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CADAVERI ECCELLENTI

Her holding cell was underground, like Dracula&039;s tomb Kate supposed Silvestri intended she be rey didn&039;t work She re s hauled out of a pool of blood by Genevieve, but everything betas a red over blotted out her mind If it hurt this much, she didn&039;t want to remember

She had been questioned several ti in touch with the Irish Embassy Mostly, she was left alone, with orders to think hard

For the moment, she was a witness Not a suspect

When they had told her Dracula was dead, she&039;d let out an instinctive hallelujah of unlovely gloating That hadn&039;t ood impression, especially since she was still plastered with the deceased&039;s congealing blood Even now, the last rinds clung stubbornly to her hair and under her nails

She didn&039;t even knohether she was guilty or not

Objectively, she was the assassin type: idealistic, obsessive, frustrated, prone to fits of eht of the ht with the deadhistory of enmity with the House of Dracula As a reporter, she&039;d have picked herself as the likely killer

But surely she would reh to her, but she could iuilty would be sharply divided: Dracula&039;s supporters calling for her public i her as a heroine and a saint It should have been Genevieve She was better fit to handle all this

What stopped Silvestri charging her? The pounding in her head didn&039;t entirely blank her intuition The Inspector didn&039;t think she&039;d done it Marcello had told her the policeman specialised in those very Italianwas ever what it seemed and weird combinations of suspects with twistedatrocities His usual quarry were black-gloved, hooded fiends who took straight razors or strangling cords to fashion htclub hostesses to pose as sex killers but actually sought contested inheritances, double indemnity insurance claims or to preserve the reputations of even more unpleasant relatives To Silvestri, the victim&039;s worst enemy found at the scene of the crime covered with his blood and with the deceased&039;s wallet in his back pocket was obviously an innocent red herring

She tried to think back

Dracula&039;s to over the past It was all there somewhere

In 1943, she had walked across most of Sicily in the wake of General Patton&039;s armoured forces &039;Operation Husky&039; met little resistance fro Victor Elio was negotiating Italy&039;s change of sides - but 40,000 Gered along with the second or third wave of liberators Chain of co like Ernie Pyle By the tiot anywhere, it was supposed to be pacified, suitable for writing-up as a ed to file stories about Sicilian-A welcomed as saviours with picturesque peasant feasts

Actually, she saw the bureaucraticfascist authorities to a provisional Allied overnment and then to whoever could best exploit the situation Most of the partisans who assisted the Allies turned out to beback territories Il Duce had wrested fron swift and successful, the Allies were prepared to make use of the likes of the bandit Salvatore Giuliano and the gangster Charles &039;Lucky&039; Luciano She saw unsive a welcome to &039;exile son&039; Luciano, and wept to see not liberation but an exchange of oppressors

&039;You brought them back,&039; spat an old woman

Kate always rerandsons dead on all sides To her, the Gers, unpredictable and implacable as the weather The mafia, whom she was now expected to welcome, had been around all her life They were people she could hate, arrogant and quixotic, suddenly violent, always de more tribute

An American officer confided in Kate that he couldn&039;t understand these people &039;They&039;re free What more do they want, blood?&039; Then he realised what he had said and tried to apologise Two nights later, she bled hih she never slept with hiust of the old woman stayed with her

In the Balkans, it must have been worse There, the Allies installed not rave-randchildren of the villagers they&039;d slaughtered in years gone by

&039;You brought them back&039;

She still shuddered at that

&039;Have you found the little girl?&039;

Inspector Silvestri had heard that before

&039;It was the girl from Piazza di Trevi She must be a part of this I think she&039;s mixed up with the Crihed

&039;Il principe Dracula was not killed by il Boia Scarlatto&039;

He stated it as a ht of the party, the night Dracula died, il Boia Scarlatto was seen more than a dozen times in Rome He was in a frenzy Seven elder vaene, are dead by his hand He has grown bold Most were killed in public The assassin and an elder naht like wrestlers in Piazza dei Qinquecento, outside the railway station, causing e Voytek&039;s heart was torn out and tossed to the dogs The other dead are il conte Mitterhouse, Webb Fallon, Richmond Reed, il conte Oblensky, Lady Luna Mora, and a Madame Cassandra There may be more It&039;s difficult to identify heaps of ashes The thing is that all these died in Rome, not the Palazzo Otranto&039;

&039;How convenient&039;

&039;Indeed It has occurred to us that there ht be an arenerale? This lost child of yours?&039;

&039;She wasn&039;t a vampire&039;