When in Rome

8 Re-appearance of Sebastian Mailer

San Tommaso in Pallaria looked different after sunset. Its façade was dark against a darkening sky and its windows only faintly illuminated from within. Its entrance where Violetta had cursed Sebastian Mailer was quite given over to shadows and its doors were shut.

Alleyn was wondering how he would get in when Father Denys moved out of the shadows.

“Good evening and God bless you,” he said.

He opened a little pass door in the great entry and led the way in.

The smell of incense and hot candles seemed more noticeable in the dark. Galaxies of small flaming spearheads burned motionless before the saints. A ruby lamp glowed above the high altar. It was a place fully occupied within itself. A positive place.

Brother Dominic came out of the sacristy and they walked into the vestibule with its shrouded stalls. The lights were on in there and it felt stuffy.

“It’s like enough a fool’s errand I’ve brought you on and you maybe not eaten yet,” said Father Denys. “I may tell you it’s not been done without the authority of my superior.”

“I’m entirely at your service, Father.”

“Thank you, my son. We’ve had this sort of trouble before, d’ye see, over the head of the excavations and all. Rat trouble. Though Brother Dominic’s been after them in a very big way and it was our belief they were exterminated. And wouldn’t we look the fools if we’d stirred up Signor Bergarmi and his body of men and they fully occupied with their task?”

“Shall we have a look where the trouble seems to be?”

“A look, is it? A smell, more likely. But come along, come along.”

As he made that downward journey for the third time, it seemed to Alleyn that in its quiet way it was one of the strangest he had ever taken. A monk, a lay brother and himself, descending, if one cared to be fanciful, through a vertical section of the past.

When they reached the cloisters on the second level, Brother Dominic, who had not yet uttered a word, turned on the fluorescent lights and back into their immovable liveliness sprang the Apollo and the Mercury.

Down the iron spiral: two pairs of sandals and one pair of leather soles with the ever mounting sound of flowing water. The bottom level and a right turn. This was where Kenneth Dorne had parted company with Sebastian Mailer. On their left was the little anteroom into the Mithraeum. Ahead — the lights came on — ahead, the sarcophagus and the railed well.

They walked towards them.

The lid had not been replaced. It stood on its side, leaning against the empty stone coffin where Violetta had been urgently housed.

Father Denys put his hand on Alleyn’s arm.

“Now,” he said and they stopped.

“Yes,” Alleyn said.

It declared itself: sweetish, intolerable, unmistakable.

He went on alone, leant over the top rail where yesterday he had found a fragment of cloth and looked into the well, using the torch they had given him.

It showed walls in a sharp perspective and at the bottom an indefinable darkness.

“The other day,” he said, “when I looked down, there was a sort of glint. I took it to be a chance flicker of light on the moving stream.”

“It could be that.”

“What is there — down below?”

“The remains of a stone grille. As old,” Father Denys said, “as the place itself. Which is seventeen hundred years. We’ve lowered a light and it revealed nothing that you could call of any consequence but it was too far beneath to be of any great help.”

“The grille is above the surface of the stream?”

“It is. A few inches at the downstream end of the well. And it’s the remains only. A fragment you may say.”

“Could something have been carried down by the stream and got caught up in it?”

“It’s never been known in the history of this place. The water is pure. Every so often we let down a wee tin and haul up a sample for the testing. There’s never been the hint of contamination in it.”

“Can one get down there?”

“Well — now—”

“I think I can see footholds and — yes—”

Brother Dominic spoke. “You can,” he said.

“Aren’t there iron pegs?”

“There are.”

“And they rotten no doubt,” Father Denys urged, “and falling out like old teeth at the first handling.”

“Have you a rope, Father?”

“Sure, we have them for the excavations. You’re not thinking—”

“I’ll go down if you’ll give me a hand.”

“Dominic, let you fetch a rope?”

“And a head-lamp and overalls,” Brother Dominic enumerated with a glance at Alleyn’s impeccable suit. “We have them all got. I’ll fetch them, Father.”

“Do so.”

“It’s unwholesome here,” Father Denys said when Brother Dominic had gone. “Let us move away for the time being.”

They entered the Mithraeum. Father Denys had switched on the lighting used in visiting hours. The altar glowed. At the far end, the god, lit from beneath, stared out of blank eyes at nothing. They sat on one of the stone benches where in the second century his initiates had sat, wan with their ordeal, their blanched faces painted by the altar fires.

Alleyn thought he would like to ask Father Denys what he made of the Mithraic cult but when he turned to speak to him found that he was withdrawn into himself. His hands were pressed together and his lips moved.

Alleyn waited for a minute and then, hearing the returning slap of sandals in the cloister, went quietly out by the doorway behind the god. This was the passage by which he and the Van der Veghels had left the Mithraeum. It was very dark indeed and the Baroness had exclaimed at it.

Two right turns brought him back into sight of the well and there was Brother Dominic with ropes, an old-fashioned head-lamp of the sort miners use, a suit of workmen’s overalls and a peculiar woolly cap.

“I’m obliged to you, Brother Dominic,” said Alleyn.

“Let you put them on.”

Alleyn did so. Brother Dominic fussed about him. He fixed the head-lamp and with great efficiency made fast one end of the rope round Alleyn’s chest and under his shoulders.

Alleyn transferred a minuscule camera from his homicide kit to the pocket of his overalls. After looking about for a minute, Brother Dominic asked Alleyn to help him place the lid of the sarcophagus at right angles across the coffin. It was massive but Brother Dominic was a strong man and made little of it. He passed the slack of the rope twice round the lid, crossing it in the manner of sailors when they wear a rope in lowering a heavy load.

“We could take your weight neat between us,” he said, “but this will be the better way. Where’s Father?”

“In the Mithraeum. Saying his prayers, I think.”

“He would be that.”

“Here he is.”

Father Denys returned looking anxious.

“I hope we are right about this,” he said. “Are you sure it’s safe, now, Dominic?”

“I am, Father.”

“Mr. Alleyn, would you not let me place a — a handkerchief over your — eh?”

He hovered anxiously and finally did tie his own large cotton handkerchief over Alleyn’s nose and mouth.

The two Dominicans tucked back their sleeves, wetted their palms and took up the rope, Brother Dominic on Alleyn’s side of the sarcophagus lid and Father Denys on the far side, close to the turn. “That’s splendid,” Alleyn said. “I hope I won’t have to trouble you. Here I go.”

“God bless you,” they said in their practical way.

He had another look at the wall. The iron pegs went down at fairly regular intervals on either side of one corner. The well itself was six feet by three. Alleyn ducked under the bottom rail, straddled the corner with his back to the well, knelt, took his weight on his forearms, wriggled backwards and groped downwards with his right foot.

“Easy now, easy,” said both the Dominicans. He looked up at Brother Dominic’s sandalled feet, at his habit and into his long-lipped Irish face. “I have you held,” said Brother Dominic and gave a little strain on the rope to show that it was so.

Alleyn’s right foot found a peg and rested on it. He tested it, letting himself down little by little. He felt a gritting sensation and a slight movement under his foot but the peg took his weight.

“Seems O.K.,” he said through Father Denys’s handkerchief.

He didn’t look up again. His hands, one after the other, relinquished the edge and closed, right and then left, round pegs. One of them tilted, jarred and ground its way out of its centuries-old housing. It was loose in his hand and he let it fall. So long, it seemed, before he heard it hit the water. Now he had only one handhold and his feet but the rope sustained him. He continued down. His face was close to the angle made by the walls and he must be careful lest he knock his headlamp against stone. It cast a circle of light that made sharp and intimate the pitted surface of the rock. Details of colour, irregularities and growths of some minute lichen passed upwards through the light as he himself so carefully sank.

Already the region above seemed remote and the voices of the Dominicans disembodied. His world was now filled with the sound of running water. He would have smelt water, he thought, if it had not been for that other growing and deadly smell. How far had he gone? Why hadn’t he asked Brother Dominic for the actual depth of the well? Thirty feet? More? Would the iron pegs have rusted and rotted in the damper air?

The peg under his left foot gave way. He shouted a warning and his voice reverberated and mingled with Brother Dominic’s reply. Then his right foot slipped. He hung by his hands and by the rope. “Lower away,” he called, released his hold, dangled and dropped in short jerks fending himself clear of the two walls. The voice of the stream was all about him.

A sudden icy cold shock to his feet came as a surprise. They were carried aside. At the same moment he saw and grabbed two pegs at shoulder level. “Hold it! Hold it! I’m there.”

He was lowered another inch before the rope took up. He scrabbled with his feet against the pressure of the stream. The backs of his legs hit against something hard and firm. He explored with his feet, lifted them clear of the water and found in a moment with a kind of astonishment that he was standing on bars that pressed into his feet

The grille.

A broken grille, the monks had said.

The surface of the stream must be almost level with the bottom of the well and about an inch below the grille which projected from its wall. Supporting himself in the angle of the walls Alleyn contrived to turn himself about so that he now faced outwards. His head-lamp showed the two opposite walls. He leant back into the angle, braced himself and shouted: “Slack off a little.”

“Slack off, is it,” said the disembodied voice.

He leant forward precariously as the rope gave, shouted “Hold it,” and lowered his head so that his lamp illuminated the swift-flowing black waters, the fragment of grille that he stood upon and his drenched feet, planted apart and close to its broken fangs.

And between his feet? A third foot ensnared upside down in the broken fangs: a foot in a black leather shoe.

His return to the surface was a bit of a nightmare. Superintendents of the C.I.D., while they like to keep well above average in physical fitness and have behind them a gruelling and comprehensive training to this end, are not in the habit of half scrambling and half dangling on the end of a rope in a well. Alleyn’s palms burnt, his joints were banged against rock walls and once he got a knock on the back of his head that lit up stars and made him dizzy. Sometimes he climbed up by such iron pegs as remained intact. Sometimes he walked horizontally up the wall while he. and the monks hauled in. “They do these things better,” he reflected, “in crime films.”

When he had finally been landed, the three of them sat on the floor and breathed hard: as odd a little group, it occurred to Alleyn, as might be imagined.

“You were superb,” he said. “Thank you.”

“Ah, sure, it was nothing at all,” Father Denys panted. “Aren’t we used to this type of thing in the excavating? It’s yourself should have the praise.”

They shared that peculiar sense of fellowship and gratification which is the reward of such exercises.

“Well,” Alleyn said. “I’m afraid you’ll have to ring the Questura, Father. Our man’s down there and he’s dead.”

“The man Mailer?” Father Denys said when they had crossed themselves. “God have mercy on his soul.”

“Amen,” said Brother Dominic.

“What’s the way of it, Mr. Alleyn?”

“As I see it he probably fell through the well head-first and straight into the stream, missing the broken grille which, by the way, only extends a few inches from the wall. The stream swept him under the grille, but one foot, the right, was trapped between two of the broken fangs. And there he is, held in the current.”

“How are you sure it’s himself?”

“By the shoe and the trouser leg and because—” Alleyn hesitated.

“What are you trying to tell us?”

“—It was just possible to see his face.”

“There’s a terrible thing for you! And so drowned?”

“That,” Alleyn said, “will no doubt appear in due course.”

“Are you telling us there’s been — what are you telling us? — a double murder?”

“It depends upon what you mean by that, Father.”

“I mean does someone have that sin upon his soul to have killed Violetta and Sebastian Mailer, the both of them?”

“Or did Mailer kill Violetta and was then himself killed?”

“Either way, there’s a terrible thing!” Father Denys repeated. “God forgive us all. A fearful, fearful thing.”

“And I do think we should ring the Vice-Questore.”

“Bergarmi, is it? Yes, yes, yes. We’ll do so.” On the return journey, now so very familiar, they passed by the well-head on the middle level. Alleyn stopped and looked at the railings. As in the basilica they were made of more finished wood than those in the insula. Four stout rails, well polished, about ten inches apart.

“Have you ever had any trouble in the past? Any accidents?” Alleyn asked.

Never, they said. Children were not allowed unaccompanied anywhere in the building and people obeyed the notice not to climb the railings. “Just a moment, Father.”

Alleyn walked over to the well. “Somebody’s ignored the notice,” he said and pointed to two adjacent marks across the top of the lowest rail. “Somebody who likes brown polish on the under instep of his shoes. Wait a moment, Father, will you?”

He squatted painfully by the rails and used his torch. The smears of brown polish were smudged across with equidistant tracks almost as if somebody had tried to erase them with an india rubber.

“If you don’t mind,” he said, “I’ve got a fancy to take a shot of this.” And did so with his particular little camera.

“Will you look at that, now!” exclaimed Father Denys.

“It won’t amount to a row of beans, as likely as not. Shall we go on?”

Back in the vestibule he rang up the Questura and got through to Bergarmi. He had to go warily. As he expected, the Vice-Questore immediately said that the Dominicans should have reported the trouble to him. Alleyn made the most of Father Denys’s reluctance to bother the police with what might well turn out to be the trivial matter of a couple of dead rats. Bergarmi gave this a sardonic reception, muttering: “Topi, topi,” as if he used an incredulous slang equivalent of “Rats!” This Alleyn felt to be a little unfair but he pressed on with his report.

“You’ll have a difficult job getting the body out,” he said, “but of course you have all the resources and the expertise.”

“You have communicated this matter, Superintendent Alleyn, to Il Questore Valdarno?”

“No. I thought it best to report at once to you.”

This went down much better. “In which respect,” Bergarmi conceded, “you have acted with propriety. We shall deal with this matter immediately. The whole complexion of the affair alters. I myself will inform Il Questore. In the meantime I will speak, if you please, with the Padre.”

While Father Denys talked volubly with Bergarmi, Alleyn washed his hands in a cubbyhole, found them to be rather more knocked about than he had realized, changed back into his own clothes and took stock of the situation.

The complexion had indeed changed. What, he sourly asked himself, was the position of a British investigator in Rome when a British subject of criminal propensities had almost certainly been murdered, possibly by another Briton, not impossibly by a Dutchman, not quite inconceivably by an Italian, on property administered by an Irish order of Dominican monks?

“This is one,” he thought, “to be played entirely by ear and I very much wish I was shot of it.”

He had an egg-shaped lump on the back of his head. He was bruised, sore and even a bit shaky, which made him angry with himself. “I could do with black coffee,” he thought.

Father Denys came back, caught sight of Alleyn’s hands and immediately produced a first aid box. He insisted on putting dressings over the raw patches.

“You’d be the better for a touch of the creature,” he said, “and we’ve nothing of the kind to offer. There’s a caffè over the way. Go there, now, and take a drop of something. The pollis will be a while yet, for that fellow Bergarmi is all for getting on to the Questore before he stirs himself. Are you all right, now?”

“I’m fine but I think it’s a marvellous suggestion.”

“Away with you.”

The caffè was a short distance down the street: a very modest affair with a scatter of workaday patrons who looked curiously at him. He had coffee and brandy and forced himself to eat a couple of large buns that turned out to be delicious.

“Well,” he thought, “it was on the cards. From the beginning it was on the cards and I’m glad I said as much to Valdarno.”

He began a careful re-think. “Suppose,” he thought, “as a starting point, I accept that the noise we heard while the Baroness was setting up that ludicrous group photograph was, in fact, the sound of the sarcophagus lid thumping down on its edge, and I must say it sounded exactly like it. This would mean presumably that Violetta had just been killed and was about to be safely stowed. By Mailer? If by Mailer then he himself survived to be killed, again presumably — no, almost certainly — before we all reassembled. The only members of the party who were alone were Sweet and young Dorne, who found their way up independently, and Lady B., who was parked in the atrium.

“The Van der Veghels were with me. Sophy Jason was with Barnaby Grant. We met nobody on our way up and they say as much for themselves.

“Query. If Mailer killed Violetta while we were all having our photographs taken, why did he — not a robust man — go through the elaborate and physically exhausting job of putting the body in the sarcophagus and replacing the lid instead of doing what was subsequently done to him — dispatching it down the well?

“I have no answer.

“On the other hand, suppose one person killed both of them. Why? I am dumb, but suppose it was so? Why for pity’s sake, make a sarcophagus job of Violetta and a well job of Mailer? Just for the hell of it?

“But. But, I suppose, on the third hand, Mailer killed Violetta and hadn’t time to do anything further about it before he himself was knocked off and pushed down the well? How will this fadge? Rather better I fancy. And why does his killer take the trouble to box Violetta up? That’s an easier one. Much easier.

“I suppose there’s a fourth hand. We approach Indian god status. Suppose Violetta killed Mailer and heaved him overboard and was then — no, that I refuse to entertain.

“How long were we all boxed up together under the blank eyes of Mithras? Sweet arrived first and, about five minutes later, young Dorne. Then there was the business of the photographs. The discussion, the groping and the grouping. Sophy and I being funnymen and Grant cursing us. He had just said: ‘Serve you bloody well right,’ to Sophy, who was having trouble with the Major, when the lid, if it was the lid, thudded. After that came the failure of the flashlight, the interminable wait while the Baroness set herself up again. At least ten minutes I would think. Then Dorne took his photo of Mithras. Then the Baroness loosed off, this time successfully. Then she took two more shots, not without further re-arrangements and palaver. Another four minutes? All of that. And finally the Baron changed places with the Baroness and blazed away on his own account. Then Grant read his piece. Another five minutes. And then the party broke up. After that Dorne and Sweet are again odd men out. So it looks as if we were all together in that bloody basement for about twenty-five minutes, give or take the odd five. So everybody’s got an alibi for the salient time. Everybody? No. No, not quite. Not — Sit still, my soul. Hold on to your hats, boys—”

A great rumpus of sirens broke out in the distance, drew rapidly nearer and exploded into the little street. The police. The Squadra Omicidi in strength. Three large cars and a van, eight Agenti and four practical-looking characters in overalls.

Alleyn paid his bill and returned to the church, stiffer now about the shoulders and ribs and painful as to the head but in other respects his own man again.

A large amount of equipment was being unloaded: two pairs of waders, ropes, pulleys, an extension ladder, a winch, a stretcher. Il Vice-Questore Bergarmi watched the operations with an air of tetchy disdain. He greeted Alleyn ceremoniously and with a fine salute.

Patrons from the little caffè, some groups of youths and a car or two quickly collected and were bossed about by two of the Agenti who were otherwise unoccupied. Brother Dominic came out, surveyed the assembly and opened the main doors.

“Il Questore Valdarno, Signor Alleyn,” said Bergarmi fairly stiffly, “sends his compliments. He wishes me to express his hopes that you will continue to interest yourself in our investigations.”

“I am very much obliged to him,” Alleyn replied, groping about in his Italian for the correct phrases, “and will be glad to do so without, I trust, making a nuisance of myself.”

“Mente affalto,” Bergarmi replied. Which was as much, Alleyn thought, as to say, “Don’t let that worry you,” or even, “Forget it.” Somehow it sounded a good deal less cordial.

It was after ten o’clock when Bergarmi’s men landed Sebastian Mailer’s body in the insula.

It lay on a stretcher not far from the sarcophagus, an inconsequential sequel to a flabby, fat man. It wore a ghastly resemblance to Violetta. This was because Mr. Mailer, also, had been strangled.

His body had been knocked about; both before and after death, said the medical man — presumably a police surgeon — called in to make an immediate examination. Its face had been scored by fangs of the broken grille. There was a heavy livid mark across the neck quite apart from the typical stigmata of manual strangulation. Alleyn watched the routine procedure and spoke when he was spoken to. There was a certain hauteur in the attitudes of the investigating officers.

“We shall, of course, perform an autopsy,” said the doctor. “He was a man of full habit. No doubt we shall find he was killed not so very long after he had eaten. Ecco! We find certain manifestations. You may cover the cadaver.” They did so. “And remove it,” added the doctor. “Unless, of course—” he bowed to Alleyn who had moved forward—“the Signor Superintendent wishes—?”

Alleyn said: “Thank you. I am sure, gentlemen, you have already taken every possible photograph required for the investigation, but unfortunately as we all know, under such difficult conditions there can be accidents. When I found the body I did get a shot of it in situ.” He produced his very special minuscule camera. “It seems to have survived a rather rough passage,” he said. “If by any chance you would like a print I shall of course be delighted to give you one.”

He knew at once by a certain momentary stillness that no photographs had been taken down below by the recovery team. He hurried on. “Perhaps I may be allowed to finish my film and then — a further favour, Signor Bergarmi — perhaps your laboratories would be kind enough to develop it.”

“Of course, Signore. Our pleasure.”

“You are very good,” Alleyn said and instantly whipped back the sheet and took four photographs of Mailer, deceased, with special attention to the right foot. He then removed the cassette and handed it with a bow to Bergarmi.

The body was re-shrouded and taken away.

Bergarmi said irritably that this was a bad evening for such an event. Student demonstrations had broken out in Navona and its surrounding district and threatened to become serious. The Agenti were fully occupied. A mammoth demonstration was planned for the morrow and the police expected it to be the worst yet. He must get this job through as quickly as possible. He suggested that nothing further could be done at the moment but that in view of the grossly altered circumstances his chief would be glad if Alleyn would wait on him in the morning at 9:30. It seemed advisable to call the seven travellers together again. Bergarmi’s officers would attend to this. A car was at Alleyn’s disposal. No doubt he would like to go home.

They shook hands.

When Alleyn left he passed Father Denys, who came as near to tipping him a wink as lay within the dignity of his office.

Sophy Jason and Barnaby Grant met for breakfast on the roof garden. The morning sparkled freshly and was not yet too hot for comfort. From the direction of Navona there came vague sounds of singing, a discordant band and the rumour of a crowd. A detachment of police marched down their street. The waiter was full of confused chatter about riots. It seemed unreal to Sophy and Barnaby.

They talked of the blameless pleasures of the previous evening when they had walked about Roman streets until they tired and had then taken a carriage drive fraught with the inescapable romanticism of such exercise. Finally, after a glass of wine in Navona, they had strolled home. When they said good night Grant had kissed Sophy for the first time. She had taken this thoughtfully with a nod as if to say, “Well, yes, I suppose so,” had blushed unexpectedly and left him in a hurry. If they could have read each other’s thoughts they would have been surprised to find that they were so nearly identical. Each, in fact, speculated upon immediate as opposed to past emotions under like circumstances and each, with a kind of apprehensive delight, recognized an essential difference.

Sophy had arrived first for breakfast and had sat down determined to sort herself out in a big way but instead had idly dreamed until Grant’s arrival set up a commotion under her ribs. This was quickly replaced by a renewed sense of companionship unfolding like a flower in the morning air. “How happy I am,” each of them thought. “I am delighted.”

In this frame of mind they discussed the coming day and speculated about the outcome of the Violetta affair and the probability of Mr. Mailer being a murderer.

“I suppose it’s awful,” Sophy said, “not to be madly horrified, but truth to tell I’m not much more appalled than I would be if I’d read it in the papers.”

“I’ll go one worse than you. In a way I’m rather obliged to him.”

“Honestly! What can you mean!”

“You’re still hanging about in Rome instead of flouncing off to Assisi or Florence or wherever.”

“That,” Sophy said, “is probably a remark in execrable taste although I must say I relished it.”

“Sophy,” said Grant, “you’re a sweetie. Blow me down flat if you’re not.”

He reached out his hand and at that moment the waiter came out on the roof garden.

Now it was Grant who experienced a jolt under the diaphragm. Here he had sat, and so, precisely here, had the waiter appeared, on that morning over a year ago when Sebastian Mailer was announced.

“What’s the matter?” Sophy asked.

“Nothing. Why?”

“You looked — odd.”

“Did I? What is it?” he asked the waiter.

It was the Baron Van der Veghel hoping Mr. Grant was free.

“Ask him to join us, please.”

Sophy stood up.

“Don’t you dare,” Grant said. “Sit down.”

“Yes, but — Well, anyway, you shut up.”

“Siddown.”

“I’ll be damned if I do,” said Sophy and did.

The Baron arrived: large, concerned and doubtful. He begged their forgiveness for so early a call and supposed that, like him, they had received a great shock. This led to some momentary confusion until, gazing at them with those wide open eyes of his, he said: “But surely you must know?” and, finding they did not, flatly told them.

“The man Mailer,” he said, “has been murdered. He has been found at the bottom of the well.”

At that moment all the clocks in Rome began to strike nine and Sophy was appalled to hear a voice in her head saying: “Ding, dong bell, Mailer’s in the well.”

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

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

The Baron glanced anxiously at Sophy. “Perhaps,” he said, “we should—”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Suspects?” Sophy said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“With the greatest pleasure,” said the Baron politely.

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

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

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

The travellers, he said, were summoned to appear at 10:30. Conversation languished but revived with the arrival of Bergarmi, who had the results of the postmortems. Violetta had been hit on the back of the head and manually strangled. Mailer had probably been knocked out before being strangled and dropped down the well, though the bruise on his jaw might have been caused by a blow against the rails or the wall on his way down. He had drowned. The fragment of material Alleyn had found on the inner side of the top rail matched the black alpaca of his jacket and there was a corresponding tear in the sleeve.

At this point Valdarno, with stately punctilio, said to Bergarmi they must acknowledge at once that Signor Alleyn had advanced the theory of Mailer’s possible disappearance down the well and that he himself had not accepted it. They both bowed, huffily, to Alleyn.

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

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

“Screaming?”

“No.”

“One would expect the woman Violetta to scream.”

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

Valdarno surveyed Bergami. “You realize what all this implies, no doubt.”

“Certainly, Signor Questore.”

“Well?”

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

“Very well.”

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

Valdarno turned to Alleyn and spread his hands.

“Ecco!” he said. “You agree?”

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

“Ah?”

“Do we know where Giovanni Vecchi was?”

“Vecchi!”

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

Valdarno gazed in his melancholy way at nothing in particular. “What,” he asked Bergami, “has the man Vecchi said?”

“Signore Questore — nothing.”

“Still nothing?”

“He is obstinate.”

“Has he been informed of Mailer’s death?”

“Last night, Signor Questore.”

“His reaction?”

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

“Again nothing. A little pale perhaps. I believe him to be nervous.”

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

“Of course, Signor Questore,” said Bergarmi, who had not looked at Alleyn.

“Send for him.”

“Certainly, Signor Questore. At once.”

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

An Agente came in and saluted.

“The tourists, Signor Questore,” he said.

“Very well. All of them?”

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

“Admit them,” said Valdarno with all the grandeur of a Shakespearian monarch.

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

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

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

“Baronessa,” he said.

“Too shattering,” she lamented. “I can’t believe it. That’s all. I simply cannot believe it.”

“Unfortunately it is true. Please! Be seated.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“No!” Kenneth whispered. “No! Don’t you dare. Don’t dare!”

“—Dorne on his way up — and alone.”

“—and who else — who else? Go on. Who else!”

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

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

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

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

“They have lost him,” he said. “Buffoons! Idiots! Lunatics! He has given them the slip.”

“Vecchi!”

“Vecchi! No, Signor Questore, no. Sweet. Major Sweet.”