‘We have a statement from Mr. Randolph Verdew,’ said the policeman gently. ‘He said that he . . . he . . . he met Mr. Rollo at the castle in the early hours of the morning.’
‘But how can you be so stupid!’ cried Mrs. Verdew. ‘It wasn’t Rollo—it was Mr. Rintoul who . . .’
‘What name is that?’ asked the policeman, taking out his notebook.
THE WHITE WAND
THE WHITE WAND
C.F. told me this story and I shall re-tell it, as nearly as I can, in his own words. He would certainly have wished to be anonymous, and I shall respect his wish.
‘Last summer,’ he said, ‘after an absence of many years, I revisited Venice. I used to stay there for long stretches at a time before the war, and had many friends in the Anglo-American colony. My reasons for going to Venice were partly curiosity, to see if the old spell still held, and partly in order to write—I’ve always been able to write in Venice. The apartment I used to take had been let, and I had found a new one, though of course I hadn’t seen it. Nor had I notified my friends of my arrival; I’ll tell you why Arthur, presently.
‘But I didn’t expect to be altogether alone, nor did I want to be. I had one stand-by. My gondolier, Antonio, who had served me all the times I was in Venice, was at the station to meet me. Italians are very good at welcoming one. He greeted me rapturously; he could hardly stand stilclass="underline" excitement wriggled from the top of his greying head to the soles of his feet. It was as if a fund of affection had been accumulating in him during the war years and now he was pouring it all out.
‘Alone of my Venetian friends I had kept in touch with him during the War. Somehow or other, by way of Portugal, or the Vatican, or the Red Cross, we had managed to communicate, and the very difficulty entailed by those manœuvres seemed to have made our friendship more precious. Though I had never succeeded in hating him as an enemy, the reaction was just as strong as if I had, and I think the same was true of him. He was much more articulate about his feelings than I was. All the way from the station to my flat, which was somewhere behind the Zattere—I’ll try to tell you where later, it’s so hard to describe where anything is in Venice—I kept screwing my head round on the cushion and looking up at him, while he leaned over his oar, his words tripping over each other he talked so fast.
‘I got more feeling from that conversation that hostilities had come to an end than I did from V.E. day or V.J. day, or indeed from anything before or since. The cold war with Russia had not yet got under way, and talking to Antonio I felt that human solidarity was once more a fact.
‘So enveloping was his personality and so infectious his goodwill that I was hardly aware of the strangeness of my new abode, he was like a strong dose of familiarity that transformed the unknown into the known. I only noticed that it was up a great many steps.
‘There was only one subject I didn’t discuss with him, and that was my friends in Venice. Partly because I thought that he wouldn’t know about them (though he was by nature a know-all), partly, and illogically, because I thought he might tell me something I didn’t want to hear, but chiefly because—well, you know how I have felt about people since the war. The whole thing was such a ghastly disappointment to me that even my closest friends were somehow involved in it—even you, Arthur. I saw even the people I liked best as somehow at each other’s throats. My personal relationships were a tender area, as the doctors say. I had dreaded my meeting with Antonio, in case it turned sour on me, like food on an acid stomach. I had jumped that hurdle, but I thought the others could be taken later. It’s one thing talking to a servant who more or less has to agree with you (at least, Italian servants feel they must), and another to broach highly controversial topics with people whose minds and feelings have to be approached as warily as if they were a Foreign Power. And I was in no mood for circumspection. If I couldn’t see eye to eye with someone, I didn’t want to see him; I couldn’t bear to be disagreed with, and I wasn’t over eager to be agreed with, either. So I didn’t ask Antonio for news of my friends, and he didn’t for the moment volunteer any.
‘I might have noticed that he and Giuseppina, the maid of all work who “went” with my new flat, were not hitting it off; but if I did notice, it didn’t register. In the confusion of arriving I forgot to introduce them to each other formally. This was a breach of etiquette, but I don’t think it would have made any difference if I had. There is never any love lost between gondoliers and indoor servants, and I think they were jealous of each other from the start. Giuseppina had not been warned that I should have this attendant, and Antonio did not trouble to disguise from her the fact that he regarded me as his possession. She looked about fifty; he was ten years older. She never let him out of her sight if she could help it, and she didn’t want him to unpack for me. At about seven o’clock, before going out, as was his custom, to celebrate with his friends, he asked me if there was anything I wanted—tobacco, cigarettes, cognac? I said I should like some cognac and he brought it back with him when he returned to wait on me at dinner. Afterwards, when he was standing in the dimly-lit sala, saying goodnight, which took him a long time for he had by no means rubbed off the patina of absence, Giuseppina circled round him like a cat round a retriever, and when he had gone she shot the big bolt—the catenaccio—across the door with a sigh of satisfaction.
‘I dined well and slept well, and the next morning what was my surprise and pleasure when Antonio appeared at eight o’clock bringing my early morning tea and beaming at me like the sun. In his other hand he was carrying something else—a bottle. He did everything with a flourish.
‘ “What have you got there?” I asked, when he had gone through our morning salutations and inquiries which, so strong is habit, took the same form they had taken in pre-war years. “It isn’t time to begin drinking yet.”
‘His expression changed and became serious, even severe.
‘ “O signore,” he said accusingly, “what a lot of cognac you drank last night!”
‘He held the bottle up to the light; it was about three-quarters full. I was surprised that I had drunk so much and said so. “I was drinking a toast to my return to Venice,” I added, apologizing for excess.
‘He accepted my explanation graciously but still with a touch of disapproval in his manner; and then suddenly his face relaxed and became sunny again.
‘ “Good news,” he said. “Signor Gretton is in Venice, he is staying at the Grand Hotel.”
‘I was dumbfounded. It was anything but good news to me. Gretton was an old friend of mine of pre-war days, not a member of the colony but a constant visitor to Venice, as I was. I liked him but I didn’t want to see him, and he would bring the whole colony buzzing round my ears.
‘ “Yes, signore,” Antonio went on, “he was leaving to-morrow, but when he heard that you were here he put his departure off a day.
‘ “How did he know that I was here?” I asked—a silly question from someone who knew the workings of the Venetian bush-telegraph as well as I did; but I was so relieved that Gretton was so to speak on the wing that I hardly knew what I was saying.
‘Antonio shrugged his shoulders. “His gondolier must have told him,” he said—forbearing to add, “And I told his gondolier.” “And he wants to know if he may dine with you to-night. He thought you would prefer that to going to his hotel—I expect he is short of money like all the English, alas.” This was a reasonable inference, but quite groundless, for Gretton is the soul of hospitality.