The Brewer of Preston by Andrea Camilleri

of duty he decided upon a middle course. His flesh felt heavy, his bones ached, his head was in a fog, but what made him feel worst of all was the sensation of dirt and scum on his skin, caused by the smoke and the mud. He thought he could at least allow himself a bath and then come back to keep an eye on operations. The most he would lose was half an hour.
    â€œYou wait here,” he said to a uniformed policeman he had posted as guard in front of the half-burnt building in which Gnà Nunzia and the Pizzutos lived, to prevent the usual bastards from going inside and looting. “I’ll be back in a bit. As long as it takes me to go home and bathe.”
    He turned to go to the place he called home: two rooms with a latrine and the use of a kitchen, which he rented from Signora Gesualda Contino, a septuagenarian who treated him like a son.
    Ruin and desolation reigned in the piazza in front of the theatre, which the mayor had chosen to embellish with a small garden and a single file of oil lamps arrayed in a circle. All the damage had been done before the fire broke out, by the mounted soldiers’ horses and the fleeing crowd of frightened people. The garden hardly existed anymore, and three of the six lampposts lay on the ground, uprooted. At the far end of the square was a smashed-up carriage with its wheels in the air, while another lay next to it on its side, with the dead horse still attached. Puglisi looked towards the façade of the theatre, now blackened by smoke. Hoffer’s men were entering through the main doorway to go and fight the remaining fire deep in its bowels.
    Some discrepancy, some difference, some thing that didn’t tally, slowly worked its way into Puglisi’s head. With aching legs, he turned back towards the rear of the theatre, and as he drew near, keeping close to the wall, the signs of the devastation became more and more evident. At last he arrived in the alley behind the building, between the theatre and Gnà Nunzia’s house. The guard he had posted saw him reappear.
    â€œDidn’t you go home?”
    â€œNot yet. Something occurred to me.”
    â€œWhat is it, sir?”
    â€œIt occurred to me I need a breath of air, all right?” was his brusque reply. Puglisi liked to ask questions, not to answer them.
    He carefully studied the rear façade of the theatre. At street level there were six transom windows, the kind that are hinged at the bottom and serve to allow air and a bit of light into the rooms below, in the basement.
    Stumps of frames without panes, eaten up by the fire, were all that was left of them. In the middle of the row of transom windows was a wooden door, or the charred remains of one. Behind it were six stone stairs leading down to the understage. On either side and above the door were the signs of a furious, all-devouring fire much fiercer than in other parts of the theatre. Puglisi stopped in front of the door, bewildered. Then he noticed that the first transom window on the right had by some miracle been almost spared. He went up to it and crouched down to have a better look. The pane had been shattered, but the shards had fallen inwards. Puglisi stood up again and backpedaled slowly until he was up against Gnà Nunzia’s building. The overall view confirmed the opinion he was forming: that the fire had not been started when some spectator dropped a still-burning cigar too close to a curtain in the entrance lobby, where the box office and the grand staircase leading up to the boxes, the orchestra, and the gallery were. Its point of origin was on the opposite side of the building.
    And the culprit may have been a stagehand who had perhaps gone down to the understage for a smoke. But then why break the panes of the transom windows and leave the door open? There was no doubt, in fact, that the back door had been open at the moment the fire first caught, as one could tell by the remains of the door still attached to its hinges.