North From Rome

by Helen Macinnes

  “How many servants are at the big house?”

  “Just Alberto and Anna-Maria meanwhile. The princess always brings the others with her from Rome.”

  “And just Jacopone at the gamekeeper’s cottage?”

  She nodded. “Two old men and one old woman,” she said as if she had guessed his thoughts. “Not much help, except in good will.”

  “Are you sure of that?”

  “Yes. The princess telephoned and gave Alberto her orders. She woke the operator at three o’clock in the morning. It was quite a sensation. But so were the cars.”

  She moved to the window, looked out, and then drew the shutters closer together.

  “Where’s Joe? Tethering goats back into place?”

  She sat down on the wooden chest. “He was going to follow me, I thought.”

  “Ready for rearguard action?” Or Joe might have other friends to visit. “Well—I’m glad you’re out of that place, Rosana,” he said awkwardly. “What has been happening up there?”

  “I’ll tell you when Giuseppe arrives. He will have to hear most of it, too. I only saw him for a minute at Jacopone’s cottage.” She looked down at her hands. And she began to cry, very quietly, just sitting there on the chest in her shapeless dress, her head bent, the tears slowly running down her pale cheeks. She didn’t want him to notice, so he sat still and looked now at the floor.

  She said, “So they killed Tony Brewster.” And she took a long shuddering breath. But she had stopped crying. “And Joe told me that Sabatini—” She paused. “Could it be possible? Could he have betrayed us?”

  “It’s possible.” He remembered Joe’s words last night. “If he didn’t, then he is in hiding—if he’s still alive. First, your brother. Then Brewster. Who’s next?”

  “Not any more of us, if I can help it,” she said with a sudden burst of cold anger.

  Lammiter said nothing to that. He had his doubts.

  “Don’t look so worried, Bill,” she said gently. “No one saw me come here. You see, I lived at the Casa Grande for almost two months after I came back from America. The princess was the only one of my mother’s old friends who stood beside me when my brother died so—so badly. The princess knows what disgrace is—her only brother blew his brains out when he saw what his politics had done to Italy—oh well, anyway—she sent me away from Rome until the scandal died down, and I stayed up here. I know every inch of the house and the garden and the woods outside the walls; my only friends were Alberto and Anna-Maria and Jacopone. So this morning—it was easy. You see?”

  She rose and went over to the window again. She turned back. She moved around restless, not sitting down.

  “It was here,” she said, “in this room, that I first met Bevilacqua.”

  “Joe brought you here to meet him?”

  “Oh no! It was I who persuaded Giuseppe to join Brewster’s group. He was to be my watchdog. And he has been very good. Only—I’m difficult to watch, I think.”

  Indeed you are, Lammiter thought.

  “It was Jacopone who brought me here,” she went on. “You see, Bevilacqua had heard that the men with whom my brother had been connected were going to ask me to join them. Oh—not an important job, of course. I was just to be a sort of secretary.” She was embarrassed.

  These friends of her brother’s had created a job for her, Lammiter thought. “Very considerate of them.”

  She missed the irony in his words. Earnestly she explained, “No—just very clever. I had no money, I needed a job, and then— if I ever did learn more about my brother’s death, I wouldn’t be free to speak out. I had become one of them. You see?”

  “And Bevilacqua asked you to accept the job, if it were offered to you.”

  She nodded.

  “That was a hard assignment,” he said quietly.

  She nodded again. She hesitated, and then she declined to finish her story. “The job was offered to me. And I took it. And I found that I was Luigi Pirotta’s secretary.”

  She paused again. But Lammiter, watching her in silence and sympathy, seemed to give her courage. “That was a shock,” she admitted. “I knew he was my brother’s friend, but I hadn’t known he was in the same horrible business. But then I persuaded myself that he had been drawn into that mess just like my brother Mario. Because—” she swung round lightly to face him, her dark eyes almost pleading with him to understand her “—if I ever admitted that Luigi Pirotta knew what he was doing, had chosen such a way to live, then I would have to condemn Mario, too. You see?”

  Lammiter saw.

  “I kept hoping that Luigi, like my brother, was only a— a—”

  “A front man, dupe,” he finished for her.

  She said, “Tony was absolutely right: I trusted too easily. Because I—well, perhaps I was a snob. Our families—” She looked away. She said proudly, “Luigi and Mario never were educated to behave like that.”

  “Didn’t Pirotta’s father—the man who blew his brains out—didn’t he go off the tracks?” He had spoken bluntly, purposefully. And it had its effect. She dropped her half-sad, half-excusing little piece of snobbery, and became the girl Brewster had liked.

  “Yes,” she flashed back at him. “But that was open politics. He chose Mussolini’s side. He was wrong. But he did nothing. He didn’t deceive people, pretending one thing, doing another.”

  “Not like his son, dear Luigi.”

  She looked at him. “No,” she admitted, “not like his son.” She moved back to the window. “What is delaying Giuseppe?”

  “You always call him Giuseppe.”

  “Do I? Perhaps I prefer Giuseppe to Joe.”

  “How did you come to choose him as your—your watchdog?”

  “He drove for my brother. I couldn’t afford a chauffeur, so I recommended him to the princess, who needed one. Then, later, when Bevilacqua introduced me in Rome to Tony Brewster—well, Giuseppe seemed just the kind of man Tony needed. And he was devoted to my brother. Giuseppe is a Sicilian, you know. He wanted to find my brother’s murderer as much as I did. So I—recruited him.” She tried to smile, as if she were happy about one wise accomplishment in her life. “That’s the technical word, I believe.”

  Poor Rosana, Lammiter thought, caught in such a web of disaster that not even those who are loyal to you have been able to tell you the whole truth. He looked at her beautiful face, strained, white, pathetic. She had changed in the last twenty-four hours: she had lost her self-confidence; something had crushed hope out of her heart. He felt a sudden cold shiver touch the nape of his neck. “Rosana,” he said softly, “when all this is over—”

  “Over?” she broke in. “But when? And how?”

  “When it’s all over,” he said, with an optimism he did not feel, “then—” He stopped, listening to the footsteps entering the room below, and rose.

  “It’s Giuseppe,” Rosana said.

  Joe came upstairs whistling. Was it an act? Lammiter wondered: Joe liked to encourage people. Here were two who needed all Joe could give.

  “Had a nice walk?” he asked Joe as he entered the room. Joe was more like a peasant than ever. He had borrowed a battered felt hat, and stuck a field poppy’s frail stalk through its grease-stained ribbon.

  “Had a nice talk?” Joe said with a grin. He took off his hat and turned to Rosana. “The signorina got here without trouble?”

  “Of course,” she told him severely. “We were beginning to worry about you, Giuseppe.”

  Lammiter looked at them in surprise. Then he remembered that Rosana believed that she was in authority. “Look,” he said, “let’s keep everything simple. Joe—Rosana—Bill. We’re in this together.” He gave them both a smile. There was a brief gleam of answering amusement in Joe’s eyes. “Joe was on the scene last night more than either of us,” he told Rosana. “So he has a better idea of how things stand. I think we’ll elect him boss around here. We’ll play it his way.”

  Rosana seemed a little startled, and then a little doubtful as she
studied Joe’s furrowed brow and ingenuous grin.

  “He can out-think both of us put together,” Lammiter answered her thoughts. “He’s a Sicilian, isn’t he?”

  Rosana smiled suddenly. “He’s a Saracen, you mean. He will have us storming the castle with knives out. Thumb on the hilt, and strike up. Wasn’t that your father’s last piece of advice to you, Giusep—Joe?” But she settled herself on the wooden bench, and her smile was no longer teasing. “All right. What do we do?” She looked at Joe.

  “First of all, we’ll learn a few facts. Who drove you here in Pirotta’s car?”

  Rosana’s eyes opened still more at the brisk voice. But she obeyed it. “A mechanic—one of the men at the garage— Poggioli’s—where Pirotta has repairs done. He knows nothing. He was just hired to do a job. He is following instructions, though. He wouldn’t let me out of the car, except at one café just beyond Terni; and then he came with me to the lavatory, and waited outside, and took me back to the car, so I couldn’t telephone anyone.”

  “Did he talk much?”

  “It’s a long journey. He began to talk half-way.”

  “About himself?”

  “His name is Giovanni. He was worried about not being able to say goodbye to his girl except by a telephone call. She was angry. They were going to a party tomorrow night.”

  “He expects to be away from Rome, then?”

  “He wouldn’t answer that question. But there were three of Pirotta’s suitcases in the back of the car. It looks as if he is going on a vacation.”

  “Did Giovanni talk about his girl?”

  “Constantly. It seemed a safe subject, I think. Her name is Margherita. She works at Stefano’s—that’s a shop for making artificial flowers. She is seventeen. Very beautiful. Dark curls and good figure. They are getting married next month. That’s about all, I think.” She frowned, trying to recall anything else.

  Joe took out an old envelope from one trouser pocket and a stump of pencil from another. Lammiter, sitting beside him, on the bed, saw what he was jotting down. Stefano— fiori artificiali—Margherita 17, tipo Lollobrigida—Giovanni, mecanico—Autorimessa Poggioli. “It’s good enough,” Joe said. “It will be simple to track down the girl. She will know where her Giovanni is going.”

  Lammiter stirred restlessly.

  Joe looked at him. “This is not useless,” he said gently. “All we have to do is to wait for the next few hours. No one is leaving the Casa Grande until two o’clock, when the two men who forced Eleanor into the car are taking the bus. At present, they’re on guard: one in front of Eleanor’s room, the other at the telephone. Pirotta wants to be wakened at noon, and his car is to be ready for him at three. Signorina Halley is to be kept in her room until he returns this evening. Dinner for two.” He looked at Rosana. “And one dinner on a tray in Miss Halley’s room. And the mechanic eating with Alberto and Anna-Maria. Right?”

  She nodded. “Anna-Maria asked how much food she must buy. The princess keeps an eye on the bills. And Pirotta said, ‘Oh, enough, enough until tomorrow night. We’ll be leaving then.’ So it’s my idea,” and she glanced with a little smile at Joe, “that the important meeting at Perugia will be over by tomorrow afternoon. Is it possible?”

  Joe said with a grin, “I think Tony Brewster taught you a lot of things.”

  “Or perhaps,” she said softly, “I learned a lot of things from Joe without knowing I was being taught.” She stood up. “That’s about all, isn’t it? I had better get back now.”

  “Going back?” blurted out Lammiter. “Into that place?” Dinner for two, he remembered bitterly. “Are you still hoping you can influence Pirotta?” he asked angrily.

  She shook her head. “That’s one idea that died last night, when I kept my appointment with his car. He was there, waiting with the mechanic. When I saw he wasn’t going, I knew he had tricked us again.” She turned to Joe. “You know he had said over the telephone that he wanted to finish some work in the country, and that I was to bring along all the papers I had on the Galante correspondence—that was an honest business deal he was arranging for his firm.”

  Joe said soothingly, “That’s what he told you.”

  “But when I saw Pirotta wasn’t going, I stepped out of his car. I was scared and angry. Then he said that Eleanor was in danger, that he had to persuade her to leave Rome that night. He said that he needed me to be with her, to look after her, to keep her company. Do you know—I do think he told the truth then. Perhaps,” she added bitterly, “it is the only time he ever told me the truth.”

  “So you got back into the car?” Lammiter asked.

  “I got back into the car.” She looked up at him. “You helped me when I needed help. So—” she shrugged her shoulders “—I help you. I’ll get into Eleanor’s room when she wakens. She was still half-drugged when they arrived this morning. But she has to eat. And a tray must be carried into her room.”

  “You won’t be allowed near her! Look, Rosana, Pirotta never told you the truth once in his life, except when he said you were beautiful. Last night at his car?—the same old confidence trick. He wanted you out of Rome. Brewster’s been murdered and you’ve run away. See what he’s building up around you? Suspicion, a wall of suspicion as big and thick as that wall out there.” He caught Joe’s eye. “How much evidence have Pirotta’s friends planted, how much fabricated? I bet, right now, that Brewster’s diary is being found.”

  “He never kept a diary. He wouldn’t!” she said derisively.

  “Of course he wouldn’t. But either a diary or a letter will be found saying he was becoming suspicious of you, that he thought you were working against him, that he had challenged you yesterday afternoon, and you had been frightened. Joe—I ask you: am I talking nonsense? Or is all that in the pattern?”

  “Pattern?” Joe said and was as stupid as possible. “Well, maybe... You write a play about it, eh? You have a real good plot there.” He said to Rosana. “Glad we’ve got a writer fellow with us to show how plots are made.”

  Rosana avoided their eyes. “Yes,” she said haltingly, “that could be true. It’s in their—pattern.” Then her voice became bitter. “But I shall be allowed to see Eleanor if I am willing to make her listen to Pirotta’s story. He needs me for that—I’ve already had the first hints. He will persuade me, and I have to persuade Eleanor, that right is wrong and wrong is right. His story will seem very, very good. Yes—that is also in the pattern.” Suddenly, her face was emotionless, and her voice reminded Lammiter of the princess. “I’m going back to the Casa Grande. Now. At this moment. Is that agreed?”

  Joe agreed.

  “Bill,” Rosana said, “you know someone has got to reach Eleanor. She must know she is not alone.”

  “Yes,” he said. “But—”

  “Oh, you Americans! But—but—but! I shall come to no harm.” She began walking over to the door. She looked down at the loose pink-and-green checked cotton dress, and laughed as she pulled it in, for a moment, against her slender waist. “How thin I have grown!”

  “Tell Eleanor—” Lammiter began, as he followed her to the door, and then he was silent.

  “That you are here? Those will be my first words to her.” Then she was looking at him, most serious with her large dark eyes. “Goodbye, Bill.”

  He took her hand awkwardly. “Goodbye, Rosana. Take care of yourself.” He kissed her cheek, on an impulse he could not explain. Or perhaps hand kissing was not in his line.

  “I shall, I shall,” she said reassuringly. She touched his arm for a moment.

  “I go with you part of the way,” Joe told her, picking up his hat.

  “More questions? But I told you everything!”

  “What did the princess say on the telephone?”

  “I couldn’t talk to her. The mechanic wouldn’t let me.”

  “What did she say to Alberto?”

  “He wouldn’t tell me.”

  “He wouldn’t?”

  “It upset him too much. But one t
hing I do know: the princess must be against Pirotta. For Alberto wouldn’t even speak to him when he arrived in the Lancia. Anna-Maria had to do all the talking.” She gave a last smile to Lammiter; and a cheerful wave of her hand. Then she started downstairs. Joe was about to follow her.

  “Just a minute,” Lammiter said, and caught Joe by his arm. “There’s a limit to everything. Do you expect me to stay up here all day?”

  “I’ll be back soon.”

  “I’d like to stretch my legs, look around, get a feel of the town.”

  “I can’t risk you—”

  “What risk? None of Pirotta’s hired men know me. I’ll take no chances. I won’t even try to climb the Casa Grande walls.”

  Joe relented. “Wait until the morning bus arrives. Follow it in. Look as if you could have come that way.”

  “I certainly won’t try to look as if I had just buried my parachute.”

  “Okay, okay. Keep to the narrow streets. Pirotta’s car has to travel along the main one.”

  “When does the bus get here?” Lammiter looked at his watch. It was now a quarter to eight.

  Joe shrugged. “Depends on its business at the other little towns. You’ll hear it, all right.”

  Rosana’s voice called from downstairs: “Coming?”

  “Coming!” Over his shoulder, to Lammiter, he said quietly, “If it makes you feel better, I’m going to telephone. We keep in touch with the big world, eh?” He gave a cheerful salute and ran downstairs.

  “You’re so slow!” Rosana scolded him gently in Italian.

  “We’ll be very quick now. And careful?”

  “Very careful.” You could hear the smile in her voice. “What a mess you two have left in this kitchen! Someone ought to wash these dishes, put things away—”

  “Yes, yes.” He closed the kitchen door firmly.

  Upstairs, Bill Lammiter stood at the window and waited until he saw Rosana in her borrowed dress—it looked pink at this distance, and far too noticeable—cross the field towards the wood. Then she vanished from sight. But once more, he couldn’t see Joe. Then he looked at the gate to the town. For a moment, he was startled: a girl in a pink cotton dress was standing talking to two thick-waisted women in black. Other women joined them, all with bundles of laundry on their heads. Then they scattered, shouting good-naturedly in their strong hoarse voices to each other. Some followed a path across the road, to houses that must lie outside the walls. He counted three pink dresses altogether. He relaxed then.