Continental Crimes, page 29
It had been a curious scene at the albergo. The four of them at their table with their drinks. At one side Lord Keaough, immobile, cut from a single piece of well-tanned leather. At the other the girl, between the publisher—with his chubby face and horn-rimmed glasses, boyish and bookish—and the poet, dark-haired, bright-eyed, Byronic, and indubitably drunk.
Lucifero had thought for a moment that they were going to do what English people of their class never did in public: that they were going to quarrel. Words had floated from Ralph Marley, high-pitched, emphatic, tumbling over themselves in bitter, eager spite. And Colin Sampson, normally, Lucifero surmised, a man of peace, had said something so sharp that even Lord Keaough had opened his sleepy eyes.
Lucifero had been sitting six tables away, unable to distinguish a word that was spoken but acutely aware of what was happening. He had half expected to see a glass emptied in someone’s face. In his native Calabria knives would have been out long since.
Then Ralph Marley had climbed to his feet, turned his back on the party, and walked away. The others had watched him in silence.
The poet, pushing his way between the tables, had passed within a few feet of Lucifero, and Lucifero had observed his face, an odd mixture of petulance and passion. Now, standing with one hand actually on the brass dolphin knocker of the villa, he tried to picture it. He tried to bring it back into his mind, past the very different picture of Ralph Marley that was presently occupying his thoughts.
It was Umberto who answered the knock. He was only eighteen, but as heavy and as chunky as marble from the quarries of Carrara.
‘Tenente?’
‘Good evening, Umberto. You are well? And your mother, I hope.’
‘Very well indeed.’ He seemed almost to be standing guard in the hallway. ‘Do you wish me to tell—the Lordship—that you are here?’
Lucifero smiled to himself at this evasion. He was aware, none more so, of the difficulties which attended the pronunciation of Lord Keaough’s name in any language, but above all in the Italian tongue which tries so conscientiously to separate every vowel from its neighbour.
‘Be good enough,’ he said, ‘to inform Lord Kuff that I would appreciate a word with him, alone, on a matter of importance.’
‘They are on the terrace.’ Umberto considered. ‘The doors to the salon are open. There is no privacy there. Perhaps the dining-room?’
‘The dining-room should do well. But warn your mother that her excellent meal may have to wait a little. What we have to discuss will not be done within five minutes.’
Lucifero was standing in front of the empty fireplace in the dining-room when the door opened and Lord Keaough came in.
‘Good evening, Tenente. Lucifero, is it not? I seem to remember that you speak excellent English, so I shall not have to inflict my terrible Italian on you. Do sit down.’
‘Your Lordship speaks excellent Italian,’ said Lucifero, but he made no attempt to move back into his native tongue. Nor did he sit. ‘What I have to tell you will not take a great deal of time. I have to start with a question. How long is it since anyone here has seen Signor Ralph Marley?’
He wished that the lighting was better. The single economical central bulb hid more of Lord Keaough’s face than it revealed.
‘Ralph? Let me think. To-day is Friday. It was some time on Wednesday afternoon when he walked out on us.’
‘Walked out? You imply—?’
‘He stood not upon the order of his going. He said no good-byes. He took no luggage. He went.’
‘Yes,’ said Lucifero. Curious how much a single word could imply. To walk was one thing. To walk out was another. He must remember the difference. ‘Can you tell me any more?’
‘All that I know, and that’s precious little. But perhaps you will tell me something first. Has he got into trouble?’
‘Why do you ask?’
‘In most countries,’ said Lord Keaough, ‘police mean trouble.’
Lucifero showed white teeth under a hairline of black moustache. ‘Signor Marley is in no trouble now,’ he said. ‘He is dead.’
Lord Keaough leaned forward, bending from the waist in a gentle, courteous gesture of interrogation. ‘Dead?’ he said.
Lucifero stared at him, opened his mouth to speak, and closed it again in resignation. ‘Yes. His body was taken from the sea by a fisherman this morning, a half-mile out from Portovenere.’
Lord Keaough stood, looking out through the window, as if he could see the hidden lines of the bay and estimate the currents as they set between the towering headlands.
‘If,’ agreed Lucifero, reading his thoughts, ‘he had entered the sea just here, in twenty-four or thirty-six hours he would have been carried to Portovenere.’
‘Yes,’ said Lord Keaough. ‘I’m afraid that’s it. Shall I tell the others, or would you prefer to tell them yourself?’
Lucifero had given thought to this. Two factors influenced him. The first, that the lights in the salon would probably be better; the second that the other two, younger members of the party would hardly have the same unnatural control over their feelings as was being exhibited by this impossible aristocrat.
‘Let us go to the salon,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you will permit me to tell your guests the news.’
‘Of course, of course.’
Lord Keaough led the way down the short passage and into a large bright, pleasant room.
Natalie Merrow was sitting, upright, on one end of the sofa, an unopened book beside her, and Colin Sampson was standing behind her, talking to her or at her. He stopped in mid sentence when the door opened.
‘This is Lieutenant Lucifero, of the Police,’ said Lord Keaough. ‘He has some bad news for us.’
‘Ralph!’ said Natalie.
‘What’s happened to him?’ said Colin.
If it was acting—and the possibility had always to be borne in mind—it was very fine acting. Not an amateur or bungled effort. Precisely the right intonation, exactly the correct proportions of realisation, shock, and pity.
‘I have to tell you,’ he said. ‘I have already told his Lordship, the body was recovered from the sea, near Portovenere, early this morning. By a fishing boat returning to harbour.’
‘Yes,’ said Colin. It was as if he was confirming something which had been hinted at before. A possibility had turned into a probability. That was all.
‘You will, I hope, excuse the observation,’ said Lucifero. ‘But, in some way, this news seems not to surprise you greatly.’
The other two looked at Lord Keaough, who said, ‘Ralph was a poet, and a great admirer of Lord Byron.’
‘I see,’ said Lucifero. ‘He had the same idea? To swim across the gulf?’
‘Yes. We attempted to dissuade him, of course.’
‘Why?’
‘Ralph was neither as good a poet as Byron,’ said Colin, ‘nor as good a swimmer.’ Then he blushed, as if conscious that he had been guilty of some impropriety.
Lucifero said, ‘The indications are that Mr Marley started his ill-fated swim in the late afternoon of Wednesday. I say late afternoon because he would hardly contemplate such a feat in the dark. This coincides also with what his Lordship has told me. That you last saw Mr Marley on Wednesday afternoon.’
They looked at him warily.
‘Yes?’ said Lord Keaough.
‘If that is so, why was his absence not reported before?’
‘Because,’ said Lord Keaough, ‘we did not know that he had been drowned.’
‘But you realised that he was missing.’
‘If we brought in the police every time Ralph walked out,’ said Mr Sampson, an edge once more perceptible in his voice, ‘we should keep you gentlemen pretty busy.’
‘Mr Marley,’ explained Lord Keaough, ‘was a poet.’
‘Temperamental?’
‘You could call it that,’ said Mr Sampson.
‘Really, Colin,’ said Natalie. ‘Ralph is hardly twenty-four hours dead. I think we might refrain from speaking ill of him. Just until he is buried, perhaps?’
Lucifero looked at them curiously. There was something that he did not understand. Something to be docketed for future reference.
‘I’m afraid,’ said Lord Keaough, ‘that Mr Marley had cried “wolf” too often. Last year he walked out on us in Rome, after a little difference of opinion, and reappeared in Venice. In Venice early one morning, for no reason at all, he decided to go to Scotland—’
‘He said, afterwards, that he preferred grouse to pigeons,’ observed Natalie.
‘And on that occasion, too, he took no luggage. Not even a toothbrush. It was—a sort of—affectation.’
‘A poet must be free,’ recited Mr Sampson. ‘Untrammelled by any bonds. Unrestrained by any conventions.’
‘And on this occasion, you assumed that he had walked out on you—’ Lucifero managed this newly-acquired idiom quite smoothly—‘on account of—what? Some recent difference of opinion?’
‘We had a sort of quarrel on Tuesday evening,’ said Lord Keaough. ‘It started at dinner, and went on over our drinks at the Albergo Maritime. As no doubt you observed, since you were seated a few tables away.’
‘Yes,’ said Lucifero. ‘I did, I think, observe something.’ But Lord Keaough, he could have sworn, had sat with his back to him throughout the incident. ‘If you feel at liberty to tell me what it was about—?’
‘It’s not a secret,’ said Mr Sampson. ‘My firm, Blakelock & Sampson, that is, had decided that we could not publish his latest book of verse. We had lost money heavily on the other three. Besides, we are not really publishers of poetry—’
‘Messrs. Blakelock and Sampson,’ said Natalie, ‘make all their real money out of detective stories.’
Mr Sampson flushed again. Really, thought Lucifero, for a man in his middle thirties he was extraordinarily susceptible. And was the girl teasing him because she liked him or because she hated him? Time would no doubt give him the answer.
‘There was the usual talk,’ said Mr Sampson. ‘That all publishers are philistines who batten on the genius of the artist and squeeze him to death for their own profit.’
‘His eminent prototype, Lord Byron, also made many uncomplimentary references to publishers,’ observed Lucifero. ‘Could any of you tell me more precisely when you last observed Mr Marley on Wednesday?’
‘We pretty well live our own lives here,’ said Lord Keaough. ‘Get up when we like. Do what we like. We usually meet in the evening for a drink, and have dinner together. On Wednesday, actually, we all four of us had luncheon together. Ralph seemed to have got over his sulks, though he didn’t eat much. In the afternoon I retired to my room for my siesta.’
‘I painted,’ said Natalie.
‘I went for a walk, towards Tolaro,’ said Mr Sampson.
‘We three met for our drink—at about six?’ The others agreed. ‘At about six. There was no sign of Ralph then or later.’
‘You painted, where?’ asked Lucifero.
‘On the hillside, overlooking Carrara. An hour’s walk there. Three-quarters of an hour back, downhill. I was here by six.’
‘And you awoke from your siesta—?’
‘I call it a siesta,’ said Lord Keaough. ‘I don’t really sleep. I lie on my bed, and read a little, and then do some writing. I came down at half past five.’
‘And you heard and saw nothing?’
‘I heard Signora Telli calling out once to Maria in the garden. Maria was, I think, putting out the laundry. Or more likely, at that hour, getting it in.’
‘I must question the servants afterwards,’ agreed Lucifero.
‘Is it important?’ said Lord Keaough.
Lucifero’s head came round slowly. ‘Important?’ he said.
‘I mean, we are agreed what happened. The late afternoon was Ralph’s time for bathing. He had often told us that he would try this particular swim. If it was an accident—’
‘But it was not an accident,’ said Lucifero. ‘Mr Marley was taken from the sea fully dressed. And there is no seawater in his lungs. His head was crushed. He was dead before he entered the sea.’
Three faces turned towards him. Three pairs of eyes centred on his. The hard lines which fenced Lord Keaough’s nose and mouth seemed a little more marked, but he remained implacably impassive. There was a puzzled frown behind Natalie’s eyes, and her lips were parted, showing her small white teeth. Mr Sampson was blushing again.
The servants told him little about the dead man, but quite a lot about their patron and his guests; and, without realising it, a good deal about themselves, too.
‘Signor Marley was a man of moods, Tenente,’ said Signora Telli. ‘A great poet, so we were told. But for me, I judge a man by the way he lives not by what he writes. And it is my opinion, and I say it with the proper reserve due when a man has been called unexpectedly to his Maker, that that young man did not live well. He had not a good name. We hear about such things more than you would imagine. Two years ago, there was an Austrian girl who threatened to kill herself—you heard?’
Lucifero had heard. But he was not greatly interested in what had happened two years before. ‘On the Wednesday afternoon,’ he said, ‘did you yourself see Mr Marley?’
‘Not in the afternoon at all. I was busy in my kitchen. Umberto was at the market. Maria might have seen him. She was in the garden part of the time, and may have seen him if he went to bathe.’
Maria was summoned. She was seventeen, a dark girl with a pert, peasant face and a budding beauty. She was also, clearly, very nervous. Lucifero thought it better to question her in Signora Telli’s presence.
She had been in the garden on three—or perhaps four—occasions. First to collect some of the firewood which Umberto had chopped and left. Then to pick radishes and lettuce for the evening meal. Twice to bring in washing. She had not seen Signor Marley. She was positive she had not seen him. If she had seen him, she would have said so. What reason would there be to lie? She had not seen him.
‘Understood,’ said Lucifero dryly. ‘Are you affianced to Umberto?’
Both women seemed to be struck dumb by this question. Signora Telli said at last, ‘There is nothing finally arranged. It is an understanding. But Umberto is only just eighteen.’
‘He is a good boy,’ said Lucifero. ‘And old for his age. I was affianced before I was eighteen.’
‘He is the best of sons,’ agreed the Signora. ‘And Maria will be a good wife to him—when the time is proper.’ She smiled suddenly at the girl, who smiled back. ‘You wish to question Umberto?’
‘But if he was at the market,’ said Lucifero, ‘what could he tell me?’
Signora Telli dismissed Maria with a jerk of her head. When the door had closed behind her, she said, ‘I have something to tell you. It concerns his Lordship.’
‘Yes,’ said Lucifero.
‘What I have to say has, you must understand, nothing to do with the drowning of Signor Marley.’
‘Of that I must be the judge.’
‘It is something which I have long felt should be said—to someone in authority. He is a kind patron, generous and easy to work for.’ She seemed suddenly unsure of herself. ‘But—’
‘But?’
‘I think he is a spy.’
Lucifero prided himself that he was difficult to surprise, but for a moment he felt his mouth falling open. Then he recovered himself.
‘It does not seem very likely,’ he observed mildly. ‘We are not at war.’
‘If he is not a spy, why does he sit for hours and hours on the terrace, with a great pair of glasses—’ she demonstrated with her hands—‘staring out at the ships?’
‘Perhaps it is the birds he watches. Not the ships.’
She looked at him doubtfully, to see if he was laughing at her. He pinched her arm and said, ‘Do not worry. If he is a spy, you have discharged your duty by telling me of your suspicions.’
Nevertheless, before he left for the night he walked back to the house to have a further word with Lord Keaough.
‘There is much to do,’ he said, ‘but it cannot be done until morning. We shall have to examine the private beach at the foot of your garden, and the rocks about it. And there is a fuller autopsy to be made.’
‘I’ve been thinking,’ said Lord Keaough. ‘What seems most probable is that Ralph went down for his swim, tried the short cut to the beach down through the rocks—it is dangerous, but he had done it before—and slipped, hitting his head as he went into the sea. There is only one difficulty. If that was so, he would have dropped his bathing costume, and we should have found it. Unless it fell and floated out to sea with him.’
Lucifero said, ‘When found, Signor Marley was wearing an open shirt and linen trousers. Under the trousers, he was wearing bathing shorts.’
‘I see,’ said Lord Keaough. ‘Then my theory may well be correct.’
‘Very likely. Meanwhile, I must ask you and your friends to be patient.’
‘We are none of us planning to leave,’ said Lord Keaough. ‘We are at your disposal. I have no doubt you will soon discover the truth.’
‘Speriamo,’ said Lucifero, and took his leave.
In police work things did not often happen quickly. It was time and hard work that solved most problems. Some facts, a very few facts, emerged. A painstaking, inch-by-inch search of the grassy plateau which crowned the knoll—a hidden place, open only towards the sea, and much used by the inhabitants of the villa for sunbathing—brought to light two hairpins, the lid of a tin of face-cream, a number of old matchsticks, and a 1930 five-lire piece. There were two routes down to the beach: the one cut from the smooth rock, serpentine but safe; the alternative descent over the sheer rocks, a mountaineer’s route. Nothing of significance was discovered on either. Nor was this strange.
‘If he went to the beach by the path,’ said Lucifero to Lord Keaough, ‘he would leave no mark. If he fell from here, he would strike one of those rocks. It has been washed too well by the sea to leave clues for us.’
