Andrea Camilleri - The Age Of Doubt

Ding dang dong .

And why was Dr. Pasquano also in a good mood?

After greeting him, the doctor had shown him into his office without uttering a single nasty word or insult as he normally did. He must surely have won at poker the night before at the club.

But was the doctor really in a good mood, or was that just how it seemed to him, Montalbano, given the fact that everything he saw now seemed enveloped in a sort of halo of candied pink?

“So you want to know about the sailor? And why’s that?”

“What do you mean, ‘Why’s that?’ It’s my job.”

“But aren’t you losing your edge with age?”

The inspector ignored this first provocation. He had to be patient and pretend not to have heard, because other, even more stinging insults were surely to follow.

“Can you tell me your thoughts on the matter?”

“To all appearances, an accident.”

“Oh, no you don’t, Doctor! I’m not gonna let you play cat and mouse with me. You can’t say, ‘to all appearances’; you have to tell me what you know for certain.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t think the work you do is based on hypotheses, clues, conjectures, and vague stuff like that…”

“Is that what you think of us? But aren’t you aware that there is nothing in the world vaguer than man? And that we, too, proceed by means of conjecture? Do you think we’re like a bunch of little popes who never make a mistake?”

“Doctor, I didn’t come here to discuss the limitations of medical science. If you can’t tell me anything certain, tell me something half-certain.”

Pasquano seemed persuaded.

“I’ll start with a question. Do you smell a rat in this whole affair?”

“Frankly, yes.”

“Are you aware that when someone dies by drowning we normally find a great deal of water in the lungs?”

“Yes, I know. But this guy didn’t have any.”

“Who ever said that? He had plenty of water.”

“So then he died by drowning.”

“But why do you have this bad habit of always jumping to conclusions? Hasn’t old age made you a little more cautious?”

All this talk of old age was starting to get on the inspector’s nerves.

“C’mon, Doctor, get to the point. Did he have water in his lungs or not?”

“Don’t get pissed off, mind you, or I’ll clam up and say no more. There was water there, but not enough to drown him.”

“So how did he die, then?”

“From a powerful blow to the nape of the neck, which killed him instantly. An iron bar. It fits.”

“Fits with what?”

“With a sort of iron hook I noticed sticking out from the wharf about a foot and a half above the water. You hadn’t noticed it?”

“Doctor, when I looked, the hook was covered up by the body.”

“Let me try to explain this a little better. The poor guy, drunk as he was-and he’d had a lot to drink-took a wrong step, fell into the narrow space between the wharf and the broadside of the yacht, smashed his head against the hook, and died.”

“Doctor, now I’m completely confused.”

“That’s natural, given your-”

“What killed him, the hook or the iron bar?”

“The fact that you don’t understand is clearly owing to your age and not to any lack of clarity in my explanation. What I’m saying is that the killers were very clever. They’re trying to make us believe he died when his head struck the hook. But the hook was green with sea moss. Whereas there was no trace of moss around the man’s wound.”

“And how do you explain the water in the lungs?”

“A precautionary measure.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Don’t you see what kind of shape you’re in? Why don’t you retire? Can’t you see for yourself your time is up? Here is what happened, in my opinion. The killers-because there were at least two of them-grab the guy and dunk his head into the water to the point where he almost drowns and-”

“But the wharf is tall!”

“What makes you think they killed him there?”

“Where’d they kill him, then?”

“On the boat, of course! They take him aboard, shove his head into a basin or something like that full of water, let him have a good drink, then pull him back out, choking his guts out, deal him the fatal blow, take him to the appointed place, and chuck him into the water from the wharf.”

“I still don’t understand why you called it a precautionary measure.”

“Do you see how seriously impaired your brain is? It was to make it look like he took in the seawater in the few seconds of life he had left.”

There wasn’t anything else to be learned here. On top of that, Montalbano couldn’t stand the bastard’s provocations any longer.

“Thank you, Doctor. I’m sorry, but have you informed the commissioner’s office of the results of your autopsy?”

“Of course. I did my duty as soon as I’d finished my work.”

If Dr. Pasquano’s reasoning was correct, and it did seem to make a great deal of sense, then the killing, with all the commotion of shoving the guy’s head repeatedly into a bucket of seawater, could not have taken place aboard the yacht, no way. The risk would have been too great. Mimì Augello might hear something, however involved he was in bedroom gymnastics with La Giovannini at that moment.

It’s possible they did, at first, intend to carry out the killing on the yacht, but when La Giovannini appeared with Mimì on her arm, they would have been forced to change their plans.

Thus, when Captain Sperlì, while waiting for Shaikiri to return, saw Augello come aboard, his only course of action would have been to race over to the Ace of Hearts and tell them of the hitch in their plans.

But there was no escaping it: if the killing did not take place on the yacht, it could only have occurred on the cruiser. Definitely not on the wharf-or, at least, only the last phase could have taken place on the wharf: moving the corpse and then chucking it into the water.

And this brought up something very important for the investigation: namely, that there was some sort of amorous correspondence between the Vanna and the Ace of Hearts . No question but that there were strong elective affinities between the two boats. In less literary terms, they must have been complicit in affairs so shady as to lead to murder.

If that was how it was, however, it implied something unexpected: that La Giovannini was completely in the dark as to the premeditated killing. Otherwise she would not have taken Mimì back to her cabin but gone to his place instead.

Was La Giovannini therefore innocent?

Wait a second, Montalbà. Try, as Pasquano warned, not to jump to conclusions.

Indeed, one could even hypothesize the exact opposite on the basis of the fact that La Giovannini brought Mimì on board. While they’re dining in Montelusa, the lady gets an idea for creating an ironclad alibi. She’ll be rolling in the hay when the killing takes place.

No, that won’t work.

It won’t work because the alibi would be stronger if she went to Mimì’s place.

And so?

Maybe La Giovannini didn’t want the Arab to be liquidated aboard her yacht. Maybe she wasn’t opposed to killing him, but wanted, in one way or another, to be left out of it. Mimì’s dinner invitation therefore came at just the right time, providing her with a unique opportunity.

By bringing him into her cabin, she forced all the others to change their plan of action.

Mimì said they had run into the captain in the mess room purely by chance. But that meant nothing. If they hadn’t crossed paths with him, La Giovannini would probably have gone to talk to him, coming up with whatever excuse she could think of, so she could let him know that an outsider would be spending the night with her.