“And how did you feel about it?”
“I think I already told you. The more possessive he became, the more I grew distant. I can’t stand being harnessed, among other things.”
Wasn’t there an ancient Greek poet who wrote a love poem to a young Thracian filly that couldn’t stand being harnessed? But this wasn’t the time for poetry.
Almost against his will, the inspector slipped a hand into his jacket pocket and extracted the three letters he’d brought with him. He set them down on the table.
Elena looked at them, recognized them, and didn’t seem the least bit troubled. She left them right where they were.
“Did you find them in Angelo’s apartment?” “No.”
“Where, then?”
“Hidden in the trunk of his Mercedes.”
Suddenly three wrinkles: one on her forehead, two at the corners of her mouth. For the first time, she seemed genuinely baffled.
“Why hidden?”
“Well, I wouldn’t know. But I could venture a guess. Maybe Angelo didn’t want his sister to read them. Certain details might have proved embarrassing to him, as you can imagine.”
“What are you saying, Inspector? There were no secrets between those two!”
“Listen, let’s forget about the whys and wherefores. I found these letters inside a linen envelope hidden under the rug in the trunk. Those are the facts. But I have another question, and you know what it is.”
“Inspector, those letters were practically dictated to me.”
“By whom?”
“By Angelo.”
What did this woman think? That she could make him swallow the first bullshit that came into her head? He stood up abruptly, enraged.
“I’ll expect you at the station at nine o’clock tomorrow morning.”
Elena also stood up. She’d turned pale, her forehead shiny with sweat. Montalbano noticed she was trembling slightly.
“No, please, not the police station.”
She kept her head down, her fists clenched, arms extended at her sides, a little girl grown up too fast, scared of being punished.
“We’re not going to eat you at the station, you know.”
“No, no, please, I beg you.”
A thin, frail voice that turned into little sobs. Would this girl ever be done astonishing him? What was so terrible about having to go to the station? As one does with small children, he put a hand under her chin and raised her head. Elena kept her eyes closed, but her face was bathed in tears.
“Okay, no police station, but don’t tell silly stories.”
He sat back down. She remained standing but drew close to Montalbano until she was right in front of him, her legs touching his knees. What was she expecting? For him to ask her for something in exchange for not forcing her to go to the police station? All at once the smell of her skin reached his nostrils, leaving him slightly dazed. He became afraid of himself.
“Go back to your place,” he said sternly, feeling as if he’d suddenly become a school principal.
Elena obeyed. Now seated, she tugged at the housecoat with both hands, in a vain attempt to cover her thighs a little. But as soon as she let go of the cloth, it climbed back up, worse than before.
“So, what’s this unbelievable story about Angelo himself dictating the letters to you?”
“I never followed him in my car. Among other things, when we started seeing each other, it had been a year since I had a car. I’d had a bad accident that left my car a total wreck. And I didn’t have enough money to buy another, not even a used one. The first of those three letters, the one where I say I followed him to Fanara, dates from four months ago— you can check the date—when Angelo hadn’t given me the new car yet. But just to make the story more believable,Angelo told me to write that he’d gone to a certain house—I no longer remember the address—and that I’d become suspicious.”
“Did he tell you who lived there?”
“Yes, an aunt of his, his mother’s sister, I think.”
She’d recovered her nerve and was now herself again. But why had the inspector’s idea so frightened her?
“Let’s suppose for a minute that Angelo actually did get you to write those letters.”
“But it’s true!”
“And for the moment I’ll believe that. Apparently he had you write them so that someone else would read them. Who?”
“His sister, Michela.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because he told me himself. He would arrange for her somehow to come across them, as if by accident. That’s why I was so surprised when you said he was keeping them hidden in the trunk of the Mercedes. It’s unlikely Michela would ever find them there.”
“What was Angelo trying to get out of Michela by having her read the letters? What, in the end, was the purpose? Did you ask him?”
“Of course.”
“And what was his explanation?”
“He gave me an extremely stupid explanation. He said they were supposed to prove to Michela that I was madly in love with him, as opposed to what she claimed. And I pretended to be satisfied with this explanation, because deep down I didn’t give a damn about the whole thing.”
“You think in fact there was different reason?”
“Yes. To get some breathing room.”
“Could you explain?”
“I’ll try. You see, Inspector, Michela and Angelo were very close. From what I was able to find out, when their mother was all right, Michela would very often sleep at her brother’s place. She would go out with him, and she knew at all times where he was. She controlled him. At some point Angelo must have got tired of this, or at least he needed more freedom of movement. And so my phony but over-leaping jealousy became a good alibi. It allowed him to get around without always having his sister in tow. He had me write the other two letters before going away on a couple of trips, one to Holland, the other to Switzerland. They were probably pretexts for preventing his sister from going along with him.”
Did this explanation for writing the letters hold water? In its twisted, contorted way, like a mad alchemist’s alembic, it did. Elena’s conjecture as to the real purpose proved convincing.
“Let’s set aside the letters for a moment. Since, in our investigation, we have to cast a wide net, we’ve—”
“May I?” she interrupted him, gesturing towards the letters on the coffee table.
“Of course.”
“Go on, I’m listening,” said Elena, taking a letter out of the envelope and beginning to read it.
“We’ve found out a few things about your husband.”
“You mean what happened during his first marriage?” she said, continuing to read.
Let alone the rug. This girl was pulling the ground out from under him.
Without warning, she threw her head backwards and started laughing.
“What do you find so amusing?”
“The tric-troc! What must you have thought?”
“I didn’t think anything,” said Montalbano, blushing slightly.
“It’s that I have a very sensitive belly button, and so …”
Montalbano turned fire red. Ah, so she liked to have her belly button kissed and tongued! Was she insane? Didn’t she realize those letters could send her to jail for thirty years! Tric-troc indeed!
“To get back to your husband …”
“Emilio told me everything,” said Elena, setting down the letter. “He lost his head over a former pupil of his, Maria Coxa, and married her, hoping for a miracle.”
“What sort of miracle, if I may ask?”
“Inspector, Emilio has always been impotent.”
The girl’s frankness was as brutal to the inspector as a stone dropped from the sky straight onto his head. Montalbano opened and closed his mouth without managing to speak.
“Emilio hadn’t told Maria anything. But after a while he couldn’t find any more excuses for covering up his unfortunate condition. And so they made an agreement.”
“Stop just a minute, please. Couldn’t the wife have asked for an annulment or a divorce? Everyone would have said she was right!”