CRIME AT THE WINDOW

CRIME AT THE WINDOW

The window, on the back of her house, overlooked the garden of the Cecchi, her neighbors. Beyond the garden they stood, the high, massive, squared buildings, recently built, that included hundreds of apartments.

It was an almost dark night, there was only a  thin crescent moon in the cloudy sky.

Angry meows , which seemed to her, who was standing at the open window, coming from the garden of her neighbors who, however, didn’t have cats.  She tried to sharpen her eyes, but she was able only to see more or less dark and indistinct areas in the garden on which the window opened.  Even the numerous windows on the façade ( front face) of the two high, massive buildings , that stood beyond the garden, were all dark.

It was when she heard the chimes which sounded midnight that, here that, at suddenly , in the expanse of darkness she had before, a rectangle of light appeared. It was one of the window at the third floor  of the building at her right. In the illuminated rectangle of the window, which was closed by a thin curtain, two silhouettes had appeared: one of a slender, long haired person  (someone), wrapped in a kind of cloak, the other ( silhouette) was of a taller and more massive person.  But what Clarice saw, that is,  the one on which her attention focused ( what she focused on)  as soon as that window lit up, were the hands of the taller and more massive silhouette  (figure) that tightened around the neck of the lower and thinner one, which slid to the floor  of the room , that she couldn’t see. Clarice had not heard a cry or a moan, not even a word. She kept on looking at the illuminated screen that for her that window was, even if a screen that allowed her to see only the silhouettes ( or the figures, or the shadows) of the people who, being in that room, were framed in the window. Now in the illuminated rectangle of the window only the higher, massive silhouette appeared, probably of a man, that she could not understand what he was doing. He seemed to be standing there, motionless, maybe he was looking at the ground, but she wasn’t sure ( she couldn’t be sure). The silhouette of that one, probably a man, appeared to her still only for a few moments. Soon the light went out and that window came back to be dark, like all the others .

Very harsh, very angry meows were coming from the garden of her neighbors, meows so angry that made her think of cats fighting. Clarice was, to say the least, shocked by what had appeared to her, even if for a very short time, in that lighted window. ( in that window that had lit up):a man had strangled a woman….Oh, yeah, maybe the woman, whom she had seen slide down, could not be dead...ah, but if she didn’t died after that squeeze of her neck, her killer would have finished her anyway. Clarice had no doubts that she had witnessed a crime, even if she had got up

shortly ago, rushing to open the window still in the anguish of a dream, in which she was going up a large staircase, that had to lead to the entrance door of an imposing building….She saw the magnificent, white building upwards, in front of her, when suddenly, with the suddenness with which in dreams you go from a situation to a completely different one, just the moment she was about to put her foot on the next step, uphill, she was in front of an interminable staircase that, instead of going up, it went down and down , in a precipice descent that seemed to have no end  (of which she could not see the end) . She, completely stunned, really terrified , had been about to fall in the very abyss that descent was, she had woken up, as if to avoid to fall. Then she had gone to the window, and had opened  it , looking for a relief from the fear, the terror that her dream had caused her.

The following morning, determined to investigate the crime she had happened to witness by chance she had asked to her neighbors, the Cecchi, if they knew anyone who lived in that building beyond their garden. They had said her that no, they didn’t know anyone, they didn’t even know the name of any of the tenants in that building. And then Cecilia C, haf added, who knows why, that in the other building, instead, until a few months earlier, a distant relative of theirs had lived.

“He, Carl V., killed himself in his apartment , at the third floor of that building” Cecilia had said, pointing to the building next   to which Clarice was interested in. But look, right on the third floor that relative of the Cecchi had killed himself….on the third floor, but of the other building, she  had thought , how strange….that she had seemed there was something very strange , but even threatening about what she could not help but consider a coincidence….the coincidence of the third floor. Yeah, both the crimes had happened on the third floor, even if on two different buildings.  Two crimes, certain, since she remembered that Carl V. had been found hanged, but those who did the investigation were not at all convinced it had been  a suicide.

“ Ah, yes, now I remember….But I didn’t know that Carl V., found hanged, was your relative….” Clarice said, hesitating, almost fearfully. She was ( had been) about to say even that she did not know that the apartment where that man, Carl V., had been found hanged, was on a third floor too…..the coincidence of the third floor seemed to her to mean something

“ Ah, yes…it was a strange suicide…I remember. And how did it go then? Was his really a suicide?” Clarice asked. “ Ah, of course, it was a suicide” Paul C., Cecilia’s husband had intervened precipitously , too precipitously….He seemed to have hastened to answer her ( Clarice) as if….he feared that Cecilia could answer, what she could say. She, Cecilia, in fact had seemed to her not to be of the same opinion of her husband regarding the death of that distant relative of theirs. In fact, while Paul , sure, claimed that, but of course, it had been a suicide, she ( Cecilia) had kept on looking at the building to which the apartment of that her distant relative____where he had lived and had died___belonged. Indeed to Clarice it had seemed that her neighbor was looking right at the windows on the third floor of that building. Oh, and she too, Clarice, had happened to see a murder , looking at a window on a third floor too……the third floor of the other building, agreed….but ir was still the (a) third floor. Clarice had been tempted to tell Cecilia the scene of crime she had happened to see at the window, but then she hadn’t dared to.

Anyway, come on, if she wanted to find out what had happened the last night in the apartment of the third floor of that building….oh but she had no doubts : what had appeared to her in that   lighted window, it had been certainly a crime….well, but then she had to try to find out wh had been strangled( killed) , and who was the killer. Then, she absolutely needed to know who lived in the third floor apartment to which that window belonged. And for this, before this, since she didn’t know any of the tenants of that building, she had to come up with something that would allow her to access that building without giving rise to suspicion and ( that would allow her) to approach people who lived there. Thinks and rethinks, since she had previous , even if, to tell the truth, far from fortunate , experiences of home sales of household appliances, but also of products for household cleaning and personal hygiene, Clarice decided that she would introduce herself to the tenants of that building offering them very special sweets, at unbeatable prices. So she (had) bought the sweets in a pastry shop where an aunt of hers worked, and started to ring at the bells of the building residents, offering them delicacies that, she bet, they had never tasted. It had not been easy, but, after having rang  several apartments bells, a young woman, mother of two children, had  told her that, of course, she was interested in her sweets, which she hoped , would have made her children happy .

Clarice had been thus able to come in the building  where , more than offering her delicious sweets, she took care to obtain as much information as possible  about the tenants on the third floor. There were four apartments on the third floor. In one of them a family, with numerous children, lived. The children greatly appreciated Clarice’s sweets. In another apartment an old paralytic woman lived, assisted by a caregiver. The old woman said her, disgusted, that her sweets, other than delicacies, they were very bad , even disgusting. From the old paralytic

woman there was no way, for Clarice, to obtain any information on the other tenants on the third floor.

Who, on the other hand, ( instead) was able to give her some information was the young painter who lived , with the company of a dog and numerous cats, in one apartment of the same floor.

It was this young man who informed her about the one who lived in the apartment ,in whose window, which had become a screen in the night, Clarice was sure to have seen the scene of a crime. MS Green lived in that apartment, but she had gone to Japan more than a month ago, so that apartment had been uninhabited ever since. Oh, but could he be sure that, in absence of the owner, of MS Green, other people couldn’t have access to that apartment? Clarice asked, even if she would have wanted to ask him a more direct question.____But last night was there, by chance, anyone in that apartment?____She would have liked to ask him. Oh, no, it was absolutely out of the question that anyone could have access to Ms Green’s apartment when she was absent ( in her absence), the young man had assured.

Clarice had left the building rather disappointed and disconsolate. She had worked so hard to get to know what? That in the apartment she was interested in, there was no one. There was no one even last night. Yet she was sure she had witnessed a crime Therefore someone had to have been killed. But nevertheless she didn’t succeed in finding out something about that crime she had happened to witness by chance, and of which no one seemed to know that it had happened.

A few months passed, and Clarice happened to read in the newspaper that the corpse of a woman had been found in the apartment of Ms Green.  That woman, whose death dated back to months ago, had been killed, she had been strangled. The suspect in the murder was Ms Green, who could not be found. She had disappeared.