The Marshal and the Murderer (3 page)

The people who had been on the bus on Monday were still arguing loudly.

'She was sitting right in front of me!'

'No, you're wrong. She was on the bus but right at the front.'

The Marshal pushed his way forward along the narrow aisle and signalled to the driver to turn the radio down.

'I want a word with you when you stop.'

'Right you are.'

They were well out of Florence and following the river and the electric railway line in the direction of Pisa, passing through a series of small towns that looked depressing in the rain. In the centre of one of them the bus stopped and the driver looked up.

'What can I do for you?'

'I'm trying to trace this girl. Do you know if she was on the bus on Monday morning?'

'Yes, she was.'

'You're quite sure?' By this time it seemed too good to be true. 'You saw her on Monday morning?'

'That's right.'

'It couldn't have been last Friday?'

'No, it couldn't. I was on afternoons last week. She caught this bus every morning, has done for a while. And on Monday she did her usual trick of getting up too late for her stop - there's nothing along that road until you come round a big bend and the stop's right there. She was always missing it and I often let her off well past the stop though I shouldn't. Otherwise she'd have to get off in the town and walk back. It's quite a way and it's a dangerous road with no pavement.'

'I see. Thanks. In that case you'd better warn me when we get to her stop or I'll be doing the same myself.'

'Will do.'

He turned up the radio again and the Marshal swayed back to his seat. His damp trouser legs were getting hot and itchy from the blast of the bus's heaters. He rubbed a big patch on the steamy window as the other passengers had all done.

The small towns had petered out and they were travelling between wet fields and ghostly orchards. The rain and fog were getting increasingly heavy so perhaps his cheery colleague hadn't been joking about the weather being ten times worse out here. Probably it was the proximity to the river. On the right, the railway was now hidden behind a dripping high black wall and only the overhead wires were visible. The bus picked up speed and big lorries with their headlights on came roaring towards them out of the gloom from the direction of the industrial towns ahead. The driver was right, it was a dangerous road and had no doubt had its share of fatal accidents.

The bus swished round a broad curve and slowed to a stop, apparently in the middle of nowhere.

'Here you are, chief!'

The Marshal climbed down. 'Thanks.'

'You're welcome.'

He had almost to flatten himself against the wet wall as the bus pulled away and then was forced to stay there for some time as lorries and a few cars streamed past in either direction. He could see a huddled little building on the other side with a patch of dirt surrounded by junk and plastic bags beside it, just wide enough for the light blue car that was parked there. By the time he managed to get across the road his hat and greatcoat were quite wet. It was obvious that, as the girl had said, this had once been an ordinary peasant's cottage and it had probably stood in a pretty deserted spot until this road had been constructed to serve the new factories. The biggish window on the left which was covered with torn brown paper must be the artisan's workshop. Light was showing through the tears. To the right, a woman's face appeared for a moment behind the ragged curtain of a tiny, barred window and vanished again. Out of curiosity he approached this window and peered into the gloom. At first he couldn't make out anything but he could hear the soft crowing of hens and a vague scuffling noise. A tiny black cat jumped on to the inside windowsill and rubbed itself against the wet bars. There was no glass, just the bit of ragged curtain which hung crookedly. The smell of animal excrement was almost overpowering. After a while he managed to make out the beady eyes of the hens as they paused in their scratching and pecking to observe him in case he might be the bearer of more food. The scuffling noise must be coming from inside a wine barrel. A pair of long ears flashed every so often above its rim and he gathered it must be a hare being fattened.

'There's nothing very interesting in there.'

The Marshal turned. The artisan was standing in his doorway watching him, a small paintbrush in his hand.

'Just curious.' The Marshal looked him up and down, a little surprised to see that he was wearing a grey mohair suit that had once been quite good though now it was worn and rather dusty. Perhaps he had taken his overall off, seeing someone approach. The Marshal was quite sure that he kept an eye on the goings-on on the road through the tears in the paper. 'It was you I came to see. Your name's Berti?'

'That's right. Don't you want to come in out of the rain?'

'I wouldn't mind.' He followed Berti, a much shorter man than himself and rather scraggy, into the workshop.

'I must be disturbing you . . .'

Berti shrugged. 'People come in all the time.'

A paraffin stove was hissing in the oblong room which was bigger than the Marshal had expected. Every inch of wall space was taken up with majolica plates and the place was crammed with pottery of every description, some of it on crooked dusty shelves and makeshift tables and a lot of it on the stone floor so that the Marshal hardly dared move for fear of breaking something.

I'll get you a chair,' Berti said, and picked his way through it all easily to the back of the room, where he shifted a stack of dishes from a dusty chair which he carried back with him without dislodging so much as an eggcup from the jumble.

'Thanks.'

'Don't sit down yet . . .'He dusted the chair off with a bit of rag. 'That's the best I can do but you'll find it'll brush off all right.'

Berti sat down himself at what must have been his habitual place by the window. A small table beside him was crammed with pots of colour and brushes of various shapes and sizes and more similar pots stood about the floor at his feet. The Marshal, who would have immediately crushed or knocked over the whole lot, was amazed by the man's delicacy which seemed so effortless and unconsidered. It was his habit when finding himself in a new place to wander around it getting his bearings, rather like a dog roaming about and sniffing in corners in an unfamiliar house, but in this place he decided he had better keep still or he'd find himself paying for any number of breakages.

'Don't you want to look round?' Berti might have been reading his thoughts though he didn't look up from his work.

'I'm all right here. Go on with your work if you like.'

In fact the artisan had already picked up a white plate and set it on a small wheel on a stand in front of him.

'You don't want to buy anything, then?'

'No, but I wouldn't mind watching you for a minute if it doesn't bother you.'

Berti shrugged as if he weren't interested either way. He spun the wheel and adjusted the plate a fraction of an inch so that it was in the centre. Then he took a loaded brush from one of the pots at his elbow and a perfect dark stripe appeared round the edge of the plate.

The Marshal, who would have loved to learn a craft but had always been too clumsy for it, watched him in silence.

'You're not from round here?' Berti commented, changing his brush and tracing another stripe, as thin as a hair, inside the first one.

'No.'

'Friend of Niccolini's?'

'Niccolini?'

'The Marshal down the road.'

'Ah . . .'He hadn't thought to ask his cheery colleague's name. 'You could say that.'

'He was in here yesterday looking for something for his wife.'

The Marshal didn't answer but glanced involuntarily at the covered window, which meant that this was a workshop with no licence to sell directly to the public.

'Eh, this is Italy, Marshal, this is Italy . , .' The artisan paused in his work to fix the Marshal with a beady, rather watery eye and the Marshal remembered his colleague's description of him as an old rogue. He was certainly an unprepossessing creature, rather spider-like, but he could well have been good-looking as a young man. His wizened features were very even and his grey hair so abundantly thick and wavy as to make him look almost top-heavy. He turned and selected another brush, twirling its point between his thin fingers.

'Niccolini didn't buy anything . . .' He dipped the brush into a pale yellow liquid and made a series of what seemed to the Marshal to be random strokes on the white surface of the plate. 'And you don't want to buy anything either. Are you going to tell me what it's all about? I'm curious, very curious.'

The Marshal cleared his throat and placed his hands squarely on his knees, only to find that they left dusty white marks. He tried to brush them away but only succeeded in spreading them.

'Something and nothing,' he said slowly, 'probably turn out to be nothing at all. I believe there's a young woman comes here in the mornings, Swiss girl . . .'

The small watery eyes darted a glance at him but the Marshal, though aware of it, didn't meet them. He kept his gaze fixed on the still incomprehensible brushstrokes.

'What about her?'

'She isn't here today?'

'No.'

'Was she here yesterday?'

'She's free to come and go as she pleases. She doesn't work for me. I told that to her little friend who came here looking for her-1 suppose she was the one who brought you in?'

'Was she here?'

'The little friend?'

'Monica Heer.'

'Yesterday, no.'

'Monday?

'Monday . . .'

'Well?'

'I'm trying to think.'

The brush was poised, motionless, but only for a second. Whatever was going on in this man's head didn't affect his hands, which moved in their own space and time, the habit of a lifetime's skill. The brush was attacking the plate rapidly with tiny delicate strokes of darker yellow which gave form to the mysterious paler marks so that, as if by magic, they took the shape of a variety of figures, writhing dragon-like animals and grotesque human torsoes with the lashing tails of beasts.

Berti swivelled his head round and grinned.

'Raphael,' he said. 'You know these grotesques?'

'1 seem to have seen something like them before . . .'

'The frescoes in the Palazzo Vecchio.'

'I suppose that must be it.'

The thin fingers reached out for another brush and began tracing black outlines, fine as a hair, around the figures and adding tiny glaring eyes and scales.

'She wasn't here on Monday, Monica. Pretty girl. Talented too. That's her work.' He indicated a group of plates hanging on the wall by the door. The colours were more limited and the designs more abstract than the pieces surrounding it. The Marshal noted a broken dusty mirror propped on a shelf beside them. 'She has her own ideas, not like ours.'

'You teach her?'

'Technique. Her designs are nice enough but it takes years of practice before the hand becomes light enough for this work. It's really a specialized job but she wanted to learn everything about the pottery business, that's why . . .'

'That's why what?'

'That's why, if she wasn't here on Monday, she probably went to Moretti.'

'And who's Moretti?'

'He has the terracotta factory just a few yards away round the bend.'

'Why would she have gone there?'

'They're firing tomorrow.'

'And she wanted to learn about that?'

'No, no.' The plate was finished and Berti got up and placed in on a stack of others by the door with a scrap of paper under it so that it didn't touch the one below. Then he stood wiping his hands on a dusty rag.

'I see you don't know much about this business. I'll explain. At one time I used to do everything here, throwing, decorating, firing, but I gave it up a year or so ago. I'm not as young as I was and it cost me more in time and money than it was worth. It's not as though I have a son to take over from me . . . Anyway I sold my wheel and kiln and now I buy these plates in biscuit - when they've already been fired once - from a factory and I decorate them. Moretti fires them for me. It's easier and more profitable, you follow me?'

'I follow you.'

'Well, as I said, the Swiss girl wanted to learn the whole business, set up her own studio. I could only teach her majolica and that's why once or twice she's been round to Moretti's place, just to keep her hand in at throwing.'

'You said before he was firing . . .'

'That's right. That's why - I'm going round there now if you want to know more about it. You could ask him if she was there. I haven't seen her since Friday.'

'I will.' The Marshall was staring out through a tear in the paper at the bus stop against the dripping black wall opposite. 'If this Moretti's place is just round the bend I imagine she must have got off the bus here just the same. They told me there isn't another stop before the town/

Berti's sharp little eyes followed his glance and understood.

'I don't always get here that early. You might not have found me here at this time today if I didn't have to get this stuff round to Moretti.'

'The girl always caught the bus I caught. Did you give her a key to get in?'

'I did no such thing.'

'Then what did she do if you hadn't arrived?'

'She waited.'

Again the Marshal looked out of the window at the heavy traffic streaming past under the drizzle. Had Berti noticed that they had begun to talk of the Swiss girl in the past tense? He was bending over now, dusting off his shoes with the rag. All his movements were slow, accurate and continuous. Crouched over like that, he looked more spider-like than ever.

'If you'll wait a minute I'll just open the car.'

'But if it's only round the bend . . .'

Without a word Berti pointed to the stack of plates and went out. He backed the car round to the door and opened the boot. When he came back in the Marshal said, 'Do you want some help?'

Berti only grinned slyly. 1 don't think you could manage.'

Only as Berti lifted the plates did the Marshal realize that the white surface on which the designs were painted consisted of a thick layer of fine white powder of which the brushstrokes had disturbed not a grain.