A Florentine Death Read Free

you?'
    Rita Senesi had been working here for as long as anyone could remember. Whether or not she was in love with her boss was a mystery, and nobody knew the answer - perhaps she didn't even know it herself. She was certainly resigned to Massimo Verga's inveterate womanising, which had caused more than a few problems over the years and had greatly reduced his considerable family fortune.
    'I'm not here to buy anything, Rita. Massimo asked to see me.'
    'He's up there, in a "meeting". One of those "summits", you know? . . . I'll go and call him. Wait here. Or would you prefer to go to his office?'
    'Yes, I think I will. Tell him I'm there.'
    It was a big bookshop, spread over three floors. The latest books were on the ground floor, along with a section for newspapers and magazines just inside the front door on the left, and a section for luxury stationery on the right. On the first floor were the art books, including the antiquarian volumes, as well as Massimo Verga's office. In the basement was the store room, the paperbacks, and the meeting room. Book launches were held in the meeting room, as well as impromptu gatherings of the city's best wits, who convened from time to time at a moment's notice to slaughter anything that took their fancy: the latest bestsellers or the policies of whichever government was in office, no matter the political complexion.
    Ferrara was not at all sorry to have arrived right in the middle of one of these meetings. If Massimo was busy, he wouldn't have time to do something Ferrara had been dreading: grill him on how he was getting on with Henry James' Turn of the Screw. Massimo had been constantly lecturing him about that book ever since Ferrara had been unwise enough to confess that, when it came to horror, he preferred Stephen King.
    The office was not large. It was dominated by a metal desk that was always cluttered with books, most of them open and annotated in the margins or with the pages marked with strips of coloured paper. There were also four chairs, various shelves full of files, and an outsize rack of carefully polished pipes.
    That was another of the differences that united the two men: as far as smoking went, Ferrara maintained that cigars were superior to anything else, while Verga championed the nobility of the pipe. Both of them looked down on cigarettes, which they considered common and deadly.
    'I did it!' Massimo exclaimed as he joined him, having finally managed to extricate himself from the passionate debate currently in progress.
    'I could have waited. I'm in no hurry'
    'What?' He smiled. 'Oh, no, I wasn't referring to those four madmen.' He opened a drawer in the desk, took out a rather thick envelope and handed it over in triumph. 'Look at this, and spare me the gratitude. When the time's right, I'll remind you that you owe me one.'
    The surprise wasn't entirely unexpected. The envelope contained return tickets to Vienna, for two people, for a period of two weeks over the New Year, as well as tickets for the first night of Cavalleria Rusticana with Placido Domingo, which were now quite impossible to find.
     
     
     
    1 p.m.: Michele Ferrara's apartment
     
     
     
    Ferrara returned home, humming Bada, Santuzza, schiavo non sono under his breath, making sure no one could hear him because he was very out of tune and was well aware of the fact, even without Petra there to remind him. He was in a good mood. He had quite forgotten that the world never stops breathing down our necks, doesn't give a damn how we amuse ourselves, and is always there, ready to deal us a new blow in order to remind us that we are human and are born only to suffer.
    Petra was in the greenhouse on the terrace, which was one of her two kingdoms, the other being the kitchen.
    They lived in a top floor apartment, which Ferrara had been lucky enough to find seven years earlier. The apartment was small, though perfectly adequate for the two of them, but its great advantage was that it had a beautiful