Lucifer's Shadow

48 The demon who escaped my grasp

Being an excerpt removed from the memoirs of Alberto Marchese, magistrate of the Quirinal quarter, 1713–33, at his request.

As you, dear reader, will appreciate by now, the rogue is a most ordinary species. I have, in my time, despatched more than 200 to the prison and thirty or so to the sca fold. Human nature being what it is, I cannot, I confess, feel much regret for their fates, nor satisfaction, either. Life is much determined by a throw of the die. None of these felons possessed some seed of the Devil in their blood. Born to different parents in another time, they would all have made model citizens, I’ll warrant, except perhaps for old Fratelli, who was as mad as a swineherd’s hound and twice as dangerous. But anyone minded to strangle his wife, then serve up cooked portions of the dismembered corpse for the relatives who arrived for her own birthday feast, must be deemed lunatic, and therefore not fully human in the first place. Even Brazzi, that light-fingered blackguard with a taste for lifting the purses of tourists on the Palatine, had his finer side, quoting wistfully from Petrarch as I set down his appointment with the axe (a little thievery is one thing, but the fellow should never have stuck that chap from Milan — I know these northern types can be annoying, but murder is murder, after all).

I can think of only one villain I have encountered over the years for whom I feel the word “evil” is truly appropriate, and it is to my eternal shame that he remains, as far as I am aware, a free man. But this was no ordinary criminal. I cannot give you his real name or history. What I do know is that he is surely one of the most wicked creatures ever to have walked this earth, in that his malevolence was both intentional and directed at the innocent in full knowledge of the pain and injury it would cause. Most malefactors fall into their cycle of criminality through laziness, accident, or, let it be said, necessity. The one I describe here indulged in his devilry — there is no other word — because its performance, and its consequences, amused him. Money, influence, power both sexual and worldly… all these things were but side dishes for the main course of his pleasure, which was to deceive the world with one face and devour it with another.

Every other criminal I have encountered in this odd career, I could in one way or another understand. Poverty, lust, greed — read the Good Book, they’re all there — have driven men to bad since Eve first offered Adam a bite of the apple. Yet this one was beyond me, beyond God in all his wisdom, I’d venture. You will suspect I say this because he was a foreigner, an Englishman at that. You are wrong. This fellow — Arnold Lescalier, as I knew him (though I doubt that bears much resemblance to the name he was christened with, if christened he was) — possessed a streak of evil that ran through his soul with the same unbending accuracy of a flaw despoiling a piece of fine marble. It was appropriate, then, that we first met at the Teatro Goldoni, where a passable pack of players was trying to entertain us with a translation of some ancient piece about Faust by the Englishman Marlowe. It was an amusing melodrama, and would have been all the more so had I known that this articulate, entertaining Englishman to whom I was introduced at the interval could have passed as inspiration for the theme. The doomed doctor on his way to Hades, you think? Ah, no. For all his faults, Faust was human throughout. Mr. Lescalier, I believe, had more in common with Mephistopheles, the Devil’s cool and calculating aide-de-camp, who would smile while slitting your throat, then steal your soul as it departs your bleeding carcass and stop it up in a bottle for his master.

None of this was apparent when we met, naturally. All I saw was a pleasant-looking Englishman, perhaps just past thirty, with fair hair, a querulous, deceptively blank expression, and the kind of foppish clothes the travelling aristocrats prefer when visiting Rome: all silk and finery. Mr. Lescalier appeared the sort of fellow who might wear two kerchiefs in each sleeve and never dare to blow his nose in public. The one hint to the contrary, which I should have noticed, was his manservant, an unspeakably ugly little native whose name I never discovered. I assumed that it was the servant’s coarse worldliness which saved his ingenuous master from being torn apart by the Roman hoodlums. Their story was that Lescalier was the bastard son of a rich English lord who had sent him to Europe for an education. The means to gaining this seemed to be to apply money to all in sight in return for admittance to their circle. Lescalier loved painting, sculpture, music, dance, everything that Rome had to offer. He had, he told me, travelled through Paris, Geneva, Milan, and Florence before arriving in our fair city, and while all had their finer points, none could touch Rome. There was, I later discovered, some truth in this. An Englishman named Debrett (strange how the chap chose these French-sounding titles) had fleeced a score of nobles in Milan before decamping, and I heard reports of similar behaviour in Geneva by a scoundrel called Lafontaine.

Mr. Lescalier cast a spell upon all he met that night. The ladies wished to mother him. The men regarded him much like a younger brother newly arrived in the city, in need of guidance and protection from its cruel realities. Before the evening was out, he had invitations to dinner at six of the best tables in Rome (I declined to join the game for no other reason than embarrassment — my humble home could not hope to match those he now had in his appointment book). Lescalier swept through the cafés and dining rooms of the city like a whirlwind, and it was not until a good seven months after that we discovered what tragedy and wreckage lay in his wake.

It was January of my last year in office, 1733, the year in which I now write. I was woken at three in the morning by a rapping on the door. The weather that night was vile. Soft snow, as cold as the grave, swirled from the night sky, and a bitter wind chilled the bone. There was nothing I wished more than to stay snug in bed. I kissed my darling Anna and told her to go back to sleep while I dealt with the visitor. It is a magistrate’s lot to be at every man’s beck and call, night and day. There is no reason why this burden should be shared with one’s wife.

Downstairs was someone I recognised immediately: the chambermaid of the Duchess of Longhena, a handsome young woman utterly devoted to her mistress. The poor child was quite hysterical, in floods of tears, babbling nonsense, throwing her hands to her cheeks. Longhena, a fat, unlovely, and wealthy widow of somewhat flighty nature, lived three streets away down the hill, on the very border of my jurisdiction. I had never liked the woman, to be honest, and lately she had seemed more gross than usual. She had gone to pieces since her husband’s death and, so the street gossip had it, taken to entertaining young men indiscreetly (the sin being in the indiscretion, of course, not the act itself— this is Rome, after all).

I sent Lanza into the kitchen for some grappa for the girl and made her sit down. When he returned, she drank it in one, then, after a further minute of sundry sobs and moans and trembling, calmed sufficiently to be asked the obvious question.

“It is late, girl,” I said. “What is the meaning of this?”

She turned upon me eyes full of grief. “Oh, sir. It is my lady. She is dead, and horribly too.”

“Dead?”

“Murdered, sir. By one she thought loved her more than any other.”

“Lanza!” He had our coats all ready, and scarves and hats to keep out the cold. Thirty years this man has been by my side, and never once has let me down. “Come, girl. We must see what you are talking about.”

“Sir!” Her eyes were wide and open and glassy with tears. “I cannot. Do not make me go back in that room again. I swear I’ll die.”

“Nonsense,” I roared, impatient to be on with matters. “If there’s a crime here, we must see for ourselves, and I shall hear how you discovered it. How else will we find the villain? Come!”

Lanza took her arm and, with the hapless girl wailing more loudly all the time, we ventured out into the night, where we fought our way through the gale and sleet, down the icy cobbled streets, struggling to remain upright. In spite of the weather a small crowd had gathered at the iron gates to the Longhena mansion, muttering darkly about murder and revenge. The night watch had yet to make their way to the scene. I announced my presence and pushed through. The house was very grand, on three floors, with a small Palladian entrance. The front door was open. From inside came the faint light of a small chandelier. With one hand on my dagger, I strode across the threshold and listened for activity. Some felons are late to quit the scene of their misdeeds. It is best to be prepared.

The great mansion was quite empty. Not a sound came from anywhere. Lanza followed on behind with the servant girl, who was now hiccupping and sobbing in that rhythmic way that sometimes betokens the onset of mania. If only I had listened more. Instead, suspecting intrigue (servants figure in crime more than one might expect), I turned upon her.

“Where are the rest of them, girl? The cooks? The servants?”

“All gone for the night, sir. Like the lady asked. She said she wanted me here alone when she met him, and I wasn’t to let on I was around, neither. Just hang about in case I was needed. And he was done so quick, I ran for my life!”

I have, I imagine, no need to tell you who this “he” turned out to be.

“Where is she, then?”

“No…!” She gazed terrified at the staircase, then fell to the floor in a huddle and covered her face with her hands. I have seen many a similar show from villains seeking to escape detection. Justice requires an iron hand if it is to be impartial. I ordered Lanza to drag her to her feet if necessary and follow me up the stairs.

Human blood smells like no other. We climbed two floors to the top of the house. When I reached the landing, I could recognise the stink. At the end of the corridor, in what I took to be the lady’s main bedroom, was a dim light leaking past a half-open door. On the icy draught of night air that came towards us — through an open window at the front, I suspected — was the stench of murder. I have seen enough dead bodies in my time to view this dread task with equanimity. Without another word I walked down the corridor. Lanza forced the girl to follow, her screams rising until, at the door, she fell to the floor and clutched my knees.

“I beg you, Signor Marchese. For the love of God, do not make me return to that place!”

I am the very cynic in these matters. I must be.

“If you are innocent, child, what do you have to fear? If your lady has been done a wrong, you should help us find the perpetrator, not stand in our way.”

Her face went rigid and there was the unmistakable cast of contempt in her eyes. “Find the perpetrator, sir? Would you lock up the Devil?”

“If I could throw my shackles round his ankles.”

There was a movement at her chest. I think it may have been the stirrings of grim laughter. “And you think he’d sit in your cell and await his fate?”

Her strangeness annoyed me.

“Come,” I ordered, and Lanza lifted her bodily, then the three of us entered the bedroom of the late Duchess of Longhena.

I have watched the axe sever a man’s head from his shoulders. I have attended the scene of the vilest of low crimes Rome has to offer. Nothing had prepared me for this sight. Lanza let go of the girl, went faint and pale, then dashed to the fireplace to vomit freely into the dying embers. The poor child knelt on the floor and buried her face in her hands, making the kind of howling sound one might expect of an animal coming face-to-face with the knife in the slaughterhouse.

She was right, of course. None should have entered that room and hoped to come out sane. The Duchess of Longhena, or what remained of her, lay naked on the bed like a small white whale beached in a sticky sea of her own blood. The woman’s throat had been cut from ear to ear, giving her face the appearance of a carnival clown sporting a false smile. Her belly had been ripped open from the breast to the groin, the fat flesh thrust aside to expose the internal organs, and these then torn from their fastenings and scattered around the bedroom much as an angry child might launch its toys at the walls of the nursery.

I remained calm in the face of the girl’s mad chanting and the continued heaving of Lanza in the corner, though this was a false show of reason. Somewhere at the back of my head, the real Marchese shrieked and howled along with her, as if in some locked room of my imagination. His was the true vision of this scene: a cruelty and violence that originated beyond the normal world we inhabit. Yet I must remain the magistrate always, and so contain my sentiments.

I took one step forward towards the bed. By the side of the mangled corpse lay something small and red, a familiar shape, though not in these circumstances. I bent and saw, on the bloodied coverlet, the tiny, perfect form of a human child, its head held forward as if in concentration, its eyes tight shut, tiny fists clenched, legs drawn up to its stomach. The cord still protruded from its belly. I took note of this scene, trying to calm my thoughts, and was aware of a hand upon my back. It was the girl, drawn to the bed, for all its horror. I looked at her crazed face and wondered how she might fare in the asylum. Our eyes returned to the collection of flesh upon the stained white satin and the tiny corpse there, surely the oddest victim of human brutality one might ever hope to find.

We stared at this still miniature of the human miracle for a moment, and then the universe turned turtle on us. For it moved. In one short, convulsive twitch, its limbs jerked into life, and the eyes, still covered with sheen, like those of a lizard, blinked briefly open. A bubble of mucus and blood emerged from its lips. Then the child, a male child, born of the Duchess of Longhena by some bloody parody of the Caesarean manner, died before our eyes.

I fell to my knees and found myself, without thinking, struggling in vain for prayer. Two lives had ended on these bedclothes: one tired and wasted, the other so short it was impossible to imagine how God’s grace had touched its brief, bloody blink of existence.

When I rose, my head a maze of conflicting thoughts, the girl stared at me, not weeping, not shouting anymore. Her face was full of hatred and I knew why.

“I did not… understand,” I stuttered.

“This is the Englishman’s doing,” she replied without emotion. “My lady called him here to tell him she was with child. She asked all but me to go away, wanting some solitude in which to break the news.”

“But why…?”

The room felt steeped in some mad, incarnate rage. It bore down on us all; its weight sat achingly on our shoulders.

She was looking at the bed again, no longer afraid. “I cannot have this poison in my head forever,” she said to no one in particular.

My mind was wheeling in too many directions. I did not see what was happening until it was too late. She walked over to the half-open window, threw up the sash, and, without a word, flung herself out into the night air, two storeys aboveground. I recall the nauseating sound of her body as it met the marble terrace below. It took all my resolve not to follow her. That night I stood in the presence of evil and its stain touched me. The irony was that I had met it many times before and never recognised its true face.

Lescalier had impregnated the Duchess, of course. He had, it transpired, been having a fairs all over Rome. A priest or some kind of doctor might be able to tell me why it was the news of the child which unhinged him. It could not have been planned, though my investigations proved beyond doubt that even without this casual murder, the Englishman would soon have departed Rome. His modus operandi seemed to be consistent with that adopted in the other cities where I traced him. First, he appears as a wealthy, innocent visitor, spreading around the riches he has stolen from his last port of call to gain some favour. Then, when he is embraced by all who matter, he becomes the thief and the rogue: borrowing, stealing, seducing at will, until the net of deceit becomes so broad and encircling that it begins to tighten around his neck. At this point, he flees, and a few weeks later another English aristocrat, with another counterfeit name, appears in society somewhere else in Europe. Curiously, in Paris and Geneva, too, he is thought to have killed, both pregnant women, one who was entirely innocent and merely happened to meet him in the wrong circumstances. What demon in a man’s topography could make him hate so much the notion of motherhood? I cannot begin to imagine. Faced with such horrors, I find the complexities of the human beast beyond my comprehension.

So he escaped me as he escaped my counterparts elsewhere. Should he return to Rome, he will stand trial. But I doubt that will happen. This man is too clever. He deceives us by appealing to the better part of our nature, our generosity, our love of art, our proclivity for welcoming the charming stranger. That makes for a much more cunning villain than your average rogue.

Still, if he is brought to justice somewhere, I shall buy myself a ticket for the trial. And when a lull occurs in the proceedings, I shall remember the most horrific sight I witnessed that evening: the shattered body of that poor maidservant lying upon the marble terrace of the mansion of the Duchess of Longhena, all through the pompous stupidity of an old Roman magistrate who put the letter of the law above the need for simple human compassion.

With that image in my head, I shall abandon my lifelong devotion to so-called justice, take out my stiletto, walk over to the dock, and carve the bastard’s guts out on the spot.

I doubt you will print this, my publisher friend. Yet, of all the tales I have to tell, it is, I submit, in some ways the most edifying.