Death in August

by Marco Vichi

  ‘Ouch! Easy does it, boy!’

  The cat stood up, ran across the bed, slipped under the covers and started running as if chasing a mouse.

  Piras stood in the far corner, thinking. He turned towards Bordelli.

  ‘What should we do, Inspector? Interrogate all four again?’

  ‘Absolutely. Their alibi has finally gone to the dogs. Or the cats.’

  ‘Well, you two certainly seem pleased,’ said Diotivede. ‘May I ask a question?’

  ‘By all means.’

  ‘The lady was murdered. This we knew from the start. Now we also know how, which is a big step forward, no doubt about it. But to issue an indictment, the judge will want some proof, something beyond a speck of pollen in a cat’s fur.’

  Bordelli thought of Judge Ginzillo and his scrupulous ways. He was a young, arse-licking arriviste who was afraid to make mistakes and ruin his career. With him it was always a struggle.

  ‘Don’t be always such a pessimist, Doctor. We may have some luck, as we did this evening.’

  The doctor raised his hands as if to say he wouldn’t utter another word. He put his tools back in his bag and looked at the other two with the expression of one who wants to leave.

  ‘All right, then, we can go,’ said Bordelli. They left the cat to his games under the covers and went out. While descending the stairs, the inspector became pensive again. Diotivede took him by the arm and looked at him from behind his spectacles.

  ‘Want some friendly advice? Sleep on it,’ he said.

  Bordelli smiled vacantly.

  ‘You’re right. Let’s sleep on it. Piras: eight o’clock tomorrow morning, in my office.’

  ‘Let’s not waste any time, Piras. Let’s try to reconstruct the whole affair in all its details, top to bottom.’

  Piras was ready, fresh as a rose.

  ‘Should you go first, Inspector, or should I?’

  Bordelli had two grey bags under his eyes. He had lain awake all night, caught between the heat and the mosquitoes. He had also thought about Elvira, and Annina … which amounted to the same thing.

  ‘You start, Piras … I’ll interrupt you if I need to.’

  The Sardinian began pacing about the room, as he always did when he had the floor.

  ‘So, on the day of the crime, in the afternoon, someone, whom I’ll call X for now, enters the villa with a copy of the keys, which he acquired at some earlier point. At an opportune moment, he replaces the lady’s bottle of Asthmaben with an identical one filled with water, then goes out into the garden to find the cat, puts the mate pollen on his back, then leaves. At nine o’clock he makes sure he’s seen at the restaurant, after which he goes dancing at a much-frequented nightspot-’

  Bordelli cut in.

  ‘You forgot the car.’

  ‘I was about to get to that. That same afternoon, X asks to borrow Salvetti’s Alfa Romeo Giulietta Sprint, saying he wants to go for a drive in the mountains the next morning, but he asks if he can have it right away, since by the time X wakes up in the morning, Salvetti will be already at the beach.’

  ‘All right, go on.’

  Piras made a circular motion with his hand.

  ‘Let’s go back to the dance club. X arrives at half past ten. It’s Thursday, so X already knows that Salvetti and his wife will be there, since the Milanese couple routinely go there every Thursday night. He also knows that they will leave soon after his arrival, because they have a small son who plays until midnight with a neighbour’s son. And, indeed, around midnight the friends leave. At that point, X knows that Signora Pedretti is already dead, or at least he hopes she is. He needs to go and verify this, but mostly he needs to go and switch the Asthmaben bottles again. The dance club is very crowded late into the night, and no one notices his absence. He gets into the Alfa and races into town. In a car like that, it doesn’t take much more than an hour. When he gets to the villa, he sees that everything has gone according to plan. The lady is dead, the fake bottle is on the bedside table. X exchanges the medicine bottles, putting the real one in its proper place, but in his agitation he makes a mistake: he forgets to unscrew the cap. Then he drives back to the coast, slips back into the nightclub, and stays there until closing time. He gets drunk and tries to call attention to himself. The following morning, he goes on his drive through the mountains, and in the evening he returns the car to his friend, all cleaned and polished, to get rid of any eventual trace of his nocturnal excursion.’

  ‘Good, Piras. Not one wrinkle. Now, however, try to go into a little more detail.’

  Piras repeated the whole story, dwelling on the most insignificant details. X entering the villa and then hiding in a room on the ground floor, awaiting the right moment, when he won’t be seen by Rebecca or Maria, putting on gloves so as not to leave any fingerprints, the real medicine bottle delicately wrapped in a handkerchief so as not to erase Signora Pedretti’s fingerprints … The reservation for the restaurant, the dance club with the Salvettis. When he got to the part where the killer goes back for the phoney medicine bottle, Bordelli interrupted him.

  ‘Here you should go slowly. Imagine it’s you at the wheel. What do you do?’

  ‘I get to the villa and … no, I don’t drive all the way to the villa. I hide the car somewhere nearby and then walk. Somebody might notice the Alfa and report this to the police.’

  ‘Good. Now let’s talk about that scrape on the Alfa Romeo.’

  ‘Do you think …?’

  ‘Who knows, Piras, maybe luck’s on our side. C’mon, let’s go.’

  Fifteen minutes later, the VW was rumbling up the hill towards Rebecca’s villa. The inspector had an unlit cigarette between his lips, pulling on it every so often out of instinct and feeling disappointed at the lack of smoke.

  ‘What do you think, Piras? Is there such a thing as the perfect crime?’

  The Sardinian didn’t answer. He just looked out of the car window, thinking, perhaps, of how different it was here from the Campidano plain.

  About half a mile from the villa, Bordelli slowed down, and the still-unlit cigarette went flying out of the window. He didn’t feel like smoking.

  ‘Look carefully and see if you can see a small side street, Piras.’

  The Sardinian started studying the edge of the road.

  ‘If we can find the spot where the Alfa was scratched, Inspector, the Morozzis are screwed.’

  ‘Even if we don’t, we’ve still got the upper hand, haven’t we? We know how they did it, and they don’t know that we know.’

  Piras pointed to a narrow, unpaved road that led into the open countryside. They got out of the car to examine the surroundings, but found nothing. Leaving the Beetle there, they continued on foot. Farther ahead was a large, grassy clearing, but it was too close to the road. It would have made no sense to park there. A couple of hundred yards before the villa was a pebbled path that seemed made for hiding a car. They carefully studied the area but, aside from some anonymous tyre tracks, they found nothing.

  ‘This may in fact be where they parked the car,’ said Piras. ‘It seems like the best place.’

  ‘Maybe, but we haven’t an iota of proof.’

  The sun was high in the sky and, as usual, there wasn’t a breath of wind. The inspector sat down on a large rock and pulled his shirt away from his sweaty skin. He gazed at the dark green woods that entirely covered the hill of Fiesole in the distance. It gave him a feeling of coolness. Piras continued to look for signs of the Alfa Romeo’s scrape, then also gave up.

  ‘How did you ever think of the cat, Inspector?’

  ‘By chance, Piras. Pure chance. But I had a hunch from the moment I saw it.’

  ‘A hunch?’

  ‘That the murderer had used the cat. But there was still the problem of the alibi. Whoever put the pollen in Gideon’s fur had to be absolutely sure of what he was doing. He couldn’t leave things to chance. If Rebecca died before the appointed time, the risk was enormous. The killer’s alibi hinged entirely on
this, on the hour of her death. A murder so well planned could not afford to neglect so important a detail.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘The killer had to be absolutely certain he could count on the cat as an unwitting accomplice. At some point I remembered Rebecca’s will. If you recall, Dante broke off his story right where his sister began to talk about Gideon. So I rang Dante and asked him to tell me in minute detail everything his sister put into the will. And, bingo. In the codicil to the will, Signora Pedretti talks a great deal about Gideon. There are instructions concerning his eating habits and other matters, and she asks her brother to find a dependable person to take care of the animal. He must be certain that the person loves cats, and she concludes by saying that if he couldn’t find Gideon in the garden, not to worry because he’s an adult male and is always out and about. One need only wait for him to come home, because every day of the year, at nine o’clock sharp, Gideon always came up to her bedroom to see her. He never missed a day, Rebecca said. And the killer must have known this.’

  Piras shook his head, twisting up his mouth.

  ‘Disgusting,’ he said.

  ‘Poor cat. They made him a traitor.’

  They resumed walking towards the villa, but there was no longer any point. There were no more side roads or clearings where the killer might have hidden the car.

  ‘Our good luck’s run out, Piras. We’ll have to proceed with what we’ve got.’

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, we are now certain that Signora Rebecca Pedretti-Strassen was murdered,’ said Bordelli.

  Anselmo gulped, a doltish smile on his lips.

  ‘You’ve already told us that, haven’t you?’

  ‘Yes, but I didn’t say that it was you who did it.’

  ‘That’s rich!’ said Angela.

  Bordelli ignored her.

  ‘Whether it was just one of you, or you were all in it together, I can’t really say, but I suspect we’ll know soon,’ he said calmly.

  The Morozzis squirmed in their chairs.

  ‘That’s absurd!’

  ‘This is unbelievable …’

  ‘Sheer lunacy!’

  ‘Just one minute, ladies and gentlemen. Please calm down and allow me to finish.’

  The inspector stood up, walked round his desk and moved a stack of papers from a corner so he could sit down there, right beside Gina. The sickly-sweet smell of chestnut flour brutally penetrated his nostrils. He glanced over at Piras, who was seated in front of the typewriter, frowning darkly. Then he looked at his watch.

  ‘I’d like to give you some friendly advice. It is now four o’clock. If you confess straight away, you’ll spare yourselves a lot of trouble, and perhaps — who knows? — the judge will take this into consideration. Otherwise …’

  Angela gave a start.

  ‘Otherwise?’ she said.

  Bordelli threw his hands up.

  ‘Otherwise I’ll keep all four of you here and interrogate you one at a time for as long as I see fit, perhaps until midnight, or until tomorrow morning, or even, if necessary, for three straight days. The choice is yours.’

  ‘But we’ve already told you everything we know,’ said Gina, trying to smile.

  ‘We are not murderers,’ said Anselmo.

  Bordelli shrugged.

  ‘As you wish. Here’s the telephone. Call all the lawyers you want.’

  As Anselmo was dialling, Bordelli stood up and went over to Piras. He spoke loudly so they could all hear him.

  ‘Get a whole stack of pages ready, Piras. It looks like we’ll be spending the night here.’

  ‘That’s fine with me.’

  Half an hour later, Santelia, the lawyer arrived, all eighteen stone of him. He had a pair of penetrating blue eyes and the face of an insecure little boy. He stank of sweat and eau de cologne.

  ‘Let’s get one thing immediately clear, Inspector,’ he said. ‘Have my clients been formally charged? Because, if not-’

  ‘It’s all by the book, sir. I’m questioning suspects in the presence of their lawyer.’

  ‘Of course, of course, what I meant was … well, to proceed properly, what are they suspected of?’

  ‘Premeditated murder.’

  ‘On what grounds?’

  ‘On the basis of some very convincing evidence, sir. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to begin the questioning.

  ‘Ready, Piras?’

  ‘Ready, Inspector.’

  ‘Good.’

  The individual interrogations began. While awaiting their turn, the other three bided their time in three separate rooms. Once the first round was over, they started all over again. Bordelli’s ashtray was filling up faster than you could count the butts. Piras only sighed, resigned to breathing the foul air. He hit the keys hard, striking them with only two fingers: Q and A, Q and A … Same questions, same answers. One in particular.

  ‘But we were at the coast at that time! Everybody saw us, didn’t they?’

  And at once the bothersome clacking of the typewriter would fill their ears. Santelia the lawyer sat as still as if he were posing for a sculpture, staring at the person being questioned. After each question he would nod, almost closing his eyes, giving the go-ahead for the answer. At one point he said the question was irrelevant, and Bordelli retorted that he should save that objection for the trial.

  ‘Trial? I didn’t know that in Italy the innocent were put on trial,’ he said.

  There were two or three more irksome, pointless squabbles, trifling matters, in fact. During one of the many interrogations of Giulio, the lawyer protested.

  ‘It is nine o’clock, Inspector! You certainly don’t want to violate the rights of your suspects, I hope! They’re hungry! And I myself am ravenous!’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Bordelli, and he called Mugnai and told him to bring the other suspects into his office. When they were all there, he had them sit down and sent Mugnai out for panini.

  ‘I’d like a beer, myself,’ said the lawyer. ‘Actually, make that two.’

  ‘No beer,’ said Bordelli. ‘Orangeade for everyone.’

  Fifteen minutes later Mugnai returned with a bag full of provisions. Piras devoured his share in seconds, though the panini were dry round the edges and the prosciutto had long since turned to cardboard. Bordelli bit into his, but it was so disgusting that he shoved it into a drawer and lit up a cigarette instead. He then took to observing the Morozzis as they chewed with difficulty and in silence, and he began to feel sorry for them. For a brief moment he even doubted that they had done the deed and that money was the motive, and he wondered whether at that very moment the killer wasn’t living it up somewhere, utterly indifferent to the inheritance. Then he looked at Piras’s grave expression and became convinced he was on the verge of closing the case.

  Gina and Angela tried to eat without smearing their lipstick. They raised their lips before sinking their teeth into the bread, incisors exposed all the way to the gums; then they closed their mouths and ruminated with lips sealed. They seemed downright batty. Still, their serenity had the look of innocence.

  Although Bordelli couldn’t wait to lie down in bed, by this point he had to play the part of the stubborn cop to the end. This was no time to give in. The lawyer took great big bites of his sandwich, displaying a revulsion he didn’t deign to translate into words.

  ‘They’re from the bar outside. They make them in the morning, and in this heat …,’ said Bordelli, trying to apologise for the terrible quality of the dinner. Santelia waved his hand in the air as if to sweep away this excuse, then he grabbed a bottle of orangeade by the neck.

  ‘Have you got a bottle-opener?’ he asked.

  ‘Give it here, I’ll open it for you,’ said Bordelli. The lawyer handed him the bottle, and he flipped off the cap, as he always did, with his house key. Santelia watched Bordelli’s operation with a sneer of pity, as if watching some street punk cut a lizard in two. While he was at it, Bordelli opened all the bottles.

  ‘Now, let’s g
et back to work,’ he said.

  The air in the room had become stifling. The window was wide open but only served to give them a glimpse of the evening’s lazy progress. There wasn’t the slightest puff of wind that might sweep away the foulness.

  Round about ten o’clock the Morozzis began to look tired and worried. Bordelli took advantage of this fact to communicate that he knew more than he had let on. He started tossing out random statements without batting an eyelid.

  ‘The post-mortem showed that while there was no trace of Asthmaben in your aunt’s blood, it was all over her tongue. How would you explain that?’

  ‘I’m not a doctor,’ Anselmo said.

  ‘Signora Gina, do you know what we found in Gideon’s fur?’

  The woman squinted and then shook her head as if she hadn’t understood.

  ‘Gideon? Who’s that?’ she said.

  The lawyer smiled provocatively.

  ‘Don’t ask useless questions, Inspector. Get to the point.’

  ‘That is precisely the point, sir. The mate pollen that was found in the cat’s fur means that your clients’ alibi isn’t worth a mouse turd any more. You know what I mean?’

  As the hours passed, they all grew more tired and nervous. The inspector had already filled and emptied the ashtray twice, betraying all his good intentions, and this bothered him more than a little. Piras was disgusted by all the smoke. His eyes were bloodshot, and during the pauses he stuck his head out of the window for air.

  At around midnight Anselmo had a fit of rage. Irritated by one of Bordelli’s questions, he shot to his feet and grabbed the edge of the desk as if he wanted to overturn it. Santelia forced him to sit back down and whispered something in his ear, squeezing his shoulder with his hand.

  The clacking of the Olivetti had become unbearable to all. To Bordelli it felt as if the transcript were being typed directly on his temples. The lawyer was the only person who seemed not to suffer. Every so often he would doze off while seated, his nose emitting a buzzing sound, and each time he awoke his eyes looked smaller.

  ‘Don’t you think you’re taking this too far, Inspector? This is not Nuremberg, you know,’ he said.