Authors: Michael Dibdin
The streets, glimpsed from my window, presented a prospect which was uninviting in the extreme. The rain had turned hard and punchy, coming down in squally showers beaten into every corner by a nasty wind which roamed the streets like a mob in search of victims. It found few enough, for sensible folk stayed at home, and listened to it howling in the chimney. But I could not, alas, and so, bundled up in every protection against the elements I could lay my hands on, I set off across town towards the Ponte Vecchio.
Having noted that Mr Browning is extremely particular about punctuality, I had taken care to pay him the politeness of kings myself, and was therefore both surprised and mildly annoyed when Aere was no sign of him by the time the nearby churches had finished ringing nine o’clock. I was still puzzling over his non-appearance when my attention was drawn by a crowd of men in the standard Florentine garb of slouch hats, short cloaks and cigars, clustered around a doorway to my right.
As Mr Jarves has said, Florence is a city where you may see ten men watching an eleventh buy two oranges from a street-trader with a degree of lively interest which an American crowd might bestow upon one of Mr Barnum’s raree-shows. But the natives’ aversion to foul weather is even more marked than their curiosity, and for a crowd to collect on such a day as that the spectacle, I felt, must possess some greater intrinsic interest than orange-trading. After another five minutes’ fruitless wait, I therefore walked over to investigate.
When I reached the fringes of the crowd I heard my name called, looked up—for the voice had come from above—and found Robert Browning waving at me from a window of the house before which the onlookers had gathered. The next moment he disappeared, but I shouldered my way through the crowd, which parted reluctantly to let me through, and when I reached the doorway Browning was there to lead me past the police constable on guard into the dry empty echoing spaces of the vestibule.
His eyes glittered with a hard intense brilliance.
‘It is all over!’ he hissed excitedly. ‘Come!’
We mounted the shallow slab-like steps to the first floor, three at a time. I asked what had happened, but my companion would say only that he wished me to see for myself.
Another policeman guarded the door to DeVere’s apartments, and once again Browning’s word was enough to gain us entrance, and I could not help remarking on this astonishing volte-face in the authorities’ attitude to my companion. A few days before he had been the object of a police interrogation, his house was watched and he himself followed by a police agent — for all the world like a man under suspicion. Yet here he was, a foreigner with no official standing, ordering the local constables about like one of their own officers! How on earth had he effected this miraculous transformation?
‘Commissioner Talenti has pestered me no more since I called his bluff by challenging that ruffian in Doney’s—he wouldn’t dare!’ Browning explained. ‘As for my status here, it is the result of a little bluffing of my own. I was on my way to keep our appointment when I noticed the crowd outside the house. The police had just been called, but by feigning to be a friend of DeVere’s I was able to gain entrance on the pretext of representing his interests until an official from the embassy arrives.
He is expected at any moment. But there is just time, I hope, for you to see what there is to be seen.’
We had entered the main room, a noble salon overlooking the river. Now when I say ‘the river’, you are not to imagine some stately body of calmly-proceeding water such as the Thames, the Seine, or for that matter our own Charles. The Arno is quite another type of beast: a moody Latin, either thrashing about in spate and threatening to inundate the city (as it did to such disastrous effect in ‘44); or more usually a drab and uninspiring waste of murky water, thick with all the filth of the city and the rank ooze of the tanneries and cloth finishers upstream, split into a maze of tiny channels winding through the banks of silt, torn-up trees and rubble washed down from the mountains. A damned ditch, Dante called it—and such it remains to this day.
The glass doors on to the balcony stood open, and Browning led me outside. The first thing I noticed was that the railing was broken in half, the right-hand section leaning out over the river at a crazy angle. I approached the edge of the terrace with care, and looked down. On a mud-flat below the house a small group of men were standing in a circle around a formless heap covered with a blanket. I saw several policemen, as well as some of the poor fellows called sandmen, who scrape a living sieving for that commodity in the same way the Californians do for gold. As for the sinister object in their midst, Browning informed me that it was the lifeless body of Cecil DeVere.
Although the subsequent examination of the body indicated that death had occurred at some time during the night, the corpse had lain undiscovered until shortly after eight o’clock, when one of those same sandmen had come upon it in the course of his work, and raised the alarm. Knowing what I now know, I have no compunction in pointing out the irony: the vain DeVere had once held forth to me at some length upon Beau Brummel’s definition of elegance, which was also his: dressing in such a way as not to excite attention. By this criterion his toilet had remained impeccable to the last, for his body had lain there for several hours not twenty yards from the busiest bridge in Florence, without being noticed by anyone.
But my immediate considerations were quite different, for you must remember how vital DeVere had been to our hopes of solving the murder of Isabel Eakin. Now those hopes appeared to have been extinguished for ever. I asked Browning if it was yet known how DeVere had come to fall to his death. He pointed to the broken railing.
‘That rail has apparently been defective for some time, and DeVere had repeatedly spoken of having it repaired. The authorities’ view would seem to be that he has now paid the price of his procrastination.’
Browning’s voice was bland—too much so.
‘And is that view also yours?’ I queried.
For all answer, he turned away and led me back inside.
The living-room bore all the marks of its late occupier’s good taste and long purse. Tapestries, pictures, statuary, old books and musical instruments, primitive crucifixes, classical antiquities and suchlike abounded on every side. In the centre of the room, beneath the inevitable chandelier, stood a highly-polished inlaid walnut table, at which I had sat with other guests a score of times, sipping the excellent aleatico dessert wine which DeVere obtained from a local marquis for whom he had done some favour—the story of which invariably circulated with the decanter, for DeVere was one of those who never seem to know when they have told a tale before.
Upon the table lay two very different objects. The more immediately striking was a golden locket in the shape of a heart. It was open, revealing an incised inscription consisting of the letters O, V, and A, almost hidden amidst a profusion of curlicues and tendrils, like the figure in a carpet. Beside the locket lay an object as different from it in every respect as can well be imagined—yet if anything even more interesting. It was a dirty, crumpled, torn scrap of cheap paper, bearing the name Joseph Ernest Eakin in a well-formed flowing hand.
At that moment we heard a sound of footsteps and voices on the stairs, and to my astonishment Browning picked up the scrap of paper and put it in his pocket. The next instant the door was opened, and in walked a group of three men, headed by the dapper melancholy little figure of Antonio Talenti.
The worst of it was that he did not even seem particularly surprised to find us there, merely nodding familiarly at my companion in a way that seemed to say, ‘Ah, so you’re in this, are you? I thought as much’. For some reason I found this infinitely more disturbing than any amount of histrionics.
Browning, however, was no whit abashed—on the contrary! Totally ignoring the policeman, he greeted the other two men—the British chargé d’affaires, Mr Scarlett, and one of his assistants—and explained our presence there. Having thus established the free and easy terms on which he stood with the diplomats, he then turned to the Italian and greeted him elaborately, as though remarking his existence for the first time.
‘I’m so glad to see that you are putting your considerable talents’—emphasising the word humorously—‘to some worthwhile use at last,’ he continued. ‘It is of the highest importance that no mistake is made in this matter. Mr DeVere was of course an accredited representative of the British Crown, and should any irregularity occur our Lord Palmerston is quite capable of sending a gun-boat up the Arno, shelling the Pitti Palace, and then sending the Grand Duke a bill for the costs of the operation. Thank heavens that such an awful responsibility rests in hands no less sure than yours, Signor Talenti.’
With which he made a slight bow, and with a ‘Come, Mr Booth!’ swept me from the room. And all with that vital piece of evidence burning a hole in his pocket the while! What a man!
Outside in the street one of the frequent showers was in full spate, and it was clear that in a few moments we would be as effectively soaked as if someone had thrown a bucket of water over us. It was imperative to seek shelter at the first opportunity, which as it happened was afforded by the porch of a nearby church. Here we stood shivering for several minutes, at which point, the downpour showing no signs of moderating, Browning suggested that we go inside and sit down.
I was surprised to notice Mr Browning make the sign of the cross as we entered, and remarked that I had had no idea he was a Catholic.
‘I am not,’ he replied, ‘but the church is, and I like to respect the forms. Do you know that story of the English aristocrat on the Grand Tour, who found himself in a church in Venice during Mass? At the elevation of the host the entire congregation knelt, all except our staunch Protestant. “Kneel down!” hissed the man beside him. “I do not believe in the Real Presence,” returned the Englishman. “No more do I,” the Venetian retorted immediately, “but either kneel down or get out of the church!” That’s the spirit! But perhaps I shock your principles, Mr Booth. You Bostonians can be very strict, I believe.’
‘You cannot shock my principles, for I have none,’ I returned, without thinking.
Browning shot me a look of horror. ‘No principles! Ah, then you must be a prodigy indeed! A man without principles—what a terrifying idea! Let us thank God it can be nothing more. But all you mean, of course, is that you have no fixed principles in regard to the forms of religious observance—or, perhaps, that they are none of my business—and thus I am rightly punished for my inquisitiveness.’
One of the ideas which had flitted, fugitive-like, through my mind since meeting Robert Browning was that I might one day write a memoir of the man—put my humble talents to some good use and become his Boswell! This being the case, I realise that I must become adept at fishing out his ideas as they casually arise in the stream of conversation, and stretching them out in cold black ink at the earliest possible opportunity, all nice and fresh. How else, I would like to know, are collections of aphorisms,
obiter dicta
, etc., assembled?
While we are on the subject, another volume I have thought of publishing one day is a small manual entitled
The Whole Art and Secret of Conversational Success
, It would certainly make my fortune overnight, for the method it would elaborate has contributed in no small measure to my rapid ascent into the better strata of society here. The entire work would consist of but two words: Ask Questions.
I see you smile cynically, but try it some time! The secret of its invariable efficacy is simple: everyone—rich and poor, famous and unknown—would rather talk than listen, rather answer than ask, rather entertain than be entertained, rather bore than be bored. Give them the opportunity to do so, and they will always invite you back. With a Robert Browning there is of course no fear of being bored—but the trick works just the same.
‘All I meant was that I have no prejudices in religious matters,’ I commented. ‘My parents brought me up as a Quaker, but I have long since ceased to know what I believe, if anything. But do you not think it possible that a man without any principles might nevertheless exist—at least in principle?’
I underlined my little jest with a smile; but Browning was all high seriousness.
‘Never! The idea contains a contradiction. What is a man but a bundle of principles? Poor principles, often, to be sure. Weak principles, wrong principles; mad, sad or bad principles. But principles there must be, all the same—just as this stone, this wood all around us cannot exist without the great Principle which holds its atoms together, binding them irrevocably into the nature of wood or stone. Why, just imagine this …’—he produced a handkerchief from his pocket—’imagine this little piece of cloth totally released, unpacked and liberated from all restraints! Imagine that hurricane of energy blasting half Florence into instant ruin! The human counterpart of that apocalyptic explosion would be the man without principles. But he cannot appear until the day matter casts off its bonds, and that cannot happen until he appears—and we know when that will be, and who he is: the Anti-Christ! Until then, thank God, we have only mundane wickedness, ignorance and sin to contend with. And we should get on with it, no doubt, instead of philosophising on ultimate things in this fashion.’
I was, in fact, thinking less of what he was saying than of the handkerchief he was waving in front of my eyes. It was of lace, like those the huckster had been selling by the Cathedral the night before. I observed now that a feature of the pattern embroidered on it was a bold letter B in each of the four corners. At first I thought of his own name, then of the maiden name of his wife, and lastly of the pet name by which he calls her: Ba. So the purchase had been innocent enough, after all.
I enquired where we should go to discuss what had happened—half-hoping that he might invite me back to Casa Guidi, which lay at the end of the street, almost in sight of the church. But he merely asked why we should not stay where we were.