He
is the man who may fairly be suspected of being capable of stabbing
a woman as she slept!" argued the Marchese, with intense
indignation.
"No," said the lawyer, shaking his head; "depend upon it we did not
let him go till it was made clear that he could have had no hand in
the crime. He was able to prove beyond the possibility of a doubt,
that he had returned to the city, entering it by the Porta Sisi,
before the earliest time when the murder could have been committed.
No; that notion has to be abandoned."
"And no other idea has been started?--no suspicion? Have the
investigations of the police led to nothing?" asked Ludovico, with
profound discouragement.
The lawyer shook his head. "I have told you," he said, "how the case
stands, Signor Marchese. An idea was started at one moment that the
old friar at St. Apollinare might have been the man. Strangely
enough he also was in or near the Pineta much about the same time.
But the total absence of all assignable motive--an infirm
octogenarian; no, that is not it. But the truth is, Signor Marchese,
that our inquiries with reference to this Padre Fabiano have brought
to light facts which tend to make the case stronger against the girl
Paolina Foscarelli."
"I tell you, Signor Fortini, that the notion of her guilt is more
entirely preposterous than any other possible imagination.
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