Ngaio Marsh - When in Rome

“Well, whatever I am, I’ve got a date for lunch. So — thank you, Mr. Alleyn — but I must be off.”

And before they could do anything to stop her she had in fact darted across the street and stopped a taxi.

“A lady of incisive action,” Alleyn remarked.

“She is indeed.”

“Here’s another cab. Shall we go?”

They lunched at Alleyn’s hotel. He caught himself wondering if to Grant the occasion seemed like a rendering in another key of his no doubt habitual acceptances of expense-account hospitality.

Alleyn was a good host. He made neither too much nor too little of the business of ordering, and when that was done talked about the difficulties of adjusting oneself to Rome and the dangers of a surfeit of sightseeing. He asked Grant if he’d had to do a great deal of research for Simon in Latium .

“Of course,” Alleyn said, “it’s bloody cheek to say so but it always seems to me that a novelist who has set his book in a foreign environment is, in some sort, like an investigating officer. I mean, in my job one is forever having to ‘get up’ information, to take in all sorts of details — technical, occupational, indigenous, whatever you like — in surroundings that are quite outside one’s experience. It’s a matter of mugging up.”

“It certainly was in the case of Simon in Latium .”

“You must have stayed in Rome for some time, surely?”

“Two months,” Grant said, shortly. He laid down his knife and fork. “As a matter of fact it’s about that — in a way — that I want to talk to you.”

“Do you? Fair enough. Now?”

Grant thought for a moment or two. “It’s a poor compliment to a superb luncheon but — now, if you please.”

So he told Alleyn how Sebastian Mailer found his manuscript and about the sequel.

“I think I know now how he’d worked the whole job. When he found the ms. he got his idea. He picked the lock of my case and read the book. He spent three days concocting his Angelo in August . He didn’t make it blatantly like Simon. Just introduced my major theme as a minor one. Enough to make me talk about it in front of his revolting chums.

“He took me on a night-crawl, fetching up at the place you went to last night — Toni’s. I don’t remember much about the later part of the experience but enough to make me wish I’d forgotten the lot. Apparently I talked about the ‘resemblance’ at the restaurant we went to — Il Eremo, it’s called — and to some American chum of his who would be delighted to blow it to the press.

“I went back to England. The book came out and three weeks ago I returned to Rome, as he knew I would. I ran into him and he took me into a ghastly little parlour in the Van der Veghels’ hotel and blackmailed me. He was quite shameless. He practically said, in so many words, that he’d re-hashed his story so that now it was blatantly like mine and that he had witnesses from — that night — to say I’d talked about the resemblance when I was drunk. One of them, he said, was the Roman correspondent for the News of the World and would make a big splash with the story. Oh yes!” Grant said when Alleyn opened his mouth. “Oh yes. I know. Why didn’t I tell him to go to hell? You may not remember — why should you? — what happened over my first book.”

“I remember.”

“And so would a great many other people. Nobody except my publishers and a few friends believed that bloody business was a coincidence. The case would be hauled into the light again. All the filthy show rehashed and me established as a shameless plagiarist. I may be a louse but I couldn’t face it.”

“What did he ask?”

“That’s the point. Not so much, in a way. Just that I took on these unspeakable tours.”

“It wouldn’t have stopped there, you know. He was easing you in. Why did you decide to tell me all this?”

“It’s just got too much. I told Sophy about it and she suggested I tell you. After the meeting was over and we waited outside. It’s an extraordinary thing,” Grant said. “I met that girl yesterday. It’s by no means a quick take, she’s not that sort. And yet — Well,” Grant said, giving it up, “there you are. You tell us your main interest in him is as a drug-runner. He turns out to be a murderer. I daresay it’s only of academic interest that he happens to be a blackmailer as well.”

“Oh, everything is grist that comes to our grubby little mill,” Alleyn said. “I’m in a damn’ tricky sort of position myself, you know. I’ve learnt this morning that the Roman police have found out Mailer’s definitely a British subject. That, in a vague way, keeps me in the picture but with a shift of emphasis: my masters sent me here on the drug-running lay and I find myself landed with the presumptive murder of an Italian.”

“So your presence in yesterday’s ongoings was not accidental?”

“No. Not.”

“I may as well tell you, Alleyn, I’m not as keen as mustard for you to catch Mailer.”

“I suppose not. You’re afraid, aren’t you, that if he’s brought to trial he’ll blow the story of your alleged plagiarism?”

“All right. Yes. I am. I don’t expect you to understand. The police,” Grant said savagely, “are not exactly famous for their sympathy with the arts.”

“On the other hand they are acquainted with a tendency on the part of the general public, artistic or otherwise, to separate what is laughingly called justice from the concept of enlightened self-interest.”

“I imagine,” Grant said after a sufficient pause, “that my face could scarcely be redder.”

“Don’t give it another thought. As for your fear of a phoney exposure, I think I can promise you it is absolutely groundless.”

“You can? You really can do that?”

“I believe so. I’d take long odds on it.”

“I suppose the whole thing, from the police point of view, is entirely beside the point”

“You may put it like that,” Alleyn said. “How about a liqueur with our coffee?”

The next two days went by without further incident. Mr. Mailer’s guests followed, Alleyn presumed, their own inclinations. He himself wrote up a detailed report on the case and sent a précis of it to his masters. He had three indeterminate conversations with Valdarno and put a call through to London asking for detailed reports on Lady Braceley and Kenneth Dorne and a check through the army lists on Major Hamilton Sweet. He also asked for the appropriate branch to make enquiries through the Dutch authorities about the Van der Veghels.

On the third day Rome was engulfed in a heat wave. Pavements, walls and the sky itself quivered under its onslaught and the high saints extended their stone arms above the city in a shimmer that resembled movement. Alleyn lunched in the hotel and spent a good deal of time wondering how Fox was prospering in London.

The Latin siesta is a civilized habit. At its best it puts the sweltering heat of the day behind insect-proof barriers, gives people a rest from excitedly haranguing each other and causes a lull in the nervous activity of the streets.

For Alleyn the siesta was not a blessing. Trained to do with less sleep than most persons require and, when necessary, to catch what he could get in cat-naps and short periods of oblivion, he found the three odd hours of disengagement an irritant rather than a tranquilizer. He stripped, slept soundly for an hour, took a shower and, freshly dressed, went out into the street.

Rome was under a haze and the Spanish Steps were deserted. No ambiguous youths displayed on their accepted beat. Flowers blazed under protective canvas or drooped where the sun had found them. All the shops down in the Via Condotti were shut and so was the travel agency where Alleyn had booked his tour.