Voice of the Violin Read online

  “Maybe your wife doesn’t like surprise visitors . . .”

  “I live alone.”

  Anna Tropeano didn’t have to think twice about it.

  “I’ll meet you in your car.”

  They rode in silence, Montalbano still surprised at having invited her, Anna clearly amazed with herself for having accepted.

  Saturday was the day Adelina, the housekeeper, customarily devoted to a fastidious cleanup of the whole house. Seeing it so spick-and-span, Montalbano took comfort. Once on a Saturday he’d invited a married couple over, but Adelina hadn’t come yet. In the end, his friend’s wife, just to set the table, had to clear away the mountain of dirty socks and underwear he’d left there for the housekeeper to wash.

  As if she were already long familiar with the house, Anna went directly to the veranda, sat down on the bench, and looked out at the sea a short distance away. Montalbano set a folding table and an ashtray in front of her and went into the kitchen. Adelina had left him a large serving of haddock; in the refrigerator he found a sauce of anchovies and vinegar to add to it.

  He went back out on the veranda. Anna was smoking and seemed more and more relaxed with each passing minute.

  “It’s so beautiful here.”

  “Listen, would you like a little baked haddock?”

  “Inspector, please don’t be offended, but my stomach’s in a knot. Let’s do this: while you’re eating, I’ll have a glass of wine.”

  Half an hour later, the inspector had gobbled up the triple serving of haddock and Anna had knocked back two glasses of wine.

  “This is really good,” said Anna, refilling her glass.

  “My father makes it . . . used to make it. Would you like some coffee?”

  “I won’t turn down a coffee.”

  The inspector opened a can of Yaucono, prepared the napoletana, and put it on the gas burner. He returned to the veranda.

  “Please take this bottle away from me or I’ll drink the whole thing,” said Anna.

  Montalbano complied. The coffee was ready. He served it. Anna drank, savoring it in little sips.

  “This is delicious. So strong. Where do you buy it?”

  “I don’t. A friend sends me a can now and then from Puerto Rico.”

  Anna pushed the cup away and lit her twentieth cigarette.

  “What do you have to tell me?”

  “There are some new developments.”

  “What?”

  “Maurizio Di Blasi.”

  “You see? I didn’t give you his name this morning because I knew you’d find it out with ease. He was the laughing stock of the whole town.”

  “Fell head over heels for her?”

  “Worse. Michela had become an obsession for him. I don’t know if anyone told you, but Maurizio wasn’t right in the head. He was on the borderline between normal and mentally unstable. You know, there were two episodes where . . .”

  “Tell me about them.”

  “One time Michela and I went out to eat at a restaurant. A little while later Maurizio arrived. He said hi and sat down at the table next to ours. But he ate very little and just stared at Michela the whole time. Then he suddenly started drooling, and I nearly threw up. He was really drooling, believe me; he had a string of saliva hanging out of the side of his mouth. We had to leave.”

  “And the other episode?”

  “I’d gone up to the house to give Michela a hand. At the end of the day, she went to take a shower and afterward came downstairs into the living room naked. It was very hot. She liked to go around the house with nothing on. Then she sat down in an armchair and we started talking. At a certain point, I heard a kind of moan coming from outside. I turned around to look. There was Maurizio, his face practically pasted against the window. Before I could say a word, he took a few steps back, bending over. And that’s when I realized he was masturbating.”

  She paused a moment, looked at the sea, and sighed.

  “Poor kid,” she said under her breath.

  Montalbano, for a moment, felt moved. The full, sensuous hips. That astonishing, wholly feminine capacity for deep understanding, for penetrating one’s feelings, for being at once mother and lover, daughter and wife. He placed his hand on top of Anna’s, and she did not pull it away.

  “Do you know he’s disappeared?”

  “Yes, I know. The same night as Michela. But . . .”

  “But?”

  “Inspector, can I speak to you frankly?”

  “Why, what have we been doing up to now? But do me a favor, please call me Salvo.”

  “If you call me Anna.”

  “Okay.”

  “You know, you’re wrong if you think Maurizio could ever have murdered Michela.”

  “Give me one good reason.”

  “Reason’s got nothing to do with it. You know, people don’t talk very willingly to the police. But if you, Salvo, were to conduct a poll, all of Vigàta would tell you Maurizio’s not a murderer.”

  “Anna, there’s another development I haven’t mentioned.”

  Anna closed her eyes. She’d intuited that what the inspector was about to tell her would be hard to say and hard to hear.

  He told her, without looking her in the eye, gazing out at the sea. He didn’t spare her any details.

  Anna listened with her face in her hands, her elbows on the folding table. When the inspector had finished, she stood up, pale as a ghost.

  “I need a bathroom.”

  “I’ll show you where it is.”

  “I can find it myself.”

  A few moments later, Montalbano heard her vomiting. He glanced at his watch; he still had an hour before Emanuele Licalzi’s visit. And, anyway, Mr. Orthopedist from Bologna could certainly wait.

  She returned with an air of determination and sat back down beside Montalbano.

  “Salvo, what does the word ‘consent’ mean to this coroner?”

  “The same thing it means to you or me: to agree to something.”

  “But in certain cases one might appear to consent to something because there’s no chance of resistance.”

  “I know.”

  “So I ask you: Couldn’t the murderer have done what he did to Michela without her wanting him to?”

  “But there are certain details—”

  “Forget them. First of all, we don’t even know whether the killer abused a living woman or a corpse. Anyway, he had all the time in the world to arrange things in such a way that the police would lose their heads over it.”

  Neither of them seemed to notice how familiar they’d become with each other.

  “You’re thinking something but not saying it,” said Anna.

  “No, I have no problem saying it,” said Montalbano. “At the moment, everything points to Maurizio. He was last seen at nine P.M. in front of the Bar Italia. Calling someone on his cell phone.”

  “Me,” said Anna.

  The inspector literally jumped up from the bench.

  “What did he want?”

  “He was asking about Michela. I told him we’d parted shortly after seven, and that she would be stopping at the hotel before going to dinner at the Vassallos.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “He hung up without even saying good-bye.”

  “That could be another point against him. He must have phoned the Vassallos next. Not finding her there, he guessed where she might be and caught up to her there.”

  “At the house.”

  “No. They didn’t arrive at the house until just after midnight.”

  This time it was Anna’s turn to jump.

  “A witness told me,” Montalbano continued.

  “He recognized Maurizio?”

  “It was dark. He only saw a man and a woman get out of the Twingo and walk towards the house. Once inside, Maurizio and Michela make love. At a certain point Maurizio, who you all say is a bit psycho, has an attack.”

  “Never in a million years would Michela—”

  “How
did your friend react to Maurizio’s stalking?”

  “It bothered her. Sometimes she felt deeply sorry for . . .”

  She stopped, realizing what Montalbano meant. Suddenly her face lost its freshness, and wrinkles appeared at the corners of her mouth.

  “There are, however, a few things that don’t make sense,” said Montalbano, who suffered seeing her suffer. “For example: Would Maurizio have been capable, immediately after killing her, of coolly conceiving of stealing her clothes and bag to throw the cops off the scent?”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “The real problem isn’t finding out the details of the murder, but knowing where Michela was and what she did between the moment you left her and when the witness saw her. That’s almost five hours, a pretty long time. And now we have to go because Dr. Emanuele Licalzi is coming.”

  As they were getting in the car, Montalbano, like a squid, squirted a black cloud over the whole picture.

  “I’m not so sure your public opinion poll would be so unanimous on Maurizio’s innocence. One person, at least, would have serious doubts.”

  “Who?”

  “His father, Engineer Di Blasi. Otherwise he would have had us out searching for his son.”

  “It’s natural for you to follow every lead. Oh, I just remembered something. When Maurizio rang me to ask about Michela, I told him to call her directly on her cell phone. He said he’d already tried, but her phone was turned off.”

  In the doorway to headquarters, he practically ran into Galluzzo, who was coming out.

  “Back from your heroic exploit?”

  “Yessir,” Galluzzo said uneasily. Fazio must have told him about his morning outburst.

  “Is Inspector Augello in his office?”

  “No sir.”

  Galluzzo’s uneasiness visibly increased.

  “And where is he? Out clubbing other strikers?”

  “He’s in the hospital.”

  “Eh? What happened?” Montalbano asked, worried.

  “Hit in the head with a stone. They gave him three stitches. But they wanted to keep him there for observation and told me to come back around eight o’clock tonight. If everything’s all right, I’ll drive him home.”

  The inspector’s string of curses was interrupted by Catarella.

  “Chief, Chief! First of all, Dr. Latte with an s at the end called two times. He says as how you’re asposta call him poissonally back straightaway. Then there was tree other phone calls I wrote down on dis little piece a paper.”

  “Wipe your ass with it.”

  Dr. Emanuele Licalzi was a diminutive man in his sixties, with gold-rimmed glasses and dressed all in gray. He looked as if he’d just been pressed, shaved, and manicured. Impeccable.

  “How did you get here?”

  “You mean from the airport? I rented a car and it took me almost three hours.”

  “Have you already been to your hotel?”

  “No. I’ve got my suitcase in the car. I’ll go there afterward.”

  How could he be so wrinkle-free?

  “Shall we go to the house? We can talk in the car, that way you’ll save time.”

  “As you wish, Inspector.”

  They took the doctor’s rented car.

  “Did one of her lovers kill her?”

  He didn’t beat around the bush, this Emanuele Licalzi.

  “We can’t say yet. One thing is certain: she had repeated sexual intercourse.”

  The doctor didn’t flinch, but kept on driving, calm and untroubled, as if it wasn’t his wife who’d just been killed.

  “What makes you think she had a lover here?”

  “Because she had one in Bologna.”

  “Ah.”

  “Yes, Michela even told me his name. Serravalle, I think. An antiquarian.”

  “That’s rather unusual.”

  “She used to tell me everything. She really trusted me.”

  “And did you also tell your wife everything?”

  “Of course.”

  “An exemplary marriage,” the inspector commented ironically.

  Montalbano sometimes felt irretrievably left behind by the new lifestyles. He was a traditionalist. For him, an “open relationship” meant nothing more than a husband and wife who cheated on each other and even had the gall to tell each other what they did under or on top of the covers.

  “Not an exemplary marriage,” the unflappable Dr. Licalzi corrected him, “but a marriage of convenience.”

  “For Michela or you?”

  “For both of us.”

  “Could you explain?”

  “Certainly.”

  He turned right.

  “Where are you going?” the inspector asked. “This road won’t take you to Tre Fontane.”

  “Sorry,” said the doctor, beginning a complex maneuver to turn the car around. “But I haven’t been down here for a year and a half, ever since I got married. Michela saw to all the construction herself; I’ve only seen photographs. Speaking of photographs, I packed a few of Michela in my suitcase. I thought they might be of some use to you.”

  “You know what? The murder victim might not even be your wife.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Yes. Nobody has officially identified the body, and none of the people who’ve seen it actually knew her when she was alive. When we’ve finished here, I’ll talk to the coroner about identifying her. How long do you plan on staying?”

  “Two, three days at the most. I want to take Michela back to Bologna.”

  “Doctor, I’m going to ask you a question, and I won’t ask you again. Where were you Wednesday evening, and what were you doing?”

  “Wednesday? I was at the hospital, operating late into the night.”

  “You were telling me about your marriage.”

  “Yes. Well, I met Michela three years ago. Her brother, who lives in New York now, had a rather severe compound fracture in his foot, and she brought him to the hospital. I liked her at once. She was very beautiful, but what struck me most was her character. She was always ready to see the bright side of things. She lost both her parents before the age of fifteen and was brought up by an uncle who one day saw fit to rape her. To make a long story short, she was desperate to find a place to live. For years she was the mistress of an industrialist, but he eventually disposed of her with a tidy sum of money that helped her to get along for a while. Michela could have had any man she wanted, but, basically, it humiliated her to be a kept woman.”

  “Did you ask Michela to become your mistress, and she refused?”

  For the first time, a hint of a smile appeared on Emanuele Licalzi’s impassive face.

  “You’re on the wrong track entirely, Inspector. Oh, by the way, Michela told me she’d bought a bottle-green Twingo to get around town. Do you know what’s become of it?”

  “It had an accident.”

  “Michela never did know how to drive.”

  “Your wife was entirely without fault in this case. The car was properly parked in front of the driveway to the house and somebody ran into it.”

  “And how do you know this?”

  “It was us, the police, who ran into it. At the time, however, we still didn’t know—”

  “What an odd story.”

  “I’ll tell it to you sometime. Anyhow, it was the accident that led us to discover the body.”

  “Think I could have the car back?”

  “I don’t see any reason why not.”

  “I could resell it to somebody in Vigàta who deals in used cars, don’t you think?”

  Montalbano didn’t answer. He didn’t give a shit about what happened to the car.

  “That’s the house there on the right, isn’t it? I think I recognize it from the photograph.”

  “That’s it.”

  Dr. Licalzi executed an elegant maneuver, pulled up in front of the driveway, got out of the car, and stood there looking at the construction with the detached curiosity of a sightseer.

/>   “Nice. What did we come here for?”

  “I don’t really know, truth be told,” Montalbano said grumpily. Dr. Licalzi knew how to get on his nerves. He decided to shake him up a little.

  “You know, some people think it was Maurizio Di Blasi, the son of your cousin the engineer, who killed your wife.”

  “Really? I don’t know him. When I came here two and a half years ago, he was in Palermo for his studies. I’m told the poor boy’s a half-wit.”

  So there.

  “Shall we go inside?”

  “Wait, I don’t want to forget.”

  He opened the trunk of the car, took out the elegant suitcase that was inside, and removed a large envelope from it.

  “The photos of Michela.”

  Montalbano slipped it in his jacket pocket. As he was doing this, the doctor extracted a bunch of keys from his own pocket.

  “Are those to the house?”

  “Yes. I knew where Michela kept them at our place in Bologna. They’re the extra set.”

  Now I’m going to start kicking the guy, thought the inspector.

  “You never finished telling me why your marriage was as convenient for you as it was for your wife.”

  “Well, it was convenient for Michela because she was marrying a rich man, even if he was thirty years older, and it was convenient for me because it put to rest certain rumors that were threatening to harm me at a crucial moment of my career. People had started saying I’d become a homosexual, since nobody’d seen me socially with a woman for more than ten years.”

  “And was it true you no longer frequented women?”

  “Why would I, Inspector? At age fifty I became impotent. Irreversibly.”

  8

  “Nice,” said Dr. Licalzi after having a look around the living room.

  Didn’t he know how to say anything else?

  “Here’s the kitchen,” the inspector said, adding: “Eat-in.”

  All of a sudden he felt enraged at himself. How did that “eat-in” slip out? What was it supposed to mean? He felt like a real estate agent showing an apartment to a prospective client.

  “Next to it is the bathroom. Go have a look yourself,” he said rudely.

  The doctor didn’t notice, or pretended not to notice, the tone of voice. He opened the bathroom door, stuck his head in for the briefest of peeks, and reclosed it.