The Marshal's Own Case by Magdalen Nabb Page B

true. I saw her the night before. She said she was leaving soon. When I went to the flat that night she’d gone.’
    ‘He hadn’t gone. He was dead. He died right after a meal, the meal we found on the table, the meal you shared with him.’
    ‘That’s a lie! I told you, I ate at the trattoria! You can check—and then I went to work at my usual place. I only went to Lulu’s flat after that and she’d gone!’
    ‘So how did you get in? Well? Come on, let’s hear it. You went to the flat at midnight and Lulu wasn’t there so how did you get in?’
    ‘I want a lawyer! I’m not answering any more questions.’
    ‘Please yourself. With or without your lawyer you’ll talk to the Prosecutor tomorrow morning and I hope you’ll have a better story ready because this one stinks. Take him away.’
    When he’d been removed, Ferrini and the Marshal looked at each other and then at the traveller’s cheques.
    ‘He might think better of it overnight,’ Ferrini said, ‘and then our troubles really start.’
    ‘How do you mean?’
    ‘We can keep him in a cell here for a day or two but once he’s charged we’ll have to move him to prison. The men’s prison won’t want him and the women’s prison will refuse to take him. In the meantime I’d say enough’s enough for one night, what about you?’ He slid the traveller’s cheques into an envelope and locked them away. Then he tipped the rest of Peppina’s stuff back into the handbag. As well as make-up and various crumpled bits of paper, there were cigarettes and a bottle of pills.
    ‘Do you think he did it?’ the Marshal asked.
    ‘Why? Don’t you? He could have this stuff back, I suppose . . .’
    ‘I’ll see to it. Then, as you say, enough’s enough . . .’
    It was difficult to hear anything down in the basement because of the noise from the generator right in front of the two cells. It was unbearably hot. The Marshal had himself let into the cell on the left and offered the handbag to Peppina who was curled up on the worn brown blanket covering the hard narrow bed. He sat up and snatched at it, clutching at once at the cigarettes and lighting one with trembling hands.
    ‘Thanks.’ He threw the packet down on the blanket and fished anxiously for the bottle of pills. ‘Thank God for that. I can’t sleep without them, can’t sleep a wink . . . oh shit!’ He crumpled up with his head on his knees. His sobs were dry, sobs of fear. ‘Oh shit . . . what a thing to happen to me. And all because of that bitch Lulu.’
    ‘Did you hate him?’
    ‘Lulu? Everybody hated her! Everybody!’ He looked up, pushing back his long fair hair with the lethal red fingernails whose effects the Marshal could still feel. ‘Listen, I swear to God I never killed her—besides it must have been a maniac, chopping somebody up like that, it makes me shudder to think! I’ve never harmed a fly, never. I’ve never been in prison either and I don’t even take drugs. There’s nothing against me and now this has to happen just when I wanted to get out!’
    ‘Get out?’
    ‘Out of this whole business. I’ve had enough. I never wanted to be a prostitute—what kind of life do you think it is? I’d decided to get out, start a little business on my own—well, nobody would give me a job, I know that— and now what will happen to me? I’ve had it. I know I’ve had it. Nobody will believe me, will they, because of what I am? I’ll be convicted because of what I am even though I never touched her. I never even saw her. That bitch!’
    ‘What was it about Lulu,’ the Marshal asked, ‘that everybody hated him?’
    ‘She had so much money. They’d pay anything to have her. She didn’t need to be on the streets, do you know that? With all the regulars she had and what they paid her she could have stayed at home, but she didn’t. It wasn’t enough that she had more than anybody, she had to snatch everybody else’s clients as well, just for spite. Do you know what she’d