A Rich Full Death Read online

  Until now I had been in the lee of the house, and therefore to some extent sheltered, although such a wind has a way of finding you out wherever you are. But the garden faces north, towards the Apennines, and here the thing itself raged-a darkness whole, mobile and massive as a stormy ocean. I had only the most general impression of shapes and shades, of the outlines of the garden I knew so well, which seemed to have been shuffled like a pack of playing cards. The place was full of surprises: everything seemed larger or smaller, nearer or more distant, than I expected it to be. I pressed forward, however, towards one shape less dark than the rest, more constant, detaching itself from the blurry confusion of background forms with growing insistence; lighter and more agitated than the rest, swinging to and fro-long, luminous, white.

  Steel yourself for a shock, my dear fellow, for it was poor Isabel I saw there, hanging by her neck from a tree!

  The next instant my attention was seized by something I caught sight of moving on the ground beneath-something low, dark and bulky. At first I thought it was some animal-a dog, or a wild boar-and it was with a distinct thrill that I realised a moment later that the form was human, and then recognised Mr Browning!

  His behaviour was bizarre, to say the least. Seemingly oblivious of the terrific figure which the wind tugged and buffeted this way and that in the luminous darkness above his head, he had crouched down and was devoting all his attention to a wrought-iron garden table which stood close by. So far as I could tell from my position some ten feet off, this item appeared to be as devoid of interest as other examples of its very common type; but there was Mr Browning, in the middle of a howling gale, that pathetic corpse swaying inches above his head, examining the claw-shaped feet of the thing with a degree of concentration worthy of an antiquary inspecting the latest Etruscan relic to come to light.

  The next moment, to my utter astonishment, he began poking his fingers into the soil, and then holding them up in the moonlight to study the effect!

  Just then my attention was attracted by a movement to my left, towards the house, and I quickly took cover as the two policemen who had arrived in the carriage walked towards us. They remained quite unaware of my presence, although they passed by no more than a few feet away, and I was able to watch them go up to Mr Browning, tap him on the shoulder, and direct him with gestures to return to the villa-any attempt at speech was quite out of the question in that wind. The two then set about freeing the tree of its awful burden.

  It was evident that any future developments would take place at the house rather than in the garden, so I hastily made my way back around the side of the villa to the front, through the low door beneath the steps and into a warren of passages and corridors which eventually led me to the cavernous kitchens. Here I found a little group consisting of the gate-keeper, Isabel’s maid, and the fourth man I had seen arrive in the carriage, who now introduced himself as Commissioner of Police Antonio Talenti.

  ‘You are Signor Eakin?’ he enquired.

  I hastened to disabuse him.

  ‘And what are you doing here?’ demanded the official, once I had identified myself.

  I explained that I had called in hopes of seeing Mr or Mrs Eakin, who were old friends of mine-this story would not have borne much scrutiny, but as luck would have it the door flew open at that very moment, admitting the two policemen carrying the body, and the anomalies of my presence were forgotten.

  The corpse was incongruously deposited on the nearest table, which happened to be one of the marble-topped kind used for rolling out noodles; water dripped monotonously from the sodden garments to the stone floor.

  Poor Isabel! I said just now that she was one who seemed to have the gift of effortlessly shrugging off the droop and pall of reality-yet here she was, unceremoniously laid out, a nightmare vision; the face horribly discoloured, the eyes and tongue protruding. It was an obscenely compelling spectacle: there was no looking at it, and no looking away. It had to be covered, and as there was nothing suitable to hand Beatrice was sent to search out a sheet.

  Meanwhile the door to the garden-at which the wind was heaving to get in-flew open once more, and Mr Browning appeared. He barely glanced at us-did not see me, I am sure. He had eyes for only one thing: Isabel’s corpse.

  The police official, with an ironical display of politeness which was not lost on his subordinates, begged this newcomer to have the goodness to identify himself. In view of the tyrannical way the authorities here comport themselves, he was treating Browning with consideration. I was therefore the more impressed with the insolence Mr Browning showed in ignoring the fellow, as if utterly unaware of his existence. He crossed to the table where the corpse lay, and examined with admirable coolness the loop of rope embedded in the bare white flesh of the neck, and then each of the poor dead white hands in turn.

  The constables were moving to recall Browning to the realities of the situation, when Beatrice returned and quite effectively did so by covering the piteous figure with the sheet she had procured. Deprived of the sole object of his attention, Mr Browning looked around like one emerging from a spiritualist trance.

  ‘Mr Booth! Are you here too?’ he murmured vaguely.

  ‘Aha! So you two know each other, eh?’ the police official demanded triumphantly, as if this fact were a crime. It was no doubt a justifiable impatience with the fellow’s overbearing manner which made Browning reply, ‘Certainly we do; and what of it?’-although of course the extent to which we ‘knew’ each other at this time was fairly limited. Nevertheless it was quite a feather in my cap to hear Mr Robert Browning roundly declare me to be his companion in this unequivocal manner!

  Ignoring the question, Talenti seated himself at the head of a long wooden table in the centre of the room. His constables stood guard at either side, and the rest of us remained grouped uneasily together, like schoolboys before the master. And so the interrogation began.

  The first point to be established related to the whereabouts of Mr Joseph Eakin: he had left Florence that morning to visit an elderly aunt of his who lives in Siena, and was not expected to return until the following day. That this was in no way remarkable, I was able to confirm from my own knowledge. The aunt suffers from some suitably genteel ailment, and-there being some question of an inheritance-Joseph Eakin has gone fortnightly to commiserate with her throughout his stay here.

  In the absence of her husband Mrs Eakin had no plans either to entertain or be entertained, and she had accordingly dismissed all the servants except her own maid until the following morning. Beatrice had been retained to dress her mistress and to prepare a light luncheon, after which she had been given the rest of the day off, with instructions to return about supper time.

  From that moment on, it at first appeared, Isabel had been alone in the villa. Shortly afterwards, however, a very important clue emerged in the testimony of the gate-keeper, who deposed that an unknown woman had called at the villa at about four o’clock, leaving about twenty minutes later-and despite the strenuous cross-questioning of the police official, he would in no way be shaken from this testimony. He had opened the gates to let her in, he said, and closed them again after her departure. There had been no other visitors.

  This, therefore, brought us to twenty past four or thereabouts. Commissioner Talenti had astutely remarked that the victim’s clothing was extremely damp. As I have already observed, there had been but one fall of rain all day, as brief as it was intense, and this was over by five o’clock. Before that the weather was unnaturally close and still for the time of year, afterwards it grew increasingly windy, but with no further precipitation. It therefore seems clear that Isabel could not have died later than five o’clock-a mere forty minutes after her mysterious visitor left.

  The rest is quickly told. Returning at half past seven, Beatrice found the house deserted and the lamps guttering in the wind blowing in through the large glass doors which lay open on to the steps leading to the garden. As she went to close them, the girl caught sight of a strang
e white form apparently hovering several feet above the ground in the moonlit garden. As always with old houses, there are rumours that the villa is haunted-in this case by a beauteous maiden murdered long ago by a jealous lover, or some such nonsense. Directly the maid caught sight of the white shape glimmering in the garden she naturally assumed it to be the apparition, and fled to the gate-keeper’s lodge. The old man, a sturdy old Tuscan peasant who would bargain with the devil himself, returned alone to investigate, discovered Isabel’s body hanging from the tree, and went to fetch the authorities.

  And Beatrice? She, left alone once more, began to realise the problems that her mistress’s death was likely to cause her. Isabel Eakin was a foreigner; where foreigners are involved there are always complications; these are not likely to be diminished when the foreigner in question is young, beautiful and has met a violent death. The remedy, clearly, was to fight fire with fire — bring in another foreigner to deal with these problems in the high-handed foreign way. And so she sent a lad from a nearby farm to summon Mr Browning.

  Yes, indeed! I too sat bolt upright and wide awake at this astonishing intelligence. So did the police official.

  ‘We are so fortunate as to have several thousand foreigners here in Florence,’ he commented, with a flicker of a smile. ‘Why, out of so many, did you send for this one?’

  A pointing finger reduced Mr Browning to the status of an inanimate courtroom exhibit.

  And now, for the first time, Beatrice faltered-fatally. Thus far everything had been said calmly, smoothly, naturally; with some understandable confusion in places, but no sense whatever of embarrassment or difficulty. Yet now her eyes roved restlessly about, determinedly avoiding Mr Browning’s-who for his part was looking at the girl with unusual intensity.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she murmured at last.

  ‘Don’t know?’

  Talenti had dropped his teasing manner.

  ‘Do you think I can be fobbed off with such stuff, my girl? If you can’t do better than that, I’ll have you locked up in the Bargello until you do know. But first I’ll give you one more chance. Why did you send for this man?’

  Browning made to speak, but the official peremptorily silenced him. The maid started to weep. At length she spoke, almost inaudibly.

  ‘He was a friend.’

  ‘Oh, he was, was he? Your friend?’

  I glanced at Browning, who sat strained forward, the image of a man in an agony of suspense.

  ‘A friend of the family,’ Beatrice replied between sobs.

  ‘But what are you saying, you stupid girl?’ the gate-keeper suddenly burst out. ‘What friend of the family? I see everyone who comes to this house. For example, I know you well enough,’ he said, turning to me. ‘But as for this man’-pointing at Browning ‘I’ve never seen him before in my life!’

  The police official stared bleakly at Beatrice.

  ‘So, you have lied. That much is sure. Do you know the penalty for lying to the authorities?’ He paused, terribly, for a moment. ‘Now then, for the third and last time I ask you-why did you send for this man?’

  The poor girl looked at Browning, and then at the policeman, and then back at Browning. I had not noticed before-one doesn’t, of course, with servants-how beautiful she was, with very distinct features, a full figure, and long raven-black hair. Finally she spoke, in a wavering voice.

  ‘He was a friend … of the signora.’

  And she nodded at the table where Isabel’s body lay stretched out.

  The mocking little smile appeared for an instant on Talenti’s features, and was gone.

  ‘I see,’ he replied blandly. ‘Well, Signor Browning-what have you to say?’

  After a long silence Browning asked if he could speak to the official alone, and to my surprise-and disappointment-this was granted. Browning then quickly scribbled a note, which he handed to me with the following words: ‘Mr Booth, I implore you, as one gentleman to another, to deliver this to my wife as soon as possible. Will you do so much for me? It will prevent much needless suffering. But say nothing of what has happened here, I beseech you! I am, of course, completely innocent-as will very soon be established.’

  I expressed my wholehearted belief in this, and promised to deliver his note immediately. Then, having supplied my address to the police, I reluctantly left the villa.

  On my way home I tried to make some sense of what I had witnessed, and in particular of Browning’s declaration that he was completely innocent-which very naturally provoked the thought ‘innocent of what?’ Of any relationship with the deceased woman? Then why should Beatrice so plainly have tried to conceal this fact? Why struggle to conceal from the police-with all the dangers this entailed-a relationship which did not exist?

  No, surely what Mr Browning must have meant is that there was a connection between him and Isabel, but that it was not a guilty one. The fact remains, however, that it looks bad-and this impression is not diminished by the fact that he is evidently striving to conceal the whole affair from his wife. This was confirmed by his note, which I took the liberty of reading before handing it in-falsehoods were in the air, after all, and I felt justified in knowing just exactly which one I might be taking responsibility for spreading. ‘I have been detained longer than expected-do not wait up for me-will explain all tomorrow’ was the gist of the thing. Fortunately I was spared any need to tell untruths myself, merely handing Browning’s note to the servant and continuing home to bed.

  I slept badly, tormented by doubts, questions, hopes and fears, and was awakened at six o’clock by the characteristic Florentine din of a bullock-cart passing by underneath my window. It is now almost nine, and with the sunlight streaming into the room last night seems little more real than a bad dream-it suddenly occurs to me that the answers to all the mysteries I have so laboriously described may well be known by now. I shall therefore lay down my pen and go and seek them out, in hopes of concluding this letter in a more satisfactory fashion than with a mere series of question marks.

  3

  Tuesday

  Has it ever happened to you, while going through old papers, to hit upon some youthful journal or memorandum, full of shallow certainties and easy courage? If so, you will be familiar with the mixture of contempt and pity which I now feel on scanning the above lines-the difference being that these were penned not six-and-thirty hours ago!

  Judge from this the intensity of the changes that have taken place in so short a time: truly I may say that most of the things I thought yesterday have been unceremoniously seized and stood on their heads, leaving my own in a state of utter bewilderment. Believe it or not, Prescott, I find myself in the extraordinary situation of aiding and abetting Mr Robert Browning in an attempt to pervert the course of justice!

  But this is not the way to set about it. ‘First things first’ must be my motto, if I am to make any sense of all.

  By Monday morning, then, as I mentioned, the storm had quite blown over, leaving a clear sky and crisp sunshot air-one of those splendid days, harbingers of spring, that make one feel like crying out aloud ‘The South! The South!’ Needless to say, I restrained any such impulse, but nevertheless my heart was high as I strode through the streets of Florence. Poor Isabel’s death seemed a distant memory, a horror of the night, and my grief had become almost an abstraction. Nature’s compensation for the loss of our loved ones is a renewed sense of our own vitality. ‘Alas, that she is gone!’ I sighed, and back came answer, ‘Rejoice, that you remain!’ At such a moment, on such a day, simply being alive is reason enough to exult; and I exulted.

  The streets of Florence are a spectacle of which one never tires, but that morning every scene produced an effect overwhelmingly rich and deep and full of life. The profusion of anecdote and incident which assails the eye here may be partly explained by the way in which the aristocrat here lives cheek by jowl with the pauper, the merchant with the artisan. There is no ‘good’ quarter, with the result that you see more in the time it takes to stroll the
length of one average street than you will in a week elsewhere; and all bizarrely juxtaposed with the greatest nonchalance: grave burghers in fur-lined capes discussing the real unpublished news of the city in discreet murmurs; a locksmith at work on a creaky old door; a brace of counterfeit Madonnas set out in the street, awaiting the framer’s art; a ringing laugh, a cutting jibe, a sullen retort; chickens being throttled, plucked and suspended on strings; a peasant woman carefully sprinkling water to freshen her horde of green vegetables; meat being hoisted in a basket on a rope towards an inaccessible window from which a face peers anxiously down; a distinguished-looking gentleman complaining loudly that the watch he has been sold keeps stopping dead at five to five every day; a priest scurrying along on some urgent mission of life or death; a soldier with a prisoner in guard; a girl with big grave eyes who leaves her work for a moment to watch you pass.

  And when at length you reach the river, and the huddling mediaeval walls fall back to reveal San Donato hill with the monastery, and the great reach of glinting water bridged by the quaint old Ponte Vecchio (which is apparently to be pulled down any day now) and the snow-capped mountains in the distance-well, to my unphilosophical eye it all seems a quite sufficient justification in itself for the existence of the world.

  Once beyond the river, however, this mood of unreflecting joy waned, deserting me altogether as I approached the Guidi palace. I had set off thither without much thought of the difficulties of my enterprise, but as I drew nearer to my goal these became only too evident. What did I think I was about, setting off thus blithely to pay a morning call on Mr Robert Browning? Even assuming that this gentleman was prepared to receive me at such an hour, it would almost certainly be impossible for us to discuss what had happened the previous night, since his wife was bound to be present. Moreover, I realised, it was more than likely that I featured in whatever story Browning had dreamed up to account for his late return home-the servant to whom I had handed in the note had recognised me, and this would have had to be explained. To blunder in and attempt to improvise my part in this domestic comedy was to risk my entire standing here. At one stroke I might become a social leper, persona non grata wherever I turned, the man to whom no one would ever again be at home!