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

by Dorothy Dunnett

  I didn’t mean to sound anxious. I did mean Johnson to clasp me by the hand and say, richly laughing, that it didn’t matter. Instead he said, eyeing the shallows, that it probably didn’t, provided that Charles wasn’t caught in the Villa Michele handing over a submarine to a masked man in knee boots. Then he got the engine going and we wheeled out in an arc towards Dolly.

  He didn’t talk, and I wondered how I had offended him. Perhaps he was cross because I wouldn’t come to Capri when he needed me, but would change all my plans to meet Charles there. Or was it possible that he had thought all along that Charles was guilty, and that he was annoyed that the Rome police had freed him?

  Surely not. He was a clever man. And he had been honest with me.

  It was a wonderful night; warm and bright with Dolly and Sappho resting each on a gloss of lit water. Farther out, the big fishing boats moved about, no longer gaudy blue and orange but graceful as gondolas with the lanterns hung bright in their prows.

  On the land, the frantic traffic had slowed down at last: the khaki trains had ceased to hurtle past, blaring into the bowels of the next hill, their interminable trucks snaking after them. The streams of pale cars and lorries of incredible colour and length crossing the straddling bright orange viaducts no longer filled the air with chirps and burbles and chortles, or the single, embittered cry with which they raced from tunnel to tunnel.

  All had died away. Only by the constellations pricking the hills could you tell where the villages lay, and only when you looked at them long enough did you see how the hill lights were mixed with the stars.

  The hill lights looked the more friendly. Perhaps I had chosen to turn my eyes in quite the wrong direction.

  When we reached and climbed aboard Dolly, Jacko and Innes were there at the rail to help bring in my suitcase. Professor Hathaway had already left, they said, to become Maurice’s guest on the Sappho.

  Innocent that I am, I thought this left me the use of the master cabin. Then I saw the litter of striped velvet luggage and met six pairs of disgusted blue eyelashes, as Di emerged nude from my loo and surveyed me.

  ‘Christ!’ said Di. ‘It’s like having a continuous ink-flow ear tattooing machine for my bloody birthday. Why aren’t you flying to Naples?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘if I’m spoiling anything. Charles is out. He’s meeting us all on Capri.’

  ‘In that case,’ said Di, picking up a lit cigarette and heeling her clothes, with some effect, on to one of the bunks, ‘can we poor groaning bitches hope that you will settle down to one of your men and fling the other one out for retexturing?’

  I said, ‘I thought you were pairing with Jacko.’ I was sorry for Jacko. Even after seeing what he had got hold of in Lipari, I was sorry for him.

  ‘Ruth darling. A Minicucci,’ said Di, ‘always has the master bedroom. But not usually, I may say, with a bloody girl in it.’

  There was a brief silence. ‘Well,’ I said finally, ‘I’m not pairing with Jacko. Hard luck, Minicucci. If you don’t like the hen run, you’ll have—’

  ‘. . . to make do with the cockpit,’ said Di bitterly, echoing me. The thing she put on for dinner was, I swear, infrared as well as transparent and I sat back and watched Jacko squirming. I ate insalata mista (i sardina; patate gr. 100). Innes got lightly squiffed and Johnson talked, as I remember, about Samurai body-painting, while sketching Di’s trunk on the cloth in French mustard.

  That man is an intellectual snob, a pouf and a traitor.

  Charles was waiting for us on the strip of quay under the rock face at Capri playing football with the local kids when Dolly sailed into the harbour on Monday. He lobbed the ball and turned to catch the rope Lenny chucked him. It was morning and the sun was shining and he was wearing his hair brushed sideways and a chain belt and a Renaissance gold locket I’d given him and a grin with Entrapped Butter Flavour that would have warmed Timothy’s cockles.

  Sappho, which had sailed with us all the way from Taormina, was just coming in behind us to drop Sophia, but Charles didn’t give her a glance. He vaulted aboard Dolly before Johnson had laid down the gangplank and collected me in a very satisfactory fashion. After a long, suffocating interval he let me go and kissed Di, who was wearing a scowl and a large cotton Stetson.

  He mentioned, with a considering expression, that I had grown a few bones since he left me. I didn’t mention the diet. But I felt I had arrived at the great crossroads of my pilgrimage: the moment of transfer from Dieta Dimagrante to Dieta Mantenimento.

  He didn’t comment on my blighted ear because I wore a silk head scarf tied pirate-style over it. The effect was rakish. Sappho, whose little man had the disadvantage of having Maurice and Timothy to tell him what to do, arrived rather unhandily and began to back into position beside us. In a moment, a lot of luggage was going to come off, followed by Sophia Lindrop. Charles was saying, ‘. . . So Sassy got three months, the absolute idiot, and they let me go free with a talking-to. Mother asked where you were. She wants a chat with you.’ He added, without changing his tone,

  ‘You loved me, mother, when I was small

  And I won’t forget you now I’ve grown tall.’

  ‘Still no sale,’ I said calmly. ‘My family wouldn’t let me tie myself to a jailbird.’

  He cuffed my ear, and I let out a yell that would have made all the Valkyries drop their spears and Wotan go pretty spare into the bargain. Charles snatched back his fingers.

  ‘Her ear,’ Johnson explained. ‘Sophia bit it, trying to get your watch back.’

  Charles said, ‘Bit it!’ over a drop of eight semitones just as Sappho’s companionway thudded into position and Maurice and Professor Hathaway and Timothy appeared at the head of it, all taking turns at kissing Sophia. Then she began to walk down it followed by Timothy, a steel-banded leather case in each hand. She was wearing white knee socks with a camel-hair jacket and Bermudas, and her smooth hair was bound with a bandeau. Below her dark glasses her face looked pale and pure and pathetically vulnerable.

  She knew I was on Dolly, having seen me. But she didn’t know our jailbird was at liberty. She stalked down to the quay and pulled up short, to find Charles looming over her. The rest of us, hesitating on the plank, stepped on to the quay and stood doubtfully watching them. Charles rested one hand on his hip and stared down at Sophia’s upturned glasses.

  ‘Charles! You’re free! I’m so glad!’ said Sophia quickly. She lifted both hands and held them towards him. The inside of her mouth, even, looked pallid.

  He smiled. It was a deep, groovy smile and anyone might have been thrilled with it, except that he still didn’t say anything. He didn’t take her hands either. Sophia’s eyes behind her dark glasses turned slightly in my direction and then back to Charles. She said, ‘Darling? I have so much to say to you. Come. Maurice will let us sit down and talk. You are not looking well.’

  I moved around and looked at him. He was looking well. He just didn’t look sent over Sophia. She said, ‘Or in the town? Let me put my bags in the observatory, and we shall meet somewhere and talk. You do not know what has been happening, Charles. You must listen to me while I tell you.’

  ‘Oh, I know what’s been happening,’ said Charles mildly. ‘You attacked a scientific worker from a private observatory and made off with her personal property. Ruth hasn’t gone to the police, but I shall.’

  ‘She told you that?’ said Sophia. ‘But do you really think, knowing me, that I would want anyone else’s belongings? What I wished back was yours, the watch I had given you.’ She lifted her hands nervously to her glasses and, taking them off, stood looking down into them. She said, whispering, ‘It broke my heart to see her wearing it.’

  There was a tear, actually, on her cheek. It glistened in the sunshine and Timothy’s eyes became misty. He put down the suitcases. ‘I expect it did, darling,’ said Charles callously. He was still standing squarely in front of her, his hand on his hip. ‘But it still wasn’t your property. I worked for that bloody watch on a
standard wage scale with guaranteed overtime rates and workers’ grievance procedures and if you want it back you’ll have to apply to the union. If I chose to hand it to a one-eyed Singhalese elephant driver, it’d still be none of your bloody business. Hand it over.’

  I stood there like a one-eyed Singhalese elephant driver and wondered what line Sophia could possibly take. She said abruptly, ‘I wanted something of yours. Something to keep when you are not with me. Something to remember you by.’

  Charles held his stomach and slid the hand from his hip into his pocket. It came out with a fiver, English money, which he slapped into Sophia’s palm and abandoned there. ‘Something of mine,’ said Charles lucidly. ‘You’ve laid your oversexed little claws on my girl, darling Sophia, and if I weren’t a gentleman you would be hitting that water, with a fat jaw to show just what I think of you. I want that watch, and I am not waiting, really, any longer. My watch. Or the police, Sophia. Or if you’d like it better I’ll strip you here and now, till I find it.’

  He had the right idea, even if his enthusiasm now and then ran away with him. Timothy was sitting on one of the suitcases and Johnson on the other while Innes fidgeted, red-faced and aghast, just behind them. The complement of Sappho were not quite visible but definitely, I thought, within earshot; Jacko and Diana appeared to be neither. It came to me that while the cameras were rolling, Jacko was probably having it off in my cabin. Excitement takes some people that way. Everything takes Jacko that way, and Di quicker than anybody. Then Charles lifted his hand and Sophia screamed, ‘She shan’t have it!’

  ‘Give it!’ Charles commanded. He had her by the elbow.

  ‘She shan’t! The jackal! The whore! The hag, she shan’t have my watch that I gave you. The promises you made me!’ She was crying now, her arm wrenched back from Charles’s grip; the glasses jerking as she flung her hands upward. ‘What else is she wearing of mine?’

  ‘A bloody ear. Would you like one to match it?’ Charles added. The children had stopped playing football and were staring at him.

  Sophia turned her head, breathing heavily. Timothy, transfixed by her gaze, stood up slowly. Johnson, with interest, rose to his feet smoothly also. ‘Timothy. Shall we go on?’ said Sophia abruptly. Timothy hesitated.

  Sophia sidestepped and walked sharply past Charles. Charles instantly moved just as quickly and planted himself in her path once again. ‘Not before I have the watch back,’ he said baldly. Timothy, lifting the cases, wandered up and stood helpfully behind them.

  ‘No,’ said Sophia. She moved to the right.

  Charles moved to the right.

  She moved to the left.

  He stepped sideways and blocked her.

  She walked six paces, very fast, to the rock wall and, as he made to follow her, she bent and seized the children’s ball which had dropped to her feet.

  She might not have played all that much hockey, but she would have been a sensation at rounders. She chucked the ball straight at Charles’s chest and if he hadn’t fielded it with a snatch, he might well have been carried right over the quayside.

  She had already started to run when he caught it. He whirled with the ball in his hands and, lifting it, hurled it straight after her. It hit her behind the Bermudas. She went full length on the path, with Timothy, uttering little cries, jettisoning the suitcases and charging after her. The rest of us followed more slowly.

  Timothy was helping her up when Charles arrived. Her glasses were cracked and the look on her face as she flung them off almost made up for what happened in Taormina. Charles said, ‘The watch, please, Sophia.’

  I didn’t know why the hell it mattered, but it seemed that it did. Perhaps it was symbolic or something. I know by that time I couldn’t have cared if I had been offered Big Ben next to take home on castors. At any rate, Sophia knew when she was beaten. She put her hand into her bag and drew out Charles’s beautiful watch. She held it out, and he reached out to take it. Then she dropped it on the path and ground it under her stout heel to powder.

  We all looked at Charles, including Johnson, who now strolled forward, his bifocals glistening. He said, ‘Go on. Sock her one and then throw her over the quayside.’

  Charles, who had both his fists up, pulled himself together. ‘What?’ he said.

  ‘Decadent product of a Victorian educational system,’ Johnson said. He footed the ball in the direction of the children, who trapped it without moving and continued to stand in a trance, staring. Sophia kicked the remains of the wristwatch.

  ‘There!’ she said, ‘so much for your token of love. It is no use your coming to me when you are tired of her. I never want to see you again.’

  ‘Charles,’ I murmured. I was afraid he would cease to be a decadent product of a Victorian system and actually sock it to her. ‘You have to concede a ruff and discard. Goodbye, Sophia.’

  ‘Goodbye, Sophia,’ everyone said, eventually, in varying cadences. Timothy picked up the bags. After a moment, she turned on her heel and walked off, followed gently by Timothy. I said, ‘Charles. Now you won’t be able to go to her when you’re tired of me. She said she met you in Naples.’

  ‘She certainly did,’ said Charles with some feeling. ‘She wanted all her presents back. I told her she could have them when I got back the price of her engagement ring.’

  ‘She didn’t offer you a bed,’ I suggested happily, ‘whenever you felt like a little variety?’

  ‘Come off it,’ said Charles. ‘Of course she did. Do you think I’m losing my first bloom or something? She offered, and I fancy I kept her hoping. It’s supposed to be kinder.

  ‘Memories are like threads of gold,

  Never tarnish or grow old.’

  ‘It is not kinder,’ I said firmly, ‘to the older, permanent workforce. Please be realistic in your dealings in future.’

  ‘Come on,’ said Johnson. ‘The ball’s at your feet, Digham’s Jackal.’

  It was, too. I even kicked a couple of goals, as I remember. Then I recalled it was the morning of Monday, November 20, and the day of the late Mr Paladrini’s last assignment and my footwork went off.

  SIXTEEN

  I told Charles after that who Johnson was. He took a long time to believe it and even when I brought Johnson in to confirm it, he couldn’t quite keep his face straight. I was glad I had mentioned it. The letter I wrote to Charles in prison had never reached him and he had begun to wonder, who wouldn’t, what the hell I was up to, wandering about the Tyrrhenian in Johnson’s yacht in November.

  So I told him about the list of dates, and what had happened on all the islands, which was a complete mistake because his chromosomes all began waving flags and he settled down nose to nose with Johnson in my stateroom masterminding the afternoon’s visit to the Villa San Michele.

  I squeezed up and down, passing them gins and pointing out that now it didn’t matter a damn. Nobody was assaulting us, so the criminal element must have come to realize that Charles’s pictures were truly disposed of. Charles wasn’t implicated any longer. The idea that anyone in authority might have suspected him of complicity in the murders was so novel that we couldn’t get him to take that seriously either and stopped trying. The final stupid outcome of that masculine conference was that both twits were hell-bent on going to the Villa San Michele that afternoon and neither appeared to think it necessary, as I kept pointing out, for Charles to get the hell out of it. The other natural disaster was that I had to tell Charles I had developed his photographs.

  I kept my cool, telling him because I’d had twenty-four hours to rehearse it in. Johnson lit his pipe. Charles went rather red and then said, reasonably, ‘Why?’

  I wished Johnson wasn’t there. I wished I had had two minutes alone with Charles since Sophia departed and we had all come back on board Dolly. I said, and could feel my own face growing hot, ‘I thought you knew they’d pinched the wrong camera. I thought you’d been using the other one perhaps for pictures of Sophia.’

  I could feel Johnson looking at
me and I didn’t care. I’ve never met a man yet who minded his girlfriend being jealous of someone else. But I wasn’t going to let Charles know my faith in him had dimmed, even for the space of an evening. I said, ‘I was an ass. And I’m sorry I burned them. Johnson says if I hadn’t, it would have cleared you of suspicion immediately.’

  I added, tentatively,

  ‘The kindness of his nature

  The sunshine of his smile

  Are things I shall remember

  and treasure all the while.’

  ‘I’m not sorry,’ Charles said. He took my hand and pulling me suddenly down to sit beside him continued to hold it so tightly that it hurt. He said rather thickly, ‘They were rotten pictures anyway,’ and at that moment, thank God, Johnson remembered something he had to do, and took himself off.

  When we both emerged, to let a sarcastic Diana have access at last to her stateroom, it was to find that the spy fever had spread like foot-and-mouth disease through both yachts, embracing even the worldly sybarites of the Sappho, who had come on board Dolly to lunch with us. At three o’clock that afternoon, I could see, the Villa San Michele was liable to be thronged by excited astronomers calling to one another the now classic phrase, Let’s capture the bastards.

  Johnson did what he could to defuse us. ‘Do remember,’ he said, uncorking bottles. ‘Unless the message in Paladrini’s flat has been seen and understood by the two parties concerned – the seller of information and the purchaser – nothing will happen today whatsoever.’

  Innes recrossed his legs irritably. He said, ‘Anyone looking for information about his next rendezvous wouldn’t find Paladrini’s flat, surely, hard to get into. Relatives, to remove the effects. Workmen, to repair the ceiling.’

  ‘It seems mad to me,’ Jacko said. ‘Why smuggle over the date of an appointment when you might as well hand over the loot on the spot?’