“Pardon me,” said a shrill lady behind the french windows. “But is it too much to ask for a mite of common courtesy and consideration?” And then in an access of rage: “If you can’t keep your voices down you can belt up and get out.”
Morning was well established when Giovanni and Kenneth Dorne with Lady Braceley, maintained by lateral pressure and support from the armpits and not so much propelled as lifted, crossed the foyer of the hotel and entered the lift.
Cleaning women with black-currant eyes exchanged looks with the night porter, who was preparing to go off duty. The man with the vacuum cleaner watched their progress to the lift and then joined them and, with back turned and averted glance, took them up to their floor. A chambermaid, seeing their approach, opened the door into their suite and hurried away.
They put Lady Braceley into a chair.
Kenneth fumbled in his pocket for his note-case.
“You’re sure, aren’t you,” he said to Giovanni. “It’s going to be O.K. I mean — you know—?”
Giovanni, indigo about the jaws but otherwise impeccable, said: “Perfectly, Signore. I am fully in Signor Mailer’s confidence.”
“Yes — but — you know? This thing about — well, about the police — did he—?”
“I will be pleased to negotiate.”
They both looked at Lady Braceley.
“We’ll have to wait,” Kenneth said. “It’ll be all right, I promise. Later. Say this afternoon when she’s — you know?”
“As soon as possible. A delay is not desirable.”
“All right. All right. I know. But — see for yourself, Giovanni.”
“Signore, I have already perceived.”
“Yes. Well, in the meantime — here.”
“You are very kind,” Giovanni said, taking his dirt-money with infinite aplomb. “I will return at 2:30, Signore. Arrivederci.”
Left alone, Kenneth bit his knuckles, looked at his aunt and caught back his breath in a dry sob. Then he rang for her maid and went to his room.
“You have enjoyed yourself, my beloved?” the Baron had asked the Baroness in their own language as they prepared for bed.
“Very much. The tall Englishman is a good dancer and clearly a person of some distinction. He what the English call ‘funned’ me about not going on to the other place. To take care of him, he said. He is a flirt.”
“I am jealous.”
“Good — good. Almost, I wish we had decided to go.”
“Now, you tease me, my love. It is quite unthinkable that I should take you to one of these places, Mathilde. You would be insulted. I wonder that this person, Allen, suggested it.”
“He was ‘funning’ me, my darling.”
“He had no business to do so on that subject.”
The Baroness turned her back to her husband, who deftly unzipped her dress and awarded her a neat little slap.
“The relief,” she said, “is so enormous, Gerrit. I dare not believe in it. Tell me, now, fully, what happened.”
“In effect — nothing. As you know I hoped to negotiate. I kept the appointment. He did not. It is very strange.”
“And, for the moment at least, we are free of our anxiety?”
“I think we are free altogether, darling. I think we shall not see this Mailer again.”
“No?”
“My feeling is that he is in trouble with the police. Perhaps he was recognized. Perhaps the woman who threatened him has some hold over him. I am sure he has bolted. We shall not be troubled by him again, my poor love.”
“And our secret — our secret, Gerrit?”
“Remains our secret.”
The Baron’s winged smile tilted his mouth. He opened his eyes and put his head on one side. “And as for our financial disaster,” he said. “It is vanished. Look.”
He unlocked a cupboard, removed from it the great satchel in which he carried his photographic equipment, unlocked that and displayed a large sealed package.
“Such a business it was,” he said, “getting it all together. And now — back to Geneva and lock it all up again. What a farce!”
“What a farce,” she echoed obediently.
He put the satchel away, locked the cupboard, turned and opened wide his arms.
“So,” he said. “And now—! Come to me, my beloved.”
Major Sweet was the last of his party to return to his lodging. He was taken to his room by the second driver, being in a trance-like condition from which he neither passed into oblivion nor wholly recovered. The second driver watched him make a pretty good hash of withdrawing money from his pockets and did not attempt to conceal his own chagrin when given a worse than conservative tip.
Alone, the Major was at laborious pains to retrieve the money he had dropped on the carpet. He was reduced to crawling after it like a botanist in search of some rare specimen.
Having achieved several pieces of cash and two notes he sat on the floor with his back to the bed, stared at his gleanings with astonishment and then, incontinently, threw them over his shoulder.
He rolled over, climbed up his bed, fell on it, removed his tie and slept.
6
Re-appearance of a Postcard Vendor
At seven o’clock Alleyn obeyed his own orders and woke. He ordered breakfast, bathed, shaved and was ready for the day when the hotel office rang to say a car had called for him.
It was Il Questore Valdarno’s car and in it, exuding his peculiar brand of melancholy and affability, was the Questore himself. He welcomed Alleyn and in doing so contrived to establish the awesome condescension of his being there at all. It was a long time, Alleyn understood, since the Questore had risen at this hour, a long time since his association with fieldwork had taken any form other than the august consideration of material pre-filtered by his subordinates.
Alleyn expressed, not for the first time, his deep sense of obligation.
The air was fresh, Rome sparkled, the streets swam with shoals of early workers. Above them and against a quattrocento blue, giant personages in marble looked downwards, their arms frozen in benediction. Under the streets, behind façades, in still dominant monuments the aspirations of senators, Caesars and Emperors held their ground. And nowhere more strangely, Alleyn thought, than in San Tommaso in Pallaria.
When they arrived they were met by three of the Questore’s “people” — Agenti di Questura, which Alleyn took to be the equivalent of constables — and by Father Denys and the sacristan, Brother Dominic, a dour man who drew the key to the underworld from his habit as if it were a symbol of mortality.
Valdarno was rather high and remote with the clergy, but complaisant too, and not ungracious.
Father Denys greeted Alleyn as an old friend.
“It’s yourself again, is it, and you not letting on what was your true function. Sure, I thought to myself there was something about you that was more than met the eye and here you are, they tell me, a great man on the C.I.D.”
“I hope it was an innocent — reservation, Father.”
“Ah, well,” said Father Denys with a tolerance, Alleyn felt, reserved for heretics, “we’ll let you off this time. Now what is all this? A wild goose chase you and the Questore are on over the head of this queer fellow. Be sure he’s given us the slip and away on his own devices.”
“You’re persuaded he did give you the slip, Father?”
“What else could it be? He’s not beneath.” He turned to Valdarno. “If you’re ready, Signor Questore, we may proceed.”
Cleaners were busy in the upper basilica which, in common with most Latin churches, had the warm air of always being in business and ready for all comers. A Mass had been said and a small congregation of old women and early workers were on their way out.
Three women and one man knelt in prayer before separate shrines. The sacristy was open. The celebrant had concluded his after-Mass observances and was about to leave. They moved on into the vestibule and shop. Brother Dominic opened the great iron grill and he, Valdarno, Alleyn and three attendant policemen began their search of the underworld. Father Denys remained above, being, as he pointed out, entirely satisfied of the non-presence of Mr. Mailer in the basements and having a job to do in the shop.