Death of a Dutchman

by Magdalen Nabb

  'Yes, I suppose you could say that . . .'

  All down the marble hallway, there had been half-moon tables with gilded lamps on them, alternating with elaborately carved oak chairs. Some of the rooms they had passed through were almost empty of furniture. They had passed a small, concealed door let into the wall on the left, and the Marshal had time to glimpse a single bed with a dark blue linen suit thrown across it before the Count hurriedly shut the door.

  'I'll leave you here.'

  The Marshal had been out on the first-floor landing when the Count made this abrupt remark.

  'Then, goodbye and thank you . . .'

  But by the time he turned, the door had shut and he was alone.

  There were still two hotels to be visited. The Marshal was tired and not at all sure, thinking about it as he drove along by the river, whether his visits to the Brothers had been useful or not. They hadn't turned up any concrete facts that he could present to an officer, and the Brothers of the Misericordia, although acceptable as reliable and experienced witnesses, were not officially expert ones. And the expert ones weren't going to give their findings to him. Unless . . .

  The Marshal pulled up at a bar, went in and asked for a telephone token. If there was one thing his last visit had done it was to make him more determined. Perhaps it had been the deserted-looking room with its dust-sheeted furniture which had brought the deadened images to life. After all, if somebody did kill the Dutchman, what a cold-blooded, sinister killing it had been. The meeting must have been arranged since the man only went there once or twice a year, and nobody goes about carrying enormous doses of sleeping pills . . .

  Waiting for the token, he glared about him at the milling tourists buying ice-cream and evening aperitifs. Somewhere in the city ... it could be any of these people, anyone . . . dressed like any other holidaymaker . . .

  A middle-aged German couple, unnerved by the hostile glare discernible even behind his dark glasses, left their drinks unfinished and hurried out.

  'Is something the matter?' asked the barman, handing over the token.

  'What? What should be the matter?" growled the Marshal. He paid and strode to the telephone.

  The barman looked apprehensively after him and then at his waiter, who shrugged. 'None of our business, I suppose . . .'

  'Let's hope not. I don't want any shoot-outs with terrorists taking place in my bar, thanks.'

  And he, too, began to scan the innocent-looking tourists.

  'Rubbish! That sort of thing only happens in Rome.. .'

  But both of them touched the metal edge of the counter to ward off evil, and the barman, dropping ice-cubes into three Camparis for an outside table, kept an eye on the Marshal's broad back.

  'Di Nuccio? What? I can't hear, this place is packed . .. Well, get what details you can and send them over with the daily sheet—Lorenzini will have to sign it, I'm going to be late ... I shall be at the Medico-Legal Institute and then ... let me see, the Pensione Annamaria and the Albergo del Giardino, those are my last two. If I'm not back—and I don't think I will be—you'll have to stay in, or if you want to eat at the mensa, go in relays. Don't leave Gino in on his own, he's too young to cope. Anything else? Till later, then . . .'

  He drove fast out to Careggi. The traffic was already thinning slightly with the advance of summer. By August there would only be the tourists and the people who serviced them left in the city. Out on the wide avenues the trees were tinged with gold in the evening light, the sky slightly pink.

  The hospital city was an almost self-contained world with its own rhythms. There was a large and busy roundabout in the centre where kiosks sold newspapers, flowers and fruit, and signs pointed out the road to take to the different hospitals, clinics and convalescent homes and to the various specialist centres. Streams of people were going in the main doors of almost all the hospitals, carrying paper-wrapped flowers.

  The Medico-Legal Institute forms part of the School of Medicine of the University of Florence, and it was at the main entrance used by students that the Marshal parked his car, avoiding the wing that housed the police laboratories and its adjacent car park. Inside, a broad tiled corridor led to the viewing rooms and the main lecture theatre. The place was deserted except for the porter's lodge where a grey head came into view above a newspaper.

  'What can I do for you?' Then he spotted the Marshal's uniform. 'Go out the front door again, round the block, second on your left.'

  'Actually, I was hoping for a word with Professor Forli, if he's still about.'

  'He's still here. Rarely leaves before nine.' He turned to his switchboard. 'What name shall I give?'

  'No! There's no need to disturb him . . . nothing urgent, you know. I'll wait a while and if he comes out I'll have a word. If not, it'll do some other time. I wouldn't want to disturb him if he's busy . . .'

  'He's that all right. Rush job on this morning and then all these drug deaths . . .'

  'Well, I'll wait a bit."

  'Suit yourself.'

  Was the rush job the Dutchman? It was more than likely. And where would he be now in this great building. . . lying in some bleak, refrigerated compartment with his abdomen perfunctorily sewn back together . . . ?

  It reminded the Marshal of the slide lecture long ago in training school when they had had to look at road accidents. He hadn't fainted but the boy next to him had. All of them had felt ill for the rest of the day and no one had touched the slightly congealed lasagne that had been served up for lunch.

  How would he broach the reason for his visit to the Professor, if and when he appeared? He had no clear idea. He only knew that once the Professor got talking it was almost impossible to stop him; he was famous for it. The only problem, the Marshal mused as he wandered along the marble corridor, was to get him started before he thought to ask who the Marshal was and why he should be there.

  It turned out not to be a problem at all.

  The Professor came into view, striding down the corridor with the jacket of his white linen suit slung round his shoulders and a briefcase in his hand. The Marshal had no opportunity to open his mouth; the Professor called out as soon as he spotted him:

  'It's already gone, if it's the Dutchman you're here for! You asked for priority and got it, despite the fact that I've got another drug death and two road accidents on my hands, and we're short staffed as usual . . .'

  When he reached the Marshal he said: 'Surely it was one of your own men who collected it shortly after I telephoned ..." He made to go and check with the porter, but the Marshal put in quickly:

  'Yes, no problem, I'm sure they did—I've been out all afternoon and was going back this way so I called just in case it hadn't gone. I'm obviously out of touch. It doesn't matter . . .'

  'Interesting case, very interesting. Did it myself with one or two promising students—kept them awake, plenty to think about. One of them was on to it right away. Got the connection as soon as we'd established the time of death and the stomach contents. Heart business complicated it, naturally, kept them guessing. Now the first thing to look for in a case of this sort . . .'

  The Marshal hadn't misjudged his man. The Professor's severe good looks and almost excessive sartorial elegance gave him an aloof appearance totally at odds with his true character. He was a born teacher who, once he began to expound some theory, went ahead like a steam engine. They had been walking along the corridor towards the exit but now, every two or three steps, the Professor stopped to bombard the Marshal with technical information, nose to nose, and to fire questions at him which he then answered himself.

  'Now! You've established the amount of barbiturate absorbed into the bloodstream. You've established the contents of the vomit containing food and coffee and barbiturate but the stomach contains coffee and barbiturate only! And that has only got as far as the duodenum. What's that telling you?'

  'I . . .'

  'It's telling you that there were two doses, the first dose following immediately on a meal. He's had ham,
he's had bread, he's had gorgonzola, he's had a peach. He's then had coffee. The coffee contains the barbiturate. He absorbs some of it. He digests part of his meal. Then he vomits. Why?'

  'I don't know . . .' The Marshal wasn't far from vomiting himself; there was a faint odour of formaldehyde in the corridor. They had turned and were walking in again.

  'Because the dose is too big! People talk very glibly about neurotic women taking just so many sleeping pills, enough to create a fuss but not to kill themselves—even a doctor would have some difficulty judging a dose like that, or, if it comes to that, a dose that would surely kill. Why would he?'

  'I . . .'

  'Reason number one, the individual organism, that has to be taken into account; reason number two, tolerance, and this is where most suicide attempts go wrong. Drugs, many drugs, upset the stomach. Take a massive dose of sleeping pills and what happens? An hour later, or even less, you vomit the lot and you're back to square one— that's if you don't drown in your own vomit which our man came very near to doing, there were slight traces of vomit in his lungs. Three: habit. Someone who regularly takes sleeping pills is likely to make a success of the job by taking a large-ish dose of a drug she and her stomach are used to, combined with alcohol.'

  The Professor strode ahead and then spun round dramatically, smacking the palm of his left hand with his right index finger.

  'Now, what do we know about our Dutchman, eh?'

  This time he didn't even wait for the Marshal's confused mumble but began immediately counting off points of information on his fingers.

  'He's in good general health, we've seen that; the problem with his heart's a plumbing fault, not electrical. Weakened valves probably caused by a fever in childhood. Liver sound as a bell, he didn't drink much. Lungs fine, he smoked now and again but not much. He exercised, outdoors. His job was an indoor one but his skin's healthy, he's had plenty of fresh air and his muscles are in good tone despite his job being largely sedentary. Now what is his job?'

  'He was a—'

  'Where's the first place you're going to look for information?'

  'His hands . . .' ventured the Marshal, remembering the young Count's words: They must have been important to him.

  'Well done! Right! Good! He's a craftsman. He uses small metal tools regularly and he works with precious metals. He's a watchmaker or he's a silversmith or jeweller. Your lab tells me they found traces of diamond dust under his cuticles. I found tiny burns just above his wrists, the sort your wife gets when she's careless taking things out of the oven. We find faint scars of earlier burns all of the same shape and all more or less in the same place. So he's not a watchmaker, is he?'

  'He's not ... ?'

  'Obviously not. He's a silversmith, a jeweller, and one with plenty of business—he has a smelting kiln or an enamelling kiln maybe, and he's loading it again before it's anywhere near cool. Asbestos gloves protect his hands, of course, but he's catching himself each time just above the wrists on the lower front bricks. Right?'

  'Well I'll be damned . . .' murmured the Marshal, quite forgetting himself.

  'In a city full of artisans, it's no problem distinguishing those things, but let's look at this particular jeweller: he's prosperous, he's doing well; the clothes we sent over to your lab were good clothes, his socks were silk, so was his shirt. He hardly drinks, which is saying something for a northerner, he doesn't smoke too much, he's married, wears a ring, and happily married, carries a photograph of his wife; his heart trouble's not that serious, he only knows it as a murmur he's had for years, if it deteriorates as he gets older he can have a plastic valve fitted, but it's not likely because he looks after himself. He's a happy,, generally healthy, prosperous man, a craftsman who does satisfying work that he likes so much that he goes on working when he could probably just run the business and let others do the work. He takes plenty of exercise. He's no sort of candidate for sleeping pills. Right?'

  'Yes,' said the Marshal, 'that's just what I felt . . .'

  'So what's wrong with him?'

  The Marshal was stunned. 'What's . . . but nothing. . .'

  'But there was! Remember his hands!'

  'The cuts? But surely he didn't deliberately . . .'

  'Cuts, cuts! That comes later. His fingers. His fingers don't match his lungs. His lungs tell me he smokes an occasional cigarette, or even a cigar, to be sociable in company. But his fingers were deep yellow with nicotine! The fingers of the right hand, all of it new, nothing ingrained. He'd been chain-smoking for hours before he died. Yet his lungs are barely touched. My guess is that he was lighting up one cigarette after another out of nervousness and letting them burn away in his hand. Something was worrying him.'

  'He'd quarrelled with his wife,' the Marshal admitted. 'She didn't want him to make this trip. She's going to have a baby soon. But what I thought was, if it bothered him so much, why not go home? He's not going to kill himself for that.'

  They had come back out to the main doors and now they absent-mindedly turned and started back along the broad corridor.

  'Of course, it depends,' said the Professor, frowning, 'what the trip was for. I mean, your problem may well be that, not the wife.'

  'I heard it was a business trip . . .'

  'In that case, I suppose you'll be looking for whoever he did business with.'

  'Do you think he killed himself?'

  'Strictly speaking, he died of heart failure. That's what I put in the report. It's not for me to make judicial pronouncements, and if the young woman's pregnant..."

  'It's not for me, either, to make pronouncements; I just wanted to know what you thought. Those wounds in his hands ... he tried to bind them up . . . they were important to him, his hands, being a craftsman.'

  'I follow you. If he'd intended to die, it would hardly have mattered. But, you know, he may well have been totally confused at that stage. He'd still be very groggy from the first dose. There are anomalies, I agree. He took the first dose immediately after his meal —and that I don't like. I understand he'd just arrived here and so must have bought the food he ate, probably on the way from the station. He must have gone to two shops, one for the cheese, ham, coffee and bread, and another for the peaches . . .'

  It brought back the previous morning vividly: the almost deserted market, the pungent odour of basil and ripe tomatoes, the cheerful stallholder in his big green apron reaching for the'large peaches in their grassy tray...

  'Now, your suicide is a self-abusing sort of person. A person who's obsessed with himself, punishes himself when things go wrong—or abuses his own body to punish someone else. He's likely to have a history of self-neglect, or of excessive fatidiousness, and an unbalanced attitude to food. This man, on the other hand, chose himself a very nice meal, visiting two shops to do it, despite, presumably, being rather tired after a long journey. Anyway, to continue to reconstruct the thing as I see it: he eats, and eats well. He then drinks coffee—not the Italian coffee which he bought, but Viennese coffee of which your people apparently found no further trace in the house—we'll come to that problem in a moment. Having drunk the coffee with the barbiturate dissolved in it, anomaly number three—why bother?—he then doesn't go to bed, anomaly number four—does he want to die on his feet with all his clothes on? Shortly afterwards he gets sick. He staggers to the bathroom, turns on the tap and starts vomiting. That's normal. He's already absorbed plenty of the stuff and he hangs there over the sink feeling wretched until he falls asleep with his head in his own vomit. That's normal. The sink blocks and fills up. He wakes up, choking. That's normal, though he could just as easily have drowned. Then he starts ransacking the bathroom cabinet, tumbling out every old bottle of medicine in there. Why does he do that? He was covered in ancient cough medicine and hair oil. What's he looking for?'

  'I don't know . . .'

  'I do. Never get so fascinated by the extraordinary that you miss the ordinary. I tell my students that every time but ninety-nine per cent of them will never learn to
obey that simple rule.'

  'No,' agreed the Marshal, "they won't. It's too dull.' But it was his golden rule, too.

  'Two aspirins!' announced the Professor, stopping in his tracks abruptly. 'I say two; it might have been three, but I doubt if it was more. Traces in the stomach lining and in the vomit, taken at the same time as the coffee and the first massive dose of barbiturate! And when he's been sick, confused and doped as he is, he starts scrabbling through the medicine cabinet, smashing everything in sight. What does that tell you?'

  'It tells me,' said the Marshal, a trifle grumpily, 'what I already knew. He didn't know about the barbiturate. I suppose if he'd been smoking too much, and after the journey, too, he had a headache and took some aspirin from the bathroom cabinet . . .'

  'And then he got sick, very sick, he realized he was doped.'

  'So he thought he'd poisoned himself, that the aspirin wasn't aspirin, and he'd no idea what it might be. And his phone wasn't connected so he couldn't call for help . . .'

  'I should think, anyway, that he was barely compos mentis at that point,' said the Professor. 'He could hardly Stand; there were cuts on his knees which indicate that he must have fallen a number of times in the bathroom among all that broken glass where he lost one of his slippers, according to my assistant, and then again in the kitchen where he spilled all the coffee he'd bought.'

  'Why that . . . ?'

  'He was no fool. He knew he should try and keep himself awake, and I suppose the package of coffee was still where he had left it on arriving—it was spilt mostly just around the cupboard on the left inside the kitchen door according to your chaps. He wasn't capable of making it, of course . . .'

  'No,' said the Marshal quietly, 'but what an effort he was making to stay alive.'

  'Perhaps. But at that point, anyway, he gave in, sat down at the kitchen table and fell asleep among the remains of his dinner. Your people brought me samples of the blood that was under the table and the traces of vomit where his head had lain. The next thing we know is that he wakes up—this would be about an hour before you found him next day—having slept off most of the barbiturate, but rather weak, he's lost quite a lot of blood, goes to the sink—maybe he still feels sick—and finds in the sink the coffee-pot with the remains of the Viennese coffee in it. It's nasty and it's cold and there isn't much of it, but he has to wake himself up enough to get help. He drinks it and it kills him. The last straw. His heart gives out."