When in Rome

by Ngaio Marsh

  Sebastian Mailer had come up on the far side of Lady Braceley. He murmured something that Alleyn couldn’t catch. Grant was talking again. The hand was withdrawn from Alleyn’s arm and the pair turned away and moved out of sight behind the junction of two pilasters. Now, Alleyn speculated, was Mailer doing a rescue job or had he something particular and confidential to say to Lady Braceley?

  Grant led his party into the centre of the nave and through the enclosed schola cantorum, saying, Sophy thought, neither too much nor too little but everything well. She herself was caught up in wonder at the great golden bowl-shaped mosaic of the apse. Acanthus and vine twined tenderly together to enclose little groups of everyday persons going about their medieval business. The Cross, dominant though it was, seemed to have grown out of some pre-Christian tree. ‘I shall say nothing about the apse,’ Grant said. ‘It speaks for itself.’

  Mailer and Lady Braceley had re-appeared. She sat down on a choir bench and whether by some accident of lighting or because she was overtaken by one of those waves of exhaustion that unexpectedly fall upon the old, she looked as if she had shrunk within her own precarious façade. Only for a moment, however. She straightened her back and beckoned her nephew who fidgeted about on the edge of the group, half-attentive and half-impatient. He joined her and they whispered together, he yawning and fidgeting, she apparently in some agitation.

  The party moved on round the basilica. The Van der Veghels took photographs and asked a great many questions. They were laboriously well-informed in Roman antiquities. Presently the Baron, with an arch look, began to inquire about the particular features that appeared so vividly in Grant’s novel. Were they not standing, at this very moment, in the place where his characters assembled? Might one not follow, precisely, in the steps they had taken during that wonderful climactic scene?

  ‘O-o-oah!’ cried the Baroness running her voice up and down a chromatic scale of enthusiasm. ‘It will be so farskinating. Yes?’

  Grant reacted to this plea as he had to earlier conversations: with a kind of curbed distaste. He gave Sophy and Alleyn one each of his sharp glances, darted a look of something like pure hatred at Sebastian Mailer and suggested confusedly, that an author seldom reproduced in scrupulous detail, an actual mise-en-scène any more than he used unadulterated human material. ‘I don’t mean I didn’t start off with San Tommaso,’ he shot out at Sophy. ‘Of course I did. But I gave it another name and altered it to my purpose.’

  ‘As you had every right to do,’ Sophy said boldly and Alleyn thought the two of them were united for the moment in their common field of activity.

  ‘Yes, but do show us,’ Lady Braceley urged. ‘Don’t be beastly. Show us. You promised. You know you did.’

  Kenneth Dorne said, ‘Isn’t that why we came? Or not? I thought you were to be the great attraction.’

  He had approached Grant and stood in an attitude of some elegance, his left arm extended along one of the closure-slabs of the schola, his right hand on his hip. It was not a blatant pose but it was explicit nevertheless and at least one aspect of Kenneth was now revealed. He looked at Grant and widened his eyes. ‘Is it all a sellout?’ he asked. ‘Or have I made a muddle? Or am I merely being impertinent?’

  A rabid oath, instantly stifled, burst from Major Sweet. He shouted, ‘I beg your pardon,’ and glared at a wall-painting of the Foolish Virgins.

  ‘Oh dear,’ Kenneth said, still to Grant. ‘Now the Major’s cross. What have I said?’ He yawned again and dabbed at his face with his handkerchief.

  Grant gave him a comprehensive look. ‘Nothing to the purpose,’ he said shortly and walked away. Mr Mailer hurried into the breach.

  ‘Naughty!’ he tossed at Kenneth and then, vindicating Grant to his disconcerted customers, told them he was unbelievably modest.

  Lady Braceley eagerly supported this view as did the Van der Veghels. Grant cut short their plaudits by adopting, with a great effort, it seemed to Alleyn, a brisk and business-like air and by resuming his exposition.

  ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘if you’d really like to see the equivalent places to those in the book I’ll be delighted to point them out, although I imagine if you’ve read it they declare themselves pretty obviously. There, in the right-hand aisle, for instance, is the picture so much admired by Simon and, I may add, by me. Doubting Saint Thomas, himself, by Masolino da Panicale. Look at those pinks and the “Pompeian” red.’

  ‘Fabulous!’ Kenneth restlessly offered. ‘Psychedelic, aren’t they?’

  Grant disregarded this. He said to Sophy, ‘He’s so very doubtful, isn’t he? Head on one side, lips pursed up and those gimlet fingers! How right that enormous hospital in London was to adopt him: he’s the very pith and marrow of the scientific man, don’t you think?’

  Sebastian Mailer gave a shrill little cackle of appreciation: perhaps of surprise.

  ‘While we are in this aisle of the basilica,’ Grant said, leading them along it for a short distance, ‘you may like to see something that I’m afraid I did adopt holus-bolus.’

  He showed them a railed enclosure, about six feet by three in size. They collected round it with little cries of recognition.

  It encompassed an open rectangular hole like the mouth of a well. Fixed to the rails was a notice saying in five languages, that climbing them was strictly forbidden.

  ‘Listen,’ Grant said. ‘Can you hear?’

  They stood still. Into the silence came the desultory voices of other sightseers moving about the basilica: the voice of a guide out in the atrium, footfalls on marble and a distant rumour of the Roman streets. ‘Listen,’ Grant repeated and presently from under their feet, scarcely recognizable at first but soon declaring itself, rose the sound of running water, a steady, colloquial voice, complex and unbroken.

  ‘The Cloaca Maxima?’ Major Sweet demanded.

  ‘A pure stream leading into it,’ Grant rejoined. ‘More than sixty feet below us. If you lean over the rail you may be able to see that there is an equivalent opening immediately beneath this one, in the floor of the earlier church. Yet another thirty feet below, out of sight unless someone uses a torch, is a third opening and far down that, if a torch is lowered, it’s possible to see the stream that we can hear. You may remember that Simon dropped a pebble from here and that it fell down through the centuries into the hidden waters.’

  The Van der Veghels broke into excited comment.

  Grant, they warmly informed him, had based the whole complex of imagery in his book upon this exciting phenomenon. ‘As the deeper reaches of Simon’s personality were explored—’ on and on they went, explaining the work to its author. Alleyn, who admired the book, thought that they were probably right but laid far too much insistence on an essentially delicate process of thought.

  Grant fairly successfully repressed whatever embarrassment he felt. Suddenly the Baron and Baroness burst out in simultaneous laughter and cries of apology. How ridiculous! How impertinent! Really, what could have possessed them!

  Throughout this incident, Major Sweet had contemplated the Van der Veghels with raised eyebrows and a slight snarl. Sophy, stifling a dreadful urge to giggle, found herself observed by Alleyn and Grant, while Lady Braceley turned her huge, deadened lamps from one man to another, eager to respond to whatever mood she might fancy she detected.

  Kenneth leant far over the rail and peered into the depths. ‘I’m looking down through the centuries,’ he announced. His voice was distorted as if he spoke into an enormous megaphone. ‘Boom! Boom!’ he shouted and was echoed far below. ‘Ghost beneath: Swear,’ he boomed, and then: ‘Oh God!’ He straightened up and was seen to have turned a sickly white. ‘I’d forgotten,’ he said. ‘I’m allergic to heights. What a revolting place.’

  ‘Shall we move on?’ said Grant.

  Sebastian Mailer led the way to a vestibule where there was the usual shop for postcards, trinkets and colour slides. Here he produced tickets of admission into the lower regions of San Tommaso.

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  The first descent was by way of two flights of stone stairs with a landing between. The air was fresh and dry and smelt only of stone. On the landing was a map of the underground regions and Mailer drew their attention to it. ‘There’s another one down below,’ he said. ‘Later on, some of you may like to explore. You can’t really get lost: if you think you are, keep on going up any stairs you meet and sooner or later you’ll find yourself here. These are very beautiful, aren’t they?’

  He drew their attention to two lovely pillars laced about with convolvulus tendrils. ‘Pagan,’ Mr Mailer crooned, ‘gloriously pagan. Uplifted from their harmonious resting place in the Flavian house below. By industrious servants of the Vatican. There are ways and ways of looking at the Church’s appropriations are there not?’

  Major Sweet astonished his companions by awarding this remark a snort of endorsement and approval.

  Mr Mailer smiled and continued.

  ‘Before we descend—look, ladies and gentlemen, behind you.’

  They turned. In two niches of the opposite wall were terra-cotta sculptures: one a male, ringleted and smiling, the other a tall woman with a broken child in her arms. They were superbly lit from below and seemed to have, at that instant, sprung to life.

  ‘Apollo, it is thought,’ Mr Mailer said, ‘and perhaps Athena. Etruscan, of course. But the archaic smiles are Greek. The Greeks, you know, despised the Etruscans for their cruelty in battle and there are people who read cruelty into these smiles, transposed to Etruscan mouths.’ He turned to Grant: ‘You, I believe—’ he began and stopped. Grant was staring at the Van der Veghels with an intensity that communicated itself to the rest of the party.

  They stood side by side admiring the sculptures. Their likeness, already noticed by Grant, to the Etruscan terra-cottas of the Villa Giulia startlingly declared itself here. It was as if their faces were glasses in which Apollo and Athena smiled at their own images. Sharp arrowhead smiles, full eyes and that almost uncanny liveliness—the lot, thought Alleyn.

  It was obvious that all the company had been struck by this resemblance, except, perhaps, Lady Braceley who was uninterested in the Van der Veghels. But nobody ventured to remark on it apart from Sebastian Mailer who, with an extraordinary smirk, murmured as if to himself: ‘How very remarkable. Both.’

  The Van der Veghels, busy with flashlights, appeared not to hear him and Alleyn very much doubted if any of the others did. Barnaby Grant was already leading them down a further flight of steps into a church that for fifteen hundred years had lain buried.

  In excavating it a number of walls, arches and pillars had been introduced to support the new basilica above it. The ancient church apart from the original apse, was now a place of rather low, narrow passages, of deep shadows and of echoes. Clearly heard, whenever they all kept still, was the voice of the subterranean stream. At intervals these regions were most skilfully lit so that strange faces with large eyes floated out of the dark: wall-paintings that had been preserved in their long sleep by close-packed earth.

  The air,’ Barnaby Grant said, ‘has done them no good. They are slowly fading.’

  ‘They enjoyed being stifled,’ Sebastian Mailer said from somewhere in the rear. He gave out a little whinnying sound.

  ‘More than I do,’ Lady Braceley said. ‘It’s horribly stuffy down here, isn’t it?’

  ‘There are plenty of vents,’ Major Sweet said. ‘The air is noticeably fresh, Lady Braceley.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ she complained. ‘I don’t think I’m enjoying this part, Major. I don’t think I want—‘ She screamed.

  They had turned a corner and come face to face with a nude, white man wearing a crown of leaves in his curls. He had full, staring eyes and again the archaic smile. His right arm stretched towards them.

  ‘Auntie darling, what are you on about!’ Kenneth said. ‘He’s fabulous. Who is he, Seb?’

  ‘Apollo again. Apollo shines bright in the Mithraic mystery. He was raised up from below by recent excavators to garnish the Galalian corridors.’

  ‘Damn highfalutin’ poppycock,’ Major Sweet remarked. It was impossible to make out in what camp he belonged. So Kenneth, Alleyn noted, calls Mailer ‘Seb’. Quick work!

  ‘And they are still digging?’ the Baron asked Grant as they moved on. ‘The Apollo had not risen when your Simon came to S. Tommaso? He is then a contemporary resurrection?’

  ‘A latter-day Lazarus,’ fluted Mr Mailer. ‘But how much more attractive!’

  Somewhere in the dark Kenneth echoed his giggle.

  Sophy, who was between Alleyn and Grant, said under her breath, ‘I wish they wouldn’t,’ and Grant made a sound of agreement that seemed to be echoed by Major Sweet.

  They continued along the cloister of the old church.

  It was now that Baron Van der Veghel developed a playful streak. Holding his camera at the ready and humming a little air, he outstripped the party, turned a corner and disappeared into shadow.

  Mr Mailer, at this juncture, was in full spate. ‘We approach another Etruscan piece,’ he said. ‘Thought to be Mercury. One comes upon it rather suddenly: on the left.’

  It was indeed a sudden encounter. The Mercury was in a deep recess: an entrance, perhaps to some lost passage. He was less strongly lit than the Apollo but the glinting smile was sharp enough. When they came up with him, a second head rose over his shoulders and smirked at them. A flashlight wiped it out and the echoes rang with Baron Van der Veghel’s uninhibited laughter. Lady Braceley gave another scream.

  ‘It’s too much,’ she cried. ‘No. It’s too much!’

  But the elephantine Van der Veghels, in merry pin, had frisked ahead. Major Sweet let fly anathema upon all practical jokers and the party moved on.

  The voice of the subterranean stream grew louder. They turned another corner and came upon another railed well. Grant invited them to look up and there, directly overhead, was the under-mouth of the one they had already examined in the basilica.

  ‘But what were they for,’ Major Sweet demanded. ‘What’s the idea? Grant?’ he added quickly, apparently to forestall any comment from Mr Mailer.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Grant said, ‘for drainage. There’s evidence that at some stage of the excavations seepage and even flooding occurred.’

  ‘Hah,’ said the Major.

  The Baroness leant over the rail of the well and peered down.

  ‘Gerrit!’ she exclaimed. ‘L-oo-ook! There is the sarcophagus! Where Simon sat and meditated!’ Her voice, which had something of the reedy quality of a schoolboy’s, ran up and down the scale. ‘See! Down there! Belo-oow.’ Her husband’s flashlight briefly explored her vast stern as he gaily snapped her. Heedless, she leant far over the railing.

  ‘Be careful, my darlink!’ urged her husband. ‘Mathilde! Not so far! Wait till we descend.’

  He hauled her back. She was greatly excited and they laughed together.

  Alleyn and Sophy approached the well-railing and looked downwards. The area below was illuminated from some unseen source and the end of a stone sarcophagus was clearly visible. From their bird’s eye position they could see that the stone lid was heavily carved.

  As they looked, a shadow, much distorted, moved across the wall behind it, disappeared, and was there again, turning this way and that.

  Sophy cried out: ‘Look! It’s—it’s that woman!’ But it had gone.

  ‘What woman?’ Grant asked, behind her.

  ‘The one with the shawl over her head. The postcard-seller. Down there.’

  ‘Did you see her?’ Mr Mailer asked quickly.

  ‘I saw her shadow.’

  ‘My dear Miss Jason! Her shadow! There are a thousand Roman women with scarves over their heads who could cast the same shadow.’

  ‘I’m sure not. I’m sure it was she. It looked as if—as if—she wanted to hide.’

  ‘I agree,’ Alleyn said.

  ‘Violetta is not permitted to enter the basilica, I assure you. You saw the shadow of some
one in another party, of course. Now—let us follow Mr Grant down into the temple of Mithras. He has much to relate.’

  They had completed their circuit of the cloisters and entered a passage leading to a spiral iron stairway. The ceiling was lower here and the passage narrow. Grant and Mailer led the way and the others trailed behind them. The head of the little procession had reached the stairhead when Lady Braceley suddenly announced that she couldn’t go on.

  ‘I’m frightfully sorry,’ she said, ‘but I want to go back. I’m afraid you’ll think it too dreary of me but I can’t, I can’t, I can’t stay in this awful place another moment. You must take me back, Kenneth. I didn’t know it’d be like this. I’ve never been able to endure shut up places. At once. Kenneth! Where are you! Kenneth!’

  But he wasn’t with them. Her voice flung distorted echoes about the hollows and passages. ‘Where’s he gone?’ she cried out and the whole region replied ‘—gone—on—on.’

  Mailer had taken her by the arm. ‘It’s all right, Lady Braceley. I assure you. It’s perfectly all right. Kenneth went back to photograph the Apollo. In five minutes I will find him for you. Don’t distress yourself. No doubt I’ll meet him on his way here.’

  ‘I won’t wait for him. Why’s he suddenly taking photographs? I gave him a camera costing the earth and he never uses it. I won’t wait for him, I’ll go now. Now.’

  The Baron and Baroness swarmed gigantically about her making consoling noises. She thrust them aside and made for Grant, Major Sweet and Alleyn who were standing together. ‘Please! Please!’ she implored and after a quick look round, latched with great determination on to the Major. ‘Please take me away!’ she implored. ‘Please do.’

  ‘My dear lady,’ Major Sweet began in tones more consistent with ‘My good woman’—‘My dear lady, there’s no occasion for hysteria. Yes—well, of course, if you insist. Be glad to. No doubt,’ said the Major hopefully, ‘we’ll meet your nephew on our way.’