When in Rome (21 page)

‘No doubt,’ the Baron said, ‘you will receive a message. As we did. This of course, changes everything. My wife is so much upset. We have found where is a Protestant church and I have taken her there for some comfort. My wife is a most sensitive subject. She senses,’ the Baron explained, ‘that there has been a great evil amongst us. That there is still this evil. As I do. How can one escape such a feeling?’

‘Not very readily,’ Grant conceded, ‘particularly now when I suppose we are all much more heavily involved.’

The Baron glanced anxiously at Sophy. ‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘we should—’

‘Well, of course we’re involved, Baron,’ she said.

Clearly, the Baron held that ladies were to be protected. He goes through life, she thought, tenderly building protective walls round that huge, comical sex-pot of his and he’s got plenty of concern left over for extramural sympathy. Who says the age of chivalry is dead? He’s rather a dear, is the Baron. But beneath her amusement, flowing under it and chilling it, ran a trickle of consciousness: I’m involved in a murder, thought Sophy.

She had lost track of the Baron’s further remarks but gathered that he had felt the need for discussion with another man. Having left the Baroness to pursue whatever Spartan devotions accorded with her need, he had settled upon Grant as a confidant.

Deeply perturbed though she was, Sophy couldn’t help feeling an indulgent amusement at the behaviour of the two men. It was so exclusively masculine. They had moved away to the far side of the garden. Grant, with his hands in his pockets, stared between his feet and then lifted his head and contemplated the horizon. The Baron folded his arms, frowned portentously, and raised his eyebrows almost to the roots of his hair. They both pursed their lips, muttered, nodded. There were long pauses.

How different, Sophy thought, from the behaviour of women. We would exclaim, gaze at each other, gabble, ejaculate, tell each other how we felt and talk about instinctive revulsion and how we’d always known, right along, that there was
something.

And she suddenly thought it would be satisfactory to have such a talk with the Baroness, though not on any account with Lady Braceley.

They turned back to her, rather like doctors after a consultation.

‘We have been saying, Miss Jason,’ said the Baron, ‘that as far as we ourselves are concerned there can be only slight formalities. Since we were in company from the time he left us, both in the Mithraeum and when we returned (you with Mr Grant and my wife and I with Mr Alleyn) until we all met in the church portion, we cannot be thought of either as witnesses or as—as—

‘Suspects?’ Sophy said.

‘So. You are right to be frank, my dear young lady,’ said the Baron, looking at Sophy with solemn and perhaps rather shocked approval.

Grant said, ‘Well, of course she is. Let’s all be frank about it, for heaven’s sake. Mailer was a bad lot and somebody has killed him. I don’t suppose any of us condones the taking of life under any circumstances whatever, and it is, of course, horrible to think of the explosion of hatred, or alternatively the calculated manoeuvring, that led to his death. But one can scarcely be expected to mourn for him.’ He looked very hard at Sophy. ‘I don’t,’ he said. ‘And I won’t pretend I do. It’s a bad man out of the way.’

The Baron waited for a moment and said very quietly, ‘You speak, Mr Grant, with conviction. Why do you say so positively that this was a bad man?’

Grant had gone very white but he answered without hesitation. ‘I have first-hand knowledge,’ he said. ‘He was a blackmailer. He blackmailed me. Alleyn knows this and so does Sophy. And if me, why not others?’

‘Why not?’ Van der Veghel said. ‘Why not, indeed!’ He hit himself on the chest and Sophy wondered why the gesture was not ridiculous. ‘I too,’ he said. ‘I who speak to you. I too.’ He waited for a moment. ‘It has been a great relief to me to say this,’ he said. ‘A great relief. I shall not regret it, I think.’

‘Well,’ Grant said, ‘it’s lucky we are provided with alibis. I suppose a lot of people would say we have spoken like fools.’

‘It is appropriate sometimes to be a fool. The belief of former times that there is God’s wisdom in the utterances of fools was founded in truth,’ the Baron proclaimed. ‘No. I do not regret.’

A silence fell between them and into it there was insinuated the sound of a distant crowd—shrilling of whistles. A police-car shot down the street with its siren blasting.

‘And now, my dear Baron,’ said Grant, ‘having to some extent bared our respective bosoms, perhaps we had better, with Sophy’s permission, consider our joint situation.’

‘With the greatest pleasure,’ said the Baron politely.

Alleyn found a change in the atmosphere of Il Questore Valdarno’s splendid office and in the attitude of Valdarno himself. It was not that he was exactly less cordial but rather that he was more formally so. He was very formal indeed and overpoweringly polite. He was also worried and preoccupied and was constantly interrupted by telephone calls. Apparently the demonstrations were hotting up in Navona.

Valdarno made it perfectly clear that the discovery of Mailer’s body altered the whole complexion of the case: that while he had no intention of excluding Alleyn from the investigation and hoped he would find some interest in the proceedings, they would be absolutely in the hands of the Roman Questura, which, he added, with an unconvincing air of voicing an afterthought, was under the direct control of the Minister of the Interior. Valdarno was very urbane. Alleyn had his own line of urbanity and retired behind it, and between them, he thought, they got exactly nowhere.

Valdarno thanked Alleyn with ceremony for having gone down the well and for being so kind as to photograph the body
in situ.
He contrived to suggest that this proceeding had, on the whole, been unnecessary if infinitely obliging.

The travellers, he said, were summoned to appear at 10.30. Conversation languished but revived with the arrival of Bergarmi who had the results of the post-mortems. Violetta had been hit on the back of the head and manually strangled. Mailer had probably been knocked out before being strangled and dropped down the well, though the bruise on his jaw might have been caused by a blow against the rails or the wall on his way down. The fragment of material Alleyn had found on the inner side of the top rail matched the black alpaca of his jacket and there was a corresponding tear in the sleeve.

At this point Valdarmo, with stately punctilio, said to Bergarmi that they must acknowledge at once that Signor Alleyn had advanced the theory of Mailer’s possible disappearance down the well and that he himself had accepted it. They both bowed, huffily, to Alleyn.

‘It is of the first importance,’ Valdarno continued, ‘to establish whether the sound which was heard by these persons when they were in the Mithraeum was in fact the sound made by the lid of the sarcophagus falling upon its edge to the floor where, it is conjectured, it remained, propped against the casket while the body of the woman was disposed of. Your opinion, Signore, is that it was so?’

‘Yes,’ Alleyn said. ‘You will remember that when we removed the lid it made a considerable noise. Two minutes or more before that, we heard a confused sound that might have been that of a woman’s voice. It was greatly distorted by echo and stopped abruptly.’

‘Screaming?’

‘No.’

‘One would expect the woman Violetta to scream.’

‘Perhaps not, do you think, if she was there unlawfully? When she abused Mailer on the earlier occasion she didn’t scream: she whispered. I got the impression of one of those harridan-voices that have worn out and can no longer scream.’

Valdarno surveyed Bergarmi. ‘You realize what all this implies, no doubt?’

‘Certainly, Signor Questore.’

‘Well?’

‘That if this was the woman Violetta and if the sound was the sound of the sarcophagus lid and if the person Mailer killed the woman Violetta and was himself killed soon afterwards—’ here Bergarmi took a breath ‘—then, Signor Questore, the field of suspects is confined to such persons as were unaccompanied after the party left the Mithraeum. These were the Major Sweet, the Baronessa Braceley, the nephew Dorne.’

‘Very well.’

‘And that in fact the field of suspects remains the same,’ Bergarmi said, fighting his way out, ‘whether the woman Violetta was killed by the person Mailer or by the killer of the person Mailer.’

Valdarno turned to Alleyn and spread his hands.

‘Ecco!’
he said. ‘You agree?’

‘A masterly survey,’ Alleyn said. ‘There is—if I may?—just one question I would like to ask.’

‘Ah?’

‘Do we know where Giovanni Vecchi was?’

‘Vecchi?’

‘Yes,’ Alleyn said apologetically. ‘He was by the cars when we came out of the basilica but he might have been inside while we were in the nether regions. He wouldn’t attract notice, would he? I mean he’s a regular courier and must often hang about the premises while his customers are below. Part of the scenery, as it were.’

Valdarno gazed in his melancholy way at nothing in particular. ‘What,’ he asked Bergarmi, ‘has the man Vecchi said?’

‘Signor Questore—nothing.’

‘Still nothing?’

‘He is obstinate.’

‘Has he been informed of Mailer’s death?’

‘Last night, Signor Questore.’

‘His reaction?’

Bergarmi’s shoulders rose to his ears, his eyebrows to the roots of his hair and his pupils into his head.

‘Again nothing. A little pale, perhaps. I believe him to be nervous.’

‘He must be examined as to his movements at the time of the crimes. The priests must be questioned.’

‘Of course, Signor Questore,’ said Bergarmi, who had not looked at Alleyn.

‘Send for him.’

‘Certainly, Signor Questore. At once.’

Valdarno waved a hand at his telephone and Bergarmi hurried to it.

An Agente came in and saluted.

‘The tourists, Signor Questore,’ he said.

‘Very well. All of them?’

‘Not yet, Signor Questore. The English
nobildonna
and her nephew. The English writer. The Signorina. The Olandese and his wife.’

‘Admit them,’ said Valdarno, with all the grandeur of a Shakespearean monarch.

And in they came: that now familiar and so oddly assorted company.

Alleyn stood up and so did Valdarno, who bowed with the utmost formality. He said, merely, ‘Ladies and Gentlemen,’ and motioned them to their seats.

Lady Braceley, who was dressed, with an over-developed sense of occasion, in black, ignored this invitation. She advanced upon Valdarno and held out her hand at the kissing level. He took it and kissed his thumb.

‘Baronessa,’
he said.

‘Too shattering,’ she lamented. ‘I can’t believe it. That’s all. I simply can
not
believe it.’

‘Unfortunately it is true. Please! Be seated.’

The Agente hastened to push a chair into the back of her knees. She sat abruptly, gazed at Valdarno and shook her head slowly from side to side. The others regarded her with dismay. The Van der Veghels exchanged brief, incredulous glances. Kenneth made a discontented noise.

Bergarmi finished his orders on the telephone and seated himself at a little distance from the administrative desk.

‘We shall not wait for the assembly to complete itself,’ said Valdarno. He explained, loftily, that under the normal and correct form of procedure the interview would be in charge of his Vice-Questore but that as this would necessitate an interpreter he proposed to conduct it himself.

Alleyn thought that little time was saved by this departure as Il Questore continually interrupted the proceedings with translations into Italian from which Bergarmi took notes.

The ground that had been so laboriously traversed before was traversed again and nothing new came out except a rising impatience and anxiety on the part of the subjects. When Kenneth tried to raise an objection he was reminded, icily, that with the discovery of Mailer’s body they were all much more deeply involved. Both Kenneth and his aunt looked terrified and said nothing.

Il Questore ploughed majestically on. He had arrived at the point of the departure from the Mithraeum when Grant, who had become increasingly and obviously restive, suddenly interrupted him.

‘Look here,’ he said, ‘I’m very sorry but I simply cannot see the point of all this reiteration. Surely by now it’s abundantly clear that whether the noise we heard was or was not this bloody lid, it would
have been quite impossible for the Baron, the Baroness, Alleyn, Miss Jason or me to have killed this man. I imagine that you don’t entertain the idea of a conspiracy and if you don’t, you have irrefutable proof that none of us was ever, throughout the whole trip, alone.’

‘This may be so, Signor Grant. Nevertheless, statements must be taken—

‘All right, my dear man, all right. And they have been taken. And what are we left with, for pity’s sake?’

He looked at Alleyn, who raised an eyebrow at him and very slightly shook his head.

‘We’re left,’ Grant said, raising his voice, ‘as far as the touring party is concerned with a field of three. Lady Braceley in the atrium. I’m sorry, Lady Braceley, but there you were and I’m sure nobody supposes you left it. Dorne—’

‘No!’ Kenneth whispered. ‘No! Don’t you dare. Don’t dare!’

‘—Dorne on his way up—and alone.’

‘—and who else—who else? Go on.
Who else?’

‘—and Major Sweet, who seems to be taking an unconscionable time getting to this meeting—’

There,’ Kenneth chattered. There! You see? What I always said. I said—’

‘And heaven knows what intruder from outside,’ Grant ended. ‘As far as I can see, you’ve no absolute proof that some complete outsider didn’t lie in wait down there for Mailer, kill him and make a getaway. That’s all. I’ve spoken out of order and I don’t regret it.’

Valdarno had begun, ‘Mr Grant, I must insist—’ when his telephone rang. He gestured angrily at Bergarmi, who lifted the receiver. A spate of Italian broke out at the other end. Bergarmi ejaculated and answered so rapidly that Alleyn could only just make out what he said. He picked up something like ‘—insufferable incompetence. At once. All of you. You hear me! All!’ He clapped the receiver down and turned to Valdarno.