Modo looked at him intently through the cigarette smoke.
“If you explain to me exactly what you mean, I may be able to answer your question.”
Ricciardi sighed:
“Do you remember when you described the condition of the corpse to me? You mentioned a struggle. Broken fingernails, broken ribs.”
“And signs of asphyxiation, of course, I remember perfectly. So what?”
“So Signora Capece told us that she came in and shot the duchess through the cushion, and that the duchess was fast asleep. But she didn’t say anything about a fight.”
Modo shrugged:
“I’ll say it again: so what? Did she fire the gun, yes or no? If she pushed the cushion down onto the duchess’s face, whether it was for one second or thirty seconds, if she braced her knee against her abdomen so she was better able to fire the gun, if the duchess grabbed her dress, breaking her fingernails in the processs-and they were long, well manicured nails, and therefore quite fragile-well, there you are, you have your full clinical picture of the autopsy. It all lines up perfectly, as far as I’m concerned. If you tell me that she’s crazy, well, as you know individuals with mental problems can wield enormous strength without even being aware of it. I remember, during the war, there was a guy. .”
But Ricciardi was too focused to listen to the doctor’s postprandial digressions.
“And the fingers? You told me that there were abrasions on one of the fingers, as if someone had violently ripped off a ring, and the explanation for that emerged in the investigation; but the other finger, the one that was dislocated when she was already dead, given the absence of hematomas? The Signora Capece said nothing about having taken a ring off the corpse.”
The doctor spread both arms wide:
“Ah, well, that’s something I can know nothing about: I’m a scientist, not a seer. I can tell you with great confidence, and in fact I did, that the finger was dislocated after the poor duchess had shuffled off this miserable coil. Whether someone then took her ring or visited a strange and perverse desecration upon her corpse, I have no idea. But forgive me if I say: now you’re starting to look like the lunatic in this story. Signora Capece has confessed, you’ve found the murder weapon, and her confession fits in with all the evidence and clues that you’ve found. Can you tell me what more you want?”
Ricciardi ran a hand over his face as if brushing away a fly.
“You’re right. Maybe it’s just that I can never seem to give up an investigation just like that, that’s all.”
Modo stretched out in his chair, knitting his fingers behind his neck and smiling:
“Of course. If it were anyone else but you, the high priest of crime and justice, I would suggest you come with me to sample the delights of a new bordello that just opened its doors at La Torretta, with a team of French mademoiselles who are actually from Mugnano, but trust me, they’ll take your breath away. But since you stubbornly insist on being yourself, I think I’ll let you go back to your muckraking. But I want to give you a piece of advice, too, in exchange for the advice you gave me: every so often, why don’t you give yourself a little peace. Take some time off, do something fun. Otherwise they’ll be checking you into a room next to Signora Capece, take it from your friend Bruno.”
“Fine, fine, I’ll just have to devote a little leisure time to my favorite pursuit: hunting for dissident doctors. Come on, let’s go get a cup of coffee. And this time, it’s your treat.”
XLIII
Maione slowly made his way up the last part of the steep uphill street that led to his home, where lunch was waiting. Incredible as it might seem, given how hungry he was, he’d happily have skipped lunch entirely, for a number of reasons: first of all, he couldn’t stand the prospect of another bowl of vegetable soup; next, last night’s spat was certain to mean a chilly silence on his wife’s part, and that meant he couldn’t hope for the friendly conversation that was his one sure way of getting his mind off work; last of all, he’d have to walk past the fruit and vegetable shop run by that damned Di Stasio, who had greeted him with a smile that struck him as faintly sarcastic.
Things changed radically however when, still a good fifty yards, perhaps more, from his own front door, he caught an unmistakable whiff of Lucia’s Genovese savory pastries. It couldn’t be anything else: the meat and onion sauce his wife cooked, and no other sauce out there, would have woken him out of a deep coma, and it was famous throughout the quarter. Long before the topic of food became a minefield, Lucia used to rib him, saying that the reason he’d married her was her Genovese pastries: and he, with a laugh, would say that she was probably right.
The thought only irritated him more: it struck him that making Genovese pastries for their children, now that he couldn’t eat them, was gratuitously cruel; a torture that Lucia was inflicting on him to punish him for rejecting the soup she’d made the night before. He was tempted to turn around and head straight back to police headquarters, just to deprive her of that satisfaction; then he decided that a real man faces challenges, he doesn’t turn and run, so he climbed the stairs, down in the mouth but grimly determined.
When he opened the front door, the celestial odor wafted over him violently; he even thought that he could detect the scent of fried broccoli and roasted potatoes, and possibly even a rum baba. He couldn’t believe it: a full Christmas banquet in the middle of August. What on earth was happening?
He noticed that none of the children came running to greet him the way they usually did. He made his way into the kitchen and stood there, openmouthed: the table was groaning with an array of food, cooked in every style imaginable. There were only two place settings, with the tablecloth and silverware that were only used on very special occasions. Lucia stood glaring at him, combatively, by the kitchen sink as she dried her hands with a dish towel. He asked her:
“Where are the kids?”
“They’re down at my sister Rosaria’s. They’ve had lunch there and they won’t be back until tonight.”
The brigadier pointed to the dishes arrayed on the table: “And all this food. . who put it here?”
Lucia replied in a harsh voice, but laughter was glinting in her eyes. She was enjoying herself.
“Who do you think put it here? And you tell me, who else would I let set foot in my kitchen?”
As she spoke, she came closer to Maione and gave him a fake punch in the chest, and another, then another, punctuating the things she said:
“And you tell me, is there a woman in all Naples who cooks better than I do? And you tell me, is there a place in all Naples where you’d be more comfortable than in your own home? And you tell me, how should a woman feel when she sees her own husband not bother to come home for dinner? And you tell me. .”
He seized her wrist to stop her from hitting him and put one arm around her waist, pulling her close to him.
“Well, while we’re at it, how is a man supposed to feel when he’s rejected in his own home? And you tell me, how is a husband supposed to feel when he sees his wife flirting with an idiot fruit vendor-and even if we went to school together when we were kids, it’s never too late for me to pluck out every last whisker in his whorish mustache, one by one?”
And they both burst out laughing and crying, until Lucia said, sit down and eat, or else we’ll have to throw out this whole banquet; and Raffaele replied, if you’re thinking of throwing away your Genovese pastries, you’ll have to pry them out of my cold dead hands. And they sat down and ate for an hour, and then they made love, and then they ate the rest.
Crying and laughing the whole time.
His lunch with Modo had at least helped Ricciardi to pinpoint the source of his uneasiness: the duchess’s second ring. He realized that whoever had torn the ring off her finger, dislocating it in the process, had done so after she’d already been killed, but still he felt compelled to complete his picture of the emotions that had danced around her corpse that night. His sense of order demanded it.