‘Same again tomorrow?’ the lad said.
‘No, no, I come to the market tomorrow, same as for ever,’ said Joe.
The boy looked rather crestfallen but then rubbed the coin on his shirtsleeve and flipped it up in the air with a grin.
‘Better’n a poke in the eye,’ he said and left, whistling.
‘I made arrangement on Saturday morning,’ said Joe. ‘Delivery. Save me go to market in case Rosa come home and I gone. I forget to change. But now she gone and she not come home…’
‘Life goes on, Mr Aldo,’ I said. He was untying the neck of the potato sack but he turned and smiled at me, a smile with enough courage and sadness in it to melt my heart a little. ‘You have your daughter and your cooking and believe me, there are many men who would be happy these days to have such a solid little business as this one.’
‘I do fine here. Many people come. Not all the people, but enough.’
I thought about the throngs who had been there at luncheon time on Saturday and wondered at his mild grumbling. But then I supposed a real businessman would not be satisfied unless everyone in the town ate his dinner from Aldo’s every evening and I had, it was true, heard more than one say they never went near the place.
‘And I look out of my window at the beautiful sea and the sky and the green grass,’ said Joe. ‘I am a lucky man.’
‘It’s wonderful to hear you speak that way,’ I said. ‘To hear you a little more cheerful.’
‘What business is your husband?’ said Mr Aldo. ‘You married lady, eh, bellissima? No way men not fight other men to make you married lady, eh?’
I willed myself not to simper, although it is hard to resist when a man with dancing black eyes and a smile as wide as the sea calls one ‘bellissima’. (For some reason, flirting in an Italian accent did not excite the outrage I should have felt had my admirer been the catcher of the fish, or digger of the potatoes, rather than the fryer of them.)
‘He’s a farmer,’ I said, for this was what Hugh always said these days, now that his earlier answer (to wit: ‘gentleman’) was wont to meet with resentful glares or out-and-out guffaws.
‘Ohhh,’ said Joe Aldo. ‘And he no mind you… detective, and not feed chickens and milk cows.’ I was sure he was teasing, but it was impossible to take offence at him.
‘Not at all,’ I said.
‘And you no want him help you… finger smudges and clues?’
‘He is an excellent farmer,’ I said. ‘And I am an excellent detective. We’re both happy this way.’
He straightened and gave me a more serious and very searching look.
‘You happy,’ he said. ‘Good. Bellissima signora should be happy. I happy for you.’
A deaf dowager in her nineties would have blushed at that and I did not even try to disguise it. Indeed, my pink cheeks seemed to make him happier than ever.
‘Well, I hope I shan’t make you cross with me when I say this,’ I said. ‘Mr Osborne and I can’t, in all fairness, keep searching for your wife now that we know she is alive and well. There’s the body, for one thing.’ He crossed himself and uttered a short prayer. ‘And things are dreadful up at the school, with all the mistresses leaving and no one knowing why. We really can do much more good there than we can do for you.’
‘Yes, yes, yes,’ said Joe, some of his old spirit returning. ‘You go – excellent and so charming detective – and your Mr Osborne too. I thank you.’
‘I’m so glad you understand,’ I said.
‘Sì, sì,’ said Joe. ‘Rosa is gone – my heart is to break – but the poor dead lady need you and the ladies in the school too. Not my Rosa and me.’
I left then but could not help looking behind me with a fond smile at the place as I strolled back along the harbourside towards the town.
‘Hoi! Dandy!’ said Alec, leaning out of his bedroom window at the Crown. He was in his shirtsleeves and his hair was still slicked back wet from his bath. ‘You look as if you’ve been walking in a bluebell wood with your true love,’ he shouted down as I got closer.
‘Alec, shut up, for heaven’s sake,’ I said. All around us people were turning to see what such a thing would look like and I hunched my neck down into my coat collar to avoid their gaze.
‘Come up,’ said Alec. At the next window along I saw the curtain move and was sure that the shadow there was the convalescent widow. Hands fussed their way out from behind the lace and brought the sash down with a sharp rap into its frame.
‘Certainly not,’ I said. ‘Apart from anything else, if that was the quarter chiming then I need to hurry up to the school for the start of lessons. Come down and walk with me.’
He was at my side in less than a minute (oh, to have a man’s toilet instead of my own, even with bobbed hair and zip fasteners and Grant to mix the lash-black), determined to solve the riddle of my shining eyes and the small smile I could not quite persuade to leave my lips.
‘I went to see Joe to tell him we can’t keep looking for Rosa,’ I said.
‘I’d have done that,’ said Alec, handing me up the first and steepest of the cliff steps.
‘I wanted to tell him how unhappy Sabbatina is too,’ I said. ‘Oof! Thank you, I’m all right on my own from here. She found out about her mother leaving and she’s in low spirits.’
‘Doesn’t sound too enchanting so far,’ said Alec. ‘Why the bounce in your step and the broad grin?’
‘Oh, too silly for words, but Giuseppe Aldo is such a flirt and I suppose I’m not quite beyond being flattered by it yet.’
‘Not a flirt, Dandy,’ said Alec. ‘A charmer, I’d say. Don’t forget how he had me hugging him in the street after a day’s acquaintance. You have nothing to berate yourself with for being taken in.’
‘Ah well,’ I said. ‘I daresay he won’t be alone for long then. Any of the women round here who’re used to fish guts and monosyllables might be happy to try hot fat and sweet nothings.’
‘If he can pry his heart away from Rosa, anyway,’ Alec said. ‘But he might pine for ever.’
‘Nonsense,’ I said. ‘His spirits are lifting already. He was talking about Sabbatina and the sunshine and sea breezes when I left him. I’m sure he does love his wife with that heaving Latin heart of his, but he’s an India rubber ball and he’ll bob back to the surface.’
‘Anyway, thanks to you cutting the ties he is no longer our problem,’ Alec said. ‘So I feel no compunction in sloping off on the 10.05.’
‘Sloping where?’ I said. ‘To do what?’
‘Did you know that scholastic agencies open at eight o’clock in the morning?’ he replied. ‘And of course newspaper offices keep notoriously early hours, worse than bakers. I’ve done a day’s work already. Oh, thank God!’ We had reached the top of the cliff steps and come out on level ground. ‘Twenty past nine, Dandy, let’s sit a minute while I brief you. And I must say the revelations of life in a girls’ school go on – nine thirty?’
‘Oh, I know,’ I said. ‘I thought they’d be knee-deep in slide rules and conjugations by this time too. Anyway, the sloping?’
‘North Yorkshire,’ said Alec. ‘It’s a devil of a journey too unless I catch this first train to Dumfries and hope for a tail wind. A very tight connection in Carlisle.’
I sighed and waited.
‘Yes,’ Alec said. ‘Right. The Lambourne Agency popped Miss Blair’s name right out as soon as I mentioned girls and cricket and apparently she’s working at an establishment by the name of The Bridge House School for Young Ladies, which is somewhere out in the middle of the moors north of Pickering.’
‘The agency just told you where she was?’ I said. ‘To help you poach her?’