A Siren Part 39

"None whatever."

"But since that time you have become intimate with her?"

"It is true."

"Signor Marchese, this is a most lamentable and unhappy affair. It is my duty to point out to you, what doubtless your own good sense has already suggested to you--that the mere facts, as you have related them to me, place you in a very unfortunate position. But most unhappily--it is exceedingly painful to me to have to say it--there is, if what has already reached my ears be true, worse, much worse behind. I am obliged to ask you what conversation, of a special nature, pa.s.sed between you and Bianca Lalli during your excursion?"

"I will make no pretence at not understanding your question, Signor, nor any attempt to conceal the truth. I have already stated the facts; or that, which you have evidently heard, could not have reached your ears.

The Signorina Bianca Lalli confided to me the fact, that my uncle the Marchese Lamberto had offered marriage to her."

"Most lamentable, and to be regretted in every way," said the magistrate, gravely shaking his head. "You perceive, Signor Marchese, the terrible, but inevitable suggestion, that arises from the fact of your having been made aware of a purpose so disastrous to your interests?"

"I call your attention, Signor, again to the fact, that nothing would have been known of any such communication having been made to me, had I not spontaneously mentioned the circ.u.mstance myself."

"It is true, Signor Marchese, and it will not be forgotten that this circ.u.mstance was spontaneously mentioned by you. But you must observe, that the fact of the proposal made by the Marchese Lamberto would have become known in more ways than one. And unhappily the fact that such a proposal had been made, would throw a very disagreeable light on the extraordinary circ.u.mstances of this death. To whom would the death of this unfortunate woman be profitable? That is the fatal question, Signor Marchese, which it is impossible to avoid asking."

"I am aware of the cruelty of the inference suggested by the circ.u.mstance, Signor Commissario," said Ludovico sadly.

"Have you any suggestion to offer yourself as to the possible means by which this woman may have met with her death?" asked the Commissary of Police.

"As far as I could see at the city gate, and according to the statement of the men who found the body, there was no indication of violence whatever to be found on it. My suggestion therefore, and my trust is, that the cause of her death was a natural one:"

"That will be a question for the medical authorities to decide," said the Commissary.

"I was about to ask you whether they had proceeded to any examination yet?" said Ludovico.

"Not yet; we shall have the report immediately; and it shall be at once communicated to you."

"At the Palazzo Castelmare?" said Ludovico, though he had but very little hope that he should be allowed to remain at large.

The Commissary shook his head very gravely.

"I need hardly tell you, Signor Marchese, how painful it is to me to be compelled to announce to you that we cannot find it consistent with our duty to allow you under the circ.u.mstances to quit this building. The utmost that can be done to make your detention as little uncomfortable to you as possible, shall be done. And I can only say that I trust it may be but for a short time."

"Permit me to observe, Signor Commissario, that after seeing the dead body at the gate, to say nothing of all the hours previously, if I had been guilty,--I had abundance of time to escape, and to place myself beyond the reach of the Papal authorities, before I could have been overtaken. I might have done so, but did not. Might not that be held to justify you in allowing me to retain my liberty until the course of your inquiries may again require my presence?"

"I fear not, Signor Marchese, I fear not. The fact that such a crime has been committed throws a terrible responsibility upon us. As to your not having availed yourself of opportunity to escape, I may remark that you may have been detained, not so much by your desire of meeting inquiry, as of having the interview, of which you told me just now. You say that you came directly from the Signorina Foscarelli's dwelling hither. At that time it was too late for hope of escape. I fear, Signor Marchese, it will not be consistent with my duty to allow you to depart."

So Ludovico was conducted to a very sufficiently comfortable chamber reserved for similar occasions, and found himself a prisoner, waiting trial on suspicion of murder.

CHAPTER III

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 n.o.ble 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 antic.i.p.ating 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 munic.i.p.al 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 s.p.a.ce 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 circ.u.mstance 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 pa.s.sed 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 dest.i.tute. 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 compa.s.sion for the perpetrator of the crime. There is something in this Italian mode of viewing human events and human conduct curiously a.n.a.logous 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 compa.s.sion 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 n.o.ble 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 circ.u.mstances should seem to give any value to it.