“And what was he like?”
Concetta’s eyes welled up with tears, and there was a quaver in her voice.
“As if he were drunk, but he didn’t smell like wine. He couldn’t walk straight; it took him forever to get up the stairs. He said that he was tired and that he didn’t feel good. He fell down on the bed with all his clothes on; he had a fever, and he fell straight asleep. I undressed him, the way I do with my children when they fall asleep in their clothes.”
She exchanged a glance with her mother-in-law; the older woman nodded her head yes ever so slightly. Then she pulled a folded scrap of paper out of her dress.
“And I found this. It fell out of his jacket.”
She handed the sheet of paper to Maione, who unfolded it.
“A promissory note, Commissa’. Eighty lire, payable April fourteenth, signed by Iodice, Antonio. Beneficiary: Calise, Carmela. And. .”
Ricciardi looked up at Maione.
“And?”
Maione spoke in a low voice, looking at Concetta.
“It’s covered with blood, Commissa’.”
Emma opened her door just a crack. Her husband glimpsed part of her face, her hair in disarray. Her eyes were red from weeping, or possibly from sleep.
“What do you want?”
“May I come in? I need to talk to you. It’s important.”
Emma’s voice was full of pain.
“What could be all that important?”
She turned and walked toward the bed, leaving the door half-open. Ruggero entered the room, shutting the door behind him.
The bedroom was a mess. Clothes and undergarments scattered across the floor and furniture, scraps left over from breakfast lying forgotten on the night table, a large, filthy handkerchief spread out on the bed. There was a stale, dank smell in the air.
“You’ve thrown up. You’re not well.”
Emma was shaking. She ran a hand through her hair.
“Aren’t you sharp. So that’s why they call you the Fox. Prego, have a seat. Just make yourself at home.”
Ruggero ignored the sarcasm. He looked around, still standing. Then he turned his gaze on his wife.
“You’ve been drinking, too. Look at you: you’re a wreck. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?”
Emma let herself flop back on the bed, snickering.
“You want to know if I’m ashamed? Of course I’m ashamed. I’m ashamed I never had the courage to tell my father no when he arranged for me to marry you. I’m ashamed that I didn’t have the strength to leave you and this house all the times you treated me like a spoiled child. And I’m ashamed to be here right now, instead of. .”
Ruggero finished her sentence for her.
“. . instead of with him. With Attilio Romor.”
A long silence ensued. Emma struggled to focus on her husband’s image through her clouded vision.
“How do you know his name? Damn you! Have you been following me? Did you hire someone to investigate me? You coward!”
With her lips drawn back in a snarl, showing her gums, her head drawn between her shoulders, her fingers spread like claws, eyes red with fury and wine, her hair a tangled mess, Emma looked like a wild animal. She looked around for something to throw at him.
A bitter smile appeared on Ruggero’s lips.
“Investigate you? Spend good money to find out something everyone is eager to tell me, precisely because I don’t ask about it? Everyone: my friends, male and female, even the doorman. You didn’t deny anyone the sight of you, the spectacle of you playing the stupid slut. And now you’re surprised? Spare me your anger and settle for what you’ve brought down on yourself already.”
Emma turned pale. Reaching out with one hand, she groped for her filthy handkerchief and raised it to her lips, fighting back a retching impulse to vomit.
“I’ve left him, I won’t be seeing him again.”
“I know.”
She lifted her head and looked at him.
“How do you know that? You can’t possibly know that.”
“It doesn’t matter now. We have a more serious problem to deal with. Actually, to be precise, you’re the one with the problem. But you’re still Signora Serra di Arpaja, to my misfortune, and you need to listen to me, carefully.”
Ruggero pulled Emma’s summons out of his jacket pocket and started talking.
XLVI
Ricciardi took the promissory note, immediately noticing the bloody fingerprints near where the amount was written in numerals and by the signature. It looked as if Iodice had traced the parts that had been filled in with his finger, stained with Calise’s blood, making sure that it was the document he was looking for. He looked up at Concetta.
“He didn’t do it,” the woman said immediately.
Ricciardi shook his head.
“I know you’re convinced of that, Signora. Otherwise, you’d have never given me this note. But you have to admit that it’s hard to reconstruct what happened without thinking that your husband might have been the one to kill Calise.”
Concetta took a step forward. Her voice broke as she talked.
“I know it: I know it wasn’t him. After all, Commissa’, tell me this: why would he have kept the note? Wouldn’t he just have destroyed it and said he’d paid it in full? Even if his name did come out as one of the people who owed money to Calise. No, you know it yourself that it wasn’t him. He found her already dead, he took the promissory note, and he left. You have to find the murderer, Commissa’. Now there’re two souls that need to rest in peace.”
Ricciardi and Maione looked at each other uncertainly. What Concetta was saying was speculation. Evidence was quite another matter.
Iodice’s mother stepped forward out of the shadows. She spoke up in a low voice, roughened by silence and grief. It was clear that she had a hard time expressing herself in a language other than the dialect she was used to speaking.
“Commissario, Brigadier, forgive me. I’m an ignorant woman; I don’t know how to speak properly. I’ve worked hard all my life. That’s our fate, to struggle to raise our children. I watched this son of mine grow all his life long, minute by minute. I saw him cry and laugh and then I saw the children he and this fine girl brought into the world, this fine girl who tied her life to his, to ours. I knew him the way only a mamma can know her son, and I can tell you: my son never killed anyone. Much less an old woman, like his mother. Impossible. Believe what my daughter-in-law tells you, believe us both. Don’t let a murderer run loose in the streets; don’t let our name be stained just because it’s easier to stop looking.”
Ricciardi gave the woman a searching look.
“Signora, believe me when I tell you that we have no intention of letting the guilty party go free. I promise you: we’ll continue the investigation. But I have to tell you, the way things look right now, your son would appear to have committed this murder. You may go now. Maione will see you to the front door. And once again, my condolences.”
The women nodded their heads in farewell and walked toward the door. Before they left the room, Tonino Iodice’s mother turned back to face the commissario.
“The things a person does, sooner or later they have to pay for them, Commissa’. Or else they get their reward. Remember: ’O Padreterno nun è mercante ca pava ’o sabbato.” God Almighty’s not a shopkeeper who pays His debts on Saturday.
When he returned to the office after seeing the two women out, Maione found Ricciardi staring nonplussed at the door.
“What does that mean?”
“What does what mean, Commissa’?”
“What Iodice’s mother said. What did she mean?”
Maione looked at him with concern. This investigation was introducing him to a Ricciardi who was very different from the one he’d come to know.
“The line about God Almighty and Saturday, you mean? Sometimes I forget that you’re not Neapolitan. They don’t say that where you come from? It’s a proverb. It means that when you do something, you don’t get your reward or punishment on a set date, like with debts between human beings. But I don’t think she was trying to threaten you.”