The Marshal's Own Case by Magdalen Nabb Page A

late and his hesitation might have been the death of him if Bruno hadn’t leaped forward and torn Peppina away.
    ‘Good lad!’ came Ferrini’s voice and the other two approached. Of course Ferrini had a torch. He shone it down on the writhing white figure. Bruno was astride the prostrate Peppina, struggling to get the hands behind the back and handcuff them. The others helped and Peppina was soon dragged upright and taken off to the parked cars.
    The Marshal had recognized the face by this time. Peppina was the one who’d turned on him that night in the office: ‘Is looking enough or do you want to touch?’
    Now he sat in the front of the car, conscious of his smarting face and of the strong perfume still clinging to the front of his overcoat. Peppina was in the back, handcuffed now to Bruno. Ferrini’s lad was following in the other car. Peppina had made row enough for ten at first until she saw what Ferrini was holding on his knee.
    ‘You threw your handbag away in the bushes when you were running off,’ Ferrini said. ‘I’m sure you wouldn’t do a thing like that except by mistake, so I picked it up for you.’
    And Peppina fell silent.
    As they drove out of the park towards the yellow lighting on Ponte alla Vittoria, Ferrini slowed down.
    ‘Did you want a word with Carla? You said you’d ask him about identifying . . .’
    ‘He’s here?’
    ‘Over there, by the hotel. Do you want me to stop?’
    Carla stood very still and upright. Long legs in white fishnet tights, a scrap of something lacey that didn’t quite reach up to the high breasts. One hand was placed on the left hip, the other hanging loose but motionless. The long white fur was pushed back from the shoulders and hung down behind almost to the feet. There was something different from the figures in the park that swung forwards from their huddled stance under the sheltering trees. There was no sign of life, no flicker of response to the dark falling rain, to the headlights that swept slowly over the still, white figure and passed on. They came close enough to stop and speak but the Marshal, unable to recognize even at that distance, the person he had talked to in a tidy little flat, hesitated and then said, ‘Drive on.’ It was the eyes. They had stared past him, past the cars streaming across the bridge, past the river and the floodlit palaces on the other bank, past everything. The blank and sightless eyes of a statue.
    ‘What time did you arrive at Lulu’s flat?’
    ‘I told you.’
    ‘And I don’t believe you.’
    ‘It couldn’t have been before midnight. I never go out before half past eleven.’
    ‘You went out before that. You went out to eat at Lulu’s flat.’
    ‘That’s a lie. I ate at the trattoria where I always eat.’
    ‘Who with?’
    ‘I can’t remember . . .’ Peppina was rubbing at his blackened fingers with a handkerchief but the fingerprinting ink only spread a little and didn’t come off. He was nearly naked but the Marshal’s overcoat was pulled around his shoulders. Ferrini had laughed at him but he had refused to have Peppina brought in uncovered. It had been Bruno who had inadvertently divested him of the fur coat when trying to grab him during the chase and now it was lying in a sodden heap somewhere in the park.
    Ferrini’s interrogation wasn’t vicious, only insistent. He was too sure of his ground to have recourse to anger. No matter what Peppina might admit or deny, there was no getting away from the evidence lying on the desk between them. His handbag had contained, among other things, a packet of traveller’s cheques in the name of Luigi Esposito.
    ‘What about the money? There must have been some cash as well as these. Have you spent it?’
    ‘There was no money. I never saw any money.’
    ‘We’ve already fingerprinted the flat.’
    ‘I never said I wasn’t at the flat.’
    ‘And the handbag.’
    ‘I never touched her handbag. She’d gone when I got to the flat. I swear that’s