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answer.
    'Tomorrow, then.' It was amazing. They hadn't asked him a single question or even so much as mentioned their dead neighbour's name. It was true that he hadn't mentioned it himself. For reasons of his own he didn't want the truth getting about just yet. He closed the door softly as he went out. They looked a nice couple, intelligent too, but odd not to be at all curious.
    He dismissed them from his mind when he heard voices coming from above and, since he had left Pippo alone, that meant new arrivals. This could hardly be an instant result of his phone call. He was annoyed and quickened his step, arriving on the landing above breathless, his hat clutched to his chest. The door was open and the tiny flat seemed to be full of chatter and cigarette smoke.
    'For God's sake . . .' He hadn't been gone five minutes!
    Pippo was talking animatedly to a stocky young man in dark blue. An elderly woman was sitting on an upright chair in the bedroom, apparently waiting for something.
    'What's going on here?'
    Pippo interrupted himself and the younger man turned, cigarette in mouth, grinning lopsidedly.
    'Galli!' The Marshal recognized the journalist from the Nazione. 'How the devil. . .'
    'I have my methods.' Galli held out his hand and the Marshal was obliged to shake it. Not that he didn't like the man, he'd always found him honest in his job and you couldn't say that for so many journalists. But he had an infuriating way of turning up too soon. Too soon for the Marshal, at any rate. And there was that story of the time he not only turned up at the scene of a crime before the police got there but found a witness, which the police had failed to do, and instead of informing them he published the man's statement in the paper, pointing out that the police hadn't. . . Oh well. There he was.
    'I'll go if I'm in the way,' Galli offered.
    'You mean you've already got what you want.' He hadn't, though, not from talking to Pippo, the Marshal consoled himself. Unless he'd taken a good look at the body. He was no fool.
    'You won't get more than four lines out of a story like this,' he hazarded, without actually lying.
    'Are you kidding? In the middle of August? If my gran's cat committed suicide I'd give it half a page and a photo!'
    The Marshal was relieved. Even so, he said: 'I'd rather you went before the Substitute Prosecutor arrives.'
    'Right you are. If it turns out she had a bag of diamonds on top of the wardrobe or anything, or was the rejected daughter of some foreign prince, let me know.'
    'Hm.'
    'Or even if the old girl had been crossed in love we'd do a special edition. God, it's hot. It's foul working in August.'
    'Go on holiday, then.'
    'And leave you in peace, you mean? Not me. I can see myself, squashed into a square inch of beach with the riff-raff. I went to London last month. It was so damn cold I wore an overcoat the whole time.'
    He was certainly suffering from the heat. His face had a greyish pallor and there were dark circles under his eyes. He mopped his forehead with a handkerchief.
    'I'll be off, then. If I can be of any help to you, just shout.'
    It was impossible to stay angry with the man even when he was as cheeky as this. And it was no more than the truth since he often had been of help.
    'I'll bear it in mind.'
    'So long, then!'
    The Marshal glowered at Pippo who flushed.
    'Have I said something I shouldn't?'
    'How should I know? I don't know what you told him.'
    'Nothing I hadn't told you. I never thought. . . You didn't tell me not to let anybody in.'
    Which was true. The Marshal gave it up and looked towards the bedroom where the elderly woman was still sitting perfectly still, staring straight ahead of her as if in a dentist's waiting-room.
    'And who's this?'
    'Franco sent her up.'
    'Oh yes? And did Franco send Galli up, too?'
    'Who?'
    'That journalist.'
    'I don't think so, no. He just turned up. Said he was on his way to supper with friends and saw the crowd outside.'
    'I see.'
    'If you don't want her,