Marco Vichi: Death in August

‘Yes, she did it, she organised the whole thing … I kept saying it wouldn’t work … she … She did it.’

Bordelli stood up, dragged a chair over beside Giulio, and sat down.

‘Now I’m going to ask you a question, Giulio, and I want a clear answer. Are you ready?’ he said, in a tone at once severe and protective.

‘Yes,’ Giulio blubbered, drooling.

‘Were you all in it together?’

Giulio couldn’t bring himself to look up, keeping his eyes fixed on an inkwell.

‘She did it, Inspector, she organised everything,’ he said.

‘Of course. But you knew about it and didn’t do anything to stop her, did you?’ he said.

‘Yes, I mean no … I didn’t do anything. I didn’t do it.’

‘All right, you didn’t do it, but if you all got away with it, some of the inheritance would have gone to you, too, wouldn’t it?’

Giulio said nothing and kept dribbling. Every so often a sob shook his whole body from the waist up. Bordelli brought his chair even closer to Giulio’s and made a sign to Piras to resume typing. The horrible clacking began to assail their ears again.

‘Did your wife and your brother know?’

‘Yes, they knew, and I knew too, but it was Gina who did everything.’

‘What do you mean by “everything”? Let’s run through the whole thing. Who was it that switched the medicine bottles?’

Giulio started whimpering again, and sniffling.

‘Gina.’

‘And who put the pollen on Gideon’s back?’

‘Gina.’

‘Good. And who went back to the villa that night to switch the medicine bottles again? Gina again?’

Giulio’s face collapsed once and for all.

‘No. It was my brother.’

‘All right. So they did it. But you and your wife knew everything, isn’t that right?’

‘Yes, that’s right.’

‘One last thing. Was it you who put the nitroglycerine in Dante’s bottle?’

‘That was her idea, Gina’s, I mean … I knew it wouldn’t work … I knew it!’ he said with a sob, and then he buried his fat face in his hands and started whimpering like a dog. Bordelli sighed. It was a truly nasty affair, more sordid than most.

‘All right, then. Bring them all in, Piras. The lawyer, too. Let’s give them the good news, and we can all go and get some sleep.’

‘So, Rosa, how are things with the cat?’

It was nighttime, on the last Sunday in September. Bordelli lay comfortably on his friend’s sofa in front of an open window giving on to the neighborhood rooftops. He had taken his shoes off and was sipping a thirst-quenching concoction. Rosa was deeply tanned and deeply decolletee, arms covered with clinking bracelets.

‘Gideon’s a darling. I couldn’t live without him,’ she said.

‘I’m so glad you’ve become friends. Where is he now?’

‘I leave the terrace door open for him, so he can go wandering over the rooftops. You won’t believe it, but every evening at nine o’clock sharp he comes into my room to cuddle with me. He’s such a dear … why won’t you tell me where you got him?’

‘I’ve already told you. One night he came knocking on my door and asked me to introduce him to a wonderful woman.’

Rosa looked over her shoulder at him, smiling with embarrassment and pleasure.

‘You’re such a liar, dear Inspector, but that’s why I like you so much … Come on, tell me.’

‘He was given to me by a friend of mine who couldn’t keep him.’

‘And why couldn’t he keep him?’

‘Because his house is full of mice.’

‘Oh, you’re so silly!’

‘This time I’m telling the truth.’

‘Of course you are.’

‘I swear it’s true.’

Rosa flicked his nose with her finger.

‘Okay, I get it, you want it to remain a mystery.’

‘No, I tell you.’

‘All right, then, tell me again about the judge, it’s so funny … What did you say to him?’

‘I’ve told you that at least ten times; aren’t you getting tired of it?’

‘No, tell me again.’

Bordelli took a sip and lit up a cigarette.

‘So I go in and Judge Ginzillo shows me the chair. He looks very nervous. Then he looks me in the eye and says: “Do you know that interrogating a suspect without his lawyer present is a crime?” So I say: “Then go ahead and report me.”’

Here, as always, Rosa burst out laughing.

As Bordelli continued his story, flashes of the Morozzi trial came back to him. Four life sentences. Santelia had bent over backwards trying to get a reduced sentence for Giulio and Angela, waving his arms under his gown for a good half-hour, every so often bringing his fist down on the bench. But it was all for naught. The heat during the trial was unbearable, but the courtroom was nevertheless packed with people, owing perhaps to the interest the press had shown in the case. Piras even ended up getting his picture in the paper with the caption: ‘Young Officer Piras, who played a decisive role in solving the murder’.

Dante had appeared in the courtroom dressed as he always was, in his oil-stained white smock. He sat in the last row, following the trial attentively, perhaps more interested in observing the people than in knowing the outcome. No one dared ask him to put out his smelly cigar. Since he was a strange person, photographers and journalists took aim at him as if he were a movie star. He simply ignored them. After the sentence was read, he had got up and left in silence.

‘My good Inspector,’ he had said to him over the phone a few days later, ‘my mice are very worried. Please help me find some wonderful woman to care for Gideon.’

That same evening Bordelli had paid him a call, taken the cat and brought it to Rosa, who adopted it on the spot.

‘Hey, are you in a daze or something?’ said Rosa, waving a hand in front of his face. Bordelli snapped out of it.

‘I’m sorry. Where was I?’

Rosa took the empty glass out of his hand.

‘I get it. You need something strong.’

As Rosa went off in search of alcohol, Bordelli saw Elvira’s face before his eyes. This was certainly nothing new. She troubled his sleep every night, in fact, walking across the hard floor in her bare feet, staring at him with her beautiful, piercing eyes.

It was an evening like so many others, Bordelli dozing on Rosa’s couch, coddled like a child. He gazed at the sky through the open window, following his dreams. He had no way of knowing that only a few months later, one nasty afternoon, he would be dashing off to the park of Villa di Ventaglio after a particularly monstrous murder.

At that moment a shooting star streaked across the sky, and Bordelli became agitated. He saw his aunts’ passion-flower pergola again, and Annina bent down to kiss a sad little boy goodbye.