Free The Disappearance of Signora Giulia by Piero Chiara Page A

his wife the news. The plate she’d been holding fell to the floor.
    ‘How was Signora Giulia?’ she asked.
    ‘Falling apart, poor thing – it was indescribable! Those empty sockets… Only her hair was untouched. At least there was no smell. She was all shrivelled up…’
    For the time being, Esengrini’s arrest was a simple matter of police custody. But that afternoon Sciancalepre decided to complete his report with an explicit charge for the murder of Giulia Zaccagni-Lamberti and of the attempted murder of Carlo Fumagalli. He went to the public prosecutor’s office to deliver his report in person, stopped by police headquarters to accept the chief’s congratulations and then went back home.
    Two days later the public prosecutor, having notified Esengrini of the two charges against him and the warrant for his arrest, went to M—— for the questioning. At the old district prison of M——, built one hundred years before by the Austrians, Esengrini was brought into the little room reserved for judges and lawyers – without tie, shoelaces or belt. And yet his natural distinction was in no way diminished. On thecontrary, an air of being both offended and annoyed heightened the pitch of his words and the looks he gave.
    The magistrate prepared to hear a full confession. But first he waited for the court clerk to take down all the accused’s personal details as required by the State. The official was about to write ‘married with issue’ when Esengrini firmly corrected him. ‘Widower’, he said, his arched brows underscoring the word.
    When the court clerk had finished writing the usual phrase, ‘The accused, charged with crimes as specified in the warrant for arrest, responds’, the prosecutor said courteously: ‘You dictate it, Esengrini.’
    Esengrini agreed with a nod and began to dictate.
    ‘I deny having committed the first crime charged against me at A, of having somehow taken part, or of having caused others to commit it. I deny having committed the crime listed in the second charge at B.’
    He then asked the clerk for a pen to sign with.
    ‘Just a minute!’ the magistrate exclaimed. ‘What do you mean, you deny it?’
    ‘I deny it.’
    ‘Then I have some questions to put to you.’
    ‘Go ahead.’
    ‘How do you explain the fact that the cadaver’s been in your villa for three years?’
    ‘I’m not explaining anything,’ the detainee concluded. ‘For the time being it’s not up to me to explain. It’s up to you to demonstrate that I killed my wife and that it was my shadow armed with the club. If I have to, I will appeal during the course of the inquiry. It’s only now that I’ve learnt that there was an attempted murder in the park the other night. Now Iunderstand why Sciancalepre arrived at my house at one in the morning with such a face. I must reflect, sir; I’ve got to collect my thoughts. For the moment I can tell you only that I am innocent.’
    In truth, the prosecution still lacked evidence. Sciancalepre’s reconstruction was based on nothing but supposition – it was reasonably logical, but that wasn’t proof. The only fruit of the painstaking search of the lawyer’s home and office for the jewellery was the confiscated club. Two safe-deposit boxes at the bank had been inspected with similar results: nothing.
    Sciancalepre worked on an hour-by-hour reconstruction of the morning of the crime, and Esengrini was questioned for a second time. He explained that he had come back to the house at noon and found it in the same state as that in which the Commissario had found it two hours later. Teresa confirmed that she had been sent away from the house at nine by Signora Giulia; that she’d come back at eleven and had heard the signora in her room. She’d gone away for sure at eleven-thirty and returned only at two, when the signora was no longer there. But the door had been closed.

SEVEN
    While the investigators scoured Rome for Luciano Barsanti, Esengrini put in a request