by Ngaio Marsh
‘Hear anybody? Voices?’
‘No. I don’t think so.’
‘Wait a bit,’ Sophy said.
‘Yes, Miss Jason?’
‘I don’t suppose it matters but she appealed to Grant. ‘Do you remember? Just as we were leaving the Mithraeum there was a sound of voices. All mixed up and booming because of the echo.’
‘Was there? I’ve forgotten.’
‘Men’s or women’s voices?’ Alleyn asked.
‘They were so distorted it’s hard to say. A man’s I think and perhaps a woman’s: perhaps yours and Baroness Van der Veghel’s on your way up the stairs. Or Baron Van der Veghel’s. Or all three.’
‘Might be,’ Alleyn said. ‘Which way did you go back, Major Sweet?’
‘Ah, ’um. I pottered round a bit. Had another look at the well and if you ask me whether the lid of the sarcophagus was out of position I can only say if it was I didn’t notice it. I—ah—I went up into the nave of the old church. Matter of fact, while I was there I heard you and—ah—the Van der Veghels in the cloisters. Taking photographs.’
That is so,’ said the Baroness. ‘I took the head of Mercury.’
‘You were still at it when I went on up the stone stairs. Took my time. Didn’t see the woman. Or Mailer. My opinion, he wasn’t there, anywhere in the premises. Sure of it.’
‘Why?’ Alleyn asked.
‘To be perfectly honest because if the fellow had been there I’d have found him. I thought it damned peculiar him not turning up like that, leaving us cold after taking a whacking great fee off us. So I thought: if the blighter’s hanging about somewhere I’m going to dig him out. And I didn’t.’
‘I really can’t believe,’ said Grant, ‘that you could have made anything remotely resembling a thorough search, Major Sweet. In that short time? In that light? And with all those side passages and excavations? No!’
‘That is so,’ said the Baron. ‘That is undoubtedly so.’
‘I resent that, sir,’ said the Major and blew out his cheeks.
The Baron paid no attention to him. ‘Mr Alleyn,’ he said. ‘Surely it is not impossible that this Mailer was hiding down there, perhaps already with the body of the woman he had murdered, and that he waited until we had gone before putting it—where it was found. Mr Alleyn—what do you say? Is it possible?’
‘I think it’s possible, Baron, yes. But when, in that case, did he make his escape?’
‘Perhaps he’s still there,’ Kenneth suggested, and gave his little whinnying laugh.
‘I have thought of that,’ the Baron said, disregarding Kenneth. ‘I have thought that perhaps he waited until the good fathers made their search. That he hid himself somewhere near the top and while they looked elsewhere, contrived to elude them and again hid himself in the basilica until we had driven away and then made his escape. I do not know. Perhaps it is an absurd suggestion but—he is gone, after all.’
‘I think,’ Lady Braceley said, ‘it’s a very clever suggestion.’ And she actually summoned up the wreck of an arch glance for the Baron, who bowed and looked horrified.
‘To sum up,’ Alleyn said, ‘if that’s not a laughable phrase in the context. None of us saw Mailer or Violetta after Mailer left us, ostensibly to join Mr Dorne at the statue of Apollo in the cloisters of the old church at the middle level of S. Tommaso.’
Sophy had given a little ejaculation.
‘Yes, Miss Jason? You’ve thought of something?’
‘Only just. It may be—it probably is—nothing. But it was during the group-photograph episode.’
‘Yes?’
There was a noise somewhere outside the Mithraeum. Not far away, I’d have thought, but all mixed up and distorted by echoes. A woman’s voice, I think, and then it was—well, kind of cut off. And then—later—a kind of thud. At the time I supposed somebody—somewhere—had shut a very heavy door.’
‘I remember!’ the Baron ejaculated. ‘I remember perfectly! It was when I took my picture of the group.’
‘Yes? You do?’ Sophy said. ‘A kind of bang—thumping noise?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Like a door?’
‘A very heavy door.’
‘Yes,’ Alleyn agreed, ‘it did sound rather like that, didn’t it?’
‘But,’ Sophy said, turning white, ‘there aren’t any heavy doors down there that I can remember.’ She appealed to Grant. ‘Are there?’
‘No. No doors,’ he said.
‘So I wonder if it was something else—something being dropped, for instance. Not from a great height. Just a little way. But something very heavy.’
‘Like a stone lid?’ Alleyn suggested.
Sophy nodded.
CHAPTER 7
Afternoon
When Alleyn asked the travellers not to leave Rome for the present there was a great outcry from Lady Braceley and Major Sweet. The Major talked noisily about his rights as a British subject. Lady Braceley lamented and referred to persons in high places to whom she commanded immediate access. She was silenced at last by her nephew, who muttered and cajoled. She shed tears which she dexterously manipulated with the folded edge of her handkerchief.
The Major seemed to be sensibly influenced by the information that additional expenses would be met. He subsided into a sullen and wary acquiescence.
Grant, Sophy and the Van der Veghels were temperate in their reactions. What, as the Baroness rhetorically and vaguely asked, could one do against Fate? Her husband, at a more realistic level, said that while it was inconvenient, it was at the same time obligatory upon them to remain in situ if circumstances seemed to require their presence.
Grant said impatiently that he had intended to stay in Rome anyway and Sophy said her holiday extended over the next four weeks. While she had made vague plans for Perugia and Florence she was perfectly ready to postpone them.
They broke up at half past one. The travellers, with the exception of Grant and Sophy, availed themselves of the large car provided by Valdarno. Alleyn had a brief talk with the Questore and with appropriate regrets declined an invitation for luncheon. He had, he said, to write a report.
When he finally emerged from the building he found Grant and Sophy waiting for him.
‘I want to talk to you,’ Grant said.
‘By all means. Will you have lunch with me?’ Alleyn made a bow to Sophy. ‘Both of you? Do.’
‘Not me,’ Sophy said. ‘I’m only a hanger-on.’
‘You’re nothing of the sort,’ Grant contradicted.
‘Well, whatever I am, I’ve got a date for lunch. So—thank you, Mr Alleyn—but I must be off.’
And before they could do anything to stop her she had in fact darted across the street and stopped a taxi.
‘A lady of incisive action,’ Alleyn remarked.
‘She is indeed.’
‘Here’s another cab. Shall we go?’
They lunched at Alleyn’s hotel. He caught himself wondering if to Grant the occasion seemed like a rendering in another key of his no doubt habitual acceptance of expense-account hospitality.
Alleyn was a good host. He made neither too much nor too little of the business of ordering and when that was done, talked about the difficulties of adjusting oneself to Rome and the dangers of a surfeit of sightseeing. He asked Grant if he’d had to do a great deal of research for Simon in Latium.
‘Of course,’ Alleyn said, ‘it’s bloody cheek to say so, but it always seemed to me that a novelist who has set his book in a foreign environment is, in some sort, like an investigating officer. I mean, in my job one is for ever having to “get up” information, to take in all sorts of details—technical, occupational, indigenous, whatever you like—in surroundings that are quite outside one’s experience. It’s a matter of mugging up.’
‘It certainly was in the case of Simon in Latium.’
‘You must have stayed in Rome for some time, surely?’
‘Two months,’ Grant said, shortly. He laid down his knife and fork
. ‘As a matter of fact it’s about that—in a way—that I want to talk to you.’
‘Do you? Fair enough. Now?’
Grant thought for a moment or two. ‘It’s a poor compliment to a superb luncheon but—now, if you please.’
So he told Alleyn how Sebastian Mailer found his manuscript and about the sequel.
‘I think I know now how he’d worked the whole job. When he found the MS he got his idea. He picked the lock of my case and read the book. He spent three days concocting his Angelo in August. He didn’t make it blatantly like Simon. Just introduced my major theme as a minor one. Enough to make me talk about it in front of his revolting chums.
‘He took me on a night-crawl, fetching up at the place you went to last night—Toni’s. I don’t remember much about the later part of the experience but enough to make me wish I’d forgotten the lot. Apparently I talked about the “resemblance” at the restaurant we went to—Il Eremo it’s called—and to some American chum of his who would be delighted to blow it to the Press.
‘I went back to England. The book came out and three weeks ago I returned to Rome, as he knew I would. I ran into him and he took me into a ghastly little parlour in the Van der Veghels’ hotel and blackmailed me. He was quite shameless. He practically said, in so many words, that he’d rehashed his story so that now it was blatantly like mine and that he had witnesses from—that night—to say I’d talked about the resemblance when I was drunk. One of them, he said, was the Roman correspondent for the News of the World and would make a big splash with the story. Oh yes!’ Grant said when Alleyn opened his mouth. ‘Oh yes. I know. Why didn’t I tell him to go to hell? You may not remember—why should you?—what happened over my first book.’
‘I remember.’
‘And so would a great many other people. Nobody except my publishers and a few friends believed that bloody business was a coincidence. The case would be hauled into the light again. All the filthy show re-hashed and me established as a shameless plagiarist. I may be a louse but I couldn’t face it.’
‘What did he ask?’
‘That’s the point. Not so much, in a way. Just that I took on these unspeakable tours.’
‘It wouldn’t have stopped there, you know. He was easing you in. Why did you decide to tell me all this?’
‘It’s just got too much. I told Sophy about it and she suggested I tell you. After the meeting was over and we waited outside. It’s an extraordinary thing,’ Grant said, ‘I met that girl yesterday. It’s by no means a quick take, she’s not that sort. And yet…Well,’ Grant said, giving it up, ‘there you are. You tell us your main interest in him is as a drug-runner. He turns out to be a murderer. I daresay it’s only of academic interest that he happens to be a blackmailer as well.’
‘Oh, everything is grist that comes to our grubby little mill,’ Alleyn said. ‘I’m in a damn tricky sort of position myself, you know. I’ve learnt this morning that the Roman police have found out Mailer’s definitely a British subject. That, in a vague way, keeps me in the picture but with a shift of emphasis: my masters sent me here on the drug-running lay and I find myself landed with the presumptive murder of an Italian.’
‘So your presence in yesterday’s ongoings was not accidental?’
‘No. Not.’
‘I may as well tell you, Alleyn, I’m not as keen as mustard for you to catch Mailer.’
‘I suppose not. You’re afraid, aren’t you, that if he’s brought to trial he’ll blow the story of your alleged plagiarism?’
‘All right. Yes. I am. I don’t expect you to understand. The police,’ Grant said savagely, ‘are not exactly famous for their sympathy with the arts.’
‘On the other hand they are acquainted with a tendency on the part of the general public, artistic or otherwise, to separate what is laughingly called justice from the concept of enlightened self-interest.’
‘I imagine,’ Grant said after a sufficient pause, ‘that my face could scarcely be redder.’
‘Don’t give it another thought. As for your fear of a phoney exposure, I think I can promise you it is absolutely groundless.’
‘You can? You really can do that?’
‘I believe so. I’d take long odds on it.’
‘I suppose the whole thing, from the police point of view, is entirely beside the point.’
‘You may put it like that,’ Alleyn said. ‘How about a liqueur with our coffee?’
II
The next two days went by without incident. Mr Mailer’s guests followed, Alleyn presumed, their own inclinations. He himself wrote up a detailed report on the case and sent a précis of it to his masters. He had three indeterminate conversations with Valdarno and put a call through to London asking for detailed reports on Lady Braceley and Kenneth Dorne and a check through the Army lists on Major Hamilton Sweet. He also asked for the appropriate branch to make inquiries through the Dutch authorities about the Van der Veghels.
On the third day Rome was engulfed in a heat wave. Pavements, walls and the sky itself quivered under its onslaught and the high saints extended their stone arms above the city in a shimmer that resembled movement. Alleyn lunched in the hotel and spent a good deal of time wondering how Fox was prospering in London.
The Latin siesta is a civilized habit. At its best it puts the sweltering heat of the day behind insect-proof barriers, gives people a rest from excitedly haranguing each other and causes a lull in the nervous activity of the streets.
For Alleyn the siesta was not a blessing. Trained to do with less sleep than most persons require and, when necessary, to catch what he could get in cat-naps and short periods of oblivion, he found the three odd hours of disengagement an irritant rather than a tranquillizer.
He stripped, slept soundly for an hour, took a shower and, freshly dressed, went out into the street.
Rome was under a haze and the Spanish Steps were deserted. No ambiguous youths displayed on their accepted beat. Flowers blazed under protective canvas or drooped where the sun had found them. All the shops down in the Via Condotti were shut and so was the travel agency where Alleyn had booked his tour.
He walked down the steps: not quite the only person abroad in the heat of the day. Ahead of him at intervals were a belated shop-girl, a workman, an old woman and—having apparently come from the hotel—Giovanni Vecchi! Alleyn took cover behind an awning. Giovanni went on down the steps and into the Via Condotti. Alleyn followed cautiously. Giovanni stopped.
Alleyn’s instant sidestep into the entrance of a closed shop was a reflex action. He watched Giovanni between two handbags in the corner window. Giovanni glanced quickly up and down the street, and then at his watch. A taxi appeared, stopped at a house almost opposite the shop and discharged its fare. Giovanni hailed it and came back to meet it.
Alleyn moved farther into the doorway and turned his back. He heard Giovanni say ‘Il Eremo’ and name the street.
The door slammed, the taxi rattled off and Alleyn, looking in vain for another, set off at a gruelling pace for Navona.
Arriving there some ten minutes later, he made his way down an alley smelling of cooking oil and garlic.
There it was: the little trattoria with kerbside caffè where a year ago Mailer and Grant had dined together. The door into the restaurant was shut and the blinds were drawn. Chairs had been tipped forward over the outside tables. The place at first sight seemed to be quite deserted.
As Alleyn drew cautiously nearer, however, he saw that two men were seated at a table in a shadowed corner under the awning and that one of them was Giovanni. They had their backs towards him but there was no mistaking Giovanni’s companion.
It was Major Sweet.
Alleyn had arrived at a yard belonging to a junk shop of the humbler sort. Bad pictures, false renaissance chairs, one or two restored pieces ruined by a deluge of cheap varnish. A large dilapidated screen. He moved into the shelter of the screen and surveyed Major Sweet and Giovanni through the hinged gap between two leaves.
&
nbsp; Major Sweet, from the rear, looked quite unlike himself: there was something about his back and the forward tilt of his head that suggested extreme alertness. A slight movement and his cheek, the end of his moustache and his right eye came into view. The eye was cocked backwards: the eye of a watchful man. Giovanni leant towards the Major and talked. No Italian can talk without hands and Giovanni’s were active but, as it were, within a restricted field. The Major folded his arms and seemed to wait.
Could he, Alleyn wondered, be arranging with Giovanni for a further instalment of the other night’s excesses? Somehow the two of them didn’t look quite like that. They looked, he thought, as if they drove some other kind of bargain and he hoped he wasn’t being too fanciful about them.
He saw that by delicate manoeuvring he could cross the yard, edge up to a bin with a polyglot collection of papers under a tall cupboard and thus bring himself much nearer to the caffè. He did so, slid a disreputable but large map out of the bin and held it in front of him in case they suddenly came his way. Lucky, he thought, that he’d changed his shoes and trousers.
They spoke in English. Their voices dropped and rose and he caught only fragments of what they said, as if a volume control were being turned up and down by some irresponsible hand.
‘…waste of time talking…you better understand, Vecchi…danger. Ziegfeldt…’
‘…are you mad? How many times I tell you…instructions…’
‘…search…police…’
‘…OK, Signore. So they search and find nothing…I have made…“arrangements”…’
‘…arrangements. Try that on Alleyn and see what…Different…Take it from me…I can do it. And I will. Unless…’
‘…drunk…’
‘…nothing to do with it. Not so drunk I didn’t know…It’s a fair offer. Make it right for me or…’
‘You dare not.’
‘Don’t you believe it. Look here…if I report…Ziegfeldt…’
