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

by Dorothy Dunnett

  You could hardly see her for smoke. I could see Timothy trying hard not to cough. Even Maurice’s nostrils were flaring. Lilian Hathaway looked at him thoughtfully. ‘You have a novel idea, there. No.’

  ‘It suits you precisely?’ said Maurice. Smiling.

  ‘As the theatre is the chosen field for your temperament. If you had made a mistake, I imagine,’ said Professor Hathaway, ‘you would have changed your profession rather earlier?’

  ‘Perhaps I did make a mistake,’ Maurice said. ‘Perhaps in the pure, detached study of astronomy I should have found my true self. I have enjoyed watching my Dome being put to its true purpose. I have found an inner peace, some nights, standing in the darkness under the stars, looking at the round, dry whiteness of that terrible moon. You know this. You feel this. The infinite smallness of man, compared with the unmeasured stretch of the universe.’

  ‘Naturally,’ said Professor Hathaway. A smile, like a rabbit, appeared on her lips and then hopped it. ‘Women, of course, are a different matter.’

  Maurice laughed. He had to, having underestimated her to quite a marked degree. I wondered why he hadn’t got her taped in previous interviews, and then recalled that they had only met once, to my knowledge, and that the occasion was probably formal. He laughed in any case most splendidly, with a sort of effervescence of liquid espresso, and then, leaning forward, lifted his cigar case and held it out fondly. ‘I propose,’ he said, ‘to call you Lilian. I also propose to introduce you to the other actor in my little comedy. You haven’t met Johnson Johnson. He’s painting the Pope.’

  ‘He’s back,’ said Timothy, dividing his smile between Maurice and Professor Hathaway and standing with one wrist bent, to show he hadn’t stopped speaking. ‘Just rushed off to scrub off the incense. Would anyone like a teeny liqueur, Maurice? A port? A little splash of Marsala?’ Timothy, with his infallible intuition, had divined that the scalping was over. Maurice nodded and Jacko excused himself with the first note of hope in his voice since Wednesday. A silver drinks tray made its appearance followed by my portrait-painting friend, Johnson Johnson.

  He looked the same, except that today he had on a blue baggy sweater by his uncle in Margate and was carrying a Honk for Jesus rear window sticker and a lapel button with pont max printed on it which he gave to Innes with a sincere shake of the hand. He said that a large part of the morning’s conversation had been about Filippo d’Edimburgo and could he have a brandy but not in a balloon glass if it could be avoided. The thought crossed my mind that if Johnson Johnson had been ten years younger and maybe two inches taller and had worn wolfskin coats instead of ravelling jerseys I might have met and settled down with him instead of Charles. Except that Johnson looked the marrying kind, and I didn’t want to take the place of his uncle in Margate.

  He looked around for somewhere to sit and only then appeared to notice the pebble glasses and angular figure behind the heavy curtain of Corona Corona. He fanned it away with one hand and said, ‘Lilian!’

  Jacko, coming back just in time to catch it, blanched again. Our workmate was a friend of the management.

  The rabbit appeared and vanished. The Professor had smiled. Johnson craned forward and kissed her, and then, groping about, found a love seat and dropped there beside her. He said, ‘You got the whole story, I assume, from the police. We did our best to keep you out of the papers.’

  ‘So Ruth and the others have been telling me,’ said Professor Hathaway. I had remembered something. I had remembered that when she left Mount Hamilton to come to the Zodiac Trust, she had had her portrait painted. I had seen it once, reproduced in a newspaper.

  It had been a good, lively likeness, which was just as well; she would take a bloody awful photograph. And painted by, of course, who else but Johnson. The pebble glasses turned on the bifocal spectacles in a dazzling encounter of vitrines and Lilian Hathaway said, ‘And you are about to suggest, I suppose, that I should be lenient with them?’

  ‘Do what you like with them,’ said Johnson callously. ‘They’ll all get jobs with somebody.’ He pointed a finger at me. ‘I want that one for a mascot.’

  Innes stood up and started to speak. His voice cracked, and he had to begin again. ‘You will excuse me. Professor Hathaway,’ said Innes stubbornly. ‘But these are matters that I and my colleagues would like to discuss with you in the privacy of the observatory. If you please.’

  You could tell he had had all his brandy. He remained standing while the Professor considered him. Then she said, ‘Sit down, Innes. Unless your girlfriend has been developing photographs in the observatory, there is nothing to discuss. You have all been foolish, but it was an attempt, I realize, to keep the observatory out of the public eye. Luckily, thanks to the police, if not to Mr Frazer here, it has succeeded. The matter is closed. Ruth, I shall come with you to Naples tomorrow.’

  I caught the whites of Jacko’s eyes through the smoke: we had expected to go there together. Before we came out, Lilian had asked us to check on the Trust’s training station. It isn’t a school, but a practice post high in the hills by the city. Charles had planned to come too. Johnson said softly, ‘Lilian!’

  ‘Ah,’ said Professor Hathaway, to no one in particular. ‘Ruth. What remains to be done at the Dome?’

  There was two days’ work left in the Dome, and I said so. Our contract with Maurice had a full week to run after that. But if she wanted him to send us home now, you couldn’t blame her.

  Instead she said, ‘I see. The police tell me that they require you to stay in Italy for at least ten days while they clear all formalities.’

  It was the first I had heard of it. A telephone began to ring somewhere persistently, and while Timothy went off to answer it I exchanged a fleeting twitch of the eyebrow with Jacko. ‘In Rome?’ I said. So much for our expedition to Naples next morning. Naples with Jacko and Charles was a pipe dream.

  It wasn’t a pipe dream. ‘Anywhere on Italian soil,’ the Professor said briskly. ‘You may proceed therefore, James and Ruth, with your planned visit tomorrow to Naples. I shall accompany you.’

  She paused, while Jacko and I continued waxily smiling, and puffed a cloud of cheroot smoke in Innes’s direction. Innes winced.

  ‘I do not believe,’ said Lilian Hathaway briskly, ‘in keeping idle staff in working quarters when there is no useful employment for them to do. I suggest therefore that you treat the rest of your legal quarantine as a holiday. Naturally, at your own cost entirely. If you wish to remain in the Naples area, I shall leave you there. Innes, you have no business in Naples, but I can offer you a seat in the car should you wish it. I should in fact appreciate a long talk with you during the journey.’

  I looked at Jacko and Jacko looked at me. That was Innes booked for Naples whether he wanted to leave Poppy or not, but Jacko and I didn’t mind. We had our trip to Naples endorsed, transport free, and we needn’t go back to Maurice afterwards. Not for ten days, if we didn’t feel like it.

  Good Old Lilian. I let Jacko express our joint gratitude. I was figuring out how to get Charles to Naples immediately Professor Hathaway had gone back to England. I was still figuring it out when Timothy came into the room, rather wan round the petals. He made a short keening sound in the direction of Maurice and then, bending over me cosily, said, ‘Ruth? I’ve had a call from a friend at the Embassy. Charles Digham has just been arrested.’

  ELEVEN

  He had, too, for illegal gambling with Sassy Packer, which might have been true but actually wasn’t. I went to see him straight from the villa, and I must say, the jail was quite passable. Sassy was in the next cell, and they had had pizza for supper, Charles said.

  I took in his clothes and some cigarettes, but they weren’t the kind Sassy smoked, and after looking at him more closely I thought it was just as well. The trouble with having a lot of friends as Charles does is that your friends have a number of variable habits. Sassy, for example, was wearing a Bosnian peasant blouse with a fringed sash and looked the entire bit that
the Afghanistan authorities keep trying to deport. Charles, who was again wearing his pyjama top under a sage green quilted cotton suit and hadn’t shaved since last night, looked hardly better. He said it was a piece of bloody nonsense and he would take the Rome police apart and feed them to the newspapers limb by limb, and his mother was coming over on the evening plane.

  That meant business in a big way, particularly for the Rome police. The Teddingtons may not approve of their only son’s every action, but they will back him against any unfortunate foreigner who might consider Digham had taken one picture too many. I remembered an unfortunate incident in Chile. I said, ‘Aren’t you worried?’

  ‘No,’ said Charles, looking astonished. ‘Look, I don’t know anything about his bloody club. I haven’t been on any trips. I haven’t even been in that flat so’s you’d notice. I’ve got a bird somewhere else.’

  We grinned at each other. He really did look unconcerned. It is not, after all, the first time he has been in clink. He said, ‘You go on to Naples, angel. It’ll all be over before you get back,’ and threw in one from the book, somewhat perfunctorily:

  At night when all is silent

  And sleep forsakes your eyes

  Your lonely thoughts dwell on the jail

  Where your poor Charlie lies.

  I had told him, in the past tense, about the proposed joint excursion to Napoli. I stared at him. ‘Don’t be mad, darling. Of course I’m not going. You might not get pizza every meal. I shall bring you your crusts and the Daily American and have long conferences with your defence lawyer.’

  ‘Don’t think I wouldn’t settle for that,’ Charles said, and pulled a violent face. ‘But Mother will be doing just that, with the combined British Press at her elbow. On the other hand we could announce our engagement. Ruthie, will you marry a junkie photographer?’

  He was grinning behind his hair, but it was rather an intent grin. My stomach turned over and I wanted to cry, and be comforted and, if possible, go to bed. ‘No,’ I said rather shakily. ‘I won’t even marry you.’

  I could see his Adam’s apple move as he swallowed, but he went on smiling. ‘You are a bitch, darling,’ he said. ‘Go on and enjoy your holiday. It’s all right, I promise you. I should tell you if it weren’t.’

  There was a bit more, but it was off the record. I went outside and got into the souped-up Fiat beside Johnson, who had driven me into Rome, and blew my nose all the way through the traffic jams.

  Johnson didn’t say a thing. He didn’t take me right home to Velterra either. When we got to the Piazza dell’Esedra he hooted three times and an old Alfa Romeo Z600 that had been parked among the other five million cars revved up and backed slowly out, allowing Johnson to back slowly in and park in its place. Then he switched off the engine and said, ‘Before we go any farther, you are to have a Whisky Black & White and a lecture. Pontiff’s orders.’

  I don’t remember making any protest. I powdered my nose and noticed that my eyes looked like workingmen’s oysters. Then Johnson switched off the car lights and it didn’t matter, because the power lines had failed once again and there was no lighting outside whatever. He took me to the Hotel Quirinale and the walk there was a vivid experience as the traffic lights weren’t functioning either and every crossing was full once more of Fiats steaming eyeball to eyeball. We picked our way across the marble floors of the Hotel Quirinale by the aid of some candles in saucers and seated ourselves in a dim corner under a tapestry. In a moment a waiter brought us a candle and then two double whiskies. Johnson blew out the candle and then, groping, clinked his glass against mine and said, ‘Here’s to crime,’ rather vaguely. Over on a far corner another couple were giggling in complete darkness. Apart from that, the only other people in the salon appeared to be a group of twenty Indian women in saris who were standing about in the middle, talking sharply to one another. I don’t suppose the power supply in Delhi is all that hot either. I drank half my whisky and hiccupped.

  ‘I wanted to talk to you about Charles,’ Johnson said.

  I said, ‘He hasn’t done anything.’ My voice sounded sharp, too.

  I could hear the grin in Johnson’s voice. ‘He hasn’t embarked on illegal gambling with Sassy Parker, if that’s what you mean,’ Johnson said. The grin disappeared from his voice. He said, ‘Ruth. The police aren’t holding him over Sassy’s misdemeanours, although that’s the excuse at the moment. That’s what they’ll tell Lady Teddington and that’s the charge on which they’ll keep him in prison until it suits them to change it for a worse one.’

  ‘A worse one? What? The idiots,’ I said. ‘What will they charge him with?’

  ‘Murder and espionage,’ said Johnson briefly.

  A match, struck a long way away, gleamed for a moment in the depths of the drink in his glass; otherwise he was a bodiless voice speaking from blackness, and I suppose I was the same. After a moment I said, ‘What murder? What espionage?’

  His voice remained impersonal, damn him. ‘Mr Paladrini’s,’ said Johnson. ‘And possibly the man in the meat safe as well. The suicide note was a forgery. The police haven’t much proof they agree, so far. But, you see, the confusing of the two cameras was suspicious. They say Charles had something of importance in his own camera and meant to conceal it. You and I know he didn’t, but we must show them evidence. The time has come, Ruth, to dig out Charlies’s girlie pictures, wherever you’ve hidden them.’ His voice softened. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll tell Charles the police found and developed them.’

  I didn’t enjoy being humoured. I stared straight out into the darkness and said, ‘I can’t dig them out. I haven’t got them. I took the roll out of hiding and burned it.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Johnson, and then I got angry.

  ‘You know it’s nonsense,’ I said. ‘Even without the film, it must be perfectly obvious. Why on earth should Charles risk his career for the sake of selling a few couture secrets? He would be the first person suspicion would fall on. And no fashion house would ever employ him then, ever.’

  ‘It seems,’ said Johnson, ‘that it isn’t only a matter of skirt lengths. The traffic Mr Paladrini was helping to direct from his balloon cart was a traffic in real, old-fashioned espionage.’

  The Indians were filing out. I said, after a while, ‘Then the two men from the Villa Borghese? How did they come into the picture?’

  ‘They were security agents,’ Johnson said. ‘Large firms employ them. Also governments. Some marketable photographs were on their way to a vendor, and the agents thought, quite wrongly, these were in the camera Charles was carrying. They also thought they knew the interested parties. That was why they were killed. The first one, if you remember, was sold the gas-filled balloon by Paladrini.’

  ‘And,’ I said, ‘they think Charles killed the second security agent? And then slaughtered Mr Paladrini, who himself murdered the first?’ I remember giving a bray of cross laughter, dismissively. ‘They can’t believe that. It’s too bloody silly.’

  ‘Oh. Mr Paladrini was killed by his own side,’ Johnson said. ‘After his photograph was taken, he had to be. And the suicide note might have closed the police inquiry into the murders. As it was, the police think the man in the meat safe was shot by the intruder who twice found his way into the Dome. The man who knew where the trapdoor was, among other things. And who pinched the signed film, of course, from the vase in Maurice’s bedroom.’

  ‘Then,’ I said, ‘that couldn’t have been Charles, because of the Mouse Alarm.’

  My voice shook as I finished saying it and Johnson must have heard it because he said briskly, ‘Yes. That’s it, of course. The police know in theory that Charles cannot tolerate ultrasonic emissions, but only you and I know that it would be truly impossible for Charles to remain in the room while the alarm was transmitting.

  ‘No one could have faked that amount of distress, or even have known when to show it. Only Maurice and Timothy know when the alarm is switched on, and not even they know whether it is transmitting properl
y. But that morning it was guaranteed to be in perfect condition. Because I blew the fuse, if you remember. And within five minutes, Maurice’s electrician had repaired and tested it. During those five minutes we know that Charles was out of the chamber. We know that if he had come back he would have found the signal transmitting continuously. We know that there are no accomplices among the servants: they have been in Maurice’s employment for anything from twenty years upward. And we know that the servants admitted no strangers to the villa that morning, and that Di and Innes, who both came to see Maurice, called after the film had been stolen. I have told the police all this,’ Johnson said. ‘But, you know, it isn’t enough.’

  I said, my voice breaking out of its whisper, ‘What would be enough?’

  ‘Your film, but that’s burned,’ said Johnson mildly. ‘Proof then, that others are guilty. Evidence that while Charles is in prison, the real villain is still out there, operating. You’ve forgotten the fish.’

  ‘S.M. Capri twenty/fifteen hundred?’ I quoted. My heart was going like a pinball machine.

  ‘That’s what it said,’ Johnson acknowledged. A candle flame appeared in the darkness, moved across one lens of his glasses and disappeared as the waiter carrying it moved up the stairs. Johnson said, ‘The other paper I found in Paladrini’s flat was much more explicit. I didn’t tell you about that and I didn’t mention it to the Rome policemen either. It said San Michele, three p.m. twentieth Nov. It also said, Ischia, twelfth. Lipari, fifteenth. Taormina, seventeenth. Two of these are islands off the Italian coast, and the last is a small town in Sicily. No times or places were specified, but it seemed fairly clear to me what they were. These were the next trading points which Paladrini was to mark on his balloon fish. Each of these was a rendezvous between buyer and seller. The question is, did he manage to tell any buyers or sellers of these meeting points?’