When in Rome

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Cast of Characters

CHAPTER 1 Barnaby in Rome

CHAPTER 2 An Expedition is Arranged

CHAPTER 3 Saturday, the Twenty-sixth

CHAPTER 4 Absence of Mr Mailer

CHAPTER 5 Evening Out

CHAPTER 6 Re-appearance of a Postcard Vendor

CHAPTER 7 Afternoon

CHAPTER 8 Return of Sebastian Mailer

CHAPTER 9 Death in the Morning

CHAPTER 10 When in Rome

By The Same Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

Cast of Characters

Patrons of Mr Sebastian Mailer’s conducted tour

Mr Barnaby Grant | Author of Simon in Latium
The Baron and Baroness Van der Veghel
Miss Sophy Jason | Writer of children’s stories
Lady Braceley
The Hon. Kenneth Dorne | Her nephew
Major Hamilton Sweet
Superintendent Roderick Alleyn | CID London

Officers of the Roman Police Department

Il Questore Valdarno

Il Vice-Questore Bergarmi

Sundry members of the Questura

Dominicans in charge at S. Tommaso in Pallaria

Father Denys

Brother Dominic

Mr Sebastian Mailer | Il Cicerone Conducted Tours
Giovanni Vecchi | His assistant
Violetta | A postcard vendor
Marco | A restaurateur
A British Consul
Signor Pace | A travel agent
A Porter and sundry waiters

CHAPTER 1 Barnaby in Rome

Barnaby Grant looked at the Etruscan Bride and Bridegroom who reclined so easily on their sarcophagal couch and wondered why they had died so young and whether, as in Verona, they had died together. Their gentle lips, he thought, brushed with amusement, might easily tilt into the arrowhead smile of Apollo and Hermes. How fulfilled they were and how enigmatically alike. What signal did she give with her largish hands? How touchingly his hand hovered above her shoulder.

‘—from Cerveteri,’ said a guide rapidly. ‘Five hundred and thirty years before Christ.’

‘Christ!’ said a tourist on a note of exhaustion.

The party moved on. Grant stayed behind for a time and then, certain that he desired to see no more that morning, left the Villa Giulia and took a taxi to the Piazza Colonna for a glass of beer.

II

As he sat at a kerbside table in the Piazza Colonna, Barnaby thought of the Etruscan smile and listened to thunder.

The heavens boomed largely above the noon traffic but whatever lightning there might be was not evident, being masked by a black canopy of low and swollen cloud. At any moment, thought Barnaby, Marcus Aurelius’s Column will prick it and like ‘a foul bumbard’ it will shed its liquor! And then what a scene!

Before him on the table stood a glass and a bottle of beer. His mackintosh was folded over the back of his chair and on the ground, leaning against his leg, was a locked attaché case. Every so often his left hand dropped to the case and fingered it. Refreshed by this contact his mouth would take on an easier look and he would blink slowly and push away the lock of black hair that overhung his forehead.

A bit of a swine, this one, he thought. It’s been a bit of a swine.

A heavy rumbling again broke out overhead. Thunder on the left, Barnaby thought. The gods are cross with us.

He refilled his glass and looked about him.

The kerbside caffè had been crowded but now, under threat of a downpour, many customers had left and the waiters had tipped over their chairs. The tables on either side of his own, however, were still occupied: that on his right by three lowering young men whose calloused hands jealously enclosed their glasses and whose slow eyes looked sideways at their surroundings. Countrymen, Grant thought, who would have been easier in a less consequential setting and would be shocked by the amount of their bill. On his left sat a Roman couple in love. Forbidden by law to kiss in public, they gazed, clung hand-to-hand, and exchanged trembling smiles. The young man extended his forefinger and traced the unmarred excellence of his girl’s lips. They responded, quivering. Barnaby could not help watching the lovers. They were unaware of him and indeed of everything else around them, but on the first visible and livid flash of lightning, they were taken out of themselves and turned their faces towards him.

It was at this moment, appropriately as he was later to consider, that he saw, framed by their separated heads, the distant figure of an Englishman.

He knew at once that the man was English. Perhaps it was his clothes. Or, more specifically, his jacket. It was shabby and out-of-date but it had been made from West Country tweed though not, perhaps, for its present wearer. And then—the tie. Frayed and faded, grease-spotted and lumpish: there it was, scarcely recognizable, but if you were so minded, august. For the rest, his garments were dingy and nondescript. His hat, a rusty black felt, was obviously Italian. It was pulled forward and cast a shadow down to the bridge of the nose, over a face of which the most noticeable feature was its extreme pallor. The mouth, however, was red and rather full-lipped. So dark had the noonday turned that without that brief flash, Barnaby could scarcely have seen the shadowed eyes. He felt an odd little shock within himself when he realized they were very light in colour and were fixed on him. A great crack of thunder banged out overhead. The black canopy burst and fell out of the sky in a deluge.

There was a stampede. Barnaby snatched up his raincoat, struggled into it and dragged the hood over his head. He had not paid his bill and groped for his pocket-book. The three countrymen blundered towards him and there was some sort of collision between them and the young couple. The young man broke into loud quarrelsome expostulation. Barnaby could find nothing smaller than a thousand-lire note. He turned away, looked round for a waiter and found that they had all retreated under the canvas awning. His own man saw him, made a grand-opera gesture of despair, and turned his back.

‘Aspetti,’ Barnaby shouted in phrase-book Italian waving his thousand-lire note. ‘Quanto devo pagare?’

The waiter placed his hands together as if in prayer and turned up his eyes.

‘Basta!’

‘—lasci passare—’

‘Se ne vada ora—’

‘Non desidero parlarle.’

‘Non l’ho fatto io—’

‘Vattene!’

‘Sciocchezze!’

The row between the lover and the countrymen was heating up. They now screamed into each other’s faces behind Barnaby’s back. The waiter indicated, with a multiple gesture, the heavens, the rain, his own defencelessness.

Barnaby thought: After all, I’m the one with a raincoat. Somebody crashed into his back and sent him spread-eagled across his table.

A scene of the utmost confusion followed accompanied by flashes of lightning, immediate thunder-claps and torrents of rain. Barnaby was winded and bruised. A piece of glass had cut the palm of his hand and his nose also bled. The combatants had disappeared but his waiter, now equipped with an enormous orange-and-red umbrella, babbled over him and made ineffectual dabs at his hand. The other waiters, clustered beneath the awning, rendered a chorus to the action. ‘Poverino!’ they exclaimed. ‘What a misfortune!’

Barnaby recovered an upright posture. With one hand he dragged a handkerchief from the pocket of his raincoat and clapped it to his face. In the other he extended to the waiter his bloodied and rain-sopped thousand-lire note.

‘Here,’ he said in his basic Italian. ‘Keep the change. I require a taxi.’

The waiter ejaculated with evident pleasure. Barnaby sat down abruptly on a chair that had become a bird-bath. The waiter ludicrously inserted his umbrella into a socket in the middle of the table, said something incomprehensible, turned up the collar of his white jacket and bolted into the interior. To telephone, Barnaby hoped, for a taxi.

The Piazza Colonna was rain-possessed. A huge weight of water flooded the street and pavements and spurted off the roofs of cars as if another multiple Roman fountain had been born. Motorists stared through blurred glass and past jigging windscreen-wipers at the world outside. Except for isolated, scurrying wayfarers, the pavements were emptied. Barnaby Grant, huddled, alone and ridiculous under his orange-and-red umbrella, staunched his bloody nose. He attracted a certain incredulous attention. The waiter had disappeared and his comrades had got up among themselves one of those inscrutable Italian conversations that appear to be quarrels but very often end in backslaps and roars of laughter. Barnaby never could form the slightest notion of how long he had sat under the umbrella before he made his hideous discovery, before his left arm dangled from his shoulder and his left hand encountered—nothing.

As if it had a separate entity the hand explored, discovered only the leg of his chair, widened its search and found—nothing.

He remembered afterwards that he had been afraid to get into touch with his hand, to duck his head and look down and find a puddle of water, the iron foot of his chair-leg and again—nothing.

The experience that followed could, he afterwards supposed, be compared to the popular belief about drowning. In that an impossible flood of thoughts crowded his brain. He thought, for instance, of how long it had taken him to write his book, of his knowledge that undoubtedly it was the best thing he had done, perhaps would ever do. He remembered his agent had once suggested that it was dangerous to write in longhand with no duplication. He remembered how isolated he was in Rome with virtually no Italian, and how he hadn’t bothered to use his introductions. He thought inaccurately of—who? Was it Sir Isaac Newton? ‘O, Diamond, Diamond, you little know what you have done!’ Above all he thought of the ineffable, the unthinkable, the atrocious boredom of what must now ensue: the awful prospect of taking steps as opposed to the numb desolation of his loss: the rock-bottom horror of the event itself which had caused a thing like a water-ram to pound in his thorax. A classic phrase stood up in his thoughts: ‘I am undone.’ And he almost cried it aloud.

Here, now, was the waiter, smirking and triumphant, and here at the kerbside, a horse-carriage with a great umbrella protecting the seats and a wary-looking driver with some sort of tarpaulin over his head.

Grant attempted to indicate his loss. He pointed to where his attaché case had been, he grimaced, he gesticulated. He groped for his phrase-book and thumbed through it. ‘Ho perduto,’ he said. ‘Ho perduto mia valigia. Have you got it? My case? Non trovo. Valigia.’

The waiter exclaimed and idiotically looked under the table and round about the flooded surroundings. He then bolted into cover and stood there gazing at Barnaby and shrugging with every inch of his person.

Barnaby thought: This is it. This is the worst thing that has ever happened to me.

The driver of the horse-carriage hailed him mellifluously and seemed to implore him to make up his mind. He looked at the desolation around him and got into the carriage.

‘Consolato Britannico,’ Grant shouted. ‘O God! Consolato Britannico.’

III

‘Now look here,’ the Consul had said, as if Barnaby Grant required the information, ‘this is a bad business, you know. It’s a bad business.’

‘You, my dear Consul, are telling me.’

‘Quite so. Quite so. Now, we’ll have to see what we can do, won’t we? My wife,’ he added, ‘is a great fan of yours. She’ll be quite concerned when she hears of this. She’s a bit of an egg-head,’ he had jokingly confided.

Barnaby had not replied. He contemplated his fellow-Briton over a handful of lint kindly provided by the consular staff and rested his bandaged left hand upon his knee.

‘Well, of course,’ the Consul continued argumentatively, ‘properly speaking it’s a matter for the police. Though I must say—however, if you’ll wait a moment I’ll just put a call through. I’ve got a personal contact—nothing like approaching at the right level, is there? Now, then.’

After a number of delays there had been a long and virtually incomprehensible conversation during which Barnaby fancied he was being described as Great Britain’s most celebrated novelist. With many pauses to refer to Barnaby himself, the Consul related at dictation speed the details of the affair and when that was over showered a number of grateful compliments into the telephone—‘E stato molto gentile—Grazie, Molto grazie, Signore,’ which even poor Barnaby could understand.

The Consul replaced the receiver and pulled a grimace. ‘Not much joy from that quarter,’ he said. Barnaby swallowed and felt sick.

He was assured that everything that could be done, would be done, but, the Consul pointed out, they hadn’t much to go on, had they? Still, he added more brightly, there was always the chance that Barnaby might be blackmailed.

‘Blackmailed?’

‘Well, you see, whoever took the case probably expected, if not a haul of valuables, or cash, something in the nature of documents for the recovery of which a reward would be offered and a haggling basis thus set up. Blackmail,’ said the Consul, ‘was not, of course, the right word. Ransom would be more appropriate. Although…’ He was a man of broken sentences and he left this one suspended in an atmosphere of extreme discomfort.

‘Then I should advertise and offer a reward?’

‘Certainly. Certainly. We’ll get something worked out. We’ll just give my secretary the details in English and she’ll translate and see to the insertions.’

‘I’m being a trouble,’ said the wretched Barnaby.

‘We’re used to it,’ the Consul sighed. ‘Your name and London address were on the manuscript, you said, but the case was locked. Not, of course, that that amounts to anything.’

‘I suppose not.’

‘You are staying at—?’

‘The Pensione Gallico.’

‘Ah yes. Have you the telephone number?’

‘Yes—I think so—somewhere about me.’

Barnaby fished distractedly in his breast pocket, pulled out his note-case, passport and two envelopes which fell on the desk, face downwards. He had scribbled the Pensione Gallico address and telephone number on the back of one of them.

‘That’s it,’ he said and slid the envelope across to the Consul, who was already observant of its august crest.

‘Ah—yes. Thank you.’ He gave a little laugh. ‘Done your duty and signed the book, I see,’ he said.

‘What? Oh—that. Well, no, actually,’ Barnaby mumbled. ‘It’s—er—some sort of luncheon. Tomorrow. I mustn’t take up any more of your time. I’m enormously grateful.’

The Consul, beaming and expanding, stretched his arm across the desk and made a fin of his hand. ‘No, no, no. Very glad you came to us. I feel pretty confident, all things considered. Nil desperandum, you know, nil desperandum. Rise above!’

But it wasn’t possible to rise very far above his loss as two days trickled by and there was no response to advertisements and nothing came of a long language-haltered interview with a beautiful representative of the Questura. He attended his Embassy luncheon and tried to react appropriately to ambassadorial commiseration and concern. But for most of the time he sat on the roof-garden of the Pensione Gallico among potted geraniums and flights of swallows. His bedroom had a french window opening on to a neglected corner of this garden and there he waited and listened in agony for every telephone call within. From time to time he half-faced the awful notion of re-writing the hundred thousand words of his novel but the prospect made him physically as well as emotionally sick as he turned away from it.

Every so often he experienced the sensation of an abrupt descent in an infernal lift. He started out of fits of sleep into a waking nightmare. He told himself he should write to his agent and to his publisher but the mere thought of doing so tasted as acrid as bile and he sat and listened for the telephone instead.

On the third morning a heat wave came upon Rome. The roof-garden was like a furnace. He was alone in his corner with an uneaten brioche, a pot of honey and three wasps. He was given over to a sort of fretful lassitude and finally to a condition that he supposed must be that of Despair itself. ‘What I need,’ he told himself on a wave of nausea, ‘is a bloody good cry on somebody’s bloody bosom.’

One of the two waiters came out.

‘Finito?’ he sang, as usual. And then, when Barnaby gave his punctual assent, seemed to indicate that he should come indoors. At first he thought the waiter was suggesting that it was too hot where he was and then that for some reason the manageress wanted to see him.

And then, as a sudden jolt of hope shook him, he saw a fattish man with a jacket hooked over his shoulders come out of the house door and advance towards him. He was between Barnaby and the sun and appeared fantastic, black and insubstantial but at once Barnaby recognized him.

His reactions were chaotic. He saw the man as if between the inclined heads of two lovers, and to the accompaniment of thunder and lightning. And whether the sensation that flooded him was one solely of terrified relief, or of a kind of blessed anticlimax he could never determine. He merely wondered, when the man advanced into the shade and drew an attaché case from under his jacket, if he himself was going to faint.

‘Mr Barnaby Grant?’ asked the man. ‘I think you will be pleased to see me, will you not?’

IV

They escaped from the Gallico which seemed to be over-run with housemaids to a very small caffè in a shaded by-way off the Piazza Navona, a short walk away. His companion had suggested it. ‘Unless, of course,’ he said archly, ‘you prefer something smarter—like the Colonna, for instance,’ and Barnaby had shuddered. He took his attaché case with him and, at his guest’s suggestion, unlocked it. There, in two looseleaf folders, lay his book, enclosed by giant-sized rubber bands. The last letter from his agent still lay on top, just as he had left it.

He had rather wildly offered his guest champagne cocktails, cognac, wine—anything—but when reminded that it was not yet ten o’clock in the morning settled for coffee. ‘Well then,’ he said, ‘at a more appropriate hour—you will let me—and in the meantime I must—well—of course.’

He slid his hand inside his jacket. His heart still thumped at it like a fist.

‘You are thinking of the reward so generously offered,’ said his companion. ‘But, please—no. No. It is out of the question. To have been of service even on so insignificant a scale to Barnaby Grant—that really is a golden reward. Believe me.’

Barnaby had not expected this and he at once felt he had committed a gigantic error in taste. He had been misled, he supposed, by general appearances: not only by the shabby alpaca jacket that had replaced the English tweed and like it was hooked over the shoulders, displaying a dingy open shirt with worn cuffs, nor by the black-green hat or the really lamentable shoes but by something indefinable in the man himself. I wish, he thought, I could take an instant liking to him. I owe him that, at the least.

And as his companion talked Barnaby found himself engaged in the occupational habit of the novelist: he dwelt on the bullet head, close cropped like an American schoolboy’s, and the mouse-coloured sparse fringe. He noted the extreme pallor of the skin, its appearance of softness and fine texture like a woman’s: the unexpected fullness and rich colour of the mouth and those large pale eyes that had looked so fixedly into his in the Piazza Colonna. The voice and speech? High but muted, it had no discernible accent but carried a suggestion of careful phrasing. Perhaps English was no longer the habitual language. His choice of words was pedantic as if he had memorized his sentences for a public address.

His hands were plump and delicate and the nails bitten to the quick.

His name was Sebastian Mailer.

‘You wonder, of course,’ he was saying, ‘why you have been subjected to this no doubt agonizing delay. You would like to know the circumstances?’

‘Very much.’

‘I can’t hope that you noticed me the other morning in Piazza Colonna.’

‘But yes. I remember you very well.’

‘Perhaps I stared. You see, I recognized you at once from the photographs on your book-jacket. I must tell you I am a most avid admirer, Mr Grant.’

Barnaby murmured.

‘I am also, which is more to the point, what might be described as “an old Roman hand”. I have lived here for many years and have acquired some knowledge of Roman society at a number of levels. Including the lowest. You see I am frank.’

‘Why not?’

‘Why not indeed! My motives in what I imagine some of our compatriots would call muck-raking, are aesthetic and I think I may say philosophical, but with that I must not trouble you. It will do well enough if I tell you that at the same time as I recognized you I also recognized a despicable person known to the Roman riff-raff as—I translate—“Feather-fingers”. He was stationed at a short distance from you and behind your back. His eyes were fastened upon your attaché case.’

‘God!’

‘Indeed, yes. Now, you will recollect that the incipient thunderstorm broke abruptly and that with the downpour and subsequent confusion a fracas arose between some of the occupants of tables adjacent to your own.’

‘Yes.’

‘And that you received a violent blow in the back that knocked you across your table.’

‘So it did,’ Barnaby agreed.

‘Of course you thought that you had been struck by one of the contestants but this was not so. The character I have brought to your notice took advantage of the mêlée, darted forward, delivered the blow with his shoulder, snatched up your case and bolted. It was an admirably timed manoeuvre and executed with the greatest speed and precision. The contestants continued to shout at each other and I, my dear Mr Grant, gave chase.’

He sipped his coffee, made a small inclination, an acknowledgement perhaps of Barnaby’s passionate attention.

‘It was a long pursuit,’ Mailer continued. ‘But I clung to his trail and—is the phrase “ran him to earth”? It is. Thank you. I ran him to earth, then, in what purveyors of sensational fiction would describe as “a certain caffè in such-and-such a little street not a thousand miles from—“ etc., etc.—perhaps my phraseology is somewhat dated. In plain terms I caught up with him at his habitual haunt, and by means with which I shall not trouble you, recovered your attaché case.’

‘On the same day,’ Barnaby couldn’t help asking, ‘that I lost it?’

‘Ah! As the cornered victim of an interrogation always says: I am glad you asked that question. Mr Grant, with any less distinguished person I would have come armed with a plausible prevarication. With you, I cannot adopt this measure. I did not return your case before because—’

He paused, smiling very slightly, and without removing his gaze from Barnaby’s face, pushed up the shirt-sleeve of his left arm which was white-skinned and hairless. He rested it palm upwards on the table and slid it towards Barnaby.

‘You can see for yourself,’ he said. ‘They look rather like mosquito bites, do they not. But I’m sure you will recognize them for what they are. Do you?’

‘I—I think I do.’

‘Quite. I have acquired an addiction for cocaine. Rather “square” of me, isn’t it? I really must change, one of these days, to something groovier. You see I am conversant with the jargon. But I digress. I am ashamed to say that after my encounter with “Feather-fingers”, I found myself greatly shaken. No doubt my constitution has been somewhat undermined by my unfortunate proclivity. I am not a robust man. I called upon my—the accepted term is, I believe, fix—and, in short, I rather exceeded my usual allowance and have been out of circulation until this morning. I cannot, of course, hope that you will forgive me.’

Barnaby gave himself a breathing space and then—he was a generous man—said: ‘I’m so bloody thankful to have it back I feel nothing but gratitude, I promise you. After all, the case was locked and you were not to know—’

‘Oh but I was! I guessed. When I came to myself I guessed. The weight, for one thing. And the way it shifted, you know, inside. And then, of course, I saw your advertisement: “containing manuscript of value only to owner”. So I cannot lay that flattering unction to my soul, Mr Grant.’

He produced a dubious handkerchief and wiped his neck and face with it. The little caffè was on the shady side of the street but Mr Mailer sweated excessively.

‘Will you have some more coffee?’

‘Thank you. You are very kind. Most kind.’

The coffee seemed to revive him. He held the cup in his two plump, soiled hands and looked at Barnaby over the top.

‘I feel so deeply in your debt,’ Barnaby said. ‘Is there nothing I can do—?’

‘You will think me unbearably fulsome—I have, I believe, become rather Latinized in my style, but I assure you the mere fact of meeting you and in some small manner—

This conversation, Barnaby thought, is going round in circles. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you must dine with me. Let’s make a time, shall we?’

But Mr Mailer, now squeezing his palms together, was evidently on the edge of speech and presently achieved it. After a multitude of deprecating parentheses he at last confessed that he himself had written a book.

He had been at it for three years: the present version was his fourth. Through bitter experience, Barnaby knew what was coming and knew, also, that he must accept his fate. The all-too-familiar phrases were being delivered ‘…value, enormously, your opinion…’ ‘…glance through it’ ‘…advice from such an authority…’ ‘…interest a publisher…’

‘I’ll read it, of course,’ Barnaby said. ‘Have you brought it with you?’

Mr Mailer, it emerged, was sitting on it. By some adroit and nimble sleight-of-hand, he had passed it under his rump while Barnaby was intent upon his recovered property. He now drew it out, wrapped in a dampish Roman news-sheet and, with trembling fingers, uncovered it. A manuscript, closely written in an Italianate script, but not, Barnaby rejoiced to see, bulky. Perhaps forty thousand words, perhaps, with any luck, less.

‘Neither a novel nor a novella in length, I’m afraid,’ said its author, ‘but so it has befallen and as such I abide by it.’

Barnaby looked up quickly. Mr Mailer’s mouth had compressed and lifted at the corners. Not so difficult, after all, Barnaby thought.

‘I hope,’ said Mr Mailer, ‘my handwriting does not present undue difficulties. I cannot afford a typist.’

‘It seems very clear.’

‘If so, it will not take more than a few hours of your time. Perhaps in two days or so I may—? But I mustn’t be clamorous.’

Barnaby thought: And I must do this handsomely. He said: ‘Look, I’ve a suggestion. Dine with me the day after tomorrow and I’ll tell you what I think.’

‘How kind you are! I am overwhelmed. But, please, you must allow me—if you don’t object to—well to somewhere—quite modest—like this, for example. There is a little trattoria, as you see. Their fettuccini—really very good and their wine quite respectable. The manager is a friend of mine and will take care of us.’

‘It sounds admirable and by all means let us come here but it shall be my party, Mr Mailer, if you please. You shall order our dinner. I am in your hands.’

‘Indeed? Really? Then I must speak with him beforehand.’

On this understanding they parted.

At the Pensione Gallico Barnaby told everybody he encountered: the manageress, the two waiters, even the chambermaid who had little or no English, of the recovery of his manuscript. Some of them understood him and some did not. All rejoiced. He rang up the Consulate which was loud in felicitations. He paid for his advertisements.

When all this had been accomplished he re-read such bits of his book as he had felt needed to be re-written, skipping from one part to another.

It crossed his mind that his dominant reaction to the events of the past three days was now one of anticlimax: All that agony and—back to normal, he thought and turned a page.

In a groove between the sheets held by their looseleaf binder he noticed a smear and, on opening the manuscript more widely, found a slight deposit of something that looked like cigarette ash. He had given up smoking two years ago.

V

On second thoughts (and after a close examination of the lock on his case) he reminded himself that the lady who did for him in London was a chain-smoker and excessively curious and that his manuscript often lay open on his table. This reflection comforted him and he was able to work on his book and, in the siesta, to read Mr Mailer’s near-novella with tolerable composure.

‘Angelo in August by Sebastian Mailer.’

It wasn’t bad. A bit jewelled. A bit fancy. Indecent in parts but probably not within the meaning of the act. And considering it was a fourth draft, more than a bit careless: words omitted: repetitions, redundancies. Barnaby wondered if cocaine could be held responsible for these lapses. But he’d seen many a worse in print and if Mr Mailer could cook up one or two shorter jobs to fill out a volume he might very well find a publisher for it.

He was struck by an amusing coincidence and when, at the appointed time, they met for dinner, he spoke of it to Mr Mailer.

‘By the way,’ he said, refilling Mr Mailer’s glass, ‘you have introduced a secondary theme which is actually the ground-swell of my own book.’

‘Oh no!’ his guest ejaculated, and then: ‘But we are told, aren’t we, that there are only—how many is it? three?—four?—basic themes?’

‘And that all subject matter can be traced to one or another of them? Yes. This is only a detail in your story, and you don’t develop it. Indeed, I feel it’s extraneous and might well be dropped. The suggestion is not,’ Barnaby added, ‘prompted by professional jealousy,’ and they both laughed, Mr Mailer a great deal louder than Barnaby. He evidently repeated the joke in Italian to some acquaintances of his whom he had greeted on their arrival and had presented to Barnaby. They sat at the next table and were much diverted. Taking advantage of the appropriate moment, they drank Barnaby’s health.

The dinner, altogether, was a great success. The food was excellent, the wine acceptable, the proprietor attentive and the mise-en-scène congenial. Down the narrowest of alleyways they looked into the Piazza Navona, and saw the water-god Il Moro in combat with his Fish, superbly lit. They could almost hear the splash of his fountains above the multiple voice of Rome at night. Groups of youths moved elegantly about Navona and arrogant girls thrust bosoms like those of figureheads at the eddying crowds. The midsummer night pulsed with its own beauty. Barnaby felt within himself an excitement that rose from a more potent ferment than their gentle wine could induce. He was exalted.

He leant back in his chair, fetched a deep breath, caught Mr Mailer’s eye and laughed. ‘I feel,’ he said, ‘as if I had only just arrived in Rome.’

‘And perhaps as if the night had only just begun?’

‘Something of the sort.’

‘Adventure?’ Mailer hinted.

Perhaps, after all, the wine had not been so gentle. There was an uncertainty about what he saw when he looked at Mailer, as if a new personality emerged. He really had got very rum eyes, thought Barnaby, tolerantly.

‘An adventure?’ the voice insisted. ‘May I help you, I wonder? A cicerone?’

May I help you? Barnaby thought. He might be a shop-assistant. But he stretched himself a little and heard himself say lightly: ‘Well—in what way?’

‘In any way,’ Mailer murmured. ‘Really, in any way at all. I’m versatile.’

‘Oh,’ Barnaby said. ‘I’m very orthodox, you know. The largest Square,’ he added and thought the addition brilliantly funny, ‘in Rome.’

‘Then, if you will allow me—

The proprietor was there with his bill. Barnaby thought that the little trattoria had become very quiet but when he looked round he saw that all the patrons were still there and behaving quite normally. He had some difficulty in finding the right notes but Mr Mailer helped him and Barnaby begged him to give a generous tip.

‘Very good indeed,’ Barnaby said to the proprietor, ‘I shall return.’ They shook hands warmly.

And then Barnaby, with Mr Mailer at his elbow, walked into narrow streets past glowing windows and pitch-dark entries, through groups of people who shouted and by-ways that were silent into what was, for him, an entirely different Rome.

CHAPTER 2 An Expedition is Arranged

Barnaby had no further encounter with Sebastian Mailer until the following spring when he returned to Rome after seeing his book launched with much éclat in London. His Pensione Gallico could not take him for the first days so he stayed at a small hotel not far from it in Old Rome.

On his second morning he went down to the foyer to ask about his mail but finding a crowd of incoming tourists milling round the desk, sat down to wait on a chair just inside the entrance.

He opened his paper but did not read it, finding his attention sufficiently occupied by the tourists who had evidently arrived en masse: particularly by two persons who kept a little apart from their companions but seemed to be of the same party nevertheless.

They were a remarkable pair, both very tall and heavily built with high shoulders and a surprisingly light gait. He supposed them to be husband and wife but they were oddly alike, having perhaps developed a marital resemblance. Their faces were large, the wife’s being emphasized by a rounded jaw and the husband’s by a short chinbeard that left his mouth exposed. They both had full, prominent eyes. He was very attentive to her, holding her arm and occasionally her big hand in his own enormous one and looking into her face. He was dressed in blue cotton shirt, jacket and shorts. Her clothes, Barnaby thought, were probably very ‘good’ though they sat but lumpishly on her ungainly person.

They were in some sort of difficulty and consulted a document without seeming to derive any consolation from it. There was a large map of Rome on the wall: they moved in front of it and searched it anxiously, exchanging baffled glances.

A fresh bevy of tourists moved between these people and Barnaby and for perhaps two minutes hid them from him. Then a guide arrived and herded the tourists off exposing the strange pair again to Barnaby’s gaze.

They were no longer alone. Mr Mailer was with them.

His back was turned to Barnaby but there was no doubt about who it was. He was dressed as he had been on that first morning in the Piazza Colonna and there was something about the cut of his jib that was unmistakable.

Barnaby felt an overwhelming disinclination to meet him again. His memory of the Roman night spent under Mr Mailer’s ciceronage was blurred and confused but specific enough to give him an extremely uneasy impression of having gone much too far. He preferred not to recall it and he positively shuddered at the mere thought of a renewal. Barnaby was not a prig but he did draw a line.

He was about to get up and try a quick getaway through the revolving doors when Mailer made a half turn towards him. He jerked up his newspaper and hoped he had done so in time.

This is a preposterous situation, he thought behind his shield. I don’t know what’s the matter with me. It’s extraordinary. I’ve done nothing really to make me feel like this but in some inexplicable way I do feel—he searched in his mind for a word and could only produce one that was palpably ridiculous—contaminated.

He couldn’t help rather wishing that there was a jalousie in his newspaper through which he could observe Mr Mailer and the two strangers and he disliked himself for so wishing. It was as if any thought of Mailer involved a kind of furtiveness in himself and since normally he was direct in his dealings, the reaction was disagreeable to him.

All the same he couldn’t resist moving his paper a fraction to one side so that he could bring the group into his left eye’s field of vision.

There they were. Mailer’s back was still turned towards Barnaby. He was evidently talking with some emphasis and had engaged the rapt attention of the large couple. They gazed at him with the utmost deference. Suddenly both of them smiled.

A familiar smile. It took Barnaby a moment or two to place it and then he realized with quite a shock that it was the smile of the Etruscan terra-cottas in the Villa Giulia: the smile of Hermes and Apollo, the closed smile that sharpens the mouth like an arrowhead and—cruel, tranquil or worldly, whichever it may be—is always enigmatic. Intensely lively, it is as knowledgeable as the smile of the dead.

It faded on the mouths of his couple but didn’t quite vanish so that now, thought Barnaby, they had become the Bride and Groom of the Villa Giulia sarcophagus and really the man’s gently protective air furthered the resemblance. How very odd, Barnaby thought. Fascinated, he forgot about Sebastian Mailer and lowered his newspaper.

He hadn’t noticed that above the map in the wall there hung a tilted looking-glass. Some trick of light from the revolving doors flashed across it. He glanced up and there, again between the heads of lovers, was Mr Mailer, looking straight into his eyes.

His reaction was indefensible. He got up quickly and left the hotel.

He couldn’t account for it. He walked round Navona telling himself how atrociously he had behaved. Without the man I have just cut, he reminded himself, the crowning event of my career wouldn’t have happened. I would still be trying to re-write my most important book and very likely I would fail. I owe everything to him! What on earth had moved him, then, to behave atrociously? Was he so ashamed of that Roman night that he couldn’t bear to be reminded of it? He supposed it must be that but at the same time he knew that there had been a greater compulsion.

He disliked Mr Mailer. He disliked him very much indeed. And in some incomprehensible fashion he was afraid of him.

He walked right round the great Piazza before he came to his decision. He would, if possible, undo the damage. He would go back to the hotel and if Mr Mailer was no longer there he would seek him out at the trattoria where they had dined. Mailer was an habitué and his address might be known to the proprietor. I’ll do that! thought Barnaby.

He had never taken more distasteful action. As he entered by the revolving doors into the hotel foyer he found that all the tourists had gone but that Mr Mailer was still in conference with the ‘Etruscan’ couple.

He saw Barnaby at once and set his gaze on him without giving the smallest sign of recognition. He had been speaking to the ‘Etruscans’ and he went on speaking to them but with his eyes fixed on Barnaby’s. Barnaby thought: Now he’s cut me dead, and serve me bloody well right, and he walked steadily towards them.

As he drew near he heard Mr Mailer say:

‘Rome is so bewildering, is it not? Even after many visits? Perhaps I may be able to help you? A cicerone?’

‘Mr Mailer?’ Barnaby heard himself say. ‘I wonder if you remember me. Barnaby Grant.’

‘I remember you very well, Mr Grant.’

Silence.

Well, he thought, I’ll get on with it, and said: ‘I saw your reflection just now in that glass. I can’t imagine why I didn’t know you at once and can only plead a chronic absence of mind. When I was half-way round Navona the penny dropped and I came back in the hope that you would still be here.’ He turned to the ‘Etruscans’. ‘Please forgive me,’ said the wretched Barnaby, ‘I’m interrupting.’

Simultaneously they made deprecating noises and then the man, his whole face enlivened by that arrowhead smile, exclaimed: ‘But I am right! I cannot be mistaken! This is the Mr Barnaby Grant.’ He appealed to Mr Mailer. ‘I am right, am I not?’ His wife made a little crooning sound.

Mr Mailer said: ‘Indeed, yes. May I introduce: The Baron and Baroness Van der Veghel.’

They shook hands eagerly and were voluble. They had read all the books, both in Dutch (they were by birth Hollanders) and in English (they were citizens of the world) had his last (surely his greatest?) work actually with them—there was a coincidence! They turned to Mr Mailer. He, of course, had read it?

‘Indeed, yes,’ he said exactly as he had said it before. ‘Every word. I was completely riveted.’

He had used such an odd inflexion that Barnaby, already on edge, looked nervously at him but their companions were in full spate and interrupted each other in a recital of the excellencies of Barnaby’s works.

It would not be true to say that Mr Mailer listened to their raptures sardonically. He merely listened. His detachment was an acute embarrassment to Barnaby Grant. When it had all died down: the predictable hope that he would join them for drinks—they were staying in the hotel—the reiterated assurances that his work had meant so much to them, the apologies that they were intruding and the tactful withdrawal, had all been executed, Barnaby found himself alone with Sebastian Mailer.

‘I am not surprised,’ Mr Mailer said, ‘that you were disinclined to renew our acquaintance, Mr Grant. I, on the contrary, have sought you out. Perhaps we may move to somewhere a little more private? There is a writing-room, I think. Shall we—’

For the rest of his life Barnaby would be sickened by the memory of that commonplace little room with its pseudo Empire furniture, its floral carpet and the false tapestry on its wall: a mass-produced tapestry, popular in small hotels, depicting the fall of Icarus.

‘I shall come straight to the point,’ Mr Mailer said. ‘Always best, don’t you agree?’

He did precisely that. Sitting rather primly on a gilt-legged chair, his soft hands folded together and his mumbled thumbs gently revolving round each other, Mr Mailer set about blackmailing Barnaby Grant.

II

All this happened a fortnight before the morning when Sophy Jason saw her suddenly bereaved friend off at the Leonardo da Vinci Airport. She returned by bus to Rome and to the roof-garden of the Pensione Gallico where, ten months ago, Barnaby Grant had received Sebastian Mailer. Here she took stock of her situation.

She was twenty-three years old, worked for a firm of London publishers and had begun to make her way as a children’s author. This was her first visit to Rome. She and the bereaved friend were to have spent their summer holidays together in Italy.

They had not made out a hard-and-fast itinerary but had snowed themselves under with brochures, read the indispensable Miss Georgina Masson and wandered in a trance about the streets and monuments. The friend’s so-abruptly-deceased father had a large interest in a printing works near Turin and had arranged for the girls to draw most generously upon the firm’s Roman office for funds. They had been given business and personal letters of introduction. Together, they had been in rapture: alone, Sophy felt strange but fundamentally exhilarated. To be under her own steam—and in Rome! She had Titian hair, large eyes and a generous mouth and had already found it advisable to stand with her back to the wall in crowded lifts and indeed wherever two or more Roman gentlemen were gathered together at close quarters. ‘Quarters’, as she had remarked to her friend, being the operative word.

I must make a plan or two, of sorts, she told herself but the boxes on the roof-garden were full of spring flowers, the air shook with voices, traffic, footsteps and the endearing clop of hooves on cobble-stones. Should she blue a couple of thousand lire and take a carriage to the Spanish Steps? Should she walk and walk until bullets and live coals began to assemble on the soles of her feet? What to do?

Really, I ought to make a plan, thought crazy Sophy and then—here she was, feckless and blissful, walking down the Corso in she knew not what direction. Before long she was contentedly lost.

Sophy bought herself gloves, pink sun-glasses, espadrilles and a pair of footpads, which she put on, there and then, greatly to her comfort. Leaving the store she noticed a little bureau set up near the entrance. ‘DO,’ it urged in English on a large banner, ‘let US be your Guide to Rome.’

A dark, savage-looking girl sat scornfully behind the counter, doing her nails.

Sophy read some of the notices and glanced at already familiar brochures. She was about to leave when a smaller card caught her eye. It advertised in printed Italianate script: ‘Il Cicerone, personally conducted excursions. Something different!’ it exclaimed. ‘Not too exhausting, sophisticated visits to some of the least-publicized and most fascinating places in Rome. Under the learned and highly individual guidance of Mr Sebastian Mailer. Dinner at a most exclusive restaurant and further unconventional expeditions by arrangement.

‘Guest of honour: The distinguished British Author, Mr Barnaby Grant, has graciously consented to accompany the excursions from April 23rd until May 7th. Sundays included.’

Sophy was astounded. Barnaby Grant was the biggest of all big guns in her publisher’s armoury of authors. His new and most important novel, set in Rome and called Simon in Latium had been their prestige event and the best-seller of the year. Already bookshops here were full of the Italian translation.

Sophy had offered Barnaby Grant drinks at a deafening cocktail party given by her publishing house and she had once been introduced to him by her immediate boss. She had formed her own idea of him and it did not accommodate the thought of his traipsing round Rome with a clutch of sightseers. She supposed he must be very highly paid for it and found the thought disagreeable. In any case could so small a concern as this appeared to be, afford the sort of payment Barnaby Grant would command? Perhaps, she thought, suddenly inspired, he’s a chum of this learned and highly individual Mr Sebastian Mailer.

She was still gazing absent-mindedly at the notice when she became aware of a man at her elbow. She had the impression that he must have been there for some time and that he had been staring at her. He continued to stare and she thought: Oh blast! What a bore you are.

‘Do forgive me,’ said the man removing his greenish black hat. ‘Please don’t think me impertinent. My name is Sebastian Mailer. You had noticed my little announcement I believe.’

The girl behind the counter glanced at him. She had painted her nails and now disdainfully twiddled them in the air. Sophy faced Mr Mailer.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I had.’

He made her a little bow. ‘I must not intrude. Please!’ and moved away.

Sophy said: ‘Not at all,’ and because she felt that she had made a silly assumption, added: ‘I was so interested to see Barnaby Grant’s name on your card.’

‘I am indeed fortunate,’ Mr Mailer rejoined, ‘am I not? Perhaps you would care—but excuse me. One moment. Would you mind?’

He said something in Italian to the savage girl who opened a drawer, extracted what seemed to be a book of vouchers and cast it on the counter.

Mr Mailer inspected it. ‘Ah yes,’ he said. ‘Others, also, would seem to be interested. We are fully booked, I see.’

At once Sophy felt an acute disappointment. Of all things now, she wanted to join one of Mr Mailer’s highly sophisticated tours. ‘Your numbers are strictly limited, are they?’ she asked.

‘It is an essential feature.’ He was preoccupied with his vouchers.

‘Might there be a cancellation?’

‘I beg your pardon? You were saying?’

‘A cancellation?’

‘Ah. Quite. Well—possibly. You feel you would like to join one of my expeditions.’

‘Very much,’ Sophy said and supposed that it must be so.

He pursed up his full mouth and thumbed over his vouchers. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘As it falls out! There is a cancellation I see. Saturday, the twenty-sixth. Our first tour. The afternoon and evening. But before you make a decision I’m sure you would like to know about cost. Allow me.’

He produced a folder and turned aside in a gentlemanly manner while Sophy examined it. The itinerary was given and the name of the restaurant where the party would dine. In the evening they would take a carriage drive and then visit a nightclub. The overall charge made Sophy blink. It was enormous.

‘I know,’ Mr Mailer tactfully assured her. ‘But there are many much, much less expensive tours than mine. The Signorina here would be pleased to inform you.’

Obviously he didn’t give a damn whether she went or stayed away. This attitude roused a devil of recklessness in Sophy. After all, mad though it seemed, she could manage it.

‘I shall be very glad to take the cancellation,’ she said and even to herself her voice sounded both prim and defiant.

He said something further in Italian to the girl, raised his hat, murmured, ‘Then—arrivederci’ to Sophy, and left her to cope.

‘You paya to me,’ said the girl ferociously and when Sophy had done so, presented her with a ticket and a cackle of inexplicable laughter. Sophy laughed jauntily if senselessly in return, desiring, as always, to be friendly with all and sundry.

She continued to walk about Rome and to anticipate with feelings she would have been quite unable to define, Saturday, the twenty-sixth of April.

III

‘I must say,’ Lady Braceley murmured, ‘you don’t seem to be enjoying yourself very madly. I never saw such a glum face.’

‘I’m sorry, Auntie Sonia. I don’t mean to look glum. Honestly, I couldn’t be more grateful.’

‘Oh,’ she said, dismissing it, ‘grateful! I just hoped that we might have a nice, gay time together in Rome.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he repeated.

‘You’re so—odd. Restless. And you don’t look at all well, either. What have you been doing with yourself?’

‘Nothing.’

‘On the tiles, I suppose.’

‘I’ll be all right. Really.’

‘Perhaps you shouldn’t have pranced out of Perugia like that.’

‘I couldn’t have been more bored with Perugia. Students can be such an unutterable drag. And after Franky and I broke up—you know.’

‘All the same your parents or lawyers or the Lord Chancellor or whoever it is will probably be livid with me. For not ordering you back.’

‘Does it matter? And anyway—my parents! We know, with all respect to your horrible brother, darling, that the longer his boychild keeps out of his life the better he likes it.’

‘Kenneth—darling!’

‘As for Mummy—what’s the name of that dipso-bin she’s moved into? I keep forgetting.’

‘Kenneth!’

‘So come off it, angel. We’re not still in the ‘twenties, you know.’

They looked thoughtfully at each other.

His aunt said: ‘Were you a very bad lot in Perugia, Kenneth?’

‘No worse than a dozen others.’

‘What sort of lot? What did you do?’

‘Oh,’ Kenneth said, ‘this and that. Fun things.’ He became selfsuffused with charm. ‘You’re much too young to be told,’ he said. ‘What a fabulous dress. Did you get it from that amazing lady?’

‘Do you like it? Yes, I did. Astronomical.’

‘And looks it.’

His aunt eyed herself over. ‘It had better,’ she muttered.

‘Oh lord!’ Kenneth said discontentedly and dropped into a chair. ‘Sorry! It must be the weather or something.’

‘To tell you the truth I’m slightly edgy myself. Think of something delicious and outrageous we can do, darling. What is there?’

Kenneth had folded his hands across the lower half of his face like a yashmak. His large and melting brown eyes looked over the top at his aunt. There was a kind of fitful affectation in everything he did: he tried-on his mannerisms and discarded them as fretfully as his aunt tried-on her hats.

‘Sweetie,’ he said. ‘There is a thing.’

‘Well—what? I can’t hear you when you talk behind your fingers.’

He made a triangular hole with them and spoke through that. ‘I know a little man,’ he said.

‘What little man? Where?’

‘In Perugia and now here.’

‘What about him?’

‘He’s rather a clever little man. Well, not so little, actually.’

‘Kenneth, don’t go on like that. It’s maddening: it’s infuriating.’ And then suddenly:

‘In Perugia. Did you—did you—smoke— ?’

‘There’s no need for the hushed tones, darling. You’ve been handed the usual nonsense, I see.’

‘Then you did?’

‘Of course,’ he said impatiently and, after a pause, changed his attitude. He clasped his hands round his knee and tilted his head on one side. ‘You’re so fabulous,’ he said. ‘I can tell you anything. As if you were my generation. Aren’t we wonderful? Both of us?’

‘Are we? Kenneth—what’s it like?’

‘Pot? Do you really want to know?’

‘I’m asking, aren’t I?’

‘Dire the first time and quite fun if you persevere. Kid-stuff really. All the fuss is about nothing.’

‘It’s done at—at parties, isn’t it?’

‘That’s right, lovey. Want to try?’

‘It’s not habit-forming. Is it?’

‘Of course it’s not. It’s nothing. It’s OK as far as it goes. You don’t get hooked. Not on pot. You’d better meet my little man. Try a little trip. In point of fact I could arrange a fabulous trip. Madly groovy. You’d adore it. All sorts of gorgeous gents. Super exotic pad. The lot.’

She looked at him through her impossible lashes: a girl’s look that did a kind of injury to her face.

‘I might,’ she said.

‘Only thing—it’s top bracket for expense. All-time-high and worth it. One needs lots of lovely lolly and I haven’t—surprise, surprise—got a morsel.’

‘Kenneth!’

‘In fact if my rich aunt hadn’t invited me I would have been out on my little pink ear. Don’t pitch into me, I don’t think I can take it.’

They stared at each other. They were very much alike: two versions of the same disastrous image.

‘I understand you,’ Kenneth said. ‘You know that, don’t you? I’m a sponge, OK? But I’m not just a sponge. I give back something. Right?’ He waited for a moment and when she didn’t answer, shouted, ‘Don’t I? Don’t I?’

‘Be quiet. Yes. Yes, of course you do. Yes.’

‘We’re two of a kind, right?’

‘Yes. I said so, didn’t I. Never mind, darling. Look in my bag. I don’t know how much I’ve got.’

‘God, you’re wonderful! I—I’ll go out straight away. I—I’ll—I’ll get it—‘ his mouth twisted ’—fixed. We’ll have such a—what did that old burnt-out Egyptian bag call it?—or her boyfriend?—gaudy night?—won’t we?’

Her note-case shook in his hand. ‘There isn’t much here,’ he said.

‘Isn’t there?’ she said. ‘They’ll cash a cheque downstairs. I’ll write one. You’d better have something in hand.’

When he had gone she went into her bedroom, sat in front of her glass and examined the precarious mask she still presented to the world.

Kenneth, yawning and sweating, went in febrile search of Mr Sebastian Mailer.

IV

‘It’s the familiar story,’ the tall man said. He uncrossed his legs, rose in one movement, and stood, relaxed, before his companion who, taken by surprise, made a laborious business of getting to his feet.

‘The big boys,’ said the tall man, ‘keep one jump ahead while their henchmen occasionally trip over our wires. Not often enough, however.’

‘Excuse me, my dear colleague. Our wires?’

‘Sorry. I meant: we do sometimes catch up with the secondary villains but their principals continue to evade us.’

‘Regrettably!’

‘In this case the biggest boy of all is undoubtedly Otto Ziegfeldt who, at the moment, has retired to a phoney castle in the Lebanon. We can’t get him. Yet. But this person, here in Rome, is a key man.’

‘I am most anxious that his activities be arrested. We all know, my dear colleague, that Palermo has most regrettably been a transit port. And also Corsica. But that he should have extended his activities to Naples and, it seems, to Rome! No, assure yourself you shall have every assistance.’

‘I’m most grateful to you, Signor Questore. The Yard was anxious that we should have this talk.’

‘Please! Believe me, the greatest pleasure,’ said Il Questore Valdarno. He had a resonant voice and grand-opera appearance. His eyes melted and he gave out an impression of romantic melancholy. Even his jokes wore an air of impending disaster. His position in the Roman police force corresponded, as far as his visitor had been able to work it out, with that of a Chief Constable.

‘We are all so much honoured, my dear Superintendent,’ he continued. ‘Anything that we can do to further the already cordial relationship between our own Force and your most distinguished Yard.’

‘You are very kind. Of course, the whole problem of the drug traffic, as we both know, is predominantly an Interpol affair but as in this instance we are rather closely tied up with them—’

‘Perfectly,’ agreed Valdarno, many times nodding his head.

‘—and since this person is, presumably, a British subject—’

The Questore made a large involved gesture of deprecation: ‘Of course!’

‘—in the event of his being arrested the question of extradition might arise.’

‘I assure you,’ said the Questore, making a joke, ‘we shall not try to deprive you!’

His visitor laughed obligingly and extended his hand. The Questore took it and with his own left hand dealt him the buffet with which Latin gentlemen endorse their friendly relationships. He insisted on coming to the magnificent entrance.

In the street a smallish group of young men carrying a few inflammatory placards shouted one or two insults. A group of police, gorgeously arrayed, pinched out their cigarettes and moved towards the demonstrators who cat-called and bolted a short way down the street. The police immediately stopped and relit their cigarettes.

‘How foolish,’ observed the Questore in Italian, ‘and yet after all, not to be ignored. It is all a great nuisance. You will seek out this person, my dear colleague?’

‘I think so. His sightseeing activities seem to offer the best approach. I shall enrol myself for one of them.’

‘Ah-ah! You are a droll! You are a great droll.’

‘No. I assure you. Arrivederci.’

‘Goodbye. Such a pleasure. Goodbye.’

Having finally come to the end of a conversation that had been conducted in equal parts of Italian and English, they parted on the best of terms.

The demonstrators made some desultory comments upon the tall Englishman as he walked past them. One of them called out, ‘Ullo, gooda-day!’ in a squeaking voice, another shouted. ‘Rhodesia! Imperialismo!’ and raised a cat-call but a third remarked ‘Molto elegante’ in a loud voice and apparently without sardonic intention.

Rome sparkled in the spring morning. The swallows had arrived, the markets were full of flowers, young greens and kaleidoscopic cheap-jackery. Dramatic façades presented themselves suddenly to the astonished gaze, lovely courtyards and galleries floated in shadow and little piazzas talked with the voices of their own fountains. Behind magnificent doorways the ages offered their history lessons in layers. Like the achievements of a Roman pastrycook, thought the tall man irreverently: modern, renaissance, classic, mithraic, each under another in one gorgeous, stratified edifice. It would be an enchantment to walk up to the Palatine Hill where the air would smell freshly of young grass and a kind of peace and order would come upon the rich encrustations of time.

Instead he must look for a tourist bureau either in the streets or at the extremely grand hotel he had been treated to by his Department in London. He approached it by the way of the Via Condotti and presently came upon a window filled with blown-up photographs of Rome. The agency was a distinguished one and their London office well-known to him.

He turned into an impressive interior, remarked that its décor was undisturbed by racks of brochures and approached an exquisite but far from effete young man who seemed to be in charge.

‘Good morning, sir,’ said the young man in excellent English. ‘May I help you?’

‘I hope so,’ he rejoined cheerfully. ‘I’m in Rome for a few days. I don’t want to spend them on a series of blanket-tours covering the maximum amount of Sights in the minimum amount of time. I have seen as much as I can take of celebrated big-boomers. What I would like now is to do something leisurely and civilized that leads one a little off the beaten way of viewing and yet is really—well, really of Rome and not, historically speaking, beside the point. I’m afraid I put that very badly.’

‘But not at all,’ said the young man looking hard at him. ‘I understand perfectly. A personal courier might be the answer but this is the busy season, sir, and I’m afraid we’ve nobody free for at least a fortnight whom I could really recommend.’

‘Somebody told me about something called Il Cicerone. Small parties under the guidance of a—I’m not sure if I’ve got his name right—Sebastian Something? Do you know?’

The young man looked still more fixedly at him and said: ‘It’s odd—really, it’s quite a coincidence, sir, that you should mention Il Cicerone. A week ago I could have told you very little about it. Except, perhaps, that it wasn’t likely to be a distinguished affair. Indeed—‘ he hesitated and then said—’please forgive me, sir. I’ve been at our London office for the past three years and I can’t help thinking that I’ve had the pleasure of looking after you before. Or at least of seeing you. I hope you don’t mind,’ the young man said in a rush. ‘I trust you will not think this insufferable cheek: I haven’t mastered my Anglo-Saxon attitudes, I’m afraid.’

‘You’ve mastered the language, at least.’

‘Oh—that! After an English university and so on, I should hope so.’

‘—and have an excellent memory.’

‘Well, sir, you are not the sort of person who is all that readily forgotten. Perhaps, then, I am correct in thinking—?’

‘You came into the general manager’s office in Jermyn Street while I was there. Some two years ago. You were in the room for about three minutes: during which time you give me a piece of very handy information.’

The young man executed an involved and extremely Italianate gesture that ended up with a smart slap on his own forehead.

‘Ah-ah-ah! Mamma mia! How could I be such an ass!’ he exclaimed.

‘It all comes back to you?’ observed the tall man drily.

‘But completely. All!’ He fell away a step and contemplated his visitor with an air of the deepest respect.

‘Good,’ said the visitor, unmoved by this scrutiny. ‘Now about the Il Cicerone thing—’

‘It is entirely for recreation, sir, that you inquire?’

‘Why not?’

‘Indeed! Of course! I merely wondered—’

‘Come on. What did you wonder?’

‘If perhaps there might be a professional aspect.’

‘And why did you wonder that? Look, Signor Pace—that is your name, isn’t it?’

‘Your own memory, sir, is superb.’

‘Signor Pace. Is there, perhaps, something about this enterprise, or about the person who controls it that makes you think I might be interested in it—or him—for other than sightseeing reasons?’

The young man became pink in the face, gazed at his clasped hands, glanced round the bureau which was empty of other people and finally said, ‘The cicerone in question, Signore—a Mr Sebastian Mailer—is a person of a certain, or perhaps I should say, uncertain reputation. Nothing specific you understand, but there are—’ he agitated his fingers ‘—suggestions. Rome is a great place for suggestions.’

‘Yes?’

‘I remarked that it was quite a coincidence you should inquire about him. That is because he was here earlier today. Not for the first time. He asked to be put on our books some weeks ago but his reputation, his appearance—everything—did not recommend his venture to us and we declined. Then, this morning as a new inducement he brings us his list of patrons. It was quite astonishing, Signore, this list.’

‘May I see it?’

‘We still have not accepted him. I—I don’t quite—’

‘Signor Pace, your guess was a good one. My interest in this person is professional.’

‘Ah!’

‘But I am most anxious to appear simply as a tourist. I remember that in London your chief spoke very highly indeed of your discretion and promise—a promise that is evidently being fulfilled.’

‘You are kind enough to say so, sir.’

‘I realize that I can’t get a booking with Il Cicerone through you but perhaps you can tell me—

‘I can arrange it with another agency and will be delighted to do so. As for the list of patrons: under the circumstances, I think, there is no reason why I should not show it to you. Will you come into the office, if you please. While you examine it I will attend to your booking.’

The list Signor Pace produced was a day-by-day record of people who had put themselves down for Il Cicerone expeditions. It was prefaced by a general announcement that made his visitor blink: ‘Under the distinguished patronage of the celebrated author, Mr Barnaby Grant.’

‘This is coming it strong!’

‘Is it not?’ Signor Pace said, busily dialling. ‘I cannot imagine how it has been achieved. Although—’ he broke off and addressed himself elegantly to the telephone. ‘Pronto. Chi parla?’— and, as an aside: ‘Look at the patronage, Signore. On the first day, Saturday, the twenty-sixth, for instance.’

Here it was, neatly set out in the Italianate script.

Lady Braceley. | London
The Hon. Kenneth Dorne. | London
Baron and Baroness Van der Veghel. | Geneva
Major Hamilton Sweet. | London
Miss Sophy Jason. | London
‘Mr Barnaby Grant (Guest of Honour). | London

After further discussion, Signor Pace broke out in a cascade of thanks and compliments and covered the mouthpiece. ‘All is arranged,’ he cried. ‘For whichever tour you prefer.’

‘Without hesitation—the first one. Saturday, the twenty-sixth.’

This, evidently, was settled. Signor Pace hung up and swung round in his chair. ‘An interesting list, is it not? Lady Braceley—what chic!’

‘You may call it that.’

‘Well, Signore! A certain reputation, perhaps. What is called the “jet set”. But from the point of view of the tourist-trade—extremely chic. Great éclat. We always arrange her travel. There is, of course, immense wealth.’

‘Quite so. The alimony alone.’

‘Well, Signore.’

‘And the Hon. Kenneth Dorne?’

‘I understand, her nephew.’

‘And the Van der Veghels?’

‘I am dumb. They have not come our way. Nor have Miss Jason and Major Sweet. But, Signore, the remarkable feature, the really astonishing, as one says, turn-up for the book, is the inclusion of Mr Barnaby Grant. And what is meant, I ask myself, by Guest of Honour?’

“Prime Attraction”, I imagine.’

‘Of course! But for him to consent! To lend his enormous prestige to such a very dim enterprise. And, we must admit, it appears evident that the gimmick has worked.’

‘I wouldn’t have thought Lady Braceley was a natural taker for the intellectual bait.’

‘Signore, he is impressive, he is handsome, he is famous, he is prestigious—Am I correct in saying “prestigious”?’

‘It really means he’s a bit of a conjuror. And so, of course, in a sense, he is.’

‘And therefore to be acquired by Lady Braceley. Or, at least, considered.’

‘You may be right. I understand she’s staying at my hotel. I heard her name at the desk.’

‘Her nephew, Mr Dorne, is her guest.’

‘Fortunate youth! Perhaps. By the way, what are the charges for these jaunts?’

‘In the top bracket and, at that, exceedingly high. I would have said impertinently so but, as you see, he is getting the response. One can only hope the patrons are satisfied.’

‘In any case you have given me the opportunity to form an opinion. I’m extremely obliged to you.’

‘But, please! Come,’ said the jaunty Signor Pace, ‘let us make our addition to the list.’

He gaily drew it towards him and at the bottom wrote his addition.

‘You see!’ he cried in playful triumph. ‘I remembered everything! The rank! The spelling!’

‘If you don’t mind, we’ll forget about the rank and the spelling.’

The visitor drew a line through the word ‘Superintendent’ and another through the letter ‘y’, so that the entry read:

‘R. Allen, London.’

CHAPTER 3 Saturday, the Twenty-sixth

It became fairly clear from the outset why Mr Sebastian Mailer made extravagant charges for his expeditions.

At three-thirty in the afternoon two superb Lancias arrived at the rendezvous near the Church of the Trinity and therefore within a very short distance of the hotel where three of Mr Mailer’s prospects were staying.

From here, as they assembled, his seven guests looked down at April azaleas flaring on the Spanish Steps and at Rome suddenly laid out before them in a wide gesture. There was a sense of opulence and of excitement in the air.

Alleyn got there before the appointed time and saw the cars draw up. They had small labels in their windows: ‘Il Cicerone’. Out of one of them stepped a dark man of romantic appearance whom he at once recognized as Barnaby Grant and out of the other the person he had come to see: Sebastian Mailer. He was smartened up since Barnaby Grant’s last encounter with him and was dressed in a black suit of some material that might have been alpaca. This, together with a pair of clumping black shoes gave him a dubiously priestly look and made Alleyn think of Corvo and wonder if he might turn out to be such another. The white silk shirt was clean and the black bow tie looked new. He now wore a black beret on his cropped head and no longer had the appearance of an Englishman.

Alleyn kept his distance among a group of sightseers who milled about taking photographs. He saw that while Sebastian Mailer, half-smiling, talked vivaciously, Grant seemed to make little or no response. He had his back to Alleyn who thought the nape of his neck looked indignant. It looks, Alleyn thought, like the neck of a learner-driver seen from the rear. Rigid, cross and apprehensive.

A young woman approached the cars, spotted Mailer and made towards him. She had a glowing air about her as if Rome had a little gone to her head. Miss Sophy Jason, Alleyn said to himself. He saw her look quickly at Barnaby Grant. Mailer pulled slightly at his beret, made a little bow and introduced her. The girl’s manner was shy, Alleyn thought, but not at all gauche: rather charming, in fact. Nevertheless she said something to Grant that seemed to disconcert him. He glared at her, replied very shortly and turned away. The girl blushed painfully.

This brief tableau was broken by the arrival of two over-sized persons hung about with canvas satchels and expensive cameras: a man and a woman. The Van der Veghels, Alleyn concluded and, like Barnaby Grant before him, was struck by their resemblance to each other and their strangely archaic faces. They were well-dressed in a non-with-it sort of way: both of them in linen and both wearing outsize shoes with great rubber-studded soles and canvas tops. They wore sensibly shady hats and identical sun-glasses with pink frames. They were eager in their greetings and evidently had met Grant before. What great hands and feet you have, Baron and Baroness, thought Alleyn.

Lady Braceley and her nephew were still to come. No doubt it would be entirely in character for them to keep the party waiting. He decided it was time for him to present himself and did so, ticket in hand.

Mailer had the kind of voice Alleyn had expected: a rather fluting alto. He was a bad colour and his hands were slightly tremulous. But he filled his role very competently: there was the correct degree of suavity and assurance, the suggestion that everything was to be executed at the highest level.

‘So glad you are joining us, Mr Allen,’ said Sebastian Mailer. ‘Do come and meet the others, won’t you? May I introduce—’

The Baron and Baroness were cordial. Grant looked hard at him, nodded with what seemed to be an uneasy blend of reluctance and good manners, and asked him if he knew Rome well.

‘Virtually, not at all,’ Alleyn said. ‘I’ve never been here for more than three or four days at a time and I’m not a systematic sightseer.’

‘No?’

‘No. I want things to occur and I’m afraid spend far too much time sitting at a caffè table waiting for them to do so which of course they don’t. But who knows? One of these days the heavens may open and big drama descend upon me.’

Alleyn was afterwards to regard this as the major fluke-remark of his career. At the moment he was merely astonished to see what an odd response it drew from Barnaby Grant. He changed colour, threw an apprehensive glance at Alleyn, opened his mouth, shut it and finally said ‘Oh,’ without any expression at all.

‘But today,’ Alleyn said, ‘I hope to improve my condition. Do we, by any chance, visit one of your Simon’s haunts? That would be a wonderful idea.’

Again Grant seemed to be about to speak and again he boggled. After a sufficiently awkward pause he said: ‘There’s some idea of it. Mailer will explain. Excuse me, will you.’

He turned away. All right, Alleyn thought. But if you hate it as much as all this, why the hell do you do it?

He moved on to Sophy Jason, who was standing apart and seemed to be glad of his company. We’re all too old for her, Alleyn thought. Perhaps the nephew of Lady Braceley will meet the case but one doubts it. He engaged Sophy in conversation and thought her a nice intelligent girl with a generous allowance of charm. She looked splendid against the background of azaleas, Rome and a pontifical sky.

Before long Sophy found herself telling Alleyn about her suddenly-bereaved friend, about this being her first visit to Rome, about the fortunate accident of the cancellation and finally about her job. It really was extraordinary, she suddenly reflected, how much she was confiding to this quiet and attentive stranger. She felt herself blushing. ‘I can’t imagine why I’m gabbling away like this!’ she exclaimed.

‘It’s obliging of you to talk to me,’ Alleyn said. ‘I’ve just been, not exactly slapped back but slightly edged off by the Guest of Honour.’

‘Nothing to what I was!’ Sophy ejaculated. ‘I’m still cringing.’

‘But—isn’t he one of your publisher’s authors?’

‘He’s our great double-barrel. I was dumb enough to remind him that I had been presented by my boss. He took the news like a dose of poison.’

‘How very odd of him.’

‘It was really a bit of a facer. He’d seemed so unfierce and amiable on the earlier occasion and has the reputation in the firm of being a lamb. Aren’t we rather slow getting off our mark? Mr Mailer is looking at his watch.’

‘Major Sweet’s twenty minutes late and so are Lady Braceley and the Hon. Kenneth Dorne. They’re staying at the—‘ He broke off. ‘Here, I fancy, they come.’

And here, in fact, they came and there was Mr Mailer, his beret completely off, advancing with a winning and proprietary air towards them.

Alleyn wondered what first impression they made on Sophy Jason. For all her poise and obvious intelligence he doubted if the like of Sonia Braceley had ever come her way. Alleyn knew quite a lot about Sonia Braceley. She began life as the Hon. Sonia Dorne and was the daughter of a beer-baron whose children, by and large, had turned out disastrously. Alleyn had actually met her, many years ago, when visiting his Ambassadorial elder brother George at one of his official Residences. Even then she had what his brother, whom Alleyn tolerantly regarded as a bit of an ass, alluded to as ‘a certain reputation’. With the passage of time, this reputation had consolidated. ‘She has experienced everything,’ Sir George had weightily quipped, ‘except poverty.’

Seeing her now it was easy to believe it. It’s the legs, Alleyn thought. More than the precariously maintained mask or the flabby underarm or the traitorous neck. It’s the legs. Although the stockings are tight as a skin they look as if they should hang loose about these brittle spindle-shanks and how hazardously she’s balanced on her golden kid sandals. It’s the legs.

But the face was not too good either. Even if one discounted the ruches under the eyes and the eyes themselves, there was still that dreadfully slack mouth. It was painted the fashionable livid colour but declared itself as unmistakably as if it had been scarlet: the mouth of an elderly Maenad.

Her nephew bore some slight resemblance to her. Alleyn remembered that his father, the second Lord Dorne, had been rapidly divorced by two wives and that the third, Kenneth’s mother, had been, as George would have said, ‘put away’. Not much of a start, Alleyn thought, compassionately, and wondered if the old remedy of ‘live on a quid-a-day and earn it,’ would have done anything for Kenneth Dorne.

As they advanced, he noticed that the young man watched Mailer with an air that seemed to be made up of anxiety, furtiveness and perhaps subservience. He was restless, pallid, yellow and damp about the brow. When Mailer introduced him and he offered his hand it proved to be clammy as to the palm and tremulous. Rather unexpectedly, he had a camera slung from his shoulder.

His aunt also shook hands. Within the doeskin glove the fingers contracted, momentarily retained their clasp and slowly withdrew. Lady Braceley looked fixedly into Alleyn’s eyes. So she still, he thought, appalled, gives it a go.

She said: ‘Isn’t this fun?’ Her voice was beautiful.

Mailer was at her elbow with Grant in tow: ‘Lady Braceley, may I present? Our guest of honour—Mr Barnaby Grant.’

She said: ‘Do you know you’re the sole reason for my coming to this party? Kenneth, with a team of wild horses, wouldn’t have bullied me into sightseeing at this ghastly hour. You’re my “sight”.’

‘I don’t know,’ Grant said rapidly, ‘how I’m meant to answer that. Except that I’m sure you’ll find the Church of S. Tommaso in Pallaria much more rewarding.’

‘Is that where we’re going? Is it a ruin?’ she asked, opening her devastated eyes very wide and drawling out the word. ‘I can’t tell you how I hate roo-ins.’

There was perhaps one second’s silence and then Grant said: ‘It’s not exactly that. It’s—well, you’ll see when we get there.’

‘Does it come in your book? I’ve read your book—that Simon one—which is a great compliment if you only knew it because you don’t write my sort of book at all. Don’t be huffy. I adored this one although I haven’t a clue, really, what it’s about. You shall explain it to me. Kenneth tried, didn’t you, darling, but he was even more muddling than the book. Mr Allen, come over here and tell me—have you read the last Barnaby Grant and if you have, did you know what it was about?’

Alleyn was spared the task of finding an answer to this by the intervention of Sebastian Mailer who rather feverishly provided the kind of raillery that seemed to be invited and got little reward for his pains. When he archly said: ‘Lady Braceley, you’re being very naughty. I’m quite sure you didn’t miss the last delicate nuance of Simon in Tuscany,’ she merely said ‘What?’ and walked away before he could repeat his remark.

It was now the turn of the Baron and Baroness. Lady Braceley received the introduction vaguely. ‘Aren’t we going to start?’ she asked Alleyn and Grant. ‘Don’t you rather hate hanging about? Such a bore, don’t you think? Who’s missing?’

Upon this cool inquiry, Sebastian Mailer explained that Major Sweet was joining them at the basilica and proceeded to outline the programme for the afternoon. They would drive round the Colosseum and the Forum and would then visit the basilica of S. Tommaso in Pallaria which, as they all knew, was the setting for the great central scene in Mr Barnaby Grant’s immensely successful novel, Simon in Latium. He had prevailed upon the distinguished author, Mr Mailer went on, to say a few words about the basilica in its relation to his book which, as they would hear from him, was largely inspired by it.

Throughout this exposition Barnaby Grant, Alleyn noticed, seemed to suffer the most exquisite embarrassment. He stared at the ground, hunched his shoulders, made as if to walk away and, catching perhaps a heightened note in Mr Mailer’s voice, thought better of this and remained, wretchedly it appeared, where he was.

Mr Mailer concluded by saying that as the afternoon was deliciously clement they would end it with a picnic tea on the Palatine Hill. The guests would then be driven to their hotels to relax and change for dinner and would be called for at nine o’clock.

He now distributed the guests. He, with Lady Braceley, Alleyn and Barnaby Grant would take one car; the Van der Veghels, Sophy Jason and Kenneth Dorne would take the other. The driver of the second car was introduced. ‘Giovanni is fluent in English,’ said Mr Mailer, ‘and learned in the antiquities. He will discourse upon matters of interest en route. Come, ladies and gentlemen,’ said Mr Mailer, ‘let us embark. Pronto!’

II

The four arches that lead into the porch of S. Tommaso in Pallaria are of modest proportion and their pillars, which in classic times adorned some pagan temple, are slender and worn. The convolvulus tendrils that their carver twined about them have broken in many places but the work is so delicate that the stone seems to tremble. In the most shadowed corner of the porch sat a woman with a tray of postcards. She wore a black headscarf pulled forward over her face and a black cotton dress. She shouted something, perhaps at Mr Mailer. Her voice was strident which may have caused her remark to sound like an insult. He paid no attention to it.

He collected his party about him and looked at his watch. ‘Major Sweet,’ he said, ‘is late. We shall not wait for him but before we go in I should like to give you, very shortly, some idea of this extraordinary monument. In the fourth century before Christ—’

From the dark interior there erupted an angry gentleman who shouted as he came.

‘Damned disgusting lot of hanky-panky,’ shouted this gentleman. ‘What the hell—‘ He pulled up short on seeing the group and narrowed his blazing eyes in order to focus upon it.

He had a savage white moustache and looked like an improbable revival of an Edwardian warrior. ‘Are you Mailer?’ he shouted. ‘Sweet,’ he added, in explanation.

‘Major Sweet, may I—’

‘You’re forty-three minutes late. Forty-three minutes!’

‘Unfortunately—’

‘Spare me,’ begged Major Sweet, ‘the specious excuses. There is no adequate explanation for unpunctuality.’

Lady Braceley moved in. ‘All my fault, Major,’ she said. ‘I kept everybody waiting and I’ve no excuses: I never have and I always do. I dare say you’d call it “ladies’ privilege”, wouldn’t you? Or would you?’

Major Sweet turned his blue glare upon her for two or three seconds. He then yapped ‘How do you do’ and seemed to wait for further developments.

Mr Mailer with perfect suavity performed the introductions. Major Sweet acknowledged them by making slight bows to the ladies and an ejaculation of sorts to the men. ‘Hyah,’ he said.

‘Well,’ said Mr Mailer. ‘To resume. When we are inside the basilica I shall hand over to our most distinguished guest of honour. But perhaps beforehand a very brief historical note may be of service.’

He was succinct and adequate, Sophy grudgingly admitted. The basilica of San Tommaso, he said, was one of a group of monuments in Rome where the visitors could walk downwards through the centuries into Mithraic time. At the top level, here where they now stood, was the twelfth-century basilica which in a moment they would enter. Beneath it, was the excavated third-century church which it had replaced. ‘And below that—imagine it—’ said Mr Mailer, ‘there has lain sleeping for over eighteen hundred years a house of the Flavian period: a classic “gentleman’s residence” with its own private chapel dedicated to the god Mithras.’ He paused and Sophy, though she regarded him with the most profound distaste, thought: He’s interested in what he’s talking about. He knows his stuff. He’s enjoying himself.

Mr Mailer went on to describe briefly the enormous task of nineteenth-century excavation that had so gradually disclosed first, the earlier basilica and then, deep down beneath it, the pagan household. ‘Rome has risen, hereabout, sixty feet since those times,’ he ended. ‘Does that surprise you? It does me, every time I think of it.’

‘It doesn’t me,’ Major Sweet announced. ‘Nothing surprises me. Except human gullibility,’ he added darkly. ‘However!’

Mr Mailer shot him an uneasy glance. Sophy gave a little snort of suppressed amusement and caught Barnaby Grant looking at her with something like appreciation. Lady Braceley, paying no attention to what was said, let her ravaged eyes turn from one man’s face to another. The Van der Veghels, standing close together, listened intently. Kenneth Dorne, Sophy noticed, was restless and anxious-looking. He shuffled his feet and dabbed at his face with his handkerchief. And the tall man, what was his name—Allen?—stood a little apart, politely attentive and, Sophy thought, extremely observant.

‘But now,’ Mr Mailer said, ‘shall we begin our journey into the past?’

The woman with the postcards had sidled between the group and the entrance. She had kept her face down and it was still shadowed by her black headscarf. She muttered, almost inaudibly, ‘Cartoline? Posta-carda?’ edging towards Sebastian Mailer. He said generally to his company, ‘There are better inside. Pay no attention,’ and moved forward to pass the woman.

With extraordinary swiftness she pushed back her headscarf, thrust her face up at him and whispered: ‘Brutto! Farabutto! Traditore!’ and added what seemed to be a stream of abuse. Her eyes burned. Her lips were retracted in a grin and then pursed together. She’s going to spit in his face, thought Sophy in alarm and so she was, but Mr Mailer was too smart for her. He dodged and she spat after him and stood her ground with the air of a grand-opera virago. She even gave a hoarse screech of eldritch laughter. Mr Mailer entered the basilica. His discomforted flock divided round the postcard-seller and slunk after him.

‘Kenneth, darling,’ Lady Braceley muttered. ‘Honestly! Not one’s idea of a gay little trip!’

Sophy found herself between Barnaby Grant and Alleyn. ‘Was that lady,’ Alleyn asked Grant, ‘put in as an extra touch of atmosphere? Does she recur, or was she a colourful accident?’

Grant said, ‘I don’t know anything about her. Mad, I should think. Ghastly old bag, wasn’t she?’ and Sophy thought: Yes, but he hasn’t answered the question.

She said to Alleyn, ‘Would you suppose that all that carry-on, if translated into Anglo-Saxon terms, would amount to no more than a cool glance and an indrawn breath?’

Grant looked across Alleyn at her, and said with a kind of eagerness, ‘Oh, rather! You have to make allowances for their sense of drama.’

‘Rather excessive in this instance,’ she said coolly, giving, she said to herself, snub for snub. Grant moved round and said hurriedly, ‘I know who you are, now. I didn’t before. We met at Koster Press didn’t we?’ Koster Press was the name of his publisher’s house in London.

‘For a moment,’ Sophy said and then: ‘Oh, but how lovely!’

They were in the basilica.

It glowed sumptuously as if it generated its own light. It was alive with colour: ‘mediterranean’ red, clear pinks, blues and greens; ivory and crimson marble, tingling gold mosaic. And dominant in this concourse of colour the great vermilion that cries out in the backgrounds of Rome and Pompeii.

Sophy moved away from the group and stared with delight at this enchantment. Grant, who had been left with Alleyn, abruptly joined her.

‘I’ve got to talk about this,’ he muttered. ‘I wish to God I hadn’t.’

She looked briefly at him. ‘Then why do it?’ said Sophy.

‘You think that was an affectation. I’m sorry.’

‘Really, it couldn’t matter less what I think.’

‘You needn’t be so snappish.’

They stared at each other in astonishment.

‘I can’t make this out,’ Grant said unexpectedly. ‘I don’t know you,’ and Sophy in a panic, stammered, ‘It’s nothing. It’s none of my business. I’m sorry I snapped.’

‘Not at all.’

‘And now,’ fluted Sebastian Mailer, ‘I hand over to my most distinguished colleague, Mr Grant.’

Grant made Sophy an extremely stuffy little bow and moved out to face his audience.

Once he was launched he too did his stuff well and with considerable charm, which was more than could be said for Mr Mailer. For one thing, Sophy conceded, Grant looked a lot nicer. His bony face was really rather beautifully shaped and actually had a carved, medieval appearance that went handsomely with its surroundings. He led them farther into the glowing church. There were two or three other groups of sightseers but, compared with the traffic in most celebrated monuments, these were few.

Grant explained that even in this, the most recent of the three levels of San Tommaso, there was a great richness of time sequences. When in the twelfth century the ancient church below it was filled in, its treasures, including pieces from the pagan household underneath it, were brought up into this new basilica so that now classical, medieval and renaissance works mingled. ‘They’ve kept company,’ Grant said, ‘for a long time and have grown together in the process. You can see how well they suit each other.’

‘It happens on the domestic level too,’ Alleyn said, ‘don’t you think? In houses that have belonged to the same family for many generations? There’s a sort of consonance of differences.’

‘Exactly so,’ Grant agreed with a quick look at him. ‘Shall we move on?’

A wave of scent announced the arrival of Lady Braceley at Alleyn’s elbow. ‘What a marvellous way of putting it,’ she murmured. ‘How clever you are.’

The doeskin glove with its skeletal enclosure touched his arm. She tipped her head on one side and was looking up at him. Sophy, watching, thought a shutter had come down over his face and indeed Alleyn suffered a wave of revulsion and pity and a recognition of despair. I’d give a hell of a lot, he thought, to be shot of this lady.

Sebastian Mailer had come up on the far side of Lady Braceley. He murmured something that Alleyn couldn’t catch. Grant was talking again. The hand was withdrawn from Alleyn’s arm and the pair turned away and moved out of sight behind the junction of two pilasters. Now, Alleyn speculated, was Mailer doing a rescue job or had he something particular and confidential to say to Lady Braceley?

Grant led his party into the centre of the nave and through the enclosed schola cantorum, saying, Sophy thought, neither too much nor too little but everything well. She herself was caught up in wonder at the great golden bowl-shaped mosaic of the apse. Acanthus and vine twined tenderly together to enclose little groups of everyday persons going about their medieval business. The Cross, dominant though it was, seemed to have grown out of some pre-Christian tree. ‘I shall say nothing about the apse,’ Grant said. ‘It speaks for itself.’

Mailer and Lady Braceley had re-appeared. She sat down on a choir bench and whether by some accident of lighting or because she was overtaken by one of those waves of exhaustion that unexpectedly fall upon the old, she looked as if she had shrunk within her own precarious façade. Only for a moment, however. She straightened her back and beckoned her nephew who fidgeted about on the edge of the group, half-attentive and half-impatient. He joined her and they whispered together, he yawning and fidgeting, she apparently in some agitation.

The party moved on round the basilica. The Van der Veghels took photographs and asked a great many questions. They were laboriously well-informed in Roman antiquities. Presently the Baron, with an arch look, began to inquire about the particular features that appeared so vividly in Grant’s novel. Were they not standing, at this very moment, in the place where his characters assembled? Might one not follow, precisely, in the steps they had taken during that wonderful climactic scene?

‘O-o-oah!’ cried the Baroness running her voice up and down a chromatic scale of enthusiasm. ‘It will be so farskinating. Yes?’

Grant reacted to this plea as he had to earlier conversations: with a kind of curbed distaste. He gave Sophy and Alleyn one each of his sharp glances, darted a look of something like pure hatred at Sebastian Mailer and suggested confusedly, that an author seldom reproduced in scrupulous detail, an actual mise-en-scène any more than he used unadulterated human material. ‘I don’t mean I didn’t start off with San Tommaso,’ he shot out at Sophy. ‘Of course I did. But I gave it another name and altered it to my purpose.’

‘As you had every right to do,’ Sophy said boldly and Alleyn thought the two of them were united for the moment in their common field of activity.

‘Yes, but do show us,’ Lady Braceley urged. ‘Don’t be beastly. Show us. You promised. You know you did.’

Kenneth Dorne said, ‘Isn’t that why we came? Or not? I thought you were to be the great attraction.’

He had approached Grant and stood in an attitude of some elegance, his left arm extended along one of the closure-slabs of the schola, his right hand on his hip. It was not a blatant pose but it was explicit nevertheless and at least one aspect of Kenneth was now revealed. He looked at Grant and widened his eyes. ‘Is it all a sellout?’ he asked. ‘Or have I made a muddle? Or am I merely being impertinent?’

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