The Puppeteer (6 page)

“I want thirty.” She folded her arms.

“What on earth is wrong? Why d’you work like this? You’re young and you should be enjoying yourself—yes, Pioppi, you should be enjoying life, going dancing, having boyfriends. Like your mother when she was your age. But apart from Mass, you spend all your time at the university or here with the Nonna. You don’t enjoy yourself. You just study—and you starve.”

She had filled her cup with a few centimeters of black coffee.

“Pioppi, my daughter, I love you. But please, can’t you see that you are being unreasonable? You’re obsessive.”

“I’m obsessive because I am like my—” Her mouth snapped shut.

She stood up and left the kitchen.

The toast lay untouched on the plate.

O
N THE NIGHT
of 21st July, 1960—just ten days before the assassination of Belluno and the young housekeeper—a group of friends, carried away by the Olympic fever which now gripped Italy, held a bet.

Francesco Barbieri maintained that he could run the eight kilometers from the bar in which the friends were—Bar Città di Genova—to the point downstream where the Po met its confluent.

The record over this distance had been set the previous night by a certain Matteo Bianco, alias Lo sciocc. Consequently, just after midnight and accompanied by a convoy of bicycles, Vespas and two cars, the slightly inebriated contestant set off into the night along the track that followed the banks of the Po. When the runner and his entourage reached a place known as the Zona Spagnola—it had once been the site of stables at the time of the Spanish occupation—they came abreast of a motorcar, partially hidden behind the trees. Later in sworn statements, several people categorically identified the vehicle as a two-tone Fiat 1100. All the witnesses agreed that they had seen the car’s registration, and had recognized the letters PC.

Nobody, however, could recall the precise registration number. The Zona Spagnola was about five minutes’ brisk walk through woodland from the Villa Laura. In the normal course of events, passersby would not normally be walking
along the secluded path at such a time of night, and the person or persons wanting to approach the Villa Laura without being observed would be well advised to leave any vehicle at the Zona Spagnola. Police investigation soon revealed that a two-tone Fiat 1100 was the property of Douglas Ramoverde, the victim’s son-in-law. The car’s registration was PC 23478. On 16th August—a fortnight after the discovery of the two bodies—Signora Peliti appeared before the investigating judge Dell’Orto. In her sworn statement she said that on the night of 1st August, she had been to visit her aunt at Argine Ticinese. On the return journey, despite the late hour, she decided to take a short cut. She cycled along the path beside the Po and at two thirty, the dynamo light caught the reflection of a car bumper. The vehicle had been left at Zona Spagnola. Signora Peliti stated that she recognized the car as a Fiat, but she could not name the model. She was not certain of the color of the car but as to the registration, she was convinced that it had been a Piacenza plate.

The following day, Douglas Ramoverde was arrested.

“Y
OU DON
’
T BELIEVE
, Brigadiere, that there’s sufficient evidence?”

Behind the pince-nez, the old face rarely smiled. Dell’Orto seemed to be smiling now; webs of wrinkles formed at the corner of the eyes and the colorless lips.

“I have no opinion, Signor Giudice.” Trotti had been in the police long enough to know how to conceal his opinions.

“You believe, no doubt—like your colleague, Commissario Bagnante—that I’m bowing before public pressure. Is that not correct?”

“There are good reasons for suspecting Ramoverde, Signor Giudice.”

“But in your opinion such evidence is merely circumstantial—is that not so?”

For a man with such power, for a man who would never have to pay for a meal in a restaurant or go short of parmesan cheese or Christmas cake, knowing as he did that these things and many others would be provided for him by people eager to find his favor, Judge Dell’Orto was strangely humble. Everyone who came into contact with him was aware of his power, but never did he flaunt it. Austere, perhaps, but in his way he was like the dead publisher, Belluno. Both men were outsiders—Belluno from Puglia, Dell’Orto from Tuscany—and both had built themselves a position in Lombardy. It was rumored that Dell’Orto was a
freemason; it was certain that he held an outdated respect for Mazzini, for a different, almost archaic idea of Italy. His republicanism had remained untainted throughout the Mussolini years.

But Italy was changing.

The war was over and the country was entering a new era—as the Olympic Games in Rome clearly showed. A new, modern Italy. The wounds of the partisan war had begun to heal. The Italy of August 1960 was an Italy of hope. The papers spoke of the Italian miracle; there were autostradas and the bomb craters of Milan and Genoa had disappeared. In their place, new blocks of flats had gone up—architecture that was the envy of the rest of the world. Italians now owned their own cars and husbands bought washing machines—made in Italy—for their wives. There were Vespas and Lambrettas. The new generation of women were going out to work, leaving the fields for the factories. More money in the house and the insidious invasion of new television sets.

“Merely circumstantial, Brigadiere?” Dell’Orto pulled at the loose belt of his trousers. He wore clothes that belonged to a different era, trousers that crumpled over his shoelaces. “But of course, I respect your opinion.”

Trotti shrugged. “There’s very little evidence.”

The old man’s thin finger pointed into the air. “Many years, Brigadiere, many years I have been dealing with criminals. By and large, not nice people—sometimes amusing, often pathetic and nearly always”—his finger underlined his words—“nearly always cunning.” He sat back in his chair, waiting for Trotti’s reply.

Trotti looked at the older man.

“One lesson I have learned over the years:
motive
. Always look for a motive.” A speck of saliva had formed at the edge of his mouth. “They are cunning, Trotti, very cunning—but they can never hide their motive.”

“I’m not sure that Ramoverde had a good reason for killing his father-in-law.”

Dell’Orto clapped his hands, as if amused. But he was no longer smiling and the freckled, dark skin of his forehead creased. “He was afraid that the old man would change his will—and this time he would get nothing at all.”

“He had already been cut out of most of the will.”

“Belluno got on well with his two daughters—and in particular, with Matilde Ramoverde. In the two previous wills, he had bequeathed virtually everything to her and to her younger sister. Then quite suddenly, last year he changed his mind. Obviously, Ramoverde was frightened he’d change it again—this time cutting Ramoverde’s wife out completely.” The judge pulled at the shiny bowtie underneath the wing-collar. “Human beings are rational—even in their irrationality. Remember that, Trotti, and you won’t go wrong. Belluno felt he had good reason for cutting the daughters out for good—no Villa, no money, no nothing. As our French friends say,
cherchez la femme
!”

It was Trotti’s turn to frown.

“A woman, Trotti, a woman and the old fool had fallen in love.” He stopped suddenly, eyes bright behind the pince-nez. “Love perhaps is not the right word, it is something too young, too juvenile for Belluno. Let us say he was infatuated with the girl—infatuated with his housekeeper. He probably saw himself Pygmalion and he hoped to transform this rustic girl into something more sophisticated.” Again the smile behind the glasses—an old, cynical smile.

Trotti nodded.

The judge coughed and gave a brief glance to the dusty office, the piles of faded dossiers held together with ribbon or pieces of string.

“Forty years between the old man and Bardizza, and like a fool, he must have thought he was in love.” The eyes shone. “But his daughter saw the relationship for what it really was. Women are cynical in a way that you and I will never understand. Never. Brigadiere, I have been married now for over thirty-one years and my own dear wife is a woman whom I cherish like life itself. I have shared my bed with her, she has given me four wonderful children. But there are moments, even at the end of a road that we have been sharing now for so long, when I understand my dear Genoveffa about as much as I understand the mystery of life itself.” He lowered his voice. “Women see things we never see; they give life and they can understand its cruelties and its
envies in a way that is denied to us. We are men, we intellectualize, we give names to things so that we can deal with them. But women don’t need names, they don’t need words. And Matilde Ramoverde, the old man’s daughter, she understood that Eva Bardizza was intent on one thing. She wanted the Villa Laura, and the house in Piacenza and the villa in San Remo. She wanted everything she could get her hands on. And she saw that the old man was a willing fool whom she could manipulate.” Again he held up his finger, but his smile was without humor. “A cunning, very pretty little peasant girl—she had found the gold pot at the end of the rainbow—and she wanted all the gold.”

“I don’t feel that there is any conclusive proof that we can bring against Ramoverde.”

“Ramoverde allowed himself to be manipulated by his wife. It was his wife who got him to slap Bardizza. It happened at San Remo and Ramoverde doesn’t deny it. How could he, when the old man wrote long and tedious letters to all his friends and colleagues denouncing his son-in-law—the same son-in-law whom he’d always got on so well with—as a heartless monster? No doubt Ramoverde was irritated—scared, even—by the airs that Bardizza put on, strutting about the Villa Laura as if she already owned it—when Ramoverde and his wife had naturally assumed it was theirs by right.” He lowered his hands on to the cluttered desktop. “The motive, Trotti—the motive is there.”

“But there were other people who had reasons to hate Belluno.”

“Who, for example?”

“A young woman. There had been other men in her life. A slighted lover, perhaps or a …”

“A
crime passionel
!” He used the French expression.

Trotti paused, feeling uncomfortable. “Somebody, perhaps, who was jealous to see that Bardizza was intending to live with the old man.”

“A crime of passion. But they didn’t sleep in the same bed,” the judge said.

“They didn’t sleep in the same bed but they slept in the same
house. And how was an outsider to know what exactly went on within the walls of the Villa Laura?”

“The murderer knew the villa well—well enough to find his way around and not leave any clues, not even a fingerprint. Somebody who cleaned up after his dirty work. Somebody who knew exactly what the relationship between the old man and his housekeeper was.”

Trotti was silent.

“Piero Trotti, you’re young and you’re ambitious. But don’t allow yourself to be carried away. Look for the motive. Can’t you see that no one else had any reason to want to kill the old man?” It was as if Dell’Orto had convinced himself. “Tell me, Trotti, have you talked to Ramoverde?”

Trotti nodded.

“And?”

“He seems a pleasant man. Shy, perhaps.”

Dell’Orto smiled. “A shy man with a fairly turbulent past.” He set the pince-nez higher on his nose and turned towards the pile of dusty documents.

Outside, beyond the judge’s grubby office, the sky was blue and cloudless. Agnese and Pioppi were up on the lake, probably swimming in the cool water or perhaps taking tea on the terrace at the Villa Ondina.

The hottest August on record.

The old Judge appeared to have forgotten about Trotti. Trotti stood up and mumbled a courteous “Buongiorno.”

“Remember, Brigadiere, remember what the French say—
cherchez la femme
.”

V
ITA E SORRISI
, 2nd September 1960

“
WE SAW THE MONSTER OF VILLA LAURA
”

Within a few days, Italy will return to work after the two-month hiatus of a summer that has given us much to be proud of in the stadia of Rome. But the Olympic Games are now over, the first clouds can be seen in the late August sky and soon the nation must return to the office and to the factory
.

For some people, work has never stopped, even during the canicular heat of the Ferragosto. While others were crowding into the Olympic City or on to the hot beaches, Vilma and Giacomo Forti (both thirty-seven years old) have been diligently selling petrol and oil from their AGIP concession in the via Klepero (Piacenza). “Not everybody can take a holiday and we have been working to satisfy the demand of the local population as well as the tourists coming down from Northern Europe.”

About one thing, Giacomo Forti is certain. “On the afternoon of August second, a two-tone Fiat 1100 drew into the forecourt. The driver—a tall man wearing dark sunglasses—insisted that I wash his car immediately. He appeared nervous and obviously in a hurry. When I informed him that I would not be able to carry out the job before the following morning,
he got rather agitated. Eventually he agreed to pay me a bonus of three thousand lire in addition to the standard rate for tourist vehicles. Understandably, the financial agreement met with my approval.”

“
We have seen the monster of the Villa Laura,” says Vilma, originally from the Valcamonica (Prov. of Brescia). Holding her delightful young son Andrea to her breast (photo opposite), she informed our special correspondent that the driver of the Fiat 1100 wore sunglasses and, despite the summer heat, a suit and a borsalino hat. He was, she states, of above average height
.

“
My husband was very busy and it was with my sister that I cleaned the car. Above the passenger seat, both on the inside and the outside of the vehicle, there were clearly defined black traces. My sister has trained as a nurse and she recognized the traces as dried blood.” The proprietress gives a shrug and a smile. “We have informed the Questura of this discovery in the light of what has already been stated in the local and national press.”