As he led Ricciardi and Maione toward the dressing rooms of the two lead actors, Renzullo, referring to Erminia, said in a low voice: “You have to understand her, Commissa’. She’s been with us for two years, it was Michelangelo who recommended I hire her. She really loves and needs this job. Her husband is an invalid from the war and can’t leave home. She’s afraid of losing her position. That’s what makes her so mistrustful. But believe me, she’s honest and scrupulous; a very hard worker. If she tells you no one got in, then no one did.”
Maione murmured: “Still, the fact that Gelmi went to speak to his wife before the second performance is important news. And when he left, he was in tears. Renzu’, you knew him well, didn’t you? What do you think could have happened in those five minutes?”
The impresario seemed uncomfortable.
“It’s true, Michelangelo and I had been friends for years. When I decided to start a theater of my own, he helped me out. Then Fedora arrived, with her sudden dazzling fame and her popularity with the public . . . But let me reiterate, they were by no means in competition on the stage. Quite the opposite. As for matters of the heart, though, I can’t help you; Michelangelo wasn’t prone to spilling certain types of secrets.”
Ricciardi insisted: “But you must have had some idea . . .”
Renzullo had stopped in front of a door upon which a sign had been posted with the words: “Signor Michelangelo Gelmi.” He thought about it for a moment, then went on talking.
“Commissa’, I don’t think that he was really jealous. I presume that he knew that Fedora, so young and beautiful, was being courted hand and foot. And I imagine—though I can only imagine it because I’ve neither seen nor heard anything to flesh out my belief—that he cared deeply about respect and decorum. The actor’s profession is a special one, and they live and die on fame. Gelmi still had a name, a reputation, and a few followers. If he became nothing but a . . .” and here he stopped short and simply raised the pinky and forefinger of one hand in the universal symbol of the cuckold, “then he might as well retire. All that Michelangelo cared about was his name and his art.”
“So yesterday’s quarrel . . .”
A grimace appeared on Renzullo’s face.
“These are things that happen between a husband approaching old age and an attractive wife still in the bloom of her youth. If they ever fought, they were very discreet about it. Only Erminia could hear them, and she would never have told a soul. You saw for yourself how devoted she was to both of them. Then Michelangelo must have gone back to his own dressing room and . . .”
As if continuing the discussion he opened the door with the sign on it. Inside, only the dimmest of light arrived from a small, high window. The impresario turned on the light switch and a bare bulb, dangling from the ceiling, faintly illuminated a makeup mirror surrounded by small spotlights, a tabletop crowded with cans of greasepaint, brushes, and combs, and a clothes cupboard with a single door, standing ajar. Inside were Gelmi’s stage costumes. Completing the furnishings were a chair, a small sofa, and a coffee table on whose surface lay a newspaper.
Renzullo also turned on the lightbulbs surrounding the mirror, which emitted a spectral glow. Then he walked over to the wardrobe and confidently put his hand in, reaching behind the costumes. When he pulled the hand out, it was grasping a bottle of brandy that contained nothing more than a puddle of amber-colored liquor at the bottom, like some tiny reservation of a guilty conscience.
“Here you have it, Commissario: Michelangelo Gelmi’s true best friend. It’s a sad and nasty miracle, given his bad habits, that last night he was able to shoot Fedora right in the heart, from that distance.”
It was chilly in the room, colder than out on the street. A stale odor of cigarette smoke, alcohol, and lavender hovered in the air. On the mirror, wedged into the lower corner of the frame, was a flyer for a show, Il principe dei sogni—The Prince of Dreams—featuring Gelmi’s name, in large letters. Ricciardi leaned closer to check the date of the performance: March 1924. Nearly nine years earlier. The year was not even followed by the Roman numerals of the Fascist calendar.
The commissario looked around. Loneliness. Disillusionment. Weariness. Resignation. There was no need for a talking ghost, he could recognize those emotions easily.
He shook himself with a shiver and nodded his head to Maione. Together they followed Renzullo into Fedora Marra’s dressing room.
The victim’s dressing room was quite different than her husband’s. Nothing grim or gray. The room was filled with a cheerful, colorful, variegated messiness. Various articles of clothing were scattered all over the place; a charming dressing screen concealed a full-length mirror, while the surface of the vanity was cluttered with all sorts of cosmetics. There was a blend of scents and odors that reflected the jumbled heap of hats and ostrich plume boas, skirts, and bodices; a sweet and penetrating perfume wafted off the numerous bouquets of flowers, displayed with coquettish pride. But there was also a bitter after-scent, perhaps the faint trace of a manly cologne.
It was as if one might expect Fedora to return any moment, overheated and smiling, from her time onstage. It all seemed suspended and timeless, awaiting the actress’s brilliant and flighty persona. The space between those walls must have been the woman’s true home, much more so than any apartment she may have slept in at night.
Here, too, there were flyers and postcards wedged into the corner of the frame around the makeup mirror, but these were for recent shows, and there were also photographs of well-known celebrities. Ricciardi recognized the face of a cabinet-level minister, features frozen in an atypical smile, as well as other leading figures of the regime. A rising star, then, Fedora. A setting sun, instead, Michelangelo. Their respective careers were diverging, and now death had parted them once and for all.
In front of the vanity table stood a gracefully designed chair. Ricciardi found himself staring at it, lost in thought. The chair’s position, standing at a diagonal with respect to the surface piled high with makeup and cosmetics, and with its backrest turned to the door, would be useless in terms of applying that makeup, since it wouldn’t afford a full view of the reflected face. Nor was it compatible with the movements of someone about to leave the room. The commissario followed the hypothetical line of sight of a person sitting in that chair and his eyes came to a halt on a coatrack from which hung a dressing gown, alongside several elegantly cut dresses, garments that she would certainly have worn after the evening’s last performance: the dressing gown was the only article of clothing that could neither be worn onstage nor outside of the theater.
The commissario stepped forward. Renzullo, who up until that point had observed him curiously, intervened: “Wait, Commissa’, what . . .”
Maione hushed him with a brusque wave of the hand, as if he wished to keep him from articulating aloud a silent thought process. Ricciardi extended his hand into the pocket of the dressing gown and extracted a folded sheet of paper.
He opened it and read.
My love,
Again, tonight, I’ll wear your embroidery before falling asleep, and in my heart it will be the last thing I hear.
Don’t worry, I belong to no one but you. I’m yours, yours and happy! Till tomorrow.
F.
He handed the note to Maione, who read it in silence, moving his lips. Renzullo, too, peeked over the brigadier’s shoulder and blushed.
“Commissa’, it doesn’t seem right to rummage through the belongings of poor dead Fedora.”
Ricciardi replied, decisively: “This isn’t rummaging. This is a murder investigation. A murder that has an appearance and a substance, and the further we move ahead, the less the two aspects seem to match up. Now let’s meet with the rest of the troupe, before the show begins.”