Free The Etruscan Net by Michael Gilbert Page A

now, even with the Germans.’
    ‘I completely disagree,’ said Miss Plant. ‘I have never spoken to a German since a disagreeable experience I had in the winter of 1944. I was short of fuel, and it seemed to me that the Germans had plenty, so I went to see their General – I forget his name–’
    ‘What happened?’ said Weighill. He had heard the story at least three times, but it would be new to some of his guests.
    ‘You may find it hard to believe, but he refused to see me. I said to the young officer who did see me, “Your stupid Reich won’t last forever, you know. Some day you’ll wish you hadn’t been so rude to everybody.” He had no answer to that. He just clicked his heels. A pointless habit. I believe they acquired it as students at Heidelberg. Along with the scars.’
    ‘That sounds like the luncheon bell,’ said Sir Gerald. ‘Let’s go through, shall we? Lead the way, Tessa. That’s right. Sindaco, will you do us the honour of taking the other end of the table. You shall have my daughters on either side of you.’
    ‘High priest guarded by vestal virgins,’ murmured Elizabeth.
    ‘Miss Plant on my right. Tom, come and sit on my left. Broke and Moss in the middle. That’s right. I hope, by the way, that you can all eat lobster. I am devoted to it myself.’
    ‘As a girl,’ said Miss Plant, ‘I was put off lobster by the sinking of the Lusitania. ’
    ‘In anticipation that it might not be to everyone’s taste,’ said the Consul smoothly, ‘I have had an alternative dish of ravioli prepared.’
    Miss Plant looked chagrined. She had disrupted many dinner parties by declaring a last-minute aversion to the principal dish. And ravioli was not her favourite form of food. Recovering rapidly, she said, ‘But I was taught by my mother that personal fads have no place at table. I shall eat lobster with the rest of you.’
    Broke wondered if Sir Gerald really had got ravioli in reserve, or whether he had scored a point, by superior bluff, in this game of gastronomic poker.
    ‘Lobster,’ said Harfield Moss, ‘is a favourite dish in the state of Maine. We also eat clams.’
    ‘You are straight out of England, Mr Proctor?’ said Miss Plant. ‘You must find us a strange community in Florence. We must seem Edwardian to you who are a visitor from swinging London.’
    Tom Proctor, who divided his time between a farm in Herefordshire, an office in Bedford Row and the Athenaeum, looked a little taken aback, but said that he found Florence a refreshing change.
    ‘It can be refreshing in the off-season,’ said Sir Gerald. ‘But at the moment we seem to have about twenty thousand tourists. A lot of them are British subjects. And at least half of them will lose their passports, and apply to me for help. I sometimes wonder whether it wouldn’t be a sensible rule that tourists should have their passport numbers tattooed on their arms.’
    ‘They’d lose them, too,’ said Elizabeth.
    In the course of her long reign, Miss Plant had adopted certain queenly habits. She liked to ration her attention equally among her subjects; and she tended to make pronouncements rather than to ask questions.
    She now turned on Harfield Moss, and said, ‘You come from America. You are interested in the collection of antique objects.’
    ‘Well, not all antique objects,’ said Moss. ‘That would constitute rather a wide field of endeavour. I myself am personally interested in Roman and Etruscan antiquities. I am also collecting for the Moss Foundation.’
    ‘What a curious coincidence!’
    ‘A coincidence, Miss Plant?’
    ‘That your name should be Moss and that you should be collecting for the Moss Foundation.’
    The American smiled and said, ‘Not so much of a coincidence, when you consider that I founded it. It’s my private charity.’
    ‘I’ve always envied you that bit of your law,’ said Tom Proctor. ‘I understand that if you buy for an artistic or educational foundation, you get almost complete