“Ah! Of course, I was speaking of them. She said very little, but, do you know, her manner rather shocked me. It takes a lot to do that! She seemed positively to gloat over that horrible, tragic, dark corner. Cacciola was quite distressed, and remonstrated with her—at least I’m sure he did, though he spoke in Italian, which I don’t understand, and she answered him very briefly, in a passionate whisper, and then simply walked off, and Cacciola made a sort of incoherent apology and hurried after her. I couldn’t help thinking there was something mentally wrong—a most grievous thing, especially in one so young and beautiful and talented.”
Austin Starr sat listening intently, but neither then nor later, when the elder men had gone, did he say that he knew aught of Maddelena Cacciola, though why he kept silence he really did not know.
CHAPTER XVI MADDELENA
“Giulia, thou art a foolish old cow! I tell thee no harm will come to thee. It is but to make oath and tell the truth; that the young signor came here inquiring for Donna Paula, and went away, and that Withers brought thee later the little silver case, and thou gave it to the police. What is there in all that?”
In the beautifully appointed kitchen where usually Giulia reigned supreme Maddelena, attired in a morning wrapper of brilliant hues, was dividing her attention between preparing the breakfast coffee and alternately coaxing and scolding Giulia, who sat huddled in a chair, weeping and muttering prayers and protestations to every saint in the calendar.
She was to give evidence in the police court again that day—as she had already done at the inquest which had terminated in a verdict of wilful murder against Roger Carling—and nothing would induce the poor old woman to believe that the object of these interrogations was any other than to prove her guilty of stealing that silver cigarette case! That, she was convinced, was what “they of the police” were after, and the murder of “Donna Paula” was quite a secondary consideration.
Maddelena shrugged her pretty shoulders and went on with her task, setting a dainty breakfast-tray with a little silver service. For all her sharp words to Giulia, there was a smile on her lips, and her fine, capable white hands touched the inanimate things caressingly; for she was preparing that tray for Boris, who had not been out the other evening—as she told Austin Starr on the telephone—but ill in bed. He had collapsed after that scene at the cemetery, and they had brought him home more dead than alive. As Giulia was so foolishly upset, Maddelena and her uncle had nursed the invalid, and already he was much better.
She turned brightly to Cacciola as he came into the kitchen.