Roman Nights: Dolly and the Starry Bird; Murder in Focus by Dorothy Dunnett
It embarrassed me, I can tell you. I looked from Professor Hathaway to Jacko with my brain wheezing. I said, ‘They went to other observatories?’
‘From the Zodiac Trust,’ said Professor Hathaway mildly. ‘In exchange for other material from them. You wouldn’t expect astronomers to have such a lively interest, would you, in earthly bodies? But they apparently did. Every now and then, from among a pile of plates arriving or departing for comparison or specialist reduction, there would slip out a disconcerting picture which would find rapid cover without, of course, being reported to the head of the observatory. And that, as it happens, was only one method of exchange employed by these extraordinary persons.
‘You must be aware, James,’ said Professor Hathaway, tipping the ash from her Manikin, ‘that in the worldwide network of observatories, there exists a ready-made system of communication which lends itself to a number of telling abuses. Who would put a flawed photographic plate through an enlarger? Yet they are sent to the centre for reduction with the good plates, and who knows what microprints they may not incorporate in some hazy corner? Astronomers are excellent photographers. And if they cannot doctor the plates, there is always the parcel of undeveloped plates which passes periodically from one place to another without fear of broaching by customs. And if that fails, there are Jacko’s pictures and their like: good harmless fun which causes no more than a giggle if they fall into the wrong hands and would never, in a sporting profession, be reported to the authorities. Maurice?’
‘I am listening,’ said Maurice. ‘Agog.’
Narrowing her eyes above the belching tip of her half-consumed Manikin, Professor Hathaway groped with both hands through her large tapestry handbag and handed something to Maurice.
‘Perhaps,’ she said, ‘you haven’t yet seen one of James’s productions.’
It was a picture of Di: an old one, in which she was wearing a fringed outfit someone had brought her from Cairo. I recognized it upside down as Maurice studied it at arm’s length on the four-poster. I said, without thinking, ‘He’s altered her necklace.’
I saw Jacko go slowly scarlet at the same moment as I felt the tide of red rising over my own neck and face. Charles, rigid beside me. was staring at Jacko.
‘The necklace – Ruth is right – is certainly the most interesting part of the photograph,’ said Lilian Hathaway calmly. ‘In fact, I found it so interesting that I decided to share my interest with Johnson. He is here because I asked him to come here. Pass around the photograph.’
No one spoke as it went around. Everyone looked at the necklace, and avoided looking at anyone else. Very few of them looked at her face; the smart, beautiful, likeable face we had been friends with.
‘You said,’ said Professor Hathaway, ‘that the necklace had been changed. It had, in a very alarming way. Each of these circles, which once contained round clear stones of a pale character, is now filled with approximately four manuscript pages of classified material. The photograph arrived at the Trust from this station a month ago. The person who received it has been under observation. More pictures were to go, I am sure, with the packet due to go off ten days ago. Unfortunately, Jacko’s pictures were destroyed and I appeared, to supervise the rest of the packing. That was why it was decided to entrust the rest of the information to Sophia.’
‘To send from Capri?’ said Innes. ‘Through her network of communications?’
‘Of course. She was already suborned when she worked at the Trust. She only left when her place was taken by another.’
Johnson had lied to me. Jacko stood up. He said, ‘Wait a minute.’
‘We’re not going anywhere,’ said Johnson coolly. ‘Are you going to try and convince us you knew nothing about this?’
The fire roared up the chimney, dark red behind the gauzy curtains of tobacco. A trickle of sweat, hovering over my neck, suddenly made a cold dash down my back. I shivered and sought in vain around my hip for a handkerchief. A clean one appeared before me, which I recognized as Timothy’s. Timothy said, ‘Maurice. I think it is bedtime.’
Maurice smiled. ‘What? Before the last murder? Timothy,’ he said, ‘you have no soul in the matter of exits.’
‘You said,’ said Johnson to Jacko, ‘that you could defend yourself.’
‘Dear boy,’ said Maurice regretfully. ‘I always said your hobbies would lead you into nothing but trouble. Much better stick to stump work, like Timothy.’
‘I also prefer stump work,’ said Professor Hathaway, surveying him, ‘but I doubt if any court would accept it as a character reference. You understand, James, that it is the connection between the Minicucci family and the Zodiac Trust which is exercising us. Prince Minicucci, we are led to understand, was the head of a select organization which dealt in the exchange of illegally acquired information, whether military or industrial. In this he made use of his daughter and of people like Sophia, I make no doubt, and Mr Paladrini. But information has been coming from the observatory and elsewhere into the Zodiac Trust since Sophia left us. We are left to wonder therefore who is responsible.’
Charles said, ‘Isn’t it a matter for the police? It seems hard luck on Jacko to have to pull himself together in the middle of the night and start defending himself. We’re not a court.’
‘It is a matter for the British police,’ said Professor Hathaway. ‘The police in Rome are at present mainly occupied with tracing and arresting all of Prince Minicucci’s associates. I prefer to clear my own doorstep. James, have you been sending doctored photographs in the parcels to England?’
‘No,’ said Jacko. His flowered shirt had come untucked from his trousers and his moustache had flecks of Maurice’s cigar ash in it. He said, ‘This is a hell of a—’
‘You have only to answer me truthfully,’ said Professor Hathaway. ‘Did you, or Diana with your knowledge, transfer the lethal gas cylinder from Mr Paladrini’s flat to the Dome?’
‘No, I didn’t,’ said Jacko. ‘Listen, was it likely? Ruth uses that mixer gas. I was as likely to get blown up in the Dome with her as anybody.’
‘Unless you disconnected it when she was about. Did you give or lend Diana the key to the Dome, so that her friends were able to break in or search it as they pleased?’
There was a slight pause, during which Jacko breathed heavily through his nostrils. I stared at the ground. I knew he was thinking of his Orals. The strict voice, the impersonal questions were so reminiscent I could feel the same low, queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach.
Jacko said, ‘I did lend her a key. Once or twice. But that’s got nothing to do with it. Look, if I wanted to search the Dome or bust Charles’s camera or anything, I didn’t have to hire someone to do it. I could do it myself and fake some sort of tale of a break-in. In any case, the man who pinched the film and broke up the camera busted the door to get into the observatory. My God, he tied me up and got away while I was still on the floor of the developing room. You were there, Innes. And Ruth, and Charles and Johnson. There you are. The bloody film was stolen and that proves I had nothing to do with it.’
‘Of course it does,’ said Johnson cheerfully. It was a tone that I distrusted and I saw by Jacko’s wary scrutiny that he wasn’t buying it either.
Johnson said, ‘The man who smashed Charles’s camera and took the film was a security agent, the partner of the man who was killed in the toletta at the zoo. He had nothing to do with Minicucci and the fact that he broke in and attacked you does nothing whatever to prove you weren’t in with the Minicuccis up to the hairline. The only thing it does prove is that you didn’t shoot him. In fact, the puzzle is, who did shoot him? Di and her friends weren’t around, and there wasn’t time to summon them. I suppose you didn’t put the body into the meat safe?’
‘I didn’t know it was there,’ said Jacko indignantly. ‘My God, ask Ruth what we both felt when we saw it. Look, what about that break-in? If I hadn’t been there, I suppose Ruth would have joined the other bloke in the meat safe. If I hadn’t found the ke
‘My dear boy,’ said Maurice gently, ‘you are the one whose extraction is in question. Am I not right in thinking that on that occasion entrance was effected by a key to the Dome? And that the intruder was aware of the presence of a trapdoor, and therefore was either a member of the observatory staff, or on intimate terms with one? What about that, my poor children?’
‘All right,’ said Jacko hotly, glaring around at his tormentors. ‘Tell me one thing. What do you think he had come for?’
Again, it was Innes, no friend of his, who supported him. ‘The body,’ he said. ‘The fact that he had the meat safe key on him proves it. Also, he did not know, Jacko, of your presence. You had expected to go home after your duty. Ruth had just come on duty and was safely locked in the Dome making exposures. It was pure coincidence that on this one night she left the door open, and that the subsequent events forced the criminal into the open. I do not believe,’ said Innes, ‘that there was any prior intention of harming Ruth. Up to that moment, Minicucci’s party had shown themselves most anxious to avoid police interference. The trapdoor was merely a desperate device to ensure his own escape through the Dome roof. If you had both fallen through it, there would be no absolute proof that it wasn’t an accident.’
‘All right,’ said Jacko. ‘Then if all he wanted was to remove the body, you can count me out of that one as well. I spent half my nights in that Dome. I could have carted out and buried the entire Inter football team and no one need have been any the wiser.’
‘I remember suggesting it,’ said Maurice mildly. ‘In fact, truth to tell, I began to worry a little about the possible contents of my refrigerator. Johnson, I think the boy has made a case for himself.’
Professor Hathaway leaned forward and stubbed out her cigar with a movement of sudden decision. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I do believe he has. Now, where does that leave us? Johnson, Innes and myself are not under suspicion. On circumstantial evidence, Jacko may be largely absolved. Who. then, doctored the pictures and slipped them into the packages intended for the Trust? Timothy and Maurice? They didn’t need to leave bodies in the Dome: they had their own ample resources.’
‘Of course,’ said Johnson mildly. ‘Also, neither of them made the slightest attempt to ensure that Ruth’s valuable wristwatch was safely transferred to Sophia. Indeed, it was through Maurice’s amateur sleuthing that we got the shredded film back from the barber’s – thereby, I will say,’ added Johnson reprovingly, ‘much upsetting Lenny, who was already having a steam treatment – you may not have noticed – in another part of the salon.’
‘How did . . . ?’ began Maurice.
‘Added to which,’ said Johnson, paying no attention, ‘neither Maurice nor Timothy was sufficiently intimate with the posting details of the Dome, nor did either know anything whatsoever about photography. Indeed, once you rule out Innes and Jacko and Charles, who was in Naples or in prison half the time all the crimes were being committed, there is really only one person left who possesses every qualification. Ruth, come over here.’
Charles’s hands dropped from my shoulders. My heart, which had been beating in a succession of quick, heavy thumps, had a logjam and began to shake me like an uneven trip-hammer. I looked up at Charles and he was staring at me with a face I had never seen before.
Everyone was staring at me. I got up very slowly and walked to where Johnson had risen. ‘I’m sorry, Ruth,’ he said. ‘But it had to be done.’ And taking me by the arm he drew me beside him, so that I could see the loving regularity of the cable stitching and the bristle where he needed shaving and the bulge in his trouser pocket which was either his pipe, or his matches, or something which was bigger and neither.
His hand on my arm was very tight. ‘I couldn’t have him using you as a hostage,’ said Johnson. ‘Charles. It is, I’m afraid, the end of the joyride.’
NINETEEN
‘And that,’ said Charles with a breathless kind of angry amusement, ‘is what is wrong with the British Intelligence Service today. I beg to inform you, Johnson. You’ve made a ripe, newspaper-worthy, libel-incurring cock-up of this one.’
‘Charles?’ said Jacko. He came over and stood beside me and glared at Johnson. ‘You said yourself, he was in prison half the time.’
‘I know. I put him there,’ said Johnson. ‘To keep him out of Ruth’s way. To isolate him from his associates. And to see what he would do with the nuclear film from the Baedeker which Di had received at the Fall Fair and given him. What he did, of course, was put it in his watch and make Ruth unwittingly carry it to Sophia.’
‘So you say,’ said Charles. ‘Who can prove it?’
‘I can,’ said Johnson. ‘What you burned just now was the second part of the Turin Traffic Regulations for nineteen fifty-four. The nuclear film is safely in England, with your fingerprints on it.’
‘Bluff,’ said Charles.
‘You think so?’ said Johnson. ‘You have an eight-millimetre-film camera. You not only take fashion shots. You have industrial contracts for photographs. The two security agents in the zoo were from such a firm. They wanted to see what was in your camera because they had suffered a leak and were suspicious of you. And what was in your camera, as Ruth well knows, were retakes of Jacko’s pictures of Diana, with certain microfilm additions.’
‘Prove it,’ said Charles. ‘If you can, from the ashes.’
‘Or Ruth’s testimony,’ Johnson said. ‘She can testify against you, you know. Despite your persuasiveness, she wouldn’t marry you. You had hoped to make Ruth into another Sophia. Instead, she realized you had lied about the ownership of her camera, and, finding yours in the Dome, developed what was in it. What she found must have reeked of industrial espionage, but she was more than fair to you. She hid them, and even when at one point she thought I might help you out of your trouble, she didn’t give you away.’
‘Because there was nothing to give away,’ Charles said. ‘I was a cretin, no doubt. I didn’t know I had muddled the cameras. But when I realized I had, I thought I ought to pretend that mine was the one which was pinched at the zoo. After all, my own was lying about loose for anyone to take. I wanted to make that secure first.’
‘Then why not tell Ruth at least?’ Johnson said. ‘Or were you afraid of something happening which would cause the police to investigate and develop the contents of both cameras? I can see that it would be better to get hold of Ruth’s camera and destroy the film somehow, so that the question of developing it could never arise. And mixed up with it all was Mr Paladrini, who had appointed to meet you with the balloon cart outside the zoo on that day, and who duly handed over to you the balloon bearing the rendezvous advice for the Fall Fair.
‘Only, Ruth got the balloon and managed to interpret what it meant. And Mr Paladrini, knowing you were being followed, took the law into his own hands and gave your pursuer the lethal balloon. Whose fragments you removed, of course, when you went into the zoo toletta. What a shock it must have been to see that someone had got away with the contents of Ruth’s camera already. That meant that when he developed it, he would realize he had the wrong film. And he would then look for the right one, which was still lying in the Dome.
‘You did your best to get it that night,’ said Johnson. ‘The night of Maurice’s party, do you remember? But Jacko had exposures going on in the Dome, and it was blacked out. And none of us, as it happens, left you for a moment. And then, when you got away from Maurice’s party, it was to find that the other security agent was already in the Dome and had found your camera with the film in it. You even caught him, and had him locked in the bathroom, when he unfortunately escaped.
‘Or did he escape?’ said Johnson reflectively. ‘Who knows? He might even have remained in the bathroom, a bullet hole in his head, until it was safe to remove him to the meat safe. But the film had gone, and that frightened you. You appointed Di to go to the Fall Fair in your place and you forced a quarrel with Ruth to ac
‘You came back to Rome on Tuesday evening, hoping to find things had cooled off, and that it would be possible to remove the shot man at last from the Dome. The locks had been changed, but Di always had access to Jacko’s key and of course by now had copies. Unfortunately, in your absence Mr Paladrini had been spotted at the Fall Fair and since positively identified. Prince Minicucci decreed that he now represented an unnecessary risk to the organization, and on Tuesday night or early on Wednesday morning he was taken away and killed and equipped with a suicide note. A little later, for reasons which had become rather compelling, you made the exchange of gas cylinders from Mr Paladrini’s flat to the Dome, but left the Dome cylinder insufficiently connected, so that until you chose, nothing fatal could happen.’
I said, ‘You’re wrong there.’ It didn’t come out very well and Jacko, on my other side, shot a glance of hatred at Johnson and put his arm around my waist. Johnson, without looking, opened his fingers and freed my near arm. I wanted to sit down but I didn’t. I stayed exactly as I was.
Johnson said, ‘No. If even I knew you were worried, do you think Charles wouldn’t observe it? And something appalling had happened. He had entered the Dome after you left him at midnight, and had been discovered even before reaching the meat safe. Instead of covering his tracks, he suddenly had both you and Jacko in full cry after him. He left that trapdoor open praying you would both fall into it, for he thought you would certainly have recognized him. In fact you didn’t recognize him, and didn’t fall into the trap. Then, of course, when he retrieved the film from Maurice’s vase the next morning, he saw that it was a dud and guessed you had found and developed the right one. From then onward, it was too dangerous to leave you with him. I told the Rome police my suspicions and had him arrested until further notice, quite incommunicado but for the one meeting with you when he gave you his wristwatch. He received no letters and received and made no telephone calls until the moment of the Capri appointment, when I released him so that he could incriminate himself and, if possible, all his associates.