Roman Nights: Dolly and the Starry Bird; Murder in Focus by Dorothy Dunnett
We had started to move forward again. Over three shoulders Johnson called, ‘Who brought him?’
‘He just came,’ she yelled back, and we were off again.
I suppose Innes, walking sedately down the stairs on his way back to Mouse Hall and Poppy, had no reason to connect the bustle upstairs with his winnings. When people started to run, he probably thought that the fair had concluded, and the Voice of America was about to arrive in a body and fill all the seats on his trolley bus. So he started to run downstairs also. When the court case came up afterwards, people said that he turned at the first shout of ‘Stop thief!’ and then, faced with a solid wall of shrieking people sweeping down the wide staircase after him, he whirled around and most wisely beat it.
He tripped and fell six stairs from the bottom, and the leading hounds tripped and took off right over him, followed by their near neighbours. Rather stylishly, in a glistening wave of manicured hands and blue glasses and other crocodile handbags, the entire body politic of Little America overturned and slid like a pack of cards straight down the staircase. At the bottom in a pool of scarlet lay Innes Wye, covered in Trappist jam, money and ketchup. And Jungle After Shave, the Essence for Men Born to Conquer.
Glissading down the side of the staircase was Mr Paladrini, his spectacles no longer visible. I took a flying leap over Innes and, with Johnson pounding ahead of me, followed them both out into the courtyard.
Outside, it was the rush hour. I think I have mentioned before that Rome had a worrying problem with traffic. The street was full of taxis, but all of them were bumper to bumper and motionless; ahead, dimly, Mr Paladrini was pounding up the vestigial pavement. He paused, looked around, and then began running downhill to the Via Nazionale and the buses. A large green double-decker bound for the Piazza Venezia swung out from the kerb, and he plunged through the doors as they hit him. We could see him haul out a fistful of money.
In Rome, there is a pathological shortage of small coins. For change, the little shops tend to use candy. Johnson said, ‘Come on!’ and set off down the Nazionale, running.
I could see the point. At the rate the traffic was travelling, we had as good a chance of getting to the next stop on time as the bus had. The pavement, it must be admitted, was crowded and not with polite Americans, but deploying his palette-holding arm, Johnson turned out to be more than an adept at barging. A stream of Italian oaths followed us on the whole of our free downhill slalom, which entailed ignoring the alts and treating the avantis like a springboard. We got to the next stop just as the bus was drawing in, with a brooding face looking down from its galleria. The doors opened. One person got off, and only one person was allowed on. And it wasn’t one of us.
‘Ah, well,’ said Johnson. And again, holding my wrist, began running. We battled our way through the parked cars at Trajan’s Forum and got to the bus stop just as Mr Paladrini descended there. He saw us, turned, and got back in, against the physical and vocal resistance of all his fellows. The door shut and the bus trundled across the Piazza to the Via del Plebiscito, where he got off again.
We were badly behind him that time. To cross the Piazza in the rush hour in full sight of the policeman standing there and chirping at you, whistle in mouth, is the quickest way to the British cemetery I know. We made it in time to see our quarry disappear into the maw of a black archway opposite the Palazzo di Venezia. We raced after him.
Outside, the row of brass plates appeared to indicate the usual colony of lawyers, dentists and insurance companies, with possibly a minor resting place of the Banco di Spirito Santo. Inside was a dark vaulted tunnel of pure seventeenth-century magnificence with a pebbled floor and arcaded walls through which we groped in the meagre daylight which penetrated from the street. The only other light came from a small concierge’s room at the end, next to the locked double doors which ended the tunnel, and from a hint of daylight to the left, from a small courtyard overlooked by tall buildings. Fragments of ancient marble: masks, broken draperies and fractured Latin inscriptions were built into the vine-covered walls. Among tubs of flowering plants rested a small cherub fountain, pouring thinly under the inscription non potabile. The tunnel itself was full of small cars.
We ran about, looking for Mr Paladrini. ‘I bet you don’t know Napoleon’s mother died here,’ Johnson said.
‘A million times I’ve needed you, Mum,
A million times I’ve cried
If love could have saved you, Mum,
You never would have died.’
‘Hell,’ he said abruptly. ‘He’s gone through the shoe shop.’
We had missed it first time around. But on the right, near the entrance, an archway led down some steps and into a lit arcade which proved to be just that: the shoe shop at the foot of the Corso. We plunged through it and into the street. Dodging up it was Mr Paladrini, in the middle of all Rome going home to its wife and bambinos in suede jackets and knitted jackets and shortie overcoats and very long overcoats and enough polo necks to outfit the entire British Raj, and better filled, at that. We belted after.
They used to hold horseraces in the Corso, which runs for a mile uphill between the Venezia and Renati’s, and the horses must have needed corks on their shoulders, because the pavements are about three inches wide and the road not much better. It is lined with continuous blocks of shops and churches and palaces, broken by monumental squares. The palaces are the kind made of faceted marble where the barred windows start three feet above the top of your head and the gardens are full of palm trees and gardeners and the private art collections are uninsurable. We charged up it and came to a halt finally in the open space of the Piazza Colonna, with the Marcus Aurelius column towering fervently above us. ‘Hell,’ said Johnson. ‘He’s gone across to the Galleria.’
The Galleria is a maze, and any self-respecting criminal would make straight for it. We had got halfway across the road with a screeching of brakes to encourage us when Johnson swung me abruptly around and raced back the way we had come. ‘No, he hasn’t,’ he said, and at that moment I saw Mr Paladrini, walking slowly and deceptively up past the monument and over the piazza.
Halfway across, he glanced around and saw us and, spinning around, started off, fast, in another direction. Two Fiats, an Alfa Romeo and a Mercedes-Benz allowed him to pass and met, uncontrollably, in his absence. There was a bang, followed by a quartet of long, tinny rattles. Mr Paladrini, in a burst of imperishable speed, nipped on to the pavement and vanished down a flight of steps signposted sottopassaggio pedonale, followed by an erratic file of afflicted motorists, a number of bystanders, two carabinieri, and us.
The Piazza Colonna has been referred to as the bellybutton of Rome, and the only way to get from one side to another is under it. Once you get down the steps the foot passage is wide and crowded and brightly lit, and lined with shop display windows and showcases. It also has as many exits and entrances as a badger sett. We had hardly fought our way in when a flight of steps reared on our left labelled, p. colonna: montecitorio. From the fact that a red-faced man with a bleeding nose was pounding madly down it, we deduced we were still in the ranks of the pursuers. We ran hopefully on.
Steps to the right: Galleria Colonna, blocked by one of the carabinieri attempting to form a one-man cordon. More steps to the right: the Palazzo della Rinascente, full of people running both up and down and colliding with one another. Further steps to the right: the Piazza Silvestro, with six people standing on the stairs waving their arms around and arguing. The stairs up, at which was standing the other carabiniere, listening to two drivers and a waiter shouting at one another. Johnson and I came to a halt.
‘What a pity,’ said Johnson. ‘I rather hoped they would catch him for us.’
I said, ‘We’ve lost him, then?’
‘Not at all,’ said my friend Johnson. ‘You underrate the speed and resourcefulness of any Roman citizen who thinks he has suffered an injury. If no one is running up those steps yelling blue murder, it is because Mr Paladrini hasn’t
‘In the shop?’ I said, la rinascente, said the shop sign beside us. Behind double glass doors we could see a busy lit interior full of men’s clothes and executive briefcases.
‘Right,’ said Johnson mildly. But he didn’t leap into the shop. He stood inside and, raising his voice, called in excellent Italian to the carabiniere at the end, ‘Here! Your man went in here! I saw him just now in the shop here!’ Then he stood back, holding my arm, while every man in the passage poured past us and in through the doorway.
I looked at Johnson as the shop door swung to, and a ruminative quiet returned to the passage. ‘You didn’t see him,’ I said.
‘No,’ said Johnson. ‘But I know where he is.’ And walking six paces back he came to a halt by the Rinascente staircase, now empty. At the bottom of it was an erection like a small telephone booth, with a sign above which said foto-tesser a autom atico, and a curtain closing the doorway. The curtain trembled, and Johnson addressed it.
‘Mr Paladrini,’ he said. ‘They’re going to come back. And then I’m afraid you’re in trouble. Why not come with me? Miss Russell and I just want to talk to you.’
Silence. The curtain stopped moving.
‘Mr Paladrini,’ I said. ‘We think someone asked you to pass on a message about the Fall Fair, and it got to the wrong person. We know about the theft of the fashion pictures, and we don’t want any publicity. If you’ll come and tell us about it, no one will do a thing to harm you.’
I tried to say the right things. I was thinking so hard that I didn’t notice that Johnson’s hand had slipped between the curtain and the edge of the cubicle. There was a chink of metal and then from inside the box a volley of brilliant white flashes, followed by a terrified cry. The curtain was wrenched back and the exponent of fairy tales tumbled out, just as the sky above the Rinascente steps was darkened by a column of people pouring down them.
I had forgotten that the main door of the department store debouches on to the street up above. The pursuit had raced through the shop and, finding nothing, had simply descended into the passage again. I heard Johnson swear feelingly just before we were bowled over and Mr Paladrini, setting off like the hammers, tore along the rest of the passage with the four drivers and two carabinieri and the audience in full cry after him.
I gave, sitting there, a passing thought to the four impacted cars, still presumably blocking the streetway above us, but justice is justice after all, and a clearway at the rush hour isn’t everything. We walked slowly after and stood at the top of the Corso steps watching. After twenty yards the shouting increased and then died away; so did the action. They had lost him.
‘Heigho,’ said Johnson, and halted at the foot of the Rinascente steps. The automatic booth stood just as Mr Paladrini had vacated it, with the curtain half torn off its rings. From the side protruded, limply, a long strip of glistening paper.
Johnson extended a hand and removed it. ‘Mr Paladrini,’ he said, and passed the whole strip over to me.
It held six pictures of Mr Paladrini, working from the top of his head to his ear tip. The middle two showed the whole of his face very nicely. It was plain that, beyond any conceivable doubt, the seller of balloons and the teller of fairy tales were the same man.
‘As a tonal composition,’ Johnson said, ‘it lacks confidence. But as a clue they don’t come any better. All you and I have to do now is find him.’
FIVE
At that point, I revolted. ‘Oh no, we don’t,’ I remember announcing.
‘”The Struggling for Knowledge hath a Pleasure in it like that of Wrestling with a Fine Woman,”’ said Johnson. ‘The late Marquess of Halifax. You can retire if you want to. The police are bound to have street traders’ records. I’m going to find out who Mr Paladrini is.’
‘If you do, they’ll arrest him for jaywalking,’ I said. We were on the surface again and making, it seemed, for the Hassler.
‘Not if I don’t tell them why I want him,’ Johnson said. He remained unmoved by the idea that he would outrage the Trust, involve the Dome personnel in a court case and probably have us all extradited if he pursued his silly detective work. He fed me at the Hassler, and then mentioned that he had work to do at the villa, but would spare the time to drive me back to my digs in the Fiat. How Di ever got the idea he was a sexpot I cannot conceive.
In my pocket were two tickets, bought before his desertion by Charles, for a performance by Il Gruppo Teatro Libero. The theatre they were appearing in is called Il Kilt, which was enough to account for Charles’s interest. As I have indicated, he has an overdeveloped sense of the ludicrous.
Charles, I understood, was in Naples. Di, if I was not mistaken, would be at the Number One with one or more of the boys from the Fall Fair. Timothy had last been seen bending tenderly over the ketchup-covered form of Innes Wye and was possibly even now conveying him back to his bedroom, or even possibly Timothy’s bedroom in Sansavino. Jacko’s whereabouts I knew precisely. He was at the Dome, on duty until I took over at midnight.
There seemed to be no one to take me to Il Kilt but Johnson, who said he had seen Il Barone Rampante and why not hire a bedroom instead and play contract.
I said, ‘Bridge? Why bridge, for God’s sake? It needs four bods.’
‘So Di has noticed,’ said Johnson. ‘Her erotic reputation rests solely on her habit of inviting three chaps to her bedroom and all stripping off for a rubber. I know. She asked me in once, but the lights failed.’
‘What a waste,’ I said, playing for safety. It seemed unlikely that he was reading my mind, but I made a determined effort to clean up my thinking. I said, ‘Do you follow the form in the newspapers?’
‘That’s why I took up the game,’ explained Johnson. Someone had brought the old Fiat to the front of the Hassler and he held the door for me. ‘I think Di is going through life hoping to meet those chaps North, South, East and West. You know. East felt an itch to overruff Dummy? I’ll take you to Il Kilt if the Pope isn’t there. You can go about too much together.’
In fact, he never did take me to the Kilt, because as we drew up at the front door a man came through the crowd and stood a little way off, on the pavement, just looking.
It was Charles, with the Maserati covered with dust parked beside him.
‘Goodbye, Ruth,’ said Johnson. ‘How was Naples, Charles?’
‘Neapolitan,’ said Charles. He was still looking at me. I got out, and Charles shut the door of the Fiat and added, ‘I saw your yacht there. Much admired by the neighbourhood. Your man sends his regards and says the dynamo’s fixed and she’s ready.’
He didn’t need to prove that he’d gone where he said he had. I didn’t mind whether he had been to Naples or a European Grand Masters’ Tournament with Omar Sharif, so long as he had decided, of his own accord, to come back. I said to Johnson, ‘I’m sorry. You’ve been so kind. You wouldn’t like two tickets for Il Barone Rampante?’
Charles was already standing at the door of the Maserati. Johnson smiled and shook his head and drove off in a roar of high octane fuel while Charles got hold of me in full view of the clientele of the Rampant Baron and kissed me.
I relieved Jacko at midnight, which may or may not surprise you. Charles refused to come to the Dome on the grounds that he would only distract me, which was certainly true. I left him in bed, received on my way out the felicitations of our landlady and had to hammer on the door of the Dome when I got there, because the locksmiths had replaced the burst lock and Jacko had forgotten to hand out the new keys. All Jacko carries in his head are thousands of coordinates and the correct meter readings for three-dimensional natural objects, preferably moving.
He is, however, a hard-working and reliable duty man. He had been observing since seven o’clock, although the weather impinged on the hazy. A cloudy sky up till midnight means, in our own code, that you can turn it in after that if you want to. I wished that night that he hadn’t been so hard-working.
He had made me coffee, and we had it in the Dome while I checked over what he had finished. I would develop his plates with mine in the morning, and by the end of the week we could pack them up and send them on to the Trust. It was the last pack we should send there this season. The week of the full moon started on Saturday, and that meant no photography. And by the end of the next week we’d have reached the end of our contract. I began to hum under my breath as I perched myself up on the ladder and Jacko, about to open the door to the stairs, said, ‘Don’t tell me. I’m clairvoyant. Charles is back?’
I said, stricken, ‘Oh Christ. Jacko, I’m terribly sorry. We’ve got the bed again. I meant to put it back in your room as I left.’
‘The way I feel,’ said Jacko, ‘it doesn’t matter. Timothy tells me you all had a gas at the Barberini. He dropped Innes off at his digs, loaded up to the eyeballs with aftershave.’
I revised my opinion of Timothy’s kindheartedness and tried to think of a way of not telling Jacko what he was asking. The trouble with Jacko is that he really does go for Di. I said, ‘You’ll never guess who we saw in the Barberini. The man who sold Charles and me the balloon outside the zoo. We ran after him and lost him somewhere in the Corso.’
‘At the Fall Fair?’ said Jacko, arrested. ‘You’re dreaming. The Yanks wouldn’t let a street trader in – not if he went through a car wash and wax spray with Dettol. Ruth, precious, you’ve seen too many teleromanzos on the goggle box.’
I said, ‘He was specially scoured for the occasion. Johnson’s got a photograph. I couldn’t stop him. There is shortly going to be a sonic boom at the Trust which could be felt in three continents, and I only hope I’m not there to hear it. In the meantime, that unfortunate star is going to set in forty minutes.’