The girl proved to be amiable and intelligent. Her name was Gilda, just as Bambinella had said, and she came from the Rione del Vasto, a neighborhood behind the train station. The fifth-eldest of nine children, she’d gone to work as a housemaid at age sixteen because her family could no longer afford to feed her. Now that she was twenty-two, she earned enough in her current line of work to maintain her four younger siblings and her mother. Their father had vanished, three years earlier, and had never been heard from again. “Either he’s dead or he shipped out,” she said, her jaws working industriously all the while, and without a hint of regret.
When she decided to become a housemaid, she’d been hired immediately by the Capece family, whose income was climbing along with the brilliant newspaper career of the head of the family. Gilda described a time that was not so much wealthy as hopeful, a household full of penny-pinching as well as laughter. “But it wasn’t weird,” she said, “because the signora helped me with the housekeeping and I helped her with the children.”
The Capece family had two children: Andrea and Giovanna; Andrea, the boy, was the elder of the two. When Gilda decided to quit after the first year, Andrea had been twelve and Giovanna was seven.
“So now,” Maione calculated, “they’re sixteen and eleven.”
“Yes,” said Gilda. “And he’s become a handsome young man. I wonder if I’ll find him on top of me in here, some of these days.”
Gilda knew what Andrea looked like now because every so often, up until a couple of years ago, she’d gone by to say hello to the Capece family; she had fond memories of her time there.
“But then I didn’t want to go back. The last time was just too weird,” she said again.
Maione didn’t understand.
“What do you mean, too weird?”
Gilda seemed to shudder at the memory, despite the heat.
“It was like going to pay a call on a family of dead people, Brigadie’. Everything was different.”
“How, everything was different how? What do you mean?”
The girl hesitated before answering. Bambinella, who was sitting beside her and holding her hand, squeezed it quickly to encourage her. She looked over at her friend and went on:
“The family I remembered was poor but they were happy. They treated me like a daughter; we were always lauging together. The signora would sit down next to me and teach me everything, how to cook, how to sew. She used to say that later on, once I’d found a husband and started a family of my own, I’d know how to do it all. Then I. . well, my life went the way it did. I don’t regret a thing, eh. But I expected that Signora Sofia, the wife, would dress me down, that she’d tell me I’d done wrong.”
“So what happened?”
“Instead, when I went to see them, she sat me down in the drawing room, like a grand lady. I felt uncomfortable, I wanted to go sit in the kitchen. But she insisted, she said, come sit in here. You made the right decision, I’m the one who chose the wrong life. And the apartment. .”
Maione was sensitive to every detail.
“The apartment? What had happened to the apartment?”
The girl tossed her yellow-tinted head of hair.
“No, no, nothing had really happened. It was all the same. But still it seemed. . dead, everything was dead. The little girl sitting at the table, studying, white as a sheet, she barely said hello to me. The boy, Andrea, gave me a big strong hug, and then he left the room, right away, as if he was ashamed or something. But the signora talked and talked to me, I thought she’d never stop.”
“And what did she talk about?”
“She talked about the old days, about when I lived there with them. She talked about her husband, as if he was dead though, as if he was a memory from long ago. Without hatred. She didn’t say anything to me about it, but maybe she knew that I’d heard all about the affair with the duchess. Everyone’s heard about it. And her, too, Brigadie’: her eyes were empty. As if they’d taken her heart out of her, her stomach, her brain, everything inside her. And that’s why I said, before, that it seemed weird to me. And that I don’t ever want to go back there.”
A long silence followed. Bambinella was stroking her girlfriend’s hand, as if she were consoling her for some loss. While Gilda was telling her story, she’d never altered her tone of voice; but now she wore an expression of profound sadness. The splotches of tomato sauce around her mouth made her look like a little girl playing at being a grown-up.
After a pause, Maione asked:
“Now listen to me carefully, Gilda: do you remember by any chance whether there was a pistol in the apartment? Think as hard as you can and try to remember: this is important to us.”
The girl was about to answer the question, then she stopped. She looked at Bambinella, and then at the brigadier, and said:
“The master of the house served in the war, he was an officer. His pistol is locked up in the desk drawer, one time he showed it to me to throw a scare into me, and he had a good laugh at my expense, too. But he keeps it locked up, and he has the only key.”
XXVIII
When Ricciardi and Maione met up again at headquarters, night had already fallen. The brigadier brought back the information he’d gathered from his round of bars and dives, from Bambinella, and from Gilda, the maid-turned-prostitute.
For his part, Ricciardi was evasive, skimming over the results of his personal investigation; it wasn’t that he didn’t want to share his information, but he thought that the trail he was following might prove to be dangerous-even just knowing about it-and he preferred to leave Maione in the dark. At least for now.
Every piece of information that they’d gathered on Capece and Musso seemed to strengthen the impression of guilt for both of them. And, paradoxically, the stronger the impression became that each of them was the murderer, the less there seemed to be any solid evidence proving it. It was a real stumper.
Just as they were trying to determine their new investigative strategies, they heard a nervous tapping at the door of Ricciardi’s office. Maione gave him a knowing look:
“If you ask me, it’s that snake, Ponte. He’s the only one who’ll knock on the door the same way he talks and the way he looks you in the face: all hesitant, without conviction. Listen to him: he’s practically scratching like a dog.”
Ricciardi sighed and called out: “Avanti!”
It was Ponte, of course, sweatier and more nervous than before.
“Commissario, buona sera. I’m here to ask you to come straight up to Dottor Garzo’s office. He said right away, immediately, in other words. Please, come with me.”
After such a grueling day, the last thing that Ricciardi felt like was resisting the little man’s darting, evasive gaze; moreover, even if he couldn’t say so to Maione, he was curious to hear what new objections the deputy chief of police had to make. And so he caught both the brigadier and Ponte by surprise when he stood up and said, agreeably:
“Did he say right away? Then we’ll come right away.”
They found the deputy chief of police pacing back and forth in his office, like a lion in a cage; his collar was unbuttoned, his tie was loosened, his jacket was draped over a hanger, and his vest swung open. On his desk, normally so immaculate, with only a few neatly stacked files, were scattered sheets of notepaper with transcriptions of official transcribed phone messages, various documents, and broken pencils. As soon as he saw Ricciardi and Maione come in, he started to berate them:
“I warned you two! You can’t say I didn’t warn you! It’s exactly what I expected to happen, and now it’s happened. Now what do we do, Ricciardi? What now? Tell me what you plan to do now, why don’t you?”
Ricciardi didn’t blink. He stood there, hands in his pockets, his lock of hair hanging over his forehead, a half-smile playing over his lips. Garzo stood seething, waiting for an answer. Maione and Ponte, behind Ricciardi, were both wondering what the commissario would say now. Ricciardi shrugged briefly and said: