The Marshal and the Murderer Read Online Free PDF

said, opening the door of what was hardly more than a shack detached from the rest of the building.
    Moretti was there, standing by a trestle table littered with orders and invoices. He turned and was about to greet Berti when he saw the Marshal and remained silent.
    'I've brought my stuff,' Berti said, and with a sly look at the Marshal: 'And somebody who wants a word with you.'
    'What can I do for you?' Moretti was small and wiry with a shock of red hair. He looked the Marshal straight in the eye.
    'Just some information. This is your factory?'
    'Mine and my brother's.'
    'I'm trying to trace a Swiss girl; Monica Heer. I believe she sometimes came here.'
    'What of it? She wasn't working for me.' He shot an accusing glance at Berti.
    I'm not suggesting that she was, and in any case I'm not interested in who she was working for. I'm trying to trace her, that's all.'
    'How do you mean, trace her? What for? If she's in trouble with you people it's nothing to do with me.'
    He wasn't hostile, only brusque, but there was something aggressive or even defiant in the way he continued to look the Marshal straight in the eye.
    'It seems she's missing,' put in Berti, rubbing his hands slowly together, his little eyes taking in everything in the cluttered office. 'She hasn't been seen since Friday.'
    'Well, she's not here. You'd better get your stuff up there, they're more than halfway through loading.' He picked up a pair of dusty reading glasses and put them on, letting them rest almost on the end of his nose as though he never wore them for long. Then he took a blue invoice from the pile as if to indicate that, as far as he was concerned, their talk was over. When the Marshal didn't follow Berti out he looked up and said: 'If there's nothing else ... I have to have all these invoices ready by tomorrow. You'll excuse me, this is a busy few days for us.'
    'That's all right,' said the Marshal blandly, "there's nothing else . . . Except that I was wondering if she came here on Monday morning ..."
    'Monday morning . . .? I suppose she could have done since we're ready to fire.'
    'She could have done? Surely you'd have seen her?'
    'Not necessarily. I only came in for half an hour to talk to some buyers. I took them round a couple of other factories and then to the restaurant in town. We were in here, so for all I know she could have been inside, throwing.'
    'Somebody would have seen her.'
    'I doubt it, not on Monday. The point is, when we're about to fire and the last pieces are drying out we usually take a long weekend. All my men are on piece work except the apprentice and they work all hours when we've a lot on, then take a bit of time off when we're firing. That was when the girl used to come round, to use the wheel when the throwers were off. Once everything's dry and we're ready to load the kiln everybody mucks in and helps. This is a small place, run on family lines. Monday there was nothing doing, the place was empty.'
    'You mean the girl could have just walked in here? You don't lock up?'
    'Lock up? No, never, there's no need . . .' Moretti ran a hand through his disordered red hair, hesitating as though embarrassed by what he had just said and wondering how to justify it. 'In a place like this there's nothing to steal ... I do lock this office up with a bit of a padlock but I don't know why I bother since there's never any money here.'
    1 see. Well, I'll let you get on, then . . .'
    The Marshal decided he'd better get some background information from his cheery colleague at the Carabinieri Station in the town before getting involved any further. He always liked to sniff about on his own first, with no preconceived ideas, but these people seemed to live in a world of their own whose workings were foreign to him. Even so, when he spotted Berti carrying the last of his plates into the factory he followed him, partly in the hope that some workman in there might have been around on Monday despite what Moretti had said, and partly because