The Marshal and the Murderer Read Online Free PDF Page B

he was beginning to feel certain that something had happened to the girl who, if he were to believe all he'd been told, had got off a bus outside Berti's studio and disappeared into thin air.
    When he got inside the gloomy building Berti had vanished and there was no one else in sight. The place was like a maze. There was no understanding how it was constructed. So many crooked passageways, rickety wooden stairs, rooms that led into each other and brought you back to where you started from. He began to believe that the girl could have been in here without anybody knowing it. After rambling about aimlessly for some time without coming across a soul or hearing anything other than the sound of his own footsteps he found himself in a long high room that seemed almost empty, so that it was impossible to understand what normally went on there, if anything. There were windows all along one side of it, all of them dirty and one or two of them broken so that the rain was coming in. In one corner of the room stood an old bath full of bits of clay covered with water, and nearby a box containing coils of thick wire. Then a great empty stretch and at the far end a group of large white shapes. The Marshal approached them, curious, but even seeing them close up he was none the wiser. Huge plaster shells, rough on the outside and smooth on the inside. He touched one of them tentatively. It was damp and very cold. Then he heard muffled voices coming from directly beneath him and started down the nearest staircase. On the floor below there was no one and he was obliged to wander through three or four other rooms before finding his way down to the next floor, losing himself and the spot the voices came from. At last he heard them again and entered a room almost as big as the one two floors above. But this one was full and busy. In the centre of it was a huge kiln with piles of broken bricks and what looked like some sort of crumbling red cement around its gaping mouth. The rest of the room was filled with row upon row of dark, big-bellied pots, many of them almost as tall as the two men who were lifting them one by one and carrying them to the mouth of the kiln. One of the men looked up without interrupting his movements.
    'If you're looking for the boss, he's in his office.'
    'No.' The Marshal stepped back out of their path. 'I was looking for Signor Berti.'
    The man nodded in the direction of the kiln. The Marshal waited until they had deposited their burden and then went nearer and peered into the gloom. A boy was crouched inside the entrance sorting through piles of biscuit-coloured tubes and fitting castellated tops on to them. Behind the boy, Berti was passing his plates through to some chamber beyond from which muffled voices issued.
    "That's the lot?'
    'Two more.'
    'Saggar's full!'
    'I'll pass you a shelf.'
    'The boss won't like it . . .'
    'He won't know.'
    'He'll know if he sees as much as one spot of glaze on any of this stuff . . .'
    Ignoring the complaining voice, Berti came forward to the crouching boy. 'Give me four props and a shelf . . .' Then he saw the dark figure of the Marshal blocking the light at the kiln's entrance, as round and heavy as the jars piling up around him. 'You'll get yourself dirty there. I'll be out in a minute.'
    Indeed, the Marshall on glancing down at his black greatcoat found that there were large patches of iron red dust on it. Nevertheless, he stayed where he was. He was feeling uneasy and instead of asking questions as he had intended he went on standing there, observing everything with big troubled eyes. In any case, he was convinced that if anybody here had something to hide these people would stick together like a family. You could tell it even from the way they worked, or rather went on working. Usually when a uniformed caribiniere appeared in a place unexpectedly, however innocuous the visit, it had the effect of breaking up whatever was going on if only for the sake of curiosity, but here his