The Disappearance of Signora Giulia by Piero Chiara

truth.
    An idea began to take shape in the magistrate’s mind: that Esengrini was tightening the grip around Barsanti. At any rate, he’d set things up for an arrest.
    While the young man, arrested in Rome, was travelling under escort towards the prison in M——, Esengrini, informed of the discovery of the yellow envelope, made another surprising request. It was his method when defending and the public prosecutor had seen it in action at other times. Begrudgingly, he had to pass the proceedings to the examining judge, presenting the case as rather complex and, as such, requesting a formal investigation.
    The new petition to the examining judge demanded the seizure of Esengrini’s diary for 1955, saved in the office archives. The judge looked at the page for the Saturday when the letter to Barsanti was sent. There he found the following annotations:
    — meeting with the lawyer Berrini on the Bassetti file
    — meeting with Egidio Rossinelli and family on the suit against Scardìa
    — appointment with the surveyor Chiodetti
    — request for provisional freedom: Alfredo Marchionato (N 468/62)
    Envisioning further requests from Esengrini, and curious to see him, the examining judge went to visit him in prison.
    ‘Sir,’ he heard Esengrini say, ‘perhaps you understand where I’m going with this; I therefore advise the utmost secrecy. Go ahead looking into things on your own. But we’re at a crucial point: just one word is all that’s needed to destroy the definitive proof. Don’t even speak with a colleague; don’t let a singlesoul look at the proceedings. My liberty is at stake. The guilty man is nearby, with eyes and ears open. We need to convince him that by this point, I’m done for…
    ‘I’ve been studying the documents I’m putting in the file for you for years and they have revealed the truth to me. Looking through them, I’ve identified the killer, reconstructed his actions and finally, five months ago, I discovered the corpse of my wife in the cistern. (This revelation is just for you.) When I had to leave the house where I’d spent twenty-one years with my wife, I felt I was in danger, but I defied that danger. I had, and I have, a careful adversary, as able as I but more determined, capable of killing again to save himself. An adversary who’s aware of my painstaking work to reconstruct the truth.’
    ‘But who is he?’ asked the judge. ‘It’s time to talk, Esengrini. You don’t trust the law!’
    ‘Sir, if I told you that I trusted the law I’d be lying. I trust you, I trust in your intelligence, your utter rectitude, and that of all magistrates. But I don’t trust the law. Justice is a machine with neither heart nor intelligence: it acts as instructed. And the instruction is determined by the evidence. We must feed it firm evidence, documents, reliable witness statements. Then it will strike accurately. Heaven help us if we feed it with opinions! Or worse, if we stuff it with incomplete or vague evidence…’
    ‘So then, what’s the next move?’
    ‘I would ask you to seal off my office, including the internal space and the windows, and put an officer there to sleep nights. Then I’d ask you to get hold of the file containing the proceedings against Alfredo Marchionato: drawer 468/62 – it’s archived in the magistrates’ court. It concerns an action for libel, which we won. I was the defender. In the trial there’s a request fromme for provisional liberty. I drew it up that Saturday, as you saw in my diary.’
    The judge looked into the Marchionato trial and found the request for provisional liberty, typewritten and signed by the lawyer. He added everything to the records.
    Meanwhile the details of the investigation were coming in to him. The lawyer Panelli confirmed having found the letter in the drawer of the furniture at auction. The same bailiff remembered the details.
    The results of the autopsy also came through. The forensic pathologist had immediately stated that a