8

The man gave no sign of being uneasy. Whether it was remarkable self-control and a seasoned talent for acting or he really did believe in his own supernatural strength, he maintained his moment of rapture.

“You can’t accuse me of a crime that was committed by someone else.”

“By whom?”

He smiled, and his smile was sinister. “I don’t deny that someone might be able to find out. I don’t know.”

“I repeat: this is not a performance. So you can begin by telling me something about yourself. What do you do?”

“Salesman. Everyone knows it…” He paused, then seemed to become human. He spoke simply, as if confiding in someone. “I’m a salesman now. I’ve had a lively existence, I have. I’ve been all over the world, earning my keep with some effort. I come from the East. In Italy, Levantines are not known for their honesty.” He shrugged. “You won’t find anyone who can make a well-founded accusation against me. What have I done? I’ve grown and sold tobacco; I’ve been a stoker on the Sea of Azov; fisherman on the Black Sea; I’ve traded in bricks and watermelons, going up and down the Dnieper; I’ve been a clown in a circus; I was an actor. Now? I deal in trifles. Indispensable objects—because they’re unnecessary. Men don’t always need bread, but they always need someone to make them marvel. A little paper flower, which opens as if by magic…”

On a night like this, after having taken a body down from a rope, De Vincenzi’s nerves were raw. But he controlled himself. If there were some way to get this cunning and deceitful Levantine to reveal something useful, he could do nothing but let him go on talking in his own way, and do all the acting he wished.

Novarreno had taken a step backward and had gone still again. A smile crept over the inspector’s face and he went to sit with his back to the wall.

“Take a seat. I believe we’ll be speaking for some time.”

A look of dismay flitted over Novarreno’s ashen face. “In here?” He looked around, and his gaze fell on the headboard. “I actually have some urgent business… an appointment.”

“At this hour? Are you joking, Novarreno? It’ll soon be three in the morning. Sit down, I tell you, and let’s talk about this calmly. I’m not in a hurry myself. I’m not leaving this hotel until I find out who killed Douglas Layng—and until I’ve arrested him, of course.”

“But what do I have to do with it? I don’t know anything.”

“You know, for example, that the young man was killed in this room and that he was killed at exactly twelve-thirty. You said so yourself! And you’re the only one who knows this. I’ll bet that—” He jumped up and turned back the bedcover and the sheets, revealing a huge stain, black with blood. “Look! Did you know this, too?”

Novarreno didn’t even back away. Angry and stock-still, he looked beyond the stain at the headboard… Only his jaw muscles worked convulsively, as if he were using incredible force to control himself.

“I know nothing! I sensed that a man had been killed in here as soon as I entered this room.”

“Ah, yes! So you’re a necromancer, right? And the time it happened? Did you feel that, too, when you came into the room?”

“Yes,” and he added no more. He didn’t even try to make it seem logical, to offer an explanation, to justify his absurd claim with an argument, however specious.

But why had he spoken? It didn’t seem possible that he was the killer, for the precise reason that he’d talked. However great an actor he was, however consumed with the need to cause continual sensation—to shock—one could not suppose that the charlatan in him was stronger than his sense of danger, his instinct for self-preservation. And since one couldn’t give any weight to his necromantic divination—even if one tried to explain it as a hypersensitivity of the nerves or a telepathic phenomenon—what was left?

“Where is your room, Novarreno?”

“Next to this one. The next door along.”

De Vincenzi was left, therefore, simply with this: the Levantine had heard Douglas Layng being killed through the thin walls of his room and now, after having impulsively and rashly given in to his desire to demonstrate his occult and divinatory powers, he was reluctant to speak for fear of the killer.

For the third time, De Vincenzi said curtly: “Sit down!” and the man sat in a chair beside the bed, without showing the least horror or repugnance at the blood-soaked sheets. The inspector covered up the bed again—he was the one who couldn’t stand the sight.

“Listen to me closely, Giorgio Novarreno. Don’t imagine that I’m going to let this farce continue. You know something, and you’ve got to tell me what you know. You won’t be leaving this room until you’ve talked. Understood?”

The man shook his head. “I don’t know a thing.”

“What were you doing, and where were you yesterday at half past twelve?”

A malicious smile was the first response; it came to him spontaneously. He spoke slowly.

“Was I the only one to give you the time of the crime? Or had you already more or less settled on that moment?”

“What if I told you that my calculations and those of the doctor coincided exactly with your information?”

“I’d have to believe you. But I remain struck by it as I would by a supernatural event. Think about it, I beg you. If I were the killer or his accomplice, it’s obvious that even if I were play-acting, as you say, I would have suggested any time except that of the crime, and in any case I would have proposed a time for which I had an alibi. So either you believe that I’ve spoken moved by some force outside myself—call it telepathy, occultism, divination, the nervous tension of a sick organism, whatever you wish, in fact—in which case you’re trying to prove a suggestion that might be completely wrong… or you believe that I might be mixed up in this business, in which case you should pay no heed to my words and consider them no more than a guilty man’s attempt to derail your investigation and confuse your thoughts.”

He was clever. In command of himself, in any case. Of course there had to be something else underneath all this. This man, acting as he did, was clearly pursuing his own goal. But what was it?

All at once, De Vincenzi decided to change tactic and rely on cunning. “That’s right,” he said. “I see you’re not devoid of logic. But you could be helpful to me all the same and I’m counting on your voluntary collaboration.”

“Of course.”

“When did you see Douglas Layng for the last time?”

“Yesterday morning.”

“What time?”

“Three in the morning, when we came upstairs together to go to bed.”

“Who else was with you?”

“I don’t know. I only remember coming up with Layng. The others had either gone up before us or followed later. The game was over.”

“With whom had the Englishman been playing?”

“With everyone… baccarat isn’t a closed game, you know. Donato Desatta was banker and anyone who wanted to placed a bet.”

“And the Englishman?”

“From the moment he learnt how to play that cursed game, he played whenever he could, like a desperate man. In the early evening, when he had no alternatives, he’d start playing baccarat with only one other player. He even played with the ladies.”

“And lost.”

“Yes.”

“Who taught him how to play?”

Novarreno didn’t hesitate. “Da Como.” He smiled. “Da Como will be hit hardest of all by his death.”

So Carlo Da Como was the one who’d won a thousand lire in one night with Layng. And he was living in one of the little rooms on the top floor… Was it possible to imagine that the tragic mise en scène had been staged just for him?

“What did you and Layng talk about when you went upstairs?”

“Nothing. A few words, whatever one says on the way to bed after sitting shut up in a room for hours, gambling.”

He was lying. De Vincenzi could tell that he was lying. Even if his hesitation hadn’t been obvious before he spoke, his actual voice, which he’d tried to infuse with indifference, had betrayed him. But why? He was clearly responding to some of the questions with sincerity, though there were others he was trying to avoid.

“Where were you born, Novarreno?”

“In Adalia. On the Gulf of Adalia, across from Cyprus… Asiatic Turkey. A miserable, tragic country.”

“How long have you been in Italy?”

“Since ’14.”

“And during the war?”

“I travelled… on behalf of your government.”

So he’d been a spy, if one could believe he was telling the truth. It would be easy to check.

“Yesterday? Tell me what you were doing from—from, shall we say, eight in the morning onwards.”

“If you want me to give you an alibi you can check up on, I don’t think I’ve got one. For the very reason that I could never have imagined that what’s happened would happen, I took no steps to ensure that I had one.”

“Let’s see… before we come back to this, how did you know Douglas Layng had been killed?”

“The hunchback yelled it out to everyone. How could I have failed to hear? I was by myself in the lobby, tucked away in a corner. I often go off on my own because I need to think freely. Bardi went by, running and screaming: ‘There’s a hanged man’ or something like that. There was a moment of panic… women fainting… chairs overturned… Someone found the nerve to go and look.”

“Who?”

“Me. And I was the one who telephoned the police.”

“So you saw the dead man. What then?”

“Then—nothing!”

“On the contrary, then everything, because everything must have led you to suppose that the young man had been killed yesterday evening. You saw him hanging. So why did you say, as soon as you came in here, that the murder had been committed at twelve-thirty?”

He didn’t miss a beat.

“I could say I don’t know, because when I’m speaking during a state of spiritual clairvoyance, or something near it, I’m unaware of what I’m saying. And yet I’ll tell you that, precisely because I did see the hanged man, I was convinced that the crime had been committed some time earlier, and that the rope and all the rest were nothing but a trick rigged up to scare someone.”

“Ah, so you’re a medical expert now?”

“Somewhat. Of course, I’ve seen many bodies in my life. The Armenian massacres, the Great Thessaloniki Fire…”

“So you thought the trick was rigged up to scare someone. Who?”

He shrugged. “How should I know?”

“What about your clairvoyant powers?”

“My clairvoyance is limited to calculating which people, last night or this morning, would have had to bump into the body to believe there was one. But you can make that sort of calculation on your own.”

“You’re right. So yesterday at twelve-thirty, you were…”

“I was in the Galleria when the midday siren sounded. I started slowly for the hotel… I would have reached it in fifteen or twenty minutes.”

“And you naturally came up to your room?”

“No. I went into the dining room and sat down at my table to eat.”

“Who else was in the dining room at that time?”

“Well, let’s see… I can remember if I try. Signor Belloni—the cashier of the Banca Indigena—his whole family were there: his wife and daughter… Agresti, with his wife… Desatta and Vittoria were there… You know who Vittoria is, don’t you?… And then that American… the Nolan woman… and the actress Stella Essington… and everyone in the usual group of old men—they have the table at the back and don’t live in the hotel—and then… yes, Da Como and Engel came in a bit later… and before one, Pompeo Besesti, the owner of the Bank of Pure Metals. Do you know him? They say he’s a fairly rich man. That’s it. Of course, none of this is worth anything as a witness statement. My memory may betray me. I was thinking about eating, not busy checking the hotel register to see who was missing. Not to mention that in no restaurant in the world are the diners always the same.”

“That afternoon, you didn’t go up to your room?”

“No, not until last night at eight. I went out right after lunch and didn’t come back to the hotel.”

“Where were you?”

“Another alibi entirely lacking witnesses… Every morning before I leave my room, I do my daily horoscope in order to find out how best to comport myself and how to go about my business. Well, yesterday my horoscope was dire.”

He took a notebook from his pocket, opened it and read:

A profusion of malign influences thanks to the Moon’s configuration with Uranus and Neptune. A day of difficult events and sinister complications.

He lifted his head and looked at De Vincenzi. “Do you want to read it? I wrote these lines yesterday morning.”

“Fine, fine.” The inspector was condescending. “Another amazing divination. But I don’t see—”

“—what my horoscope has to do with my alibi for yesterday afternoon? How can I simplify this… A bad horoscope for me means no business prospects. And in those cases I don’t try to do anything. For that reason, I left my suitcase in the hotel yesterday, the one with all my—frivolous—samples in it, and went to Lake Como. I left from the North station on the 2.40 and came back on the train that arrives in Milan at 7.20. That’s it. There’s no hope, however, of anyone being able to confirm my statement, unless… of course… unless the North station ticket-seller at the window for Como remembers my face and the fact that I gave him a five-hundred-lire note to pay for a return ticket when it was only ten lire in total. He was very put out.”

Cleverer than ever. The alibi? Novarreno had one, and how. And it was one of those alibis that appear all the more genuine for being apparently casual and totally unprepared. If he were to find himself in a tight spot, that Levantine would certainly provide other witnesses in Como and Milan, witnesses he’d have created, in fact, by changing that large banknote, by tipping generously in a café or one of any number of little tricks that had served to draw attention to him, leaving a memory of his person.

“So, you have nothing to tell me about the fact itself?”

“About the crime? About the author of the same? Certainly not.”

“There remain, however, your powers of divination. You’re a necromancer, aren’t you?”

“I know a few divinatory practices: aeromancy, daphnomancy, lampadomancy, lecanomancy…”

Rapid knocking at the door interrupted his enumeration, which seemed like a joke.

“Who is it?” the inspector asked impatiently.

“Me,” came Sani’s voice.

De Vincenzi went to open the door.

“I must speak to you.”

De Vincenzi went out into the corridor.

“Read this,” and the deputy inspector held out a small, crumpled piece of paper.

Someone must have squashed it into a ball. Written in pencil in capital letters were the words:

THE FIRST: THE YOUNGEST, THE INNOCENT.
THIS ISN’T A WARNING.
IT’S THE BEGINNING OF A SERIES.

“Where did you find it?”

“In a corner of the first landing downstairs, close to the door that opens onto the stairs to the top floor. I was coming up to see you just now because I wanted to tell you several things, when that little white ball caught my eye. I picked it up and unfolded it. Do you think it’s a joke?”

No, De Vincenzi did not think it was a joke.

“Have everyone come up to their rooms, lock themselves in and wait for me. I’ll go to see each one in his or her own room myself. Go with them and then put the officers on guard in the corridor. You stay downstairs with the hotel managers. And keep an eye on the English couple in the parlour. Put Cruni on the top floor, but tell him to be on guard and not to hesitate to use his gun if necessary.”

“What do you think is going on?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think anything.”

He went back into the room and coldly ordered: “Novarreno, come to your room with me. I want to search your suitcases.”