The Marshal's Own Case (17 page)

‘I had to talk to you,’ the Marshal said.

‘I know.’ He rubbed a weary hand over his face, blurring the make-up. ‘My mother told me.’ This was another voice, low and defeated. ‘What do you want from me?’

The Marshal stood very still. He couldn’t see his own reflection but Nanny could see it and responded to it without turning to face him. ‘It’s about Peppina. Peppina’s in prison, did you know that?’

‘Oh yes. I read it in the paper.’

‘He’s accused of killing—of murder.’ He was afraid to name Lulu in case she reappeared. The eyes in the mirror watched him in silence. He was forced to go on.

‘Peppina claims you took him to Lulu’s flat.’

‘Why should I do that?’

‘We know he was there. We took fingerprints. I expect we’ll find yours among them as well as his.’

‘Of course. I was staying there.’

‘And you took Peppina there.’

‘No.’ The eyes narrowed in thought and then he said, ‘She came there on her own.’

‘And you let him in?’

‘Why not? And I left her there. I went away.’

He could hardly avoid it now.

‘Where was Lulu?’

‘She was there. Lulu was there.’

‘And you left? And then Peppina murdered Lulu?’

‘That’s what must have happened. Peppina hated her.’

‘So did a lot of people.’

‘They didn’t understand her.’

‘But you did?’

‘I loved her.’

The eyes in the mirror glittered and the thin lips flickered with the trace of a smile like a serpent’s tongue. He raised a hand to one shoulder and followed the sagging contours of the sequinned dress down to the waist. ‘Beautiful . . .’ he whispered, ‘perfect . . .’ He was no longer talking to the Marshal’s reflection but to his own as he repeated, ‘I loved her.’

And the Marshal knew then that this wasn’t a missing witness he’d found, but a murderer. He also knew that no one else would ever see what he was seeing, that there would be no Nanny in the witness-box but a respectable businessman named Carlo Fossi, surrounded and supported by his mother and a lot of expensive lawyers. A respectable man tricked and corrupted and set up by a social pariah known as Peppina.

Unless he confessed. And the only time for a confession was here and now. In measured tones he said, ‘But Lulu didn’t love you.’

The eyes jerked back into focus.

‘That’s a lie. You know nothing about it. You don’t know Lulu.’

‘Lulu didn’t love you or anybody else. Lulu loved Lulu, Lulu’s body, Lulu’s money. Did you think you could keep it up without money? You had no money you could get at, did you? You moved in but sooner or later the truth had to come out. That you’d brought no money with you. Is that what went wrong?’

‘I loved her. Why didn’t she understand? What was money compared to what I’d given up for her. Everything! I gave up everything! For years I’d worked, building up a business. I gave it up. My mother, my wife, my home . . . I left everything because I loved her. Why didn’t she understand? She laughed in my face. She said I was crazy. I’d laid my whole life at her feet and she laughed at me. Over a year it had taken . . . sometimes she’d let me stay a day or two, then she’d kick me out. You had to understand her. There was a wild streak in her but I loved that too, I worship everything about her. Why didn’t she understand? Why?’

‘Did she ask you for money?’

‘The rent. Three million. I had nothing—I’d given up everything for her but she couldn’t see it. I’ve thought a lot about it. I thought: She’s never had any real love offered to her in her life, so she can’t understand. I thought . . . I must be patient. I was humble, I offered to leave, to let her think it over. She was bound to miss me, do you see? If I could manage to stay away from her long enough, she’d realize. No! Oh no!’ It was Lulu’s voice again. ‘No, no, you creeping half-wit! That’s not part of the bargain. I haven’t put up with your creeping and whining for over two weeks so that you can slide off without coughing up a penny! You’re not going anywhere except to the bank, and if you think you can crawl back home to your silly bitch of a wife you can think again! It’s too late! They won’t let you in the door after the nice little parcel I sent them!’ He burst into a raucous laugh that went on and on until the voice was spent. Then with a faint sob the head fell forward. The crown, reflected in the mirror, was slightly bald. The Marshal waited, afraid to interrupt, until the eyes were slowly raised to his reflection again.

‘I had to be patient. I had to work things out. She wanted me to sell the business, she wanted all of it. I couldn’t . . . it wasn’t so simple—I’d have done it, I’d have given her every penny I had in the world if only I could have undone what she’d done! But it was too late.’

‘Your identity card?’

‘Not just that. That was missing but there was a photo missing too, of me . . . a photo . . . And a letter, a letter describing things . . . details . . . she told me. She told me what she’d written and that she’d sent it . . .’

‘To your mother?’

He shook his head and dropped his face into his hands.

And yet he’d been so sure that the wife . . .

Slowly, the figure seated at the mirror turned. The smeared and haggard face in the hard torchlight looked like an illuminated death’s head. The lips barely moved as he whispered:

‘To my little girl.’

Then he wept, his hands hanging loosely between his knees.

The Marshal, waiting for the crisis to pass, took stock of the room as best he could without moving. The only door was behind him, though he had few fears of the broken creature before him attempting to run away. He eventually spotted what he was looking for down by the side of the table. The hold-all was there with Carlo Fossi’s suit draped over it. On top of the clothes lay a gun.

The weeping was beginning to subside. The limp hands sought each other and began turning over and over, the nails of one hand tearing at the back of the other.

‘I need to wash. I need to wash my hands.’

‘Not here. There’s nowhere . . .’

‘She used to mock me. She’d say, “Washing off the guilt?” especially when I was getting ready to go home. It’s a need I have . . .’ He had drawn blood from the backs of his hands but still he went on tearing. ‘A need . . . it does nobody any harm, does it?’

‘No.’

‘She used to mock me. I had to destroy her, you understand that, like you have to destroy a dog that gets rabies even though you love it. You have to. But I had to be very careful. A child can forget things, after all, don’t you think? The important thing was that she shouldn’t grow up knowing her father was a murderer. I thought for a long time. Lulu imagined I was trying to sell the business but I wasn’t. I was thinking. I thought if I wrote a letter to my little girl, telling her . . . telling her it was all lies and that because of it I’d been driven to suicide. She might have felt sorry for me. She might have believed me, mightn’t she?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘She’s so fragile, innocent . . .’ To the Marshal’s relief he stopped tearing at his hands and reached down towards his clothes.

The Marshal stiffened but made no move to stop him. The gun tumbled to the floor but Nanny appeared not to notice it. He fumbled in the pocket of his jacket and then turned back, holding out a photograph of the blonde child.

‘You see.’

‘She’s very pretty.’

‘Do you have any children?’

‘Two boys.’

‘Then you understand . . .’ He took the photograph back and balanced it on his knee, gazing at it while he talked.

‘My gun was at the factory, you see, so I couldn’t . . . I thought of the river or even the bell tower. But I knew I’d never have the courage. Perhaps I wouldn’t have had the courage even with the gun, I don’t know. So I thought the best thing was to destroy Lulu first and then I would feel better and decide what to do. I thought of Peppina afterwards.’

‘Why Peppina? What harm had she done you?’

‘She hadn’t done me any harm. She was just the first of them I came across.’ He sounded surprised at the question. His gaze remained fixed on the photograph, on the pure, irrefutable reason for what he had done.

‘The main thing was to destroy Lulu. I chose the night before she went to Spain. That way nobody would miss her for a long time, and anyway, it made a good excuse, don’t you think? To prepare our last supper . . .’ He frowned. ‘I didn’t want to use her sleeping pills. I would have liked her to be awake, you see. To know what I was doing so that she’d have to repent it. I wanted to make her understand . . . But I couldn’t risk it. Lulu was strong and fought like a wildcat, so . . . Even then, when I put her in the bath and hit her head with the rolling-pin I thought the pain would wake her and then . . . But it didn’t. I hit her and hit her but she never woke up. She was dead and I hadn’t been able to make her understand the evil she’d done. But I felt better, even so. I felt better . . .’ He stroked the little face in the photograph delicately.

‘What did you do then?’

‘I filled the bath. I had to, you see, or the body would have become rigid and I wanted to deal with it afterwards. After I’d been out and organized an alibi. I filled it with warm water. Then I washed myself in the kitchen. I had to wash my hands. And I changed my clothes and left them in the bathroom and then I went out.’

‘And you brought Peppina back so that her fingerprints would be in the flat.’

‘Yes, and I gave her some of Lulu’s traveller’s cheques. I said Lulu had gone to Spain and forgotten them. I’d hidden the suitcase, I thought of that. I only thought of the traveller’s cheques because Peppina told me, when we were having a drink, that she was saving to start a business. She was a fool to take them, wasn’t she?’

‘Yes.’

‘But it was lucky for me. She went in the bedroom, too, before we left, to powder her nose, so you’ll find her fingerprints there too.’

‘And you went in the bathroom.’

‘The water was all red. I told her, “I have to get rid of Peppina but I’ll be back, Lulu.” I felt very calm then so I didn’t say it angrily, just “I’ll be back.” ’

He fell silent, gazing down at the photograph, a different, softer expression in his face as though he were remembering a long-dead child instead of a living one.

The Marshal, too, remembered. He remembered a little girl who had aroused his empathy because for a moment they had shared the same sense of guilt mingled with satisfaction at the sight of a child who seemed so much less fortunate and who had cried because she couldn’t have a pink satchel.

‘Why did you go back?’ he asked. ‘Why? If you intended to kill yourself why did you . . . go on with it?’

But still the man stared down. ‘She had my eyes, you know. I never wanted to marry—my mother . . . She had my eyes but her hair was almost white like her mother’s. I never touched her. These hands . . . I never once touched her, only looked at her. I felt I couldn’t, you see. And she would say, “Play with me. Papa, why won’t you play with me?” I’d tell her, “Papas don’t play, they have to work”— because I would never touch her with these hands. “I’ll buy you a present,” I’d say to her. “Tell me what you’d like most in all the world.” Time and time again I’d ask her, “Tell me what you’d like most in all the world,” and she . . . She’d think for such a long time and then ask for some trifle, so seriously. “I want a new pencil with pink and white stripes.” And then she’d look at me to see if that would satisfy me. You see, she didn’t really want anything. She had to think of something, she understood in her childish way that it was I who needed . . . And she was so innocent she never thought of taking advantage. Innocent—I had no business to be near such a creature, I know that. I always knew it. I lived in fear that one day I’d lose the right to even so much as look at her, the way I used to do when she was sleeping. Anyone would have had the right to take her away from me—but not to defile her, not to dirty her!’ The hands holding the photograph gripped it tight, trembling. ‘Lulu had to be destroyed. She had to be punished. When I came back I decided what to do. I felt very calm and decided . . . But I had nothing to do it with, you see, so I went to bed. First I emptied the bath and put some very hot water in it because of what I had to do. Then I was hungry and I ate some of the food that was left. And then I slept.’

‘Where did you buy the saw?’

‘From an ironmonger. I drove across town in the morning and found a shop a good distance away, I don’t remember the street. I chose it badly, it should have been bigger. It was all right for the neck and the arms but it wasn’t long enough and the flesh on her thighs was too thick. It got caught a few times. It took me a long time because it was so difficult. It was the end of the saw, you see, that would bury itself in the flesh. It should have been longer—it caught in her dress as well until I thought of taking it off.’

The Marshal’s stomach felt tight and cold, not because of what he was being told but because of the manner of telling. It might have been a game of cards he was describing.

‘When I’d finished I put some of the pieces in plastic rubbish bags and some in a suitcase because there weren’t enough bags. I couldn’t take them out to the car until it went dark, so I spent all day cleaning the bathroom. I cleaned it and cleaned it until every trace of her was gone. I stuffed the bloodstained clothes and towels and rags in plastic bags and then I packed my clothes.’

He stopped and looked up at last. He looked straight at the Marshal and began to laugh. ‘I packed my clothes! And there in the top of her wardrobe I found my identity card and the photograph! She’d made it all up, you see! Everything was all right—all I had to do was get rid of the bags and I could go home. I opened one of them—one of the bags—and put the photo in it—you didn’t find it, did you?’

‘No.’

‘So, you see, everything’s all right. I dumped the bags in a lot of different places and then it was all over.’ He gave a deep sigh of weary satisfaction. ‘All over . . . I feel so tired.’

His gaze was drifting, his mind so evidently giving up the struggle to hang on to sanity that the Marshal said quickly, ‘It’s over for you, yes. But I have to arrest you now. You’ve confessed to the murder of Lulu and I have to arrest you.’