Michael Dibdin: A Rich Full Death

Then that Saturday, at DeVere’s inhumation, came the terrible and decisive shock of realising that my new ‘friend’ Browning was treating me just as Isabel had-as a plaything to pick up and throw down as the whim took him. Was I so boring, then? Well, I would make myself interesting!

That Sunday, as I lay around my flat, I picked up the Divine Comedy . The volume happened to fall open at the Argenti episode in Canto VIII, and I was struck with the resemblance to the discovery of DeVere’s body in the Arno that morning-the more striking given the similarity in their characters.

I toyed idly with the idea, purely as an abstract notion at first. What about Isabel? At once the famous description of Francesca da Rimini and her lover, eternally restless and wind-whipped, suggested itself. Isabel, then, would be punished as Lustful-as was just. Not that she was a raging Messalina in her desires-on the contrary! But she was a prey to her shallow passions, as Dante intended: someone vain, light, inconstant, worthless. My idea appeared more satisfactory the longer I thought about it. Yes, I would make myself interesting all right- and divert suspicion from myself for Isabel’s death for ever.

The remainder of the weekend I spent planning the attack on Maurice Purdy, and on the Monday I returned to the inn where I had eaten on my way to Siena. Posing as a doctor studying hydrophobia, I bought the mad dog I had observed there and carted it in a wicker basket to Fiesole, and then after dark to Purdy’s villa. Here I put a bullet through the wolfhound’s brain, scribbled the Dante reference up on the wall and released the rabid beast to greet Mr Purdy on his return from feeding with his fat friends.

I would have been content to stop there. What happened at the Chaunceys’ was totally unpremeditated-the spirtualist’s hocus-pocus so convinced me that I decided that she had to be silenced that very night, before Isabel or DeVere could use her powers to take revenge on me from beyond the grave. Instead of going to the front door when I left, I therefore hid in a little glory-hole used to store cleaning utensils. In the middle of the night I crept out, and smothered the old lady first with a pillow, to avoid using violence to a woman-a thing I deplore. I then dislocated her neck, and arranged the corpse at the foot of the stairs with a suitable inscription clasped in its hand. In the morning, when the maid went off for help, I slipped out of the apartment and up the stairs to the next landing, where I waited until she had returned and the door was shut again before going home-only to be awakened a few hours later by the police, which I can assure you was a very unpleasant shock.

At the Bargello I learned that all my pains-and it was no joy sitting there on a cold hard stone floor, knowing that if anything went wrong I was caught like a rat in a trap-had been wasted: Miss Chauncey had been a harmless fraud. But I was in up to my neck now, and my only thought was to keep my head above water. So when Tinker let me know that he had fathomed my secret I had no choice but to get out my well-thumbed copy of Dante again.

I willingly admit that I underestimated the ‘Reverend’ Tinker. Because the man was a patent confidence-trickster, I marked him down as a fool-but I was mistaken. He was the second person to leave the Chaunceys’ that night, so when he reached the front door and found it still locked and bolted for the ‘seance’, he was puzzled. When he heard about the mysterious death of the ‘medium’, he put two and two together with remarkable celerity. This was the limit of his cleverness, however; for instead of informing the police-which would have been the end of me-he gave me a few days to think that I had got away with it, and then called to see me and explained frankly what he knew, what he had guessed, and what he wanted. The answer was cash, in quite considerable amounts.

I agreed, of course-what else could I do? But I told him it would take a little time to have the sum he requested sent from America. He made no objection to this, and we parted very amicably. Tinker therefore had no particular reason for suspicion when he received a note the following evening from a very attractive lady whom I knew he had met shortly before. She had been ‘deeply impressed’, she said, with his ‘forceful and fascinating personality’, and urged him to come to her that evening at an address in Via Calimala and relieve the spiritual crisis which was so sorely tormenting her. Tinker was no fool, as I have said, but we all have our weak spot; mine is Literature, his was the fair sex. And so he came, and I was waiting for him, the oven already nicely glowing.

By now I had discovered the truth about Browning’s relations with Beatrice, and my interest in him was at an end. It was moreover becoming urgent to escape from the juggernaut I had set rolling before it crushed me. For this, one further victim was required; and after mature consideration I chose Mr Grant.

His death was my masterpiece, if I do say so myself. It was worked with a double, of course, as Browning finally realised. Petacco had been the porter at one of my previous dwellings in Florence; I looked him up, explained that I wished to play a Carnival prank on some friends, and offered him a coin of a value he had not seen for some time if he would assist me. He agreed readily enough to dress up in the costume I gave him and to wait for me in an alley behind Piazza Santa Trinita.

Having got Grant more than slightly inebriated, it was no problem to lead him into the boatyard, knock him down with my lead-weighted stick and tip his body into the cauldron of pitch. I then proceeded to the alley where Petacco was awaiting my arrival and we then made ourselves as conspicuous as possible in the Trinity square. As I had hoped, Talenti was there-I had sent him an anonymous threat in hopes of bringing him in person to secure my alibi-and I made sure we stayed together until Grant’s death had been reported, after which I hurried to the alley where Petacco was waiting to be paid. Having used the Bowie-knife on him, I stripped off his Carnival glad rags, which I threw down a sewer on my way to the scene of Grant’s death. The letter to Mr Browning had been very much a shot in the dark, and I was delighted to find that it succeeded better than I had dared hope. I thought it a particularly fine touch to sign the counterfeit with my own name!

And it all worked perfectly-except that Browning, with his accursed shopkeeper’s fascination with petty facts and dreary details, somehow found me out. But how much more a poet, how much greater an artist, am I! The bold conception, the reach, the range-these are mine, and mine alone. But such things count for nothing in this world, and so he wins.

Or rather, does not win! For though I should have died that night, I did not. In the morning I was awakened by a dog which barked over me until its master, an old peasant, came to see what was the matter. He fetched his son, and the two of them laid me on a ladder and carried me to the farm, where I was washed and put to bed by the woman of the house.

For the next week or so I lay in the grip of the most tremendous fever, which set my lungs aflame worse than they have ever been. By the time it subsided, the tell-tale clots of bright red had begun to appear in the matter I coughed up, and I gave myself up for lost. The peasant’s wife, however, forced me to drink certain foul-tasting infusions, which miraculously cured me. What they contained I have no idea-and would rather not know! — but in due course I was able to sit up in bed and take solid nourishment, and within a week or two I was not just well again, but feeling younger and more alive than I have for twenty years or more! Once I had recovered fully I slipped away to the place from which I presently write, on the coast, at the edge of a line of high cliffs, overlooking the sea.