THE NICE BOYS

Isabel Colegate

October 8th

Of course Venice is not the same. How could it be? Last year was the first time, and with Jacob.

There were two nice boys on the train from Milan. I talked to them. I have been through bad periods before. I know how easy it is to become isolated if you are unhappy.

I asked them for a light.

The one in the corner brought out a box of matches, lit one, and held it out to me with a steady hand.

‘What’s that on your arm?’ he asked. ‘A bite?’

I had taken off my coat, and the sleeves of my dress were short. There was a circular bruise on my forearm.

I explained feebly that I had bitten myself in a temper. The travel agency had muddled all my arrangements just when I was fussing about my packing. ‘I know it sounds stupid,’ I said. “But it did calm me down as a matter of fact.’

The boy who had lit my cigarette pushed back the sleeve of his jacket, undid the button of his beautifully white cuff, and showed me his wrist. One side of it was purple and swollen. It was a much more serious bruise than mine.

“That was a bite,’ he said.

I wondered what to say.

The other boy said, ‘His kid sister did it,’ and they both laughed, excessively I thought, but I suppose they were remembering a funny incident.

‘She’s a terror,’ said the first boy.

‘How old is she?’ I asked. They told me she was eight and called Jean, |and then a noisy Italian family moved into the carriage with a lot of luggage and our conversation came to an end for the time being.

We exchanged another non-committal word or two on the journey, about the weather and this or that, and I was rather struck by them. It was not just that they were nice-looking and well-dressed, with good haircuts and Italian shoes, but that they had a certain air of confidence and reserve as if they already had some achievement to their credit. I don’t know what the achievement could be. They might have been pop singers; but there would have been fans, and a manager or something. Academic success? They might have been grammar school boys who had won scholarships somewhere; but no, they had more assurance than that. Anyway, whatever its origin, their air of authority was rather charming.

Of course, all young people are confident these days. Confident, independent, and cool. He didn’t sink his teeth into his own flesh at three o’clock in the morning after hours of sobbing and screaming with jealous misery. I wish I had his self-control.

October 12th

I am glad I came. Venice is wonderfully soothing, wonderfully sad.

I remember my very first impression, which was one of gaiety; but that was misleading. I remember going down the Grand Canal in a launch boats dashing about through the choppy water, the sun on buildings of pure fantasy it was so active, startling, beautiful, such a glorious joke. I remember standing up and laughing, and Jacob watching me with surprise and pleasure. Later I discovered the Venice I loved best, the Venice of regret.

We stayed for two nights at the Gritti Palace, but then it became obvious that my money was not going to last, and so we moved to this same seedy pensione where I am now, not far from the Accademia bridge. The pale German woman is still the proprietress. She does not remember me, thank goodness. I was right to come. It is easy to be sad here, and when I am sad I am not enraged. Besides, Venice’s glory is all over too.

I was rather nervous when I came in. I was afraid she would ask about Jacob. I could not decide whether to deny having been here before, or to say ‘He is busy,’ or to say ‘He has married someone younger, prettier, and richer than I am.’ I need not have bothered. She hardly looked at me; but when she saw my English passport she said, ‘I see you have more terrible murders in London.’ She was not interested in me, only in some idea she had about a gas-lit London where sadistic murderers pad through the fog about their dreadful business: some foreigners do have this picture of London in their minds. I asked her if she had ever been there and she said no. ‘It is terrible,’ she said. ‘These poor girls.’ Someone has evidently been chopping up prostitutes again. She seemed to have a morbid interest in the whole business.

When we were here before the sun was shining. This time it is misty and damp. Appropriate, perhaps. Loneliness, damp, melancholy, the seediness of a place from which the glory has fled. I went to Torcello in the water-bus, simply to be on the lagoon again, and visit those dead islands, grass on stone, quiet water over fallen palaces; and felt a sort of happiness. How soon will all Venice slide into the sea?

The boys from the train are staying in the pensione. They were signing themselves in when I came in this evening. I greeted them, and saw that they had written ‘N. Bray, S. Brook’. Seeing where I was looking the one who had been writing said with a smile, ‘He’s Sig. I’m Poney.’ Sig is slightly smaller and quieter, Poney darker, more handsome and less intense. They seem unlikely names.

October 15th

The fog has come. Damp cold fog has flopped over Venice, making the whole place mysteriously different. The people seem to accept it with a certain gloomy relish.

They say it is better than the floods they often have at this time of the year.

There is nothing to do. I walk endlessly. Everyone seems to have disappeared: only occasionally another human being pads past in the fog, muffled to the eyes, a stranger. The little restaurant round the corner where I often go for lunch is usually empty, the student waiters have disappeared and only the close-faced husband and wife who own it are there. And the cats. There are always cats in Venice.

I begin to think it may be lucky that I could not keep my room after November the first. Apparently the German woman closes down then and goes for a holiday, to her mother in Munich, she told me. She’s an odd woman. She seems to have no family here, or friends. She has struck up some sort of relationship with the two boys. They order her about in a rather disagreeable manner: they are really awfully arrogant, but she seems to like it. There is something slavish in her attitude as she fetches and carries for them.

They have the room next to mine. Last night I was awake until about five. I had taken my last sleeping pill, and when it didn’t work I began to panic. I walked up and down, tried to read, did exercises. It was no good. All the agony came back. I am so bloody jealous. It is hardly sane. I hate it, but what can I do? Here she is at that party, leaning against the door – how pleased with her own looks and Jacob walking towards her, unsteadily because he is a bit drunk, and I recognise with a shock that the curve of her cheek and chin is rather like mine and I am lost in the endless torture of imagining them together, of remembering his love-making and imagining him making love to her. He said, ‘She’s awfully sweet really, you’d like her.’ Unimaginable cruelty.

At some stage in the night I opened my window and leaned out into the fog. The water of the little canal below slopped gently against its walls. Someone laughed, quite close to me. I shut the window quickly and leant against the wall for a moment. The laugh had come from the next room and had sounded so spiteful that I thought for a moment that the two boys must have been watching me and were laughing at my agony. It was half-past three. I had seen them go upstairs at about eleven. I listened, and could just hear a murmur of voices, then a series of bumps. After a moment I opened the window again very slightly, but I could still only hear the voices without being able to make out what they were saying. Evidently it was not me they were interested in. And then I heard someone cry out ‘The King!’ in a harsh high voice. ‘The King! The King!’ Then the laugh again. Then silence. I shut the window.

I don’t know what the explanation was. They didn’t look in the least tired this morning, which is more than could be said for me. They were talking to Frau Engels when I came down, about the famous London murders again. It was not prostitutes apparently, but a respectable family in a respectable suburb who were found dead in their beds one morning, having all been murdered and mutilated during the night. It does seem extraordinary and horrible. They had no enemies. I imagine Jacob’s wife but no, of course I don’t want her to be murdered sometimes I could be half in love with her in a sort of way. Today I feel sick and tired. Lack of sleep gives me indigestion, my obsession makes me feel guilty: I must try to distract myself, but my will seems hopelessly weak.

I asked Frau Engels about the boys when they had gone.

‘They are charming,’ I said to start the conversation. ‘Are they on holiday?’

‘Yes.’ She did not seem particularly keen to talk, but I persisted.

‘What part of England do they come from?’ I asked.

They are from – what do you call it? a home,’ she said.

‘What sort of home?’ I asked, startled.

They are from very distinguished parentage,’ she said portentously.

‘Oh, yes?’ I did not understand.

They have been supported in this home for orphans by their fathers who were both from high up in the English aristocracy, but who were not married with their mothers.’

‘I see. That sort of home. But how have they money? I mean, to buy those clothes and come for holidays in Venice?’

‘From their fathers, who gave them much money when they attained eighteen years.’

‘But do they know their fathers then?’

‘They know, but they cannot tell.’

And then an elderly Italian couple who were staying in the pensione came up to ask whether it was not possible to stay after November the first: their daughter was joining them and they hoped the weather might have improved by then.

‘It is impossible, I am so very sorry, but on the first I must everything close.’ She gave her remote correct smile, and I walked out into the fog.

In order to reach the vaporetto stop I had to cross the small canal which ran beside the pensione, and as I turned across the little humped bridge, the boys materialised out of the fog and crossed with me, one on each side. They did not speak at first, and nor did I, Finally Sig said, in a mild conversational tone, ‘What were you talking to the old bag about?’

‘Frau Engels?’ I said. ‘We were talking about you as a matter of fact.’

“What did she say?’ asked Sig.

‘She said she believed you were both orphans.’

They laughed. Sig’s is the high, hard laugh, the other is a kind of low giggle, rather sexy: it struck me that neither sounded genuinely amused.

‘She’s just a stupid old bag,’ said Sig. ‘She fancies Poney, that’s all.’

‘She’d like to eat me,’ said Poney, in a bored sort of way. ‘Hardly the verb I’d have chosen,’ said Sig. They talk in a semi-facetious; slangy, private joke sort of way which is often awkward. I suppose that may be how schoolboys talk, I don’t know.

‘Aren’t you orphans then?’ I asked.

‘We come from respectable middle-class backgrounds,’ said Sig. ‘We live in Epping, my dear, that respectable middle-class suburb where you may be chopped into little pieces as you lie a-sleeping.’

‘We were so frightened we ran away from home,’ said Poney in a baby voice. ‘We were afraid of the nasty man with the chopper. We suck our thumbs you see.’

‘Where are you going?’ asked Sig as I slowed down.

‘I am going to look at the pictures here,’ I said, turning towards the Accademia. ‘There’s nothing much else to do in the fog is there?’

‘Do you know one of these palaces is for sale?’ said Sig,

‘I had heard it was.’

‘We’re thinking of buying it,’ said Sig casually.

‘But you must be millionaires!’

‘Oh, we’re all right for money,’ said Sig. ‘Cheery-bye.’ They glided away into the fog.

I can’t make up my mind whether they are ridiculous or offensive. They would be ridiculous but for something peculiar about their partnership. I don’t know whether it is a homosexual relationship or not: it might be that that makes them seem so close, so set apart from the common run of men.

October 21st

I cannot sleep. And the fog is still here.

Last night two girls appeared for dinner at the pensione. The boys were out, but everyone else was there, that is to say, the elderly Italian couple, the two moderately attractive French sisters and the daughter of one of them, the solitary Italian who looks like some sort of minor businessman, and myself. That, with the boys, is the sum of the guests at the moment. An Italian brother and sister who live next door do the waiting, and Frau Engels herself cooks.

The girls were nice-looking and well dressed. They spoke with American accents. One was dark and curly- haired, the other wore glasses but had quite good features. They both wore little hats. They immediately drew attention to themselves by being appallingly rude. They complained loudly of the dreary decor before they went in to dinner. At dinner they ordered the waiter about most disagreeably and soon sent for Frau Engels herself in order to complain of the food. It annoyed me intensely to see how she took it from them, padding backwards and forwards with a cringing anxiety to please, quite different from her usual frosty attitude towards her guests.

I finished my meal as quickly as I could and went upstairs. I had not been there long before I heard someone going into the next room, and the sound of voices and laughter. I decided to go and read downstairs. As I passed the boys’ room the door opened. Frau Engels came out laughing and carrying some clothes. Behind her I caught a glimpse of Sig, still half-dressed, in women’s clothes.

As soon as I saw it I wondered why I had not realised before that the American girls were in fact Sig and Poney. All the same the transformation had been alarmingly convincing. I didn’t really like it. I didn’t like the way they had abused her and she had cringed. I didn’t like their pleasure in having deceived us all. There was no question of throwing off the disguise and allowing us to share the joke: there they were in the bedroom laughing at us. I don’t like them. I don’t know why I ever thought they were nice boys. I think there is something unpleasant about them.

October 24th

Sinus trouble back at its very worst. A constant headache that nothing seems to cure. I don’t know why I don’t leave. My will seems to have been weakened by the lowering insinuations of the soggy fog: why doesn’t it go? I wander and wander, waiting for the fog to clear and the sun to come out. I have nothing in my head, no thought, no will, nothing. Except pain. I wander, and lean over bridges, and watch the slack water. Pain pain go away. Come again another day. Immeasurable pain. Last night my dreaming soul was king again.

I hate those boys. They shouted again last night, something about the king. I think they have orgies up there night after night. There’s something suspicious about the way they are always so clean. Only guilty people wash as much as they do.

Also they are morbid. They came in this morning as I was drinking coffee in the dreary little sitting-room, and sat down beside me. They were carrying newspapers.

‘Haven’t caught him yet, I see,’ said Sig.

‘Caught who?’ I asked.

‘This murderer.’

‘Oh.’

‘Aren’t you interested then?’ asked Poney.

‘Not particularly,’ I said,

‘Don’t you think there’s something about it though?’ said Poney encouragingly. ‘I mean these people lying there safe in their snug little beds in their snug little house, and suddenly bash, bash, they’re all in pieces?’ He gave his rather charming boyish smile. ‘Not interesting?’

I smiled feebly, too tired to talk to them.

Sig laughed his nasty laugh and Poney’s smile widened.

‘That’ll teach them, won’t it?’ he said.

‘Teach them what?’ I said.

‘Teach them who’s master,’ said Poney quietly.

‘He who wields the axe,’ said Sig.

‘Ah,’ said Poney. ‘He must have been a great man all right, that killer, don’t you think so?’

‘No,’ I said flatly.

“Don’t you like us?’ said Sig suddenly.

‘Good Heavens I – I hardly know you,’ I said, embarrassed.

‘At first you seemed to like us,’ Sig went on, watching me intently. ‘Now you don’t seem so friendly. Do we offend you?’

‘No, no, of course not.’

‘But there is something about us you find yourself resenting? Have you ever tried hypnosis? For your headaches I mean?’

‘How did you know I have headaches?’

‘I can see. Have you ever been hypnotised?’ He was staring at me much too hard.

‘No,’ I said.

‘I should think you’d be a bad subject,’ he said, leaning back in his chair.

‘Sig could do it,’ said Poney confidently.

‘I could. But no one else. She’d withstand anyone else. What is it about us that annoys you?’

‘I think you’re talking nonsense. I’m not annoyed by you.’

He was leaning forward again. ‘Is it that you feel the power coming from us?’

‘Power?’

That you feel we’re in some way set apart.’

‘You seem to feel that yourselves. I had noticed that.’

‘Do you know what sets us apart?’ said Sig very quietly. His gaze had become unbearably intense by now. ‘Do you know what it is? Our virtue.’

A moment’s peculiar silence. And then they both noticeably relaxed, and laughed briefly, and looked like two prankish schoolboys.

I can’t make them out.

October 27th

A horrible day.

It started well. The fog had cleared and the sun was shining. Everything seemed to have changed. My headache was no better, but I felt calmer, convalescent almost. I took the vaporetto to San Marco and sat in the Piazza to have some coffee. The place was quite crowded; everyone seemed to have gathered there to see Venice reborn.

I saw the boys moving in my direction, and sat back behind my paper hoping they would pass: but they had seen me, and paused, though they did not sit down.

‘Got them yet?’ Poney asked, gesturing slightly towards my paper.

‘Got what?’ I said.

‘The murderers.’

I wondered vaguely why he used the plural.

‘It doesn’t say so,’ I said. ‘Lovely morning, isn’t it?’

‘More like it, isn’t it?’ agreed Poney. ‘We’re off to that crooked old house agent again,’ and they walked off through the tables, neat, spruce, untouchable.

Then in the evening there was a question of moving some furniture. Frau Engels was making preparations for shutting up her house and wanted, for some reason, to move several pieces of furniture from downstairs up into one of the empty bedrooms. There were several chairs, three Viennese-looking cabinets, and a big mahogany cupboard. She asked the boys to help her. Seriously they removed their well-cut jackets, rolled up the sleeves of their impeccably clean white shirts, and set to work. They lifted the heavy furniture with no difficulty at all; and I saw the muscles in their arms. The two Frenchwomen and the daughter of one of them were coming in at the time, and were much impressed.

‘But how is it you do this?’ one of the Frenchwomen asked them. ‘You are weight-lifters?’

‘It’s nothing really,’ said Poney.

‘It’s a matter of training,’ said Sig, remotely.

‘But you do this training for what?’ she asked. “You are athletes?’

‘We just keep in training,’ said Sig.

‘You never know when it may come in useful,’ said Poney.

They went on with their work. The Frenchwomen passed them admiringly and went upstairs. The boys began showing off, to each other more than to anyone else.

Poney flexed his muscles and lifted a small chair, pretending it was a great weight.

‘The strong man,’ said Sig. ‘Nothing he can’t do.’

You’re not bad yourself,’ said Poney. ‘Come on, let’s see those muscles now.’

Sig lifted one of the little cabinets which really did look heavy. Poney put down his chair and lifted the pair of cabinets. They stood side by side swaying slightly, then gently lowered the weights without faltering in their control.

‘Not bad, not bad,’ said Poney again.

‘You’re the best,’ said Sig, who was breathing rather heavily. ‘You’re the king of the weight-lifters.’

‘You could lift a heavy man.’

‘You could hold one down.’

‘You know your judo.’

‘You could lift a heavy axe.’

‘You could have gone into that house in Woodbridge Road. You could have dealt with that fat family.’

‘You could have wielded that axe.’

‘You could have taken it in turns with me.’

‘You could have smothered the parents.’

‘You could have despatched the two girls, wham, wham, all gone.’

‘You could have swung that axe.’

‘You could have swopped their heads …’ Here Poney became lost in his low giggle. Sig joined in. They bent over the furniture, laughing. Then each taking one side of one of the cabinets, they began to carry it towards the stairs.

‘Ah, we could have swung it,’ said Sig, calm after his laughter.

‘We could have swung it,’ echoed Poney in his deeper voice.

And suddenly I knew that they had.

They were murderers.

With absolute certainty and terror, I knew that they were murderers.

‘You are not well?’ Frau Engels was looking at me strangely.

‘Oh, yes, I I have a bit of a headache.’ I did not dare to say more because I felt certain that she would think me mad. Besides, she was so strangely fascinated by the boys. Unless she knew already, and this was the secret of their relationship? Or perhaps she merely sensed in them a depth of evil which appealed to some perverted leaning of her own? She offered me aspirin. I refused, but asked if she had any back numbers of English papers. She led me to a cupboard and left me to look for what I wanted.

I soon found it. I read everything I could see about the Epping murders. A family of four, father, mother, and two daughters had been found dead and mutilated. The crime was described as being of appalling brutality. No one had seen or heard a thing. They had lived in a detached house in its own garden in a high-class suburban street. They had had no enemies. The father had worked in a City office, the two girls had been to a local school, were popular at the tennis club, and looked quite pretty from the photographs. There were interviews with the various young friends – no, Jean and Pam had no special boyfriends, everybody had liked them, Jean was on the committee of the tennis club, Pam was keener on riding, they were the most popular girls in the neighbourhood. The parents went to Church, the mother was a member of the local Women’s Institute. Here was something. And yet I was hardly surprised to read it. ‘Mrs Bray, Chairman of the local branch, said at her home in nearby Forest Avenue, that Mrs Anderson had been a regular attender at W.I. Meetings. “It hardly bears thinking of,” she said.’

Poney’s name was Bray. I had seen him writing it in the Register when they first arrived.

Before dinner I found them sitting in the tiny bar next to the dining-room drinking fruit juice (they never touch alcohol). It was an effort to go and sit beside them, but I made it.

‘Whereabouts in Epping do you live?’ I began, ordering whisky. ‘I used to know it slightly.’

‘Forest Avenue,’ said Poney. ‘We both do.’

‘Isn’t that quite near where the murder was?’

‘I thought you weren’t interested in the murder,’ said Sig.

‘I’m not particularly,’ I said. “But it becomes more interesting if you knew the people.’

‘We didn’t,’ said Sig firmly.

I did not dare to pursue it. Their faces had become closed and uninformative. Poney patted his already immaculately tidy hair and said, ‘I wonder what’s for jolly old dins.’

‘How are you getting on with your house-hunting?’ I asked.

‘We’ve gone off it,’ said Poney. ‘It seems you can’t rely on the weather here. We’re going to Sardinia in a few days to look around there.’

‘Was anything stolen from the house where the murder was?’ I asked before I could stop myself.

‘Hey, what’s the …’ began Poney, but Sig interrupted him.

He said very clearly, ‘Some valuable jewellery I believe.’

‘What’s the big interest suddenly?’ said Poney.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Tell me about Sardinia. I believe it’s lovely there.’

‘So old Aga Khan says,’ said Poney, stroking his hair again. ‘He’s looking out a decent plot for us.’

Then the bell went for dinner.

I don’t know what to do.

It is late now and I have locked myself into my bedroom. My headache has come back and I cannot sleep. I can just hear their voices next door. They talk so much alone in their room. What do they do in there?

They have some horrible thing between them, I felt it from the beginning. They are linked by some fantasy they have built up about power and violence, I am sure of it. Perhaps the girls snubbed them at a local dance. One of the girls was called Jean. Didn’t they tell me that was the name of Poney’s little sister, when he was showing me his bruise from a bite? Jean, I’m sure they said Jean. Perhaps they simply chose the Anderson family because they were so obviously harmless. This made it more of a joke, a clever trick. They enjoy fooling people; as they enjoyed letting us all think they were two American girls the other night, to score off the rest of the world, to build up their sense of isolation and superiority. I suppose they are mad, if to live in a world of fantasy is mad; or perhaps Sig is mad and Poney merely bad, and utterly corrupted. Heaven knows what appalling rituals may be going on in the next room even now that shout of ‘The King!’ – what shall I do if I hear it again tonight? But what can I do? Who would believe me? I have no friends in Venice. Frau Engels is useless. What about the other people in the pensione? Those unimaginative-looking Frenchwomen with the daughter, the bored businessman, the doddering old couple what use would they be? I can’t go to the British Consul unless I can offer something more positive than just my own conviction. In a way the people I know best, though only in the most casual way, are the couple who run the little restaurant round the corner, Mario and his wife. I don’t even particularly like them, but we have talked a certain amount. I think I will try and say something to them tomorrow. In the meantime I can do nothing but sit behind my locked door and listen to the murmurs and occasional bumps from the next room.

October 29th

I think I did hear the shout, but it may have been a dream. I took three sleeping pills. It was too many and I have felt terrible all day.

I lunched at the restaurant. I said to Mario, ‘Do you ever see those two young English boys who are staying at my pensione?’

‘Yes, they have been in once or twice,’ he answered in his good English. ‘Architectural students, they told me. They seemed nice boys. I lent them a guide book.’

‘They are not architectural students,’ I said.

He looked surprised.

‘They lie to everyone, they live in a complete fantasy,’ I said. ‘Look, if I tell you something, will you take it seriously, will you give me your advice?’

He said he would, and sat down at my table, looking worried.

It was difficult to go on.

‘I have reason to believe,’ I said. ‘In fact I know, that they have committed a terrible crime.’

He looked down at the table cloth in silence. I felt I was doing badly.

‘I know it sounds absurd,’ I said. ‘But I am quite sure about this. I wouldn’t say so otherwise. You must believe me.’

But he didn’t. He listened politely as I told him of my suspicions, and then he told me that he thought I was mistaken.

‘When the fog comes I sometimes have strange ideas myself. You told me you had been having sinus trouble and bad headaches. You don’t think you could be mistaken about these boys?’

‘I know I am not mistaken.’

But I could see it was no good. All I could do was to make him say that if at any stage I needed help I could come to him.

‘But of course,’ he said, standing up with obvious relief. ‘We are your friends.’

During the day I managed to see the Frenchwomen and the elderly couple. I asked them whether they thought there was anything odd about the boys. They all said no, they thought them charming. I did not go on.

I do not know what to do. They might do it again, kill someone I mean.

October 31st

I notice them more now. I notice the black hairs on the back of Poney’s hands, and the tight line between the eyebrows on Sig’s white face. I notice how they both have the same strutting walk, how close they walk and how they never touch. I notice the metallic tone in Sig’s voice, the sleepy softness in Poney’s. I notice how light they are on their feet, how controlled; and yet I’ve seen, in Sig’s eyes only and only when he is looking at Poney, an occasional doubt. I think this must be when the veil of fantasy momentarily twitches. I don’t think Poney doubts. He has been handed his myth and he is living it out.

I watch them. I think they are watching me. I want to go, but I must stay. They are bound to make some move, and then I can send for help and run away myself. But I can’t leave them, knowing what I do. I am not yet so disgusted with the human race. They must be caught, and stopped.

What will they do? I lurk about the pensione, pretending to read, watching them. The other guests look at me oddly, wondering what I am doing, but I can’t talk, not yet. I feel ill and desperately anxious.

November 2nd

And now it is all over.

The next morning I followed them in the Piazza and sat down a few tables away to drink some coffee. A girl whom I knew slightly in London came up to speak to me. She said that some friends of hers, with whom she was staying, were giving a party that night after dinner. Would I like to come?

I had not seen anyone from London for some time. Indeed for the last few days I had had no conversation except with other people at the pensione. I said I would go to the party.

Later when I was in my bedroom changing I heard the voices of the boys and Frau Engels in the next room. I opened the window and leaned out. I heard Frau Engels sobbing, ‘No,’ and the two voices together, one high and one low, repeating, ‘Yes, yes, yes, yes.’

I finished changing quickly and went downstairs. What else could I do? What could I tell to whom? Who would be concerned to know what went on in a bedroom between a middle-aged proprietress of the pensione and her two young lodgers: who would do more than shrug knowingly?

I stayed late at the party. Not so much because it was a good party as because I did not want to go back to the pensione. It was a boring party really. My friend’s friends were stuffy Italians who lived in a comfortable little flat at the top of a fine flaking palazzo. One or two of the other people there looked quite interesting, but my Italian was not good enough to find out whether the impression was misleading, and I spent most of the evening talking to an American professor and his wife. I almost forgot about the boys, but not quite. I stayed until I was too tired to stay any longer. Then I walked out into the damp darkness. The vaporetto was still running. I got off at the Accademia bridge and walked towards the pensione, along the narrow way between the houses, over the little canal and up to the door. It was open. No one was at the desk. There was a light on the stairs, none in the hall.

I moved quietly towards the stairs. There was a sound above me. I stopped. There was silence. I went on. Another soft dragging sound, very slight. I went on. The weak bulb revealed the landing much as usual, shadowy, the faded Turkish carpet, the row of doors, mine, theirs, the Frenchwomen’s, the couple’s, the businessman’s: Frau Engels slept on the top floor.

The faint sound seemed to come from the businessman’s room. There were shoes outside some of the doors, ready for the maid to clean when she came in in the morning the two Frenchwomen’s and the daughter’s, and the elderly couple’s – there were none outside the businessman’s door, or the boys’, or mine. There were long shadows beside the shoes. They were not shadows. They were marks. Something had been spilt. But beside all the shoes? I moved closer. All the shoes had a long dark stain coming from them. They were neatly placed outside the doors but surrounded by this dark wet stain. But the shoes were not empty. They had feet in them. There was a lot of blood.

A handle turned quietly. The businessman’s door opened very slightly. A hand came out holding a pair of shoes. It placed them neatly outside the door.

I ran, stumbling on the stairs.

I battered on the door of the restaurant.

At last they came.

‘It’s happened. They’ve done it again. They’ve killed everyone in the pensione.’

‘All right. Steady now. Come in.’

Mario and his wife were both there, in their nightclothes, looking startled, and then annoyed. I saw the beginnings of disbelief on their faces and for the first time in my life I collapsed into hysterics.

They slapped my face, made me swallow several pills, and put me to bed. I kept begging them to hurry, to get the police, to go round there before it was too late. They promised they would, and left me. I must have been quite heavily drugged because I fell asleep almost immediately.

And in the morning, unbelievably, they had done nothing.

I woke, heavy-headed, at nine o’clock, dressed as quickly as I could and went downstairs. They were in the kitchen drinking coffee.

‘What happened?’ I said.

The wife did not look at me. Mario said quite kindly, ‘You had a nightmare.’

‘But the police …?’

‘We didn’t want to wake them in the middle of the night. Now come and have some coffee.’

I made a great effort and remained calm.

‘Please will you come round there with me now.’

Mario came.

The pensione seemed very quiet as we approached. The front door was still open. We walked into the dim hall. A figure moved slowly towards us from the kitchen door. It was Frau Engels. Her face was very white except for where several raw red scratches ran down one side of it.

‘Good morning, Frau Engels,’ said Mario, in English for my sake. ‘Have you had an accident?’

It was in the fog. I walked into a tree,’ she said brusquely. ‘Have you come to collect your luggage, madame?’

But I had already passed her without answering and was rushing up the stairs. The stairs were still there. I burst into the boys’ room. It was empty. Their clothes and luggage had gone. I went into the next room, and the next. They were all empty. There was no sign of anyone. Frau Engels and Mario had followed me up the stairs. I confronted them.

‘Where are they?’ I said. ‘Where are the boys?’

‘They left this morning,’ she said, looking at me with the oddest hatred. ‘Everybody left this morning.’

‘Why?’

‘It is November the 1st. I told you. I am closing down.’

‘These stains …’

She explained them away. She said they were varnish, which had run when the wooden boards had been stained brown. I tried to insist that they should send for the police and have the stains tested to prove that they were blood. I asked where the two servants were, but Frau Engels said they had already left for a holiday with their family in Naples. I heard Mario murmur to her in Italian that he would telephone for a doctor.

‘I go to get the police,’ he said to me soothingly as he turned to go downstairs.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ll take my luggage now and come back later with the British Consul.’

I packed and left. I went to the hotel where my acquaintance from London was staying. I found her and told her my story. I took her with me back to the pensione. It was locked and shuttered. Frau Engels had left.

It is of course an impossible story. I can hardly blame people for not wanting to believe it. Only I know it is true. I am not a hysterical or deluded person.

Frau Engels also knows that I know that it is true. I do not know to what extent she was involved or whether her appalling association with the boys is still going on, but it seems likely that she may somehow or other have told them about my return to the pensione.

This is the horror with which I have to live.

They will find me. One day I shall take a train. I shall settle myself in my corner seat, open the paperback I have bought to read on the journey. And I shall look up. And there will be two nice boys sitting opposite me.