When in Rome

9 Death in the Morning

He made his getaway during the riots.

After Alleyn left him on the previous afternoon he had begun to keep watch from behind his window-blind on a man in the street below. The man had changed three times, the second to last being a short, swarthy fellow wearing a green hat. Sweet could not be sure if these watchers were police agents or spies employed by Giovanni. The latter would be infinitely more dangerous.

He had eaten in his room, giving it out that he was unwell, and had managed to keep on the safe side of the whisky bottle although, as evening came on, he had taken more than most men could stand.

Once when he was not looking into the street, he made a tiny fire of paper in an ashtray. Two larger papers he tore into fragments and put down the lavatory across the landing. But he had never carried much really incriminating stuff about with him and these were soon disposed of.

When it grew dark he did not turn on his light but still watched. The man in the green hat was at no pains to make himself inconspicuous. Often, he looked directly at the window so that, although Sweet knew this was not possible, he felt as if they stared into each other’s eyes. When the man’s relief came — he arrived on a motor-bicycle — they pointed out the window to each other.

The lavatory was at the back of the landing. He had stood on the seat and looked through the window louvres. Yes, sure enough there was another man, watching the rear of the hotel.

When he got down he saw he had left marks of shoe polish on the seat. He had always been particular about his shoes, liking the arches of their soles to be attended to. He wiped the marks.

If they were Agenti down there, it meant that Alleyn had told the police and they had decided he should be kept under observation. And if, as Alleyn had suggested, Giovanni was under arrest? He might still have managed to lay this on. And if he had done that, then things looked black indeed.

At eleven o’clock he was still watching and being watched. At five past eleven the telephone on the landing rang and went on ringing. He heard the man in the next room groan and go out. He was prepared for the bang on his own door and the slam of the neighbouring one. He answered the telephone. It was somebody speaking basic English for the Vice-Questore Bergarmi. The travellers were required to report next morning at the office where they had formerly been interviewed. At 10:30.

He waited for two or three seconds while he ran the tip of his tongue over his trim little moustache. His hand slithered on the receiver.

“Jolly good,” he said. “Can do.”

“I beg your pardon, Signore? You said?”

“I’ll be there.”

“Thank you.”

“Wait a bit. Hold on.”

“Signore?”

“Have you found Mailer?”

A pause. A consultation in Italian.

“Hullo? Are you there?”

“Yes, Signore, Mailer has been found.”

“Oh.”

“His body has been found. He has been murdered.”

He should have said something. He shouldn’t have hung up the receiver without a word. Too late now.

He lay on his bed and tried to think. The hours went by and sometimes he dozed but always came to with a jerk and returned to look down into the street. The brief quietude of the small hours came over Rome and then, with the first light, the gradual return of traffic. Presently there was movement within the hotel.

At eight o’clock he heard a vacuum cleaner whining in the passage. He got up, shaved, packed a small overnight bag and then sat looking at nothing and unable to think coherently.

At 9:30 the biggest student demonstrations of the year began. The point of assembly was Navona but as they increased in violence the crowds overflowed and erupted into the narrow street below. A gang of youths ran down it manhandling parked cars into a herringbone pattern. He could see bald heads among them, urging them on. He began to make frantic preparations. Still watching the street he struggled into his overcoat. There was a scarf in the pocket. He wound it over his mouth. Then he found a tweed hat he hadn’t worn since he arrived. He checked that he had his passport and money in his pockets and took up the overnight bag. There was now a great deal of noise in the street. A group of students milled round the watcher’s motor-bicycle. They had opened the tank and then set fire to the petrol. Six or seven of them swarmed about the man. A fight broke out.

He heard windows opening and voices in the other rooms exclaiming.

The landing and stairs were deserted.

When he reached the street the bicycle was in flames. The crowd manhandled the owner. He struggled, caught sight of Sweet and yelled.

Sweet dodged and ran. He was hustled and thrust aside and finally caught up in a general stampede down the street and into the main thoroughfare. Here he took to his heels and ran, disregarded, until he was winded.

There was a traffic block at an intersection. He saw an empty taxi in midstream, got to it, wrenched open the door and fell in. The driver shouted angrily at him. He pulled out his wallet and showed a 10,000-lire note. “Stazione!” he said. “Stazione!”

The traffic moved and the cars behind set up a great hooting. The driver gestured, seemed to refuse but finally moved with the stream, still shouting incomprehensibly.

Then Sweet heard the siren.

The police car was some way behind them but the traffic between made way for it. Sweet and the driver saw each other in the rear-vision glass. Sweet pounded with both fists on the driver’s back. “On!” he screamed. “Go on!”

The taxi screeched to a halt as the man crammed on his brakes. The police car drew alongside and Sweet hurled himself through the opposite door.

For a moment he showed up in the sea of traffic: a well-dressed man in an English overcoat and tweed hat. Then he went down under an oncoming van.

“He is not expected,” Bergami said, “to recover consciousness.”

Since Sweet’s escape had been reported, less than half an hour had elapsed. During the interval, while Valdarno and his Vice-Questore were still at blast-off potential, Giovanni had been brought in. He was unshaven, pale and dishevelled and had looked round the group of tourists as if he saw them for the first time. When his glance fell on Lady Braceley he half closed his eyes, smirked and bowed. She had not looked at him.

He was questioned by Bergami with occasional interjections from Valdarno. This time there was no translation and only Alleyn knew what was said. The travellers leant forward in their chairs and strained and frowned as if they were physically rather than intellectually deaf. It was difficult, indeed, to think of any good reason why their presence was supposed to be desirable. “Unless,” Alleyn thought, “we are to become bilingual again and some sort of confrontation is envisaged.”

The official manner with Giovanni was formidable. Bergami shot out the questions. Valdarno folded his arms, scowled and occasionally threw in a demand if not a threat. Giovanni alternately sulked and expostulated. A good deal of what went on, Alleyn reflected, would be meat and drink to defending counsel in Great Britain. The examination was twice interrupted by reports of further violence in the streets and the Questore flung orders into the telephone with the precision of a souped-up computer. Alleyn could not escape the feeling that they all three greatly relished running through this virtuoso performance before their baffled and uncomprehending audience.

After a prolonged skirmish leading nowhere in particular Giovanni suddenly flung out his arms, made a complicated acknowledgement of his own stainless integrity and intimated that he was prepared to come clean.

This turned out to be the overstatement of the day. What he was prepared to do, and did, was accuse Major Sweet of murdering Sebastian Mailer. He said that while he himself was innocent of all knowledge of Mailer’s side activities and had merely acted in good faith as a top-class courier for Il Cicerone it had come to his knowledge that there was some kind of hanky-panky going on between Mailer and Sweet.

“Something told me it was so,” said Giovanni. “I have an instinct in such matters.”

“For ‘instinct,’ ” Il Questore said, “read ‘experience.’ ” Bergami laughed rather in the manner of deferential junior counsel.

“And what steps,” Valdarno asked nastily, “did this instinct prompt you to take?” He glanced at Alleyn.

Giovanni said he had observed, when Violetta attacked Mailer in the portico, that Sweet watched with a certain eagerness. He became even more interested in Sweet. When the party went below he strolled into the basilica and said a prayer to San Tommaso, for whom he had a devotion. Major Sweet, he said in parenthesis, was an atheist and made several abominable remarks about the holy saints.

“His remarks are unimportant. Continue.”

Giovanni was still in the basilica when Major Sweet returned with Lady Braceley, he said, and slid his eyes in her direction. Sweet’s behaviour was peculiar and far from polite. He planted her in the atrium and hastened to return below. Giovanni — filled, if he was to be believed, with nameless misgiving — had gone to the top well-head in the basilica and looked down — to his astonishment upon Major Sweet who (against the holy fathers’ regulations) had mounted the rails of the well-head directly underneath and seemed to strain over the top and peer into the Mithraeic insula below. There was something extraordinarily furtive about the way he finally climbed down and darted out of sight.

“This is nothing,” said Valdarno, flicking it away with his fingers.

Ah, said Giovanni, but wait. Wait, as he had, for the return of the party. First to arrive was Signor Dorne, who went immediately to his aunt in the atrium. And then, alone, the Major. White. Trembling. Agitated. A terrible expression in the eyes. He had passed Giovanni without seeing him and staggered into the porch. Giovanni had gone to him, had asked him if he was unwell. He had cursed Giovanni and asked him what the hell he meant and told him to get out. Giovanni had gone to his car and from there had seen the Major fortify himself from a pocket flask. His recovery was rapid. When the others appeared he was in full command of himself.

“At the time, Signor Questore, I was at a loss to understand — but now, now I understand. Signor Questore. I,” said Giovanni slapping his chest and shaking his finger and making his point with the greatest virtuosity, “had looked upon the face of a murderer.”

And it was at this point that the telephone had rung. Bergarmi answered it, received the news of Sweet’s catastrophe and informed his superior.

“He is not expected,” he had said, “to recover consciousness.”

“And while we’re on the subject of expression,” Alleyn thought, “if ever I’ve seen incredulous delight flash up in anybody’s face it’s now. And the face is Giovanni’s.”

Five minutes later came the information that Hamilton Sweet had died without speaking.

Valdarno unbent so far as to convey this news to the travellers. And again relief, decently restrained, was in the air. Barnaby Grant probably voiced the majority’s reaction when he said: “For God’s sake don’t let’s go through the motions. He was a disastrous specimen and now it seems he was a murderer. It’s beastly but it’s over. Better for them — all three of them — by a long chalk and for everybody else that it should be so.”

Alleyn saw Sophy look steadily at Grant for a moment and then frowningly at her own clenched hands. The Baron made sounds of agreement but his wife, disconcertingly, broke into protest.

“Ah, no, ah no!” cried the Baroness. “We cannot so coldly dismiss! Here is tragedy! Here is Nemesis! Behind this denouement what horror is not lurkink?”

She appealed from one to another of the hearers and finally to her husband. Her eyes filled with tears. “No, Gerrit, no! It is dreadful to think,” she said. “The Violetta and this Mailer and the Sweet: between them was such hatred! Such evil! So close to us! I am sick to think of it.”

“Never mind, my darling. It is gone. They are gone.”

He comforted her in their own language, gently putting one of her large hands between his own two enormous ones as if to warm it. He looked round at the others with that winged smile inviting them to indulge a childish distress. They responded awkwardly.

Valdarno said that they would all perceive, no doubt, that the affair now wore an entirely different complexion. It would be improper, until legal pronouncements had been made and the case formally wound up, for him to make a categorical pronouncement but he felt, nevertheless, that as representative of the Minister for the Interior he might assure them they would not be unduly troubled by further proceedings. They would be asked to sign a statement as to their unfortunate experience. Possibly they would be required to give formal evidence and should hold themselves in readiness to do so. And now, perhaps, they would be kind enough to wait in the next room while Vice-Questore Bergarmi prepared a statement. He greatly regretted—

He continued in this strain for a few more rounded periods and then they all stood up and responded as best they could to a ceremonial leave-taking.

Alleyn remained behind.

“If it would save trouble, Signor Questore,” he said, “I’m at your service — you’ll want an English transcription of this statement for instance. And perhaps — as I was there, you know—?”

“You are very kind,” Valdarno began and broke off to deal with yet another report of violence. Bergarmi had gone to some inner office and for a moment or two Alleyn and Giovanni were confronted. The Questore’s back was turned to them as he apostrophized the telephone.

“You too,” Alleyn said, “will no doubt sign a statement, will you not?”

“But certainly, Signore. On my conscience and before the saints. It is my duty.”

“Will it include an account of your talk with Major Sweet yesterday afternoon, at the Eremo?”

Giovanni, snake-like, retracted his head. Almost, Alleyn thought, you could hear him hiss. He half closed his eyes and whispered disgustingly.

For the hundredth time that morning Valdarno shouted, “E molto seccante! Presto!” He clapped down the receiver, spread his hands for Alleyn’s benefit and caught sight of Giovanni. “You! Vecchi! You are required to make a written statement.”

“Of course, Signor Questore,” Giovanni said. The intercom buzzed. Valdarno took another call.

An officer came in and removed Giovanni, who darted a look at Il Questore’s back and as he passed Alleyn rapidly mimed a spit into his face. The officer barked at him and pushed him out. “Violetta,” thought Alleyn, “would not have stopped short at pantomine.”

“These students!” cried Valdarno, leaving the telephone. “What do they suppose they achieve? Now, they burn up Vespa motorcycles. Why? Possibly they are other students’ Vespas. Again, why? You were speaking of the signed statement. I would be greatly obliged if you would combine with Bergarmi.” The buzzer sounded. “Basta!” shouted Il Questore and answered it.

Alleyn joined Bergarmi, who received him with a strange blend of huffishness and relief. He had written out a résumé in Italian, based on his own notes of the now desperately familiar experiences of the travellers in the depths of San Tommaso. Alleyn found this accurate and put it into English. “Would you like a check of the translation by a third person, Signor Vice-Questore?” he asked. Bergarmi made deprecatory noises. “After all,” he said, “it is no longer of the first importance, all this. Giovanni Vecchi’s evidence and the fact that this,” he slapped the statement, “does nothing to contradict it and, above all, Sweet’s attempt to escape, are sufficient, for our purpose. The case is virtually closed.”

Alleyn pushed his translation across the table. “There is just one thing I’d like to suggest.”

“Yes? And that is?”

“The Van der Veghels took photographs in the Mithraeum and the insula. Flashlights. Two by the Baroness and one by the Baron. Kenneth Dorne also took one. After that, when we were returning, the Baroness photographed the sarcophagus. I thought you might like to produce these photographs.”

“Ah. Thank you. The sarcophagus, yes. Yes. That might be interesting.”

“If it shows the piece of shawl?”

“Quite so. It would limit the time. To some extent that is true. It would show that the woman Violetta was murdered before you all left the Mithraeum. By Mailer, of course. There can be no doubt, by Mailer. It would not help us — not that we need this evidence — to fix a precise time for Sweet’s attack upon Mailer. We have, my dear Signor Super,” said Bergarmi with evident pleasure in discovering this new mode of address, “motive. From your own investigation of Sweet.” Alleyn made a wry face. “Intent. As evidenced in suspicious behaviour noted by Vecchi. Opportunity. Apart from Signor Dorne and his Aunt Baroness (this latter being a ludicrous notion) he is the only one with opportunity.”

“With the greatest respect — the only one?”

“Signore?”

“Well,” Alleyn said apologetically, “it’s just that I wonder if Giovanni was speaking all of the truth all of the time.”

After a considerable pause Bergarmi said: “I find no occasion to doubt it.” And after an even longer pause. “He had no motive, no cause to attack Mailer.”

“He had every reason, though, to attack Sweet. But don’t give it another thought.”

Alleyn’s translation was typed, with copies, by a brisk bilingual clerk. During this period Bergarmi was rather ostentatiously busy. When the transcription was ready he and Alleyn went to the lesser office, where for the second and last time the travellers were assembled. At Bergarmi’s request Alleyn handed out the copies.

“I find this a correct summary of our joint statements,” Alleyn said, “and am prepared to sign it. What about everyone else?”

Lady Braceley, who was doing her face, said with an unexpected flight of fancy: “I’d sign my soul to the devil if he’d get me out of here.” She turned her raffish and disastrous gaze upon Alleyn. “You’re being too wonderful,” she predictably informed him.

He said: “Lady Braceley, I wonder — simply out of curiosity, you know — whether you noticed anything at all odd in Sweet’s manner when he took you up to the atrium. Did you?”

He thought she might seize the chance to tell them all how responsive she was to atmosphere and how she had sensed that something was wrong or possibly come out with some really damaging bit of information. All she said, however, was: “I just thought him a bloody rude, common little man.” And after a moment’s thought: “And I’ll eat my hat if he was ever in The Gunners.” She waited again for a moment and then said: “All the same, it’s quite something, isn’t it, to have been trotted about by a murderer, however uncivil? My dear, we’ll dine on it, Kenny and I. Won’t we, darling?”

Her nephew looked up at her and gave a sort of restless acknowledgement. “I just don’t go with all this carry-on,” he complained. “It’s not my scene.”

“I know, darling. Too confusing. Three dead people in as many days, you might say. Still it’s a wonderful relief to be in the clear oneself.” She contemplated Bergarmi, smiling at him with her head on one side. “He really doesn’t speak English, does he? He’s not making a nonsense of us?”

Bergarmi muttered to Alleyn: “What is she saying? Does she object to signing? Why is she smiling at me?”

“She doesn’t object. Perhaps she has taken a fancy to you, Signor Vice-Questore.”

“Mamma mia!”

Alleyn suggested that if they were all satisfied they would sign and Lady Braceley instantly did so, making no pretence of reading the statement. Kenneth followed her — mulishly. The Van der Veghels were extremely particular and examined each point with anxious care and frequent consultations. Barnaby Grant and Sophy Jason read the typescript with professional concentration. Then they all signed. Bergarmi told them, through Alleyn, that they were free to go. They would be notified if their presence at the inquest was required. He bowed, thanked them and departed with the papers.

The six travelers rose, collected themselves and prepared, with evident signs of relief, to go their ways.

Sophy and Barnaby Grant left together and the Van der Veghels followed them.

Lady Braceley, with her eye on Alleyn, showed signs of lingering.

Kenneth had lounged over to the door and stood there, watching Alleyn with his customary furtive, sidelong air. “So that would appear to be that,” he threw out.

“You remember,” Alleyn said, “you took a photograph of Mithras when we were all down there?”

“That’s right.”

“Have you had it developed?”

“No.”

“Is it in black-and-white or colour?”

“Black-and-white,” Kenneth mumbled. “It’s meant to be better for the architecture and statues bit.”

“Mine are being developed by the police expert, here. They’ll only take a couple of hours. Would you like me to get yours done at the same time?”

“The film’s not finished. Thank you very much, though.”

Lady Braceley said: “No, but do let Mr. Alleyn get it done, darling. You can’t have many left. You never stopped clicking all through that extraordinary picnic on the what-not hill. And you must admit it will have a kind of grisly interest. Not that I’ll be in the one Mr. Alleyn’s talking about, you know — the bowels of the earth. Do give it to him.”

“It’s still in my camera.”

“And your camera’s in the car. Whip down and get it.”

“Darling Auntie — it’ll wait. Need we fuss?”

“Yes,” she said pettishly, “we need. Go on, darling!” He slouched off.

“Don’t come all the way back,” Alleyn called after him. “I’ll collect it down there. I won’t be a moment.”

“Sweet of you,” Lady Braceley said, and kissed her hand. “We’ll wait.”

When they had gone Alleyn went out to the lift landing and found the Van der Veghels busily assembling the massive photographic gear without which they seemed unable to move. He reminded the Baroness of the photographs she had taken in the Mithraeic insula and offered to have the police develop the film.

“I think,” he said, “that the police would still be very glad to see the shot you took of the sarcophagus, Baroness. I told them I’d ask you for it.”

“You may have it. I do not want it. I cannot bear to think of it. Gerrit, my darlink, please give it to him. We wish for no souvenirs of that terrible day. Ach, no! No!”

“Now, now, now,” the Baron gently chided. “There is no need for such a fuss-pot. I have it here. One moment only and I produce it.”

But there was quite a lot to be done in the way of unbuckling and poking in their great rucksacks, and all to no avail.

Suddenly the Baroness gave a little scream and clapped her hand to her forehead.

“But I am mad!” she cried. “I forget next my own head.”

“How?”

“It was the young Dorne. Yesterday we arrange he takes it with his own development.”

“So,” said the Baron. “What a nonsense,” and began with perfect good humour to re-assemble the contents of his rucksack.

“He hasn’t done anything about it,” Alleyn said. “If I may I’ll collect your film with his.”

“Good, good,” agreed the Baron.

Alleyn said aside to him: “You’re sure you don’t want it?”

He shook his head, pursed his lips and frowned like a nanny.

“No, no, no,” he murmured. “You see how it is. My wife prefers — no. Although,” he added rather wistfully, “there are some pictures — our little group, for instance. But never mind.”

“I’ll let you know how it comes out,” Alleyn said.

They went down in the lift together. He wondered if, long after the case of Sebastian Mailer had faded out of most people’s memories, he and the Van der Veghels would meet somewhere. The baroness had cheered up. They were off on a coach trip to the water-gardens at the Villa d’Este. He walked with them to the main entrance. She went ahead with that singularly buoyant tread that made Alleyn think of the gait of some kind of huge and antique bird: a moa perhaps.

“My wife,” said the Baron fondly regarding her, “has the wise simplicity of the classic age. She is a most remarkable woman.” And dropping his voice he added to himself rather than to Alleyn, “And to my mind, very beautiful.”

“You are a fortunate man.”

“That, also, is my opinion.”

“Baron, will you have a drink with me? At about six o’clock? I will be able to show you your photographs. Since they would distress the Baroness I don’t ask you to bring her with you.”

“Thank you,” he said. “I shall be delighted. You are very considerate,” and shifting his rucksack on his massive shoulders, he called: “Mathilde, not so fast! Wait! I am coming.”

And he, also with springing gait, sped nimbly after his wife. They went down the street together, head and shoulders above the other pedestrians, elastically bobbing up and down and eagerly talking.

Kenneth Dorne sat at the wheel of a white sports car with his aunt beside him. It occurred to Alleyn that they might have been served up neat by an over-zealous casting department as type-material for yet another La Dolce Vita. Kenneth had one of the ridiculous “trendy” caps on his head, a raspberry-coloured affair with a little peak. He was very white and his forehead glistened.

“Here we are,” cried Lady Braceley, “and here’s the film. Such a fuss! Come and have drinks with us this evening. I suppose it’s frightful of one, isn’t it, but one can’t help a feeling of relief. I mean that poisonous Giovanni terrifying one. And all lies. Kenneth knows that I told you. So, don’t you think a little celebration? Or don’t you?”

Kenneth stared at Alleyn with a pretty ghastly half-grin. His lips moved. Alleyn leant forward. “What am I to do?” Kenneth mouthed.

Alleyn said aloud: “I’m afraid I’m booked for this evening.” And to Kenneth, “You don’t look well. I should see a doctor if I were you. May I have the film?”

He handed it over. The carton was damp.

“I think you’ve got the Baroness’s film too, haven’t you?”

“Oh God, have I? Yes, of course. Where the hell — here!”

He took it out of the glove-box and handed it over.

“Can we give you a lift?” Lady Braceley asked with the utmost concern. “Do let us give you a lift.”

“Thank you, no. I’ve a job to do here.”

The sports car shot dangerously into the traffic.

Alleyn went back into the building.

He sought out Bergarmi and got the name and working address of their photographic expert. Bergarmi rang the man up and arranged for the films to be developed immediately.

He offered to accompany Alleyn to the photographic laboratory and when they got there expanded on his own attitude.

“I have looked in,” Bergarmi said, “to see our own photographs. A matter of routine really. The case against Sweet is perfectly established by Giovanni Vecchi’s evidence alone. He now admits that he was aware of a liaison of some sort between Sweet and Mailer and will swear that he heard Mailer threaten Sweet with exposure.”

“I see,” Alleyn said. “Exposure of what? And to whom?”

“Giovanni believes, Signore, that Mailer was aware of Sweet’s criminal record in England and threatened to expose his identity to you, whom he had recognized.”

“Very neat flashes of hindsight from Giovanni,” said Alleyn drily. “I don’t believe a word of it. Do you?”

“Well, Signore, that is his guess! His evidence of fact I accept entirely. The important point is that Sweet was in danger, for whatever reason, and that the threat came from Mailer. Who, of course, had discovered that Sweet was set to spy upon him by Ziegfeldt. It is a familiar story, Signor Super, is it not? The cross and the double-cross. The simple solution so often the true one. The circumstance of Mailer being a ricattatore and of his extorting money from tourists has no real bearing on his murder, though Sweet may have hoped it would confuse the issue.” Bergarmi’s quick glance played over Alleyn. “You are in doubt, Signor Super, are you not?” he asked.

“Pay no attention to me,” Alleyn said. “I’m a foreigner, Signor Vice-Questore, and I should not try to fit Giovanni into an English criminal mould. You know your types and I do not.”

“Well, Signore,” said Bergarmi smiling all over his face, “you have the great modesty to say so.”

The photographic expert came in. “They are ready, Signor Vice-Questore.”

“Ecco!” said Bergarmi, clapping Alleyn on the shoulder. “The pictures. Shall we examine?”

They were still submerged in their fixative solution along benches in the developing room. The Questura’s photographs: Violetta in the sarcophagus with her tongue out. Violetta on the stretcher in the mortuary. Mailer’s jaw. Details. Alleyn’s photographs of Mailer, of a scrap of alpaca caught in a rail, of Mailer’s foot, sole uppermost, caught in the fangs of the grille, of boot polish on another rail. Of various papers found in Mailer’s apartment. Regulation shots that would fetch up in the police records.

And now, unexpectedly, views of Rome. Conventional shots of familiar subjects always with the same large, faintly smiling figure somewhere in the foreground or the middle-distance. The Baron looking waggish with his head on one side, throwing a penny into the Trevi Fountain. The Baron looking magisterial in the Forum, pontifical before the Vatican and martial underneath Marcus Aurelius. And finally a shot taken by a third person of the Van der Veghels’ heads in profile with rather an Egyptian flavour, hers behind his. They even had the same large ears with heavy lobes, he noticed.

And then — nothing. A faint remnant of the Baron at the head of the Spanish Steps heavily obscured by white fog. After that — nothing. Blankness.

“It is a pity,” said the photographic expert, “there has been a misfortune. Light has been admitted.”

“So I see,” Alleyn said.

“I think,” Bergami pointed out, “you mentioned, did you not, that there was difficulty with the Baronessa’s camera in the Mithraeum?”

“The flashlamp failed. Once. It worked the second time.”

“There is a fault, evidently, in the camera. Or in the removal of the film. Light,” the expert reiterated, “has been admitted.”

“So,” Bergarmi said, “we have no record of the sarcophagus. It is of secondary interest after all.”

“Yes,” Alleyn said. “It is. After all. And as for the group by the statue of Mithras—”

“Ah, Signore,” said the expert, “Here the news is better. We have the film marked Dorne. Here, Signore.”

Kenneth’s photographs were reasonably good. They at once disproved his story of using the last of his film before meeting Mailer at the Apollo and of replacing it on his way to the Mithraeum. Here in order were snapshots taken in Perugia. Two of these showed Kenneth himself, en travesti in a garden surrounded by very dubious-looking friends, one of whom had taken off his clothes and seemed to be posing as a statue.

“Molto sofisticato,” said Bergarmi.

Next came pictures of Kenneth’s aunt outside their hotel and of the travellers assembling near the Spanish Steps. Midway in the sequence was the picture of the god Mithras. Kenneth had stood far enough away from his subject to include in the foreground the Baroness, fussing with her camera, and beyond her the group. Alleyn and Sophy grinned on either side of the furiously embarrassed Grant and there was Sweet very clearly groping for Sophy’s waist. They had the startled and rigid look of persons in darkness transfixed by a flashlight. The details of the wall behind them, their own gigantic shadows and the plump god with his Phrygian cap, his smile and his blankly staring eyes, all stood out in the greatest clarity. Kenneth had taken no other photographs in San Tommaso. The rest of his film had been used up on the Palatine Hill.

Alleyn waited for the films and prints to dry. Bergarmi pleaded pressure of work and said he would leave him to it.

As he was about to go Alleyn said: “You know, Signor Vice-Questore, there is one item in this case that I find extremely intriguing.”

“Yes? And it is—?”

“This. Why on earth should Mailer, a flabby man, go to all the exertion and waste a great deal of time in stowing Violetta in the sarcophagus when he might so easily and quickly have tipped her down the well?”

Bergarmi gazed at him in silence for some moments.

“I have no answer,” he said. “There is, of course, an answer but I cannot at the moment produce it. Forgive me, I am late.”

When he had gone Alleyn muttered: “I can. Blow me down flat if I can’t.”

It was ten to three when he got back to his hotel.

He wrote up his report, arranged a meeting with Interpol and took counsel with himself.

His mission, such as it was, was accomplished. He had got most of the information he had been told to get. He had run the Mailer case down to its grass roots and had forced Sweet to give him the most useful list yet obtained of key figures in the biggest of the drug rackets.

And Mailer and Sweet were dead.

Professionally speaking their deaths were none of his business. They were strictly over to the Roman Questura, to Valdarno and Bergarmi and their boys, and very able they were being handled. And yet—

He was greatly troubled.

At half past five he laid out all the photographs on his bed. He took a paper from his file. The writing on it was in his own hand. He looked at it for a long time and then folded it and put it in his pocket.

At six o’clock Kenneth Dorne rang up and asked apparently in some agitation if he could come and collect his film.

“Not now. I’m engaged,” Alleyn said, “at least until seven.” He waited a moment and then said: “You may ring again at eight.”

“Have — have they turned out all right? The photos?”

“Yours are perfectly clear. Why?”

“Is something wrong with hers — the Baroness’s?”

“It’s fogged.”

“Well, that’s not my fault, is it? Look, I want to talk to you. Please.”

“At eight.”

“I see. Well I — yes — well, thank you. I’ll ring again at eight.”

“Do that.”

At half past six the office called to say that the Baron Van der Veghel had arrived. Alleyn asked them to send him up.

He opened his door and when he heard the lift whine went into the corridor. Out came a waiter ushering the Baron, who greeted Alleyn from afar and springingly advanced with outstretched hand.

“I hope you don’t mind my bringing you up here,” Alleyn said. “I thought we wanted a reasonable amount of privacy and the rooms down below are like a five-star Bedlam at this hour. Do come in. What will you drink? They make quite a pleasant cold brandy-punch. Or would you rather stick to the classics?”

The Baron chose brandy-punch and while it was coming enlarged upon their visit to the water-gardens at the Villa d’Este. “We have been there before, of course,” he said, “but with each visit the wonder grows. My wife said today that now she summons up, always at the same vista, a scarlet cardinal and his guests. She sees them through the mists of the fountains.”

“She has second-sight,” Alleyn said lightly. Seeing the Baron was puzzled, he explained.

“Ach — no. No, we do not believe such phenomena. No, it is her imagination which is so very vivid. She is most sensitive to her surroundings but she does not see ghosts, Mr. Alleyn.”

The drinks arrived. Alleyn attended to them and then said: “Would you like to look at your photographs? I’m afraid you will be disappointed.”

He had left all the prints except Kenneth’s on the bed.

When the Baron saw Violetta and Mailer, which he did at once, he said: “Oh, no! This is too horrible! Please!”

“I’m so sorry,” Alleyn said and swept them away. “Here are your wife’s photographs. The early ones, you see, are very good. It is when we come to San Tommaso that the trouble begins.”

“I cannot understand this,” the Baron said. He stopped, peered at them and took them up, one by one. “My wife’s camera is in good condition: it has never happened before. The film was correctly rolled off before it was removed. Where are the negatives?”

“Here they are.”

He held them in turn up to the light. “I am sorry,” he said. “And I confess I am puzzled. Forgive me but — the man who processed the film — you said he was a police photographer?”

“I honestly don’t think for a moment that he was careless.”

“My wife,” said the Baron, “will be relieved after all. She wanted no record of the visit to that place.”

“No.”

“But I am sorry. You wished for the photograph of the sarcophagus, I believe.”

“The police attach little importance to it. But there is, after all, a record of the group in the Mithraeum.”

He dropped Kenneth’s print on the bed.

The Baron stooped over it.

The room was quiet. The windows were shut and the great composite voice of Rome not obtrusive. A flight of swallows flashed past almost too rapidly for recognition.

“Yes,” said the Baron. He straightened up and looked at Alleyn. “It is a clear picture,” he said.

“Isn’t it?”

The Baron sat down with his back to the windows. He drank a little of his cold brandy-punch. “This is an excellent concoction,” he said. “I am enjoying it.”

“Good. I wonder if you would do me a favour.”

“A favour? But certainly, if it is possible.”

“I have a copy of a letter. It’s written in a language that I don’t know. I think it may be in Dutch. Will you look at it for me?”

“Of course.”

Alleyn gave it to him. “You will see,” he said, “that the original was written — typed, actually — on the letter paper of your publishing firm — of Adriaan and Welker. Will you read it?”

There was a long silence and then the Baron said: “You ask me here to drink with you. You show me — these things. Why do you behave in this way? Perhaps you have a microphone concealed in the room and a tape recorder as in some ridiculous crime film?”

“No. I am not acting for the police. My job here is finished. No doubt I should have taken this letter to them but they will find the original when they search Mailer’s rooms. I doubt if they will take very much interest in it but of course I have not read it and may be wrong. They know very well that he was a blackmailer. I have seen that your wife’s name appears in the letter. I am behaving reprehensively in this matter, I daresay, but I don’t think you have any reason to throw your brandy-punch in my face, Baron. It was offered in what may fairly be called good faith.”

The Baron moved slightly. The light from the window crossed his face and in a moment the white Apollo, the glancing Mercury, the faintly smiling Husband of the Villa Giulia seemed in turn to look through his mask. “I must believe you,” he said. “What else can I do?”

“If you like you can go away leaving me to deal with — for example — Kenneth Dorne and his photography.”

“Whatever I do,” said the Baron, “it is clear that I put myself in your hands. I have no choice, I think.”

He got up and walked about the room, still with some trace of elasticity in his tread. At last he said: “It seems to me there would be little point in my refusing to give you the content of this letter since you tell me, and I believe you, that the original is extant. You can get a translation easily enough. In effect it appears that someone — you will have seen the name — calling himself Silas J. Sebastian had written to my firm asking if they could give him any information about my wife. Apparently the writer had said he represented an American magazine and was organizing a series of articles on the incursions into the business world of persons of the old nobilities. From the point of view of their wives. The writer, it appears, went on to say that he had a personal interest in my wife as he believed they were distantly related. Evidently he asked for my wife’s maiden name. This letter is an answer to their enquiry.”

“Yes?”

“It says—” The Baron seemed to flinch from his intention. He shut his eyes for a moment and then examined the letter as if he saw it for the first time. Presently in an extraordinarily prim voice that seemed not to belong to him he said: “In accordance with my standing instructions it states that the Baroness Van der Veghel is a permanent invalid and lives in retirement.”

“When did you first encounter Sebastian Mailer?”

“Eighteen months ago. In Geneva.”

“And a few weeks later he wrote his letter. He didn’t trouble to find himself an entirely dissimilar pseudonym.”

“No doubt he felt sure of himself.”

“After all,” Alleyn said, “this letter might be a standard reply to choke off boring enquiries.”

“He did not think so. He pursued the matter,” said the Baron. “He extended his investigations.”

“To—?”

“I regret: I must decline to answer.”

“Very well. Let us accept that he found his material. Will you tell me this much? When you met him again, in Rome, the other day, had you any idea—?”

“None! My God, none! Not until—”

“Until?”

“A week before the — before San Tommaso.”

“And then the blackmailing process began?”

“Yes.”

“Were you prepared to pay?”

“Mr. Alleyn, I had no choice. I flew to Geneva and obtained the money in notes of small denomination.”

“You presented a brave front,” Alleyn said, “on that expedition. You and your wife. So much enthusiasm for the antiquities! Such joie de vivre!”

The Baron Van der Veghel looked steadily at Alleyn for some few moments and then he said: “You yourself have a distinguished and brilliant wife, I think? We have admired her work very greatly. She is a superb painter.”

Alleyn said nothing.

“You must know, then, Mr. Alleyn, that a preoccupation with the arts is not to be tampered with — my English is unable to explain me, I think — it is not to be cut off and turned on like taps. Beauty and, for us, antique beauty in especial — is absolute. No misfortune or anxiety can colour our feeling for it. When we see it we salute it and are greatly moved. The day before yesterday at San Tommaso I was furnished with the money demanded of me as a price of silence. I was prepared to hand it over. The decision had been taken, I have to confess that a lightness of spirit came over me and a kind of relief. The beauty of the Etruscan works in that underworld did much to enhance this feeling.”

“And also, it was advisable, wasn’t it, to keep up appearances?”

“That, too,” said the Baron steadily. “I admit. That too. But it was not difficult. There were the Etruscans to support me. I may tell you that I believe our family, which is of great antiquity, arose in classical times in the lands between the Tiber and the Arno.”

“Your wife told me so. Did you hand over the money?”

“No. There was no opportunity. As you know, he had gone.”

“A further and very understandable relief.”

“Of course.”

“You were not his only victim in that party, you know.”

“I am not surprised.”

Alleyn took his glass. “Let me give you a drink.”

“It will not increase my indiscretion,” said the Baron. “But thank you.”

When Alleyn had given it to him he said: “You may not believe me when I say that it would solace me if I could tell you what it was that he had discovered. I cannot. But on my honour I wish that I could. I wish it with all my heart, Mr. Alleyn.”

“Let us take it as read.”

Alleyn collected the Baroness’s photographs, prints and negatives. “You will take these, won’t you?” he said. “There is nothing in the earlier ones to distress your wife.” He gave them to him. The picture in profile of the Van der Veghels’ heads was on top.

“It’s a striking picture,” Alleyn said lightly. “Isn’t it?”

The Baron stared at it and then looked up at him.

“We think alike, too,” he said. “My wife and I. You may have noticed it.”

“Yes,” said Alleyn. “I noticed.”

“When such a bond occurs, and I think it occurs very seldom, it cannot be — I am lost for the English word.”

“Gainsaid?”

“Perhaps. It cannot be interrupted. You have it in your literature. In your Wutherink Heights you have it.”

It was not easy, Alleyn thought, to clothe the Van der Veghels in the mantles of Heathcliff and Cathy — but all the same it was not altogether a ludicrous association.

The Baron finished his drink and with a well-managed air of briskness lightly slapped his knees and stood up.

“And now I go,” he said. “It is unlikely we meet again, unless at whatever formalities the authorities may require of us. I believe that I am your debtor, Mr. Alleyn, to — to an indefinable extent. You would not wish me to say more, I think.”

“Not another syllable.”

“As I supposed. May we—?”

For the only time during their brief acquaintance Alleyn saw the Baron Van Der Veghel really uncertain of himself. He looked at his enormous hand and then doubtfully at Alleyn.

“But of course,” Alleyn said and his own hand was briefly engulfed. “I am truly grateful,” said the Baron.

Alleyn watched him go bouncily as ever to the lift.

“By and large,” he thought to himself, “that was the nicest murderer I have met.”