The Dark Valley

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The posters were first seen in the village on the feast of San Martino. They said that Paride Rodolfi had not disappeared, that he was alive and in good health. The last one had been stuck up shortly before Commissario Soneri arrived. He could see, as he stood reading it, that the glue was still wet. Something about the wording, with its suggestion of disputes and mysteries, troubled him, and that was even before he heard the rumours that the Rodolfis were in deep trouble, rumours in part prompted by envy and restrained only by the dull respect accorded a family which owned a huge villa on the coast and an enormous salame factory in the village. The name Rodolfi brought back to Soneri the once-familiar trademark featuring a chubby, moustachioed pork-butcher standing alongside a plump pig. The image, which had haunted his imagination since boyhood, appeared on the coloured, oval labels attached to the hams hanging from hooks in grocers’ shops which smelt of lard. This memory had nothing in common with the ambiguity of the newly issued posters which, even if they appeared to convey good news, could not entirely conceal the impression that something was awry.

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