I picked my way down to the lawn and walked across it, then up some steps until I'd crossed to the front door. It was big and heavy, bronze I guessed, with more bas-reliefs, this time of clean-shaven characters in more ornate and complicated armour with two-handed swords and riding horses. Some had lances and axes. I pulled the bell and waited.
I had plenty of time to study the pictures before one of the doors swung open and an old man in a semi-military suit, holding himself straight by an effort, raised a white eyebrow at me.I told him my name and he let me in to a cool, dark hall full of the same kinds of armour the men on the door had been wearing. He opened a door on the right and told me to wait. The room I was in was all iron and leather - weapons on the walls and leather-covered furniture on the carpet.
Thick velvet curtains were drawn back from the window and I stood looking out over the quiet ruins, smoked another stick, popped the butt in a green pot and put my jacket back on.
The old man came in again and I followed him out of that room, along the hall, up one flight of the wide stairs and in to a huge, less cluttered room where I found the guy I'd come to see.
He stood in the middle of the carpet. He was wearing a heavily ornamented helmet with a spike on the top, a deep blue uniform covered in badges, gold and black epaulettes, shiny jackboots and steel spurs. He looked about seventy and very tough. He had bushy grey eyebrows and a big, carefully combed moustache. As I came in he grunted and one arm sprang into a horizontal position, pointing at me.
'Herr Aquilinas. I am Otto von Bismarck, Chief of Berlin's police.'
I shook the hand. Actually it shook me, all over.
'Quite a turn up,' I said. ' A murder in the garden of the man who's supposed to prevent murders.'
His face must have been paralysed or something because it didn't move except when he spoke, and even then it didn't move much.
'Quite so,' he said. ' We were reluctant to call you in, of course. But I think this is your speciality.'
'Maybe. Is the body still here?'
'In the kitchen. The autopsy was performed here. Paper lungs - you know about that?'
'I know. Now, if I've got it right, you heard nothing in the night - '
'Oh, yes, I did hear something - the barking of my wolfhounds. One of the servants investigated but found nothing.'
'What time was this?'
'Time?'
'What did the clock say?'
'About two in the morning.'
'When was the body found?'
'About ten - the gardener discovered it in the vine grove.'
'Right - let's look at the body and then talk to the gardener.'
He took me to the kitchen. One of the windows was opened on to a lush garden, full of tall, brightly coloured shrubs of every possible shade. An intoxicating scent came from the garden. It made me feel randy. I turned to look at the corpse lying on a scrubbed deal table covered in a sheet.
I pulled back the sheet. The body was naked. It looked old but strong, deeply tanned. The head was big and its most noticeable feature was the heavy black moustache. The body wasn't what it had been. First there were the marks of strangulation around the throat, as well as swelling on wrists, forearms and legs which seemed to indicate that the victim had also been tied up recently. The whole of the front of the torso had been opened for the autopsy and whoever had stitched it up again hadn't been too careful.
'What about clothes?' I asked the Police Chief.
Bismarck shook his head and pointed to a chair standing beside the table.' That was-all we found.'
There was a pair of neatly folded paper lungs, a bit the worse for wear. The trouble with disposable lungs was that while you never had to worry about smoking or any of the other causes of lung disease, the lungs had to be changed regularly.
This was expensive, particularly in Rome where there was no State-controlled Lung Service as there had been in most of the European City-States until a few years before the war when the longer-lasting polythene lung had superseded the paper one.
There was also a wrist-watch and a pair of red shoes with long, curling toes. I picked up one of the shoes. Middle Eastern workmanship. I looked at the watch. It was heavy, old, tarnished and Russian. The strap was new, pigskin, with ' Made in England' stamped on it.
'I see why they called us,' I said.
'There were certain anachronisms,' Bismarck admitted.
'This gardener who found him, can I talk to him?'
Bismarck went to the window and called: ' Felipe!'
The foliage seemed to fold back of its own volition and a dark haired young man came through it. He was tall, long-faced and pale. He held an elegant watering can in one hand. He was dressed in a dark-green high-collared shirt and matching trousers.
We looked at one another through the window.
'This is my gardener Felipe Sagittarius,' Bismarck said.
Sagittarius bowed, his eyes amused. Bismarck didn't seem to notice.
'Can you let me see where you found the body?' I asked.
'Sure,' said Sagittarius.
'I shall wait here,' Bismarck told me as I went towards the kitchen door.
'Okay.' I stepped into the garden and let Sagittarius show me the way. Once again the shrubs seemed to part on their own.
The scent was still thick and erotic. Most of the plants. had dark, fleshy leaves and flowers of deep reds, purples and blues. Here and there were clusters of heavy yellow and pink.
The grass I was walking on seemed to crawl under my feet and the weird shapes of the trunks and stems of the shrubs didn't make me feel like taking a snooze in that garden.
'This is all your work is it, Sagittarius?' I asked.
He nodded and kept walking.
'Original,' I said. ' Never seen one like it before.'
Sagittarius turned then and pointed a thumb behind him.
'This is the place.'
We were standing in a little glade almost entirely surrounded by thick vines that curled about their trellises like snakes. On the far side of the glade I could see where some of the vines had been ripped and the trellis torn and I guessed there had been a fight. I still couldn't work out why the victim had been untied before the murderer strangled him - it must have been before, or else there wouldn't have been a fight. I checked the scene, but there were no clues. Through the place where the trellis was torn I saw a small summerhouse, built to represent a Chinese pavilion, all red, yellow and black lacquer with highlights picked out in gold. It didn't fit with the architecture of the house.
'What's that?' I asked the gardener.
'Nothing,' he said sulkily, evidently sorry I'd seen it.
'I'll take a look at it anyway.'
He shrugged but didn't offer to lead on. I moved between the trellises until I reached the pavilion. Sagittarius followed slowly. I took the short flight of wooden steps up to the veranda and tried the door. It opened. I walked in. There seemed to be only one room, a bedroom. The bed needed making and it looked as if two people had left it in a hurry. There was a pair of nylons tucked half under the pillow and a pair of man's underpants on the floor. The sheets were very white, the furnishings very oriental and rich.
Sagittarius was standing in the doorway.
'Your place?' I said.
'No.' He sounded offended.' The Police Chiefs.'
I grinned.
Sagittarius burst into rhapsody. ' The languorous scents, the very menace of the plants, the heaviness in the air of the garden, must surely stir the blood of even the most ancient man. This is the only place he can relax. This is what I'm employed for why he gives me my head.'