By now the young master was over thirty, and showed no sign of being ready to cast off the burden of solitude that he’d been bearing since he was a child. Her greatest worry was that she had so few years left; who would take her place alongside Luigi, who would watch over his fevers, who would feed him? She never missed the opportunity to ask him those questions, over and over again, but she never got an answer.
She loved him deeply, but she didn’t understand him. She couldn’t figure out his indifference to money, to people, to human emotions. No ties to his distant family, no attention to the administration of his property; if she hadn’t been there to look after things with her scrupulous simplicity, those viper cousins of his would have devoured it all. He didn’t care; all he cared about was his damned job. His evenings were spent shut up in his bedroom, listening to radio broadcasts of American tunes played by those black jazz musicians, or else reading.
A poor old woman wants to hear children’s voices in the house again, she thought sadly. And she wants to be able to wait for the end with a faint sense of serenity.
She thought of the Baroness: the same green eyes, the same sad smile as her son, the same nervous hands. The same silence.
She wondered yet again whether she was really up to the task that that frail woman had entrusted to her.
Doctor Modo reached the scene of the crime around two in the afternoon, wiping his brow dry with his handkerchief, his instrument bag in the other hand and his hat under his arm.
“I can’t understand why people always seem to get themselves murdered in ways and at times of the day designed to make me skip lunch. And really, am I the only medical examiner in this city?”
Maione went to meet the doctor as soon as he heard his unmistakable muttering in the stairway.
“Hello, Doc. Have you got any news for me?”
“What news do you want me to have, Brigadie’! A poor wretch works all night only to spend it with four imbeciles who decided to crack each others’ heads open just to prove there’s nothing inside, except maybe a signed photograph of that bald guy in jackboots up north in Rome. Then the minute he leaves to get some shut-eye, your police officer shows up, and here I am. Do you do these things to me on purpose, or what?”
“No, Dotto’, for the love of all that’s holy. I was asking, what about that. . that lady that I brought for you to look at, this morning. The one with the. . the cut, you know who I mean. How is she?”
“Ah, Signora Russo. How do you think she is, Brigadie’. . they’ve ruined her for life. I sutured her the best I could, but that side of her face will always be disfigured. Her eyelid even droops now. It was a miserable job, a real ordeal. And she never made so much as a peep; just sat there, hands folded in her lap, looking straight ahead, not uttering a word. Except that at one point, a tear ran down her cheek.”
“Did anyone come to see her, in the time you were there?”
“No, no, no one at all. She told me she had a son, a boy, but he has a job; he may not have heard yet. What a pity. It’s such a crime: a truly beautiful woman. And her voice, Brigadie’. . what a warm, gracious voice. Do you have any idea who could have done such a thing?”
“No, not yet; but I want to look into the matter. Did you detain her, like I asked?”
“Of course I did. Besides, with that wound of hers, she could contract a nasty case of septicemia in no time. If you’d seen the things I saw at the battle of the Carso. . No, you’ll find her right where you left her, at least until tonight. Hurry though; you know there’s no overabundance of beds.”
As they were speaking, Ricciardi had joined them.
“Here’s our good doctor. Please, take your time. After all, your patient is in no hurry.”
“Look who’s here, Ricciardi, the prince of darkness himself. I should have known. When someone calls me outside of regular working hours, you’re always to blame: the man without a life of his own. Just the kind of thing that happens to someone like me: someone like you. And here I was, so close to retirement.”
“Sure, that’ll be the day. I guarantee you’ll be one of those old pains in the neck who are always buzzing around crime scenes after they retire, giving advice no one asked for.”
“You’ve got my personality type pegged, at least. When I retire, I’m going to get everything off my chest, once and for all. That way they’ll send me into internal exile on some beautiful sunny southern island teeming with women and I’ll never have to look at your ugly mugs again as long as I live-no offense, Brigadie’.”
Ricciardi and Modo had an odd, rough-edged friendship. The doctor was the only one who dared to address the commissario with the Italian informal “tu,” and he was also the only one capable of grasping his wry sense of humor.
“Come along, doctor. Come meet the elderly signora who’s been waiting for you all morning. But there’s no hurry; believe me, she’s not going anywhere.”
XVII
Off to one side, Ricciardi watched the minuet that always took place in the wake of a murder. The stage setting varied, but the cast of characters was more or less the same: the medical examiner, a photographer, a couple of police officers, Maione, himself: each with a score and choreography all his own, treading carefully to avoid incursions into the others’ territory, just trying to see his own work through to completion. Talking, commenting, sometimes even laughing: a job like any other.
Outside the door, behind the police officer responsible for isolating the crime scene, morbidly curious eyes scanned the front hall for details that could be exaggerated in the neighborhood tall tales that would enliven conversations between next-door neighbors, friends, and relatives in the days to come. The same old story. Every time.
Ricciardi distinguished between murders with evident motives and murders whose motives were concealed. The former type had all the evidence right in the first scene, visible at first glance: the man with a gun in his hand sprawled out on top of the woman’s body, their faces disfigured by point-blank bullet wounds. The man splattered across the sidewalk, and up on the fourth floor the other man telling him to get up and take the rest of what he’s got coming. The guappo lying on the ground, with the knife protruding from his jacket like the handle of an umbrella clamped under his arm, and the other man, being restrained by four bystanders, still spitting out all the hatred he feels for him. Unmistakable motive. No doubt at all; all that’s left to take care of is a bit of cleaning and a small mountain of reports.
Concealed motive: the tenor found in his dressing room with his throat slit and a whole slew of people with excellent reasons for wanting him dead. The whore with her belly ripped open by a knife that’s vanished into thin air, in a bedroom that dozens of people pass through over the course of a single day. The rich gentleman killed in a crowd during a neighborhood street celebration, and no one saw a thing.
A poor, harmless old woman, mused the commissario, a “saint,” beloved by one and all, and then brutally clubbed and kicked to death: he had an unpleasant feeling that it wasn’t going to be easy to get to the bottom of this murder, to find the motive.
Maione summoned Riccardi’s attention; he was squatting down close to the carpet, being careful not to move or touch anything. Given his size, in that position he looked like an alabaster Buddha, which for some reason was dressed as a Neapolitan policeman.