The Marshal and the Madwoman Read Online Free PDF Page A

peeling black door into a dingy little flat.
    'She's in here.'
    A kitchen with barely enough room for an old-fashioned sink, an ancient gas cooker and a small table with a plastic cloth on it. A window, no more than a foot square, was wide open on a jumble of red tiles against the sunset and a bit of flowered curtaining was drawn across a small alcove to the left of the cooker. All this the Marshal took in without entering the room since his way was blocked by a body lying just inside the door. After a moment he stepped over it to get in. Pippo stayed where he was outside the doorway.
    'Who put this on her? You?' The head was covered with a faded tea-towel so that only a tuft of grey hair showed.
    'It was all I could find.'
    The Marshal removed it and looked at the face which was twisted up as if to look back at him. The eyes were slightly open and the mouth pulled to one side where there was a dark stain on the cheek. He frowned and bent over the body. It was lying on its side, half covered with the flowered overall, naked down the front, and he saw now that it hung open like that because there were no buttons on it. He remembered the plump nude figure, bursting with life and vibrant with anger, shaking a fat little fist at the neighbours. Now the fat arms were oddly stretched out behind as if their movement had swept the flowered overall back. The knees were bent and showed the same wine-dark stain as the right cheek. Each of the flaccid breasts carried a similar mark.
    The Marshal straightened up and passed a big hand over his face with a sigh. The wail of a siren wound down in the street outside.
    'Where did you find her?'
    'I hope I didn't do wrong . . .' The doorbell rang. 'That's the Misericordia . . .'
    'All right. Let them in.'
    Pippo went to press the button at the top of the stairs and came back.
    'So where did you find her? She wasn't lying here.'
    'She might have been alive. How was I to know?'
    'Where?'
    'With her head in the gas oven. That was why—'
    'The gas oven?'
    Four black-robed brothers of the Misericordia appeared behind Pippo.
    'Can you wait a minute?' The Marshal looked at the cooker and the open window, then turned and looked at the wine-dark stains on the pale flesh again. Then he made a sign to the waiting brothers. When they'd gone he said to Pippo, 'You'd better come in here.' And seeing the man's reluctance to step across the upturned face, he replaced the tea-towel.
    'I don't like ... It was different, you know, at first, thinking she might still be alive.
    'Sit down.' There was only one rickety formica chair.'You'll feel better in a minute.'
    Pippo was looking so white that the Marshal was afraid he might faint or vomit. 'Do you want a glass of water?'
    'No, no, nothing. I couldn't fancy . . .' As if everything in the room were contaminated with death.
    'Tell me what happened, right from the beginning.'
    'I wouldn't have come up here, I can tell you, if Franco hadn't said—' 'Never mind Franco for the moment.' Was this barman some sort of tribal chief round here that he seemed to make all the decisions? 'Just tell me, as simply as you can, the facts in the order that they happened. Nobody's saying you did wrong; I just need to know the full story.'
    Though nobody knew better than the Marshal that the one thing nobody ever did was to tell the full story about anything.
    'If it hadn't been that today's a holiday somebody would have been on to it sooner, but a lot of people were out at lunch-time, visiting relatives and what have you, and of course Franco only opened for an hour or two this morning, otherwise . . .'
    The Marshal perched himself on a corner of the table, hoping it would bear his weight. This was going to be a long job and it was evidently pointless trying to get this man to stick to the facts as interruptions generally tend to make people ramble even further from the point, intent as they always are on justifying themselves rather than giving a lucid account.
    'Anyway, nobody