The Death of an Irish Consul

by Bartholomew Gill

  “Where will you be? Remember my Italian is weak.”

  “Right now, I’m going to make several phone calls.” McGarr slapped a fifty-thousand-lire note on the bar and told the barman to hold it until he finished his calls, one long distance to London.

  O’Shaughnessy finished his glass, bought a newspaper, and sat at a sidewalk table from which he had a full view of the door to the Palazzo Ricasoli. Battagliatti would not slip out the back. He had too much pride for that.

  Over one hour and two glasses of white wine later, McGarr managed to reach Carlo Falchi. He had had to insist that Falchi’s carabinieri secretary give him a list of possible phone numbers at which he might reach the commandant. On the seventh try, Falchi answered. “You call at an inopportune moment. I’m in conference with the Danish professoressa from the tour bus. We’re discussing a matter of great intercultural urgency,” said Falchi, “namely, the rehabilitation of a carabinieri commandant’s manly pride.”

  “But your secretary told me this was the number of your barber.”

  Falchi sighed, “What is a poor romantic man to do—ice maidens, all of them. Not one had anything but sangfroid. I wonder why they come to Siena, what they expect to learn without meeting her people?”

  McGarr could hear a male voice sniggering in the background. He guessed it was Falchi’s barber.

  “How did Rattei get along with Francesco Battagliatti?”

  Falchi snorted into the phone. “He didn’t. He doesn’t. Who do you think encouraged Mussolini to exile Battagliatti during the thirties? They’ve been feuding since they were students at university. Never in public, mind you, but it’s one of the well-known oddities of the Italian political scene that every student of our government must learn. On national occasions, when they meet on the platform, they’re scrupulously polite to each other, but behind the scenes they’ve been knifing each other in the back for decades. If the Communists ever become a part of a coalition government in Rome, one condition will certainly be the removal of Rattei from ENI and maybe even the dissolution of that organization. Nothing would give Battagliatti greater pleasure and nothing would hurt Rattei more.”

  “But the Christian Democrats aren’t likely to invite the Communists into a coalition.”

  “No, but the Christian Democrats are no longer as strong as they once were. Other coalitions are becoming increasingly possible.”

  McGarr then could hear Falchi asking his barber to be most discreet about what he was overhearing.

  The barber then replied that a patron should trust his barber even more than his confessor, since the operations the former conducted were so much the more vital, the neck being connected to the head, as opposed to what the priest did for the soul, which was insubstantial and could not grow a beard. “What’s more,” the barber added, “I speak no English whatsoever, since those words seem to foul the chin with spittle, which is unsightly and therefore bad for business.”

  “Could Enna Ricasoli Cummings be the cause of their original squabble?”

  “Very likely. Rattei is—how shall I term it?—hot-blooded. And that woman! She’s still a goddess, even today.”

  “But would she be attracted to a man like Battagliatti?”

  “There is no accounting for taste. He makes up for his size in other ways. He’s one of the most powerful men in Italy today.”

  “But he doesn’t exactly act like a Communist.”

  “Because communism in Italy is more of a conversational stance, an ideology, than a firm belief. A few days ago I visited some university students who are so poor they live in a basement that doesn’t have a single window. They publish a weekly Communist broadside—you know, scurrilous rhetorical attacks on anybody with money or power or both, and it’s usually the Americans who come in for the most abuse. They had failed to register for a mailing license. While I talked to them, one of their other roommates returned from having been home in Piacenza over the weekend. He promptly unpacked his bags and showed me two new, flashy suits, a pair of shoes, and a clock radio that his family had given him. And these kids are about as hard-core Marxist as you can get in this country. They call themselves something special, you know, Cinese——”

  “Maoists.”

  “That’s it.”

  Liam O’Shaughnessy entered the restaurant and walked rapidly toward McGarr.

  “Do you know if Battagliatti can fly a helicopter?”

  “No. I do know he can fly an airplane, though. He was in the Russian Air Force from ’thirty-nine until he showed up back here in ’forty-four. He got a commendation from Stalin for his exploits. He’s been trying to bury that information for years. It seems he’s ashamed of his association with Stalin.”

  “You mean, he’s got blood on his hands?”

  “Some say so, but it all happened so many years ago and in Russia.”

  “But, would you say he’s a man who could kill, if he had to?”

  “He definitely gives that impression, doesn’t he? He’s got a mind like a steel trap. I don’t think he’d let anybody get in the way of what he wanted. Why all the questions about him? Surely you don’t think——.”

  O’Shaughnessy put his hand on McGarr’s shoulder. “Battagliatti’s bodyguards are readying his car in front of the palazzo. Looks like he’s going someplace.”

  “Where would Battagliatti be going today?” McGarr asked Falchi.

  McGarr then could hear Falchi asking the same question of his barber, but in Italian.

  “Piombino. The Communists are having a rally there about ten o’clock.”

  More talk in the background.

  “Yes, ten. When Battagliatti attends, they’re always right on schedule. Are you going there? What’s this all about anyhow? You’ll keep me informed of any…developments, won’t you? By the way, you’re certainly not planning to leave town without coming to dinner? Remember, I haven’t yet had the very great pleasure of speaking to your wife again.” Falchi chuckled libidinously.

  The barber, who had claimed to know no English, was also laughing in the background now. He said, “Cuckoo, cuckoo!” in a high voice.

  McGarr hung up. He mused that it must be exhausting to be an aging Italian male. Sex preoccupied so much of every day, awake or asleep. They seemed loath to let the subject rest.

  He called the Excelsior Hotel and left the message that he and Liam would be in Piombino at least until midnight. He also asked McKeon to contact British Customs and Immigration to learn how long Battagliatti had been in England last.

  He then called London and after only a short while managed to reach Hugh Madigan. “Anything new?”

  “McKeon get in touch with you about the Rattei development?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well—here’s another thing that just turned up. The lawyers—Loescher, Dull, and Griggs, Forty Parliament Square—who are the ones that queried the Panamanian government, represent somebody who is Italian and in oil. How’s that strike you, Peter?”

  “Like a very nice piece of detective work.”

  McGarr could tell Madigan was gloating. “It’s going to cost you, my friend.”

  McGarr didn’t respond.

  “Well,” Madigan demanded, “nothing more?”

  “Like what?”

  “You mean you’re not going to put that together for me? Remember I’m stuck in this office most of the day working on business and, you know, other dreary things.”

  “Such as your accounts receivable, no doubt.”

  “This is the first real piece of police work I’ve had in a year.”

  “Anytime you want bracing police work twenty-four hours a day, I can offer you a job in Dublin for what I would estimate as one-third your present earnings.”

  “This is a two-way street, you know, Peter.”

  “I’m well acquainted with it, Hugh. It’s got a big pound sterling marker on the street lamp.”

  “It’s not that and you know it. I’ve got kids and we’re settled here.”

&nbs
p; McGarr, one of whose fondest wishes was to have Madigan working for Special Branch, asked, “But does it feel like home there in London, Hugh?”

  Madigan said, “I don’t know why I talk to you.”

  “Business,” said McGarr. “It’s only business and very good at that. Think about it, though, Hugh. Talk to Maisie about it too. Tell her I’ll fight for every farthing I can. The government will build you a house, say, in Rathfarnum. I can promise you every assignment that interests you. There’s hospitalization, retirement, all the things you’ve got to pay for yourself. There’s a very fine place for you here.”

  “In Siena?”

  “Ah—g’wan wid ya now,” McGarr said in Dublinese, and rang off.

  The drive from Siena toward Piombino via Chiusdino was pleasant. They passed through valleys of planted fields, climbed hills the slopes of which became cow pastures, then vineyards, then olive groves. In mountainous terrain, the undergrowth was thick and appeared thorny and Risèrva di Caccia signs were ubiquitous.

  The farmhouses they passed were all of a type. Faced with stucco, the living quarters were on the second floor with barn, stable, and kitchen—stoves and ovens—on the ground floor. The walls of these houses had been extended to form a courtyard. Larger farms had other stables, granaries, tool sheds, garages, and assorted outbuildings running off this to form a neat compound on the land. In color, the walls of the houses were raw sienna, or yellowish brown, while the ceramic roof tiles, which had been fired, were burnt sienna or reddish brown. Most shutters were green.

  And every farmhouse had poultry in the yard. There were chickens, geese, ducks, domesticated pheasant, and even turkeys, which, McGarr mused, were one of the best gifts the New World had given the Old. And somehow, barnyard fowl, which had been allowed to grub beneath olive trees and along the rows of the vineyards, had a distinctive and piquantly fresh taste. It was, of course, the cooks of Catherine de’ Medici who, bringing their foodstuffs and ideas for preparation from Florence to Paris, had laid the groundwork for the development of Parisian haute cuisine, than which, McGarr would be the first to admit, there was no gastronomy finer. But in the roasting of a plain barnyard chicken—póllo arrosto or coq au vin—so many elements were of importance: the diet of the chicken, its age (it must be young), but mostly its preparation. The care with which this simple dish was prepared was, to McGarr’s way of thinking, one very accurate measure of a civilization’s cuisine.

  But, checking his watch and finding it to be 4:00 P.M., McGarr decided to delay dinner until the usual Italian hour, 8:00 or so, and, after asking directions in an alimentari in Chiusdino, they pushed on toward Massa Maritima. On the road, they were told, they couldn’t miss Rattei’s villa.

  And surely the prospect of the villa set on a hilltop with a serpentine drive lined by ancient cypresses was magnificent. But rather than leave the hillside in park as, McGarr supposed, the original inhabitant had intended, Rattei had much of it under extensive and modern—the massive concrete vineyard pillars dotted the hillside—grape cultivation, with pasturage for sheep and goats where the terrain was rocky.

  After a forty-minute wait in the gatehouse that had been heavily bombarded and rebuilt recently, McGarr and O’Shaughnessy were admitted to the grounds. McGarr imagined that because of Rattei’s politics, the local peasantry had taken liberties with his property during the chaos that followed Mussolini’s defeats and absconder. After all, Rattei was an interloper from Rome and couldn’t have enjoyed a squirearchical relationship with the neighboring contadini.

  The villa itself was set on raised ground surrounded by extensive and towering ramparts, which the Fiat rent-a-car entered over a drawbridge. The interior courtyard was a garden of sculptured yews and a plethora of bright flowers that thrived with abandon in this warm, sunny clime. The gravel drive surrounded this and led to the house, which was pentagonal in shape and constructed of the ubiquitous Sienese brick that had aged to a delicate fawn color. Here and there—along the crenellated roofline, around one entire two-mullioned window that was bearing, as one would expect, a Sienese arch—McGarr noted the brick and mortar were new. The house too, he supposed, had been ravaged.

  They were led down dark, cool corridors, the walls of which were draped with unicorn tapestries that delighted McGarr, especially the one in which the white unicorn reared up in a much-flowered green field which hunters on horseback and baying hounds surrounded. Head and body of a handsome horse, hind legs of a stag, and tail of a lion, it seemed a doomed figure, too beautiful and rare. And too proud.

  A servant had to call McGarr twice to get him into the reception room. There Rattei and O’Shaughnessy awaited him.

  Rattei was seated in a towering chair placed at the middle of a massive oaken table. His back was to the window, across which drapes had been drawn, so that two fat candles roughly at either end of the table supplied the only light in the room. He wore only a dark blue silk dressing gown and slippers to match.

  “What is it you want, Mr. McGarr? You’ve interrupted my siesta.” He spoke in English.

  McGarr switched to Italian. “Such a lovely place you’ve got here, Signor Rattei. My wife would certainly enjoy taking a peek at your tapestries sometime.”

  Rattei sighed. “Certainly you haven’t come all the way from Ireland to admire my holdings or discuss your wife’s interests. She is, of course, welcome to examine my possessions anytime. As are you. Would you care for a little wine, an aperitif, whiskey?”

  “Wine, please. I trust it’s your own,” said McGarr, sinking into another chair only slightly less ornate, although tastefully so, than that in which Rattei sat.

  O’Shaughnessy took another one.

  The servant left the room.

  McGarr continued, “It’s always so reassuring to talk to a man who can offer you something which his very own land has produced.”

  Again Rattei sighed. He looked trapped, as though the prospect of a long interview with McGarr displeased him greatly, yet he said in a pleasant manner, “It seems every time I talk to you it is in a setting more distant from your jurisdiction.”

  McGarr replied, “Ireland is a wet, foul place. We have no wine.”

  The waiter poured McGarr and O’Shaughnessy goblets, which he handed them. The tray also contained a plate of cheese and sausage slices.

  “Not much sun, and certainly no women as beautiful as Enna Cummings.”

  Rattei motioned to the servant, who placed a goblet in front of him and poured some wine. The servant then left the room and closed the door. Rattei then said, “The Italian police released me because I proved to them: one, I was not in Italy when that person placed the money in the Monte dei Paschi; two, that the money did not come from my personal funds or those of my business concerns. I don’t ever need to carry large amounts of cash with me. My word is binding, everybody knows that. Also, my company is state-owned. The auditors are scrupulous about every penny.”

  The wine was an Italian ideal—it had a hearty red body but was not saccharine, it was musky without an aftertaste. Yet for all of that, it was light and McGarr could still taste the grapes. “Those who corroborated your whereabouts were doubtless the same men we talked to that day aboard the oil rig.”

  “Of course—mine is not a noble name, signor. I must work for all of this.” He indicated the room.

  “Which makes your men love you all the more.”

  “I only hope they love me.”

  “So much so they’d even lie for you?”

  “I will never ask them to do that.”

  “But they would.”

  “Certainly.” Rattei sipped from his glass. In the shadows that the candles made he looked his age, which was fifty-eight. It was more his body that belied the years. “But then they would feel a certain contempt for me. I had used them badly, inexcusably.”

  “But this crisis would have passed. There are always new friendships to be formed, greater loves to be joined.” McGarr smiled slightly. “Your wine is excellent.”<
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  “Have some sausage. It’s a special recipe and not Tuscan.” Rattei pushed the plate toward McGarr, who rose slightly to take a few slices.

  Rattei said, “I am not a chameleon, signor.”

  “No—I think of you more as a unicorn.”

  Rattei cocked his head a bit. His ears pulled back. McGarr had struck a nerve. Rattei said, “I disagree. I am nothing more than a man.”

  “Who, like other men, has weaknesses.”

  Rattei looked up at McGarr inquiringly.

  “Proud, forthright men don’t go to bed with other men’s wives and, if they do, certainly they don’t make it a nearly thirty-year preoccupation.”

  Rattei’s nostrils flared. He tossed off the wine in his glass and stood. He turned his back to them. “Perhaps you had better leave.”

  McGarr wasn’t about to move. “Proud, forthright men—gentlemen—would not be able to support a situation in which they were forced to take their beloved to a—how shall I phrase it?—a place for amorous adventure.”

  Rattei spun around. “Get out! Paolo!” he shouted at the closed door.

  McGarr said, “Did you ask Paolo and the others who work for you and love you to keep that little secret for you too? To lie for you if they were asked where you were on the nineteenth and twenty-sixth of June when you were not on the oil rig but rather in Ireland with Moses Foster slaying first Hitchcock, then Browne, and planning all along to kill the husband of the woman you love, whose own truly aristocratic sense of fidelity and pride was such she couldn’t tolerate divorce or who perhaps, all along, never loved you? I’ve got the address of that place right here.”

  The doors of the room burst open and three men rushed in.

  McGarr opened his notebook. “Shall I read you the address of that house in London? Perhaps Paolo will tell us how you trade on your relationships right now, how you can get people to believe in you and then get them to lie for you.” McGarr twisted around in the chair. “Paolo—has Signor Rattei ever been to Thirty-eight West Road, Surrey? That’s in London, England, of course.”