by Ngaio Marsh
‘Bless you, Brother Dominic. You’ll do it?’
‘I will,’ Brother Dominic repeated, and stalked off.
‘These holy fathers!’ Valdarno tolerantly observed. ‘The one talks to distraction and the other has half a tongue. What is it you wish to demonstrate?’
‘Only, in some sort, how the shadow appeared to us.’
‘Ah, the shadow. You insist on the shadow?’
‘Humour me.’
‘My dear colleague, why else am I here? I am all attention.’
So they leant over the railing, stared into the depths and became aware of the now familiar burble of subterranean water.
‘Almost,’ Alleyn said, ‘you can persuade yourself that you see a glint of it in the well—almost but not quite. Yesterday I really thought I did.’
‘Some trick of the light.’
‘I suppose so. And pat on his cue, there goes Brother Dominic.’
A concealed lamp had been switched on. The lid of the sarcophagus, the wall behind it and the railings round the well all sprang into existence. Their view from immediately above was one of bizarre shadows and ambiguous shapes, of exaggerated perspectives and detail. It might have been an illustration from some Victorian thriller: a story of Mystery and Imagination.
As if to underline this suggestion of the macabre a new shadow moved into the picture: that of a hooded form. It fell across the sarcophagus, mounted the wall, grew gigantic and vanished.
‘Distorted,’ Alleyn said, ‘grotesque, even, but quite sharply defined, wasn’t it? Unmistakably a monk. One could even see that the hands were concealed in the sleeves. Brother Dominic, obliging, in fact. The shadow Miss Jason and I saw yesterday was equally well-defined. One saw that the left shoulder was markedly higher than the right, that the figure was a woman’s and even that she carried some tray-like object slung round her neck. It was, I am persuaded, Signor Questore, the shadow of Violetta and her postcards.’
‘Well, my friend, I do not argue with you. I will take it as a working hypothesis that Violetta escaped the vigilance of the good fathers and came down here. Why? Perhaps with the intention of pursuing her quarrel with Mailer. Perhaps and perhaps. Perhaps,’ the Questore continued with a sardonic inflection, ‘she frightened him and that is why he ran away. Or even—as you have hinted—but come—shall we continue?’
Alleyn leant over the well-rails and called out. ‘Thank you, Brother Dominic. That was excellent. We are coming down.’
He had a resonant voice and it roused a concourse of echoes: ‘-down-ow-ow-ow-n-n.’
They descended the circular iron stairway, walking along the narrow passage and found Brother Dominic, motionless beside the well-head. The scene was lit as it had been yesterday afternoon.
Alleyn stood by the well-head and looked up. The opening above his head showed as a brilliant square of light and far above that, the opening into the basilica. As he watched, Father Denys’s head appeared at the top level, peering into the depths. If Father Denys, like Violetta, was given to spitting, Alleyn thought, he would spit straight in my eye.
‘Are you all right, beneath?’ asked Father Denys and his voice seemed to come from nowhere in particular.
‘We are,’ boomed Brother Dominic without moving. The head was withdrawn.
‘Before we turn on the fluorescent light,’ Alleyn said, ‘shall we check on the movements of the woman in the shawl? Brother Dominic, I take it that just now you walked from the foot of the iron stair where you turned on the usual lighting, down the passage and across the light itself to where you now stand?’
‘I did,’ said Brother Dominic.
‘And so must she, one would think?’
‘Of course,’ said Valdarno.
‘It wasn’t quite the same, though. Violetta’s shadow—we are accepting Violetta as a working hypothesis—came from the right as Brother Dominic’s did and, like his, crossed to the left. But there was a sequel. It re-appeared, darting into view, lying across the sarcophagus and up the wall. It paused. It turned this way and that, and then shot off to the right. The suggestion, a vivid one, was of a furtive person looking for a hiding-place. Miss Jason thought so, too.’
‘Did Mailer comment?’
‘He pooh-poohed the idea of it being Violetta and changed the subject.’ Alleyn looked about him. ‘If we extend the “working hypothesis” which, by the way, Signor Questore, is a nice alternative to the hateful word “conjecture”, we must allow that there are plenty of places where she could hide. Look what a black shadow the sarcophagus throws, for instance.’
Alleyn had a torch and now used it. He flashed it along the well-rails, which turned out to be makeshift construction of roughly finished wood.
‘You would like the working lights, Signore?’ said one of the men.
But the darting beam paused and sharpened its focus. Alleyn stooped and peered at the rail.
‘There’s a thread of some material caught here,’ he said. ‘Yes, may we have the lights, please?’
The man went back down the passage, his retreating footfalls loud on the stone floor.
The torchlight moved away from the rails, played across the lid of the sarcophagus, caused little carved garlands to leap up in strong relief, found the edge of the lid. Stopped.
‘Look here.’
Valdarno used his torch and the other two men came forward with theirs. As they closed in the pool of light contracted and intensified.
The lid of the sarcophagus was not perfectly closed. Something black protruded and from the protrusion dangled three strands of wool.
‘Dio mio!’ whispered the Questore.
Alleyn said, ‘Brother Dominic, we must remove the lid.’
‘Do so.’
The two men slid it a little to one side, tilted it and with a grating noise, let it slide down at an angle. The edge of the lid hit the floor with a heavy and resounding thud, like the shutting of a monstrous door.
The torchlights fastened on Violetta’s face.
Her thickened eyes stared sightlessly into theirs. Her tongue was thrust out as if to insult them.
Valdarno’s torch clattered on the stone floor.
The long silence was broken by a voice: uninflected, deep, rapid.
Brother Dominic prayed aloud for the dead.
II
A consultation was held in the vestibule. The church was shut and the iron grille into the underworld locked, awaiting the arrival of Valdarno’s Squadra Omicidi. It was strange, Alleyn found, to hear the familiar orders being laid on by somebody else in another language.
Valdarno was business-like and succinct. An ambulance and a doctor were sent for, the doctor being, as far as Alleyn could make out, the equivalent of a Home Office pathologist. The guard at all points of departure from Rome was to be instantly stepped up. Toni’s premises were to be searched and the staff examined. Mailer’s apartment was to be occupied in such a way that if he returned he would walk into a trap. Violetta’s known associates were to be closely questioned.
Alleyn listened, approved and said nothing.
Having set up this operational scheme, the Questore turned his deceptively languishing gaze upon Alleyn.
‘Ecco!’ he said. ‘Forgive me, my friend, if I have been precipitate. This was routine. Now we collaborate and you shall tell me how we proceed.’
‘Far be it from me,’ Alleyn rejoined in the nearest Italian equivalent to this idiom that he could at the moment concoct, ‘to do anything of the sort. May we continue in English?’
‘Of course,’ cried the Questore in that language.
‘I suppose,’ Alleyn said, ‘that now you have so efficiently set up the appropriate action we should return to the persons who were nearest to the crime at the time it was committed.’
‘Of course. I was about to say so. And so,’ Valdarno archly pointed out, ‘you interview yourself, isn’t it?’
‘Among others. Or perhaps I may put myself in your hands. How would you set about me, Signor Questo
re?’
Valdarno joined his fingertips and laid them across his mouth. ‘In the first place,’ he said, ‘it is important to ascertain the movements of this Mailer. I would ask that as far as possible you trace them. When you last saw him, for example.’
‘The classic question. When the party was near the iron stairway on the middle level. We were about to go down to the Mithraic household on the lowest level when Lady Braceley said she was nervous and wanted to return to the top. She asked for her nephew to take her up but we found that he was not with us. Mailer said he had returned to photograph the statue of Apollo and that he would fetch him. Lady Braceley wouldn’t wait and in the upshot Major Sweet took her up to the basilica garden—the atrium—and rejoined us later. When they left us Mailer set off along the passage, ostensibly to retrieve Kenneth Dorne. The rest of us—the Van der Veghels, Miss Jason and I, with Barnaby Grant as guide, went down the iron stair to the Mithraeum. We had been there perhaps eight minutes when Major Sweet made himself known—I put it like that because at this point he spoke. He may have actually returned un-noticed before he spoke. The place is full of shadows. It was some five or six minutes later that Kenneth Dorne appeared, asking for his aunt.’
‘So Mailer had not met this Dorne after all?’
‘Apparently not, but there is some evidence—’
‘Ah! I had forgotten. But on the face of it no one had seen Mailer after he walked down the passage?’
‘On the face of it—nobody.’
‘We must question these people.’
‘I agree with you,’ said Alleyn.
For some seconds the Questore fixed his mournful gaze upon Alleyn.
‘It must be done with tact,’ he said. ‘They are persons of some consequence. There could be undesirable developments. All but two,’ he added, ‘are British citizens.’
Alleyn waited.
‘In fact,’ said Valdarno, ‘it appears to me, my Superintendent, that there is no longer any cause for you to preserve your anonymity.’
‘I haven’t thought that one out but—no, I suppose you’re right.’
One of the Agenti came in.
‘The Squadra Omicidi, Signor Questore, the ambulance, Vice-Questore and the doctor.’
‘Very well. Bring them.’
When the man had gone Valdarno said, ‘I have, of course, sent for the officer who would normally conduct this inquiry, Il Vice-Questore Bergarmi. It would not be fitting for me to engage myself in my subordinate’s duties. But in view of extraordinary circumstances and international implications I shall not entirely dissociate myself. Besides,’ he added with a totally unexpected flash of candour, ‘I am enjoying myself prodigiously.’
For Alleyn the confrontation at close quarters with a strangled woman had not triggered off an upsurge of pleasure. However, he said something vague about fieldwork as an antidote to the desk. Valdarno developed his theme.
‘My suggestion,’ he said, ‘is this and you shall tell me if I am faulty. I propose to invite these people to my office where they will be received with ceremoniale. There will be no hint of compulsion but on the contrary a glass of wine. I present you in your professional role. I explain a little but not too much. I implore their help and I then push them over to you.’
‘Thank you. It will, don’t you feel, be a little difficult to sustain the interview at this level? I mean, on his own admission to me, Kenneth Dorne has been introduced to soft and then to hard drugs by Mailer. And so, after last night, I believe, has Lady Braceley. And I’m perfectly certain Mailer exercised some sort of pull over Barnaby Grant. Nothing short of blackmail, it seems to me, would have induced Grant to take on the role of prime attraction in yesterday’s conducted tour.’
‘In which case he, at least, will be glad to help in bringing about the arrest of Mailer.’
‘Not if it means publicity of a very damaging kind.’
‘But my dear colleague, will you not assure them that the matter at issue is murder and nothing else? Nothing, as you say, personal.’
‘I think,’ Alleyn said drily, ‘that they are not so simple as to swallow that one.’
The Questore hitched his shoulders and spread his hands. ‘They can be assured,’ he threw out, ‘of our discretion.’
Alleyn said: ‘What’s Mailer’s nationality—has he taken out Italian citizenship?’
‘That can be ascertained. You are thinking, of course, of extradition.’
‘Am I?’ Alleyn muttered absently. ‘Am I?’
The doctor, the ambulance men, the Questore’s subordinate, Vice-Questore Bergarmi and the Roman version of a homicide squad now arrived with their appropriate gear: cameras, tripods, lamps, cases, a stretcher and a canvas sheet; routine props in the international crime show.
The men were solemnly presented. Alleyn supposed Bergarmi to be the opposite number in rank of a detective-inspector.
They were given their instructions. Everyone was immensely deferential to Il Questore Valdarno and, since it was clearly indicated, to Alleyn. The grille was unlocked and the new arrivals went below.
‘We shall not accompany them,’ Valdarno said. ‘It is not necessary. It would be inappropriate. In due course they will report themselves. After all, one does not need a medical officer to tell one when a woman has been strangled.’
Alleyn thought: I’ve got to tread delicately here. This is going to be tricky.
He said, ‘When your photographer has taken his pictures I would be very glad to have another look round, if I might. Particularly at the top railing round the well. Before that fragment of material, whatever it is, is removed. May I?’
‘But of course. You find some significance in this fragment? The rail has a rough surface, many, many persons have brushed past it and grasped it. I saw that you examined the area closely after the lights were on. What did you see? What was this material?’
‘Some kind of black stuff. It’s the position that I find interesting. The rail is about five by two inches. It is indeed rough on the inside surface and it is on the inside surface near the lower edge that this scrap of material has been caught.’
After a considerable pause Valdarno said, ‘This is perhaps a little curious but, I would suggest, not of great moment. Some person has leant over the rail, lolling his arms down, peering into the depths and—’ he stopped, frowned and then said, ‘by all means go down, my friend, and examine the area as you require. You have my full authority.’
‘How very kind,’ Alleyn said and took immediate advantage of the offer.
He went below and found Valdarno’s ‘people’ very active in the familiar routine under Bergarmi. Violetta had been photographed in situ and was now transferred to the stretcher where the surgeon hung over her terrible face. The lid of the sarcophagus was being treated by a fingerprint officer. Alleyn didn’t for a moment suppose that they would find anything. Bergarmi received his principal’s card with elaborate courtesy and little enthusiasm.
Alleyn had his own and very particular little camera. While Bergarmi and his staff were fully extended in other directions, he took three quick shots of the inner-side rails. He then returned to the basilica. He told Valdarno what he had done and said that he would now take advantage of his kind offer and visit Mailer’s apartment. Valdarno instructed one of his drivers to take him there and, having shaken hands elaborately for the second time in an hour, they parted.
Mailer’s apartment was in a side street behind the Pantheon. It was reached through a little run-down courtyard and up the first flight of a narrow outdoor stairway. Valdarno’s man on duty let Alleyn in and, after a look at the all-powerful card, left him to his own devices.
The rooms, there were three of them, struck Alleyn as being on their way up. One or two new and lusciously upholstered armchairs, a fine desk, a sumptuous divan, and on Mr Mailer’s bed, a heavily embroidered and rather repellent velvet cover, all pointed to affluence. A dilapidated kitchenette, murky bathroom and blistered walls suggested that it was of recent
origin. The bookshelves contained a comprehensive line in high-camp pornography, some of it extremely expensive, and a selection of mere pornography, all of it cheap and excessively nasty. Signor Valdarno’s man was whiling away his vigil in a sample of the latter kind.
Alleyn asked him if the contents of the desk had been examined. He said Vice-Questore Bergarmi had intimated that he would attend to it later on if Mailer did not return.
‘He has not returned,’ Alleyn said. ‘I will look at it. You, perhaps, would prefer to telephone Il Questore Valdarno before I do so.’
This did the trick. The man returned to his book and Alleyn tackled the desk. The only lock that gave him any trouble was that of a concealed cupboard at the back of the knee-hole and it was in this cupboard, finally, that he struck oil: a neatly kept ledger: a sort of diary-cum-reference book. Here, at intervals, opposite a date, was a tick with one, or sometimes two letters beside it. Alleyn consulted his own notebook and found that these entries tallied with those connected with suspected shipments of heroin from Izmir to Naples and thence, via Corsica, to Marseilles. He came to a date a little over a year ago and found: ‘Ang. in Aug. B.G.’ and four days later: ‘B.G. S. in L.’ This he thought very rum indeed, until, in a drawer of the desk he found a manuscript entitled Angelo in August. He returned to the ledger.
Nothing of interest until he came to an entry for May of the previous year. ‘V. der V. Confirmed. Wait.’ From now on there appeared at intervals entries of large sums of money with no explanation but bearing a relationship to the dates of shipment. He plodded on. The Agente yawned over his book. Entries for the current year. ‘Perugia. K.D. L. 100,000.’ Several entries under K.D. After that: merely a note of the first and subsequent Il Cicerone tours.
Alleyn completed his search of the desk. He found in a locked cash box a number of letters that clearly indicated Mr Mailer’s activities in the blackmailing line and one in a language that he did not know but took to be Dutch. This he copied out and then photographed, together with several entries in the diary. It was now half past eleven. He sighed, said good morning to the Agente and set out for Valdarno’s office, reflecting that he had probably just completed a bare-faced piece of malfeasance but not in the least regretting it.
