Ngaio Marsh - When in Rome

“If you like you can go away leaving me to deal with — for example — Kenneth Dorne and his photography.”

“Whatever I do,” said the Baron, “it is clear that I put myself in your hands. I have no choice, I think.”

He got up and walked about the room, still with some trace of elasticity in his tread. At last he said: “It seems to me there would be little point in my refusing to give you the content of this letter since you tell me, and I believe you, that the original is extant. You can get a translation easily enough. In effect it appears that someone — you will have seen the name — calling himself Silas J. Sebastian had written to my firm asking if they could give him any information about my wife. Apparently the writer had said he represented an American magazine and was organizing a series of articles on the incursions into the business world of persons of the old nobilities. From the point of view of their wives. The writer, it appears, went on to say that he had a personal interest in my wife as he believed they were distantly related. Evidently he asked for my wife’s maiden name. This letter is an answer to their enquiry.”

“Yes?”

“It says—” The Baron seemed to flinch from his intention. He shut his eyes for a moment and then examined the letter as if he saw it for the first time. Presently in an extraordinarily prim voice that seemed not to belong to him he said: “In accordance with my standing instructions it states that the Baroness Van der Veghel is a permanent invalid and lives in retirement.”

“When did you first encounter Sebastian Mailer?”

“Eighteen months ago. In Geneva.”

“And a few weeks later he wrote his letter. He didn’t trouble to find himself an entirely dissimilar pseudonym.”

“No doubt he felt sure of himself.”

“After all,” Alleyn said, “this letter might be a standard reply to choke off boring enquiries.”

“He did not think so. He pursued the matter,” said the Baron. “He extended his investigations.”

“To—?”

“I regret: I must decline to answer.”

“Very well. Let us accept that he found his material. Will you tell me this much? When you met him again, in Rome, the other day, had you any idea—?”

“ None ! My God, none! Not until—”

“Until?”

“A week before the — before San Tommaso.”

“And then the blackmailing process began?”

“Yes.”

“Were you prepared to pay?”

“Mr. Alleyn, I had no choice. I flew to Geneva and obtained the money in notes of small denomination.”

“You presented a brave front,” Alleyn said, “on that expedition. You and your wife. So much enthusiasm for the antiquities! Such joie de vivre !”

The Baron Van der Veghel looked steadily at Alleyn for some few moments and then he said: “You yourself have a distinguished and brilliant wife, I think? We have admired her work very greatly. She is a superb painter.”

Alleyn said nothing.

“You must know, then, Mr. Alleyn, that a preoccupation with the arts is not to be tampered with — my English is unable to explain me, I think — it is not to be cut off and turned on like taps. Beauty and, for us, antique beauty in especial — is absolute. No misfortune or anxiety can colour our feeling for it. When we see it we salute it and are greatly moved. The day before yesterday at San Tommaso I was furnished with the money demanded of me as a price of silence. I was prepared to hand it over. The decision had been taken, I have to confess that a lightness of spirit came over me and a kind of relief. The beauty of the Etruscan works in that underworld did much to enhance this feeling.”

“And also, it was advisable, wasn’t it, to keep up appearances?”

“That, too,” said the Baron steadily. “I admit. That too. But it was not difficult. There were the Etruscans to support me. I may tell you that I believe our family, which is of great antiquity, arose in classical times in the lands between the Tiber and the Arno.”

“Your wife told me so. Did you hand over the money?”

“No. There was no opportunity. As you know, he had gone.”

“A further and very understandable relief.”

“Of course.”

“You were not his only victim in that party, you know.”

“I am not surprised.”

Alleyn took his glass. “Let me give you a drink.”

“It will not increase my indiscretion,” said the Baron. “But thank you.”

When Alleyn had given it to him he said: “You may not believe me when I say that it would solace me if I could tell you what it was that he had discovered. I cannot. But on my honour I wish that I could. I wish it with all my heart, Mr. Alleyn.”

“Let us take it as read.”

Alleyn collected the Baroness’s photographs, prints and negatives. “You will take these, won’t you?” he said. “There is nothing in the earlier ones to distress your wife.” He gave them to him. The picture in profile of the Van der Veghels’ heads was on top.

“It’s a striking picture,” Alleyn said lightly. “Isn’t it?”

The Baron stared at it and then looked up at him.

“We think alike, too,” he said. “My wife and I. You may have noticed it.”

“Yes,” said Alleyn. “I noticed.”

“When such a bond occurs, and I think it occurs very seldom, it cannot be — I am lost for the English word.”

“Gainsaid?”

“Perhaps. It cannot be interrupted. You have it in your literature. In your Wutherink Heights you have it.”

It was not easy, Alleyn thought, to clothe the Van der Veghels in the mantles of Heathcliff and Cathy — but all the same it was not altogether a ludicrous association.

The Baron finished his drink and with a well-managed air of briskness lightly slapped his knees and stood up.

“And now I go,” he said. “It is unlikely we meet again, unless at whatever formalities the authorities may require of us. I believe that I am your debtor, Mr. Alleyn, to — to an indefinable extent. You would not wish me to say more, I think.”

“Not another syllable.”

“As I supposed. May we—?”

For the only time during their brief acquaintance Alleyn saw the Baron Van Der Veghel really uncertain of himself. He looked at his enormous hand and then doubtfully at Alleyn.

“But of course,” Alleyn said and his own hand was briefly engulfed. “I am truly grateful,” said the Baron.

Alleyn watched him go bouncily as ever to the lift.

“By and large,” he thought to himself, “that was the nicest murderer I have met.”

“The case was clinched,” Alleyn wrote, “when I saw young Dorne’s snapshot. No Baron.

“It’d been a possibility all along. While we were lined up in that preposterous group scarcely able to see each other he hadn’t spoken. She talked to him . When she told him to stand further back and not to speak he wasn’t there. While she fussed about hunting for her second flashlamp — and of course the first dud was a put-up affair — he was off by the passage behind that smirking little god. He had his date with Mailer. He had to hand over the money. Mailer was to dispose of it — in the car I expect — and had stayed behind for that purpose.

“At the moment when we all heard Violetta’s voice, Van der Veghel was in the passage. I don’t believe he witnessed the murder. I think he came upon Mailer with Violetta dead at his feet. I think Mailer bolted and Van der Veghel chased him up the iron stairs to the next landing. There was a struggle. Mailer was knocked out and throttled and tipped over the wellhead. The body fell like a plummet into the well below and in doing so a coat sleeve brushed the inner side of the rail and was torn.