She Walks in Darkness Read Online Free

being given—but fortunately or unfortunately, the old man knew some English. Richard and I are not rich, we are saving for things our house will really need when we get it, but I finally let him sell me an exquisite lantern (a copy of an old Etruscan lamp, he said) at a price that seemed absurdly low.
    His eyes beamed then; he thanked me in voluble Italian. As the money changed hands, I heard a faint rustling somewhere in the gloomy depths of the shop behind us, and the shopkeeper started and glanced over his shoulder.
    “Is somebody there?” My eyes followed his, but the shadows were too deep; I could see nothing.
    Then the old woman laughed—a little too loudly—and her husband moved rather quickly to the door, bowed, smiled, and opened it. They did not seem afraid that anybody might have gotten into their house; if anything, they were anxious to get us out of it. Once, on our way back to the palazzo, I glanced back, thinking that I heard steps on the stones behind us, but I saw no one.
    When I joined Richard and the doctor, my fit of nerves was over. I forgot to mention the escaped prisoner, I was so busy showing my lantern, and hoping that Richard would like it. He did. Dr. Pulcinelli smiled indulgently.
    “I should have known that Giovanna would take you to the Credis’; Taddeo Credi’s wife is an old friend of hers. But you were not cheated; he is a fine workman. He was once a protégé of Prince Mino Carenni, on whose lands he was born.”
    “You knew Prince Mino?” I asked.
    He hesitated a moment. “In my youth I revered him. His learning, not his opinions and theories, which were always extreme. I still admire that.”
    “You and Professor Harris both made a thorough search for those epoch-making discoveries that he was rumored to have found during his last years,” said Richard. “Didn’t you, sir?”
    The doctor sighed. “Yes. But we found nothing. And we went deep into the vaults below the villa, into the lowest”—he hesitated again—“at least the lowest known level of the ancient tombs.”
    What a place to have built a love nest, I thought— over a cemetery. What I said aloud was something quite different: “You don’t think that the prince would have committed murder?” And then I could have bitten my tongue; since the two men had known each other, such a remark was intolerably tactless.
    The doctor stiffened. “That story was a lie, signora: a stupid and malicious slander.” He paused a moment. “Yet there may have been reasons for its telling. This is a day of change. Too much change, however it ends, to please older men like me. Old loyalties are fading, old resentments sometimes erupt in barbaric ways. Not too far from here last year, an ironmaster was burned alive in his own furnace, by men some of whom he had known all his life.”
    “Communist agitators prompt those things, though, don’t they?” Richard said. “Men from outside?”
    “Communists, yes.” The doctor’s face was grim. “But such men are not always strangers; sometimes they return to their own birthplaces to bring violence and bloodshed. But to return to our subject: The Prince Carenni’s pride of race and birth amounted almost to insanity, but it is preposterous to suggest that he ever would have harmed a guest whom his house sheltered. There is a famous old Italian story of a father who killed his own son for betraying a guest to the law. Even though, according to one version, the fugitive was also the seducer of the boy’s sister.”
    Richard nodded. “I know, sir. You see, Barby, the guest’s own worth didn’t matter; the host’s honor was at stake, once he’d given him shelter. In Italy the tradition of hospitality always has been very sacred.”
    “Exactly.” Our host was gratified.
    He courteously urged us to stay for dinner. “Then you could see le Balze in the dusk. The site of Volterra’s great landslide. The event itself was a catastrophe, destroying perhaps priceless tombs, but at