When in Rome

6 Re-appearance of a Postcard Vendor

At seven o’clock Alleyn obeyed his own orders and woke. He ordered breakfast, bathed, shaved and was ready for the day when the hotel office rang to say a car had called for him.

It was Il Questore Valdarno’s car and in it, exuding his peculiar brand of melancholy and affability, was the Questore himself. He welcomed Alleyn and in doing so contrived to establish the awesome condescension of his being there at all. It was a long time, Alleyn understood, since the Questore had risen at this hour, a long time since his association with fieldwork had taken any form other than the august consideration of material pre-filtered by his subordinates.

Alleyn expressed, not for the first time, his deep sense of obligation.

The air was fresh, Rome sparkled, the streets swam with shoals of early workers. Above them and against a quattrocento blue, giant personages in marble looked downwards, their arms frozen in benediction. Under the streets, behind façades, in still dominant monuments the aspirations of senators, Caesars and Emperors held their ground. And nowhere more strangely, Alleyn thought, than in San Tommaso in Pallaria.

When they arrived they were met by three of the Questore’s “people” — Agenti di Questura, which Alleyn took to be the equivalent of constables — and by Father Denys and the sacristan, Brother Dominic, a dour man who drew the key to the underworld from his habit as if it were a symbol of mortality.

Valdarno was rather high and remote with the clergy, but complaisant too, and not ungracious.

Father Denys greeted Alleyn as an old friend.

“It’s yourself again, is it, and you not letting on what was your true function. Sure, I thought to myself there was something about you that was more than met the eye and here you are, they tell me, a great man on the C.I.D.”

“I hope it was an innocent — reservation, Father.”

“Ah, well,” said Father Denys with a tolerance, Alleyn felt, reserved for heretics, “we’ll let you off this time. Now what is all this? A wild goose chase you and the Questore are on over the head of this queer fellow. Be sure he’s given us the slip and away on his own devices.”

“You’re persuaded he did give you the slip, Father?”

“What else could it be? He’s not beneath.” He turned to Valdarno. “If you’re ready, Signor Questore, we may proceed.”

Cleaners were busy in the upper basilica which, in common with most Latin churches, had the warm air of always being in business and ready for all comers. A Mass had been said and a small congregation of old women and early workers were on their way out.

Three women and one man knelt in prayer before separate shrines. The sacristy was open. The celebrant had concluded his after-Mass observances and was about to leave. They moved on into the vestibule and shop. Brother Dominic opened the great iron grill and he, Valdarno, Alleyn and three attendant policemen began their search of the underworld. Father Denys remained above, being, as he pointed out, entirely satisfied of the non-presence of Mr. Mailer in the basements and having a job to do in the shop.

As they descended Brother Dominic turned on the fluorescent lighting used by the monks in their maintenance and excavation. It completely changed the atmosphere and character of the underworld, which had become a museum with no shadows and its exhibits remorselessly displayed. Nothing could reduce the liveliness, beauty and strangeness of the Etruscan terracottas but they no longer disconcerted.

Little heaps of rubble, tools and rope, tidily disposed, stood at entrances to passages that were still being explored. The Agenti poked into all these and re-emerged dusting their knees and shoulders. Brother Dominic looked on with his hands in the sleeves and an expression of disfavour on his face. The Questore lost no opportunity of telling Alleyn in a stagey aside that this, undoubtedly, was merely a routine search and they might expect nothing from it.

Alleyn asked him if any results had come through from Mailer’s flat and learnt that somebody had telephoned immediately after he himself had done so, that the man seemed to be in some agitation, refused to give his name and rang again several times, enabling the number to be traced. It was that of La Giaconda. Marco, without a doubt

“And the woman, Violetta?”

Certainly. Naturally the matter of the woman Violetta had been followed up. Curiously, it must be admitted, she had not returned to her lodging and so far had not been found.

“It is possible,” Valdarno said, “that they are together.”

“You think so?”

“One cannot tell. She may be implicated. He may have informed her of your identity and frightened her into taking flight. This is mere speculation, my dear Superintendent, and I know your views. I have read your book. In English, I have read it.”

“Well, I’ll break my rule and indulge in a bit of speculation on my own account. It occurs to me there is another possible explanation for their double disappearance.”

“Indeed? Please tell me of it.”

Alleyn did so. Valdarno stared straight in front of him and nursed his splendid moustache. When Alleyn had finished, he turned an incredulous gaze upon him and then decided to be arch. He shook his finger at Alleyn. “Ah-ah-ah, you pull my leg,” he said.

“I don’t, you know.”

“No? Well,” said the Questore, thinking it over, “we shall see. Yet I fear,” he added, giving Alleyn a comradely clap on the shoulder, “that we shall see — nothing in particular.”

They moved laboriously onwards and down. To the church on the second level. To the first smiling Apollo and the tall woman with the broken child, to the white Apollo with a crown of leaves, to the Mercury behind whom Baron Van der Veghel had so playfully hidden.

The men flashed torchlights into the recesses and niches. Alleyn looked into them a little more closely. Behind the white Apollo he found a screwed-up piece of glossy blue paper which he retrieved and wrapped in his handkerchief, sharply observed by Valdarno, to whom he scrupulously confided his reasons for doing so. Behind the Mercury he found a sealing tab from an undeveloped film, left there no doubt by Baron Van der Veghel when he played his little joke and frightened Lady Braceley into fits.

On to the railed hole in the floor of the second level cloister, where Baroness Van der Veghel had peered into the underworld and where Sophy Jason and Alleyn, also looking down, had seen the shadow of a woman they took to be Violetta.

Alleyn reminded Valdarno of this and invited him to stand where Sophy had stood while he himself looked over the Questore’s shoulder. There was no lighting down below and they stared into a void.

“You see, Signor Questore, we are looking straight down into the well-head on the bottom level. And there to the right is the end of the sarcophagus with the carved lid. You can, I think, just make it out. I wonder — could one of your men go down there and switch on the normal lighting. Or perhaps—” He turned with diffidence to the Dominican. “I wonder,” he said, “if you would mind going down, Brother Dominic? Would you? You are familiar with the switches and we are not. If we could just have the same lighting as there was yesterday? And if you would be very kind and move between the source of light and the well, we’d be most grateful.”

Brother Dominic waited for so long, staring in front of him, that Alleyn began to wonder if he had taken some vow of silence. However, he suddenly said, “I will,” in a loud voice.

“That’s very kind of you. And — I hope I’m not asking for something that is not permitted — would you have your hood over your head?”

“What for would I be doin’ that?” asked Brother Dominic in a sudden access of communication.

“It’s just to lend a touch of verisimilitude,” Alleyn began and to his astonishment Brother Dominic instantly replied: “ ‘To an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative’?”

“Bless you, Brother Dominic — You’ll do it?”

“I will,” Brother Dominic repeated and stalked off.

“These holy fathers!” Valdarno tolerantly observed. “The one talks to distraction and the other has half-a-tongue. What is it you wish to demonstrate?”

“Only, in some sort, how the shadow appeared to us.”

“Ah, the shadow. You insist on the shadow?”

“Humour me.”

“My dear colleague, why else am I here? I am all attention.”

So they leant over the railing, stared into the depths and became aware of the now familiar burble of subterranean water.

“Almost,” Alleyn said, “you can persuade yourself that you see a glint of it in the well — almost but not quite. Yesterday I really thought I did.”

“Some trick of the light.”

“I suppose so. And pat on his cue, there goes Brother Dominic.”

A concealed lamp had been switched on. The lid of the sarcophagus, the wall behind it and the railings round the well all sprang into existence. Their view from immediately above was one of bizarre shadows and ambiguous shapes, of exaggerated perspectives and detail. It might have been an illustration from some Victorian thriller: a story of Mystery and Imagination.

As if to underline this suggestion of the macabre a new shadow moved into the picture: that of a hooded form. It fell across the sarcophagus, mounted the wall, grew gigantic and vanished.

“Distorted,” Alleyn said, “grotesque, even, but quite sharply defined, wasn’t it? Unmistakably a monk? One could even see that the hands were concealed in the sleeves. Brother Dominic obliging in fact. The shadow Miss Jason and I saw yesterday was equally well defined. One saw that the left shoulder was markedly higher than the right, that the figure was a woman’s and even that she carried some tray-like object slung around her neck. It was, I am persuaded, Signor Questore, the shadow of Violetta and her postcards.”

“Well, my friend, I do not argue with you. I will take it as a working hypothesis that Violetta escaped the vigilance of the good fathers and came down here. Why? Perhaps with the intention of pursuing her quarrel with Mailer. Perhaps and perhaps. Perhaps,” the Questore continued with a sardonic inflection, “she frightened him and that is why he ran away. Or even — as you have hinted — but come — shall we continue?”

Alleyn leant over the well rails and called out. “Thank you, Brother Dominic. That was excellent. We are coming down.”

He had a resonant voice and it roused a concourse of echoes: “—down — ow — ow — ow — n—n.”

They descended the circular iron stairway, walked along the narrow passage and found Brother Dominic, motionless beside the well-head. The scene was lit as it had been yesterday afternoon.

Alleyn stood by the well-head and looked up. The opening above his head showed as a brilliant square of light. Far above that, was the opening into the basilica. As he watched, Father Denys’s head appeared at the top level, peering into the depths. If Father Denys, like Violetta, was given to spitting, Alleyn thought, he would spit straight in my eye.

“Are you all right, beneath?” asked Father Denys and his voice seemed to come from nowhere in particular.

“We are,” boomed Brother Dominic without moving. The head was withdrawn.

“Before we turn on the fluorescent light,” Alleyn said, “shall we check on the movements of the woman in the shawl. Brother Dominic, I take it that just now you walked from the foot of the iron stair where you turned on the usual lighting, down the passage and across the light itself to where you now stand?”

“I did,” said Brother Dominic.

“And so must she, one would think?”

“Of course,” said Valdarno.

“It wasn’t quite the same, though. Violetta’s shadow — we are accepting Violetta as a working hypothesis — came from the right as Brother Dominic’s did and, like his, crossed to the left. But there was a sequel. It re-appeared, darting into view, lying across the sarcophagus and up the wall. It paused. It turned this way and that and then shot off to the right. The suggestion, a vivid one, was of a furtive person looking for a hiding place. Miss Jason thought so, too.”

“Did Mailer comment?”

“He pooh-poohed the idea of it being Violetta and changed the subject.” Alleyn looked about him. “If we extend the ‘working hypothesis’ which, by the way, Signor Questore, is a nice alternative to the hateful word ‘conjecture,’ we must allow that there are plenty of places where she could hide. Look what a black shadow the sarcophagus throws, for instance.”

Alleyn had a torch and now used it. He flashed it along the well rails, which turned out to be makeshift constructions of roughly finished wood.

“You would like the working lights, Signore?” said one of the men.

But the darting beam paused and sharpened its focus. Alleyn stooped and peered at the rail.

“There’s a thread of some material caught here,” he said. “Yes, may we have the lights, please?”

The man went back down the passage, his retreating footfall loud on the stone floor.

The torchlight moved away from the rails, played across the lid of the sarcophagus, caused little carved garlands to leap up in strong relief, found the edge of the lid. Stopped.

“Look here.”

Valdarno used his torch and the other two men came forward with theirs. As they closed in, the pool of light contracted and intensified.

The lid of the sarcophagus was not perfectly closed. Something black protruded and from the protrusion dangled three strands of wool.

“Dio mio!” whispered the Questore.

Alleyn said: “Brother Dominic, we must remove the lid.”

“Do so.”

The two men slid it a little to one side, tilted it, and with a grating noise let it slip down at an angle. The edge of the lid hit the floor with a heavy and resounding thud, like the shutting of a monstrous door.

The torchlight fastened on Violetta’s face.

Her thickened eyes stared sightlessly into theirs. Her tongue was thrust out as if to insult them.

Valdarno’s torch clattered on the stone floor.

The long silence was broken by a voice: uninflected, deep, rapid.

Brother Dominic prayed aloud for the dead.

A consultation was held in the vestibule. The church was shut and the iron grille into the underworld locked, awaiting the arrival of Valdarno’s Squadra Omicidi. It was strange, Alleyn found, to hear the familiar orders being laid on by somebody else in another language.

Valdarno was business-like and succinct. An ambulance and a doctor were sent for, the doctor being, as far as Alleyn could make out, the equivalent of a Home Office pathologist. The guard at all points of departure from Rome was to be instantly stepped up. Toni’s premises were to be searched and the staff examined. Mailer’s apartment was to be occupied in such a way that if he returned he would walk into a trap. Violetta’s known associates were to be closely questioned.

Alleyn listened, approved and said nothing.

Having set up this operational scheme, the Questore turned his deceptively languishing gaze upon Alleyn.

“Ecco!” he said. “Forgive me, my friend, if I have been precipitate. This was routine. Now we collaborate and you shall tell me how we proceed.”

“Far be it from me,” Alleyn rejoined in the nearest Italian equivalent to this idiom that he could at the moment concoct, “to do anything of the sort. May we continue in English?”

“Of course,” cried the Questore in that language.

“I suppose,” Alleyn said, “that now you have so efficiently set up the appropriate action we should return to the persons who were nearest to the crime at the time it was committed.”

“Of course. I was about to say so. And so,” Valdarno archly pointed out, “you interview yourself, isn’t it?”

“Among others. Or perhaps I may put myself in your hands. How would you set about me, Signor Questore?”

Valdarno joined his fingertips and laid them across his mouth. “In the first place,” he said, “it is important to ascertain the movements of this Mailer. I would ask that as far as possible you trace them. When you last saw him, for example.”

“The classic question. When the party was near the iron stairway on the middle level. We were about to go down to to the Mithraic household on the lowest level when Lady Braceley said she was nervous and wanted to return to the top. She asked for her nephew to take her up but we found that he was not with us. Mailer said he had returned to photograph the statue of Apollo and that he would fetch him. Lady Braceley wouldn’t wait and in the upshot Major Sweet took her up to the basilica garden — the atrium — and rejoined us later. When they left us? Mailer set off along the passage, ostensibly to retrieve Kenneth Dorne. The rest of us — the Van der Veghels, Miss Jason and I, with Barnaby Grant as guide — went down the iron stair to the Mithraeum. We had been there perhaps eight minutes when Major Sweet made himself known — I put it like that because at this point he spoke. He may have actually returned unnoticed before he spoke. The place is full of shadows. It was some five or six minutes later that Kenneth Dorne appeared, asking for his aunt.”

“So Mailer had not met this Dorne after all?”

“Apparently not but there is some evidence—”

“Ah! I had forgotten. But on the face of it no one had seen Mailer after he walked down the passage?”

“On the face of it — nobody.”

“We must question these people.”

“I agree with you,” said Alleyn.

For some seconds the Questore fixed his mournful gaze upon Alleyn.

“It must be done with tact,” he said. “They are persons of some consequence. There could be undesirable developments. All but two,” he added, “are British citizens.”

Alleyn waited.

“In fact,” said Valdarno, “it appears to me, my Superintendent, that there is no longer any cause for you to preserve your anonymity.”

“I haven’t thought that one out but — no, I suppose you’re right.”

One of the Agenti came in.

“The Squadra Omicidi, Signor Questore, the ambulance, Vice-Questore and the doctor.”

“Very well. Bring them.”

When the man had gone Valdarno said: “I have, of course, sent for the officer who would normally conduct this enquiry, Il Vice-Questore Bergarmi. It would not be fitting for me to engage myself in my subordinate’s duties. But in view of extraordinary circumstances and international implications I shall not entirely disassociate myself. Besides,” he added with a totally unexpected flash of candour, “I am enjoying myself prodigiously.”

For Alleyn the confrontation at close quarters with a strangled woman had not triggered off an upsurge of pleasure. However he said something vague about fieldwork as an antidote to the desk. Valdarno developed his theme.

“My suggestion,” he said, “is this and you shall tell me if I am faulty. I propose to invite these people to my office where they will be received with cerimoniale. There will be no hint of compulsion but on the contrary perhaps a glass of wine. I present you in your professional role. I explain a little but not too much. I implore their help and I then push them over to you.”

“Thank you. It will, don’t you feel, be a little difficult to sustain the interview at this level? I mean, on his own admission to me, Kenneth Dorne has been introduced to soft and then to hard drugs by Mailer. And so, after last night, I believe, has Lady Braceley. And I’m perfectly certain Mailer excercised some sort of pull over Barnaby Grant. Nothing short of blackmail, it seems to me, would have induced Grant to take on the role of prime attraction in yesterday’s conducted tour.”

“In which case he, at least, will be glad to help in bringing about the arrest of Mailer.”

“Not if it means publicity of a very damaging kind.”

“But my dear colleague, will you not assure them that the matter at issue is murder and nothing else? Nothing, as you say, personal.”

“I think,” Alleyn said drily, “that they are not so simple as to swallow that one.”

The Questore hitched his shoulders and spread his hands. “They can be assured,” he threw out, “of our discretion.”

Alleyn said: “What’s Mailer’s nationality-has he taken out Italian citizenship?”

“That can be ascertained. You are thinking, of course, of extradition.”

“Am I?” Alleyn muttered absently. “Am I?”

The doctor, the ambulance men, the Questore’s subordinate, Vice-Questore Bergarmi and the Roman version of a homicide squad now arrived with their appropriate gear: cameras, tripods, lamps, cases, a stretcher and a canvas sheet: routine props in the international crime show.

The men were solemnly presented. Alleyn supposed Bergarmi to be the opposite number in rank of a Detective Inspector.

They were given their instructions. Everyone was immensely deferential to Il Questore Valdarno and, since it was clearly indicated, to Alleyn. The grille was unlocked and the new arrivals went below.

“We shall not accompany them,” Valdarno said. “It is not necessary. It would be inappropriate. In due course they will report themselves. After all one does not need a medical officer to tell one when a woman has been strangled.”

Alleyn thought: “I’ve got to tread delicately here. This is going to be tricky.”

He said: “When your photographer has taken his pictures I would be very glad to have another look round, if I might. Particularly at the top railing round the well. Before that fragment of material, whatever it is, is removed. May I?”

“But, of course. You find some significance in this fragment? The rail has a rough surface, many many persons have brushed past it and grasped it. I saw that you examined the area closely after the lights were on. What did you see? What was this material?”

“Some kind of black stuff. It’s the position that I find interesting. The rail is about five by two inches. It is indeed rough on the inside surface and it is on the inside surface near the lower edge that this scrap of material has been caught.”

After a considerable pause Valderno said: “This is perhaps a little curious, but I would suggest not of great moment. Some person has leant over the rail, lolling his arms down, peering into the depths and—” he stopped, frowned and then said, “By all means go down, my friend, and examine the area as you require. You have my full authority.”

“How very kind,” Alleyn said and took immediate advantage of the offer.

He went below and found Valdarno’s “people” very active in the familiar routine under Bergarmi. Violetta had been photographed in situ and was now transferred to the stretcher, where the surgeon hung over her terrible face. The lid of the sarcophagus was being treated by a finger-print officer. Alleyn didn’t for a moment suppose that they would find anything. Bergarmi received his principal’s card with elaborate courtesy and little enthusiasm.

Alleyn had his own and very particular little camera. While Bergami and his staff were fully extended in other directions, he took three quick shots of the inner-side rails. He then returned to the basilica. He told Valdarno what he had done and said that he would now take advantage of his kind offer and visit Mailer’s apartment. Valdarno instructed one of his drivers to take him there, and having shaken hands elaborately for the second time in an hour, they parted.

Mailer’s apartment was in a side street behind the Pantheon. It was reached through a little run-down courtyard and up the first flight of a narrow outdoor stairway. Valdarno’s man on duty let Alleyn in and, after a look at the all-powerful card, left him to his own devices.

The rooms — there were three of them — struck Alleyn as being on their way up. One or two new and lusciously upholstered armchairs, a fine desk, a sumptuous divan, and on Mr. Mailer’s bed a heavily embroidered and rather repellent velvet cover, all pointed to affluence. A dilapidated kitchenette, murky bathroom and blistered walls suggested that it was of recent origin. The bookshelves contained a comprehensive line in high-camp pornography, some of it extremely expensive, and a selection of mere pornography, all of it cheap and excessively nasty. Signor Valdarno’s man was whiling away his vigil with a sample of the latter kind.

Alleyn asked him if the contents of the desk had been examined. He said Vice-Questore Bergami had intimated that he would attend to it later on if Mailer did not return.

“He has not returned,” Alleyn said. “I will look at it. You, perhaps, would prefer to telephone Il Questore Valdarno before I do so.”

This did the trick. The man returned to his book and Alleyn tackled the desk. The only lock that gave him any trouble was that of a concealed cupboard at the back of the knee-hole and it was in this cupboard, finally, that he struck oil: a neatly kept ledger, a sort of diary-cum-reference book. Here, at intervals, opposite a date, was a tick with one, or sometimes two, letters beside it. Alleyn consulted his own notebook and found that these entries tallied with those connected with suspected shipments of heroin from Izmir to Naples and thence, via Corsica, to Marseilles. He came to a date a little over a year ago and found: Ang. in Aug. B.G. and four days later: B.G.S. in L. This he thought very rum indeed until, in a drawer of the desk, he found a manuscript entitled Angelo in August. He returned to the ledger.

Nothing of interest until he came to an entry for May of the previous year. V. der V. Confirmed. Wait. From now on there appeared at intervals entries of large sums of money with no explanation but bearing a relationship to the dates of shipment. He plodded on. The Agente yawned over his book. Entries for the current year. Perugia. K.D. L. 100,000. Several entries under K.D. After that, merely a note of the first subsequent Il Cicerone tours.

Alleyn completed his search of the desk. He found in a locked cash box a number of letters that clearly indicated Mr. Mailer’s activities in the blackmailing line and one in a language that he did not know but took to be Dutch. This he copied out and then photographed, together with several entries in the diary. It was now half past eleven. He sighed, said good morning to the Agente and set out for Valdarno’s office reflecting that he had probably just completed a bare-faced piece of malfeasance but not in the least regretting it.

At noon Mr. Mailer’s unhappy band of pilgrims assembled in the Questore Valdarno’s sumptuous office.

Lady Braceley, Kenneth Dorne and Major Sweet all bore shattering witness to the extravagances of the previous night. The Van der Veghels looked astonished, Barnaby Grant anxious and Sophy Jason shocked. They sat in a semi-circle on imitation Renaissance chairs of great splendour and little ease while Valdarno caused wine to be handed round on a lordly tray. Lady Braceley, Kenneth and Major Sweet turned sickly glances upon it and declined. The rest of the party sipped uncomfortably while the Questore addressed them at length.

Alleyn sat a little apart from the others, who, as the Questore proceeded, eyed him with increasing consternation.

Without much elaboration, Valdarno told them of the discovery of Violetta’s body and remarked upon Sebastian Mailer’s continued non-appearance. He sat behind his magnificent desk. Alleyn noticed that the centre drawer was half open and that it contained paper. The Questore had placed his folded hands negligently across the drawer but as he warmed to his theme he forgot himself and gestured freely. His audience shifted uneasily. Major Sweet, rousing himself, said that he’d known from the first that there was something fishy about the fellow Mailer. Nobody followed this up.

“My lady, ladies, gentlemen,” the Questore concluded, “you will, I am sure, perceive that it is important for this Mr. Mailer to be traced. I speak from the highest authority when I assure you of our great concern that none of you should be unduly inconvenienced and that your visit to Rome, we hope a pleasurable one, should not be in any way—” he paused and glanced into the drawer of his desk, “diminished,” he said, “by this unfortunate occurrence.”

He made the slight mistake of absentmindedly closing the drawer with his thumb. Otherwise, Alleyn thought, he had managed beautifully.

Major Sweet said: “Very civil, I’m sure. Do what we can.” The Van der Veghels and Sophy said, “Of course.” Lady Braceley looked vaguely about her. “No, but really!” she said. “I mean how too off-putting and peculiar.” She opened her cigarette case but made a sad botch of helping herself. Her hands jerked, cigarettes shot about the floor.

“Exccellenza!” the Questore ejaculated. “Scusi! Allow me!” He leapt to his feet.

“No! No! Please! Kenneth! Too stupid of me. No!”

Kenneth gathered the cigarettes, pushed them back into the case and with some difficulty lit the one that shook between her lips. They all looked away from Lady Braceley and Kenneth.

Grant said loudly: “You haven’t actually told us so, but I suppose I am right in thinking you suspect Mailer of this murder?”

Kenneth Dorne gave out a noise somewhere between a laugh and a snort.

The Questore made one of his more ornate gestures. “One must not be precipitate,” he said. “Let us say, Mr. Grant, that we feel he may—”

“ ‘Help the police in their investigation,’ ” Kenneth said, “that’s got a familiar ring about it! ‘Inspector or Superintendent Flookamapush says he’s anxious to trace Mr. Sebastian Mailer, who the police believe may help—’ ”

He broke off, staring at Alleyn. “My God!” he said and got to his feet, “I was right! My God! I remember, now. I knew I’d seen that fabulous face before. My God, you are a policeman!”

He turned to the others: “He’s a bloody policeman,” he said. “He’s the detective they’re always writing up in the papers. ‘Handsome’ something — what is it? — yes — by God—‘Handsome Alleyn.’ ” He pointed to Alleyn. “He’s no tourist, he’s a spy. Last night. At Toni’s. Spying. That’s what he was doing.”

Alleyn watched all the heads turn in his direction and all the shutters come down. “I’m back in business,” he thought.

He stood up. “Mr. Dorne,” he said, “has beaten us to the post by one second. I think the Questore was about to explain.”

The Questore did explain, with one or two significant evasions and a couple of downright lies that Alleyn would have avoided. He said that the highly distinguished Superintendent was on holiday but had made a courtesy call at police headquarters in Rome, that he had expressed a wish to remain incognita which the Questore had of course respected. It was by pure accident, he lied, that Alleyn had joined in the Cicerone tour but when Mailer disappeared he had felt it his duty to report the circumstance. For which the Questore and his subordinates were greatly obliged to him.

Here he paused. Of his audience Sophy and the Van der Veghels looked perfectly satisfied. The others exhibited distrust and scepticism in varying degrees.

The Questore continued. In view of the death of this unfortunate woman, and because Mr. Mailer was a British subject, he had asked Superintendent Alleyn to assist, which he had most graciously consented to do. The Questore felt sure that the Superintendent’s fellow-countrymen would greatly prefer the few enquiries to be under his guidance. In any case, he ended, the proceedings would probably be very short and there would be no radical interference in their holidays. He bowed to the Van der Veghels and added that he hoped they, also, would find themselves in agreement with this plan.

“But, of course,” the Baron said. “It is a satisfactory and intelligent suggestion. A crime has been committed. It is our duty to assist. At the same time I am glad of your assurance that we shall not be detained for very long. After all,” and he bowed to Alleyn, “we are also on vacation.”

With many mellifluous assurances the Questore begged them to withdraw to a room which had been placed at Alleyn’s disposal.

It was less sumptuous than the first office but more than sufficient for the purpose. There was a desk for Alleyn and extra chairs were brought in for the seven travellers. He noticed that Barnaby Grant was quick to place himself next to Sophy Jason, that Major Sweet was fractionally less bleary-eyed than he had been, that Lady Braceley had better luck with a new cigarette and in controlling the tremor that was nevertheless still in evidence. Kenneth, fidgety and resentful looked out of the corner of his eyes at Alleyn and clearly was not much mollified by the official pronouncement.

Alleyn’s chief concern was to avoid sounding like a replay of the Valdarno disc.

“This is both a tragic and an absurd situation,’’ he said, “and I don’t really know what you’ll be making of it. Cutting it down to size it amounts to this. An unfortunate woman has been murdered and a rather strange individual of presumed British nationality has disappeared. We seem to be the last people to have seen him and the police, obviously, want to get statements from all of us. Signor Valdarno is much too grand a personage to handle the case: he’s the equivalent in rank of our Chief Constable or perhaps Assistant Commissioner. His man in charge doesn’t speak English and because I’m a cop he’s asked me to sort it out. I hope that’s all right with all of you. I could hardly refuse, could I?”

“You might have told us about your job,” Major Sweet said resentfully.

“But why? You haven’t told us about yours.”

The Major reddened.

“Look,” Alleyn said. “Let’s get it over, shall we? The sooner the better, surely.”

“Certainly,” Sophy Jason said. “By all means, let’s.”

Grant said: “Oh, by all means,” in a wooden voice and Lady Braceley and Kenneth made plaintive sounds of acceptance.

“Ach, yes!” cried the Baroness. “No more delays, isn’t it? Already our plans for today look silly. Instead of fountinks at the Villa d’Este here is a stuffed room. Come! On!”

Thus encouraged Alleyn set about his task. His situation was an odd one, removed as he was from immediate reliance upon the C.I.D. and from the sense of being an integral part of its structure. This was an “away match” and presented its own problems, not the least of which was to define his area of investigation. Originally it had simply been that which covered Mailer’s presumed activities in the international drug racket and possible association with the key figure — the fabulous Otto Ziegfeldt. Now, with the discovery of Violetta, staring and frightful, in a stone coffin that had held who could guess what classic bones and flesh, the case had spilled into a wider and more ambiguous affair. The handling of it became very tricky indeed.

He began. “I think we’d better settle the question of when each of us last saw Sebastian Mailer. For my part, it was when we were on the middle level and just after Major Sweet and Lady Braceley had left to go up to the atrium. Mr. Grant, Miss Jason and the Baron and Baroness were with me and we all went down to the Mithraic dwelling together. Major Sweet and Mr. Dorne joined us there separately, some five to ten — or fifteen — minutes later. May I begin by asking you, Lady Braceley, if you saw anything of Mailer or of Violetta after you left us?”

Not only, Alleyn thought, was she in the grip of a formidable hangover but she was completely non-plussed by finding herself in a situation that could not be adjusted to a nineteen-twentyish formula for triteness. She turned her lacklustre gaze from one man to another, ran her tongue round her lips and said: “No. No, of course I didn’t. No.”

“And you, Major? On your way down? Did you see either of them?”

“I did not.”

“You stayed for a minute or two with Lady Braceley and then came down to the Mithraeum?”

“Yes.”

“And met nobody on the way.”

“Nobody.”

Alleyn said casually, “There must at that time have been, beside yourself, three persons at large between the top level — the basilica — and the bottom one — the Mithraeum. Mailer himself, Violetta and Mr. Kenneth Dorne. You neither saw nor heard any of them?”

“Certainly not.”

“Mr. Dorne, when exactly did you leave us?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea.”

“Perhaps,” Alleyn said with undiminished good humour, “we can help you. You were with us in the middle-level cloisters when Mailer made his joke about Apollo being a latter-day Lazarus.”

“How do you know?”

“Because you giggled at it.”

“Marvellous,” said Kenneth.

“It was not a nice joke,” the Baroness said. “We did not find it amusink, did we, Gerrit?”

“No, my dear.”

“It was a silly one.”

“So.”

“You think it funnier perhaps,” Kenneth said, “to dodge behind terra-cotta busts and bounce out at old — at highly strung people. It takes all sorts to raise a laugh,” said Kenneth.

“You were not there, Mr. Dorne,” said the Baron. “You had left the party. We had crossed the nave of the early church and you did not come with us. How did you know I bounced?”

“I heard of it,” Kenneth said loftily, “from my aunt.”

Alleyn plodded on. “We understood from Mailer that you had gone back to photograph the Apollo. Is that right?”

“Certainly.”

“And you did photograph it?”

Kenneth slid his feet about and after a pretty long pause said: “As it happened, no. I’d run out of film.” He pulled out his packet of cigarettes and found it was empty.

“No, you hadn’t,” shouted Major Sweet. “You hadn’t done any such thing. You took a photograph of Mithras when we were all poodlefaking round Grant and his book.”

Grant, most unexpectedly, burst out laughing.

“There’s such a thing,” Kenneth said breathlessly, “as putting in a new film, Major Sweet.”

“Well, yes,” said Alleyn. “Of course there is. Tell me, did Mailer rejoin you while you were not photographing Apollo?”

This time the pause was an uncomfortably long one. Major Sweet appeared to take the opportunity to have a nap. He shut his eyes, lowered his chin and presently opened his mouth.

At last: “No,” Kenneth said loudly. “No. He didn’t turn up.”

“ ‘Turn up’? You were expecting him, then?”

“No, I wasn’t. Why the hell do you suppose I was? I wasn’t expecting him and I didn’t see him.” The cigarette packet dropped from his fingers. “Whats that?” he demanded.

Alleyn had taken a folded handkerchief from his pocket. He opened it to display a crumpled piece of glossy blue paper.

“Do you recognize it?” he asked.

“No!”

Alleyn reached out a long arm, retrieved the cigarette packet from the floor and dropped it on the desk.

He said: “I was given two boxes wrapped in similar paper to this at Toni’s pad last night.”

“I’m afraid,” Kenneth said whitely, “my only comment to that is: ‘So, dear Mr. Superintendent Alleyn, what?”

“In one of them there were eight tablets of heroin. Each, I would guess, containing one-sixth of a grain. In the other, an equal amount of cocaine in powder form. Mr. Mailer’s very own merchandise, I was informed.”

The Van der Veghels broke into scandalized ejaculations, first in their own language and then in English. “You didn’t throw this paper behind the statue of Apollo, Mr. Dorne?”

“No. Christ!” Kenneth screamed out, “what the hell is all this? What idiot stuff are you trying to sell me? All right, so this was an H. and C. wrapping. And how many people go through Saint what’s-his-name’s every day? What about the old woman? For all you know she may have peddled it. To anyone. Why, for God’s sake, pick on me?”

“Kenneth — darling — no. Please. No!”

“Partly,” Alleyn said, “because up to that time you had exhibited withdrawal symptoms but on your arrival in the Mithraeum appeared to be relieved of them.”

“No!”

“We needn’t labour the point. If necessary we can take fingerprints.” He pointed to the paper, and to the empty cigarette packet. “And in any case, last night you were perfectly frank about your experiments with drugs. You told me that Mailer introduced you to them. Why are you kicking up such a dust now?”

“I didn’t know who you were.”

“I’m not going to run you in here, in Rome, for making a mess of yourself with drugs, you silly chap. I simply want to know if, for whatever reason, you met Mailer by the statue of Apollo in the middle level at San Tommaso.”

“Kenneth — no!”

“Auntie, do you mind! I’ve told him — no, no, no.”

“Very well. We’ll go on. You returned to photograph Apollo, found you had used up the film in your camera, continued on down to the bottom level and joined us in the Mithraeum. At what stage did you put a new film in your camera?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Where is the old film?”

“In my pocket, for God’s sake. In my room.”

“You didn’t encounter Major Sweet either although he must have been on his way down, just ahead of you.”

“No.”

“You passed the Apollo, Major, on your way down?”

“I suppose so. Can’t say I remember. Must have, of course.”

“Not necessarily. The cloisters run right around the old church at the middle level. If you’d turned right instead of left when you reached that level you would have come by a shorter route, and without passing Apollo, to the passage leading to the iron stairway.”

“I could have but I didn’t.”

“Odd!” Alleyn said. “And neither of you had sight, sound or smell of Mailer and Violetta?”

Silence.

“With the exception of Lady Braceley we all came together in the Mithraeum and were there for, I suppose, at least fifteen minutes while the Baroness and Baron and Mr. Dorne took photographs and Mr. Grant read to us. Then we found our several ways back to the top. You left first, Mr. Dorne, by the main entrance.”

“You’re so right. And I went up by the shortest route and I met nobody and heard nothing and I joined my aunt in the garden.”

“Quite so. I went back with the Baron and Baroness. We left the Mithraeum by a doorway behind the figure of the god, turned right twice and followed the cloister, if that’s what it should be called, passing the well and the sarcophagus and arriving finally at the passage to the iron stairway.” He turned to the Van der Veghels. “You agree?”

“Certainly,” said the Baroness. “That was the way. Stoppink sometimes to examine—” She broke off and turned in agitation to her husband, laying her hands on his arm. She spoke to him in their own language, her voice trembling. He stooped over her: solicitous and concerned, gathered her hands in his and said gently: “In English, my dear, should we not? Let me explain.” He turned to Alleyn. “My wife is disturbed and unhappy,” he said. “She has remembered, as no doubt you will remember, Mr. Alleyn — or, no! You had already turned into the passage, I think. But my wife took a photograph of the sarcophagus.”

“It is so dreadful to think,” the Baroness lamented. “Imagink! This wretched woman — her body — it may have been — no, Gerrit, it is dreadful.”

“On the contrary, Baroness,” Alleyn said. “It may be of great assistance to the investigation. Of course, one understands that the implications are distasteful—”

“Distasteful!”

“Well — macabre — dreadful, if you like. But your photograph may at least prove that the sarcophagus had not been interfered with at that juncture.”

“It had not. You yourself must have seen—”

“In that lighting it looked perfectly all right but a flashlamp might bring out some abnormality, you know.”

“What was it like,” Grant said, “when you examined it, as I gather you did, with Valdarno?”

“There was — a slight displacement,” Alleyn said. “If the Baroness’s photograph shows none it will establish that the murder was committed after we left the Mithraeum.”

“And after we had all left the building?” Grant asked.

“Not quite that, perhaps, but it might come to that. May we just define the rest of the party’s movements. Yours, for instance.”

“I had offered to stay in the Mithraeum in case anybody wanted information about the rest of the insula. Miss Jason remained with me for, I suppose, ten minutes or so and we then made our way up by the shortest route: the main exit from the Mithraeum, through the antechamber and then down the short passage to the stairway. We didn’t pass the well and sarcophagus, of course, and we met nobody.”

“Hear anybody? Voices?”

“No. I don’t think so.”

“Wait a bit,” Sophy said.

“Yes, Miss Jason?”

“I don’t suppose it matters but—” She appealed to Grant. “Do you remember? Just as we were leaving the Mithraeum there was a sound of voices. All mixed up and booming because of the echo.”

“Was there? I’ve forgotten.”

“Men’s or women’s voices?” Alleyn asked.

“They were so distorted it’s hard to say. A man’s I think and perhaps a woman’s: perhaps yours and Baroness Van der Veghel’s on your way up the stairs. Or Baron Van der Veghel’s. Or all three.”

“Might be,” Alleyn said. “Which way did you go back, Major Sweet?”

“Ah, ’um. I pottered round a bit. Had another look at the well and if you ask me whether the lid of the sarcophagus was out of position I can only say if it was I didn’t notice it. I — ah — I went up into the nave of the old church. Matter of fact, while I was there I heard you and — ah — the Van der Veghels in the cloisters. Taking photographs.”

“That is so,” said the Baroness. “I took the head of Mercury.”

“You were still at it when I went on up the stone stairs. Took my time. Didn’t see the woman. Or Mailer. My opinion, he wasn’t there, anywhere on the premises. Sure of it.”

“Why?” Alleyn asked.

“To be perfectly honest because if the fellow had been there I’d have found him. I thought it damned peculiar him not turning up like that, leaving us cold after taking a whacking great fee off us. So I thought: if the blighter’s hanging about somewhere I’m going to dig him out. And I didn’t.”

“I really can’t believe,” said Grant, “that you could have made anything remotely resembling a thorough search, Major Sweet. In that short time? In that light? And with all those side passages and excavations? No!”

“That is so,” said the Baron. “That is undoubtedly so.”

“I resent that, sir,” said the Major and blew out his cheeks. The Baron paid no attention to him. “Mr. Alleyn,” he said. “Surely it is not impossible that this Mailer was hiding down there, perhaps already with the body of the woman he had murdered, and that he waited until we had gone before putting it — where it was found. Mr. Alleyn — what do you say? Is it possible?”

“I think it’s possible, Baron, yes. But when, in that case, did he make his escape?”

“Perhaps he’s still there,” Kenneth suggested and gave his little whinnying laugh.

“I have thought of that,” the Baron said disregarding Kenneth. “I have thought that perhaps he waited until the good fathers made their search. That he hid himself somewhere near the top and, while they looked elsewhere, contrived to elude them and again hid himself in the basilica until we had driven away and then made his escape. I do not know. Perhaps it is an absurd suggestion but — he is gone, after all.”

“I think,” Lady Braceley said, “it’s a very clever suggestion.” And she actually summoned up the wreck of an arch glance for the Baron, who bowed and looked horrified.

“To sum up,” Alleyn said, “if that’s not a laughable phrase in the context. None of us saw Mailer or Violetta after Mailer left us, ostensibly to join Mr. Dorne at the statue of Apollo in the cloisters of the old church at the middle level of San Tommaso.”

Sophy had given a little ejaculation.

“Yes, Miss Jason? You’ve thought of something?”

“Only just. It may be — it probably is — nothing. But it was during the group-photograph episode.”

“Yes?”

“There was a noise somewhere outside the Mithraeum. Not far away, I’d have thought, but all mixed up and distorted by echoes. A woman’s voice, I think, and then it was — well, kind of cut off. And then — later — a kind of thud. At the time I supposed somebody — somewhere — had shut a very heavy door.”

“I remember!” the Baron ejaculated. “I remember perfectly! It was when I took my picture of the group.”

“Yes? You do?” Sophy said. “A kind of bang — thumping noise?”

“Exactly.”

“Like a door?”

“A very heavy door.”

“Yes,” Alleyn agreed, “it did sound rather like that, didn’t it?”

“But,” Sophy said, turning white, “there aren’t any heavy doors down there that I can remember.” She appealed to Grant. “Are there?”

“No. No doors,” he said.

“So I wonder if it was something else — something being dropped, for instance. Not from a great height. Just a little way. But something very heavy.”

“Like a stone lid?” Alleyn suggested.

Sophy nodded.