by Ngaio Marsh
‘So glad you are joining us, Mr Allen,’ said Sebastian Mailer. ‘Do come and meet the others, won’t you? May I introduce—’
The Baron and Baroness were cordial. Grant looked hard at him, nodded with what seemed to be an uneasy blend of reluctance and good manners, and asked him if he knew Rome well.
‘Virtually, not at all,’ Alleyn said. ‘I’ve never been here for more than three or four days at a time and I’m not a systematic sightseer.’
‘No?’
‘No. I want things to occur and I’m afraid spend far too much time sitting at a caffè table waiting for them to do so which of course they don’t. But who knows? One of these days the heavens may open and big drama descend upon me.’
Alleyn was afterwards to regard this as the major fluke-remark of his career. At the moment he was merely astonished to see what an odd response it drew from Barnaby Grant. He changed colour, threw an apprehensive glance at Alleyn, opened his mouth, shut it and finally said ‘Oh,’ without any expression at all.
‘But today,’ Alleyn said, ‘I hope to improve my condition. Do we, by any chance, visit one of your Simon’s haunts? That would be a wonderful idea.’
Again Grant seemed to be about to speak and again he boggled. After a sufficiently awkward pause he said: ‘There’s some idea of it. Mailer will explain. Excuse me, will you.’
He turned away. All right, Alleyn thought. But if you hate it as much as all this, why the hell do you do it?
He moved on to Sophy Jason, who was standing apart and seemed to be glad of his company. We’re all too old for her, Alleyn thought. Perhaps the nephew of Lady Braceley will meet the case but one doubts it. He engaged Sophy in conversation and thought her a nice intelligent girl with a generous allowance of charm. She looked splendid against the background of azaleas, Rome and a pontifical sky.
Before long Sophy found herself telling Alleyn about her suddenly-bereaved friend, about this being her first visit to Rome, about the fortunate accident of the cancellation and finally about her job. It really was extraordinary, she suddenly reflected, how much she was confiding to this quiet and attentive stranger. She felt herself blushing. ‘I can’t imagine why I’m gabbling away like this!’ she exclaimed.
‘It’s obliging of you to talk to me,’ Alleyn said. ‘I’ve just been, not exactly slapped back but slightly edged off by the Guest of Honour.’
‘Nothing to what I was!’ Sophy ejaculated. ‘I’m still cringing.’
‘But—isn’t he one of your publisher’s authors?’
‘He’s our great double-barrel. I was dumb enough to remind him that I had been presented by my boss. He took the news like a dose of poison.’
‘How very odd of him.’
‘It was really a bit of a facer. He’d seemed so unfierce and amiable on the earlier occasion and has the reputation in the firm of being a lamb. Aren’t we rather slow getting off our mark? Mr Mailer is looking at his watch.’
‘Major Sweet’s twenty minutes late and so are Lady Braceley and the Hon. Kenneth Dorne. They’re staying at the—‘ He broke off. ‘Here, I fancy, they come.’
And here, in fact, they came and there was Mr Mailer, his beret completely off, advancing with a winning and proprietary air towards them.
Alleyn wondered what first impression they made on Sophy Jason. For all her poise and obvious intelligence he doubted if the like of Sonia Braceley had ever come her way. Alleyn knew quite a lot about Sonia Braceley. She began life as the Hon. Sonia Dorne and was the daughter of a beer-baron whose children, by and large, had turned out disastrously. Alleyn had actually met her, many years ago, when visiting his Ambassadorial elder brother George at one of his official Residences. Even then she had what his brother, whom Alleyn tolerantly regarded as a bit of an ass, alluded to as ‘a certain reputation’. With the passage of time, this reputation had consolidated. ‘She has experienced everything,’ Sir George had weightily quipped, ‘except poverty.’
Seeing her now it was easy to believe it. It’s the legs, Alleyn thought. More than the precariously maintained mask or the flabby underarm or the traitorous neck. It’s the legs. Although the stockings are tight as a skin they look as if they should hang loose about these brittle spindle-shanks and how hazardously she’s balanced on her golden kid sandals. It’s the legs.
But the face was not too good either. Even if one discounted the ruches under the eyes and the eyes themselves, there was still that dreadfully slack mouth. It was painted the fashionable livid colour but declared itself as unmistakably as if it had been scarlet: the mouth of an elderly Maenad.
Her nephew bore some slight resemblance to her. Alleyn remembered that his father, the second Lord Dorne, had been rapidly divorced by two wives and that the third, Kenneth’s mother, had been, as George would have said, ‘put away’. Not much of a start, Alleyn thought, compassionately, and wondered if the old remedy of ‘live on a quid-a-day and earn it,’ would have done anything for Kenneth Dorne.
As they advanced, he noticed that the young man watched Mailer with an air that seemed to be made up of anxiety, furtiveness and perhaps subservience. He was restless, pallid, yellow and damp about the brow. When Mailer introduced him and he offered his hand it proved to be clammy as to the palm and tremulous. Rather unexpectedly, he had a camera slung from his shoulder.
His aunt also shook hands. Within the doeskin glove the fingers contracted, momentarily retained their clasp and slowly withdrew. Lady Braceley looked fixedly into Alleyn’s eyes. So she still, he thought, appalled, gives it a go.
She said: ‘Isn’t this fun?’ Her voice was beautiful.
Mailer was at her elbow with Grant in tow: ‘Lady Braceley, may I present? Our guest of honour—Mr Barnaby Grant.’
She said: ‘Do you know you’re the sole reason for my coming to this party? Kenneth, with a team of wild horses, wouldn’t have bullied me into sightseeing at this ghastly hour. You’re my “sight”.’
‘I don’t know,’ Grant said rapidly, ‘how I’m meant to answer that. Except that I’m sure you’ll find the Church of S. Tommaso in Pallaria much more rewarding.’
‘Is that where we’re going? Is it a ruin?’ she asked, opening her devastated eyes very wide and drawling out the word. ‘I can’t tell you how I hate roo-ins.’
There was perhaps one second’s silence and then Grant said: ‘It’s not exactly that. It’s—well, you’ll see when we get there.’
‘Does it come in your book? I’ve read your book—that Simon one—which is a great compliment if you only knew it because you don’t write my sort of book at all. Don’t be huffy. I adored this one although I haven’t a clue, really, what it’s about. You shall explain it to me. Kenneth tried, didn’t you, darling, but he was even more muddling than the book. Mr Allen, come over here and tell me—have you read the last Barnaby Grant and if you have, did you know what it was about?’
Alleyn was spared the task of finding an answer to this by the intervention of Sebastian Mailer who rather feverishly provided the kind of raillery that seemed to be invited and got little reward for his pains. When he archly said: ‘Lady Braceley, you’re being very naughty. I’m quite sure you didn’t miss the last delicate nuance of Simon in Tuscany,’ she merely said ‘What?’ and walked away before he could repeat his remark.
It was now the turn of the Baron and Baroness. Lady Braceley received the introduction vaguely. ‘Aren’t we going to start?’ she asked Alleyn and Grant. ‘Don’t you rather hate hanging about? Such a bore, don’t you think? Who’s missing?’
Upon this cool inquiry, Sebastian Mailer explained that Major Sweet was joining them at the basilica and proceeded to outline the programme for the afternoon. They would drive round the Colosseum and the Forum and would then visit the basilica of S. Tommaso in Pallaria which, as they all knew, was the setting for the great central scene in Mr Barnaby Grant’s immensely successful novel, Simon in Latium. He had prevailed upon the distinguished author, Mr Mailer went on, to say a few words about the ba
silica in its relation to his book which, as they would hear from him, was largely inspired by it.
Throughout this exposition Barnaby Grant, Alleyn noticed, seemed to suffer the most exquisite embarrassment. He stared at the ground, hunched his shoulders, made as if to walk away and, catching perhaps a heightened note in Mr Mailer’s voice, thought better of this and remained, wretchedly it appeared, where he was.
Mr Mailer concluded by saying that as the afternoon was deliciously clement they would end it with a picnic tea on the Palatine Hill. The guests would then be driven to their hotels to relax and change for dinner and would be called for at nine o’clock.
He now distributed the guests. He, with Lady Braceley, Alleyn and Barnaby Grant would take one car; the Van der Veghels, Sophy Jason and Kenneth Dorne would take the other. The driver of the second car was introduced. ‘Giovanni is fluent in English,’ said Mr Mailer, ‘and learned in the antiquities. He will discourse upon matters of interest en route. Come, ladies and gentlemen,’ said Mr Mailer, ‘let us embark. Pronto!’
II
The four arches that lead into the porch of S. Tommaso in Pallaria are of modest proportion and their pillars, which in classic times adorned some pagan temple, are slender and worn. The convolvulus tendrils that their carver twined about them have broken in many places but the work is so delicate that the stone seems to tremble. In the most shadowed corner of the porch sat a woman with a tray of postcards. She wore a black headscarf pulled forward over her face and a black cotton dress. She shouted something, perhaps at Mr Mailer. Her voice was strident which may have caused her remark to sound like an insult. He paid no attention to it.
He collected his party about him and looked at his watch. ‘Major Sweet,’ he said, ‘is late. We shall not wait for him but before we go in I should like to give you, very shortly, some idea of this extraordinary monument. In the fourth century before Christ—’
From the dark interior there erupted an angry gentleman who shouted as he came.
‘Damned disgusting lot of hanky-panky,’ shouted this gentleman. ‘What the hell—‘ He pulled up short on seeing the group and narrowed his blazing eyes in order to focus upon it.
He had a savage white moustache and looked like an improbable revival of an Edwardian warrior. ‘Are you Mailer?’ he shouted. ‘Sweet,’ he added, in explanation.
‘Major Sweet, may I—’
‘You’re forty-three minutes late. Forty-three minutes!’
‘Unfortunately—’
‘Spare me,’ begged Major Sweet, ‘the specious excuses. There is no adequate explanation for unpunctuality.’
Lady Braceley moved in. ‘All my fault, Major,’ she said. ‘I kept everybody waiting and I’ve no excuses: I never have and I always do. I dare say you’d call it “ladies’ privilege”, wouldn’t you? Or would you?’
Major Sweet turned his blue glare upon her for two or three seconds. He then yapped ‘How do you do’ and seemed to wait for further developments.
Mr Mailer with perfect suavity performed the introductions. Major Sweet acknowledged them by making slight bows to the ladies and an ejaculation of sorts to the men. ‘Hyah,’ he said.
‘Well,’ said Mr Mailer. ‘To resume. When we are inside the basilica I shall hand over to our most distinguished guest of honour. But perhaps beforehand a very brief historical note may be of service.’
He was succinct and adequate, Sophy grudgingly admitted. The basilica of San Tommaso, he said, was one of a group of monuments in Rome where the visitors could walk downwards through the centuries into Mithraic time. At the top level, here where they now stood, was the twelfth-century basilica which in a moment they would enter. Beneath it, was the excavated third-century church which it had replaced. ‘And below that—imagine it—’ said Mr Mailer, ‘there has lain sleeping for over eighteen hundred years a house of the Flavian period: a classic “gentleman’s residence” with its own private chapel dedicated to the god Mithras.’ He paused and Sophy, though she regarded him with the most profound distaste, thought: He’s interested in what he’s talking about. He knows his stuff. He’s enjoying himself.
Mr Mailer went on to describe briefly the enormous task of nineteenth-century excavation that had so gradually disclosed first, the earlier basilica and then, deep down beneath it, the pagan household. ‘Rome has risen, hereabout, sixty feet since those times,’ he ended. ‘Does that surprise you? It does me, every time I think of it.’
‘It doesn’t me,’ Major Sweet announced. ‘Nothing surprises me. Except human gullibility,’ he added darkly. ‘However!’
Mr Mailer shot him an uneasy glance. Sophy gave a little snort of suppressed amusement and caught Barnaby Grant looking at her with something like appreciation. Lady Braceley, paying no attention to what was said, let her ravaged eyes turn from one man’s face to another. The Van der Veghels, standing close together, listened intently. Kenneth Dorne, Sophy noticed, was restless and anxious-looking. He shuffled his feet and dabbed at his face with his handkerchief. And the tall man, what was his name—Allen?—stood a little apart, politely attentive and, Sophy thought, extremely observant.
‘But now,’ Mr Mailer said, ‘shall we begin our journey into the past?’
The woman with the postcards had sidled between the group and the entrance. She had kept her face down and it was still shadowed by her black headscarf. She muttered, almost inaudibly, ‘Cartoline? Posta-carda?’ edging towards Sebastian Mailer. He said generally to his company, ‘There are better inside. Pay no attention,’ and moved forward to pass the woman.
With extraordinary swiftness she pushed back her headscarf, thrust her face up at him and whispered: ‘Brutto! Farabutto! Traditore!’ and added what seemed to be a stream of abuse. Her eyes burned. Her lips were retracted in a grin and then pursed together. She’s going to spit in his face, thought Sophy in alarm and so she was, but Mr Mailer was too smart for her. He dodged and she spat after him and stood her ground with the air of a grand-opera virago. She even gave a hoarse screech of eldritch laughter. Mr Mailer entered the basilica. His discomforted flock divided round the postcard-seller and slunk after him.
‘Kenneth, darling,’ Lady Braceley muttered. ‘Honestly! Not one’s idea of a gay little trip!’
Sophy found herself between Barnaby Grant and Alleyn. ‘Was that lady,’ Alleyn asked Grant, ‘put in as an extra touch of atmosphere? Does she recur, or was she a colourful accident?’
Grant said, ‘I don’t know anything about her. Mad, I should think. Ghastly old bag, wasn’t she?’ and Sophy thought: Yes, but he hasn’t answered the question.
She said to Alleyn, ‘Would you suppose that all that carry-on, if translated into Anglo-Saxon terms, would amount to no more than a cool glance and an indrawn breath?’
Grant looked across Alleyn at her, and said with a kind of eagerness, ‘Oh, rather! You have to make allowances for their sense of drama.’
‘Rather excessive in this instance,’ she said coolly, giving, she said to herself, snub for snub. Grant moved round and said hurriedly, ‘I know who you are, now. I didn’t before. We met at Koster Press didn’t we?’ Koster Press was the name of his publisher’s house in London.
‘For a moment,’ Sophy said and then: ‘Oh, but how lovely!’
They were in the basilica.
It glowed sumptuously as if it generated its own light. It was alive with colour: ‘mediterranean’ red, clear pinks, blues and greens; ivory and crimson marble, tingling gold mosaic. And dominant in this concourse of colour the great vermilion that cries out in the backgrounds of Rome and Pompeii.
Sophy moved away from the group and stared with delight at this enchantment. Grant, who had been left with Alleyn, abruptly joined her.
‘I’ve got to talk about this,’ he muttered. ‘I wish to God I hadn’t.’
She looked briefly at him. ‘Then why do it?’ said Sophy.
‘You think that was an affectation. I’m sorry.’
‘Really, it couldn’t matter less wha
t I think.’
‘You needn’t be so snappish.’
They stared at each other in astonishment.
‘I can’t make this out,’ Grant said unexpectedly. ‘I don’t know you,’ and Sophy in a panic, stammered, ‘It’s nothing. It’s none of my business. I’m sorry I snapped.’
‘Not at all.’
‘And now,’ fluted Sebastian Mailer, ‘I hand over to my most distinguished colleague, Mr Grant.’
Grant made Sophy an extremely stuffy little bow and moved out to face his audience.
Once he was launched he too did his stuff well and with considerable charm, which was more than could be said for Mr Mailer. For one thing, Sophy conceded, Grant looked a lot nicer. His bony face was really rather beautifully shaped and actually had a carved, medieval appearance that went handsomely with its surroundings. He led them farther into the glowing church. There were two or three other groups of sightseers but, compared with the traffic in most celebrated monuments, these were few.
Grant explained that even in this, the most recent of the three levels of San Tommaso, there was a great richness of time sequences. When in the twelfth century the ancient church below it was filled in, its treasures, including pieces from the pagan household underneath it, were brought up into this new basilica so that now classical, medieval and renaissance works mingled. ‘They’ve kept company,’ Grant said, ‘for a long time and have grown together in the process. You can see how well they suit each other.’
‘It happens on the domestic level too,’ Alleyn said, ‘don’t you think? In houses that have belonged to the same family for many generations? There’s a sort of consonance of differences.’
‘Exactly so,’ Grant agreed with a quick look at him. ‘Shall we move on?’
A wave of scent announced the arrival of Lady Braceley at Alleyn’s elbow. ‘What a marvellous way of putting it,’ she murmured. ‘How clever you are.’
The doeskin glove with its skeletal enclosure touched his arm. She tipped her head on one side and was looking up at him. Sophy, watching, thought a shutter had come down over his face and indeed Alleyn suffered a wave of revulsion and pity and a recognition of despair. I’d give a hell of a lot, he thought, to be shot of this lady.