With Janet gone, the domestic economy of the Casa Gialla started a gentle crumbling, like damp plaster in an old house. The Wednesday lunches ended; the socialists and communists came no more. Assunta said that her husband had forbidden her to come any more to a house with only a man in it ‘because of his honour’. Janet had left him written instructions to go on paying Assunta, so he supposed he would; however, he took the matter to DiNapoli for advice. DiNapoli’s answer was to install an elderly woman as housekeeper. At once, Assunta’s husband’s honour was satisfied and she returned; however, Sirena, the more sluggish of the two housemaids, left because the housekeeper told her she didn’t work hard enough.
DiNapoli became moody. Denton had explained why Janet had left, but DiNapoli seemed not to accept it. He seemed to take her going as a personal hurt. They all did, in fact.
The rector of the English church was not English but Australian, and not a prissy country parson but a scarlet-nosed football fan. Denton wondered but didn’t ask how he’d washed up in Naples, thought that perhaps ‘washed up’ said it all—some error somewhere behind him. Whatever his past, the Reverend Mr Porter tried hard to be cheerful, although the nose kept suggesting that he’d be even more cheerful if they could adjourn somewhere for a pint.
‘Library? Yes, we’ve a library. Cheaper than Tauchnitz is what keeps it going. A Debrett’s? Absolutely—it’s the bible of a few of my parishioners, which isn’t to say that the Bible isn’t their bible, ha-ha. Fra Geraldo? Yes, I think I knew he was a duke or somewhat, but as he wasn’t a parishioner I didn’t pay much notice. He was Papist, wasn’t he?’
Denton murmured that Fra Geraldo had once been choirmaster in this very church. ‘His name’s on the wall.’
‘Really! Shows what you don’t notice when you’re thinking of Sunday dinner.’ When Denton had pointed out the name, the rector said, ‘Gerald Sommers, well, there you are. Long before my time. I’ve been here four years, so I’m still the new boy. Some of the older ones still call me Mr Semple, who was my predecessor. Can’t get used to having an Aussie at the helm. Records? Records of the choir? Well, if the roaches and the mice and the wet rot have spared them, I suppose we might have records, but I don’t know what sort of records we’d have kept of the choir. Children? We’ve had boys in the choir, if that’s what you mean, sons of parishioners, you know—those high-pitched voices, can’t say I much care for them, but many people do. If you mean records of who was in the choir, I suppose we keep something of that sort. Mrs Bridges would know. I’ll just have a word with her—that’s the library through there, the shelves against the wall under the window—and I’ll find you in there with Debrett’s, shall I?’
Denton made his way down a corridor all in brown, with varnished brown woodwork taking up most of the walls and worn brown boards underfoot. The library was really only the set of shelves he’d been pointed towards; otherwise, the room was given over to a huge typewriter on a table, two stacks of collection plates, pegs with assorted clothes hung on them—presumably the lost and found department—and a bicycle that he thought would be the rector’s. One rather florid-faced Englishwoman, looking as if she’d been walking on the Downs, was standing by the shelves and said, ‘Oh, hello,’ as if they’d known each other for years.
‘I’m looking for Debrett’s,’ he said.
‘Second shelf.’ She was reading standing up, perhaps trying to see if the book in hand was one she’d already read.
Denton glanced along the shelves, was surprised to see one of his own novels—but not surprised to see more of Mrs Gaskell’s and Ouida’s.
He took the Debrett’s to the table by the typewriter and quickly found the Easleigh title. He made notes in his book—dates, names, children—without caring about the minor permutations of family that seemed to fascinate admirers of the aristocracy. To his surprise, Fra Geraldo had been only the fifth Lord Easleigh; the first had materialised from the cabinet of wealth at the end of the eighteenth century. Denton had thought that noble families all went back to the Conquest.
The woman who had been reading passed behind him and said, ‘See you in church, I hope,’ and swept out with a lot of noise of skirts.
The rector, having stood aside for her, veered in. ‘Such records as we might have are in the tower. Apparently there’s a trunk, maybe two, and old accounts and a lot of stuff are thrown in there when we finish with them. I’ll give you the key if you want to climb up. Can’t promise anything.’
‘I’d also like to get more information about the Sommerses—the Easleighs, if that’s what they’re called.’
‘No, they’d be the Sommerses; I think only the holder of the title is Easleigh. We don’t pay much attention to any of that Down Under. Tell you who could, though—there’s an old tyke I take communion to every week, as he can’t get about any more. He’s mad for the titles and their doings. Gets a couple of rags sent out from Blighty, all about them; has a pile of books. Go see him. Tell him I sent you. Nice old buffer, although don’t tell him I said that. Actually gave me a brown ale instead of sherry, would you believe it—“Porter for Porter,” he said. I could have wept in gratitude. In this job, you go out and about to a lot of old ladies and gents; the snake-piss they give you to drink would gag a platypus. Sir Martin Gort. Likes you to use the “sir”. You go see him.’ He wrote something on a card and put it down in front of Denton. ‘Wave that at him; he’ll know it’s me. I suppose you want to make your ascension into the tower now?’
‘Wait until you see the stairs.’
The stairs, however, were merely narrow and steep; there wasn’t enough of the tower to make them long, as well. Above was a small room reached through a trap; the stairs went on up to another trap and, presumably, a bell or bells. Denton stopped in the room, which held mostly cast-offs of congregations past—a few broken chairs, several large crates full of long-out-of-style clothes (perhaps the last stop for the lost and found department), several awnings, now raddled, that might have been a bad idea for the church windows in the Neapolitan summer.
Denton made his way to several trunks pushed together below a broken window through which birds evidently came and went: bird droppings were frequent. He knelt and opened a trunk and began to rummage through it. After twenty minutes, he knew he was in for a dirty afternoon; after an hour, his hands were grimy, his face taut with the feel of dust. He had been once through all three trunks, found nothing likely, was now methodically emptying them one at a time. He found old hymnals, old prayer books, old prize books (‘Edwin Latham, Most Proficient in Memorisation, 1837’) that the recipients either hadn’t taken or had given back to the church, old plans and programmes for now-forgotten jumble sales and lawn parties. He found records of pledges to the church, of bequests, of gifts; he found records of moneys paid in pounds and francs, dating to well before Garibaldi. He found correspondence about prospective rectors and vicars. He found papers so mouse-chewed as to be nothing but a kind of damp lacework.
The second trunk was more of the same, filled out with old, rotted vestments. Somebody’s boots had found their way there, very small in size and very out of fashion. Twelve issues of Every Saturday. A packet of brochures about the steamship route from Marseilles to Alexandria by way of Naples. That, oddly, was the first mention of Naples. The church, whatever its geography, was really in England.
Such choir records as there were he found in the third trunk in the backs of the vestrymen’s accounts. The collections, counted and initialled by two sets of initials, were kept in the various coinages of their day, now and then with the intrusion of Spanish or German coins. Perhaps because the choir was considered an expenditure (the choirmaster’s meagre stipend, gowns, music), the choir was put at the back of each ledger. Little was revealed to Denton that interested him until, raising small explosions of dust as he threw the books down in disgust, he found the volume that included Fra Geraldo’s tenure as choirmaster.
And there he was: ‘To Mr Sommers for music 9s/6d’. ‘To Mr Sommers 12s/3d for the Christmas’. ‘For Henson for singing Gt. Jehovah 1/2 crown’. And then there was an entry that quickened Denton’s pulse and made him forget the dust: ‘To Mr Sommers for housing the boys L1/11s/3d’.
Housing the boys? The choirboys? In the Palazzo Minerva—or hadn’t he bought that yet?
Denton skimmed more and found nothing, looked at the next volume, then the one before. Nothing and nothing.
He returned to the first ledger and at last found, not in the section devoted to the choir, but under Irregular Employees and Labour, an entry for ‘The Italian Boys, to have 6p each for each time they sing and 3p each per week that they rehearse, to include…’ And there followed a list of names. Only two of them meant anything to Denton, but those jumped out at him: Michele Esposito…Edouardo diToledano. Nonetheless, he copied all nine names into his notebook. Might DiNapoli be able to find them if they were still alive and in Naples?
‘Bit smutty up there, I think,’ Porter said when he came down the stairs. He was standing there as if he’d been waiting.
‘I’m a little grubby. Still…’
‘Found something? Oh, good! Never like to see a man labour in vain. Well, do go call on old Gort. You may not get anything out of it, but he will. And if you’d like to make a contribution to the foundation, there’s a box by the door as you go out. Ah, that is generous. Good of you. Do come back. Come on Sunday! Come every Sunday—!’
His voice faded as Denton walked through the churchyard and back into the world of Naples.
He gave the list of choirboys’ names to DiNapoli and told him to try to find them or their families.
‘Every other person in Naples got one of these names!’
‘I thought you knew everybody. Look, DiNapoli, they were very poor, so you know where they must have come from.’
‘Half them peoples, they got moved out by the Risanamento. These guys be fifty years old now, older, they’re maybe dead. Maybe they emigrated. Maybe they don’ wanna be found.’
‘Find one. Just one.’
‘You gimme a needle in a what-you-call-it—on a farm.’
‘Haystack.’
‘A pile of haystacks.’ DiNapoli looked at the list.
‘This one is Michele ’l ubriacon’, huh?’
‘Yes.’
‘Him I don’t have to find, then.’
‘I want to talk to him, though. I had him and then he ran away.’
‘He moves around. I ain’t seen him in a few days. I look.’ DiNapoli said it without enthusiasm and went off with a sick man’s posture. The only thing wrong with him, Denton thought, was Janet’s absence. Well, he was suffering from it, too.
He had got something from his visit to the English church, but not enough. He needed to talk to the man who was ‘mad for titles and their doings’ and so sent a note to ask if he could come by the next day. The answer came first thing the next morning: Sir Martin Gort would be delighted to have him visit that afternoon.
In the same mail was a brief letter from Maltby. Denton winced when he read, ‘By the time you get this, I shall have left Naples.’ He remembered Maltby’s look of appeal just before he had fled the dismantling of Fra Geraldo’s chapel. He must have known then that he was leaving; he must have wanted some sort of goodbye. Denton had been too caught up in that spectacle to give him the chance.
‘I wish to thank you for all the help you have given me,’ Maltby had written. Denton winced again: what help? ‘Thank you for everything, and I hope we will meet again under more propitious circumstances.’ It was signed Frederick L. Maltby. Denton hadn’t even learned his first name before.
It was not the happiest way to start the day. Maltby was a bit of a wart, but he had succeeded in making Denton feel guilty—a sin of omission. He walked to the flat of the man who knew all about the nobility with a sense of gloom.
Sir Martin Gort was a thin old man in a beautifully made grey frock coat, faintly wheezing as he sat in a hard armchair to receive Denton. An Italian maid who looked somewhat younger than he and as tough as a prison matron fussed over him and glared at Denton as if he had come on some evil errand, then vanished.
‘Forgive me for not getting up,’ the old man said. ‘My legs, you know.’ His hair had thinned to a baby-like sparseness, chalky white and a little yellow on the top. His gaunt cheeks were yellowing, too.
Denton made polite apologies and explanations, sat where he was directed, described his errand.
‘Ah, the Sommerses. Yes, you mentioned them in your note.’
Denton was relieved that the old man remembered it.
‘The Sommerses,’ he said again. ‘I confess I never saw the fifth Lord Easleigh, though I believe he was long active in the poorer wards of the city. Certainly, he was in Naples long before me.’ He shook his head. ‘When I left India, I thought I would live in England, but I found London less familiar than Hyderabad. And I liked a warmer climate. Naples seemed to me about right. What is it about the Sommerses you’d like to know? Let me say, I don’t trade in gossip, can’t abide it, but I do take an interest in genealogy.’
‘The family, really. The history.’
‘Oh, yes.’ The old man seemed to wiggle slightly. ‘I do like aristocratic history. Well, the first one, you know, started as a regimental agent during the American War, made rather a packet. After the war, he put his money into slaving ships and made another packet! He was a great benefactor of the Tory party and so was given the title. A viscount by letters patent, I believe. The title has to do with the village where he was born, I think—Easleigh, in Sussex. Never been there. Nor have you, I dare say. Doesn’t matter. He lived to a great age and so all but cheated his eldest of the title—the mother was a Desmond, I think the cadet branch, no distinction but said to have been remarkably pretty as a girl—where was I?’
‘He lived to a great age.’
‘Just so, he did. When he passed away, slaving had been banned, so the second earl went into the India trade. Not the best time for it; in fact, he had no head for money and so ran through a great deal of it—more than was good for the estate, if the rumour-mongers are to be believed. His passion was hunting—he was a regular with the Melton—and he did a good deal of coaching, and so on. Sometimes rather high spirited, I believe. He married an iron man’s daughter, quite a good deal of money, and they say he went through that, too, although I don’t know about such things.’
‘The family was poor, then?’
‘Oh, not poor as you might say poor, but for a viscount, perhaps so. I have always thought it dangerous to give inherited titles to such people—life peerages are so much wiser. I believe in the old families—the Spencers, the Devonshires—whose bloodline has been long established and who breed true. New money gives a certain vigour for a generation or two, and then—’ He sighed.
‘The Sommerses have gone downhill?’
‘Well, the second Lord Easleigh was not wise. His son was a military man and hardly lived in England long enough to call it home, as I hear it. Killed in one of the Zulu Wars. Cetawayo’s impis, I suppose. He had two sons; the second son was the chap who just died in Naples; he became the fifth in the line after his elder brother, who was the fourth, died unexpectedly in one of the cholera epidemics. This one—your one, I mean, the Naples monk or whatever he was—was as I understand it rather a radical, some sort of artist, and there were stories—I hate to retail stories; they’re so unkind—that he had to leave England because of an indiscretion. Most unsuitable, if true. Bit of a black sheep, perhaps.’
‘He never seems to have married.’
‘I think not. At any rate, the title has gone to a—I just read about it in a court circular, really a kind of round-robin letter for those of us interested in genealogy; where is it?—oh, no matter, I remember the gist. The sixth Lord Easleigh is still a boy, it seems. Seventeen, I think. Not the happiest of stories: his mother was one of the daughters of the fourth Lord Easleigh—that is, the Naples one’s elder brother, making her his niece—did I say he had three daughters—the fourth one, I mean? Well, he did, and not a brood mare in the lot. Not for sons, at any rate; they did produce a multitude of daughters, but what good is that to the title? I suppose it was a heritage from their mother, whose name I can’t even recall. The new peer’s mother—or her husband; I believe he is an engineer, as they are settled in Birmingham; it was one of those unfortunate marriages—one of them, anyway, was determined to produce an heir, as none of her sisters had, and so she kept on having children long after it was either wise or seemly for her to do so, and even after one of her sisters had a boy, she at last presented the world with this boy. He’d never have got the title, except his cousin—the boy born ahead of him to one of his mother’s sisters and who should have inherited—was killed a few years ago in an accident on the steam underground. A cautionary tale, if one could take the meaning from it.’
‘But there’s no doubt about the succession?’
‘I shouldn’t think so. It’s all quite simple and direct, as you’ve just heard.’
‘And he inherits everything?’
The old man chuckled. ‘“Everything” of whatever there is left. Each child in each generation has had some money, of course; I think that the monk, the fifth, was probably on some sort of remittance, although I shouldn’t say it, until he inherited. It won’t be one of the great fortunes, I’m sure.’ He chuckled again, apparently with satisfaction.
‘He owned a palazzo here.’
‘In a most insalubrious neighbourhood, I believe. The value cannot be great.’
‘But I’ve been told that he had plans to endow a charity.’
‘Oh, dear. Well, not to speak ill of the dead, but I should say he passed away just in time. I don’t believe in noble titles’ being passed on without the money to support them.’
‘The fifth Lord Easleigh lived very modestly.’
‘Yes, and let the title and whatever properties he owned in England go to rack and ruin, I’m sure. He should have been at home, minding his properties and fathering an heir! I have no patience with such men.’
Denton stayed long enough after that to drink a small glass of Madeira (he wasn’t offered the brown ale—some judgement, he supposed, that the old man had made of his character). And to promise to call another time. The old man said that he had few callers and he liked a good chat. He never went out. Soon, Denton thought, he would go out for the last time, that one-way journey. He thanked him and left.
Another afternoon, DiNapoli not available, he climbed the Gradino di Chiaia towards the upper town. He could go anywhere alone now, partly because he felt confident of the city, partly because of the sword stick, the blade polished as bright as a silver spoon and the mahogany smoothed and oiled. It went with him everywhere. It had been only slightly disheartening to him to learn that the local thugs and the petty cammoristi carried revolvers.
The stone steps passed between old buildings, the stairs really another alley, but one that happened to head towards the sky—laundry fluttered overhead; women sat outside doorways and gossiped, everything stopping as he passed by. At the top, the gradino opened into an irregular little stone piazza. Denton crossed it and headed for a far corner, hoping to find steps to carry him higher.
A cracked voice cried, ‘Texas Jack!’
Denton turned. Eight or ten boys were clustered on the far side of the little piazza where there was a stone balustrade and a view towards Posillipo and a bit of sea. At the kids’ centre was a little theatre the size of a steamer trunk, at its front a puppet Pulcinella in black mask and domino. He waved a stick and shouted again, ‘Texas Jack! Dio mio, uno cowboy!’
The kids squealed.
Denton, amused, called, ‘Buon’ giorno, piccolino.’
Pulcinella took great offence at being called ‘little one’. He moved back and forth the width of his theatre; he put half his body outside it and shook his stick. He said something in Nnapulitan’ that made the kids scream with laughter.
Denton walked towards the little theatre. The kids, suddenly unsure whether he was angry, parted for him. He went close to the stage but to the side, leaned towards the puppet and said, ‘Piccolino, ma che naso!’ It was true, Pulcinella’s black mask had a big nose on it.
The puppet was incensed. ‘Naso—io? Naso!’ He turned to the kids. ‘Guardi—guardi!’ He put his stick just under Denton’s own huge nose. ‘Il Pizzofalcone!’ The Pizzofalcone was a major—and noselike—landmark.
The kids loved it. While they laughed and shrieked and pointed, Denton leaned into the theatre and tried to see through the back curtain, behind which the puppeteer would be standing. He said, ‘Beppe—è tu?’ He had pulled the name from the depths of his memory—the night in the cellar of the Casa Gialla, the little man who had worked the puppet of the lady ghost, the Scuttini boy trussed up to die.
The curtain parted a few centimetres. An eye appeared. ‘Si signore, sono qui.’
Denton knew the voice, thought he had recognised it in Pulcinella’s. It was indeed the little puppeteer he had caught in his cellar. He said, ‘Non più dei mal’orme, eh.’ No more ghosts, eh?
The puppeteer started to say something, but Pulcinella whacked Denton on the upper arm with his baton and asked him what he was doing, putting his big nose into his house.
Denton said, his Italian beginning to fail him, that he was looking for Pulcinella’s wife. This brought on more whacks, more words, more laughter. Pulcinella threatened him; Denton made a pistol of his finger and shot him. Pulcinella fell, mortally wounded, then sprang back up and blew Denton a kiss. Denton walked off, and the kids applauded and shouted, ‘Texas Jack!’, and women who had come out of their houses stared at him. He found the next flight of stairs and started up, smiling.
He met Gianaculo at a café because the inspector had sent him a note. It was not a place that Denton knew, close to the questura with rather cold, brutal service that he thought might come from serving mostly cops. Gianaculo was at a small, not very clean table, a cup the size of a baby’s fist in front of him. It was already empty and he was signalling for more. When Denton sat down, Gianaculo said, ‘Michele ’l ubriacon’ is dead.’
Denton didn’t try to hide his surprise and some other reaction—hurt? Resentment?
‘Somebody found him on the beach at Cannavaciuolo.’
‘Drowned?’
Gianaculo’s fat shoulders shrugged; his waistcoat pulled up to reveal a little of his shirt. ‘Drowned, drunk, who knows?’
Denton asked for coffee with grappa, perhaps reminded because of Michele. ‘Why are you telling me?’
‘You interest yourself in him.’ Gianaculo gulped down his second tiny cup. ‘You have DiNapoli looking for him.’
‘Who told you?’
Gianaculo’s eyes showed a possibly malicious satisfaction. ‘DiNapoli, who else?’ He smiled without parting his lips. ‘DiNapoli has not told you he is a police informer? Mmmm. Well, DiNapoli is not so bad. You know he is a criminal?’
Frowning, Denton said, ‘Was. In the Stati Uniti. Deportato. He told me.’
Gianaculo’s mouth pulled down at the corners; the lower lip pushed up in the middle, as if to say, Fancy his telling you! Gianaculo said, ‘You know he is a criminal; and you do not understand he is therefore an informer? I am so sorry, signore. Yes, little Vincenzo is one of ours. Do not think too badly of him—he has to make a living. We require that he come to the questura once a week because he is a criminal; as long as he is there, he might as well tell us what he knows.’
Denton felt choked. ‘He informs on me and the signora?’
‘What is there to tell? You are admirable people.’ He patted Denton’s arm. ‘Do not be hard on DiNapoli. He reveres the lady. He has his own kind of honour.’ He sat back and stared at nothing, and said, ‘He looks for some other people for you, too.’
‘Kids who were in the English church choir molti anni fa.’ Long ago.
Gianaculo tipped his head back. ‘Fra Geraldo again? Kids. His ghosts, eh?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Can you?’
Gianaculo clapped his hands together as if they were the halves of a book. ‘The magistrato says fermata.’ Closed.
‘Then why do you tell me about Michele ’l ubriacon’?’
Gianaculo smiled his fat, faintly oriental smile. He let his hands fall open again. He dropped some coins on the table. ‘Tell me what you learn if DiNapoli finds any of the kids.’
‘Was Michele killed?’
Gianaculo pushed out both lips. ‘Michele was a walking corpse. You saw him. But maybe somebody helped him get where he was going.’
‘Evidence?’
‘The fish have the evidence.’ He started to walk away and turned back. ‘Did DiNapoli tell you he informs about you to the Scuttini, too?’
Denton stared. Gianaculo smiled, perhaps sadly, perhaps merely cynically. ‘He does it to stay healthy, you know? If he doesn’t, they break his hands. His hands, at least.’
Without Janet, he slept strangely, some nights waking at midnight and lying there until morning, other nights sleeping at a depth that frightened him. The dog slept in his room, first on the floor and then on the bed. Old dreams came back, all that unresolved detritus of a life. One of the dreams was familiar and inevitable—his wife, a horse, her last walk to the meadow with the lye bottle. He didn’t dream of trying to save her and failing, however; perhaps he had accepted his failure.
Some nights without Janet, he woke and got up, then prowled that part of the house, the red room and the corridors. The building was silent, without the creakings and whispers of a wooden house. He was the only one on that floor; the remaining housemaid had been moved upstairs by the housekeeper ‘to keep an eye on her.’ The dog trotted along behind him. He looked down into the gardens, all grey and black now in moonlight. He tried to read, gave it up, went back to bed and slipped almost unwillingly into something like sleep, brief dreams from which he jerked awake, only to sleep again and then dream at length.
He and Fra Geraldo were in the chapel. They were painting one of the panels, the old man working on a foreground figure at the bottom, Denton higher up, painting one of those vignettes in the middle distance. Denton was finishing a picture of a puppet booth. He had painted the scugnizzi who surrounded the booth, naked imps with gleeful, nasty little faces. He was working on the puppet in the little theatre’s opening, a Pulcinella with the traditional black mask but a policeman’s costume instead of the loose white smock. He and Fra Geraldo were talking in Italian while they painted. When he woke, however, it all dropped away and left nothing, like a wall that crumbled and gave a clear view of an ocean and sky that met in foggy greyness. He remembered something about speaking Italian, and then that, too, was gone.
It was still dark beyond the window. Denton got up, sipped a little water. What had he been dreaming? Something about Italian. The chapel; it came to him like the flash of a gun at night, almost vanished; he grasped it, held it. The chapel—the chapel—
Il poliziotto fa la commedia.
It was all a puppet show?
His walks got longer, mostly without DiNapoli, who stayed away now and whom Denton no longer trusted because of what Gianaculo had told him. Denton wrote to Janet almost every day. She did not write to him.
Then DiNapoli told him that he’d found somebody who claimed to be one of Fra Geraldo’s choirboys.
‘“Claims”?’
‘He looks too old. He’s a old man. Plus you got the name Gianni Formoso; this guy’s name’s Giorgio.’
‘Close enough.’ But he was wondering if it was a fake, like so much else here—somebody seeing money in it. And he was wondering if DiNapoli had already told Gianaculo, and if so what Gianaculo would do. Could he trust Gianaculo? Could he trust DiNapoli, for that matter? Could he trust anybody?
‘Dis guy, he works at the statue foundry in Orientale. He don’t get home till seven and he says don’ come to his work, they don’ like it. He wants five lire to talk to you.’
‘Tell him I’ll come tomorrow night. Or he can come here.’
In fact, they met in an enoteca near San Giovanni del Mare that was as close to a Dickensian dive as Denton wanted to get. DiNapoli was nervous, said ‘maybe they should have brought a couple strong guys wit’ us’; Denton was less worried, carrying his sword stick, but wished he could have carried a gun as well. The place itself was all right inside—low ceilinged, dark, the only light three kerosene lanterns hung on nails driven into the cement between the rough stones of the walls. Wine barrels stood on trestles behind a bar of rough boards laid over sawhorses. There were some benches and stools, no tables.
Giorgio Formoso indeed looked older than Denton thought one of the choirboys should look, but people aged fast in the vicoli of the lower city. Formoso was bald, his scalp shiny and blotched; he had a big white moustache that drooped like Denton’s but was stained with tobacco—he had a cheap cigar in his mouth and two more in the pocket of his short jacket. His nose was big, but round and not sharp like Denton’s, a drinker’s nose, perhaps, with one reddened eye to match, the other visible only as milky white under a drooping, scarred lid. He was drinking red wine from a thick-walled glass and had a half-empty carafe on the floor beside him.
Denton gave him the five lire and pulled over a stool, then another while DiNapoli was getting them wine. Denton looked around, met the stares of the other three customers, answering them look for look, theirs hostile, his neutral. He said, ‘Buona sera.’ They didn’t answer.
‘They are all right,’ Formoso said in Italian.
Formoso shrugged. DiNapoli brought their wine and sat between them where he could translate. He’d warned Denton that Formoso spoke dialect, although the few words Denton had heard so far had been Italian.
Denton raised his glass, as if in a toast or greeting; Formoso simply looked at him with his good eye, head slightly turned. Denton drank. He said, ‘You were one of the choirboys at the English church?’
Formoso nodded. He seemed to be rationing his words. ‘What was the choirmaster like?’
Formoso shrugged. Denton said, ‘Old? Young?’
‘Young.’
‘English?’
‘Of course, of course.’
‘Good to you?’
Formoso shrugged again.
Trying not to show his irritation, Denton said, ‘Did you live with him?’
Formoso shook his head, drank off half the wine in his glass. ‘This was a long time ago, signore. I was a little kid. You think I remember everything from when I was nine years old? Do you?’
‘Where did you live?’
Formoso looked at the men near the bar, as if they might know where he had lived, then said, ‘We lived in some rooms. Eight of us, with an old woman. She cooked and slapped us around. Sommers came every day and taught us.’ He pronounced it So-mairss.
‘Taught you what?’
‘Singing, what else? Singing in English.’ He put his head back and sang ‘Nearer My God to Thee’ in a surprisingly high voice, the English only slightly accented. ‘That you don’t forget.’ Then he drank the rest of the wine from the glass and reached down for the carafe. ‘The words meant nothing. He cared about the voice and the pronouncing, you know?’ He poured himself more wine. ‘I could have been singing about how great the devil is, for all I knew.’
‘Did you sing in the church on Sundays?’
‘Never.’
Denton was surprised. He said so. Formoso, who had not smiled yet and seemed likely never to smile, said, ‘He told my father we would be a year learning.’ He shrugged. He drank.
‘What happened?’
‘I don’t remember. Sommers went away.’
Denton waited for more; nothing came. ‘Why?’
Formoso shrugged.
‘Was there trouble?’
‘What trouble?’
‘Did the boys make trouble?’
Formoso stared over Denton’s shoulder. ‘He was paying our fathers for us. My father said if I did not do well, if I was trouble, he would find real work for me. He meant he would sell me to one of the metal shops, they used boys and they died from the stuff they breathed, or they got burned. I knew he meant it. Anyway, we ate good; I remember that; the old woman smacked us around, but she was a good cook and sometimes we got meat. And he brought us cake sometimes. I remember that.’
‘Then why did he go away?’
Formoso drank. He drank his mouth full and held the wine, puffing out his cheeks and his upper lip, then swallowed noisily. ‘I was nine years old.’
‘He took two boys with him. Edouardo and Michele.’
Formoso’s eyes swung to meet Denton’s, then went to DiNapoli. ‘You already know these things, why do you ask me?’
‘We know some things, not all things.’
‘I don’t know anything about that. But maybe…Edouardo and Michele.’ He narrowed his good eye until it showed as little as the injured one. ‘They were his favourites.’
‘Did he touch them?’
Formoso went through the same look, first at Denton, then DiNapoli, and then he muttered something to DiNapoli in dialect. DiNapoli said, his voice weary, ‘He wants more money.’
Denton handed over another five lire, then, when Formoso shook his head, five more. DiNapoli frowned.
‘Did Sommers touch the boys?’
‘I never—’ Formoso puffed his cheeks and upper lip out, although there was no wine in his mouth. He looked miserable, then angry, as if memory had brought up something he didn’t want to face—and couldn’t talk about. ‘There are things you forget. Some things, too, you did not understand back then.’
‘Did he touch Michele and Edouardo?’
Formoso frowned and shook his head, as if that was something he didn’t know.
‘Then why did he go away?’
Formoso shook his head. ‘How do I know? I didn’t even know he’d gone away until a long time after. Something happened. Nobody talked about it, or I do not remember. Sometimes he would take one or two boys to the church so they could hear themselves sing there. One day, he came back—he had been there with Michele—and Sommers was mad, ugly. I think that was the day he shouted at us. Then one day, it must have been after that, they told us to go home.’
‘Did the boys talk about what happened?’
Formoso poured himself more wine. ‘Michele didn’t talk. But I knew later, it was something about the priest at the English church.’ He looked at Denton with one old, sin-weary eye. ‘Now, I know what it was, I suppose. You know.’ He looked at DiNapoli. ‘You know.’
‘And you all went home, and that was the end of it?’
‘The priest came to our basso and said thank you, I remember. He paid my father some money—I didn’t see that, but my father told me. My father beat the shit out of me and he said it was my fault and the priest had not paid enough. I don’t know how much he got. I remember my father saying he was going to the English church to get more. I think the priest told my father not to say anything to other people, because that’s what my father told me, to say nothing. He said if I talked about it he’d kill me because there would be no more money. I didn’t know what he was talking about.’ He shrugged.
‘I never saw them again, did I? We were from all over Naples, as far away as Torre Annunziata, Pozzuoli; how would we see each other? I saw one, what was his name—Dio, I lived with them a long time, it seemed like a long time then, and I can’t remember the names. Anyway, one of them, a few times in the street; he lived in Vicaria, like me. But we didn’t talk.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘How would I know? I haven’t seen him in twenty years—thirty. Maybe he died. It’s like I told you, it was over. We were kids, you know—a year later, we forgot, we were bigger, we were different. I was working by then.’
‘In the metal shop?’
Formoso nodded. ‘My father said it was my fault I wasn’t at the singing school any more; he needed the money; he put me out to work.’ He pulled his left arm out of his jacket and pushed up his shirtsleeve and showed a burn scar the length of the forearm, the swell of the muscle gone, only puckered skin remaining. He touched his bad eyelid.
Denton waited, thinking of what else to ask, and said finally, ‘You know Michele ’l ubriacon’?’
‘I know he was that Michele from the singing school, yes. I never talked to him afterward, though. Once, when he was a scugnizzo, I saw him, I waved or something and he ran away.’ He was pulling down his sleeve, working his arm into the jacket. ‘Michele was never right in the head, I do remember that. I think he was born peculiar. But he had a good voice, and he was a good-looking kid. Pretty, you know. But even before he started drinking, he was peculiar. He’d laugh at things weren’t funny, and he’d say the wrong thing, like he was talking to somebody else. He was crazy.’
‘And Edouardo?’
Formoso raised his carafe and looked into it, frowned to see it was almost empty. DiNapoli took it from him and poured his own wine in. Denton handed his glass over, and DiNapoli did the same with it. Neither of them had tasted the wine.
‘Edouardo was…a guappo, you know? A tough guy. Little, but tough. Ten years old, tough. He hit the other kids a lot. He hit me, but I was big and I could hit him back. Edouardo had been on the street since he was four. Truly! He was one of those guys, even that young, you know—they know everything. He knew about girls, you know? He knew how to get on the right side of Sommers.’
‘He was a foundling?’
Formoso paused, as if to think. ‘No. It was Michele was from the foundling hospital; Edouardo was just from the streets. He had a family, but they didn’t want him. I don’t know how I know that.’
‘So when Sommers went off, he took the two boys who had no families.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘And he came back to Naples—you know that? And he bought a house in Spagnuoli? And he had the two boys living with him for a while?’
‘I didn’t know that. I only knew later, lots later, that he was back. I didn’t know anything about boys.’ Formoso seemed frightened now, eager to separate himself from that knowledge. ‘I saw him on the street, somebody said, “That’s Fra Geraldo.” I recognised him. But I didn’t care. I remember, I recognised him but I couldn’t think of his name. Later, the name came to me, but—so? Why would I care?’ He sounded defensive.
‘So Fra Geraldo never came to see you? Never visited your father? Didn’t pay any money?’
Formoso looked away towards the door. It was made of the same rough boards as the bar, held loosely by an old-fashioned thumb latch, and the wind was causing it to open almost an inch and rattle the latch. Cold air blew across the dirt floor. Formoso said in a musing voice, ‘My father got some money sometimes. Not a lot. I don’t where he got it. Mostly, he played the lottery with it.’
Denton had little more to ask. He did mention the police, which made Formoso indignant: why would the police have anything to do with the singing school? Denton didn’t know what the police had been like back then—1857, 1858, Italy not yet unified, the corrupt Bourbons still trying to hold on to Naples. He gave Formoso another five lire, to DiNapoli’s disgust, and left.
Outside, he walked into the guttering light of a small shrine, the candle flames thin and streaming in the wind, and looked back at the enoteca. Two of the men who had been standing at the bar came out and looked at them. Denton slid the sword a foot out of the stick and let them see the shine of the metal.
‘I don’ think they mean nothing,’ DiNapoli said.
‘Just helping them be certain that’s what they mean.’
They walked towards the brighter lights of the Strada del Duomo, where Denton turned left to go home. DiNapoli was going another way and said goodnight. After he had gone, Denton could hear him singing, the clear tenor voice offering one of those sentimental Neapolitan songs to the night. Denton listened, then turned towards home. DiNapoli had taught him a word, sfiducia, distrust, and now Denton found himself applying it to DiNapoli himself. They saw each other less with Janet not there, and something had come faintly between them, perhaps nothing more than Denton’s own cynicism. Yet he found he felt sfiducia towards DiNapoli. Maybe it was only the spying. But he couldn’t resist walking that ugly cat, suspicion, back to the beginning: it had been DiNapoli who had found him in the Galleria, not the other way around. Suppose it had been deliberate? Suppose the Casa Gialla, the puppet-ghost, the dying boy in the cellar, had all been part of a scheme? But it was ridiculous: there was no way anybody could have predicted that Denton would find the boy or that he would go to Scuttini or even that he would stay in the Casa Gialla. And none of it had anything to do with Fra Geraldo, who had come to Denton at the pensione before the DiNapoli and the Casa Gialla and Scuttini and Gianaculo had even entered his life.
And who would be behind such a crazy plan? Naples, like all of Italy, loved conspiracies, but they were usually no more real than the ghosts, this one least of all. No, his sfiducia was absurd: DiNapoli was a petty informer, both to the police and the Scuttini, but he was loyal to Janet and, Denton hoped, to him. Hoped.