Roman Nights (20 page)

‘A worse one? What? The idiots,’ I said. ‘What will they charge him with?’

‘Murder and espionage,’ said Johnson briefly.

A match, struck a long way away, gleamed for a moment in the depths of the drink in his glass; otherwise he was a bodiless voice speaking from blackness, and I suppose I was the same. After a moment I said, ‘What murder? What espionage?’

His voice remained impersonal, damn him. ‘Mr Paladrini’s,’ said Johnson. ‘And possibly the man in the meat safe as well. The suicide note was a forgery. The police haven’t much proof they agree, so far. But, you see, the confusing of the two cameras was suspicious. They say Charles had something of importance in his own camera and meant to conceal it. You and I know he didn’t, but we must show them evidence. The time has come, Ruth, to dig out Charlies’s girlie pictures, wherever you’ve hidden them.’ His voice softened. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll tell Charles the police found and developed them.’

I didn’t enjoy being humoured. I stared straight out into the darkness and said, ‘I can’t dig them out. I haven’t got them. I took the roll out of hiding and burned it.’

‘Oh,’ said Johnson, and then I got angry.

‘You know it’s nonsense,’ I said. ‘Even without the film, it must be perfectly obvious. Why on earth should Charles risk his career for the sake of selling a few couture secrets? He would be the first person suspicion would fall on. And no fashion house would ever employ him then, ever.’

‘It seems,’ said Johnson, ‘that it isn’t only a matter of skirt lengths. The traffic Mr Paladrini was helping to direct from his balloon cart was a traffic in real, old-fashioned espionage.’

The Indians were filing out. I said, after a while, ‘Then the two men from the Villa Borghese? How did they come into the picture?’

‘They were security agents,’ Johnson said. ‘Large firms employ them. Also governments. Some marketable photographs were on their way to a vendor, and the agents thought, quite wrongly, these were in the camera Charles was carrying. They also thought they knew the interested parties. That was why they were killed. The first one, if you remember, was sold the gas-filled balloon by Paladrini.’

‘And,’ I said, ‘they think Charles killed the second security agent? And then slaughtered Mr Paladrini, who himself murdered the first?’ I remember giving a bray of cross laughter, dismissively. ‘They can’t believe that. It’s too bloody silly.’

‘Oh. Mr Paladrini was killed by his own side,’ Johnson said. ‘After his photograph was taken, he had to be. And the suicide note might have closed the police inquiry into the murders. As it was, the police think the man in the meat safe was shot by the intruder who twice found his way into the Dome. The man who knew where the trapdoor was, among other things. And who pinched the signed film, of course, from the vase in Maurice’s bedroom.’

‘Then,’ I said, ‘that couldn’t have been Charles, because of the Mouse Alarm.’

My voice shook as I finished saying it and Johnson must have heard it because he said briskly, ‘Yes. That’s it, of course. The police know in theory that Charles cannot tolerate ultrasonic emissions, but only you and I know that it would be truly impossible for Charles to remain in the room while the alarm was transmitting.

‘No one could have faked that amount of distress, or even have known when to show it. Only Maurice and Timothy know when the alarm is switched on, and not even they know whether it is transmitting properly. But that morning it was guaranteed to be in perfect condition. Because I blew the fuse, if you remember. And within five minutes, Maurice’s electrician had repaired and tested it. During those five minutes we know that Charles was out of the chamber. We know that if he had come back he would have found the signal transmitting continuously. We know that there are no accomplices among the servants: they have been in Maurice’s employment for anything from twenty years upward. And we know that the servants admitted no strangers to the villa that morning, and that Di and Innes, who both came to see Maurice, called
after
the film had been stolen. I have told the police all this,’ Johnson said. ‘But, you know, it isn’t enough.’

I said, my voice breaking out of its whisper, ‘What would be enough?’

‘Your film, but that’s burned,’ said Johnson mildly. ‘Proof then, that others are guilty. Evidence that while Charles is in prison, the real villain is still out there, operating. You’ve forgotten the fish.’

‘S.M. Capri twenty/fifteen hundred?’ I quoted. My heart was going like a pinball machine.

‘That’s what it said,’ Johnson acknowledged. A candle flame appeared in the darkness, moved across one lens of his glasses and disappeared as the waiter carrying it moved up the stairs. Johnson said, ‘The other paper I found in Paladrini’s flat was much more explicit. I didn’t tell you about that and I didn’t mention it to the Rome policemen either. It said
San Michele, three p.m. twentieth Nov.
It also said,
Ischia, twelfth. Lipari, fifteenth. Taormina, seventeenth.
Two of these are islands off the Italian coast, and the last is a small town in Sicily. No times or places were specified, but it seemed fairly clear to me what they were. These were the next trading points which Paladrini was to mark on his balloon fish. Each of these was a rendezvous between buyer and seller. The question is, did he manage to tell any buyers or sellers of these meeting points?’

‘He might have done,’ I said. ‘Or they might have called as we did, and found the notes in his room after his death. Or if he was working for the selling side, his own people would have seen to it that the buyers were advised of the dates.’

I paused. ‘But if his own side killed him, they must know the list was in his room and the police were likely to see it. Won’t they change all the dates?’

‘Perhaps,’ Johnson said. ‘Perhaps they can’t. And this paper wasn’t in the man’s overalls. It was extremely well hidden. Suppose, while Charles is in prison we keep those dates. And suppose we come across one of these transactions and find out who the principals are. Or, better still, who is running the exchange market. For that, dear Ruth, is what I think we have stumbled on. An international auction house. A broker in espionage, one of whose agents was Paladrini.’

I thought of Charles, and Lady Teddington, and all my jokes about pizzas and lawyers. I thought of the sanity of the star charts and the holiday I had been going to have in Naples and the plans Charles and I had made for Christmas and the look in Professor Hathaway’s eyes when Maurice sat in his giltwood armchair airily fantasticating. I knew Johnson was asking me to go with him to all these places and I wondered blearily how he expected to reach them until, a moment later, I remembered. The
Dolly,
she was called, Charles had said. Johnson had a yacht called the
Dolly
in Naples. I said, ‘Professor Hathaway’s given us extra leave. The police said we all have to stay ten days in Italy.’

‘I know,’ Johnson said. ‘I told them to say it.’

‘Told them?’ I repeated. I remembered the Chief Commissioner and the 100,000 lire note around the visiting card. Whoever did the telling that time, it wasn’t Johnson.

‘Yes,’ said Johnson. ‘I wanted ten days to back my own fancy. Did you know Maurice has a yacht called the
Sappho
in Lipari? He uses her when he goes to Vulcano.’

I knew about Maurice’s autumn trips to Vulcano, though not from Maurice. He steamed his arthritis in the sulphuric hot springs of Vulcano, and Timothy managed his yacht—’With a friend, dear, and of course a little man full-time greasing the engines. Day and night, I promise you, he sits there turning them over and singing to them.’ I said, ‘Will they be there while we are at Lipari?’

‘I should think,’ Johnson said, ‘it’s amazingly likely. And who knows whom else we shall meet? I’m sure Jacko likes sailing. Innes will want to see the Greek theatre at Taormina. You have been instructed to remain for ten days in Italy. Professor Hathaway can hardly object.’

I didn’t get it. I was still staring at him, not getting it, when the lights came on. I stared at him with my eyes screwed up against the brilliance, remembering Jacko’s hurried consultation of
Who’s Who
in Maurice’s library. Johnson Johnson had been in it all right. His people came from Surrey and he had been to all the right schools and belonged to all the right clubs, with a formidable painting career and a spell in the Royal Navy for good measure. He was who he said he was. The twenty people who had recognized him at Maurice’s party testified to that.

I had taken such trouble to prove to myself that he was harmless that I might never have found out otherwise. Until I saw him suddenly, in all the hard clarity of that new-restored lighting, and knew that when he said he instructed anyone to do anything, he meant exactly that. And whatever had happened over the balloon cart had no bearing at all on the present attitude of the polizia towards him. Because he knew so many things that a nice portrait painter from Surrey couldn’t have known. He knew that the two men from the Villa Borghese were security men. He knew that Paladrini’s death wasn’t suicide. He had had time – when? – to search for the note from Paladrini’s flat he had just read me. The police had been watching the flat and certainly would not have let a member of the public return there without question. In short—

I opened my mouth.

‘Well,’ said Johnson pleasantly, ‘we certainly took a long time getting there. Don’t look so harassed. I’m working with the Rome police but I’m paid out of your taxes. And come to think of it, not even the Rome police knew about it till yesterday. You can tell Charles but not, I beg you,
not
anyone else.’

I had dropped over the zoo wall, and Johnson had caught me. I said, ‘But you were here at the beginning!’

‘Painting the Pope,’ he agreed. ‘That’s what happens. I’m sitting comfortably somewhere minding my own business and someone asks me to check the ignition of two security agents. Would you mind very much if we sail in rough weather?’

I thought frantically, Ischia, Lipari, Taormina and Capri, in November. With a British agent on board and a mugging in every port, I shouldn’t wonder . . . I was damned if I’d do it.

But if I didn’t do it, Johnson would think I didn’t want to help spring Charles from clink, and I did. I wanted Charles in my scene, taking photographs and delivering obituary verses, carefree as a bird. I wanted Charles.

I said, ‘I don’t mind rough weather,’ but it didn’t ring as true as I would have liked. The fact is, I was afraid of rough weather and nastiness, but there seemed little object in saying so. Everyone is, and you just have to get on with it, and make up obit verses and laugh at them.

Back in Velterra, Johnson dropped me off at my digs and I brought him in to tell Jacko that I was sailing on
Dolly
from Naples. ‘Ischia,’ I said airily. ‘And, of course, Lipari and Taormina. And Capri on the twentieth, to end with.’

‘You lucky bitch,’ said J. Middleton enviously. ‘And if they spring Charles, I suppose you’ll do it together.’

‘I suppose so,’ I answered. I didn’t tell him they weren’t going to spring Charles: not for ten days at least, if ever. I didn’t tell him the reason for the itinerary either, but he hit on part of it.

‘Hey,’ said Jacko. ‘You’ll be at Capri on the date of the meeting. The date on the fish in that balloon-vendor’s flat? You sneaky blighters!’

‘Want to come?’ said Johnson lightly.

He had Jacko around his neck before he got quite through speaking. We went through the same thing with Innes. Innes remembered the date in Capri as well, and we didn’t tell him about the others in between. We didn’t tell Innes any more than we told Jacko, but he fairly jumped at the invitation when Johnson made it. I said crossly, ‘What about Poppy?’ and Innes said his landlady would look after her he was sure, and he had a very strong stomach. Then I thought that maybe I was denying Innes his first anthropological experience, and felt ashamed of myself.

But it was uncanny how all Johnson’s predictions came true. Even to the interview in Maurice’s villa when we related our plans to Professor Hathaway, and she gave her rabbity smile and said that she was hoping the invitation included herself.

There was the very beginning of a silence, swept away by Maurice’s most delicious cries. Of course she must go. And he and Timothy would fly south to meet her. ‘I have a yacht there,’ said Maurice. ‘A little thing called the
Sappho,
so appropriate, although I warn you, the heads are too tiny. You will dine on her. They will dine on her, Timothy. If the weather isn’t too dreadful, you may sail on her . . . Such nights. You will see stars on
Sappho,
I promise you, Lilian, such as your dull telescopes have never shown you before. You may never come back . . .’

If the film had gone from Maurice’s vase, Johnson had once agreed, then one of us must have taken it. Mr Paladrini was dead, but we – all of us – were still living. And we – all of us – for one reason or another, it seemed, were to share in some part of
Dolly
’s
voyage.

We left for Naples the following morning, Saturday, November II, in a rainstorm. I had been warned that Charles couldn’t have phone calls. But before we set out I posted him a long letter with SWALK on it to make him laugh, telling him everything and ending.

Silent thoughts and tears unseen,

Wishing your absence was only a dream.

It crossed with one of his to me which came with another obituary:

We said farewell that autumn day

My heartstrings felt the tug

You laid your hair down far away

And left your heart in jug.

It takes four hours to drive to Naples and it rained all the way. Sheets of water sprayed up on each side of the Fiat, in which I was cravenly sitting with Jacko. Maurice’s chauffeur-driven limousine rolled majestically behind, bearing Innes and Professor Hathaway, talking.

The Fiat did a hundred and twenty on the autostrada and got to Naples ahead of the Maserati, with Jacko slumbering heavily in the back, on the way to rehabilitation after a brisk farewell warm-up of pages one to six of his address book. The yachting haven is on the north side of the bay. Johnson wove past all the stalls selling varnished shell ashtrays and splashed over a long concrete jetty lined with covered boats.