by Ngaio Marsh
‘What was that?’
‘A gracious silence.’
She didn’t answer and suddenly he was telling her about the morning of the thunderstorm in the Piazza Colonna and the loss of his manuscript. She listened with horror, her fingers at her lips. ‘Simon,’ she muttered. ‘You lost Simon!’ And then: ‘Well—but obviously you got it back.’
‘After three days’ sweltering hell spent largely on this roof-garden. Yes. I got it back.’ He turned away and sat in one of the little wrought-iron chairs. ‘At this table, actually,’ he said indistinctly.
‘I wonder you can face it again.’
‘You don’t ask how I got it back.’
‘Well—how, then?’
‘Mailer—brought it here.’
‘Mailer? Did you say Mailer? Sebastian Mailer?’
‘That’s right. Come and sit here. Please.’
She took the other chair at his table, as if, she thought, the waiter was going to bring their breakfast. ‘What is it?’ she asked. ‘You’re worried about something. Do you want to talk about it?’
‘I suppose I must. To this extent, at least. Do you believe me when I tell you that at the moment I can almost wish he had never recovered the thing?’
Sophy said, after a pause, ‘If you say so, I believe you, but it’s a monstrous idea. For you to wish Mailer hadn’t found it—yes. That I can imagine.’
‘And this is what I meant. You’re too young to remember when my first book came out. You were a child, of course.’
‘Aquarius? Well, I was about fourteen, I think. I read it with goggling eyes and bated breath.’
‘But afterwards. When you came into Koster Press? You heard about—the scandal? Well, didn’t you? You can’t tell me they don’t still thumb it over in those august premises.’
‘Yes,’ Sophy said. ‘I heard about the coincidence bit.’
‘The “coincidence” bit! Did you, by God! And did you believe that I could have repeated in exact detail the central theme of a book I’d never read?’
‘Certainly. That’s the general opinion at Koster’s.’
‘It wasn’t the opinion of twelve good, bloody men and true.’
‘Token damages, though, weren’t they? And there’s a long list of proven literary coincidences. I write children’s books. I found last year that I’d lifted the entire story-line of Mrs Molesworth’s Cuckoo Clock. Actually it wasn’t coincidence. My grandmother had read her copy aloud to me when I was six. I suppose it was stowed away in my subconscious and bobbed up unbeknownst. But I swear I didn’t know.’
‘What did you do when you found out?’
‘Scrapped it. I was just in time.’
‘You were lucky.’
‘Does it still hurt so much?’
‘Yes,’ Grant said. ‘Yes, my girl, it does.’
‘Why, though? Because people may still believe you cribbed?’
‘I suppose so—yes. The whole thing’s a nightmare.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Sophy said. ‘That’s beastly for you. But I can’t quite see—
‘What it’s got to do with this book—and Mailer?’
‘Yes.’
Grant said: ‘Was it at half past three last afternoon that we met for the first time?’
‘We’ve been thrown together. Like people in ships,’ Sophy said with a practical air that was invalidated by the circumstance of her being obliged to murmur.
‘Mailer kept the manuscript for three days.’
‘Why?’
‘He says because he flaked out. Cocaine. He showed me his arm to prove it. I don’t believe it for a moment.’
‘Was he waiting for a reward to be offered?’
‘He wouldn’t take it.’
‘Amazing!’ said Sophy.
‘I don’t think so. I don’t think he’s an addict. I think he’s a pusher in a big way and they never are. He took me to the place they’ve gone on to, tonight. Toni’s. It’s a highly tarted-up junk and flop shop. Caters for all tastes. It’s outrageous. Where was I?’
‘You were going to say—’
‘Why he waited three days. Because it took him that amount of time to cook up a novella with a resemblance in theme to an incident in Simon. He asked me to read it and give him a criticism. I’m certain now that he’d opened my case, read the MS and deliberately concocted this thing. It had all the characteristics, only I was too dumb to spot them. I gave him an opinion and mentioned, as an amusing coincidence, the resemblance. We were in a restaurant and he told some friends about it. Later on in that damnable evening he told other people. He made a great story of it.’
Grant stopped speaking. A belated horse-carriage clopped down the street under their garden. Much farther away a babble of Italian voices broke out, topped by a whistle, laughter and a snatch of song. A driver in Navona changed gears and revved up his engine.
‘Do I begin to see,’ Sophy said, ‘why you put up with—this afternoon?’
‘Do you begin to see!’ he burst out. ‘Yes, you do begin to see. You haven’t heard half of it yet, but by God you do begin to see.’ He brought his clenched fist down on the table with a crash and their tooth mugs clattered together.
‘Pardon me,’ said a shrill lady behind the french windows, ‘but is it too much to ask for a mite of common courtesy and consideration?’ And then in an access of rage. ‘If you can’t keep your voices down you can belt up and get out.’
V
Morning was well-established when Giovanni and Kenneth Dorne with Lady Braceley, maintained by lateral pressure and support from the armpits and not so much propelled as lifted, crossed the foyer of the hotel and entered the lift.
Cleaning women with black-currant eyes exchanged looks with the night porter, who was preparing to go off duty. The man with the vacuum cleaner watched their progress to the lift and then joined them and, with back turned and averted glance, took them up to their floor. A chambermaid, seeing their approach, opened the door into their suite and hurried away.
They put Lady Braceley into a chair.
Kenneth fumbled in his pocket for his note-case. ‘You’re sure, aren’t you?’ he said to Giovanni. ‘It’s going to be OK. I mean—you know—?’
Giovanni, indigo about the jaws but otherwise impeccable, said, ‘Perfectly, Signore. I am fully in Signor Mailer’s confidence.’
‘Yes—but—you know? This thing about—well, about the police—did he—?’
‘I will be pleased to negotiate.’
They both looked at Lady Braceley.
‘We’ll have to wait,’ Kenneth said. ‘It’ll be all right, I promise. Later. Say this afternoon when she’s—you know?’
‘As soon as possible. A delay is not desirable.’
‘All right. All right. I know. But—see for yourself, Giovanni.’
‘Signore, I have already perceived.’
‘Yes. Well, in the meantime—here.’
‘You are very kind,’ Giovanni said, taking his dirt-money with infinite aplomb. ‘I will return at two-thirty, Signore. Arrivederci.’
Left alone, Kenneth bit his knuckles, looked at his aunt and caught back his breath in a dry sob. Then he rang for her maid and went to his room.
VI
‘You have enjoyed yourself, my beloved?’ the Baron had asked the Baroness in their own language as they prepared for bed.
‘Very much. The tall Englishman is a good dancer and clearly a person of some distinction. He what the English call "funned" me about not going on to the other place. To take care of him, he said. He is a flirt.’
‘I am jealous.’
‘Good-good. Almost, I wish we had decided to go.’
‘Now, you tease me, my love. It is quite unthinkable that I should take you to one of these places, Mathilde. You would be insulted. I wonder that this person, Allen, suggested it.’
‘He was “funning” me, my darling.’
‘He had no business to do so on that subject.’
The Baroness turned her
back to her husband, who deftly unzipped her dress and awarded her a neat little slap.
‘The relief,’ she said, ‘is so enormous, Gerrit. I dare not believe in it. Tell me, fully, what happened.’
‘In effect—nothing. As you know I hoped to negotiate. I kept the appointment. He did not. It is very strange.’
‘And, for the moment at least, we are free of our anxiety?’
‘I think we are free altogether, darling. I think we shall not see this Mailer again.’
‘No?’
‘My feeling is that he is in trouble with the police. Perhaps he was recognized. Perhaps the woman who threatened him has some hold over him. I am sure he has bolted. We shall not be troubled by him again, my poor love.’
‘And our secret—our secret, Gerrit?’
‘Remains our secret.’
The Baron’s winged smile tilted his mouth. He opened his eyes and put his head on one side. ‘And as for our financial disaster,’ he said. ‘It is vanished. Look.’
He unlocked a cupboard, removed from it the great satchel in which he carried his photographic equipment, unlocked that and displayed a large sealed package.
‘Such a business it was,’ he said, ‘getting it all together. And now—back to Geneva and lock it all up again. What a farce!’
‘What a farce,’ she echoed obediently.
He put the satchel away, locked the cupboard, turned and opened wide his arms.
‘So,’ he said. ‘And now—! Come to me, my beloved.’
VII
Major Sweet was the last of his party to return to his lodging. He was taken to his room by the second driver, being in a trance-like condition from which he neither passed into oblivion nor wholly recovered. The second driver watched him make a pretty good hash of withdrawing money from his pockets and did not attempt to conceal his own chagrin when given a worse than conservative tip.
Alone, the Major was at laborious pains to retrieve the money he had dropped on the carpet. He was reduced to crawling after it like a botanist in search of some rare specimen.
Having achieved several pieces of cash and two notes he sat on the floor with his back to the bed, stared at his gleanings with astonishment and then, inconsistently, threw them over his shoulder.
He rolled over, climbed up to his bed, fell on it, removed his tie and slept.
CHAPTER 6
Re-appearance of a Postcard Vendor
At seven o’clock Alleyn obeyed his own orders and woke. He ordered breakfast, bathed, shaved and was ready for the day when the hotel office rang to say a car had called for him.
It was Il Questore Valdarno’s car and in it, exuding his peculiar brand of melancholy and affability, was the Questore himself. He welcomed Alleyn and in doing so contrived to establish the awesome condescension of his being there at all. It was a long time, Alleyn understood, since the Questore had risen at this hour, a long time since his association with fieldwork had taken any form other than the august consideration of material pre-filtered by his subordinates.
Alleyn expressed, not for the first time, his deep sense of obligation.
The air was fresh, Rome sparkled, the streets swam with shoals of early workers. Above them and against a pontifical blue, giant personages in marble looked downwards, the arms frozen in benediction. Under the streets, behind façades, in still-dominant monuments the aspirations of senators, Caesars and Emperors held their ground. And nowhere more strangely, Alleyn thought, than in S. Tommaso in Pallaria.
When they arrived they were met by three of the Questore’s ‘people’: Agenti de Questura, which Alleyn took to be the equivalent of constables, and by Father Denys and the Sacristan, Brother Dominic, a dour man who drew the key to the underworld from his habit as if it was a symbol of mortality.
Valdarno was rather high and remote with the clergy, but complaisant too, and not ungracious.
Father Denys greeted Alleyn as an old friend.
‘It’s yourself again, is it, and you not letting on what was your true function. Sure, I thought to myself there was something about you that was more than met the eye and here you are, they tell me, a great man in the CID.’
‘I hope it was an innocent—reservation, Father.’
‘Ah, well,’ said Father Denys with a tolerance, Alleyn felt, reserved for heretics, ‘we’ll let you off this time. Now what is all this? A wild-goose chase you and the Questore are on over the head of this queer fellow. Be sure he’s given us the slip and away on his own devices.’
‘You’re persuaded he did give you the slip, Father?’
‘What else could it be? He’s not beneath.’ He turned to Valdarno. ‘If you’re ready, Signor Questore, we may proceed.’
Cleaners were busy in the upper basilica, which in common with most Latin churches, had the warm air of always being in business and ready for all comers. A Mass had been said and a small congregation of old women and early workers were on their way out. Three women and one man knelt in prayer before separate shrines. The Sacristy was open. The celebrant had concluded his after-Mass observances and was about to leave. They moved on into the vestibule and shop. Brother Dominic opened the great iron grille and he, with Valdarno, Alleyn and three attendant policemen, began their search of the underworld. Father Denys remained above, being, as he pointed out, entirely satisfied of the non-presence of Mr Mailer in the basements and having a job to do in the shop.
As they descended Brother Dominic turned on the fluorescent lighting used by the monks in their maintenance and excavation. It completely changed the atmosphere and character of the underworld, which had become a museum with no shadows and its exhibits remorselessly displayed. Nothing could reduce the liveliness, beauty and strangeness of the Etruscan terra-cottas but they no longer disconcerted.
Little heaps of rubble, tools and rope, tidily disposed, stood at entrances to passages that were still being explored. The Agenti poked into all these and re-emerged dusting their knees and shoulders. Brother Dominic looked on with his hands in his sleeves and an expression of disfavour on his face. The Questore lost no opportunity of telling Alleyn in a stagy aside that this, undoubtedly, was merely a routine search and they might expect nothing from it.
Alleyn asked him if any results had come through from Mailer’s flat and learnt that somebody had telephoned immediately after he himself had done so, that the man seemed to be in some agitation, refused to give his name and rang again several times enabling the number to be traced. It was that of La Gioconda. Marco, without a doubt.
‘And the woman, Violetta?’
Certainly. Naturally the matter of the woman Violetta had been followed up. Curiously, it must be admitted, she had not returned to her lodging and so far had not been found.
‘It is possible,’ Valdarno said, ‘that they are together.’
‘You think so?’
‘One cannot tell. She may be implicated. He may have informed her of your identity and frightened her into taking flight. This is mere speculation, my dear Superintendent, and I know your views. I have read your book. In English, I have read it.’
‘Well, I’ll break my rule and indulge in a bit of speculation on my own account. It occurs to me there is another possible explanation for their double disappearance.’
‘Indeed? Please tell me of it.’
Alleyn did so. Valdarno stared straight in front of him and nursed his splendid moustache. When Alleyn had finished, he turned an incredulous gaze upon him and then decided to be arch. He shook his finger at Alleyn. ‘Ah-ah-ah, you pull my leg,’ he said.
‘I don’t, you know.’
‘No? Well,’ said the Questore, thinking it over, ‘we shall see. Yet I fear,’ he added, giving Alleyn a comradely clap on the shoulder, ‘that we shall see—nothing in particular.’
They moved laboriously onwards and down. To the church on the second level. To the first smiling Apollo and the tall woman with the broken child, to the white Apollo with a crown of leaves, to the Mercury behind whom Baron Van d
er Veghel had so playfully hidden. The men flashed torchlights into the recesses and niches. Alleyn looked into them a little more closely. Behind the white Apollo he found a screwed-up piece of glossy blue paper which he retrieved and wrapped in his handkerchief, sharply observed by Valdarno, to whom he scrupulously confided his reasons for doing so. Behind the Mercury he found a sealing tab from an undeveloped film, left there no doubt by Baron Van der Veghel when he played his little joke and frightened Lady Braceley into fits.
On to the railed hole in the floor of the second-level cloister where Baroness Van der Veghel had peered into the underworld and where Sophy Jason and Alleyn, also looking down, had seen the shadow of a woman they took to be Violetta.
Alleyn reminded Valdarno of this and invited him to stand where Sophy had stood while he himself looked over the Questore’s shoulder. There was no lighting down below and they stared into a void.
‘You see, Signor Questore, we are looking straight down into the well-head on the bottom level. And there to the right is the end of the sarcophagus with the carved lid. You can, I think, just make it out. I wonder—could one of your men go down there and switch on the normal lighting? Or perhaps—’ He turned with diffidence to the Dominican. ‘I wonder,’ he said, ‘if you would mind going down, Brother Dominic? Would you? You are familiar with the switches and we are not. If we could just have the same lighting as there was yesterday? And if you would be very kind and move between the source of light and the well. We’d be most grateful.’
Brother Dominic waited for so long, staring in front of him, that Alleyn began to wonder if he had taken some vow of silence. However, he suddenly said ‘I will’ in a loud voice.
‘That’s very kind of you. And—I hope I’m not asking for something that is not permitted—would you have your hood over your head?’
‘What for would I be doing that?’ asked Brother Dominic in a sudden access of communication.
‘It’s just to lend a touch of verisimilitude,’ Alleyn began, and to his astonishment Brother Dominic instantly replied, ‘ “To an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative”?’
