Some Bitter Taste Read Online Free PDF

introduced them and the marshal noticed the way Sir Christopher shook hands with them, smiling and according equal attention to both. A gentleman, then, unlike the soft fellow who now left them.
    ‘It’s very good of you to come. I understand from Jeremy that we’ve lost nothing of particular value this time. He is preparing a typewritten list of the small objects which are missing. He’ll bring it out to us in a moment, I’m sure, so perhaps you’d sit with me and drink something.’
    They sat down. The captain declined to take anything and, though impressed by the variety of drinks, mosdy alcoholic, set out on a low wicker table beside Sir Christopher’s chair, the marshal said, ‘I’d be glad of a glass of water, if that’s all right. Hot day….’ And he’d better not drink much of that or he’d break out in a sweat again after having cooled off so nicely in the captain’s car.
    ‘Of course.’
    The marshal expected a servant, perhaps a buder, to appear from nowhere and do the honours but Sir Christopher served him. He put a lot of ice in the glass, which the marshal didn’t want, but he didn’t like to say so. He’d have done better to take nothing because now he didn’t know where to put his hat and so held it precariously on one knee as he sipped the freezing cold water.
    ‘Do I understand from your saying “this time” that you’ve had other burglaries?’ Nothing disturbed the captain’s quiet gravity and one sunburned hand lay smooth and still on his perfecdy balanced hat.
    ‘One quite serious burglary, I’m sorry to say, though a great many years ago now. The distressing thing about that occasion was not so much the considerable value of the stolen artworks, which were part of my father’s collection, but the fact that there seemed no doubt that someone in the house was involved. Someone who let them in and took them to the things they were interested in. There were no signs of a forced entry, you see, and there were two dogs in the house who didn’t bark.’
    As the captain asked his questions the marshal listened to the sawing of the crickets and the water trickling feebly in the fountain at the centre of the lily pond. He was worrying about what to do with his ice-cold glass since the table was out of his reach. It was becoming agony to hold. Would it fall over if he put it down on the pebble-patterned floor booby-trapped with creeping flowers? Sir Christopher saw his discomfiture and leant forward a little. ‘Do let me…’
    Like the marshal, he was a big man, a bit overweight, and the hand that reached for the glass had plump pale fingers. ‘We were obliged to fire a young man we’d just taken on to help with the cataloguing of the collection here, which my father never kept up to date and which, I’m afraid, still is far from complete. The young man—a very diligent worker—was the only person other than my curator, who’s been with us almost thirty years, and my dearest friend, Renato, an antiquities expert with whom I’ve dealt all my life, who could have directed the thieves to those pieces.’
    ‘They couldn’t have helped themselves to whatever attracted them?’
    ‘Ah, my dear Captain, if you were to see the top floor of this house you would realise how impossible that would be. My father was a real collector. He didn’t buy for this house, the house was just a receptacle for his collection, nor did he ever sell anything. It’s a sort of Aladdin’s cave up there. Not only that, but since things were being moved during the cataloguing process, pairs had occasionally been separated—in the case of one piece needing restoration, that sort of thing. Yet they made no mistakes and their choices were precise and, sorry though I am to say it, admirable.’
    ‘And nothing, I presume, ever appeared on the market.’
    ‘Nothing. Robbery on commission. Collectors, you know, have no scruples. They mention to their dealer that they are looking for a certain type of piece