North from Rome (41 page)

“The registration forms—” the assistant manager reminded him in a relieved voice.

“In a minute.” He looked at the quiet man, an Italian, who had left his post beside a potted palm to come forward to Eleanor. “Who is this?”

The assistant manager was rattled enough to say, “He is guarding the
signorina.
One of our tourist police. Very discreet, very capable.”

“You can vouch for him? I mean, you know him?”

“But of course I know him. We went to school—”

“Then tell him to guard the
signorina
well.” To Eleanor he said, “I’ll be back in a moment. I just want to have one look at this taxi.” He turned back to the lobby again.

The tourist policeman looked down at Eleanor, and then at the assistant manager. “There is some difficulty?” he asked.

“No,” said the assistant manager and “Yes,” said Eleanor, almost in unison. I’m so tired, she thought, I could scream. Instead, a few isolated tears forced their way to the surface.

“Ah,” the policeman said, and looked protective. The assistant manager was visibly upset and apologetic. At least, Eleanor thought wearily, I could be in a country where men thought women were idiots and tears were ludicrous, but I am in Italy, where all women are beautiful and tears are a manifestation of charm. She gave them a little smile of thanks, and turned her eyes towards the door. Where was Bill? She waited, counting each second. There he was now, trying—as soon as he saw she was watching him—to look more cheerful. What was troubling him so much? Both he and Bunny Camden seemed to be sharing the same worry. And I never noticed anything, she thought; for the last half-hour I’ve been
in a kind of daze. I’m too tired, perhaps, just too tired.

“The taxi was only a taxi,” Bill told her. “No high-powered car.” He sounded both relieved and disappointed. She looked at him, trying to follow his meaning, and failing. “Let’s sign these registration forms, pick up the keys, and get upstairs.” Gently, he helped her rise from the chair.

“This way—” The assistant manager was smiling now, and in his relief he became informative. “If you need a high-powered car, we could arrange to have that for you tomorrow. Usually, our guests only need the small Fiat to take them to the station.”

“Station?” Then Lammiter added casually, “Professor Stark is leaving? Has he changed his mind about the summer school?” He smiled, turning his question into a little joke.

“No, no!” The assistant manager was very earnest. “He is simply going to meet his old friend, Dr. Benvenuto Corredi, who arrives tonight from Rome. Dr. Corredi is our Etruscan expert. He is quite famous. You have heard of him in America, no doubt?”

Lammiter thought, I wish that were the only kind of doubt that kept buzzing round my head like a mosquito. Then he had the unpleasant feeling that perhaps he had let an idea become an obsession. That was the kind of thing that happened when you were exhausted: your judgment warped.

“We have numbers of eminent scholars with us this week-end,” the assistant manager went on. “A great honour, a very great honour indeed.” Scholars were peaceful men: no loud parties, no doubtful women. Virtue and culture combined. That compensated, almost, for their lack of spending power.

As Lammiter signed his name, he said, “I didn’t realise Perugia had a station. You hide it well.”

“We have always congratulated ourselves that we kept the railway where it belongs—down in the valley. A station is
not
a historical monument.”

“Give it fifty more years,” Lammiter predicted, and crossed over to the porter’s desk for the keys. Forget everything, he told himself, except Eleanor: just get her upstairs and into bed— she’s on the point of collapse. Behind him, he heard her being forgiven for the little contretemps she had initiated.

“Now,” the assistant manager was saying to her with a playful smile, “you are sure all the statements in your registration card are true? It is a serious matter—” he laughed to make it quite clear that he was joking, and he looked at the policeman who was waiting beside her—“most serious, if you sign your name to statements that are not true. Eh, Giono?” But Giono, like Queen Victoria, was not amused. It
was
a most serious matter. He inclined his head as if he hadn’t quite heard and upheld the dignity of the law. The joke dropped at his feet and crashed into silence.

Eleanor signed her name, and turned to look in Bill’s direction. What was the delay? A boy was waiting, keys in hand, ready to conduct them both to their rooms. “Luggage?” the porter asked firmly. And Bill was saying that their luggage was outside, in a friend’s car. Eleanor’s heart sank. Bill’s suitcase—that was all the luggage. More complications, more regulations; would she never reach that bedroom upstairs? She closed her eyes wearily; she would let Bill handle the problem of one suitcase between two people who had registered separately. Then she heard Bill say thankfully, “Bunny! Come and straighten this out, will you?” She opened her eyes. Camden had just entered, along with two neatly dressed, grave-faced Italians.

Behind Bill, one of the hotel guests was dropping his key on the porter’s desk. He was a tall man, thin, with grey hair, dressed in a tweed jacket and unpressed flannel trousers. “Have you the package that was left for me?” he asked, annoyed with the porter’s lack of attention.

“I’m sorry,” the porter apologised. He had been watching the two grave-faced Italians with some apprehension: he knew a plain-clothes policeman when he saw one. And here were two in
this
hotel? “I thought you would want me to keep it until you came back. It is only a magazine.”

“I’ll take it with me to read while I wait, thank you. One never knows how late the train may be, does one?” Professor Stark took the large, quarto-sized envelope, and turned towards the door, unhurried, and calm.

This, Eleanor thought, this is a dream. This, she almost cried out, cannot be real. But the man’s voice took her back to Tivoli, to the garden beyond the shrubbery. It was the same voice, cold, acid, superior. From here she could only see the back of his head—grey hair, yes, but now covered by the old felt hat he had pulled comfortably over his brow. This, she wanted to scream, is a nightmare, turning back to the desk. And there is the man, passing behind them on his way to the door. No one knows, she thought, except me, and my feet won’t move and my voice has gone...

Then, suddenly, strength came back to her legs. She ran towards the door. You must be sure, she kept telling herself; you must see him as he faced you at Tivoli.

“Eleanor!” Bill cried, and started towards the doorway to intercept her.

At the threshold, she checked her mad flight and swung
round to face the man who called himself Professor Stark. For a moment, their eyes met. For a moment, he halted. “Excuse me,” he said coldly, trying to pass her. But Bill had reached her, had taken her arm. Together, they stood blocking the doorway.

Then strength returned to her voice, too. “Mr. Evans,” she said. “How do you do, Mr. Evans...”

The assistant manager surveyed the quiet lobby as he was about to go off duty at ten o’clock. “There was a little trouble here tonight,” he told the night receptionist, who had just arrived, and then he fell silent: partly because the police (all kinds of policemen in plain clothes;
mamma mia,
had his hotel ever seen such a disaster as this?) had warned him against all discussion, partly because so many things had happened that he did not even know how to explain half of them, partly because it was superior wisdom to let the manager decide what should be announced.

“Oh?” said the night receptionist gloomily. Fortunately, he was rarely interested in anything except the Tombola. He had lost again today.

“Ah well,” the assistant manager said, “Good night.” At least, he had been saved from the impulse to talk too much. But he wondered, as he left the silent lobby, its lights already
half-subdued, whether any other assistant managers had ever been faced with the discovery that a guest was a liar (everything that man had entered in his registration form was false), a cheat (he was no more a professor than his name was Stark), a receiver of stolen property (the envelope had contained someone else’s passport). And had a guest
ever
been arrested right in the middle of the lobby?

Giono had done that. Of course, he had been helped by the two detectives who accompanied Mr. Camden. Two detectives— Thoughts failed the assistant manager for a full minute. Anyway, Giono would get his promotion, I may be promoted, too. After all, everything was handled so quietly, so simply that none of the other hotel guests, not even those impossible Milanese in the adjoining room, working up an enormous appetite for dinner, had noticed anything particularly wrong. Yes, he thought, all things considered, we were lucky. For there had been worse trouble tonight outside of the hotel.

The stranger who had left the stolen passport for Professor Stark had been found in a car waiting at the station, down in the valley. So Professor Stark—no, the real name was Evans— so Evans must have planned to get out of his taxi and step into this car and drive away.

Then there was the man, poor soul, who owned the stolen passport, an Englishman, they said. He had been found at the foot of the precipice near the church of San Angelo. These foreigners were so stupid, so incredibly stupid: whatever made them walk near the precipices, by themselves, in fading light?

As he left the hotel, the assistant manager glanced up at the windows behind which most of his guests, thank God, were
already safe in bed. Why, he asked himself angrily, why did that man Evans choose my hotel? Why couldn’t he have found some miserable lodgings in one of the dark side streets? The American, Camden, had answered that question by saying that Evans chose the hotel for the simple reason that no one,
no one
, would ever suspect such effrontery, such temerity. And no one had, Signore Camden had said: Evans had not been discovered by suspicion; he had been discovered by the moment of accident, the moment of luck. Perhaps, the assistant manager thought as he walked through the soft night air of the little park to reach his motor bicycle, perhaps it is better if I do not try to understand too much about such things.

He halted and looked back at the hotel again. Now he could see the balconies of the Americans’ rooms. (He had given them the best view he could provide, west and south, over the broad valley below, towards the farther hills. It was a gesture of thanks on his part to the American girl, who had kept her voice so quiet. He could imagine his Maria facing such a man: all the guests would have been brought running from the dining-room.) There was someone standing on the nearer balcony. That one belonged to the girl’s room, but it was Signore Lammiter who was standing up there, facing this way, looking south. Ah well, the assistant manager thought, at least the trouble is over. And there will not even be any stories about it in the newspapers. The detective had assured him of that.

He moved quickly away, to home and supper and Maria, who would count the minutes he was late. Out of sight of the hotel, he paused to light a cigarette, loosen his collar and tie, take off his carefully pressed jacket and fold it neatly over his arm. He unchained his Vespa, swung a leg over its seat, started
the engine (it was splendidly unmuffled) and roared into the night. He was Colonel Eduardo Ricci, jet-propelled, breaking the sound-barrier.

Bill Lammiter, standing on the balcony, watched the stars come out. Far beneath him—for this hotel wall seemed to rise out of one of Perugia’s encircling precipices—came the roar of a Vespa as it joined the noisy stream of cars and motor bicycles sweeping down the steep twisting hill to the plain. But tonight, strangely enough, his nerves were better, or perhaps they were exhausted into numbness: loud belches from watered-down gas, unmuffled roars no longer irritated him. Noise was those people’s innocent pleasure: they were alive and enjoying it. He wished them well. He wished everyone well. He had never felt more kindly to his fellow men, to the innocent and naive and uncomplicated who had simple ambitions and honest loyalties.

He lit a cigarette and looked southwards again. The bright lights of the little houses flanking Perugia’s hill gave way to the mystery of sleeping countryside. Against the night sky, the far hills were black shadows. That’s the way I travelled last night, he thought; a long, long way. Is it only two nights ago since I stood on another balcony, and wondered what lay north from Rome?

He heard a small movement from the room behind him. Quickly he stubbed out his cigarette, and left the balcony. Eleanor was still asleep. She had turned on her side, a light blanket over her legs had slithered to the floor. He picked it up, replacing it carefully, and stood watching her for a few minutes. Then he went back to the balcony again. Some people
wanted to make speeches whenever they stood on a balcony. All he wanted to do was to give thanks. He gripped its iron railing. He felt strangely emotional, and then—as he overcame that unexpected and unusual onslaught—strangely at peace. A balcony was a very thanksgiving place.

“Bill,” he heard her cry—a small, half-smothered cry of fear and bewilderment, “Bill—are you there?”

“Yes,” he said, as he turned back into the room, “yes, I’m here.”

Helen MacInnes, whom the
Sunday Express
called ‘the Queen of spy writers’, was the author of many distinguished suspense novels.

Born in Scotland, she studied at the University of Glasgow and University College, London, then went to Oxford after her marriage to Gilbert Highet, the eminent critic and educator. In 1937 the Highets went to New York, and except during her husband’s war service, Helen MacInnes lived there ever since.

Since her first novel
Above Suspicion
was published in 1941 to immediate success, all her novels have been bestsellers;
The Salzburg Connection
was also a major film.

Helen MacInnes died in September 1985.