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Overview
The scandal that erupted was a top news story in Europe and America for three consecutive years. Investigators uncovered successive layers of a conspiracy that constantly twisted and changed its shape. The suspects included all these men as well as their servants and lovers. There was a diverse array of murder weapons, including knives, heavy pellets, and poison. There were rumors of missing accomplices. Intimate relations among many suspects were uncovered through sensational letters and testimonials. Witnesses died mysteriously. A suspect tried to kill himself. One question lingered throughout and still haunts researchers today: what role did Bonmartini's widow, Linda, known as "The Enchantress," play? Was she the spider at the center of the vast web, or did the plot originate with the key men who loved her so desperately?
Scholar and writer Christina Vella combines meticulous research with a novelist's eye for a great story. As she unspools the tight, tense drama, she offers a fascinating picture of Italian society in the early 20th century, with a historian's insights into life at both the top and the bottom. From sexual dysfunctions, to prison conditions, to the patronage systems that permeated medicine, law, and politics, the Bonmartini murder provides a window into a rich world. The result is an unforgettable story and an invaluable introduction to an Italy that is still recognizable today.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781416576044 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Free Press |
| Publication date: | 09/06/2007 |
| Pages: | 416 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 1.10(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Indecent Secrets
The Infamous Murri Murder AffairBy Christina Vella
Free Press
Copyright © 2006 Christina VellaAll right reserved.
ISBN: 0-7432-5046-X
Chapter One
The Murder
Dressed in his good suit, his vest neatly buttoned over his gray tie, and his suitcase full of soap, Count Francesco Bonmartini stank uncontrollably. Years later, neighbors could still recall the odor that permeated all the apartments at 39 Via Mazzini and reached out to the street, where the driver of the police carriage finally had to urge his horse toward the gentler air of the next block. The smell had begun on August 30, and was so unbearable by September 2 that the manager of the building called the police and made arrangements to open the Bonmartini apartment that appeared to be the source. Several officers of Bologna's public security arrived with a picklock and hammer and broke the fastening with a practiced blow. When the door swung open, the invaders were thrown back into the hall by the stench of Bonmartini. He was lying just inside the entrance. Faustino Cenacci, the manager, controlled his nausea, braced himself against the odor, and went in behind the police, following the black creek that led from the door to the body. He made for the window and opened it, gulping the outside air before he turned around to look at the rotting man.
Bonmartini was lying on his side, his hand on his chest as if to touch the gaping crescent where his larynx had been and which now held a deep socket of clotted blood. There were thirteen cuts on his face, hands, arms, and chest, including one terrible hole between the second and third buttons of his vest where a ferocious stab had broken his sternum, pierced his heart, and produced the hemorrhage that covered the room with a carpet of dark crust. His jacket was open; his wallet, empty of money, lay nearby. Among the folded papers in the wallet was a note signed with an initial:
Dear Count, Thursday the 27th is fine for me, also the time. However, I wonder if we couldn't meet at the door on the Via Pusterla side, where we won't be seen by the tenants in the front? Meanwhile, I'm sending you many kisses and fondly remain Your B.
Bonmartini had just arrived home from Venice when he was attacked, still holding his keys, umbrella, overcoat, and yellow suitcase. A knife was plunged into his chest as he crossed the threshold. He must have tried to defend himself even while hemorrhaging on the floor - both his hands were cut from grabbing the weapon - but his desperate efforts were futile. According to the medical examiners, the lethal blow was the first one, "cutting the sternum in two," they said with amazement, "even though it is one of the densest bones in the body." To finish him off, the assassin cut his throat twice, with two sweeping slices that severed Bonmartini's esophagus and a nerve bundle near his shoulder. Now the yellow nerves had spilled onto his jacket lapel. Cenacci could detect a few strands on the railroad schedule that was folded under Bonmartini's arm.
The big body had long been spoiling. Cenacci forced himself to look at the vermin swarming over Bonmartini and at the movement that had gathered in a tight party at the count's nostrils and eyes. Where do maggots come from? he remembered thinking. Are they born spontaneously as the body decays?
The apartment was scarcely less horrible and fascinating than the body. A trail, black and coagulated, stretched from the body to the bathroom, where there was a full basin of blood and red-soaked towels. Two glasses and an empty champagne bottle stood on the dining room table like props left behind onstage from some previous affable play. Bonmartini's wife and two children were in Venice taking the baths. In the children's bedroom were part of a cake and two sandwiches, the remains of a simple meal. There was an imprint of a body on one of the beds and a light, dirty footprint on the other, as if someone had stepped on the coverlet. Between the two little beds, cigar ashes had spilled to the floor. The police carefully saved the ashes and dirt and measured the ghost that had dented the bed. Under a pillow on the count's bed was a pair of women's underpants, well made by machine, with delicate drawstrings and lace on the gathers under the knee. Though notably red, they were not the cheap bloomers of a streetwalker.
Bonmartini's wife, Linda Murri, was informed that the body had been discovered, and a message was dispatched to her father, a renowned doctor and the head of a clinic in Bologna. Her brother, Tullio Murri, who could hardly stand the sight of Bonmartini when he looked his best, was called in to identify his disintegrating corpse. Tullio arrived with his uncle, a lawyer, partially deaf. The two of them remained for some time in the front courtyard, the excited Tullio telling anyone who would listen, "The motive must have been robbery, because they also took Linda's jewels," a refrain repeated word for word by the uncle who, having heard only the word "robbery," would hasten to provide details. Tullio informed visitors to the commotion that Bonmartini had led a "disordered life" and was known to consort with fast women. As if to confirm his assertion, the investigation soon turned up a few long blond hairs in the count's bed and chamber pot. Bonmartini's luggage indeed contained a disordered collection of objects: a curling iron and some leather curlers, a fork, a bathrobe that was not his, a tortoise shell hatpin, two dressing gowns that would not have fit him, and a cigar case, along with many newspapers tucked into the side holders. He carried a rosary in his pants pocket, loose with his change. The eminent Augusto Murri, father of Linda and Tullio, visited the cadaver and offered his professional opinion: his son-in-law had not committed suicide, as police had first conjectured when called to the locked apartment.
All over Italy journalists and their readers advanced theories about how the count died, each day's articles confirming that the rich and famous, too, have sordid and unhappy lives. It was believed for a while that the count had planned a rendezvous with a woman on his return to Bologna and that, after lovemaking, the woman opened the door to accomplices who murdered the count and robbed the apartment. The defenders of this hypothesis were hard put to explain why Bonmartini would have arisen from a bed of vice and meticulously redressed himself with all the pieces of his three-piece suit and a railroad timetable under his arm. If robbery had been the motive for the murder, why had the thieves left valuable rings on the victim's fingers? The elderly portinaia, doorkeeper of Bonmartini's building, said she saw the count arrive home in a carriage about 6:30 on the evening of August 28. "It would have been my duty to carry his suitcase," she explained to investigators, "but he gave me to understand that it was too heavy." She therefore unlocked the outer gate to the house, walked with him through the long corridor to the inner courtyard, and watched him go up the stairs to his apartment. She returned to her window near the front of the house just in time to see an accident: the carriage that had brought Bonmartini collided with an automobile and lay overturned at the corner. Though the evening had been eventful, the carriage driver remembered that the count was tall, fat, and young, had a black beard and wore a black hat, and that he was let down at precisely 6:20. A few minutes after the count's arrival, one of the contessa's servants came by, a wardrobe mistress whom the portinaia called the Flower Lady because her hats were prinked with flowers. The wardrobe woman inquired whether the count was in, and she, too, went up the stairs but returned in a moment, reporting that he had told her to come back the next day. According to both the portinaia and a young girl who was with her in her kitchen, no one else came in or out of the front entrance that night.
"Are you certain, Grandma, that Count Bonmartini didn't leave again that night?"
"Not that night or after" came the answer. According to the old lady, he never went out the front door again until he was carried reeking down the stairs. None of the neighbors recalled hearing any disturbance coming from his apartment either on the night of the murder or during the five days afterward while he noiselessly decomposed. Nothing else of special interest was found in the apartment, except in the count's desk. One drawer contained stationery that exactly matched the rendezvous letter from the mysterious "B."
Count Bonmartini's family estate was outside Padua. A search of his bedroom there uncovered a collection of pornographic photos which the investigators examined conscientiously. His briefcase contained a revolver, ammunition, a gun license, a walking stick with a sharp, pointed end that could serve as a weapon, a crucifix, a picture of the Madonna, and letters - from a singer, and from donne allegre ("lively" women), along with drafts of his letters to them.
Your darling is late in answering you [he explained in one] because I'm in the country with the family and only just got your letter. I am very much against what you suggested, as I see no way of bringing you to Bologna. Your coming would be an embarrassment and, since you love me, you wouldn't want to do that to me. You know how important it is to me to fulfill my duties toward my family, and how I'd do anything not to be remiss where they are concerned.
To another he wrote:
Your letter gave me quite a start. It shows me that you don't understand what our relations are and must be. Given your relationship with [name obliterated], which you must maintain and safeguard, and given my family constraints, we should both understand that I am not, nor could ever be, your lover.
Bonmartini agrees, however, to give her some money that she has asked for but he cautions her:
Read this letter carefully. If we keep to the straight and narrow, we can always be the best of friends, and in that hope I embrace and kiss you with much affection.
To a third:
My dear, it is absolutely impossible for me to come tomorrow. I have a ring on my finger and am not, therefore, free to do as I please.... Write me here in Padua, to Dr. Piccoli [Bonmartini's extramarital pseudonym]. Give me your home address, as it's impossible for me to take off for the Caffè Orientale in between classes [he was attending medical school]. A kiss to your Pomegranate Blossom.
The newspapers published other police findings: effusive missives to Bonmartini from three women, all indicating their partiality to his eyes and his fortune.
My gorgeous love, ... I'm having a great deal of success in Trieste, but I was better off in Bologna because there I was with you. I'm dying for your kisses. I want to cover you with caresses. Really. Your Nini
My dear, beloved sweetheart. I feel neglected and wonder if you've forgotten me. Wait, I don't know what to think - maybe you don't love me and would rather have some two-lire tramp, like those in the station. Through no fault of mine I often find myself needing money that I hope you won't refuse. This will be a new proof that you love me. I'm absolutely counting on your coming. Kisses, Silvia
Silvia wrote again of "that train station tramp who caused me so much torment" but ended by "covering those beautiful eyes with long, long kisses."
My handsome love [wrote another, who was also waiting to kiss his beautiful eyes]: The seventh of April is my Name Day. All my lovers are migrating, so I'm saving it for you alone. I love you. Kissing you everywhere, everywhere, everywhere! Your Clelia.
Dear, my love, my wonderful treasure, my handsome one. I'm hungering for your caresses.... Seeing your writing made me start to cry.... My mother thanks you so much for the marsala. Write me right away. Covering you with kisses, I am your very much in love, Nini.
Dear friend ... After your oaths I didn't believe you were false this way. But believe me, your method of doing things will cost you many tears, because, believe me, my love toward you has now changed to utter scorn. You must know that for your sake I left my [name obliterated] and lost the 70 lire a month that he was giving me, you, with your slick ways, you made me despise that man who adored me like a madonna in order to dedicate myself completely to you who was such a fine gentleman and a liar. You should know that if you don't respond right away to this request I will wait until the end of the month and then I'll give your wife all your letters. Understand? Clesias
For several days, the major newspapers provided readers with delectable accounts of Bonmartini's exploits. Sightseers began gathering in front of the Palazzo Bisteghi on Via Mazzini, now that the smell had subsided. They asked sly questions in the farmacia, located then as now under the Bonmartini apartment; the druggist had nothing to report concerning women, but he could talk feelingly about the stink that had come through the ceiling. Bonmartini's cousin Valvassori and his best friend Cervesato tried to defend his memory; but their protests were a splash against the deluge of lurid articles and public contumely. "I knew that Bonmartini was fond of caffè singers," said a lawyer in Padua, "though he was raised to be very religious. I was shocked to read that he allowed a donna allegra in the family home. I didn't think he was capable of that." One young woman felt bound to answer the reports of the count's degeneracy by recording that she had encountered him in her territory near Via Mazzini. "Seeing that he was good-looking," she wrote, "I approached him. 'Go home to your people!' he told me."
The nasty essays attacked both Bonmartini and the aristocracy in general. L'Avvenire d'Italia, a Bolognese daily, reported that Bonmartini had contracted a venereal disease that infected his wife. The result of this contagion, the paper averred, was that Linda lost one eye to the malady and had gone to clinics abroad to seek treatment. It was suggested that the count's malodorous dead body was an apt symbol for the fleshly offenses he committed when alive. Alongside these editorials were articles recounting Linda's history of sickness and injury, and even longer reviews of her father's accomplishments. Augusto Murri was not from an old family; he was a self-made man, an exemplar of the active, educated, agnostic professionals who had been gaining ground everywhere in Europe, making independent names for themselves. The Murris were respectable and genteel. How could an event of such raw brutality happen in a decent family?
The long and sordid Murri-Bonmartini story had begun.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Indecent Secrets by Christina Vella Copyright © 2006 by Christina Vella. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Dramatis Personae
A Note
Chapter 1 The Murder
Chapter 2 The Marriage
Chapter 3 The Wife
Chapter 4 The Brother
Chapter 5 The Lover
Chapter 6 The Third Accomplice
Chapter 7 The Latest News
Chapter 8 The Trial Begins
Chapter 9 The Mystery Witness
Chapter 10 The Summations
Chapter 11 The Closing
Chapter 12 Tutti
Chapter 13 Coda
Notes
Pronunciation Guide
Acknowledgments
Index