De Vincenzi was rigid with tension. The Green Cross stretcher had just that moment taken Carin Nolan away; the assassin’s blow had not killed her. This time he hadn’t used the switch-blade and the blow, dealt by long scissors, had failed to reach her heart. The young woman was unconscious, but she wasn’t dead and there was hope that she might be saved. De Vincenzi wished for it with all his being. He felt rather guilty about the most recent attempt. Why hadn’t he gone to the young Norwegian’s room earlier?
The killer was incredibly bold. He’d run the highest level of risk each time he’d committed a crime, right from the first, absurdly complicated murder up to this attempt on Carin Nolan’s life in her own room—under the eyes, so to speak, of those who should have been protecting her. If the murderer had climbed in through Novarreno’s window, he’d have had to come through the door this time. He could not, therefore, have come from anywhere but the corridor. And the corridor was guarded by an officer, at certain points two or three—not to mention Sani and De Vincenzi, who’d walked down it and stopped in it at least twice during the night. It was not possible for the man to have come from below or from the third floor. Cruni was upstairs, and the lobby downstairs was being guarded by too many eyes for anyone to have gone past unobserved.
De Vincenzi set about searching Carin Nolan’s room carefully. Sani, in the grip of superstitious terror, waited at the door and watched him. In his view, everything that was happening came back to the supernatural, the diabolical. And though at first he’d laughed at De Vincenzi for taking that anonymous letter seriously, now he couldn’t stop repeating the banal, theatrical phrase: the devil is grinning from every corner.
De Vincenzi hadn’t dared to remove the scissors from Carin Nolan’s wound. Should he call the usual doctor, who would just be settling down at that hour after a night awake, with the changeover imminent? He preferred to phone the Maggiore Hospital himself, and had them send a stretcher urgently. He explained the situation, pleading with the paramedics to be ready when they arrived at the injured woman’s side. So Carin Nolan was laid on the stretcher with the scissors still sticking out of her chest. De Vincenzi had studied them: a pair of large steel scissors, no doubt long and sharp. In any case, the young woman was alive—De Vincenzi was assured of this by the strong and rather accelerated beating of her pulse and heart. She had lost a lot of blood. Not enough to justify her prolonged state of unconsciousness—someone must have administered a narcotic to her as they had to Douglas. De Vincenzi was looking for signs of drugs, but he didn’t find any. There was only one beaker on the shelf above the sink, and it hadn’t been used: it was perfectly dry, with a faint smell of toothpaste and two toothbrushes in it. An injection, then, or a cotton-wool ball soaked with ether? Even with the window shut tight, there weren’t any suspicious smells. De Vincenzi stood in the middle of the room, talking to himself.
“It’s diabolical,” Sani said slowly.
“Diabolical?” The inspector was sceptical.
“Can you imagine who the killer might be? How he managed to get into the room with the officer never moving from the corridor?”
“Do you actually believe he never stirred? That he never went to sleep, not even for a short time, enough to allow the killer some freedom of movement?”
Sani impulsively turned in order to call the officer but De Vincenzi stopped him.
“No. There’s no point. Let’s try not to lose another minute, and act only where necessary. How do you think that poor man will answer? Even if he denies it in good faith, what conclusion can you draw? The killer’s work is tangible, plain to see—it’s staring us in the face. Can that officer’s statement negate the fact? Clearly not. So, since it’s not possible, and it’s unreasonable to think that the killer made himself invisible or passed through these walls, we have to admit that he crossed over the threshold and walked through the corridor twice, the first time to enter the room and the second to leave it.”
“But,” Sani objected, “I never left the landing, or if I did I went down to the lobby or the dining room… I went up the small staircase to the third floor. So I was always within range of the criminal’s actions. And I’m on the alert, I am! How is it possible that I never saw him?”
“There are several objections to your statement, and I’ll make them, since I consider it necessary to discuss the situation before taking action. One false step, one ill-timed action could now mean the killer goes unpunished.”
“What do you mean?”
De Vincenzi sat down. He took the hotel plan with the names of the guests written on it from his pocket and studied it for a minute or two.
“Listen. You’ll need to follow my instructions to the letter. How many officers are there in the hotel?”
“Four of them—you know that—plus Cruni and the officer guarding the door at the back of the building.”
“Four, yes.”
De Vincenzi was still looking at the plan in his hands. Sani saw his finger and lips moving as he counted.
“Four officers… thirteen people on this floor, plus a body. Four people on the third floor, plus another body. Downstairs, the manager, his wife, the two maids, the factotum and the four card-players. That’s not all—the two Flemingtons in the blue parlour and the porter sleeping somewhere. Too many people.”
“And too many bodies,” Sani exclaimed.
“Indeed. But they won’t be giving us any more trouble.” He was growing cynical. He’d overcome his momentary depression and completely recovered his mental lucidity, as well as his cold, implacable determination. The battle had become horrifying and he was facing it determined not to spare any effort—or himself.
“So listen to me. First of all, go to the end of this corridor. The hunchback, Bardi, is in Room 19. Make sure he’s still there and is still alive. Then go to Room 21, where there are two rooms, one inside the other, a sort of mini-apartment. You’ll find a certain Belloni there with his wife and daughter; he’s a cashier at Local Credit. It’s highly likely that they’re sleeping, but open their door as well, look at them, examine them, count them and then ask them to excuse what you’re doing and lock their door. Put the key in your pocket. Understood?”
Sani nodded and De Vincenzi watched as he went off. He stayed where he was, waiting and studying the locked doors one by one. Sani returned with the key in his hand.
“You only told me to lock Room 21, right? Why not Bardi’s room?”
“What was Bardi doing?” De Vincenzi asked, lowering his voice almost to a whisper.
Sani did the same. “He seemed to be sleeping. He wouldn’t even have known I’d come in.”
“Did he have the light on?”
“Yes.”
“And did you turn it off?”
“No.”
“Good. Come with me and go carefully.”
He went back up the corridor to Room 10, next to the empty room of Carin Nolan. He opened it, turned on the light and went in. A man, evidently sleeping and suddenly awakened, sat up in the bed, his eyes wide open. A full face with bovine eyes and tumid lips. His sparse, badly tinted hair stuck out every which way on his head.
“What is it?” he managed to ask in a strangled voice.
“Don’t be frightened. Nothing bad for you, other than the bother of having to go down to the dining room. I need all the hotel guests together.”
“But why? I’m Donato Desatta, owner of the Orfeo. What do I have to do with the hanged Englishman?”
“It’s precisely because you don’t have anything to do with it—and I’m sure of that—that I’m asking you to go down to the dining room. I’m asking you, naturally, as a favour.”
The man slipped his legs out from under the sheets. He put on some red and blue striped flannel pyjamas. He looked for his slippers but couldn’t find them. De Vincenzi put them by his feet. He stood up, pulling the ties of his bottoms over his prominent paunch.
“I have to get dressed,” he mumbled, putting a hand through his hair.
“It’s not important. You need to hurry. Look, if you want, just put your overcoat over your pyjamas.”
“But to go down like this, in the midst of all those people…”
De Vincenzi held out his coat to him, helped him put it on and pushed him towards the door. He called out softly to the officer on duty in the corridor.
“Take him downstairs,” he ordered. “Put him with the manager and all the others you’ll find in the billiard room—and stay with them. I’ll have other people sent down to you. You can let them sleep… gamble… chatter… But make absolutely sure that none of them leaves. Do you understand?”
A few minutes later, he sat in the chair Sani had been sleeping in.
“Come here and let’s talk—it’ll clear our thoughts. Get a chair for yourself.”
Sani was convinced that that was what he needed.
“What were you saying a little while ago? That it wouldn’t have been possible for the murderer to have come upstairs and gone down this corridor without being seen by you or the officer? You admit, however, to having wandered from the corridor into the rooms, from this landing to the dining room, from there to the third floor. Not to mention that when I went downstairs last time and passed this way, you were sleeping and didn’t even notice me.”
“Let me continue. It doesn’t matter in the least that you were sleeping, and I’ll convince you of that shortly. Let’s get to the officer. Even if he fell asleep from time to time, as I believe he did, he doubtless wasn’t sleeping deeply or for a long time. Given the circumstances, which are certain, one cannot suppose that the person who harmed Carin Nolan—for now let’s stick to this last attempt—came in from the outside, nor that he engaged in acrobatics to reach the room, nor did he, after all, have much ground to cover. He would have encountered too many obstacles. Do you follow me? Even if he managed to avoid you, he couldn’t have avoided the officer, and vice versa; if he came from the third floor, Cruni would have seen him; and if he came from downstairs, he’d have gone by the other two officers in the lobby.”
“That’s right. But you’re forgetting the service stairway, which connects the billiard room with the other part of the corridor. It opens in the corner between Room 22, which is empty, and 21, which is Belloni’s mini-apartment. I saw it just now.”
“I haven’t forgotten it. I have it in mind, as a matter of fact, and I actually believe it played its part in the first crime, yesterday—the murder of Douglas Layng. But it wouldn’t have been used last night. And the nature of the problem remains the same, even if we suppose—mistakenly, as you’ll see—that the murderer used it to get to young Layng’s room. All the same, he would only have had to consider the officer in the corner of the corridor, and could have taken advantage of a brief nap or a moment away. That’s indisputable, don’t you agree?”
“Yes. So this shows that—”
“Hold on—this doesn’t show a thing yet, or not enough. And it doesn’t give us the name of the killer.”
Once again he drew the room plan from his pocket and showed it to Sani. “Let’s look at the people who were on this floor when Giorgio Novarreno was killed and Carin Nolan was attacked. In Room 1, Bice Toffoloni, the wife of Agresti; in 2, Stella Essington; in 3, Pompeo Besesti; in Room 7, Nicola Al Righetti. In 8—”
“—the woman with all the little curlers.” Sani finished his sentence for him and laughed. His laugh served above all to relieve some of their tension.
“Yes, her. In Room 10, Donato Desatta; in 12, Mary Alton Vendramini; in 19, Stefano Bardi, and finally, in 21, the Belloni family. Let’s stick to those people for a moment. My assessment of people and facts may be arbitrary, but I don’t think it’s wrong, and I would eliminate Toffoloni, Vittoria Jumeta Zogheb, Donato Desatta, the Belloni family and the maids from the list of possible suspects.”
“Is that why you had me lock the door on the Belloni family and take the others downstairs?”
“To keep them out of the way and give us free rein shortly.”
“So you think that—”
“Why do you want me to have a theory?”
“What are you going to do?”
“Wait, and while we’re waiting, we can calmly continue our reflections. If you add the two from the third floor, Carlo Da Como and Vilfredo Engel, and the two English people who arrived last night—”
“Those two couldn’t have budged from the blue parlour.”
“Of course not. But I was saying that, along with the people I left in their rooms on this floor, everyone involved in this drama is accounted for.”
“The men in there—” and Sani pointed to the door to the corridor “—there are only three left: Pompeo Besesti, Nicola Al Righetti and Bardi, the hunchback.”
“Right. But Besesti couldn’t have killed Novarreno, because I was with him in his room when the murder was committed. And moreover, Stefano Bardi could not have plunged the scissors into Carin Nolan’s chest for the same reason. There’s no one left, then, apart from Al Righetti.”
“And you saw him. He’s from Chicago!”
“Yes. But not one of those I questioned seemed to know of his existence. Only Bardi spoke of him as a persistent—and dangerous—suitor of Carin Nolan. He also mentioned a certain episode involving the offer of cocaine, which was not accepted. But that poor thing, the hunchback, is in love with the young Norwegian, and with his hypersensitivity he may have exaggerated quite a bit. He could also have been mistaken when he told me that Al Righetti was a friend of Da Como and lived with him in London.”
“In any case…”
“In any case, the American is thirty-four, and could be Donald Lessinger’s son, and could have carried out the three crimes for revenge. You won’t be able to understand all of this, because you don’t know the story of Major Alton, but I do. See? All, or almost all the facts needed to explain the mystery—however confused—are to be found there, in my brain. However, it’s still inscrutable to me. I can’t make sense of them, can’t find the links. You know how certain chemicals work in special solutions? All the acids, or sulphides—or whatever the devil they may be, since I can no longer remember what little chemistry I learnt in school—unite in a vessel… But anyway, I know that even when all the ingredients necessary to create the desired precipitate have been assembled in the vessel, nothing happens unless electricity is passed through it to create sparks. The same thing is going on in my head. Everything is there, but I’m not getting any result. The spark is missing.”
He fell silent, looking into the emptiness surrounding him, then shook himself and smiled at Sani. Standing up to straighten his legs, he put both hands in his pockets and immediately pulled one out. He moved it so that something glinted in his palm.
“What is that?”
“Half a cufflink, which I found in the built-in wardrobe on the third floor.”
“Where the body was hanging?”
“That’s it.” He put the little gold disc back in his pocket. “Al Righetti… an American who was in London and met Carlo Da Como there and knew his hotel, where people gambled and smoked opium. But he was downstairs eating in the billiard room when Bardi came down shouting that he’d seen the hanged man. And he has an alibi. If I take things at face value, I have to admit that he couldn’t have carried out the crime, unless he had an accomplice charged with preparing the macabre scene. But it’s unlikely.” He passed his hand over his face. “I feel I’m getting closer and closer to the answer, but I can’t seem to see what steps I should be taking to find it. Do you know what I mean?”
The two men turned to see Cruni coming up the main staircase.
“Sir, everyone is gathered in the billiard room. They seem like the survivors of a fire, with those two women in their nightgowns and the man in pyjamas. They’re so tired and frightened that they don’t even have the strength to protest.”
“They’re just there. The four scopone players are continuing their game.”
“So then, what do you want?”
“It’s almost seven-thirty, sir. Do you want me to go and get Bernasconi?”
“Ah, yes! Go, and be quick about it. He’s the old owner of the hotel,” De Vincenzi explained to Sani, “and I need to find out a few things.” He called Cruni back from the foot of one flight of stairs. “Who’s guarding them downstairs?”
“Two men in the dining room who are also watching the door to the billiard room.”
“Well done. What about the service stairway that goes from the billiard room to the first floor?”
With a sly wink the sergeant replied, “I’ve thought about that, sir. There’s a bar with a padlock on that door. I shut it and I have the key with me.”
“Thank goodness. Go—and come back quickly.”
At that moment the telephone rang. Sani ran downstairs.
“It was the hospital. The Norwegian girl is in a very serious condition, but the head physician, who telephoned, hopes to save her. I asked him if it would be possible to question her and he asked me if I was mad. It’ll be at least four or five days before she can speak.”
“Of course. And who was hoping to get anything out of her?”
He looked at his watch. It was seven-thirty, just as Cruni had said. A dull grey light shone through the huge window on the landing, the first glimmer of dawn sneaking past the thick curtain of rain which continued to fall relentlessly. Before long the hotel would come to life… He shook himself and jumped at the sound of another bell. It was the door at the entrance. Sani went down. De Vincenzi heard him open the little window in the door, speak quietly to someone, then turn. The sound of a metallic clunk on the floor rose up to him.
“It was the milkman. The parade of suppliers is starting.”
In other words, Sani too was thinking that they couldn’t go on as they were.
“You stay here. But be careful.”
“Eh, for sure,” murmured the deputy inspector. He would have preferred not to receive those orders. He looked down the corridor with all the doors opening onto it. There was a body there…
“I’m going down to the blue room. I’m going to have everyone still locked in their rooms come down there one by one. I’ll periodically send an officer up to you with the name of the person to send down written on a sheet of paper from my notebook. I want you personally to go and get them. But first I have to have a longish interview with the English couple.”
“What if—something happens?”
De Vincenzi looked at Sani and put a hand on his shoulder.
“You’re a bit tired yourself, aren’t you? Don’t give up! I honestly believe everything will be over quite soon.” He went downstairs.
Sani watched him go, and then shook his head sadly. It was more than tiredness. He couldn’t put up with any more. He took a chair and placed it at the beginning of the corridor. At least that way no one would go by without his seeing him and being able to stop him. But not even that precaution—which seemed absolutely necessary to Sani—could stop the fatal course of events. Nor did it.