“Michela Pardo.”
“Ah.”
She snuffed out her cigarette in the ashtray and lit another. A wrinkle now furrowed her beautiful brow. She was concentrating very hard. Not only beautiful, but also quite intelligent, no doubt. Without warning, two more wrinkles appeared at the corners of her mouth.
“Did something happen to Angelo?”
She’d finally asked.
“He’s dead.”
She shook as though from an electrical current, and closed her eyes tight.
“Was he murdered?”
She was quietly weeping, without sobbing. “What makes you think there was a crime?”
“Because if it had been a car accident or natural death, a police inspector would not have come to interrogate the victim’s mistress at eight-thirty in the morning.”
Hats off.
“Yes, he was murdered.” “Last night?”
“We found him yesterday, but he’d been dead since Monday night.”
“How did he die?” “Shot.” “Where?” “In the face.”
She gave a start, trembling as though she felt suddenly cold.
“No, I meant where did it happen?”
“At his place. Do you know that room he had up on the terrace?”
“Yes, he showed it to me once.”
“Listen, ma’am, I have to ask you some questions.”
“Well, here I am.”
“Did your husband know?”
“About my affair with Angelo? Yes.”
“Was it you who told him?”
“Yes. I never kept anything from him.”
“Was he jealous?”
“Of course. But he could control himself. Anyway, Angelo wasn’t the first.”
“Where would the two of you meet?”
“At his place.”
“In the room on the terrace?”
“No, never. As I said, he showed it to me once. He told me he went up there to read and sunbathe.” “How often did you meet?”
“It varied. Normally, when one of us felt like it, we would call the other. Sometimes we went as long as four or five days without seeing each other, maybe because I was too busy or because he had to go out on his rounds of the province.”
“Were you ever jealous?”
“Of Angelo? No.”
“But Michela told me you were. And that lately the two of you had been quarreling a lot.”
“I don’t even know Michela. I’ve never met her. But Angelo used to tell me about her. I think she’s mistaken.”
“About what?”
“About our quarrels. Jealousy wasn’t the reason.”
“Then what was?”
“I wanted to leave him.”
“You did?!”
“Why are you so surprised? The feeling was fading, that’s all. And then …” “And then?”
“And then I realized Emilio was taking it too hard, even though he didn’t let it show. It was the first time he felt so bad.”
“Angelo didn’t want you to leave him?”
“No. I think he was starting to develop a feeling for me that he hadn’t counted on at the beginning. You know, in matters of women, Angelo was rather inexperienced.”
“Forgive my asking, but where were you Monday evening?”
She smiled.
“I was wondering when you would ask. I have no alibi.” “Can you tell me what you did? Did you stay home? See friends?”
“I went out. Angelo and I had planned to get together Monday evening at his place, around nine o’clock. But when I went out, almost unconsciously, I took a wrong turn. And I kept on going, forcing myself not to turn back. I wanted to see whether I could actually give Angelo up, as he was waiting to make love to me. I drove around aimlessly for two hours, then went back home.”
“Weren’t you puzzled that Angelo didn’t contact you the following morning and in the days that followed?”
“No. I thought he wasn’t calling me out of spite.”
“Didn’t you try to call him?”
“No, I would never have done that. It would have been a mistake. Maybe it really was all over between us. And I felt relieved at the thought of it.”
4
The telephone rang again.
“Excuse me,” said Elena, getting up.
But before leaving the room, she asked:
“Do you have many more questions to ask me? Because I’m sure this is a girlfriend whom I’m supposed to—”
“Ten more minutes at the most.”
Elena went out, answered the phone, returned, and sat down. From the way she walked and talked, she seemed completely relaxed. She had managed to metabolize the news of her lover’s death in a hurry. Maybe it was true she no longer gave a damn about the man. So much the better. Montalbano wouldn’t have to hold back or feel embarrassed.
“There’s one thing that now seems a bit—how shall I say?—odd to me…Forgive me, I’m not very good with adjectives …or maybe it seems odd only to me, since I’m… I couldn’t…
He felt completely nonplussed. He didn’t know how to put the question to this beautiful girl, who was a pleasure just to look at.
“Say it,” she encouraged him with a little smile.
“Okay. You told me you went out Monday evening to go to Angelo’s place, where he was waiting to make love with you. Is that right?” “That’s right.”
“Were you planning to spend the night there with him?”
“Absolutely not. I never spent the night there. I would have come back home around midnight.”
“So you would have stayed about three hours with Angelo.”
“More or less. But why …?”
“Did you ever happen to arrive late for a date with him?”
“A few times.”
“And how did Angelo behave in those instances?”
“How was he supposed to behave? He was usually nervous, irritated. Then he would slowly calm down and …” She smiled in a completely different way from a moment be-fore. A smile half concealed, secret, self-directed, eyes sparkling with amusement. “And try to make up for the time lost.”
“What if I were to tell you that Angelo, that evening, didn’t wait for you?”
“What do you mean? I really don’t think he went out, since you said they found him on the terrace …”
“He was killed right after having sexual relations.”
She was either as great an actress as La Duse or truly shaken. She quickly made a few meaningless gestures, stood up and sat down, brought her empty demitasse to her lips, put it down as if she’d drunk from it, pulled a cigarette out of her pack but didn’t light it, stood up and sat down, knocked over a small wooden box that was on the coffee table, looked at it, then set it down.
“That’s absurd,” she finally said.
“You see, Angelo behaved as if he was absolutely certain you were no longer going to his place on Monday evening. Out of some sort of resentment towards you, or out of spite, or to get back at you, he may have called another woman. And now you must answer me truthfully: That evening, as you were driving around in your car, did you phone Angelo and tell him you weren’t going to his place?”
“No. That’s why I say it’s absurd. One time, you know, I even showed up two hours late. And he was beside himself, but still waiting. Monday evening he had no way of knowing what I’d decided. I could have descended on him at any moment and surprised him!”
“No, I don’t think so,” said Montalbano.
“Why?”
“Because Angelo, in a way, had taken a precaution: He’d gone up to the room on the terrace. And the glass door leading to the terrace was locked. Do you have a key for that door?”
“No.”
“So you see? Even if you’d arrived unexpectedly, there was no way you could have surprised him. Do you have keys to his apartment?”
“No.”
“So all you could have done was knock on the apartment door, and nobody would have answered. Before long you would have concluded that Angelo wasn’t home, that he’d gone out, perhaps to blow off some steam, and you would have given up. In his room on the terrace, Angelo was out of your reach.”