required to be cooked.
All of a sudden, the light faded and the wood was shrouded in a dense mist. Soneri decided it was time to make his way back, but as he did so he became aware of the faint squelch of footsteps sinking into the damp leaves behind him. From time to time, the snap of a broken branch could be heard, seemingly from someone picking his way over dead wood in the shade of the beech trees. Soneri continued on his way, choosing carefully where to put his feet so as not to make the least inroad into the profound silence which seemed to amplify the slightest sound. He walked gingerly through a copse of oak trees, where the dry leaves still hanging on the branches made the surroundings even more gloomy. Somewhere lower down, he heard a sharp noise, the quick, alarmed movement of a prey that knew it was being hunted. He thought he made out the outline of a human being, barely glimpsed through the foliage. Perhaps someone had only just realised how close Soneri was and was vanishing into the mist, leaving no more than a tantalising shadow.
Soneri followed the course of the Macchiaferro stream until he emerged into an area of hornbeam and chestnut, ripe for the autumnal pruning. His mind was still filled with the image of that figure, little more than a shadow distorted by the dampness, which had made a momentary appearance before being swallowed up by the mist. As he turned onto the Boldara road, he recalled what he had been told about Albanians and others who supposedly moved about the mountainside. People spoke of them as a menace, in terms which made them the modern equivalent of the ancient fear of wild animals, lightning and hailstones. He took a rest at the reservoir and in the failing afternoon light sat down to enjoy his parmesan. He was taken aback when he realised how meagre were the fruits of his day’s labour, no more than a few mushrooms, all of the “horn of plenty” variety, maybe a couple of ounces in total which would be reduced to half that when cooked.
Once he had eaten the cheese, he turned to the prosciutto. His flask contained a quarter litre of the Barbera which Sante had commended. He gazed up at Montelupo, which resembled an enormous, sweating beast, and thought back to the periods of rest permitted by his father during the hunting season when, seated on a rock or on a tree trunk, they partook of a frugal meal together. Everything was different now, except for Montelupo with its rocky outgrowth. His gaze shifted from mountain to mountain, each one well known to him, until his inspection came to a stop lower down, on the road leading to Villa del Greppo. An ambulance was making its way slowly along the road, and Soneri was reminded of Rivara’s words: either it was going slowly because it had no-one on board or because the person on board was beyond help. Two cars followed close behind, and there appeared to be an unusual level of activity around the villa itself. Soneri took a sip of his wine and decided to go straight home, following the slope of the hill. Tiredness overcame him the moment he reached the plain, but by then he was only a stone’s throw from the Scoiattolo, where Sante was pacing up and down on the courtyard, scarcely noticing his return. When he did see him, he looked at him with a distracted air. The commissario returned the gaze, but Sante continued staring straight ahead, like a blind man.
“All I have to show for a morning’s work is about a quarter kilo of ‘horns of plenty’.”
“Is that what you call them? Do you know the names we use round here for that mushroom? ‘The black chanterelle’, or even ‘the trumpet of death’. That’s a better name after what has happened to Palmiro.”
“What has happened to him? Has he gone missing again?”
“This time it’s for good. This morning they found him hanging from a wooden beam in his loggia.”
The commissario made no reply. He felt an instinctive need to reason, to put this news into some sort of context but he resisted it. “Do you think it was suicide, or is there more to it?”
Sante’s grimace indicated that he did not know. “They say he hammered a huge nail into the wood, tied a rope round it and hanged himself. They found the hammer on the windowsill. He had contrived his own gallows.”
“That takes guts,” the commissario murmured.
“Palmiro never lacked guts. Once he’d made up his mind, no-one could shift him. He never allowed anything to stand in his way.”
“He could have let the cold on Montelupo do the job,” Soneri said, while images of the stolen coffin and the sound of shots in the woods played on his mind. Against his better judgement, curiosity was getting the upper hand and he began to put the various facts together. “What do you think made him do it?” he asked Sante.
Sante stopped pacing back and forth and stood still, his back turned to the commissario. He shrugged.
“You told me he was a decisive man, always sure of himself. Someone like that must have had a good reason for killing himself,” Soneri said.
Sante turned slowly towards him, embarrassment written clearly on his face. “Who can say? Problems with his business…” The worries welling up inside Sante prevented him from expressing himself more clearly.
“The salame factory was not going well?”
The only response was another awkward gesture, a clumsy wave as though in an attempt to grab hold of some notion that was proving as elusive as a troublesome fly.
“There are so many rumours in this village. Who really knows what was going on in the Rodolfi household? This place is buzzing with gossip. You can draw your own conclusion. I’ve got a hard enough job keeping on top of my own business.”
There was a tone of pain in the last words which Soneri sensed conveyed some deep, personal bitterness. For a few moments the two men stood facing each other in silence until Ida called to her husband from the doorway of the dining room. She greeted the commissario, but without her customary warmth. He heard the couple exchange some words as they moved inside.
He went up to his room to change. As he came back out, his eyes fell on the basket with the “trumpets of death”. He opened it and stared long and hard at the dark mushrooms with their long stems and wide-brimmed caps, not unlike instruments played by the town band. They had the eerie appearance of creatures that come out at dusk in northern climes, or in the dank parts of graveyards. They seemed to bear with them evil tidings, and troubled him so much that he tossed them into a ditch.
It was already growing dark when he went into the village. He saw Maini walking in the piazza, but before he could catch up with him he heard his name called out. It was the mayor coming quickly out of the pharmacy as though he had been lying in wait for him.
“So now something has happened,” he began. “It’s not just gossip any more.”
“A suicide is a private deed. The most private of all,” Soneri said.
The mayor was taken aback by this response, leaving the commissario with the strong impression that he did not consider the deed at all private.
“It’s not an ordinary suicide. It couldn’t be if the man who kills himself is Palmiro Rodolfi.”
“In the face of death, we are all equal. As also in the face of despair.”
“We’ve got to understand what drove Palmiro to despair. In my view, it was because of his grandson,” the mayor said.
“His grandson?”
“He’s turning out to be a problem. He thinks of nothing but big, flashy cars. He spends money like water and won’t do any work. And then lately…” The mayor lowered his voice to a whisper, as though he were in church. “It seems he has started taking drugs.”
The commissario thought of the third-generation decadence, corrupted by wealth from birth. “Who found him?”
“His daughter-in-law. She used to go up to his room every morning to check that everything was alright. She loved him like a father.”
“So where was his son?”
“It seems it was he who cut him down.”
“Seems?”
The mayor spread out his hands. “That’s what I’ve heard, but whether that’s exactly what happened…”
“Have the carabinieri questioned Paride?”
“The maresciallo told me that by the time he got there, Paride had already left. They’re looking for him, but there’s no sign of him yet. His wife says that he’s gone to their cabin in the woods, distraught.”
“Did anyone see him?”
“Apparently so, but I couldn’t tell you who.”
Soneri lit a cigar to give himself time to think. The mayor had the same vaguely embarrassed expression he had noted on Sante, but perhaps it was really fear. “So what can I do? I don’t get the impression that there’s
