She Walks in Darkness Read Online Free Page A

twilight, when the broken cliffs gleam with phosphorescence and the masses of fallen earth turn purple—well, it is not a sight to forget.”
    I felt that I could stand the deprivation; also that in a country so full of tombs, the destruction of one batch could not have been too great a loss. Richard must have read my feelings in my face; he thanked the doctor, but refused.
    “My wife is tired, and we want to get to the villa before dark; I don’t know these roads too well. But we’ll be back. May we take a rain check on your invitation, sir?”
    And then the meaning of rain check had to be explained; the doctor was delighted with the new phrase.
    When we came to the Porta all’ Arco again, a policeman stopped us and I tensed, but after a swift exchange in Italian, Richard grinned at me. “It’s all right, Barbs. We’re not being arrested. They’re just stopping all cars to look for a man—”
    “I know. I heard while I was out with Giovanna.”
    If I hadn’t stopped him then, Richard might have told me what now I would give so much to know! As it was, he only shrugged. “Whoever the fellow is, they’ve certainly got the wind up. This man even wanted to look in the trunk of our car, but I told him it hadn’t been unlocked since we left Florence.”
    It had been. I had unlocked it before I realized that the groceries could be stuffed into the back part with our luggage. The car is—was—new, and that lock sticks; I don’t use it if I can help it. Did I get it locked again? I know I tried to—I am sure I thought I had. But I was nervous then; until Giovanna and I were safely inside the palazzo’s stout walls, I couldn’t shake off that creepy feeling that we were being followed. And if the lock didn’t catch, the trunk sat there accessible for nearly an hour. Someone could have gotten into it easily; the street is lonely and quiet there outside Dr. Pulcinelli’s door. Someone could have lain hidden there while Richard and I drove out of Volterra. Death doubled up in that cramped space, coiled there like a snake. Waiting to strike.
    When Richard parked the car and came into the villa with me, it—that thing we had harbored—could have crawled out.
    Death free to strike!
    But if so, where was Mattia Rossi then? He should have been there to welcome us, and he was not. His killer must have reached the villa before us; I only hope that he has enough sense to be already well on his way elsewhere. Somewhere as far from the scene of his crime as he can get.
    No, no murderer came with us to the Villa Carenni: That thought is mad, a fear-spawned fantasy of the night. It cannot matter now, the thing I kept Richard from telling me. Yet it could matter very much, here in this lonely place, whether that man escaped from the Mastio or from that other grim pile that houses the insane.
    Madness. It is such a familiar word, yet what is a madman really like? I have never seen one, I have never known anybody who has. Dear God, keep it that way! Let me never see the thing that may have been coiled within a few feet of me, all that long way from Volterra!

Chapter II

    esterday, when Volterra’s brooding height first fell behind us, something made me say, “What became of her, Richard? Of that little bride who sounds so much like Browning’s Pompilia? Did she outlive the old man and get to marry somebody her own age? I hope so.”
    He said rather slowly, “There’s no record of her anywhere. All the other Carenni wives rest honorably beside their noble lords, either here or in Florence. But she seems to have vanished without a trace.”
    “Perhaps she eloped.” I felt cheered.
    He grinned. “You take the marriage vows seriously, Barby-girl. I’ll have to keep an eye on you.”
    “You’re keeping something from me now. If there hadn’t been something you didn’t want me to hear, you’d have told me about her in the first place. There is a story, isn’t there? An ugly one?”
    He took one hand from the wheel a