Ricciardi and Maione returned to police headquarters after receiving confirmation from a mistrustful female cousin of Signora Iovine that the professor’s wife and his son had both been her dinner guests the previous night. This woman too had been told, only hours before, of the professor’s untimely death.
“I just can’t get over it, Commissa’,” said Maione as he slammed his fist down on the desktop, “the way that everybody around here seems to know about things even before they happen. What do they have, a wireless network in constant operation? Now, for instance, if we were heading out to arrest a murderer or a thief, the guy would already know hours in advance that we were on our way, and we’d come up with a great big handful of nothing.”
Ricciardi threw the window open to let in a little air and flopped down in the chair behind his desk.
“You’ve been too touchy for some time now. Hasn’t it always been this way? And remember, this is how you manage to get all that information from your secret girlfriend.”
“Commissa’, you’re just playing with me, and if you want to play, let’s play. My secret girlfriend is actually my secret man-friend, or not even that, what are you tricking me into saying, she’s nothing to me. She’s a femminiello, a transvestite who I decided just once, out of pure pity, not to throw in jail, and ever since she’s shown her gratitude by telling me the gossip that she hears.”
“You see how on edge you are? Will you tell me what’s got into you?”
The brigadier heaved a deep sigh.
“What can I tell you, Commissa’: I must be a little tired. I do work too hard, I know that, but we need the money, with all the kids I have at home.”
Ricciardi turned serious: “Raffaele, you aren’t short on cash, are you? I have plenty of my own, if you want I can . . .”
Maione held up a hand. “Why no, Commissa’, if you start talking like that you’ll offend me, and I won’t even be able to tell you anything anymore. I earn a good salary and I have no trouble making ends meet. It’s just that now we have the little girl from Mergellina, you remember her, Benedetta; and Lucia and I would like to adopt her. We could use a bigger apartment, too; we have little boys and little girls living together in the same room, and now that they’re growing up, they’re going to need a place to study. So I’m setting aside a little money so we can move in a year, that’s all.”
Ricciardi decided to explain his intentions: “Please don’t be offended. I have a good salary, you know that, and aside from Rosa I have no family. You have children, and what you’ve done for Benedetta is admirable and does you honor; you ought to let your good friend help you out. Have you talked it over with Lucia?”
“Good lord, no! She’ll immediately start worrying and we’ll never hear the end of it. No, no, I’ve just been doing a little budgeting, that’s all. But Lucia doesn’t know a thing, and I don’t want her to know a thing. As for you, Commissa’, thanks, but it’s really not necessary. After all, since you stubbornly continue not to get married, you already pay the mother-in-law tax. How much has it risen to by now?”
The reference to the ironic name given to the tax on unmarried men that had now been in effect for five years made Ricciardi shake his head: “I’m more than happy to pay that tax. I already have Rosa who serves simultaneously as both mother and mother-in-law: however substantial the cost, I avoid much worse consequences. Still, all kidding aside, promise me that if you are ever in need you’ll let me know. Don’t give me something else to fret about.”
Maione burst out laughing: “Don’t you worry about that, Commissa’. Now let’s get busy. Shall we go pay a call on the clinic of this doctor who sent a letter to the dead man’s house?”
“It’s too early for that, we don’t even know whether he jumped or if someone else helped him out the window. Let’s wait for Modo to finish the autopsy and see if he finds anything. Instead, let’s find out something more about the man who swore he’d kill him, the one whose wife died in childbirth. What’s his name?”
Maione pulled his notebook out of his pocket and read aloud: “Graziani, Giuseppe. I’ll hurry down to Archives and talk to Antonelli. Shall I bring you an ersatz coffee, Commissa’?”
“No, no, thanks. With this heat, a disgusting ersatz coffee like the ones we drink here would kill me. Bring me news instead.”
Ten minutes later Maione had returned: “May I come in, Commissa’? There’s another piece of news that I just got from the wireless telegraph.”
Ricciardi looked up from the report that he was drafting concerning his on-site examination of the scene of the death at the general hospital: “Well?”
“There’s a strange guy outside in the hall. He says that he saw the professor last night. And when he heard that he was dead, he came in of his own volition.”
“You see? It’s not always a bad thing for news to travel fast. Send him in.”
The man did have an unusual appearance. At first glance he was short, but that impression was accentuated by the fact that he had an unmistakable curvature of the spine; he wore thick-lensed eyeglasses, and his arms and legs were disproportionately long compared with his torso. His hair, thinning on top of his head, grew thick along the sides in tangled curls; his skin was a sickly pale white. He seemed uneasy; he worried the hat he held in his hands, and looked as if he expected to arrested any minute.
Maione winked at Ricciardi, in an acknowledgment of the odd character.
“Commissa’, this is Signor Coviello, Nicola by name. Signor Coviello, Commissario Ricciardi, who’s in charge of the case of Professor Iovine. Come right in.”
The man took a step forward, hesitantly. Ricciardi waited a few seconds then, since the man seemed unable to make up his mind, asked: “Did you want to speak to me?
Coviello opened his mouth, shut it, and then opened it again, as if he were a fresh-caught fish. At last he said: “Commissa’, buongiorno. I . . . I heard that this misfortune had taken place, that Professor Iovine is dead. That he fell out his office window.”
Maione butted in firmly: “Excuse me, but how the hell did you know about it?”
Confronted with the brigadier’s sudden aggressivity, Coviello flinched, almost as if he expected to be punched: “No, you see,” he stammered, “I have a cousin who runs a shop near the general hospital. Since he knows that I know the professor, this morning as soon as the custodian . . .”
Maione interrupted, in exasperation: “Yes, yes, I understand. You received a paperless telegram. Let’s continue.”
The other man was now more bewildered still.
“What telegram? No, Brigadie’, it was my cousin’s son who brought me the news . . .”
Ricciardi decided to put an end to that unproductive line of questioning: “Forget about that, Coviello. Tell me, why have you come in to see us?”
The man dragged his foot back and forth across the floor, worrying his cap in both hands all the while; he was already regretting his act of good conscience.
He spoke in a low voice: “Commissa’, I’m a goldsmith by trade, I have a workshop down in the borgo, you can ask anyone, they call me Mastro Nicola.”
After identifying himself in this manner, he fell silent. After a short while the brigadier said, impatiently: “Covie’, you came in of your own free will, no one subpoenaed or arrested you; we don’t have a lot of time to waste, would you mind telling us why you’re here?”
The man seemed to snap out of it.
“No, it’s just that I was thinking about where to start.”
“Try starting from the beginning,” Maione suggested.
“Right. Grazie, Brigadie’.”
Maione looked him up and down grimly, trying to decide whether the best thing might not be to toss him bodily out the window, and have him meet the same end as the professor had. Luckily for him, Mastro Nicola snapped to. “All right then, as I’ve told you, I’m a goldsmith. A month or so ago, the professor came into my shop, introduced himself, and . . .”
Ricciardi interrupted him: “Hold on a second: was he already a customer of yours? Did you know him?”
“No, no, Commissa’, I’d never seen him before. But he’d heard I was good at what I did and told me he wanted to commission two pieces. Actually, at first just one; then, the second time, he asked me to make another.”
Ricciardi asked: “What kind of pieces?”
Coviello spoke animatedly: “Well then, Commissa’, this is the way I work: either my clients bring me the material, the stones, the gold, and the silver, or else they commission the items and I ask for a down payment so I can buy the materials I need; or else a little of each, that is, they bring me some old object to melt down, or loose stones to set in something that I make myself, and then they give me the money to purchase the materials, or else . . .”
Maione snapped: “Coviello, what did you come in here for, to deliver a lecture? Commissario Ricciardi asked you about the professor and how you came to know him, not the story of your life. Go on, and stick to the facts.”
Ricciardi shot him an angry look, then turned to the goldsmith: “Go on, Coviello. If you please.”
The man gave Maione a brief glance. His ears were bright red.
“Forgive me. The professor had no materials of his own, but he wanted to give a gift to his wife, because her name day was coming up. He didn’t even really know what he wanted. I told him that one of my suppliers had a few nice diamonds at home and I suggested a ring. We agreed on a price and he said that would be fine.”
Maione asked: “Did he haggle?”
Coviello shook his head, his eyes still fixed on Ricciardi. Maione’s tone of voice clearly made him uncomfortable: “Not much. He said that he’d expected it to cost less, but he immediately gave me the deposit so I could give my supplier a partial advance payment. My suppliers give me credit, because I always settle up on time, so I can . . . in any case, we made a deal. He wasn’t even in a hurry, as long as it was ready in time for the Festival of the Carmine, Our Lady of Mount Carmel; he’d asked me to engrave the name Maria Carmela on the inside of the ring.”
Ricciardi pressed him: “And the second time?”
“He came back about ten days later, at night, when I was just about to close up. I work late sometimes in my shop. He said that he needed a second ring, identical to the first. I told him that it wouldn’t come out exactly identical, every stone is different from the others, and he replied: well then, make it better. With a bigger stone. And I need you to deliver them both to me at the same time.”
The last part of the story was told in a tone of voice that was clearly meant to reproduce the professor’s own: imperious, stentorian.
“Did you ask him to make a new deposit?”
“Certainly, Commissa’. I can hardly afford to do the work otherwise. It was a higher price, but he didn’t object. In fact he paid the entire amount in advance.”
Maione broke in: “And did you have to engrave a name this time too?”
“‘Sisinella,’ he wanted me to write ‘Sisinella.’”
“And you didn’t ask him anything? Like just who this Sisinella might be?”
“Brigadie’, that’s none of my business. If I start asking questions like that, I’m going to scare all my customers away.”
Ricciardi nodded, absentmindedly.
“Let’s talk about yesterday. Where did you see him? Did he come to you, in your workshop?”
“No, I went to see him in his office. He’d insisted I deliver the rings that day, even late, he’d wait for me. I worked fast, but with precision. You know, that kind of ring isn’t easy to fashion, it’s a labor of love: you have to make a sort of knot in the metal, it symbolizes a union, and in the middle you set the stone. Setting the stone is hard, because the gold doesn’t offer a flat surface, still . . .”
Maione emitted a muffled snarl. Coviello snapped his mouth shut.
Ricciardi asked: “So you went to call on him at the general hospital?”
“Yes, Commissa’. It took me a little while to find him, that place is a labyrinth and at that time of night the custodians had all gone home. The professor had explained that he was on the top floor.”
Maione cut in: “How did he look to you? Did he strike you as angry, upset, worried?”
Coviello thought it over, then said: “No, Brigadie’. He was just like the other two times. Brisk, even a little brusque, but calm. I wanted payment in full for the first ring: he inspected my work, read the engraving, and paid. The bigger ring, the one with the engraving that read ‘Sisinella,’ he put in a desk drawer. He set the other one down on the top of the desk.”
Ricciardi leaned forward: “Do you remember anything particular about the office? Was the window closed?”
“In this heat? No, Commissa’, it was open. And that high up there was even a bit of a breeze. Climbing the stairs I’d turned into a sweaty mess, and I remember that the five minutes I spent up there gave me a little bit of relief.”
“And he didn’t say anything to you, the professor?”
“No, Commissa’. He didn’t even compliment me on the work I’d done. Maybe that wasn’t his style. But he must have been satisfied, because the rings had turned out well.”
There was a pause. Ricciardi was trying to reconstruct the situation. Then he asked: “What time was it when you left?”
“Hmm, it must have been ten thirty, or a quarter to eleven. The church bells near my house rang eleven o’clock just as I was arriving; it takes about twenty minutes to get back from the general hospital, so right around that time.”
“Did you get the impression that he was still expecting someone else?”
“We just said goodbye, nothing more, but yes, I think so.”
Maione took a step forward.
“And what made you think that?”
“There was someone in the hallway.”
Ricciardi sat up straight in his chair: “Could you be a little more specific?”
“I didn’t get a look at his face, it was really dark, the lights were off, but when I walked out of the office he was sitting on the bench. A man, for sure. And a big one, too. He looked like the mountain at night.”