by Jane Arbor
His brows lifted. ‘ “No, thank you”—just like that? How extremely glacial! I’d have thought you could at least w atch me eat and join me in coffee and a liqueur?’
‘Well, I couldn’t. It would choke me.’ She had braced herself for attack. ‘What’s more, I’m surprised you dare to ask me—in the circumstances.’
He stared. ‘Dare to ask you to dine? What do you mean? In what circumstances?’
‘You must know. Or did you think you could get away with tricking me into doing a job for you that I believed was just a—a goodwill thing that I was glad to do, as long as it was voluntary and amateur and couldn’t prejudice my position at Plenair at all?’ She watched him work it out. ‘You’re talking about the survey you did for us? But you did do it voluntarily, though I’d remind you you agreed to accept your expenses,’ he said.
‘My expenses, yes, though I didn’t expect even them. You had m ade it sound so casual—all of you had—that I never suspected you had it in mind to try to—either bribe me or insult me with the ridiculous figure on that cheque. Not to mention that you must have known I couldn’t take any direct payment for any job while I was employed by Plenair and without their permission. Especially one which involved reporting on hotels in which the firm had interests.’
‘If we had thought about it, of course we should have known. But this cheque—the one I signed before I left for Stockholm and gave to Bertholde Lesogno to complete and sign it himself in the name of the syndicate, and then to pass it to you?’
‘That cheque, yes.’
‘But what about it? It only covered your expenses!’
‘Expenses? Expenses?' she echoed. ‘At seven hundred thousand lire plus? Nearly seventy English pounds for each hotel I visited? Expenses indeed!’
‘Oh, nonsense,’ he scorned. ‘You were seeing double when you read it. Where is it, anyway? Show it to me.’
‘I can’t. I tore it up. And your friend Lesogno didn’t send it to me. It came into the hands of the Plenair manager, Signor Corotti, and as he concluded, or had been told, that it was pay for something I shouldn't have been doing for money, he felt justified in dismissing me. And if he couldn’t believe me, perhaps he was.’
‘He dismissed you, without hearing your side?’
‘He would have done, but I forestalled him. I resigned myself.’
‘But how did he come by the cheque?’
‘From a “source’’ he wouldn’t name to me.’ ‘Lesogno?’
‘How should I know? Signor Corotti had undertaken to return it when he had faced me with it, but I destroyed it in front of him.’
‘Of course.’
‘But he said I was only making a gesture; probably because he had
frightened me into repudiating it. That I knew it could be written again, was his conclusion. I could tell he didn’t believe a word I was saying.’ Cesare said tautly, ‘He’ll believe it—or else—when I get next to him!’ ‘You?’ There was a world of disillusion in Dinah’s tone. ‘You signed the cheque!’
‘I’ve told you,’ he retorted, ‘I signed it blank. Which means that sometime between then and when it was slipped to your manager, this absurd figure was entered on it, and friend Lesogno is going to have to explain that!’
Dinah was silent: Something strange and disconcerting had happened. From the enemy whom she had thought she must force to defend himself, Cesare had suddenly turned ally, on the defensive for her. There was a cliche for that—something about the
spiking of guns..........Now she heard him saying, ‘But
first of all, we’ll interview this Corotti and make him name his informant. Where can he be reached at this hour?’
‘Only at his home. The office is closed.’
‘Then his home it shall be. His number will be in the book?’
But Dinah suddenly snapped, ‘No! No, leave it. I fought my battle with him and I’m not involving you in another. Whoever gave him the cheque only did it to get me into trouble with Plenair. Which it did and I’m disgraced there, and I couldn’t—wouldn’t go back, whatever mud you stir up.’
Cesare came slowly across the room to where she stood, the big book, the purpose of her errand to the salotto, clasped in front of her like an armoured breastplate. Standing close over her, he said, ‘You are not serious. The mud has to be stirred. Because you’re not alone in this. Your character has been called into question, and you won’t get another job in the same line until the thing has been cleared up. Besides, Lesogno’s and my good faith are in doubt. No, Dinah, you can’t fight it alone, nor ‘leave it’. It’s out of your hands.’
‘But I have fought it alone! It’s finished.’
He shook his head. ‘No. Someone has done this to embarrass you and worse—even to costing you your job, which is probably what was intended; so that if you leave it here, they have succeeded. You have made an enemy of someone, girl—don’t you realise that? How the thing was managed, one can’t know, out I’m not going to rest until I find out. I’m going straight to the telephone now.’
Still holding the book with one hand, she caught at his wrist with the other as he turned. ‘No, Cesare, please! ’ she begged. ‘I mean it.’
He turned back. ‘Why?’
She fumbled for a reason—not the true one— which he might accept. ‘Because,’ she said, ‘I thought you were responsible, and now you’ve proved to me that you weren’t, I—well, I haven’t the r ight to try to lean on you, to expect you to help.’
Thought up on the spur of her need to give him a reason, it was a lame effort, she knew. But for a long moment he seemed to consider its validity before he said quietly and tensely, ‘Then we must give you the right, mustn’t we? Dinah, will you marry me?’
Wide-eyed and in silence, she stared at him. The question made no sense, for, spoken from him to her, the words had no meaning. Fleetingly she wondered what it was about her which did not inspire love, but which had prompted two men to offer her marriage in a reckless impulse to protect her from her world.
For this was a deja-vu scene—a re-lived one, one that had enacted before. In a rash moment Trevor had asked her to marry him in order to guard her from scandal, and now Cesare, even if he were only momentarily serious, was doing the same. But of course he wasn’t serious; he couldn’t be, and the thought that he could suppose the empty offer would comfort or reassure her was a wound which struck deep. As she remembered telling Trevor—if marriage had been for them, they would not have had to argue the pros and cons of it; they would have been in each other’s arms. And if any warmth or tenderness, rather than quixotry, had inspired Cesare’s question, she would have known, known before now that he felt for her more than the lightweight friendship they had lately attained. There would have been an awareness, a response to her feeling for him. And he had allowed her none.
At last she muttered, her voice thick, ‘That was pretty unfair, wasn’t it?’
His dark eyes sparked. ‘Unfair to you? What do you mean?’
‘Unworthy of yourself, then. If it wasn't meant’ flippantly as a joke, then it was callous, and that's something I’ve never known you to be.'
‘Thank you.’ A muscle twitched at the corner of his mouth. ‘It's something, I suppose, that I'm not a monster of insentience. So it had to be a joke, had it?'
‘Of course. What else? And I'm afraid I didn't
find it funny ---------- ' But there Dinah had had enough.
She could not go bandying mere words with him, arguing the unarguable, fearing to reveal to him the depth of her hurt. She had to escape.
She backed a step, turned and left him, not looking back, not expecting him to follow or to stop her, which he did not. In the hall, in a mechanical reflex she did not later remember making, she picked up her bag from a table where she had left it when coming in earlier, and went out by the front door, letting it close heavily behind her.
For a minute or two she stood irresolutely on the quay, then began to walk, unaware of any decision to
go either right or left, but only of her need to put distance between herself and the Palazzo d'Orio— and Cesare.
It was always easy, in Venice, to walk without purpose or direction. A wide paved calle, lined with shops, would offer itself; a shadowed riva would branch off; a hump-backed bridge would invite; a mere passage between walls would give on to a broad campo, its expanse peopled by groups of teenagers, children on tricycles and romping dogs.
Dinah wandered aimlessly, trying to forget humiliation and chagrin and the cruel injustice from which Cesare had pretended it was his duty to rescue her.
She must go back some time; she owed his mother gratitude and explanations as to her imminent departure from Venice and the Palazzo’s hospitality. So somehow she must walk off anger and despair until she could return with dignity and control. And perhaps, if Cesare were able to leave for Sweden tomorrow, she need not see him again.
But it was difficult to keep her mind from churning, from remembering. Now she was recalling the flash of insight she had experienced when she had told Signor Corotti of how she had been urged into doing her amateur survey. For who, among the people at that dinner-party, had been the most subtle in persuading Cesare and the others that she, Dinah, was the ideal person for the job? That had been Francia Lagna! For some, perhaps then undefined purpose of Francia’s own, she had wanted to involve Dinah, had seen advantage to herself in it, however vaguely. But ultimately there had been nothing vague about the revenge she had achieved. For as soon as Cesare had mentioned her ‘enemy’, Dinah had realised that without doubt she had one, and who it was who could have sought to injure her so cruelly. Yet because the Princess was so close to Cesare, Dinah could not name her, and so had had to resort to the feeble reason she had given for insisting that he should not interfere. And look where that had led! Straight to that spurious suggestion that it was his duty to marry her. But there she was, back again full circle to bitterness and questioning and regret. She must, she would think about something else—about the twins, about going home and being welcomed there, about Trevor and Etta being happy—anything.
It had been a heavy day of brooding cloud, and the light was fading when she found her wandering had brought her near to the Calle Maser and she remembered she had promised Maria Pacelli that she would keep an eye on the progress of the repairs to the apartment building after the fire. When she had made the promise the errand hadn’t seemed urgent, but now that she would be leaving Venice as soon as she could arrange it, she decided to look at the place this evening. Doing so would ‘take her mind off’...
She went through the archway into the courtyard. The builders had knocked off work for the day, but she could see that the gutted two lower floors had reached an encouraging state of repair, though they were not yet reoccupied. The entrance door from the court had always stood open, as it did now, and re membering that the key to Maria Pacelli’s flat was in her bag, Dinah went up the stairs to it.
As she knew, the fire had not reached their floor, but earlier she had arranged for most of the furnishings to go into store, leaving behind only some kitchen equipment in locked cupboards and the fixtures. She opened on to a dust-begrimed scene which would not be habitable again until it had been fully redecorated. The rooms were so dark behind their shutters that she had to throw them back, and as she did so the first of the rain which had been threatening all day began to fall, and in the distance thunder growled.
There was little to be done about the rooms’ griminess; the builders’ traffic in the courtyard and the dust of their demolition would make it just as bad tomorrow, she knew. But in pity and regret for how the place had looked after Cesare’s furbishing of it for her, she found a duster and a window-cloth and gave it such cleaning as she could while she waited for the rain to give over. She had brought no coat when she had fled from the Palazzo, and in minutes her light dress and sandals would be soaked through.
But the rain did not give over. It increased and came down with steady persistence—the thoroughgoing, flood-causing rain of the subtropical equinox, the kind of rain which, at the change of season, the Venetian plain knew well and which could empty the city streets of their night life and the canals of their craft with the seeming legerdemain of a conjuring trick, yet which tomorrow might usher in a cloudless dawn and another sun-drenched day.
Dinah had to draw the shutters close against its drive, and sit in the increasing dark while she waited to be able to leave. Nobody was going to come home to this shell of a building; no light nor heat was connected, and, lacking a chair, all she could do was to prop herself on the padded windowseat in the bedroom where in happier days she had often spent the twilight of summer evenings looking out over the roofs and chimneys and television aerials of the city until the real dark came down.
Now it was intensely dark and the rain still drummed. She supposed she must soon make a dash for it, but not quite yet. For it wasn’t only the rain which deterred her; she dreaded her return to the Palazzo more. So she would wait a little while longer ... not too long . . . . perhaps another ten minutes or so ...
She woke with a start, blinking and shaking her head in wonder. How could she have slept, with her mind in such a turmoil and her body in such a cramped, half-sitting, half-lying position? She remembered now having shut her eyes briefly, thinking that if sleep would come—which it wouldn’t—it would be a welcome respite from her troubles. But it had come. For how long? She had no torch with which to look at her watch, but if she waited and were lucky, one of the many church clocks of the city would signal the hour to her. Surely it couldn’t be very late?
She listened for the rain. It had eased slightly, but it was still coming down. And then the deep tongue of San Pedro’s clock spoke—boom, boom, boom. Three strokes only, then silence. Three o’clock in the morning! How could she creep back to the Palazzo at such an hour?
She stood up stiffly, then walked about the empty room. What would they think of her? Where would they suppose she was?
Guilt was now added to all the rest. Rain or no rain, she should have gone back at some reasonable time; she had no right to have put Cesare’s mother to the worry she knew she would suffer for her. Cesare would have told her how she had flung out of the house without a coat and, as far as they knew, without money for a hotel room. But though she debated going back straight away, she thought it best to wait until first light when she knew Tomasa would be up and about, and she could hope that the Signora and Cesare were, mercifully, still in bed.
It was cold now, and she groped into a cupboard where she thought she had left a couple of blankets. She had, and wrapped herself in them and went back to the window-seat to wait for morning. It was a very long time until the sky began to pale, then turned saffron-yellow as the sun climbed, though the courtyard would be in shadow for some hours yet. The houses round about came to life; shutters were thrown back, housewives shouted Buon giorno to each other across the court and the inevitable Venetian pigeons fluttered and strutted in the hope of a meal. It was time for Dinah
to go.
She put away the blankets, wiped her hands and face with her handkerchief and ran her pocket-comb through her hair. But as she paused for a last look round, there was a tread on the stairs. Someone was coming up them, up to this floor. She went through to the vestibule and waited, then opened the door to come face to face with—Cesare’s mother!
Dinah was speechless. The Signora, panting a little, said,. ‘Well, well! Put two and two together, and what do they make? Aren’t you going to ask me in, child?’
There was kindliness about that ‘child’, and Dinah, disarmed and contrite, found her tongue in a babble.
‘Yes, of course.’ She stood aside and the Signora swept through into the living-room. ‘I—I’m so sorry.
I didn’t mean ----------It was the storm. I know I ought
to have braved it, but I—sort of fell asleep, and.................. ’
The Signora was looking round the empty room.
‘Fell asleep? Standing up? Like a horse?’ she in quired.
‘No. There’s a window-seat in the bedroom.’
Then lead me to it. Those stairs.................! ’ In the bed room she
approved the window-seat, ‘H’m, better than nothing,’ sat down on it and invited Dinah to sit, beside her.
‘Well, now........ ’ she began.
Dinah said, ‘I can’t think how you found me, signora.’
‘And you’d like me to say “Simple”? Well, it wasn’t. I didn’t get home until midnight, and by then Cesare had telephoned the police and the hospitals and every hotel he thought you knew. After a couple of hours he insisted on my going to bed, but he stayed up, and it wasn’t until half an hour ago that he waked me to tell me that Tomasa had come up with a clue.’ ‘Tomasa?’ said Dinah puz zled.
‘It seems that you had mentioned to her that you had promised that girl you had exchanged with you would make time to see how the repairs to this place were going on.’ The Signora paused. ‘In the circum stances, Cesare thought it an odd time for you to choose to do it, but I persuaded him it was worth our looking.’
‘In the circumstances?’ questioned Dinah faintly. ‘Of how you ran out on him. He said he thought it unlikely you did that in any mood for making a cold blooded survey of property.’
‘Yes, we ll—I walked and walked. I had to. And when I found myself near here, I thought I might as well come in. That was before the rain
began. You —you know what had happened before I ran away?’
‘I do. And that before he got alarmed as to your whereabouts, Cesare had sorted the whole thing out. He telephoned Bertholde Lesogno, your chief, and then the Villa Bacardi, of course.’
The Villa Barcadi?’ The name had meaning for Dinah.
‘Yes. Francia Lagna hadn’t been able to get to Stockholm either. She was still at the Villa and Cesare spoke to her.’
‘O-oh,’ murmured Dinah on a long-drawn breath. The Signora said briskly, ‘I see you understand how the woman was involved. Had you guessed it for yourself? And when?’
