Free The Marshal and the Murderer by Magdalen Nabb Page B

the outline of a flower delicately on to the plate in front of him and put the brush down. He rubbed his spidery fingers together, looking from one to the other of the two men above him, his tiny eyes glinting.
    'If you're thinking what I think you're thinking, Niccolini, you're barking up the wrong tree.'
    'Oh, am I? I've seen the way you looked at her.'
    'The way I look at women never did them any harm. On the contrary, they like it. There was a time - and not that long ago either - when I could take on three in one day.' This last remark he chose for some reason to direct at the Marshal.
    "Three in one day . . .' and he made a sudden gesture with his fingers so vulgar that the Marshal involuntarily took a step backwards and all but collided with the door which somebody was trying to open.
    'Shut it, shut it,' Berti said, calling out to the invisible intruder: 'Go away, I'm busy.'
    'Who's that?' Niccolini whipped round and the Marshal opened the door in time to see a small woman turn away and scuffle back towards the house next door in her slippers.
    'It's only Tina,' Berti said, picking up his brush again, 'the woman from next door.'
    'The one whose husband found the body? What does she want with you?' Niccolini pushed past the Marshal and strode outside. The woman had vanished. 'Well,' he said, coming back in and towering over the wizened little artisan as though he intended to eat him alive, 'what's she doing coming round here?'
    'She's my neighbour, isn't she? Comes round for a chat now and then.' He chuckled quietly to himself and added: If you really want to know what she comes for . . .'He put down his brush carefully and turned to a shelf behind him where there was a stack of dusty books on Majolica and some loose pages cut out of magazines of art history from which he no doubt copied motifs. Underneath these were some glossy magazines, one of which he pulled out and waved in their faces. 'She likes to borrow these. Here, take a look.'
    The thin grey fingers clutching the large pornographic image made its garish colours look all the more shocking.
    'Cut it out, Berti,' barked Niccolini.
    'You wanted to know . . .' Berti evidently took great delight in anything he thought might shock them, and the Marshal was convinced that this was particularly directed at him. It was at him that Berti winked now, saying, 'It's a dull enough life round here, so we have to get a bit of excitement where we can find it.'
    'I think,' said the Marshal slowly, 'that I might as well have a word with this woman next door . . .'
    He had no real reason for doing it except that he was only too glad to escape from Berti and the jumbled studio with its smells of dust and paraffin and from the leering face and the pornographic magazines. Niccolini made no objection. He was probably glad enough to see the back of his colleague, whatever the excuse. Once outside, he paused a moment, feeling the need to breathe clean air. The mist that had veiled the thin sunshine earlier had thickened, and the sky was a uniform pale grey above the high black wall and the wires of the electric railway line. The traffic streamed past him as he stood there on the patch of beaten dirt in front of Berti's door. A dull life . . . And before the day was out it would almost certainly rain again.
    Behind him Niccolini's voice was getting louder and he wondered, too, whether his own presence wasn't the real cause of the trouble rather than the uncommunicative townsfolk. In any case there was little he could do about either problem. With a sigh, he turned and knocked on the small door by the barred window. The cat wasn't there today but the smell was as pungent as ever and he wrinkled his nose as he waited. It was a long wait. He had to knock three times before he heard the woman's shuffling steps, and even then they didn't come as far as the door. He wasn't surprised when after a moment he heard a flutter among the scratching hens and found himself peered at from behind the