Dolly and the Starry Bird-Dorothy Dunnett-Johnson Johnson 05 (27 page)

Charles said, “Isn’t it a matter for the police? It seems hard luck on Jacko to have to pull himself together in the middle of the night and start defending himself. We’re not a court.”

“It is a matter for the British police,” said Professor Hathaway. “The police in Rome are at present mainly occupied with tracing and arresting all of Prince Minicucci’s associates. I prefer to clear my own doorstep. James, have you been sending doctored photographs in the parcels to England?”

“No,” said Jacko. His flowered shirt had come untucked from his trousers and his mustache had flecks of Maurice’s cigar ash in it. He said, “This is a hell of a —”

“You have only to answer me truthfully,” said Professor Hathaway. “Did you, or Diana with your knowledge, transfer the lethal gas cylinder from Mr. Paladrini’s flat to the Dome?”

“No, I didn’t,” said Jacko. “Listen, was it likely? Ruth uses that mixer gas. I was as likely to get blown up in the Dome with her as anybody.”

“Unless you disconnected it when she was about. Did you give or lend Diana the key to the Dome, so that her friends were able to break in or search it as they pleased?”

There was a slight pause, during which Jacko breathed heavily through his nostrils. I stared at the ground. I knew he was thinking of his Orals. The strict voice, the impersonal questions were so reminiscent I could feel the same low, queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach.

Jacko said, “I did lend her a key. Once or twice. But that’s got nothing to do with it. Look, if I wanted to search the Dome or bust Charles’s camera or anything I didn’t have to hire someone to do it. I could do it myself and fake some sort of tale of a break-in. In any case, the man who pinched the film and broke up the camera busted the door to get into the observatory. My God, he tied me up and got away while I was still on the floor of the developing room. You were there, Innes. And Ruth, and Charles and Johnson. There you are. The bloody film was stolen and that proves I had nothing to do with it.”

“Of course it does,” said Johnson cheerfully. It was a tone that I distrusted and I saw by Jacko’s wary scrutiny that he wasn’t buying it either.

Johnson said, “The man who smashed Charles’s camera and took the film was a security agent, the partner of the man who was killed in the toletta at the zoo. He had nothing to do with Minicucci and the fact that he broke in and attacked you does nothing whatever to prove you weren’t in with the Minicuccis up to the hairline. The only thing it does prove is that you didn’t shoot him. In fact, the puzzle is, who
did
shoot him? Di and her friends weren’t around, and there wasn’t time to summon them. I suppose you didn’t put the body into the meat safe?”

“I didn’t know it was there,” said Jacko indignantly. “My God, ask Ruth what we both felt when we saw it. Look, what about that break-in? If I hadn’t been there, I suppose Ruth would have joined the other bloke in the meat safe. If I hadn’t found the key to the meat safe, they might be there yet. Try and get out of that!”

“My dear boy,” said Maurice gently, “you are the one whose extraction is in question. Am I not right in thinking that on that occasion entrance was effected by a key to the Dome? And that the intruder was aware of the presence of a trapdoor, and therefore was either a member of the observatory staff, or on intimate terms with one? What about that, my poor children?”

“All right,” said Jacko hotly, glaring around at his tormentors. “Tell me one thing. What do you think he had come for?”

Again, it was Innes, no friend of his, who supported him. “The body,” he said. “The fact that he had the meat safe key on him proves it. Also, he did not know, Jacko, of your presence. You had expected to go home after your duty. Ruth had just come on duty and was safely locked in the Dome making exposures. It was pure coincidence that on this one night she left the door open, and that the subsequent events forced the criminal into the open. I do not believe,” said Innes, “that there was any prior intention of harming Ruth. Up to that moment, Minicucci’s party had shown themselves most anxious to avoid police interference. The trapdoor was merely a desperate device to insure his own escape through the Dome roof. If you had both fallen through it, there would be no absolute proof that it wasn’t an accident.”

“All right,” said Jacko. “Then if all he wanted was to remove the body, you can count me out of that one as well. I spent half my nights in that Dome. I could have carted out and buried the entire Inter football team and no one need have been any the wiser.”

“I remember suggesting it,” said Maurice mildly. “In fact, truth to tell, I began to worry a little about the possible contents of my refrigerator. Johnson, I think the boy has made a case for himself.”

Professor Hathaway leaned forward and stubbed out her cigar with a movement of sudden decision. “Yes,” she said. “I do believe he has. Now, where does that leave us? Johnson, Innes and myself are not under suspicion. On circumstantial evidence, Jacko may be largely absolved. Who, then, doctored the pictures and slipped them into the packages intended for the Trust? Timothy and Maurice? They didn’t need to leave bodies in the Dome: they had their own ample resources.”

“Of course,” said Johnson mildly. “Also, neither of them made the slightest attempt to insure that Ruth’s valuable wristwatch was safely transferred to Sophia. Indeed, it was through Maurice’s amateur sleuthing that we got the shredded film back from the barber’s — thereby, I will say,” added Johnson reprovingly, “much upsetting Lenny who was already having a steam treatment — you may not have noticed — in another part of the salon.”

“How did…?” began Maurice.

“Added to which,” said Johnson, paying no attention, “neither Maurice nor Timothy was sufficiently intimate with the posting details of the Dome, nor did either know anything whatsoever about photography. Indeed, once you rule out Innes and Jacko and Charles, who was in Naples or in prison half the time all the crimes were being committed, there is really only one person left who possesses every qualification. Ruth, come over here.”

Charles’s hands dropped from my shoulders. My heart, which had been beating in a succession of quick, heavy thumps, had a logjam and began to shake me like an uneven trip-hammer. I looked up at Charles and he was staring at me with a face I had never seen before.

Everyone was staring at me. I got up very slowly and walked to where Johnson had risen. “I’m sorry, Ruth,” he said. “But it had to be done.” And taking me by the arm he drew me beside him, so that I could see the loving regularity of the cable stitching and the bristle where he needed shaving and the bulge in his trouser pocket which was either his pipe, or his matches, or something which was bigger and neither.

His hand on my arm was very tight. “I couldn’t have him using you as a hostage,” said Johnson. “Charles. It is, I’m afraid, the end of the joy ride.”

“And that,” said Charles with a breathless kind of angry amusement, “is what is wrong with the British Intelligence Service today. I beg to inform you, Johnson. You’ve made a ripe, newspaper-worthy, libel-incurring cock-up of this one.”

“Charles?” said Jacko. He came over and stood beside me and glared at Johnson. “You said yourself, he was in prison half the time.”

“I know. I put him there,” said Johnson. “To keep him out of Ruth’s way. To isolate him from his associates. And to see what he would do with the nuclear film from the Baedeker which Di had received at the Fall Fair and given him. What he did, of course, was put it in his watch and make Ruth unwittingly carry it to Sophia.”

“So you say,” said Charles. “Who can prove it?”

“I can,” said Johnson. “What you burned just now was the second part of the Turin Traffic Regulations for nineteen fifty-four. The nuclear film is safely in England, with your fingerprints on it.”

“Bluff,” said Charles.

“You think so?” said Johnson. “You have an eight-millimeter-film camera. You not only take fashion shots. You have industrial contracts for photographs. The two security agents in the zoo were from such a firm. They wanted to see what was in your camera because they had suffered a leak and were suspicious of you. And what was in your camera, as Ruth well knows, were retakes of Jacko’s pictures of Diana, with certain microfilm additions.”

“Prove it,” said Charles. “If you can, from the ashes.”

“Or Ruth’s testimony,” Johnson said. “She can testify against you, you know. Despite your persuasiveness, she wouldn’t marry you. You had hoped to make Ruth into another Sophia. Instead, she realized you had lied about the ownership of her camera, and, finding yours in the Dome, developed what was in it. What she found must have reeked of industrial espionage, but she was more than fair to you. She hid them, and even when at one point she thought I might help you out of your trouble, she didn’t give you away.”

“Because there was nothing to give away,” Charles said. “I was a cretin, no doubt. I didn’t know I had muddled the cameras. But when I realized I had, I thought I ought to pretend that mine was the one which was pinched at the zoo. After all, my own was lying about loose for anyone to take. I wanted to make that secure first.”

“Then why not tell Ruth at least?” Johnson said. “Or were you afraid of something happening which would cause the police to investigate and develop the contents of both cameras? I can see that it would be better to get hold of Ruth’s camera and destroy the film somehow, so that the question of developing it could never arise. And mixed up with it all was Mr. Paladrini, who had appointed to meet you with the balloon cart outside the zoo on that day, and who duly handed over to you the balloon bearing the rendezvous advice for the Fall Fair.

“Only, Ruth got the balloon and managed to interpret what it meant. And Mr. Paladrini, knowing you were being followed, took the law into his own hands and gave your pursuer the lethal balloon. Whose fragments you removed, of course, when you went into the zoo toletta. What a shock it must have been to see that someone had got away with the contents of Ruth’s camera already. That meant that when he developed it, he would realize he had the wrong film. And he would then look for the right one, which was still lying in the Dome.

“You did your best to get it that night,” said Johnson. “The night of Maurice’s party, do you remember? But Jacko had exposures going on in the Dome, and it was blacked out. And none of us, as it happens, left you for a moment. And then, when you got away from Maurice’s party, it was to find that the other security agent was already in the Dome and had found your camera with the film in it. You even caught him, and had him locked in the bathroom, when he unfortunately escaped.

“Or did he escape?” said Johnson reflectively. “Who knows? He might even have remained in the bathroom, a bullet hole in his head, until it was safe to remove him to the meat safe. But the film had gone, and that frightened you. You appointed Di to go to the Fall Fair in your place and you forced a quarrel with Ruth to account for your departing to Naples, to meet Sophia and arrange for the nuclear film, when it came, to be passed to Sophia when you and Jacko and Ruth came to Naples at the weekend.

“You came back to Rome on Tuesday evening, hoping to find things had cooled off, and that it would be possible to remove the shot man at last from the Dome. The locks had been changed, but Di always had access to Jacko’s key and of course by now had copies. Unfortunately, in your absence Mr. Paladrini had been spotted at the Fall Fair and since positively identified. Prince Minicucci decreed that he now represented an unnecessary risk to the organization, and on Tuesday night or early on Wednesday morning he was taken away and killed and equipped with a suicide note. A little later, for reasons which had become rather compelling, you made the exchange of gas cylinders from Mr. Paladrini’s flat to the Dome, but left the Dome cylinder insufficiently connected, so that until you chose, nothing fatal could happen.”

I said, “You’re wrong there.” It didn’t come out very well and Jacko, on my other side, shot a glance of hatred at Johnson and put his arm around my waist. Johnson, without looking, opened his fingers and freed my near arm. I wanted to sit down but I didn’t. I stayed exactly as I was.

Johnson said, “No. If even I knew you were worried, do you think Charles wouldn’t observe it? And something appalling had happened. He had entered the Dome after you left him at midnight, and had been discovered even before reaching the meat safe. Instead of covering his tracks, he suddenly had both you and Jacko in full cry after him. He left that trapdoor open praying you would both fall into it, for he thought you would certainly have recognized him. In fact you didn’t recognize him, and didn’t fall into the trap. Then, of course, when he retrieved the film from Maurice’s vase the next morning, he saw that it was a dud and guessed you had found and developed the right one. From then onward, it was too dangerous to leave you with him. I told the Rome police my suspicions and had him arrested until further notice, quite incommunicado but for the one meeting with you when he gave you his wristwatch. He received no letters and received and made no telephone calls until the moment of the Capri appointment, when I released him so that he could incriminate himself and, if possible, all his associates.

“By that time Sophia had compromised herself by attempting to seize the watch, which she recognized as Charles’s and which they had already used for exactly this purpose. She lost her head over that rather, because I think she was truly jealous of you anyway. She left the Trust, as you know, when Charles became interested in you, and he must have had a hard time persuading her to continue helping him. He succeeded. It seemed to me that having lost the watch, as she thought, and also her chance of helping Charles, Sophia would quite cheerfully have allowed herself to fall over that wall at Taormina.”

“Excuse me,” said Maurice politely. Because they had all stopped smoking, the air had cleared oddly. Maurice, reclining on the Rape of Persephone was able to invoke, with every line of his handsome face, the spirits of justice and moderation, tempered on this occasion with the least drop of actor-manager’s acid.

“Charles, I do think you should sit down. Fascinating though it all is, I hardly think there is a shred of real evidence against you. And I do want to make two little points. Johnson, Charles couldn’t have removed the signed film from the vase in this room. You know he couldn’t. The Mouse Alarm was on. It had been repaired the very instant you shorted it. And if the film was so important, why did you allow Sophia to take the watch in the end, even with the substitute film in it?”

I knew what the answers were going to be. I didn’t even look at Johnson as he said gently, “Ah, yes. The Mouse Alarm. Charles called to see if Ruth was with you, Maurice, after she had gone with me to Mr. Paladrini’s without telling him — yet another indication, to Charles, that Ruth didn’t fully trust him. You didn’t even mention his visit, though you knew that Innes had called at the house, and that Di had also been, but after the film had been stolen. You thought, as everyone did, that the Alarm was on, and therefore he couldn’t go near your suite. But don’t you remember? Even Ruth and Diana and I in Rome were inconvenienced by it. There was a power cut that morning.”

I had remembered. I had remembered Di’s bland voice at Renati’s. I remembered, inconsequently, the way Johnson had fascinated her. It was the last high-stake rubber she would play with him.

“And you needed to hand over the watch?” said Innes thoughtfully. “To insure that Sophia rushed out and told somebody, so soon as she identified the fake on her enlarger?”

“Of course,” said Johnson. “We observed everyone going ashore at Capri that day, and we placed Charles most carefully out of reach in the chair lift. So Sophia darted out of the observatory and poured out her troubles to Diana. It was easy to guess then what was going to happen. Ruth had to disappear: she knew too much for her own good, and besides, once in Minicucci’s power, she could be persuaded to tell the whereabouts of that compromising film she had hidden. Charles didn’t believe it was burned any more than I did.

“He also knew for the first time who I was. He was the only one among our group of suspects who did know, which made his authorship of the great abduction plot fairly plain. I hadn’t expected to be kidnaped on the high seas, but as soon as I saw that wreckage, and Charles leaped so briskly into
Dolly’s
speedboat, I smelled a rat.
Sappho
, of course, belonged to Minicucci: it was only a matter of Di giving instructions to the little man who liked to sing to the engines, and the necessary R/T conversations would take place. I heard
Sappho’s
launch coming under cover of Diana’s radio, and I even stayed below so that they could play it any way they wanted. But Charles wanted me out of the way. If I was an agent and had taken the nuclear film from the wristwatch, then I must be pretty sure what his share in the plot was.

“There was an awkward moment,” Johnson said. “
Sappho’s
launch didn’t take us to the harbor, where my people were waiting, and they landed us and got us into Minicucci’s car without our being followed. But luckily, Charles knew exactly where we were all going. He made some excuse to leave for Rome after Diana and led Lenny — and, as it turned out, Innes — straight to the observatory. Then having checked with Diana that all was going well, he rushed about filling in his alibi until he discovered, to his horror, that we were alive and well and baring our bosoms at the police station. I’m glad you sat down,” said Johnson to Charles quite calmly. “But although Maurice means to be kind, I shouldn’t like you to rely on his verdict. The case against you, to my mind, is overwhelming.”

The telephone rang.

“I doubt it,” said Charles. He was sitting on the arm of one of Maurice’s Sicilian sofas, his blazer immaculate, his scarf neatly tied, his deep-collared shirt slightly crumpled. Because of the heat, the long hair which lay on his brow was stuck thickly together and curling a little bit at the ends. In bath steam, Charles’s hair curled up all over. He didn’t look at me or Jacko. He gave the impression, as it were, of speaking around us, so that there seemed no one in the room except himself and Johnson. He said, “You haven’t met my mother, Johnson, have you?”

“I have,” said Professor Hathaway. She got up and stretched. “I made a point of it, at a dinner at Number Ten, as I remember. I asked her where the instability was in the family.”

The telephone rang again.

“Instability?” I said.

“The grandfather made a fortune and shot himself. There was a cousin who was pretty notorious as well. I wanted to know who you were tying yourself to,” said my sponsor. She picked up Maurice’s phone and answered it. “Pronto?”

“I take it,” said Charles to Johnson, with the same casual hauteur as before, “that you have no objection if I telephone the British Embassy for my protection?” He stood up.

“I’ve done that,” said Johnson. “There are two cars downstairs now. One from the Embassy and one from the police, to take you back to the station. It is, as I said, the end of the joy-ride.”

“Is it?” said Charles. His eyes were full of fun. He looked as if, I thought, he was going to rip out an obituary notice and stride along, declaiming it to all who would listen. “Why, Lilian. Who was telephoning you? Lloyd George?”

Professor Hathaway put down the telephone. “The police,” she said. “I thought you wouldn’t object, Johnson, if I accepted the message. Diana has made a full confession.”

“Bloody cow,” said Charles.