Ngaio Marsh - When in Rome

She said: “Isn’t this fun ?” Her voice was beautiful.

Mailer was at her elbow with Grant in tow: “Lady Braceley, may I present? Our guest of honour — Mr. Barnaby Grant.”

She said: “Do you know you’re the sole reason for my coming to this party? Kenneth, with a team of wild horses, wouldn’t have bullied me into sightseeing at this ghastly hour. You’re my ‘sight.’ ”

“I don’t know,” Grant said rapidly, “how I’m meant to answer that. Except that I’m sure you’ll find the church of San Tommaso in Pallaria much more rewarding.”

“Is that where we’re going? Is it a ruin ?” she asked, opening her devastated eyes very wide and drawling out the word. “I can’t tell you how I hate roo-ins.”

There was perhaps one second’s silence and then Grant said: “It’s not exactly that. It’s — well, you’ll see when we get there.”

“Does it come in your book? I’ve read your book — the Simon one — which is a great compliment if you only knew it because you don’t write my sort of book at all. Don’t be huffy. I adored this one although I haven’t a clue, really, what it’s about. You shall explain it to me. Kenneth tried, didn’t you, darling, but he was even more muddling than the book. Mr. Allen, come over here and tell me — have you read the last Barnaby Grant and if you have, did you know what it was about?”

Alleyn was spared the task of finding an answer to this by the intervention of Sebastian Mailer, who rather feverishly provided the kind of raillery that seemed to be invited and got little reward for his pains. When he archly said: “Lady Braceley, you’re being very naughty. I’m quite sure you didn’t miss the last delicate nuance of Simon in Latium ,” she merely said, “What?” and walked away before he could repeat his remark.

It was now the turn of the Baron and Baroness. Lady Braceley received the introduction vaguely. “Aren’t we going to start?” she asked Alleyn and Grant. “Don’t you rather hate hanging about? Such a bore, don’t you think? Who’s missing?”

Upon this cool enquiry, Sebastian Mailer explained that Major Sweet was joining them at the basilica, and proceeded to outline the programme for the afternoon. They would drive round the Colosseum and the Forum and would then visit the basilica of San Tommaso in Pallaria which, as they all knew, was the setting for the great central scene in Mr. Barnaby Grant’s immensely successful novel, Simon in Latium. He had prevailed upon the distinguished author, Mr. Mailer went on, to say a few words about the basilica in its relation to his book which, as they would hear from him, was largely inspired by it.

Throughout this exposition Barnaby Grant, Alleyn noticed, seemed to suffer the most exquisite embarrassment. He stared at the ground, hunched his shoulders, made as if to walk away and, catching perhaps a heightened note in Mr. Mailer’s voice, thought better of this and remained, wretchedly it appeared, where he was.

Mr. Mailer concluded by saying that as the afternoon was deliciously clement they would end it with a picnic tea on the Palatine Hill. The guests would then be driven to their hotels to relax and change for dinner and would be called for at nine o’clock.

He now distributed the guests. He, with Lady Braceley, Alleyn and Barnaby Grant would take one car; the Van der Veghels, Sophy Jason and Kenneth Dorne would take the other. The driver of the second car was introduced. “Giovanni is fluent in English,” said Mr. Mailer, “and learned in the antiquities. He will discourse upon matters of interest en route. Come, ladies and gentlemen,” said Mr. Mailer, “let us embark. Pronto !”

The four arches that lead into the porch of San Tommaso in Pallaria are of modest proportion and their pillars, which in classic times adorned some pagan temple, are slender and worn. The convolvulus tendrils that their carver twined about them have broken in many places, but the work is so delicate that the stone seems to tremble. In the most shadowed corner of the porch sat a woman with a tray of postcards. She wore a black headscarf pulled forward over her face and a black cotton dress. She shouted something, perhaps at Mr. Mailer. Her voice was strident, which may have caused her remark to sound like an insult. He paid no attention to it.

He collected his party about him and looked at his watch. “Major Sweet,” he said, “is late. We shall not wait for him but before we go in I should like to give you, very shortly, some idea of this extraordinary monument. In the fourth century before Christ—”

From the dark interior there erupted an angry gentleman who shouted as he came.

“Damned disgusting lot of hanky-panky,” shouted this gentleman. “What the hell—” He pulled up short on seeing the group and narrowed his blazing eyes in order to focus upon it.

He had a savage white moustache and looked like an improbable revival of an Edwardian warrior. “Are you Mailer?” he shouted. “Sweet,” he added, in explanation.

“Major Sweet, may I—”

“You’re forty-three minutes late. Forty-three minutes!”

“Unfortunately—”

“Spare me,” begged Major Sweet, “the specious excuses. There is no adequate explanation for unpunctuality.”

Lady Braceley moved in. “ All my fault, Major,” she said. “I kept everybody waiting and I’ve no excuses: I never have and I always do. I daresay you’d call it ‘ladies’ privilege,’ wouldn’t you? Or would you?”

Major Sweet turned his blue glare upon her for two or three seconds. He then yapped: “How do you do,” and seemed to wait for further developments.

Mr. Mailer with perfect suavity performed the introductions. Major Sweet acknowledged them by making slight bows to the ladies and an ejaculation of sorts to the men. “Hyah,” he said.

“Well,” said Mr. Mailer. “To resume. When we are inside the basilica I shall hand over to our most distinguished guest of honour. But perhaps beforehand a very brief historical note may be of service.”

He was succinct and adequate, Sophy grudgingly admitted. The basilica of San Tommaso, he said, was one of a group of monuments in Rome where the visitor could walk downward through the centuries into Mithraic time. At the top level, here where they now stood, was the twelfth-century basilica which in a moment they would enter. Beneath it, was the excavated third-century church which it had replaced. “And below that — imagine it—” said Mr. Mailer, “there has lain sleeping for over eighteen hundred years a house of the Flavian period: a classic ‘gentleman’s residence’ with its own private chapel dedicated (and Mr. Grant will tell you more about this) dedicated to the god Mithras.” He paused and Sophy, though she regarded him with the most profound distaste, thought: “He’s interested in what he’s talking about. He knows his stuff. He’s enjoying himself.”

Mr. Mailer went on to describe briefly the enormous task of nineteenth-century excavation that had so gradually disclosed first, the earlier basilica and then, deep down beneath it, the pagan household. “Rome has risen, hereabouts, sixty feet since those times,” he ended. “Does that surprise you? It does me, every time I think of it.”

“It doesn’t me,” Major Sweet announced. “Nothing surprises me. Except human gullibility,” he added darkly. “However!”

Mr. Mailer shot him an uneasy glance. Sophy gave a little snort of suppressed amusement and caught Barnaby Grant looking at her with something like appreciation. Lady Braceley, paying no attention to what was said, let her ravaged eyes turn from one man’s face to another. The Van der Veghels, standing close together, listened intently. Kenneth Dorne, Sophy noticed, was restless and anxious-looking. He shuffled his feet and dabbed at his face with his handkerchief. And the tall man, what was his name — Allen? — stood a little apart, politely attentive and, Sophy thought, extremely observant.