Michael Dibdin: A Rich Full Death

They made such an incongruous pair that when I spied them together for the first time, at that ball I told you of, I took him to be some species of uninteresting relative: an uncle, or something of the kind, brought along to act as chaperon. So forceful was this impression that even when I overheard Isabel being presented to someone as Mrs Eakin I did not immediately realise that she was married to the fellow.

What led polite opinion here to speak of Mr and Mrs Eakin in terms of the proverbial chalk and cheese was not solely his age (although I’ll lay he wasn’t born this century), nor even the fact that he hails from Philadelphia, but rather his marked, his so painfully evident and unashamed fascination with Money.

Not-as with her -the spending of it on a million madcap projects and celebrations of every nature-no, Mr Joseph Eakin is one of Mammon’s truest and purest believers, worshipping Cash not obliquely, as a means of exchange, but for itself. Despite the fortune he has amassed by the manufacture of some product without which the human race is either unable or unwilling to do, he is meticulous in counting his change when buying a cup of coffee, while ‘How much did that cost?’ is the question most frequently on his lips.

In short, then, I had no reason to love Mr Joseph Eakin, and so when Mr Browning asked me if I would be prepared to go to Siena that afternoon and make some discreet enquiries concerning Mr Eakin’s whereabouts at the time of Isabel’s death, I found myself quite agreeably disposed to the idea.

‘You are intimate with the Eakins’ circle,’ Mr Browning explained, ‘and can easily find some pretext for asking the necessary questions without giving offence. Besides, I can ill spare the time, for there are one or two urgent matters which I must follow up here in Florence.’

Well, to be brief, I agreed, and it was with no small thrill that I handed Mr Robert Browning my card, and received in return his assurance of a personal visit the following afternoon to hear the results of my enquiries! That interview in Doney’s had left me more impressed than ever with his masterful manner, his sharp intelligence and knowledge of human nature, and that piquant and quirky manner of expressing himself-which I have endeavoured to set down verbatim in so far as I can recall it.

Indeed, there is even the glimmer of a notion stirring somewhere in the back of my mind …

But of that another time, if at all, for I am grown as cautious as an old fox. Enough to say that I went that very morning to the English bookshop, which is but two steps from Doney’s, and asked if they could supply me with any of his works. I knew vaguely that he had written plays, though I had never read any of them-or indeed seen a single copy. I was therefore both surprised and delighted when the assistant cried ‘But of course!’, and returned in a few moments carrying an armful of volumes which I seized avidly-only to discover that their author, although indeed of the genus Browning, was not the rare Robert but rather the common Elizabeth Barrett variety. I tried to explain the mistake, but the assistant was now engaged in selling someone a modern prose version of Dante’s Inferno , and merely waved me towards the shelves at the back of the shop, where after much searching I eventually unearthed-like uncut raw diamond-a single volume of verses by Mr Robert Browning, entitled Dramatic Romances and Lyrics , of which I promptly possessed myself.

As the weather bid fair to continue fine, I decided to eschew the advantages of modern civilisation-in the form of the railroad, the first in Italy, which the Englishman Stephenson has built the Duke-and drive to Siena along the old highway, not yet fallen into complete disuse, through the Chianti hills.

The road is of some forty miles, but steep in places, and the horse attached to the gig I had hired proved as weak as hireling beasts usually are. Moreover I was late leaving, having a number of matters to attend to in town, and compounded this by making a detour out by way of Bellosguardo and then stopping at an inn on the road for a country repast of bean soup, tough bread and roasted songbirds washed down with black wine, accompanied by the howling of a mad dog and the sullen prattle of the peasantry. The result was that by the time I reached Siena it was growing late, and I drove directly out to the villa where Mr Eakin’s ailing relative lives, on the hills to the west of the city.

If chronic invalidism should ever prove to be your lot, Siena has much to recommend it. Florence may have had its day, but that era seems almost contemporary with our own compared to that of its ancient rival. Here life and hope and striving are notions so long extinct that the Siennese turn up their noses at the mere words. The only really well-bred thing to do here is to expire gracefully, like the city itself, by exquisite degrees; which is precisely what Joseph Eakin’s aunt, along with many others of her sex and nation, is single-mindedly engaged in doing.

I was received not by this lady herself, who was ‘indisposed’, but by a youngish man whose relationship to her-as indeed his name, race and other details-remained nebulous. I introduced myself as a friend of Mr Eakin’s, who had been the subject of a bizarre and disturbing experience which I hoped my visit could resolve. I had been strolling past the Cathedral in Florence (I said) at about five o’clock on Sunday afternoon, when I caught sight of my old friend Joseph Eakin walking towards me. Much surprised-for I had believed him to be in Siena for the weekend-I hastened to greet him. To my astonishment and chagrin he had cut me dead, walking on without so much as pausing in his stride, as though I were a complete and utter stranger! I was quite naturally astounded and hurt by this behaviour, but above all anxious to learn the reason for it. Had I unwittingly done or said something to offend him? Had someone been spreading malicious gossip? Having learned that he was now in Siena, I was come thither in hopes of finding him and resolving this misunderstanding.

The young man replied with slightly insolent politeness, in an accent I could not quite place, that Mr Eakin had unfortunately returned to Florence by the midday train. However, he assured me that I must have been mistaken, since he could vouch for the fact that on the afternoon in question Joseph Eakin had not been in Florence, but sitting in the very room in which we were presently talking-a gesture indicated the chair which had supported the plutocratic posterior during this period.

This seemed final, but to ensure that there was no mistake I pressed the point. Was my informant really quite certain? The resemblance had been quite astonishing; I scarcely thought it possible that I could have been mistaken. Was it not possible that Mr Eakin had absented himself for a few hours and returned to Florence? But the young man was not to be shaken: Eakin had spent the whole of Sunday afternoon at the villa, first with his aunt and subsequently with her personal doctor, one McPherson.

There was nothing more to be done that evening, so I put up at an inn which Murray’s Guide accurately described as ‘very indifferent’, where I fell asleep over Mr Browning’s verses-this implies no criticism of the latter, which pleased me, but I was exhausted from my long drive and all the shocks these last days had sprung upon me.

This morning I was up betimes, and in an hour was on the road back to Florence, having verified Mr Eakin’s alibi by applying to Doctor Alistair McPherson: a lean sliver of upright Aberdeen morality as out of place in these accommodating climes as an Italian cupola astride a Presbyterian kirk. Here was a man whose every feature proclaimed his utter probity, and when he assured me that he had been with Joseph Eakin at the hour in question, then I knew that Mr Browning’s convenient theory would no longer serve.