Ngaio Marsh - When in Rome

“What do you think?” Sophy asked Grant.

“It’s as good an idea as any other.” He turned to Alleyn. “Sorry to be bloody-minded,” he said. “Shall we go back in there, then?”

“On second thoughts I won’t bother you. If you wouldn’t mind fixing things with Giovanni — I suggest that even if I don’t reappear with Mailer in hand, you carry on with the programme. The alfresco tea, then back to your hotels and the cars will pick you all up again at nine o’clock. You’re at the Gallico, aren’t you? You might be very kind and just make a note of where the others are staying. There I go, bossing again. Never mind.”

He gave Sophy a little bow, and as Major Sweet bore down upon them neatly sidestepped him and returned to the basilica.

“I’ll be damned,” said Barnaby Grant.

“I daresay,” Sophy said. “But all the same you’ll do it. It’s like what you said.”

“ What did I say, smarty-pants?”

“He’s got authority.”

When Alleyn got back to the vestibule he found the shop still in process of closure. An iron lattice gate with a formidable padlock shut off the entrance to the lower regions. San Tommaso in Pallaria like its sister Basilica, San Clemente, is in the care of Irish Dominicans. The monk in charge — Father Denys, it transpired — spoke with a superb brogue. Like so many Irishmen in exile, he had the air of slightly putting it on, as if he played his own part in some pseudo-Hibernian comedy. He greeted Alleyn like an old acquaintance.

“Ah, it’s yourself again,” he said. “And I have no news for you. This fellow Mailer’s not below. We’ve had the full power of the lighting on and it’s enough to dazzle the eyes out of your head. I’m after looking beneath with these two young chaps—” He indicated his assistants. “We made a great hunt of it, every nook and cranny. He’s not there, at all, no doubt of it.”

“How very odd,” Alleyn said. “He’s in charge of our party, you know. What can have happened to him?”

“Well now, it’s strange occurrence and no mistake. I can only suggest he must have slipped through here at a great pace when we were all occupied and never noticed ’um. Though that’s not an easy thing to credit, for as I’ve mentioned we keep a tally ever since a Scandinavian lady twisted a fetlock and got herself locked in five years ago and she screeching all night to no avail and discovered clean demented, poor soul, in the morning. And another thing. Your party was the only one beneath for the one or two odd visitors had come out before you arrived. So he would have been on his own and the more noticeable for it.”

“I don’t want to make a nuisance of myself, Father, and I don’t for a moment suggest your search wasn’t thorough, but would you mind if I—”

“I would not but I can’t permit it. It’s the rule of the place, d’ye see. No visitors beneath under any pretext after closure.”

“Yes, I see. Then I wonder — is there a telephone I could use?”

“There is and welcome. In here. You can go, now,” he said over his shoulder to his assistants and repeated it in Italian.

He opened a door into a store-cupboard, pointed to a telephone and switched on a light.

There wasn’t much room or air when the door was shut. Alleyn backed gingerly into an open box of holy trinkets, eased himself into a crouch supported by the edge of a shelf, examined his memory and dialed the resulting number.

Il Questore Valdarno had not left his office. He listened to Alleyn’s story with an animation that was tangible but with few interruptions. When Alleyn had finished Valdarno said in English: “He has run.”

“Run?”

“Flown. He recognized you and decamped.”

“They seem pretty sure, here, that he couldn’t have got past them.”

“Ah, ah, ah,” said the Questore contemptuously, “who are they? a monk and two pale shop boys. Against this expert! Pah! He has run away at the double-up behind the showcases.”

“Speaking of postcards, there was a savage elderly postcard lady in the entrance who made a scene with Mailer.”

“A scene? How?”

“Yelling abuse at him. It was not in the sort of Italian we learnt in my diplomatic days but the general drift was invective and fury.”

Alleyn could almost hear the Questore’s shrug.

“He had done something to annoy her, perhaps,” he suggested in his melancholy voice.

“She spat at him.”

“Ah,” sighed the Questore. “He had irritated her.”

“No doubt,” Alleyn faintly agreed. “She’s called Violetta,” he added.

“Why do you concern yourself with this woman, my dear colleague?”

“Well, if I understood her at all, she threatened to kill him.”

“Evidently a short-tempered woman. Some of these street vendors are in fact badly behaved persons.”

“I thought he was greatly disturbed by the encounter. He made light of it but he turned very white.”

“Oh.” There was a brief silence. “She sells postcards outside San Tommaso?”

“Yes. One of our party thought she saw her shadow on the wall of a passage down in the Mithraeum.”

“They are not permitted to enter.”

“So I gathered.”

“I will have enquiries made. I will also have the airports, omnibus and railway stations watched. I feel there is a strong probability Mailer has recognized you and will attempt an escape.”

“I am deeply obliged to you, Signor Questore.”

“Please!”

“But I confess the chances of his recognizing me — we have never met — do seem a bit thin.”

“Some contact of his, an English contact, may have seen you and informed him. It is most possible.”

“Yes,” Alleyn said, “it’s possible of course.”

“We shall see. In the meantime, my dear superintendent, may I have a little speech with this Dominican?”

“I’ll call him.”

“And we keep in close touch, isn’t it?”

“Of course.”

“With my compliments, then—” said Il Questore Valdarno sadly.

Alleyn returned to the shop and delivered his message.

“Il Questore Valdarno, is it?” said Father Denys. “You didn’t let on this was a pollis affair but it doesn’t surprise me at all. Wait, now, and I’ll talk to ’um.”

He did so in voluble Italian and returned looking perturbed. “It’s a queer business,” he said, “and I don’t say I fancy the turn it’s taking. He wants to send in some of his fellows to search below and is going to talk to my superior about it. I told ’um we’d overlooked every inch of the place but that doesn’t satisfy the man. He says will I tell you you’re welcome to join in. Eight sharp in the morning.”

“Not tonight?”

“Ah, why would it be tonight and himself if he’s below, which he’s not, locked up like a fish in a tin.” Father Denys looked pretty sharply at Alleyn. “You’re not the cut of a policeman, yourself,” he said. “None of my business, of course.”

“Do I look like a harmless visitor? I hope I do. Tell me, do you know anything about the woman called Violetta who sells postcards here?”

Father Denys clapped his hand to his forehead. “Violetta, is it!” he ejaculated. “A terrible pest, that one, God forgive me, for she’s touched in her wits, poor creature. Sure, this other business put her clean out of my mind. Come into the atrium till I tell you. We’ll lock up this place.”

He did lock up the vestibule and pretty securely, too, fetching a great key out of a pocket in his habit. Nobody else had that one or a key to the iron grille, he said, except Brother Dominic who opened up in the morning.

The basilica was now deserted and the time six o’clock. All the bells in Rome rang the Ave Maria and Father Denys took time off to observe it. He then led the way into the atrium and settled beside Alleyn on a stone bench, warm with the westering sun. He was a cosy man and enjoyed a gossip.