Sophy had arrived first for breakfast and had sat down determined to sort herself out in a big way but instead had idly dreamed until Grant’s arrival set up a commotion under her ribs. This was quickly replaced by a renewed sense of companionship unfolding like a flower in the morning air. “How happy I am,” each of them thought. “I am delighted.”
In this frame of mind they discussed the coming day and speculated about the outcome of the Violetta affair and the probability of Mr. Mailer being a murderer.
“I suppose it’s awful,” Sophy said, “not to be madly horrified, but truth to tell I’m not much more appalled than I would be if I’d read it in the papers.”
“I’ll go one worse than you. In a way I’m rather obliged to him.”
“Honestly! What can you mean!”
“You’re still hanging about in Rome instead of flouncing off to Assisi or Florence or wherever.”
“That,” Sophy said, “is probably a remark in execrable taste although I must say I relished it.”
“Sophy,” said Grant, “you’re a sweetie. Blow me down flat if you’re not.”
He reached out his hand and at that moment the waiter came out on the roof garden.
Now it was Grant who experienced a jolt under the diaphragm. Here he had sat, and so, precisely here, had the waiter appeared, on that morning over a year ago when Sebastian Mailer was announced.
“What’s the matter?” Sophy asked.
“Nothing. Why?”
“You looked — odd.”
“Did I? What is it?” he asked the waiter.
It was the Baron Van der Veghel hoping Mr. Grant was free.
“Ask him to join us, please.”
Sophy stood up.
“Don’t you dare,” Grant said. “Sit down.”
“Yes, but — Well, anyway, you shut up.”
“Siddown.”
“I’ll be damned if I do,” said Sophy and did.
The Baron arrived: large, concerned and doubtful. He begged their forgiveness for so early a call and supposed that, like him, they had received a great shock. This led to some momentary confusion until, gazing at them with those wide open eyes of his, he said: “But surely you must know?” and, finding they did not, flatly told them.
“The man Mailer,” he said, “has been murdered. He has been found at the bottom of the well.”
At that moment all the clocks in Rome began to strike nine and Sophy was appalled to hear a voice in her head saying: “Ding, dong bell, Mailer’s in the well.”
“No doubt,” the Baron said, “you will receive a message. As we did. This, of course, changes everything. My wife is so much upset. We have found where is a Protestant church and I have taken her there for some comfort. My wife is a most sensitive subject. She senses,” the Baron explained, “that there has been a great evil amongst us. That there is still this evil. As I do. How can one escape such a feeling?”
“Not very readily,” Grant conceded, “particularly now when I suppose we are all much more heavily involved.”
The Baron glanced anxiously at Sophy. “Perhaps,” he said, “we should—”
“Well, of course we’re involved, Baron,” she said.
Clearly, the Baron held that ladies were to be protected. “He goes through life,” she thought, “tenderly building protective walls round that huge, comical sex-pot of his and he’s got plenty of concern left over for extra-mural sympathy. Who says the age of chivalry is dead? He’s rather a dear, is the Baron.” But beneath her amusement, flowing under it and chilling it, ran a trickle of consciousness: “I’m involved in a murder,” thought Sophy.
She had lost track of the Baron’s further remarks but gathered that he had felt the need for discussion with another man. Having left the Baroness to pursue whatever Spartan devotions accorded with her need, he had settled upon Grant as a confidant.
Deeply perturbed though she was, Sophy couldn’t help feeling an indulgent amusement at the behaviour of the two men. It was so exclusively masculine. They had moved away to the far side of the garden. Grant, with his hands in his pockets, stared between his feet and then lifted his head and contemplated the horizon. The Baron folded his arms, frowned portentously and raised his eyebrows almost to the roots of his hair. They both pursed their lips, muttered, nodded. There were long pauses.
How different, Sophy thought, from the behaviour of women. “We would exclaim, gaze at each other, gabble, ejaculate, tell each other how we felt and talk about instinctive revulsions and how we’d always known, right along, that there was something.”
And she suddenly thought it would be satisfactory to have such a talk with the Baroness though not on any account with Lady Braceley.
They turned back to her, rather like doctors after a consultation.
“We have been saying, Miss Jason,” said the Baron, “that as far as we ourselves are concerned there can be only slight formalities. Since we were in company from the time he left us, both in the Mithraeum and when we returned (you with Mr. Grant and my wife and I with Mr. Alleyn) until we all met in the church portico. We cannot be thought of either as witnesses or as — as—”
“Suspects?” Sophy said.
“So. You are right to be frank, my dear young lady,” said the Baron, looking at Sophy with solemn and perhaps rather shocked approval.
Grant said: “Well, of course she is. Let’s all be frank about it, for heaven’s sake. Mailer was a bad lot and somebody has killed him. I don’t suppose any of us condones the taking of life under any circumstances whatever and it is, of course, horrible to think of the explosion of hatred or alternatively the calculated manoeuvring, that led to his death. But one can scarcely be expected to mourn for him.” He looked very hard at Sophy. “I don’t,” he said. “And I won’t pretend I do. It’s a bad man out of the way.”
The Baron waited for a moment and said quietly: “You speak, Mr. Grant, with conviction. Why do you say so positively that this was a bad man?”
Grant had gone very white but he answered without hesitation. “I have first-hand knowledge,” he said. “He was a blackmailer. He blackmailed me. Alleyn knows this and so does Sophy. And if me, why not others?”
“Why not,” Van der Veghel said. “Why not, indeed.” He hit himself on the chest and Sophy wondered why the gesture was not ridiculous. “I too,” he said. “I who speak to you. I too.” He waited for a moment. “It has been a great relief to me to say this,” he said. “A great relief. I shall not regret it, I think.”
“Well,” Grant said, “it’s lucky we are provided with alibis. I suppose a lot of people would say we have spoken like fools.”
“It is appropriate sometimes to be a fool. The belief of former times that there is God’s wisdom in the utterances of fools was founded in truth,” the Baron proclaimed. “No. I do not regret.”
A silence fell between them and into it there was insinuated the sound of a distant crowd and a shrilling of whistles. A police car shot down the street with its siren blasting.
“And now, my dear Baron,” said Grant, “having to some extent bared our respective bosoms, perhaps we had better, with Sophy’s permission, consider our joint situation.”
“With the greatest pleasure,” said the Baron politely.
Alleyn found a change in the atmosphere of Il Questore Valdarno’s splendid office and in the attitude of Valdarno himself. It was not that he was exactly less cordial but rather that he was more formally so. He was very formal indeed and overpoweringly polite. He was also worried and preoccupied and was constantly interrupted by telephone calls. Apparently the demonstrations were hotting up in Navona.
Valdarno made it perfectly clear that the discovery of Mailer’s body altered the whole complexion of the case: that while he had no intention of excluding Alleyn from the investigation and hoped he would find some interest in the proceedings, they would be absolutely in the hands of the Roman Questura which, he added with an unconvincing air of voicing an afterthought, was under the direct control of the Minister of the Interior. Valdarno was very urbane. Alleyn had his own line of urbanity and retired behind it and between them, he thought, they got exactly nowhere.