They really did take five minutes to reach the address that Ottavia Calabrese had given Lojacono. A shiny brass plate next to the front door of the luxurious building announced: “Arturo Festa, Notary.”
It was early, not yet ten o’clock. The lieutenant wondered whether anyone was already in the office. He couldn’t reasonably linger to give the husband the news in person. He had his cell phone number: he could try to call him. But what he really wanted was to observe the reactions of the people who knew the notary well, when they heard the news of the murder.
They went over to the doorman, a diminutive, middle-aged fellow who was sorting catalogues into the various mailboxes. Without even turning around, the man gestured to the foot of a flight of stairs with his head: “Mezzanine, Staircase A,” he said.
Which meant that someone was already there.
Aragona rang the doorbell, and from inside someone hit a button to open the door automatically. They walked into a small waiting room, and a young woman, short, pudgy, and wearing glasses, came toward them; her manner was businesslike: “Hi there. Can I help you?”
Lojacono saluted and said: “Perhaps. Buongiorno, signorina. My name is Lojacono and this is Officer Aragona, from the Pizzofalcone police station. We’d like to speak with the notary Arturo Festa.”
The young woman seemed unsurprised. It couldn’t have been unusual for the police to show up at this office.
“I’m sorry, the notary isn’t in just now. Could you tell me what this is about? Did you have an appointment, have you spoken to him directly?”
“When do you think that we could talk with him? This is a confidential matter, and it’s quite urgent. You are . . .”
“I’m sorry, I haven’t introduced myself. My name is Imma, Imma Arace. I’m in charge of bills of exchange and promissory notes, the only part of the office that is open for business at this hour. The other employees come in later on; now it’s only me and the preparer, Rino. I’m sorry, but I really wouldn’t know how to help you.”
“How many other people work in this office, signorina? And what time do they come in?”
“There are two other employees, both women, and they get here by 10:30. We leave earlier, so their shift is staggered with respect to ours. You’d just have to wait . . .” she glanced at the clock, “half an hour, more or less, for the entire staff.”
Lojacono and Aragona exchanged a glance.
“Perhaps we could speak with the two of you, in that case. While we wait for the other office employees to come in, and for the notary himself. And, signorina, you really ought to tell me where the notary is.”
Signorina Arace noticed the change in Lojacono’s tone of voice, now more emphatic and urgent. And she realized that these two police officers weren’t here to handle some confidential bureaucratic procedure: this must be something far more serious.
“Please, come right this way.”
She led them into a large room with wood-paneled walls, which contained six desks. Only one desk was occupied, by a stout bespectacled man with thick lenses who was sorting an array of promissory notes into separate little piles.
The man narrowed his eyes when he heard the trio enter the room. The woman spoke to him in a worried voice.
“Rino, these two gentleman are from the police and they’d like to talk with us. They were looking for the notary.”
The man put down the promissory notes he was still holding and walked around the desk, coming to stand next to Imma. Side by side like that, they seemed like relatives: both of them tubby, both bespectacled, both frightened and surprised.
“They were looking for the notary. The notary isn’t here, he’s out of town. Did you tell them that?”
The young woman nodded, looking insulted: “Of course I told them, what kind of fool do you take me for? But they still want to talk with us.”
“Still want to talk with us. But what can we tell them, if the notary isn’t here? They’ll just have to come back, is what they’ll have to do.”
The girl had lost her patience. Clearly, Rino wasn’t the brightest bulb.
“Then you try talking to them. I already told them, and I’ll tell you again. They said that they would wait.”
“They would wait.”
Aragona glanced at Lojacono: it seemed like a farce. The man’s habit of repeating the last few words that the young woman said was like an old-fashioned comedy routine straight out of the commedia dell’arte.
The lieutenant broke the spell: “We need to speak with the notary, whom you certainly know how to get in touch with. We need to speak to him now.”
The man ran a trembling hand over the comb-over that spread what little hair remained to him across the top of an otherwise bald head, as if checking to make sure every hair was in order.
“Speak to him now. The notary is on Capri, for a conference. He ought to have been back yesterday, but with the choppy seas the hydrofoils weren’t running. So he’s stuck there and we don’t know when he’ll be able to get back. If there’s anything we can do to help . . .”
He looked over at his colleague uncertainly, and she dropped her eyes. Something isn’t right, thought Lojacono. He tried bluffing.
“Okay, then we can get in touch with the police station there on the island. You must certainly be able to tell me the name and phone number of the hotel. I would imagine that for you the notary must always be available, isn’t that right, Signor . . .”
The man opened and shut his mouth a few times, as if he couldn’t think of what to say. The young woman threw him a lifeline: “De Lucia, Salvatore De Lucia. As I informed you, he prepares the promissory notes, he’s in charge of . . .”
Aragona interrupted her, raising one hand: “You can explain all that later, signorina. Right now we just need to know where we can find the notary. And fast.”
The officer’s abrasive tone further frightened the fat man, who stammered: “Actually . . . that’s classified information, where the notary is. Top secret.”
He shot Imma a sidelong glance.
Lojacono said: “Not anymore, it isn’t. Now you’d better tell me. You have to.”
De Lucia looked down at the floor and murmured: “He’s in Sorrento, with . . . on vacation. He’ll be back today, later this morning. But please, I beg you, this can’t get out. No one can know, especially not his . . . his family.”
He had blushed to a pathetic degree. His coworker glared at him in disgust, and Lojacono wondered whether her reaction was due to the fact that the man had revealed a secret or just that he’d tried to cover up the notary’s affair.
“You can rest assured that this information will remain confidential,” Aragona told the two employees. “The notary’s wife, Signora Cecilia De Santis, was found dead this morning, in their apartment.”
It was as if someone had unexpectedly fired a gun. The man stared at Aragona in disbelief, as if he’d just heard a very unfunny joke. The woman was the picture of surprise, eyes and mouth wide open like three capital O’s. Then she began to tremble, and finally she burst into sobs. De Lucia hesitantly raised his arm and put it around his coworker’s shoulders. Lojacono felt sorry for them both.
“I’m sorry to have had to break the news to you like this, but it was to make you understand the urgency of the situation. Now, would you please tell me how to get in touch with the notary?”