Roman Nights: Dolly and the Starry Bird; Murder in Focus by Dorothy Dunnett
The Professor’s pebble glasses inclined towards this evidence of superficial thinking and Jacko wilted faintly in his folding chair. ‘I can think of several reasons,’ said Lilian Hathaway. ‘The material may not always be of convenient size to hand over in public. Provided the amount of contact is kept to a minimum, a mobile liaison office such as the balloon cart could be used over and over again, and doubtless has been. And lastly, it argues, does it not, that an appointment for the future is made because at the time of contact the merchandise itself is not yet available?
‘Had the missing couture photographs been in Ruth’s possession at the time of the attack on her in Ischia, no doubt they would have figured in the next meeting. Perhaps this was why the San Michele arrangement was made; in which case the seller has still to explain to the purchaser that he has nothing to give him. And I doubt if anywhere on the island you would find a house and garden with more secret corners for such an encounter than San Michele. Axel Munthe, of course, was a most unusual gentleman.’
‘You know the villa?’ said Johnson.
‘I have had cause to visit it,’ said Professor Hathaway calmly.
She had been to the Grotta Azzurra as well, so it transpired, and gave us a lucid account of the refractive effects of the sun’s rays filtered through cavern water. I could see Jacko’s illusions all wilting. Then she said that she would be glad to conduct us on a tour of the San Michele precincts and who else wished to be of the party? Too many Chiefs, as well, and not enough unfortunate Indians.
It appeared that everyone but Maurice and Di, who wanted to get her hair done, wished to be of the party; and Maurice only opted out because any party Maurice is in has to be Maurice’s party, and this wasn’t. In all, six of us fell into line behind Johnson when he left the boat at 1300 that afternoon: Charles and I and Professor Hathaway, together with Jacko and Innes and Timothy.
We were, it is fair to say, inclined to giggle. It seemed enough, on the face of it, to frighten off the toughest conspirators, but Johnson did nothing to stop it. He probably couldn’t. Only Charles and I, after all, knew his curiosity had official endorsement. All I could do was resolve not to let Charles Digham leave my sight until the visit to Capri was over, and a fat lot of good that was to do me.
It was rather warm, I remember, and Jacko wore moss green shorts with laced flies which the natives of Capri in their winter wool thought dead dishy. Charles had on a needlecord shirt with a flower pattern and a jewelled belt around his pants. Johnson wore a white keyhole sweater and flannels: L’Escalade de l’Erotisme. ‘Dear boy,’ said Maurice, ‘you look like a veteran seed with no balls left. Do look after the children. I trust you.’
Someone said that Capri was shaped like a slipper. From where we were floating, it was like two mountainous knobs with a saddle between them. At the bottom of the saddle is the big harbour with a half circle of houses and shops and trattorias swarming with traffic and tenders and cruise ships in season. The quickest way to Capri proper, which is the top of the saddle, is by funicular. From there, San Michele is reached by taking a winding hill road to the right-hand cliff, on which sits the little town of Anacapri.
We all got into the scarlet carriage of the funicular and allowed Timothy to describe to us the orgies of the Emperor Hadrian while the fig and orange and lemon trees and the tops of the villas disappeared slowly down by our feet. A notice on the wall said:
SEGNALE D’ALLARME:
In caso di pericolo, tirare la maniglia
I thought if anything happened to this carriage, the Pope wouldn’t get his picture and the Trust would need a new director, so why should I worry.
Then we got to the top, and walked around to the Umberto I Square, which is pure, living Kodak, with white buildings and greenery and café chairs and tables and a little square tower containing a blue and yellow clock with Roman digits just like my telescope.
It reminded Charles of something else altogether.
‘Like falling leaves the years slip by
But memories will never die
Time may pass and fade away
But thoughts of you will always stay.’
A sad thing happens with Charles and myself. If the setting becomes too romantic, he tips over into obituary verses. I suppose this is why I weep all the way through teleromanzi. I know moments of high romance will never come my way with wine and moonlight and soft violins playing. If Charles didn’t break down and cackle, then I should.
We piled into two taxis for Anacapri.
With seven of us up, the taxis nearly didn’t make it, and the steam was rising to the pine trees as we finally wheezed into the little square and tumbled out at our destination.
We were too early. There was no one standing about the sunken park with a Gents in the middle, or the hotels and houses and shops built around it. In front of us, a notice said: To the Villa San Michele
Behind that rose a large modern hotel with a submarine window let into its swimming pool. The only natives in sight were grouped before that green aqueous rectangle through which moved the stomach of a stout woman performing the breast stroke.
It was like the fish tank in the Ischia restaurant. Johnson said, ‘Let’s go up in the chair lift.’
One of Johnson’s larky ideas, and very funny until it turned out that he meant it. Jacko, told there was a terrace with beer at the top, became instantly enthusiastic. I thought of the stiff in the meat safe. Some people never learn from life’s lessons.
Innes was made of different stuff. ‘You bent on living dangerously?’ he inquired of Johnson with sarcasm. ‘The view?’ offered Timothy placatingly. He was anxious for Johnson to be pleased.
‘Ah. The view,’ said Professor Hathaway, and we all turned and looked at her.
Charles got her point in fact before I did. ‘The view of San Michele,’ he said, looking at Johnson. ‘Granted. But if we can watch the approach path, won’t our quarry be aware of seven high-level spectators? Two taxi-loads of yachtsmen in November can hardly have escaped anyone’s notice. We must be notorious.’
He was right. As far as public argument went, we must have the Runners-up Art Deco Cufflinks already. Johnson said patiently, ‘Ponder this. If this meeting hasn’t already been cancelled it’s only because the two people concerned haven’t been warned about us. And if they haven’t been warned, two taxi-loads of bent foreign yachtsmen won’t worry them.’
‘Well said,’ said Lilian Hathaway. ‘Likewise, what man of sense would attempt to dispose of seven people? Where is the chair lift?’
At Anacapri, the chair lift is like any other. You place your feet on a pair of red footprints, then the chair steals upon you from behind and sweeps you into the air, while a safety bar clips at your middle. Professor Hathaway was lifted first; then Charles and Timothy and Innes and Jacko. Johnson put me in the next chair and then seated himself in the last one. We rocketed heavenward.
I don’t mind heights. I like, Charles maintains, being above people. I enjoyed looking down into their gardens and their vegetable patches, and passing their lanes and their roofs and their henhouses. The chairs were very close, in Anacapri, to the chimney tops. You could kick the tallest vine stakes with your sandals. You brushed the tops of their greenery: lilac bushes and olives and almonds, little poplars and oak trees growing densely below you in silence.
That was the main surprise: the lushness, the mild air and the quietness. Sometimes a bird would twitter in the pine trees. Sometimes, far off among the dipping white houses, you heard the snore of a motorbike or the beat of a tool, distantly hammering. But up here in space there was silence, save for the four hissing wheels of each pylon as the chairs swung from tower to tower.
Ahead, depending from its single rod, I could see the chair with Jacko in it, his camera appearing first on one side and then on the other. The others, dark figures against the sky, were crossing the next chasm, beyond which the terrain seemed much wilder, with grass and bushes and slabs of crumpled grey rock undernea
I wondered how high exactly was the mountain we were thus ascending. Parallel with us the empty chairs came swooping down on the other side of the pylons, their worn seats bearing the imprint of God knows how many thousands of summertime tourist bottoms.
Our seats were facing away from the villa. I turned around, my eyes searching for bearings. Behind me, Johnson was doing the same, standing embracing the bucketing rod, his binoculars pressed to his glasses.
If anything was manic stupid, that was. I made to call him, and decided against it. I sat fuming while we swept up to a tower. The ripped-silk noise of the wheels sang out and diminished. We began descending the arc to the next one. Johnson changed his stance as he too passed the tower. For a moment he released the rod while he focused his binoculars. I swore, and bumped around, glaring, to see if Jacko had noticed.
He hadn’t. He was still taking photographs. After a moment, his elbows went down and he looked around, like a man who is expecting a shower. It was so quiet that you could hear the sparrows rustle below us. It was perfectly quiet. It was perfectly quiet because the wheels had stopped running.
My chair slid slowly to the bottom of its arc and remained there, rocking gently above the tiled and tumbledown roof of a very small cabin. A number of hens pecked about in a dirt yard. A dog, running out of a shed, began to set up a high, monotonous yapping. I twisted around to yell out to Johnson.
Johnson wasn’t there. The chair seat behind me was empty.
He had therefore toppled out. He had (a) over-balanced when the power left the cable. He had (b) been stoned as the chair stopped. He had (c) been shot with a silencer.
God took our Johnson for a star
To love and guide us from afar.
I had lost him.
Then I saw the tree beside which Johnson’s vacant chair had halted. And Johnson climbing down it, with his tennis pullover glinting like eglantine among the graceful green branches. He got to the ground and waved, just as remote cries began to issue from the rest of our immobilized party.
I was waving back when a skylight in the roof just below me creaked and groaningly opened. A ladder rose into the sky with the spectral lassitude of Jacob’s dream, projected in slow motion and backward. The hens fluttered. Johnson appeared, the dog snapping about him, and called, but not too loudly, ‘Do you think you can climb it?’
I could climb his ladder. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to. I looked ahead, to where Jacko was carrying on an acrimonious conversation with Innes, and behind, where the only view seemed to consist of two vanishing cables holding a lot of dangling seats, emphatically immobile. I lifted the bar over my waist, hitched my bottom over the seat and lowered myself till my feet found the ladder.
Johnson helped me into the house, and then downstairs and out of it, accompanied by the beatific sound of the passing of many great lire. Just as we got to the ground, Jacko turned around in his high seat and bellowed.
I was rather touched to observe that he’d missed me. Johnson cupped his hands and yelled something at him. He promised, I think, to send a mechanic. At any rate, he then took me by the hand and began running with no style but a great deal of speed down the path and back to the platform where we had started. I said, ‘What about freeing the others?’
‘They’re too high to get down,’ said Johnson with absolute accuracy.
We continued to belt down the pathway. ‘What,’ I said, ‘if they can’t get the machinery started?’
‘They won’t get to the villa on time,’ Johnson said. ‘What a pity.’
What a pity. I stopped dead in my tracks, and the jerk as he skidded me forward nearly shattered my wishbone. I started running again, but methodically. I said, ‘You fixed it.’
‘I fixed it,’ Johnson agreed. He didn’t sound penitent. ‘Who would suspect two taxi-loads of bent tourists?’ he’d said, or something like it. ‘Who,’ Professor Hathaway had said, ‘would attempt to dispose of seven people?’
‘Listen,’ I said. I tried to speak reasonably. ‘What if someone is waiting to go to the villa at fifteen hundred? What if they were about to call off the meeting, and then discover the opposition has reduced itself to you and me? What if they try to knock us off? Hell,’ I said, hauling viciously on his pulling arm so that he was forced at least to turn around and look at me, ‘at least Innes Wye had his Dardick.’
‘Ruth,’ Johnson said very gently. He took me by the arm and walked me past the Hotel Europe with its voyeurs and into a dark and flowery lane all shaded with trees. ‘I haven’t a Dardick,’ Johnson said, ‘but I have a little thought I’d like you to receive and mull over. Whoever will be in the Villa Michele at three p.m., it won’t by any conceivable chance be Charles Digham.’
He was an intellectual snob, a pouf and a traitor. He was also a man of great cunning. I went to heel and walked on with my trap shut.
The Villa San Michele lay on the right past the souvenir stalls. At 1430 hours, we entered it.
Tickets were sold in the vestibule. It was a quiet day, the attendant said, glad to find someone to talk to. One or two gentlemen in the morning. This afternoon, a pair of ladies with cameras and Mr Frazer. Mr Frazer, did we know him, the playwright?
Indeed, said Johnson. He showed no surprise and quelled with a douche of his glasses the open-eyed stare I was trying to throw him. We turned right into the small white-walled rooms and enclosed patios of the villa itself and he hissed each time I spoke until I lost patience and confronted him. We were in the monumental bedroom, as I remember, beside the monolithic uncanopied four-poster and the statues and the heavy carved seat-pieces. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘All right. I’m here and you’re here and Maurice is here and everyone else is dangling in the air above Monte Solaro. To protect Charles, maybe, but that isn’t everything. Can I induce you to tell me what’s happening?’
‘I have an idea,’ Johnson said. ‘Perhaps Maurice has the same one.’ He touched the chairs, walked around the bed and went and stood under the arch by the window, peering about him.
He made me nervous. Ever since we had entered the villa he had explored it as if he were going to buy it, prodding the statues, passing his hands over the carved fragments plastered into the walls, lifting the cushions. The guide hadn’t come with us, and it was just as well. I’ve seen a few bus parties in my time, but none as ferrety as Johnson Johnson.
‘I have an idea,’ he continued now, peering out of the window, ‘that there is to be no nasty encounter in the Villa San Michele at the hour of fifteen hundred today. I think something else entirely is going to happen. I think a message is about to be picked up.’
The occasion seemed to warrant a little grammar. ‘From whom to whom?’ I asked, whispering flutily. ‘And what?’ I added, as an afterthought.
‘From whom, I can’t prove,’ Johnson said. ‘But it can’t have been left before latish this morning, which makes the attendant’s news all the more interesting. And to whom we may never know, because whoever is going to lift it will make quite sure he is not observed doing it. But what, is a different matter. That is what I hope we are going to discover.’
‘A message,’ I said, helplessly mourning. The rooms connected like a jigsaw puzzle; up and down steps, through little piazzas and terraces. And outside, acre on glamorous acre, stretched the gardens, with the white gleams of statues and fountains.
‘A written message, tucked somewhere known to the searcher. Come on,’ said Johnson. ‘We haven’t all day. Let’s do over the chapel.’
We did over the chapel, which was full of holy paintings and open-pored wooden statues and atmosphere. We walked over mosaic and peered between barley sugar columns of marble and, emerging, climbed the flowery paths to the summerhouse. We nosed our way through the loggia, its white pillars twisted with greenery.
Axel Munthe had built his crash pad on what remained of a big Roman villa, and into it he had squirrelled all of ancient Rome that could be found on the island. Leaning over the wall between the Korda pillars you s
Johnson started to laugh. It was so irritating I could have cuffed him.
I straightened and so, more smoothly, did Johnson. From the distant curve of the loggia stepped the noble figure of the owner of the Frazer Observatory, blandly smiling. Two ladies in tweed suits and felt hats and cameras were backing before him, genteelly drivelling. Maurice stopped, cigar in hand, by a statue. The soft white hair, freshly cut by the artist, strayed across the magnificent forehead. ‘In this haunted bower, what impulses cannot flower; what encounter does not have its meaning, deeper than any we poor mortals may reach for. You have a right profile, dear lady. You may, if you wish, take my left. Various, I fear, as a chameleon. The curse of the mummer.’
He posed, pouting smoke, for a further exposure, and as they bagged their photometers, shook their hands warmly. They walked slowly past us, flushed and moonily smiling and I wondered, as Johnson glanced at them, if either man envied the other.
Maurice had style, panache, courtship, indeed adulation. Johnson had more woolly jerseys, and the recognition due to his profession. If you discerned in him anything remarkable, he forced you to recognize it with the eye of the intellect.
The snobbery which once I had accused him of. Or perhaps merely the requirements of his other, confidential profession. Perhaps he yearned for tight pants and chain belts and contact lenses. Perhaps he indulged in them secretly, with a round bed and a blonde fashion editress in Hampstead. ‘Johnson! And Ruth darling,’ said Maurice, allowing us to approach him. ‘I worry too much, and so does poor, motherly Lilian. There you are, hand in hand and perfectly happy.’ Only Maurice at his most elfish would think of calling Lilian Hathaway motherly. He added, ‘I thought you were all coming at three. Where are the others?’