The Etruscan Net (20 page)

‘That is true,’ said Tenente Lupo. ‘And I ordered an immediate check of the registers of all hotels,
pensioni
and boarding houses. It was unsuccessful.’

‘And it was carried out by whom?’

‘By Scipione. But surely–’

Colonel Doria held up one hand. He said, ‘Do not let us jump to conclusions. We must simply remember that many Sicilians who are not themselves members of the Mafia have nevertheless affiliation sympathies. Let me turn to another point. It was to Scipione that you entrusted the surveillance of the witness, Dindoni, now believed to have been killed, possibly by those two men. What report did he make on the matter?’

‘He lost sight of Dindoni in the crowd. It was the evening of the poll, you understand. There was great confusion. I could not altogether blame him.’

‘I do not blame him myself,’ said Colonel Doria. ‘But it was unfortunate. This is not a case in which mistakes will be lightly forgiven, you understand?’

Lupo understood very well. Where a Minister, to enhance his own prestige, or to discredit his predecessor, expressed personal interest in a case it was essential to the well-being of all concerned, from the Comandante-in-Capo dei Carabinieri in Rome down to the humblest Tenente in Florence, that the matter should be smoothly and successfully concluded.

He said, ‘What do you plan to do?’

‘First, these two men must be found. I have here full details from the records in Rome. They can be held, for the moment, on some technical charge. Failure to register will be as good as any. Then, I wish to see all the witnesses myself. The man Labro, the cemetery keeper, the woman Maria Calzaletta.’

The Tenente’s face clouded. He said, ‘The first two will present no difficulty. But Maria has for the moment disappeared.’

‘Then she must be found,’ said Colonel Doria.

A door in the upper storey of the far wing of the Villa Rasenna opened, and Danilo Ferri came out. He shut the door quietly behind him, and walked along the corridor, his footsteps silent on the matting which lined the floor.

No one looking at his dark composed face would have supposed that he had any troubles in the world. A man of order and method, under whose capable hands the complex machinery of the Villa ran smoothly and silently.

He descended the main staircase with a curiously neat and cat-like tread, and found the giant Arturo lifting the great urns of flowering shrubs on to the terrace for their daily watering.

He stood watching him for a moment. Then, almost as though it were an afterthought, he called to him, ‘Arturo.’

‘Signor Ferri?’

‘There is one matter I should like you to see to. It is a matter of confidence, which I do not wish to have discussed with the rest of the staff.’

‘I am no chatterbox.’

‘I know it. The matter is this. We have two unexpected guests. I received them, myself, last night, and lodged them in the end room in the north corridor. They will be with us for a few days. Since it is not desirable that others should know of their presence, it follows that they cannot leave their room. They will need food, and drink. Can you see to it yourself. If you use the back stair, from the little courtyard, no one need see you.’

Arturo smiled a lazy smile. He had been standing all the while with a huge earthenware pot of azaleas in one hand, as if unconscious of its weight. Now he placed it gently on the ground, and said, ‘There will be no difficulty. I myself will take care of them.’

The End of a Dream

Colonel Doria had been allotted a handsome room on the first floor of the Carabinieri Station in the Via dei Bardi and it was here, on the morning of the next day that he spoke to Avvocato Riccasoli.

The two men were alone in the room. The windows were wide open and an electric fan fluttered in the corner, but it fluttered ineffectively, for the heat was of a character and a quality beyond the attention of electric fans. It had weight as well as temperature. The sky above Florence was still a fiery blue, but thunderheads were building up in the mountains behind the city.

‘It was good of you to come so promptly to see me,’ said the Colonel. ‘You appreciate, I hope, that there need be no reticence between us. We are both, if I may so express it, on the same side.’

‘We are both on the side of justice,’ said Riccasoli softly.

The Colonel considered this reply as carefully as if the whole conversation was being recorded for posterity. Then he said, ‘That is a correct statement. But it is an incomplete one. For there is also the interest of the State to be considered, an interest more important, in my opinion, than that of any individual. This case has become one of national, almost international importance. I cannot tell you why. Intrinsically, it is nothing. Perhaps it is the standing of the accused, perhaps the coincidence of the elections. Perhaps it is a feeling, an instinct, which journalists possess, that there is something more, something unrevealed, which lies behind a simple running-down case. This does happen. You will remember when the accidental drowning of a young lady near Rome nearly upset the government of the day.’

‘I remember it well.’

‘This case may not be as important, but it has some of the same elements. And I can assure you of one thing. When it comes to trial – if it comes to trial – you will have reporters here from every important newspaper in the country. You will be on your mettle.’ Riccasoli smiled faintly. He said, ‘I would not presume to conduct so important a case in Court myself.’

‘So! You will have a leading advocate from Rome?’

‘Not from Rome. The case in Court has been accepted by Sindaco Trentanuove. You will recollect that he is a qualified advocate.’

If the news surprised Colonel Doria, he was too experienced to show it. But he sat back a little in his chair to consider it. He said, drily, ‘That will not diminsh the public interest in the case, I should imagine.’

‘I should imagine not, no.’

‘It leads me to the next thing I have to say. It is important that the full truth should be established
before
the matter comes to Court. So far we have half truths.’ He tapped the bulky folder on the table in front of him. ‘There has been inefficiency at certain levels of the investigation. Not, I think, anything worse than inefficiency.’

His eyes challenged Riccasoli, who did not accept the gambit, but mopped his forehead with a large white handkerchief.

‘The first step will be to question the witness Maria Calzaletta.’

‘Yes.’

‘I have reason to believe that you know where she is.’

‘Yes,’ said Riccasoli, sadly.

‘Then I must ask you to bring her here.’

Riccasoli considered the matter whilst he continued to mop his forehead. He said, ‘It would be better, I think, if you would consent to go and see her. She is in a very disturbed state following the death of Dindoni. She was not greatly attached to him, but they had been – closely associated.’

‘They were lovers?’ said the Colonel bluntly.

‘Yes. They were lovers.’ Riccasoli considered the oddly assorted couple and sighed. He said, ‘She is being looked after in a convent near here. She has been given work by the sisters. I have some influence with them. I was able to do them a small service over a matter of taxation. Here is the address.’

The sky was darkening as the clouds rolled up from the south and the west. Little gusts of wind made the leaves dance in the gutter and rustled the dry stalks on the walls of the Villa Rasenna until they scratched, like ghosts seeking for entrance.

Professor Bronzini was facing Mercurio across his writing-room table. They had been sitting there since two o’clock and now it was nearly four. The argument had gone round in circles, like the leaves in the gutter. Mercurio said, ‘You’re dodging the issues. If you know nothing about it, what are those two men doing in this house? I know they’re here. I’ve seen Arturo taking them food. I’ve listened outside the door, and heard them talking.’

‘They are friends of Danilo Ferri.’

‘They are criminals – Mafiosi – wanted by the Police. A telephone call would bring a police car out here in five minutes. They would be removed. Are you afraid of them?’

‘Certainly not. But Danilo–’

‘Where
is
Danilo?’

‘He went to Switzerland, on business, early this morning. He will be back tonight.’

‘What
business?’

‘Private business.’

‘His own, or yours? Is he your servant or your master? Is it you who dances to his piping? Does he crook his little finger and you come running?’

The Professor looked very old, and very tired. The cheerful Silenus look had gone, and had been replaced by a mask, with sunken holes for eyes and sagging parchment for cheeks. Looking at him, Mercurio felt an unexpected twinge, of pity. He leaned forward across the table and said, without any hint of his previous mockery, ‘Listen to me, please. I have not perhaps been very grateful to you in the past. I have sometimes behaved badly.’ The old man made a timid gesture with his hand, but said nothing. ‘Now perhaps I can repay you, if only with advice. Go to the authorities. Tell them everything. They say there is a new man here, from Rome. He has charge of the investigation. Go to him before he comes to you.’

There was silence in the little room, broken only by the sound of the wind outside, coming now in gusts with some force behind them.

Mercurio said, ‘What have you to lose? You have had some beautiful Etruscan objects manufactured for you. But you have not yet sold them. It may be suggested that you intended to do so. But intention is no crime.’

‘There were others in the past.’

‘Certainly. But who will trouble their heads about them. Suspicion may be cast on them, but their owners will not be anxious to have their collections doubted. They will be the last people to attack you. Danilo Ferri must be given up to justice. For he is the true criminal. He, the quiet man, the steward, the organizer. It was he who brought these men to Florence. It was he who gave them their instructions. Did he consult you? Did he tell you what he was doing?’

The Professor hesitated, and then shook his head.

Mercurio said, triumphantly, ‘I thought as much. Then how can you be blamed? It was he who organized the whole conspiracy. It was he who caused the death of old Milo, and the accusation to be made against the Englishman. Why should you shoulder the blame for something you have not done? Tell me that?’

The Professor said nothing.

‘There is a difference between artistic faking – and murder.’

Mercurio let the last two words hang, and then brought them out with deliberate brutality.

The Professor said, ‘I know nothing of that. I was promised that there would be no violence. The death was an accident.’

‘And the death of Dindoni? Was that an accident? Did he break his own neck and place himself on the bonfire?’

The old man shuddered. Mercurio, seeing his advantage, pressed it home. ‘You shall make your choice,’ he said. ‘The production of Etruscan relics. That is, perhaps, a minor matter for the civil courts. But a double murder! Will you accept the responsibility for what these animals have done? Animals, hired and paid behind your back, by your own steward. Well?’

‘If I speak, it will involve Milo Zecchi also. He had a part in it. And he is no longer here to speak for himself.’

‘Do you imagine that they will dig up his bones and hang them in the gibbet for carving a few bronzes on your instructions?’

‘His family survive, and will be shamed.’

‘That is true. It is an argument which I accept. But if his family themselves, his widow and his daughter, tell you with their own lips that they would rather the truth came out, what then?’

The question was answered by a low rumbling of thunder. The old man was silent. His thoughts were a long way away. Many centuries away. He was walking again on the Etruscan hills, at the dawn of the first civilization, when men and women moved unencumbered, and the gods walked beside them; when life was wonderful and death only a pleasant postcript.

‘Well?’ said Mercurio impatiently. ‘If I do this, will you agree?’

‘Shall an Etruscan
lucumone
betray his own servant to the magistracy?’

The thunder rolled out again, on the left, a menacing drum beat of sound. It was as though Thor, the Lord of Thunder, had himself answered the question.

Mercurio got up, and moved across to the door. Still the Professor sat on in silence, unmoving. The look on Mercurio’s face as he went out was one almost of pity.

He crossed the hallway of the silent house, opened the front door, and walked out into a world which was cowering before the coming fury. The light was pearly. So far only a few lazy drops of rain had fallen, but the strong wind which runs before the storm had bent the tops of the cypress trees, like acolytes bowing all in line. Mercurio got into his car and ran down, through empty streets, to Florence.

As he reached the Zecchi house the storm broke in a fury of rain, driven horizontally down the street. In the few seconds that he had to wait for the door to be opened, he was soaked right down to the waist.

The two women were both there. Tina chirruped like a bird when she saw him, standing there, dripping. Annunziata, more practical, bade him take off his coat and shirt and gave him a towel to dry himself. Then she found a clean shirt which had belonged to Milo and popped it over him. Regardless, for once, of his appearance, Mercurio sat down in their kitchen, his head, crowned with a mop of tousled hair, sticking through the collarless neck of the flannel shirt. Whilst the storm raged outside, he talked. And as he talked, both women drew nearer to him, to hear, over the rolling and rattling of the thunder, exactly what it was he had to say. When he stopped speaking, Annunziata’s piled white crown of hair and Tina’s sleek black head were nodding in unison.

When Mercurio left them, more than an hour later, the two women sat in silence for some moments. It was still raining, but steadily, and without ferocity.

Annunziata said to Tina, ‘That boy is growing up.’

At four o’clock the giant Arturo made a tour of the Villa Rasenna, carefully closing all open windows and fastening shutters and doors. He saw Mercurio depart in his car, and then stood at one of the windows, watching the rain advance like an army with spears.

The storm did not disturb him. He had seen many summer thunderstorms break over the house, and pass on their way leaving the world fresher and brighter. This one was exceptional only in its violence. He was sorry for the flowers in the garden, which would be beaten to the ground and lose their blooms. But other flowers would grow.

When he came to consider the matter afterwards, he had no real idea how long he had stood there looking out when he was disturbed by a crack of thunder not louder than those which had gone before, but different in quality, and seeming to come from inside the house.

He decided that he must have been mistaken, but made a tour of the ground floor to see whether, perhaps, a shutter had been blown off its hinges. Finding everything in order, he returned to his post. But he was still disturbed. Something was amiss. The noise had come from so far under his feet that it suggested some disturbance in the very lowest part of the house.

Arturo considered the matter. His mind worked slowly, but methodically. If this alarming noise had originated somewhere below the ground-floor level, there were four places it might have come from. There was the boiler-room; and the coke store; there was the storage cellar, where wine and olive oil were kept; and there was the sacred room, the room of mysteries.

On balance, the most likely place seemed to be the boiler-room or the coke store and Arturo went there first. All was in order. In the cellars he found that some water from the recent deluge had made its way through one of the gratings and formed a pool on the floor. It would have to be mopped up. The only remaining possibility was the sacred room. Arturo had no key for this, and, in any event, was chary of entering it without his master’s orders. Pausing outside it, he noticed that the door, usually so tightly shut, was standing very slightly ajar.

Arturo put out his hand, and pushed it open.

The explanation of the noise he had heard was at once apparent. The door of the wall-safe had been blown off its hinges, and the air in the unventilated room was pungent with the fumes of explosive.

But Arturo had no eyes for it. His attention was concentrated on the thing which swung by a short length of rope from a hook in the ceiling; a thing with bloated face, exploded eyes and protruding blackened tongue; a thing which had once been his beloved master, Professor Bruno Bronzini.