North From Rome

by Helen Macinnes

  From the door behind her, she heard a deafening explosion echoing around the high stone walls. She saw Pirotta’s hand go to his right shoulder and hold it, his face twisted with pain. Then an arm swept round her waist and pulled her down into the hall behind the shelter of the balustrade. “It’s all right, it’s all right,” Bill was saying, as she heard a second explosion, still louder, thunder through the hall.

  There were people at the door.

  “It’s all right,” Bill said again, his arms around her. And they stood there, together, her face pressed against his chest, his cheek against her hair, his arm around her, holding her, holding her, until their two bodies seemed to have been carved out of one piece of stone. She raised her head and their eyes met. Slowly, gently, he kissed her. “Never, never again—” he began; he couldn’t go on. He kissed her hard, this time.

  No one paid any attention to them. Everyone had started climbing the staircase. Someone began to speak. “Come away,” Bill said, “come away from this place.”

  He led her towards the first room he could see. He wanted her away from the hall before Anna-Maria’s cries became hysterics, before the captain would call out, “He’s dead.”

  26

  Perhaps twenty minutes later, certainly no more than that, the door opened and the captain of the carabinieri came into the room where Eleanor lay. Lammiter had ripped a sheet from a velvet couch, and propped her up with cushions. He sat beside her, talking quietly, holding her hands between his in a firm grasp. Afterwards, he had no idea what he talked about: it didn’t matter. All that mattered was to get the shadows out of her eyes, the frightened look away from her lips. She had listened, and yet at the same time she had been following her own troubled thoughts. For suddenly she asked, just as the captain came into the room, “He would have killed himself, even if I hadn’t been here?” There was a question in her voice, the last remnant of fear.

  “Yes.” He was sure of that.

  “He said a strange thing.” Her voice hesitated.

  “That’s all right, darling. Forget it,” he said gently. He looked at the captain, who was watching them sombrely.

  But she had to tell him. “He said that he could and would come back to Italy because he didn’t leave in defeat. And then—”

  And then defeat had come, and it had been complete. How could Pirotta have faced his political masters with such an overwhelming disaster behind him? They would add up the total loss—Sabatini arrested; Evans extradited; the meeting not only a failure but a permanent danger to all those who had taken part—and even call it treachery. They were capable of that. As Joe would say, it was their pattern.

  Eleanor said haltingly, watching him, “You don’t blame me?” She closed her eyes and bit her lip. “He did.”

  “He made today’s choice years ago. Long before he ever met you.” He kissed her. Then he remembered the captain. He rose and faced the waiting man.

  What’s in the north?” The captain had been remarkably patient. But he had found the little scene interesting. Each revelation, however small, was important. And he had got little help from Alberto or Anna-Maria: they were much too overwhelmed with grief. Jacopone, as usual, just stood around, saying and doing nothing. The Signorina Di Feo had told him a wild story of what she had seen as she entered the hall just ahead of him, and when he hadn’t quite believed it, she had rushed to the telephone over in the office. And a stranger, a mechanic, had been found locked in Anna-Maria’s room next door to the office. (Anna-Maria had had hysterics at that point.) The man had not complained about his imprisonment: he kept saying he knew nothing about anything, which might be true. Only one thing was certain: the count had died on the staircase, by his own hand. Accidentally? Or had it been deliberate?

  The captain studied the young woman. Yes, she was very beautiful. They always were. He had entered this room prepared to dislike these foreigners for the trouble they had caused. And yet—watching them—he wasn’t so sure now that this was a heartless creature, or that the American was a ruthless Hollywood ruffian. There was something very—yes, very touching in the way they looked at each other, in the way the man now stood protectively over her. They were more like two people who had come through some frightful accident and could scarcely believe they were still alive. He had seen faces like these once, when a train had plunged over a bridge into a ravine and—but enough of disasters. Briskly, he held out a pair of high-heeled shoes. “These were found on the staircase,” he said.

  Thank God, he speaks English, Lammiter thought. “Thank you.” He took the shoes and knelt to slip them on Eleanor’s feet.

  Now, the captain wondered, what is he thinking, what is he remembering? The American touched the girl’s feet as if he had much to remember. (And indeed, Lammiter was remembering his first sight of Eleanor today, running across the burning cobblestones to reach Jacopone where the old man had fallen.) The girl was saying, “I was trying to escape... I was afraid I’d twist my ankle—”

  A crime of passion? Perhaps. The poor count had lost this young woman to the American, and so he blew out his brains. What a tragedy, what a terrible unhappiness for everyone, what a disaster. She glanced at Bill, wondering how foolish she must now seem. But he didn’t look as if he thought she had been foolish.

  “Soon,” he said. But that was the problem. He rose and led the captain away from the couch towards the window. “She didn’t actually see what happened,” he said quietly. “Please don’t question her. Not now.”

  “Later, later,” the captain agreed quickly. “She is very tired. I see that.” And so are you, he thought, studying the American’s exhausted face. “But now, one thing. You have a gun?”

  Lammiter drew out Joe’s revolver and handed it over. “One bullet—”

  “The bullet in the shoulder.” The captain examined the revolver with interest. “Why?”

  “He was going to shoot—” Lammiter glanced back at Eleanor. “I fired from the door, and hit his shoulder. He changed his revolver to his left hand. And then—well, you arrived then. You saw what happened.”

  “Yes, yes.”

  Lammiter took a deep breath of relief.

  From the courtyard came the ringing of the bell at its gate. The captain’s worried face, no longer bland, was etched with down-drawn lines. “He would have killed her. You are sure?”

  “Yes.”

  And that was what the Signorina Di Feo had insisted: she had arrived just a few seconds behind Signore Lammiter; she had seen the gun pointed at the Americana. “It is so difficult to believe,” he said. “Suicide, yes. That is understandable.” He glanced at the girl. “But murder, no.”

  “Most truths are difficult to believe.”

  The captain was staring out of the window. He sighed unhappily. “What shall we tell the princess?” His hands stretched out, as if asking for help, and then fell to his sides, acknowledging no help was possible.

  Lammiter glanced out of the window. A cream-coloured sports car was coming through the gate now. The princess had arrived.

  The captain frowned down at his highly polished boots, as if willing them to start moving towards the courtyard. He took a reluctant step. He sighed. “It would be kinder not to mention attempted murder, yes?” He spoke the word with distaste.

  Lammiter nodded.

  “Then,” the captain said more cheerfully, “the bullet in the shoulder, it is probably of little importance now.” But he did not hand over Joe’s revolver. He slipped it into his pocket. Under the warm cloak of politeness, business was still business. The princess could have her myth, meanwhile, but reports had to be made, forms filled out, evidence noted. He looked out of the window again, and squared his shoulders. Then, with an impressive salute, he marched quickly out of the room.

  She gave her first smile, a small one but real. “I’m much better now,” she told him. “When can we leave?” “The princess is here,” Lammiter told Eleanor. He stood for a moment, watching the courtyard. “With that Englishman,” he ad
ded in some surprise as he noted the driver of the car. “You know—Whitelaw, Bertrand Whitelaw.” And he didn’t know which astounded him the more: Whitelaw’s excellent if raffish taste in cars, or the princess’s willingness to travel in what she would call a “contraption”. She was sitting very erect and motionless, her head and neck wrapped in layers of chiffon, her face a complete mask. At first she didn’t seem to notice Whitelaw offering her his hand to descend. She didn’t even look at Alberto. And then she stepped slowly, carefully, out of the car, and stood, almost unwilling to face the door of her house. “She’s afraid,”

  “She knows? But how?”

  Lammiter was thinking of Whitelaw now. He, too, had been uncertain, but for quite another reason: he had been glancing at his watch, a man torn between politeness and impatience. “What is Whitelaw doing in Umbria, anyway?” he suddenly asked aloud. He halted, looking back at the window.

  “Bill—I don’t want to see the princess. I don’t want to stay here.” Eleanor had risen and come over to him. He put an arm around her waist. “I can’t bear this place, I can’t bear it.”

  “We’ll leave,” he told her reassuringly. From outside he now heard the captain asking politely about the princess’s journey.

  “But can you leave?” She was watching him anxiously.

  “Why not? The captain is in charge. As soon as he gives the signal, I’m taking you right out of here.”

  “Bill,” she said very quietly, “tell me one thing. Are you a secret agent?”

  He looked down at her in amazement. “Good God, no!” He tightened his arm around her. “Everything I did was— strictly personal.” He smiled, a little embarrassed, “All for you, funny face.”

  “That was what I hoped,” she said gravely.

  He stared at her. “Surely you never believed—”

  “Everyone else does.”

  “What? But that’s all nonsense. Ellie—it’s absolute nonsense. You know that, don’t you?”

  She nodded. She gave her second smile. “Then your job is over. You can leave with me?”

  “Nothing is going to stop me.” He pushed the hair back from the nape of her neck and kissed it.

  “Now I really do feel better,” she said. She glanced towards the window. “The poor captain... He is having a little trouble.” They could hear his rich baritone still hedging around the distasteful task of being the sad bearer of tragic news.

  Whitelaw said, with an undiplomatic abruptness that was quite apart from his usual character, “What bad news? What are you trying to say?”

  And at last the truth was jolted out. “Luigi, Count Pirotta, has shot himself.”

  There was a long moment of silence. Then the princess’s clear voice said, “When did it happen? This morning?”

  “No, Principessa. Half an hour ago.”

  There was another silence. Lammiter could imagine the cold, sad face paling even under its careful mask of rouge and powder. She had, he thought grimly, been almost too early in arriving, after all.

  Eleanor had walked back to the couch. She looked up at the high ceiling with its carved and painted beams, at the tall wall covered with the treasure of centuries, at the rows of high-backed chairs waiting under their dust covers for the parties that never would take place here any more, at the long windows elaborately curtained which once had opened on a courtyard filled with the cheerful bustle of arriving guests, with the excitement of people who had come to enjoy themselves, elegants among elegance, an island of prerogative, of unreality, in a sea of constant struggle. Now the Casa Grande would become what it really was: a museum of beautiful things and evil memories.

  Bill Lammiter, beside her, was watching her anxiously. “But perhaps,” she said, letting him into her thoughts, “all that happened today was as much a part of this house as those pretty possessions.” She pointed at random to a Cellini candelabrum on a Florentine mosaic table, and then to a Bronzino portrait of a handsome man, young, richly dressed, melancholy, who looked gravely down at her from his elaborately carved and gilded frame. Her eyes widened suddenly as she stared up at the Renaissance man. “He looks like—” She didn’t finish. Lammiter, looking up at the portrait, saw the resemblance to Pirotta, too.

  Instinctively, he took her hand. But she was in control of herself. She sat quite still, more curious than upset, as though she were trying to solve the puzzle that anyone who could bear a strong resemblance to such a noble face should have been driven by the forces that had controlled Pirotta. Was this, Lammiter wondered, the Pirotta she had fallen in love with? And it was your own God-damned fault, he cursed himself, remembering how he had let her go last spring, hadn’t followed her until he realised he had lost her. She was watching him, holding his hand as if he were the one who needed comforting. “I was a swollen-headed fool,” he said bitterly. “I was so busy giving away pieces of myself to everyone and everything that I’d soon have had nothing left to give to the only one who mattered.” He paused. He gave a wry smile. “All a playwright has to do is to write good plays. All the rest is—sawing, sawdust.” He paused again. He had never found words so elusive and stupid. “I’m trying to say I am sorry,” he said almost desperately.

  “No—not you. It’s I who should be saying—” She paused. The princess’s voice came clearly from the hall. “Oh, Bill—is she coming in here?”

  Too late to close the door. He could hardly shut it in the princess’s face.

  “It was an accident, of course,” the princess told the captain.

  “He was cleaning his rifle in the gun room.”

  “Perhaps it was an accident,” the captain said unhappily. “But it happened on the staircase.”

  There was a long pause. “I think I shall rest here for a little,” the princess said in a low voice. She stopped abruptly at the threshold of the room as she saw Eleanor, sitting so still. Then she looked at Lammiter. A strange expression, not unkind, not even surprise, softened her carefully painted lips for a fleeting moment. She nodded. She walked on.

  Lammiter knelt beside Eleanor. He kissed her hands. She looked at him, and then she touched his brow gently, and she laid her cheeks against his.

  Rosana brought Eleanor’s coat and purse. She spoke quickly, tonelessly, with all life dredged out of her voice. Perhaps this was the only way she could keep her emotions under control: to be businesslike and almost aloof—even if that was, or perhaps indeed because it was, contrary to her nature—that was how she could build a wall around her emotions. If she let one part of that wall be displaced, the whole barrier would come falling down. “Joe is waiting,” she told Bill Lammiter.

  “Where?”

  “Outside the gate.”

  “What brought him here?”

  “I telephoned. I thought the captain was going to be— difficult.”

  “Thank you.” Lammiter looked at the pale face, now coldly beautiful, a marble statue going through human motions of politeness. “Again,” he added gently, “thank you.”

  “You must hurry.”

  “Before the captain changes his mind?” he asked with a smile.

  “He’s been told your address for the next few days. He knows where to find you—if he needs you.”

  “My address? I haven’t got any address.” But Rosana didn’t explain.

  Eleanor said impulsively, “Rosana—you don’t want to stay here, either. Come with us.”

  Rosana’s face softened for a moment. Her lips began to tremble. “I must stay,” she said, turning away. She walked back towards the door.

  Lammiter took Eleanor’s arm, and pressed her wrist gently. That warned her. She was still puzzled, but she said no more. She gave a last look round the white and green room, and then at the Bronzino portrait of the sad and proud young man. Rosana, waiting at the door for them, noticed that glance. She said, “Bronzino still enjoys his private joke. Every time someone stands in front of that portrait and exclaims, ‘What grace, what goodness! Ah—those were noble days!’ Then Bronzino’s skeleton s
hakes with laughter. The Renaissance had its share of violence and evil. That young man was one of its monsters.” She walked into the hall.

  Quickly they followed her, quickly they passed over the stone-flagged floor. At the front door, Rosana halted. “Goodbye,” she said evenly. “I must go to the princess.” She held out her hands to them both.

  “Not goodbye,” he protested.

  Rosana looked at him and then at Eleanor. She said, suddenly natural again, warm and vibrant, “You are my friends.” She gave a smile that turned into a strangled sob as her guard went down. Then she turned abruptly, and retreated into the dark shadows of the vast hall. They began to walk, in silence, across the gold-lit courtyard.

  It was a serene place, that courtyard. Under the five o’clock sun, warm and mellow, there was no movement except the flutter of a white pigeon over their heads, no sound except their footsteps on the stones. Near the gate, wide open now, showing the quiet little square outside, Lammiter suddenly said, “Where is Whitelaw?”

  Eleanor looked at him in surprise. “I didn’t hear him leave either.” It was odd, she thought, that Whitelaw had left so immediately. He was a friend of the princess’s, wasn’t he? Strange that he should have left her at her doorstep. “Perhaps the princess sent him away.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “You’re worried.”

  “I’ve reached the stage of worrying about everything,” he told her. Then he thought, I never even noticed Whitelaw’s car was gone until I had walked the breadth of this courtyard. What’s gone wrong with your reactions, Lammiter? They are as slow as your feet at this moment.

  He almost passed Jacopone. The gamekeeper was standing so motionless beside the gate that he might have been one of its carved decorations. He still carried his rifle under one arm. He looked at them both quite impassively. He nodded, and a smile entered those old watchful eyes. He seemed surprised and then pleased as Lammiter seized his free hand in a grasp that tightened as they stood in silence. “Viva Garibaldi!” Lammiter said suddenly.