The Art of Killing Well by Marco Malvaldi, Howard Curtis

not expected that it would actually be a member of the same family who would broach the subject.
    â€œI wouldn’t have thought, Signorino Lapo, that this was a problem for your father.”
    â€œYou may think that.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    Lapo looked about him circumspectly and put his hands up like someone realising a moment too late that he has just said something he shouldn’t. “This is a somewhat delicate matter.I’m not sure that now is the time to—”
    â€œI am a police officer, Signorino Lapo, not a porter. Delicate matters are my business.”
    â€œOf course. The thing is, this is a family affair, and I doubt that it’s of any relevance to your investigation. We are entitled to be treated with a modicum of respect, I think.”
    â€œSignorino Lapo, let me remind you that I show you respect every time I pretend not to see you commit one of your nocturnal feats. The next time we meet, you may well be directly beneath a street lamp, and it would be hard for me not to recognise you.”
    Lapo looked down at the floor for a moment, then turned his chair to face the inspector. “Alright, then. A few days ago I was in Mademoiselle Marguerite’s house when I overheard something that made my hair stand on end. You know Mademoiselle’s house, I assume?”
    â€œI frequently have to make arrests there when the customers start causing a disturbance.”
    â€œThen you’ll know that the walls are of plasterboard and you can hear every noise from the adjoining rooms. You wouldn’t believe the kinds of noises people make in certain situations. Sometimes—”
    â€œSignorino Lapo, I have no interest in these erotic shenanigans. Please get to the point.”
    â€œForgive me. I was merely trying to underline that, however inadvertently, what goes on in the other rooms is common knowledge. Anyway, without wandering off the subject again, no morethan a week ago I heard a man talking about my father in the next room, maintaining that he did not pay his debts.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œExactly what I’m telling you. ‘All that splendour, and nothing in his pocket,’ the man said. ‘To keep going he’s been forced to turn to moneylenders. Among the guests invited to the castle for the hunt, there’ll be one who’s there for a very specific purpose.’”
    â€œI see. So you’re telling me …”
    â€œPrecisely, Ispettore. One of my father’s guests is a usurer who wants his dirty money back. And I know who it is.”

    Ispettore Artistico walked up and down the room, lost in thought, as he waited to interview the rest of the family.
    About what had happened, there seemed little doubt. Someone familiar with the baron’s habits had waited for the right moment to poison his drink with a substantial dose of belladonna. The baron, however, probably because he had eaten too much, had barely wet his lips with the port: the indisposition he had described struck the inspector as the typical effect of the ingestion of belladonna. Poor Teodoro, confronted with that almost full glass, had taken it with him to the cellar and drunk it all down, consuming the rest of his days along with the wine.
    Lapo’s pitiful cock-and-bull story added some further suspicious elements. Obviously, the young layabout had concocted a piece of nonsense off the top of his head to remedy the fact that he had said rather too much, but there was usually no smoke without fire. For the moment, the inspector had decided to play the game:he would deal with Lapo later. There was something else that needed clarifying now.
    Two or three timid knocks at the door transported the inspector back to the reality of the room.
    â€œCome in.”
    â€œWith your permission,” Gaddo said in a steady voice. He was accustomed to it: this was his father’s study, and deferentially asking permission to enter was obligatory,