“Ach, yes!” cried the Baroness. “No more delays, isn’t it? Already our plans for today look silly. Instead of fountinks at the Villa d’Este here is a stuffed room. Come! On!”
Thus encouraged Alleyn set about his task. His situation was an odd one, removed as he was from immediate reliance upon the C.I.D. and from the sense of being an integral part of its structure. This was an “away match” and presented its own problems, not the least of which was to define his area of investigation. Originally it had simply been that which covered Mailer’s presumed activities in the international drug racket and possible association with the key figure — the fabulous Otto Ziegfeldt. Now, with the discovery of Violetta, staring and frightful, in a stone coffin that had held who could guess what classic bones and flesh, the case had spilled into a wider and more ambiguous affair. The handling of it became very tricky indeed.
He began. “I think we’d better settle the question of when each of us last saw Sebastian Mailer. For my part, it was when we were on the middle level and just after Major Sweet and Lady Braceley had left to go up to the atrium. Mr. Grant, Miss Jason and the Baron and Baroness were with me and we all went down to the Mithraic dwelling together. Major Sweet and Mr. Dorne joined us there separately, some five to ten — or fifteen — minutes later. May I begin by asking you, Lady Braceley, if you saw anything of Mailer or of Violetta after you left us?”
Not only, Alleyn thought, was she in the grip of a formidable hangover but she was completely non-plussed by finding herself in a situation that could not be adjusted to a nineteen-twentyish formula for triteness. She turned her lacklustre gaze from one man to another, ran her tongue round her lips and said: “No. No, of course I didn’t. No.”
“And you, Major? On your way down? Did you see either of them?”
“I did not.”
“You stayed for a minute or two with Lady Braceley and then came down to the Mithraeum?”
“Yes.”
“And met nobody on the way.”
“Nobody.”
Alleyn said casually, “There must at that time have been, beside yourself, three persons at large between the top level — the basilica — and the bottom one — the Mithraeum. Mailer himself, Violetta and Mr. Kenneth Dorne. You neither saw nor heard any of them?”
“Certainly not.”
“Mr. Dorne, when exactly did you leave us?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea.”
“Perhaps,” Alleyn said with undiminished good humour, “we can help you. You were with us in the middle-level cloisters when Mailer made his joke about Apollo being a latter-day Lazarus.”
“How do you know?”
“Because you giggled at it.”
“Marvellous,” said Kenneth.
“It was not a nice joke,” the Baroness said. “We did not find it amusink, did we, Gerrit?”
“No, my dear.”
“It was a silly one.”
“So.”
“You think it funnier perhaps,” Kenneth said, “to dodge behind terra-cotta busts and bounce out at old — at highly strung people. It takes all sorts to raise a laugh,” said Kenneth.
“You were not there, Mr. Dorne,” said the Baron. “You had left the party. We had crossed the nave of the early church and you did not come with us. How did you know I bounced?”
“I heard of it,” Kenneth said loftily, “from my aunt.”
Alleyn plodded on. “We understood from Mailer that you had gone back to photograph the Apollo. Is that right?”
“Certainly.”
“And you did photograph it?”
Kenneth slid his feet about and after a pretty long pause said: “As it happened, no. I’d run out of film.” He pulled out his packet of cigarettes and found it was empty.
“No, you hadn’t,” shouted Major Sweet. “You hadn’t done any such thing. You took a photograph of Mithras when we were all poodlefaking round Grant and his book.”
Grant, most unexpectedly, burst out laughing.
“There’s such a thing,” Kenneth said breathlessly, “as putting in a new film, Major Sweet.”
“Well, yes,” said Alleyn. “Of course there is. Tell me, did Mailer rejoin you while you were not photographing Apollo?”
This time the pause was an uncomfortably long one. Major Sweet appeared to take the opportunity to have a nap. He shut his eyes, lowered his chin and presently opened his mouth.
At last: “No,” Kenneth said loudly. “No. He didn’t turn up.”
“ ‘Turn up’? You were expecting him, then?”
“No, I wasn’t. Why the hell do you suppose I was? I wasn’t expecting him and I didn’t see him.” The cigarette packet dropped from his fingers. “Whats that?” he demanded.
Alleyn had taken a folded handkerchief from his pocket. He opened it to display a crumpled piece of glossy blue paper.
“Do you recognize it?” he asked.
“No!”
Alleyn reached out a long arm, retrieved the cigarette packet from the floor and dropped it on the desk.
He said: “I was given two boxes wrapped in similar paper to this at Toni’s pad last night.”
“I’m afraid,” Kenneth said whitely, “my only comment to that is: ‘So, dear Mr. Superintendent Alleyn, what?”
“In one of them there were eight tablets of heroin. Each, I would guess, containing one-sixth of a grain. In the other, an equal amount of cocaine in powder form. Mr. Mailer’s very own merchandise, I was informed.”
The Van der Veghels broke into scandalized ejaculations, first in their own language and then in English. “You didn’t throw this paper behind the statue of Apollo, Mr. Dorne?”
“No. Christ!” Kenneth screamed out, “what the hell is all this? What idiot stuff are you trying to sell me? All right, so this was an H. and C. wrapping. And how many people go through Saint what’s-his-name’s every day? What about the old woman? For all you know she may have peddled it. To anyone. Why, for God’s sake, pick on me?”
“Kenneth — darling — no. Please. No!”
“Partly,” Alleyn said, “because up to that time you had exhibited withdrawal symptoms but on your arrival in the Mithraeum appeared to be relieved of them.”
“No!”
“We needn’t labour the point. If necessary we can take fingerprints.” He pointed to the paper, and to the empty cigarette packet. “And in any case, last night you were perfectly frank about your experiments with drugs. You told me that Mailer introduced you to them. Why are you kicking up such a dust now?”
“I didn’t know who you were.”
“I’m not going to run you in here, in Rome, for making a mess of yourself with drugs, you silly chap. I simply want to know if, for whatever reason, you met Mailer by the statue of Apollo in the middle level at San Tommaso.”
“Kenneth — no!”
“Auntie, do you mind! I’ve told him — no, no, no.”
“Very well. We’ll go on. You returned to photograph Apollo, found you had used up the film in your camera, continued on down to the bottom level and joined us in the Mithraeum. At what stage did you put a new film in your camera?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Where is the old film?”
“In my pocket, for God’s sake. In my room.”
“You didn’t encounter Major Sweet either although he must have been on his way down, just ahead of you.”
“No.”
“You passed the Apollo, Major, on your way down?”
“I suppose so. Can’t say I remember. Must have, of course.”
“Not necessarily. The cloisters run right around the old church at the middle level. If you’d turned right instead of left when you reached that level you would have come by a shorter route, and without passing Apollo, to the passage leading to the iron stairway.”