The Marshal Makes His Report by Magdalen Nabb

feel really settled here now . . .’
    ‘Of course I am. What brought this on? I haven’t complained.’
    ‘No . . . no. Only at first you—’
    ‘These things take time, Salva. More for me than for you. You’ve got your work and your colleagues wherever you go. And even though it’s so bad for the boys to change school, they soon make friends. If it’s taken me longer it’s because I’m on my own—is it boiling?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Mind out of the way. You can’t be going out making new friends at my age. I haven’t the time. Salva, will you move, I want to get to the rubbish bin. Anyway—’ she put the mug of tea in his hand—‘I don’t know what you’re worrying about. I’m used to Florence now and I like it. And thank goodness we won’t have to move again.’
    They watched a film, or at least Teresa did. The Marshal tried his best to follow it in the hope of distracting himself, but for all his efforts at following the story he would continually find his thoughts back with the Ulderighi house, its inhabitants, the gloomy courtyard filled with piano music. Lorenzini, he’d noticed, had been quite unperturbed by it all, even by Grillo, who had evidently been less on the defensive with a fellow Florentine. A rum sort of character, Lorenzini had admitted.
    ‘Even so, you can be sure he knows everything that’s going on in that house.’
    ‘That’s what I thought.’
    ‘You know what his real job is?’
    ‘Some sort of odd job man, isn’t he?’
    ‘Nothing of the sort—oh, he probably does do odd jobs, but his business is looking after the young master.’
    ‘Ah, the son . . .’
    ‘Neri Ulderighi, who apparently hardly ever leaves his apartments which are at the top of the tower above where Grillo has his lair. It seems that was the original Ulderighi house, thirteenth-century. The rest, with the courtyard, was added three centuries later when they were in their heyday.’
    ‘How old is the boy?’
    ‘Early twenties, I gather.’
    ‘Mph. Not quite right in the head, is that it?’
    ‘Difficult to tell. Delicate is the word used. In and out of clinics all his life, never went to school. There even seems to have been some doubt about his surviving at all when he was a child. Mother smothers him, father never went near him. Mother’s latest plan is to marry him off to some suitable girl who’ll produce the next heir before it’s too late.’
    ‘And he’s not willing, I suppose.’
    ‘Oh, he willing all right. According to our friend Grillo, he can’t wait, though he’s never been near a girl in his life. Wants to escape from his ivory tower, perhaps, and Grillo’s all for it. “He needs to get married,” were his words. You know, he’s a pretty poisonous little creature but I’m convinced he’s really attached to the boy.’
    ‘And the others?’
    ‘Difficult to say. I reckon he’s a bit frightened of the Lady of the Manor, for all his cockiness. Corsi I’d say he never gave much thought to, dead or alive. The ones he really loathes are the tenants.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘No reason I could pin down. Just for being there, I think. Breaking up the great family residence, not belonging. It may be they torment him, of course, but I wouldn’t have thought it. They’re all respectable people by the sound of them.’
    The Marshal, who had long since had his faith in ‘respectable people’ thoroughly shaken, made no comment, and they parted in Piazza Pitti, Lorenzini to go cheerfully off to his young wife and baby in their little flat down Via Romana, the Marshal to climb the sloping forecourt in front of the Pitti Palace towards his station under the arch on the left. He wanted his own home, a shower, normality. He wanted, at least for tonight, to forget it all. So why was he thinking about it yet again? A better film might have helped. This one seemed to be nothing but one long quarrel between a husband and wife. What they were quarrelling about was beyond him.
    ‘What did I tell