When in Rome

7 Afternoon

When Alleyn asked the travellers not to leave Rome for the present there was a great outcry from Lady Braceley and Major Sweet. The Major talked noisily about his rights as a British subject. Lady Braceley lamented and referred to persons in high places to whom she commanded immediate access. She was silenced at last by her nephew, who muttered and cajoled. She shed tears which she dexterously manipulated with the folded edge of her handkerchief.

The Major seemed to be sensibly influenced by the information that additional expenses would be met. He subsided into a sullen and wary acquiescence.

Grant, Sophy and the Van der Veghels were temperate in their reactions. What, as the Baroness rhetorically and vaguely asked, could one do against Fate? Her husband, at a more realistic level, said that while it was inconvenient it was at the same time obligatory upon them to remain in situ if circumstances seemed to require their presence.

Grant said impatiently that he had intended to stay in Rome anyway and Sophy said her holiday extended over the next four weeks. While she had made vague plans for Perugia and Florence she was perfectly ready to postpone them.

They broke up at half past one. The travellers with the exception of Grant and Sophy availed themselves of the large car provided by Valdarno. Alleyn had a brief talk with the Questore and with appropriate regrets declined an invitation for luncheon. He had, he said, to write a report.

When he finally emerged from the building he found Grant and Sophy waiting for him.

“I want to talk to you,” Grant said.

“By all means. Will you have lunch with me?” Alleyn made a bow to Sophy. “Both of you? Do.”

“Not me,” Sophy said. “I’m only a hanger-on.”

“You’re nothing of the sort,” Grant contradicted.

“Well, whatever I am, I’ve got a date for lunch. So — thank you, Mr. Alleyn — but I must be off.”

And before they could do anything to stop her she had in fact darted across the street and stopped a taxi.

“A lady of incisive action,” Alleyn remarked.

“She is indeed.”

“Here’s another cab. Shall we go?”

They lunched at Alleyn’s hotel. He caught himself wondering if to Grant the occasion seemed like a rendering in another key of his no doubt habitual acceptances of expense-account hospitality.

Alleyn was a good host. He made neither too much nor too little of the business of ordering, and when that was done talked about the difficulties of adjusting oneself to Rome and the dangers of a surfeit of sightseeing. He asked Grant if he’d had to do a great deal of research for Simon in Latium.

“Of course,” Alleyn said, “it’s bloody cheek to say so but it always seems to me that a novelist who has set his book in a foreign environment is, in some sort, like an investigating officer. I mean, in my job one is forever having to ‘get up’ information, to take in all sorts of details — technical, occupational, indigenous, whatever you like — in surroundings that are quite outside one’s experience. It’s a matter of mugging up.”

“It certainly was in the case of Simon in Latium.”

“You must have stayed in Rome for some time, surely?”

“Two months,” Grant said, shortly. He laid down his knife and fork. “As a matter of fact it’s about that — in a way — that I want to talk to you.”

“Do you? Fair enough. Now?”

Grant thought for a moment or two. “It’s a poor compliment to a superb luncheon but — now, if you please.”

So he told Alleyn how Sebastian Mailer found his manuscript and about the sequel.

“I think I know now how he’d worked the whole job. When he found the ms. he got his idea. He picked the lock of my case and read the book. He spent three days concocting his Angelo in August. He didn’t make it blatantly like Simon. Just introduced my major theme as a minor one. Enough to make me talk about it in front of his revolting chums.

“He took me on a night-crawl, fetching up at the place you went to last night — Toni’s. I don’t remember much about the later part of the experience but enough to make me wish I’d forgotten the lot. Apparently I talked about the ‘resemblance’ at the restaurant we went to — Il Eremo, it’s called — and to some American chum of his who would be delighted to blow it to the press.

“I went back to England. The book came out and three weeks ago I returned to Rome, as he knew I would. I ran into him and he took me into a ghastly little parlour in the Van der Veghels’ hotel and blackmailed me. He was quite shameless. He practically said, in so many words, that he’d re-hashed his story so that now it was blatantly like mine and that he had witnesses from — that night — to say I’d talked about the resemblance when I was drunk. One of them, he said, was the Roman correspondent for the News of the World and would make a big splash with the story. Oh yes!” Grant said when Alleyn opened his mouth. “Oh yes. I know. Why didn’t I tell him to go to hell? You may not remember — why should you? — what happened over my first book.”

“I remember.”

“And so would a great many other people. Nobody except my publishers and a few friends believed that bloody business was a coincidence. The case would be hauled into the light again. All the filthy show rehashed and me established as a shameless plagiarist. I may be a louse but I couldn’t face it.”

“What did he ask?”

“That’s the point. Not so much, in a way. Just that I took on these unspeakable tours.”

“It wouldn’t have stopped there, you know. He was easing you in. Why did you decide to tell me all this?”

“It’s just got too much. I told Sophy about it and she suggested I tell you. After the meeting was over and we waited outside. It’s an extraordinary thing,” Grant said. “I met that girl yesterday. It’s by no means a quick take, she’s not that sort. And yet — Well,” Grant said, giving it up, “there you are. You tell us your main interest in him is as a drug-runner. He turns out to be a murderer. I daresay it’s only of academic interest that he happens to be a blackmailer as well.”

“Oh, everything is grist that comes to our grubby little mill,” Alleyn said. “I’m in a damn’ tricky sort of position myself, you know. I’ve learnt this morning that the Roman police have found out Mailer’s definitely a British subject. That, in a vague way, keeps me in the picture but with a shift of emphasis: my masters sent me here on the drug-running lay and I find myself landed with the presumptive murder of an Italian.”

“So your presence in yesterday’s ongoings was not accidental?”

“No. Not.”

“I may as well tell you, Alleyn, I’m not as keen as mustard for you to catch Mailer.”

“I suppose not. You’re afraid, aren’t you, that if he’s brought to trial he’ll blow the story of your alleged plagiarism?”

“All right. Yes. I am. I don’t expect you to understand. The police,” Grant said savagely, “are not exactly famous for their sympathy with the arts.”

“On the other hand they are acquainted with a tendency on the part of the general public, artistic or otherwise, to separate what is laughingly called justice from the concept of enlightened self-interest.”

“I imagine,” Grant said after a sufficient pause, “that my face could scarcely be redder.”

“Don’t give it another thought. As for your fear of a phoney exposure, I think I can promise you it is absolutely groundless.”

“You can? You really can do that?”

“I believe so. I’d take long odds on it.”

“I suppose the whole thing, from the police point of view, is entirely beside the point”

“You may put it like that,” Alleyn said. “How about a liqueur with our coffee?”

The next two days went by without further incident. Mr. Mailer’s guests followed, Alleyn presumed, their own inclinations. He himself wrote up a detailed report on the case and sent a précis of it to his masters. He had three indeterminate conversations with Valdarno and put a call through to London asking for detailed reports on Lady Braceley and Kenneth Dorne and a check through the army lists on Major Hamilton Sweet. He also asked for the appropriate branch to make enquiries through the Dutch authorities about the Van der Veghels.

On the third day Rome was engulfed in a heat wave. Pavements, walls and the sky itself quivered under its onslaught and the high saints extended their stone arms above the city in a shimmer that resembled movement. Alleyn lunched in the hotel and spent a good deal of time wondering how Fox was prospering in London.

The Latin siesta is a civilized habit. At its best it puts the sweltering heat of the day behind insect-proof barriers, gives people a rest from excitedly haranguing each other and causes a lull in the nervous activity of the streets.

For Alleyn the siesta was not a blessing. Trained to do with less sleep than most persons require and, when necessary, to catch what he could get in cat-naps and short periods of oblivion, he found the three odd hours of disengagement an irritant rather than a tranquilizer. He stripped, slept soundly for an hour, took a shower and, freshly dressed, went out into the street.

Rome was under a haze and the Spanish Steps were deserted. No ambiguous youths displayed on their accepted beat. Flowers blazed under protective canvas or drooped where the sun had found them. All the shops down in the Via Condotti were shut and so was the travel agency where Alleyn had booked his tour.

He walked down the steps: not quite the only person abroad in the heat of the day. Ahead of him at intervals were a belated shop-girl, a workman, an old woman and — having apparently come from the hotel — Giovanni Vecchi! Alleyn took cover behind an awning. Giovanni went on down the steps and into the Via Condotti. Alleyn followed cautiously. Giovanni stopped.

Alleyn’s instant side step into the entrance of a closed shop was a reflex action. He watched Giovanni between two handbags in the corner window. Giovanni glanced quickly up and down the street, and then at his watch. A taxi came down the street, stopped at a house almost opposite the shop and discharged its fare. Giovanni hailed it and came back to meet it.

Alleyn moved further into the doorway and turned his back. He heard Giovanni say “Il Eremo” and name the street.

The door slammed, the taxi rattled off and Alleyn, looking in vain for another, set off at a gruelling pace for Navona.

Arriving there some ten minutes later he made his way down an alley smelling of cooking oil and garlic.

There it was: the little trattoria with kerbside caffè where a year ago Mailer and Grant had dined together. The door into the restaurant was shut and the blinds were drawn. Chairs had been tipped forward over the outside tables. The place at first sight seemed to be quite deserted.

As Alleyn drew cautiously nearer, however, he saw that two men were seated at a table in a shadowed corner under the awning and that one of them was Giovanni. They had their backs towards him but there was no mistaking Giovanni’s companion.

It was Major Sweet.

Alleyn had arrived at a yard belonging to a junk shop of the humbler sort. Bad pictures, false Renaissance chairs, one or two restored pieces ruined by a deluge of cheap varnish. A large dilapidated screen. He moved into the shelter of the screen and surveyed Major Sweet and Giovanni through the hinged gap between two leaves.

Major Sweet, from the rear, looked quite unlike himself: there was something about his back and the forward tilt of his head that suggested extreme alertness. A slight movement and his cheek, the end of his moustache and his right eye came into view. The eye was cocked backwards: the eye of a watchful man. Giovanni leant towards the Major and talked. No Italian can talk without hands and Giovanni’s were active but, as it were, within a restricted field. The Major folded his arms and seemed to wait.

Could he, Alleyn wondered, be arranging with Giovanni for a further installment of last night’s excesses? Somehow the two of them didn’t look quite like that

They looked, he thought, as if they drove some other kind of bargain and he hoped he wasn’t being too fanciful about them.

He saw that by delicate manoeuvring he could cross the yard, edge up to a bin with a polyglot collection of papers under a tall cupboard and thus bring himself much nearer to the caffè. He did so, slid a disreputable but large map out of the bin and held it in front of him in case they suddenly came his way. Lucky, he thought, that he’d changed his shoes and trousers.

They spoke in English. Their voices dropped and rose and he caught only fragments of what they said, as if a volume control were being turned up and down by some irresponsible hand.

“—waste of time talking — you better understand, Vecchi — danger. Ziegfeldt—”

“—are you mad? How many times I tell you — instructions—”

“—search — Police—”

“O.K., Signore. So they search and find nothing — I have made—‘arrangements’—”

“—arrangements. Try that on Alleyn and see what — Different — Take it from me — I can do it. And I will. Unless—”

“—drunk—”

“—nothing to do with it. Not so drunk I didn’t know — It’s a fair offer. Make it right for me or—”

“You dare not.”

“Don’t you believe it. Look here — if I report — Ziegfeldt—”

“Taci!”

“Shut up.”

A savage-sounding but muted exchange followed. Finally Giovanni gave a sharp ejaculation. Chair legs grated on the pavement. A palm was slapped down on the table. Alleyn, greatly stimulated, squatted behind the ruin of a velvet chair and heard them go past. Their footsteps died away and he came out of cover. Somewhere behind a shuttered window a man yawned vocally and prodigiously. Further along the street a door opened. A youth in singlet and trousers lounged out, scratching his armpits. A woman inside the trattoria called with an operatic flourish. “Mar — cel — lo.”

The siesta was over.

It was a long time since Alleyn had “kept observation” on anybody and, like Il Questore Valdarno, he didn’t altogether object to an unexpected return to fieldwork.

It was not an easy job. The streets were still sparsely populated and offered little cover. He watched and waited until his men had walked about two hundred yards, saw them part company and decided to follow the Major, who had turned into a side alley in that part of Old Rome devoted to sale of “antiques.”

Here in the dealers’ occupational litter it was easier going and by the time they had emerged from the region Alleyn was close behind the Major, who was headed, he realized, in the direction of his small hotel where they had deposited him in the early hours of the morning.

“All that for nothing,” thought Alleyn.

The Major entered the hotel. Alleyn followed as far as the glass door, watched him go to the reception desk, collect a key and move away, presumably to a lift.

Alleyn went in, entered a telephone booth opposite the lift and rang up Valdarno as he had arranged to do at this hour. He gave the Questore a succinct account of the afternoon’s work.

“This Major, hah? This Sweet? Not quite as one supposed, hah?” said the Questore.

“So it would seem.”

“What is your interpretation?”

“I got a very fragmentary impression, you know. But it points, don’t you think, to Major Sweet’s connection with Ziegfeldt and in a greater or less degree with the Mailer enterprise?”

“Undoubtedly. As for the premises — this Toni’s — Bergarmi conducted a search yesterday afternoon.”

“And found—”

“Nothing. There was evidence of hurried proceedings but no more.”

“The stuff they sold me was in a very small office near the main entrance.”

“It is empty of everything but a cash-box, ledger and telephone directory. There is no lead at all so far as Mailer is concerned. We are satisfied he has not left Rome. As you know I set a watch of the most exhaustive, immediately after you telephoned.”

If Alleyn felt less sanguine than the Questore under this heading he did not say so.

“I think,” Valdarno was saying, “we tug in this Giovanni Vecchi. I think we have little talks with him. You say he spoke of ‘arrangements.’ What arrangements do you suppose?”

“Hard to say,” Alleyn cautiously replied. “I seemed to smell bribery. Of a particular kind.”

There was a longish silence. He thought that perhaps it would be tactful not to mention Major Sweet’s remark about himself.

“And your next move, my dear colleague?”

“Perhaps while your people have their little talk with Giovanni Vecchi, I have one with Major Sweet. And after that, Signor Questore, I’m afraid I’m going to suggest that perhaps — a close watch on the Major?”

“Where are you?”

“At his hotel. The Benvenuto.”

“That will be done. There is,” Valdarno confessed, “some confusion. On the one hand we have the trade in illicit drugs, which is your concern. On the other the murder of Violetta, which is also ours. And Mailer who is the key figure in both. One asks oneself: is there a further interlockment? With the travellers? Apart, of course, from their reluctance to become involved in any publicity arising out of our proceedings. Otherwise, between the murder and these seven travellers there is no connection?”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Alleyn said. “Oh, my dear Signor Questore, I wouldn’t say that, you know. Not by a long chalk.”

When he had explained this point of view he hung up the receiver and took counsel with himself. At last, by no means sure that he was doing the right thing, he went to the reception desk and sent up his name to Major Sweet.

It was hard to believe that this was the same man who, half an hour ago, had muttered away with Giovanni. The Major was right back on the form that Alleyn had suspected from the first to be synthetic. There he sat in his impeccable, squarish lightweight suit, wearing an R.A. tie, a signet ring, brown brogues polished like chestnuts and the evidence of a mighty hangover in his bloodshot eyes. The hangover, at least, was not assumed. Perhaps none of it was assumed. Perhaps the Major was all he seemed to be and all of it gone to the bad.

“Glad you looked in, Alleyn,” he said. “I hoped to have a word with you.”

“Really?”

“Only to say that if I can be of use I’ll be delighted. Realize you’re in a difficult position. Treading on foreign protocol corns, what? Don’t suppose there’s much I can do but such as I am — here I am. Services ought to stick together, what?”

“You’re a gunner, I see.”

“Was, old man. Was. Retired list now but still good for a spell of duty, I hope.” He gave a sly comradely laugh. “In spite of the other night. Mustn’t judge me by that, you know, Bad show. Rather fun once in a while, though, what?”

“You’re not a regular patron of Mr. Mailer’s then?”

A fractional pause, before Major Sweet said: “Of Mailer’s? Oh, see what you mean. Or do I? Can’t stomach the feller, actually. Picked him for a wrong ’un straight off. Still, I must say that show was well run even if I did look on the wine when it was red but let that go.”

“I wasn’t talking about alcohol. I meant hard drugs. Heroin. Cocaine.”

“I say, look here! You’re not telling me they’ve been pushing that rot-gut at Toni’s pad! I mean regularly.”

“And you’re not telling me you didn’t know.”

The Major took an appreciably longer pause before he said with quiet dignity: “That was uncalled for.”

“I would have thought it was obvious enough.”

“Not to me, sir. Hold on, though. Wait a bit. You’re referring to that ghastly youth: Dorne. Sorry I spoke. Good Lord, yes, I knew what he was up to, of course. You brought it all out next morning. Very neatly done if I may say so, though as a matter of fact I dozed off a bit. Didn’t get the hang of all that was said.”

“This isn’t your first visit to Rome, is it?”

“Oh, no. No. I was here on active service in 1943. And once or twice since. Never got hold of the lingo.”

“How long have you known Giovanni Vecchi?”

The beetroot ran out of the Major’s carefully shaven jaw leaving the plum behind, but only in this respect could he be said to change countenance. “Giovanni how much?” he said. “Oh. You mean the courier fellow.”

“Yes. The courier fellow. He’s in the drug business with Mailer.”

“Good Lord, you don’t say so!”

“I do, you know. They’re tied up,” Alleyn said, mentally taking a deep breath, “with Otto Ziegfeldt.”

“Who’s he?” asked the Major in a perfectly toneless voice. “Some dago?”

“He’s the biggest of the drug barons.”

“You don’t tell me.”

“I don’t think I need to, do I?”

“What you need to do,” said the Major and his voice jumped half an octave, “is explain yourself. I’m getting sick of this.”

“Ziegfeldt imports morphine from Turkey. The usual route, by diverse means, is from Izmir via Sicily to Marseilles and thence, through France or entirely by sea, to the U.S.A. During the past year, however, an alternative route has developed: to Naples by a Lebanese shipping line and thence by Italian coastal traders to Marseilles, where it is converted to heroin. Ziegfeldt established an agent in Naples whose job was to arrange and supervise the transshipments. We believe this man to have been Sebastian Mailer.”

Alleyn waited for a moment. They sat in the deserted smoking-room of the hotel. It smelt of furniture polish and curtains and was entirely without character. Major Sweet rested his elbow on the arm of his uncomfortable chair and his cheek on his hand. He might have been given over to some aimless meditation.

“It appears,” Alleyn said, “that at one time Mailer was married to the woman Violetta. Probably she acted for him in some minor capacity. Subsequently he deserted her.”

“Now,” said the Major into the palm of his hand, “you’re talking. Threatened to expose him.”

“Very likely.”

“Killed her.”

“Highly probable.”

“There you are, then.”

“Ziegfeldt doesn’t at all care for agents who help themselves to goods in transit and then set up their own account.”

“Daresay not.”

“He has them, as a general practice, bumped off. By another agent. He sets a spy upon them. Sometimes the spy is too greedy. He extorts a pay-off from — say — Giovanni? On consideration that he will not betray Giovanni and Mailer to his master. And then, unless he is very clever indeed, he is found out by his master and he too gets bumped off.”

A little bead of sweat trickled down Sweet’s forehead and got hung up in his eyebrow.

“The gunners were not in Italy in 1943. They arrived in ’44,” said Alleyn. “Where do you buy your ties?”

“—slip of the tongue. ’44.”

“All right,” Alleyn said and stood up. “How many times can a man double-cross,” he said of nobody in particular, “before he loses count? What’s your price?”

Sweet raised his head and stared at him.

“I wouldn’t try a bolt either. You know your own business best, of course, but Otto Ziegfeldt has a long arm. So, for a matter of fact, have Interpol and even the London Police Force.”

Sweet dabbed his mouth and forehead with a neatly folded handkerchief. “You’re making a mistake,” he said. “You’re on the wrong track.”

“I heard you talking to Giovanni Vecchi in the Eremo Caffè at a quarter to four this afternoon.”

A very singular little noise came from somewhere inside the massive throat. For the first time Sweet looked fixedly at Alleyn. He mouthed rather than said: “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I have the advantage of you, there. I do know what you and Vecchi were talking about. Come,” Alleyn said. “You’ll do yourself no good by keeping this up. Understand me. I’m here in Rome to find out what I can about Otto Ziegfeldt’s operations. I’m not here to run in his lesser agents unless by doing so I can carry my job a step further.” He thought for a moment and then said: “And of course, unless such an agent commits some action that in itself warrants his immediate arrest. I think I know what you’ve been up to. I think you’ve been sent by Ziegfeldt to spy upon Mailer and Giovanni Vecchi and report on their side activities in Italy. I think you’ve double-crossed Ziegfeldt and played along with Mailer and Giovanni and now Mailer’s disappeared you’re afraid he may put you away with Ziegfeldt. I think you threatened to betray Giovanni to Ziegfeldt unless he pays you off in a big way. And I think you plan to clear up and get out while the going’s good. You haven’t a hope. You’re in a pretty ugly situation, one way and another, aren’t you? The safest thing for you, after all, might be for the Roman police to lock you up. The Roman streets won’t be too healthy for you.”

“What do you want?”

“A complete list of Ziegfeldt’s agents and a full account of his modus operandi between Izmir and the U.S.A. Step by step. With particular respect to Mailer.”

“I can’t. I don’t know. I–I’m not — I’m not as deeply committed—”

“Or trusted? Perhaps not. But you’re fairly far in or you wouldn’t have been given your present job.”

“I can’t do it,Alleyn.”

“Giovanni is being questioned.”

“Give me time.”

“No.”

“I want a drink.”

“You may have a drink. Shall we go to your room?”

“All right,” said Sweet. “All right, God damn you, all right.”

When Alleyn got back to his hotel he found a note from Lady Braceley under his door and a message that Fox had rung from London and would ring again at six. The time was now 5:15. Lady Braceley wrote a large, mad hand that spilled all over the paper.

“Must see you,” said the note. “Terribly urgent. Desperate. Please, please come to this apartment as soon as possible. If you see K. say nothing. S.B.”

“This,” Alleyn said to himself, “is going to be the bottom. Bullying a phoney Major is a pastoral symphony compared to the tune Lady B.’s going to call.”

He tore up the note and went to the apartment.

She received him, predictably, on a chaise longue wearing a gold lame trouser suit. A hard-featured maid let him in and withdrew, presumably into the bedroom.

Lady Braceley swung her feet to the floor and held out her hands. “Oh God!” she said. “You’ve come. Oh bless you, bless you, bless you.”

“Not at all,” Alleyn said and glanced at the bedroom door.

“It’s all right. Swiss. Doesn’t speak a word of English.”

“What is it, Lady Braceley? Why do you want to see me?”

“It’s in deadly confidence. Deadly. If Kenneth knew I was telling you I don’t know what he’d say to me. But I just can’t take this sort of thing. It kills me. He won’t come in. He knows I always rest until six and then he always rings first. We’re safe.”

“Perhaps you’ll explain—”

“Of course. It’s just that I’m so nervous and upset. I don’t know what you’re going to say.”

“Nor,” Alleyn said lightly, “do I. Until I hear what it’s all about.”

“It’s about him. Kenneth. And me. It’s — Oh he’s been so naughty and stupid, I can’t think what possessed him. And now — if you knew where he’s landed us.”

“What has he done?”

“I don’t follow it all. Well, first of all he behaved very badly in Perugia. He got into a wild set and ran out of money, it appears, and — oh I don’t know — sold something he hadn’t paid for. And that wretched murderer Mailer got him out of it. Or said he had. And then — when we were in that ghastly church, Mailer spoke to me about it and said the police — the police — were making a fuss and unless he could ‘satisfy’ them it would all come out and Kenneth would be — imagine it! — arrested. He wanted 500 pounds paid into some bank somewhere. All I had to do was to write an open check and he would — what’s the word — negotiate the whole thing and we could forget it”

“Did you write this check?”

“Not there and then. He said he would hold the police off for two days and call for the check at midday today. And then, of course, there was this thing about him disappearing and all the murder horror. And then Giovanni — you know? — rather sweet or so I thought. Giovanni said he knew all about it and he would arrange everything only now it would be more expensive. And he came in here after lunch today and said the situation was more difficult than he had understood from Mailer and he would want 800 pounds in lire or it might be easier if I let him have some jewelry instead. And I’ve got rather a famous tiara thing my second husband gave me only it’s in the bank here. And quite a lot of rings. He seemed to know all about my jewelry.”

“Did you give him anything?”

“Yes. I did. I gave him my diamond and emerald sunburst. It’s insured for 900 pounds, I think. I’ve never really liked it frightfully. But still—”

“Lady Braceley, why are you telling me all this?”

“Because,” she said, “I’m frightened. I’m just frightened. I’m out of my depth. Kenneth behaves so oddly and, clearly, he’s got himself into the most hideous mess. And although I’m awfully fond of him I don’t think it’s fair to land me in it, too. And I can’t cope. I feel desperately ill. That place — I don’t know whether you — Anyway they gave me something to turn me on and it wasn’t anything like they tell you it’ll be. It was too awful. Mr. Alleyn, please, please be kind and help me.”

She wept and chattered and dabbed at him with her awful claws. In a moment, he thought, she’ll take off into the full hysteria bit.

“You’re ill,” he said. “Is there anything I can get you?”

“Over there. In the drinks place. Tablets. And brandy.”

He found them and poured out a moderate amount of brandy. She made a sad botch of shaking out three tablets. He had to help her. “Are you sure you should take three?” he asked. She nodded, crouched over her hand, gulped and swallowed the brandy. “Tranquilizers,” she said. “Prescription.”

For a minute or so she sat with her eyes closed, shivering. “I’m sorry. Do have a drink,” she offered in a travesty of her social voice.

He paid no attention to this. When she had opened her eyes and found her handkerchief he said: “I’ll do what I can. I think it’s unlikely that your nephew is in danger of arrest. I’ll find out about it. In the meantime you mustn’t think of giving anything else to Giovanni. He is blackmailing you and he will certainly not carry out any negotiations with the police. But I don’t think he will come. It’s highly possible that he himself is under arrest. I’ll leave you now but before I go tell me one thing. Your nephew did meet Mailer that afternoon by the statue of Apollo, didn’t he?”

“I think so.”

“To collect his drugs?”

“I think so.”

“For any other purpose, do you know? Did he tell you?”

“I — think — he’d seen Mailer talking to me and he’d seen I was upset. And — I think he wanted to find out if — if—”

“If you’d agreed to pay up?”

She nodded.

“When your nephew appears,” Alleyn said grimly, “will you tell him I want to see him? I will be in my room, 149, for the next hour. And I think, Lady Braceley, you should go to bed. Shall I call your maid?”

“She’ll come.”

She was gazing at him now with an intensity that appalled him. She suddenly burst into an incoherent babble of thanks, and since there seemed no hope of stemming the flood, he left her, still talking, and returned to his room.

Inspector Fox came through, loud and clear, at six o’clock. The department had been expeditious in collecting information about the travellers. The Dutch Embassy and the London representative of Messrs. Adriaan and Welker had confirmed the Van der Veghels’ account of themselves: an ancient family, a strict Lutheran background conforming with the evangelical policy of the firm.

“Very strict in their attitudes,” Fox said. “Puritanical, you might say. The lady I talked to in their London office is one of the modern sort. Groovy. She said that the Baron’s a very different type from his father, who was what they call a ‘sport.’ In both senses. A bit of a lad. Edwardian playboy type and notorious in his day. She said there are some very funny stories they tell in the firm about the Baron coming face to face with himself and cutting himself dead. She said they live very quietly. In Geneva mostly. The Baroness writes some kind of religious tales for kids but she never accompanies him to the Hague and is thought to be delicate.”

Fox enlarged cosily upon his theme. Believed to be distantly related to her husband, the Baroness, it was understood, belonged to an expatriate branch of the family. The nature of the Baron’s work for the firm obliged them to live abroad. A highly respected and unblemished record.

Lady Braceley: “Nothing in our way, really,” said Fox, “unless you count a 1937 Ascot weekend scandal. She was an unwilling witness. Recently, just the usual stuff about elderly ladies in the jet set. Do you want the list of husbands?”

“She’d love to tell me herself but — all right. In case.”

He took them down.

“The nephew’s different,” said Fox. “He’s a naughty boy. Sacked from his school for pot parties and sex. Three convictions for speeding. Got off on a charge of manslaughter but only just. Accident resulting from high jinks at what was called a ‘gay pad.’ ”

“Press on, Br’er Fox.”

“This Sweet, Hamilton. Major. There’s no Major Hamilton Sweet in the Royal Artillery or any other army lists for the given period. So we looked up recent cases of False Pretences and Fraud, Army Officers, masquerading as. Less popular than it used to be.”

“See British possessions, armed forces, for the use of. Dwindling.”

“That’s right Well, anyway we looked. And came up with James Stanley Hamilton, who answers to your description. Three fraudulent company affairs and two revenue charges involving drugs. Known to have left the country. Wanted.”

“That, as they say in the late night imported serials, figures. Thank you, Br’er Fox.”

“You mentioned Mr. Barnaby Grant and Miss Sophy Jason. Nothing apart from what you know. You seem to be in a funny sort of milieu, Mr. Alleyn,” said Fox, who speaks French, “n’est-ce pas?”

“It gets funnier every second. Mille remerciements, Frère Renard, and why the hell aren’t you speaking Italian? Good night to you.”

Bergarmi rang up to say the Questore had told him to report. They had pulled in Giovanni Vecchi but had not persuaded him to talk. Bergarmi thought Giovanni might be hiding Mailer and almost certainly knew where he was but had no hard facts to support what seemed to be merely a hunch. They would continue to hold Vecchi. Alleyn again reflected upon the apparently wide divergences between Italian and British police procedure. He asked Bergarmi if he had made any enquiries as to Kenneth Dorne’s activities in Perugia. Bergarmi had done so and found that a complaint had been made to the police by a jeweler about a cigarette case but the man had been repaid and the charge withdrawn. There had been no further developments. “I thought as much,” Alleyn said. He then told Bergarmi of his interview with Sweet. “I’ve got a list of Ziegfeldt’s top agents from him,” he said. “I think it’s genuine. He’s been playing the double agent between Ziegfeldt and Mailer and now he’s got very cold feet.”

Bergarmi said he would have the Major watched. An arrest at this juncture would probably prove unfruitful but under obvious supervision he might crack and do something revealing: clearly Bergarmi now regarded the Major as his most fruitful source of information. He added that with the material Alleyn had obtained, no doubt his mission in Rome had been accomplished. There was no mistaking the satisfaction in Bergarmi’s voice. Alleyn said that you might put it like that, he supposed, and they rang off.

As he intended to dine in the hotel, he changed into a dinner jacket. At half past seven Kenneth Dorne came to see him. His manner slithered about between resentment, shamefacedness and sheer funk.

Alleyn ran through Kenneth’s record as supplied by Fox and asked him if it was substantially correct. Kenneth said he supposed so. “Anyway,” he said, “you’ve made up your mind so there’s no point in saying it’s not.”

“None whatever.”

“Very well, then. What’s the object in my coming here?”

“Briefly: this. I want to know what happened between you and Mailer by the Apollo, yesterday. No,” Alleyn said and lifted a hand, “don’t lie again. You’ll do yourself a lot of damage if you persist. You met him by arrangement to collect your supply of heroin and cocaine. But you also wanted to find out whether he’d been successful in blackmailing Lady Braceley on your behalf. Perhaps that’s a harsh way of putting it but it’s substantially what happened. You had got yourself into trouble in Perugia, Mailer had purported to get you out of it. Knowing your talent for sponging on your aunt he came again with completely false stories of police activity and the necessity for bribery on a large scale. He told you, no doubt, that Lady Braceley had promised to comply. Do you deny any of this?”

“No comment,” said Kenneth.

“My sole concern is to get a statement from you about your parting with Mailer and where he went — in what direction — when he left you. Your wits,” Alleyn said, “are not so befuddled with narcotics that you don’t understand me. This man has not only made a fool of you and robbed your aunt. He has murdered an old woman. I suppose you know the penalty for comforting and abetting a murderer.”

“Is this Roman law?” Kenneth sneered in a shaking voice.

“You’re a British subject. So is Mailer. You don’t want him caught, do you? You’re afraid of exposure.”

“No!”

“Then tell me where he went when he left you.”

At first Alleyn thought Kenneth was going to break down, then that he was going to refuse, but he did neither of these things. He gazed dolefully at Alleyn for several seconds and appeared to gain some kind of initiative. He folded his white hands over his mouth, bit softly at his fingers and put his head on one side. At last he talked and having begun seemed to find a release in doing so.

He said that when Mailer had fixed him up with his supply of heroin and cocaine he had “had himself a pop.” He carried his own syringe and Mailer, guessing he would be avid for it, had provided him with an ampoule of water and helped him. He adjusted the tourniquet, using Kenneth’s scarf for the purpose. “Seb,” Kenneth said, “is fabulous — you know — it’s not easy till you get the knack. Finding the right spot. So he cooked up and fixed me, there and then, and I felt fantastic. He said I’d better carry on with the party.”

They had walked together round the end of the old church and arrived at the iron stairway. Mailer had gone down the stairway into the insula with Kenneth but instead of entering the Mithraeum had continued along the cloister in the direction of the well.

Kenneth, saturated, Alleyn gathered, in a rising flood of well-being, had paused at the entry into the Mithraeum and idly watched Mailer. Having got so far in his narrative he ran the tip of his tongue round his lips and eyeing Alleyn with what actually seemed to be a kind of relish, said:

“Surprise, surprise.”

“What do you mean?”

“I saw it. Again. The same as what the Jason dolly saw. You know. The shadow.”

“Violetta’s.”

“Across the thing. You know. The sarcophagus.”

“Then you saw her?”

“No, I didn’t. I suppose he was between. I don’t know. I was high. There’s a kind of buttress thing juts out. Anyway I was high.”

“So high, perhaps, that you imagined the whole thing.”

“No,” Kenneth said loudly. “No.”

“And then?”

“I went into that marvellous place. The temple of whatever. There you were. All of you. On about the god. And the great grinning Baroness lining us up for a team photograph. And all the time,” Kenneth said excitedly, “all the time just round the corner, Seb was strangling the postcard woman. Wouldn’t it send you!” He burst out laughing.

Alleyn looked at him. “You can’t always have been as bad as this,” he said. “Or are you simply a born, stupid, unalterable monster. How big a hand has Mailer taken, with his H. and C. and his thoughtful ever-ready ampoule of distilled water, in the making of the product?”

Kenneth’s smile still hung about his mouth even as he began to whimper.

“Shut up,” Alleyn said mildly. “Don’t do that. Pull yourself together if you can.”

“I’m a spoilt boy. I know that. I never had a chance. I was spoilt.”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-three. Someone like you could have helped me. Truly.”

“Did you get any idea of why Mailer didn’t go into the Mithraeum with you? Was he expecting to meet the woman?”

“No. No, I’m sure he wasn’t,” Kenneth said eagerly, gazing at Alleyn. “I’m telling the truth,” he added with a dreadful imitation of a chidden little boy. “I’m trying to be good. And I’ll tell you something else. To show.”

“Go on.”

“He told me why he wouldn’t come in.”

“Why?”

“He had a date. With someone else.”

“Who?”

“He didn’t say. I’d tell you if I knew. He didn’t say. But he had a date. Down there in that place. He told me.”

The telephone rang.

When Alleyn answered it he received an oddly familiar sensation: an open silence broken by the distant and hollow closure of a door, a suggestion of space and emptiness. He was not altogether surprised when a rich voice asked: “Would this be Mr. Alleyn?”

“It would, Father.”

“You mentioned this morning where you were to be found. Are you alone, now?”

“No.”

“No. Well, we’ll say no more under that heading. I’ve called upon you, Mr. Alleyn, in preference to anybody else, on account of a matter that has arisen. It may be no great matter and it may be all to the contrary.”

“Yes?”

“If it’s not putting too much upon you I’d be very greatly obliged if you’d be kind enough to look in at the basilica.”

“Of course. Is it—?”

“Well, now, it may be. It may be and then again it may not and to tell you the truth I’m loath to call down a great concourse of the pollis upon me and then it turning out to be a rat.”

“A rat, Father Denys?”

“Or rats. The latter is more like it. Over the head of the strenth.”

“The strength, did you say?”

“I did that. The strenth. Of the aroma.”

“I’ll be with you,” Alleyn said, “in fifteen minutes.”

His professional homicide kit was in the bottom of his wardrobe. He took it with him.