Authors: Christianna Brand
‘Don’t tell us,’ said Sofy—‘you met a lovely man?’
‘Yes, in fact I did, and he let me creep into his office which was closing for the night, and sleep on the bench in there; and turned up next morning with coffee and the sondveedge; and all with no strings attached...’
‘There never are any strings in Italy,’ said Sofy. ‘That’s what’s so wonderful, talk talk, pinch pinch, bottom black and blue, do I not know, because they do so love a large blonde; but if you show the slightest glimmer of being ready for more, they scarper. Wives and six kiddywinx at home and as long as you pick on a married one, you’re safe.’
And fortunately, said Sari, as though this were merely a useful fact to have by one through life, continental men did wear those huge wedding rings...
‘But poor Nan, darling, finding you suddenly so inexplicably vanished!’
‘Not so jolly inexplicably;
she
knew. And not poor Nan at all. Rufie won’t believe, Sofy, that Nan’s been spying on us all this time. But I know. I mean, like I’ve said, what do we know about her?—Etho picked her up at this party, she could have been placed there, primed with her one joke—God knows she’s never made another. And very dreary in fact she is—’
‘Oh, Sari, you loved her!’
‘Not when I got her abroad; she drove me nearly mad. The complete and utter tourist, we’d have gone gooping round all day if she’d had her way, guide books at the ready, and dinner at seven in crummy little dives, everything no garlic for the Breeteesh and candle-wax running down the necks of Chianti bottles as though someone had been sick over them. Actually I was dying to go to dear old St Peter’s and pay my respects to M. Angelo—’
‘Oh, ducky, one does so agree,’ said Rufie, for a moment unwontedly camp. ‘All those muscular slaves struggling up out of their marble!’
‘Not St Peter’s, darling, actually; Florence. And much more like trying to get out of too-tight suspender belts, I always think—’
‘Which you wouldn’t know about, Rufie, of course. Unless any of the Visitors—’
‘But the lovely, lovely Pieta,’ interrupted Sari, a mite hurriedly; Rufie played it all very quietly, after all, and he didn’t take kindly to teasing. ‘And then dear St. Peter with his toes munched away by pilgrims, not that he’s by Michaelo; and—well, it’s all so huge and super. Only I simply couldn’t give in and be one of
her
and I’m afraid I did rather tease her. It was a shame really—’
‘—and after all, Sari, she was paying—’
‘—but she did get on my nerves. It’s the nippety way she eats. And now, of course, I’m glad. The whole thing, the whole of Nan, has been an act.’
The newly dyed hair stood up softly ‘en brosse’, like the hair of a marmalade cat; but Rufie, exchanging glances with Sofy, saw that beneath the whipped-up excitement the lovely face was strained and the gabble a little bit forced, And one thing was certain; Sari loved or she loved not and if Nan had in some way offended—justifiably or not—from here on Nan was out.
A
WEEK HAD PASSED
since the discovery of the murder and Mr Charlesworth’s collage was in a somewhat sorry condition, lots of little pieces of fur and feather all neatly fitting together but fitting with no other little fitted-together pieces; not to mention a huge assortment of other materials which might or might not have a place. And all against a background of almost farcical fantasy, true or false one quite honestly could not say. The Press were getting noisy, his seniors restive and as he sat, mentally tossing about the assorted contributions to his picture, as a child messes about the food on its plate, he found time to utter a short prayer that his sergeant would have something constructive to report, when he got back from Rome. Ginger had been only too delighted to go out and keep a discreet eye on the problematic doings of Miss Morne; having with customary complacency exhibited a fluency in Italian, the more impressive in that neither of them could recognise the accent as execrable. He appeared at last, looking exceedingly sheepish. Charlesworth said, ‘Good God!—what on earth have you been doing to yourself?’
‘All in the way of duty, sir,’ said Ginger, manfully.
‘To get yourself a Bubbles hair-cut—in the way of duty?’
‘I thought I might get a bit of something out of this Luigi, sir; and before I knew it, they had me in a chair and were hopping around me like the Seven Dwarfs. His-and-Hers, sir.’
‘But you seem to have got Hers. Well, I’m sorry, Ginger,’ said Charlesworth, bursting into outright laughter for the first time in quite a long while. ‘I’ll personally pay for you to go to the best barber in town and have something done about it!’
‘But what’s it going to look like, sir, on the expenses sheet? x-thousand lire for a short-back-and-sides at a His-and-Hers?’
‘I’ll look after it all for you. Now come on, for all this self-sacrifice, what’ve you got?’
‘If I could put my cap back on, Mr Charlesworth, sir? I can’t keep my mind on it, like this.’
‘Of course, of course... Yes, well?’
‘Well, I got an earlier plane, sir, got to the hotel address she gave you before
she
did, had a word with these so-called Sardines. Nasty little bunch, but one great advantage—for a couple of bob they’d sell their grandmothers.’
‘So would I,’ said Charlesworth, ‘if anyone was ever so mad as to offer as much.’
‘But
their
grandmothers are right on the spot, and working like demons—’
‘So is mine—uninvited. And demons make very bad cooks. Though you’d think they’d be able to roast. Well—so?’
‘So I gave them the couple of bob, but told them not to worry about the flag, as it were; and they undertook to spill every bean that came their way. They have no deep love for Miss Morne. It seems that she—’
‘I know, don’t tell me. Incited the other guests to tie up the shoe-laces of all the shoes left outside doors to be cleaned, in inextricable tangles of odd pairs—’
‘They didn’t mention that one. And come to think of it,’ said Ginger, ‘not a lot of men wear shoes with laces, these days.’ He sighed. ‘A lovely lady, you can’t help sort of—well, loving her; but you can’t believe a word she says.’
‘Or only one here and there,’ said Charlesworth. ‘That’s the worst of it; you don’t know which is true.’ It was like his collage; you couldn’t be sure which bits to take into account and which to leave alone.
‘Yeah well, so I took a room in the hotel, very cheap it is fortunately, and if they ever noticed me I don’t think they reckernised me—’
‘Not with that hair-do,’ said Charlesworth, laughing again.
‘I could put it down on the sheet as “Disguise”?’ suggested Ginger, hopefully. But anyway, he had watched them and a bit of a tricky business it had been, never drunk so many espressos in his life. If only they had gone to look at things, he added wistfully; for Ginger to be in Italy and deprived of its enchantments was a genuine regret. He described the visit to the Pore Horse, however, adding a few tributes to the Bernini fountain which Charlesworth, anxious to get down to the facts, hastily repressed; and the subsequent absurdities in Trastevere. ‘Lord knows what she was up to. She shushed them all into the restaurant and went running over to a group of men, holding out a great sheaf of notes, and had a gabble with them and then had a word with a policeman and went into the restaurant. I introduced myself to the policeman, not that he believed in me for a second, me in my civvies, but he told me just the same: she’d asked the men if they could arrange a car for her outside the restaurant later on and one of them had a green Lamborghini that he kept an eye on for some count or someone who had a flat there, which they all seem to do now, and sometimes drove for him; and he said he’d drive
them,
the count was away and he wouldn’t mind a bit. He couldn’t think why she kept addressing him as “Beppo”—he’d never set eyes on her before—but it really didn’t matter. The policeman said he’d told her that it was all OK. So later when they came out the restaurant, she dragged Mrs Winter along with her and they madly drove off to the hotel. I waited and watched what the two men did—no use trying to catch up with the Lamborghini—and all they did was to go into hysterics wondering what it was all about and then calm down and get into a hire car they had waiting and meekly drive away. But what was going on, I had no idea, any more than they seemed to have.’
‘Building up this thing about the Juan—all right, all right, Hoowarnese—followers?’ suggested Charlesworth shrewdly. He thought it over. ‘Would you recognise the Juanese dialect?’
‘I’d reckernise straightforward Italian,’ said Ginger, ‘and that’s what those two were talking.’
‘Mrs Winter wouldn’t know, either way?’
‘They’d speak English with her there, I daresay?’
‘M’m, well that’s great, you did a good job on that. So then?’
‘So then the next morning the two ladies went back to the hair-dresser’s for the second stage of their treatments—’
‘One stage had been enough for you?’
‘Yes,’ said Ginger, rather crossly. All this and raillery too?
‘No one would believe it!’
‘Nossir,’ said Ginger.
‘Come on, Ginger, come on—don’t start your nonsenses! I’m sorry. What next?’
‘Well, next, I hung about in the hall—more hand-outs and then the Sardines were letting me wear a porter’s uniform cap and pretend to work behind the desk, more or less out of sight. So after lunch, they had a discussion in the hall and Mrs Winter was insisting on going with Miss Morne to this convent. Then a call came through for Miss Morne and she went into a call-box, and the minute she’d gone, the Number one Sardine, knowing, I suppose, that Mrs Winter didn’t speak Italian, and of course not knowing that I did—they spoke enough English for me to have got along with them, over all this—immediately snatched up the desk telephone and put through a call, and said in a low voice, “Signora Duchessa?” which means Madame the Duchess—’
‘Thank you,’ said Charlesworth.
‘—and he rapidly explained that the young lady was going to the convent, and then, with a lot of pregos, that means—’
‘Sergeant, I
have just
been outside England once or twice in my life.’
‘Yessir, sorry sir—well, anyway, he then rang off. So off went the ladies, with me following them, to this convent—’
‘Which convent, for goodness sake?’ said Charlesworth, unwisely.
‘A bit outside Tarquinia, sir, in the countryside. Very, very old village, church quattrocento, I wouldn’t be surprised, and a walled graveyard, but frankly dreary frescoes. The convent must be nearly as old, with a chapel and a famous Madonna, painted marble, a thing you don’t all that often see—’
‘Or wish to hear about. What
happened
?’
‘Well, I have to explain it, sir. The place is run by nuns, given over to care of the sick, a lot of cripples and mentally handicapped—that’s why this Madonna is supposed to do miraculous cures, the Madonna day Marracalli they call her, that means—Yes, well, I’m just saying, the chapel’s stiff with abandoned crutches, a pair of surgical corsets, sir, a bit hilarious, and offerings of course and what not—’
‘Come on, Ginger, spare me, spare me: what happened?’
Ginger favoured his chief with a you’ll-be-sorry look and in a rapid gabble recited the course of events.‘—so then Miss Morne rushed off and drove away fast and the lady stood staring after her and when the car was gone, she turned and went quickly up the front steps and into the convent. So, the door being open, I just went in after her. She asked for the Mother Abbess and they said pronto, pronto—’
‘OK,’ said Charlesworth, dangerously.
‘—and while she waited she went into the chapel and knelt down to pray. I followed her in. That Madonna, sir!—it’s really pretty spectacular—’
‘But what
happened?’
‘What actually happened, sir? Well, a message came and she went in to see the Mother Abbess. I waited till she came back into the hall—’
‘And then?’
‘And then went in to see the Mother Abbess,’ said Ginger sweetly.
Meanwhile, at the flat in Hampstead, Etho had arrived for a late lunch, and was highly entertained by the history of the Flight from Rome—‘Not that I believe a word of it: you just came downstairs before Nan did and paid your bill and went off to the airport...’
‘I went and got this man, you can ask the Sardines.’
‘The Sardines will say anything you ask them, for a couple of bob,’ said Etho, as Ginger had earlier that morning said to Charlesworth. ‘Never mind, it’s much more fun the way you tell it. But this business up at the convent...’
She had telephoned Phin and they were meeting that night, for dinner; she was aglow with happiness but beneath it was a terrible fear. Her skin had the strangely dark look that it took when she was under great strain, not a greyness but a darkness, a darkening, not even physical perhaps, of the whole lovely face. She looked round at them. ‘You three—you’re the only ones in all the world that I can really trust; you three. You know me and you can understand me. You know what they think now isn’t true; but you know it’s what they’ll think.’
Etho sat on the couch, her hand held lightly and lovingly in his own. ‘They’ll think that four years ago you went into the hospital to have a child. They’ll think that that little boy—crippled and mentally defective—is Aldo’s legitimate heir. It’s as simple as that.’
‘Would it matter so very to them?’ said Sofy. ‘They seem to pretty well make up their own rules. I mean, didn’t the Grand Duke just write off the marriage by declaring it annulled?’
‘It was more complicated than that,’ said Etho. ‘They’d been married in Rome, a church wedding—’
‘But you’re not a Catholic, Sari?’
‘I just said I was,’ said Sari, shrugging. ‘It seemed easiest.’
‘—and the Grand Duchess, being a real Catholic, and very devout—well, she wouldn’t take that too lightly.’
‘It seems a curious way of getting out of it,’ suggested Sofy, ‘that this devout lady should prefer to lend herself to murder.’
‘I don’t suppose she’d know anything about murder,’ said Sari. ‘She’d simply report back to the Grand Duke. Of course Aldo will never have said a word about it, the whole thing was probably as much of a shock to her as
she
was to me.’