By My Hand Read Online Free PDF Page A

head; I’m a country boy, and you know our skulls are a lot tougher than you city types’. But I have to say, Christmas hasn’t put you in a particularly good mood.”
    â€œAside from the fact that, as you know, I’m an atheist, I’ve always found Christmas to be sort of depressing, if you want to know the truth. All these families gathering together to pretend they love one another, whereas you and I see day after day how much they hate one another in actuality; all this exchanging of smiles and best wishes, only to insult one another and wish one another ill as soon as they turn their backs; this flaunting of wealth and prosperity, only to plunge back into the grimmest poverty in the days that follow. It disgusts me.”
    Maione laughed.
    â€œOh,
mamma mia
, Dotto’—there’s a nice bit of optimism! Listen, come over to our house on Christmas Eve: we’ll see if you can resist the broccoli, the vermicelli with clam sauce, and the big pan of eel my Lucia makes, with a couple of liters of wine from Gragnano, which a friend of mine who works down there brings me. Shall we make it interesting, a little cash bet that the Maione family can make you like Christmas?”
    â€œ
Grazie
, Maio’. Thanks especially because, as far as I can tell, you don’t listen to a word I say: Haven’t I told you that gorging yourself like that is bad for your health? Will you get it through your head that you need to start living a healthier life?”
    â€œI give up, Dotto’: there’s just no way to put a smile on your face today. Christmas must just really get you down.”
    â€œIt’s not Christmas, it’s humanity’s sheer evil that gets me down. This morning, before you called and invited me to join you at your murder victims’ social club here, I had to stitch up another couple of skulls because your friends from the Fascist Party were letting off steam by strolling around town cracking people over the head with bats. Whether you call this Year Nine of the Fascist Era or 1931, it doesn’t change the fact that those who have power use it to crush the powerless underfoot.”
    Ricciardi looked at his watch.
    â€œHow about that: we’d been talking for almost three minutes and politics still hadn’t come up. That may be a record. Why can’t you get it through your head that if you keep talking like this you’ll wind up with a fractured skull yourself?”
    Modo grinned, slyly.
    â€œBecause the police can’t protect me, that’s why. Neither me nor any other honest citizen. Speaking of which, would you care to show me your new clients, my dear Commissario Dracula? Your thirst for blood has brought us all down to the seashore: So who’s dead now, some fisherman? Or have you found a comely mermaid murderess?”
    â€œCome with me, I’ll take you upstairs and introduce you to a handsome couple. I’ll also have you know that we have a brand-new orphan on our hands, an eight-year-old girl who still doesn’t know, so it’s nothing to joke about.”
    Â 
    Standing off to one side of the room while Modo, the photographer, Maione, and the two police officers performed the usual minuet that is always danced around corpses, Ricciardi mulled over the feelings that the murder scene filled him with. He was curious about the phrase that the dead woman kept uttering—
Hat and gloves?
—in a tone both affectionate and deferential; the commissario sensed a familiarity, a straightforward warmth underlying the formality of the words. The man in the bedroom, on the other hand, had been brusque and peremptory; his words—
I don’t owe a thing, not a thing
—clearly referred to a debt he refused to acknowledge. Money and affection, mistrust and warmth, scorn and reverence. It was a sharp contrast. The man had thought about money, the woman about cordially welcoming a visitor into their home.
    The