Death of an Englishman - Softcover

Nabb, Magdalen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1569472548 ISBN 13: 9781569472545

Verlag: Soho Crime, 2001

Inhaltsangabe

When retired Englishman A. Langley-Smythe is found murdered in Florence, the Italian and British police work together under the direction of Marshal Salvatore Guarnaccia of the carabinieri to search for the killer. Reprint.

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Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Magdalen Nabb was born and educated in England. She lived and wrote in Florence, where she died on August 18, 2007.

Magdalen Nabb was born in Lancashire and moved to Florence in 1975, where she pursued a dual career as a crime writer and children's author until her death in 2007.

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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 Carabiniere Bacci had insisted on sleeping in the office instead of going upstairs to bed—quite unnecessarily, in the Marshal’s opinion—but Carabiniere Bacci was known as the ‘perfect student.’ Quietly he took down the gun, checked it and strapped it on with an eye on the inner door. He ought to wake the Marshal, perhaps, or phone through to Borgo Ognissanti in case he needed help . . . but if he phoned Headquarters they would surely tell him to stay where he was and they’d send an Officer . . . Carabiniere Bacci had never in his life been near the scene of a crime . . . still . . . he was drumming softly with his gloved fingers on the desk. The Marshal had said that if anything important came up—it might not be anything at all, of course—nothing ever did happen at Stazione Pitti . . .
          Carabiniere Bacci did not like the Marshal. In the first place because he was Sicilian and he suspected him of being, if not actually Mafia, at least mafioso, and he knew that the Marshal knew of his suspicion and even encouraged it. He seemed to think it was funny. He disliked the Marshal in the second place because he was too large and fat and had an embarrassing eye complaint—embarrassing to Carabiniere Bacci—that caused him to weep copiously during the hours of sunlight. And since he continually mourned the absence of his wife and children who were at home in Syracuse, his rolling tears often seemed distressingly real—distressing to Carabiniere Bacci. The Marshal himself would fish unperturbedly for the dark glasses that were always in one of his voluminous pockets and explain to anyone and everyone, ‘It’s all right, just a complaint I have. It’s the sunshine starts it off.’
          He thought he wouldn’t wake the Marshal. Via Maggio was only two steps away. He could be there and back in ten minutes and then wake him if it seemed necessary. He stepped outside and locked the office door.
          The caller had been right—it was morning, just about. A sluggish, damp December dawn. Thick yellow fog rose off the river and seeped along the narrow streets to deaden Carabiniere Bacci’s footsteps as he came out under the dark, stone archway and crossed the sloping forecourt of the Pitti palace. The few ghostly cars that had been left there all night were misted with fine droplets of moisture. He crossed the silent piazza and cut through an alley that slit the high buildings dividing Piazza Pitti from Via Maggio. He was shivering inside his heavy greatcoat, aware of the whole city sleeping behind closed shutters. The streetlights were still on, but since the narrow passage had only one iron lamp at each end, Carabiniere Bacci had to tread carefully, squeezing past the inevitable line of illegally parked mopeds, his nose discreetly lifted against the stench of drains that hung in the dawn fog and that would not be dispersed until the rush-hour traffic drove it off and replaced it with exhaust fumes. Halfway along the alley, at its gloomiest point, he stumbled on to a Coca-Cola can that rolled away along the uneven flags, rattling his nerves. When he came out in Via Maggio he  stopped, wondering which way to go. To his right, the street...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Soho Crime
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2001
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1569472548
• ISBN 13: 9781569472545
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 172
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar