His tone of voice remained unchanged, still just as cheerful and conversational as before. It was as if he were chatting about the weather or his plants.
“She slipped into this house through deceit, and through deceit she cast a spell on my father, and with the same deceit she won herself friends and lovers. She took our name and donned it like a dress, with utter indifference for those who, centuries before her, bore it proudly. That is why I’ve stopped using it. She cast shame on us all, with her continuous and unconcealed adultery, going so far as to bring her lover, a married man with children, under the roof of this home.”
The silence that followed was broken by the cries of the children below and the seagulls that pinwheeled lazily through the sky overhead. Ricciardi mused that, whoever Adriana Musso di Camparino might once have been, she was now a badly restitched piece of old clothing lying on a slab in the morgue. And all that remained of her was an image made of mist that no one could see but him, an image that went on endlessly repeating a senseless phrase and bleeding from a bullet hole in its forehead. He said again:
“Where were you, sir, on Saturday night?”
Ettore went on as if he hadn’t even heard him:
“As you can imagine, anyone would have hated her in my place. To keep from having to see her, I moved all the way up here. And from up here I look out on this city and its populace, and I admire my plants. And I learn a great deal. These are meaningful times, Commissario. Times that will forever be remembered. Destiny is about to make itself felt, and everyone can see that: you need only read, look around you, listen to the radio. Those children down there, you can see them: they don’t know it. But there will come a man who will lead them toward the sun, who will make them the masters of history. They live like little animals, the way their fathers and mothers did, incapable of understanding even whether they’re alive or dead. But they must stay in their place. All that matters is that each and every one stays in their place. That everyone does their part. In the world of tomorrow there is no place for deceit; and therefore there is no place for women like my father’s un-dearly departed wife.”
Maione sweated in silence, under his cap. He was thinking that people were simply no longer ashamed to say certain things, even in the presence of two strangers. And that the fact that they were in uniform, or at least that he was, must make people like Musso assume that they too were fanatical supporters of the Fascist regime. He was also thinking that all that nonsensical chatter must be an attempt to shift attention away from the commissario’s question, though he was certainly not about to let himself be distracted.
“Sir, I asked you a question. I’d like you to answer it.”
Ettore turned his back on the view and looked Ricciardi in the face. Now he was no longer smiling.
“I didn’t kill her, I’m sorry to say, if that’s what you’re asking. I should have, and I could have done it a thousand times over the past ten years. And God only knows how much I’d have wanted to. But I didn’t kill her. Maybe out of fear, or perhaps out of courage. I couldn’t say. And when she died, if she died during the night between Saturday and Sunday, I wasn’t home. I returned home at dawn, and I came directly up here.”
Maione seemed to have dropped off into sleep, as he always did when he was at the peak of his concentration. He asked:
“Forgive me, but I have a question: do you own a pistol? Or, as far as you know, does your father own one? In other words, are there weapons in the house?”
“No. No firearms, in this house. If I’m remembering rightly, there must be a saber somewhere, my father was an officer. But no pistols.”
Silence followed Ettore’s words. Even the insects stopped their buzzing for an instant.
“And where were you, that night?”
The man held the transparent gaze of Ricciardi’s eyes.
“That, Commissario, is none of your business. If you have nothing else to ask me, I’d like to go back to my plants. Buon giorno.”
As they went back out through the study, Ricciardi noticed a large, yellowing photograph, hand-colored, framed, and hanging in the place of honor over the desk. An elderly woman with a proud gaze, a hooked nose just like Ettore’s, and the same line of the mouth. In her hands, crossed beneath her bosom, she held a rosary.
On her left ring finger a golden ring could be seen, with a heraldic crest.
XVII
Looking through the plateglass window, Giulio Colombo saw Enrica arrive, and noticed how she resembled her mother: in just two days he’d been subjected to two assaults on his tranquility, and for two different reasons.
It seemed harder for him to face his daughter, because he felt guilty about what he’d done to her; the evening had hardly been a success, precisely because of the girl’s stubborn refusal to join in the conversation. In fact she’d spent nearly the entire dinner grimly looking out the window, despite her mother’s best efforts to draw her out by praising her domestic and cultural gifts. As far as that goes, he himself hadn’t been particularly impressed with the Fiores’ son, a fairly superficial young man who had bored him stiff with a lengthy disquisition on the latest automobile models: there was no topic on earth that attracted him less, as he was a diehard proponent of the belief that those horrible noisy contraptions were irreparably ruining his city.
Nor did the situation improve after dinner, when they all went to sit in the drawing room: while the mother took command of the conversation, gossiping relentlessly about the entire city and in particular about the talk of the town, the murder of the duchess of Camparino, the son sat down practically on top of Enrica, and whispered in her ear incessantly; an unseemly approach, especially considering it was the first time they’d met. Giulio had given signs of annoyance, but one angry glare from his wife was enough to stop him cold, and so he sat there obediently, pretending not to notice what was happening. Poor Enrica had scooted over as far as she could, closer and closer to the armrest, pursued implacably by Sebastiano. A genuine nightmare. Once the three guests had left, Giulio had heaved a sigh of relief and then braced himself for the inevitable argument, but Enrica had immediately withdrawn into her bedroom without even wishing him goodnight. That was the first time he could ever remember that happening: his daughter’s goodnight kiss was a consolation he sorely hated to miss.
And here she came now. Her expression, usually so sweet, was grim and set. Giulio wondered whether there was a reason that everyone had it in for him. He sighed and prepared for the clash.
Ricciardi and Maione, on their way back from Palazzo Camparino, were still in bad moods; but at least their work was distracting them from their personal problems. The interviews with the duke and his son, instead of clearing up any details of the case, had only stirred new doubts. Maione seemed especially baffled.
“Commissa’, what do you think of this? The duke certainly isn’t strong enough to break a couple of anyone’s ribs, he might not even be capable of getting out of bed. Still, I don’t know if you noticed, the housekeeper obeys him like a lapdog, and she’s plenty strong.”
Ricciardi walked, lost in thought.
“Yes, that’s true; and there’s another thing: the Sivo woman, who kept us company close to the duke the whole time, stopped at the door with Ettore, she didn’t even come in. And the room struck me as remarkably messy, while the rest of the palazzo is clean and tidy. I’d like to understand the relationship between the two of them.”