by Ngaio Marsh
‘She’ll come.’
She was gazing at him now with an intensity that appalled him. She suddenly burst into an incoherent babble of thanks and since there seemed no hope of stemming the flood, he left her, still talking, and returned to his room.
V
Inspector Fox came through, loud and clear at six o’clock. The department had been expeditious in collecting information about the travellers. The Dutch Embassy and the London representative of Messrs Adriaan and Welker had confirmed the Van der Veghels’ account of themselves: an ancient family, a strict Lutheran background conforming with the evangelical policy of the firm.
‘Very strict in their attitudes,’ Fox said. ‘Puritanical, you might say. The lady I talked to in their London office is one of the modern sort. Groovy. She said that the Baron’s a very different type from his father who was what they call a “sport”. In both senses. A bit of a lad. Edwardian playboy type and notorious in his day. She said there are some very funny stories they tell in the firm about the Baron coming face to face with himself and cutting himself dead. She said they live very quietly. In Geneva mostly. The Baroness writes some kind of religious tales for kids but she never accompanies him to The Hague and is thought to be delicate.’
Fox enlarged cosily upon his theme. Believed to be distantly related to her husband, the Baroness, it was understood, belonged to an expatriate branch of the family. The nature of the Baron’s work for the firm obliged them to live abroad. A highly respected and unblemished record.
Lady Braceley: ‘Nothing in our way, really,’ said Fox, ‘unless you count a 1937 Ascot weekend scandal. She was an unwilling witness. Recently, just the usual stuff about elderly ladies in the jet set. Do you want the list of husbands?’
‘She’d love to tell me herself but—all right. In case.’
He took them down.
‘The nephew’s different,’ said Fox. ‘He’s a naughty boy. Sacked from his school for pot-parties and sex. Three convictions for speeding. Got off on a charge of manslaughter but only just. Accident resulting from high jinks at what was called a “gay pad”.’
‘Press on, Br’er Fox.’
‘This Sweet, Hamilton. Major. There’s no Major Hamilton Sweet in the Royal Artillery or any other Army lists for the given period. So we looked up recent cases of False Pretences and Fraud, Army Officers, masquerading as. Less popular than it used to be.’
‘See British possessions, armed forces, for the use of. Dwindling.’
‘That’s right. Well, anyway we looked. And came up with James Stanley Hamilton who answers to your description. Three fraudulent company affairs and two Revenue charges involving drugs. Known to have left the country. Wanted.’
‘That, as they say in the late-night imported serials, figures. Thank you, Br’er Fox.’
‘You mentioned Mr Barnaby Grant and Miss Sophy Jason. Nothing apart from what you know. You seem to be in a funny sort of milieu, Mr Alleyn,’ said Fox who spoke French, ‘n’est-ce pas?’
‘It gets funnier every second. Mille remerciements, Frère Renard, and why the hell aren’t you speaking Italian? Goodnight to you.’
Bergarmi rang up to say the Questore had told him to report. They had pulled in Giovanni Vecchi but had not persuaded him to talk. Bergarmi thought Giovanni might be hiding Mailer and almost certainly knew where he was, but had no hard facts to support what seemed to be merely a hunch. They would continue to hold Vecchi. Alleyn again reflected upon the apparently wide divergences between Italian and British police procedure. He asked Bergarmi if he had made any inquiries as to Kenneth Dorne’s activities in Perugia. Bergarmi had done so and found that a complaint had been made to the police by a jeweller about a cigarette case but the man had been repaid and the charge withdrawn. There had been no further developments.
‘I thought as much,’ Alleyn said.
He then told Bergarmi of his interview with Sweet. ‘I’ve got a list of Ziegfeldt’s top agents from him,’ he said. ‘I think it’s genuine. He’s been playing the double-agent between Ziegfeldt and Mailer and now he’s got very cold feet.’
Bergarmi said he would have the Major watched. An arrest at this juncture would probably prove unfruitful but under obvious supervision he might crack and do something revealing: clearly Bergarmi now regarded the Major as his most fruitful source of information. He added that with the material Alleyn had obtained, no doubt his mission in Rome had been accomplished. There was no mistaking the satisfaction in Bergarmi’s voice. Alleyn said that you might put it like that, he supposed, and they rang off.
As he intended to dine in the hotel, he changed into a dinnerjacket. At half past seven Kenneth Dorne came to see him. His manner slithered about between resentment, shamefacedness and sheer funk.
Alleyn ran through Kenneth’s record as supplied by Fox and asked him if it was substantially correct. Kenneth said he supposed so. ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘you’ve made up your mind so there’s no point in saying it’s not.’
‘None whatever.’
‘Very well, then. What’s the object in my coming here?’
‘Briefly: this. I want to know what happened between you and Mailer by the Apollo, the other day. No,’ Alleyn said and lifted a hand, ‘don’t lie again. You’ll do yourself a lot of damage if you persist. You met him by arrangement to collect your supply of heroin and cocaine. But you also wanted to find out whether he’d been successful in blackmailing Lady Braceley on your behalf. Perhaps that’s a harsh way of putting it but it’s substantially what happened. You had got yourself into trouble in Perugia, Mailer had purported to get you out of it. Knowing your talent for sponging on your aunt, he came again with completely false stories of police activity and the necessity for bribery on a large scale. He told you, no doubt, that Lady Braceley had promised to comply. Do you deny any of this?’
‘No comment,’ said Kenneth.
‘My sole concern is to get a statement from you about your parting with Mailer and where he went—in what direction—when he left you. Your wits,’ Alleyn said, ‘are not so befuddled with narcotics that you don’t understand me. This man has not only made a fool of you and robbed your aunt. He has murdered an old woman. I suppose you know the penalty for comforting and abetting a murderer.’
‘Is this Roman law?’ Kenneth sneered in a shaking voice.
‘You’re a British subject. So is Mailer. You don’t want him caught, do you? You’re afraid of exposure.’
‘No!’
‘Then tell me where he went when he left you.’ At first Alleyn thought Kenneth was going to break down, then that he was going to refuse, but he did neither of these things. He gazed dolefully at Alleyn for several seconds and appeared to gain some kind of initiative. He folded his white hands over his mouth, bit softly at his fingers and put his head on one side. At last he talked and, having begun, seemed to find a release in doing so.
He said that when Mailer had fixed him up with his supply of heroin and cocaine he had ‘had himself a pop’. He carried his own syringe and Mailer, guessing he would be avid for it, had provided him with an ampoule of water and helped him. He adjusted the tourniquet, using Kenneth’s scarf for the purpose. ‘Seb,’ Kenneth said, ‘is fabulous—you know—it’s not easy till you get the knack. Finding the right spot. So he cooked up and fixed me, there and then, and I felt fantastic. He said I’d better carry on with the party.’
They had walked together round the end of the old church and arrived at the iron stairway. Mailer had gone down the stairway into the insula with Kenneth but instead of entering the Mithraeum had continued along the cloister in the direction of the well.
Kenneth, saturated, Alleyn gathered, in a rising flood of well-being, had paused at the entry into the Mithraeum and idly watched Mailer. Having got so far in his narrative he ran the tip of his tongue round his lips and, eyeing Alleyn with what actually seemed to be a kind of relish, said:
‘Surprise, surprise.’
‘What do you mean?’
�
��I saw it. Again. The same as what the Jason dolly saw. You know. The shadow.’
‘Violetta’s.’
‘Across the thing. You know. The sarcophagus.’
‘Then you saw her?’
‘No, I didn’t. I suppose he was between. I don’t know. I was high. There’s a kind of buttress thing juts out. Anyway I was high.’
‘So high, perhaps, that you imagined the whole thing.’
‘No,’ Kenneth said loudly. ‘No.’
‘And then?’
‘I went into that marvellous place. The temple or whatever. There you were. All of you. On about the god. And the great grinning Baroness lining us up for a team-photograph. And all the time,’ Kenneth said excitedly, ‘all the time just round the corner, Seb was strangling the postcard woman. Wouldn’t it send you!’ He burst out laughing.
Alleyn looked at him. ‘You can’t always have been as bad as this,’ he said. ‘Or are you simply a born, stupid, unalterable monster? How big a hand has Mailer taken with his H. and C. and his thoughtful ever-ready ampoule of distilled water in the making of the product?’
Kenneth’s smile still hung about his mouth even as he began to whimper.
‘Shut up,’ Alleyn said mildly. ‘Don’t do that. Pull yourself together if you can.’
‘I’m a spoilt boy. I know that. I never had a chance. I was spoilt.’
‘How old are you?’
‘Twenty-three. Someone like you could have helped me. Truly.’
‘Did you get any idea of why Mailer didn’t go into the Mithraeum with you? Was he expecting to meet the woman?’
‘No. No, I’m sure he wasn’t,’ Kenneth said eagerly, gazing at Alleyn. ‘I’m telling the truth,’ he added with a dreadful imitation of a chidden little boy. ‘I’m trying to be good. And I’ll tell you something else. To show.’
‘Go on.’
‘He told me why he wouldn’t come in.’
‘Why?’
‘He had a date. With someone else.’
‘Who?’
‘He didn’t say. I’d tell you if I knew. He didn’t say. But he had a date. Down there in that place. He told me.’
The telephone rang.
When Alleyn answered it he received an oddly familiar sensation: an open silence broken by the distant and hollow closure of a door, a suggestion of space and emptiness. He was not altogether surprised when a rich voice asked: ‘Would this be Mr Alleyn?’
‘It would, Father.’
‘You mentioned this morning where you were to be found. Are you alone, now?’
‘No.’
‘No. Well, we’ll say no more under that heading. I’ve called upon you, Mr Alleyn, in preference to anybody else, on account of a matter that has arisen. It may be no great matter and it may be all to the contrary.’
‘Yes?’
‘If it’s not putting too much upon you I’d be very greatly obliged if you’d be kind enough to look in at the basilica.’
‘Of course. Is it—?’
‘Well now, it may be. It may be and then again it may not and to tell you the truth I’m loath to call down a great concourse of the pollis upon me and then it turning out to be a rat.’
‘A rat, Father Denys?’
‘Or rats. The latter is more like it. Over the head of the strength.’
‘The strength, did you say?’
‘I did that. The strength of the aroma.’
‘I’ll be with you,’ Alleyn said, ‘in fifteen minutes.’
His professional homicide kit was in the bottom of his wardrobe. He took it with him.
CHAPTER 8
Return of Sebastian Mailer
S. Tommaso in Pallaria looked different after sunset. Its façade was dark against a darkening sky and its windows only faintly illuminated from within. Its entrance where Violetta had cursed Sebastian Mailer was quite given over to shadows and its doors were shut.
Alleyn was wondering how he would get in when Father Denys moved out of the shadows.
‘Good evening and God bless you,’ he said.
He opened a little pass-door in the great entry and led the way in.
The smell of incense and hot candles seemed more noticeable in the dark. Galaxies of small flaming spearheads burned motionless before the saints. A ruby lamp glowed above the high altar. It was a place fully occupied within itself. A positive place.
Brother Dominic came out of the Sacristy and they walked into the vestibule with its shrouded stalls. The lights were on in there and it felt stuffy.
‘It’s like enough a fool’s errand I’ve brought you on and you maybe not eaten yet,’ said Father Denys. ‘I may tell you it’s not been done without the authority of my Superior.’
‘I’m entirely at your service, Father.’
‘Thank you, my son. We’ve had this sort of trouble before, d’ye see, over the head of the excavations and all. Rat trouble. Though Brother Dominic’s been after them in a very big way and it was our belief they were exterminated. And wouldn’t we look the fools if we’d stirred up Signor Bergarmi and his body of men and they fully occupied with their task?’
‘Shall we have a look where the trouble seems to be?’
‘A look is it? A smell, more likely. But come along, come along.’
As he made that downward journey for the third time, it seemed to Alleyn that in its quiet way it was one of the strangest he had ever taken. A monk, a lay-brother and himself, descending, if one cared to be fanciful, through a vertical section of the past.
When they reached the cloisters on the second level, Brother Dominic, who had not yet uttered, turned on the fluorescent lights and back into their immovable liveliness sprang the Apollo and the Mercury.
Down the iron spiral: two pairs of sandals and one pair of leather soles with the ever-mounting sound of flowing water. The bottom level and a right turn. This was where Kenneth Dorne had parted company with Sebastian Mailer. On their left was the little ante-room into the Mithraeum. Ahead—the lights came on—ahead, the sarcophagus and the railed well.
They walked towards them.
The lid had not been replaced. It stood on its side, leaning against the empty stone coffin where Violetta had been urgently housed.
Father Denys put his hand on Alleyn’s arm.
‘Now,’ he said and they stopped.
‘Yes,’ Alleyn said.
It declared itself: sweetish, intolerable, unmistakable.
He went on alone, leant over the top rail where he had found a fragment of cloth and looked into the well, using the torch they had given him.
It showed walls in a sharp perspective and at the bottom an indefinable darkness.
‘The other day,’ he said, ‘when I looked down, there was a sort of glint. I took it to be a chance flicker of light on the moving stream.’
‘It could be that.’
‘What is there—down below?’
‘The remains of a stone grille. As old,’ Father Denys said, ‘as the place itself. Which is seventeen hundred years. We’ve lowered a light and it revealed nothing that you could call of any consequence but it was too far beneath to be of any great help.’
‘The grille is above the surface of the stream?’
‘It is. A few inches at the downstream end of the well. And it’s the remains only. A fragment you may say.’
‘Could something have been carried down by the stream and got caught up in it?’
‘It’s never been known in the history of this place. The water is pure. Every so often we let down a wee tin and haul up a sample for the testing. There’s never been the hint of contamination in it.’
‘Can one get down there?’
‘Well, now—’
‘I think I can see footholds and—yes—
Brother Dominic spoke. ’You can,’ he said.
‘Aren’t there iron pegs?’
‘There are.’
‘And they rotten no doubt,’ Father Denys urged, ‘and falling out like old teeth at the first handling
.’
‘Have you a rope, Father?’
‘Sure, we have them for the excavations. You’re not thinking—’
‘I’ll go down if you’ll give me a hand.’
‘Dominic, let you fetch a rope.’
‘And a head-lamp and overalls,’ Brother Dominic ennumerated with a glance at Alleyn’s impeccable suit. ‘We have them all got. I’ll fetch them, Father.’
‘Do so.’
‘It’s unwholesome here,’ Father Denys said when Brother Dominic had gone. ‘Let us move away for the time being.’
They entered the Mithraeum. Father Denys had switched on the lighting used in visiting hours. The altar glowed. At the far end, the god, lit from beneath, stared out of blank eyes at nothing. They sat on one of the stone benches where in the second century his initiates had sat, wan with their ordeal, their blanched faces painted by the altar fires.
Alleyn thought he would like to ask Father Denys what he made of the Mithraic Cult but when he turned to speak to him found that he was withdrawn into himself. His hands were pressed together and his lips moved.
Alleyn waited for a minute and then, hearing the returning slap of sandals in the cloister, went quickly out by the doorway behind the god. This was the passage by which he and the Van der Veghels had left the Mithraeum. It was very dark indeed and the Baroness had exclaimed at it.
Two right turns brought him back into sight of the well and there was Brother Dominic with ropes, an old-fashioned head-lamp of the sort miners use, a suit of workmen’s overalls and a peculiar woolly cap.
‘I’m obliged to you, Brother Dominic,’ said Alleyn.
‘Let you put them on.’
Alleyn did so. Brother Dominic fussed about him. He fixed the head-lamp and with great efficiency made fast one end of the rope round Alleyn’s chest and under his shoulders.
Alleyn transferred a minuscule camera from his homicide kit to the pocket of his overalls. After looking about for a minute, Brother Dominic asked Alleyn to help him place the lid of the sarcophagus at right angles across the coffin. It was massive but Brother Dominic was a strong man and made little of it. He passed the slack of the rope twice round the lid, crossing it in the manner of sailors when they wear a rope in lowering a heavy load.
