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anything will come of this, despite the new developments.”
    “I don’t know. I really don’t know, and that’s the truth.”
    Again he got to his feet, clearly wanting the interview to be over. The Marshal got up and followed him to the door.
    “They expect you at eight tomorrow morning.”
    There was no doubt that the brief touch on the Marshal’s shoulder as he said it was friendly, but there was no doubt either that his face as he watched the Marshal leave was dark with anger.
    “Don’t tell the boys.”
    “For heaven’s sake, Salva, as if I’d dream of talking about something like that to the boys.” Even so, Teresa, too, glanced anxiously at the door through which they’d charged the minute it stopped raining. The white Sunday tablecloth was still on and she had just cleared their plates and brought in coffee. “Such a nasty affair …”
    She didn’t go on but the Marshal understood what she was feeling. She’d still been down in Sicily when most of the murders happened but the newspapers all over the country had made the most of such a ghoulish case of murder and sexual mutilation. What she was thinking, and he couldn’t blame her, was that he’d brought it into the house. Wasn’t that what he was feeling himself in not wanting the boys to know?
    “Of course, the papers will be full of it,” she went on, “and it’ll be on television all the time. They’re bound to be asking questions.”
    “It doesn’t matter as long as they don’t know I’m involved. You needn’t imagine my name’ll ever be in the papers. Why me? That’s what I still want to know. Why me? It makes no sense but there must be a reason. They didn’t pick names out of a hat. Maestrangelo said they’d made the choice themselves but he looked angry.”
    “And you can’t imagine why?”
    He stared at her. “You mean you can?”
    “I mean maybe he’d like it to be himself. So, if for some reason he was passed over …”
    “No, no …”
    “He’s only human, you know.”
    The Marshal sipped his coffee in silence, thinking. He was a great admirer of Captain Maestrangelo, seeing him as everything he himself was not: intelligent, well educated, a good speaker. He’d never thought a lot about the man’s human qualities because they weren’t what you noticed. Teresa would, of course; that was like her. She’d even said when they first met that Maestrangelo was a handsome man, and attractive to women, or that he would be if he smiled. That had certainly never crossed the Marshal’s mind—but then, Maestrangelo never smiled. He was ambitious, that was true … but even so …
    “No, no …” he said again. “He has his ambitions, he’ll end up a general, I’m sure of that. But however reliable he might be as an investigator, it’s not where his ambitions lie. And then, a case like this, I can’t see how it can come to anything with the best will in the world. All those years ago and there never was any evidence. No, no, he’s not the man for anything risky or unusual.”
    “Well, if you say so, but leaving that aside, I don’t see why they shouldn’t choose you.”
    “He said, ‘We made the choice.’ He emphasized the ‘we.’ As though he were taking the responsibility but without liking it. It’s the Colonel’s responsibility, anything of that sort, but he hasn’t been here much more than a month.”
    “So the Captain must have recommended you—you know, you really shouldn’t run yourself down the way you do. The Captain thinks a lot of you, you’ve solved some important cases.”
    “I’ve never been on an important case. The only case I ever solved was when that poor creature Cipolla shot that Englishman. And he only did it by accident and after that he was just hanging around waiting for me to arrest him.”
    “I’ll grant you that—have a drop more coffee; I don’t want any more.”
    “It’ll keep me awake.” He accepted it, even so.
    “No, I’ll grant you that but what