In the Hour Before Midnight by Jack Higgins Read Free Book Online Page B

bathroom.
    The houseboy put my bag on the bed and left and I went and turned on the shower. When I came back into the bedroom, Burke was standing by the window.
    He managed a smile. “The rich full life, eh?”
    â€œSomething like that. I don’t know about you, but I’m going to have a shower.”
    He was obviously eager to please and moved to the door at once. “A good idea. I’ll see you downstairs in an hour.”
    But I had other plans . I gave myself about a minute and a half under an ice-cold needlesprayand changed, pulling on a clean shirt and a lightweight suit in blue tropical worsted. A pair of gold-framed sunglasses completed the outfit.
    I hesitated over the Smith and Wesson, but this was Sicily after all. I clipped the holster to my belt on the right-hand side, left the room quickly and went downstairs.
    There seemed to be no one about and I paused on top of the steps outside the front door. The Mercedes was still there, the driver going over the windscreen with a wash leather.
    Rosa Solazzo said from behind, “You are going somewhere, Mr. Wyatt?”
    I turned and said cheerfully, “Yes, into Palermo if that’s all right with you.”
    â€œBut of course, I’ll tell Ciccio to take you wherever you want.”
    It was nicely done and without the slightest hint of hesitation. The local dialect in Sicily is similar to the Italian spoken in the rest of Italy except for one or two different vowel sounds and an accent you could cut with a knife. She switched over to it as we went down the steps.
    â€œThe American wants to go into Palermo,” she told Ciccio. “Take him wherever he wishes and watch him closely.”
    â€œYou do that, Ciccio,” I said as he held openthe door for me, “and I’ll slice your ears off.”
    Or at least that was the gist of what I told him in the kind of Sicilian you hear on the Palermo waterfront and nowhere else.
    His mouth sagged in surprise and the Solazzo woman’s head snapped round. I ignored her frown, got in the back of the Mercedes. Ciccio slammed the door and slid behind the wheel. He glanced at her enquiringly, she nodded and we moved away.
    Â 
    I made him drop me in the Piazza Pretoria because it seemed as good a place as any and I’d always been fond of that amazing baroque fountain and the beautifully vulgar figures of river nymphs, tritons and lesser gods. At the northern end of the bay, Monte Pellegrino towered in the late afternoon sun and I went on past the beautiful old church of Santa Caterina, turned into the Via Roma and walked towards the central station.
    In a side street, I came across a small crowd waiting to go into a marionette theatre. They were mainly tourists—German from the sound of them. They were certainly in for a shock. Even in decline, the old puppet masters refuse to change their ways and the speeches are delivered in the kind of Sicilian dialect that even a mainland Italian can’t follow.
    On the way in from the airport, I’d noticed one or two of the old hand-painted carts with brass scroll-work, drawn by feather-tufted horses, but on the whole, most of the farmers seemed to be running around on three-wheeler Vespas and Lambrettas. So much for tradition, but just before I reached the Via Lincoln, I saw a carriage for hire standing at the kerbside just ahead of me.
    It was past its prime, the woodwork cracking, the leather harness splitting with age and yet it had been lovingly cared for, the brasswork glinting in the sunlight and I could smell the wax polish of the upholstery.
    The driver looked about eighty years old with a face like a walnut and a long white moustache curling up around each cheek. From the moment I spoke he quite obviously took me for a Sicilian.
    In Palermo it is necessary to make a bargain with a horse cab driver for any journey, however short, which can be rough on the tourist, but I had no trouble—no trouble at all. When I told