‘She must have been the patron saint of Lady Godiva.’
‘And of the librettists of
Hair.’
‘That’s right.’ Sophy drank a little more champagne cocktail. ‘I suppose we really ought to be asking each other whatever could have happened to Mr Mailer,’ she said.
Grant was motionless except that his left hand, resting on the table, contracted about the stem of his glass.
‘Oughtn’t we?’ Sophy said vaguely.
‘I feel no obligation to do so.’
‘Nor I really. In fact, I think it’s very much nicer without him. If you don’t mind my saying so?’
‘No,’ Grant said heavily. ‘No, I don’t mind. Here comes the car.’
When Alleyn got back to his fine hotel at ten past six he found a message asking him to telephone Il Questore Valdarno. He did so and was told with a casual air that scarcely concealed the Questore’s sense of professional gratification, that his people had already traced the woman called Violetta to her lair which was in a slum. When he said they had traced her, the Questore amended, he did not mean precisely in person since she was not at home when his man called. He had, however, made rewarding inquiries among her neighbours who knew all about her war with Sebastian Mailer and said, variously, that she was his cast-off mistress, wife or shady business associate, that he had betrayed her in a big way and that she never ceased to inveigh against him. Violetta was not popular among the ladies in her street, being quarrelsome, vindictive and unpleasant to children. She was also held to poach on certain begging preserves in the district. It emerged that Mr Mailer in his salad days had abandoned Violetta in Sicily, ‘Where, my dear Superintendent,’ said the Questore, ‘she may well have been one of his contacts in the smuggling of heroin. Palermo is a port of transit as we well know.’
‘Yes, indeed.’
‘All are agreed that she is a little mad.’
‘Ah.’
It appeared, the Questore continued, that for an unspecified time, years perhaps, Mailer had eluded Violetta, but getting wind of his being first in Naples and then in Rome she had chased him, finally establishing herself on the postcard beat outside S. Tommaso.
‘I have spoken with this Irish Dominican,’ said the Questore. ‘It is nonsense for him to say that no one could escape their vigilance
going or coming from the places below. It is ridiculous. They sell their cards, they sell their rosaries, they add up their cashes, they visit their stores, they sleep, they talk, they say their prayers. A man of Mailer’s talents would have no difficulty.’
‘What about a woman of Violetta’s talents?’
‘Ah-ah. You speak of the shadow on the wall? While I am sure that she
could
elude the vigilance of these gentlemen, I doubt if she did so. And if she did, my dear colleague, where was she when they made their search? I have no doubt the search was thorough: of
that
they are perfectly capable and the lighting is most adequate. They know the terrain. They have been excavating there for a century. No, no, I am persuaded that Mailer recognized you and, being aware of your most formidable and brilliant record in this field, took alarm and fled.’
‘Um,’ Alleyn said, ‘I’m not at all sure I struck terror in that undelicious breast. Mailer seemed to me to be, in a subfusc sort of way, cocksure. Not to say gloating!’
‘Scusi?
Subfusc?’
‘Dim. It doesn’t matter. Do you mean you think that at some moment when we were groping about in the underworld, recognition came upon him like a thunder-clap and he fled. There and then?’
‘We shall see, we shall see. I spread my net. The airports, the wharves, the
stazioni.’
Alleyn hurriedly congratulated him on all this expedition.
‘But nevertheless,’ Valdarno said, ‘we make our examination of these premises. Tomorrow morning. It is, of course, not my practice personally to supervise such matters. Normally if a case is considered important enough one of my subordinates reports to one of my immediate staff.’
‘I assure you, Signor Questore—’
‘But in this case, where so much may be involved, where there are international slantings and above all, where so distinguished a colleague does us the honour—
Ecco!’
Alleyn made appropriate noises and wondered how great a bore Valdarno really thought him.
‘So tomorrow,’ the Questore summed up. ‘I leave my desk and I take the fields. With my subordinates. And you accompany us, is it not?’
‘Thank you. I shall be glad to come.’
They whipped through the routine of valedictory compliments and hung up their receivers.
Alleyn bathed and dressed and wrote a letter to his wife.
‘—so you see it’s taken an odd turning. I’m supposed to be nudging up to Mailer with the object of finding out just how vital a cog he is in the heroin game and whether, through him, I can get a line on his bosses. My original ploy was to be the oblique approach, the hint, the veiled offer, the striking-up of an alliance and finally the dumping upon him of a tidy load of incriminating evidence and so catching him red-handed. And now, damn him, he disappears and I’m left with a collection of people some of whom may or may not be his fall guys. Consider, if you’re not fast asleep by this time, my darling—consider the situation.
‘To launch this Il Cicerone business, Mailer must have had access to very considerable funds. You can’t do this sort of thing on HP. The cars, the drivers, the food and, above all, the quite phenomenal arrangement that seems to have been made with the Gioconda Restaurant who as a general rule would look upon package diners, on however exalted a scale, as the Caprice would look upon coachloads from the Potteries. It appears that we dine à
la carte
at the best tables and drink distilled gold if they’ve got it in their cellars. And Mailer pays all. Well, I know we’ve paid him through the nose but that’s another story.
‘And then—this lot. This lot who’ve stumped up fifty quid each for the pleasure of hearing Barnaby Grant, with evident reluctance, read aloud, very badly, from his own best-seller. Next attraction: a walk round an ancient monument that’s open to the public followed by tea or whatever they had on the Palatine Hill, and dinner at the Gioconda which could set them back anything up to £20 a nob if they went under their own steam, and then on to a further entertainment coyly unspecified in the brochure. Probably a very expensive strip and champagne show with possibly a pot party to follow. Or worse.
‘All right. Take Lady B. She’s rolling in money. One of her husbands was an Italian millionaire and she may have alimony paid out to her in Rome. She could obviously afford this show. She’s rich, raffish, pretty bloody awful and all for
la dolce vita.
No doubt she’s paying for the egregious Kenneth who looks to me very much as if he’s hooked and may therefore turn out to be a useful lead into
Mailer’s activities. I gather from something young Sophy Jason, who is an enchanter, let fall that she just suddenly decided to blue fifty quid out of the Italian funds available to her through business connections.
‘The Van der Veghels are a couple of grotesques, and interest me enormously as I think they would you. Grotesques? No, not the right word. We both go for the Etruscan thing, don’t we? Remember? Remember that male head, bearded and crowned with leaves in the Museo Barraco? Remember the smiling mouth, shaped, now I come to think of it, exactly like a bird in flight with the thin moustache repeating and exaggerating the curve of the lips? And the wide open eyes? What an amusing face, we thought, but it is perhaps atrociously cruel? I assure you, a portrait of the Baron Van der Veghel. But against this remember the tender and fulfilled couple of that sarcophagus in the Villa Giulia: the absolute in satisfied love? Recall the protective hand of the man. The extraordinary marital likeness, the suggestion of heaviness in the shoulders, the sense of completion. Portrait, I promise you, of the Van der Veghels. They may be Dutch by birth but blow me down flat if they’re not Etruscan by descent. Or nature. Or something.
‘The overall effect of the Van der Vs is, however, farcical. There’s always an easy laugh to be won from broken English or, come to that, fractured French. Remember the de Maupassant story about an English girl who became increasingly boring as her command of French improved? The Baroness’s lapses are always, as I’m sure beastly Kenneth would say, good for a giggle.
‘I suppose their presence in the set-up is the least surprising. They’re avid and merciless sightseers and photographers and their fund of enthusiasm is inexhaustible. Whether one can say the same of their fund of cash is anyone’s guess.
‘Major Sweet. Now, why has Major Sweet coughed up fifty quid for this sort of jaunt? On the face of it he’s a caricature, a museum piece: the sort of Indian Army officer who, thirty years ago, was fair game for an easy laugh shouting Qui-hi at a native servant and saying By George, what? I find it unconvincing. He’s bad-tempered, I should imagine pretty hard on the bottle, and amorous. As the young Sophy found to her discomfort in the Mithraic underworld. He’s violently, aggressively and confusingly anti-religious. Religion
of any kind. He lumps them all together, turns purple in the face and, deriving his impenetrable argument from the sacraments, pagan or Christian, says the whole lot are based on cannibalism. Why should he pay through the nose to explore two levels of Christianity and a Mithraic basement? Just to have a good jeer?
‘Finally—Barnaby Grant. To my notion, the prime puzzle of the party. Without more ado I would say, quite seriously, that I can think of no earthly reason why he should subject himself to what is clearly the most exquisite torture, unless Mailer put the screws on him in another sense. Blackmail. It might well be one of Mailer’s subsidiary interests and can tie in very comfortably with the drug racket.
‘And as a
bonne-bouche
we have the antic Violetta. If you could have seen Violetta with her
“Cartoline—posta-cardas”
and harpy’s face, foaming away under a black headpiece! Il Questore Valdarno can shrug her off with remarks about short-tempered postcard ladies but never trust me again if that one isn’t possessed of a fury. As for Sophy Jason saying it was Violetta’s shadow she saw on the wall by the stone sarcophagus, I think it’s odds-on she’s right. I saw it, too. It was distorted but there was the tray, the shawl and the hitched up shoulder. Clear as mud or my name’s Van der Veghel.
‘And I think Valdarno’s right when he says Mailer could have nipped out under the noses of Father Denys and his boys. There’s plenty of cover.
‘But without any justification for saying so, I don’t believe he did.
‘On the same premise Violetta could have nipped in and I do believe
she
did. And out again?
‘That too is another story.
‘It’s now a quarter past eight of a very warm evening. I am leaving my five-star room for the five-star cocktail bar where I rather hope to hob-nob with the Lady B. and her nephew. From there we shall be driven to La Gioconda where we shall perhaps eat quails stuffed with pâté and washed down with molten gold. At Mailer’s expense? Well—allegedly.
‘More of the continuing story of Anyone’s Guess tomorrow. Bless you, my dear love, My—’
They had dined by candlelight at a long table in the garden. Between leafy branches of trees and far below, shone Rome. It might have been its own model, laid out on a black velvet cloth and so cunningly illuminated that its great monuments glowed in their setting like jewels. At night the Colosseum is lit from within and at this distance it was no longer a ruin but seemed so much alive that a mob might have spewed through its multiple doorways, rank with the stench of the circus. It was incredibly beautiful.
Not far from their table was a fountain, moved there at some distant time from its original site down in Old Rome. At its centre lolled Neptune: smooth, luxurious and naked, idly fingering the long ringlets of his beard. He was supported by tritons and all kinds of monsters. They spouted, jetted and dribbled into basins that overflowed into each other making curtains of water-drops. The smell of water, earth and plants mingled with cigar-smoke, coffee, cosmetics and fumes of wine.
‘What is all this
like?’
Sophy asked Grant. ‘All this magnificence? I’ve never read Ouida, have you? And anyway this is not at all Victorian.’
‘How about Antonioni?’
‘Well—all right. But not
La Dolce Vita.
I don’t think I get any whiffs of social corruption, really. Do you?’
He didn’t answer and she looked across the table at Alleyn. ‘Do you?’ she asked him.
Alleyn’s glance fell upon Lady Braceley’s arm, lying as if discarded on the table. Emeralds, rubies and diamonds encircled that flaccid member, veins stood out on the back of the hand, her rings had slipped to one side and her talons—does she have false ones, he wondered, and saw that she did—made little dents in the table-cloth.
‘Do
you,’
Sophy persisted, ‘sniff the decadent society?’ and then, evidently aware of Lady Braceley and perhaps of Kenneth, she blushed.
Sophy had the kind of complexion Jacobean poets would have praised, a rose-blush that mounted and ebbed very delicately under her skin. Her eyes shone in the candlelight and there was a nimbus round her hair. She was as fresh as a daisy.
‘At the moment,’ Alleyn said, smiling at her, ‘not at all.’
‘Good!’ said Sophy and turned to Grant. ‘Then I needn’t feel apologetic about enjoying myself.’
‘Are you liking it so much? Yes, I see you are. But why should you apologize?’
‘Oh—I don’t know—a streak of puritan, I suppose. My grandpa Jason was a Quaker.’
‘Does he often put in an appearance?’
‘Not all that often but I thought he lurked just now. “Vanity, vanity,” you know, and the bit about has one any right to buy such a sumptuous evening, the world being as it is.’
‘Meaning you should have spent the cash on doing good?’
‘Yes. Or not spent it at all. Grandpapa Jason was also a banker.’
‘Tell him to buzz off. You’ve done a power of good.’
‘I? How? Impossible.’
‘You’ve turned what promised to be a perfectly hellish evening into—‘ Grant stopped short, waited for a moment and then leant towards her.
‘Yes, well, all right,’ Sophy said in a hurry. ‘You needn’t bother about that. Silly conversation.’
‘—into something almost tolerable,’ Grant said.
On the other side of the table Alleyn thought: No doubt she’s very well able to take care of herself but I wouldn’t have thought her one of the easy-come easy-go sort. On the contrary. I hope Grant isn’t a predatory animal. He’s a god in her world and a romantic-looking, ravaged sort of god, at that. Just the job to fill in the Roman foreground. Twenty years her senior, probably. He’s made her blush again.
Major Sweet, at the head of the table, had ordered himself yet another cognac but nobody followed his example. The champagne bottles were upside down in the coolers and the coffee cups had been removed. Giovanni appeared, spoke to the waiter and retired with him, presumably to pay the bill. The maître-d’hôtel, Marco, swept masterfully down upon them and not for the first time inclined, smiled and murmured over Lady Braceley. She fished in her golden reticule and when he kissed her hand, left something in his own. He repeated this treatment with subtle modulations, on the Baroness, worked in a gay salute to Sophy, included the whole table in a comprehensive bow and swept away with the slightest possible oscillation of his hips.
‘Quite a dish, isn’t he?’ Kenneth said to his aunt.
‘Darling,’ she replied, ‘the things you say! Isn’t he too frightful, Major?’ She called up the table to Major Sweet, who was staring congestedly over the top of his brandy glass at Sophy.
‘What!’ he said. ‘Oh. Ghastly.’
Kenneth laughed shrilly. ‘When do we move?’ he asked at large. ‘Where do we go from here?’
‘Now we are gay,’ cried the Baroness. ‘Now we dance and all is hip and nightlife. To the Cosmo, is it not?’
‘Ah-ha, ah-ha, to the Cosmo!’ the Baron echoed.
They beamed round the table.
‘In that case,’ Lady Braceley said, picking up her purse and gloves, ‘I’m for the
ritirata.’
The waiter was there in a flash to drop her fur over her shoulders.
‘I too, I too,’ said the Baroness and Sophy followed them out.
The Major finished his brandy. ‘The Cosmo, eh?’ he said. ‘Trip a jolly old measure, what? Well, better make a move, I suppose—
‘No hurry,’ Kenneth said. ‘Auntie’s best official clocking in
la ritirata
is nineteen minutes and that was when she had a plane to catch.’
The Baron was in deep consultation about tipping with the Major and Grant. Their waiter stood near the door into the restaurant. Alleyn strolled over to him.
‘That was a most excellent dinner,’ he said and overtipped just enough to consolidate his follow-on. ‘I wonder if I may have a word with Signor Marco? I have a personal introduction to him which I would like to present. Here it is.’
It was Valdarno’s card with an appropriate message written on the back. The waiter took a quick look at it and another at Alleyn and said he would see if the great man was in his office.
‘I expect he is,’ Alleyn said cheerfully. ‘Shall we go there?’
The waiter, using his restaurant walk, hurried through the foyer into a smaller vestibule where he begged Alleyn to wait. He tapped discreetly at a door marked
Il direttore
, murmured something to the elegant young man who opened it and handed in the card. The young man was gone for a very short time and returned with a winning smile and an invitation to enter. The waiter scuttled off.
Marco’s office was small but sumptuous. He advanced upon Alleyn with ceremony and a certain air of guarded cordiality.
‘Good evening, again, Mr—’ he glanced at the card. ‘Mr Alleyn. I hope you have dined pleasantly.’ His English was extremely good. Alleyn decided to be incapable of Italian.
‘Delightfully,’ he said. ‘A superb evening. Il Questore Valdarno told me of your genius and how right he was.’
‘I am glad.’
‘I think I remember you some years ago in London, Signore. At the Primavera.’
‘Ah! My “salad days”. Thirty-one different salads, in fact. Perhaps five are worth remembering. Can I do anything for you, Mr Alleyn? Any friend of Il Questore Valdarno—?’
Alleyn made a quick decision.
‘You can, indeed,’ he said. ‘If you will be so kind. I think I should tell you, Signore, that I am a colleague of the Questore’s and that I am not in Rome entirely for pleasure. May I—’
He produced his own official card. Marco held it in his beautifully manicured fingers and for five seconds was perfectly motionless. ‘Ah, yes,’ he said at last. ‘Of course. I should have remembered from my London days. There was a
cause célèbre.
Your most distinguished career. And then—surely—your brother—he was Ambassador in Rome, I think, some time ago?’
Alleyn normally reacted to remarks about his brother George by falling over backwards rather than profit by their relationship. He bowed and pressed on.
‘This is an affair of some delicacy,’ he said and felt as if he spoke out of an Edwardian thriller or, indeed, from No. 221B Baker Street.
‘I assure you I wouldn’t have troubled you if I could have avoided doing so. The fact is Il Questore Valdarno and I find ourselves in something of a quandary. It’s come to our knowledge that a certain unsavoury character whose identity has hitherto been unknown is living in Rome. He has formed associations with people of the highest standing who would be appalled if they knew about him. As I think you yourself would be.’
‘I? Do you suggest—?’
‘He is one of your patrons. We think it proper that you should be warned.’
If Marco had seemed, for an Italian, to be of a rather florid complexion he was so no longer. His cheeks were wan enough to make his immaculately shaven jaws look, by contrast, a cadaverous purple. There was a kind of scuffling noise behind Alleyn. He turned and saw the beautiful young man who had admitted him seated behind a table and making great play with papers.
‘I didn’t realize—’ Alleyn said.
‘My secretary. He does not speak English,’ Marco explained and added in Italian, ‘Alfredo, it might be as well for you to leave us.’ And still in Italian, to Alleyn: ‘That will be better, will it not?’
Alleyn looked blank. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said and spread his hands.
‘Ah, you do not speak our language?’
‘Alas!’
The young man said rapidly in Italian:
‘Padrone
, is it trouble? It is—?’ and Marco cut him short. ‘It is nothing. You heard me. Leave us.’
When he had gone Alleyn said, ‘It won’t take long. The man I speak of is Mr Sebastian Mailer.’
A short pause and Marco said, ‘Indeed? You are, I must conclude, certain of your ground?’
‘Certain enough to bring you the information. Of course you will prefer to check with the Questore himself. I assure you, he will confirm what I’ve said.’
Marco inclined and made a deprecatory gesture. ‘But of course, of course. You have quite taken me aback, Mr Alleyn, but I am most grateful for this warning. I shall see that Mr Mailer’s appearances at La Gioconda are discontinued.’
‘Forgive me, but isn’t it rather unusual for La Gioconda to extend its hospitality to a tourist party?’
Marco said rapidly and smoothly, ‘A normal tourist party—a “package”—would be out of the question. A set meal and a
fiasco
of wine—with little flags on the table—unthinkable! But this arrangement, as you found, is entirely different. The guests order individually, à
la carte
, as at a normal dinner-party. The circumstance of the
conto
being settled by the host—even though he is a professional host—is of little significance. I confess that when this Mailer first approached me I would not entertain the proposal but then—he showed me his list. It was a most distinguished list. Lady Braceley alone—one of the most elegant of our clientèle. And Mr Barnaby Grant—a man of the greatest distinction.’
‘When
did
Mailer first approach you?’
‘I believe—about a week ago.’
‘So tonight was the first of these dinner-parties?’
‘And the last, I assure you, if what you tell me is true.’
‘You noticed, of course, that he did not appear?’
‘With some surprise. But his assistant, Giovanni Vecchi, is a courier of good standing. He informed us that his principal was unwell. Am I to understand—?’
‘He may be unwell, he has undoubtedly disappeared.’
‘Disappeared?’
The colour seeped back, unevenly, into Marco’s cheeks. ‘You mean—?’
‘Just that. Vanished.’
‘This is very confusing. Should I understand that you believe him to have—’ Marco’s full lips seemed to frame and discard one or two words before they chose ‘—absconded?’
‘That is the Questore’s theory.’
‘But not yours?’ he asked quickly.
‘I have none.’
‘I conclude, Mr Alleyn, that your attendance here tonight, which must have followed your enrolment in today’s tour, is professional rather than recreational.’
‘Yes,’ Alleyn agreed cheerfully. ‘That’s about it. And now I mustn’t take up any more of your time. If—and the chances I believe are remote—if Mr Mailer should put in an appearance here—‘ Marco gave an ejaculation and a very slight wince ‘—Il Questore Valdarno and I would be most grateful if you would say nothing to him about
this discussion. Simply telephone at once to—but the number is on the Questore’s card, I think.’
‘The Questore,’ said Marco in a hurry, ‘will I am sure appreciate that any kind of unpleasantness, here, in the restaurant, would be—’ he flung up his hands.
‘Unthinkable,’ Alleyn filled in. ‘Oh yes. It would all be done very tactfully and quite behind the scenes, you know.’
He held out his hand. Marco’s was damp and exceedingly cold.
‘But you think,’ he persisted, ‘you yourself think, isn’t it, that he will not come back?’
‘For what it’s worth,’ Alleyn agreed, ‘that’s my idea. Not, at any rate, of his own volition. Goodbye.’
On his way out he went to the telephone booth and rang Il Questore Valdarno, who reported that he had set up further inquiries but had no news. Mailer’s flat had been found. The porter said Mailer left it at about three o’clock and had not returned. The police briefly examined the flat, which seemed to be in order.
‘No signs of a sudden departure?’
‘None. Yet I am still persuaded—’
‘Signor Questore, may I ask you to add to the many favours you have already granted? I am not familiar with your police regulations and procedures but I understand you are less restricted than we are. Would it be possible to put a man in Mailer’s flat at once and could that man answer the telephone and make a careful note of any calls, if possible tracing their origin? I think it’s highly probable that Marco of La Gioconda will at this moment be trying to get him and will try again. And again.’
‘Marco!
Indeed? But—yes of course. But—’
‘I have spoken to him. He was discreet but his reaction to the disappearance was interesting.’
‘In what way? He was distressed?’
‘Distress—yes. Not, I think, so much by Mailer’s disappearance as by the thought of his return. That prospect, unless I’m very much mistaken, terrifies him.’