Ngaio Marsh - When in Rome

He walked down the steps: not quite the only person abroad in the heat of the day. Ahead of him at intervals were a belated shop-girl, a workman, an old woman and — having apparently come from the hotel — Giovanni Vecchi! Alleyn took cover behind an awning. Giovanni went on down the steps and into the Via Condotti. Alleyn followed cautiously. Giovanni stopped.

Alleyn’s instant side step into the entrance of a closed shop was a reflex action. He watched Giovanni between two handbags in the corner window. Giovanni glanced quickly up and down the street, and then at his watch. A taxi came down the street, stopped at a house almost opposite the shop and discharged its fare. Giovanni hailed it and came back to meet it.

Alleyn moved further into the doorway and turned his back. He heard Giovanni say “Il Eremo” and name the street.

The door slammed, the taxi rattled off and Alleyn, looking in vain for another, set off at a gruelling pace for Navona.

Arriving there some ten minutes later he made his way down an alley smelling of cooking oil and garlic.

There it was: the little trattoria with kerbside caffè where a year ago Mailer and Grant had dined together. The door into the restaurant was shut and the blinds were drawn. Chairs had been tipped forward over the outside tables. The place at first sight seemed to be quite deserted.

As Alleyn drew cautiously nearer, however, he saw that two men were seated at a table in a shadowed corner under the awning and that one of them was Giovanni. They had their backs towards him but there was no mistaking Giovanni’s companion.

It was Major Sweet.

Alleyn had arrived at a yard belonging to a junk shop of the humbler sort. Bad pictures, false Renaissance chairs, one or two restored pieces ruined by a deluge of cheap varnish. A large dilapidated screen. He moved into the shelter of the screen and surveyed Major Sweet and Giovanni through the hinged gap between two leaves.

Major Sweet, from the rear, looked quite unlike himself: there was something about his back and the forward tilt of his head that suggested extreme alertness. A slight movement and his cheek, the end of his moustache and his right eye came into view. The eye was cocked backwards: the eye of a watchful man. Giovanni leant towards the Major and talked. No Italian can talk without hands and Giovanni’s were active but, as it were, within a restricted field. The Major folded his arms and seemed to wait.

Could he, Alleyn wondered, be arranging with Giovanni for a further installment of last night’s excesses? Somehow the two of them didn’t look quite like that

They looked, he thought, as if they drove some other kind of bargain and he hoped he wasn’t being too fanciful about them.

He saw that by delicate manoeuvring he could cross the yard, edge up to a bin with a polyglot collection of papers under a tall cupboard and thus bring himself much nearer to the caffè. He did so, slid a disreputable but large map out of the bin and held it in front of him in case they suddenly came his way. Lucky, he thought, that he’d changed his shoes and trousers.

They spoke in English. Their voices dropped and rose and he caught only fragments of what they said, as if a volume control were being turned up and down by some irresponsible hand.

“—waste of time talking — you better understand, Vecchi — danger. Ziegfeldt—”

“—are you mad? How many times I tell you — instructions—”

“—search — Police—”

“O.K., Signore. So they search and find nothing — I have made—‘arrangements’—”

“— arrangements . Try that on Alleyn and see what — Different — Take it from me — I can do it. And I will. Unless—”

“—drunk—”

“—nothing to do with it. Not so drunk I didn’t know — It’s a fair offer. Make it right for me or—”

“You dare not.”

“Don’t you believe it. Look here — if I report — Ziegfeldt—”

“ Taci !”

“Shut up.”

A savage-sounding but muted exchange followed. Finally Giovanni gave a sharp ejaculation. Chair legs grated on the pavement. A palm was slapped down on the table. Alleyn, greatly stimulated, squatted behind the ruin of a velvet chair and heard them go past. Their footsteps died away and he came out of cover. Somewhere behind a shuttered window a man yawned vocally and prodigiously. Further along the street a door opened. A youth in singlet and trousers lounged out, scratching his armpits. A woman inside the trattoria called with an operatic flourish. “Mar — cel — lo.”

The siesta was over.

It was a long time since Alleyn had “kept observation” on anybody and, like Il Questore Valdarno, he didn’t altogether object to an unexpected return to fieldwork.

It was not an easy job. The streets were still sparsely populated and offered little cover. He watched and waited until his men had walked about two hundred yards, saw them part company and decided to follow the Major, who had turned into a side alley in that part of Old Rome devoted to sale of “antiques.”

Here in the dealers’ occupational litter it was easier going and by the time they had emerged from the region Alleyn was close behind the Major, who was headed, he realized, in the direction of his small hotel where they had deposited him in the early hours of the morning.

“All that for nothing,” thought Alleyn.

The Major entered the hotel. Alleyn followed as far as the glass door, watched him go to the reception desk, collect a key and move away, presumably to a lift.

Alleyn went in, entered a telephone booth opposite the lift and rang up Valdarno as he had arranged to do at this hour. He gave the Questore a succinct account of the afternoon’s work.

“This Major, hah? This Sweet? Not quite as one supposed, hah?” said the Questore.

“So it would seem.”

“What is your interpretation?”

“I got a very fragmentary impression, you know. But it points, don’t you think, to Major Sweet’s connection with Ziegfeldt and in a greater or less degree with the Mailer enterprise?”

“Undoubtedly. As for the premises — this Toni’s — Bergarmi conducted a search yesterday afternoon.”

“And found—”

“Nothing. There was evidence of hurried proceedings but no more.”

“The stuff they sold me was in a very small office near the main entrance.”

“It is empty of everything but a cash-box, ledger and telephone directory. There is no lead at all so far as Mailer is concerned. We are satisfied he has not left Rome. As you know I set a watch of the most exhaustive, immediately after you telephoned.”

If Alleyn felt less sanguine than the Questore under this heading he did not say so.

“I think,” Valdarno was saying, “we tug in this Giovanni Vecchi. I think we have little talks with him. You say he spoke of ‘arrangements.’ What arrangements do you suppose?”

“Hard to say,” Alleyn cautiously replied. “I seemed to smell bribery. Of a particular kind.”

There was a longish silence. He thought that perhaps it would be tactful not to mention Major Sweet’s remark about himself.

“And your next move, my dear colleague?”

“Perhaps while your people have their little talk with Giovanni Vecchi, I have one with Major Sweet. And after that, Signor Questore, I’m afraid I’m going to suggest that perhaps — a close watch on the Major?”

“Where are you?”

“At his hotel. The Benvenuto.”

“That will be done. There is,” Valdarno confessed, “some confusion. On the one hand we have the trade in illicit drugs, which is your concern. On the other the murder of Violetta, which is also ours. And Mailer who is the key figure in both. One asks oneself: is there a further interlockment? With the travellers? Apart, of course, from their reluctance to become involved in any publicity arising out of our proceedings. Otherwise, between the murder and these seven travellers there is no connection?”