Elizabeth Peters: Street of the Five Moons

Chapter Eleven

I TURNED ASIDE and leaned against the door-frame, my hands over my eyes. Through the roaring in my ears I heard John’s footsteps, then a series of rustling, rubbing noises, unpleasantly suggestive. Finally he spoke, in a voice I never would have recognized as his.

‘It’s all right. I’ve covered her.’

I looked out of the corner of one eye. The thing on the bed was anonymous now – a long, low mound of white cotton sheeting. But it would be a long time before I could forget that hideous, bloated face. John was standing by the bed. His features were under control, but a tiny muscle in his cheek quivered like a beating pulse.

‘Why?’ I whispered. ‘Why would anybody want to kill her?’

‘I don’t know. She was so harmless. Stupid and vain and silly, but utterly harmless . . . And so proud of her pretty face.’

There was a note in his voice as he said that, a look on his face . . . It reminded me of the way he had looked earlier that day when I had asked him whether anyone knew about his apartment.

‘She knew,’ I said. ‘That’s how the gang found out. You brought her here. You and she were – ’

‘For God’s sake, do you think I’m that stupid? She was Pietro’s mistress, and utterly without guile. I wouldn’t risk telling her, or bringing her here.’

‘But you and she – ’

‘That makes no difference,’ John said. ‘Except, possibly, to me.’

‘You’ve got to get out of here,’ I exclaimed. ‘They put her here so that you would be blamed for her death.’

‘That was a mistake,’ John said, in the same quiet voice.

‘I can give you an alibi.’

He shook his head.

‘She’s been dead at least twelve hours, possibly longer. They will claim I killed her last evening, before they locked me in the cellar.’

I understood then why he looked so sick. It could not have been easy for him to handle the cold flesh he had once caressed.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said haltingly. ‘I rather liked her.’

The faintest ghost of his old smile touched the corners of his pale mouth.

‘So did I . . . This changes the situation, Vicky. I’m too confused to think clearly, but I don’t believe I can walk away from this.’

‘You must. I can’t seem to think either . . . When do you suppose they brought her here? John, you must have told her about this place. How else would they know about it?’

He started to speak. Then his jaw dropped, and the most extraordinary expression transformed his face.

Knowing what I know now, I’m not sure he would have told me the truth about the revelation that had just struck him, but I am sure that things would have worked out much more neatly for us if he had had time to think it over. But at that moment someone started knocking at the door of the apartment.

This final shock, on top of all the others, was almost too much for my bewildered brain. I can’t say I was surprised – only infuriated that I had not anticipated this. If the gang wanted to incriminate John, what better way to ensure that he would be caught than by making an anonymous phone call to the police? They had laid a neat little ambush, and now we were trapped.

John slammed the bedroom door shut and – after a moment’s hesitation – shoved the bed up against it.

‘There’s no way out,’ I gasped. ‘Maybe we should give ourselves up. John, I’ll tell them – ’

‘Shut up.’ He crossed the room in a single bound and flung up the window.

The wall went straight down, three stories, to a narrow alley paved with stone.

‘I am not a human fly,’ I said. The pounding at the outer door was now decidedly peremptory.

‘Up,’ John said. He had his head and shoulder out of the window. I looked out.

This building wasn’t one of your palatial high-ceilinged old mansions. The eaves of the roof were less than six feet above the windowsill. It still didn’t strike me as such a great idea, and I was about to say so when John grabbed me around the waist.

‘I hope you aren’t afraid of heights,’ he said, and helped me out the window.

I am not afraid of heights. As I stood there, my fingers curved over the eaves, and John’s arms clasping my thighs, I heard the outer door give with a crash. The pounding recommenced, on the bedroom door.

‘Get to a phone,’ John snapped. ‘Call Schmidt. Tell him everything.’

I started to say something, but before I could speak he transferred his grip to my knees and heaved me up. I saw his face go dead white as his arms took my full weight. Then my elbows were over the edge of the roof. From then on it was a piece of cake. John’s hands on the soles of my shoes gave one last push that took me onto the flat roof.

He had time to close the window and move away from it before the bedroom door gave way. When I peered down, I saw the window was closed, and I heard the sounds from inside the room. He put up quite a fight.

He could never have climbed onto the roof. I kept telling myself that as I scuttled across the steaming, tarred surface. Without his pushing me from below I couldn’t have made it myself, and he only had one good arm. I also kept telling myself that he was safe now, in the hands of the police, and that as soon as I could reach Schmidt he would be all right. At least he wouldn’t be charged with murder. I wondered if the Italian police used the third degree on suspects.

I knew he hadn’t killed Helena. I couldn’t think of a reason why anyone would want to kill her. Pietro wasn’t the type to fly into a jealous passion, even if he had discovered she was unfaithful to him; he would just curse and shrug and dump her. There was, of course, the possibility that she had stumbled on some information that made her dangerous to the gang. But what? She wasn’t awfully bright, poor girl, and I doubted that she could have learned more than John and I knew. The gang had imprisoned us when they decided we were dangerous. Perhaps they had meant to kill us. But why kill her? A handful of diamonds would have shut her mouth quite effectively – and they needn’t have been real diamonds. One of Luigi’s pretty copies would have fooled her nicely. No, there was no need to commit murder – unless the streak of hidden violence I had already sensed beneath the seeming harmlessness of the original plot had finally surfaced.

These ideas were swimming around in my mind, not quite as coherently as I have expressed them, as I went loping across the roofs of Trastevere like Zorro or the Scarlet Pimpernel or somebody of that ilk. Those fictitious heroes weren’t as foolhardy as they appeared; they always had a stooge down below, with a wagon filled with hay or with a snorting white stallion, so that they could drop dramatically onto the animal’s back and go riding off into the sunset shouting ‘Vengeance,’ or ‘I will return.’

I stopped and took a look around. Nobody had climbed the wall after me. Either John had convinced the policemen that he was alone, or they had concluded I had made my getaway. I felt horribly conspicuous up there, though. The apartment building was of moderate height; some of the neighbouring structures were higher, some were lower, and there were balconies and windows all around. I sat down in the shade of the parapet that ran around the roof and tried to catch my breath.

I wasn’t going to have any problem getting down from the roof. The old buildings of Trastevere don’t boast modern luxuries like fire escapes, but they have other features that would make cat burglary a cinch. There are no yards or gardens in that crowded quarter, so the people use the roofs for out-of-door living. Some of them were prettily arranged, with furniture and awnings and potted palm trees. Obviously there was access to the roofs from the lower floors. All I had to do was select a building at a safe distance from the one where I was sitting, and descend.