North from Rome (23 page)

The princess looked at him searchingly. She was angry. “All gates are locked. Am I to believe you climbed over my wall?”

He looked down at his blackish-grey trousers liberally streaked with dust. He tried to brush it off. “I’m sorry—” he said awkwardly. “I just had to see you.” He hoped he sounded like a man who had indeed climbed a wall.

“The usual way to enter is to ring the bell at the gate,” she said.

“I didn’t want to waken everyone at this time of night.”

“Most thoughtful of you.” She was still acid. “And why were you determined to wake
me?”

“I saw your car drive off.”

She hesitated. “Indeed? And so you came to warn me? How
very
kind,” she said mockingly. She obviously believed that attack was the best defence.

He tried a little attack of his own. “Pirotta was driving.”

“Oh?” She stood very still.

“And Eleanor was with him, wasn’t she?”

“It’s very late for questions, Mr. Lammiter. Come and see me tomorrow.” She smiled, almost kindly, and turned away.

“You have one habit I like,” he said. “If you can’t tell the truth, you don’t tell lies.”

She halted and faced him. “Why are you here?”

He said, “Yesterday at Doney’s you invited me to stay in Italy. I’ve decided to accept. That’s all.”

“I gave you more than an invitation. I gave you warning.” She suddenly burst out,
“Why
didn’t you talk sense into Eleanor’s head and make her leave?”

“She was leaving today.”

“Too late, too late,” she said angrily. “Why, why did she ever come to Rome, why did Luigi have to fall in love with her? Why
didn’t he marry Rosana, and there would have been none of this trouble?” She halted abruptly and controlled her emotions. “Stop glaring at me like that! Do you think I’d ever have let Luigi take my car if I didn’t believe we could still save Eleanor?”

“From what?”

The princess hesitated. “I only know that there is danger. She knows too much about matters that do not concern her. She must be hidden. For her own safety. Just a few days, that’s all.
Please
believe me, Mr. Lammiter. Do you think that I should ever have let Luigi take her away if—”

“Was she all right?” he interrupted quickly.

She looked at him with astonishment. “But of course!”

“Did she go of her own free will?”

“Really, Mr. Lammiter! One would imagine—”

“It’s too late for imagining. I want to
know.
Did she go of her own free will?”

“Yes.” She watched his face. “I’m sorry,” she said more gently. “She had to go. There was no other solution. She will be safe, I assure you.”

“No other solution?” he asked. “You could have telephoned the American Embassy if Eleanor was in danger. You could have called the police.”

“Impossible!”

“Why?”

“Because we want no publicity. There is danger in publicity. Danger for Eleanor—and for Luigi. We must keep everything discreet: no scandal, no disgrace.”

“That’s going to be difficult.”

“Not so difficult. Luigi has resigned from his company. You see, he, at least, took my warning at Doney’s.”

“Do you actually believe that resigning from a company— an innocent company at that—is going to have any effect on evidence?”

“What evidence will stand up without witnesses?”

“His firm will know from its books that he has been up to mischief. What about the shipments of drugs he has sidetracked?”

“But its directors may not want such publicity, Mr. Lammiter. As you say, their firm is a good one, solid, respectable. It took too long to build up that reputation. Do you think they want it destroyed overnight? One touch of scandal.”

“Sure,” he said bitterly. “It would empty their pockets, too.” So honest men would form a solid wall of respectability around Pirotta. And the princess would cover up Pirotta’s guilt for the sake of the family name. What about the crooks who had worked for him? But criminals rarely talked. They wouldn’t give evidence against him. They would cover up for him, more than anyone, in order to save their own skins.

The princess was watching him with marked displeasure. She said coldly, “Must Americans always think of money?”

He looked at her, equally coldly. “But dear Luigi never thought of money, indeed not. I suppose he was only dedicated to the noble cause of spreading dope addiction?”

For a moment, her eyes blazed with anger. For a moment, he thought she was going to turn on her heel and walk away. But she did not. She dropped her eyes. Perhaps that was as near to an apology as she could ever come. “It’s all over,” she said in a low voice. “All that degrading and evil business is over. He has given me his word.” She faced Lammiter again. “Don’t think that I am excusing anything he has done,” she
said almost fiercely.

“Has he promised to drop all his political ambitions, too? Or at least change them to open, honest politics?”

“Politics?” She clearly did not understand what he was saying.

“If Eleanor is in danger, it doesn’t come from the men who worked in narcotics.”

“Do not underestimate them. They are vindictive and dangerous. Believe me, Mr. Lammiter, the danger is very great.”

“We’re talking at cross-purposes,” he said impatiently. “What I meant—”

“Do you know what you really mean? Why, you don’t even know what you’ve
done!
You are to blame for all this, Mr. Lammiter. And you stand there—”

“I’m
to blame?”

“If anything happens to Eleanor, you will be responsible. You instigated, persuaded her to—” She made a gesture of distaste. “No doubt you had the most patriotic motives for acting as one of your country’s agents. But why draw Eleanor into—”

“But that’s nonsense. Who told you this, anyway? Pirotta? Surely you don’t believe—”

“Why was she trying to reach you this evening? Why did she want to see you before she left Rome?”

“She was trying to reach me—where?” And then suddenly he remembered Eleanor’s telephone calls to his hotel. “Just let me explain,” he began quietly. “It was—”

“How
could
you have drawn her into all this hideous mess?” The princess was glad to scold someone. “I hold no brief for Luigi, but he, at least, is trying to protect her.”

“Does Eleanor believe that?”

The princess shrugged her shoulders. “She is a very strange girl. She kept quite silent all the time she was with Maria.”

“You were not with her?”

“Luigi had a great deal to tell me. After all, he did owe me some explanation.”

“And a very good job he made of it.”

“That is quite enough,” the princess said sharply. “Maria, let this man out at the gate.”

“This man will go when he is good and ready,” Lammiter said.

“I shall call the police.”

“You should have called them an hour ago.” He had scored a point: she must have had that impulse and then smothered it. Or been persuaded out of it. He pressed on. “Better still, you should have had an honest talk, alone, with Eleanor. Then you would have found out that she doesn’t know one thing about the narcotics racket. She is in no danger from that.”

“But—but she
is
in danger.”

“Yes,” he said very quietly.

“From what?” she asked quickly.

“I tried to tell you.”

“From what?” she repeated. And now, the doubts that had troubled her and been silenced were stirring again.

It was a good time to leave, Lammiter decided. “Ask Mr. Big,” he said.

“Mr. Big?”

“Mr. Big the second: Dear Luigi. Oh, he isn’t anything near that, yet. But that’s the direction he is taking. Not Fascist, of course. That’s been tried. And there won’t be any march on Rome, this time. His friends without faces have more subtle methods than that.”

She said haltingly, “Friends—without faces?”

“Yes, his friends at Tivoli, who don’t like being photographed. Good night, Principessa.” He bowed. To the maid he said, “Don’t trouble about the gates, Maria. I can go out the way I came in.” He smiled for her. She had not understood what he said, for he had been too tired to face any Italian verbs. It had been a mistake, after all, he thought wearily, to try to talk with the princess.

He made an effort and walked smartly down the driveway. He was more than tired: he was exhausted. The gate was near, and the wall beside it looked higher than he remembered. His exit line had been good theatre, but a damned silly idea. He had enough sense still left to keep well away from the garage. Would the princess watch? No, probably not. She would never be caught watching anyone. But she would have no objection to Maria’s watching and telling her what the crazy foreigner did.

He refrained from looking round. And then, almost at the gates, he noticed how the bushes and the flowering trees had been planted partly to screen the entrance to the yard, partly to soften the bleak stone. He plunged through this mass of shrubbery, and behind its shelter made his way slowly and carefully along the wall. It took some time. He reached the second gateway by which Joe and he had entered, and there was the path to lead him back to the courtyard. He couldn’t be seen here from the driveway. He halted and waited. If Maria didn’t come round the corner of the garage in the next five minutes, he’d risk that bare and vulnerable courtyard. Everything seemed bleak and purposeless. What am I doing here, anyway? he asked himself angrily. Eleanor had gone of
her own free will. That was all he needed to sink him into this cold pit of despair.

Maria did not appear. Perhaps she was too busy offering salts of ammonia to the princess. Anyway, the garage door was forgotten. It still gaped open. And still Bill Lammiter stood, making up his mind to cross the courtyard and climb the stairs. And then? Sleep upstairs in that attic, while each minute took Eleanor a full mile farther away? She had gone of her own free will. Had she? What was free will worth when she had not known the full truth? He could blame himself for that. He hadn’t told her much tonight. And yet, he hadn’t been free to talk. It always came back to the same old frustration: the eternal pull between what you wanted and what you had to do.

He turned and measured the wall behind him with his eye. Difficult, but not impossible. And once over? Try to find out which of the princess’s villas in the country had a care-taker called Alberto. And then? Hire a car and find his way—hell, one man was useless. In trouble, one man was not enough. He
heard a light step from the courtyard. Quickly he glanced over his shoulder.

But it was Joe. The garage door was left open behind him for Maria to find exactly as the princess had left it. He was carrying one of Lammiter’s suitcases, and in the other hand he held his keys ready.

“What, no typewriter?” Lammiter asked as he took his bag.

Joe gave him a strange smile, looked up at the wall, and shook his head. Then, in silence, he opened the padlock of the gate and urged Lammiter through. The long street was quiet, except for a few people in the distance, where it ended in some kind of boulevard, a brightly lit
corso.
Joe set off towards the lights at a quick pace. Apparently, it was all right to talk now, for he said, “You worried me, you worried me.” Suddenly he grinned. “You know, I thought you might even be climbing that damn wall. Here, let me carry that bag. You’re all worn out making decisions. Just leave them to Joe, eh?”

“I’m all right,” said Lammiter curtly.

“We’ll get a lift.”

“Not on this damned street, we won’t.”

“I phoned for a taxi.” Joe’s smile was broad. He was in bright good humour.

“Sure,” Lammiter said gloomily. Joe’s little jokes were even worse than his own.

Joe said, “Hope I grabbed the right suitcase. You have to look pretty when you walk down the main street of Perugia.”

Lammiter looked at him.

“But first, we’ll find your little American. You stay with me now, eh?” Joe was amused.

“Well, that is better than sleeping on an attic floor.”

“After what happened? Look—it took me a long time getting that place fixed up. I don’t want to have it discovered now.”

“Sorry if I altered your plans,” Lammiter said more cheerfully, “but I like them better this way.”

“Yes,” said Joe. “I noticed you were getting kind of restless. Come on, then. Let’s keep moving. Another block, that’s all.” And as he quickened his pace still more, he went on, “Want to know what’s happening back at the villa right now? The princess is mad. She’s good and mad. She’s ordered all the servants out to search the grounds, the garage, everywhere. That’s my guess, but I’ll bet on it. She’s getting angrier every minute. With Pirotta. But she doesn’t know that yet. She thinks it’s you that is making her mad.”

“I hope she will branch on to Pirotta, before it’s too late.”

“She will. She will. She’s no fool. How did you know she hated Mr. Big so much?”

“Mussolini wouldn’t be her idea of God’s gift to Italy.” He built the biggest railway stations and the biggest shell holes, too. And he divided her family: her brother on Mr. Big’s side, the princess and her son against him. “What happened to her son and daughter-in-law?”

“They were banished to Lipari. Died there.” Joe looked at him curiously. “You’ve stirred a lot of memories tonight. Good! The more she is mad, the better. For then she starts thinking. And after that she acts.” Joe’s admiration was unbounded.

Lammiter did not share his enthusiasm. “Perhaps. I heard her at Doney’s. But it must have taken her weeks to act on that gossip about Pirotta.”

“Weeks?” Joe laughed. “She heard that news yesterday with her breakfast tray. Maria tells her everything. And the cook tells Maria everything. And I’m a good friend of the cook. See?”

Lammiter looked at Joe’s broad grin. He had to smile, too.

“That’s good,” Joe said with approval. “And from now, we tell each other the truth, eh? That makes our lives much simpler, my friend. And one more thing, don’t call me a policeman. And never call Bevilacqua that, either. If you meet him.”

“If.” Lammiter said, and changed his suitcase to his other hand. He was feeling better now. In every way. It was strange how depression could slow up the body, too. “Good for you, Joe,” he said as he now noticed which bag had been chosen. It was the one that had clean shirts, shaving kit, and a suit. “How did you guess? You certainly hadn’t time to look.”