David Dickinson - Goodnight Sweet Prince

‘I saw him in Venice about ten days ago.’

‘Come,’ said Ferrante, ‘we can do the paperwork in the office. Not in here, I think.’ Powerscourt could see why Italian policemen were always busy. Ferrante was filling in forms as fast as his pen could write.

‘Name?’

‘Lord Edward Gresham.’

‘Address?’

‘Thorpe Hall, Warwickshire, England.’

‘Occupation?’

‘Army officer.’

‘Married or single?’

‘Had been married. His wife was dead. No children.’

‘Call that single. Religion?’

‘Catholic.’

‘Next of kin?’

‘Mother. Lady Blanche Gresham, Thorpe Hall. Same address.’

‘Reason for visit to Perugia?’

‘Tourist.’

‘Address to which body should be conveyed for interment?’

‘Thorpe Hall again.’ The family vault, watched over by his weeping mother. Surely even a Gresham would cry when her son came home in a coffin.

‘Thank you so much, Lord Powerscourt. Now, while I finish off the forms, perhaps you would like to have a look at these.’ He took a small bag from the desk and shook the contents out on to the table.

‘This is what we find in the pockets and so on. Nothing has been touched, except by the blood.’

There was a train ticket to Rome, first class, valid for travel some five days before. Gresham must have been on his last day in Perugia when they killed him, the last stop before Rome. There was an assortment of small coins and a receipt for a bill from Florian’s in Venice. My God, thought Powerscourt, that was with me, and the waiters, Sandro the gondolier’s hat waving across St Mark’s Square, the mirror on the wall. There was a letter, written by Gresham to himself. My Penance, it said at the top, from Father Menotti SJ. There followed a list of prayers, Acts of Contrition, arcane references to the intricacies of the faith that Powerscourt didn’t understand.

But wait, he said to himself. If Gresham has his penance to perform, then he must have been to confession here in Perugia maybe, or in Florence.

‘Captain Ferrante.’

‘Yes, Lord Powerscourt.’ The Captain was half-way down a very long form indeed. He carried on writing.

‘I need to ask you a question about the Catholic faith.’

‘I am not the priest, you understand.’ Ferrante was refilling his pen with official blue ink. ‘But my brother is. And my wife, I am afraid, she is very devout.’

‘Lord Edward Gresham had converted to Catholicism. Early this year he killed somebody. It was revenge. The somebody had killed Gresham’s wife. Gresham was on a journey to Rome. Somewhere en route he was going to say his confession. This piece of paper makes me think he had already done so.’

‘There is no Father Menotti in Perugia, Lord Powerscourt. We have checked. I believe there is one in Florence. I have written to him but so far he does not reply. The mails are very slow sometimes. Most of the time.’ Ferrante shook his head sadly at the inadequacies of the postal service.

‘If he had said his confession, would he be able to go to heaven? You see, he was very keen on going to heaven to meet his dead wife. Louisa, she was called. He was sure she was in heaven.’

‘I think it is like this,’ said Ferrante, continuing to write furiously. Powerscourt saw that he was now signing his name to a number of documents, a great flourish on the F of Ferrante. ‘If he makes the confession, and the priest absolves him, and he performs the Sacrament of Penance, then the state of sanctifying grace is restored to his soul. He will be in the State of Grace. God will receive him into heaven. He can meet the Louisa again, perhaps.’

Powerscourt felt relieved. He didn’t like to think of Gresham missing Louisa, somewhere between heaven and hell.

‘So it is the story of the doomed lovers?’ Ferrante bundled his papers into a folder. ‘Like Romeo and Juliet in Verona, or Heloise and Abelard. This time we have Eduoarde e Louisa. Maybe we should write the opera, you and I, Lord Powerscourt. Italians would love it. Eduoarde e Louisa . The final act could be here in Perugia by the fountain, a huge chorus singing away as the body of Eduoarde is discovered. There is blood everywhere. The lights go down over the cathedral. The ghost of the dead Louisa, she come to sing to her lover’s corpse. Maybe there is the duet. Eduoarde and Louisa on top of the Collegio del Cambio in the piazza. Two ghosts, but what a great aria. That would make the audience look up. Maybe they would cheer. Maybe they would cry.

‘Sorry, Lord Powerscourt. I get carried away. I am very fond of the opera. Mrs Ferrante, she say I spend too much money going to the performances. Now it is time for some more coffee. These forms,’ he waved triumphantly at the folder, ‘these forms are finished. Thank God.’

They were now in some quiet room at the back of the cafe. More black coffee had appeared and a plate of pastries.

‘Lord Powerscourt.’ Captain Ferrante was devouring a small lemon cake. Powerscourt saw that there were a large number of these cakes on the table. Perhaps they were Ferrante’s favourites. ‘I think we should speak freely. Nobody can hear us in here. Nobody will disturb us. We can decide what to put in our reports later on. Yes?’

‘Of course.’

‘I think, when you came here, that you expected to find that the body was that of Lord Gresham. Is that right? The Commissioner sent me a summary of what it said in The Times about Perugia the day you went to see him.’

Powerscourt hadn’t mentioned the report in The Times to Sir John. He was quite sure of that. He had mentioned Perugia, of course. Maybe it wasn’t that difficult to combine the two.

‘Yes, I was expecting to find that Gresham was the dead man.’

‘May I ask you, Lord Powerscourt, why you thought it was Gresham? You read this report in your newspaper, you drop all the other things you are doing, and you come to Perugia as fast as you can. Why?’

Powerscourt could see why the Commissioner held Ferrante in such high regard.

‘We are speaking confidentially for the moment, Captain?’

‘We are. I give you my word.’

‘It was the way he was killed. Those wounds.’

‘And why did those wounds make you so sure? Forgive me, I have a report to write about this murder. It may have been an Englishman, not a native of Perugia who died, but I am still charged with the task of finding the murderer. As you may be too, Lord Powerscourt, but a different murderer perhaps. For you, I sense, this is an end. For me, it may be only the beginning. I can always write in the middle of the report that he was killed by an unknown person or persons. That I have done before, God help me. But I come back to the wounds.’ Captain Ferrante advanced towards another of the little lemon cakes. ‘What was it about the wounds?’

‘In the earlier murder,’ said Powerscourt, ‘the one I spoke of, the victim’s throat was cut, the arteries were slit, everything was done to make sure there was as much blood as possible. It was terrible. Your Perugia murder was a copy of the one in England, a direct copy, wound for wound, cut for cut. Once I read the report in The Times with the details of the death, I felt sure it was Gresham. Here, I suspect, the fountain washed away some of the blood. With the other one, there was no water, only the sheets and the carpets. The blood was lying in puddles on the floor.’

‘I do not think I want to know very much about your earlier murder, Lord Powerscourt. I am forgetting that.’ Ferrante took another cake as an aid to amnesia. ‘Do you think, forgive me, that the killer was the same person in both our murders, that these wounds are some terrible trademark?’

‘I am absolutely certain,’ said Powerscourt, deciding that he too had better try one of these little pastries before they all disappeared, ‘that the killer is not the same person. There are two different killers.’