‘‘Only the one night?’’
‘‘Yes. She left for Capri the following day and registered there at the Hôtel Vecchio.’’
Mrs. Winter was a restless mover. ‘‘And from there?’’
‘‘We have no notice of her having left. But of course it may not yet have come in.’’
I thanked him adequately. The police I said had been very kind, and he saw me out. Then I caught a taxi down to the docks. A boat I found was leaving at 2.30. I took that.
Chapter Seven
As I walked through the main square of Capri the hollow hell of the town dock was striking twenty-seven, though the fingers pointed to ten past five. I’d been here once before, in ’forty-six, when the island, was still shaking itself out after the war. That was August and a crowded one. Today there weren’t many people sitting in the square, and a good few of the coloured umbrellas had been taken in against the threat of wind. The Hôtel Vecchio was up one of the narrow slits running off from the cathedral, an alley no wider than an arm-stretch with arches propping the opposite sides three stories overhead. Following the usual job lot of people: bowed natives carrying wood, foreign residents in beach hats and blue jeans, old men with donkeys and young men with girls, I came to the end of the cobbled alley and climbed the slope to the hotel.
From what the policeman said I’d expected and hoped that this would be the end of the road, but when I asked about Mrs. Winter the receptionist shook his head. Mrs. Winter had stayed only one night. He didn’t know where she had gone. She bad left no forwarding address. I felt rather desperate at this, because it looked as if I was getting nowhere at all. I asked to see the manager. The manager was out. I asked for the under-manager. A dark young woman came out fastening a cameo to her blouse and I said I wanted a room. (I certainly did, for there was no way of leaving the island tonight.) The woman showed me up to one, and there I tackled her about Mrs. Winter again. I said I had information that she was still on the island, and I really must ask them to co-operate in helping me trace her. After a bit of fencing the woman, to my great relief, gave in and admitted that in fact Mrs. Winter hadn’t gone far and was staying with friends. She specially asked that her new address shouldn’t be given away to casual strangers. It seemed that Mrs. Winter was anxious to avoid some sort of publicity and she did not wish reporters. I said I was not a reporter and would treat any confidence with the greatest discretion. I could still hardly believe that the bluff had come off. The dark young woman pulled back the shutters of my bedroom, showing the sea going cobalt with the approach of evening; then with a little look under her eyes at me she said the address was care of Mme Weber, Villa Atrani.
Sometimes you follow a trail so closely that the trail becomes an end in itself and your mind doesn’t go beyond. This had happened to me now. I had been so full of the need to trace one of these two people who were bound up with Grevil’s death that, now I had apparently caught up with one, I was at a loss as to the next move. The first thing was to make sure there had been no mistake in identity. After that …
All through dinner I thought round it, and then after dinner I went for a stroll.
Going out in Capri after dark is always a secretive business—that’s if you get away from the few main ‘‘streets’’ and the square. It’s all as badly lighted as an early English film, and the lanes and alleys bend and twist and climb and fall on half a dozen different levels between the blank high walls of houses or private gardens which cut off a view of where you’re going or where you’ve come from. If you do meet a Capriote, the chances are he’ll hurry past with a half glance or a muttered good evening, or sometimes within a fan of light thrown by one of the infrequent street lamps there may be a group of young matrons sitting and gossiping with their children beside them; and then they’ll stop talking and watch you till you’re past. There’s a quietness about it all, a feeling of having to do with things which have no business with the superficial world of the tourist and the foreigner.
I went in the direction I’d been told, and after losing my way twice came on a couple of stone gateposts and a wrought-iron gate with a crest worked into the middle. On one gatepost was Villa and on the other Atrani. You couldn’t see the house—at least you couldn’t in the dark; only two big tree-ferns, and some yuccas and a curving path.
The narrow lane I was in went down some steps farther on and disappeared into darkness. The only light came from the back top window of an old house on a lower level. In the garden of the Villa Atrani it looked dark. I opened the gate slowly, and it made a noise like a soprano from the Scala, Milan. I went in.
You soon saw the lights of the house. It was a big place but built low, with a flat roof. At the front there was a long shallow verandah supported on baby Corinthian pillars. The lights were at both ends of the house. As I went up, the gravel crunched under my feet so I stepped upon the grass verge.
The blinds of the drawing-room hadn’t been let down, and I could just see in, though on a lower level. There was a tall heavily-built woman moving about, and once she came close to the window to pick a dead petal off some flowers in a vase. Then I saw a man, a dark handsome chap probably about forty. He was wearing a reefer coat and a polo sweater, and beside him was a tall thin woman with an enormously long cigarette holder between her teeth. They were looking at something together out of my sight. Then the first woman bent down and a dog barked.
I heard something else too: the shrill creak of the gate behind me and the sound of footsteps coming up the path.
It was too late to move far into the undergrowth; the sort of foliage round me would make a lot of noise if shoved quickly aside; I leaned back against a palm tree.
Three people; they went past very close; a slim fair girl in a scarlet blouse and dark slacks, a young very dark man with a hooked nose and a limp, a plump girl in a white sweater and jeans. They were talking together. The man said in English:
‘‘That is putting temptation in the way of me. You are very rash. You are both very rash.’’
The fair girl said: ‘‘I don’t believe you ever thought of it before. Did he, Jane?’’
‘‘Well, I guess he never thought of it in my presence.’’
As they went up the steps the man said something more to the fair girl that I couldn’t catch and she laughed.
The door of the house opened and they went in.
Perhaps I should have taken that interruption as a warning, but I didn’t I thought if I could get up near to the window I could see right in.
A firefly darted across the path as I moved up it. I had gone perhaps a dozen steps when the door of the house suddenly opened again. I backed into the shrubbery. The big woman I had first seen in the room was silhouetted against the light. She walked with a stick, and after a second two great dogs bounded out from beside her. One gave a deep throated bark and came straight down the path. I saw it was a mastiff.
‘‘Macy!’’ the woman shouted. ‘‘ Macy, don’t you dare go out of the grounds, dear!’’
The dog came straight for me. I backed an inch or two, but it was no good. He came off the path and stopped about a yard away. He opened his mouth and gave off a noise that was half a bark and half a cough.
I muttered to him in a low voice: ‘‘Good dog. Good dog.’’
The mastiff made no move but just looked at me as if waiting for me to start running. That was when the fun would begin. There was a trampling in the undergrowth as the other dog came at me by a less direct route.
I put out my hand.
The second mastiff pushed his way through some decayed canna lilies and also saw me and stopped. He growled, low and deep. Mastiffs have big heads. This one was dribbling at the sides of its jowl.
‘‘Macy! Gimbel!’’ said the woman. ‘‘Don’t you dare go out of the garden!’’ She began to come down the steps.
The first dog moved a few paces nearer and sniffed at my hand. He didn’t look as if the smell pleased him, but at least it was a sign of hesitation.
I didn’t move. The second dog growled again.
‘‘Gimbel,’’ I muttered.
‘‘Who’s there?’’ said the woman. ‘‘Is anyone there?’’
After what seemed a very long time Macy turned away and began sniffing at some leaves. I wasn’t sure but thought there was a movement of his tail. The other chap now came over and examined the leg of my trousers. I should have been a lot happier if his tail had moved too.
The woman was at the bottom of the steps but didn’t come any farther. She had stopped to light a cigarette. I took my life in my bands and patted Macy’s head. He shook it, and a tiny bell rattled round his neck. Gimbel was now making extraordinary inhaling noises as if the smell of me was giving him asthma. Macy stretched up, and his head came level with my top waistcoat button.
The woman called to them again. Slowly, with obvious reluctance, Macy detached himself and ambled up the path. Gimbel, later here, was later going.
The fair girl came to the door. ‘‘Are you all right, Mme Weber?’’
‘‘I hope I am, Leonie darling. Gimbel and Macy are being very naughty. They know they should stay with me and not go off into the overgrown part of the garden. Provokin’. One never knows, one might meet a snake.’’
I couldn’t hear the girl’s reply because at that moment Macy came into Mme Weber’s view and went wuffling and wagging up to her, and she immediately rounded on him, calling down the wrath of God on him in such honeyed tones that he thought he was being praised.
Jealousy was stirred in Gimbel, and he abruptly left me and went off up the path. Presently the two women and the two dogs went in and the door closed. I wiped my hand, which was wet with Macy’s saliva, on the leaf of a convenient banana tree, and made a move to leave the gardens. Before I did so a light came on in one of the bedrooms upstairs and I saw Leonie Winter lean out and pull the shutters to.
I walked back to the hotel and had a few minutes more conversation with the manageress. Now that she had given way on the first point, she seemed quite willing to talk. She told me that Mme Weber was a well-known personage on the Island and fostered local painting.
Later I spent an hour deciphering and writing out the first pages of Grevil’s archæological notes. On the fifth page there was a reference to Buckingham. ‘‘Authority in this district scarcely exists—planters cannot live on estates but come weekly to inspect, under convoy. Even Indonesians do not venture out at night for fear of bandits. Rubber trees cut down for firewood in their thousands. No wonder we were attacked. Buckingham’s behaviour then is in keeping with his general attitude towards this state of affairs, which he argues is the most natural in the world. Civilisation as we know it, he says, is a glacial condition preserving what is dead and done with and preventing true development which occurs only in flux and thaw. Absolute moonshine, I tell him. We wrangle amiably long after dark. Have decided to check up on his report of fossils in Urtini river bed and we shall leave Djandowi tomorrow. He’s very knowledgeable on archæology—apparently would listen to me all night if I would go on—but what his practical experience is am not at all sure; no doubt shall know more by Thursday!’’
A couple of entries later come the first one headed ‘‘Urtini’’. ‘‘This location not dissimilar from ancient terraces of Solo below first Trinil site, and the resemblance is the more encouraging, even though all finds so far of undoubted Pleistocene date—probably Chellean. The two teeth dug yesterday much worn and their nature inconclusive. The trace of an expansion of the pulp cavity, but their transverse diameter is significant. I am sure Pangkal is wrong in attributing to orangutan.
‘‘Shall probably stay here several weeks, Buckingham having certainly justified himself. A man of many talents, but with a philosophy at once egocentric and destructive. Of course it’s very typical of the age but carried farther than I like to see it carried. Irritating to find it in so worthy a man and on one’s own doorstep so to speak!’’
My eyes skipped hastily along trying to find the name again. But it didn’t turn up in the next few pages so I came back and went on with the deciphering.
The following morning was brilliantly clear and fine, one of those magic days that you see at their best in Italy when the world looks as if it has been re-created while you slept. There’s an innocence about it that wind or cloud may probably soil later, but to begin with even their existence isn’t to be thought of.
I did not know the plans at the Villa Atrani bur I’d a good idea what most people want to do on a morning like this, so after breakfast I walked into the noisy square, bought myself bathing trunks and rope-soled shoes and took a bus.
I got down to the sea and swam straight away. The water was cold and took and very buoyant. Afterwards I hired a canoe and paddled round the little beaches, keeping close in-shore. On the western-most and most unspoiled I saw four people lying in the sun and thought they were the likeliest. I paddled in between two rocks and took an interest in the sea bed until they moved. Then I recognised the dark man and the shape of Leonie Winter’s head.
As I turned the canoe and headed away, a very handsome motor yacht entered the bay and came close in-shore. Leonie Winter waved and I recognised the man at the wheel as the man in the reefer jacket who had been in the Villa Atrani last night.
When I got in I took up a position between the sun-bathers and the motor road. Whatever their means of transport, thev must come this way.
By now it was noon, I smoked and lay in the sun beside a pool. There were not a lot of people about this morning, and I felt myself likely to be conspicuous as a newcomer. At twenty to one the two girls came past me. The men, it seemed, were staying down. A crowd was gathering for the quarter to one bus. The girls joined it. I did too.
So I got my first real look at her.
She was wearing only a blue linen blouse cut sailor fashion, and brief blue linen shorts with a white stripe down the side and scarlet rope bathing shoes.
People don’t queue in Italy. First come first served is an axiom foreign to their temperament. When the bus arrived there was an unprincipled scramble, and as I was chiefly interested in being near the two girls I wasn’t lucky over a seat. Instead I stood close beside them, strap-hanging immediately over them while a tall Italian woman elbowed my ribs from behind.
The other girl was doing all the talking, with an American accent, about a flirtation she was having with someone called Nicolo. Leonie Winter only nodded her fair head occasionally in an absent-minded way. Her shortish hair looked casually untidy but in fact it had been cut that way by a first-rate hairdresser. In the bus her legs were golden with the sun, and the tiny hairs on them, that you couldn’t see except in sunshine, gave them a polished golden sheen. They were a very good shape, you had to admit that
The bus palpitated into life, the door concertinaed the last struggling people in and the driver started off with a jerk. We rounded the first hairpin with a lurch and a swerve. I was carrying my rope-soled shoes, which were very wet, and I now changed hands with them and saw the first drops fall on Leonie Winter’s leg.
They’d been buying ice-cream, Nicolo and Jane, and Nicolo had said if you put brown ice-cream against white … and Jane had said … Leonie Winter moved her right leg. I shifted my arm and the drops of sea water began to fall on her left.
‘‘So I said to Nicolo, ‘My dear, you can’t suppose, you just can’t suppose that I mean that …’ ’’
The second hairpin. The bus accelerated into the first straight climb. A hand touched my arm. I looked down. It was the plump girl, staring at me with pleasant friendly eyes.
‘‘Do pardon me, but your shoes are dripping on to my friend.’’
I looked at Leonie Winter. She had tried to move her legs out of the way but hadn’t quite made it. She wasn’t looking up or looking at anything in particular.
‘‘I’m sorry.’’ I moved the shoes into the other hand. ‘‘ I’m very sorry indeed …’’
The American girl smiled nicely enough; the other
girl didn’t stir. I looked at her legs and fished a clean handkerchief out of my breast pocket.
‘‘It was very careless of me,’’ I said. I bent and dabbed her legs with the handkerchief. I dabbed them both a couple of times, and then she moved them. Still she hadn’t looked up.
I put my handkerchief away and smiled back at the plump girl.
She said: ‘‘It’s these buses. They’re quite awful. One never knows how they’re going to behave.’’
‘‘Or the people in them.’’
She laughed. ‘‘Oh, I don’t know. You take it as it comes.’’
‘‘Fine if you have the right temperament.’’
She said: ‘‘Everyone develops the right temperament in time.’’
I said: ‘‘You’ve evidently been here some time.’’
The bus lurched to a stop, throwing everyone more or less in a heap. Round a bend two donkey carts were stopped abreast while the drivers talked over the municipal elections.
‘‘Mother of Heaven,’’ said the Italian woman. ‘‘ Your pardon, signore. That was your toe?’’
The bus ground its way past the carts with an inch or so of the road to spare. We went on and up. A few hundred yards from the terminus we stopped at what I recognised was the back entrance to the Villa Atrani. The two girls and some others fought their way out.
Leonie Winter looked at me for the first time. She got down. Jane smiled and nodded a friendly goodbye.
That afternoon I had a stroke of luck. I walked down to the square and passed near the bank, which had just reopened after its siesta. Outside the door, tied by a lead to a stone post, were two small yellow-brown lion-cub-like puppies.
People were milling around and I could see the bank was crowded. I strolled over and bent down and began to stroke one of the puppies. I was in no danger of losing a couple of fingers or half a leg today. They were nice little brutes, these two, and fell over each other making friends with me. They climbed over my shoes on wobbly bow legs, and bits of tail waved in the air. They sat and scratched themselves and shook their muzzles and then came back for more. I was pretty sure it was her feet and rubber-tipped stick before she spoke in Italian.
The Little Walls Page 8