When in Rome (24 page)

And now, unexpectedly, views of Rome. Conventional shots of familiar subjects always with the same large, faintly smiling figure somewhere in the foreground or the middle distance. The Baron
looking waggish with his head on one side, throwing a penny into the Trevi Fountain. The Baron looking magisterial in the Forum, pontifical before the Vatican and martial underneath Marcus Aurelius. And finally a shot taken by a third person of the Van der Veghels’ heads in profile with rather an Egyptian flavour, hers behind his. They even had the same large ears with heavy lobes, he noticed.

And then—nothing. A faint remnant of the Baron at the head of the Spanish Steps heavily obscured by white fog. After that—nothing. Blankness.

‘It is a pity,’ said the photographic expert, ‘there has been a misfortune. Light has been admitted.’

‘So I see,’ Alleyn said.

‘I think,’ Bergarmi pointed out, ‘you mentioned, did you not, that there was difficulty with the Baroness’s camera in the Mithraeum?’

‘The flashlamp failed. Once. It worked the second time.’

‘There is a fault, evidently, in the camera. Or in the removal of the film. Light,’ the expert reiterated, ‘has been admitted.’

‘So,’ Bergarmi said, ‘we have no record of the sarcophagus. It is of secondary interest after all.’

‘Yes,’ Alleyn said. ‘It is. After all. And as for the group by the statue of Mithras—’

‘Ah, Signore,’ said the expert. ‘Here the news is better. We have the film marked Dorne. Here, Signore.’

Kenneth’s photographs were reasonably good. They at once disproved his story of using the last of his film before meeting Mailer at the Apollo and of replacing it on his way to the Mithraeum. Here in order were snapshots taken in Perugia. Two of these showed Kenneth himself,
en travesti
in a garden surrounded by very dubiouslooking friends, one of whom had taken off his clothes and seemed to be posing as a statue.

‘Molto sofisticato,’
said Bergarmi.

Next came pictures of Kenneth’s aunt outside their hotel and of the travellers assembling near the Spanish Steps. Midway in the sequence was the picture of the god Mithras.

Kenneth had stood far enough away from his subject to include in the foreground the Baroness, fussing with her camera, and beyond her the group. Alleyn and Sophy grinned on either side of the
furiously embarrassed Grant and there was Sweet very clearly groping for Sophy’s waist. They had the startled and rigid look of persons in darkness transfixed by a flashlight. The details of the wall behind them, their own gigantic shadows and the plump god with his Phrygian cap, his smile and his blankly staring eyes, all stood out in the greatest clarity. Kenneth had taken no other photographs in S. Tommaso. The rest of his film had been used up on the Palatine Hill.

Alleyn waited for the films and prints to dry. Bergarmi pleaded pressure of work and said he would leave him to it.

As he was about to go Alleyn said, ‘You know, Signor Vice-Questore, there is one item in this case that I find extremely intriguing.’

‘Yes? And it is—?’

‘This. Why on earth should Mailer, a flabby man, go to all the exertion and waste a great deal of time in stowing Violetta in the sarcophagus when he might so easily and quickly have tipped her down the well?’

Bergarmi gazed at him in silence for some moments.

‘I have no answer,’ he said. ‘There is, of course, an answer but I cannot at the moment produce it. Forgive me, I am late.’

When he had gone Alleyn muttered, ‘I can. Blow me down flat if I can’t.’

It was ten to three when he got back to his hotel.

He wrote up his report, arranged a meeting with Interpol and took counsel with himself.

His mission, such as it was, was accomplished. He had got most of the information he had been told to get. He had run the Mailer case down to its grass roots and had forced Sweet to give him the most useful list yet obtained of key figures in the biggest of the drug rackets.

And Mailer and Sweet were dead.

Professionally speaking, their deaths were none of his business. They were strictly over to the Roman Questura, to Valdarno and Bergarmi and their boys, and very ably they were being handled. And yet…

He was greatly troubled.

At half past five he laid out all the photographs on his bed. He took a paper from his file. The writing on it was in his own hand. He looked at it for a long time and then folded it and put it in his pocket.

At six o’clock Kenneth Dorne rang up and asked apparently in some agitation if he could come and collect his film.

‘Not now. I’m engaged,’ Alleyn said, ‘at least until seven.’ He waited a moment and then said, ‘You may ring again at eight.’

‘Have—have they turned out all right? The photos?’

‘Yours are perfectly clear. Why?’

‘Is something wrong with hers—the Baroness’s?’

‘It’s fogged.’

‘Well, that’s not my fault, is it? Look: I want to talk to you. Please.’

‘At eight.’

‘I see. Well I—yes—well, thank you. I’ll ring again at eight.’

‘Do that.’

At half past six the office called to say that the Baron Van der Veghel had arrived. Alleyn asked them to send him up.

He opened his door and when he heard the lift whine, went into the corridor. Out came a waiter ushering the Baron, who greeted Alleyn from afar and springingly advanced with outstretched hand.

‘I hope you don’t mind my bringing you up here,’ Alleyn said. ‘I thought we wanted a reasonable amount of privacy and the rooms down below are like a five-star Bedlam at this hour. Do come in. What will you drink? They make quite a pleasant cold brandy-punch. Or would you rather stick to the classics?’

The Baron chose brandy-punch and while it was coming enlarged upon their visit to the water-gardens at the Villa d’Este. ‘We have been there before, of course,’ he said, ‘but with each visit the wonder grows. My wife said today that now she summons up, always at the same vista, a scarlet cardinal and his guests. She sees them through the mists of the fountains.’

‘She has second sight,’ Alleyn said lightly. Seeing the Baron was puzzled, he explained.

‘Ach—no. No, we do not believe such phenomena. No, it is her imagination which is so very vivid. She is most sensitive to her surroundings but she does not see ghosts, Mr Alleyn.’

The drinks arrived. Alleyn attended to them and then said, ‘Would you like to look at your photographs? I’m afraid you will be disappointed.’

He had left all the prints except Kenneth’s on the bed.

When the Baron saw Violetta and Mailer, which he did at once, he said, ‘Oh, no! This is too horrible! Please!’

‘I’m so sorry,’ Alleyn said and swept them away. ‘Here are your wife’s photographs. The early ones, you see, are very good. It is when we come to S. Tommaso that the trouble begins.’

‘I cannot understand this,’ the Baron said. He stooped, peered at them and took them up, one by one. ‘My wife’s camera is in good condition: it has never happened before. The film was correctly rolled off before it was removed. Where are the negatives?’

‘Here they are.’

He held them in turn up to the light. ‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘And I confess I am puzzled. Forgive me, but—the man who processed the film—you said he was a police photographer?’

‘I honestly don’t think for a moment that he was careless.’

‘My wife,’ said the Baron, ‘will be relieved after all. She wanted no record of the visit to that place.’

‘No.’

‘But I am sorry. You wished for the photograph of the sarcophagus, I believe.’

‘The police attach little importance to it. But there is, after all, a record of the group in the Mithraeum.’

He dropped Kenneth’s print on the bed.

The Baron stooped over it.

The room was quiet. The windows were shut and the great composite voice of Rome was not obtrusive. A flight of swallows flashed past almost too rapidly for recognition.

‘Yes,’ said the Baron. He straightened up and looked at Alleyn. ‘It is a clear picture,’ he said. ‘Isn’t it?’

The Baron sat down with his back to the windows. He drank a little of his cold brandy-punch. ‘This is an excellent concoction,’ he said. ‘I am enjoying it.’

‘Good. I wonder if you would do me a favour.’

‘A favour? But certainly, if it is possible.’

‘I have a copy of a letter. It’s written in a language that I don’t know. I think it may be in Dutch. Will you look at it for me?’

‘Of course.’

Alleyn gave it to him. ‘You will see,’ he said, ‘that the original was written—typed, actually—on the letter-paper of your publishing firm—of Adriaan and Welker. Will you read it?’

There was a long silence and then the Baron said, ‘You ask me here to drink with you. You show me—these things. Why do you behave in this way? Perhaps you have a microphone concealed in the room and a tape-recorder, as in some ridiculous crime film?’

‘No. I am not acting for the police. My job here is finished. No doubt I should have taken this letter to them but they will find the original when they search Mailer’s rooms. I doubt if they will take very much interest in it, but of course I have not read it and may be wrong. They know very well that he was a blackmailer. I have seen that your wife’s name appears in the letter. I am behaving reprehensibly in this matter, I dare say, but I don’t think you have any reason to throw your brandy-punch in my face, Baron. It was offered in what may fairly be called good faith.’

The Baron moved slightly. The light from the window crossed his face and in a moment the white Apollo, the glancing Mercury, the faintly smiling Husband of the Villa Giulia seemed in turn to look through his mask. ‘I must believe you,’ he said. ‘What else can I do?’

‘If you like you can go away leaving me to deal with—for example—Kenneth Dorne and his photography.’

‘Whatever I do,’ said the Baron, ‘it is clear that I put myself in your hands. I have no choice, I think.’

He got up and walked about the room, still with some trace of elasticity in his tread. At last he said, ‘It seems to me there would be little point in my refusing to give you the content of this letter since you tell me, and I believe you, that the original is extant. You can get a translation easily enough. In effect it appears that someone—you will have seen the name—calling himself Silas J. Sebastian had written to my firm asking if they could give him any information about my wife. Apparently the writer had said he represented an American magazine and was organizing a series of articles on the incursions into the business world of persons of the old nobilities. From the point of view of their wives. The writer, it appears, went on to say that he had a personal interest in my wife as he believed they were distantly
related. Evidently he asked for my wife’s maiden name. This letter is an answer to their inquiry.’

‘Yes?’

‘It says—’ The Baron seemed to flinch from his intention. He shut his eyes for a moment and then examined the letter as if he saw it for the first time. Presently in an extraordinarily prim voice that seemed not to belong to him he said: ‘In accordance with my standing instructions it states that the Baroness Van der Veghel is a permanent invalid and lives in retirement.’

‘When did you first encounter Sebastian Mailer?’

‘Eighteen months ago. In Geneva.’

‘And a few weeks later he wrote his letter. He didn’t trouble to find himself an entirely dissimilar pseudonym.’

‘No doubt he felt sure of himself.’

‘After all,’ Alleyn said, ‘this letter might be a standard reply to choke off boring inquiries.’

‘He did not think so. He pursued the matter,’ said the Baron. ‘He extended his investigations.’

‘To—?’

‘I regret: I must decline to answer.’

‘Very well. Let us accept that he found his material. Will you tell me this much? When you met him again, in Rome, the other day, had you any idea—?’

‘None!
My God, none! Not until—’

‘Until?’

‘A week before the—before S. Tommaso.’

‘And then the blackmailing process began?’

‘Yes.’

‘Were you prepared to pay?’

‘Mr Alleyn, I had no choice. I flew to Geneva and obtained the money in notes of small denomination.’

‘You presented a brave front,’ Alleyn said, ‘on that expedition. You and your wife. So much enthusiasm for the antiquated! Such
joie de vivre!’

The Baron Van der Veghel looked steadily at Alleyn for some few moments and then he said, ‘You yourself have a distinguished and brilliant wife, I think? We have admired her work very greatly. She is a superb painter.’

Alleyn said nothing.

‘You must know, then, Mr Alleyn, that a preoccupation with the arts is not to be tampered with—my English is unable to explain me, I think—it is not to be cut off and turned on like taps. Beauty and, for us, antique beauty in especial—is absolute. No misfortune or anxiety can colour our feeling for it. When we see it we salute it and are greatly moved. The day before yesterday at S. Tommaso I was furnished with the money demanded of me as a price of silence. I was prepared to hand it over. The decision had been taken. I have to confess that a lightness of spirit came over me and a kind of relief. The beauty of the Etruscan works in that underworld did much to enhance this feeling.’

‘And also it was advisable, wasn’t it, to keep up appearances?’

‘That, too,’ said the Baron steadily. ‘I admit. That too. But it was not difficult. There were the Etruscans to support me. I may tell you that I believe our family, which is of great antiquity, arose in classical times in the lands between the Tiber and the Arno.’

‘Your wife told me so. Did you hand over the money?’

‘No. There was no opportunity. As you know, he had gone.’

‘A further and very understandable relief.’

‘Of course.’

‘You were not his only victim in that party you know.’

‘So I believe.’

Alleyn took his glass. ‘Let me give you a drink.’

‘It will not increase my indiscretion,’ said the Baron. ‘But thank you.’

When Alleyn had given it to him he said, ‘You may not believe me when I say that it would solace me if I could tell you what it was that he had discovered. I cannot. But on my honour I wish that I could. I wish it with all my heart, Mr Alleyn.’