A Rich Full Death

by Michael Dibdin

  Saturday passed, and Sunday: two days, like most of those which make up a life, so featureless and devoid of incident that they blur into one another, forming one undistinguished lump of time. I lolled around my rooms, stared out of my window, leafed through musty old books, elaborated a thousand impossible schemes, lay on my sofa and gazed up at the ceiling with its elaborate design of concentric circles. I saw no one and no one came to see me. I almost ceased to exist, reduced to a mere licked whimpering spirit hiding in its corner, more than half in love with easeful death.

  But such a state could not last, and when Monday dawned bright and clear and sunny I shook off this unhealthy inactivity and determined to escape from the grey walls of Florence and fill my lungs with some country air. There is a stables some little distance from my house, and there I went and hired a gig for a modest sum, and stood in the sunlight and smoked a cigar while the stable lads hitched my vehicle up, allowing myself to be diverted by the sheer vitality of the scene-all the coming and going occasioned by the presence in the same yard of a poultry shop where two frowsy girls stood plucking fowl, a wagon-maker’s where a new cart was being painted, a smithy at his bellows, and a cheap inn for the peasantry attached to the stables. All this at the bottom of a well, as it were, with lines of washing strung overhead from one back-balcony to another, and caged canaries chirping away like mad-and through it all a patch of pale delicate blue sky just visible.

  It was a week to the day since I had undertaken the journey to Siena to verify Joseph Eakin’s alibi, and by dint of brooding upon everything that had happened since then, I found myself taking the same road past the Guidi Palace (I gave it hardly a glance) to the imposing Porta Romana, where as usual I was held up for a lengthy period by the press of bullock-carts laden with vegetables and hides and demijohns of oil and wine, for everything that comes to market here must still pay a stiff tax at the city gate, as in the Middle Ages.

  Once outside the walls it is unusual to see another vehicle, and thus I was free to enjoy to the full the beauties of the road, which are considerable even at this time of year. The gentle slopes of reddish-brown soil were superbly offset by the olive trees, with their elusive shade of grey-green-though the mystery, somehow, is as much in the texture of the colour as its shade-which, together with the whole of the pale blue sky I had but glimpsed before, made up a very pleasing composition. It was moreover one of those days when the clarity of the air makes crystal seem murky by comparison. You feel that if only your eyes were good enough you could count the buttons on a shepherd’s coat five miles away, or reach out and pick up the team of miniature white buffalo ploughing that distant hillside.

  My mood, however, was darkened by the comparison I was bound to make between the last occasion I had driven that way, as Mr Browning’s trusted confidant, and my position now. This impression was strengthened when I stopped to eat at the same inn as before, where everything was of course unchanged, as it has been no doubt for the past three hundred years: the same food, the same wine, the same dog, the same peasants. Nothing had altered but my situation. Was there no help for that? Could I find-or make-no way back?

  After my stop at the inn I turned off the high road, and headed north and east on little farm-tracks winding over the hills towards the Arno. I was reluctant to return to Florence. Whilst I remained out in the country my fate remained as it were in abeyance, and I sought to frustrate it as long as possible. And so I made my way across the valley by backways and forgotten lanes, right around the city to Fiesole, where I went to watch day turn to night from those immemorial slopes set with villas and long rows of cypresses: a landscape exactly fitted to the human scale, with the wild sublimity of the Apennine peaks behind to put all that barely-achieved perfection in perspective.

  The sunset proved to be magnificent-a broad band of brilliant crimson spread right across the valley westward to the sea, cut into by the jagged edges of the coastal hills below, and melting away upwards by infinite gradations into a zone of pure gold which aged to a pale verdigris, and then flowed imperceptibly into the most delicate translucent rose, before cooling to azure which in turn deepened, almost overhead, into a rich indigo canopy flecked with glinting stars and artfully arranged fluffy cloudlets streaked with grey shadows and pink light from the invisible sun. In short, the whole affair was quite in Salvatore Rosa’s best manner, and there I stayed, lost in admiration, until it grew dark.

  Down in the valley Florence had vanished beneath a thick layer of mist, out of which a few of the taller towers and domes rose up like the remnants of a drowned city. I went downhill towards it as towards the surface of a moonlit lake, and when I reached the shore it was with something like dread that I saw that the road continued down into those grey depths, and that I had no choice but to follow.

  I got home safely, however, and was groping my way up the stairs towards my front door, when I heard someone move in the darkness ahead of me. Instantly I stopped, all the hairs on the back of my neck bristling up-a most extraordinary and unpleasant sensation. The next moment a door opened on the next landing up, where a lonely old nobody named Hackwood ekes out a dreary existence with a cat for company. He had opened the door to put this beast out for the night, and it thus remained open only a few seconds-but during that time a shaft of light fell down on to my landing, and reflected back from the toes of two highly-polished black boots standing against the wall near the top of the stairs.

  That was all I had time to see before darkness came rushing back, and blind panic seized me. I dashed forward, fumbling with keys that would open any other lock in the universe but my own! Then a hand gripped my arm, and I stifled a scream as a voice whispered, ‘Don’t be alarmed, Mr Booth! It’s only me!’-a voice I recognised with an overwhelming sense of relief as that of Robert Browning.

  Somehow the door opened, and we got inside. My nerves were jangling like a pianoforte which some demented virtuoso of the modern school has taken to playing with an axe. Fortunately the lamps were all burning, and in their peaceful light my nightmare terrors were quickly dispelled.

  Something in this fact, however, seemed to strike my visitor, who had gone off into a brown study, murmuring ‘That’s strange!’ When I enquired what he meant, he replied, ‘The lamps-who lit them?’

  ‘There is no mystery,’ I explained. ‘My servant left them burning. He knew I would be home shortly, and that I have a horror of the darkness.’

  ‘I do not mean that,’ Browning replied. ‘I was referring to that night at the villa. Don’t you remember? Beatrice-Mrs Eakin’s maid-said that when she returned in the evening she found the lamps burning. But Mrs Eakin was dead by five o’clock, when the rain stopped-and at that time it was still light. So who lit the lamps?’

  I must confess I reacted very impatiently to this belated bit of reasoning.

  ‘What does it matter now?’ I protested. ‘We know who killed Isabel, and he has paid with his life. I really have no wish to dwell on the topic any further.’

  Browning looked at me strangely, and changed the subject, apologising for having startled me. He explained that he had called upon me several times already that day, and on this occasion had been about to give up when I had returned, and he had thus appeared to be lying in wait for me like a foot-pad. He followed this apology with another, much more strongly felt, for his behaviour at the cemetery: it had been but one symptom, he said, of a black reaction which had seized him after the exertions of the previous week.

  I nodded politely, and said nothing.

  ‘To tell you the truth, Mr Booth,’ he went on, ‘I am not near as much enamoured of life in Florence as I once used to be. Indeed, I should leave for London or Paris tomorrow, if such a thing were possible. But with the state of my wife’s health that is of course out of the question, and so I make a virtue of necessity. Which is not very difficult, in a sense: the place has charm, no doubt about it. But after-how long is it now? — almost eight years, it does sometimes all begin to seem a little quiet, a little
-dare I say? — provincial

  ‘So you see this bad business, for all its horrors, gave me what I badly needed-a change, a lift, call it what you will. I should not say so, perhaps, but there it is: it diverted me! And when it came, as I thought, to a conclusion, the effect was to plunge me into the blackest depression I have known for many months-and you suffered the consequences, I fear. I do not know if I can do anything to make amends, but since you were kind enough to mention your interest in my work, I have brought you this.’

  He handed me a volume, upon whose spine I read the title Sordello.

  This piece might aptly be described as an acid test for aspiring admirers of my poetry,’ Browning said sardonically. ‘Its reception almost broke my heart, for I had the highest hopes of the piece; and although I can now see its faults plainly enough-though not how to remedy them! — I still have a special place in my heart for it, as for a deformed child. Please accept it, with my most humble apologies.’

  I was speechless with joy and gratitude. But to my chagrin, instead of continuing to talk thus about his work, Browning turned away-as if to put this matter behind him-and began to pace the floor slowly, hands clasped behind his back.

  ‘And now I have something very serious to tell you,’ he went on-as though his poetry were not serious! ‘Yesterday I was invited to dine by William Bulwer, who was the British Minister here until his retirement recently. In the course of the meal one of the other guests remarked to our host that he was doubly grateful to be there, since his own table was saddened for him by the fact that poor Cecil DeVere had sat at it on that very day a week earlier, the very image of health and enviable good fortune.

  ‘You may imagine with what feelings I listened to this news. I managed to keep my wits about me to the extent of enquiring if it had not been on the same day that Mrs Eakin had yielded to whatever tragic urge had impelled her to self-destruction. This was established, and Bulwer then perorated at some length upon the cruel and unexpected blows which fate deals out, and the whole conversation moved on to an elevated plane-but not before I had ascertained beyond the shadow of a doubt that on Sunday the fifth of February Cecil DeVere had been a guest at a formal dinner, commencing at three o’clock and ending not earlier than half-past six; during the whole of which time he was in the company of eleven illustrious members of the diplomatic community in Florence, and therefore could not by the wildest stretch of the imagination have had anything whatever to do with the death of Isabel Eakin!’

  10

  Now then, Prescott, a test! How do you think I responded? Rack your brains and pronounce. Did I gasp and gawp? Hold my tongue but look volumes? Clutch my temples and fall writhing to the floor? Invoke the gods?

  I did none of these things. I laughed-a fierce, hard, brittle, convulsive laughter, akin to vomiting. Strangely enough, Browning took this bizarre outburst quite in his stride.

  ‘Oh, you may laugh!’ he cried. ‘You have my leave. I quite deserve it. I agree that I look absolutely ridiculous, with all my fine theories.’

  I tried to protest that I was not laughing at him-but the fit shook me so uncontrollably that in the end I had to leave the room and go and bathe my face with cold water to calm myself. When I returned I apologised to Browning for my hysterical outburst, and asked him if there was no possibility of error in what he said.

  ‘It seems almost impossible that he could be innocent,’ I exclaimed. ‘Everything fitted together so perfectly!’

  ‘Indeed. And the irony of it is that evidence has come to light which appears to confirm my original theory in other respects. For example, Isabel Eakin and DeVere were lovers-of that there is no further doubt.’

  There was no risk of my laughing at this.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘It came out over the port. Despite the official line, no one at the Embassy seems to doubt that DeVere killed himself in despair at his mistress’s death. One of the attaches who was a close friend of his said that DeVere had bragged to him about it. He said-but perhaps you would prefer to be spared the details. Mrs Eakin was a friend of yours.’

  ‘No, no-tell me!’

  Browning fell to perusing a small landscape I like to think may be a Carlo Dolci.

  Well, it seems that DeVere boasted to this friend of having made a conquest of Isabel Eakin. He was that kind of man, apparently-to boast of it, I mean. He even showed him a letter from Mrs Eakin, couched in the most passionate terms. He in turn described her as “frisky”. He also-are you quite sure you want me to go on? — mentioned that she had a mole near her right nipple which was extremely sensitive. DeVere further asseverated that he was in the habit of-’

  ‘Stop!’ I cried, for I could stand no more. If he had not already been dead, I swear I would have rushed out and killed DeVere there and then.

  ‘Very well!’ I went on wildly. ‘He is dead, and a good riddance of bad rubbish, say I! What of it?’

  ‘Well there is just the small question of who killed him,’ murmured Browning.

  ‘Killed him? But he killed himself, didn’t he? You just said as much.’

  ‘No-I said that that was what the Embassy believe. But they do not know about the locket. Only Mrs Eakin’s murderer could have had possession of that, and if DeVere did not murder her then the locket must have been left on his table by the person who did, after he also killed DeVere.’

  I hid my face in my hands, trying to think.

  ‘But why? It doesn’t make sense,’ I protested. ‘What had DeVere got to do with it?’

  ‘I have given that some thought,’ Browning replied, ‘and I can see two reasons why the murderer might have wanted to kill DeVere. Firstly, for the same reason that he placed the knife with Eakin’s name in the garden of the villa-to divert suspicion from himself. Let us note in passing that he must therefore be someone who would otherwise naturally have come under suspicion. He evidently chose DeVere partly because his known liaison with the dead woman made the latter a convincing suspect.

  ‘But there is another reason, which relates to that story DeVere told you about having seen someone prowling about the Eakins’ garden-which we may now presume to be true. You were no doubt not the only person he told about his interesting experience. Suppose, therefore, that amongst others he unwittingly told the murderer himself — who of course had been in the garden that very day, placing the knife where I later found it. Imagine the tremendous resonance of DeVere’s words in the vaults of a guilty conscience! Each bland expression seems to imply a wealth of unspoken knowledge; each smile and glance seems to say “I saw you! I know you!”

  ‘Now suppose that the murderer, to find out how much DeVere knows, asks for more details. What did he look like, this intruder in the garden? “Oh, about your height and build,” DeVere unwittingly replies-it was true, after all! Now the murderer is sure! DeVere knows, and he must silence him at once. He did so the very same night, and when we went to see him in the morning, it was too late.’

  I rose from my chair and went over to confront Browning.

  ‘Very well,’ I said. ‘We have been wrong, despite our best efforts. The time has come to be honest and admit our limitations. This affair has got completely out of hand. Murder is no business for amateurs, and that is all we are. But there can be no doubt now that we are facing a devilishly cool opponent who has already struck twice with complete impunity, and who may even now be planning further outrages. Let us forestall him by going to the police at once and making a clean breast of it! Let us tell them everything we know, everything we suspect, and leave them to decide what action to take. They may be successful or they may not, but we at least shall have done our duty.’

  A good speech, I thought it at the time, level-headed and responsible to a fault. Browning’s response, to my amazement, was to shake his head slowly.

  To take such a step now would place me in a most awkward position, Mr Booth,’ he replied sadly. ‘Not that I disagree with you! On the contrary-I wholeheartedly echo your sentiments. Would I h
ad listened to your advice in the first place! But you know the Grand Duke’s police-they see plots and conspiracies everywhere. If we go now and tell them that we have kept this matter secret for a week, they will arrest us both on the spot. And the law here is that once arrested you are considered guilty unless you can prove your innocence.’

  ‘But surely you can prove your innocence,’ I objected. ‘You have an alibi for the time of Isabel Eakin’s death, have you not?’

  Again the shake of the huge head.

  ‘I was out for a walk. Worse, I walked up to Bellosguardo-as I often do. Several people must have seen me there. No, it will look very bad for me, I fear.’

  ‘Why, then let us invent an alibi for you!’ I cried enthusiastically. ‘I shall simply say that you were with me.’

  ‘No, that will not do either,’ Browning pointed out, ‘for you really have an alibi, proved by Mr Jarves, and plainly there can be no question of dragging him into our conspiracy. No, there is no help for it-I am in a very unenviable position. If the police learn that I have wilfully concealed information from them, and that I have no alibi, then Commissioner Talenti will avenge himself royally for my former intransigence, and this time neither my foreign status nor my friends will be able to save me. I shall be locked up as an accessory after the fact, and what will become of poor Ba then?’

  So that was it! Browning’s unmanly pusillanimity was explained: it was not for himself‘that he feared, but for his wife, who is utterly dependent upon him. And it is certainly true that once in prison here, it is no easy matter to get out again. One hears terrible tales of men who have spent half their lives in gaol, awaiting trial on some trivial charge (of which, perhaps, they are subsequently found to be innocent). Even commoner is the plight of those who have no relatives or friends to bribe the gaoiers and supplement the meagre rations provided, and who almost starve to death. In short, Florence is mediaeval in more than one respect, and the prospect of bringing oneself to the attention of the law is so dismal that one would do almost anything to avoid it.