“Well, really,” said Ragwort.
who had, however, rejected my honourable proposals.
“You mean you asked him and he said no?” said Marylou.
I confirmed that that was indeed the case. She was shocked at such heartlessness and undiscernment and displayed, warm-hearted girl, such sympathetic indignation on my behalf.
“It’s a bit much,” said Ragwort.
that I felt obliged to point out, in extenuation of Ragwort’s offence, that any virtues I possess are not of a domestic nature. This, however, did not placate her. If, she said, all Ragwort wanted was someone to keep the house clean and give him a nice time in bed
“From Julia of all people,” said Ragwort.
then he was not worthy of me: a woman of my intellect and personality, she said, needed someone who would appreciate her as a person, not merely a household object.
“Do have some brandy, Ragwort,” said Selena. “You’ll feel much better.”
It was a day of many and diverse pleasures. The best of which was the discovery, on our return to the Cytherea, of the lovely Ned sitting all alone in the bar. Alone and discontented: Kenneth, it seemed, had been busy all day with something serious and artistic; Ned, deserted, had wandered round Venice with no one to talk to and been very bored. He was sadly looking forward to an equally tedious Sunday.
Well, Selena, one has not a heart of stone. Marylou and I, having already agreed to spend Sunday morning together at the Lido, invited Ned to join us. If he had been a plain young man, we could hardly have done otherwise.
On Sunday morning, therefore, I rose in a mood of optimism — I had great hopes of the Lido.
“The signorina is very happy today,” said the pretty waiter who brings my breakfast.
“Who could fail to be happy,” I answered, “who is given breakfast by a young man with such beautiful eyes?” My linguistic ability was not equal to expressing this in Italian, nor his to fully understanding it in English; but he gathered, sufficiently to look pleased, that a compliment was intended.
Arriving first on the terrace, where we had arranged to meet, I settled down in my usual corner. In consequence of this, I came to overhear a most peculiar conversation, or rather fragments of one, between Eleanor and Kenneth Dunfermline. I will report it in as much detail as I can manage and see what you make of it.
They came together on to the terrace and sat down at a table at the other end of it. I stayed where I was, concealed by the vine or similar shrub. That I might have the embarrassment of overhearing them did not occur to me, for anything said in normal tones would not have been audible. I had not allowed for the resonance of Eleanor’s voice in moments of irritation.
For a few minutes, indeed, they talked quite quietly and peaceably, so that I heard nothing. Then I heard Eleanor say, “It’s no use blaming me, Kenneth. Of course I thought he knew about it — I wouldn’t have mentioned it otherwise.” Then Kenneth said something I didn’t hear, which seemed to soothe her a little. The next thing I heard her say was, “Well, I’ve warned you about him and that’s all I can do. As long as you keep it properly locked up while he’s anywhere about the place, you shouldn’t have anything to worry about.”
I at first assumed, I don’t quite know why, that she was talking about the Major. The Major strikes me, for some reason, as the sort of man in whose vicinity it might be prudent to lock up the spoons. It seems, however, that I must have been wrong about this, because soon afterwards I heard her say that someone called Bruce had stolen an armchair and a rococo looking-glass which she rather liked. I concluded that Bruce, whoever he is, must have been the subject of her previous warning.
I cannot imagine, however, what Kenneth could have in his possession of sufficient value to be in danger of theft — unless, of course, one counts the lovely Ned. So it all seemed rather odd; but not nearly as odd as the next part.
Built, as I have mentioned, like an ox, Kenneth had hitherto displayed a corresponding placidity. Soon after the reference to Bruce, however, he seemed to become enraged. He rose from his chair and stood in front of Eleanor, head down and shoulders forward as if about to charge. Indignation now made him, too, sufficiently resonant to be audible to me. I cannot attempt a verbatim account of his remarks: the general burden was that Eleanor didn’t own him, that he wasn’t employed by Frostfield’s and that she’d already had her money’s worth out of him. Something, too, about not letting down his friends to please her.
After which he left the terrace, evidently in dudgeon. Eleanor, to my relief, left soon afterwards, saving me the embarrassment of discovery.
Don’t you think it extraordinary, Selena, that Eleanor and Kenneth should in two days have reached a sufficient intimacy to have a row? Rancour, I have always supposed, is the fruit of long acquaintance. But you, with your usual agility of mind, may perhaps arrive at some reasonable explanation.
“I like the Bruce chap,” said Cantrip.
“You mean,” said Ragwort, “that you see him as a kindred spirit?”
“No, I mean I like him for the murder. I think he did it.”
“With respect,” said Timothy, “are you not theorizing a little in advance of the evidence? A single mention of his name in an overheard fragment of conversation—”
“Jolly significant, though. Because now we know that this sculptor chap’s got something valuable with him. And we know this Bruce chap knows he’s got it. And we know it’s the sort of thing this Bruce chap will go to any lengths to get hold of. We don’t know what it is, of course. I expect it’s some more of this rocky cocoa stuff, if that’s what Bruce goes in for. Is rocky cocoa valuable?”
“One imagines,” said Ragwort, “that a good piece of genuine rococo furniture would command an attractive price.”
“Right. So what the Bruce chap does is hang around the Cytherea till he thinks there’s no one about. Then he weasels into the annexe with a view to knocking off the rocky cocoa armchair or whatever it is. Only the chap from the Revenue comes back unexpectedly and catches him at it. Threatens to call the fuzz. The Bruce chap pleads with him a bit, I expect, says he’s got a wife and five children and so on and they’ve got no armchairs to sit on. But it’s no good, because chaps from the Revenue are specially trained not to listen to hard-luck stories. So the Bruce chap gets desperate and stabs him. I like it, myself. What do you think?”
“I think,” said Selena, “that we’d better go on and find out what this unpleasantness is that Julia is worried about.”
Marylou and Ned joining me soon afterwards, we took the vaporetto across the lagoon to the Lido. There we swam very energetically and drank a good deal of Campari soda. That, I mean, was the sum of our joint achievements: Marylou and Ned did most of the swimming and I drank most of the Campari. Ned, when disrobed, is a fraction more muscular than I had imagined, but not distastefully so. And not at all hairy, which was a great relief to me.
I begged them both to avoid sunburn. It would be disgraceful, I said, to take out with me the two most beautiful people in the Cytherea and bring them back looking like boiled lobsters.
“Only in the Cytherea?” asked Ned, looking reproachful.
“In Venice,” I said. “On the whole coast of the Adriatic.”
“Why not the whole Mediterranean?” he asked, still not satisfied. But I was not to be drawn into such gross exaggeration.
I did not forget to show an interest in Ned’s hopes, dreams and aspirations. I asked if he really intended to spend all his days in the service of the Revenue, sending ever more menacing letters in ever more buff-coloured envelopes. “Surely,” I said, “it is a very soul-destroying occupation?” This seemed to me to be rather subtle.
“I don’t know,” answered Ned. “Perhaps there’ll suddenly be some amazing transformation in my circumstances. My friend Kenneth has plans to make both our fortunes.”
Encouraged, however, to speak more of these, he said, “Oh, they won’t come to anything. You know what artists are like. I
take Ken’s plans as seriously as your compliments, Julia. No, I expect I’ll stay with the Revenue.” He even seemed a little irritated at having mentioned any alternative: I therefore felt no obligation to pursue the subject further.
“Don’t you think,” said Selena, “that that is also a significant conversation?”
“Well,” said Timothy, “he was right, in a way, about the sudden change in his circumstances. But presumably he wasn’t thinking of being murdered, poor boy. What have you in mind?”
“I was remembering,” said Selena, looking dreamily into her empty brandy glass, “the efficiency of Eleanor’s tax-planning. Still, perhaps I am being fanciful — let us continue.”
We had lunch in the open, under a blue canopy in the elegant avenue which leads from the beach to the vaporetto station. Afterwards, we returned across the lagoon: Graziella had instructed us on no account to miss the Historic Regatta. This is an annual pretext for the Venetians to dress up in Medieval costumes and glide along the Grand Canal under gold awnings, in barges shaped like lions and dolphins.
The pressure of the crowds gathered to watch the spectacle brought me into closer proximity with the lovely Ned than could otherwise have been achieved. This, with the heat and the wine I had drunk at lunch, induced in me a certain dizziness: I was hard put to it to refrain from any open advance.
I did consider, indeed, whether I should try fainting, as recommended by the dramatist Shakespeare. It seemed to me, however, that unless Ned felt obliged to carry me all the way back to my room at the Cytherea nothing of substance would be achieved by this. He does not seem to me the kind of young man who would readily undertake such a task.
“I don’t believe Shakespeare told Julia to try fainting,” said Cantrip. “He’s dead.”
“She is referring,” said Selena, “to his early poem ‘Venus and Adonis.’ Julia read it at an impressionable age and has since regarded it as a sort of seduction manual.”
“It is a most indelicate work,” said Ragwort. “Not at all suitable reading for a young girl.”
“It’s hardly Julia’s fault,” said Selena. “They told her at school that Shakespeare was educational.”
“As I recall,” I said, “the methods employed by the goddess in her pursuit of Adonis, though forceful, achieved only limited success. Doesn’t Julia find that discouraging?”
“No,” said Selena. “No. On this point alone, she believes that Shakespeare has been less than candid. She is persuaded, you see, that the poem is based on personal experience. The historical evidence shows that he yielded.”
We returned, therefore, in the usual way to the Cytherea — that is to say, with no one carrying anyone else. Ned went off to rest before dinner.
“Julia, honey,” said Marylou, “you must let me fix that skirt.”
At some stage of the afternoon the hem of my skirt had come down. It is in the nature of hems to come down; and Marylou is of the school of thought which holds that they should be put up again. We accordingly adjourned to her room, where she keeps her sewing things, acquiring en passant from the bar a bottle of Frascati.
We sat on the bed, drinking Frascati, she sewing and I watching her sew. She displayed a great interest in life at the English Bar, and I was happy to gratify her curiosity. I gave her, I think, a pretty fair and balanced picture. That is to say, I did not dwell exclusively on the forensic triumphs attributable to my own skill and brilliance, but mentioned also the forensic disasters brought about by the idiocy of my lay client, the incompetence of my instructing solicitor or the senile dementia of the tribunal hearing my case. It was, in short, a very similar account to what she would have got from any other member of our profession.
“Julia, honey,” she said, “I think I ought to oversew the hem of your slip.”
The lower edge of my petticoat, since its abbreviation, inevitably lacked its original smoothness. The defect was latent: but for my taking my skirt off to allow her to sew the hem, Marylou herself would not have remembered it. Still, it is curiously pleasant to watch someone engaged for one’s benefit on some delicate domestic task: with only formal protest I surrendered the petticoat.
I seem to have given her an unduly rosy picture of life at the Bar. “I wish I’d done something like that,” she said, rather wistfully. “I wish I’d done something valid and meaningful, instead of just getting married.”
I assured her that celibacy was not a prerequisite to practice at the Bar: I suggested, indeed, that a husband might prove a great comfort in those moments of stress and anxiety which are unavoidable in our profession.
“Not if the husband was Stanford, honey,” said Marylou. “Stanford is not the kind of husband who would be supportive to me in a self-actualizing role. Stanford does not care about me as an individual person.”
I said — what else could I say? — that if Stanford did not adore her he was both a fool and a scoundrel; and I could not easily believe so ill of him.
“No, honey,” said Marylou. “He adores the way I look and the way I dress and the way I keep house and the way I organize parties. He does not adore me as a person. He does not care about me as a person. If my husband cared about me as a person, he would not have come to Venice with me and then gone to Verona for the weekend to stay with a business acquaintance.”
She then burst into tears.
I was much distressed by this and did not know what to do. Still, it is common knowledge that those who weep do not wish to do so in vacuo, but on a convenient shoulder: I proffered my shoulder and Marylou wept on it. “There, there,” I said, or words to the like effect.
It will be clear to you from the foregoing that the reasons for my being on Marylou’s bed in a fairly small quantity of underwear and holding her head on my shoulder were of the most innocent nature imaginable. I do quite see, however, that it was perhaps not the best moment for Stanford, returning from Verona, to walk, without knocking, into the bedroom. The scene was open to misconstruction: from Stanford’s expression it was clear that he misconstrued.
Still, he did not, while I remained present, actually say anything. I was hopeful that by the time we all went down to dinner Marylou would have persuaded him of the absolute purity of her motives and my own. From the way Stanford looked at me over dinner, however, I fear this is not the case. I hope, as I say, that there will be no unpleasantness.
I was so put out by all this that when the Major suggested cutting a rug together some evening I was not immediately able to think of an excuse and have, in principle, agreed.
I excused myself from coffee on the grounds of a headache, seeking in the privacy of my room the consolation of reporting to you the difficulties in which this leaves me
Yours, as always, Julia.
“It does seem extraordinary,” said Ragwort, “if anyone was going to murder anyone, that no one murdered Julia. One’s glad they didn’t, of course.”
CHAPTER 7
It was now very late: even the actors were leaving.
“We’d better go,” said Timothy. “Selena, do you still feel like driving me to Heathrow tomorrow?” It had been arranged, earlier in the week, that Selena should drive Timothy to the airport, arriving there in time to coincide with Julia’s return. The rest of us, thinking to spend in convivial reunion the hours between Julia’s arrival and Timothy’s departure, had intended to include ourselves among her passengers. It was agreed, in spite of the altered circumstances, that these arrangements should stand.
“I say, Ragwort,” said Cantrip. “You know what you said about no one murdering Julia — you don’t think it’s one of those mistaken identity things, do you? I mean, you don’t think someone meant to murder Julia and got the Revenue chap instead?”
I pointed out that to murder, in mistake for Julia, a thin young man with fair hair would require a peculiarly myopic assassin.
“Might have been dark,” said Cantrip. “And we don’t know whose room it happened in — the report just said ‘in hotel bedroom.’ Suppose the ch
ap from the Revenue was in Julia’s bed—”
“That,” said Ragwort, “is a possibility which, regrettably, we cannot altogether discount. But wouldn’t Julia have been there with him?”
“Temporarily absent,” said Cantrip. “In the loo or somewhere.”
“I’m rather doubtful,” said Timothy, “about the timing. You rang the Corkscrew at about twenty past eight, Cantrip. So I take it the news must have been on the teleprinter by quarter past. If the murder happened after dark, I wouldn’t have thought it was possible.”
“Don’t know,” said Cantrip. “Depends what time it gets dark in Venice.”
Timothy paid the bill. We rose to leave.
“By the way,” said Selena, “if you don’t mind, I’d still like to get to Heathrow in time to meet the flight Julia should have come back on.”
“Yes, of course,” said Timothy. “If it turns out she’s on it after all—”
“That, certainly, would be a great relief. But if she isn’t, then I think, you know, in the light of what Cantrip’s just been suggesting, that I’d like to be sure that all the other Art Lovers are.”
It was thus at a comparatively early hour on Saturday morning, considering the lateness of our retirement, that Selena collected me from my borrowed residence in Islington. She had received, but not yet had time to read, a further letter from Julia, evidently posted on Wednesday. She proposed, by reading it aloud, to improve the otherwise idle hours at Heathrow.
Taking my place beside her, I resigned myself to being driven through the traffic of North London at the pace she describes as brisk. Still, we arrived without accident at Middle Temple Lane.
Timothy had already spoken by telephone to Julia’s travel agents. They had confirmed that their customer, Miss Julia Larwood, was experiencing certain difficulties with the Venetian police, but were happy to reassure him that she was not actually in custody: she had merely been asked to surrender her passport and not to leave the Veneto. Arrangements were being made for her accommodation. Relieved, I dare say, to find that they were not solely responsible for the poor creature, they had given Timothy the name and address of their representative in Venice — that was to say, Graziella — and had promised that she would give him every possible assistance in his efforts on Julia’s behalf.
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