Roman Nights: Dolly and the Starry Bird; Murder in Focus

by Dorothy Dunnett

  ‘No. Stinging rebuke followed by abject contrition. But if I don’t do this now, the police will merely do it in two days’ time, Ruth. All I shall do is threaten him with the polizia. This is only Red Riding Hood. What I should like is a look at the wolf.’

  ‘And if the wolf is one of us?’ I said.

  He took his glasses off. There was nothing wrong with his eyes underneath, except that they were chilly and narrowed. He said. ‘It probably is. Are you suggesting that he – or she – should be allowed to escape?’

  I saw I had made a mistake. An irretrievable, hopeless mistake. ‘I thought that was why you were doing this,’ I said. ‘I thought you were the only one who realized it had to be one of us. Someone from the villa. Or someone from the observatory. I thought you would help us to—’

  ‘Sweep it under the carpet?’ said Johnson. ‘Or bury it all in the garden? It’ll be the making of Maurice’s organic tomatoes.’

  At the next table a middle-aged lady with long, shining fingernails poured a little cream delicately into her saucer and held it under her bosom. A miniature white poodle attired in a black knitted tube like a sock emerged from the overhang and began to lap with a scrap of pink tongue. She conversed with it, in miniature Italian.

  I looked back at Johnson. He had put on his glasses and all I could see was beer and bifocals again. I said, ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘I suppose not, too,’ Johnson said. ‘Tolerance, yes. Decadence, no. People don’t laugh at comic obituary verse because death is funny. Quite the reverse. On the other hand, you can stretch your sense of proportion on light years until it can’t apply itself to the human dilemma anymore. Hence the mystics.’ He finished his beer and continued in the same tone of voice, ‘So you really think Charles wants to murder you?’

  The saucer at the next table tilted and shot a trail of cream upward; the poodle, craning forward, lapped it up neatly. All the blood in my veins rose as through a hose pipe into my face but I didn’t look away and I didn’t gasp and I didn’t lose my head. I said, ‘All right, my adrenalin blipped. The rest of the experiment was a failure. I don’t think Charles is trying to murder me. I don’t think Charles has any more to do with all this than I have. I live with him, remember?’

  ‘When he isn’t in Naples. He was in Naples, Ruth. The message on the fish couldn’t have been for him. He wasn’t at the Fall Fair and, alone of you all, he didn’t have one of the new keys to the Dome and he didn’t have any possible access to one. He couldn’t possibly have murdered the man in the zoo: he hadn’t even reached the loo when you heard the shot that killed him. And lastly, if he didn’t want you around, he would hardly have come back to you after Naples.’

  Johnson grinned at me and turning to the woman at the next table said, ‘We’re rehearsing a play.’ She smiled tremulously and then, ducking her head, began to collect her gloves, her handbag and the dog like a native of Vesuvius reacting to the first smoke ring over the crater. Johnson turned back to me and I said, ‘I know all that.’

  ‘Then why were you crying?’ said Johnson mildly.

  The woman at the next table had gone. I said, ‘I was asleep. My God, I’m not responsible to anyone for my dreams, am I?’

  ‘And yesterday?’ the irritating voice went on persistently.

  It was unfair. It was unfair to me and to Charles, and it was nothing to do with Johnson. And, more damnable than anything else, I could feel my eyes beginning to sting once again. Johnson said, ‘I know. You love the man. But you have been worried. I wonder if perhaps Charles seemed to have more money than you ever expected? And if perhaps I’m right in thinking that your camera and his have quite clear distinguishing marks?’

  I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t have to do anything. My face gave me away.

  ‘I see they did,’ Johnson said. ‘So you expected Charles to remark on it at the zoo, and when he didn’t, you jumped to conclusions. But, you know, he might have had a very good reason for letting people think that it was his film which had been stolen, and not yours. He might have realized that his own camera must be lying about unprotected, with even more important couture pictures still in it. Or he may have remembered that he left a film in his camera which he didn’t much want anyone to see anyway for quite uncriminal reasons. People who are good with cameras shoot funny things with them sometimes.’

  ‘You guessed,’ I said.

  ‘I guessed,’ said Johnson. ‘What was on Charles’s film? Girlie pictures?’

  ‘You could call it that,’ I said. Maurice had asked me if I was a prude and he was right, I was. I was a heel, too. I had sent Jacko to Maurice’s party on Saturday night after the zoo, and I had carried Charles’s camera down from the Dome where he had left it and developed the pictures inside it. It had only been half full, like mine. I said, ‘Some of the pictures were couture ones, the important ones which the Villa Borghese men must have been after. The rest were just straight sexy portraits like Jacko’s.’

  Johnson said, ‘What did you do with the negative?’

  ‘It’s well hidden,’ I said, and produced a grin. ‘I shouldn’t like any modest souls to be outraged. I put a new film in the camera and clicked through the first half in darkness.’

  ‘So the film our frozen friend pinched later on the same evening was a blank one? What an unsatisfactory thing,’ said Johnson, ‘to be shot for. But at least you can acquit Charles, surely, of committing murder and mayhem to preserve a little smut and a change in the hemline. Now what is eating you?’

  ‘Charles will be so worried,’ I said. ‘He’ll find he’s lost all his fashion pictures.’

  ‘He can reshoot them,’ Johnson said. ‘And they haven’t got into the wrong hands. Surely that is what matters. He’ll put it down to a fault in the camera, and since the camera is in five hundred pieces, no one is likely to dispute it . . . How nice,’ he said, breaking off and then recovering smoothly. ‘If you breathe in when you do it again, you won’t fog my glasses.’

  ‘Hullo,’ said Diana Minicucci above us. She bent again and kissed Johnson, thoughtfully.

  It was, I had forgotten, one of Di’s other haunts. She had been done over at Giulio’s again and was wearing a long, thin olive suede coat and huge tinted glasses with yellow rims and her own hair, coiled over her cheeks and knotted in ladylike fashion at the nape of her neck.

  Johnson surveyed her in exactly the way that he had looked at Innes’s mouse which she adored and which was a change, admittedly, from poor Jacko, who treated birds and ring-pull cans as one problem. Johnson said, ‘We’re running away to get married. Where’s your photographer friend?’

  ‘Looking for Ruth,’ said Di, eyeing him. ‘When he called on her at the Dome, she wasn’t there. Panic. All sittings postponed till further notice.’

  I said, ‘Where is Charles now?’ Johnson had paid the bill and we were all standing politely being buffeted and/or pinched without even noticing it.

  ‘Dashing around Rome like a rotary lawn mower,’ said Diana callously. ‘If I meet him, I’ll tell him you’re having a total immersion oil-painting course. If you want him, you’ll find us all at the Villa Borghese at two. Back to the prologue.’

  She didn’t interfere, because Di doesn’t interfere. But her lashes indicated that she was standing by on the secondary runway for the moment I chose to take off. Johnson said with complete unexpectedness, ‘We’re going to call on the man who sold Ruth a balloon outside the zoo, the day the man stole her camera and got killed. How much are you insured for?’

  Diana smiled. ‘May I come? Really?’ she said.

  ‘We’re not getting married till after lunch,’ I said. I wasn’t at all sure if Johnson knew what he was doing. ‘What about the Villa Borghese?’

  Outside in the Piazza the rain was coming down as if a tank had burst, drowning the noise of the fountains and beating hell out of the glories of Rameses II and Merneptah (c. 13–12 b.c.) as celebrated on the ancient obelisk in the centre. There was a crash of thunder, a flash, and
the lights went out everywhere, busily.

  Di Minicucci spread her gloveless hands. ‘Celestial endorsement. Not even Charles can take pictures without any power. Do we take your car or mine?’

  We took neither: if a Roman junction during one of the four normal rush hours is suicide, a Roman junction while the traffic lights are off resembles nothing so much as a herd of myopic rhinoceroses meeting eye to eye with a herd of dim-witted elephants and attempting to copulate. We crossed the Piazza to the astonishment of the sheltering natives and entered the Via del Babuino without melting. Johnson’s hair dripped gently inside the shapeless tweed collar of his jacket and my trouser suit stuck to my body. Diana remained totally immaculate. I congratulated her on her appearance.

  ‘But darling,’ she said. ‘Absolutely new and too easy. The closest any woman can come to the tingled air-washed look of a country-freshened face. So it says on the pot. You must try it.’

  The Via del Babuino is where most of the art dealers dwell and the streets around about it are occupied by the artistic colony and the voluntary bodies who serve it. The Via Babuino closes from lunchtime till half-past three in the afternoon. It was nearly lunchtime now. Between the brass rings of the eight-panelled portals the cinquecentis were filing out from their patios, leaving patches of oil by the statues. Peering through lightless windows you caught glimpses of classical busts, painted bureaus, furniture French and Italian, Dutch paintings on easels, Florentine prints on boxes and bookends. On the left, a familiar red and white street sign said carnaby street, while below, a white arrow on red said via margutta.

  ‘Think nothing of it,’ said Johnson, and, leading briskly, turned into the street of the balloon man.

  The Via Margutta is a quiet street. On the left, behind the parked cars, stretched a row of shops selling dresses and icons and paintings. On the right there was a line of mews buildings, whose faded wood doors were closed with cumbrous latches.

  On none of them was the street number Johnson had been given. ‘I’ll ask,’ I said quickly, and went into the first shop that seemed open.

  It was a small leather boutique dangling with belts and shoppers and shoulder bags, with racks of suede skirts and rawhide jerkins with fringes. A male Italian with liquid eyes and a long, unwavering nose and a perfect jawline with silky black sideburns was lolling on a wooden chair absorbing instant football from a transistor, while beside him a signora in knee boots was jabbing holes in a belt with a hand-punch. Bags of eyelets and staplers and wooden shoe moulds and lengths of cut leather littered the floorboards. The smell was ecstatic.

  I explained I was looking for a street trader who sold Occhiali Giocattoli.

  Against football, no woman can expect to compete for attention. The perfect head swivelled around in my direction. The man’s cigarette hung from his lips, and his thumbs were tucked into a belt so low it was practically garters. But his lips did not move, neither did his mind swerve from its primary task. The girl said, ‘For Marco, another visitor.’

  Which was sad. I said, ‘Oh. He has someone with him?’

  ‘Ah, frequently,’ the girl said, and I didn’t need my crash course at the language laboratory to follow the nuances. ‘Four people to drink with last night, and already another this morning.’

  ‘Drink, then, is his trouble?’ I said. I smiled at the gladiator by the transistor, who fluttered his eyelashes.

  ‘Why not?’ said the girl, forcing an awl through a wadding of pigskin, her arm muscles rippling. ‘You cannot imagine he chooses to earn his living making Occhiali Giocattoli, now can you? He is an educated man, well brought up by his family.’

  ‘You know him well, then?’ I inquired.

  ‘He is a neighbour,’ the boyfriend intervened lazily. ‘No, we do not know him well. He has accepted a coffee when he comes for his cart.’

  ‘Where does he keep it?’ I asked.

  The girl jerked her head at one of the faded doors opposite. ‘In the mews there. His studio is two stairs along, next to the dress shop. On the first floor. You will see the name, Marco Susini . . . To-to!’

  To-to turned, with flattering reluctance, from studying all he could see of my kneecaps.

  ‘Cavallette!’ the girl shouted suddenly, and flung up her fist with the awl in it.

  The awl was pointing at me. And the sharpened steel flashed in the candlelight.

  The boyfriend sprang to his feet and, snatching a broom, plunged toward me.

  I flung myself sideways. There was a crash, a flurry of scattering handbags and a grunt from To-to, engaged in tolerating stress poorly among the cape leather slough-offs. Through the plate glass window I could see Johnson and Di standing outside in the rain, their hands in their pockets. I screamed, and snatched up a bullwhip of plaited kangaroo leather. To-to got to his feet scowling faintly.

  ‘There is a plague of them,’ the girl said obscurely, and lowering the awl, resumed stabbing the pigskin. To-to said, ‘Two stairs along,’ and began, irritably, to pick up the handbags. ‘You wish the bullwhip?’ he added.

  It cost twelve bloody pounds and I bought it. I hadn’t the nerve to refuse it. Then I left the shop and showed Johnson the stair to the studio. He set off for it right away, but Di lingered, unrolling my bullwhip.

  There were twelve feet of it altogether. We trailed it up the chipped marble staircase after Johnson and stood in total darkness outside the door that said Marco Susini. ‘Fourteen pounds,’ said Diana. ‘Come on, Ruth. Charles doesn’t need it.’

  ‘Neither does Jacko,’ I said, outraged. Now that Di wanted it, the bullwhip seemed the most sophisticated possession since suspenders.

  ‘That’s what you think,’ said Diana. ‘Fifteen pounds. And my pot of Fresh Air Make-up Base.’ Johnson was ringing the bell.

  ‘Listen,’ I said. ‘Mr Paladrini is in there. And very possibly Mr Paladrini’s visitor, with a muzzle-loading gun and a guilt complex. The bullwhip is mine and I’m hanging on to it. If you want a kangaroo of your own, go and catch one.’ Johnson rang the bell for the second time.

  Di said helpfully, ‘The door’s open, darling.’

  And so it was. A thin crack of daylight, widening and lessening in the draught, showed where it had been left on the latch. ‘I want my mother,’ said Johnson, ‘to have an Interflora Sympathy basket. It will be cheaper if you send it from London.’ He pushed open the door very slowly.

  The room inside was large and empty of people. The glazed roof and windows, heavily coated with dirt, on which the rain frothed and spattered, told that it had indeed once been a studio. It was now the stockroom of the balloon man as well as his living space. A frayed armchair stood beside a battered stove, on which a pan thick with pasta was sitting abandoned. Packets spilled out of a cupboard onto a small table holding the remains of a meal, and one or two wooden chairs stood about.

  The rest of the room, bare of carpeting, was occupied by long trestle tables containing layers of cards loaded with clockwork mice and toy sunglasses and plastic tea sets and Vampire Fingernails and cardboard masks and glutinous reptilia and tiny cowboy guns with Super Bum-Bum on them and packets and packets and packets of limp assorted balloons.

  We stood in the doorway, taking it all in. Then Diana said, ‘There’s no one here, what a sell. Now I know who would like a clockwork mouse,’ and swam forward to the nearest table, bubbling. Johnson and I followed after her. I had the door in my hand when it was wrenched out of my fingers and slammed shut behind me. A hard hand striking my shoulder sent me tripping forward to crash into Johnson. He whirled around and Di, a clockwork mouse in her fingers, looked up, the eyelashes open like daisies.

  Standing with his back to the main door and barring it stood Innes Wye, and the gun in his hand was pointing straight at us. ‘I don’t know anyone who would like a clockwork mouse,’ said Di, her voice shaking, and I can’t think when I’ve admired anyone more. Then Innes said, ‘Drop that whip,’ and I realized it was still in my right hand.

  I didn’t make any jokes.
I dropped it.

  I have said, I think, that Innes Wye was a little man with a high voice and equivalent principles which none of the best scientific workshops in the world had apparently succeeded in shaking. There was little more I did know of him, except that he came to the Dome for his calories, and that the rest of his life, it appeared, was devoted to his white mouse and his bloody Incubator, with sundry forays into bestial licence in the Museo Nazionale Romano and the Pinacoteca Vaticana on holiday.

  He had, for example, torn up poor Jacko’s painstaking photographs, and made the Fall Fair the Fall Fair of the century. He seemed, in fact, a character of quite regrettable consistency until you noticed the fact that he had been at the Fall Fair. That it was his falling downstairs which allowed Mr Paladrini to escape. And that he had the new key to the observatory.

  I looked quickly at Johnson. Johnson was standing with his hands hanging at his sides looking at Innes, and demonstrating the melancholy fact that it is not the habit of eminent portrait painters to carry offensive weapons about in their jackets. He said gently, ‘Dr Wye. What are you doing here?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Innes. ‘Oh no, it won’t wash. Put your hands in the air, all of you. And get over there, away from the table. This time. Miss Minicucci, I don’t get pushed around. This time, Mr Johnson, you won’t get your friends to do your dirty work for you. This time you all get what’s coming to you.’

  It is another unfortunate fact that in moments of stress all human exchanges are conducted in unerring clichés. The exception proved to be Johnson, who said merely, ‘Why?’ followed after a moment’s thought by ‘What?’

  ‘You’ll find out,’ said Innes firmly over the revolver. He sidled along the wall towards the door to the inner room, near which, I suddenly saw, was a wall telephone. I wondered if Mr Paladrini – Marco Susini – was inside the other room and if so, why he hadn’t come out to help his colleague. I wondered what possible connection Innes Wye could have with the houses of Antonelli or Schön, and then realized that those who earn their living by dealing in secrets don’t necessarily confine themselves to fashion houses. I wondered what exactly was inside Innes’s mysterious Incubator that none of us had been allowed to gaze upon, and if in fact there was anything at all except, say, a Mickey Mouse eight-day alarm clock.