Ngaio Marsh - When in Rome

“It would have been just my luck.”

The dance band came to an inconclusive halt. Barnaby Grant and Sophy Jason returned to the table. Giovanni elegantly steered Lady Braceley to hers, where the Major sat in a trance. The Van der Veghels, hand-linked, joined them.

Giovanni explained that the second driver would return Sophy, the Van der Veghels and Grant to their hotels whenever they wished and that he himself would be responsible for the other members of the party.

Alleyn noticed that Toni’s pad had not been named by Giovanni and that there had been no general, open announcement of the extra attraction. Only those rather furtive approaches to the male members of the party. And through Kenneth to Lady Braceley.

The Van der Veghels said they would like to dance a little more and then go home. Sophy and Grant agreed to this and when the band struck up again returned to the floor. Alleyn found himself alone with the Van der Veghels, who contentedly sipped champagne.

“I’m not much good, Baroness,” Alleyn said. “But will you risk it?”

“Of course.”

She herself, like many big women, was very good — steady and light. “But you dance well,” she said after a moment. “Why do you say not so? It is this British self-deprecation we hear about?”

“It would be hard to blunder with you as one’s partner.”

“Ah-ha, ah-ha, a compliment! Better and better!”

“You are not going on to this other party.”

“No. My husband thinks it would not suit us to go. He did not very much care for the style of the suggestion. It is more for the men, he said, so I tease him and say he is a big square and I am not so unsophisticated.”

“But he remains firm?”

“He remains firm. So you go?”

“I’ve said yes but now you alarm me.”

“No!” cried the Baroness with a sort of obligatory archness. “That I do not believe. You are a cool one. A sophisticate. That I see very clearly.”

“Change your mind. Come and take care of me.”

This brought peals of jollity from the Baroness. She floated expertly and laughed up and down the scale and then, when he persisted, suddenly adopted an air of gravity. Her voice deepened and she explained that though she was sure Alleyn would not believe her, she and the Baron were in fact quite puritanical in their outlook. They came, she said, of Lutheran stock. They did not at all fancy, for instance, Roman nightlife as portrayed by Italian films. Had Alleyn ever heard of the publishing firm of Adriaan and Welker? If not she must tell him that they took a very firm stand in respect of moral tone and that the Baron, their foreign representative, upheld this attitude.

“In our books all is clean, all is honest and healthful,” she declared and elaborated upon this high standard of literary hygiene with great enthusiasm.

It was not a pose, Alleyn thought, it was an attitude of mind: the Baroness Van der Veghel (and evidently her husband, too) was a genuine pietist and, he thought, with a sidelong look at that Etruscan smile, in all probability she was possessed of the calm ruthlessness that so often accompanies a puritanical disposition.

“My husband and I,” she said, “are in agreement on the — I think you call it ‘permissive’ society, do you not? In all things,” she added with stifling effrontery, “we are in absolute accord. We are sure of ourselves. Always we are happy together and agreeing in our views. Like twins, isn’t it?” and again she burst out laughing.

In her dancing, in her complacency, in her sudden bursts of high spirits she bore witness to her preposterous claims: she was a supremely contented woman, Alleyn thought; a physically satisfied woman. Intellectually and morally satisfied, too, it would appear. She turned her head and looked towards the table where her husband sat. They smiled at each other and twiddled their fingers.

“Is this your first visit to Rome?” Alleyn asked. When people dance together and there is concord in their dancing, however alien they may be in other respects, they are in physical agreement. Alleyn felt at once a kind of withdrawal in the Baroness but she answered readily that she and her husband had visited Italy and in particular Rome, on several previous occasions. Her husband’s publishing interests brought him there quite often and when it was convenient she accompanied him.

“But this time,” Alleyn mentioned, “it is for fun?” and she agreed.

“For you also?” she asked.

“Oh absolutely,” said Alleyn and gave her an extra twirl. “Have you made any of the Il Cicerone trips on previous visits?” he asked. Again: it was unmistakable — a withdrawal.

She said: “I think they are of recent formink. Quite new and of the greatest fun.”

“Does it strike you as at all odd,” asked Alleyn, “that we none of us seem to be particularly bothered about the nonappearance of our cicerone?”

He felt her massive shoulders rise. “It is strange, perhaps,” she conceded, “that he disappears. We hope all is well with him, do we not? That is all we can do. The tour has been satisfactory.” They moved past their table. The Baron cried: “Good, good!” and gently clapped his enormous hands in praise of their dancing. Lady Braceley removed her gaze from Giovanni and gave them a haggard appraisal. The Major slept.

“We think,” said the Baroness, resuming their conversation, “that there was perhaps trouble for him with the postcard woman. The Violetta.”

“She certainly made him a scene.”

“She was down there, we think. Below.”

“Did you see her?”

“No. Miss Jason saw her shadow. We thought that Mr. Mailer was unhappy when she said so. He made the big pooh-pooh but he was unhappy.”

“She’s a pretty frightening lady, that one.”

“She is terrible. Such hatred so nakedly shown is terrible. All hatred,” said the Baroness, deftly responding to a change of step, “is very terrible.”

“The monk in charge had the place searched. Neither Mailer nor Violetta was found.”

“Ah. The monk,” Baroness Van der Veghel remarked and it was impossible to read anything at all into this observation. “Possibly. Yes. It may be so.”

“I wonder,” Alleyn presently remarked, “if anyone has ever told you how very Etruscan you are.”

“I? I am a Dutchwoman. We are Netherlander, my husband and I.”

“I meant, if you’ll forgive me, in looks. You are strikingly like the couple on that beautiful sarcophagus in the Villa Giulia.”

“My husband’s is a very old Netherlands family,” she announced apparently without any intention of snubbing Alleyn but merely as a further statement of fact.

Alleyn thought he also could pursue an independent theme. “I’m sure you won’t mind my saying so,” he said, “because they are so very attractive. They have that strong marital likeness that tells one they, too, are in perfect accord.”

She offered no comment unless her next remark could be construed as such. “We are distantly related,” she said. “We are in fact descended upon the distaff side from the Wittelsbacks. I am called Mathilde Jacobea after the so celebrated Countess. But it is strange, what you say, all the same. My husband believes that our family had its origins in Etruria. So perhaps,” she added playfully, “we are backthrows. He thinks of writing a book on the subject.”

“How very interesting,” said Alleyn politely and entered upon a spinning manoeuvre of some virtuosity. It rather irritated him that she followed with perfect ease. “Yes,” she said, confirming her own pronouncement, “you dance well. That was most pleasant. Shall we return?”

They went back to her husband, who kissed her hand and contemplated her with his head on one side. Grant and Sophy joined them. Giovanni asked if they were ready to be driven to their hotels and, on learning that they were, summoned the second driver.