The Marshal Makes His Report Read Online Free PDF Page B

I’ve never met anybody who talked so fast. But he knows which side his bread’s buttered on and if he had to leave the Ulderighi place where would he go? Didn’t seem to care much for Corsi, but then . . .’
    ‘But what?’ Lorenzini had a great respect for the Marshal, but he was young and active and couldn’t always conceal his impatience with the older man’s slowness and the half-formed irrelevant observations he left hanging in the air. ‘But what, Marshal?’ he said again, his bright grey eyes glancing through the window at the great house. Left to himself he’d have been over there an hour ago taking accurate, methodical notes, but here they were taking time over the coffee as they’d taken time over their pizza and still the Marshal didn’t answer. Lorenzini turned from the window to look at him and found him once again staring over at the television screen in silence. When he did speak he had drifted from the subject.
    ‘Florentines are a funny lot. After all these years I haven’t got used—no offence meant, you understand.’
    Lorenzini, a died in the wool Florentine, pointed out that we all have our funny ways, but the point didn’t get home.
    ‘If you’d seen him, standing there with a dead man at his feet and cracking jokes.’
    ‘Better a corpse in the house than a Pisan at the door?’
    ‘Eh?’
    ‘It’s an old Florentine saying from the days of the wars with Pisa.’
    ‘Mph.’ The Marshal thought this over and then said, ‘So I’m the Pisan, is that it?’
    ‘You or anybody else threatening the set-up.’
    ‘Well . . . Maybe you’re right. Perhaps you should talk to him, you might understand each other better—just look at that! He’s trying to strangle the referee! I remember that face, too. Isn’t he the one who got his ear bitten off one time?’
    ‘Might be. It was years ago. I think I was still at school.’
    ‘Well, I don’t like it. At least half of that lot should be behind bars, if you ask me. Anyway, you talk to him. Then there’s the porter and his wife. Mori, the name is, and there’s a son, too, and if I’ve got my facts right he’s among that lot.’ Another black look at the screen and then he prodded the notebook with a huge forefinger. ‘This is the old “tata”. Nursed all the Ulderighi children since the year dot. Her name’s Marilena Binazzi. Ninety-one and stone deaf. All these family retainers live in rooms off the courtyard. The other rooms there are rented out as studios. The musician, Emilio Emiliani, who has a flat up on the third floor uses one for practising. One’s a doctor’s surgery . . . here she is, Flavia Martelli, likewise has a flat upstairs. The last one, near the entrance on the right, is rented to an English girl called Catherine Yorke who does some sort of restoration work. She left last week on a trip to England so we won’t see her anyway. Now: there’s another flat on the third floor . . . wait a minute . . . Martelli, Emiliano . . . This one—Fido.’
    ‘Sounds like a dog.’
    ‘Well, he’s a painter. English again, but you’re right, it’s a funny sort of name. Oh, and there’s a ballet school on the first floor but that doesn’t concern us since it’s closed between Saturday and Monday. Well, that’s the lot. Now we go and ask them if they heard anything and they’ll all say no.’
    ‘But, Marshal, surely, these people who are tenants and not family retainers—I mean, a shot like that echoing round a courtyard would wake the dead.’
    ‘Yes.’ The Marshal slipped the notebook back in his pocket. ‘It would. If that’s where it happened. But I don’t think he died there, not like that. He was lying on his back but the blood had settled along one side of his face. There’ll be a post-mortem, of course, there’ll have to be, but I’ll never get to see the results of it.’
    ‘Do you think he shot himself, then?’
    ‘How should I know whether he shot himself? My point is that I’ll never get to