The Marshal and the Murderer

by Magdalen Nabb

  '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.

  'Raw glaze. You need experience to handle it.'

  When the pots were packed and the Marshal was settled in the pass
enger seat Berti went back to lock up. Through the rear-view mirror the Marshal saw him pause just inside the door, staring towards the wall intently, then take a comb from his pocket and run it carefully through his thick grey hair.

  Two

  They drove through the rain in silence for twenty yards or so. Berti drove very slowly and with what seemed exaggerated care, glancing every few seconds into his rear-view mirror. No doubt, the Marshal thought, he was worried about breaking his plates if he had to brake suddenly.

  'That's Moretti's place.' It was on the left like Berti's studio and, as he'd said, just round a curve in the road. "1*11 have to turn round here.' He drove into a lay-by in front of the gates of an enormous old house that stood well back from the road almost opposite the factory, its stuccoed facade stained dark yellow in the rain.

  'Robiglio,' he remarked with a snigger, 'and his seven-lavatory mansion,' and glanced at the Marshal as he changed into first. When the Marshal offered no comment but maintained a pop-eyed silence he lifted his hand and rubbed the thumb and forefinger together. 'A millionaire.'

  When a space appeared in the traffic he nosed out slowly and turned to park in front of Moretti's ramshackle factory which had a high terrace giving on to the road with steps leading up on each side of it. A big stocky man wearing a knitted cap and with a piece of sacking over his shoulders was up there heaving some bulging plastic bags about in the rain.

  Berti got out of the car and called out: 'Moretti in?'

  The man pointed to their left and went on heaving the bags. The Marshal got out and they climbed the wet stone steps.

  'In his office,' Berti said, opening the door of what was hardly more than a shack detached from the rest of the building.

  Moretti was there, standing by a trestle table littered with orders and invoices. He turned and was about to greet Berti when he saw the Marshal and remained silent.

  'I've brought my stuff,' Berti said, and with a sly look at the Marshal: 'And somebody who wants a word with you.'

  'What can I do for you?' Moretti was small and wiry with a shock of red hair. He looked the Marshal straight in the eye.

  'Just some information. This is your factory?'

  'Mine and my brother's.'

  'I'm trying to trace a Swiss girl; Monica Heer. I believe she sometimes came here.'

  'What of it? She wasn't working for me.' He shot an accusing glance at Berti.

  I'm not suggesting that she was, and in any case I'm not interested in who she was working for. I'm trying to trace her, that's all.'

  'How do you mean, trace her? What for? If she's in trouble with you people it's nothing to do with me.'

  He wasn't hostile, only brusque, but there was something aggressive or even defiant in the way he continued to look the Marshal straight in the eye.

  'It seems she's missing,' put in Berti, rubbing his hands slowly together, his little eyes taking in everything in the cluttered office. 'She hasn't been seen since Friday.'

  'Well, she's not here. You'd better get your stuff up there, they're more than halfway through loading.' He picked up a pair of dusty reading glasses and put them on, letting them rest almost on the end of his nose as though he never wore them for long. Then he took a blue invoice from the pile as if to indicate that, as far as he was concerned, their talk was over. When the Marshal didn't follow Berti out he looked up and said: 'If there's nothing else ... I have to have all these invoices ready by tomorrow. You'll excuse me, this is a busy few days for us.'

  'That's all right,' said the Marshal blandly, "there's nothing else . . . Except that I was wondering if she came here on Monday morning ..."

  'Monday morning . . .? I suppose she could have done since we're ready to fire.'

  'She could have done? Surely you'd have seen her?'

  'Not necessarily. I only came in for half an hour to talk to some buyers. I took them round a couple of other factories and then to the restaurant in town. We were in here, so for all I know she could have been inside, throwing.'

  'Somebody would have seen her.'

  'I doubt it, not on Monday. The point is, when we're about to fire and the last pieces are drying out we usually take a long weekend. All my men are on piece work except the apprentice and they work all hours when we've a lot on, then take a bit of time off when we're firing. That was when the girl used to come round, to use the wheel when the throwers were off. Once everything's dry and we're ready to load the kiln everybody mucks in and helps. This is a small place, run on family lines. Monday there was nothing doing, the place was empty.'

  'You mean the girl could have just walked in here? You don't lock up?'

  'Lock up? No, never, there's no need . . .' Moretti ran a hand through his disordered red hair, hesitating as though embarrassed by what he had just said and wondering how to justify it. 'In a place like this there's nothing to steal ... I do lock this office up with a bit of a padlock but I don't know why I bother since there's never any money here.'

  1 see. Well, I'll let you get on, then . . .'

  The Marshal decided he'd better get some background information from his cheery colleague at the Carabinieri Station in the town before getting involved any further. He always liked to sniff about on his own first, with no preconceived ideas, but these people seemed to live in a world of their own whose workings were foreign to him. Even so, when he spotted Berti carrying the last of his plates into the factory he followed him, partly in the hope that some workman in there might have been around on Monday despite what Moretti had said, and partly because he was beginning to feel certain that something had happened to the girl who, if he were to believe all he'd been told, had got off a bus outside Berti's studio and disappeared into thin air.

  When he got inside the gloomy building Berti had vanished and there was no one else in sight. The place was like a maze. There was no understanding how it was constructed. So many crooked passageways, rickety wooden stairs, rooms that led into each other and brought you back to where you started from. He began to believe that the girl could have been in here without anybody knowing it. After rambling about aimlessly for some time without coming across a soul or hearing anything other than the sound of his own footsteps he found himself in a long high room that seemed almost empty, so that it was impossible to understand what normally went on there, if anything. There were windows all along one side of it, all of them dirty and one or two of them broken so that the rain was coming in. In one corner of the room stood an old bath full of bits of clay covered with water, and nearby a box containing coils of thick wire. Then a great empty stretch and at the far end a group of large white shapes. The Marshal approached them, curious, but even seeing them close up he was none the wiser. Huge plaster shells, rough on the outside and smooth on the inside. He touched one of them tentatively. It was damp and very cold. Then he heard muffled voices coming from directly beneath him and started down the nearest staircase. On the floor below there was no one and he was obliged to wander through three or four other rooms before finding his way down to the next floor, losing himself and the spot the voices came from. At last he heard them again and entered a room almost as big as the one two floors above. But this one was full and busy. In the centre of it was a huge kiln with piles of broken bricks and what looked like some sort of crumbling red cement around its gaping mouth. The rest of the room was filled with row upon row of dark, big-bellied pots, many of them almost as tall as the two men who were lifting them one by one and carrying them to the mouth of the kiln. One of the men looked up without interrupting his movements.

  'If you're looking for the boss, he's in his office.'

  'No.' The Marshal stepped back out of their path. 'I was looking for Signor Berti.'

  The man nodded in the direction of the kiln. The Marshal waited until they had deposited their burden and then went nearer and peered into the gloom. A boy was crouched inside the entrance sorting through piles of biscuit-coloured tubes and fitting castellated tops on to them. Behind the boy, Berti was pass
ing his plates through to some chamber beyond from which muffled voices issued.

  "That's the lot?'

  'Two more.'

  'Saggar's full!'

  'I'll pass you a shelf.'

  'The boss won't like it . . .'

  'He won't know.'

  'He'll know if he sees as much as one spot of glaze on any of this stuff . . .'

  Ignoring the complaining voice, Berti came forward to the crouching boy. 'Give me four props and a shelf . . .' Then he saw the dark figure of the Marshal blocking the light at the kiln's entrance, as round and heavy as the jars piling up around him. 'You'll get yourself dirty there. I'll be out in a minute.'

  Indeed, the Marshall on glancing down at his black greatcoat found that there were large patches of iron red dust on it. Nevertheless, he stayed where he was. He was feeling uneasy and instead of asking questions as he had intended he went on standing there, observing everything with big troubled eyes. In any case, he was convinced that if anybody here had something to hide these people would stick together like a family. You could tell it even from the way they worked, or rather went on working. Usually when a uniformed caribiniere appeared in a place unexpectedly, however innocuous the visit, it had the effect of breaking up whatever was going on if only for the sake of curiosity, but here his presence had no effect at all. He wasn't one of them and so didn't matter. In the end all he asked of the two men lining up the big jars by the kiln was: 'How many of you work here?'

  'Counting the boss?'

  'If you like.'

  'Eight, then. There's a hairline crack in the rim of that one.' Already he had turned away to concentrate on the job in hand. 'No- the one beyond . . . that's it. Give it a rub down, will you, and let's hope it doesn't open up in the fire.' Then he did turn back to the Marshal but only to say, 'I'll have to ask you to move, do you mind?'