Dead Man's Music by Christopher Bush

Author:Christopher Bush
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dean Street Press
Published: 2017-09-02T00:00:00+00:00

★★★★★★

Franklin made an attempt to get hold of Travers that morning, then felt rather relieved that he hadn’t succeeded. After all, if things went wrong, the less said the better. By midday he was in the train; in his pocket a special recommendation for the firm’s Turin agents. The following afternoon found him in Turin.

The situation there seemed rather hopeless. Valcetto lay well out into the plain, with no more scenery than the back of your hand; moreover it appeared to be perfectly modern in character; a large dormitory that had suddenly grown up round some ancient and now non-existent nucleus. Still, he wasted some hours over a drive round, then decided to leave it for a return visit, should the other end of the trail be definitely uninformative.

It was early in the morning when he finally arrived in Taranto, and with choice of rail or car, decided on the car. The driver whom he approached seemed rather amazed.

“Valcetto! That is forty kilometres!”

“It is!” said Franklin. “But what does that matter?—if I pay.”

“Certamente! If the gentleman pays!”

The cost was argued out, half was paid down, then Franklin got in. The car seemed to draw away from the town, skirt the harbour, then cut away south towards level country dotted with vines and olives. In a few moments they came in sight of the sea again, then rarely left it. There was a quarter of an hour of that listless sort of scenery, then the landscape changed and they circled little land-locked bays or nipped between the houses of tiny villages that straggled up towards the hills. Then the car made a sudden descent to the shore. Climbing up what seemed a finger of rock thrust down to the sea, and clinging to every foothold, the small town looked like an immense crab that has left the strip of sand and lumbers awkwardly up the slope.

In the piazza, that lay below the hill and fronted the sea, the car stopped. Franklin got out, paid the balance of his fare and watched the car disappear at the top of the rise. Then he picked up his bag and made for what announced itself as the Hotel of the Three Kings—proprietor, Giovanni Curanti. A lantern-jawed, tired-looking waiter was wiping the marble-topped tables, and in five minutes he was bringing along the rolls and coffee. He bowed with exceeding deference at the sight of the special tip.

“I may leave my bag here?” Franklin asked. “I may have to call on somebody in the town.”

“Certamente, signore,” and the waiter grabbed it at once.

“And if I should want a bed, one will be available?”

The waiter indicated the perfectly stupendous pleasure that would give to everybody. Franklin got to his feet and surveyed the small town, to which he had had his back.

“There is a house here, perhaps, called The Seven Cypresses?”

“I Sette Cipressi!” He shrugged his shoulders. “I have been here only two weeks. But cypresses!”—and his wave of the hand illustrated what Franklin could see for himself, that the countryside was dotted with them.

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