to drop her at the restaurant, since it was on his way home, but swore he hadn't gone there the day she d
ied.

  'Why didn't you, if you usually did?'

  1 didn't feel like it. No reason in particular. She could look after herself for once, I thought.'

  'Did you? Well, you were wrong.'

  'Be reasonable, Marshal, be reasonable. I couldn't have known.'

  Which was no doubt true, and there was little the Marshal could say.

  'Do you reckon he was lying?' asked Niccolini, after listening without comment.

  'Yes and no.' The Marshal hesitated. 'For some reason I believe him when he said he didn't go there that day. He didn't hesitate for a second in denying it, almost as if. . . as if he were on absolutely safe ground, but . . .'

  'But?'

  'With Berti I never get the feeling that he's telling me lies, more a feeling that he's not telling me anything. Somehow or other he manages to skate round the truth . . . After all, he did say in the first place that the girl probably went to Moretti's that day. What he didn't tell us was that he knew she'd gone there, that it had been agreed beforehand. And that makes me wonder if his not picking her up there had also been agreed beforehand.'

  'Well, you could be right, but why?'

  'So as not to be in somebody's way, maybe, somebody who had plans for her that day ... It seems Moretti used to go round to Berti's place when she was there, ogling her.'

  'I wouldn't have thought it of him. But in any case, Moretti was at the restaurant that day, not at the factory.'

  1 know. Nobody was at the factory if we're to believe all we're told, but somebody killed the girl, even so.'

  'Hm. You've seen to the business of informing the parents?'

  I've left it in the Captain's hands. I went to the flat

  It wasn't easy now to explain that business of the girl's odd behaviour if only because it was seen through the eyes of that good-looking young man, Corsari, whom the Marshal hadn't liked at all - he couldn't explain why that was, either. He did his best but he didn't make much of a job of it, and he couldn't have been more amazed when at the end of his jumbled and hesitant account Niccolini sat back and slapped a hand down on the desk.

  'Well I'll be damned! Trust you to get at the truth. I said you were one for noticing things and I was right! I wouldn't have thought I could be taken in in the same way twice, but it looks like I'm a bigger fool than I thought, and at my time in life, too, when I've had more women than hot dinners!'

  That must be a lot, the Marshal thought, amazed at this new aspect of his energetic colleague. But what did Niccolini imagine he had noticed?

  I'm not sure I'

  But Niccolini rolled over him happily.

  'The first time it happened to me was in Rome - I'm talking about a good few years ago, and in those days this uniform - and even more so full dress uniform -drew the women like flies round a honey-pot. Don't get me wrong, I'm fond of my wife and my boys are everything to me, but I've never turned down a pretty woman yet, I love them all. Well, this one was an officer's wife and a risky proposition, but she was a beauty though a few years older than me, a real charmer. It began on a "bring me - fetch me - carry me" basis and I thought to myself, "All right, I'll go along with you, the moment will come." Well, the moment came all right, when she asked me to drive her home one day and invited me in for a drink. We even got as far as the bedroom before she sprang it on me. There I was all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed ready to uphold the honour of the army when she turns around and says, "I'm afraid you're wasting your time if that's what you have in mind. Not that I have anything against men as friends, but they do nothing for me in erotic terms. As far as that's concerned, I prefer women." You could have knocked me down with a feather. I laugh about it now, young fool that I was, but I can tell you I was livid, livid! She had to find somebody else to do her fetching and carrying after that!'

  'But the husband . . .' ventured the Marshal, his solemn eyes almost popping out of his head.

  'Preferred little boys. Marriage of convenience. And if that young man you told me about hangs around with two lesbians, then he's probably neither flesh nor fowl himself, whether he knows it or not.'

  'So that's what they found out when they were invited to dinner . . .'

  'And I can just see their faces.'

  'Good God ... I think, if you don't mind, I'd better give that young man a ring. I wouldn't like to be mistaken on something like this.'

  'There's no mistake, you mark my words, but ring him by all means if you want to.'

  The Marshal fished out the slip of paper from the note-book in his top pocket and tried the school number, since it was morning. Corsari wasn't there, having rung in to say he was taking the day off. He tried Signorina Stauffer's number and Corsari himself answered the phone.

  'I thought I should stay with Elisabeth,' he explained. 'She's in rather a bad way.'

  'Did you call a doctor?'

  'Yes, and he gave her something so at least she got some sleep during the night. I'm wondering whether to suggest she goes home once she's fit to travel, if that's all right with you.'

  'I'd rather she didn't leave for the moment, especially as I need to take a written statement from her as soon as she's feeling well enough ... I wanted 124 to ask you about Signorina Stauffer's relationship with Monica Heer . . .'

  'Yes? What about it?'

  'I . . .' The Marshal glanced over at Niccolini, wishing that he'd asked him to deal with this. 'Were they . . . Was it an intimate relationship - I mean, were they . . .'

  'Lesbians? Of course. I thought you'd realized that from the beginning.'

  'I don't see why,' the Marshal defended himself.

  'Perhaps not, although from our conversation I must say you gave me the impression — you even asked me if the quarrels caused by Monica's bringing men home were caused by jealousy, so . . .'

  'I see. And that's what Signorina Stauffer meant by her warning. She considered her friend's behaviour risky?'

  'Yes.'

  'Thank you.'

  The Marshal put the phone down and rubbed a hand over his face, embarrassed and very annoyed with himself.

  Niccolini was busy searching through a file.

  'You're not the only one who's been busy - here we are. I rang the Medico-Legal Institute first thing this morning - too early of course for anything more than the on-the-spot findings of yesterday, since it'll be a few days before they've done any analyses. At any rate, we know she died at lunch-time. The doctor reckons towards one o'clock but to cover himself he's saying officially between twelve and two. She ate something almost immediately before death, certainly bread, probably a sandwich of some sort, we'll have to wait for an analysis to know exactly - but that does tie in with Berti's having planned in advance not to take her to the restaurant. I doubt she'd have eaten a sandwich at that time otherwise. There's no question that she didn't die where we found her and that she wasn't wearing the jeans we found her in - or at least they certainly weren't fastened. She wasn't a virgin, so she must have given it a try at some point before going the other way - and that brings us to the rape business: there are scratches on the breasts and thighs which suggest that it was attempted but there's no trace of its having been successful. Nothing to analyse under the nails which were scrubbed clean, so if she put up a fight it wasn't much ofone, didn't have a chance.'

  'Funny. . .'murmured the Marshal. 'Usually '

  'Wait, there's a good reason. She took quite a severe blow on the back of the head before she died, so it's possible that she was knocked down and lost consciousness right at the start of the attack. What is funny is that after that, whoever attacked her didn't succeed in raping her but, maybe infuriated by her lack of response - this is only guesswork - not only strangled her but beat her head against something hard, probably the floor as there were no sharp corners involved, after she was dead. Now I don't know if that suggests to you what it suggests to me . . . What do you think?'

  'That he didn't have rape in mind, that he was expecting cooperation and was baffled and enraged not to get it. I suppo
se that's what you mean and it ties in with her behaviour. Even so . . .'

  'Yes. Even so, I'd say he wasn't right in the head to have reacted that strongly. Like a wild beast. Of course, people like that sometimes have the appearance of being quite normal until something provokes them. I've known cases before. Anyway, that's the lot for the moment.'

  Like a wild beast . . .

  '1 ought to tell you,' the Marshal said, 'that on my way here I also went to see Tina . . .'

  Six

  'I'll tell you what.' Niccolini was marching up and down behind his desk between the rubber plant and a filing cabinet in the opposite corner. "We need more facts and less gossip, that's what we need. I'm not just referring to Tina, either. I was thinking the same thing yesterday but with Robiglio in mind — and if it turns out there's a connection there, then all the more reason . . .'

  The Marshal's big eyes followed him back and forth, wishing he would sit down but realizing that he had already required him to be silent and listen, and that to ask him to be still as well was asking too much. So he said nothing.

  'I want to know exactly what Moretti's deal with that peasant farmer was over his sister. I want to know what Sestini meant by saying you can't get away with it twice, and I want to know what our friend Robiglio was up to during the war because it just might stop him getting elected if it's raked up now, and who knows whether that young girl found out something -what do you think?'

  'I think,' said the Marshal slowly, 'as I've already said . . . that there's something more recent . . . Still, I agree with you, we do need facts, only I'm afraid nobody's going to give us any.'

  Niccolini stopped marching and smiled broadly.

  'Now there you're wrong. I made my mind up on this yesterday, and when I make my mind up I get busy. There had to be somebody in this town who wasn't involved in any of its feuds and scandals and I've found him. It was my brigadier's mother who put me on to him. She's lived here all her life and though she's too young to remember much about the war she was able to tell me where to look. Dr Arnolfo Frasinelli's our man!' He sat down at last, rubbing his hands together with satisfaction. 'Eighty-six years old but they say he's as quick as a twenty-year-old, knows the history of everybody in this place, especially as for years he was a GP, and takes no nonsense from any of them. We're going along to meet him shortly, and with any luck he'll be able to explain at least some of this lot.'