Death of an Englishman (3 page)

But the huge, pale stones of the palace wall were bending and lifting before the Marshal's tinted gaze as he walked. The aspirin had worn off and his temperature was soaring. Perhaps he shouldn't even have had the coffee …

When they got into the office he took off his hat and dark glasses and fished for a handkerchief. He was shivering and his forehead was damp.

'Good God, man, you're sick!'

'Sorry … I think I'll have to lie down …' It was all he could do to get himself through to his quarters, out of his coat and jacket and on to the bed, clutching the chemist's white package. To his surprise, Carabiniere Bacci had followed him. He was too ill and too preoccupied to interpret this unwonted attention; he was worried about the little cleaner. He swallowed two tablets and lay back.

'Tell him … tell him I may not get to the funeral if I'm no better.' His eyes were closed and his face red. 'But I can send a wreath … she was only young, you know … cancer, the brother-in-law said … and he's not as old as he looks … must have been murder, I suppose … blood soaked into the carpet … but not much of it … not much … Carabiniere Bacci?'

'Yes, sir?'

'What am I talking about?'

'You'd better get some rest, sir. Is there anything else you want?'

There was no answer.

So it was the Captain who sat in the Marshal's chair and questioned the cleaner while Carabiniere Bacci took notes.

Gianpaolo Maria Cipolla, born in Salerno in 1938, resident in Florence, Via Romana 83 red, since 1952, widower, arrived in Via Maggio 58 on Wednesday, December 22nd, at his customary hour of 6 a.m., to clean the entrance hall and stairs of the building and polish the brass plate and doorknobs outside. He had his own key to the gates of the courtyard because once a month he cleaned that too, but he had no key to the front door. He was always able to get in because the bank cleaners did have keys and they arrived at about the same time. He had not seen the bank cleaners on the morning of the 22nd but whenever they arrived first they left the door ajar for him. He had no key to the lift, each tenant had his own. He used the stairs and started his cleaning at the top. He had seen, at the foot of the stairs, the door of the ground-floor flat open and a light on. He had gone in and seen the Englishman dead on the floor and had telephoned for the Marshal, instead of ringing 113, the emergency number, because the Marshal lived near his sister, who was married to a gardener in the Boboli. After telephoning he had sat down to wait.

The Captain turned to Carabiniere Bacci. 'Was the door to the flat open or closed when you arrived?'

'Open, sir.'

'I opened it for you.' Cipolla was still terrified of addressing the Captain. 'I shut it when I first went in but then I opened it for you.'

'Then why didn't you open the main doors for me, too? There is an electronic switch inside the flat?'

'No … not in the ground-floor flat, only the others upstairs.'

'Well, why didn't you come out and open the doors?'

'I was going to … it didn't seem right leaving him … a dead man, after all … I was going to but then I heard you come in …'

'The night guard let me in, sir.'

'Find him. I want to know if he saw anything and what time he made his last round before that one. We'll have to call in the bank cleaners, too. It's a pity you didn't notice them this morning.'

Carabiniere Bacci blushed. He could have sworn there was no light on in the building when he arrived but he had been so nervous …

The Captain rose to leave them. 'Go to the British Consulate first, they may be able to tell us something, and telephone your report to me as soon as you get back here. Don't disturb the Marshal, the more rest he gets the better. I'll send him a Brigadier.'

'Right, sir.' This was the sort of person Carabiniere Bacci wanted to work for, elegant, authoritative, precise. And the Marshal out of the way in bed. Carabiniere Bacci was ecstatic.

The little cleaner still stood there after the Captain had left. 'You can go home,' Carabiniere Bacci told him. 'We'll get in touch with you if we need you, and when the case is formalized you'll have to make an official statement at the Public Prosecutor's office.'

The cleaner still looked uncertain what to do, he kept glancing at the door through which the Marshal had disappeared. Carabiniere Bacci, remembering the message, understood. 'The Marshal asked me to tell you that he might not be well enough to attend the funeral, he's got 'flu quite badly, but he will be sending a wreath … and if I may also offer my condolences …'

'Thank you … have I to go, then … ?' He looked vaguely about him as though he thought he had left something, his narrow shoulders a little hunched, his brush of dark hair giving him a look of permanent surprise. He crept nervously out into the cold, shivering in his thin cotton overall.

Half way up Via Maggio, on his way to the British Consulate, Carabiniere Bacci stopped to have himself shaved. When he crossed the Santa Trinita bridge his cheeks were clean and tingling in the damp air. The morning fog, instead of lifting, had settled down, blotting out the weak sun. Upriver, the ghost of the Ponte Vecchio with its tiny windows lit was straddling nothing; down-river the swollen olive-green current, and the yellow and grey buildings flanking it, dissolved into the fog after a few hundred yards.

CHAPTER 2

By three in the afternoon the day was fading, and Carabiniere Bacci, still in his greatcoat, switched on the light in the office before he picked up the telephone receiver. As he was about to dial he heard the Marshal calling him and he went through to the bedroom. The Marshal was still in bed and had got into his pyjamas. He seemed to be breathing with difficulty.

'What time is it?'

'Just after three. Do you have to take more tablets?'

'Not till five … You look wet, is it raining?'

'It's started to drizzle, nothing much, but it's already going dark. I have to phone the Captain.'

'What's happening?'

'I spent most of the morning at the British Consulate with a girl called Signorina Lowry.'

'What was she like?'

'Very pretty, she has red hair—'

'Carabiniere Bacci,' breathed the Marshal, 'I'm delighted if you've fallen in love but I would like to know if she was helpful, if they're going to co-operate.'

'Yes, sir. Yes, she was very helpful, she rang the Embassy in Rome where they know him better and the Consul himself informed the family in England. The only thing is, she said the family might cause us some problems depending on what attitude they take, but we shall just have to wait and see. I went to see the night guard next, he lives over in Via Fiesolana, and when I got there I had to wait for him to get up. He insists that the door to the ground-floor flat was closed every time he passed it—'

'The shutters …'

'Sir?'

'You said it was going dark … close the shutters before you go, and switch on the light, not the big one … the lamp, here by me … that's right …' The Marshal's eyes were closed and there were a few drops of sweat on his forehead and nose. Carabiniere Bacci went back to the office, closing the door softly.

The Captain seemed equally determined to interrupt his report.

'—The present Consul only met him once at one of the Mayor's receptions—the previous Consul may have known him better but he's retired and before that the Englishman was at the Embassy in Rome. His registration card—'

'Yes, all right, we'll get to all that later. Your trip to the Consulate seems to have caused something of a stir; we're to be honoured by a visit from two Scotland Yard men—the Englishman evidently had relatives in high places. Our visitors will be on this afternoon's flight so they should be here about four-thirty. How's your English?'

'Quite good, sir.'

'Then be in my office here in an hour. How's the Marshal?'

'Not too good, still in bed … there's nobody here, sir, in the office … I mean …'

'I know. At this time of year it's practically impossible but there's a man on his way so wait for him—I can't leave him there all night. Is the Marshal … ?'

'He needs to rest, sir. I'll be here.'

'Yes … you'll perhaps be good enough to telephone me if anything happens.'

'Yes, sir,' said Carabiniere Bacci meekly.

'Sunny Italy,' remarked the Chief Inspector drily as they crossed the tarmac at Pisa, with their collars turned up against the foggy drizzle.

'It is December, sir,' the young Inspector ventured to remind him.

They were an unlikely couple. Inspector Jeffreys considered his chief to be a typical product of a third-rate public school, whose ignorance was only exceeded by his arrogance. The Chief thought Jeffreys was 'jumped-up working class with a chip on his shoulder and no proper respect'. Less prejudiced colleagues considered the Chief to have been, in his day, a good 'thief-taker', and the younger man to be exceptionally bright. It was said he would make a name for himself if he didn't get sacked first. The story of how, during his first week on the beat, he had booked the Mayor's car three times for being parked outside his mistress's house all night without lights was likely to follow him throughout his career. The Chief Inspector had been sent out to Florence as the man who would conduct matters so as to avoid any unpleasantness for the Langley-Smythe family. Jeffreys had been sent to get him off a delicate case at home, on the excuse that he could speak a bit of Italian. During their last hurried lunch in the canteen the Chief paused in his labours with a huge wedge of pie and chips to advise: 'Tuck in, Jeffreys, this is the last decent food we're likely to see for a few days.'

On the plane Jeffreys had read a guide to Florence to avoid conversation.

A pullman coach took them from Pisa to Florence. Along the motorway the bare orchards and ploughed fields on either side were shrouded in grey mist. A Carabiniere car met them at the terminal and plunged them into the labyrinthine centre of the city where the wet roofs seemed to meet overhead and the long streets with their interminable rows of louvred shutters got narrower and narrower, all of them, in the grey half-light, looking the same. They got a brief glimpse of the river embankment, then moved away again without crossing over. Two armed guards in napoleonic hats saluted them as an electronic gate slid open, and they were passed on to a young lieutenant whose gleaming black cavalry boots and dangling sword they followed up a wide staircase and along a series of corridors. The light was on in the Captain's large office. He rose behind his desk to greet them; Carabiniere Bacci was already on his feet. The Englishmen introduced themselves.

'Chief Inspector Lowestoft, New Scotland Yard, and this is Inspector Jeffreys.'

Some brief, polite speeches were translated by the younger men who were sizing each other up at the same time. Inspector Jeffreys, running an eye over the immaculate frontage of Carabiniere Bacci, pulled his crumpled mackintosh around him and remembered he had a button missing, which none of his three current girl-friends had been willing to sew on for him. Carabiniere Bacci, regarding the other's loose brown curls and casual attire, was feeling hopelessly inferior in the face of such ebullient confidence. The Chief Inspector was for getting down to business.

'As far as you're concerned we're here quite unofficially, let's say to offer any assistance we can with the English side of this business. Mr Langley-Smythe's sister is married to … well, to a man of some influence who would like to know exactly what the situation is and to avoid unnecessary distress for his wife, which is why he wanted somebody on the spot—we're not here to interfere in any way with your inquiries, naturally …' He watched Carabiniere Bacci's face intently as he translated this, as though to prevent his making any unauthorized changes. The Captain was a little ill at ease, knowing that his English was too basic for him to converse with the Chief Inspector at first hand. The Chief was a bit put out by this deficiency of the Captain's himself, but he persevered.

'I imagine we can make ourselves useful by interviewing Mr Langley-Smythe's English friends and so on, building up a picture of the sort of person he was—we already know, of course, that he was a gentleman of independent means and extremely well-connected. You probably know that he worked at the Embassy in Rome up until his retirement five years ago.'

'We always consider it an honour,' offered the Captain gallantly in return, 'when someone chooses to remain in our beautiful country when no longer detained by business.'

'Yes …' mused the Chief Inspector, on receiving a translation of this morsel of eloquence, 'I suppose so. Rum thing to do, really, but I suppose he'd got used to it by then, made friends and so on —there are quite a few English people here, are there?'

'Many. It is also marginally possible, of course, that Mr Langley-Smythe might have made some Italian friends too.' The irony was lost in Carabiniere Bacci's translation.

'Mmm …' The Chief thought it more polite not to answer that one. 'He seems to have made an enemy, at any rate.'

'Unless the motive was an entirely impersonal one, that of robbery.'

'No, no. I wouldn't think so. Armed robbery means professional robbery and something worth stealing. Mr Langley-Smythe was comfortably off, of course, but nothing spectacular, and what money he had was invested in England. According to his bank, he drew out a very modest amount each month, presumably for his living expenses. He wasn't a great spender or a collector either so it doesn't seem—was there anything stolen?'

'No. Nothing stolen, as far as we know.'

'Well, then … ?' The Chief Inspector looked at Carabiniere Bacci for an explanation, then at the Captain who was looking down at his own hands on the desk.

'Nothing was stolen, Chief Inspector, but there was a great deal that might have been. My men found a safe in the bedroom wall, open, containing, in various currencies, a little less than half a million pounds sterling. He would also seem to have had other investments than his English ones. According to his lawyer here in Florence, he had considerable investments in this country and a numbered account in a Zürich bank. Possibly your … gentleman of influence did not feel able to be entirely frank with you in this respect.'

Carabiniere Bacci's embarrassment over the translation of this speech was greatly increased by his conviction that he had just seen one of Inspector Jeffreys's bright blue eyes wink at him.

'Not at all, not at all.' The Chief was red-faced. 'Of course, there was no time to discuss these things at any length. We had a report of a murder, not a robbery.'

'Quite. However, the possibility remains that there might have been an attempt at robbery, perhaps disturbed by the victim. Shall we come to the cause of death …'

Inspector Jeffreys gazed out of the tall window at the lights in the building opposite. He could hear a lot of traffic going by in the wet and the occasional police car leaving with its siren going. His Italian had more or less given out after the polite preliminaries, and he had no interest in this case if they were only here to do a whitewash job. Bloke was probably queer, the foreign service was full of them. He followed the Captain's words spasmodically.

'… 6.35. One shot, fairly close range from behind. The bullet pierced the left ventricle and death was virtually instantaneous. He had been dead for some hours, when we find out where and when he ate we can be more accurate, but Professor Forli tells me that death probably occurred during the early hours of the morning.'

'The weapon?'

'My men are still looking for it. A large number of different fingerprints were found in the living-room of the flat, so we must assume, since he lived alone and employed no domestic staff, that he received a great many visitors. We're checking the prints with our files at the moment. That's really as much as I can tell you at this stage, except that he was found by the stair cleaner in the early morning, and—'

The telephone rang.

'Gianini here, sir, technical squad. I've got the information you wanted on that majolica bust. Doctor Biondini recognized the piece immediately, said he checked that seal himself only six months ago. The head of an angel by Della Robbia, Luca, not Andrea. It's a particularly good piece, he said.'

'I see. Well, this throws new light on our man.'

'More than you'd think, sir.'

'Meaning … ?'

'I said that Biondini checked that seal only six months ago. He wanted to check his files to make absolutely sure, in the circumstances, that he couldn't be mistaken.'

'And?'

'He wasn't mistaken. The Della Robbia belongs to an American woman who has a villa up near Fiesole. She married into an impoverished family of Italian nobility before the war, and with his knowledge and her money they started collecting. The husband died about six years ago.'

'And she sold the piece?'

'No. She didn't. It couldn't have been sold, Biondini says, without his knowledge. Besides which, she's been in California for the past two months, visiting relatives there, leaving only the servants, a married couple, in the house.'

'And are they still there?'

'No reply, sir. Biondini's on his way up there now.'

'I'll send somebody—but he'll have to get on to the Protection of Patrimony group; I can't deal with it—tell him I'd like to be kept informed. Yes. Yes. Thank you.' The Captain replaced the receiver and remained silent for some moments. He didn't relish the idea of announcing to the Chief Inspector that his respectable compatriot was now suspected of being a thief, or, at least, a receiver. There was no possibility of his having bought the piece legitimately since it was registered and could not be sold, or even moved, without the approval of the State. He tried an oblique approach:

'You don't happen to know whether Mr Langley-Smythe had an English gun licence?'

'I could check on it for you. Why? Did he have an Italian one?'

'No, he didn't. But he might have had a weapon, nevertheless …'

'Has such a weapon been found? Is there any evidence to suggest he had a gun?'

'No, not as yet …'

'Well, if you don't mind my saying so, it seems to me that you're trying to make a case against Mr Langley-Smythe instead of against whoever killed him.' The Chief's pale blue eyes were suddenly bright. Jeffreys knew what that meant and was listening now, watching the Captain's face as an embarrassed Carabiniere Bacci translated. The Captain showed no sign of anger but he became even more formal and excessively polite.

'I am very sorry indeed that you should think so. However, I'm sure you realize, from your own extensive experience in such a renowned place as Scotland Yard, that I am obliged to consider all possibilities, including those which are as unwelcome to me as they are to you.'