The Big Story

by Morris West

  It was an unpleasant prospect, but somehow or other he would get through it. And afterwards, sooner or later in the day, Orgagna must make his next move. He couldn’t afford to wait too long. Captain Granforte must soon make a move to claim his prisoner—to charge him with culpable homicide, or release him to print the big story.

  He was hot and sticky from the sun. If he couldn’t swim in safety, then at least he could shower before lunch. He stripped, laid out clean clothes on the bed and stood a long time under the jets, whistling a tuneless little song.

  While he was dressing, he heard the sound of the car firing, revving up and moving down the long gravelled drive. It gave him confidence. It also gave him an appetite for lunch.

  The meal was a much more elaborate affair than that of the day before. The servants had set up a large round table under a huge mushroom umbrella and beside it a long serving table at which Carlo Carrese presided. It was as if Orgagna had ordered a special display to make up for the absence of conversation.

  The first course was an antipasto of astonishing variety and richness, matched with a bottle of dry white wine of the best Orgagna vintage. Then came the fish, small white fillets cooked individually over the spirit lamps and drenched with a rich red sauce of garlic and tomato and half a dozen exotic spices. Then the wine was changed to a rich red Barolo and the next course was brought on—spiedini in the Roman style—beef and ham and grated cheese and garlic and parsley, moulded into little shoe-shapes, skewered and fried in golden batter. Then, in drowsy succession, the pastry and the cheese and the fruit and the thick black coffee, with a good Napoleon to follow.

  It was no meal for a summer’s noon, but it served its purpose, and when it was done the two women retired to doze, while Ashley and Orgagna lay out under the umbrellas, side by side.

  ‘Now,’ thought Ashley, ‘he will get down to business.’

  But Orgagna seemed in no hurry to talk business. Instead he fished in his pocket, brought out five hundred dollar notes, folded them neatly in half and tossed them into Ashley’s lap. He smiled, contemptuously.

  “There’s your money, Mr. Ashley. Tullio was wise. He decided that there was a better bargain to be made with me. You should be glad that I have saved your money.”

  “Thanks,” said Ashley blankly.

  Orgagna chuckled good-humouredly.

  “For a man of your experience, Ashley, you are sometimes very naive. Do you think a fellow like Tullio Riccioli will sell a rich patron like me for five hundred dollars? He can pick up as much as that for squiring a dowager for the week-end. But what happens when the dowager goes and you go l He is back to me. He knows it, believe me. He has earned twice, three times as much for the information that you are trying to contact George Harlequin.”

  Ashley said nothing. His head was swimming with the heat. His stomach was uneasy with the food and the wine and the brandy.

  Orgagna said bluntly :

  “Have you thought about my proposition?”

  “The answer’s still the same—no deal.”

  “You have the photostats, haven’t you?”

  “Yes.” He could say it confidently now.

  Orgagna heard the new note in his voice and looked up sharply. He said, deliberately:

  “It’s your last opportunity, Ashley.”

  “Go to hell!” said Ashley irritably.

  Orgagna shrugged and lay back on the chair, hiding his eyes behind a wide span of glare-glasses. Ashley lay back, too. He felt dizzy and faintly sick. His palms were clammy and little beads of perspiration formed on his lip and on his forehead.

  Then the pain hit him—a wrenching, griping agony in the pit of his belly that sent him lurching off the chair and staggering over to the balustrade of the terrace, where he stood, retching and gasping until the spasm passed.

  “My poor fellow!” Orgagna was at his elbow, sympathetic and solicitous. “You’re ill. Let me get you upstairs and out of the sun.”

  “Thanks… I—I don’t feel so good.”

  Orgagna took his arm and steered him hurriedly across the terrace and upstairs to his room, where he lay, sweating and knotted, waiting for the next spasm and the next, while Orgagna stood by, calm-faced but attentive, to help him to the bathroom and back again. Each time the cramps were more violent and the pain greater. His body was bathed in sweat and the room swam in front of his eyes. He heard Orgagna’s voice coming from a long way off.

  “How do you feel now, Ashley?”

  He shook his head violently and the room slid back into focus. Orgagna was standing beside the bed, smiling down at him.

  “I—I feel dreadful. Don’t know what’s the matter with me.”

  “You’ve been poisoned, Ashley,” said Orgagna gently.

  “Poisoned? I—I—” He tried to heave himself up on the bed, but the cramps seized him again and he staggered to the bathroom. This time Orgagna made no move to help but stood watching, a thin smile twitching the corners of his subtle mouth.

  When Ashley came back, weak and tottering, to fling himself on the bed, Orgagna sat down on the edge of it and told him quietly:

  “You’ve been poisoned, Mr. Ashley. The poison was in your dinner. It is a simple one, but very effective. The cramps are becoming more frequent, as you see. In an hour, two at most, you will die, painfully. There is an antidote, of course. Again quite simple. I am prepared to give it to you in return for the photostats—but not until they are safely in my hands. I suspect you may have left them at Sorrento. It is twenty minutes there and twenty back. It gives us time to administer the antidote, provided you are not too stubborn.”

  Weak and feverish, waiting for the next attack of pain, Ashley lay on the bed and looked up into the face of Vittorio Orgagna. There was no pity in it and no remorse. Ashley knew that he would sit there, calm and relaxed, and watch him die. The pain took him again and the journey across the rose-petal floor was twice as long and the return twice as uncertain.

  He closed his eyes and tried to summon up enough strength to heave himself up and wrestle Orgagna out of the room where at least he could call for help. Elena might hear or one of the servants. But when he tried to move, the nausea blinded him and the fever made his limbs as slack as string.

  Orgagna’s soft voice admonished him.

  “I will watch you die, Ashley, believe me. You have thrust me too far along the road for me to turn back now. One man is dead—another is a small matter. And in this, there is less danger than you think. You are weak now, aren’t’ you? You will be weaker yet and you will suffer more. I can give you the antidote any time you want, but I advise you not to leave it too long. Poison is subtle and unpredictable. Its effects vary with the subject.”

  Ashley lay silent and shivering, listening to him. He had no strength to argue. He must save it all to fight against the recurrent pain and make the lengthening journey across the room and back again. He could feel the fight ebbing out of him and fear taking possession of his racked and weakened body.

  Four times the agony came on him and after each time the strength was less and the fear was more and the voice of Orgagna was more and more insistent.

  Then Orgagna made his master stroke.

  “The newspaper will pay for your funeral, Ashley. They will give you a two-line obituary and perhaps a citation in the Saturday supplement. But they will kiss the girls you have never kissed and drink the wine you have never drunk and live out the years you have never enjoyed. You’re a fool, you know, a stubborn stupid fool. Where are the photostats?”

  “Under… under the chest,” said Ashley weakly. “The far corner.”

  Orgagna let out a long breath of relief and moved swiftly to the chest, lifting, as Ashley had done, with his shoulder. He picked up the envelope and let the corner of the chest fall with a thud. Swiftly he examined the photostats and then suddenly he threw back his head and laughed and laughed and laughed.

  Ashley opened his eyes and said weakly:

  “The—the antidote… for God�
�s sake!”

  Orgagna walked to the bed and stood over him, still laughing and tapping the envelope against the palm of his hand. Then he stopped laughing and his eyes darkened again.

  “You know what I’m going to do now, Ashley?”

  “You… you made a bargain.”

  “And I shall keep it. But then I shall telephone Captain Granforte and tell him that you are ill and troublesome, and that I can no longer take responsibility for you. I shall ask him to take you into custody and deal with you according to the law. Subornation, wasn’t it? And culpable homicide.”

  “For God’s sake, man! You’ve got what you want. Can’t you…?”

  Orgagna walked calmly to the mantel and pulled the big, plush bell-cord.

  A few moments later a maidservant came in and stood goggling at Ashley lying on the bed with his knees drawn up to his chest. Orgagna spoke to her in slow careful Italian:

  “Lucia, bring the signore three measures of castor oil. His dinner has disagreed with him.” Then he grinned like a schoolboy and said in English, “It was the fish, Ashley. You got a bad piece. An old trick to play on the unwelcome guest. I must compliment Carlo on its success.”

  He went out laughing and Ashley buried his face in the pillow and cursed and sobbed in a fury of anger, humiliation and belly-ache.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  NOTHING is so quick to take the starch out of a man’s collar and the courage out of his soul as an old-fashioned bout of fish-poisoning. His body is in revolt, his mind is clouded with fever and weariness. He is an object of disgust to himself and of humorous pity to others. He is dosed like a child, starved like a dyspeptic and condemned to slow and queasy hours of recovery.

  The best he can do is wait it out and try not to be too angry with himself. But Ashley had small patience at the best of times, and the thought of his physical degradation and his moral defeat was no help to him.

  The grinning maid came in and fed him with castor oil. She pulled off his shoes and drew the coverlet over him and left him with a bottle of spa water and his own unhappy thoughts for company.

  The big story was wrecked now beyond salvage. By a simple psychological trick, Orgagna had turned defeat into a trumpeting victory and had made his enemy an object of laughter for his folly and his cowardice. Now he was preparing the final humiliation, handing him back to Captain Granforte, as a fellow of no consequence, to be dealt with by the pettifogging routines of the law.

  As he sweated the hours away between the bathroom and the lengthening periods of relief, Ashley tried to marshal his last remaining evidence against Orgagna. It was a personal thing now, a grudge fight, with no high principles to justify it. He wanted to convict Orgagna of murder.

  The more he thought about it, the less he liked his chances. The only solid piece of evidence was the phone call from the Villa Orgagna to the barman, Roberto, and the money paid to him to report the movements of Cosima and himself. The rest was conjecture and speculation. He doubted that even Roberto could be brought to tell his story in the witness-box. For the rest, what did he have? Carlo’s attempt on his life? It was unsupported testimony. Even if it were supported, there would be the adequate explanation of a father defending the honour of his daughter. The quail-hunters? A laughable fiction, matching the other fiction that Orgagna had tried to poison him, when any fool with half an eye could see that it was fish-poisoning. Cosima? No help there. No hope either, ever again. Elena Carrese? She, too, would look to the main chance, like all the rest of them. She had given him the photostats, truly. But he had lost them again. He had failed her. So, in this land where poor and beautiful girls were tuppence a dozen, she must look for the best bargain she could make. And Orgagna’s was still the highest offer.

  George Harlequin? He, too, had his ends to serve. He was concerned not with moral issues, but with the delicate balance of forces in the European cockpit. Orgagna was more important to him than a gad-fly correspondent. Whichever way he turned, there were swords at his throat and mocking faces behind them.

  He gave it up. He lay, clammy and miserable, on the big four-poster bed and dozed fitfully.

  It was late when he woke. The light outside was softer and the air in the room was cooler. His body ached and he felt listless and uneasy. He looked at his watch. Ten past eight. He could not lie here like this, crumpled and clammy. He sat up and worked himself slowly off the bed. When he stood up his head spun with weakness, but he steadied himself a moment and the nausea passed. He walked slowly across the rose-petal tiles and turned on the bath.

  The warm tub refreshed him and, although he was weak and faint, he dressed carefully in dinner clothes, spending a long time over the set of his tie which refused to come right under his unsteady fingers.

  He lit a cigarette and tried to smoke it, but the taste sickened him and set his head whirling again. He stubbed it out and cleansed his mouth with mineral water. Before he walked out of the room he took a long look at himself in the glass.

  His face was drawn and haggard. His skin was blotched and grey and there were dark, bluish patches under his eyes. His lips were bloodless and the lines about his mouth and temples were deeper than ever. ‘I’m getting old,’ he thought. ‘Too old to be beating my heart out in this huckster’s trade. I’ll talk to the office and get them to give me a job at the desk—a nice, respectable job where a man can chew on his pipe and jibe at the youngsters and tell them about the big stories of the old days—and the bigger ones that got away.’

  He heard the sound of a car coming up the driveway. He went to the window and looked out, forgetting that his room faced across the sea, away from the entrance approach. No matter. It might be Captain Granforte. It could be Tullio Riccioli returning from his afternoon hunting among the tourists. Either way, there was no hurry. He would give them a little time to settle themselves, then he would go down.

  He pushed open the casements and walked out on to the narrow balcony with its curlicued iron railing.

  The sky was peach-coloured now. The air was cooling with the coming of the small night wind that made a husheen-ho in the brittle leaves of the olives. The outlines of the tufa cliffs were muted to grey monotone and deep shadows lay in the narrow re-entrants where thin spirals of smoke rose from the cooking fires of the peasants. The sea was red with the last sunset touch, and the tiny fleets of the fisherfolk were rowing out towards the grounds. A faint haze hung over Capri and the windows of the high villas flashed gold and crimson across the strait.

  The tourists would be sitting out in the bright little square and the donkey boys would be lopping home-wards and the girls would be flaunting the new clothes in the ritual passeggiata. A man was a fool to break his heart straining after bylines and digging into the dirt of twentieth-century history, when he might enjoy all that for the price of a boat-ride. But folly like that was hard to mend. It was hard to turn back on the long, stony reaches of the crooked road.

  Well, he was near the end of it now. It promised him nothing but humiliation and defeat, but he was too weak and tired to care. He turned away from the island and the sea and the soft sky and walked downstairs to the drawing-room.

  They were all there—Orgagna, Cosima, Elena Carrese, Tullio, Captain Granforte, George Harlequin and old Carlo moving among them with a tray of cocktails. They looked up as he entered and he caught the little shock of surprise when they saw his grey, drawn face. Orgagna greeted him coolly :

  “Kind of you to join us, Ashley. Are you feeling better?”

  “Thank you, yes.”

  “Please sit down. Carlo! A drink for the signore.”

  “No drink, thank you.”

  He found his way to a chair, eased himself carefully into it and nodded a greeting to the others. Nobody spoke to him though they were all watching him, uneasily, over their glasses. Carlo finished serving the drinks and the olives and then stood back against the wall, the model of unobtrusive service.

  “Salute!” said Orgagna.

  “Salute!”
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br />   They all drank. Orgagna put down his glass and wiped his lips carefully. He looked at Ashley. He looked at Captain Granforte. Then he began to speak:

  “We are all aware, I think, of the business which has brought us together. All of us, in one fashion or another, have been involved. I felt it wise, therefore, that all of us should be here at this—this closing stage. My reason is simple. In fairness to every one of us I feel the matter should be closed today, so that we may go about our business—important business to some of us—free of suspicion and unhappy after-taste. Captain Granforte agrees with me in this. That explains his presence here this evening. If there are questions to be asked, they should be asked now. If there are charges to be made, now is the time to make them. If there is evidence to be given, it should be offered freely and fearlessly. Do I make myself clear?”

  He looked around at the little company, but none of them met his eyes. They were sipping drinks or nibbling olives or fumbling for cigarettes. Orgagna went on:

  “All of you know why Mr. Ashley came to Sorrento in the first place. For some months he has been investigating my political and financial activities in the hop e of finding material which might be used against me at the coming election. He came here to buy from a certain Enzo Garofano photostat copies of what were supposed to be letters from my private files. On the day of his meeting with Garofano, he also met my wife, whom he had known in Rome before she married me. They went driving together. On the way home, with Ashley at the wheel, Garofano was run down by the car and killed. Captain Granforte felt that there might be grounds for criminal charges, but, in deference to my wishes and in fairness to Mr. Ashley, he permitted him to come here as my guest, pending further investigations. Do you agree with all that, Mr. Ashley?”