Rose in Darkness (17 page)

‘They’ll offer me a series on this,’ said Sofy with glistening eyes.

‘Pony, you’ve heard?—I’m about to become a stepmother—’

‘Poor Sari, the most ghastly stout little lump, she says, smelling strongly of cold cream—’

‘Yes, but what a papa!’

The evening roared on. Replete with a little of everything (not to hurt anyone’s feelings) she curled up at last on the floor beside Etho. He looked across at Sofy and gave her a tiny, only half-humorous wink, across the glowing head resting with childlike confidence against his arm. ‘I hate to tell you, Sari dear, but at this close range, the Oxford English marmalade is showing a decided touch or two or penicillin.’

Sari shot upright, clapping her hands to the crown of her head. ‘You don’t mean it?’

‘From up here, I do have a rather clear Fleming’s-eye view.’

‘But I’ll have to go to Luigi!’

‘What about the boyfriend?’

‘
Because
of the boyfriend.’ She was on her feet and peering into a looking-glass, anxiously parting the mossy hair with her fingers. ‘Oh God, how awful! You don’t think he noticed?’

‘Who, God?’

‘Oh, shut up!’ she said, laughing. But it was disaster. ‘I couldn’t let him see. I mean he’s—well, not exactly—I mean he’s rather a—’

‘Stuffed egg,’ said Rufie.

‘He’s nothing of the sort.’

‘Well,
I
thought he was.’

‘I daresay he wouldn’t be too mad about a kite-high homosexual—’

‘Well, there you are,’ said Rufie, taking no offence whatsoever. ‘What I said—he’s conventional.’

‘Yes, well, he certainly wouldn’t want his beloved with penicillin sprouting out of her hair. Oh, God, what am I to do?’

‘A quick dash over to Luigi; what else?’ said Etho, with the glance at Sofy again.

‘Oh, I couldn’t go
now
!’

‘Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Let alone a little abstinence,’ said Sofy, playing along with Etho.

‘Oh, no, it would kill me! On the other hand... But anyway, I’m broke, not a farthing. Etho, you wouldn’t—?’

‘No, I wouldn’t,’ said Etho. ‘Half your allowance is in bond to me already.’

‘Sari, I hadn’t told you yet, because of all this, but I’ve got a job coming along; quite a penny or two and I’m sure I could get a sub. Not a lot and one has to eat—’

‘Oh, yes, Sofy, and especially you; but I wouldn’t dream of it, thank you, darling, of course I couldn’t...’

Etho’s glance had turned discouraging. Sofy subsided. ‘Well, I might not really even get it.’

Pony, very quiet and humble, ever courteous. ‘Sari, I would be so happy—’

Sari did not look at Rufie; but, ‘No, Pony, thanks a million, but I couldn’t. It’s between—us lot.’ She looked around her. ‘Rufie, what could we sell?’

‘There’s not much left,’ said Rufie getting up and skipping about the room in search of disposable possessions. ‘You could finish Sofa’s kaftan, and we could flog that.’

‘To two people,’ agreed Sofy amicably. It did not enter her head or anyone else’s that it was she, the ever hard-up, who had paid for the yards and yards of material involved.

‘It wouldn’t begin to give me enough. God knows what the air fare is now, return, to Rome; and then having to stay there and then Luigi.’ She stood in despair. ‘I’ll see what’s in the wiggy-pig,’ and off she went anxiously, all major anxieties apparently forgotten, returning with it, a large pottery creature, brilliantly blue, slit down the back to receive contributions. A great deal of shaking and probing came up with only thirty pounds. ‘Well, it’s all no good, that would hardly even cover Luigi. What shall I
do
?’

Sofy knew perfectly well that any hairdresser in Mayfair could have given the same treatment—if they remembered how to do it, for it really was miles out of date. But Sari was above bothering over what was or was not in fashion: if something suited her, it suited her, and Sofy dismissed the vague speculation which she occasionally exchanged with Rufie, as to whether Luigi might not be just an excuse for these periodical outings. Etho would have no part of it—he said simply that with Sari it was second nature to do things the glamorous way, the ridiculous way; well, yes, if you liked, the perverse way. And she saw now that Etho, having spread his gossamer web, was about to scuttle over it like a spider and wrap up the fly in its threads; and watched with tender amusement as he turned guileless eyes upon Nan. And Nan duly bursting out with it, diffident but thrilled. ‘Sari, you wouldn’t like me to come with you? It’d be my treat, I’d pay for everything—’

Something changed in Sari’s face; an odd look, a wary look came into her eyes. ‘Oh, Nan, no, honestly—!’

Nan’s face fell. To go to Rome—and with Sari! Who had ever been so wonderful as Sari?—fly off to Rome, like Frank Churchill in
Emma,
going all the way up to London to get a haircut—though in fact of course, it had been to buy a piano. Rufie must have been having the same thoughts for, out of his happy haze, he suggested:
‘You
wouldn’t happen to want a piano, Sari, for the new life among the Bad Habitat? You could get one in Rome when you go there with Nan.’

‘Why are you all so keen for me to go with Nan?’ said Sari, almost suspiciously.

‘Because she’s offering to pay,’ said Etho equably, ‘and you’re mad not to accept.’

‘Oh, do come, Sari!’ said Nan, gathering courage again. ‘We could make a little jaunt of it, it needn’t cost you a farthing.’ Her mind played with happy calculations: two air fares, hopefully Sari’s idea of an hotel wouldn’t be too opulent—a bit extra for meals and things. She could manage that all right. ‘I’d even make you a presie of Luigi’s attentions.’

If she expected any outcry of appreciation, she was disappointed. Had it been she who had been in need, they would without hesitation have passed round the hat. Now they all said, as though no favour at all was involved, ‘Sari, that would be lovely, do go with Nan!’ and suddenly Sari’s hesitation was gone, she said oh, goody gumdrops, how super and they’d go this minute because of getting back to Phin as soon as possible...!

Nan was enchanted. ‘How lovely, I’m so thrilled, darling, it’ll be wonderful! I’ll do all the bookings, just leave it all to me—’

‘Good heavens,’ said Sari, ‘don’t bother about that! There’s sure to be something or other flying to Rome, aeroplanes do it all the time, you just have to go to the airport and get into one of them.’ And anyway, she knew a lovely man who ran something or other at Heathrow; if there happened to be no aeroplanes flying, her tone implied, he would simply lay one on.

‘About the hotel, then—’

But Sari knew of a wonderful hotel, she always went there, quite near Luigi’s, to be easy to get to him. Its charm appeared to lie largely in the fact that the proprietor and his wife simply hated their guests and made things as beastly as possible. ‘They’re Sardinians, actually, The Sardines they’re known as, far and wide, and the guests all hate them in return and gang up on them, it’s rather fun. We all go back and back and keep meeting each other there, and ganging up some more.’ Last time there had been yet another lovely man who had rescued a temporarily solitary Sari from the ferocious attentions of The Sardines, and he had turned out to be something super at the Vatican and taken her simply everywhere, places no one else ever got to. She embarked upon a lively picture of His Holiness, when she had burst in upon his orisons in her Garden of Eden drawers. ‘You remember the Garden of Edens, Sofy?’ Sort of calf-length shorts, terribly expensive, but when she’d got them home, Rufie had said they were quite inexpressibly dreary and they had fallen upon them and painted them up a bit: Expulsion from Paradise, Eve on one leg and Adam on the other—Rufie had thought they might practise on the shorts and he could sell the idea to Christophe et Cie, but, though they hadn’t meant it in the least, the snake and the Tree of Knowledge coming slap in the middle had looked a bit peculiar if you took them wrong. And everyone had taken them wrong, Mr Cecil had had fits and as for the poor Pope...! She went off into one of her charades, the stricken prelate confronted, all unprepared, with Scenes from the Old Testament in this curious guise. But Rufie, perceptions heightened by the drug, thought, while he leapt upon the abandoned kaftan and draped it around the papal shoulders, that the familiar rising hilarity had about it a dying fall. When Sari was in love, it was dreadful how deeply, how fearfully, how anxiously she was in love; and he knew that now, once again, she was in love and that the intensity of her need was frightening her.

The collage was progressing, though largely in a negative way. But that was better than nothing; to know what to discard was as important as to know what to keep in. The minions had been out and about, stuff, stones, fur, feather and haddock skin clutched in their hot hands, enquiring into the recent and past lives of everyone remotely connected with Vi Feather, Sari Morne or Phineas Devigne, abandoning here a scrap of material, there a piece of grit, as a lead proved unprofitable. And it always came back to the extraordinary business of the alleged exchange of cars; the discovery of the body in, as it were, The Wrong Box.

On one question, however, Sergeant Ellis, returned from Herts, could offer a positive—if negative—contribution. ‘I thought I’d fish around and see whether the girlfriend could tell us anything, Mrs Harte. Well—not about the murder, she can’t, sir. She knows nothing about Vi Feather, I’ll swear to it. Frightened, yes; but that’s in case the husband discovers what’s been a-going-on. I never let on to him anything about that.’

‘Not much hope for her, poor bitch,’ suggested Charlesworth, ‘when all this other business comes out.’

‘That’s
right.
But anyway, like I’m saying, I went along to this Heartsease—Harte’s Ease, you see?—rather good that?—’ said Ginger, appreciatively. ‘But no dice, sir. She knew nothing about it and no reason why she should. She drove her own car. He’d give her a couple of minutes’ start, not to get the two cars identified too close together I suppose, and then follow. So she couldn’t have been in on it, sir: absolutely. You can take it from me.’ He leaned back in his chair with a look of extreme smugness on his beaming round face. It sent old Chas mad when he thought you were pleased with yourself.

And Charlesworth did not fail him. ‘All these exertions you might have spared yourself, by simply ringing up The Heavenly Angel and asking.’

Ginger pretended to be doing his best to conceal a smile of kindly mockery. ‘Well, no sir. The lady told me herself, sir. They didn’t know about the two cars at The Heavenly Angel.’

But it was all, for the moment, faintly academic; for into Charlesworth’s life had come the little matter of the message from the Followers.

The police had so far given very little credence indeed to the fantasies about the Mafia Rossa, the Followers and the ring. But now...

Sari had been emphatic about the message. Yes, that was the seal of San Juan as far as she remembered it; she had seen it on letters to his son and heir, from the Grand Duke Juan Lorenzo. But anyway, you could look it up in
Pears
or somewhere, couldn’t you? Police examination showed clearly that the envelope had been stuck down and sealed with no possibility of the letter having been inserted after it was closed—only by someone, in other words, who had possessed an envelope with a seal and been able to use that for the note. The paper and envelope were of good quality, which, said Sari, quite jelled in with the Grand Duke’s habits, since he had been to Eton or Winchester or wherever it was and was madly anglicised, and entirely likely to have had his stationery sent out from Harrods. On the other hand...

‘On the other hand,’ said Ginger, echoing the same thought to Mr Charlesworth, ‘the woman died on Saturday night and the message arrived early on Tuesday afternoon. Not much time for it to come from San Juan, even if someone had telephoned the information about the murder. And no stamp. So that would mean that there’s someone here working for them; and that means that that same person could have sent the note themselves.’

‘Any further glimpses of the obvious will be equally welcome,’ said Charlesworth.

‘Yessir,’ said Sergeant Ellis, woodenly, but within him, rebellion rose like a bubble; I’ll show him, the supercilious sod!

‘No address, no handwriting anywhere on the whole message; envelope sealed with water not licked, i.e. no saliva. In other words, nothing that could be analysed—’

‘Nossir,’ said Ginger. What in a sergeant was obvious, in an officer was apparently merely evident.

‘—which would suggest that the sender was someone in this country who might be identifiable.’

‘Yessir.’

‘The murderer, or a friend, pretending to give an air of reality to all this rubbish about the Juanese—’

‘—and fortunate in having the Grand Ducal seal of San Juan to add a little touch of veracity.’

‘
If
it’s the Grand Ducal seal,’ said Charlesworth, playing straight into the outheld hands.

‘Oh, certainly sir, it’s the genuine seal,’ said Ginger, with an air of quiet confidence which he knew to be most maddening to his Chief Superintendent. He turned the envelope over in his pudgy hands. ‘Designed by Tomaso di Goya, you’ll recognise his touch, sir? But some years ago—you can see that the seal is well-worn; this is a good strong impression but it’s blurred at the edges and Tomaso di Goya never blurred anything at the edges. The modern Cellini, they call him nowadays—’

‘You don’t say!’ said Charles worth.

‘—direct descendant of Goya, the painter. I mean, where was Goya during those three years between the time he escaped from Madrid and turned up in Italy—?’

‘You tell me,’ said Charlesworth.

Ginger had every intention of doing so and at as much length as possible. ‘Almost certainly on the island of San Juan el Pirata. The murals in the Duomo—that would be the Cathedral—’

Charlesworth finally lost patience. ‘Never mind the bloody murals—’

‘Well, they are rather bloody, sir; the cathedral was built by the original Juan the Pirate, to his own glory, and he was a proper old sadist; and Goya, having just got out of Spain, was at his most gory—’