Page:The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg (1928).djvu/283

 poorer and more ignorant devout made up a disorderly cortège which followed the coffin through the dust all the way from Brinoë to Monte Salvatore. There were in it old men and women, a great many dirty children who looked upon the excursion in the light of an outing, three men who were quite drunk and sang, and even a woman pushing a perambulator. Immediately behind the coffin marched Sister Annunziata, who had disobeyed her superiors and joined the cortège. She still had in her plain face the light of a happiness that did not come of this world. At her side walked Fulco Baldessare, clad in his checkered bookmaker's suit and protecting himself from the brilliant sun with the black cotton umbrella. It was all very gay and dishevelled, in the best Italian tradition.

And when the excitement had died away a little so that Mr. Winnery felt he might undertake his investigation discreetly and without becoming involved, he set out to visit Signora Bardelli. The janitress, he felt, would be able to give him a straightforward and realistic account of what had happened, unmarred and distorted by the trimmings with which more religious and emotional witnesses were certain to decorate the strange case of Miss Annie Spragg.

But Signora Bardelli had disappeared from the Palazzo Gonfarini, and the new janitress, a gaunt, witch-like and very dirty woman who had been among those in the disorderly cortège, proved taciturn and ill-natured. It was only after Mr. Winnery had pressed into her hand a fraction of Aunt Bessie's