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

by Dorothy Dunnett

  We talk the old times over

  We laugh and joke the same

  But still it hurts a lot inside

  When someone speaks your name.

  ‘She burned them,’ Johnson said.

  The bullwhip, moving idly, circled around and then snapped in his direction. I could feel the draught of it, and it was less than an inch from Johnson’s face. ‘When I speak to Miss Russell,’ said the grey-haired man agreeably, ‘it is Miss Russell I wish to answer. The photographs, please.’

  ‘I burned them,’ I said.

  ‘So you have been saying. Lord Digham is your cher ami and you were anxious not to embroil him in anything troublesome. But I believe, Miss Russell,’ said the grey-haired man, ‘that you did not destroy that roll of negatives.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, of course she destroyed them,’ said Johnson irritably. ‘She thought at first Charles himself was involved in it. Naturally, she would destroy all the evidence. And so if you don’t believe me, count the number of times the Dome has been searched, and her possessions. You got in today. Don’t tell me you haven’t gone through the entire building to find it.’

  The grey-haired man listened quite patiently, I thought, and then, lifting the whip, looked along the handle in Johnson’s direction, one eye narrowed. I said sharply, ‘Stop it!’ The grey-haired man smiled, and then with a savage flick of his wrist, sent the hide flying towards Johnson again. The tip coiled like a spring around his spectacles and, snatching them off, flung them clattering to the far side of the kitchen. ‘I said,’ continued the grey-haired man, smiling, ‘it is for Miss Russell to answer. Miss Russell, where are the photographs?’ The handle of the whip came up again, and this time it was pointing to me.

  I was wondering, if I got marked like a mixed grill, whether Charles would still love me. I wondered why Johnson was sticking to my story, and whether the police would get on our tracks and if there was a chance that Jacko and Innes and Professor Hathaway would decide to come on to Rome and do a good evening’s work in the observatory.

  Thinking it over, it came to me that there wasn’t a hope. Wherever Johnson and I had been landed, it wouldn’t have been in Naples harbour, but some nice secluded beach with a fast car near it, waiting. And no police force in its senses would hear a story like that and wave goodbye to the yacht-load of foreigners who reported it. They would be setting up roadblocks and searching through Naples. The one place no one would ever think of looking for us was inside the Frazer Observatory. ‘Miss Russell?’ the grey-haired man repeated more softly.

  I decided Johnson was playing for time, and I had better help him. ‘You see,’ I said, ‘there were pictures of girls. I was angry with Charles. I didn’t care about his couture photographs. I burned the whole thing to teach him a lesson.’

  ‘When?’ said the grey-haired man.

  ‘Monday,’ I said. ‘Monday the sixth, after Charles and I had had our row and he went off to Naples.’ I didn’t look at Johnson.

  ‘And where,’ said the grey-haired man, ‘did you burn them?’

  On Monday, November 6, I had been all day in the Dome. ‘In the Dome,’ I said quickly.

  ‘Indeed?’ said the grey-haired man, smiling again, and this time I did look at Johnson.

  It didn’t do me any good because he wasn’t looking at me. He was studying the other man, watchfully. ‘But,’ said the grey-haired man gently, ‘you could not have burned it in the Dome that Monday, Miss Russell. That Monday the stove was out of action and you did not have any matches.’ And the whip, snaking out, curled itself hard around the leg of Johnson’s chair and flung it sideways. It fell towards the sink with a crash of splintering wood and a grunt from Johnson, as he struck the floor with his shoulder and head. He was still tied firmly to it.

  They left him there. ‘And so,’ pursued the grey-haired man, his voice hardening, ‘where are the photographs, Miss Ruth Russell?’

  I stared at him. I had forgotten it, but it was true. I had worked all day at the Dome, and Jacko had gone off with the only box of matches. I hadn’t even a light, I remembered, for Maurice’s cigar.

  Maurice. And the launch . . . the launch, of course, had been Sappho’s launch. And who else, of course, had the key to the Frazer Observatory but Maurice Frazer? Who else could have nets left by bribery – who else returned early to Naples especially to do so? Who else at 1500 hours had been in the Villa San Michele but Maurice? And who but Maurice could have removed Johnson’s dummy film from the vase in his own bedroom and, having developed it, initiated the search for the real film which was ending here, back in the observatory . . . ?

  And it was ending, for Johnson’s voice, rather muffled from the floor, was saying, ‘Tell him, Ruth. It isn’t burned. You know and I know it isn’t.’

  And it wasn’t, of course. I said, ‘Pick him up, and I’ll tell you.’

  The grey-haired man laughed. ‘You will tell us or your friend will be made still more uncomfortable. Are the photographs here in the Dome?’ ‘

  I looked down. I wanted time to think, and I also wanted time to slide my eyes around to Johnson who proved, with the slightest possible movement, to be shaking his head. I said, ‘No. I posted them to England.’

  ‘Miss Russell,’ said the grey-haired man sadly, and at his tone, the two men by the door moved across and stood one on each side of me, looking inquiringly at their master. ‘Miss Russell, we know what letters you have posted. There have been none to England.’

  ‘Tell them,’ said Johnson from the floor. It came to me that he had always known I hadn’t burned them. I remembered that exhaustive search of the Dome he had launched with Jacko and me after the dud film was stolen. I realized it was my film he’d been looking for. I wondered if he’d spotted it.

  The men on either side of me moved restively. On the other side of the room, the door handle moved slowly.

  ‘I need a drink of water,’ I said.

  ‘Afterwards,’ the man in the chair said sharply. He had stopped being suave.

  ‘I feel dizzy,’ I said, allowing my eyeballs to slip upward slightly, a thing Charles and I frequently practised, to the distress of soft-hearted onlookers. The door handle paused and then continued to turn. The door eased forward slightly. The grey-haired man turned and looked at it.

  It was a bad moment. On the floor, Johnson wriggled abruptly, his chair creaking, and one of the men aimed an absent-minded kick at his body. The man at my side, in response to a nod from the mastermind, walked softly forward and stood, silently waiting, one hand on the doorknob. The door, pushed slowly from outside, moved another fraction towards us.

  I yelled. I didn’t know who it was, but if it was one of ours, I couldn’t let him walk in unsuspecting and cop it. I yelled, I think, ‘They’re waiting for you,’ but it didn’t do a bit of good, for at the sound of my voice the person outside flung open the door and charged inward, to receive a full karate chop on the back of her plaited leather choker. A tiny gun went flying and took a chip out of the breadboard.

  It was one of ours. It was, for heaven’s sakes, Di Minicucci, who was on board Dolly when we were kidnapped and whom we had all forgotten. She somersaulted like a hedgehog and ended up full length on her back by the stove with her eyes shut. She had on a midi coat in blended fitch slung over her playsuit and a handbag that didn’t match, but still a handbag. I take off my hat to Di Minicucci. For sheer presence of mind and tenacity she made the whole of ‘Star Trek’ look like pikers.

  Then the grey-haired man in the chair snapped his lingers and was given a heavy revolver. He fondled it once or twice, checked his aim, and settled down with one elbow negligently on the table and the other held in his palm. The muzzle of the gun, thus handsomely supported, pointed straight at poor Di’s European hairpiece, just back from the cleaners, and poor Di, reposing gently where she had fallen, was in no situation to dodge it.

  ‘Now,’ said Grey-Hair calmly to me, as if nothing had happened. ‘Perhaps we may finish our business. The photograp
hs, or your pretty young friend will receive some unwelcome attention.’ And stretching down he unzipped, smiling, the top half of Di’s Pucci playsuit. The men standing around her grinned and fidgeted.

  Half Italy at one time or another has seen Di either half clothed or starkers, but by Di’s choice and in front of Di’s friends, not thugs of this variety. It might not seem like it but Di had something to lose, and that was dignity.

  So I was going to tell them, but Johnson got in before me. ‘They’re in the grounds,’ he said. ‘She buried the negatives out in the flower beds. Show them, Ruth.’

  The man in the chair turned and looked at me. ‘Is that true?’ he said sharply.

  Without any volition of mine, my eyeballs began to behave in a very queer manner. ‘Yes,’ I said rather thickly.

  ‘Where? Can you describe it exactly?’

  I shook my head. I wasn’t feeling very well. ‘Give her some water,’ said the grey-haired man harshly. He waited while I drank it and said, ‘Then you will show us. Dimitri will untie you. He and Pietro will then take you out into the grounds, and I shall follow you with this revolver. The slightest attempt to mislead us and I will signal Giorgio here to commence broadening your charming young friend’s education.’

  I looked at Johnson and Johnson winked and suddenly, for the first time, I saw a gleam of hope in the operation. For the photographs were not in the flower beds and Johnson clearly knew that they weren’t. He wanted us out of the way. And with us out of the way, that left only two men in the kitchen, to guard himself and Diana.

  Except that Johnson was tied to a chair, and Di was knocked out.

  If indeed Johnson was still tied to the chair. And if indeed I had not imagined, just then, that Di’s false eyelashes flickered . . .

  I made a long, long job of getting to my feet. I crawled to the door and staggered out into the hall and leaned against the front door while they unlocked it and dragged it open. I wondered how Di had managed to follow us. I wondered if she had brought the rest with her and then realized that she must be on her own. Lilian Hathaway might be an eccentric, but she knew when to call in authority. If the others knew where we were, the grounds would already be ringing with police whistles.

  Unless, for example, Di had rushed to Naples and asked someone there to send the police up to the observatory. Unless she had asked Maurice to do it.

  It was dark outside, and very clear. The lights of Velterra were cosily visible, and at the foot of the hill a window glowed in Maurice’s villa. The garden itself was perfectly silent, save for the trickling of a small fountain by the swimming pool. A light breeze, swaying the poplar trees, hid and disclosed the white flanks of some of Maurice’s statues and, further off, the ghostly pillars of Innes’s Folly, rising like a Necropolis above the hanging gardens ripened on grave-mould. Maurice’s gardeners, unalarmed, would have buried a corpse there. Next year, who knows what bumper crop would dazzle the neighbours.

  I put off time as best I could. I wandered up and down marble staircases, pausing here and exclaiming doubtfully there until the grey-haired man, losing patience, pulled my arm tight and high at my back and said, ‘Enough. You show us now, or your friend suffers. What is that?’

  It might have been a compatriot loosing off at the sparrows but it wasn’t. It was the sound of gunfire back at the observatory. I found myself flung back into the arms of Dimitri and his colleague while, gun in hand, the grey-haired man began to run in the darkness to the squat black shape of the Dome. My arm aching, I ran dragging after, in the grasp of the other two men. Then the grip on one of my arms disappeared and I turned, in time to see Dimitri stagger off and sink in a flower bed.

  May the winds blow gently

  On that quiet and peaceful spot

  Where the one we love lies resting

  And will never be forgot.

  The man holding my other arm whirled around and released me, his hands reaching out to someone I could not quite see, dodging and ducking around us in the darkness. Then Johnson’s voice said, ‘Ruth! Run like hell, sweetie . . .’ And I did.

  Feet trampled the ground all about me. Near the door of the Dome there was a burst of shouting and another shot. A little flame bloomed in the darkness to one side of me and I swerved away as the sound of the shot exploded in my ear. Johnson’s voice said breathlessly, ‘It’s all right. It was my gun. Make for the villa.’

  ‘No,’ I said, and stopped. ‘We’ve got to get Di. And listen . . .’

  Johnson said, ‘I’ll look after Di. Run for the villa. I’ll draw them off.’

  The firing was nearer now, and the shouting. Someone came racing up beside us and I saw Johnson’s arm rise in the gloom and descend with the revolver in it, butt downward. There was the sound of a thud and a fall, and Johnson grabbed my arm again and began ushering me at a brisk downward canter in the direction of Maurice’s villa. I said, ‘Maurice is on the wrong side, you bloody idiot.’

  I should have known better. I should have kept my mouth shut and trusted him. The grey-haired man was out there somewhere in the darkness, and the man Johnson had just felled, and probably three others beating about, but all I could think of was Di lying helpless there in the Dome, and Maurice waiting behind the lit window for us all to walk into the limelight.

  So I bleated out, and a figure rose from the bushes in front of us which had nothing to do with the shouting men from the Dome just behind. A neat figure which blocked out the stars and waved its revolver so that it flashed just once in the dimness.

  ‘It isn’t Maurice you have to worry about,’ said Innes Wye. ‘Drop your gun, Johnson. I’m taking you both where no one can get at you until Ruth has told me just where those photographs are.’

  Johnson dropped his gun. He could hardly argue with the barrel of Innes’s Dardick pointing straight at him and a recollection of the fate of the fish tank. Then we were making a stumbling run through the garden. I had forgotten we were near the door of Mouse Hall until I was thrust through it, with Johnson blundering after me.

  I thought it was plain myopia, and then I realized what he had tripped over. The body of Di, groggily shaking its head, lay across the threshold in the winking light of Innes’s banks of electronic instruments.

  Innes bent and, pulling her inside, closed and locked the door, his revolver trained on us without ceasing. He switched on the light. ‘Yes. I thought she might be better here than lying in the Dome,’ said Innes Wye. ‘How lucky we all met. You see, Johnson. I needed you. I needed you for a hostage.’

  I should have known. Anyone who killed locusts and lobsters the way Innes did was bound to be kinky. The fact that he kept white mice as well just went to prove it. I wondered why he needed hostages and then I didn’t wonder anymore because far in the distance through the locked door and shuttered windows came the sound of more firing and the shouting of many more voices. The police had arrived at the hill. And Innes was here by arrangement, waiting for his friends so that they could all beat it together. With us as his insurance against accidents.

  The lights popped in and out and the thin green lines wiggled and Di sat up and said, ‘How the hell did I get here . . . Oh!’ as she saw Innes.

  Johnson stayed where he was, under Innes’s gun with his back to the white foam plastic blocks of the Incubator, but I knelt down beside her and Innes let me. I said, ‘Di. You did tell the police, didn’t you? Somewhere?’

  She pulled her wig off with one hand and fanned herself with it. Even dumped on the floor in a mess of torn fitch, she looked like the front cover of Harper’s Bazaar. ‘No,’ she said blankly, looking around her. ‘I didn’t wait for the others. When they hauled you two away I upped anchor and sailed Dolly after you.’ She looked at Johnson. ‘I picked the lock on your car and followed in it. What is he pointing a gun at you for?’

  ‘I think he’s going to shoot Johnson if I don’t give him Charles’s photographs,’ I said wildly.

  Di got to her feet and held her neck, swearing. ‘Then for Christ�
�s sake, give them to him, darling,’ she said testily.

  I knew she had a crush on Johnson. I had a slight one myself, except that he didn’t seem to be handling this situation with any particular aplomb. I mean, for God’s sake, to be held up at pistol point by Innes. I said, ‘The negatives are on the shelf, in the fourth bag of Poppy’s Cuddle.’

  ‘They aren’t,’ said Johnson, suddenly stung into speech. ‘I searched every inch—’

  ‘I know you did,’ cried Innes, equally outraged. ‘That bastard Timothy laid me out and you pinched my key. Where did you put the photographs?’

  ‘I didn’t get them,’ said Johnson viciously.

  ‘They’re in the fourth bag of Cuddle,’ I repeated with patience. ‘I cut them all into strips.’

  There was a silence. The sound of shouting and firing, which had receded into the distance, became suddenly noticeably louder. ‘Get them,’ said Innes.

  To cover us all, he made Di and Johnson back beside me until we reached Poppy’s cage. Behind the bars, the tin container full of shredded white bedding was bulging and still. Poppy was having a nap. On the shelf up above, labelled in Innes’s methodical way, were her pails of sawdust and her packs of rolled oats, her bag of sunflower seeds and her hamster dinners. Beside them, in an orderly row, were the bags of Cuddle, shipped out from England.

  I reached behind me for the fourth, and handed it over to Innes. Then we stood all three in a row while he tried to open it.

  Someone banged on the door.

  Innes swore. You can’t open a bag of Cuddle one-handed. I know, because I have tried it.

  Someone banged on the door again. Someone pumped a shot into the door and a voice said, ‘Open up. Open up or I’ll shoot the lock off.’