Guilty or not Guilty?
Signor Fortini hurried home, when he quitted the Marchese Ludovico in
the little quiet street, in which they had talked together after the
terrible sight they had together witnessed at the city gate, and shut
himself up in his private room to think. He was much moved and
distressed, more moved than the practised calm of the manner natural to
him, and the slow movements of old age, allowed to be visible.
What a dreadful, what a miserable misfortune was this. A tragedy, if
ever there was one, which would for ever strike down from their place an
ancient and noble family, whose merit and worth had from generation to
generation been the pride and the admiration of the entire city--a
tragedy which would come home as such to the heart of every human being
in Ravenna. Great heaven, what a fall!
And this was the first outcome of the disastrous purpose of his old
friend the Marchese. Truly he had felt that nought but evil--evils
manifold and wide-spreading--could arise from so insane a line of
conduct. But he had been far from anticipating so overwhelming a
calamity as the first result of it.
Then, the deed itself! It would cause an outcry from one end of Italy to
the other. It would be a disgrace, and an opprobrium to the city for
many a year. What! Ravenna invites, entices this hapless girl, who had
been the admiration of so many cities, to come within her walls; and in
return for the delight which she had given them--murders her. Other
cities vie with each other in doing honour to the gifted artist. She
ventures to Ravenna, and--is murdered.
There was a bitterness in Signor Fortini's consideration of the matter
from this point of view, which was more poignant than any other man than
an Italian would quite understand. For nowhere else do municipal pride,
jealousy, and patriotism run so high.
A foul and cruel murder had been done: so much was certain. Signor
Fortini had not the smallest hope that the death would be found to have
resulted from natural causes. And then came the consideration whether
there could be any hope that, after all, the deed had been done by some
other hand than that of the young Marchese di Castelmare.
After thinking deeply for several minutes, the lawyer shook his head.
That such a deed might have been done in the forest on the person of one
found sleeping there, whose appearance was such as to hold out the
expectation of booty to a plunderer, was possible--not very likely, but
possible. Possible enough to suppose that lawless and evil-disposed
persons might have been wandering there-depredators on the forest, who
exist in great numbers--smugglers making their way across the country by
hidden paths, or what not? Possible enough that such a deed might have
been done, and the perpetrators of it far away before the discovery of
the body, away to the southward, and across the Apennine into Tuscany in
the space of a few hours. But all such possibilities were conclusively
negatived by the certain fact that no plunder had been attempted, that
plunder could not have been the object of the murderer.
Alarmed before they could carry their object into execution by the
approach of footsteps? Was this a plausible or a possible theory?
No; for the poor Diva had valuable ornaments visible on her person, an
enamelled gold watch at her girdle, a diamond pin or brooch at the
fastening of her dress on her chest, to possess themselves of which
would have needed less time than was required for the perpetration of
the murder. It was wholly impossible to suppose, on any hypothesis, that
the murder could have been committed for the sake of plunder, and that
these ornaments could have been left untouched.
It had been observed, and was noted--not in the report drawn up by the
officials at the gate, but in the more exact and detailed report
furnished by the police on their taking of the body into their
charge--that the brooch, which has been mentioned, was unfastened, so as
to be left hanging in the dress by its pin. But this circumstance did
not seem to be of much moment, as it might well have been that Bianca
herself had unfastened it before falling asleep.
No; it was but too clear, as the lawyer said to himself, that murder and
not robbery had been the object of the perpetrator of the crime.
There was, it was true, nothing improbable in the story told by the
Marchese Ludovico. That the girl should have been overpowered by sleep,
after having passed the night at the ball, and then started on an
expedition so foreign to her usual habits, was abundantly likely. That
he might have become tired of sitting still while she slept, and might
have strayed away from her, not intending to quit her for more than a
few minutes and a few yards, was also perfectly probable. That having so
strayed he might have been unable to find his way back again to the spot
where he had left her, or to be certain whether he had found the same
spot or not, would not seem at all unlikely to any one acquainted with
the Pineta. All this story was likely and natural enough.
But--the motive--the inevitable inference from that terrible cui bono
question. For whom was it profitable, that this poor girl should be put
to death? According to the fatal information, which, by his own account,
he had received but a short time previously from the victim herself,
information, the truth and accuracy of which were well known to the
lawyer from the Marchese Lamberto himself, the whole future prospects in
life of the Marchese Ludovico depended on the life or death of this
unhappy woman.
If the Marchese Lamberto carried out his insane intention of marrying La
Bianca Lalli his nephew would become simply destitute. After having been
accustomed, from the cradle to the age of four-and-twenty, to all that
riches could procure--after having lived in the sure expectation of
wealth up to an age when it was too late to think of making himself
capable of earning a competence for himself in any conceivable manner,
this marriage would take from him suddenly, and for ever, all such
prospect; and the death of the woman who had bewitched his uncle thus
fatally would make all safe, for the Marchese Lamberto was not a
marrying man--was, as all the town knew, the last man in the world to
have dreamed of taking a wife now at this time of his life.
No; it was the fatal fascination, the witchery, the lures of this one
woman. Remove her, and all would be right.
Ah! The mischief, the woe, the scandal, the disgrace, the irretrievable
calamity, and the misery, that this accursed folly of the Marchese
Lamberto had caused. Ah! to think of all the sorrow and trouble this
woman brought with her into the city when she was so triumphantly
welcomed within the walls by these two unhappy men--the uncle and the
nephew.
It was strongly and curiously characteristic of the Italian mind that
Signor Fortini, in coming to the conclusion that this deed must, beyond
the possibility of doubt, have been committed by the Marchese Ludovico
and none other, was mainly and specially moved by compassion for the
perpetrator of the crime. There is something in this Italian mode of
viewing human events and human conduct curiously analogous to that
conception of mortal destinies on which the pathos of the old Greek
tragedy mainly rests.
How cruel was the fate which had thus compelled the young man to
perceive that the life of this girl and his own welfare were
incompatible!
How dreadful the pitiless working of the great, blind, automatic,
destiny-machine!
To raise a murderous hand against the life of a sleeping girl--how
dreadful! How great, therefore, must have been the suffering which
impelled a man to do so!
He had evidently been driven to desperation by the prospect of the utter
and tremendous ruin that threatened him; and "desperation;" the absence
of all hope, is recognised, both by the popular mind of Italy and by its
theoretic theology, as a sufficient cause for any course of action. It
is especially taught by Roman Catholic theology that it is, above all
things, wicked so to act towards a man as to drive him to desperation;
and the popular ethics invariably visit with deeper reprobation any
cause of conduct which had tempted another man to make himself guilty of
a violent crime than it does the criminal himself.
Thus, lawyer and law-abiding man as he was, with all the habits of a
long life between him and the possibility of his raising his own band
against the life of any man, Signor Fortini, as he mused on the tragedy
which had fallen out, felt more of compassion for the Marchese Ludovico,
and more of anger against the folly of his uncle.
This thing, too, which the Marchese Lamberto had announced his intention
of doing, sinned against all those virtues which, let the professions of
the moral code say what they may, stand really highest in an Italian
estimation. It was eminently unwise; it was imprudent; it was
indecorous; it was calculated to produce scandal; it would bring
disgrace upon a noble name; it was ridiculous; and, besides all this, it
necessarily drove another to "desperation."
"A fool! An insane idiot! Worst of all fools--an old fool! To think that
a man, who had stood so many years in the eyes of all men as he had
stood, should come to such a downfall. It would serve him no more than
right, if it were possible, that all the consequences of what had been
done should fall on his own head."
Still, during all the musings which seemed to force him to the
conclusion that the crime which had been committed was the deed of the
Marchese Ludovico, the old lawyer did not lose sight of the idea which
had been suggested to his mind by that exclamation of Ludovico on the
first sight of the murdered woman. He did not, in truth, as yet think
that it was worth much; but he kept it safe at the bottom of his mind,
ready for being produced if subsequent circumstances should seem to give
any value to it.
After musing an hour while these thoughts passed through his mind, the
old lawyer thought he would go as far as the Palazzo del Governo to
learn what steps had been taken, and whether--though he had very little
doubt on that point--his unfortunate young friend had been detained in
custody.
Signor Pietro Logarini, the head of the police, was an old acquaintance
of Signor Fortini,--as, indeed was pretty well everybody in any sort of
position of authority in the city.
"A bad business this, Signor Pietro," said Fortini, shaking his head.
"The worst business, Signor Giovacchino, that has happened in Ravenna as
long as I can remember. It is very terrible."
"Is the poor young fellow--?" Signor Fortini completed his question by a
movement of his eyes, of one shoulder, and one thumb, quite as
intelligible to the person he addressed as any words would have been.
"Yes, of course. There was no help for it, you know."
"Of course not. I suppose he came here as soon as he parted from me. It
so happened that we were together at the gate when the body was brought
there," said Signor Fortini.
"So I understand. You will be called on for your evidence as to his
manner on being confronted with it."
"Of course; fortunately I have nothing to say on that point that can do
any damage. He was much moved, naturally; we both were; but nothing more
than any man in his place would have been."
"But the worst, the only fatal point in that confession of his, is that
the girl told him of the Marchese Lamberto's intention of marrying her.
Why in heaven's name did he let that slip out?"
"My notion is that it just did slip out, as you say. An old hand, a man
accustomed to be at odds with the laws and the police, would have known
better. Did he make the same statement here?" asked Fortini, rather
surprised.
"On my asking him, as I felt compelled to do, what special conversation
had passed between him and the girl that morning, he told me the fact,"
replied the Commissary.
"But what led you to ask him such a question?" said Fortini.
"Ah!--something that had reached my ears. We are forced, you know,
Signor Giovacchino, to have very long ears in our business. His
conversation with you to-day was held in the street,--a bad place for
such talk, Signor Giovacchino."
"And not chosen by me for such a purpose, as you may imagine. Little
could I guess what sort of confidence I was about to hear."
"Not that it makes any difference. All that would have had to come out,
you know, Signor Giovacchino."
"Oh, quite so, quite so; no, no difference in the world. Did he come to
you immediately on leaving me?"
"No; it would have been better upon the whole if he had done so. He went
first, it seems, to the residence of a lady, one Signorina Paolina
Foscarelli, being very desirous, he said, of not leaving her to hear of
the business from other lips than his own. It is a pity, because his
abstaining from flight might have been something in his favour, if he
had not made it appear, that his remaining in the city might have been
caused by his desire to see again this Paolina. Do you know anything
about her? I see by our books that she came here last autumn from
Venice. What is she like?"
"It so happens that I never saw her. But I am told that she is
pretty--very pretty--remarkably so." "Ah--h--h! that's what kept the
poor young fellow from running till it was too late to run. And yet,"
continued the Commissary, pausing on his words, and tapping his forehead
with his finger as if a new idea had just occurred to him--"and yet the
young Don Juan goes out tete-a-tete into the forest with this other
girl."
"Che volete?" returned the lawyer with a shrug. "Boys will be boys, and
women--are women."
"Yes; but the women sometimes don't quite like--" and the Commissary
allowed the remainder of his sentence to remain unspoken, being
apparently too much occupied with his thoughts to speak it.
"I suppose the medical report can hardly have been made yet?" asked the
lawyer, on whom the suppressed meaning of the Police Commissary's broken
sentence was not lost.
"No; there has not been time. It was too late in the afternoon.
Professor Tomosarchi will make a post-mortem examination the first thing
to-morrow morning; and I daresay we shall have his report in the course
of the day, if, as is most likely, there is nothing to call for more
than a superficial examination."
"I shall be very anxious to hear the result of his investigation--very.
I will look in, if you will allow me, to-morrow morning. And now I think
I will go to that unfortunate man, the Marchese Lamberto. I should not
be at all surprised if I were to find that he had heard nothing about
all this. Only think what it is I shall have to tell him--the woman
about whom he has been so mad as to have determined on sacrificing to
her everything, fame, position, friends, respect,--everything--is dead!
It is his monstrous proposal that has caused her death; and the same
folly has made the representative of his house a murderer and a felon.
Think, Signor Pietro, what that man's feelings must be when these
tidings are told him."
"Depend upon it, the whole city knows all about it by this time," said
the Commissary.
"But I think it exceedingly likely that he has not been out of his
library, all day," returned the lawyer.
"But the servants will have heard the news. Ill news travels fast," said
the Commissary, with a shrug.
"Yes; but the servants will hardly have ventured to repeat such tidings
to him. Two to one it will fall to my lot to tell him. A pleasant
office, isn't it, Signor Pietro?"
"Not one I should like to undertake. Good-evening, Signor Giovacchino.
If I don't see you to-morrow morning I will send you a couple of lines
with the result of the medical examination."
"Thanks, Signor Pietro; but I will look in about the beginning of your
office hours to-morrow morning. I feel as if I should be able to think
of nothing else but this terrible business for some time to come. Felice
sera."
And so the old lawyer went off to call upon his client, the Marchese
Lamberto, truly dreading the interview, and yet not without a certain
degree of satisfaction, and a kind of I-told-you-so feeling in the
prospect of announcing to the unhappy Marchese those terrible
first-fruits of the disastrous purpose, in condemnation of which the
lawyer had spoken so strongly a few hours ago.