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

by Dorothy Dunnett

  ‘By that time Sophia compromised herself by attempting to seize the watch, which she recognized as Charles’s and which they had already used for exactly this purpose. She lost her head over that rather, because I think she was truly jealous of you anyway. She left the Trust, as you know, when Charles became interested in you, and he must have had a hard time persuading her to continue helping him. He succeeded. It seemed to me that having lost the watch, as she thought, and also her chance of helping Charles, Sophia would quite cheerfully have allowed herself to fall over that wall at Taormina.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ said Maurice politely. Because they had all stopped smoking, the air had cleared oddly. Maurice, reclining on the Rape of Persephone was able to invoke, with every line of his handsome face, the spirits of justice and moderation, tempered on this occasion with the least drop of actor-manager’s acid.

  ‘Charles, I do think you should sit down. Fascinating though it all is, I hardly think there is a shred of real evidence against you. And I do want to make two little points. Johnson. Charles couldn’t have removed the signed film from the vase in this room. You know he couldn’t. The Mouse Alarm was on. It had been repaired the very instant you shorted it. And if the film was so important, why did you allow Sophia to take the watch in the end, even with the substitute film in it?’

  I knew what the answers were going to be. I didn’t even look at Johnson as he said gently, ‘Ah yes. The Mouse Alarm. Charles called to see if Ruth was with you, Maurice, after she had gone with me to Mr Paladrini’s without telling him – yet another indication, to Charles, that Ruth didn’t fully trust him. You didn’t even mention his visit, though you knew that Innes had called at the house, and that Di had also been, but after the film had been stolen. You thought, as everyone did, that the Alarm was on, and therefore he couldn’t go near your suite. But don’t you remember? Even Ruth and Diana and I in Rome were inconvenienced by it. There was a power cut that morning.’

  I had remembered. I had remembered Di’s bland voice at Renati’s. I remembered, inconsequently, the way Johnson had fascinated her. It was the last high-stake rubber she would play with him.

  ‘And you needed to hand over the watch?’ said Innes thoughtfully. ‘To ensure that Sophia rushed out and told somebody, as soon as she identified the fake on her enlarger?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Johnson. ‘We observed everyone going ashore at Capri that day, and we placed Charles most carefully out of reach in the chair lift. So Sophia darted out of the observatory and poured out her troubles to Diana. It was easy to guess then what was going to happen. Ruth had to disappear: she knew too much for her own good, and besides, once in Minicucci’s power, she could be persuaded to tell the whereabouts of that compromising film she had hidden. Charles didn’t believe it was burned any more than I did.

  ‘He also knew for the first time who I was. He was the only one among our group of suspects who did know, which made his authorship of the great abduction plot fairly plain. I hadn’t expected to be kidnapped on the high seas, but as soon as I saw that wreckage, and Charles leaped so briskly into Dolly’s speedboat, I smelled a rat. Sappho, of course, belonged to Minicucci: it was only a matter of Di giving instructions to the little man who liked to sing to the engines, and the necessary R/T conversations would take place. I heard Sappho’s launch coming under cover of Diana’s radio, and I even stayed below so that they could play it any way they wanted. But Charles wanted me out of the way. If I was an agent and had taken the nuclear film from the wristwatch, then I must be pretty sure what his share in the plot was.

  ‘There was an awkward moment,’ Johnson said. ‘Sappho’s launch didn’t take us to the harbour, where my people were waiting, and they landed us and got us into Minicucci’s car without being followed. But luckily, Charles knew exactly where we were all going. He made some excuse to leave for Rome after Diana and led Lenny – and, as it turned out, Innes – straight to the observatory. Then having checked with Diana that all was going well, he rushed about filling in his alibi until he discovered, to his horror, that we were alive and well and baring our bosoms at the police station. I’m glad you sat down,’ said Johnson to Charles quite calmly. ‘But although Maurice means to be kind, I shouldn’t like you to rely on his verdict. The case against you, to my mind, is overwhelming.’

  The telephone rang.

  ‘I doubt it,’ said Charles. He was sitting on the arm of one of Maurice’s Sicilian sofas, his blazer immaculate, his scarf neatly tied, his deep-collared shirt slightly crumpled. Because of the heat, the long hair which lay on his brow was stuck thickly together and curling a little bit at the ends. In bath steam, Charles’s hair curled up all over. He didn’t look at me or Jacko. He gave the impression, as it were, of speaking around us, so that there seemed no one in the room except himself and Johnson. He said, ‘You haven’t met my mother, Johnson, have you?’

  ‘I have,’ said Professor Hathaway. She got up and stretched. ‘I made a point of it, at a dinner at Number Ten, as I remember. I asked her where the instability was in the family.’

  The telephone rang again.

  ‘Instability?’ I said.

  ‘The grandfather made a fortune and shot himself. There was a cousin who was pretty notorious as well. I wanted to know who you were tying yourself to,’ said my sponsor. She picked up Maurice’s phone and answered it. ‘Pronto?’

  ‘I take it,’ said Charles to Johnson, with the same casual hauteur as before, ‘that you have no objection if I telephone the British Embassy for my protection?’ He stood up.

  ‘I’ve done that,’ said Johnson. ‘There are two cars downstairs now. One from the Embassy and one from the police, to take you back to the station. It is, as I said, the end of the joyride.’

  ‘Is it?’ said Charles. His eyes were full of fun. He looked as if, I thought, he was going to rip out an obituary notice and stride along, declaiming it to all who would listen. ‘Why, Lilian. Who was telephoning you? Lloyd George?’

  Professor Hathaway put down the telephone. ‘The police,’ she said. ‘I thought you wouldn’t object, Johnson, if I accepted the message. Diana has made a full confession.’

  ‘Bloody cow,’ said Charles.

  ‘A little tribute, true and tender:

  Just to show we still remember.’

  He stood up and hunted in his pocket and took out a revolver. I looked at Johnson but he didn’t move. Innes sat up.

  ‘Wait,’ said Johnson.

  We waited. By the coffee cups. I could hear Timothy breathing. Professor Hathaway, moving with dignity, perched herself on the bed beside Maurice. Jacko remained where he was, beside me, with his arm held tight around me. I didn’t mind. He was a nice boy, and I suppose I filled a sort of Diana-shaped space at the moment. Charles said, without pointing the gun at anybody in particular, ‘We can’t all be perfect. You made one hell of a mistake yourself.’ He pointed the gun at Johnson. ‘The red balloon. There was gas in it.’

  For a moment everyone was lost, and then I remembered. The car chase from the Castel Sant’ Angelo, among those balloons which Charles had assured us were gas-filled. And which had proved entirely harmless, but for the last one. ‘Ah, yes,’ said Johnson. ‘That was the place where I over-reached myself. Ruth should know – we had found the Paladrini address long before I took you there next morning. We found the explosive gas and we noticed the switch in the cylinders. So I set a trap.

  ‘There was never an appointment in Paladrini’s papers for the Castel Sant’ Angelo. The whole thing was a fabrication of mine to induce Charles to get into that balloon cart. To save his own life, as he thought, he had suddenly to produce a new theory about the toletta death being due to a gas balloon. More than that, he had to give away the switch of gas cylinders. In fact, I had filled the balloons from the harmless cylinder, and we had already made the lethal one harmless. The only thing I didn’t know was that Paladrini already had one or two explosive red balloons fastened to the pole of the toy cart. They weren’t loose, s
o it didn’t appear to matter, until the Chief of Police chanced to shoot one.’

  ‘You mean . . .’ I said. I shook Jacko’s hand off my arm and stared at Johnson.

  ‘The whole ride from the castle was my doing. I’m sorry,’ said Johnson. ‘At least. . . I’m not entirely sorry.’

  No. Charles hadn’t enjoyed that journey. Charles had been more scared than any of us. But Charles, of course, had been convinced that each blue balloon was a killer.

  Whereas the killer, I suppose, was Johnson. For prison would be the death of Charles. Not a few days in clink for an escapade. But the life of Dartmoor or Peterhead, year after year after year. No matter who his parents were.

  ‘Goodbye’, said Charles; and lifting his gun pulled the trigger, twice, in Johnson’s face.

  Nothing happened.

  ‘Did you think,’ said Johnson, ‘we should let you keep it with the bullets still inside? Be a good chap and come downstairs quietly. There are police outside. You really can’t get away.’

  Charles turned the gun towards himself and looked a long time in the muzzle. Then he shook it, and threw it down on the floor, dusting his hands afterwards. ‘Memories,’ he said, ‘don’t fade, they just grow deep. Of one we loved but could not keep.’ He grinned and, putting his hands in his pockets, began to walk backward towards Maurice’s study.

  Through that was a door to the public rooms, and a staircase which led to the loggia. Johnson said, ‘Charles. You’ve no transport, no money, no possible hope of escape. Don’t cause trouble. Come with me.’ And he walked quietly forward.

  Two things happened very suddenly. Charles turned and ran. And Maurice, stretching out a finger, pressed on a button.

  The scream came to us from the study. It went on and on, and even Johnson, caught striding over the threshold, stopped, too taken aback to move for a moment. Then he looked at Maurice and Maurice said, ‘He deserves it.’

  I wondered afterwards if he did deserve that. If you have ever seen a drugged fly hurling itself buzzing from wall to wall, blind and deaf and insensible to all but its agony, you will know what it was like to look at Charles in that room, howling, twisting and staggering, with all thought of escape stricken from him.

  Beside me was the coffeepot. Not far away was the wall panel: the famous wall panel of history, slowly twitching. I looked at the doorway and saw Johnson was looking at me in turn. Then he shook his head and walked forward to his prisoner.

  I don’t think Charles even heard him, or saw the hand stretching out for his sleeve. He gave a long hoot, like a Sicilian diesel, and plunging from Johnson’s reach, ran the length of the room to the windows.

  We heard the crash of the glass, but didn’t see him jump, in the darkness. It was a second floor, and there was no balcony.

  I wondered if, in some rodent paradise full of sunflower seeds. Poppy knew how tidy had been her requital.

  I have never been back to Italy. Maurice is dying, they say, now, and the pretty girls have all gathered around someone else, but Timothy still makes his coffee for him, and they have a new chauffeur who likes them.

  Jacko left the observatory for the Surface Weapons Establishment and when last heard of, he had a Zufenhausen Flyer and a nice flat with twin baths in Croydon.

  Innes finished his Incubator. It proved to be an instrument for the detection of neutrinos, and was every bit of the success that he expected. He was able to put it into production himself with the help of the United States Government and the £20,000 he won on ‘Rischia Tutto’ just before he left Rome for Christmas.

  I am working at the Zodiac Trust with Professor Hathaway, handing out and digesting projects with the help of a new computer and the extra physics man we got sanction to appoint on the strength of Johnson’s cheque for the Mouse Hall power cut.

  Johnson finished his portrait of the Pope. It was crated by the Vatican carpenters and left the Vatican station with an escort of cardinals for its sacerdotal quarters in London. They say His Holiness was so pleased with it that Johnson is to return to paint another for the Pontiff’s own study. Johnson says the Chief of Police has some reservations.

  Johnson comes to see Professor Hathaway on occasion, and I have had him in the computer room, watching us working. He and Conrad hit it off, which is a relief. Conrad is the new physics appointment. You never can tell, but it seems that he might be an asset.

  Johnson doesn’t appear to consider remarrying. Of course, he has his boat, and his painting. I’m glad to have known him. I feel quite differently, I find, about bifocal glasses. It is only obituary notices that I never read.

  What you suffered, you told but few

  You didn’t deserve what you went through.

  Tired and weary, you made no fuss

  But tried so hard to stay with us.

  Synopses of ‘Johnson Johnson’ Titles

  Published by House of Stratus

  Ibiza Surprise

  Life in Ibiza can be glorious and fast, especially for those who have money. Sarah Cassells is an intelligent girl and has many admirers. Having completed her training as a chef, she hears of her father’s violent death on the island, and refuses to believe it when told it was suicide. She becomes involved with a series of people who might be able to shed some light on events, including her brother who is an engineer for a Dutch firm from whom a secret piece of machinery has been stolen. As Ibiza prepares to celebrate an annual religious festival events become more convoluted and macabre. Sarah has choices to make; none are simple, but fortunately Johnson Johnson, the enigmatic portrait painter and master of mystery sails in on his yacht ‘Dolly’. Together they may get at the truth, but with murder, espionage and theft all entwined within the tale, there are constant surprises for the reader - and for Sarah!

  Moroccan Traffic

  The Chairman of Kingsley Conglomerates is conducting negotiations, which are both difficult and somewhat dubious, in Morocco. He is accompanied by executive secretary Wendy Helmann. However, there are soon distractions when unorthodox Rita Geddes appears on the scene. Wendy discovers that there is much more at stake than the supposed negotiations, and finds herself at the centre of kidnappings, murder, and industrial espionage. Explosions, a car chase across the High Atlas out of Marrakesh and much more follows. Of course, the prior arrival of portrait painter Johnson Johnson is in many ways fortuitous, but he has some ghosts of his own to lay.

  Operation Nassau

  Dr. B. McRannoch is in the Bahamas with her father who has moved there from Scotland because of asthma. She is a savvy and tough young lady who shows much independence of mind and spirit. However, when Sir Bart Edgecombe, a British agent who has been poisoned with arsenic falls ill on his way back from New York, she becomes involved in a series of events beyond her wildest imagination. Drawn into an espionage plot where there are multiple suspects and characters, it is only the inevitable presence of Johnson Johnson that saves the day. As with all of the Johnson series, nothing is quite as straightforward as it at first seems, and there are many complicating factors to grip the reader as well as the added bonus of another exotic location.

  Roman Nights

  Ruth Russell, an astronomer working at the Maurice Frazer Observatory, is enjoying herself in Rome – that is, until her lover, Charles Digham, a fashion photographer and writer of obituary verses, has his camera stolen. The thief ends up as a headless corpse in the zoo park tolleta. Johnson Johnson, enigmatic portrait painter, spy and sleuth, is in Rome to paint a portrait of the Pope and is therefore on hand to investigate in one of Dunnett’s usual thrilling and convoluted plots that grips the reader from cover to cover. There is something far more deadly at stake than just the secrets of a couture house …

  Rum Affair

  This mystery is told from the point of view of the ‘Bird’; Tina Rossi, a famous coloratura soprano who arrives to sing at the Edinburgh Festival, only to find a murder victim in a cupboard, whilst at the same time her lover, top scientist Kenneth Homes, has gone missing. Saved
from the long arm of the law by Johnson Johnson, a world renowned portrait painter and enigmatic solver of mysteries, Tina joins him on a yacht race to the Hebrides - there are connections anyway as Homes was conducting top secret research in the area. Here, though, there is yet more trouble and the mystery deepens as Johnson’s yacht ‘Dolly’ nears the island of Rum, where it turns into a race for life rather than prize money. This is the first title in the Johnson Johnson series and in common with the remainder involves an intricate plot and solution which is far from immediately obvious.

  Split Code

  Joanna Emerson, a trained nursery nurse, is hired as a nanny, albeit reluctantly, to the infant heir of a cosmetics fortune. She then becomes caught up in a complex kidnap plot. She is also an expert in codes and her purpose is to gain an insight into the opposition plan? But how does kidnapping further anyone’s interests? Commencing in Winnipeg, Manitoba, the story moves quickly through locations, as with many of Dunnett’s stories. On this occasion Joanna ends up on a crippled yacht off the coast of Yugoslavia. As always, both behind and aside from the plot and it’s inevitable conclusion is enigmatic portrait painter, yachtsman and former spy, Johnson Johnson. Bullets are flying, most of them in Joanna’s direction. Just how can this end?