He sighed, "Ah, well, so it goes." Ingravallo was in a stupor. His eyelids had begun to drop forward like awnings over two shop windows: to fall down, halfway over the globe of each eye, in his poppy-seed attitude of state occasions: when the torpor of the office crowned him with a hebetude which was. . almost divinatory. And instead, this divine occasion was being created by the stupidest source. A gusher! Oil! The people back in Apulia: oil is what they live on. But this other oil. . he really didn't know how to get a grip on it.
"Make the client fall in love. That's the whole story. Hammer the truth into his head: the great nail of truth! That's all. Doctor Valdarena, when it comes to hammering, has shown plenty of talent. Then, when the day comes that they've fallen in love and have given our Transformer B a try, it's very hard, believe you me, for anybody else to seduce them away, to make them unfaithful to us! And all screwing aside, those who love us, follow us… as the Great Man says. . so. . How about a cigarette?" "Thanks." "So, I mean, they pay. They pay up, without saying another word."
"They pay. They pay," grunted Don Ciccio, in the solitude of his own, interior forum.
IV
AFTER twenty-two hours of general uneasiness Balducci arrived, on the 18th: unforeseen engagements, he stated. Meanwhile the police stations had been alerted: Milan, Bologna, Vicenza, Padua. It was, for Ingravallo and for Doctor Fumi, a real relief. If it had turned out that Balducci had skipped, the investigations would have had to be extended over half the peninsula, with a slow monsoon of telegrams.
And the mess, already fairly tangled up, would have become utterly snarled. But Balducci, miraculously unaware, got off the train at eight, the collar of his overcoat turned up, his face anything but ruddy at that moment and a bit smudged to boot: with his necktie loosened, and with a look as if he had slept, in discomfort and over interminable jolting, profoundly. He and the train had kept faith with the telegram, which for the rest had been vague. But the only through train coming into Rome Station at eight was the one from Sarzana: which at its final creak and the successive blocking of the breaks was on the dot, as clocks under the roof of the platform and beside the gate waited open-mouthed, observing the new orders from above, gloriously imparted from the Ass on high. The terrible news was broken to him with all due consideration and with all the most opportune toning down, right there by the train, as other travelers, at the windows, were still fighting over the porters, with shouts imperious or imploring, and the porters assumed the tone of their finest hour: Swiss and Milanese in arrivaclass="underline" good, sound luggage; it was broken to him by his wife's relatives who had come there on Ingravallo's invitation, some dressed in black, some merely in dark gray: Aunt Marietta at their head, with a black prayer shawl around her shoulders, like a mandrill's ruff, a necklace of little black beads around her neck, a hat like a teacher in a teacher's college, a face like an attorney general. Then, behind her, Zia Elviruccia, with her son, Oreste, the big boy with the big yellow teeth who looked so much like Uncle Peppino, who was, you might say, the spit and image of Uncle Peppino. A funeral face on him, too. There was also the sergeant, in uniform: Di Pietrantonio. When, little by little, they made him understand, Uncle Remo, what had happened, he, poor man, first of all, set his overnight case on the ground: the others, the heavy ones, had already been taken off by the porter. The news didn't seem to shock him so very much. Maybe it was sleepiness, fatigue after those nights in the train. Maybe he was kind of out of his head and didn't even hear what they were saying to him.
In the meanwhile the corpse had been removed and taken to the City Morgue, where they had proceeded to an external examination of the body. Nothing. When it was dressed and laid out, the throat was bandaged, with white gauze, like a Carmelite lying in death: the head was covered with a sort of Red Cross nurse's bonnet, without the red cross, however. Seeing her like that, white, immaculate, they all immediately took off their hats. The women made the Sign of the Cross. The coroner's office had witnessed the examinations, in accordance with the law, in the person of Judge Cavaliere Mucellato. Also the Attorney General's representative, Commendatore Macchioro, had paid her, so to speak, a duty call. The man in Palazzo Chigi had to have the last word, too, louder than all the others: "That evil murderer should have already been shot, six hours ago."
But Balducci hadn't read the papers.
On the body there was nothing, beyond the work of the knife, and those scratches, those fingernail marks.
Once he was at the house, poor Signor Remo was obliged to open drawers, unlock a reluctant cupboard or two. They hadn't been able to find the keys to some: and there were other keys, discovered at random, whose destination was still unknown. He tried them, he tried them again, here, then there, in vain. Nobody had gone into his little study. The desk, with "Marengo Universal" locks, seemed free from any tampering. He opened it himself: everything was in order. And so was the metal filing cabinet, where he kept certain papers: it was a little dark green, fired-enamel case, very neat and clean and new, which stood beside the half-empty wooden bookcases, half-filled with thumbed cheap volumes, and together, the two pieces of furniture looked like the young accountant fresh from the barber with the filthy-rich, dripping-nosed old woman whom he manages and robs and who is in love with him. The entire, mute examination was observed by the two ladies, the aunts, by Oreste, and the police sergeant Di Pietrantonio, in reality a top-sergeant, a policeman — one Rodolico — as well as by Sora Manuela. A moment later Blondie happened along. Doctor Ingravallo trusted Pompeo and the Blond Terror from Terracina: the others were a bunch of meatheads, at times, when you tried to drum a little psychology into them! Those two had sharp noses: they could catch on to people from their faces, after once glance: and usually without letting on. What was important to him, to Ingravallo, was, above all, the face, the attitude, the immediate psychic and physiognomical reactions, as he said, of the spectators and the protagonists of the drama: of this bunch of bastards and sonsabitches that people the world, and their women, whores and tramps and sows.
Bottafavi's aid was invoked, after a few vain tugs from Rodolico, who succeeded only in popping one of his buttons, where it wasn't immediately clear. The weapons expert came downstairs with a square-handled carpenter's box slung over his arm, containing a whole repertory of screwdrivers, saws, chisels, hammers, pliers, and a monkey wrench into the bargain: not to mention a goodly supply of loose nails, both straight and bent. In the end a smith was summoned, a veritable Don Juan when it came to locks: he had a bunch of hooks with an extra little twist in the end, and all he had to do was tickle the lock with one or the other, and it knew at once that it couldn't hold out. With him, locks were like virtuous women who suddenly go crazy. Balducci verified at once the absence of the best, the money and the jewels which the signora kept in a little iron coffer in the second drawer of the dresser: the coffer had disappeared, complete with contents. Not even the key was found: it stayed, usually, in an old velvet purse, black with embroidered forget-me-nots, in the mirrored wardrobe, tied by a fine little blue ribbon to the elite of its genteel and tinkling sisterhood. "The purse was… it used to be here. Let me have a look." He groped with his hand from below upwards in that perfumed heap of silk, of all those slips, those blouses, and those little embroidered handkerchiefs. Yes, yes. The purse, too, had disappeared. And also the two passbooks to savings accounts failed to answer Balducci's roll-call. "My God, they've gone too!" "What?" "The savings account passbooks, Liliana's." "What color were they?" "Color! One was in the Banco di Santo Spirito, and one in the Banca Commerciale." "In whose name… hers?" "Yes, Liliana's." "Were they made out to the bearer?" "No, personal."