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By Root 1338 0

let out at one: for lunch. Balducci was supposed to get back from Milan the next day ... or maybe from Verona. Ingravallo had a try with the young girl in tears, but he got nothing out of her: after her coffee and milk, before eight, she had said good-bye to her "Mamma," had received the usual morning kiss with the usual question: "Do you know your lesson today?" She had said yes and had gone out. For the present she was handed over to the neighbors, later somebody could probably take her to the sisters: now she went to the floor above, to the Bottafavis; la Menegazzi was too alarmed and upset to be of any help to the little one. A yellow wisp of mustache seemed bent back to her nose. She hadn't had time to fix her hair: what she had on her head looked like a wig made from corn silk and tied in ribbons. She said that this building had a curse on it. She invoked Maria Vergine with her eyes red, sunken, squeezed tight. She said, and kept repeating, "Oh, seven-teen's the worst of all numbers." The little girl who had met the two women on the stairs could furnish no information concerning them. Her big eyes wide, "yes," she would say, or "no," poor kid, her lips numb with the fright she felt, seeing that big, black head of Ingravallo who, she decided, must be the man with the sack who carries off bad little girls when they won't stop crying. It was finally established that the two women had gone up to see the lawyer, Cammarota (fourth floor), or rather to see his wife, to take her two fresh cheeses: they were bimonthly suppliers of fresh cheese.

They tracked down Cristoforo, Balducci's clerk. The news shattered him, like a thunderbolt. He had gone out at seven-thirty, after a coffee-with-brandy which Signora Liliana had gently forced on him: he couldn't drink milk, it never agreed with him. Yes, a little before Gina, who went off to the Sacred Heart at eight. He couldn't face the awful sight: "I can't look at her." He made the Sign of the Cross. Tears dribbled down the somewhat wrinkled skin of his face. He had been assigned some errands by Signora Liliana, poor lady: to pay a bill, to buy two brooms from the broom-maker, get some rice, wax for the parquet, take a bundle to the dressmaker. But first, however, he had had to go to the office: to open the office: dust off the desks. Officer Ingravallo wouldn't let go of him. In fact, he charged Grabber to have a fine old chat with him: in the meanwhile Giuliano was invited to remain at the disposal of the police.

The investigations continued on the scene of the crime in the early afternoon: with the main door of the building shut, the door of the apartment shut, with reinforcements of police, with Sergeant Valiani of the scientific office and with the armed intervention of the fingerprint bureau. The tenants and even the concierge herself were asked not to linger on the stairs, "to allow greater freedom of movement to the investigations," and to remain, on the other hand, insofar as possible, "within reach" of the squad. The coroner appeared after five-thirty. The attorney general's office had taken official cognizance of the crime shortly before four, via the various offices, via Doctor Fumi and the chief of police. The good Cristoforo, the variopainted Menegazzi, the little Gina, former artilleryman Bottafavi, and handsome young Doctor Valdarena were heard alternately and simultaneously. But "the crime" remained shrouded in mystery, as the late editions said finally, in a paper which had managed to bring off the scoop, shouting the news along Corso Umberto. The reporters, wangle as they might, couldn't get past the door of the Balduccis. But at the smaller entrance to the building, however, they had caught Sora Elodia, of Stairway B, who, well, was rather jolly, as she usually happened to be, on Thursdays and Sundays. She was making eyes at the policemen, who only laughed in her face.

It was established that none of the building's tenants could furnish clues as to who might have been the author, or authors, of the crime. No one, except the little girl, Maddalena Felicetti,