by Ngaio Marsh
“Well, if I understood her at all, she threatened to kill him.”
“Evidently a short-tempered woman. Some of these street vendors are in fact badly behaved persons.”
“I thought he was greatly disturbed by the encounter. He made light of it but he turned very white.”
“Oh.” There was a brief silence. “She sells postcards outside San Tommaso?”
“Yes. One of our party thought she saw her shadow on the wall of a passage down in the Mithraeum.”
“They are not permitted to enter.”
“So I gathered.”
“I will have enquiries made. I will also have the airports, omnibus and railway stations watched. I feel there is a strong probability Mailer has recognized you and will attempt an escape.”
“I am deeply obliged to you, Signor Questore.”
“Please!”
“But I confess the chances of his recognizing me — we have never met — do seem a bit thin.”
“Some contact of his, an English contact, may have seen you and informed him. It is most possible.”
“Yes,” Alleyn said, “it’s possible of course.”
“We shall see. In the meantime, my dear superintendent, may I have a little speech with this Dominican?”
“I’ll call him.”
“And we keep in close touch, isn’t it?”
“Of course.”
“With my compliments, then—” said Il Questore Valdarno sadly.
Alleyn returned to the shop and delivered his message.
“Il Questore Valdarno, is it?” said Father Denys. “You didn’t let on this was a pollis affair but it doesn’t surprise me at all. Wait, now, and I’ll talk to ’um.”
He did so in voluble Italian and returned looking perturbed. “It’s a queer business,” he said, “and I don’t say I fancy the turn it’s taking. He wants to send in some of his fellows to search below and is going to talk to my superior about it. I told ’um we’d overlooked every inch of the place but that doesn’t satisfy the man. He says will I tell you you’re welcome to join in. Eight sharp in the morning.”
“Not tonight?”
“Ah, why would it be tonight and himself if he’s below, which he’s not, locked up like a fish in a tin.” Father Denys looked pretty sharply at Alleyn. “You’re not the cut of a policeman, yourself,” he said. “None of my business, of course.”
“Do I look like a harmless visitor? I hope I do. Tell me, do you know anything about the woman called Violetta who sells postcards here?”
Father Denys clapped his hand to his forehead. “Violetta, is it!” he ejaculated. “A terrible pest, that one, God forgive me, for she’s touched in her wits, poor creature. Sure, this other business put her clean out of my mind. Come into the atrium till I tell you. We’ll lock up this place.”
He did lock up the vestibule and pretty securely, too, fetching a great key out of a pocket in his habit. Nobody else had that one or a key to the iron grille, he said, except Brother Dominic who opened up in the morning.
The basilica was now deserted and the time six o’clock. All the bells in Rome rang the Ave Maria and Father Denys took time off to observe it. He then led the way into the atrium and settled beside Alleyn on a stone bench, warm with the westering sun. He was a cosy man and enjoyed a gossip.
Violetta, he said, had sold postcards in the entrance to San Tommaso for some months. She was a Sicilian of dubious origins, was not as old as Alleyn may have supposed, and when she first appeared carried upon her the remnants of ferocious good looks. Her story, which she never ceased to pour out, was that her husband had deserted her and in doing so had betrayed her to the police.
“For doing what?” Alleyn asked.
“Ah, she never lets on exactly. Something to do with passing prohibited articles. Likely enough stolen, though she makes out she’d no notion what mischief was in it till the pollis came down upon her and destroyed her. She’s very wild in her conversation and the saints themselves wouldn’t know which was fact and which was fantasy.”
She had behaved herself reasonably well, however, reserving her outbursts for the Dominicans and sticking to her legal postcard vending territory until about two days ago, when he had found her squatting in a corner of the porch letting out the most frightful animadversions in a hissing torrent and shaking her fists. She literally foamed at the mouth and was quite incoherent, but after Father Denys had rebuked her for blasphemy and, Alleyn gathered, sorted her out in a pretty big way, she became slightly more comprehensible. Her rage, it emerged, had been directed at a person who had visited the sacristy to discuss arrangements for sightseeing trips by a newly formed enterprise called—
“Don’t tell me,” Alleyn said as Father Denys paused for dramatic effect. “Let me guess. Called ‘Il Cicerone.’ ”
“Right for you.”
“In the person of Mr. Sebastian Mailer?”
“Right again,” cried Father Denys, clapping his hands together. “And the poor creature’s husband or if he’s not he ought to be God help him.”
It was past five o’clock on that very warm afternoon when two cars arrived at the Palatine Hill. The air smelt of sunny earth, grass, myrtle and resin. In lengthening shadows poppies made little scarlet exclamations and legions of acanthus marched down the contours of the hill. The skies had deepened behind broken columns and arches: the bones of classic Rome.
Giovanni, the driver, had responded with gusto to the role of guide. He said that he had no notion of what had befallen Mr. Mailer but suggested that a sudden onslaught of the affliction known to tourists as Roman Tummy might have overtaken him. By its nature, Giovanni delicately reminded them, it neccessitated an immediate withdrawal. He then led his party across the ruins of Domus Augustana and down a little flight of steps towards a grove of pines. Back again and here and there he led them, giving names to ruins and with sweeps of his arms laying Rome at their feet.
Sophy looked and dreamed and ached with pleasure and did not listen very closely to Giovanni. She was suddenly tired and vaguely happy. Barnaby Grant walked beside her in companionable silence, the Van der Veghels thundered about with cries of appreciation, a thousand enquiries and much photography. Lady Braceley, arm-in-arm with Kenneth and the reluctant Major, trailed and hobbled in the rear and could be heard faintly lamenting the rough going.
“I’ve a low saturation point for sights,” Sophy remarked. “Or rather for information about sights. I stop listening.”
“Well,” Grant said kindly, “at least you admit it.”
“I’d have you know it doesn’t mean that I’m insensible to all this.”
“All right. I didn’t suppose you were.”
“On the contrary, I’m knocked dumb. Or nearly dumb,” Sophy amended. “You may say: visually speechless.”
He looked at her with amusement. “I daresay you’re hungry,” he offered.
“And I daresay you’re right,” she agreed in surprise. “Thirsty, anyway.”
“Look, we’re settling for our tea.”
They had come to a terrain called the Belvedere and looked beyond the tops of a pine grove to the monstrous splendour of the Colosseum. Spires, roofs, gardens, an obelisk, insubstantial in the late afternoon haze, swam into the distance and dissolved against the Alban Hills.
Giovanni and his assistant, having found a place by a fallen column, spread rugs and cloths and opened hampers.
It was, as Sophy said, an exquisite snack: delicate little sandwiches of smoked salmon and caviar, Roman and Neopolitan pastries, fruit and a chilled white wine. There was also, surprisingly, whisky and soda. And tea for anybody who preferred it as Sophy herself did, iced with lemon, and very fragrant.
“What a rum little lot we are,” she thought indulgently. A light breath of air brought a stronger whiff of myrtle and pine needles with it and momentarily lifted her hair from her forehead. She found that Grant looked fixedly at her and she said hurriedly: “We none of us seem to be worrying about poor Mr. Ma
iler, do we?”
He made a sharp movement of his hands. “No doubt our authoritative friend has coped,” he said.
Major Sweet, having eaten very heartily and made smart work of two whiskies-and-soda, appeared to be in a mollified condition. He said: “Most extraordinary chap. My opinion,” but lazily and without rancour. “ ’Strordinary good tea,” he added.
“I think,” Lady Braceley said, “we’re all getting along very nicely as we are — with Giovanni,” and gave Giovanni a sufficiently lingering glance. “Although,” she said, “it’s a pity that other gorgeous brute’s deserted us.”
“What exactly,” Kenneth asked restlessly, “is the programme for tonight? Cars at nine — for where? Where do we dine?”
“At the Giaconda, sir,” Giovanni said.
“Good God!” the Major ejaculated. As well he might. The Giaconda is the most exclusive as it is undoubtedly the most expensive restaurant in Rome.
“Really?” Lady Braceley said. “Then I must take up my quarrel with Marco. We had a row about tables last week. He turfed out a Mexican attaché or somebody thought to be rather grand, and gave his table to me. There was almost an international incident. I told him I hated that sort of thing. Actually it was too naughty of him.”
“This time,” Kenneth said, “darling Auntie, you’ll find yourself with a set dinner at a back table near the service door. If I know anything about escorted tours.”
“Excuse me, but no, sir,” Giovanni said. “This is not such an arrangement. The service is in all ways as for the best. You will order, if you please, what you wish.”
“And pay for it?” Kenneth asked rudely.
“On the contrary, sir, no. I will attend to the settlement.” He turned to Grant. “When you are ready to leave, sir,” he said, “will you please ask your waiter to send for me? I will make the tipping also but of course if any of you is inclined—” he made an eloquent gesture. “But it will not be necessary,” he said.
“Well!” the Major ejaculated. “I must say this is — ah — it seems — ah—” he boggled slightly, “quite in order,” he said. “What?”
The Van der Veghels eagerly concurred. “At first,” the Baron confided to Sophy, “my wife and I thought perhaps the charge was too much — a ridiculous amount — but Mr. Mailer impressed us so greatly and then,” he gaily bowed to Grant, “there was the unique opportunity to meet the creator of Simon. We were captured! And now, see, how nicely it develops, isn’t it, providing all is well with the excellent Mailer.”
“Ah, pooh, ah pooh, ah pooh!” cried the Baroness rather as if she invoked some omnipotent Chinese.
“He will be very well, he will be up and bobbing. There will be some easy explaining and all laughing and jolly. We should not allow our pleasures to be dim by this. Not at all.”
“I must tell you,” the Baron waggishly said to Grant, “that I have a professional as well as an aesthetic pleasure in meeting Mr. Barnaby Grant. I am in the publishing trade, Mr. Grant. Ah-ha, ah-ha!”
“Ah-ha, ah-ha!” confirmed the Baroness.
“Really?” Grant said, politely whipping up interest. “Are you indeed!”
“The firm of Adriaan and Welker. I am the editor for our foreign productions.”
Sophy had given a little exclamation and Grant turned to her. “This is your field,” he said, and to the Van der Veghels: “Miss Jason is with my own publishers in London.”
There were more ejaculations and much talk of coincidence while Sophy turned over in her mind what she knew of the firm of Adriaan and Welker and afterwards, as they drove away from the Palatine, confided to Grant.
“We’ve done a few of their juvenile and religious books in translation. They’re predominantly a religious publishing firm, the biggest, I fancy, in Europe. The angle is Calvinistic and, as far as children’s books go, rather nauseatingly pi. The head of the firm, Welker, is said to be the fanatical kingpin of some extreme sect in Holland. As you may imagine they do not publish much contemporary fiction.”
“Not, one would venture, a congenial milieu for the romping Van der Veghels.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Sophy said vaguely. “I daresay they manage to adjust.”
“What a world-weary child!” Grant observed and shook his head at her. Sophy turned pink and fell silent.,
They were in the second car with Major Sweet, who was asleep. The other four had seated themselves, smartly, with Giovanni. Lady Braceley, offering the plea that she suffered from car sickness, had placed herself in the front seat.
The horrific evening welter of Roman traffic surged, screeched and hooted through the streets. Drivers screamed at each other, removed both hands from the wheel to fold them together in sarcastic prayer at the enormities perpetrated by other drivers. Pedestrians, launching themselves into the maelstrom, made grand opera gestures against oncoming traffic. At pavement tables, Romans read their evening papers, made love, argued vociferously, or, over folded arms, stared with portentous detachment at nothing in particular. Major Sweet lolled to and fro with his mouth open and occasionally snorted. Once he woke and said that what was wanted here was a London bobby.
“Out there,” said Grant, “he wouldn’t last three minutes.”
“Balls,” said the Major Sweet and fell asleep again. He woke when they stopped suddenly and added, “I’m most frightfully sorry, can’t think what’s come over me,” and slept again immediately.
Grant found to his surprise that Sophy, too, was at the Pensione Gallico. He himself had only moved in the day before and had not yet eaten there. He asked her if he might give her a drink at Tre Scalini in Navona. “They could pick us both up there,” he said.
“Nice idea. Thank you.”
“At half past eight then?”
He managed to make this clear to the driver.
The Major was decanted at his hotel and Sophy and Grant at the Gallico.
Grant’s room was like an oven. He bathed, lay down for an hour in a state of nature and extreme perturbation and then dressed. When he was ready he sat on his bed with his head in his hands. “If only,” he thought, “this could be the definitive moment. If only it all could stop: now,” and the inevitable reference floated up—“the be-all and the end-all here. But here, upon this bank and shoal of time—”
He thought of Sophy Jason, sitting on the Palatine Hill, her hair lifted from her forehead by the evening breeze and a look of pleased bewilderment in her face. A remote sort of girl, a restful girl who didn’t say anything silly, he thought, and then wondered if, after all, “restful” was quite the word for her. He leant over his windowsill and looked at the façades and roofs and distant cupolas.
The clocks struck eight. A horse-carriage rattled through the cobbled street below, followed by a succession of motor bicycles and cars. In an upstairs room across the way an excited babble of voices erupted and somewhere deep inside the house a remorseless, untrained tenor burst into song. Further along the second floor of the Pensione Gallico a window was thrown up and out looked Sophy, dressed in white.
He watched her rest her arms on the window ledge, dangle her hands and sniff the evening air. How strange it was to look at someone who was unaware of being observed. She was turned away from him and craned towards the end of their street where spray from a fountain in Navona could just be seen catching the light in a feathered arc. He watched her with a sense of guilt and pleasure. After a moment or two he said: “Good evening.”
She was still for a moment and then slowly turned to him. “How long have you been there?” she asked.
“No time at all. You’re ready, I see. Shall we go?”
“If you like; yes, shall we?”
It was cooler out-of-doors. As they entered Navona the splashing of water by its very sound freshened the evening air. The lovely piazza sparkled, lights danced in cascades and fans of water glared from headlamps and glowed in Tre Scalini caffè.
“There’s a table,” Grant said. “Let’s nab it, quickly.”
It was near the edge of the pavement. Their immediate foreground was occupied by parked cars. Their view of Navona was minimal. To Sophy this was of small matter. It suited her better to be here, hemmed in, slightly jostled, bemused, possibly bamboozled in some kind of tourist racket, than to be responding to Rome with scholarly discretion and knowledgeable good taste and a reserve which in any case she did not command.
“This is magic,” she said, beaming at Grant. “That’s all. It’s magic. I could drink it.”
“So you shall,” he said, “in the only possible way,” and ordered champagne cocktails.
At first they did not have a great deal to say to each other but were not troubled by this circumstance. Grant let fall one or two remarks about Navona. “It was a circus in classical times. Imagine all these strolling youths stripped and running their courses by torchlight or throwing the discus in the heat of the day.” And after one of their silences: “Would you like to know that the people in the middle fountain are personifications of the Four Great Rivers? Bernini designed it and probably himself carved the horse, which is a portrait.” And later: “The huge church was built over the site of a brothel. Poor St. Agnes had her clothes taken off there, and in a burst of spontaneous modesty instantly grew quantities of luxurious and concealing hair.”
“She must have been the patron saint of Lady Godiva.”
“And of the librettists of Hair.”
“That’s right.” Sophy drank a little more champagne cocktail. “I suppose we really ought to be asking each other whatever could have happened to Mr. Mailer,” she said.
Grant was motionless except that his left hand, resting on the table, contracted about the stem of his glass.
“Oughtn’t we?” Sophy said vaguely.
“I feel no obligation to do so.”
“Nor I really. In fact, I think it’s very much nicer without him. If you don’t mind my saying so?”
“No,” Grant said heavily. “No, I don’t mind. Here comes the car.”
When Alleyn got back to his fine hotel at ten past six he found a message asking him to telephone Il Questore Valdarno. He did so and was told with a casual air that scarcely concealed the Questore’s sense of professional gratification that his people had already traced the woman called Violetta to her lair, which was in a slum. When he said they had traced her, the Questore amended, he did not mean precisely in person since she was not at home when his man called. He had, however, made rewarding enquiries among her neighbours, who knew all about her war with Sebastian Mailer and said, variously, that she was his cast-off mistress, wife or shady business associate, that he had betrayed her in a big way and that she never ceased to inveigh against him. Violetta was not popular among the ladies in her street, being quarrelsome, vindictive, and unpleasant to children. She was also held to poach on certain begging preserves in the district. It emerged that Mr. Mailer in his salad days had abandoned Violetta in Sicily, “Where, my dear superintendent,” said the Questore, “she may well have been one of his contacts in the smuggling of heroin. Palermo is a port of transit as we well know.”
