The Disappearance of Signora Giulia Read Online Free Page B

each other for ten years. You know who I am. Tell me what’s going on!’ But to no avail. The Commissario knew his trade. Yet he felt he had to tell Esengrini the name at least: Luciano Barsanti. The lawyer remained indifferent. It was the first time he’d heard it.
    ‘He’s the man your wife’s with,’ the Commissario explained, ‘and if you want to help me get my hands on him, you’ve got to make an accusation – this time, of adultery. Without it I can’t surprise them at home. You know that better than I do.’
    Esengrini sat down on the spot and recited to him the charge from the official form:
    ‘The undersigned, etc., etc., having reason to believe that she, his wife, etc., etc., is in Rome, where she is cohabiting with a Luciano Barsanti in via Agamer, n. 15, lodges complaint against Giulia Zaccagni-Lamberti, married name Esengrini, and against her correspondent Luciano Barsanti, requesting all investigations and such verifications as may bring the crime to light in flagrante, etc, etc.’
    He made it without hesitation. He wanted to get to the bottom of the matter, move towards a separation and sort out all his dealings with his wife. They’d have to go through the arrest of the guilty and then the withdrawal of the charge (already planned) in order to procure the separation order with her as the guilty party. It was the necessary route, as well as the only possible one. As for pardoning his wife or letting her back in the house, Esengrini wouldn’t even think of it, something Sciancalepre noticed.

    With the charge in his pocket, the Commissario travelled to Rome, looking around at the Etruscan hills as he passed through Chiusi. Who knows how many cuckolds there were, even in Etruscan times! he thought. He tried to follow the history of adultery from the time of Adam forward, and came to a single conclusion: that horns had always been the real cause of all evil. In fact, they are at one and the same time the devil’s distinguishing feature and the symbol of conjugal infidelity! Could it be any clearer?!
    Sciancalepre considered himself a psychologist manqué, and among the various states of the human mind and their multiple reflections in the psyche he claimed to have studied those of unlucky husbands in particular.
    ‘If you think about it, being betrayed is a desirable situation, one that’s peaceful, even restful,’ he’d say to his closest friends. ‘The trouble lies in uncertainty or doubt – when one fears the worst but isn’t sure. When you’re sure, your fear is at an end. The anxiety fades away and a certain calm takes its place.’
    Thinking along these lines, he turned back to Esengrini’s problem and asked himself what he, Sciancalepre, would have done in his shoes. I’d have poisoned her , he mused, or shot her on the spot, at the right moment. No one could have argued that it wasn’t a crime of passion, and I could get off with a few years . But he had to reject the idea that the lawyer could kill his wife: he wasn’t a passionate man, Esengrini, and he had too great a horror of violence. Killing his wife and getting rid of the body wasn’t something he’d do. A doctor could have done it, but not a man who’d always lived by the book.
    Upon his arrival in Rome, Sciancalepre went to police headquarters to enlist the aid of a couple of officers, andthen made a visit to the area around via Agamer. The road itself started from one of the main piazzas in the suburbs and meandered out towards the countryside. Number 15 was halfway down: a five-storey building full of office workers but without a concierge. Across the road, a space had been cleared for the construction of another apartment building. It hardly seemed like Rome at all. Where was the Colosseum? The Lateran Palace? The Forum? Not having had time to stop in the centre, Sciancalepre felt like he was in a city with no name or history. A wretched, swarming anthill, the place for runaways, wanted men and vagrants.
    He