the Captain anything when they returned, muddy and exhausted, after their double shift. They tipped on to his desk their haul of three shotguns and a pistol for which the respective owners had no licences, and one dose of heroin. They also reported other stolen goods which they found but left to be collected later: a stolen Fiat 500, eight sheep and a donkey.
The Captain telephoned the American Consulate.
CHAPTER 4
'A case for galoshes,' remarked the Substitute, tossing a cigar end out of the jeep and looking around at the steam rising slowly from the wet earth. The sky above them was blue, the air sweet and the spring sunshine warm.
The Brigadier and the Captain sank their cavalry boots deep into the clay soil and began looking about. The Substitute dodged from stone to stone until he gained the hardened ground in front of the farmhouse where stone steps led sideways up to the front door. He ran up the steps and knocked but no one answered.
Hens and geese were picking around in two small haystacks and fleets of tiny yellow chickens were half hidden beneath some planking and under the foundations of some rickety sheds. The boggy sheepfold was empty. Strands of wool fringed all its fencing. On the glistening horizon two black dots appeared, separated, and became helicopters roaring low overhead and scattering the distracted fowl. The Substitute knocked again smartly, but the Brigadier appeared in the doorway of the stable and called up: 'There'll be nobody in the house at this hour!'
'Well then?' What on earth were they here for?
The Brigadier set down a fat puppy that he had been holding and squelched towards the yard, driving a dozen pullets before him.
'I'd hoped he'd still be grazing that pasture there.' He waved an arm at an empty green field with mist rising from the cropped grass. 'He was last year about now but Easter's late, I hadn't thought on, and he'll not move down until Palm Sunday like as not, and if he's still over on the mountain he'll be up Three Valleys Pass and that's an hour and a half of a walk for him, going as the crow flies, but longer for us in the jeep because there's no direct road—and then to get at him we'd have to take a cart track that'll be more like a river bed after yesterday's rain. The thing is, he'll likely not move till Palm Sunday, I should have thought on—we'll take the old road over to Demontis's farm and come back here at six this evening when Piladu will be milking. His wife'11 be back then which is just as well—she cleans for the factor's wife over at "II Cantuccio" in the mornings. We'll get on over to see Demontis. I should have thought on about Easter being late.'
'Ah.' The Substitute accepted this jumble of incomprehensible information equitably. 'Every blade of grass,' the man had said, and he evidently meant it. They climbed back into the jeep and went on along the rutted lane, lurching and splashing through deep puddles, the Brigadier worrying audibly all the way because 'things weren't as they should be.' This remark did not, as his passengers might have thought, refer either to the condition of the road or to his not having thought on about Easter, but to the problem of where the other two were going to eat lunch. He hoped fervently that they would go back to Florence and had dropped several hints in the hope of getting this information out of them, but the Captain was always concentrating on the job in hand as if nothing else mattered and the magistrate only smiled and nodded distractedly, his mind apparently elsewhere.
Outside the Demontis farm a little dog shot out of a barrel and came to be petted by the Brigadier. A short round woman in a big flowered apron, her long grey-black pigtail wound into a thick bun, came out of her cheese room and sent the Captain and the Brigadier along the edge of a muddy, sprouting cornfield to a distant pasture, leaving the Substitute to keep his shoes dry near the farmhouse. They couldn't see the shepherd until they
The Captain telephoned the American Consulate.
CHAPTER 4
'A case for galoshes,' remarked the Substitute, tossing a cigar end out of the jeep and looking around at the steam rising slowly from the wet earth. The sky above them was blue, the air sweet and the spring sunshine warm.
The Brigadier and the Captain sank their cavalry boots deep into the clay soil and began looking about. The Substitute dodged from stone to stone until he gained the hardened ground in front of the farmhouse where stone steps led sideways up to the front door. He ran up the steps and knocked but no one answered.
Hens and geese were picking around in two small haystacks and fleets of tiny yellow chickens were half hidden beneath some planking and under the foundations of some rickety sheds. The boggy sheepfold was empty. Strands of wool fringed all its fencing. On the glistening horizon two black dots appeared, separated, and became helicopters roaring low overhead and scattering the distracted fowl. The Substitute knocked again smartly, but the Brigadier appeared in the doorway of the stable and called up: 'There'll be nobody in the house at this hour!'
'Well then?' What on earth were they here for?
The Brigadier set down a fat puppy that he had been holding and squelched towards the yard, driving a dozen pullets before him.
'I'd hoped he'd still be grazing that pasture there.' He waved an arm at an empty green field with mist rising from the cropped grass. 'He was last year about now but Easter's late, I hadn't thought on, and he'll not move down until Palm Sunday like as not, and if he's still over on the mountain he'll be up Three Valleys Pass and that's an hour and a half of a walk for him, going as the crow flies, but longer for us in the jeep because there's no direct road—and then to get at him we'd have to take a cart track that'll be more like a river bed after yesterday's rain. The thing is, he'll likely not move till Palm Sunday, I should have thought on—we'll take the old road over to Demontis's farm and come back here at six this evening when Piladu will be milking. His wife'11 be back then which is just as well—she cleans for the factor's wife over at "II Cantuccio" in the mornings. We'll get on over to see Demontis. I should have thought on about Easter being late.'
'Ah.' The Substitute accepted this jumble of incomprehensible information equitably. 'Every blade of grass,' the man had said, and he evidently meant it. They climbed back into the jeep and went on along the rutted lane, lurching and splashing through deep puddles, the Brigadier worrying audibly all the way because 'things weren't as they should be.' This remark did not, as his passengers might have thought, refer either to the condition of the road or to his not having thought on about Easter, but to the problem of where the other two were going to eat lunch. He hoped fervently that they would go back to Florence and had dropped several hints in the hope of getting this information out of them, but the Captain was always concentrating on the job in hand as if nothing else mattered and the magistrate only smiled and nodded distractedly, his mind apparently elsewhere.
Outside the Demontis farm a little dog shot out of a barrel and came to be petted by the Brigadier. A short round woman in a big flowered apron, her long grey-black pigtail wound into a thick bun, came out of her cheese room and sent the Captain and the Brigadier along the edge of a muddy, sprouting cornfield to a distant pasture, leaving the Substitute to keep his shoes dry near the farmhouse. They couldn't see the shepherd until they
Similar Books
The Sword of the Banshee
Amanda Hughes
Where Lilacs Still Bloom
Jane Kirkpatrick
Angelic Pathways
Chantel Lysette
The Christmas Cookie Chronicles: Carrie
Lori Wilde
Striking Distance
Pamela Clare
Second Chance
Jane Green
Cloudburst
V.C. Andrews
Another Day
David Levithan
An Untamed Heart
Lauraine Snelling