Don Pierino’s dark and expressive face contracted in a pained expression.
“Yes, the poor duchess. A terrible thing. So you’re looking into the case. I wouldn’t have thought so.”
Ricciardi was surprised.
“Why not?”
The assistant pastor shrugged his shoulders and spread his arms wide.
“It’s an influential family. And you don’t have a reputation for being particularly diplomatic, you know.”
The commissario shook his head.
“I never knew that I was so famous; yesterday a journalist, and today you. No, I’m really not very diplomatic, Father. What interests me is the truth: and you, with the work you do, know very well that the truth isn’t diplomatic.”
“The walks of life where I spend my time, Commissario, are where you find the people who need comforting. And often those are places where the police are well known and feared. But no one says anything bad about you. They say that you’re quiet, and mysterious, too; there are a few superstitious souls, and I’ll tell you this with a smile, who say that you bring bad luck, and that you’re friends with the devil. But the poor say that an innocent man never suffers at your hands. Tell me, if I may ask; what do you want to know?”
“Whatever you can tell me, Father. Relations between the two dukes and the duchess, for instance. The household help. Or the duchess’s friends.”
A sad expression appeared on Don Pierino’s face.
“Commissario, why would you insult me like this? Do you think somehow that it’s my job to gather gossip? I go to bring spiritual comfort to a very sick man, who’s too sick even to kneel and pray. I’m certainly not going to pay any attention to who they welcome into their home, or what they say to each other.”
Ricciardi shook his head vehemently.
“No, no, Father: don’t even think such a thing. I know what kind of a person you are. But something terrible happened in that house, and the same thing could happen again. Murder, to borrow your own words, is a scar that often tears open again, and it’s my job to keep that from happening. I’m not asking you for gossip, which is of no more interest to me than it is to you. I just wanted your impressions.”
The priest smiled, reassured.
“There’s not much I can tell you, I arrive and I say mass, then I leave. The housekeeper, Signora Concetta, is so silent and discreet that sometimes she frightens me, the way she appears suddenly. You’ve seen Sciarra, the doorman, yourself: he’s a funny little man who spends his time watering the hydrangeas and playing with his children: I’ve never seen children eat so much in my life. You never hear or see his wife. No, I’d say that the scar you’re looking isn’t to be found among the palazzo’s servants.”
“What about the duke?”
“The duke made a mistake. He was a widower, he had a difficult son on his hands, one whom he never spent much time with. He thought that he could regain his youth by taking up with a younger woman, but then he fell sick. He gradually lost interest in the things of this world, formal considerations, social conventions. He’s a good man, you know, Commissario. He’s not afraid of death; to him it only means an end to his pain and a chance to be reunited with his first wife, whom he loved very much.”
But the commissario remembered the words of scorn that the old man had uttered concerning his second wife.
“But he clearly felt some resentment toward the duchess. I noticed it when we questioned him.”
“That’s only human, I think. The duke is dying, he’s bedridden. The duchess was. . a free woman, who allowed life to sweep her away, and who chased after it the way a leaf chases after a mountain stream. She wasn’t wicked, she was just lively, like certain children chasing after a rag-ball. I didn’t see her much; I doubt she was very religious. Her husband wouldn’t forgive her for losing all interest in his home and his family, perhaps. I couldn’t say, he’d never talked to me about it.”
Ricciardi thought it over.
“What about the son? How did he get along with his stepmother? On this topic everyone’s evasive but him, and he says it, loud and clear: he hated her.”
Don Pierino shrugged his shoulders.
“Ettore is no ordinary young man. He’s very well read, and he’s deeply religious. But he’s also a young man with very strict principles. He never forgave his father for his second marriage: he broke off all relations with him, I don’t think they’ve spoken in years. The duchess was the exact opposite of his poor mamma, and the memory of his mother is very important and immediate to him. I think his attitude is really quite normal. But I don’t think he’s capable of violence; let me say it again, he’s very religious.”
“What kind of life does he lead, Father? Who does he frequent? Why hasn’t he married?”
Don Pierino smiled again, after hesitating briefly.
“Everyone has their own personality and their own friendships, no, Commissario? And neither you nor I are married, it strikes me. We’ve followed our own paths, and neither of those paths led to a wife or children. And neither, it seems to me, did Ettore’s. But that doesn’t mean we’re not children of God. That doesn’t mean we don’t have our parts to play.”
Ricciardi sat for several long seconds, looking at the assistant pastor’s seraphic expression, and following the thread of his thoughts. In the end, he said:
“All right, Father. I thank you for your help. There’ll be a funeral, eventually; will you be officiating?”
“Yes, Commissario. I’m the closest thing that family has to a spiritual father, I believe.”
“Then we’ll see you at the palazzo. I believe that Brigadier Maione and I will both be attending.”
XXIV
It hadn’t gone according to her rosiest hopes, but it hadn’t gone all that badly either. While she was finishing her makeup in front of the mirror, in her room at the Hotel du Vésuve, flooded with sunlight and the bracing smell of salt water, Livia was thinking back on Ricciardi, the day after her meeting with him at Gambrinus.
He was exactly the way she had remembered, as she’d thought about him a thousand times, over the last few months. Dark, smoldering, mysterious. Those eyes that stared without intent, green as the wintry sea, chilly and transparent as glass; he made no attempt to be likable or attractive. And instead he was attractive, terribly so; Livia found him wonderfully different from any other man she’d ever known, any man who’d ever courted her. He could be surly, no doubt about it, and he seemed remote: and yet her sensibilities allowed her to detect, behind the appearance of those somewhat brusque manners, the kindness and gentleness that would make the woman who succeeded in drawing them out of him a very happy woman indeed.
As she ran the lipstick brush over her lips, Livia thought about Ricciardi’s hands: those fine, tense hands that he usually concealed in his pockets. And she thought about what it would be like to feel them sliding over her body, at first hesitant and then increasingly confident.
She tilted her head slightly to one side and tried out her most seductive smile: the mirror reflected the face of a woman in the prime of her loveliness, her large dark eyes melting and captivating, her lips parted to reveal gleaming white teeth, a coquettish dimple on her chin. She decided that she would pick up Ricciardi at police headquarters that very night, when his shift ended. She’d ignore any objections he might raise: and she’d absolutely forbid him to have his say.
After all, she was Livia Lucani: no man alive, however mysterious and reserved he might be, could resist her charms.
Maione stuck his head into Ricciardi’s office.
“Commissa’, buon giorno. It’s hotter today than it was yesterday, impossible as that seems. Shall I bring you a cup of freshly made ersatz coffee?”
Ricciardi shook his head.