‘Mr Di Blasi, I’m sure you’ve heard about the unfortunate Mrs—’
‘I know, I know, I saw it on TV.’
The disappointment had been replaced by undisguised irritation.
‘Anyway, I wanted to know why, from midday on Thursday to Friday evening, you repeatedly tried to reach Mrs Licalzi at her hotel.’
‘What’s so unusual about that? I’m a distant relative of Michela’s. Whenever she came to Vigata to work on the house, she would lean on me for help and advice. I’m a construction engineer. I phoned her on Thursday to invite her here to dinner, but the receptionist said she hadn’t come back that night. The receptionist knows me, we’re friends. And so I started to get worried. Is that so hard to understand?’
Now Mr Di Blasi had turned sarcastic and aggressive. The inspector had the impression the man’s nerves were about to pop.
‘No.’
There was no point in calling Anna Tropeano. He already knew what she would say, since Mr,Vassallo had told him beforehand. He would summon Ms Tropeano to the station for questioning. One thing at this point was certain: Michela Licalzi had disappeared from circulation at approximately seven o’clock on Wednesday evening. She had never returned to the hotel, even though she’d expressed this intention to her friend.
He wasn’t sleepy, so he lay down in bed with a book, a novel by Marco Denevi, an Argentine writer he liked very much.
When his eyes started to droop, he closed the book and turned off the light. As he often did before falling asleep, he thought of Livia. Suddenly he sat up in bed, wide awake.
Jesus, Livia! He hadn’t phoned her back since the night of the storm, when he’d made it seem as if the line had been cut. Livia clearly hadn’t believed this, since in fact she’d never phoned back. He had to set things right at once.
‘Hello? Who is this?’ said Livia’s sleepy voice.
It’s Salvo, darling.’
‘Oh, let me sleep, for Christ’s sake!’
Click. Montalbano sat there for a while holding the receiver,
It was eight thirty in the morning when Montalbano walked into the station carrying Michela Licalzi’s papers. After Livia had refused to speak to him, he’d become agitated and unable to sleep a wink. There was no need to call in Anna Tropeano; Fazio immediately told him the woman had been waiting for him since eight
‘Listen, I want to know everything there is to know about a construction engineer from Vigata named Aurelio Di Blasi’
r ‘Everything eveiything?’ asked Fazio. ‘Eveiything everything.’
‘To me, everything everything means rumours and gossip, too.’ ‘Same here.’
‘How much time do I get?’
‘Come on, Fazio, you playing the unionist now? Two hours ought to be more than enough.’
Fazio glared at his boss with an air of indignation and went out without even saying goodbye.
In normal circumstances.
Anna Tropeano must have been an attractive woman of thirty, with jet-black hair, dark complexion, big, sparkling eyes, tall and full-bodied. On this occasion, however, her shoulders were hunched, her eyes swollen and red, her skin turning a shade of grey.
‘May I smoke?’ she asked, sitting down.
‘Of course.’
She lit a cigarette, hands trembling. She attempted a rough imitation of a smile.
‘I quit only a week ago.
But since last night I must have smoked at least three packets.’
‘Thanks for coming in on your own. I really need a lot of information from you.’
‘That’s what I’m here for.’
Montalbano secretly breathed a sigh of relief. Anna was a strong woman. There wasn’t going to be any sobbing or fainting. In fact, she had appealed to him from the moment he saw her in the doorway.
‘Even if some of my questions seem odd to you, please try to answer them anyway.’
‘Of course.’
‘Married?’
‘Who?’
‘You.’
‘No, I!m not. Not separated or divorced, either. .And not even engaged. Nothing. I live alone.’ ‘Why?’
Though Montalbano had forewarned her, Anna hesitated a moment before answering so personal a question.
‘I don’t think I’ve had time to think about myself, Inspector. A year before graduating from university, - my father died. Heart attack. He was very young. The year after I graduated, my mother died. I had to look after my little sister, Maria, who’s nineteen now and married and living in Milan, and my brother, Giuseppe, who works at a bank in Rome and is twenty-seven. I’m thirty-one. But aside from all that, I don’t think I’ve ever met the right person.’
There was no resentment. On the contrary, she seemed slightly calmer now. The fact that the inspector hadn’t launched immediately into the matter at hand had allowed her in a sense to catch her breath. Montalbano thought it best to steer clear for a while.
‘Do you live in your parents’ house here in Vigata?’
‘Yes, Papa bought it. It’s sort of a small villa, right where Marinella begins. It’s become too big for me.’
‘The one on the right, just after the bridge?’
‘That’s the one.’
‘I pass by it at least twice a day. I live in Marinella myself.’
Anna Tropeano eyed him with mild amazement What a strange sort of policeman! ‘Do you work?’
‘Yes, I teach at the liceo scientifico of Montelusa.’
‘What do you teach?’
‘Physics.’
Montalbano looked at her with admiration. In physics, at school, he’d always been between a D and an F.
If he’d had a teacher like her in his day, he might have become another Einstein.
‘Do you know who killed her?’
Anna Tropeano jumped in her chair and looked at him imploringly: we were getting along so well, why do you want to play policeman, which is worse than playing hunting dog?
Don’t you ever let go? she seemed to be asking.
Montalbano, who understood what the woman’s eyes were saying to him, smiled and threw up his hands in a gesture of resignation, as if to say: It’s my job.
‘No,’ replied a firm, decisive Anna Tropeano.
‘Any suspicion?’
‘No’
‘Mrs Licalzi customarily returned to her hotel in the wee hours of the morning. I’d like to know—’
‘She was at my house. We had dinner together almost every night And if she was invited out she would come along afterwards.’
‘What did you do together?’
‘What do two women friends usually do when they see each other? We talked, we watched television, we listened to music Sometimes we did nothing at all. It was a pleasure just to know the other one was there.’
‘Did she have any male friends?’
‘Yes, a few. But things were not what they seemed. Michela was a very serious person. Seeing her so free and easy, men got the wrong impression. And they were always disappointed, without fail’
‘Was there anyone in particular who bothered her a lot?’
‘Yes.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘I’m not going to tell you.
You’ll find out soon enough.’
‘So, in short, Mrs Licalzi was faithful to her husband.’ ‘I didn’t say that.’ ‘What does that mean?’ It means what I said.’