Free The Marshal and the Murderer by Magdalen Nabb Page A

outside their own families. With a sigh, the Marshal turned back to the window. Then he took a step forward and peered out more intently. The tall windows were no longer all blank. Someone was staring out over here as he was staring out here. Were they staring at each other? The house of the seven lavatories, being set well back from the road with its drives leading in from the high gates, was too far away to tell. The Marshal didn't move away. In any case, his car was parked outside advertising his presence. There was no telling who the person across the way was. It might well not be Robiglio himself, who would surely be at his factory at that hour, but even so, that pale blur served to confirm the impression that Robiglio was disturbed for some reason by the Marshal's presence, disturbed enough to make him take on an apprentice he didn't need. And if he remembered correctly . . . Sestini had tied up the rubbish bags and was stacking them against the wall.
    'Isn't it your son who's going to be taken on at Robiglio's?'
    'What of it?'
    The Marshal just stared at him. There was no point in wasting his breath. You couldn't arrest the entire population of the town for reticence.
    Perhaps the same thought had crossed Niccolini's mind.
    'You'll end up inside, you mark my words! I advise you to think over what I've said because if you do end up inside you'll find it anything but easy to get out again. Well, answer me! Or am I talking to the wall? Ye gods!'
    And without a word of warning he turned and strode out of the room, forgetting, or choosing to forget, that he hadn't arrived alone. The Marshal mopped his brow again, put on his hat and followed slowly in his wake. And if he got lost again it was too bad. He was in no mood to go chasing after this volcano of a man every time he went steaming off in a temper.
    In fact he only got lost once, having got a better idea of the place by now, and luckily he came across the apprentice who was cutting big wedges of clay with a length of wire as it issued in a thick tube from what looked like a giant sausage-machine. The boy gave him directions sensibly enough, though the Marshal couldn't help remembering the childish clay models he had seen on the windowsill the day before and wondering if the lad weren't a little backward.
    Niccolini was stamping his boots by the car.
    'Cold,' he said, glaring about him, and once in the passenger seat: 'Damp, more than anything.'
    The Marshal started the engine and glanced across at the gates of Robiglio's house.
    'I was wondering'
    'We'll go to Berti's place if you don't mind,' interrupted Niccolini, 'He knows more about that lass than anybody else round here, and, by God, if he starts being shifty with me I'll have him inside before he knows what's hit him.'
    Berti was anything but shifty in his greeting.
    'You're back, then, are you? Have you arrested Moretti?'
    Niccolini was too taken aback at this opening to be aggressive.
    'What do you mean by that?'
    'A straight enough question, I would have thought. If that's where the girl was on Monday . . .'
    'That's yet to be proved. For all we know she could have been here.'
    'She was found at Moretti's, wasn't she? You don't mind if I go on working . . .' He was seated in his usual place near the blocked-out window. 'You're not going to tell me you're looking for something for your wife today, I imagine.'
    'You don't seem too put out by what's happened.'
    'Life goes on,' said Berti, searching among the pots of colour for the brush he needed, 'life goes on. Nobody knows that better than I do. I can't offer both of you a seat but one of you could sit down.'
    The dusty chair was still drawn up where the Marshal had sat.
    'We don't want chairs, we want information,' said Niccolini brusquely, 'about the girl.'
    'We went through all that with your chief earlier, didn't we?'
    'And you had as little to say for yourself as everyone else round here, though you were the one who had most contact with her.'
    Berti traced