Roman Nights: Dolly and the Starry Bird; Murder in Focus

by Dorothy Dunnett

  ‘But,’ said Johnson, ‘you know two things the police haven’t discovered. You know who was with the dead man. And you know why he died. You know what was in Lord Digham’s camera.’

  ‘So do you,’ I said. ‘So do Jacko and Innes and Diana and the couture house and Maurice, for all I know, as well as poor Charles himself. If I need protection, then so do we all. How shall we pair off?’ I added.

  ‘Morally, genetically or aesthetically?’ Johnson inquired. The sweet trolley stood to one side, awaiting us: I could see fresh strawberries and a deep bowl of cream; gooseberry tart, pears in brandy and gâteau. The waiter replenished my wine. Johnson said, ‘Who do you imagine killed that man in the loo? Mila Schön or Carlo Palazzi in person? The pirating of a season’s fashions can make the fortune of a wholesale house and bankrupt a couturier. Where big money is involved, big operators are hired. The two men you saw together in the Villa Borghese might even have been rivals. There was a struggle for the film in the toletta, and the first man had his head blown off.’ He broke off. ‘I’m sure he had an obituary.’

  He had several. I recited the most recent one, rapidly:

  ‘Just as you were, you will always be

  Treasured forever in memory

  Death came and gently kissed your brow

  God has another angel now.’

  ‘Mr Johnson—’

  ‘Johnson,’ he corrected me. ‘It’s confusing, I know, but my Christian name and surname are the same.’

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘I’m Ruth. And it would be nice if you didn’t keep calling Charles Lord Digham. But if they were rivals, and not meeting each other, why did the first man have to go into the loo. I mean—’

  ‘There is a time for everything, and that wasn’t it,’ said Johnson. ‘Yes. Well, my guess is that he knew someone else had his eye on the camera, and he was looking for a quiet place to wind up and take out the film. He could hardly do that while you were spraying him with hoses in the rhinoceros compound or whatever. Then if he was attacked, all he stood to lose was the empty camera.’ He finished partitioning his brochettes through the lower half of his bifocals and inspected me through the upper. ‘You still don’t want to go to the police?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ he agreed. ‘They might ask how your camera and Charles’s got mixed up in the first place.’

  I went on spearing cucumber because I prefer not to show when I have been shocked. I said, ‘Charles is around the Dome all the time. He was there before his Villa Borghese session. I suppose he picked up the wrong camera.’

  ‘The police,’ said Johnson prosaically, ‘might think you gave him the wrong camera. It certainly left his lying where anyone could get at it.’

  ‘Yes . . .’ I said slowly. ‘But that would argue that three people were after Charles’s film. Do three lots of people really want to know whether backless dresses are going to be in again this year?’

  ‘Or your two men from the Villa Borghese were really together, and one of them was killed and the film stolen by a different party?’ said Johnson. ‘Or no. That won’t wash. Unless he developed the film from your camera, the Villa Borghese survivor wouldn’t have known it was the wrong one. Assuming your Zeiss had no identifying mark on it.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘It hadn’t.’ I gazed at the sweet tray. ‘You know, you have a lot in common with Maurice.’

  ‘Charm?’ said Johnson.

  ‘Gâteau, I think. Charm, of course. And a wholly misdirected talent for mischief. If I wanted to pinch all Charles’s pictures, I should only have to take prints from his negatives. He develops half of them in the Dome while I’m working, and I could always take a contact print while he’s having a coffee. The same applies to Jacko and Innes. They come in and out. They’ve seen his stuff lying around. If any of us had pinched his pictures, we shouldn’t want Charles’s camera lying around in the Dome. We’d want Charles to take it, and pray that someone pinches it from him. So you see,’ I said over the gâteau, ‘we may be rather out of favour among the criminal classes, but there isn’t a police case against us.’

  Johnson had chosen gooseberries. ‘But you don’t want Charles or the Trust on the front page of the News of the World,’ he said thoughtfully, and arranged a passable sneer on his features. ‘I am a well-known sexual deviationist. Pander to my aberrations or I shall tell all the media.’

  ‘Well, naturally,’ I said. ‘We all thought of that.’

  ‘And?’ said Johnson. He seemed to be enjoying the gooseberries.

  ‘And we decided all you wanted was an introduction to Maurice,’ I said.

  ‘Money isn’t everything,’ Johnson said. ‘And Charles is in Naples.’

  I felt very cool, and very spiteful and extremely self-possessed. Or it may have been the Chianti. ‘And where were you,’ I said, ‘when all the fun and games were going on in the toletta?’

  ‘Waiting in the restaurant piazza,’ Johnson said, ‘for Charles to come back for your basket. I followed you both to the zoo. But I didn’t buy a balloon. You’ve spilled your cream . . . Ruth?’

  I had. But the spot on my hand wasn’t cream: it was a tear. I put my fork down and sat looking at it and daring another to fall. Johnson made a little movement, and I felt the plates being taken away and a tray of coffee and colourless liqueurs arriving in their place.

  ‘I shall pour,’ Johnson said, and pushed a cup under my nose. ‘Black coffee and Sambucca and good intentions. I do some things for money, but I do other things from love. For example: You have never asked me what it feels like to paint the Supreme Pontiff, and indeed in one way it is like painting any other portrait. Except that I am summoned to each sitting by a phone call from the Maestro di Camera and admitted at eight in the morning through the Bronze Doors of the Vatican, inside which is my room, with easel and table and Pontifical chair. And once there, I am alone with my sitter, who talks a great deal, but not in English.’

  He smiled suddenly. ‘Does it sound alarming? But then, the element of risk is what gives savour to dull professions like painting and astronomy. Are you frightened, when you go into the Dome at night, and put off all the lights, and shut the door at the top of the stairs?’

  ‘No,’ I said. And it was true. You shut the door, and you put up the bench bar across it and then touch the dimmer so that all the lights sink low. If you work in the autumn it is cold, because hot air distorts, and heating is never allowed in the cupola. Above you is the high aluminium dome in silvery orange-leaf sections, and you pull down the long spring switch which hangs from the rim of it and press the button and allow the spring to fly up as the loud drone of the retracting section begins. It opens ladderlike and very slowly from the outer rim inward, and reveals bit by bit the night sky, and the cold. You put the lights off and climb the pair of gliding steel steps and look at your sky and find your constellations and climb down again and then press and hold the switch by the door. Above your head the Dome begins to revolve, slowly and groaningly, and the open sector sweeps the night sky until there is your star cluster. You stop the cupola. And then you uncap your lenses and begin to set the declination and advancement of your telescope, and it is quiet.

  ‘You observe alone,’ Johnson said.

  I drank my coffee. The Sambucca had three coffee beans floating in it. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Some find it boring and like to work in pairs, one observing and one taking notes. Here we do from six to ten exposures in a night, depending on when our stars set. Then the negatives are sent to the Trust and the findings computed. That is how you evaluate what you are doing. Back at the Trust, they’ll be reducing material from all their protégés, and comparing the results with other researchers. It’s what gives our work here its significance.’

  ‘According to Innes,’ Johnson said, ‘you and Jacko don’t believe your work has any significance.’

  He was looking at me over the top of his glasses. I said, ‘That’s because Innes doesn’t know much about people. I don’t suppose you run on
much about the significance of art, for God’s sake, either. You take it as read, and run about making up . . . obituary notices.’

  ‘You’ve known Charles a long time?’ Johnson said.

  I said, ‘Yes. He was engaged to someone else. She was furious.’ I paused, and then said, ‘His parents want us to marry.’

  ‘I should have guessed that,’ Johnson said.

  There was another pause. No one moved or spoke around us. It was only when I turned my head that I realized we were alone in the restaurant. All the tables but ours had been cleared. But no one hovered and no one even looked near us. Such is the power of money. I said, ‘Thank you for the lunch,’ and there was another silence.

  Then Johnson said, ‘Whatever you may think, I am not motivated by mischief. I think you know something you haven’t told Charles, and I think this could be dangerous for both Charles and you. Will you trust me?’

  ‘If I do nothing,’ I said, ‘nothing will happen.’

  The glasses watched me. ‘Is that a scientist speaking?’ said Johnson.

  I said, ‘There was a goldfish inside the balloon.’

  He said quickly, ‘Which balloon? The one you had?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It burst. There was something inside. I thought it was the maker and price. It said, Fall Fair: five zero, zero.’

  ‘And?’ said Johnson. He was sitting very still.

  ‘You’ll need a Daily American,’ I said. ‘But I saw it in Greco’s. An advertisement for a Fall Fair. And the hours are from two p.m. to five, zero, zero. Today.’

  ‘Then,’ said Johnson, ‘let’s go.’

  FOUR

  The first person we saw at the Fall Fair was Innes Wye, clutching a bottle of ketchup, which figures. Sometimes one forgets that Innes is American and conscientious, but not for long.

  The railings of the Palazzo Barberini are upheld by marble weightlifters with beards and grimaces of incipient hernia. There were American cars parked under the palm trees beyond and American children with explosive grins and busty cult-figures on their sweatshirts were charging up the façade, chased by an assortment of incoherent doorkeepers.

  Inside, as I have said, there was Innes. If the place was a gallery, it was not immediately discernible. At the top of the staircase, a suite of large rooms hung with blazing crystal chandeliers was full of brilliantly barbered Americans. The girls were thin, trouser-suited and purposeful, with Pat Nixon hairdos. The men tended to be silver-haired, statuesque and faintly cultured, and to be standing about with a harem of richly dressed and well-preserved silver-haired ladies. There was a bar, patronized by a milling throng of desperate non-Americans, a side room selling soft drinks and ices, and a large, hot salon full of small empty tables at which sat a number of elderly patrons, looking as if their feet hurt them but smile, brother, smile. The rest of the tables, almost equally empty, had held the Christmas Gifts, the Home-Baked Goodies, the secondhand clothes and used books of the bazaar. There had been a run on everything but tea cosies and babies’ socks. Off that was a smaller room full of silent mothers with raging children, and a litter of toys. In a corner an earnest middle-aged man with glasses like ploughshares was telling a fairy story, with gestures, to a half circle of mesmerized toddlers. His voice, a seductive Irish-American, welled back among the baby socks and mingled with the voice of the auctioneer from the salon, pushing a De Luxe 4-Egg Chick Incubator with Thermostatic Control, plus a 32-page booklet with pictures on how the egg becomes a chick. ‘Don’t they know?’ inquired Johnson austerely.

  I said to Innes, ‘Never mind. You’ll come out all right in the yen revaluation. Let me carry the ketchup.’ He had a raffle ticket pinned to his jacket.

  We accompanied him to his hoard. He had a paper carrier of Trappist jams and a box which said Electric Callous Eraser. Have Better Looking Feet, $4. Di appeared with Timothy, of all people, in tow.

  Old Home Week. Of course, it had been her Daily American. Snakeskin and lime green fur flipped past the pant suits and drawing up with the dark glasses trained full on Johnson, Di said, ‘And what groovy goodies have you got?’ to me.

  I said, ‘I paid full market prices. Hullo, Timothy.’

  ‘You forget,’ said Diana, ‘the law of diminishing returns. Timothy wants to buy something.’

  ‘Well, there you are,’ I said against the din of the auctioneer’s voice. ‘Throw pillows, patio fruitcake or babies’ bootees.’ Below the glasses, there was a dissatisfied look about Di’s frosted pink eye make-up. I said to her, ‘Timothy, dear?’

  ‘I met him outside,’ said Diana. ‘He has a thing going for Innes. He had a thing going for Innes. What are you doing with Johnson?’

  ‘Nothing, yet,’ I said. ‘But I’ll lease him to you, if you can cut out Timothy.’

  ‘Thanks a million,’ Di said pointedly. Timothy, holding Johnson by the arm, was just disappearing into the room for the little ones. A moment later the reader of fairy tales, looking slightly harassed, emerged and went over, in a distracted way, to help at the book stall. Di, towards whom men were gravitating from every quarter of the suite, started to giggle. Innes, still holding his bottle of ketchup, lost his head and hissed at her. ‘Will you please take Mr Frazer’s secretary out of there and go away? This is a charitable occasion.’ A woman with silver hair, cleaving her way through the throng, said, ‘It’s Diana Minicucci, isn’t it? How nice of you to come along. Now you’re here, I wonder if we can persuade you to pick out the raffle tickets . . . ?’

  Unperturbed, Diana walked off, surrounded by units from Pan American, the American Academy, the American Episcopal Church, the American Express, the Ford Foundation and Coca-Cola. Innes fell back and disappeared. I was sorry for him but you have to remember that Di is not only the basic subject of Jacko’s more enterprising photographs; she is also the daughter of Prince Minicucci and Bernadette Mayflower. I went off to find Johnson.

  He was in the kiddies’ room, sitting cross-legged listening to Timothy telling the story of Little Red Riding Hood to about twenty-five children who were sitting watching his nice pink Lithuanian face and listening to every word, even the bits he was putting in for Johnson’s benefit. I sat down beside Johnson and whispered, ‘It’s five o’clock.’

  ‘Spoilsport,’ he said, and got up. Timothy, telescoping the wolf’s eyes, ears and mouth and unzipping Grandma in three well-chosen sentences, got up too. The twenty-five children started to cry. A well-coiffed mother with three offspring and a prenatal outfit covering possibly several more said, ‘You should send back Mr Paladrini.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Timothy kindly, and slid out after Johnson into the deodorized heat of the salon. Di came towards us, laden with a packet of bread sticks, some crochet work and a 1903 Baedeker, from which she was reading aloud, when she could get a word in edgewise from the crowd hanging over her shoulder.

  ‘. . . Chapter Five. Intercourse with Italians.’ (Happy applause.) ‘Guides . . . Gratuities . . . Waiters. If too importunate in their recommendations or suggestions, they may be checked by the word Basta.’ (Ironic cheers.)

  I said, ‘Di? Who won the raffle?’

  ‘Guess who?’ said Di and, lifting the dark glasses down again on her nose, looked at me through them. ‘Innes Wye.’

  I said softly, ‘Di?’ Poor Innes, ticketed like the Mad Hatter for all to see, had been easy meat. ‘Di,’ I said. ‘What did he win?’

  But even before I finished speaking, a certain muted confusion was making itself felt from the raffle stand. Among the heads turning, I noticed, was that of Timothy’s predecessor, the teller of fairy tales, presumably about to return to his post. An odd idea stirred somewhere at the back of my mind. ‘First prize,’ Di said lightly. ‘Jungle After Shave, the Essence for Men Born to Conquer. I’m rather afraid I gave him the Organizer’s crocodile handbag, too.’

  Growing cries from the raffle stand told all too plainly the perfect success of the project. Further cries defined the extent of the tragedy. There had been two hundred-doll
ar bills and a Cartier cigarette case in the crocodile handbag. The crowd seethed and then began making off, in a surge, down the length of the room to the staircase.

  I said to Johnson, ‘Mr Paladrini. The storyteller in glasses.’

  ‘Yes?’ said Johnson. Pursued by Timothy we were being swept forward by the crowd; the last I saw of Di she was settling down at a table and being brought a drink by a boy from the Embassy.

  I said, ‘If you took off his glasses, he would be the spitting image of the man at the zoo with the balloon cart.’

  I had, for once, Johnson’s fullest attention. ‘The storyteller?’ he said. ‘Then let’s have a chat with him. Can you spot him, Ruth?’

  A man in a shortie raincoat who had been walking just behind us suddenly slipped sideways and began unobtrusively to forge ahead in the crush. It was Mr Paladrini. ‘Oh, damn,’ I said. ‘He heard us.’

  ‘And he doesn’t want to know us,’ said Johnson, accelerating. ‘Isn’t that interesting?’ He began, with the greatest politeness, to thrust through the crowd in the wake of the vanishing storyteller and, as best I could, I followed him.

  I dare say, if you lost a crocodile handbag with two hundred dollars and a Cartier cigarette case in it, and saw it vanishing across a room and downstairs in the possession of a small unknown man with a shopping bag, you would lose your razor-cut head and go ape over it. I don’t know who started the cries of ‘Stop thief!’ but I strongly suspected Mr Paladrini. At any rate, they were taken up with touching enthusiasm by all the unlucky raffle contestants and most of the Organizer’s friends who up till then had been trotting rather self-consciously through the marble halls, and suddenly Johnson and I found the pursuit had turned into a gallop. It began to look, indeed, as if with a little encouragement it would turn into a lynching squad. And ahead of us, a bobbing spectacled face in the throng, was the escaping person of Mr Paladrini.

  I shoved. Kipper ties and fine jersey knits flinched from me; I stood on a handmade shoe and wriggled through the resulting small gap. Johnson, I saw, with considerable expertise was making even more progress than I was. I heeled around three children and met up with him again in the middle of what appeared to be a logjam. The pregnant mother was next to him and busy talking. ‘Mr Paladrini? Isn’t he sweet? “I’m used to entertaining children,” he said, and just walked right in. I sure hope the Organizers give him a vote of thanks at the next committee meeting.’