Free Death of a Dutchman by Magdalen Nabb Page A

complexion had given him away . . .
    The thing was, to get the talk back to the subject in hand. But the Marshal was reluctant to ask outright. He knew from experience that the phrasing of a question suggests the required answer, and he wanted an unbiased opinion.
    'It's conversation that I like, and friends. Friends are very important. That's one of the reasons why I enjoyed school so much, despite the trouble I had with mathematics. Italian was my great subject. I remember Padre Begnini saying once . . .'
    Although the evening outside was still bright and rosy, the light was fading in the vast room, making the shrouded furniture look even more ghostly. The high ceiling was a traditional Florentine one in dark wood, divided into deep-set squares, each with a carved red and gold rosette in the centre.
    'I see you're admiring the ceiling. My mother prefers the frescoed ones on the next floor, they're supposed to be by Bonechi, but I like the wooden ceilings best. You see, I admire first-class craftsmanship more than third-rate art.'
    'The man who died was a craftsman. The man you attended yesterday.'
    'He was? Oh dear, and you wanted to talk about him, while here am I leading the conversation on to other things. You'll be thinking I'm the culprit!'
    'The culprit?'
    'I was only joking. Of course, I have a perfect alibi!'
    He made the last remark in English, and then began to laugh, an uncontrolled, high-pitched giggle.
    'Forgive me,' he said at last, misinterpreting the Marshal's frown of incomprehension for one of disapproval. 'These are serious matters, grave matters, I know that. I've prayed for him, too, and for whoever did it.'
    The Marshal's face remained expressionless, but his big eyes were fixed on the Count's as he spoke.
    'What makes you think someone else did it? Rather, I mean, than that he wanted to kill himself?'
    'But. . . well, he said, didn't he? I know he didn't say who did it, but he was trying to tell us that somebody or other didn't do it, surely you heard? He said, "It wasn't her." Naturally, one thought . . .'
    Naturally. He could have been rambling, of course, thinking of something completely remote from his own death . . . and yet, he had just spoken to Signora Giusti, as if he were quite aware of where he was. The Marshal admitted to himself that he wouldn't-have made much of a detective. He had heard the Dutchman's remark, all right, but he hadn't wanted to interpret it that way because it seemed to discount the only person known to have been—or thought to have been—in the flat with him; seemed, as everyone else was inclined to agree, including the Substitute Prosecutor, to point either to suicide or an accident by absolving the only person who might come to be accused. He might even have been absolving his wife from blame, since they had quarrelled.
    'It doesn't seem likely,' the Marshal said aloud, 'that if someone had tried to murder him he would have wasted his last breath telling us who didn't do it . . .'
    'It may have been important to him to save someone from unjust suspicion.'
    'Or he may have been lying.'
    'On his deathbed!' The young Count was shocked.
    'Perhaps you're right. Did anything else strike you, apart from his words?'
    'His poor hands.' He clasped his own together tightly, as if to stem some imaginary bleeding. 'But mostly his words. I suppose, now you mention it, it was odd that he should only say who it wasn't, not very helpful . . . but I wasn't struck by it at the time. What struck me most at the time was that he sounded so surprised.'

CHAPTER 4
    The Marshal had a bottle of vinsanto which he laid carefully on the back seat of his car next to the beribboned parcel of cakes that had been pressed on him by the bar owner, and a copy of The Beauties of Florence which had been presented to him by the printer as they came out through the storeroom between stacks of cut paper where strong smells of ink and metal and a rhythmic swish and clack of machinery came from behind frosted