Murder's Long Memory, page 17
Orifla leaned forward and stubbed out his cigarette with far more force than was necessary. ‘Goddamnit,’ he shouted, ‘this is the second time you’ve—’ He stopped, just in time. It was hardly fitting that a comisario should admit that he was again about to be blackmailed into doing what his inspector wanted.
Dolores, who was knitting as she watched the television, looked up as Alvarez entered the room. ‘You’re back very early, Enrique.’
‘Yes, I know. That’s because there is so much going on.’
The illogicality of that answer escaped her. ‘You look tired. They work you much too hard.’
He took that as an encouragement to go over to the sideboard and pour himself a brandy. After adding ice, he sat. The programme came to an end and Dolores finished the row, pushed the knitting to the back of one needle, stuck both needles into the ball of wool, and put wool, needles and knitting, into a linen bag. ‘I must go and see how the cooking is getting on. Juan and Isabel are with Julia, so it’s only us three and I’ve made garbanzos Catalán.’ She stood.
‘By the way, I have to fly to Italy tomorrow.’
‘What’s that?’
He was unsurprised by her sharp reaction to his news. She worried endlessly about her family when everything proceeded normally; when something unusual happened, she became heir to nameless fears and saw disaster everywhere. ‘There’s no need to worry,’ he said soothingly.
She sounded more angry than worried. ‘Are you also returning from Italy tomorrow?’
He smiled. ‘Hardly.’
‘So will you then be returning early on Sunday morning?’
‘Not a chance. I don’t expect to be back before Tuesday at the earliest.’
‘You are telling me that you will not be here at lunch-time on Sunday?’
‘I won’t, no. But is that important?’
Her dark brown eyes flashed; her voice sharpened. ‘Only a man could be so stupid! Where are your wits? Drowned in alcohol?’
‘Here, what’s suddenly got you complaining?’
‘On Sunday, we are all invited to Cousin Francisca’s. I was with her when she bought the whole half side of lechona. I have explained how to make certain that the crackling crackles perfectly. Both of us take all this trouble and then you just stand there and tell me you won’t be here?’
‘But it’s not my fault . . .’
‘When has anything ever been any man’s fault?’
‘But if my work . . .’
She uttered a sound of high disgust, marched into the kitchen where she made a considerable noise as she moved things around.
He drained his glass. Comisario Orifla had made quite a point of the fact that people did not always behave logically. Perhaps he had at some time met Dolores.
CHAPTER 21
Alvarez had by now flown sufficiently frequently to need only three double brandies to dull to the point of resignation his fears of crashing on take-off, losing power on all engines, hitting another plane head-on, being sucked out of his seat in an explosive decompression, being blown up by a terrorist’s bomb, running out of fuel, or crashing on landing.
He was met in the arrival lounge by Sergeant Romita, a youngish man with long sideburns and a roving eye, who spoke a Spanish that was frequently larded with French and even the occasional English word.
They left the building and crossed the road to the car park, where a police Fiat had been causing an obstruction next door to the pay-booth. Romita opened the boot and put the suitcase inside. He slammed the lid shut. ‘It is a longish drive, so I suggest we stop for a meal in Bellzano.
There is a small restaurant there where the food is . . .’ He kissed his fingers in a universal gesture of appreciation.
The restaurant was on the corner of one of the many narrow streets in the small town, noted for its glass since the time of the Medici. From the outside, it looked to be little more than a slightly run-down cafe, but if the furnishings were basic, every table was occupied by people whose contented, glistening features, and in many cases girth, suggested they were connoisseurs of good bourgeois cuisine. One of the young waitresses, a laden tray in her hands, paused long enough to tell them they’d have to wait. Romita awarded Alvarez the rank of superior chief and demanded a table immediately if Italian/Spanish relations were not to be devastated. Another table was somehow edged into a corner of the second dining-room at the rear of the building.
The menu was handwritten and far from extensive, but Romita swore by Lucullus that every dish was a masterpiece and the gnocchi Bellzano made the gods on Olympus throw aside their ambrosia. Alvarez chose that.
As they waited, they each had a brandy and shared a small earthenware dish of olives. Romita dropped a stone into the ashtray. ‘As I said in the car, Franca Darida is quite an important man in Fidenaggiore.’
Alvarez sipped the brandy—slightly heavier than he was used to—put the glass down on the table. There had been an unspoken question in the other’s words. ‘There’s no question that he’s in any way mixed up in the case. It’s simply that I hope he’ll be able to tell me something.’
‘That’s good. Darida is a man we call. . . I’m not certain how to translate it. He makes certain that everything in town runs smoothly and if he becomes upset, life can become difficult for many.’
‘A party boss?’
‘You could call him so, but I think that perhaps the only party he truly supports is his own.’ Romita smiled, showing very white teeth. ‘So what will you be asking him?’
‘What kind of person his cousin really was.’
‘His cousin? I didn’t know he had one.’
‘Count Alfredo Capria.’
‘A cousin who was a count! I’m sure he wouldn’t want that to be generally known since he calls himself a man of the people! . . . Of course, some people lead different lives from others.’
Fidenaggiore was still predominantly Renaissance in style, its most noticeable feature the campanile which predated the church that had been rebuilt after the siege of 1514. The town stood in rich, rolling countryside, noted for its quality hard fruit. The streets were narrow and full of turns and most of the buildings were either four or five floors high. There were three squares and in the largest was the statue, The Two Steeds, presented to the town by Pope Leo XII in 1827 as a tacit and magnanimous admission that his predecessor, Leo X, had been somewhat hasty in ordering the siege of 1514.
Darida’s house was on the main square and it faced The Two Steeds. On the ground floor there was a corn and seed merchant with considerable storage area, and access to the living quarters was by stone stairs, their edges worn over the centuries into shallow curves. The walls on either side of the staircase were roughly finished and merely whitewashed and this provided an initial impression of austerity; an impression dispelled when the door at the head of the stairs was opened. The entrance hall was over-furnished in a style that owed more to wealth then taste.
Darida shook hands with exaggerated formality. He was a small, plump man and considering his age his face was remarkably unlined, obviously through great care. His clothes were carefully chosen and very carefully worn. A casual observer might well have placed him as an aged popinjay; Alvarez noted the expression which lurked in the dark brown eyes and decided he could be a very dangerous man.
As soon as they were in the very large sitting-room, even more over-furnished than the entrance hall, he asked them what they would like to drink. Romita translated the question and Alvarez’s answer. Darida used a silken bell-pull to summon an eighteen-year-old maid, whose manner was cowed rather than respectful, and told her what to bring. As she left the room, he settled in a large wooden-framed armchair with carved back, sides, and arms, and velvet upholstery; more throne than chair. ‘So you are from Mallorca, Inspector? Regrettably, it is not an island I have ever had the good fortune to visit. I fear I cannot afford to travel to faraway places.’
Romita smiled with respectful, amused disbelief.
‘So tell me, what can have brought you all the way here?’
‘I’d like to talk to you about your cousin, señor.’
‘Then you have endured a wasted journey. Both my wife and I are descended from families who lacked the blessing of fecundity and we now find ourselves without a single living blood relative.’
‘I’m talking about Count Alfredo Capria.’
‘That is a name I have not heard for a long time. I wonder what your interest in him can be since he died so very many years ago?’
‘In fact, he died only very recently.’
‘He died during the war.’
‘No, señor. That death was faked. Further, in his will you are named as the sole beneficiary.’
There was a long silence so that they became aware of the sounds of traffic and people in the square and of the ticking of the very ornate ormolu clock on the marble mantelpiece.
Darida spoke angrily. ‘I must presume you have not come all this way merely to be absurd.’
‘Far from it.’
‘Yet absurd is what you’re being. My cousin would not have willingly handed me a crust of bread had he seen me starving in the gutter.’
‘You are named in his will.’
‘He only ever gave me anything when the giving afforded him a satisfying feeling of contempt. Why should he have acted so out of character?’
‘A man can change as he grows older.’
‘A leopard cannot change its spots.’
‘Nevertheless, it is fact that you inherit his estate.’
‘Whatever you say, Alfredo died during the war.’
‘Señor, we have undeniable proof that he did not. Tragically, he was murdered last week in Mallorca, under the name of Giovanni Gaspari.’
He stared at Alvarez. ‘It seems I have to believe you . . . But even so, I won’t accept your description of his murder as tragic’
The maid returned to the room, carrying a silver salver on which were three crystal goblets. She handed one to each man, careful never to look directly at him, then hurried out.
Darida drank. ‘Inspector, you are a man with an expressive face and it is obvious that you disapprove of my attitude. Is that because you subscribe to the belief that the dead should be sanctified, no matter what, or because you feel I must be unjustified in my attitude? If the first, there is nothing I can do but envy you your generous humanity; if the second, I shall bore you with a little of my family’s history in an effort to justify myself.
‘My grandparents had only two children—my mother and Alfredo’s father. My grandfather was an honest, but poor man—only the poor can afford the luxury of being honest—until he developed and patented a method of producing very high quality glass at half the previous cost. He then became rich.
‘It is a habit of the newly rich to be over-conscious of their social position and when my mother fell in love with a worker in one of the glass factories my grandfather now owned, she was informed that either she called off the proposed mesalliance or she ceased to be a Capria. A very determined woman, she chose to marry, thereby losing both her maiden name and any claim to the family fortune.
‘Alfredo’s father never missed a chance. Instead of doing what he could to help his sister by softening the old man’s absurd attitude, he made certain it was exacerbated. The old fool never again spoke to my mother.
‘We lived within ten kilometres of each other. Two families, related by blood but little else. They were in a vast mansion, tended by an army of servants, we were in a humble house and tended by no one; they ate caviar, we ate pasta; they drank chateau-bottled, we drank the local wines which often tasted of old boots.
‘The year before the old man died, Alfredo’s father married Lucia who came from an ancient family of impeccable lineage and with fingers in sufficient pies to stock a bakery. Of small account to either father or son that she lacked both good looks and a figure. Naturally, when the old man died, Alfredo’s father inherited everything and my mother nothing.
‘Lucia, perhaps to compensate for what she saw in the mirror, considered it her duty to meddle in other people’s lives by doing good. She decided that I would benefit enormously if I had limited contact with her son because I would thus have the chance to appreciate the refinements that life could offer to those of sufficient breeding to warrant their enjoying them. So three times a week one of the family’s limousines driven by one of their chaffeurs came to our village and collected me and took me to their mansion to spend the afternoon with Alfredo. The village lads gave me hell for having rich relatives who, they were convinced, made me think I was better than any of them. They never understood how desperately I envied them for having only poor relatives.
‘Just before his death, Alfredo’s father was made a count; somehow, a spurious claim to an ancient title was established, undoubtedly aided by the transfer of large sums of money. Lucia demanded that I called Alfredo, Count Alfredo, thereby preparing him for his noble future. For his part, I was Chloe, a miscall that gave him doubled amusement because not only was it feminine, he held it was a diminutive of Cloacina.
‘By now you are undoubtedly asking yourself, why did the lad put up with all this? The answer is twofold. He was much larger than I and if I refused to do as he wanted, he beat me up. If I then complained to his mother, he said I was lying and in reality had fallen over and hurt myself and she read me a sanctimonious homily about always telling the truth—even more painful than the beating for ratting on him that he gave me as soon as we were on our own again. Secondly, in order to impress us with her concern for the underprivileged, when I was driven home I was given a hamper of food for the family. My mother had a great liking for luxurious foods, dating from when her father became rich.
‘As he grew older, Alfredo became more and more ingenious at making my life a misery. He had all the careless ease of manner of the rich, I had all the awkwardness of the poor, and he never tired of mocking my manners, especially in front of his mother whom he was able to persuade that he was really trying to help me improve myself. He loved practical jokes—setting them, not suffering them—and I cannot begin to count the number of times previously unsuspected buckets of water or filth poured over me. Naturally, he treated me with contempt in front of the servants so that they treated me with an even greater contempt. He’d push me into the swimming pool, knowing I couldn’t swim, and he’d stand and jeer as I panicked; then, when he’d finally hauled me out and left me gasping on the edge, he’d dive in and mockingly swim with all the easy grace of someone who was almost of Olympic standard.
‘In short, he amused himself at my expense, using envy as a needle, ridicule as a thumbscrew, and contempt as a club . . . Perhaps, Inspector, you can now understand why the news of his murder did not fill me with the sense of shock and horror that one might expect.’
‘You obviously had no cause to like him.’
‘But not enough to hate him beyond his death? Clearly, you have never had to suffer the persecution of someone who uses every ingenious method that comes to his fertile mind to make your life a living hell.’
‘I make no judgement.’
‘On the contrary, you judge my hatred.’
Alvarez did not try to argue.
‘Have I told you what you wish to know?’
‘Just about, señor.’
‘And you can now appreciate the kind of man he was?’
He could appreciate what kind of men both the cousins were. ‘I understand that in the war he was decorated for bravery?’
‘He would always be brave when others could observe his actions. He lived for the praise of his superiors, the respect of his equals, and the envy of his inferiors.’
‘What happened to the estate after the war?’
‘It was sold by his wife.’
‘By whom?’
‘You find the possibility of marriage unlikely? Then I venture to suggest that you have not quite understood the kind of man he was. Alfredo had to conform, so, being rich, he married the daughter of a rich man. Following the family tradition, Beatrice was no beauty; indeed, it would be difficult to say who lacked most, she or Lucia. I was not asked to the wedding, of course. Poor relations are a private amusement.’
‘She survived the war?’
‘She is, as far as I know, still alive.’
‘Do you ever see her?’
‘Would you expect me to?’
‘Have you any idea where she lives?’
‘Off-hand, no. But it is a question which could soon be answered, if needs be. You are intending to visit her in order to acquaint her with the fact that for many years she has not been the widow she believed herself to be? And that her beloved husband has, instead of leaving his estate to her, left it to his despised cousin? How does a proud woman react to such news?’ He smiled, satisfied that the contessa would react badly.
CHAPTER 22
The large, elegant villa lay half way up one of the hills which backed the small port of San Stefano. A maid opened the front door. Young and attractive, she immediately caught Romita’s interest and he explained at greater length than was necessary who they were.
‘I’m not sure the contessa can see you,’ she said.
Romita began to translate her answer, but she interrupted him with a flood of Spanish. She was a Filipino and avidly seized the opportunity to speak Spanish. He showed his annoyance; he had become redundant and his standing in her eyes must have suffered.
She changed her mind; perhaps the contessa would after all be able to speak to them. She led the way into a vast sitting-room and said in a low voice: ‘Don’t be surprised if you find it very difficult to understand her. She’s sometimes becoming so confused.’ She left.
