Ngaio Marsh - When in Rome

“Finally — Barnaby Grant. To my notion, the prime puzzle of the party. Without more ado I would say, quite seriously, that I can think of no earthly reason why he should subject himself to what is clearly the most exquisite torture, unless Mailer put the screws on him in another sense. Blackmail. It might well be one of Mailer’s subsidiary interests and can tie in very comfortably with the racket.

“And as a bonne bouche we have the antic Violetta. If you could have seen Violetta with her ‘ Cartoline ? Postacarda?’ and harpy’s face, foaming away under a black headpiece! Il Questore Valdarno can shrug her off with remarks about short-tempered postcard ladies but never trust me again if that one isn’t possessed of a fury. As for Sophy Jason saying it was Violetta’s shadow she saw on the wall by the stone sarcophagus, I think it’s odds-on she’s right. I saw it, too. It was distorted but there was the tray, the shawl and the hitched up shoulder. Clear as mud or my name’s Van der Veghel.

“And I think Valdarno’s right when he says Mailer could have nipped under the noses of Father Denys and his boys. There’s plenty of cover.

“But without any justification for saying so, I don’t believe he did.

“On the same premise Violetta could have nipped in and I do believe she did. And out again?

“That too is another story.

“It’s now a quarter past eight of a very warm evening. I am leaving my five-star room for the five-star cocktail bar where I rather hope to hob-nob with the Lady B. and her nephew. From there we shall be driven to La Giaconda where we shall perhaps eat quails stuffed with pâté and washed down with molten gold. At Mailer’s expense? Well — allegedly.

“More of the continuing story of Anyone’s Guess tomorrow. Bless you, my dear love, my—”

They had dined by candlelight at a long table in the garden. Between leafy branches of trees and far below, shone Rome. It might have been its own model, laid out on a black velvet cloth and so cunningly illuminated that its great monuments glowed in their setting like jewels. At night the Colosseum is lit from within, and at this distance it was no longer a ruin but seemed so much alive that a mob might have spewed through its multiple doorways, rank with the stench of the circus. It was incredibly beautiful.

Not far from their table was a fountain, moved there at some distant time from its original site down in Old Rome. At its centre lolled Naptune: smooth, luxurious and naked, idly fingering the long ringlets of his beard. He was supported by tritons and all kinds of monsters. They spouted, jetted and dribbled into basins that overflowed into each other making curtains of water drops. The smell of water, earth and plants mingled with cigar smoke, coffee, cosmetics and fumes of wine.

“What is all this like ?” Sophy asked Grant. “All this magnificence? I’ve never read Ouida, have you? And anyway this is not at all Victorian.”

“How about Fellini?”

“Well — all right. But not La Dolce Vita . I don’t think I get any whiffs of social corruption, really. Do you?”

He didn’t answer and she looked across the table at Alleyn. “Do you?” she asked him.

Alleyn’s glance fell upon Lady Braceley’s arm, lying as if discarded on the table. Emeralds, rubies and diamonds encircled that flaccid member, veins stood out on the back of the hand, her rings had slipped to one side and her talons — does she have false ones, he wondered, and saw that she did — made little dents in the tablecloth.

“Do you ” Sophy persisted, “sniff the decadent society?” and then, evidently aware of Lady Braceley and perhaps of Kenneth, she blushed.

Sophy had the kind of complexion Jacobean poets would have praised, a rose-blush that mounted and ebbed very delicately under her skin. Her eyes shone in the candlelight and there was a nimbus round her hair. She was as fresh as a daisy.

“At the moment,” Alleyn said, smiling at her, “not at all.”

“Good!” said Sophy and turned to Grant. “Then I needn’t feel apologetic about enjoying myself.”

“Are you liking it so much? Yes, I see you are. But why should you apologize?”

“Oh — I don’t know — a streak of puritan, I suppose. My Grandpapa Jason was a Quaker.”

“Does he often put in an appearance?”

“Not all that often but I thought he lurked just now. ‘Vanity, vanity’ you know, and the bit about has one any right to buy such a sumptuous evening the world being as it is.”

“Meaning you should have spent the cash on doing good?”

“Yes. Or not spent it at all. Grandpapa Jason was also a banker.”

“Tell him to buzz off. You’ve done a power of good.”

“I? How? Impossible.”

“You’ve turned what promised to be a perfectly hellish evening into—” Grant stopped short, waited for a moment and then leant towards her.

“Yes, well, all right,” Sophy said in a hurry. “You needn’t bother about that. Silly conversation.”

“—into something almost tolerable,” Grant said.

On the other side of the table Alleyn thought: “No doubt she’s very well able to take care of herself but I wouldn’t have thought her one of the easy-come easy-go sort. On the contrary. I hope Grant isn’t a predatory animal. He’s a god in her world and a romantic-looking ravaged sort of god, at that. Just the job to fill in the Roman foreground. Twenty years her senior, probably. He’s made her blush again.”

Major Sweet, at the head of the table, had ordered himself yet another cognac but nobody followed his example. The champagne bottles were upside down in the coolers and the coffee cups had been removed. Giovanni appeared, spoke to the waiter and retired with him, presumably to pay the bill. The maître d’hôtel, Marco, swept masterfully down upon them and not for the first time inclined, smiled and murmured over Lady Braceley. She fished in her golden reticule and when he kissed her hand, left something in his own. He repeated this treatment with subtle modulations, on the Baroness, worked in a gay salute to Sophy, included the whole table in a comprehensive bow and swept away with the slightest possible oscillation of his hips.

“Quite a dish, isn’t he?” Kenneth said to his aunt.

“Darling,” she replied, “the things you say! Isn’t he too frightful, Major?” She called up the table to Major Sweet, who was staring congestedly over the top of his brandy glass at Sophy.

“What!” he said. “Oh. Ghastly.”

Kenneth laughed shrilly. “When do we move?” he asked at large. “Where do we go from here?”

“Now we are gay,” cried the Baroness. “Now we dance and all his hip and nightlife. To the Cosmo, is it not?”

“Ah-ha, ah-ha, to the Cosmo!” the Baron echoed.

They beamed round the table.

“In that case,” Lady Braceley said, picking up her purse and gloves, “I’m for the ritirata .”

The waiter was there in a flash to drop her fur over her shoulders.

“I too, I too,” said the Baroness and Sophy followed them out.

The Major finished his brandy. “The Cosmo, eh?” he said. “Trip a jolly old measure, what? Well, better make a move, I suppose—”

“No hurry,” Kenneth said. “Auntie’s best official clocking in la ritirata is nineteen minutes and that was when she had a plane to catch.”

The Baron was in deep consultation about tipping with the Major and Grant. Their waiter stood near the door into the restaurant. Alleyn strolled over to him.

“That was a most excellent dinner,” he said and overtìpped just enough to consolidate his follow-on. “I wonder if I may have a word with Signor Marco? I have a personal introduction to him which I would like to present. Here it is.”