When in Rome

4 Absence of Mr. Mailer

“Not since he slouched off to find you,” Major Sweet shouted, glaring at Kenneth. “Down below, there.”

“Find me,” Kenneth said indifferently. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I haven’t seen him.”

Alleyn said: “He went back to find you when you returned to photograph the Apollo.”

“He must have changed his mind then. Last I saw of him was — you know — it was — you know, it was just before I went back to Apollo.”

Kenneth’s voice dragged strangely. He gave an aimless little giggle, closed his eyes and reopened them sluggishly. By the light of day, Alleyn saw that the pupils had contracted. “Yes, that’s right,” Kenneth drawled, “I remember. It was then.”

“And he didn’t follow you and Lady Braceley, Major Sweet?”

“I imagined that to be perfectly obvious, sir. He did not.”

“And he didn’t join you, Lady Braceley, in the atrium?”

“If that’s the rather dismal little garden where the gallant Major dumped me,” she said, “the answer is no. Mr. Mailer didn’t join me there or anywhere else. I don’t know why,” she added, widening her terrible eyes at Alleyn, “but that sounds vaguely improper, don’t you think?”

Major Sweet, red in the face, said unconvincingly that he had understood Lady Braceley would prefer to be alone in the atrium.

“That,” she said, “would have rather depended on what was offering as an alternative.”

“I must say—” he began in a fluster but Alleyn interrupted him.

“Would you stay where you are, all of you,” Alleyn said. And to Grant: “You’re in charge, aren’t you? Be a good chap and see they stay put, will you?”

He was gone — back into the church.

“By God, that’s pretty cool, I must say,” fumed the Major. “Ordering people about, damn it, like some blasted policeman. Who the devil does he think he is!”

“I fancy,” Grant said, “we’d better do as he suggests.”

“Why!”

“Because,” Grant said with a half-smile at Sophy, “he seems to have what Kent recognized in Lear.”

“What the hell’s that?”

“Authority.”

“How right you are,” said Sophy.

“I think he’s gorgeous,” Lady Braceley agreed, “too compulsive and masterful.”

A long and uneasy silence followed this appraisal.

“But what’s he doing?” Kenneth suddenly asked. “Where’s he gone?”

“I’m blasted well going to find out,” the Major announced.

As he was about to carry out this threat, Alleyn was seen, returning quickly through the basilica.

Before Major Sweet could launch, as he clearly intended to do, a frontal attack, Alleyn said:

“Do forgive me, all of you. I’m afraid I was insufferably bossy but I thought it as well to go back and ask at the shop if Mr. Mailer had come through.”

“All right, all right,” said the Major. “Had he?”

“They say not.”

“They might not have noticed him,” Grant offered.

“It’s possible, of course, but they know him by sight and say they were waiting for him to go out. They check the numbers of tickets for the lower regions in order to guard against shutting someone in.”

“What’s he doing, skulking down there?” the Major demanded. “I call it a damn’ poor show. Leaving us high and dry.” He attacked Grant. “Look here, Grant, you’re on the strength here, aren’t you? Part of the organization, whatever it is.”

“Absolutely not. I’ve nothing to do with it. Or him,” Grant added under his breath.

“My dear fellow, your name appears in their literature.”

“In a purely honorary capacity.”

“I suppose,” Kenneth said, “it’s publicity for you, isn’t it?”

“I’m not in need—” Grant began and then turned white. “Isn’t all this beside the point?” he asked Alleyn.

“I’d have thought so. The people in charge have gone down to find him. There’s a complete system of fluorescent lighting kept for maintenance, excavation and emergencies. If he’s there they’ll find him.”

“He may have been taken ill or something,” Sophy hazarded.

“That is so, that is so,” cried the Van der Veghels like some rudimentary chorus. They often spoke in unison. “He is of a sickly appearance,” the Baroness added. “And sweats a great deal,” said her husband, clinching the proposition.

The two drivers now crossed the road. Giovanni, the one who spoke English and acted as an assistant guide, invited the ladies and gentlemen to take their seats in the cars. Alleyn asked if they had seen Mr. Mailer.- The drivers put their heads on one side and raised their hands and shoulders. No.

“Perhaps,” Lady Braceley said in an exhausted voice, “he’s fallen down those horrid-awful stairs. Poorest Mr. Mailer. Do you know, I think I will sit in the car. I’m no good at standing about on my gilded pins.”

She swivelled one of her collective stares between Grant, Alleyn and the Baron and got into the car, finding a moment to smile into the face of Giovanni as he opened the door. Established, she leant out of the window. “The offer of a cigarette,” she said, “would be met with in the spirit in which it was made.”

But only Kenneth, it seemed, could oblige and did so, leaning his face down to his aunt’s as he offered his lighter. They spoke together, scarcely moving their lips, and for a moment or two looked alike.

Grant muttered to Alleyn: “This is a bloody rum turn-up for the books, isn’t it?”

“Rum enough, yes.”

Sophy said: “Of course, they’ll find him, won’t they? I mean they must.”

“You were together, weren’t you, after the rest of us left?”

“Yes,” they said.

“And returned together?”

“Of course,” Grant said. “You saw us. Why?”

“You were the last out by some moments. You didn’t hear anything? Mailer’s wearing rather heavy shoes. They made quite a noise, I noticed, on the iron steps.”

No, they said. They hadn’t heard a thing.

“I think I’ll go back, Grant. Care to come?”

“Back? You mean — down below again?”

“If necessary.”

“I’ll come,” Grant said, “as far as the office — the shop. I’m not madly keen to traipse round the nether regions after Mailer. If he’s there the staff’ll find him.”

“All right. But don’t you think something ought to be done about this lot?”

“Look here,” Grant said angrily, “I’ve already said I accept no responsibility for this turn-out. Or for anyone in it—” His voice wavered and he glanced at Sophy. “Except Miss Jason, who’s on her own.”

“I’m all right,” Sophy said airily and to Alleyn: “What should we do? Can you suggest anything?”

“Suppose you all carry on with your picnic on the Palatine Hill? The drivers will take you there. The one that speaks English — Giovanni — seems to be a sort of second-in-command. I’m sure he’ll take over. No doubt they’ll unpack hampers and lay on the charm: they’re wonderful at that. I’ll unearth Mailer and if he’s all right we’ll follow you up. It’ll be a lovely evening on the Palatine Hill.”

“What do you think?” Sophy asked Grant.

“It’s as good an idea as any other.” He turned to Alleyn. “Sorry to be bloody-minded,” he said. “Shall we go back in there, then?”

“On second thoughts I won’t bother you. If you wouldn’t mind fixing things with Giovanni — I suggest that even if I don’t reappear with Mailer in hand, you carry on with the programme. The alfresco tea, then back to your hotels and the cars will pick you all up again at nine o’clock. You’re at the Gallico, aren’t you? You might be very kind and just make a note of where the others are staying. There I go, bossing again. Never mind.”

He gave Sophy a little bow, and as Major Sweet bore down upon them neatly sidestepped him and returned to the basilica.

“I’ll be damned,” said Barnaby Grant.

“I daresay,” Sophy said. “But all the same you’ll do it. It’s like what you said.”

“What did I say, smarty-pants?”

“He’s got authority.”

When Alleyn got back to the vestibule he found the shop still in process of closure. An iron lattice gate with a formidable padlock shut off the entrance to the lower regions. San Tommaso in Pallaria like its sister Basilica, San Clemente, is in the care of Irish Dominicans. The monk in charge — Father Denys, it transpired — spoke with a superb brogue. Like so many Irishmen in exile, he had the air of slightly putting it on, as if he played his own part in some pseudo-Hibernian comedy. He greeted Alleyn like an old acquaintance.

“Ah, it’s yourself again,” he said. “And I have no news for you. This fellow Mailer’s not below. We’ve had the full power of the lighting on and it’s enough to dazzle the eyes out of your head. I’m after looking beneath with these two young chaps—” He indicated his assistants. “We made a great hunt of it, every nook and cranny. He’s not there, at all, no doubt of it.”

“How very odd,” Alleyn said. “He’s in charge of our party, you know. What can have happened to him?”

“Well now, it’s strange occurrence and no mistake. I can only suggest he must have slipped through here at a great pace when we were all occupied and never noticed ’um. Though that’s not an easy thing to credit, for as I’ve mentioned we keep a tally ever since a Scandinavian lady twisted a fetlock and got herself locked in five years ago and she screeching all night to no avail and discovered clean demented, poor soul, in the morning. And another thing. Your party was the only one beneath for the one or two odd visitors had come out before you arrived. So he would have been on his own and the more noticeable for it.”

“I don’t want to make a nuisance of myself, Father, and I don’t for a moment suggest your search wasn’t thorough, but would you mind if I—”

“I would not but I can’t permit it. It’s the rule of the place, d’ye see. No visitors beneath under any pretext after closure.”

“Yes, I see. Then I wonder — is there a telephone I could use?”

“There is and welcome. In here. You can go, now,” he said over his shoulder to his assistants and repeated it in Italian.

He opened a door into a store-cupboard, pointed to a telephone and switched on a light.

There wasn’t much room or air when the door was shut. Alleyn backed gingerly into an open box of holy trinkets, eased himself into a crouch supported by the edge of a shelf, examined his memory and dialed the resulting number.

Il Questore Valdarno had not left his office. He listened to Alleyn’s story with an animation that was tangible but with few interruptions. When Alleyn had finished Valdarno said in English: “He has run.”

“Run?”

“Flown. He recognized you and decamped.”

“They seem pretty sure, here, that he couldn’t have got past them.”

“Ah, ah, ah,” said the Questore contemptuously, “who are they? a monk and two pale shop boys. Against this expert! Pah! He has run away at the double-up behind the showcases.”

“Speaking of postcards, there was a savage elderly postcard lady in the entrance who made a scene with Mailer.”

“A scene? How?”

“Yelling abuse at him. It was not in the sort of Italian we learnt in my diplomatic days but the general drift was invective and fury.”

Alleyn could almost hear the Questore’s shrug.

“He had done something to annoy her, perhaps,” he suggested in his melancholy voice.

“She spat at him.”

“Ah,” sighed the Questore. “He had irritated her.”

“No doubt,” Alleyn faintly agreed. “She’s called Violetta,” he added.

“Why do you concern yourself with this woman, my dear colleague?”

“Well, if I understood her at all, she threatened to kill him.”

“Evidently a short-tempered woman. Some of these street vendors are in fact badly behaved persons.”

“I thought he was greatly disturbed by the encounter. He made light of it but he turned very white.”

“Oh.” There was a brief silence. “She sells postcards outside San Tommaso?”

“Yes. One of our party thought she saw her shadow on the wall of a passage down in the Mithraeum.”

“They are not permitted to enter.”

“So I gathered.”

“I will have enquiries made. I will also have the airports, omnibus and railway stations watched. I feel there is a strong probability Mailer has recognized you and will attempt an escape.”

“I am deeply obliged to you, Signor Questore.”

“Please!”

“But I confess the chances of his recognizing me — we have never met — do seem a bit thin.”

“Some contact of his, an English contact, may have seen you and informed him. It is most possible.”

“Yes,” Alleyn said, “it’s possible of course.”

“We shall see. In the meantime, my dear superintendent, may I have a little speech with this Dominican?”

“I’ll call him.”

“And we keep in close touch, isn’t it?”

“Of course.”

“With my compliments, then—” said Il Questore Valdarno sadly.

Alleyn returned to the shop and delivered his message.

“Il Questore Valdarno, is it?” said Father Denys. “You didn’t let on this was a pollis affair but it doesn’t surprise me at all. Wait, now, and I’ll talk to ’um.”

He did so in voluble Italian and returned looking perturbed. “It’s a queer business,” he said, “and I don’t say I fancy the turn it’s taking. He wants to send in some of his fellows to search below and is going to talk to my superior about it. I told ’um we’d overlooked every inch of the place but that doesn’t satisfy the man. He says will I tell you you’re welcome to join in. Eight sharp in the morning.”

“Not tonight?”

“Ah, why would it be tonight and himself if he’s below, which he’s not, locked up like a fish in a tin.” Father Denys looked pretty sharply at Alleyn. “You’re not the cut of a policeman, yourself,” he said. “None of my business, of course.”

“Do I look like a harmless visitor? I hope I do. Tell me, do you know anything about the woman called Violetta who sells postcards here?”

Father Denys clapped his hand to his forehead. “Violetta, is it!” he ejaculated. “A terrible pest, that one, God forgive me, for she’s touched in her wits, poor creature. Sure, this other business put her clean out of my mind. Come into the atrium till I tell you. We’ll lock up this place.”

He did lock up the vestibule and pretty securely, too, fetching a great key out of a pocket in his habit. Nobody else had that one or a key to the iron grille, he said, except Brother Dominic who opened up in the morning.

The basilica was now deserted and the time six o’clock. All the bells in Rome rang the Ave Maria and Father Denys took time off to observe it. He then led the way into the atrium and settled beside Alleyn on a stone bench, warm with the westering sun. He was a cosy man and enjoyed a gossip.

Violetta, he said, had sold postcards in the entrance to San Tommaso for some months. She was a Sicilian of dubious origins, was not as old as Alleyn may have supposed, and when she first appeared carried upon her the remnants of ferocious good looks. Her story, which she never ceased to pour out, was that her husband had deserted her and in doing so had betrayed her to the police.

“For doing what?” Alleyn asked.

“Ah, she never lets on exactly. Something to do with passing prohibited articles. Likely enough stolen, though she makes out she’d no notion what mischief was in it till the pollis came down upon her and destroyed her. She’s very wild in her conversation and the saints themselves wouldn’t know which was fact and which was fantasy.”

She had behaved herself reasonably well, however, reserving her outbursts for the Dominicans and sticking to her legal postcard vending territory until about two days ago, when he had found her squatting in a corner of the porch letting out the most frightful animadversions in a hissing torrent and shaking her fists. She literally foamed at the mouth and was quite incoherent, but after Father Denys had rebuked her for blasphemy and, Alleyn gathered, sorted her out in a pretty big way, she became slightly more comprehensible. Her rage, it emerged, had been directed at a person who had visited the sacristy to discuss arrangements for sightseeing trips by a newly formed enterprise called—

“Don’t tell me,” Alleyn said as Father Denys paused for dramatic effect. “Let me guess. Called ‘Il Cicerone.’ ”

“Right for you.”

“In the person of Mr. Sebastian Mailer?”

“Right again,” cried Father Denys, clapping his hands together. “And the poor creature’s husband or if he’s not he ought to be God help him.”

It was past five o’clock on that very warm afternoon when two cars arrived at the Palatine Hill. The air smelt of sunny earth, grass, myrtle and resin. In lengthening shadows poppies made little scarlet exclamations and legions of acanthus marched down the contours of the hill. The skies had deepened behind broken columns and arches: the bones of classic Rome.

Giovanni, the driver, had responded with gusto to the role of guide. He said that he had no notion of what had befallen Mr. Mailer but suggested that a sudden onslaught of the affliction known to tourists as Roman Tummy might have overtaken him. By its nature, Giovanni delicately reminded them, it neccessitated an immediate withdrawal. He then led his party across the ruins of Domus Augustana and down a little flight of steps towards a grove of pines. Back again and here and there he led them, giving names to ruins and with sweeps of his arms laying Rome at their feet.

Sophy looked and dreamed and ached with pleasure and did not listen very closely to Giovanni. She was suddenly tired and vaguely happy. Barnaby Grant walked beside her in companionable silence, the Van der Veghels thundered about with cries of appreciation, a thousand enquiries and much photography. Lady Braceley, arm-in-arm with Kenneth and the reluctant Major, trailed and hobbled in the rear and could be heard faintly lamenting the rough going.

“I’ve a low saturation point for sights,” Sophy remarked. “Or rather for information about sights. I stop listening.”

“Well,” Grant said kindly, “at least you admit it.”

“I’d have you know it doesn’t mean that I’m insensible to all this.”

“All right. I didn’t suppose you were.”

“On the contrary, I’m knocked dumb. Or nearly dumb,” Sophy amended. “You may say: visually speechless.”

He looked at her with amusement. “I daresay you’re hungry,” he offered.

“And I daresay you’re right,” she agreed in surprise. “Thirsty, anyway.”

“Look, we’re settling for our tea.”

They had come to a terrain called the Belvedere and looked beyond the tops of a pine grove to the monstrous splendour of the Colosseum. Spires, roofs, gardens, an obelisk, insubstantial in the late afternoon haze, swam into the distance and dissolved against the Alban Hills.

Giovanni and his assistant, having found a place by a fallen column, spread rugs and cloths and opened hampers.

It was, as Sophy said, an exquisite snack: delicate little sandwiches of smoked salmon and caviar, Roman and Neopolitan pastries, fruit and a chilled white wine. There was also, surprisingly, whisky and soda. And tea for anybody who preferred it as Sophy herself did, iced with lemon, and very fragrant.

“What a rum little lot we are,” she thought indulgently. A light breath of air brought a stronger whiff of myrtle and pine needles with it and momentarily lifted her hair from her forehead. She found that Grant looked fixedly at her and she said hurriedly: “We none of us seem to be worrying about poor Mr. Mailer, do we?”

He made a sharp movement of his hands. “No doubt our authoritative friend has coped,” he said.

Major Sweet, having eaten very heartily and made smart work of two whiskies-and-soda, appeared to be in a mollified condition. He said: “Most extraordinary chap. My opinion,” but lazily and without rancour. “ ’Strordinary good tea,” he added.

“I think,” Lady Braceley said, “we’re all getting along very nicely as we are — with Giovanni,” and gave Giovanni a sufficiently lingering glance. “Although,” she said, “it’s a pity that other gorgeous brute’s deserted us.”

“What exactly,” Kenneth asked restlessly, “is the programme for tonight? Cars at nine — for where? Where do we dine?”

“At the Giaconda, sir,” Giovanni said.

“Good God!” the Major ejaculated. As well he might. The Giaconda is the most exclusive as it is undoubtedly the most expensive restaurant in Rome.

“Really?” Lady Braceley said. “Then I must take up my quarrel with Marco. We had a row about tables last week. He turfed out a Mexican attaché or somebody thought to be rather grand, and gave his table to me. There was almost an international incident. I told him I hated that sort of thing. Actually it was too naughty of him.”

“This time,” Kenneth said, “darling Auntie, you’ll find yourself with a set dinner at a back table near the service door. If I know anything about escorted tours.”

“Excuse me, but no, sir,” Giovanni said. “This is not such an arrangement. The service is in all ways as for the best. You will order, if you please, what you wish.”

“And pay for it?” Kenneth asked rudely.

“On the contrary, sir, no. I will attend to the settlement.” He turned to Grant. “When you are ready to leave, sir,” he said, “will you please ask your waiter to send for me? I will make the tipping also but of course if any of you is inclined—” he made an eloquent gesture. “But it will not be necessary,” he said.

“Well!” the Major ejaculated. “I must say this is — ah — it seems — ah—” he boggled slightly, “quite in order,” he said. “What?”

The Van der Veghels eagerly concurred. “At first,” the Baron confided to Sophy, “my wife and I thought perhaps the charge was too much — a ridiculous amount — but Mr. Mailer impressed us so greatly and then,” he gaily bowed to Grant, “there was the unique opportunity to meet the creator of Simon. We were captured! And now, see, how nicely it develops, isn’t it, providing all is well with the excellent Mailer.”

“Ah, pooh, ah pooh, ah pooh!” cried the Baroness rather as if she invoked some omnipotent Chinese.

“He will be very well, he will be up and bobbing. There will be some easy explaining and all laughing and jolly. We should not allow our pleasures to be dim by this. Not at all.”

“I must tell you,” the Baron waggishly said to Grant, “that I have a professional as well as an aesthetic pleasure in meeting Mr. Barnaby Grant. I am in the publishing trade, Mr. Grant. Ah-ha, ah-ha!”

“Ah-ha, ah-ha!” confirmed the Baroness.

“Really?” Grant said, politely whipping up interest. “Are you indeed!”

“The firm of Adriaan and Welker. I am the editor for our foreign productions.”

Sophy had given a little exclamation and Grant turned to her. “This is your field,” he said, and to the Van der Veghels: “Miss Jason is with my own publishers in London.”

There were more ejaculations and much talk of coincidence while Sophy turned over in her mind what she knew of the firm of Adriaan and Welker and afterwards, as they drove away from the Palatine, confided to Grant.

“We’ve done a few of their juvenile and religious books in translation. They’re predominantly a religious publishing firm, the biggest, I fancy, in Europe. The angle is Calvinistic and, as far as children’s books go, rather nauseatingly pi. The head of the firm, Welker, is said to be the fanatical kingpin of some extreme sect in Holland. As you may imagine they do not publish much contemporary fiction.”

“Not, one would venture, a congenial milieu for the romping Van der Veghels.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Sophy said vaguely. “I daresay they manage to adjust.”

“What a world-weary child!” Grant observed and shook his head at her. Sophy turned pink and fell silent.,

They were in the second car with Major Sweet, who was asleep. The other four had seated themselves, smartly, with Giovanni. Lady Braceley, offering the plea that she suffered from car sickness, had placed herself in the front seat.

The horrific evening welter of Roman traffic surged, screeched and hooted through the streets. Drivers screamed at each other, removed both hands from the wheel to fold them together in sarcastic prayer at the enormities perpetrated by other drivers. Pedestrians, launching themselves into the maelstrom, made grand opera gestures against oncoming traffic. At pavement tables, Romans read their evening papers, made love, argued vociferously, or, over folded arms, stared with portentous detachment at nothing in particular. Major Sweet lolled to and fro with his mouth open and occasionally snorted. Once he woke and said that what was wanted here was a London bobby.

“Out there,” said Grant, “he wouldn’t last three minutes.”

“Balls,” said the Major Sweet and fell asleep again. He woke when they stopped suddenly and added, “I’m most frightfully sorry, can’t think what’s come over me,” and slept again immediately.

Grant found to his surprise that Sophy, too, was at the Pensione Gallico. He himself had only moved in the day before and had not yet eaten there. He asked her if he might give her a drink at Tre Scalini in Navona. “They could pick us both up there,” he said.

“Nice idea. Thank you.”

“At half past eight then?”

He managed to make this clear to the driver.

The Major was decanted at his hotel and Sophy and Grant at the Gallico.

Grant’s room was like an oven. He bathed, lay down for an hour in a state of nature and extreme perturbation and then dressed. When he was ready he sat on his bed with his head in his hands. “If only,” he thought, “this could be the definitive moment. If only it all could stop: now,” and the inevitable reference floated up—“the be-all and the end-all here. But here, upon this bank and shoal of time—”

He thought of Sophy Jason, sitting on the Palatine Hill, her hair lifted from her forehead by the evening breeze and a look of pleased bewilderment in her face. A remote sort of girl, a restful girl who didn’t say anything silly, he thought, and then wondered if, after all, “restful” was quite the word for her. He leant over his windowsill and looked at the façades and roofs and distant cupolas.

The clocks struck eight. A horse-carriage rattled through the cobbled street below, followed by a succession of motor bicycles and cars. In an upstairs room across the way an excited babble of voices erupted and somewhere deep inside the house a remorseless, untrained tenor burst into song. Further along the second floor of the Pensione Gallico a window was thrown up and out looked Sophy, dressed in white.

He watched her rest her arms on the window ledge, dangle her hands and sniff the evening air. How strange it was to look at someone who was unaware of being observed. She was turned away from him and craned towards the end of their street where spray from a fountain in Navona could just be seen catching the light in a feathered arc. He watched her with a sense of guilt and pleasure. After a moment or two he said: “Good evening.”

She was still for a moment and then slowly turned to him. “How long have you been there?” she asked.

“No time at all. You’re ready, I see. Shall we go?”

“If you like; yes, shall we?”

It was cooler out-of-doors. As they entered Navona the splashing of water by its very sound freshened the evening air. The lovely piazza sparkled, lights danced in cascades and fans of water glared from headlamps and glowed in Tre Scalini caffè.

“There’s a table,” Grant said. “Let’s nab it, quickly.”

It was near the edge of the pavement. Their immediate foreground was occupied by parked cars. Their view of Navona was minimal. To Sophy this was of small matter. It suited her better to be here, hemmed in, slightly jostled, bemused, possibly bamboozled in some kind of tourist racket, than to be responding to Rome with scholarly discretion and knowledgeable good taste and a reserve which in any case she did not command.

“This is magic,” she said, beaming at Grant. “That’s all. It’s magic. I could drink it.”

“So you shall,” he said, “in the only possible way,” and ordered champagne cocktails.

At first they did not have a great deal to say to each other but were not troubled by this circumstance. Grant let fall one or two remarks about Navona. “It was a circus in classical times. Imagine all these strolling youths stripped and running their courses by torchlight or throwing the discus in the heat of the day.” And after one of their silences: “Would you like to know that the people in the middle fountain are personifications of the Four Great Rivers? Bernini designed it and probably himself carved the horse, which is a portrait.” And later: “The huge church was built over the site of a brothel. Poor St. Agnes had her clothes taken off there, and in a burst of spontaneous modesty instantly grew quantities of luxurious and concealing hair.”

“She must have been the patron saint of Lady Godiva.”

“And of the librettists of Hair.”

“That’s right.” Sophy drank a little more champagne cocktail. “I suppose we really ought to be asking each other whatever could have happened to Mr. Mailer,” she said.

Grant was motionless except that his left hand, resting on the table, contracted about the stem of his glass.

“Oughtn’t we?” Sophy said vaguely.

“I feel no obligation to do so.”

“Nor I really. In fact, I think it’s very much nicer without him. If you don’t mind my saying so?”

“No,” Grant said heavily. “No, I don’t mind. Here comes the car.”

When Alleyn got back to his fine hotel at ten past six he found a message asking him to telephone Il Questore Valdarno. He did so and was told with a casual air that scarcely concealed the Questore’s sense of professional gratification that his people had already traced the woman called Violetta to her lair, which was in a slum. When he said they had traced her, the Questore amended, he did not mean precisely in person since she was not at home when his man called. He had, however, made rewarding enquiries among her neighbours, who knew all about her war with Sebastian Mailer and said, variously, that she was his cast-off mistress, wife or shady business associate, that he had betrayed her in a big way and that she never ceased to inveigh against him. Violetta was not popular among the ladies in her street, being quarrelsome, vindictive, and unpleasant to children. She was also held to poach on certain begging preserves in the district. It emerged that Mr. Mailer in his salad days had abandoned Violetta in Sicily, “Where, my dear superintendent,” said the Questore, “she may well have been one of his contacts in the smuggling of heroin. Palermo is a port of transit as we well know.”

“Yes, indeed.”

“All are agreed that she is a little mad.”

“Ah.”

It appeared, the Questore continued, that for an unspecified time, years perhaps, Mailer had eluded Violetta, but getting wind of his being first in Naples and then in Rome she had chased him, finally establishing herself on the postcard beat outside San Tommaso.

“I have spoken with this Irish Dominican,” said the Questore. “It is nonsense for him to say that no one could escape their vigilance going or coming from the places below. It is ridiculous. They sell their cards, they sell their rosaries, they add up their cashes, they visit their stores, they sleep, they talk, they say their prayers. A man of Mailer’s talents would have no difficulty.”

“What about a woman of Violetta’s talents?”

“Ah-ah. You speak of the shadow on the wall? While I am sure that she could elude the vigilance of these gentlemen, I doubt if she did so. And if she did, my dear colleague, where was she when they made their search? I have no doubt the search was thorough: of that they are perfectly capable and the lighting is most adequate. They know the terrain. They have been excavating there for a century. No, no, I am persuaded that Mailer recognized you and, being aware of your most formidable and brilliant record in this field, took alarm and fled.”

“Um,” Alleyn said, “I’m not at all sure I struck terror in that undelicious breast. Mailer seemed to me to be, in a subfusc sort of way, cocksure. Not to say gloating!”

“Scusi? Subfusc?”

“Dim. It doesn’t matter. Do you mean you think that at some moment when we were groping about in the underworld, recognition came upon him like a thunderclap and he fled. There and then?”

“We shall see, we shall see. I spread my net. The airports, the wharves, the stazioni.”

Alleyn hurriedly congratulated him on all this expedition.

“But nevertheless,” Valdarno said, “we make our examination of these premises. Tomorrow morning. It is, of course, not my practice personally to supervise such matters. Normally, if a case is considered important enough, one of my subordinates reports to one of my immediate staff.”

“I assure you. Signor Questore—”

“But in this case, where so much may be involved, where there are international slantings and, above all, where so distinguished a colleague does us the honour—Ecco!”

Alleyn made appropriate noises and wondered how great a bore Valdarno really thought him.

“So tomorrow,” the Questore summed up, “I leave my desk and I take the fields. With my subordinates. And you accompany us, is it not?”

“Thank you. I shall be glad to come.”

They whipped through the routine of valedictory compliments and hung up their receivers.

Alleyn bathed and dressed and wrote a letter to his wife.

“—so you see it’s taken an odd turning. I’m supposed to be nudging up to Mailer with the object of finding out just how vital a cog he is in the heroin game and whether through him I can get a line on his bosses. My original ploy was to be the oblique approach, the hint, the veiled offer, the striking up of an alliance and finally the dumping upon him of a tidy load of incriminating evidence and so catching him red-handed. And now, damn him, he disappears and I’m left with a collection of people some of whom may or may not be his fall guys. Consider, if you’re not fast asleep by this time, my darling — consider the situation.

“To launch this Il Cicerone business Mailer must have had access to very considerable funds. You can’t do this sort of thing on H.P. The cars, the drivers, the food and, above all, the quite phenomenal arrangement that seems to have been made with the Giaconda Restaurant, who as a general rule would look upon package diners on however exalted a scale as the Caprice would look upon coach-loads from the Potteries. It appears that we dine à la carte at the best tables and drink distilled gold if they’ve got it in their cellars. And Mailer pays all. Well, I know we’ve paid him through the neck but that’s another story.

“And then — this lot. This lot who’ve stumped up fifty quid each for the pleasure of hearing Barnaby Grant, with evident reluctance, read aloud, very badly, from his own best seller. Next attraction: a walk round an ancient monument that’s open to the public followed by tea or whatever they had on the Palatine Hill, and dinner at the Giaconda which could set them back anything up to a 20 pounds a nob if they went under their own steam and then on to a further entertainment coyly unspecified in the brochure. Probably a very expensive strip and champagne show with possibly a pot party to follow. Or worse.

“All right. Take Lady B. She’s rolling in money. One of her husbands was an Italian millionaire and she may have alimony paid out to her in Rome. She could obviously afford this show. She’s rich, raffish, pretty bloody awful and all for la dolce vita. No doubt she’s paying for the egregious Kenneth, who looks to me very much as if he’s hooked and may therefore turn out to be a useful lead into Mailer’s activities. I gather from something young Sophy Jason, who is an enchanter, let fall that she just suddenly decided to blue fifty quid out of the Italian funds available to her through business connections.

“The Van der Veghels are a couple of grotesques and interest me enormously as I think they would you. Grotesques? No, not the right word. We both go for the Etruscan thing, don’t we? Remember? Remember that male head, bearded and crowned with leaves, in the Museo Barraco? Remember the smiling mouth, shaped, now I come to think of it, exactly like a bird in flight with the thin moustache repeating and exaggerating the curve of the lips? And the wide open eyes? What an amusing face, we thought, but is it perhaps atrociously cruel? I assure you, a portrait of the Baron Van der Veghel. But against this remember the tender and fulfilled couple of that sarcophagus in the Villa Giulia: the absolute in satisfied love? Recall the protective hand of the man. The extraordinary marital likeness, the suggestion of heaviness in the shoulders, the sense of completion. Portrait, I promise you, of the Van der Veghels. They may be Dutch by birth but blow me down flat if they’re not Etruscan by descent. Or nature. Or something.

“The overall effect of the Van der V’s is, however, farcical. There’s always an easy laugh to be won from broken English or, come to that, fractured French. Remember that de Maupassant story about an English girl who became increasingly boring as her command of French improved? The Baroness’s lapses are always, as I’m sure beastly Kenneth would say, good for a giggle.

“I suppose their presence in the set-up is the least surprising. They’re avid and merciless sightseers and photographers and their fund of enthusiasm is inexhaustible. Whether one can say the same of their fund of cash is anyone’s guess.

“Major Sweet. Now, why has Major Sweet coughed up fifty quid for this sort of jaunt? On the face of it he’s a caricature, a museum piece: the sort of Indian Army officer who, thirty years ago, was fair game for an easy laugh shouting Qui-hi at a native servant and saying, By George, what? I find it unconvincing. He’s bad-tempered, I should imagine pretty hard on the bottle, and amorous. As the young Sophy found to her discomfort in the Mithraic underworld. He’s violently, aggressively and confusingly anti-religion. Religion of any kind. He lumps them all together, turns purple in the face, and deriving his impenetrable argument from the sacraments, pagan or Christian, says the whole lot are based on cannibalism. Why should he pay through the neck to explore two levels of Christianity and a Mithraic basement? Just to have a good jeer?

“Finally — Barnaby Grant. To my notion, the prime puzzle of the party. Without more ado I would say, quite seriously, that I can think of no earthly reason why he should subject himself to what is clearly the most exquisite torture, unless Mailer put the screws on him in another sense. Blackmail. It might well be one of Mailer’s subsidiary interests and can tie in very comfortably with the racket.

“And as a bonne bouche we have the antic Violetta. If you could have seen Violetta with her ‘Cartoline? Postacarda?’ and harpy’s face, foaming away under a black headpiece! Il Questore Valdarno can shrug her off with remarks about short-tempered postcard ladies but never trust me again if that one isn’t possessed of a fury. As for Sophy Jason saying it was Violetta’s shadow she saw on the wall by the stone sarcophagus, I think it’s odds-on she’s right. I saw it, too. It was distorted but there was the tray, the shawl and the hitched up shoulder. Clear as mud or my name’s Van der Veghel.

“And I think Valdarno’s right when he says Mailer could have nipped under the noses of Father Denys and his boys. There’s plenty of cover.

“But without any justification for saying so, I don’t believe he did.

“On the same premise Violetta could have nipped in and I do believe she did. And out again?

“That too is another story.

“It’s now a quarter past eight of a very warm evening. I am leaving my five-star room for the five-star cocktail bar where I rather hope to hob-nob with the Lady B. and her nephew. From there we shall be driven to La Giaconda where we shall perhaps eat quails stuffed with pâté and washed down with molten gold. At Mailer’s expense? Well — allegedly.

“More of the continuing story of Anyone’s Guess tomorrow. Bless you, my dear love, my—”