The Marshal and the Madwoman by Magdalen Nabb Read Free Book Online

carbon monoxide poisoning they'd have been a much lighter red. But they weren't going to discuss it in his presence. They would discuss it privately and then the Prosecutor would give him his orders. It was their way of telling him, in case he didn't know, that he was only an NCO. The Marshal knew from his captain, however, that the worst of them treated officers in the same way. The best of them didn't do it to anybody. This looked like being one of the worst of them, to judge by the way he'd swept in without so much as a good-evening, let alone introducing himself, since the Marshal didn't know him from Adam. Probably annoyed to have his meal interrupted. And then when the case goes badly, thought the Marshal, summing the man up, yours truly will be to blame.
    As these thoughts passed through his mind, his face remained impassive and his large bulging eyes stayed fixed on the peeling wall in front of him like those of a bulldog waiting for a command.
    At nine-thirty, all the rooms in the tiny flat were lit with weak, unshaded light-bulbs and the Marshal was alone. The Prosecutor, the doctor and all the technicians had gone through the rituals attending sudden death and taken their departure. Pippo, having told his story, rather better the second time round to the Prosecutor, had gone home to his wife and supper and the TV. The body still had to be taken away and seals put on the doors and windows, but in the meantime the Marshal was alone, expressionless, looking.
    He looked in the fridge first. It was tidy and clean enough but so old and scratched as to look a bit sleazy, and all the more depressing for having so little in it. A small box of milk in the door, one egg and a paper-thin slice of sausage on a tin plate.
    'Sometimes she'll ask him for an egg, just like a child asking for a sweet.'
    'And does he give it to her?'
    Wrapped in a bit of newspaper . . .'
    One of the last things the Prosecutor had said, wondering why anyone should have wanted to kill her, was 'Had she money?'
    And the silent Marshal had opened his big eyes wider than ever to suggest the man look around him and see.
    'It doesn't necessarily follow.'
    It was true, of course, as far as it went. Even Galli, the reporter, had quipped, 'If it turns out she had a bag of diamonds on top of the wardrobe . . .'
    The thought sent him wandering into the bedroom. He wasn't searching the place systematically. Perhaps he should have done but he didn't want to. He was content to sniff about the place with no aim in mind. He pulled the one straight chair towards the scratched wardrobe and climbed on it carefully, not at all convinced that it would bear his weight. It creaked a little but it held. There was no bag of diamonds up there and nothing else either, except a thick layer of dust and fluff. The crazy woman's cleaning mania had been as unsystematic as the Marshal's searching. He got down and opened the wardrobe door.
    'Who the devil . . .' He couldn't have been more surprised if he'd found someone hiding in there. As it was, his first thought was that someone had removed Clementina's clothing, and who on earth could have done it? Yet there was nothing in there except a few wire coathangers and a plastic-wrapped bundle lying at the bottom. This, when he opened it, contained two old woollen dresses that reeked of mothballs. He replaced the bundle and straightened up to look about him. There was a small chest of drawers against the opposite wall and he went over to it, opening the three drawers one after the other and making a mental inventory. It didn't take long. A few pieces of much worn underwear, a heavy cardigan, darned on both elbows and a lighter one in rather better condition, two pairs of thick stockings and another old woollen dress, this one, too, wrapped in polythene and filled with mothballs. That was all. Hadn't she even a coat? And what about shoes? The shoes, at least, he found under the bed. She'd been wearing nothing on her feet when she died and