by Muriel Spark
Letizia Bernardini, with her youth dedicated to an ideal plan of territorial nationalism, had she been able to envisage at that moment the reality to come would have considered it, wrongly, to be a life not worth living. At any rate, at Berto’s table in Ischia that evening, Letizia conversationally embarked once more on the leaky ship of Hubert.
‘There’s a certain magic about him,’ Letizia said, causing Maggie to glare at her and her father to smile. ‘There’s something of the high priest about him,’ Letizia went on. ‘I want to see more of him when we return to Nemi.’
Nancy Cowan said, ‘I think he’s pure fake.’
‘What!’ said Letizia.
‘Why?’ said Maggie at the same time as her husband said ‘Fake what?’
One way and another, Nancy’s quiet little words produced an uproar of argument, all about Hubert, so that they hardly noticed the good food they were eating or heard the very professional robbery of Maggie’s summer jewels going on upstairs in the meantime. Here are the details of the burglary:
Maggie’s summer collection of jewellery was worth a vast fortune, even although it was far less valuable than her winter jewels, and considerably less again than the jewellery she kept in the bank summer and winter, except for the rarest and most important occasions. Her jewellery was difficult to insure against theft in any way that meant business; the insurance companies’ requirements for so large a risk were not only so expensive as to defeat the purpose of insurance, but inconvenient as well. The companies insisted on the jewellery being housed in all types of safes and secured by innumerable safeguards, and even then were becoming more and more unwilling to insure jewellery of Maggie’s sort. Generally, she avoided hotels and when she did stay in one she took very little jewellery, which she lodged in the hotel safe when she was not wearing it. Maggie’s main problem was to prevent jewel-robberies at home. Burglar-alarms had become less and less effective as the burglars themselves became more and more adept at inventing, patenting, selling and subsequently exploiting them.
Two summers ago, Maggie had thought up a scheme to outwit the burglars, provoked as she had been at that time by a passing thief’s discovery that she kept some of her jewels in a hot-water bottle. Her new scheme was to have a tiny kitchen built on an upper landing of every house she owned and frequented. This kitchen, complete with stove, refrigerator and sink, was ostensibly for the use of house-guests who wanted to be independent and who might take it into their heads to cook bacon and eggs in the middle of the night, or mix a drink. These upper kitchens were never used but were always elaborately stocked with food and drinks. They were always approached by a little step about four inches in height. This step was in reality a drawer, and in this drawer went Maggie’s jewellery, unlocked and unnoticed.
Maggie had not been robbed for two years until this evening at Ischia during dinner. Lauro was sleeping off his migraine, heavily dosed with the pain-relieving drugs that Berto had brought from the chemist. The other servants were occupied downstairs with the serving. A boat drew up quietly and unremarked on the rocks below Maggie’s villa from where a lift ascended to the top of the house. One man was left in the boat on the look-out. Two others, young in their T-shirts and blue jeans, went up in the lift with fixed and sad expressions on their faces. They got out precisely at the landing where the little upper kitchen stood. The dinner proceeded downstairs and Lauro slept heavily in his room.
They left the lift door open, went straight to the kitchen door and within a few seconds had opened the drawer in the step. They emptied it and stuffed most of it bulgily under their shirts. All the rest, enclosed in their leather cases, they held in their hands and tucked under their arms as they sadly and expertly descended to the waiting boat. This operation was the fruit of six weeks’ research into Maggie’s habits, casual questioning at local bars of builders connected with the latest construction of Maggie’s upper kitchens, of boatmen connected with the villa, of unwitting servants who chattered about how ridiculous it was that the Marchesa had kitchens built at the top of her houses, always unused, and of simple deduction from a builder’s boy’s remark that she had quite unnecessarily called in a different builder from Milan to construct the step up to the kitchen. Summer jewellery though it was, the haul was high in the chronicles of summer robberies that year.
It was just towards the end of the dinner, with feelings and exchanges still vibrating across the table on the subject of Hubert, and Nancy Cowan quietly insisting that he was a fake, and Letizia rowdily defending him, with a murmur of scorn and an exclamation of despair here and there from Maggie, that the sound of an outboard-motor rapidly leaving the site of their landing-stage caused one of the servants to run out on the terrace and look over the cliff at the departing boat below. Suspicious of what he had seen he called out to one of the maids and ran to the lift. He pressed the button. Nothing happened. It was stuck down at sea-rock level, with the doors open.
It was when the maid returned to the terrace outside the dining-room window and started calling down vainly to Maggie’s house-guards that the diners at the table were aware that something had happened.
‘What’s going on?’ said Maggie, waving her arm towards the beautiful night outside the open french windows.
The maid and the manservant both appeared together in the dining-room, worried. ‘There’s a boat seems to have just left here, Marchesa. It left with great speed and we can’t find the house-guards. Those boys are terrible. I always say they’re negligent. They must have gone to a bar, Signora Marchesa.’
‘Go down and find them,’ said Maggie.
‘And the lift doors have been left open,’ said the girl. ‘The lift’s stuck downstairs.’
‘Then go down the steps,’ said Berto, rising, bothered by the fuss. The man and the girl made off across the terrace to the winding steps that led down the cliff to Maggie’s rock-beach. Berto stood looking after them.
The boat had already disappeared across the bay, heading probably for another island or some remote inlet of the Neapolitan shore. Maggie said to the others at the table, ‘Don’t get up. Letizia, Nancy, go and get the fruit, please, will you? These servants are hysterical.’ The cook had joined Berto on the terrace and was shouting inquiries to the maid and the manservant who had now reached the rock-beach. They were presently joined by those two of the five house-guards who were supposed to be on duty; they were amazed that their absence should have caused such a stir. Berto called roughly down to them to ask where they had been while the cook sent down vilifications of a rich and strange Italian variety.
Nancy and Letizia brought fruit and cheese to the table, but Maggie was standing now, and Emilio Bernardini with her, his pale smooth oval face gleaming beside her brown and splendid one. She looked from the terrace to him, then to the terrace again, and then back to Emilio, into his brown eyes behind his judicious spectacles. ‘Do you know,’ she said, ‘I’m going upstairs to check my jewellery.’ Emilio looked anxious but he smiled and said, ‘Oh, I hardly think…’
Maggie was still upstairs when another visitor arrived, by car at the front door. He rang several times before Emilio let him in. A short man with very black dyed-looking hair and a taut, very cosmetically surgeoned face. He seemed understandably surprised that no servants had appeared at the door to take his luggage and he greeted Emilio, who was obviously an old friend, with an absent-eyed geniality.
‘Maggie’s upstairs; she’ll be down soon. The servants have made some mystery about an unknown boat that took off from the landing-stage in a hurry. Berto’s down at the shore, investigating. Leave everything in the hall. Come in. Have you had dinner?’
The man said he had already eaten in Naples. Nancy and Letizia had left the table and were on their way down the sea-steps to join Berto and the servants. Emilio took his friend into the drawing-room where his son Pietro sat, sulkily uninterested in the fuss and ostentatiously unmoving. Emilio helplessly pressed a bell. As if in answer to it, Maggie appeared with her arms waving
and her lips moving silently up and down in an effort of dumbstruck wild speech. Her arms waved and her dress glittered. On her arms and round her neck she wore the jewellery she had put on for dinner: bracelets and long necklaces of sea-shells which she had taken the whim to have set by a jeweller in conjunction with rubies and diamonds. These jewels, which were now all the summer jewellery she had left, made a sound like little dolls’ teacups being washed up in some toy kitchen as her arms waved and her mouth gasped. She sat down on a sofa as Emilio came to help her. His friend had also stood up, quite bewildered by the whole business. Pietro sat still with a supercilious air.
‘What happened, Maggie?’ said Emilio, sitting down beside her.
Maggie pointed at the stranger, and this time her voice came through. ‘Who is that?’ she said, her pointing arm outstretched with its expensive shells.
‘Maggie, what’s happened? You’ve had a shock.’
‘Who is he?’ Maggie said. ‘Call the police. Arrest him.’
‘Maggie, don’t you remember, you asked him to stay. He was expected, Maggie. What’s wrong with you, my dear? This is my friend Coco de Renault.’
Berto returned followed by Letizia and Nancy. ‘Nothing down there,’ he reported. ‘Someone took the lift down to the water and left the doors open. Must have been one of the servants, though of course they deny it.’
‘Arrest him!’ Maggie said, still pointing to Coco de Renault, who said, ‘What the—’
‘He’s stolen my jewellery!’ Maggie said.
At this moment Coco de Renault took charge. ‘This lady,’ he said gently, ‘has had a shock.’
‘I think so,’ said Berto, while Emilio said, ‘What’s happened, Maggie?’
‘My jewellery has gone,’ Maggie said. ‘It was upstairs in the kitchen step and it’s gone. Call the police and arrest this man.’
But Coco de Renault was already pouring out a brandy and soda for Maggie. He came and stood over her like a doctor and said in a firm, almost harsh, voice, ‘Drink this.’ Maggie took the glass and drank. Monsieur de Renault then ordered the two girls to help Maggie stretch out on the sofa; on the strength of Maggie’s words, ‘My jewellery…the upstairs kitchen…’ and assuming his hostess was unbalanced by nature and in a mixed-up mood, he ordered Berto to go up to Maggie’s room and investigate, and he ordered Emilio into the kitchen to investigate. He then ordered Pietro to have his luggage taken to his room and unpacked. Maggie lay on the sofa, moaning. Looking cross, Berto none the less went upstairs and Emilio with alacrity went into the kitchen where the servants were complaining and arguing loudly amongst themselves. Pietro did not move from his chair but he stretched out his hand and tinkled a little china bell which was to hand. ‘The servants are spoilt in this house,’ Pietro remarked.
Monsieur de Renault stood in the middle of the room watching his orders being executed. His head was poised like the conductor of an orchestra. Lauro then appeared in the doorway, bare-chested and bare-foot, wearing only his day-time jeans. ‘Who are you?’ said Coco de Renault.
‘I’m the Marchesa’s personal secretary,’ said Lauro.
‘Then go and put on some respectable clothes,’ barked the stranger-in-charge. Lauro fled.
At this moment, Berto’s voice preceded his footsteps down the staircase. ‘There’s been a robbery! Maggie’s jewels have been taken from their hiding-place. Call the police, call the—’
‘Call the police,’ Coco de Renault said to Pietro. ‘Quickly, your mother’s jewellery—’
‘She isn’t my mother,’ Pietro said.
‘Then who are you?’ said de Renault as if he owned the place, and his question was so imperative that it seemed to include Berto himself who had now appeared in a state of agitation. Pietro said, ‘I’m Bernardini’s son,’ and Berto said, ‘I’m Tullio-Friole, the Marchesa’s husband.’ Pietro dialled the emergency number.
‘How do you do,’ said Coco de Renault to Berto. ‘I’m Emilio’s friend—’
‘Oh, yes, Maggie was expecting you. I’m sorry about all this.…’
Emilio returned from the kitchen and said, ‘There’s nothing missing from there. The servants are—’
‘Please come immediately,’ Pietro said into the telephone. ‘Casa Tullio-Friole, the Marchese. There’s been a robbery.’
Lauro appeared again, still half-dressed, and this time ready to express his summoned-up indignation. Maggie feebly pointed at Coco de Renault. ‘He stole my jewellery…,’ she murmured.
‘Maggie,’ said Emilio patiently, ‘this is Monsieur Coco de Renault, my friend from the Argentine whom you invited here. Your jewellery has been stolen by someone, probably common thieves who have got away by boat. Monsieur de Renault has just arrived in this distressing situation, but I’m naturally very embarrassed—’
‘Maggie, Monsieur de Renault is our guest,’ Berto said, while Nancy pressed a table napkin folded round ice from the drinks-trolley on to Maggie’s forehead, and Letizia held her hand.
‘I really am not embarrassed,’ said de Renault. ‘I understand shock. It’s hardly conceivable that anyone would seriously take me for a jewel thief.’
The servants were questioned by the two policemen who presently arrived. Coco de Renault’s documents were looked over as were Nancy Cowan’s. The police took the numbers of the passports. They looked with a certain scorn at the drawer in the upstairs kitchen step. They expressed their doubts that the thieves would ever be found: ‘The jewels will likely be broken up by now somewhere in the quartieri of Naples.’ They inquired if the jewellery had been insured. Then they inquired why not. And on learning that its value was beyond the range of the insurance companies, exchanged glances. They assured Berto they would do their best, and Berto assured them, quietly, that there would of course be a reward if the jewellery should be found. The elder of the policemen exchanged some wry Italian colloquialisms with Berto: the stuff would never be found, and they knew it. Lauro, however, was taken away to the police station, in a fuming rage, to be questioned, much against Maggie’s protestations but very much with Coco de Renault’s approval.
‘You can’t trust anybody,’ said de Renault when the police car had gone. And there was in fact this much in what he said, that he himself, within the year, was to trick Maggie into handing over to him the bulk of her fortune, such a bulk as to make the more entirely absurd her concern about Hubert’s occupancy of the house, or the little earnings of Lauro, or the theft, that evening, of her summer jewellery.
None the less, later that evening Maggie had so far recovered as to sit clanking her remaining bracelets on her arm as she reached for her drink, and asked Coco de Renault’s advice as to how Hubert should be removed from the house at Nemi. Lauro had returned from the police station by this time, soothed by the fact that Berto had followed the police car and had gone right into the office of the Commissioner himself to vouch for him, and had telephoned to the Prefect at Naples, and had altogether given Lauro such a good name as to be almost equal to promotion from private to general in the army. Lauro sat, now, in his jeans and the light cotton sweater he had put on to go to the police. He sat arrogantly, as arrogant as young Pietro.
Chapter Ten
‘TRUTH,’ SAID HUBERT, ‘IS not literally true. The literal truth is a common little concept, born of the materialistic mind.’ He raised his right arm gracefully from the lectern before him, and with it the sleeve of his green and silver liturgical vestment. The raised arm seemed to signal an expectancy; the congregation obediently drew its breath; Hubert’s eye rested on Pauline Thin in the third row, and he proceeded as if uttering a prophecy directed to all the world, but aimed especially at her.
‘Brothers and sisters of Apollo and Diana,’ Hubert went on, with his eyes focused defiantly on Pauline, ‘we hear on all sides about the evil effects of inflation and the disastrous state of the economy. Gross materialism, I say. The concepts of property and material possession are the direct causes of such concepts as perjury, lying, deception and frau
d. In the world of symbol and the worlds of magic, of allegory and mysticism, deceit has no meaning, lies do not exist, fraud is impossible. These concepts are impossible because the materialist standards of conduct from which they arise are non-existent. Ponder well on these words. Hail to the sacred Diana! Hail to Apollo!’
