A Dead Man in Naples Read online

  ‘On?’

  ‘Margareta. The Marchesa. To see if they’re the same person.’

  ‘So you were just thinking about this blasted case? You weren’t thinking about us at all?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I don’t know why I’m even considering marrying you!’

  ‘I would like to see Sister Geneviève,’ said Seymour.

  The nun hesitated.

  ‘I don’t know if she will see you,’ she said. ‘She is very frail now, and she has good days and bad days. Often, these days, she doesn’t like to be bothered. What was it you wanted to see her about?’

  ‘Margareta Esposito,’ said Seymour. ‘Just tell her that, will you?’

  ‘Margareta!’ said Sister Geneviève fondly. ‘I can still hear her voice. Do you know her?’

  ‘I have met her recently. At least, I think I have. We are not talking about a Marchesa, by any chance, are we?’

  ‘Yes. She has been called to a great position, but I am sure she is worthy of it.’

  ‘I am sure she is. But, alas, she has given up her singing.’

  Sister Geneviève shook her head.

  ‘That is wrong,’ she said. ‘She should not hide the talent that God has given her.’

  ‘It is said that she has done so to please her husband.’

  Sister Geneviève frowned. ‘Her husband should not have asked such a thing of her.’

  ‘There may be more to it than that. It is said, too, that her voice is not what it was.’

  ‘That I will not believe!’ said Sister Geneviève indignantly.

  ‘Time passes,’ said Seymour, ‘and perhaps even Margareta is not immune.’

  ‘But she is still young!’ Sister Geneviève stopped and caught herself. ‘Perhaps not so young now,’ she admitted. ‘It was all so long ago,’ she said softly.

  ‘Time creeps up on you,’ said Seymour, ‘and I think she felt it had crept up on her. Or was going to creep up on her. And she was not going to have it!’

  Sister Geneviève laughed. ‘That sounds like Margareta! She was never one to go out tamely.’

  ‘I think she feared that her voice might be going and so she stopped. Before it did go. I think she wanted to go out while she was still at her best.’

  ‘That would be Margareta, too,’ said Sister Geneviève. ‘She could never bear to be thought anything other than superb.’

  Chantale laughed.

  ‘I have met her, too,’ she said, ‘and I think I like her better in your description than I do in life.’

  ‘She was never easy,’ Sister Geneviève admitted.

  ‘You know,’ said Seymour, ‘there is one thing that puzzles me. I know her as, and you speak of her as, a Marchesa. But the man she is married to is not noble. Not by birth, certainly. And I am not sure he has a title.’

  ‘She married again,’ said Sister Geneviève. ‘That is not good, either, not according to God’s laws. But, you know, I sometimes think – and, please, do not tell anyone here this – that a great spirit can somehow wriggle through God’s laws.’

  ‘So her title comes from her former husband?’

  ‘Yes. The newspapers made a great thing of it at the time. “From foundling to Marchesa!” the headlines read. I don’t think she was altogether pleased and nor was her husband, and certainly not her husband’s family. She liked to keep that part of her life quiet. She was wrong to be ashamed of her beginnings, but I can understand it.’

  Thinking about it, and about the girl she had once known, she smiled to herself and went into a daydream. And then, suddenly she fell asleep.

  They rose to go, but then her eyes opened.

  ‘Tell her, if you see her, that Sister Geneviève remembers her in her prayers.’

  ‘I certainly will.’ Seymour hesitated. ‘She is in Naples. Shall I tell her that you would like to see her?’

  Sister Geneviève’s face lit up.

  ‘Oh, yes!’ she said. ‘But tell her not to bother if it is difficult. Or if – if she doesn’t want to.’

  ‘I think she might want to,’ said Seymour.

  ‘You have to be,’ said the Marchesa morosely, ‘pretty desperate to go and look at boats.’

  They had wandered down from the Porta del Carmine to the old harbour and then along to the Porto Mercantile, at this time of day crowded with fishing boats sighing against the quays. And there they had come across the Marchesa, sitting on a stone bollard with several iron rings in it, from which ropes led to various boats.

  ‘And you are desperate, Marchesa?’ asked Seymour.

  ‘Desperately bored,’ said the Marchesa. ‘Naples is a pig of a place. Especially when the officers are doing whatever it is that officers spend their time doing. Manoeuvres, is it?’

  ‘Not when they’re in barracks.’

  ‘Which they are most of the time. They keep them cooped up like chickens, and, in the end, like chickens they lose their virility. When they get out, they spend their time riding bicycles! Not terrorizing, and delighting, the female population, as they would have done in the old days. The country’s going to pot,’ said the Marchesa gloomily. ‘Naples!’ she said. ‘Why I ever came here, I do not know. Or, at least, I do: my bastard husband sent me.’

  ‘Was it not your choice, Marchesa?’

  ‘Choice! What sort of choice do you have when you have no money and your bastard husband says: “Luisa, it’s Naples for you. Naples, or nothing!”’

  ‘I hope that at least the money’s come through,’ said Seymour.

  ‘Oh, he’s generous in that way,’ said the Marchesa.

  ‘Something you’ve just said, Marchesa, rather interested me. When was it you decided to change your name?’

  ‘Change my name?’

  ‘To Luisa.’

  ‘When I became respectable,’ said the Marchesa, with a ghost of a smile.

  ‘And, of course, wished to put the “Esposito” behind you.’

  ‘I didn’t wish to put it behind me. I clung on to it as long as I could. But my husband’s family made me get rid of it.’

  ‘And the Margareta at the same time?’

  ‘You have been digging!’ cried the Marchesa delightedly. ‘Oh, how exciting! At last something is happening in Naples. You have found out about the Hospital!’

  ‘I am sorry if you wished to have kept it a secret.’

  ‘Secret?’ cried the Marchesa. ‘Certainly not! Let me tell you, Esposito is a name to be proud of in Naples. It shows you have made it on your own. Without anybody helping you. No, no; I can assure you that when I began singing professionally it was a great draw. Especially in Naples. They were ecstatic. Margareta Esposita. They loved it. Someone from the back streets, like them. If I could do it, so could they. Secret? It was my big selling point. Of course, when I moved into the aristocracy, it was not such a selling point! And I thought, Margareta, you’ve made it. You can pull the ladder up now. Or, at any rate, stop continually referring to the ladder!’

  ‘Was Esposita your professional name?’ asked Chantale curiously.

  ‘At first. My name. It was my name. And my voice. I wanted to tell people that. “It’s me!” I wanted to say. “Little old me! From down at the bottom. But I’m not staying there, loves, I bloody am not.” And people loved it. Even that bastard Alessandro loved it.

  ‘Of course, he was an Esposito too. Although, like me, he changed his name when he was on his way to the top. “If you’d met me earlier,” I told him, “before we changed our names, we could have stuck to them.” I meant, as a gesture of defiance. Of course, I realize now that what I should have said was, as a way of economizing. That would have appealed to him.

  ‘But at the time it was because he thought he had found a fellow spirit. You know, someone from the depths, as he was. He came from the docks. Right here! Although that’s not what I’m looking at the boats for. I used to sing here. From time to time. I would creep out of the Hospital when it all got too much for me, when I couldn’t stand any more of the goody-goody
atmosphere, and would come down here, and when I wanted some money for sweets I would sing to them. They were my people. I never forgot that and later, when I stood on the stage, it was to them I was singing and not to the bow ties and sparkling necklaces. I might be Luisa on the outside, but on the inside I was still Margareta.’

  ‘And are you still Margareta?’ asked Seymour.

  ‘Even more.’

  ‘There is someone who remembers you as Margareta. We were talking to her. She would like to see you again. Sister Geneviève.’

  ‘Sister Geneviève? Is she still alive?’

  ‘And would like to talk to you. If you could bear to.’

  ‘Bear to?’

  ‘She wouldn’t want you to come if you don’t want to.’

  ‘Sister Geneviève?’

  ‘If you would like to.’

  The Marchesa considered, and then stood up.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I think I would like to. I shall go now. Immediately.’

  She started to go, and then stopped.

  ‘How strange!’ she said. ‘That you should be the one to tell me! A policeman from England!’

  ‘Stranger still,’ said Seymour, ‘what led me there.’

  ‘What did lead you there?’ asked the Marchesa.

  ‘A betting slip,’ said Seymour, ‘in a dead man’s pocket.’

  The Marchesa looked at him levelly. ‘Scampion’s?’

  Seymour nodded.

  ‘How did it get there, Marchesa?’

  ‘I gave it him.’

  ‘You gave it him?’

  ‘Yes. He asked for it. When I was about to throw it away. It was out of date, you see. Expired. But it had my number on it. My number at the Hospital. I always used that number when I betted. Because it was me. That number was me. I told him this. And he looked at me peculiarly and asked if he could have it. Of course, I said yes, although afterwards I was a little sorry – sorry that I had told him, and sorry that I had given him the ticket. I felt as if I had given part of myself away.’

  She laughed to herself.

  ‘Foolish!’ she said. ‘Foolish, I know. And sentimental.’

  She shook her head.

  ‘And sentimental on his part too.’ She sighed. ‘Poor little Scampion! I think he had the teeniest bit of a passion for me. A passionlet. Yes, that is better. English diplomatic officials do not have passions. They have passionlets. Baby passions.

  ‘And what about English policemen, Signora?’ she said to Chantale. ‘Do they have passions? Or just passionlets?’

  ‘Working up to it,’ said Seymour.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said the sailcloth-stitcher, ‘you’re the crazy man Alberto was talking about. The man looking for the Magic Number.’

  ‘Not the Magic Number,’ said Seymour. ‘But my magic number. I’m nearly there. I just need a little bit to complete it.’

  ‘That’s always the hardest bit,’ said the sailcloth-stitcher, sighing.

  ‘I was so close!’ said Seymour.

  ‘Were you?’ said the sailcloth-stitcher, interested.

  ‘It was all there,’ said Seymour, ‘apart from one little bit.’

  ‘Were you using the Smorfia?’

  ‘Yes, I was.’

  ‘I always find it very helpful.’

  ‘It’s tried and tested,’ said Seymour.

  Tried and tested and invariably wrong, he said to himself.

  ‘Stick to it!’ advised the sailcloth-stitcher. ‘You can’t do better.’

  ‘I’m sure the Smorfia’s all right,’ said Seymour. ‘It’s just hitting on the thing it gives the number to that’s the problem. The basic idea’s good. What happened on that day. You know, the day the Englishman was killed.’

  ‘I remember the day well,’ said the sailcloth-stitcher encouragingly.

  ‘You do?’

  ‘It was the day my needle broke. Do you think that could be something to do with it?’

  ‘I remember the day well,’ said the pipe-maker. ‘It was terrible. There was blood all over the place!’

  ‘The Englishman –?’

  ‘No, no. Our Nando, he fell over and hurt his knee. He made such a row that you’d have thought his leg had come off. “For God’s sake, give that child something,” I said to my wife. “A lump of sugar or something. The noise he’s making is going right through my head.”’

  ‘Grandpa saw someone running!’

  ‘He did?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Did he get a good look at him?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘Could he describe him?’

  ‘Pretty well. It was Pietro, you see.’

  ‘Pietro?’

  ‘Gianni’s boy. He lives in a basso at the other end of the street. When he heard what had happened, he came running up. Didn’t want to miss anything, you see.’

  * * *

  And more of that ilk. Perhaps it had not been such a good idea after all.

  He repaired to the snail restaurant. His friends commiserated.

  ‘There’s bound to be a lot of dross along with the gold,’ said Ernesto.

  ‘The trouble is, there hasn’t been any gold yet,’ said Seymour.

  ‘Well, you couldn’t expect it. Not just like that. You’ve got to persist. Dig around a bit.’

  ‘Stick to it!’ Alberto advised. ‘One of these days, it will leap out at you.’

  Seymour was beginning to wish he had not thought of this daft idea. He was halfway along the street now and getting nowhere. It wasn’t, now, that they were unwilling to talk to him. On the contrary, they were only too willing. They remembered the day very well. But what they remembered was nothing to do with Scampion. It had happened at the end of the street, which in their terms was a long way away. The Porta del Carmine was another world. Scampion had belonged to that world, not that of the bassi, and they found it hard even to imagine him.

  ‘Persist!’ the carpenter enjoined him. ‘One of these days, as you said, it will leap out at you!’

  That was another daft thing that Seymour wished he had not said.

  The carpenter looked back down the street.

  ‘Oops!’ he said. ‘I’ve been expecting someone. And there he is. I’d better get back or my wife will have it in for me.’

  He got up from the table.

  The acquaiolo looked along the street too.

  ‘Has the time come round again?’ he said. ‘Already?’

  ‘It comes round a bit too quickly for my liking,’ said the carpenter. ‘Is it just that I’m getting old, or is he really coming round more often?’

  ‘I’m sorry to say,’ said the acquaiolo, ‘that it’s you getting old. He comes round every fortnight, as regular as clockwork. And the fortnight is just about up.’

  ‘I suppose it’s better that way,’ said the carpenter. ‘I mean, if he came round every month it would always seem a lot when you had to find the money. This way makes it more manageable.’

  He hurried off down the street back to his basso, where, indeed, his wife was waiting for him, arms akimbo.

  ‘I’d better get back, too,’ said the acquaiolo. ‘He’s working up the street and it’ll be my turn in a minute or two.’

  He set off back to his basso.

  ‘And mine, too,’ said the snail-shop owner, going to fidget beneath his boxes.

  Later that afternoon Seymour and Chantale passed that way again. Ernesto was standing in his snail restaurant looking glum.

  ‘Was it more this time?’ asked Seymour.

  Ernesto gave a start.

  ‘More?’ he said.

  ‘What you have to pay them,’ said Seymour.

  Ernesto looked around him cautiously.

  ‘A bit,’ he said. ‘But it’s not so much that.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No. It’s Jacopo.’

  ‘Which is Jacopo?’

  ‘Three doors down. The basket-maker. He’s not been doing so well lately and he couldn’t find it.’

  ‘The
money?’

  ‘That’s right. What he had to pay.’

  ‘Have they broken him up?’

  ‘No, no. Not yet, at any rate. They’ve just said that they will. If he can’t find it by next week. Well, he won’t be able to. Business is bad for basket-makers, not just him. He’ll have to get out.’

  ‘Leave the basso?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘What will he do?’

  ‘He’s got a brother in Benevento. But his brother’s not much better off than he is. Still, they won’t touch him there. All the same, it’s bad.’

  ‘Hard on the family?’

  ‘He’s got five. And his wife’s still sick from their last. This is no time to be moving. I’m just going to take a bowl of soup round there. Would you like to come?’

  The basso looked more like a junk shop than a workshop. There were half-finished chairs in the street outside and worn baskets awaiting repair. There were piles of rushes and heaps of twigs scattered about over the floor. A clothes line ran along the front of the basso and on it were various items of worn clothing together with stained pieces of cloth. A broken-down table stood outside and at it a man was working. The doors of the basso were only half open but inside he could just about make out in the darkness the large bed, on which children were playing. He couldn’t see the mother but guessed she was in it.

  Ernesto put the bowl on the table.

  ‘For the little ones,’ he said.

  The man at the table looked up.

  ‘Thank you, Ernesto. I will repay,’ he said.

  ‘Of course, you will, Jacopo,’ said Ernesto heartily. ‘When things are better, yes?’

  The man shrugged.

  ‘If they ever get better,’ he said.

  He gave a shout and two of the bigger children came out and eyed the bowl greedily.

  ‘Take it to your mother; and see that she gets some of it.’

  The children nodded and took the bowl away.

  The man looked at Ernesto.

  ‘He came again this morning,’ he said.

  ‘He came to me, too,’ said Ernesto.

  ‘I did them a favour a few weeks ago,’ the man said. ‘I thought that would be enough. For the time being. But he said it was only a little favour, and was only worth two payments. And I’d had those.’

  ‘Was the favour worth more?’ asked Seymour.