25

It was ten days before Easter and Mr Rogers was in Venice. During the past winter he had only once returned to London, a fleeting visit during which he did not go to his home in Sanderstead in the suburbs of London but was given a bed in the spare room in Oliver Goodbody’s flat in Kensington. The two men talked late into the night and by eight o’clock on the following morning Mr Rogers was on his way to Gatwick airport. From there he flew to Charlottesville and then on to Charleston. He was met by Clover Harrison. In the car Harrison told Mr Rogers that Judge Blaker had been busy and the sandy-haired Englishman, Jameson, had been back several times. Lawyer Walker had died.

They drove not to the city but to a motel about twenty miles west where they conferred again with the middle-aged black woman Mr Rogers had spoken to at such length during his previous visit.

Mr Rogers did not spend long in South Carolina but soon left for Florida. From Miami he flew to Jamaica, visited Haiti and ended with a swing through the islands, spending a few days in the Leewards and the Windwards and the arc of the Lesser Antilles before returning to Miami. Then he flew north to New York and crossed the Atlantic to Paris. Forty-eight hours later he was in Istanbul where he remained for a week before he began to work his way westward, reaching Venice in early April.

From the airport he took a taxi to the Piazzale Roma where he boarded the vaporetto. It was cold but the sun was shining as he sat in one of the forward seats, observing the familiar sights with satisfaction while the vaporetto zigzagged from station to station along the Grand Canal. As he disembarked at the Accademia and made his way to the Albergo Rosa, a small, rather shabby establishment, he promised himself a few days’ holiday over Easter.

There was no restaurant in the Albergo but he found one in the Calle Tollette to eat pasta and drink red wine. While he ate, he propped his newspaper, the Herald Tribune, against the flask of wine, studying the personal advertisements one of which many months ago had led to his present argosy. After a cup of strong and very sweet coffee, he paid and left. As he had promised, he took precautions; before emerging into the street he stood in the doorway looking up and down. There was no one about and he set off. As always he had with him the photograph which he carried wherever he went.

The season, he knew, would not begin until after Easter; only the bar would be open but he was seeking the proprietor who resided in an apartment above the club itself.

A week later he was in Rome where his quarters were a pension in the Via Giulia in the old city. The place he sought in this city was an establishment in the Campo dei Fiore, a more up-market club than that he had visited in Venice. But by now it was Holy Week and the club would not open until Easter Monday. Mr Rogers, though not of the Roman faith, had an historical and eschatological bent and he decided to spend the following five days visiting shrines.

On the evening of Easter Monday, his holiday over, he resumed his work and stood on a rusty carpet on raised steps leaning over a rail above a small dance-floor facing a platform on which the band was playing. There were only a few tables occupied along the side of the room and only three or four couples on the dance-floor. He chose a table near the entrance and far from the stage on which the cabaret performers appeared, first a comedian-conjuror, then a single stripper who paraded down the room, boredly casting off her clothes before she disappeared through a curtain beside the band. When the dancing began again, Mr Rogers dispensed several 100,000-lira notes, and as a result was escorted through the curtain behind which the stripper had disappeared and conducted to the director’s office. He returned the next day at noon and was taken to several rooming-houses in the city.

On the Wednesday he flew to Berlin where he stayed this time in an expensive hotel, the Maritim Grand Hotel, in the Friedrichstrasse. A registered package from London was waiting for him and after a stay of only twenty-four hours he flew on to Bucharest where on several consecutive days he visited a doctor’s office near the Herăstrău Park. From Bucharest he returned once more to Istanbul. Here he spent three days and by early May he had resumed his zigzag tour around the cities of Europe, reaching Amsterdam via Milan at the end of the month. From Amsterdam he set off on what he reckoned would be his last lap. It was a journey which was to take him to the other end of the world.