It was clear, at any rate, why suspicion had so soon attached itself to Julia: the chambermaid was one of those, no doubt, who had observed Julia going into the annexe with Ned and later leaving without him. Assisting shortly afterwards at the discovery of the corpse, it would have been natural for her simply to inform the manager that the English gentleman in Room 6 had been murdered by the English lady in Room 8. ‘Was there,’ I asked, ‘so far as you know, anyone else in the annexe?’
‘Mrs Frostfield and Major Linnaker – they were in the same group we were – they came out into the corridor to see what was going on. I guess the chambermaid had screamed some – I guess I had, too.’
‘Did you happen to notice,’ asked Ragwort, ‘whether they had changed for dinner?’
‘Mrs Frostfield certainly had – she was wearing a long skirt and evening slippers. It’s hard to say with Major Linnaker – he dressed pretty informally most of the time. Well, when the police came they searched all the rooms in the annexe but they didn’t find anyone. I don’t figure that means too much, though, because if someone wanted to get away it wouldn’t have been too hard to slip out of the window into the canal. Maybe it wouldn’t smell too good – but I guess it’s what I’d have done if I’d just committed a murder and wanted to get away.’
‘And then?’ I said.
‘Well, the police made us all wait in the corridor. Except Kenneth – Kenneth wouldn’t leave Ned and they just let him stay. Then they got a stretcher and brought Ned out with a sheet over him and took him down the stairs. They’d got the police motor-launch right up next to the entrance, so they didn’t need to take him across the bridge. There’s only one light there and they stumbled a bit getting into the launch, but it was all right. And Kenneth just went right along with them and they didn’t stop him.’
I thought of the heavy-shouldered sculptor following the body of his friend; and easily imagined, for I too am familiar with the city, how little the single light and the fragments of its reflection in the black surface of the canal would serve to penetrate the Venetian darkness.
‘Well,’ said Marylou, ‘that was about it. They took statements from all of us through an interpreter, but it didn’t take long and it was all pretty informal. Then we had dinner in a private room – the hotel manager said we wouldn’t feel like eating in the dining-room after what had happened. It was very considerate of him – additionally to which, maybe he thought having a guest murdered on the premises wasn’t the best kind of publicity and he didn’t want us talking to anyone else about it. But Julia wasn’t there and I just figured she wasn’t involved any way at all because she hadn’t been in the annexe. That was kind of simplistic maybe, because she could have been in the annexe and come down again. But I just assumed she’d got back late and gone straight to the dining-room.’
‘That seems,’ said Ragwort, ‘a very reasonable assumption.’
‘So I didn’t see Julia again that evening and I wasn’t really feeling concerned about her. I mean, I was concerned because I knew she’d be upset, but not for any other reason. Well, next morning, when we were all meant to be at the landing stage to take the launch over to the airport, Julia wasn’t there. But even then I just figured she was having problems with her packing and maybe I’d better go and help her.’ Prompted, if not caused, by the pitiful image of Julia attempting unaided to pack her suitcase, two large and evenly matched tears began to roll down in perfect parallel on either side of Marylou’s charming nose.
‘My dear girl,’ said Ragwort, ‘don’t cry.’
‘Cheer up, old thing,’ said Cantrip.
‘Have some more sherry,’ said Selena.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Marylou, ‘I guess it’s just a biochemical reflex. Well, that’s when Graziella told us Julia wasn’t coming, because the police still wanted to question her about the murder.’
Her first inclination, it seemed, on receipt of this intelligence, had been to remain in Venice until Julia could be extracted from the clutches of the police. Stanford, however, characteristically opposing this course of action, she had allowed herself, with a weakness which she now felt culpable, to be prevailed upon to return to London: she appeared to be seriously considering whether she ought not to make good this default by going straight back to Venice and persuading the Italian police of the absurdity of their accusations. We comforted her with assurances of the steps being taken to protect Julia’s interests; with promises to let her know of any further developments; and with two more glasses of Timothy’s sherry.
‘It’s a bit much,’ said Cantrip, when she had gone. ‘Losing three suspects all at one go.’
‘I suppose,’ said Ragwort, ‘that she could be lying.’
‘No,’ said Selena. ‘She must be telling us the same thing she told the Italian police. And that must be the same thing that Stanford and Kenneth Dunfermline told them. If it were merely a question of her evidence corroborating her husband’s, one might not take much notice. But conspiracy between all three – no, Ragwort, I really don’t think it’ll do.’
Timothy rang soon afterwards to tell us the bad news. We told him we knew. He told us it was worse.
12
It does me no credit – save in showing how little this chronicle is written in any spirit of self-advertisement – to admit that even now I was unable to identify the murderer and the motive for the crime. All the essential evidence was available: except to confirm an hypothesis already virtually assured no further investigation should have been necessary. Certain of my colleagues in the world of scholarship would perhaps not scruple to omit all reference to their subsequent enquiries, preferring to set forth immediately the conclusions to be drawn from the evidence and to veil in silence their own delay in reaching them. The true scholar, however, should disdain such paltering.
To excuse my slowness, I say only that the nursery is no place for quiet contemplation: and, as I have mentioned, the process of reflection was interrupted by Timothy’s telephone call.
I have been exercised in my mind how properly to deal with this, since Timothy shortly afterwards wrote a letter to Selena containing an account of his progress more detailed than he had thought economic to convey by telephone. I have debated whether it would be permissible, to avoid the tedium of repetition, to reproduce that letter immediately, rather than at the point in my narrative at which, by chronology of receipt, it ought in strictness to appear; and have concluded that it would.
As from Palazzo Artemisio
Venice.
Monday 12th September.
Dear Selena,
As I promised on the telephone, I am writing to let you know in more detail what has happened since my arrival in Venice. I hope, of course, that it will prove a wasted effort and that Julia will have been restored, before it reaches you, to the safety of Lincoln’s Inn; but I am afraid, as things stand at present, that that is optimistic. I am writing this, by the way, in the dining-room of the Hotel Cytherea – feeling that it might be sensible to see the place where everything is supposed to have happened, I decided, after ringing you, to have lunch here.
After I left you all on Saturday, there were various delays before the plane finally took off, and by the time we landed it was already dark. Instead of going by boat across the lagoon, I took a taxi across the causeway to the Piazzale Roma and went from there by vaporetto down the Grand Canal to Saint Mark’s, which is the nearest station to the Palazzo Artemisio.
I found I was feeling uneasy, almost apprehensive. I had forgotten how much darker Venice is at night than other cities. The darkness is broken here and there by the white silhouette of a floodlit church or palazzo; but its brightness is cold and disquieting – the building itself seems nothing but a clever lighting effect. Indeed, the whole city seems somehow illusory, like a stage set for a death-and-daggers melodrama. One feels the designer has overdone it rather – the water is too black, the alleyways too narrow, the silence of the gondolas too improbably sinister for anyone to believe they ar
e real. But I remembered that a man really had been murdered.
If Julia had still been in custody, I should have felt obliged to take some immediate step on her behalf, though what I could usefully have done at that time of night I have no clear idea. As it was, I felt justified in going straight to the Palazzo Artemisio. I was admitted by the housekeeper, who clucked round me very amiably, apologizing on Richard Tiverton’s behalf for his not being well enough to welcome me in person. The Palazzo itself, though, is not exactly what I would describe as comfortable. The late Miss Tiverton seems to have had a fancy, which I do not share, for living in a museum: I hardly dare move for fear of damaging something.
On the following morning, Richard Tiverton joined me for breakfast. He told me with many apologies that he did not yet feel able to give his mind to discussing his tax affairs. Having chosen to come to Venice by sea rather than air, he had found uncomfortably late that the sea did not suit his digestion: he was still feeling very unwell – looking it too, poor boy.
Wanting to begin as soon as possible to do something about Julia’s problems, I did my best to encourage him to a leisurely recovery.
‘I was intending,’ I said, ‘to add a few days’ holiday to the end of my stay in Venice. I should be quite happy, if you don’t feel I’m imposing on your hospitality, to take it at the beginning rather than the end.’ I meant, of course, that the fee for my services would not be increased by the delay; but that is hardly something, even in these permissive days, which one can say outright to the lay client.
‘Thank you,’ said Richard, ‘that’s very kind.’ Whether he understood the financial implication of my remark or had expected, on the basis of his memory of public school, that I would tell him to pull himself together and face up to the Finance Act like a man, I am not entirely sure.
Not wanting to disclose to him that there was any competing claim on my professional energies, I decided to make any telephone calls relating to Julia from the nearest bar rather than from the Palazzo, where the only telephone is just by the front door – not at all a convenient place from the point of view of privacy. After breakfast, therefore, I went out, saying that I intended to spend the day wandering round Venice.
It was a frustrating morning. I wanted, of course, to talk to Julia as soon as possible; but the travel agents had been unable to tell me exactly where she was staying in Chioggia. Graziella, obviously, would have known; but there was no answer from the number they had given me for her. The police, presumably, would also have known; but to telephone them without introduction and knowing nothing of the case seemed hardly calculated to impress them with my professional standing.
At last, through the emergency number for the British Consulate, I managed to track down a Signor Vespari, whose duties during the weekend had included receiving the news that one of those under the Consulate’s protection had been murdered and another was suspected of the crime.
Signor Vespari agreed to join me for lunch at Montin’s – the restaurant in the Dorsodouro which Ragwort likes. He told me what little he knew about the murder – that is, about the Finance Act and the unfortunate impression made by Julia’s denial of any acquaintance with the victim – and we discussed at some length the steps to be taken to protect her interests. We agreed that after I had seen her I should talk to the police officer in charge of the case – Signor Vespari undertook to arrange this for me. We both felt, at this stage, that the case against Julia was so slight that the police must be doubtful whether to pursue it.
After lunch he was kind enough to invite me back to his flat and to allow me to make my telephone calls to Julia and yourself. He is, perhaps, quite enjoying the excitement of having a murder on his hands – generally speaking, it seems, the British in Venice do nothing worse than get drunk in Saint Mark’s Square.
It was in a mood, therefore, of reasonable optimism that I took the vaporetto across the lagoon to Chioggia. I made my way to Julia’s hotel and was greeted, as I approached the reception desk, with the familiar words, ‘Hello, Timothy, come and have a drink.’
Physically, at any rate, her recent difficulties seemed to have done Julia no harm. There has been, it is true, some increase in her customary dishevelment: she looks like one of Priam’s daughters after a more than usually trying rape – but one, all the same, who during the Siege of Troy has eaten well, slept well and done plenty of sunbathing.
The trouble was that she knew nothing about the murder. I mean not merely that she is innocent of any complicity, but that she had no idea how or when it was discovered, or why suspicion had fallen on herself. There she was, she said, peacefully eating spaghetti in the dining-room of the Cytherea, doing no harm to anyone, when she was summoned to the manager’s office. The peremptory terms of the invitation led her to expect a rebuke of some kind; but she supposed it to have something to do with an episode earlier in the day, of which I gather she has already written to you, involving one of the waiters.
In the manager’s office she found, in addition to the manager himself, two police officers. This, she felt, was making altogether too much of the matter, since after all, she said, the waiter had been perfectly willing. It did cross her mind, however, that he might have been even younger than he looked and that she did not know precisely what age, under Italian law, was regarded as that of consent. When, therefore, the police officers told her that they were enquiring into the death by violence of Mr Edward Watson, it was with some relief that she told them she knew no one of that name.
‘That, Julia,’ I said, ‘was rather a pity.’
‘If you,’ said Julia, ‘had recently shared a bed with a young man of ethereal beauty, would it occur to you that his surname was Watson?’
‘The contingency,’ I answered, ‘is in my case remote. I should have thought, however, that it was a perfectly respectable name, such as anyone might have.’
‘Precisely so,’ said Julia sadly.
It had not been until Graziella arrived that anyone made it clear to Julia who it was who had been murdered. Fortunately, Graziella had conceived of the duties of a courier as including the protection of her clients during any interrogation by the police. She had accompanied Julia to the police station and had remained with her while she was questioned by the Vice-Quaestor – that is the title of the officer in charge of the case. The questioning had continued until after midnight, delayed by occasional disputes between Graziella and the official interpreter about the precise shade of meaning to be attributed to Julia’s answers.
Following, I gathered, some rather forceful representations from Graziella, Julia was released, on terms, however, of surrendering her passport and remaining in the Veneto. She had spent the rest of the night on Graziella’s sofa.
The account she had given the police of Friday afternoon is the same as is contained in her last letter to you: there is no point in my repeating it. After hearing it, I still felt that the field of suspects was entirely open. Not only the Art Lovers but almost anyone else, it seemed to me, could have been in the annexe on Friday evening. In particular, though, I still thought there had been time, after Kenneth came back from Verona, for a short but violent quarrel between him and Ned.
I felt more troubled about the lowering effect which the affair had had on her spirits. She attaches great significance to the signs of nervousness displayed by Ned on the morning of his death, attributing them to a fear of a murderous attack. She is persuaded that he was relying on her presence to protect him, and concludes that she is much to blame for leaving him asleep and defenceless.
‘My dear Julia,’ I said, ‘no one in their senses would choose you as a bodyguard.’
Since, however, she seemed unconvinced of this, I thought I had better change the subject by telling her of the professional reasons for my being in Venice: the idea of anyone incurring a £400,000 tax liability which could be avoided by a simple change of domicile was sufficiently shocking to divert her mind. There is, I think, nothing else in our conversation which needs t
o be reported to you.
This morning, taking breakfast again with my client, I was as sorry as circumstances permitted to find him not yet fully recovered. I am not, I suppose, taking quite so firm a line with Richard as my instructing solicitor would hope. Well, the Italian lawyer dealing with his great-aunt’s estate is joining us for dinner this evening – that will be soon enough to begin making him realize the seriousness of his position.
Having arranged with Signor Vespari that I would call at the Consulate at ten o’clock, I found when I arrived that he had already made an appointment for me to see the Vice-Quaestor later in the morning. He had also telephoned Graziella, to tell her of my being in Venice: this had the agreeable result that she had offered to meet me at the Consulate and to act as my interpreter in the interview with the Vice-Quaestor.
Graziella spoke indignantly on the way to the police station, of the absurdity of suspecting ‘the little Signorina Julia’. There being nothing in their relative sizes to justify the epithet – Graziella is delicately built – I take it to be a term of endearment.
‘The little Signorina Julia,’ she said, ‘is of course a most charming girl, most intelligent and serious’ – Julia’s attentiveness to her lectures on the Gothic and the Byzantine has evidently made a good impression – ‘but as for committing murder – no, Signor Shepherd, she would not know how to.’ Graziella shrugged her shoulders, as if admitting some minor defect in an otherwise admirable character – she herself, no doubt, would, if she thought it necessary, commit a very competent murder. ‘To stab a man – if one has seen the Signorina attempting to slice a peach – ’
Thus Was Adonis Murdered Page 14