“Auntie came too. She’s all for experience. She’s fabulous — honestly. I mean it.”
With considerable effort Alleyn said casually, “Did Seb — turn you on?”
“That’s right. In Perugia. I’m thinking,” Kenneth said, “of making the move.”
“To—?”
“The big leap. Pothead to mainliner. Well, as a matter of fact I’ve had a taste. You know. Mind you, I’m not hooked. Just the odd pop. Only a fun thing.”
Alleyn looked at a face that not so long ago might have been attractive. Policemen are as wary of reading character into other people’s faces as they are of betraying their thoughts in their own, but it occurred to him that if Kenneth were a less repellent colour and if he would shut his mouth instead of letting it droop open in a flaccid smirk he wouldn’t be a bad-looking specimen. He might, even at this stage, be less dissolute than his general behaviour suggested. “And whatever has happened or is about to happen to Mr. Sebastian Mailer,” Alleyn thought, “it cannot be one millionth fraction of what he most richly deserves.”
Kenneth broke the silence that had fallen between them.
“I say,” he said, “it’s idiotic of course but wouldn’t it be a yell if after being on about Seb and Toni’s pad and all that bit, you were The Man?”
“The Man?”
“Yes. You know. A plain-clothes fuzz.”
“Do I look like it?”
“Nobody less. You look gorgeous. That might be your cunning, though, mightn’t it? Still, you couldn’t have me busted when we’re not on British soil. Or could you?”
“I don’t know,” Alleyn said. “Ask a policeman.”
Kenneth gave an emaciated little laugh. “Honestly, you kill me,” he said, and after another pause: “If it’s not going too far, what do you do?”
“What do you think?”
“I don’t know. Something frightfully high-powered and discreet. Like diplomacy. Or has that gone out with the lord chamberlain?”
“Has the lord chamberlain gone out?”
“Gone in, then. I suppose he still potters about palatial corridors with a key on his bottom.” A disturbing thought seemed to strike Kenneth. “Oh God!” he said faintly. “Don’t tell me you are the lord chamberlain.”
“I am not the lord chamberlain.”
“It would have been just my luck.”
The dance band came to an inconclusive halt. Barnaby Grant and Sophy Jason returned to the table. Giovanni elegantly steered Lady Braceley to hers, where the Major sat in a trance. The Van der Veghels, hand-linked, joined them.
Giovanni explained that the second driver would return Sophy, the Van der Veghels and Grant to their hotels whenever they wished and that he himself would be responsible for the other members of the party.
Alleyn noticed that Toni’s pad had not been named by Giovanni and that there had been no general, open announcement of the extra attraction. Only those rather furtive approaches to the male members of the party. And through Kenneth to Lady Braceley.
The Van der Veghels said they would like to dance a little more and then go home. Sophy and Grant agreed to this and when the band struck up again returned to the floor. Alleyn found himself alone with the Van der Veghels, who contentedly sipped champagne.
“I’m not much good, Baroness,” Alleyn said. “But will you risk it?”
“Of course.”
She herself, like many big women, was very good — steady and light. “But you dance well,” she said after a moment. “Why do you say not so? It is this British self-deprecation we hear about?”
“It would be hard to blunder with you as one’s partner.”
“Ah-ha, ah-ha, a compliment! Better and better!”
“You are not going on to this other party.”
“No. My husband thinks it would not suit us to go. He did not very much care for the style of the suggestion. It is more for the men, he said, so I tease him and say he is a big square and I am not so unsophisticated.”
“But he remains firm?”
“He remains firm. So you go?”
“I’ve said yes but now you alarm me.”
“No!” cried the Baroness with a sort of obligatory archness. “That I do not believe. You are a cool one. A sophisticate. That I see very clearly.”
“Change your mind. Come and take care of me.”
This brought peals of jollity from the Baroness. She floated expertly and laughed up and down the scale and then, when he persisted, suddenly adopted an air of gravity. Her voice deepened and she explained that though she was sure Alleyn would not believe her, she and the Baron were in fact quite puritanical in their outlook. They came, she said, of Lutheran stock. They did not at all fancy, for instance, Roman nightlife as portrayed by Italian films. Had Alleyn ever heard of the publishing firm of Adriaan and Welker? If not she must tell him that they took a very firm stand in respect of moral tone and that the Baron, their foreign representative, upheld this attitude.
“In our books all is clean, all is honest and healthful,” she declared and elaborated upon this high standard of literary hygiene with great enthusiasm.
It was not a pose, Alleyn thought, it was an attitude of mind: the Baroness Van der Veghel (and evidently her husband, too) was a genuine pietist and, he thought, with a sidelong look at that Etruscan smile, in all probability she was possessed of the calm ruthlessness that so often accompanies a puritanical disposition.
“My husband and I,” she said, “are in agreement on the — I think you call it ‘permissive’ society, do you not? In all things,” she added with stifling effrontery, “we are in absolute accord. We are sure of ourselves. Always we are happy together and agreeing in our views. Like twins, isn’t it?” and again she burst out laughing.
In her dancing, in her complacency, in her sudden bursts of high spirits she bore witness to her preposterous claims: she was a supremely contented woman, Alleyn thought; a physically satisfied woman. Intellectually and morally satisfied, too, it would appear. She turned her head and looked towards the table where her husband sat. They smiled at each other and twiddled their fingers.
“Is this your first visit to Rome?” Alleyn asked. When people dance together and there is concord in their dancing, however alien they may be in other respects, they are in physical agreement. Alleyn felt at once a kind of withdrawal in the Baroness but she answered readily that she and her husband had visited Italy and in particular Rome, on several previous occasions. Her husband’s publishing interests brought him there quite often and when it was convenient she accompanied him.
“But this time,” Alleyn mentioned, “it is for fun?” and she agreed.
“For you also?” she asked.
“Oh absolutely,” said Alleyn and gave her an extra twirl. “Have you made any of the Il Cicerone trips on previous visits?” he asked. Again: it was unmistakable — a withdrawal.
She said: “I think they are of recent formink. Quite new and of the greatest fun.”
“Does it strike you as at all odd,” asked Alleyn, “that we none of us seem to be particularly bothered about the nonappearance of our cicerone?”
He felt her massive shoulders rise. “It is strange, perhaps,” she conceded, “that he disappears. We hope all is well with him, do we not? That is all we can do. The tour has been satisfactory.” They moved past their table. The Baron cried: “Good, good!” and gently clapped his enormous hands in praise of their dancing. Lady Braceley removed her gaze from Giovanni and gave them a haggard appraisal. The Major slept.
“We think,” said the Baroness, resuming their conversation, “that there was perhaps trouble for him with the postcard woman. The Violetta.”
“She certainly made him a scene.”
“She was down there, we think. Below.”