A Grain of Truth by Zygmunt Miloszewski Read Free Book Online

wives whose misdeeds were to rip up a priceless stamp and to burn a first edition of Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz’s pre-war short stories. Neither was still alive. The husbands who had murdered them had sat over their corpses in tears, saying over and over again that they simply didn’t understand.
    Meanwhile, the world of knives turned out to be full of enthusiasts and collectors, and there was even a periodical called Thrust , the mission of which – as the authors claimed – was “to provide you, dear Reader, with reliable information on top-quality knives and related topics. There are also plenty of curiosities, for example in our next issue ‘The Whip’, which may seem an exotic topic in the context of knife-collecting, but is about an item that has been made here in Poland since ancient times. A series of articles on cold steel will speak for itself.”
    Whips, sabres and butcher’s knives – what a charming hobby, thought Szacki, cringing, as he immersed himself in chat-rooms full of debate about blades, handles, sharpening methods, chiselling, carving and stabbing. He read the outpourings of a writer who made samurai swords by hand, he read about the “Father of the Modern Damast Knife” who had mastered the technique of reproducing Damascus steel, he looked at pictures of army daggers, hunting knivesfor dressing game animals, foils, bayonets, rapiers and broadswords. He had never imagined humanity produced so many different kinds of sharp object.
    But he couldn’t find the razor-machete.
    Finally, in an act of desperation he took a few photos of the probable murder weapon with his mobile phone and sent them to the editors of Thrust by e-mail, asking whether they meant anything to them.
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    The spring had come and gone, and that evening Teodor Szacki was feeling the cold as he walked along Mickiewicz Street towards the Modena pizzeria, where he had arranged to meet Wilczur. The old policeman had refused to be persuaded to meet in the market square, claiming that he couldn’t stand “that bloody museum”, and Szacki had lived in Sandomierz long enough by now to know what he meant.
    Sandomierz really consisted of two, or even three towns. The third was the so-called works on the other side of the river, a memento of the days when the Reds had tried to change the bourgeois, churchy, historical town into an industrial city and had erected an enormous glassworks there. This dismal, ugly district looked intimidating, with a closed-down railway station, a hideous church and a vast factory chimney, which every minute of the day and night destroyed the panorama of Sub-Carpathia visible from the high left bank of the Vistula.
    Town Number Two was the Sandomierz where life actually happened. Here there was a smallish housing estate of fortunately not too invasive blocks, here there were residential districts with one-family houses, schools, parks, a cemetery, an army unit, the police, a bus station, smaller and larger shops, and a library. It was the typical Polish provincial town, maybe a bit less neglected, and its hillside location made it more attractive than others. Yet it wouldn’t have stood out from countless Polish holes, were it not for Town Number One.
    Town Number One was the picture-postcard Sandomierz of TV cop show Father Mateusz and classic writer Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz,a little gem set on a high escarpment, whose panorama delighted everyone without exception, and which in his time Szacki had fallen in love with. He was still capable of taking a walk onto the bridge merely in order to see the historic houses banked up on the hillside, the dignified Collegium Gostomianum, the towers of the town hall and the cathedral, the Renaissance gable of the Opatowska Gate, and the solid mass of the castle. Depending on the season and the time of day, this view looked different every time, and every time it was just as breathtaking.
    Unfortunately, as Szacki knew all too well now, it was a view which only made a