Pasquale's Angel Page 6

  Niccolò reached through the open window, drew in his hand and showed the captain the blood smeared on his fingertips. The captain said, ‘There’s blood all over. As if the poor devil staggered around in a mad frenzy before dying, perhaps even while his murderer tore the place apart—you see, of course, the paper everywhere. The signaller keeps a log of all messages sent or received, apparently—that’s where most of the paper came from. Whoever killed Romano will be covered in blood, like as not. That’s why I don’t think it was anyone in the palace. We had them all lined up as soon as we could, and that was not twenty minutes after the alarm was raised. No trace of blood on any of them, and no one could have washed so quickly and so thoroughly. And no mark of a struggle on any of them either, no scratches or bruises. Whoever did this was a madman, and poor Romano there fought back bravely—perhaps even tried to follow his killer out the tower.’

  ‘You’re very thorough,’ Niccolò said. ‘And I agree, the murderer came from outside the house. But he came through this window, and left the same way. There is blood on the sill of the window, but no blood on the stair-rail. Look through Romano’s clothes: you’ll find a key. He locked himself in here for some purpose, and then the murderer surprised him. There was a violent struggle, and Romano tried to unlock the door to escape—there are new scratches on the wood around the lock where he tried and failed to thrust in the key before he was overcome by his murderer. And when he was done, the murderer left the same way he’d come, through the window here that Giulio Romano opened to light the signal-lanterns. They are still burning, as they were when I came into the garden and looked up at the tower, yet Signor Taddei told me no signals were sent this evening. He was wrong, but could not have known that one of his guests was making use of his signal-tower without his permission. I would also guess that there was still life in Romano’s body when his murderer left, for he tried again to open the door, but could only scratch at the bottom edge before he died. And so he was found. The murderer could hardly have wedged the body up against the door, and then closed it from the outside.’

  The captain said, ‘But no key is missing. The murderer must have locked the door when he left.’

  ‘No, it was Romano who locked the door. Search his body and you will find the key.’

  The captain gave the order with a smile, as if Niccolò were providing a rare entertainment he was only too happy to co-operate in, just to see where it was going. That was what Pasquale felt, at any rate, as if he were in the centre of an unfolding play, and only Niccolò Machiavegli knew how the threads of plot wove together.

  The guard who was searching the body held up a key, and the captain took it and tried it in the lock of the door. The tongue snapped back and forth, and the captain smiled. ‘One to you, Niccolò. But if no key is missing, where did this one come from?’

  ‘Signor Taddei will have a key, for he is master of the house. And the major-domo will have another, for he must have the means to ensure that his master’s orders are carried out. But there will be a third, too. No doubt that person assured you that his key was not missing—perhaps he even showed you a key. But it was not the key.’

  The captain swore. ‘Of course! You there, Acciaioli! Fetch up the signaller!’

  The other guard, the one who had found the key, said, ‘Here’s something else.’

  He held up a little construction of white stiff paper and wood splinters, a kind of boat with a double helical screw instead of a sail. It was small enough to fit into his open palm.

  The captain took it and said, ‘What do you make of this, Niccolò? Ah, here, there’s a band of that new rubber stuff, and a spindle for winding it. A toy do you think?’

  Using his thumbnail, with surprising delicacy, the captain turned a needle-sized ratchet. The little boat started to flutter and shake. The captain let it go. The paper screws whirred around and the thing wound itself into the air, rising with such force that it struck the glass bull’s-eye of one of the observation ports. Then the energy of the rubber band was spent, and with its helical screws revolving slowly the other way, the boat sank back down.

  Pasquale, who had the quickest eye, caught it before it reached the floor. It was as light as a feather: in fact, the sparring which gave it rigidity was made of the shafts of a bird’s primary feathers. A pigeon. Angels, pigeon-wings too small to sustain them. Artificers. ‘Artificers,’ Pasquale said. ‘Artificers and angels.’

  The captain said to Niccolò, ‘There’s talk amongst the artificers of machines that can row the air as lightly as a peasant’s coracle crosses the Arno’s flood. You don’t think—’

  Niccolò said, ‘With your permission, Pasquale,’ and lifted up the little flying toy, peered at it with his dark eyes—pigeon’s eyes, Pasquale thought, pink-rimmed and rheumy with years of drink, but still sharp.

  Niccolò handed the little flying boat back to Pasquale and said, ‘We need invoke no fantastical explanation until all mundane possibilities are exhausted. Only then do we begin to search for the footprints of angels. This is only a toy, popular in Rome. I have seen others like it.’ He cocked his head as footsteps were heard mounting the wooden stairway. ‘Here is our missing key, in more ways than one.’

  The signaller was a boy at least five years younger than Pasquale, with a tonsured cap of blond hair and a fringe of fine blond hairs along his acne-speckled jaw. He was dressed in the four-pocketed ankle-length black tunic of his order, cinched with a broad leather belt from which depended a leather pouch and a small rosewood cross. The Order of Signallers was a congregation of the Dominicans which, although secular rather than monastic, was nevertheless under strict religious rule.

  The captain asked the boy pleasantly enough if he would use his key on the lock of the cabin’s door, and from the way the boy looked from one man to the other Pasquale knew that his nerve was already gone. The boy signaller straightened his back and said, his voice reedy but steady, ‘Sir, Signor Romano bribed me to use this tower. I ask that you put me in the hands of the masters of my order.’

  ‘Not just yet,’ the captain said. ‘There’s a man dead here. He’s the one who bought the key from you?’

  The boy gave a small tight nod. Sweat stood out on his forehead.

  The captain said sharply, ‘Did he explain his purpose? Speak, boy! He’s dead, and won’t complain.’

  ‘Just, just that he wanted to make a private rendezvous.’

  ‘Not to send a message?’

  ‘I would not have allowed him to use the apparatus, sir.’

  Niccolò said, ‘All messages sent from here would be passed through the Great Tower.’

  The signaller, eager to please, said, ‘We call it the mains trunk. It handles all traffic routed across the city, and is the relay for the land-lines south and north.’

  Niccolò told the captain, ‘The Order of Signallers are very thorough record-keepers. If Romano managed to send a signal, then you will find a record of it. No doubt it will be some simple, apparently honest and trivial message, but it will be code for something else. Signor Romano would have sent it himself because this lad refused. He would have sent it in plain talk, which is easy enough to master—even I have knowledge of it. Anyone who practises a simple signal beforehand could send it with sufficient skill to deceive those receiving it into believing it had been sent by the proper person, which is to say our signaller lad here. Not so, boy?’

  ‘He didn’t say he wanted to use the apparatus, sir. As I said, I wouldn’t have allowed that.’

  ‘But letting him borrow your key gave you a clear conscience, eh?’ the captain said. ‘And now there’s a man dead. Think on that, signaller. You’ll spend the night in our lock-up before we hand you over to the tender mercies of your order.’

  When the signaller had been marched away, Pasquale asked what would happen to him.

  ‘The Order of Signallers deal with their own more rigorously than we would,’ the captain said. ‘They must, to enforce and protect their scrupulous code. If the
signallers were believed corrupt, who would trust a message to them?’

  Niccolò said, ‘I can add little more to my tale, Captain. I hope you find it satisfactory.’

  ‘Your reputation is upheld, Niccolò,’ the captain said. ‘If you could tell me the content of the message, and who received it, then we would have the whole of it, I think.’

  ‘There are still many questions to answer, the least of which is the content of the message. I am more concerned with the motivation of the man who sent it. Was he a spy? And if so, did his master, Raphael, know of it or even order it?’

  ‘Unfortunately, Raphael and his crew have diplomatic status, and so cannot be questioned, let alone arrested,’ the captain said. ‘Certainly, they will be kept under strict observation from now on, but that is not my duty. I am only a poor precinct captain who must try and catch a murderer. As to who that was, and why he murdered Romano, I am afraid your tale, satisfactory though it may be from a narrative point of view, is lacking in an ending.’

  ‘I can’t tell you much about your man,’ Niccolò said. ‘Except that he is unskilled in killing, and perhaps not even armed. There is no sign of use of a blade, for there are no clean rents in Signor Romano’s clothing or on his face or neck, and neither are there cuts on the palms of his hands of the kind which you would expect to find in an unarmed man trying to defend himself, or an armed man defending himself at the last from a superior opponent. A man will grasp at the blade in a last vain attempt to save his life even though it cuts him to the bone. There are no such cuts, but instead wounds made by nails and possibly teeth, and bruises in the pattern of a strong grip. Romano was bludgeoned to death in a hot fury, I would guess, by someone far stronger than he, even in his last desperate throes; even a woman may call up unguessed reserves of strength when pressed to the point of dying, and we must imagine Romano possessed of such strength, yet still he was overcome. Our murderer is a strong man then, perhaps of uncertain temper. And this man was not an accomplice to whatever Romano was up to, for if he entered with Romano, who locked the door behind him to ensure he would not be disturbed, he would have known of a key and taken it. So we must assume that he climbed in through the window and fled the same way—and I have shown you the marks of his escape, the blood that he left on the sill of the window. So while Romano’s murderer is a strong man, he is also small or slender enough to enter through that small window.’

  ‘In my experience,’ the captain remarked, ‘a thief may enter through any aperture large enough to accommodate his head. Certain thieves employ young children, who can wriggle through a chink you would swear would bar entrance even to a snake. And I must say that with all my experience in housebreaking I have never known any who could scale a tower such as this without equipment. Signor Taddei is a wealthy man, and employed builders who fit blocks of stone almost as closely as those in the ancient villas of Herculaneum.’

  ‘You have visited that unfortunate city? You’re a lucky man.’

  ‘My wife’s family has a farm close by; they grow grapes on the slopes of Vesuvius.’

  ‘If I must bow to your knowledge of housebreakers and of Roman ruins, and indeed of architecture, I do know something of mountaineering, and would judge that it is not impossible for a skilled mountain-climber to scale what we Tuscans, who find hill-walking troubling, would assay impossible. I also note that Romano has coarse hairs caught in his fingernails; not the hairs of a man, but perhaps of the coat or collar of a coat that his murderer was wearing. In winter, and on unseasonably cold nights such as this, the Prussians and Swiss take to wearing overcoats with fur-trimmed collars. Perhaps you might start your inquiries amongst the ranks of Florence’s mercenary army. A slim strong ruffian, from one of the rural cantons rather than Zurich or Geneva, and with recent deep scratches on his face or hands; there are shreds of skin along with the hairs under the victim’s fingernails.’

  The captain said, ‘The Pope employs Swiss soldiers, as well as Florence. These are deep waters, Niccolò. You write this up, and I don’t know what kind of trouble it might lead to. You will, I think, need the permission of the Signoria itself, and meanwhile, I must take your notebook, and the sketches of your young assistant there.’

  Niccolò sighed. ‘Of course I’ll co-operate. We always do, Captain. Facts, not sensationalism.’

  The captain said, ‘That’s why you were allowed here. I trust you to keep to the facts, Niccolò.’

  ‘I hoped to flatter myself that it was for my forensic skills that I was allowed to witness this terrible scene.’

  ‘I am always grateful for your opinions, Niccolò. You know that. And I will report your opinions, but the matter will soon be out of my hands, I am afraid. Now, your notes and sketches, if you please, and I will see that you are safely escorted from the palace.’

  The street outside the gate of the Palazzo was empty. The foul smog and unseasonable cold had defeated the crowd’s thirst for sensationalism. Niccolò walked quickly to the corner, where he fumbled out his flask. He drank everything he had, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  Pasquale lit a cigarette and said, ‘You might have left me some.’

  ‘My thirst admits no generosity,’ Niccolò said. He was shivering, hunched in on himself with his hands thrust between his thighs.

  Pasquale took the journalist’s arm, and they started down the street towards the publisher’s office. He said, ‘What will you do now the militia have stopped your story?’

  Niccolò laughed. His voice was congested. ‘It would take more than confiscation of my notes to stop me writing up what I’ve seen.’

  ‘But the captain—’

  ‘He followed the form of the law to protect himself. He has my notes, and your sketches, and can tell his superiors that he tried his best to stop me. But he knows I will write the story anyway, and I know that you can draw the scene from memory. You have already shown how well your memory serves your art. And you have the little flying device.’

  ‘I put it in my scrip. Do you think the toy is important?’

  ‘It isn’t a toy. That’s just a story I told the captain, so he would not wish to keep it. Instead, you must guard it, Pasquale. Will you do that for me?’

  ‘Of course. But why—’

  ‘Ah, but I’m weary, young Pasquale! Turn down here. There’s a drinking-den that stays open all hours, if you don’t mind vagabonds and whores.’

  It was a low dive in a cellar lit only by a small brazier in the centre of the straw-strewn earth floor. A dozen people sat on crude smoke-blackened benches around this rude hearth, drinking new rough red wine they dipped from a common dish. Rats rustled in the dark corners. The slattern who kept the den threw stones at any which ventured near the warmth of the brazier.

  Niccolò thawed after a couple of draughts of wine. ‘I haven’t sustained such a passage of thought since my interrogation,’ he said. ‘I had forgotten how brain-work tires you.’

  ‘Is it all true, what you said?’

  ‘Some of it, certainly. Although I’m not entirely sure about the method which the captain ascribes to the murderer.’

  Pasquale said, ‘Perhaps the murder has nothing to do with Romano. Perhaps he merely surprised a thief or spy rifling through the messages.’

  ‘Then we must believe that Romano chose to use the tower illicitly at the same time this thief broke into it. I do not say that it is impossible, but it is highly unlikely. We can only consider the unlikely when the probable has been ruled out, and the impossible when nothing else is left.’

  ‘But there must be a conspiracy. There must! Surely it is no coincidence that an assistant of Raphael was murdered on the eve of the Pope’s visit!’

  Niccolò smiled indulgently at this outburst. Pasquale drained his cup and dipped more wine from the common dish—if he was to pay for this, he would get his rightful share. When he sat down again, Niccolò told him, ‘We are only at the beginning, Pasquale. I can assure you that I crave the thrill of the hunt—there is
no finer way to keep away boredom than to solve a puzzle like this—but I must make sure I am following the right quarry.’

  ‘What of the little flying device? I’ve never seen anything like it.’

  ‘It may be everything, or nothing. I do not yet know. A man will carry all sorts of odds and ends with him, especially artists. What do you have in your scrip, Pasquale? Apart from the coin you’ll need to pay for this vigorous wine? I will guess that there will be charcoal and goose-quills, and a little knife for sharpening the quills, scraps of paper for sketching, some English lead, a bit of bread for rubbing out lines. A block of lampblack, and a dished stone for mixing the ink. Those set you apart as an artist. But I’ll wager you also have bits and pieces which set you apart as an individual, and have nothing at all to do with your profession. So perhaps with Giulio Romano. We find a little toy, and if we are not careful it takes on a significance out of proportion to its worth, and we are astray, gone from the path direct, chasing imagined shadows. Yes, it may be important, but it may also mean nothing.’

  Pasquale said, ‘In a painting, everything can be riddled for meaning. Things resonate because they have been used before, and because there is a story or a tradition behind each gesture, each flower. I saw that little toy flutter up and I thought of angels…’

  Pasquale wanted, but did not dare, to speak of his vision, the painting that glowed in his mind, still obscure yet slowly growing clearer, as an object hidden in mist grows clearer as the viewer advances towards it. No, it was not at all like the way Niccolò had worked, piecing together a brief history of violence from its scattered aftermath. He was suddenly gripped with an ache to begin painting at once, but knew that if he did it would be a botched beginning that would set him back days, weeks, months. Whole sight, or none at all.

  The cellar was dank, but the brazier’s fire warmed Pasquale through, and its smoke was better than the sharp chemical stench of the artificers’ smog that still clung to his tunic. On the other side of the brazier, a skinny weasel-faced fellow in rags was slowly inserting his arm in a fat whore’s massive pendulous bosom, as if he hoped eventually to climb all the way into this maternal cleft. The other customers mostly nodded, befuddled by rough wine, transfixed by the glowing brands in the brazier and their own unguessable thoughts.