Présentation de l'éditeur
It is just before Christmas and the marshal wants to go South to spend the holiday with his wife and family, but first he must recover from the flu (which has left the Florentine caribinieri short-handed) and also solve a murder. A seemingly respectable retired Englishman, living in a flat on the Via Maggio near the Santa Trinita bridge, was shot in the back during the night. He was well-connected and Scotland Yard has dispatched two officers to "assist" the Italians in solving the crime. But it is the marshal, a quiet observer, not an intellectual, who manages to figure out what happened, and why.
Extrait
CHAPTER 1
The small office was in darkness, except where the red night lamp stood by the telephone on the desk, and the white kid gloves lying on top of a sheaf of papers within the patch of light were flushed pink. A black uniform jacket was hung over the back of a swivel chair and a matching military greatcoat, lined with red, was buttoned neatly on to a hanger behind the door, alongside a well-brushed hat. There was just room in the office for a camp bed along one white-painted wall, and on the camp bed, his legs carefully placed so as not to crease the red stripe down his trousers, lay Carabiniere Bacci. He was doing night duty. The features of his Florentine face were serene. He was asleep.
He was very young and he slept deeply, with a copy of the
Codice di Procedura Penale open on his chest and a handbook of military tactics on the floor beside him. His idea had been to stay awake all night and study, but the closeness of the little office, the softness of the red light, and the silence had combined to close his brown eyes, though he thought in his dream that he was still reading.
The telephone shrilled loudly and insistently in its pool of light. Carabiniere Bacci had leapt to his feet before he was awake and saluted before he was on his feet. When he realized what the noise was, he grabbed the receiver quickly before it could wake the Marshal. A small, distressed voice said:
‘Marshal Guarnaccia, Marshal . . . you’d better come round here right away, it’s the Englishman, he—
‘Just a moment.’ Carabiniere Bacci felt about for the main light switch and picked up a pencil.
‘Marshal?’
‘This is not Marshal Guarnaccia, this is Carabiniere Bacci speaking, who’s that?’
There was a pause, then the voice continued obediently, ‘Cipolla, Gianpaolo Maria.’
‘And the address?’
‘My address?’ The voice was so weak that Carabiniere Bacci wondered if he were speaking to a man or a boy.
‘Your address and the address you’re speaking from if they’re different.’
‘Via Romana eighty-three red, that’s my address.’
‘And you’re speaking from?’
‘Via Maggio fifty-eight.’
‘And there’s been a crime committed there?’
‘Yes, it’s the Englishman . . . Is the Marshal not there? My sister lives next door to the Marshal, with her husband being a gardener in the Boboli, so I know him—and the Marshal . . .’
‘Might I ask you,’ said Carabiniere Bacci with all the cold dignity of his two months’ practical experience, ‘just what you’re doing in Via Maggio in the middle of the night if you live down Via Romana?’
Another pause. Then the small voice said, ‘But . . . it’s morning . . . I work here.’
‘I see. Well. Stay where you are and I’ll be over there in five minutes.’ Carabiniere Bacci pulled on his jacket and greatcoat and adjusted his hat and kid gloves carefully. It distressed him not to wash and shave but the matter might be urgent . . . he hesitated, looking toward the door that led to the Marshal’s living quarters and then back at the door where his coat had hung and where a Beretta nine was now visible, hung up with its white leather holster and webbing. The Marshal was sweating in bed with the onset of flu, which was why Carabi
