I realized that she was anxious for me to disappear. I bowed. The Rector inclined his head, wishing me good morning.
“Please don’t let me rush you away, Signor Fabbio,” he said. “I should like to hear about the new library, if you can spare a few minutes for me too.”
I bowed again, the instinctive courier manner taking hold. Signora Butali shook her head.
“The doctors said you were not to come downstairs, Gaspare,” she remonstrated. “I heard you answer the telephone. You should have called me.”
He descended the stairs and stood between us in the hall. He shook my hand, his fine eyes searching me, then turned to his wife. “I should have had to take the call anyway,” he said. “I’m afraid it was bad news.”
I tried to efface myself, but he put out his hand. “Don’t go,” he said. “It is not personal. An unfortunate and very unhappy accident to one of the students, who was found dead this morning at the bottom of the theater steps.”
Signora Butali exclaimed in horror.
“It was the Commissioner of Police on the telephone,” he continued. “He has only just heard of my return, and very properly informed me what had happened. It seems,” he turned to me, “there was a curfew last night, because of certain incidents earlier this week, and all students, except those with late passes, were warned to be in their hostels or lodgings by nine o’clock. This lad, and possibly others, defied the order. He must have taken fright, hearing a patrol, and run, taking the shortest route, which happened to be those infernal steps. He stumbled and fell the whole length, breaking his neck. His body was found early this morning.” The Rector put out his hand for his stick, which Signora Butali gave him. He made his way slowly into the room we had just left. We followed him.
“This is terrible,” she said, “at this moment of all moments, just before the Festival. Has the news been given out?”
“It will have been by mid-morning,” her husband answered. “You can’t hush up these things. The Commissioner will be here directly to discuss it.”
Signora Butali pulled forward the chair by the desk. He sat down. The gray pallor of his face seemed to have increased.
“I shall have to summon a meeting of the university Council,” he said. “I’m sorry, Livia. You will have to do a lot of telephoning.” He patted his wife’s hand, which was upon his shoulder.
“Of course,” she said, and gestured hopelessly at me.
“I can’t believe the curfew was necessary,” said the Rector. “I’m afraid the Council acted out of panic, with the inevitable result that certain students rebelled, and so came this fatality. Was there much disturbance?”
He looked at me. I did not know how best to answer him.
“The various groups were lively,” I said. “There seemed to be much rivalry among them, especially between the C and E students and the Arts and Education. The sudden curfew caused a lot of dissatisfaction. There was talk of nothing else in the canteen last night.”
“Exactly,” said the Rector, “and the more high-spirited among them were determined to send authority to blazes. I should have done the same when I was a student myself.” He turned to his wife. “It was Marelli’s boy who died,” he said. “You remember Marelli, we stayed at one of his hotels a year or two ago. I don’t know much about the boy, a third-year student, but Elia will tell me. What a tragedy for the parents. An only son.”
My throat was dry. Whatever Signora Butali said in sympathy I echoed huskily. She was no longer so anxious for me to go. Perhaps my presence made some sort of a diversion for her husband.
“What time is the doctor coming?” he asked.
“He said half-past ten,” she answered. “He might be here at any moment now.”
“If the Commissioner of Police arrives first the doctor must wait,” her husband said. “See if you can reach him, dear, at his home. If he’s not at home he’ll probably be at the hospital, and he can walk down from there. It’s only two minutes away.”
She paused a moment before leaving the room, flashing me a look of warning. It could have meant that I was not to tire him. It could have meant that I was not to talk of Aldo. All I wanted was to leave the house before the Commissioner arrived. But first I would have my say.
“This accident, professor,” I said, “will it mean a cancellation of the Festival?”
He had taken up a small cigar and was busy lighting it. It was a moment or two before he answered. “Hardly that,” he said. “There are something like five thousand students in the university of Ruffano, and to cancel one of their great days of the year because of a regrettable and unhappy accident to one of them would verge on hysteria. It would not be a good thing to do.” He drew on his cigar and frowned. “No,” he repeated, “you can rest assured that we shan’t cancel the Festival. Why, are you taking part?”
The question took me by surprise. The gimlet eyes pierced me. “I’m not sure,” I said. “Professor Donati might want me for some minor role.”
“Good,” he replied, “the more who take part the better. He is due here presently. I shall hear all about it. His choice of this year’s subject rather surprised me, but he is sure to handle it superbly. He always does. Where are you from?”
“Where am I from?” I repeated.
“Your home, your university. I take it you are with us on a temporary basis?”
“Yes.” I said, my throat tightening again. “I come from Turin. I needed a job to fill in time. I have a degree in modern languages.”
“Good. And what do you think of our new library?”
“I’ve been very much impressed.”
“And how long have you been working here?”
“A week.”
“A week only?” He removed his cigar and stared. He looked surprised. “Forgive me,” he said. “I happened to hear the maid say to my wife that the gentleman who had been to dinner on Sunday wanted to see her. I had not realized she had been giving a large party for the members of the university staff.”
I swallowed. “Quite a small party,” I said. “It was my good fortune to bring some books from the library for Signora Butali, and she was kind enough to play for me. The invitation to dinner came about after that.”
“I see,” he said.
He looked at me again. The look was somehow different. Appraising. The look of a husband who suddenly wonders why his beautiful wife should take it into her head to play the piano to a stranger and then invite him to dinner. It was evidently not a usual thing for her to do.
“You are fond of music?” he asked.
“Passionately,” I answered, hoping to assuage his interest.
“Good,” he said again. Then, abruptly, he fired another question. “How many were there at this party?” he asked.
I felt myself trapped. If I answered half a dozen it would be a lie, easily detected later when he might come to question her, and the answer would trap her too.
“You misunderstand me, professor,” I said rapidly. “The party was on the Sunday morning.”
“Then you didn’t come to dinner?”
“I came to dinner too,” I said. “I was brought by Professor Donati.”
“Ah,” he said.
I began to sweat. There was nothing else I could say. He could always question the maid, if not his wife.
“It was a musical evening,” I explained. “The idea in coming was to listen to Signora Butali playing. She played to us until we left. It was a memorable evening.”
“I am sure it was,” he said.
Somehow I must have made a gaffe. Signora Butali, when she arrived at the hospital in Rome the following day, could have told a very different story. She could have said that she had dined alone on the Sunday night, and then, seized with anxiety about her husband, had left early the next morning for Rome to be at his bedside. I did not know.
“In Rome,” he said, following a line of thought, “I became very out of touch with life in Ruffano.”
“Yes,” I said, “that?
??s understandable.”
“Although,” he continued, “well-meaning friends did their best to keep me informed of everything that went on. Some of them perhaps not so well-meaning.”
I smiled. A forced smile. The direct eyes were searching me again.
“You say you have only been here a week?” he reiterated.
“A week today,” I said. “That’s correct. I arrived last Thursday.”
“From Turin?”
“No, from Rome.” I could feel the sweat beginning to break out on my forehead.
“Had you been working in one of the libraries in Rome?”
“No, professor. I was passing through. It just happened that I took it into my head to visit Ruffano. I needed a holiday.”
My story, even to my own ears, sounded false. It must have sounded doubly false to him. My nervousness was all too obvious. For a moment he said nothing; his ears were cocked to the sound of Signora Butali’s voice on the telephone overhead, just as ours had been to the sound of his some minutes earlier.
“I apologize, Signor Fabbio,” he said, after the pause, “for asking you such a string of questions. It’s only that while I was in Rome I was bothered with anonymous telephone calls with certain allusions to Professor Donati. I tried to have the calls traced, but could only discover that they were made locally. The strange thing was that the caller—who was a woman, for I heard her whispering instructions—did not speak to me direct but through a third person, a man. It just occurred to me—and forgive me if I am wrong—that you might have been the man, and could tell me something about these calls.”
This time my look of profound astonishment must have reassured him.
“I know nothing about any calls, Professor,” I said. “I think it is best to tell you at once that I am a travel agent. I work with a firm in Genoa, and I was traveling for this firm with a coach-party from Genoa to Naples, via Rome. I certainly made no calls to you. I had never heard your name until after I arrived in Ruffano.”
He put out his hand to me. “That’s enough,” he said. “Please think no more of it. Put it right from your mind. And don’t mention the matter to anyone, above all my wife. The calls, like anonymous letters, were unpleasant, but there have been none now for more than a week.”
The front-door bell sounded its alarming peal. “That will be the Commissioner of Police,” he said, “or the doctor. I apologize again, Signor Fabbio.”
“Please, professor,” I murmured.
I bowed, and turned to the door. I could hear the girl going to answer the bell and Signora Butali descending the stairs at the same time. I went out into the hall and effaced myself as the front door opened. The sight of the Commissioner in his uniform made me retreat still further towards the kitchen regions. Signora Butali’s figure hid me from view as she showed him into the study. Then she turned to say good-bye to me. The girl who had opened the door still hovered within earshot; I could not warn Signora Butali of the conversation that had taken place between her husband and myself.
“We shall be seeing you again, I hope,” she said, reverting to the formal manner of a hostess speeding the departing guest.
“I hope so too, signora,” I replied, and then her husband called her into the room and she waved her hand at me and vanished.
I walked down the paved path and into the street, where the Commissioner’s car was waiting, a uniformed police driver at the wheel. I turned left, so as not to pass him, and walked rapidly downhill. It did not matter where I went as long as I put some distance between myself and the police car. I decided to return to my room, stay there awhile, and then walk back to my brother’s house. The news of Stefano Marelli’s death had profoundly shocked me, but I was equally disturbed by what the Rector had said about anonymous telephone calls.
When I reached the via San Michele and started to walk towards the Pensione Silvani I saw that a man was standing before the door, talking to the signora. The figure, the bared head, the face in profile, were instantly recognizable. It was the police agent from Rome, the agent in plain clothes whom I had seen in church on Tuesday.
I was opposite No. 5, and instinctively I ducked inside the open door and climbed to the first floor. I knocked at the door of Carla Raspa’s apartment. There was no answer. I turned the handle and found it open. I went in, and closed the door behind me.
18
I thought the room was empty, but the sound of the closing door disturbed someone in the bathroom. A woman came through wearing an apron, a floorcloth in her hands. She stared at me suspiciously.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“I have an appointment with Signorina Raspa,” I lied. “She told me she might be late and asked me to wait for her.”
“Very well,” said the woman. “This room is ready, but I haven’t yet finished in the bathroom and kitchen. Make yourself comfortable.”
She turned back to the bathroom and I heard the sound of running water. I crossed to the window and looked down the street to No. 24. The man was still there. Signora Silvani, waxing expansive, was doing most of the talking, and I could see her gesturing. She must be talking about me. She must be telling the agent that I worked every day in the library, that I would probably be there now, that I had been a guest under her roof for a week exactly, that I was a stranger to Ruffano. If he had explained who he was and given proof of his identity, surely he would demand to see my room? Surely he would go upstairs and open the drawers, search the cupboards and my suitcase? He would find nothing of any use to him. I carried my papers on me. But so far Signora Silvani had made no attempt to ask the man inside. They were still talking. Then the cleaning woman came back into the room and I drew away from the window.
“Would you like some coffee?” she asked.
“Please don’t trouble yourself,” I answered.
“No trouble,” she said. “The signorina would wish it.”
There was something familiar in the woman’s face. She was young and not ill-looking, but with disheveled hair suggesting an abortive attempt to copy some film star on a cinema poster.
“I’ve seen you before, haven’t I?” she asked.
“I was thinking the same,” I replied, “but Ruffano is not a big city. Perhaps it was in the street.”
“Perhaps,” she said with a smile and a shrug.
She went into the kitchen and I returned to the window. In the interval the man had disappeared, but whether into the house or further down the street there was no way of telling. I stationed myself by the window, and picking up a magazine flicked the pages idly, keeping the house in view. In a moment the woman returned with the coffee.
“Here you are, signore,” she said, “and I’ve remembered where it was I saw you. You were watching the crowd, near the Ognissanti. You asked me what it was about and why the police car was there. I had my baby in my arms, she was crying. Remember?”
I did. Ruffano was small indeed. There was no escape.
“You’re right,” I said. “I do remember now. Two people were getting into the car.”
“The Ghigis,” she said, “and it was just as I told you, they had to identify poor Marta Zampini’s clothes. The police took them all the way to Rome—just imagine driving all that distance in a police car! If it hadn’t been for such a wretched cause they would have enjoyed it. Neither of them had visited Rome before in their lives. And then the body was brought back and they buried her yesterday. What a crime, though! All for ten thousand lire. The wretch who did it still refuses to confess. The theft, yes, he acknowledges, according to what my husband read out to me from the paper, but not the murder. I suppose he hopes to save his skin by lying.”
“Probably,” I said. I drank the coffee, one eye still on the pensione further up the street.
“They’ll force him to confess,” she added. “The police have their methods; we all know that.” She stood watching me drink the coffee, conversation making an interlude in the morning’s work.
“Did you know the murder
ed woman?” I asked.
“Know Marta Zampini?” she repeated. “Everyone who lived near the Ognissanti knew Marta. She and Maria Ghigi used to work for Professor Donati’s father in the old days. You know Professor Donati of the Arts Council?”
“Yes, I know him.”
“They were saying yesterday that it was he who arranged for the police to bring back the body, and he paid for the burial. He’s a wonderful man, he’s done so much for Ruffano, like his father before him. If old Marta had continued to work for him she would have been alive today.”
“Why did she leave?”
The woman shrugged. “Too much of this.” She made a gesture of drinking. “She had gone to pieces during the past few months, so the Ghigis said. Always brooding. No one knows what she had to brood about, they took good care of her. Maria Ghigi said she was never the same after the war, when her life with the Donati family broke up. She missed the little boy. She was forever talking about the little boy, the professor’s brother, who disappeared with the German troops. Well, that’s life, isn’t it? There’s always something to go wrong.”
I finished my coffee and pushed away the tray. “Thank you,” I said.
“Let’s hope Signorina Raspa won’t be long,” she said, and then with a sly, long glance at me she added, “She’s handsome isn’t she?”
“Very handsome,” I agreed.
“The signorina has many admirers,” she said. “I know, because I often have to clear up after they have been to dinner.”
I smiled, but did not comment.
“Ah, well,” she said, “I must be going. I have to do my own shopping before my husband comes home for his midday meal. Luckily my mother looks after the baby while I’m here working for the signorina.”
There was still no sign of life from No. 24. The agent would have had time to search my room and come downstairs again. Perhaps he was having coffee too, with Signora Silvani. I pretended interest in the magazine. Some five minutes later the woman returned from the kitchen. She had put a cardigan over her dress and was carrying a string bag.