by Gill Paul
‘I think he was destroyed by his own debauchery, which meant that when the chips were down his own men didn’t trust him. The reports mostly come from Cicero, who said “We ought not to think of him as a human being but as a most outrageous beast.”’ He smiled. ‘When Cicero took against you, he didn’t moderate his criticisms.’
Elizabeth seemed entranced. ‘But this is perfect. I must pass this on to Richard.’
‘I assume he’ll have read Plutarch’s Life of Antony. It’s kinder to the man than Cicero’s diatribes, but still critical. There are many good modern biographies but I always like to go back to primary sources where possible.’
‘Are you an Egyptologist, like Diana?’
‘I’m a classicist. I’ve written a book on Plutarch, so our interests are different but complementary.’
‘How fascinating!’ Elizabeth breathed. ‘I bet you have wonderful conversations at the dinner table.’ She glanced at a clock on a side table. ‘Talking of which, I’d better get ready for dinner soon. Richard gets so grumpy when I’m late.’ She uncurled herself from the chair, moving languorously, her thoughts already with her lover. ‘It’s been fascinating meeting you. I’ll send Dick Hanley down and you can give him the address of Diana’s lawyer. And good luck, Trevor. Tell Diana that Richard and I are behind her all the way.’
She stood close to him as they shook hands and he could smell her scent. It was probably very expensive but somehow it reminded him of a type of laundry detergent Diana used to buy: ‘Ajax: Stronger than Dirt’, the advertisement said.
She wafted up the stairs, turning to wave from the top. Dick Hanley appeared a few minutes later and noted down Signor Esposito’s office address before guiding Trevor out to the car that had brought him.
As they pulled out of the gates of Villa Papa, Trevor began to cry. He didn’t know why. Perhaps he was touched by Elizabeth’s kindness. It was such an extraordinary situation.
The chauffeur opened the glove compartment, pulled out a white silk handkerchief and passed it back to him without a word, as if he was used to grown men crying in the back seat of his car.
Chapter Sixty-Three
At visiting hour the next day Diana forced a smile when Trevor described Elizabeth Taylor offering to get a testimonial from Audrey Hepburn.
‘Maybe she could get John Wayne or Marilyn Monroe?’ he suggested. ‘She made it sound as though the famous belong to some exclusive club in which they can ask each other for favours, even if they’ve never met.’ He’d planned this speech on the way there, hoping to cheer Diana up.
‘Something like the Masons, you mean?’ She cocked her head on one side. ‘Perhaps it’s true.’
‘Hilary sends her love,’ Trevor told her. ‘And the letters of support will soon start pouring in. I wrote to everyone I could think of.’
‘I’m sure that will make a huge difference,’ Diana said. ‘Thank you.’ But in her heart of hearts she didn’t believe it would influence the prosecuting authorities, who were convinced she was a murderer. Why would they release her just because her friends said she was a decent person? Most murderers probably have friends who believe they are innocent.
‘I rang that journalist, Scott Morgan, this morning and he is asking around town, trying to find Mr Balboni’s home address. He thinks he’ll get hold of it soon.’
Diana looked down at her hands. She felt awful every time Trevor was forced to mention his name. Ernesto was such a proficient liar she couldn’t imagine the journalist would be able to winkle much information from him, but she supposed he might as well try.
Trevor carried on: ‘I went to Termini station on my way here to try and work out whether Helen might have taken the train to Torre Astura. She was seen leaving Cinecittà at around four in the afternoon, so the earliest she could have caught a train would be four-thirty or five. According to the timetable, there are trains from Rome to Anzio on weekdays at five-fifteen p.m., then another at seven-fifteen, and the last one is at nine-fifteen. The journey takes an hour and a half, with several stops along the way.’
‘She never had any money,’ Diana told him. ‘She would probably have bought the cheapest possible ticket, in a third-class carriage.’
‘I watched an Anzio train leaving this morning and the cheaper carriages were packed full of farm workers with bicycles, crates of chickens and boxes of fruit. It occurred to me Helen must have stood out if she was wearing that red dress you described. It was an evening dress, wasn’t it?’ Diana nodded. ‘She must have gone home and changed after work. Maybe she caught the nine-fifteen, which got in at ten-forty-five. I wonder if the police are trying to find witnesses who saw her on the journey?’
‘It doesn’t seem to me as if the police are doing anything at all. They’ve got their culprit and a couple of so-called witnesses and are simply waiting for the trial.’
‘I hope that’s not the case,’ Trevor frowned. ‘But that’s why I thought you and I should try and piece together Helen’s final journey to see if we can come up with anything ourselves.’
Suddenly Diana had a flash of inspiration. ‘Hang on a minute. Where is her handbag? She would never have gone anywhere without her bag. It was white patent with a gold chain-link shoulder strap. I wonder what happened to it?’
They looked at each other, filled with hope for a second. ‘Perhaps Luigi stole it. If only they could find it at his apartment … But he’s not that stupid.’
‘Either that or it was thrown into the water with her and has drifted off somewhere on the current. Which doesn’t help us much.’
They sat in silence for a few minutes, mulling this over, then both started to speak at once. ‘You first,’ Trevor said.
‘I was going to say that there might be something inside that would give us a clue about her state of mind. Did she buy a return train ticket? Did she have things for an overnight stay? … What were you going to say?’
‘I’m not sure she caught the train. I think Luigi might have driven her down. Maybe she owed him money and he was bringing her to you so you could lend her some. You were her last hope.’
‘Of course I’d have given her money!’
‘But something went wrong when they arrived. Perhaps Helen threatened to expose him and he killed her before they reached you.’
‘I’m afraid that’s what must have happened. But how can we ever prove it?’
Trevor sighed. ‘It worries me that the police aren’t even looking for evidence of a third person. Maybe it’s there, staring them in the face.’ At that moment, he made up his mind. ‘I think I’ll go to Torre Astura myself and have a look around.’
‘Are you sure, Trevor? It might be dangerous. I don’t want you getting in any trouble.’
He carried on as if she hadn’t spoken, thinking out loud. ‘I’ll ask Hilary to arrange permission for me to look around the set and talk to the workers. Someone must have seen something. I’ll go tomorrow.’
Diana closed her eyes. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered. At least something was happening.
‘It means I won’t be able to visit you tomorrow,’ he explained, ‘but with any luck I’ll be back the following day with good news.’
‘Thank you for doing this.’ She forced another smile. ‘I knew I could count on you.’
Her words were slow and her expression weary. Trevor couldn’t bear to leave her looking so miserable but the guards were calling time.
‘We should have a holiday when you get out,’ he suggested. ‘Where would you like to go? How about Athens?’
‘Maybe,’ Diana hedged. ‘Athens would be nice.’ But he noticed that she couldn’t meet his eyes.
Chapter Sixty-Four
Hilary was happy to let Trevor visit Torre Astura, and even arranged a studio car to pick him up and drive him there. On the road west, he kept his eyes peeled, trying to imagine Helen’s thoughts on her final journey as she gazed out at the tilled fields, terracotta farmhouses and rows of cypress trees. Was it still daylight or had darkness fallen
? The driver spoke English so Trevor asked him how Helen might have travelled from the station in Anzio to the film set. He needed to keep an open mind about events that evening. There was a local bus, the driver told him, but they would have run infrequently at that time of night.
The car stopped at the gates of the Torre Astura set, where a security guard was sitting in a roadside office. Fortunately he spoke English. Trevor got out to chat.
The guard remembered Diana well, and they talked through her movements on the day in question, but he said he hadn’t seen her after six that afternoon, when she picked up her bag from the gatehouse, until the following morning when Helen’s body was found. He hadn’t seen Helen at all, because another guard had been on duty from seven in the evening through to seven in the morning. They worked twelve-hour shifts – night and day. His wife hated him doing this work, he said. She thought the hours were too long, but he was looking forward to seeing all the stars when they came to shoot the outdoor Alexandria scenes.
Since he didn’t know what Helen had done when she reached the set, Trevor decided to retrace Diana’s movements. The guard told him that she went straight onto the jetty and began making notes, so he walked down that way, past a gaudy imitation of the Serapeum and various other buildings and sculptures, to the waterside. Coils of rope and huge sails lay on the ground, alongside a pile of incense burners and some gold and blue statues cast in resin. A large oared battleship was moored at the end of the jetty and, as he drew closer, Trevor could see that it had been converted from a fishing boat, with a turret added in the centre of the deck. He turned at the end of the jetty and looked back at the miniature Egyptian city built along the shoreline. From a distance it was rather impressive.
He walked back along the jetty and had a quick look around the sets, discovering they were mere façades propped up by metal scaffolding. There was a black structure with ropes dangling down the front that he assumed must be Cleopatra’s mausoleum. Whoever had decided it should be black? It seemed unlikely. He explored all the other structures along the front, trying to work out what they were meant to be: Cleopatra’s Needle, Ptolemy’s Needle, the Palace, the famous Library of Alexandria. There was no lighthouse in the bay, though. Having gone to so much trouble, he wondered why they hadn’t made a copy of that wonder of the ancient world, which could reputedly be seen from right across the Mediterranean.
Diana had told him she went to the trattoria for lunch around two, so he did the same and found it packed full of workmen in dusty overalls. He ate some pasta and drank a beer but couldn’t follow any of the conversations in rapid-fire Italian that took place around him. A couple of times he sensed they might be talking about him but when he turned to look, their gazes were quickly averted.
He’d brought a photograph of Helen, cut from the newspaper, and when he finished eating he leaned over to the men at the nearest table and asked, ‘Did you see this girl on the 10th of May?’ He spoke slowly and held up ten fingers to try and make them understand. They shook their heads. ‘Pass it around,’ Trevor motioned. Each table in turn looked at the picture and glanced at Trevor but no one admitted to seeing Helen. He wished he spoke Italian and could question them individually about where they had been that night. Did any of them know the witness who claimed to have seen Diana and Helen fighting? What could he hope to discover without speaking the language? It was hopeless.
After lunch, he walked down to the coast and worked out the path Diana must have taken when she went to bathe in the sea. The heat was intense now. He rolled up his shirt sleeves and carried his jacket over his arm but still he was roasting. He could feel the patch on the top of his head burning where the hair was thinnest. He bent, peering at the shingle, trying to spot anything out of the ordinary.
Who am I fooling? he thought. The police will have done this. What chance do I have of finding something they have missed?
After half an hour of walking south, directly into the sun, the shore became rocky and he would have had to clamber across some large boulders to continue. Diana hadn’t mentioned rock climbing, so he turned to walk back towards the set again. He couldn’t work out where she must have stopped, or which field she crossed to return to the road. No matter. He decided to look in the opposite direction and cross into the army camp to see where the soldier had been when he spotted Helen’s body in the water.
Behind the model of the Serapeum, there were piles of scaffolding poles on the ground, along with some tarpaulin sheets, paint pots and stacks of plywood, then a fence separating film-set land from army land. He walked down to the waterfront and found he could easily cross into the army camp. Tents were erected further up a gentle slope but there was no one about. Tentatively he walked towards them, and when he turned to look back at the wide expanse of the bay he could imagine where the soldier must have been standing when he saw Helen’s body in the water. He would have spotted the red of her dress first.
‘Signore, questi sono terreni privati.’ A soldier appeared carrying a black assault rifle, the muzzle pointing at the ground.
Instinctively, Trevor raised his hands. ‘Sorry. Just looking.’ He backed off.
The soldier didn’t seem unfriendly but watched until Trevor had stepped back across the boundary onto film-set land. Next, he walked behind the Serapeum, across a field, to the pensione where Diana had stayed. He could see a little patio on the ground floor at the back of the building and assumed that must have been hers. It was the only room with a patio. He peered through a gap in the shutters but it didn’t look as though anyone else was occupying the room because he couldn’t see any personal possessions – just a bed and a chair.
There was an old wooden bench on the patio. It was in the shade, so he sat down, trying to imagine his wife sitting there the evening Helen died. The air was full of the noisy chirping of crickets, the buzzing of bees around a purply-pink bougainvillea and the distant rhythm of the waves. Trevor was overcome by weariness and despair. He’d come all this way and got no closer to understanding what had happened. Meanwhile, Diana was stuck in jail with common criminals. He couldn’t think what else to do, though.
I’m impotent, he thought, and the word seemed to sum up all that was wrong with him: his lack of manliness, his inability to deal with things of a practical nature, and his many sexual failures. No wonder Diana took a lover. It was a miracle she hadn’t taken many more during the course of their marriage.
Trevor decided he would stay in Torre Astura until seven o’clock and try to talk to the night guard. He wasn’t sure if Helen had made it to the entrance of the set, but if she had, surely she must have spoken with him. That gave him three hours to kill in the meantime. He closed his eyes and slipped into a wakeful doze. He could still hear the crickets and feel a slight breeze coming up from the shore but his eyelids were heavy and his limbs melted into the bench. Gradually the doze got deeper, and the external noises drifted further away, until he was sound asleep.
Chapter Sixty-Five
Trevor woke with a start. The sun was setting over the ocean and when he looked at his watch he saw it was almost eight o’clock. Four hours had gone by. He wasn’t sure whether the studio driver had waited for him. If not, he would have to find his own way back to Rome.
As soon as he leaned forward, he felt a jabbing pain in his lower back. He must have slept in an awkward position and it had triggered his old trouble. He clutched the arm of the bench and rose carefully, leaning his weight into his arms, before straightening up slowly. He rubbed the painful spot, trying to relax the tense muscles, before he started hobbling across the field towards the film set.
He made his way to the gatehouse and, as he drew near, he saw that the night guard was sitting reading a newspaper.
‘Hello, do you speak English?’ Trevor asked.
‘A leettle.’ The guard put down his paper.
‘I’m Diana Bailey’s husband.’
‘Ah, yes, yes.’ The guard seemed to understand.
‘Can I ask you some q
uestions about what happened here?’
‘Of course.’ He pulled out a chair for Trevor to sit down, wiping the seat with his sleeve.
Trevor retrieved the photograph of Helen from his jacket pocket. It was becoming rather dog-eared. ‘Did you see this girl?’
‘Yes, yes.’
Trevor wasn’t sure if he had understood the question. ‘This is the girl who died in the water.’ He pointed towards the Mediterranean. ‘Did you see her before she died?’
‘Yes, before.’
Trevor felt the stirrings of hope. ‘When did you see her?’
‘Almost twelve at night. Mezzanotte. She come here. She ask for Diana.’
‘What did you tell her?’
‘I tell her Diana is in the pensione.’ He pointed.
‘Was Helen alone?’
‘Yes, alone.’
So Luigi wasn’t with her at that stage. ‘How did she look?’
The guard shook his head. ‘She look sad.’ He waggled his fingers under his eyes to indicate crying. ‘Not good.’
‘And did she go to the pensione?’
‘Yes, I see her.’ He pointed at the door of the pensione.
‘Did you see her after that?’
The guard shook his head. ‘No. Not until the morning, when she is dead.’
‘You didn’t see her with my wife, with Diana?’
‘No.’ He shook his head emphatically.
So this guard wasn’t the witness. Who on earth could it have been?
The guard spoke, obviously keen to communicate something. ‘Non credo che sia vero che qualcuno ha visto loro due lottare. È così tranquillo qui che avrei sentito. Credo che qualcuno stia mentendo.’
Trevor couldn’t understand what he meant. The guard repeated himself and Trevor tried to pick out a few individual words but it was beyond him. Damn and blast it that he had never been any good at languages.
‘Is my driver here?’ he asked, miming a steering wheel. Perhaps he could translate.
