The Big Story

by Morris West

  Ashley closed his eyes. The whisky lay warmly in the pit of his belly. Soon the warmth would spread, relaxing him, pervading the tired muscles, clouding the fretted brain. He wanted no argument with Granforte. He could question till he was blue in the face, he would get no more answers tonight. If he got too troublesome, he would toss him out and lock the door. The Captain spoke again. His voice was soothing and sympathetic.

  “However, when one is dealing with an intelligent man, of maturity and experience, it is wiser to throw away the text-book and use tact and consideration. I know very well that I might harass you till morning and still come no nearer to the truth.”

  “You’re a wise man, Captain,” murmured Ashley. He lifted himself up on one elbow, took another drink and lay back on the pillows.

  “While we were occupied downstairs, I had one of my men search your room. He found nothing to interest me, except this.” He tapped the open manuscript. “I read English well enough to understand the sense of it.”

  “It’s not what you’re looking for, you know,” said Ashley indifferently.

  “No. But it does tell me something of what you were looking for. There are gaps preceded by notations which say: ‘insert photostat I, insert photostat 2’ and so on. I should like to keep this document.”

  “You’ll keep it whatever I say,” said Ashley. “But there are two copies of it lodged with my Office in Rome.”

  “Who now await the final documents, before they publish it. Is that right?”

  “Right. Now; please, will you get out and let me go to sleep?”

  “Blackmail is a very dirty business,” said Captain Granforte.

  “Blackmail!” Ashley thrust himself up from the bed.

  “You think I’m trying to blackmail Orgagna with this story?”

  “It’s a strong presumption, Mr. Ashley.” He held up his hand as Ashley was about to launch into a passionate denial. “Consider a moment. Why should a noble Italian, a man of wealth and influence, pretend friendship with an American journalist who is, on the evidence of this document, attempting to ruin him? Why should he offer the protection of his name and the hospitality of his house to a man who is his wife’s lover?”

  “You’ve got no right to say that!”

  “Have I not, Mr. Ashley?” Granforte smiled ironically, and spread his soft hands. “On your own evidence you drove this afternoon to Il Deserto, a favourite meeting place for lovers. Again, on your own evidence, you spent nearly two hours there. On the evidence of my men—taken by torchlight, I grant you—there are the tyre marks of the car leading towards the shrine. There is the grass bruised and broken over a significant area. What do you wish me to think? What contrary proposition can you offer me?”

  Ashley shook his head stubbornly.

  “I’m not a blackmailer. I’m not a murderer.”

  “You have motives for both.”

  “No!”

  “Yes, Mr. Ashley. The murder gives you possession of documents which lead you to the possession of Orgagna’s fortune and of his wife.”

  “You understand what you’re saying? You’re accusing Cosima of being an accessory to the crime?”

  “I have not ignored that possibility either,” said Captain Granforte coldly.

  Ashley leaned forward and buried his face in his hands. The breath went out of him in a long sobbing exhalation. He was beaten and he knew it; whichever way he turned there were nets spread for him and pits dug for his unwary feet. His first impulse was to tell Granforte the whole truth and let him sort it out in his own fashion. No sooner had he thought it, than he realised it would profit him nothing. Whatever he said now could be wrenched and twisted to fit a dozen cases, all of them against himself. There was nothing to do but walk the crooked road and hope to find some light at the end of it. He raised his head and grinned wearily at Granforte.

  “Do you want to take me in now, Granfortee?”

  The Captain looked at him oddly.

  “Is that what you want, Mr. Ashley?”

  “I’m too damn tired to care.” It was the truest thing he had said that night, and the bitterest.

  Granforte shook his head.

  “When I want you, my friend, I shall know where to find you. Good-night and golden dreams!”

  Granforte stood up, tossed off the last of his whisky, cocked his cap at a jaunty angle over his eyes, tucked the manuscript under his arm and walked from the room.

  Richard Ashley lay on the rumpled bed, fully clothed, and stared up at the ceiling. Now at last he was alone, free from the probing malice and the buzzing voices of the inquisitors. Now he could think and try to set the jig-saw pieces into a coherent pattern.

  First and most important of all, the piece around which all the rest might be keyed, was the fact that Enzo Garofano was the brother of Elena Carrese, who was the secretary and the mistress of Orgagna. The difference of names was nothing. Any man might change his name, though it might be interesting to enquire why he did it and how he managed it under the profuse documentation necessary to the simplest acts of living in Italy.

  What was more important was that it established the source of the photostats and the letters from which they came. A secretary who is also a mistress has access to a man’s most private files.

  But why should a woman destroy the man who kept her? Jealousy? Orgagna’s history proved him a fickle lover and a ruthless one. With elections looming and the prospect of Cabinet office in a clerical state, he might find it wise to disembarrass himself of a conspicuous attachment. Perhaps this was the explanation of the presence of Tullio Ricciloli at the dinner-party. It was a feudal courtesy to arrange a marriage for the discarded girl, and in workless Italy there were suitors and to spare for a well-endowed cast-off.

  It was, at face value, a feasible proposition; but it did not explain the girl’s hysterical bitterness towards him and her unwillingness to accept any accusation of Orgagna—unless Orgagna had lied in this, as in so many other things. The man was subtle and experienced in the ways of women.

  Perhaps at the villa he might come closer to her and turn her from an enemy into an ally.

  Then he thought of Cosima, dear false lover of the old days. He remembered that she had not been questioned in his presence. She had not been confronted with his account of the accident. Her statement had been given in private, in the presence of her husband and Granforte. He wondered whether in this, too, she had betrayed him, writing him down as a liar to save herself and her husband. He thought it very likely.

  Harlequin next. He of the flat voice and the pale cold eyes. He was a professional with a watching brief from his government. He was impervious to drama, unmoved by passion. The truth meant nothing to him, only the expedient. At least he had the grace to be frank about it. You knew where you stood with a man like that. Or did you?

  Granforte? Granforte was a different matter altogether. Granforte was part of the system, part of Orgagna’s system of privilege and preferment and…

  His eyes closed and sleep took hold of him and he was carried off to a nightmare world where Cosima called to him from the top of a high cliff and the waves rolled over the body of a dead man, with the face of Vittorio, Duke of Orgagna.

  He woke to full sunlight; but he was cramped and chilled. His evening clothes were a crumpled mess and the taste of the night’s liquor and cigarettes was sour on his tongue. He heard the muted clatter of the servants and the murmur of a vacuum cleaner in the corridor outside.

  He eased himself off the bed, rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, walked to the windows and threw the curtains wide. The raw sunlight dazzled him and the faint cries of the early morning bathers were a mockery of his own jaded condition. He looked at his watch—twenty past seven. There would be two or three hours to kill before the Orgagna ménage bestirred itself and made ready for the drive up to the villa.

  He stripped off his clothes and walked into the bathroom to shave. The face that looked out at him from the mirror was grey and blotched with fatig
ue. There were dark circles under the eyes and the harsh lines of experience were etched deeper round the mouth and eyes. The. chin was stubbly and the hair round the temples was flecked with the first grey streaks, an unlovely reminder that youth was passed and that maturity was less than promising.

  He grimaced at himself and began to lather. When he had finished shaving, he rubbed his face with astringent, seeing with small satisfaction the colour come back into his cheeks and the slack skin tighten under the harsh liquid. A bath now and a light breakfast with copious coffee and Richard Ashley would be his own man again.

  Not quite his own man—because Granforte had liens on him, and Vittorio d’Orgagna had other claims to make, and a correspondent without a story is considerably in debt to the office that underwrites his expense sheet. Still he was alive, while Enzo Garofano was dead and beyond helping. It was a small mercy and a man should be grateful for it.

  As he towelled his muscular body and massaged his cropped head, he asked himself whether there were not things to be done before he left the freedom of the hotel for the hermetic atmosphere of Orgagna’s villa. He wondered whether he should phone the office and tell them of the mess he was in. He decided against it. Hansen, the office chief, was a prickly, uncertain fellow, who was less concerned with the story than with the efficient administration of a news-gathering machine. He had little sympathy with eccentrics and less patience with correspondents who couldn’t detach themselves from their material. Take him at the wrong moment and he was likely to haul a man off a story and order him back to Rome to answer for his indiscretions.

  Besides, if he knew that the Orgagna photostats were lost, he might decide to recall the funds with the American Express, and Ashley had the idea that he might use them to some purpose. He thought he would withdraw them as soon as the office opened. It would give him something to do after breakfast.

  He was half-way through dressing when the telephone rang. When he lifted the receiver and said, “Pronto!” Harlequin’s voice answered him.

  “Ashley? Sorry to call you so early.”

  “I was awake. I’m dressing.”

  “You’re moving out this morning. I’d like to see you before you go—in private, that is.”

  “Fine. Come and have breakfast with me.”

  “Good. Where?”

  “Come to my room. We’ll take it on the balcony.”

  “A pleasure, my dear chap. How are you feeling?”

  “Rugged.”

  Harlequin chuckled and hung up. Ashley set the receiver back in its cradle and finished dressing. Then he telephoned for two breakfasts and smoked a pensive cigarette while he waited for coffee and George Harlequin.

  The little man was as spry as a cricket. He chatted vapidly through the first cup of coffee and ate his breakfast as if it were the most important thing in the world. Then he sat back in his chair and looked at Ashley who was toying with a roll as if he feared it might choke him.

  “I’ve decided to be frank with you, Ashley.”

  Ashley was unresponsive. He grunted:

  “It’s a change. Why?”

  “I think there might be some profit in it.”

  Ashley looked up sharply. There was no irony in the pale eyes.

  “Profit for whom?”

  “For both of us.”

  Ashley scooped the remains of his roll off the table and tossed it over the balcony.

  “Let’s hear how frank you can be, eh?”

  “Fair enough!” George Harlequin slewed his chair round and sat looking out over the sunlit water where a big white liner was steaming slowly homeward to the port of Naples. His voice was dry and impersonal. “I am as sure as you are that Garofano was murdered.” He hesitated a moment and then went on. Ashley watched him narrowly. “I’m not sure who arranged it—you or Orgagna.”

  Ashley said nothing. For all its seeming frankness, the statement held no news for him. Harlequin went on:

  “I’m in a curious position. If you’re the guilty one, I’m rather glad. It leaves me free to complete a tricky political move that advantages my government. It removes all fear of scandal and ill-timed revelations. You do see that, don’t you?”

  The smile he turned on Ashley was bland as a babe’s.

  Ashley didn’t smile. This boyish fellow was colder than a fish, and he was speaking the simple truth.

  “I see it, yes.”

  “If, on the other hand, Orgagna arranged this thing to suppress incriminating evidence against himself, then I must advise my government to wash their hands of him and withdraw from current negotiations with his colleagues. I’m in an awkward position.”

  “Aren’t you?” said Ashley, smiling for the first time with genuine pleasure.

  “We both are,” said Harlequin softly. “Captain Granforte, who is a very formidable fellow, has you slated for half the crimes in the book, and he’s released you as house guest to a man who hates your guts. If you’re guilty, I haven’t much sympathy for you. If you’re innocent——” His fingers drummed a sober little rhythm on the table. “—If you’re innocent, you’re in a fair way to be killed like Garofano.”

  “Happy thought!”

  “Which brings me,” said Harlequin deliberately, “to my question of last night. Have you the photostats or haven’t you? You don’t have to answer it. All I want to do is point out a simple fact. If you haven’t got ‘em, you’re innocent, and then you need them to protect your life. Once you’re out at Orgagna’s place, you’re tied. You need. an ally to recover the photostats as quickly as possible. I’m offering my services. Always on the presumption that you didn’t take ‘em from Garofano when you killed him.” He turned a cool and quizzical eye on Ashley, who still stared broodingly out to sea. “You still don’t trust me, do you, Ashley?”

  “No!”

  It was as blunt as bedamned, but the little Englishman seemed to find no offence in it. He grinned disarmingly, and poured himself another cup of coffee.

  “That’s the trouble with the Americans. They don’t understand the language.”

  “If you mean the diplomatic double-talk, I’ll agree. We like the facts and we like them simple.”

  “Because you don’t have to live with them, dear boy. That’s our problem in Europe, we’ve had to live so long with so many unpleasant facts that we’ve developed a technique of decoration if not concealment.”

  “I don’t see that it helps you any.”

  “I think it does, you know. Life can be damnably dull if you live it in four-letter words.”

  And for all the sourness in his mouth and the suspicion in his soul, Ashley was forced to agree with him. He laughed in spite of himself.

  “So I’ve missed the point. Underline it for me.”

  “It’s quite simple. Even when we talk to you in four-letter words, we still can’t convince you we mean it.”

  Ashley hesitated a moment, then he shrugged in wry resignation.

  “All right, Harlequin, I’ll tell you. I haven’t the photostats and I haven’t a clue in the world where they are!”

  George Harlequin looked at him with sober, pensive eyes.

  “You’ve paid me a compliment. I shan’t forget it. But you do worry me.”

  “I’m worried myself.”

  “Orgagna negotiated Garofano’s death, and did it very neatly. He’s quite capable of doing you the same service. Assassins are bought very cheaply in the back streets of Naples.”

  “I think he’s more anxious to strike a bargain.”

  “Only because he believes you have the photostats.”

  Ashley leaned forward across the table.

  “You said that before. That’s why I mistrusted you. He must know that I haven’t got them.”

  George Harlequin looked puzzled.

  “I don’t see that.”

  “It’s quite simple. Cosima was with me every minute from the time I quarrelled with Garofano in the lounge till the time I picked him off the road and brought him back to Sorrento. Do
you mean to tell me she hasn’t accounted to Orgagna for every second and every minute of those hours, with the possible exception of the love passages?”

  George Harlequin looked at him in blank amazement.

  “Do you believe that?”

  “Any reason why I shouldn’t?”

  “You poor, unhappy fool,” said Harlequin softly. “Don’t you know she’s in love with you?”

  Ashley shook his head and stared sombrely at the backs of his brown strong hands.

  “She sold me out, Harlequin. She sold me out twice to the same man. I could never trust her again.”

  Harlequin shrugged fastidiously.

  “It’s your own business, of course. And I don’t know the lady very well. A pity. You need a friend in the Orgagna household.”

  “I hope to have one,” said Ashley briskly, and he began to tell him of Elena Carrese and how she had cursed him as the murderer of her brother.

  Harlequin gave a low whistle of surprise, then settled down to listen intently. When Ashley had finished, he got up, walked to the railing and stood a long time looking out over the shining water. Then he sat down again, leaned across the table and began a low, earnest exposition.

  “I warned you at the beginning that you were dealing with matters you did not understand. I think you understand them better now, but you are still on alien ground. You are in an old and complex country where nothing is as simple as it looks on the surface. You must learn to think in paradoxes. Elena Carrese, for instance. You meet her as a sophisticate from Rome, and yet she curses you like a peasant in the runic language of the South. To her family—if she has any—she is a putana, because she has renounced her virtue to share the bed of a duke. Yet she weeps for a seedy little pedlar because he was her brother. You consider her motives, and you choose the one that suits your own habit of mind: jealousy. I could name you twenty others, each of them twice as strong. These are an old people, Ashley, the end product of two thousand years of misrule and civil disorder and recurrent conquest. They are bound by beliefs to which you are a stranger. They bow to traditions which to you are laughable but to them are more binding than the Decalogue. Unless you realise that, you will fall into errors that may well destroy you.”