"Oh, pipe down!" I said. "Stop working yourself up. This isn't our fault. If he wants an inquiry, he can have one."
He made an effort to pull himself together.
"It's all right for you to talk. You're his white-headed boy. But he hasn't much use for me ..."
At this moment the door opened and Lieutenant Itola Carlotti of the Rome Homicide Department came in.
Carlotti was a short, dark man with a tanned, wrinkled face and pale, penetrating blue eyes. He was nudging forty-five, but looked thirty. I had known him for two or three years, and we got along well together. I knew him for a smart, conscientious policeman without any genius
for his job. He got results by careful, painstaking plodding.
"I thought you were on vacation," he said, as he shook hands with me.
"I was about to leave when this broke," I said. "You know Signorina Valetti? This is Signor Maxwell. He's taking my place while I'm away."
Carlotti shook hands with Maxwell and bowed to Gina.
"Let's have it," I said, settling myself on Gina's desk and waving him to a chair. "Are you sure it's Helen Chalmers?"
"I don't think there's any doubt about that," he said, planting himself before me and making no move to take the chair I had indicated. "Three hours ago I had a report from Naples headquarters that the body of a young woman had been found lying at the foot of a cliff, five miles from Sorrento. It was thought she had fallen off a path on the cuff. Half an hour ago, I was told she had been identified as Signorina Helen Chalmers. Apparently she had rented a villa close to where she had fallen. When the villa was searched it became apparent from the contents of her luggage who she was. I want someone from your office to come with me to Sorrento to identify the body."
I hadn't expected this. The thought of going into the morgue to identify what remained of Helen's loveliness turned me sick.
Maxwell said hurriedly, "You've met her, Ed. You'll have to go. I've only seen pictures of her."
Carlotti said, looking at me, "I'm going down there right away. Can you come with me?"
"I'll come," I said, and slid off the desk. Turning to Maxwell, I went on, "Hold everything until I call you. It may not be her. I'll call you as soon as I know. Stick around until you hear from me."
"What about Chalmers?"
"I'll handle him," I said; then, turning to Carlotti, I went on, "Okay, let's go."
I patted Gina's shoulder as I followed Carlotti out of the office. We didn't say anything until we were driving fast towards the Rome airport, then I said, "Any idea how it happened?"
He gave me a stolid stare.
"I told you: she fell off a cliff."
"I know what you told me. Is there more to it?"
He lifted his shoulders as only an Italian can lift them.
"I don't know. She rented a villa under the name of Mrs. Douglas Sherrard. She wasn't married, was she?"
"Not as far as I know."
He lit one of those awful Italian cigarettes and puffed smoke out of the car window.
"There are a few complications," he said after a long moment of silence. "Signor Chalmers is an important man. I don't want any trouble."
"Nor do I. He's not only an important man, but he's also my boss." I eased myself down in the car seat. "Apart from calling herself Mrs. Douglas Sherrard – what other complications?"
"Do you know anything about her?" His cold blue eyes searched my face. "For the moment no one except you and I and the Naples police know about this, but it won't be possible to keep it quiet for long. It looks as if she had a lover."
I pulled a face.
"Chalmers will love that. You'll have to be careful what you tell the press, Lieutenant"
He nodded.
"I realize that. From what I hear, she rented the villa in the joint names of Mr. and Mrs. Douglas Sherrard. Do you think she was secretly married?"
"She might have been, but I don't think it likely."
"I don't think so either. I think she was on an unofficial honeymoon in Sorrento."
Again he lifted his shoulders expressively, "It happens. Do you know anyone called Douglas Sherrard?"
"No."
He tapped ash off his cigarette.
"Grandi, who is handling the case, seems satisfied it was an accidental fall. He has only asked me to check with him because il Signor Chalmers is such an important man. It is unfortunate that there is a lover involved. If there was no lover, it would be pretty straightforward."
"It might not be necessary to mention him," I said, looking out of the car window.
"That is possible. You wouldn't know for certain if she had a lover?"
"I know practically nothing about her." I felt the palms of my hands turn moist. "We mustn't jump to conclusions. Until we have seen the body, we don't know for certain it is her."
"I am afraid it is her all right. All her clothes and her luggage carry her name. There were letters found in her luggage. The description fits. I don't think there's a doubt about it."
We said nothing further until we were on the plane for Naples, then suddenly he said, "You will have to explain the position to il Signor Chalmers. The fact that she rented the villa under another name is bound to come out at the inquest. You understand there is nothing we can do to hush it up."
I could see he was worried about getting tangled with Chalmers.
"Oh, sure," I said. "That's not your funeral nor mine."
He gave me a sidelong look.
"Il Signor Chalmers has a lot of influence."
"He certainly has, but he should have used some of it with his daughter before she got tied up in a situation like this."
He lit another of his awful cigarettes, sank further down in his seat and went off into a coma of brooding. I went of into one of my own.
I was surprised he hadn't said more about Douglas Sherrard. This made me a little uneasy. I knew Carlotti. He moved slowly, but he also moved thoroughly.
We reached Naples around noon. There was a police car waiting. Lieutenant Grandi of the Naples Police was standing by the car, waiting for us.
He was a middle-sized bird with a hatchet face, dark solemn eyes and an olive complexion. He shook hands with me, looking just beyond my right shoulder. I had the impression he wasn't overjoyed to have me in the party. He manoeuvred Carlotti into the back seat and me into the front seat beside the driver. He got in alongside Carlotri. During the long, fast drive to Sorrento, I could just hear his rapid Italian as he talked continuously, his voice barely above a whisper.
. I tried to listen to what he was saying, but the noise of the wind and the roar of the car engine made that impossible. I gave up, lit a cigarette and stared through the wind shield at the unwinding road as it rushed continuously towards us, thinking of the previous night's ride that had been so much quicker and so much more dangerous.
We reached Sorrento. The police driver took us around the back of the railway station to a small brick building that served at the town's morgue.
We got out of the car.
Carlotti said to me, "This won't be pleasant for you, but it is necessary. She has to be identified."
"That's all right," I said.
But it wasn't all right. I was sweating, and I knew I must have lost colour. I didn't have to worry about my appearance. Anyone could have looked the same in such circumstances.
I followed him through the door of the building, down a tile-lined corridor and into a small, bare room.
In the middle of the room stood a trestle table on which lay a body, under a sheet.
We moved forward up to the table. My heart was beating sluggishly. There was a sickness inside me that made me feel faint.
I watched Carlotti reach forward and turn back the sheet.
III
It was Helen all right, and, of course, she was dead.
Although someone with a practised hand had cleaned her up, and had made her as presentable as possible, her face still bore the marks of the awful fall she had tak
en.
It was pretty unnerving to stand there and look down at the dead, shattered face. I turned away, feeling bad. Grandi, who bad come up behind me, put his hand on my arm as Carlotti pulled the sheet back into place.
I jerked away from Grandi and walked out into the corridor. The fresh draught of air coming in through the open doorway did a lot to help me pull myself together.
The two detectives came out silently, and the three of us walked slowly back to the car.
"Yes, if s her," I said, as we reached the car. "No doubt about it."
Carlotti lifted his shoulders.
"I have been hoping that there might be a mistake. This is going to be troublesome. There will be a lot of publicity."
I could see he was still very worried about Chalmers. He knew Chalmers had enough influence to lift him right out of his job if he put a foot wrong.
"Yeah," I said. I wasn't sorry for him. I had too much on my mind at that moment to be sorry for anyone except myself. "I'll have to send him a cable."
Carlotti lit another of his awful cigarettes. As he flicked away the burning match, he said, "We'll go to the station now. You can use the telephone there."
We got in the car: Carlotti and Grandi behind and I with the driver. No one said anything while we drove through the traffic-congested main street to the police station. By the time we got there, I was feeling a little more like my old self, although I was still pretty shaken. They left me in an office while they went off to another office for a conference.
I put a call through to Maxwell.
"There's no doubt about it," I said, when he came on the line. "It's Helen all right."
"Sweet grief! What do we do now?"
"I'm going to send a cable to Chalmers. I'll give him three hours to get over the shock, then I'll call him on long distance."
I could hear him breathing like an old man with asthma.
"I guess that's all you can do," he said after a long pause. "Okay, if there's anything I can do . . ."
"Look after the job," I said. "It doesn't mean that because Chalmers's daughter falls off a cliff, the job stands still."
"I'll look after it if you'll look after Chalmers," he told me. "There's no need for me to shove my oar into this, Ed. You're fitted for the job. He likes you. He thinks you're sharp. He hasn't much use for me. I'll take care of the work here: you take care of Chalmers."
"Okay. Put Miss Valetti on the line, will you?"
"Sure. Hang on a moment."
The relief in his voice was almost comic.
A moment or so later, Gina's cool voice came on the line.
"She's dead then, Ed?"
"Yes. She's dead all right. Have you got your book? I want you to send a cable to Chalmers."
"Go ahead."
That's something I have always admired about Gina. No matter how big the emergency is, she never got rattled.
I dictated a cable to Chalmers. I told him his daughter had met with an accident I regretted that she was dead. I said I would call him at his house at 16.00 hours European time with the details. That gave me three hours in which to get the details and find out how much the police had discovered. It would also give me time to cook up my end of the tale if it seemed necessary to cook up a tale.
Gina said she would get the cable off right away.
"Do that," I said. "There's a chance Chalmers will call before I call him. If he does, you don't know a thing - understand? Don't get tangled up in this, Gina. You don't know a thing. Tell him I'll call him at four o'clock sharp."
"All right, Ed."
It was good to hear her calm, matter-of-fact voice. I dropped the receiver on to its cradle and pushed back my chair. As I did so, Carlotti came in.
"I am going to look at the place where she died," he said. "Do you want to come?"
I stood up.
"Sure, I'll come."
As I followed him out of the office, I saw Grandi was waiting in the corridor. Maybe I was suffering from a guilty conscience, but I had an uneasy idea that the look he gave me was full of suspicion.
PART FOUR
I
The police launch rounded the bend of the high cliff. I was sitting in the stern of the boat by Carlotti. He was smoking, and he wore blue-tinted sunglasses. It seemed odd to me that a policeman should wear sunglasses. I felt he should be above such luxuries.
Grandi and three uniformed policemen were amidships. Grandi didn't wear sunglasses: whatever he did would always be official and correct.
As soon as we got around the bend, I recognized the tiny bay and the massive boulders on which Helen had fallen.
Carlotti stared up at the cliff head. He made a little face. I could see he was thinking what it must have felt to have fallen from such a height. Looking up, I also thought the same thing. The distant cliff head up there made me feel like a pigmy.
The boat chugged into the bay. As soon as it drew alongside the rocks, we scrambled out.
Grandi said to Carlotri, "We haven't touched anything. I wanted you to see it first. All we did was to remove the body."
He and Carlotti began a systematic search of the spot. I and two of the policemen sat on one of the bouiders, out of the way, and watched them. The third policeman remained in the boat.
It wasn't long before Grandi found the camera case I had tossed over the cliff. It was lying half-submerged in water, between two boulders. He fished it up. Both he and Carlotri examined it the way a couple of professors would have examined something that had fallen off Mars.
I noted the careful way Carlotti handled the case, and I was thankful I had got rid of all my prints.
Finally he looked over at me.
"This must be hers. Was she interested in photography?"
I very nearly said she was, but caught myself in time.
"I wouldn't know," I said. "Most Americans on a visit to Italy bring a camera."
Carlotti nodded and handed the camera case to one of the policemen who put it carefully into a plastic bag.
They continued their search. After about ten minutes and after they had climbed some distance from where I was sitting, I saw they had made another discovery. Grandi bent and picked something up from between the cliff face and a rock. The two men stood close together, their backs to me while they examined whatever it was they had found.
I waited, smoking, aware that my heart kept thumping and my mouth was dry.
Finally, after what seemed to me a lifetime, Carlotti made his way to where I was sitting. I pushed off from the rock and went to meet him. I saw he was holding what remained of Helen's Paillard Bolex camera. It had obviously hit a rock in its fall down the cliff face. The telephoto lens had snapped off and there was a dent in its side.
"This could explain how the accident happened," Carlotti said, showing me the camera. "She was probably taking a picture; holding it like this." He held up the camera and peered through the viewfinder. "If she had stood on the edge of the path up there, it would be easy for her to take a false step with this thing obscuring her view'."
I took the camera from him and looked at the little window panel at the back that showed how many feet of film you have run off. It showed twelve feet.
"There's a film in it," I said. "From the look of the camera the water hasn't got into it. Get the film processed, and you'll know for sure if she was taking something from the cliff head."
This seemed to please him.
All the time we had been driving down to the harbour and all the time we had been in the boat, heading towards the place where Helen had died, I knew he had been secretly worrying about the trouble Chalmers might make for him.
"If she hadn't called herself Mrs. Douglas Sherrard," he said, taking the camera from me, "this would be a very straightforward affair. We will go to the villa now. I want to talk to the village woman."
We returned to the harbour of Sorrento, leaving two of the policemen to continue the search for clues. They seemed pretty depressed at being marooned on the rocks.
I didn't blame them. It was very hot out there, and there was no shade.
When we reached the harbour, we took the police car and drove out to the villa.
The trip back from the bay and the drive up to the villa took a little over an hour and a half.
We left the police car at the gates and walked up the drive. The Lincoln convertible still stood on the tarmac before the villa.
You Find Him – I'll Fix Him Page 6