The Haunted Martyr Read online

  ‘Eh, Vincenzo.’

  Moments later, Denton was being steered to the exit, and then they were on the pavement, looking at the San Carlo Opera across the street. On the far kerb, a man with an enormous camera on a heavy tripod waved, not at Denton but at his guide; something passed between the two and the small man with Denton shook his head. He looked at Denton and shrugged. ‘Guy I know.’

  Denton said, ‘What the hell was that with the cop?’

  ‘I tell him you my cousin from New York. He tell me he’s looking for Texas Jack. I tell him Texas Jack’s a guy walks like he’s been on a horse too long, his legs look like two spoons back to back. Keep walking.’

  ‘My name isn’t Texas Jack.’

  ‘I know, I know; you’re Mist’ Denton the famous author. You staying at the pensione up Via Chiaia. You looking for a house.’

  ‘How do you know all that?’

  ‘I know ever’t’ing.’ He pointed ahead and across the street. ‘We cross over to Gambrinus’s, we have a couple coffees, I tell you about this house is for rent I know you gonna love.’ He gave Denton that same magnificent smile. ‘An’ it’s in Naples. Da vero Napoli.’ He pulled Denton towards the Caffè Gambrinus.

  ‘Now wait a—’

  ‘I t’ink I see a cop back there.’ He pulled Denton off the kerb and into the flow of carriages, let a horse-drawn streetcar pass in front of them and then hurried to the other side. They were in elegant Naples now, rich Naples; people drove their carriages and the rarer motor car here, strolled up and down, saw and were seen. It was where tourists spent most of their time when not up the hill at the museum or down the coast at Pompeii; it was where Mrs Newcombe and the plump girl’s mother probably were at that moment, trailed by a courier hired to direct them to the shops where he got the highest kickback. Denton, in his elegant Italian tie and hat, fit right in. The tattered man with his hand through the crook of Denton’s arm did not.

  Pulling Denton into calmer waters near the kerb, the man said, ‘What happen, them cops after you?’

  ‘Somebody tried to pick my pocket.’

  ‘Again? Jeez, what a bunch a crooks. “Tried”? You caught them?’

  ‘I, um, let them know who’s boss.’ As if to justify himself (but why did he need justifying?), he said, ‘It was the same pair as before!’

  ‘Oh, Jeez, the same ones? One of them little like me, a kid, snappy dresser—? Oh, Jeez.’ He seemed suddenly worried. Still, he pointed at the door to Gambrinus’s.

  The café was known, even to tourists, for its elegance. Denton expected that the little man might be refused entrance. Yet all the waiter said was, ‘Eh, Vincenzo,’ and made up-and-down signs in front of his own shirt. He wagged a finger. ‘La prossima volta, un’ cravate.’ Next time, wear a necktie. He showed them to a table by a window.

  The big room was filled with money, expressed in clothes and voice and manner. Several women looked at Denton; one even smiled. Her cloak had a fur collar; the man with her wore diamonds in his cuffs. Yet there were also some obvious ‘artists’, if wide hats and earrings and gypsy neckerchiefs identified them here as they did in London. Denton suspected that they were what Augustus John called ‘playing-at artists’.

  ‘You come here a lot?’ Denton said.

  ‘Never been here in my life.’ He smiled. ‘The troot is, I come here alone, they t’row me out on my cheeks.’

  ‘The waiter knew you.’

  ‘Not as a customer. You want caffè?’ He raised a finger at a waiter. ‘Due caffè. You want a pastry? The pastry is very famous. You see how fat the customers are?’ He waved the waiter away.

  Denton looked around. The room was huge, made to seem several rooms by a long service bar and mirrors. The walls were the colour of dried tobacco; glass and metal gleamed everywhere. On the service bar, rows of one- and two-cup brass coffee pots shone, the two-tiered kind that seemed to have their spouts on upside down: water was heated to boiling in the lower pot, the pot was turned over, and the hot water dripped through the grounds into the spouted half, now angled the right way.

  ‘My name is Vincenzo DiNapoli,’ the small man said. ‘I got a wonderful house for you.’

  ‘You looked worried when I said I’d knocked around the kid who picked my pocket. Why?’

  DiNapoli shrugged. ‘Prob’ly not’ing. Don’ worry about it. Lemme tell you about this house.’

  ‘You’re a rental agent?’

  DiNapoli smiled that enchanting smile and chuckled. ‘I’m all kinda t’ing. You want it, I do it. A couple minutes ago, I was a guardian angel, eh?’

  ‘“Things” don’t seem to pay too well.’

  ‘Eh, well…’ DiNapoli rocked his hand back and forth. ‘In Napoli, you learn to do what you gotta.’

  The coffees came. DiNapoli twisted a sliver of lemon peel over his cup and then gulped the coffee down in one swallow. ‘You wanna hear about this house or not? You gonna love it.’

  ‘Maybe you’d like a pastry,’ Denton said. DiNapoli shook his head. It occurred to Denton that DiNapoli, obviously on his uppers, might intend to pay the bill and didn’t want to run it up. ‘I’m buying.’

  ‘You my guest.’

  ‘No, no—’

  ‘Assolutamente, senza dubito—’

  ‘Si, si, io pagare—’

  ‘Jeez, you speak Italian. Sort of.’

  ‘What’d I say wrong?’

  ‘Io pagare don’t mean nothing—“I to pay”. You mean pagaro. “I will pay.”’

  DiNapoli’s expression was fastidious, suddenly rather priestly; language, it seemed, was important to him. He said, ‘I pay. You my guest because I bring you here, try to put you inta this house I know about. Don’ talk about it no more.’

  ‘“Any more,”’ Denton said with a smile.

  ‘Yeah, what I said.’ Correctness in English apparently was less important than in Italian. ‘You wanna hear about this house or don’ you?’

  Denton sipped his coffee. It was intense, bitter, exotic. He tried the twist of lemon in it. ‘What have I got to lose?’

  ‘Hokay, there’s this house in Spaccanapoli—you know Spaccanapoli—?’

  Spaccanapoli was the old Naples. Denton knew what the term meant but had only the vaguest idea where it was—east of the Via Toledo somewhere. He nodded.

  ‘Hokay, this house, w’ich is really a palazzo but not too big, because I heard you don’t want no palazzo. So call it a house. Ever’t’ing done new! Electric on the piano nobile, every room! Running water! Hot in the bat’room! Bee-yootiful chandeliers like you don’ believe! Furniture all elegant, some very antique, some new. A house so perfect for you it oughta have “Denton” over the door instead of the coat of arms of the Conte da Pizzinelli e Marbella, w’ich you can’t read because of them peoples don’ exist no more and the stone gone all to crumbles.’ He leaned forward over the tiny table. ‘And what’s just great, you get two months free!’ He sat back, grinning.

  Denton was instantly suspicious. ‘What’s wrong with it?’

  ‘Not’ing! What could be wrong with it? I just tole you, it’s perfect!’ DiNapoli looked into his empty cup, shrugged. ‘There’s one little t’ing, maybe.’

  ‘Ah.’ Denton tried taking the rest of his coffee at a gulp, regretted it. ‘I knew it.’ His voice sounded strangled because of the coffee.

  ‘It’s not’ing, not’ing. Little thing, you do it, the next day you’re living in paradise. And the first two months free.’

  ‘What’s the little thing?’

  ‘The owner, he says anybody gotta spend one night in the house before he can move in. You spend the night, the place is yours.’

  Denton stared at him. DiNapoli met his eyes for some seconds, then looked away, looked back, raised his eyebrows, looked away again. When again he looked back, he said, ‘There’s this old story. See, the peoples of Napoli, they superstitious. They believe anyt’ing! You tell them Fifth Avenue has the trolley tracks made of gold, they believe you. So, see, they believe this old
story, and so they give this house a bad name. Which it don’t deserve!’

  Denton folded his arms. He looked severe. ‘Tell me.’

  DiNapoli sighed. ‘Once upon a time, in the Cinquecento, there was this bee-yootiful young lady. See?’ Denton had to count: cinque was five, so the Cinquecento was the fifteen-hundreds and what he called the sixteenth century. He nodded. ‘So she got this old husband, he got a bad disposition. And the lady has this piano teacher who’s young and handsome and sings like a bird, so one day the husband comes home and finds the lovely girl lying on her bed with the piano teacher on top of her and no clothes on. The husband pulls his stiletto. The piano teacher goes out the window. The husband stabs the lady right below her left, um, you know, which is as gorgeous as something on Venus, and she’s dying. She says, “Muoro per l’amore, io vivo!” Nice, eh? “Dying for love, I live”. Eh?’

  ‘In the house you’re telling me about.’

  ‘Yeah, in the Casa Gialla. The Yellow House. What they call la camera rossa, the red room. And, uh—’ He looked embarrassed. ‘And now the simple peoples, they say she comes back sometimes and, uh, drips blood here and there and, uh, kills guys remind her of her husband.’ He managed a weak smile. ‘Crazy, eh?’

  ‘You mean the house is haunted, and the owner can’t rent it, so he’ll give two months free to anybody who spends a night in it and comes out in one piece.’

  ‘See, you got it right off.’

  ‘How many have tried?’

  ‘Only a couple. Hardly nobody.’

  ‘And they didn’t last the night?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Well, you know, there was some blood, and there was this lady, but guys like that they make things up! They was lying to make themselves look better, you follow me? You don’t believe in ghosts?’

  ‘Actually, no.’

  ‘Well, see, that’s why I thought you was perfect for it!’

  ‘What does the owner think?’ When DiNapoli looked away and didn’t answer, Denton said, ‘You are representing the owner, aren’t you?’

  ‘You could say that, yeah.’

  ‘You’re doing it on your own! Yes? This is all spit and buffalo chips! Right?’

  The glorious smile came again. DiNapoli raised his shoulders in a shrug and kept them there, hands spread. ‘I tole you, in Napoli you do what you gotta. I hear about the house, I read about you, I put two and two together, I think it’s a marriage made nel’ cielo. What ghost is gonna dare to haunt Texas Jack?’

  Denton stared at him. Then he began to laugh. The laughter rolled out of him like barrels from a dray. He felt better than he had all morning. ‘Mr DiNapoli,’ he said, ‘you have your nerve.’

  ‘In Naples, everybody got nerve. You spend a night in this house, hokay?’

  ‘What have I got to lose?’

  ‘Well, one guy, he left wit’out his pants. You smarter than that, I know. You scare the pants off the ghost.’

  ‘I’m not sure ladies wore pants in the Cinquecento. Or that ghosts do. Interesting question. Why are ghosts supposed to wear clothes at all? Did these guys say that the lady was dressed?’

  ‘Like a queen in a painting, they said. But I dunno why she look like that, because the story is she was nood when she died. But you gonna do it? I talk to the owner today, I tell him I got a sure-fire tenant, I get the keys and I confirm wit’ you. Yes?’

  ‘And you’d expect a finder’s fee from me.’

  ‘That’s up to you,’ DiNapoli said with a gracious gesture of one hand, his face now that of a noble, and very high-class, Roman.

  They arranged to meet in the Galleria next day.

  Denton walked back to the pensione smiling. The sky was silver; the still-wet streets shone. Naples suddenly looked rather glorious. A night in a supposedly haunted palazzo, he thought, might make a fine beginning for the new book. Or maybe the ending. He wondered what they would serve for lunch at the pensione. He wondered if he could entice Janet out for supper after he had visited the filthy old man in the monk’s robe. He would tell her the story of the two pickpockets and then the story of Mr DiNapoli; thinking of him made Denton smile again. He wondered if Janet would smile as he did.

  He was still smiling as he went up the stairs two at a time and opened the pensione door. He stopped smiling when he saw la Signora, the proprietor. She was a very large woman with an embonpoint like a sailing ship’s figurehead, grey hair piled above her face like thunderclouds, threatening ugly weather. So did her frown.

  ‘A representative of the polizia is awaiting you in the lounge,’ she said. Even in heavily accented English, she was fearsome. ‘He inform me you have given scandal to my pensione with public fighting. In the street! When you are complete with him, please come to the office to settle your final bill.’

  That tears it, Atkins said inside his head.

  Inspettatore Gianaculo, for some reason addressed as Dottor, was frog-like and placid and reminded Denton of several about-to-retire cops he had known in London. He sat with his legs apart and his belly filling the space between, a black bowler held on one knee and a cup of the pensione’s coffee, apparently untouched, next to him. He wore a rather tired Prince Albert—probably called something else here, Denton thought—and dark trousers and a waistcoat that didn’t match either, across it a watch chain big enough to have anchored a small boat. Getting to his feet with the slowness and dignity of a fat man, he said in a deep but almost quacking voice, ‘Dottor Gianaculo, inspettatore poliziano Napolitano.’ His hand was plump, warm, strong.

  A woman hurried in; Denton recognised her as one of the Signora’s lieutenants. She had a distinct moustache, steel-rimmed glasses, and hair like the Signora’s—perhaps the house style. In a heavily accented voice, she said, ‘I beg to excuse for my lateness. I am very busy.’ She shrilled something, perhaps the same thing, to the policeman in Italian. Turning back to Denton, she said, ‘I am to transalate.’ She closed the door. ‘We do not want scandal.’

  The policeman sat down, so Denton did, too. The policeman smiled. Denton smiled. The woman refused to sit, said something to the dottore, and he rattled Italian back at her. She said to Denton in English, ‘You have committed outrage against two citizens of Naples. On the street.’

  ‘The two citizens of Naples tried to rob me.’

  She translated this, and the frog-like dottore chuckled and nodded his head and wiggled his eyebrows at Denton as if they were sharing a secret. He spoke; the woman said, ‘You have done a bad thing. The police could prosecute. However, the two victims do not complain and so the police warn you against repeating the outrage.’

  Denton, who was less angry than wearied, said, ‘They stole my wallet a week ago. The same two.’

  The policeman smiled and held up a finger, then opened all the fingers of his right hand and shook them up and down. That meant something: Denton had seen it on the street. He said, ‘I want to complain against the two men.’

  The message that came back was, ‘Do not pull the tail of a sleeping cat.’

  Denton shrugged. The policeman smiled and nodded. The woman asked him something in Italian, got her answer, and went out, telling Denton crisply that she ‘had important things to do.’

  Denton looked at the policeman. Their eyes held. The policeman smiled. Denton opened his hands to signal, Is that everything? The policeman beamed and nodded. They stood at the same time, but, as Denton gathered his hat to go, the policeman closed the door and came close to Denton and said, ‘Signore.’

  Denton, staring down at him from his much greater height, stopped.

  ‘Signore—’ He took Denton’s arm. ‘Is nothing—capisce?’ He pinched Denton’s arm. ‘Is me, I give you—uno medaglio. Capisce?’

  ‘A medal?’

  ‘Si, si, a medal. These two—immondizia, eh? Cammoristi. Guappi.’ He shook his head. ‘Next time—you…kill them. Yes?’ He bellowed out a laugh in his peculiar deep voice, then produced a card and explain
ed in Italian what it was and which line was his name and which the address. ‘La questura. Stato ogni giornata alla questura. Yes? All hours—yes? Anything—yes?’ He patted Denton’s shoulder and said something that sounded to Denton like ‘good fellow’ and waddled out.

  Denton threw his hat and the ulster on a sofa. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry. It’s all my fault.’

  ‘No, no, it’s mine.’

  ‘I “gave scandal” by a cop coming here to talk to me.’ He threw himself into a chair. ‘In London, I’m a lawman; in Naples, I’m a criminal. Actually, the cop was quite decent about it, but the Signora’s got the hump and is throwing us out on our backsides.’

  ‘It wasn’t you, Denton; it was me. Mrs Newcombe came back early and found her daughter here with me and dragged her away. I suppose she went straight to the Signora and made a lot of noise about morality.’

  ‘The dragon gave us until Friday.’

  ‘Oh, good. Mrs Newcombe wanted me thrown out at once.’

  ‘I said I’d get a lawyer if she put us out today.’

  ‘Ah.’ She kissed him. ‘My hero.’ She scowled. ‘Poor Lucy was in tears. She was trying on one of my dresses when her mother barged in. Mama tried to drag her off; Lucy said she couldn’t steal my clothes; Mama had rather a fit; and poor Lucy had to undress with both of us watching her do it, blubbering all the while.’

  ‘Where was the comedienne?’

  ‘Oh, she skedaddled—that’s the word isn’t it, skedaddled?—as soon as her own ma put her large nose between the door and the jamb. I was tempted to close the door on it.’

  Janet was dressing to go to the university, not in the gaudy draperies she wore in private but in a severe, rather mannish grey suit. ‘Fasten me in back, please. You can tell me about the pickpockets while you do it.’

  He told her; he fastened her. He got as far as his telling off Frioni, but she had to go. She kissed him quickly, meaninglessly. ‘You stay here and work.’

  ‘At what? I’m not ready to work. I’ll come with you.’ He sounded grumpy again.

  ‘No, you won’t.’

  ‘Oh, dammit.’ He made himself grin. ‘But I’ve got a funny story to tell you.’ He was thinking of Fra Geraldo and DiNapoli. ‘Two funny stories.’