THE AIR WAS VERY STILL. Time itself was still. No bird sang, and the strident cicadas were dumb. The town in the valley was a painted town, the sea was a backcloth daub. The grey olives were nightmare trees. The sprawled shape in the middle of the road and the man who bent over him were puppet figures, motionless, waiting for the strings to jerk them into life.
Then the breeze stirred again. The leaves whispered and the branches creaked and Richard Ashley leaned forward over the body of Enzo Garofano.
He lay on his back, neck twisted and limbs spread at grotesque angles to his body. His chest was crushed. His face was torn and bloody and a dark pool of blood spread round him, soaking into the tattered dusty clothing. Twenty yards up the road his hat and his brief-case lay pitched against the side of the embankment.
The embankment.…
Ashley looked up. It was ten, twelve, feet high and. the olives grew close to the edge, their branches overhanging the road. A minute ago, Garofano had stood there, swaying on the lip.
There was no footpath there. It was private property. No place for a man to walk. The wall was grey tufa, scarred with the picks of the roadmakers, but sheer and steep. No place for a man to climb.
But Garofano had been neither walking nor climbing. He had been standing there, tottering as if… as if someone had thrust him towards the edge and sent him toppling and flailing in front of the speeding car.
Sick and shaking, Ashley straightened up and walked slowly up the road, to pick up the hat and the brief-case.
The hat was dusty and grease-stained. Mechanicaliy he tried to clean it, rubbing it on his sleeve. The brief-case was intact, the zip-fastener was closed, but when he opened it, there was nothing inside. He looked up marking the spot from where Garofano had come. There was a huddle of small trees and one large fellow with a thick trunk and oddly twisted branches. The police would want to know that. The police would want to come and look for traces of the men who had killed this shabby little cheat with the narrow face and the furtive eyes.
Then it hit him.
The man who had killed Enzo Garofano was himself—Richard Ashley. He had threatened to do it, there were witnesses to prove that. He had done it, not three hours later. By misadventure truly, but there was only one witness to tell how it was done, and her testimony would be that of the biased lover and the faithless wife.
Or that of a conspirator, party to murder!
It was a horrifying thought, but it came to him with brutal logic. Who else had known which way they would come? Who but she had chosen the way—’up the mountain, it’s lonely there’. How, but from her, would they have known, the men who had brought Garofano to this spot and tossed him out into perdition?
But she had screamed in horror. Now she was huddled weeping in the car. She could not have expected this. But she didn’t have to expect it. She had only to do as she was asked. Meet him, drive him up the mountain, keep him there a while. The rest was in other hands.
The motive? To protect her husband, to maintain the state and the fortune for which she had married him in the first place. But the prelude? The love under the olive trees, the rush of memories relived, the tenderness and the kisses? She had given him those too, in the old times—and then sold him out for Orgagna. If then, why not now, when the stakes were so much greater? Nothing so comforting as a title and a bank balance when autumn comes to the dark beauty of Rome.
Sudden nausea overcame him. His head spun and his face was clammy and he leaned his head against the grey stone of the embankment and retched painfully.
When the spasm had passed, he wiped his face and his hands, picked up the hat and the brief-case and walked back down the road towards the car. When he came abreast of the body, he stopped and looked down at it again. It was time to think of practical matters. He would have to get it into the car—Cosima’s car—and drive it to the Questura. He would have to make a report. They would be questioned, both of them What story would they tell?
‘… We are old lovers, you see. We went out to steal an hour under the olives of Il Deserto. I was crazy, as lovers are. I was driving fast. This fellow was thrown under the wheels of my car by friends of this lady’s husband.… It is a fact that I threatened to kill him. It is a fact that I thrashed him in a public place… but this, this is something different—a snare, you understand. A trap for the unwary pedlar of the truth.…’
Even as he thought it, he knew it for a folly. The story they would tell must be different altogether. The truth, yes, because a lie would entangle them both when the real questioning began. But not the whole truth. And because they both must tell the same story, he must hide his suspicions of Cosima, must still play the lover and the protecting friend. Even, if possible, use her, as others had used her against him.
He had one strong card. Elections were coming up. It was necessary for Orgagna to keep up appearances. A scandal involving his wife and an old lover could do him much harm. If he were prepared to kill to save his name, he would certainly not jib at a convenient lie or two. Orgagna had influence in this country, where influence counted much more than integrity. It would be a sour irony to have him use it for the man who wanted to ruin him.
It was small hope, but it gave him courage to walk back and comfort Cosima, then to back the car up and bundle the limp, heavy bundle into the back seat, lay the brief-case on its chest and cover its face with the hat, so that it might ride back to Sorrento with decency.
Then, very carefully, he explained matters to Cosima. She was white and trembling, her face was ravaged with shocked weeping and she sat away from him in the comer of the seat, eyes carefully averted from the grim burden in the back. But she listened attentively and seemed to understand what he wanted her to do.
“… We drive back to town. I’ll put the hood up and the side-screens. First, I’ll go to the hotel and leave you there. Then I’ll drive round to the Questura, deliver the car and the body and make my report.”
“But—but the police will want to see both of us.”
“Sure. But the police are gentlemen. They will understand that the Duchess of Orgagna is a delicate lady and deeply shocked. They will make their enquiries later, when Her Excellency is rested and has the support of her husband.”
“What will you tell them?”
“The truth. We were driving fast. No point in denying that. The skid marks and the state of the body are clear evidence. My excuse is that you had a dinner date, which is true. And the road was empty, which is also true. I’ll explain how we saw Garofano on top of the embankment; how he seemed to fall right in front of the car; how we picked him up and brought him down to the town. That’s all—no explanations, nothing.”
“How do you explain—us?”
“We are old friends. Your husband and I have met. You wanted to show me the beauties of the hill drive. It’s the truth—part of it at least—and it involves us in no lies. Do you understand that? We mustn’t lie. We mustn’t embellish. If we do, we’re in difficulties, both of us.”
“I—I understand.”
“The point is, will your husband understand? Will he support your story? And claim me as an old acquaintance entitled to the courtesy of your company?”
She smiled at him then, wanly.
“He hasn’t much choice, has he?”
“None at all,” said Ashley grimly. He switched on the ignition and started the engine. Cosima laid a detaining hand on his arm.
“Richard, there’s one thing.…”
“Yes?”
“How do you explain it to the police?”
“Explain what?”
She gestured vaguely at the embankment.
“How he came to be up there—how he fell. I mean it sounds so silly and unreal. The sort of thing that makes us both look ridiculous, as if we’re inventing a story to excuse our speeding.”
“Look, sweetheart!” He turned to her and laid it down bluntly. “We tell it that way because, however it sounds, it’s the truth.”
“You don’t understand Neapolitans. You certainly don’t understand the Neapolitan police. Give them half a line of drama, they want to turn it into an opera. What is true is not so important as what looks true. It makes it easier for the police, and it makes it easier for us. You have to help them to a convenient way out. A simple accident with no complications, nothing for the journalists to make into a story.”
‘What do you want me to tell them, Cosima?”
‘Why, simply that… that this man was walking up the hill with his eyes on the road. You saw him too late. You sounded your horn. He jumped the wrong way and you hit him. A simple story that worries no one and no one can disprove. An accident, you see?”
“No,” said Ashley flatly, “I don’ t.”
“But, Richard.…”
“We tell it the way it happened.” His eyes were hard. His mouth was tight as a trap.
“You don’t understand. You don’t know the way things work here.”
He didn’t bother to reply. He revved the engine and eased the Isotta out into the middle of the road. He understood all too well. To kill a pedestrian on a mile of empty road is culpable homicide in any codex. Given the motive, you can make it look like wilful murder. He knew now, for certain, that Cosima had betrayed him.
Slowly, very slowly, he drove down the winding, mountain road.
Captain Eduardo Granforte was a large soft man with tiny hands and feet. He had a round, innocent face, a velvet voice, an oblique smile and gentle eyes. He liked his job, because it was easy. He wanted it kept that way. He was a courteous fellow, who understood how to deal with foreign visitors and particularly with representatives of the foreign press. He helped Ashley over the first rough passages with a speed and efficiency that left him gasping.
The Isotta was whisked swiftly away from public view, to be washed and cleaned. The body of Garofano was deposited in a spare cell of the prison to await an autopsy. A telephone call to the hotel brought clean clothes for Ashley, whose shirt and trousers were bloody from his handling of the body. Coffee was brought and American cigarettes and the questioning proceeded with an unexpected charm.
“… The car, you say, is the property of Her Excellency the Duchess of Orgagna?”
“That’s right.”
“She had asked you to drive it?”
“Yes.”
“You have an international licence?”
“Yes. I wasn’t carrying it, but…”
Captain Granforte smiled gently and waved a deprecating hand.
“Enough that you possess it, signore. We do not stand on minor ceremonies—unless we have to, of course.”
“You’re very kind.”
“Prego, signore!” The Captain bowed to the compliment. “Now, you went out for your drive. You were returning in a hurry as Her Excellency had a dinner engagement.”
“Yes.”
“What was your speed at the time of the accident?”
Ashley shrugged:
“I couldn’t say. I hadn’t looked at the meter. It was quite fast.”
“But, there are so many curves on the road, it could not have been excessively so.”
Ashley was quick to seize the line that was flung to him. The Captain was playing it carefully. Orgagna was a big fellow. The sort of fellow who could do much for a provincial police captain—provided he knew how to behave himself.
“No, that’s true—the curves do slow you down.”
“So, you are proceeding at reasonable speed along this stretch of the road. What then?”
“Her Excellency screamed. It startled me because the road was clear. I looked up and saw a man right on the edge of the high embankment. He was swaying. I swung out. The next minute he—he seemed to leap out into the air, right in front of the car. I braked, but the fender hit him and we went over him. I stopped the car, ran back, found he was dead. Then I backed up, loaded him into the car and brought him here. And—and that’s all.”
The Captain frowned. His gentle eyes clouded. His soft fingers drummed on the desk. The smooth stream of his questions was checked. He looked thoughtfully up at the ceiling. Then he put it to Ashley.
“The circumstances, as you describe them, are rather unusual.”
“Yes.”
The Captain looked at him sharply.
“Did you think so at the time?”
“At the time, no. I was trying to control the car. I had no time to think of anything else.”
“But afterwards?”
“Afterwards when I went back, I looked up the embankment. I saw that it was private property. There was no footpath. There was no way to climb up there. I wondered about how he got there and what he was doing so close to the edge and how he came to fall.”
“Did any answers suggest themselves to you?”
Ashley shrugged wearily. His head was buzzing. He was beginning to feel the effects of delayed shock.
“None. Besides, I had other things to think about. Garofano was dead. My guesswork wouldn’t help him any.”
“Garofano?” The Captain pounced on the word like a cat. “You know the man then? You have heard his name?”
Ashley put his hands on the edge of the desk to stop their sudden trembling. It was his first mistake; but it was too late to mend it now. He tried to make his answer sound indifferent.
“I know him. I’ve done business with him.”
“What sort of business.”
“He used to sell me occasional news items.”
“When did you last see him? Before the accident?”
“Four-thirty this afternoon at the Caravino.”
“Shortly before you left for your drive with Her Excellency?”
“That’s right.”
Captain Granforte looked at his wrist-watch. A quarter to eight. Too close to dinner-time. Too late for any man to be working. He had many more questions to ask this leather-faced American, but now was not the time to ask them. It seemed to him that there were other things to be inquired into first: the involvement of the Duchess of Orgagna and of her husband; the status of the American in that curious domestic arrangement; the background of Garofano; the nature of the information he had been peddling to a foreign correspondent; how he had come to be at the top of the embankment; how he had come to fall. Any one of these questions seemed likely to lead him into troubled waters. He preferred to make his own soundings before venturing out any further. There might be shoals and quicksands for an ambitious official with his way to make in the world.
He leaned his chin on his small feminine hands and smiled genially at Ashley across the desk.
“You’ve had a bad afternoon, my friend.”
“Very.”
“You will, of course, be staying in Sorrento for a few days.”
“Yes.”
“You are not likely to leave without informing us first?”
“No.”
“Then permit me to offer you a cognac before we both have dinner.”
“Thanks. I could use a drink.”
They stood up together. In the shabby, fly-spotted room of the Questura, Richard Ashley drank cognac with the man who might soon put a noose around his neck. Captain Eduardo Granforte smiled and smiled and talked about women. It was a subject he enjoyed immensely.
Twenty minutes later Ashley walked back into the Hotel Caravino. He stopped at the desk to pick up his key and take the manuscript out of safe-deposit and order a bottle of whisky to be sent to his room. The clerk looked at him oddly, but said nothing. On his way to the lift, he glanced in at the bar. There was the usual clutter of pre-dinner drinkers, but in one comer he saw Elena Carrese deep in conversation with, a slim, smooth-cheeked youth in a sharkskin jacket. There was no sign of Cosima.
The lift came down, disgorged a small gaggle of women in backless frocks and men in tropical mess-jackets. They made him feel shabby and crumpled.
As he rode up to the third floor, he wondered if he should try to telephone Cosima, to tell her the result of his interview with the police. He decided against it. Safer to leave the next move to her. On the day’s showing, she had more talent for intrigue than he could muster.
Arrived at his room, he ran a deep, steaming bath, stripped and lowered himself into it. His whole body ached as if he had been beaten with rods. Slowly, the warmth relaxed him, the tension slacked off and he lay, stretched in the tub, making the tally of his fortieth birthday.
It was all a dead loss.
His big story was wrecked, because Garofano had cheated him of the Orgagna photostats. The woman he loved had betrayed him and walked him, smiling, into a snare. He had killed a man by driving like a drunken idiot. Any time from now he might face an indictment under Italian law for manslaughter, even for murder.
The tale of the accident would be buzzing about the town. The tale of his quarrel with Garofano was already gossip in the servants’ quarters. All too soon the story would come to the ears of the moon-faced Captain. Then the game would start in earnest.
Arrest, imprisonment perhaps. In Italian law the driver is guilty by presumption. The slow, subtle processes of Italian law… They would drag the case on and on until after the elections, before releasing him on an equivocal verdict. By that time Orgagna would have his seat in the Cabinet and the Office would have a polite request from the American Embassy to transfer him out of ltaly as persona non grata.
It was neat and dramatically effective. And the man who had stage-managed the comedy was Vittorio, Duke of Orgagna.
When he thought about Orgagna, he could not grudge him respect, even reluctant admiration. It takes a very particular kind of courage to watch a man month after month piling up evidence for your damnation and yet to do nothing about it. It takes a gambler’s nerve to feed line after line of evidence to your prosecutor, and then dangle the final documents in front of him, so that when he stretches for them he may over-reach and topple himself into ruin.
Orgagna had done just that. But there was more to it than nerve and courage. There was subtlety and skill—a thousand years of diplomacy and intrigue. He had moved his pieces through strategy after strategy until he had stripped the board and left his opponent checkmated, ringed about by the minions of the black king—Cosima, Elena Carrese, George Harlequin, Captain Granforte.
Even for the victim, there was a sour satisfaction in so much technical brilliance.
Ashley hoisted himself out of the bath, towelled himself ad shaved carefully. He dressed with more than usual care and spent minutes over the set of his dinner bow. As he fiddled with it, he grinned unhappily at the mirror. A man who is going to his own funeral likes to make it a dressy occasion.
There was a knock at the door. Ashley called, “Avanti!” and a waiter came in with whisky and glasses and a silver bucket of ice. Ashley signed the chit, gave the waiter a hundred lire and ushered him out of the door. Then he poured himself a two-finger measure, watered it and sat himself in the arm-chair by the terrace window to take another look at his problem.
The telephone jangled at his elbow. He lifted the receiver and said, carefully:
“Pronto! This is Richard Ashley.”
“Richard?” It was Cosima’s voice, careful, controlled, neutral. “This is Cosima. How did you get on at the Questura?”
“Very well, so far. I made my report. The Captain may wish to see me again. That’s all.”
“Good!” She said it with cool courtesy. “I’m very glad. Er, Richard?”
“Yes?”
“My husband is very grateful for your courtesy in handling this part of the business. He’d like you to join us for dinner in our suite.”
“The hell he would!” said Ashley in blank amazement.
“I’m so glad,” said Cosima, politely. “Shall we say in twenty minutes?”
“Oh—sure… sure.”
“Then we can both thank you together. Arrivederci!”
The line went dead and Ashley sat staring stupidly into the mouthpiece of the phone. Then he laid it carefully on the cradle, stood up, walked out on the balcony and looked out over the moonlit water.
The sea was calm. The night was warm and windless, but he shivered as if someone had walked over his grave. He wasn’t dead yet, of course, but the grave-diggers had started work.
Thinking of death, he thought also of Enzo Garofano, who was dead today and tomorrow would be buried and forgotten. He was a frightened, furtive fellow out for a quick profit. Yet he might have toppled a government and set the chancelleries of Europe buzzing like smoked bees, because somehow he had come to possess six photostat copies of private letters written by Orgagna to business colleagues and political connections.
How had he come by them? It was a question Ashley had asked him at their first meeting, but he had sidestepped it. He had connections, he said—connections in the household of the great man. Through these connections he had been able to take the original letters into his possession, display them to Ashley, photograph them and return them to Orgagna’s files. Ashley had accepted the explanation as the only one possible. He had been less interested in the circumstances than in the documents themselves, which proved conclusively the negotiation of a government loan of two million dollars to establish a textile industry in the South and the fraudulent diversion of ninety per cent of the funds to Orgagna enterprises in the North.
Now the circumstances themselves were of vital importance. Garofano had contacted him in Naples and arranged a meeting at Sorrento. He had presented the originals of the letters for inspection. It seemed unlikely that these had come from Rome. More likely they had come from the files in the summer villa. The contact, therefore, belonged to the Sorrento household, or at least had access to it.
What then was the basis of the collusion between this unnamed contact and Enzo Garofano? If the contact were a man, the motive was profit. If a woman, profit, too, perhaps, but other things as well… love, jealousy, revenge. But with Garofano dead, there could be no profit, therefore…
‘… Therefore find your contact, Richard Ashley, and you may be able to resume business. There are two thousand dollars in bright American notes waiting at American Express. It’s a bait, even for big fish, so long as you dangle it in the right pool.’
He looked out across the placid water to the clustered lights of the fishing-boats and puzzled over a new question. Why was he doing it? Why at forty years of age was he still involved in this shabby business of intrigue and subornation in the name of news? The romantics glorified it as a noble profession. The cynics damned it as sordid speculation on the miseries of the world. The idealists claimed to be apostles. The hucksters profited from the prurient curiosity of millions. Yet, monitor or muck-raker, the journalist had at his disposal a channel of communication, through which, pure or polluted, the truth trickled each day to millions of people all over the world.
It wasn’t the whole truth. It never could be. But even part of the truth was better than the conspiracy of silence in which corruption flourished like a rank growth.
But it took more than the truth to keep a man twenty years in the same bed, to keep him curious and passionate, and ambitious for renewed conquest.
His vanity must be fed with banner-lines and by-lines and special assignments. His pride must be fed with the greatest illusion of all—that the man who reports the news is the man who makes it. His sensuality must be soothed with doses of easy living among the people whose lives he observes but never truly shares. And, more than all else, you must give him a goal—the big story! As though the fall of a government and the reshuffle of office and perquisites were more important in the human scale than the birth of a mewing child or the dying prayer of an old, old man.
It was a comfortless thought and he put it away from him. He was forty years of age, committed long since to the pursuit of the bright illusion. He was too old to turn back. He must walk to the end of the road. He must reach up for the dangling fruit, though he knew it would be, like the apples of Sodom, a dry dust in his mouth.
He looked at his watch. It still lacked ten minutes to dinner-time. Time for another drink—one for the crooked road.