I Will Have Vengeance by Maurizio de Giovanni, Anne Milano Appel Read Free Book Online Page A

walked away. Maione looked at the priest thoughtfully for a moment, then followed Ricciardi out of the theater.
    Despite the fact that it was now eleven o’clock and that he had come out by the side door, Ricciardi found a swarm of journalists and curious bystanders waiting for him, heedless of the raging wind that whistled through the portico. Maione stepped in front and firmly pushed aside those who pressed the Commissario, trying to snatch a comment for the next edition of their papers. Ricciardi didn’t so much as look up; he was used to ignoring the living and the dead who called out to him, even though he always heard them.
    During the short walk to the Questura, the two men did not exchange many words. Maione was quite clear on the course the investigation would take starting tomorrow: determining the victim’s final hours and questioning possible witnesses. The Brigadier knew how the Commissario operated, that he looked for possible motives, circumstances, words that could put them on the right track, with maniacal attention to detail. The days would be exhausting. He hoped that by that hour his brother-in-law would be gone at least.
    When they reached the Questura, Ricciardi nodded goodnight to Maione and began walking back up Via Toledo. His pace was swift, his head ducked, the wind at his back. The city, which in other seasons at that hour still rang with songs and voices calling out, was already silent that night. Scraps of newspaper swirled in the street, in the swaying patches of light cast by street lamps hung from power cables. His footsteps echoed on the paving stones, acting as counterpoint to the occasional howling of the wind in the recess of some shop or in the doorways of the old buildings. The dead man in Largo della Carità again informed him that he would not let the thief take his things, as he went on bleeding and oozing brain matter. Ricciardi did not bother to look at him.
    He was thinking. An open window, given how cold it was, in the dressing room of a man who had to take care of his voice and be cautious about draughts—it didn’t make sense. The spotless overcoat on the blood-stained sofa—it didn’t make sense. The white scarf on the floor, immaculate—it didn’t make sense. The striped cushion, the only one without a blood stain—it didn’t make sense. The locked door—it didn’t make sense. But what if all these things taken as a whole made sense? The boy on the corner of Via Salvator Rosa, with his poor mangled skeleton, asked him if he could go down and play. The image was beginning to fade, maybe it would disappear and he would be able to sleep peacefully. Ricciardi hoped it would happen soon.
    He had reached his house.

X
    R osa Vaglio was seventy years old. She was born the same year as Italy, but she took no notice of it, then or later. For her, the homeland had always been the Family, of which she was a staunch, resolute custodian. She had entered the household of Ricciardi di Malomonte when she was fourteen years old. She was the tenth of twelve children and the Baroness had chosen her without hesitation.
    She remembered that day as if it were yesterday: the tall, blonde woman, smiling, negotiating the price with her father. She had been friends with the son, a little older than her, until he had gone off to study in Naples, where he remained for many years. Rosa had a keen intelligence and had soon become the person everyone turned to in the grand family villa in Fortino. After the death of the old Baron and that of the Baroness later on, she had kept things going as if they might return from a trip at any moment.
    Instead it was the son, now forty, who came back with his child bride. As she busied herself in the kitchen, that evening of 25 March 1931, sighing over yet another delayed dinner, she gave a quick smile at the thought: her little girl. Actually, little lady Marta was already twenty years old. She looked just like a