When in Rome ra-26

by Ngaio Marsh

  “Don’t let that trouble you. Toni’s terrific.”

  “Toni?”

  “Where we’re going, Toni’s pad. It’s the greatest. Groovy. You know? Grass, hard stuff, the lot. Mind you, he plays it cool. There’ll be a freak-out.”

  “A—?”

  “A happening. Psychedelic.”

  “A floor show?”

  “If you like — but way-out. Ever so trendy. Some people just go for giggles and come away. But if it sends you, which is what it’s for, you move on to the buzz.”

  “Obviously you’ve been there before?”

  “Not to decieve you, I have. Seb took us.”

  “Us?”

  “Auntie came too. She’s all for experience. She’s fabulous — honestly. I mean it.”

  With considerable effort Alleyn said casually, “Did Seb — turn you on?”

  “That’s right. In Perugia. I’m thinking,” Kenneth said, “of making the move.”

  “To—?”

  “The big leap. Pothead to mainliner. Well, as a matter of fact I’ve had a taste. You know. Mind you, I’m not hooked. Just the odd pop. Only a fun thing.”

  Alleyn looked at a face that not so long ago might have been attractive. Policemen are as wary of reading character into other people’s faces as they are of betraying their thoughts in their own, but it occurred to him that if Kenneth were a less repellent colour and if he would shut his mouth instead of letting it droop open in a flaccid smirk he wouldn’t be a bad-looking specimen. He might, even at this stage, be less dissolute than his general behaviour suggested. “And whatever has happened or is about to happen to Mr. Sebastian Mailer,” Alleyn thought, “it cannot be one millionth fraction of what he most richly deserves.”

  Kenneth broke the silence that had fallen between them.

  “I say,” he said, “it’s idiotic of course but wouldn’t it be a yell if after being on about Seb and Toni’s pad and all that bit, you were The Man?”

  “The Man?”

  “Yes. You know. A plain-clothes fuzz.”

  “Do I look like it?”

  “Nobody less. You look gorgeous. That might be your cunning, though, mightn’t it? Still, you couldn’t have me busted when we’re not on British soil. Or could you?”

  “I don’t know,” Alleyn said. “Ask a policeman.”

  Kenneth gave an emaciated little laugh. “Honestly, you kill me,” he said, and after another pause: “If it’s not going too far, what do you do?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I don’t know. Something frightfully high-powered and discreet. Like diplomacy. Or has that gone out with the lord chamberlain?”

  “Has the lord chamberlain gone out?”

  “Gone in, then. I suppose he still potters about palatial corridors with a key on his bottom.” A disturbing thought seemed to strike Kenneth. “Oh God!” he said faintly. “Don’t tell me you are the lord chamberlain.”

  “I am not the lord chamberlain.”

  “It would have been just my luck.”

  The dance band came to an inconclusive halt. Barnaby Grant and Sophy Jason returned to the table. Giovanni elegantly steered Lady Braceley to hers, where the Major sat in a trance. The Van der Veghels, hand-linked, joined them.

  Giovanni explained that the second driver would return Sophy, the Van der Veghels and Grant to their hotels whenever they wished and that he himself would be responsible for the other members of the party.

  Alleyn noticed that Toni’s pad had not been named by Giovanni and that there had been no general, open announcement of the extra attraction. Only those rather furtive approaches to the male members of the party. And through Kenneth to Lady Braceley.

  The Van der Veghels said they would like to dance a little more and then go home. Sophy and Grant agreed to this and when the band struck up again returned to the floor. Alleyn found himself alone with the Van der Veghels, who contentedly sipped champagne.

  “I’m not much good, Baroness,” Alleyn said. “But will you risk it?”

  “Of course.”

  She herself, like many big women, was very good — steady and light. “But you dance well,” she said after a moment. “Why do you say not so? It is this British self-deprecation we hear about?”

  “It would be hard to blunder with you as one’s partner.”

  “Ah-ha, ah-ha, a compliment! Better and better!”

  “You are not going on to this other party.”

  “No. My husband thinks it would not suit us to go. He did not very much care for the style of the suggestion. It is more for the men, he said, so I tease him and say he is a big square and I am not so unsophisticated.”

  “But he remains firm?”

  “He remains firm. So you go?”

  “I’ve said yes but now you alarm me.”

  “No!” cried the Baroness with a sort of obligatory archness. “That I do not believe. You are a cool one. A sophisticate. That I see very clearly.”

  “Change your mind. Come and take care of me.”

  This brought peals of jollity from the Baroness. She floated expertly and laughed up and down the scale and then, when he persisted, suddenly adopted an air of gravity. Her voice deepened and she explained that though she was sure Alleyn would not believe her, she and the Baron were in fact quite puritanical in their outlook. They came, she said, of Lutheran stock. They did not at all fancy, for instance, Roman nightlife as portrayed by Italian films. Had Alleyn ever heard of the publishing firm of Adriaan and Welker? If not she must tell him that they took a very firm stand in respect of moral tone and that the Baron, their foreign representative, upheld this attitude.

  “In our books all is clean, all is honest and healthful,” she declared and elaborated upon this high standard of literary hygiene with great enthusiasm.

  It was not a pose, Alleyn thought, it was an attitude of mind: the Baroness Van der Veghel (and evidently her husband, too) was a genuine pietist and, he thought, with a sidelong look at that Etruscan smile, in all probability she was possessed of the calm ruthlessness that so often accompanies a puritanical disposition.

  “My husband and I,” she said, “are in agreement on the — I think you call it ‘permissive’ society, do you not? In all things,” she added with stifling effrontery, “we are in absolute accord. We are sure of ourselves. Always we are happy together and agreeing in our views. Like twins, isn’t it?” and again she burst out laughing.

  In her dancing, in her complacency, in her sudden bursts of high spirits she bore witness to her preposterous claims: she was a supremely contented woman, Alleyn thought; a physically satisfied woman. Intellectually and morally satisfied, too, it would appear. She turned her head and looked towards the table where her husband sat. They smiled at each other and twiddled their fingers.

  “Is this your first visit to Rome?” Alleyn asked. When people dance together and there is concord in their dancing, however alien they may be in other respects, they are in physical agreement. Alleyn felt at once a kind of withdrawal in the Baroness but she answered readily that she and her husband had visited Italy and in particular Rome, on several previous occasions. Her husband’s publishing interests brought him there quite often and when it was convenient she accompanied him.

  “But this time,” Alleyn mentioned, “it is for fun?” and she agreed.

  “For you also?” she asked.

  “Oh absolutely,” said Alleyn and gave her an extra twirl. “Have you made any of the Il Cicerone trips on previous visits?” he asked. Again: it was unmistakable — a withdrawal.

  She said: “I think they are of recent formink. Quite new and of the greatest fun.”

  “Does it strike you as at all odd,” asked Alleyn, “that we none of us seem to be particularly bothered about the nonappearance of our cicerone?”

  He felt her massive shoulders rise. “It is strange, perhaps,” she conceded, “that he disappears. We hope all is well with him, do we not? That is all we can do. The tour has been satisfactory.�
� They moved past their table. The Baron cried: “Good, good!” and gently clapped his enormous hands in praise of their dancing. Lady Braceley removed her gaze from Giovanni and gave them a haggard appraisal. The Major slept.

  “We think,” said the Baroness, resuming their conversation, “that there was perhaps trouble for him with the postcard woman. The Violetta.”

  “She certainly made him a scene.”

  “She was down there, we think. Below.”

  “Did you see her?”

  “No. Miss Jason saw her shadow. We thought that Mr. Mailer was unhappy when she said so. He made the big pooh-pooh but he was unhappy.”

  “She’s a pretty frightening lady, that one.”

  “She is terrible. Such hatred so nakedly shown is terrible. All hatred,” said the Baroness, deftly responding to a change of step, “is very terrible.”

  “The monk in charge had the place searched. Neither Mailer nor Violetta was found.”

  “Ah. The monk,” Baroness Van der Veghel remarked and it was impossible to read anything at all into this observation. “Possibly. Yes. It may be so.”

  “I wonder,” Alleyn presently remarked, “if anyone has ever told you how very Etruscan you are.”

  “I? I am a Dutchwoman. We are Netherlander, my husband and I.”

  “I meant, if you’ll forgive me, in looks. You are strikingly like the couple on that beautiful sarcophagus in the Villa Giulia.”

  “My husband’s is a very old Netherlands family,” she announced apparently without any intention of snubbing Alleyn but merely as a further statement of fact.

  Alleyn thought he also could pursue an independent theme. “I’m sure you won’t mind my saying so,” he said, “because they are so very attractive. They have that strong marital likeness that tells one they, too, are in perfect accord.”

  She offered no comment unless her next remark could be construed as such. “We are distantly related,” she said. “We are in fact descended upon the distaff side from the Wittelsbacks. I am called Mathilde Jacobea after the so celebrated Countess. But it is strange, what you say, all the same. My husband believes that our family had its origins in Etruria. So perhaps,” she added playfully, “we are backthrows. He thinks of writing a book on the subject.”

  “How very interesting,” said Alleyn politely and entered upon a spinning manoeuvre of some virtuosity. It rather irritated him that she followed with perfect ease. “Yes,” she said, confirming her own pronouncement, “you dance well. That was most pleasant. Shall we return?”

  They went back to her husband, who kissed her hand and contemplated her with his head on one side. Grant and Sophy joined them. Giovanni asked if they were ready to be driven to their hotels and, on learning that they were, summoned the second driver.

  Alleyn watched them leave and then, with the resignation that all policemen on duty command, addressed himself to the prospect of Toni’s pad.

  The entrance to Toni’s was through a wrought iron gate, opened after a subdued exchange with Giovanni, by a porter. Then across a paved courtyard and up five floors in a lift. Giovanni had collected fifteen thousand lire from each member of his party. He handed these amounts to someone who peered through a trap in a wall. A further door was then opened from the inside and the amenities of Toni’s pad were gradually disclosed.

  They were everything — and more — that might be expected on a pretty elaborate scale and they catered for all tastes at predictable levels. The patrons were ushered into a pitch-dark room and seated on velvet divans round the wall. It was impossible to discover how many were there, but cigarette ends pulsed in many places and the room was full of smoke. Giovanni’s party seemed to be the last arrivals. They were guided to their places by someone with a small blue torchlight. Alleyn contrived to settle near the door. A voice murmured: “A ‘joint,’ Signore?” and a box with a single cigarette in it was displayed by the torch. Alleyn took the cigarette. Every now and then people murmured and often giggling broke out.

  The freak-out was introduced by Toni himself, holding a torch under his face. He was a smooth man who seemed to be dressed in floral satin. He spoke in Italian and then haltingly in English. The name of the performance, he said, was “Keenky Keeks.”

  A mauve light flooded the central area and the show was on.

  Alleyn was not given to subjective comment where police fieldwork was concerned, but in a report that he subsequently drew up on the case in hand he referred to Toni’s Kinky Kicks as “infamous” and, since a more explicit description was unnecessary, he did not give one.

  The performers were still in action when his fingers found the door handle behind a velvet curtain. He slipped out.

  The porter who had admitted them was in the vestibule. He was big, heavy and lowering and lay back in a chair placed across the entrance. When he saw Alleyn he did not seem surprised. It might be supposed that rebellious stomachs were not unknown at Toni’s.

  “You wish to leave, Signore?” he asked in Italian and gestured towards the door. “You go?” he added in basic English.

  “No,” Alleyn said in Italian. “No, thank you. I am looking for Signor Mailer.” He glanced at his hands which were trembling and thrust them in his pockets.

  The man lowered his feet to the floor, gave Alleyn a pretty hard stare and got up.

  “He is not here,” he said.

  Alleyn withdrew his hand from his trouser pocket and looked absentmindedly at the 50,000-lire note. The porter slightly cleared his throat. “Signor Mailer is not here this evening,” he said. “I regret.”

  “That is disappointing,” Alleyn said. “I am very surprised. We were to meet. I had an arrangement with him: an arrangement for special accommodation. You understand?” He yawned widely and used his handkerchief.

  The porter, watching him, waited for some moments. “Perhaps he has been delayed,” he said. “I can speak to Signor Toni on your behalf, Signore. I can arrange the accommodation.”

  “Perhaps Signor Mailer will come. Perhaps I will wait a little.” He yawned again.

  “There is no need. I can arrange everything.”

  “You don’t even know—”

  “You have only to speak, Signore. Anything!”

  The porter became specific. Alleyn affected restlessness and discontent. “That’s all very fine,” he said. “But I wish to see the padrone. It is an appointment.”

  Alleyn waited for the man to contradict the term “padrone” but he did not. He began to wheedle. Mellifluously he murmured and consoled. He could see, he said, that Alleyn was in distress. What did he need? Was it perhaps H. and C.? And the equipment? He could provide everything at once and a sympathetic couch in privacy. Or did he prefer to take his pleasure in his apartment?

  Alleyn realized after a minute or two that the man was trading on his own account and had no intention of going to Toni for the cocaine and heroin he offered. Perhaps he stole from the stock in hand. He himself kept up his display of “withdrawal” symptoms. The 50,000-lire note shook in his grasp, he gaped, dabbed at his nose and mopped his neck and brow. He affected to mistrust the porter. How did he know that the porter’s stuff would be of good quality? Mr. Mailer’s supplies were of the best: unadulterated, pure. He understood Mr. Mailer was a direct importer from the Middle East. How was he to know—?

  The porter said at once that it would be from Mr. Mailer’s stock that he would produce the drugs. Mr. Mailer was indeed an important figure in the trade. He became impatient.

  “In a moment, Signore, it will be too late. The performance will end. It is true that Toni’s guests will retire to other rooms and other amusements. To be frank, Signore, they will not receive the service that I can provide.”

  “You guarantee that it is of Signor Mailer’s supply?”

  “I have said so, Signore.”

  Alleyn consented. The man went into a sort of cubbyhole off the vestibule that was evidently his office. Alleyn heard a key turn. A drawer was shut. The porter returned with a se
aled package neatly wrapped in glossy blue paper. The cost was exorbitant: about thirty per cent on the British blackmarket price. He paid and said agitatedly that he wanted to go at once.

  The man opened the door, took him down in the lift and let him out.

  A car was drawn up in the alley and at its wheel, fast asleep, Giovanni’s second-in-command. Alleyn concluded that Giovanni found himself fully occupied elsewhere.

  He walked to the corner, found the name of the main street — the Via Aldo — and took his bearings. He returned to the car, woke the driver and was driven to his hotel. He maintained his withdrawal symptoms for the driver’s benefit, made a muddle over finding his money and finally overtipped lavishly with a trembling hand.

  After Toni’s pad the hotel vestibule might have been in the Austrian Tyrol, so healthful did its quietude, its subdued luxury, its tinkling fountains and its emptiness appear. Alleyn went to his room, bathed, and for a minute or two stood on his small balcony and looked down at Rome. Eastward there was a faint pallor in the sky. In those churches, shut like massive lids, over the ancient underworld, they would soon be lighting candles for the first offices of the day. Perhaps the lay brother at San Tommaso in Pallaria was already awake and preparing to go slap-slap in his sandals through the empty streets with a key to the underworld in his habit.

  Alleyn locked the cigarette and the package of cocaine and heroin in his briefcase and, telling himself to wake at seven o’clock, went to bed and to sleep.

  Much earlier in the night Barnaby Grant and Sophy Jason from the top of the Pensione Gallico had also looked at Rome.

  “It’s not very late,” Grant had said. “Shall we go out on the roof garden for a minute or two? Would you like a drink?”

  “I don’t want any more alcohol, thank you,” Sophy said.

  “I’ve got some oranges. We could squeeze them out and add cold water, couldn’t we? Fetch your tooth mug.”

  The roof garden smelt of night-scented stocks, watered earth and fern. They made their orange drinks, pointed out the silhouettes of Rome against the sky and spoke very quietly because bedrooms opened on to the roof garden. This gave their dialogue an air of conspiracy.