"There appears to have been absolutely no motive whatever in murdering
her," Arnoldo said, glancing sharply across the table at his companion.
"If it were really murder, there must have been some hidden motive,"
Tristram declared. "Personally, however, in the light of the Coroner's
verdict, I'm inclined to the opinion that the girl died suddenly in the
cab, and the man sitting beside her, fearing that an accusation of
murder might bring about some further revelation, made good his escape."
"He must have known London pretty well," observed Romanelli.
"Of course. The evidence proves that he was an Englishman; and that he
knew London was quite evident from the fact that he gave instructions to
the cabman to drive up the Haymarket, instead of crossing Leicester
Square."
Again a silence fell between them, as a calm-faced elderly waiter, in
the most correct garb of the Italian _cameriere_--a short jacket and
long white apron reaching almost to his feet--quickly removed their
empty plates. He glanced swiftly from one man to the other, polished
Tristram's plate with his cloth as he stood behind him, and exchanged a
meaning look with Romanelli. Then he turned suddenly, and went off to
another table, to which he was summoned by the tapping of a knife upon a
plate. The glance he had exchanged with the young Italian was one of
recognition and mysterious significance.
This man, the urbane head-waiter, known well to frequenters of the
Bonciani as Filippo, was known equally well in the remote Rutlandshire
village as Doctor Malvano, the man who had expressed fear at the arrival
of Vittorina in England, and who, truth to tell, led the strangest dual
existence of doctor and waiter.
None in rural Lyddington suspected that their jovial doctor, with his
merry chaff and imperturbable good humour, became grave-faced and
suddenly transformed each time he visited London; none dreamed that his
many absences from his practice were due to anything beyond his natural
liking for theatres and the gaiety of town life; and none would have
credited, even had it ever been alleged, that this man who could afford
that large, comfortable house, rent shooting, and keep hunters in his
stables, on each of his visits to London, assumed a badly starched
shirt, black tie, short jacket, and long white apron, in order to
collect stray pence from diners in a restaurant. Yet such was the fact.
Doctor Malvano, who had been so well known among the English colony in
Florence, was none other than Filippo, head-waiter at the obscure little
cafe in Regent Street.
"It is still a mystery who the dead girl was," Tristram observed at
last. "The man who told me her name only knew very little about her."
"What did he know?" Romanelli inquired quickly. "I had often met her
at various houses in Livorno, but knew nothing of her parentage."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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