The Ghosts of N-Space - Barry Letts [32]
Max visibly controlled his temper. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘so you know about that. There’s no need to broadcast it to the rest of the world. Round these parts, there’s like two 113
different set-ups. Okay? You know what Cosa Nostra means?’
‘You bet. It’s the mob, the Mafia, the Families.’
‘Yeah. But the words mean “our thing”. And that’s the way it’s played. Our business is our business and if we keep it that way, nobody’s gonna interfere. But the way it’s getting these days, you start any rough stuff with the legit world, and before the smoke’s blown away, you’ll not only have the police knocking on your door, you’ll have a Special Commissioner from Rome on your butt. I can win a war with a bunch of farm-bred dumbos, but the whole Italian state?’
She took a suck at her cocktail. The seagull finished its toilet and hopped down to make an early lunch on a piece of toast spread with Beluga caviare she’d dropped. ‘You scared or something?’
He refused to be teased. ‘Sure I’m scared. I’m scared I’ll move too quick and screw up. I’ve waited too long to risk it. But hang around, babe. It won’t be long before I’ll have them all jumping to my tune. And not just little Italia. I mean the whole goddam world.’
Again he had that vicious expression. It reminded Maggie of her father’s face as he gave her Mom the one blow too many, the belt across the side of the head which finally killed her.
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‘So,’ she said brighdy, ‘what is it you want me to do?
Huh?’
‘I want that castle. I need that castle. If I can get it legitimately I will, but if not…’ He turned and looked up at the castle, the evil still in his face. ‘I want you should use your talents on this Brit, this Lethbridge-Stewart guy. He knows more than he’s pretending. Find out…’ He stopped and looked her in the eye.
‘Find out,’ he went on, ‘whether they’ve seen any ghosts up there.’
She almost dropped her glass. ‘Ghosts?’ she said incredulously.
‘And find out whether they know about the twenty-first of May.’
‘Whether they know what about the twenty-first of May?’
‘That’s what I want you to find out.’
He looked back at the castle. But now all the expression had gone from his face.
‘Honey?’ said Maggie, tentatively. ‘Honey?’
He didn’t answer. He just didn’t seem to be there any more.
Maggie shuddered and surreptitiously crossed herself. It was the first time she’d crossed herself for over a decade.
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Louisa Nettleton had been Paolo Verconti’s ward for nearly three years. Her father, the Colonel, had managed to survive the long years of war, only to be slain by a stray musket ball minutes before Napoleon ordered his troops to lay down their arms and surrender to Wellington.
It was said by the doctor who had attended her last moments that her mother had died of a putrid infection; but the twelve-year‐old Louisa knew better. Mama had died of a broken heart.
Fortunately, Powly, as she called her godfather, was also living in Tunbridge Wells at the time, and gladly assumed the responsibility he had accepted at her baptism, taking her with him when he returned to his ancestral home.
At first, as she told Sarah, she missed all her friends so much that she was like to have died of grief. But to live in a castle! A real castle with towers and turrets and galleries, just like the one in The Mysteries of Udolpho! – had Sarah read Udolpho? No? – and Powly was so kind; and had let her beloved Miss Grinley come too; and had all the new novels sent from the London booksellers; and once she’d learnt the language – it was very like to French, was it not?
– she’d felt quite at home – even though never to visit Bath again was unendurable; she doted on Bath. Mama had taken her every year. Did