The Death of an Irish Consul (12 page)

“But Battagliatti has been with her all morning. It seems she’ll see only him. To tell you the truth, I don’t care much for him. He reminds me of a weasel. He’s far too taken with this whole business for my money. Doesn’t he have a job?”

“No,” said McGarr. “He’s a politician.”

They started up the stairs.

“Hasn’t anybody else tried to see her?”

“Sure—the whole gang we met at the embassy in London, but Battagliatti won’t have any of it. Says she’s indisposed and will see them when Cummings is laid out or at the funeral. He won’t even talk to me. Or
ders me around like I was some guard dog. I’ve been thinking I’m going to tell him where to get off the train next time.”

“Go ahead. You’ve got my O.K. But don’t put your hands on him. Remember—people fight with their mouths in this country, and they’ve got a law that claps the first person to use his hands, regardless of the cause, in the can.” Through McGarr’s mind flashed the thought that in Ireland his people were fighting with bombs, random shootings, and ambushes, and he felt very sad.

O’Shaughnessy said, “And here’s another stopper for you. Cummings is going to have a church funeral. He was a Catholic!”

“So?”

“So, I thought all those”—O’Shaughnessy cleared his throat slightly—“in London were Protestants.”

“It’s easy to start thinking like that where we’re from. Too easy. The way I understand it, there are some pretty powerful English Roman Catholics. Their families never became Protestant.”

“More power to them,” said O’Shaughnessy. He was a man who was what he was, and nothing could change him from that.

McGarr, on the other hand, could never quite forget the part the Church had played during the Famine and its continuing attempt to keep Ireland isolated, provincial, and “preserved” as “The Holy Isle.” Otherwise, McGarr too was what he was. He had been born a Catholic into a family that was only nominally so. His
father had only gone to church because the pubs weren’t open during those hours. Just to make conversation as they continued up the stairs, he said, “Hell—Alexander Pope was a Catholic.”

“He probably would have to be with a name like that.” O’Shaughnessy was in no sense a learned man, although he was quite acute in most matters.

McGarr opened the door of the foyer to the Ricasoli apartments, and there stood Battagliatti, right in front of them, smiling. McGarr couldn’t see his eyes because his glasses mirrored the light from the doorway below. McGarr wondered if Battagliatti had heard them talking. The old hallway made voices echo.

“Signor McGarr, how nice to see you again. I caught a glimpse of you crossing the piazza.” He offered his hand. It was limp when McGarr took it. “I suppose you’ve come to see Enna. I’m sorry, she’s indisposed at the moment. I know you can understand that she wants to cooperate with you and the other police in whose jurisdiction you are presently operating, but, let us remember, she was married to the man for over thirty years, and, what with the violence and all, the accident has been quite traumatic for her. In fact, the family doctor has prescribed a heavy sedative, and I believe that she has at last fallen asleep.” Battagliatti was standing in the doorway, blocking any farther advance.

McGarr said, “You know Superintendent O’Shaughnessy, don’t you, Mr. Chairman?” and made it necessary for Battagliatti to offer O’Shaughnessy his hand, as he had to McGarr. Thus, McGarr stepped by his
right side. The little man twisted his neck around to watch McGarr, who said, “Actually, I think at this time you’d be more helpful to me, sir. May I be frank with you?” McGarr looked directly at Battagliatti.

“Why yes, of course.”

“Where can we talk?” McGarr hooked his arm through Battagliatti’s and began walking him down the hall. He opened several doors, until he found a small, vacant sitting room.

As they were about to step in, a maid appeared in the foyer. She was carrying a small tray with a cup and saucer, teapot, and accessories on it.

“Don’t go in there!” Battagliatti hissed at her. “How many times must I tell you she’s resting?”

“But she——I——” The maid was flustered. She was young, dark, and somewhat too well built.

“Do as I say or I’ll have you fired.”

She flushed and scurried back into the kitchen.

McGarr noted that Battagliatti’s attitude seemed strange for a Communist.

When McGarr got Battagliatti seated, he pulled a desk chair over so that he could talk to him confidentially, as it were, in whispers. McGarr then glanced at O’Shaughnessy, who stood behind Battagliatti and leaned against the wall. They had used this technique dozens of times before to intimidate suspects.

Battagliatti twisted around to see where O’Shaughnessy was. The towering Garda superintendent looked down at the little man as though he could eat him. And Battagliatti’s features, although handsome, were too
diminutive for a man. Thus, he appeared doll-like, and, now that he was aging, like one that a craftsman with a perverse wit had designed. His hair was flecked with gray. He began to say, “I see no reason for this——”

McGarr placed his hand on his sleeve and, looking at the door, said, “Enrico Rattei’s been arrested for the murder of Colin Cummings. Accessory, I mean.” He turned only his eyes to Battagliatti. These gestures, McGarr well knew, were histrionic but designedly so. It gave another dimension to their discussion.

There was something curious about this little man, as though the whole experience here in the Ricasoli apartments—the murder, its aftermath, his present stewardship of Enna Ricasoli’s affairs—was heightened for him, who had done so much in his life and now controlled a province and had a say in the national political life of Italy. “But no! That’s impossible,” said Battagliatti. He adjusted his metal-frame glasses. “I just saw him an hour ago.”

“He’s been released, of course. They’ll never keep a powerful man like him in the jug. Especially when he’s got powerful political friends like you, signor.”

Battagliatti’s eyes wavered a bit hearing that. He then said, “This must be some sort of mistake. That row between Cummings and him was a silly schoolboy gesture, absurd and romantic. Enrico Rattei is a man of the world. He wouldn’t do something like this.”

“Love is a most absurd emotion, Mr. Chairman. Did you know that Rattei had been seeing Enna Ricasoli in London on a regular basis?”

Again Battagliatti twisted around to look at O’Shaughnessy.

“That maybe ENI’s involvement in the Scottish oil fields was just an excuse for him to be in London often?”

Did McGarr then see Battagliatti flush? Certainly his nostrils dilated, and he straightened his tie.

“Some say they were lovers, you know, in a carnal sense. I have here an address.” McGarr began to reach for his pocket secretary. “It’s a place in London that wealthy men sometimes use when they’ve got company and want to remain discreet. Of course, they’ve got to pay a great deal for the privacy.”

“That’s a lie!” Battagliatti blurted out, then twisted around to O’Shaughnessy once more. “Can’t he sit down?”

“No, no,” McGarr went on in the same even tone. “This place exists
por una relazióne amorosa
.”

And then the discussion switched into Italian. “That’s an insult to the poor woman—wife of a murdered husband!—who is resting in the other room. That’s an affront to this noble family, to Siena, to——And, what’s more, the whole idea is incredible. Enna Ricasoli is a lady, in every sense.” He straightened the lapels of his gray jacket.

“She never told her husband she went out with Rattei.”

“That’s because her husband was a boor.”

McGarr furrowed his brow.

“That’s right, a social imbecile.”

McGarr held out his palms,
“Ma, signor! Il uòmo poveretto!”

“The poor man doesn’t need any lies told about him. He was a cretin and, what’s more, he was an Englishman. You two have no love for the English, I trust.” Yet again, he began to twist around to O’Shaughnessy.

“I try not to think in categories,” said McGarr. “Do you know if Enrico Rattei is licensed to fly a helicopter?”

“No. We’re both very busy men. I wouldn’t know that.”

“Are you?”

“Am I what?”

“Licensed to fly a helicopter?”

“I leave such things up to lesser mortals.”

Once more, this statement implied an attitude that seemed strange for a Communist.

“What size are Rattei’s feet? Do you know?”

McGarr glanced down at Battagliatti’s feet. His shoes were narrow and tiny, like a woman’s, like those that had made the impressions in the soft earth behind the Hitchcock summer residence in Dingle.

Battagliatti started chuckling, “What is this—some sort of a game? Am I supposed to know that?”

“Not really.” McGarr stood. “I know you want to help your friend.”

As though relieved, Battagliatti stood and turned so that O’Shaughnessy was no longer behind him. “And that I shall. I am a man who is not without a certain
amount of influence in Siena,” he said, smiling wryly, “and I shall see that this entire, unfortunate matter is cleared up quickly.” He held out his hand to McGarr. “Thank you for coming to me with this information, Signor McGarr.

“And you too, Signor O’——”

O’Shaughnessy merely grasped the man’s hand and stared at him. Indeed, alongside the Garda superintendent, Battagliatti did appear doll-like.

Down in the piazza, McGarr and O’Shaughnessy turned into Al Mangia Ristorante and ordered two glasses of Elban white wine. Tasting his, which had a coppery color and just the slightest tang of salt air, McGarr looked at O’Shaughnessy. McGarr didn’t need to say, “Stay with him, Liam. Make yourself conspicuous. If he asks why you’re following him, say it’s for his own protection. Who knows, Rattei might try to have all Enna Cummings’s friends killed, too.”

“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.