Marco Vichi - Death in August

‘What is it you wanted to know?’ she said, mouth quivering. Bordelli looked her straight in the eye. Her eyeballs were covered by white veils veined with capillaries.

‘Your daughter was telling me you hear noises next door,’ he said.

The old woman made a vague gesture, which must have corresponded to some expression of exuberance in her younger days.

‘Oh, yes, yes. Many sounds, many, many sounds.’

‘What sort of sounds, signora?’

‘Many sounds. Many, many, many, many …’

‘Mamma, do you understand? The gentleman wants to know what kind of sounds … Stop acting senile.’ Bordelli wondered how he might extricate himself. His hand in his pocket fidgeted with his car keys. The transparent old woman joined her hands together and then pulled them tightly against her breast.

‘At night, mostly. Many, many …’

‘Not when , Mamma. The gentleman would like to know what sort of sounds.’

‘Oh … all right …’

‘Tell him about the screams you heard last February.’

Bordelli pretended to be keenly interested.

‘What kind of screams?’ the daughter persisted, jabbing her mother in the shoulder with her fingertips.

‘Come on, Mamma, the gentleman is waiting.’

‘Yes, yes … terrible screams, terrible, terrible screams … like animals …’

The daughter intervened.

‘But they weren’t animals, I’m sure of that!’ she said very seriously, opening her eyes wide to emphasise the point. Meanwhile her mother seemed to have woken up and was eager to speak.

‘I have a cousin who’s mad, and I used to go and see him until ’46,’ she said.

The daughter gave a start at the sound of these words, taking such offence that she almost began to cry. She started slapping her mother lightly on the hands.

‘Why did you say that, Mamma? Why did you say that now? Eh? Did you have to go and say that? Eh?’

‘Let me speak … You see, sir, I so hate my sister … she drove my grandson mad.’ The daughter clenched her dentures, growled, and stalked away as if she would never return. The mother continued speaking calmly.

‘The only other place I ever heard such screams was in the madhouse. Now do you understand? Are you still here, sir?’

‘I’m here.’

The daughter reappeared and stood behind her mother. She looked a bit calmer. Bordelli wanted only to run away.

‘I’m so pleased to have met you both,’ he said, holding out his hand. The mother started waving her hands in the air.

‘Don’t you want to hear about the shots?’ she said.

‘What shots?’

‘They are so loud, so so loud, that they wake me up.’

‘Pistol shots?’

‘So, so loud.’

‘Mamma! You don’t understand! The man wants to know if they were pistol shots.’

‘Ah, that’s so nice of him …’

‘No, Mamma, you don’t understand …’

‘… so, so nice.’

‘Mamma!’ the daughter shouted. Bordelli felt he should intervene, and made a slight bow towards the daughter.

‘Please don’t disturb your mother any further, I beg you. I’ve understood everything perfectly, thank you. Thank you ever so much. Goodbye.’

The mother took two tiny steps forward.

‘Do come see us some time, sir, we’re always here, all alone,’ she said.

‘Mamma, why do you say that? Why?’

‘Because it’s true,’ the mother whimpered. Bordelli said goodbye again, loudly, so they would hear, and took to his heels. Behind him the argument continued. The daughter was furious.

‘Did you really have to go and say that? Eh? Why did you say that? Tell me why!’ she kept saying, enraged.

The mother wasn’t listening to her.

‘Adele, call the gentleman back here … we didn’t tell him about the grunting noises …’

‘Tell me why you said that! Tell me why! Why?’

The great front door closed, and silence returned. Bordelli was bathed in sweat, but at last he was free.

‘The devil,’ he said to himself. He would have given his right hand for a cigarette. It was possible that mother and daughter had heard only mating cats and sputtering cars, but still they had managed to give the villa an even stranger air.

He was about to go back into the garden when a white Fiat 500 pulled up. Stepping out of the car was a small, thin man of about sixty with a wrinkly mouth and a tiny skull that narrowed vaguely at the temples. He approached Bordelli with a hesitant step. Behind his enormous eyeglasses he wore a pained expression.

‘I’m looking for Inspector Bordelli,’ he said.

‘I am he.’

‘I am Dr Bacci, Signora Pedretti’s personal physician.’

They shook hands.

‘Poor woman. I still can’t believe it,’ said Dr Bacci, truly saddened. They walked through the garden and into the villa. Bordelli stopped at the bottom of the stairs.

‘If you don’t mind, I’d like to ask you some questions about your patient,’ he said.

‘I’m sorry, but I would like to see her first.’

‘By all means. She’s upstairs. I’ll wait for you in that room over there,’ Bordelli said, pointing to one of the sitting rooms. The doctor trudged up the stairs, head bobbing to one side. He returned a few minutes later and rejoined Bordelli. Stopping in the middle of the room, he stood completely still and stared into space. Bordelli had made himself comfortable on a sofa that smelled strongly of old velvet.

‘Tell me, Dr Bacci, we know that the signora suffered from asthma … but to what degree?’

Bacci turned round, in a daze.

‘What was that?’

‘I was asking whether your patient’s asthma was serious, or if, perhaps-’

‘Ah, yes, of course. She suffered from tissual asthmatic allergy, a rather serious form of it, I should say.’

‘Could it prove fatal?’

The doctor began to wander slowly about the room, hands at his sides, eyes darting from painting to painting. There was great sadness in his voice.

‘The signora was allergic to many types of pollen. She sometimes had violent attacks, but never anything life-threatening.’

‘Are you sure about that?’

Bacci turned to face the inspector. He looked bewildered.

‘To tell you the truth, there was one plant that could be very dangerous,’ he said. Bordelli waited to hear which plant. The doctor began to move again and stopped in front of the portrait of a judge dressed in ermine, hunching his shoulders round his head.

‘Ilex paraguariensis,’ he continued, ‘commonly called mate, a typically tropical plant. Its pollen would have been deadly to Signora Pedretti.’

Bordelli coughed into his fist.

‘You wouldn’t happen to have a cigarette, would you?’ he asked.

‘I don’t smoke.’

‘So much the better. Tell me, Doctor, how did Signora Pedretti ever find out?’

‘Find what out?’

‘That she was allergic to that tropical pollen.’

The doctor took his eyes off the painting and returned to Bordelli. He said that from a very young age the signora had always travelled a great deal. A few years earlier, during a stay in Colombia, she had experienced a very serious attack and had to be rushed to hospital.

‘They snatched her from the jaws of death. It was almost a miracle.’

The Colombian doctors discovered that the flowering mate had triggered the attack. The signora spent several days in hospital and recovered quite nicely in spite of everything. But the terrible experience had changed her, and after her return she hardly ever went out of the house any more.

‘I used to say to her: Signora, you mustn’t live like a recluse. Colombia is on the other side of the world. That plant doesn’t grow here.’

‘So, in short, that plant was the only thing that might trigger a fatal attack.’