Murder in Siena by T A Williams

Author:T A Williams [Williams, T. A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Boldwood Books

14

SUNDAY AFTERNOON

Anna and I met up with Virgilio and Lina just before midday and travelled to Siena in my car with Oscar in the back. As we left, two coaches came up the drive towards us, no doubt here to collect the delegates and transfer them to Siena for their lunch and their tour of the historic city. During the twenty-minute journey, Virgilio and his wife didn’t say a lot but they were looking reasonably happy. I was keeping my fingers crossed for them. I could tell that Virgilio was dying to find out how the investigation was going but he managed to summon the self-control not to mention it and I had already agreed with Anna that anything to do with police work was taboo for today.

Oscar is a very sociable dog. So sociable, in fact, that he sometimes sticks his nose where he shouldn’t. The good news today was that Siena in early April, while busy, was far less crowded than it would be in the summer months, and the people were mostly wearing long trousers. Oscar has a particular liking for ladies in short shorts but, understandably, not everybody likes having a cold Labrador nose goosing them as they go about their business. So today was less stressful than it would have been in high summer for me hanging onto the end of his lead, though I knew that having him with us was going to cramp my style as far as going into historic buildings was concerned. But that was a problem for the afternoon. Right now, we were having lunch and Virgilio had kindly picked a restaurant where dogs were welcome.

The restaurant he had chosen was tucked away in a narrow street lined with medieval houses roughly halfway between the iconic Piazza del Campo and the duomo. It was also barely a hundred metres from the questura, the police station where Bruno worked. I rather suspected that this might not be a coincidence, but I didn’t comment and followed him in through the door. This was set in a fairly bland façade built of the same rose-pink, medieval bricks from which much of the rest of the city is made and we were ushered down a flight of brick steps into what had clearly once been a vast cellar. The vaulted ceiling was bare brick, and a huge fireplace at the far end would no doubt provide welcome warmth on cold, winter nights. Wooden shelves around the walls were laden with bottles of wine, not surprisingly most of them different varieties of Chianti. It was intimate, it was ancient, it was atmospheric, and it just screamed Tuscany. I had a feeling we were going to eat well here.

My confidence proved to be well founded.

It was just as well that I was hungry. The first thing to arrive on our table was a massive wooden platter loaded with hand-carved ham and salami, slices of three or four different types of pecorino cheese, ranging from fresh and soft to over a year old and crunchy and, of course, the ubiquitous crostini or bruschetta.

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