North from Rome (40 page)

“Half-past seven,” Camden said, glancing at his watch. “By eight it will be dark, this street will be almost empty, and the traffic will start moving out of the town. There will be a steady stream of cars and Vespas going down that hill.” And, he added gloomily to himself, not only will the light be bad, but the policemen at the road blocks will be overworked and harried. That was always the moment of mistake.

“I thought this peace was too good to last,” Lammiter said lightly for Eleanor’s benefit, as he listened to the soft fall of light footsteps around them. Benignly, the eighteenth-century
houses over the cafés and shops looked down on their progress. “How far now?” He could feel Eleanor’s weight beginning to sag on his arm.

“The hotel is at the end of this street, not far, just beyond the piazz—”

“Hallo!” called a clear young voice, surprised, delighted, friendly. A girl’s tanned arm waved to them from a table littered with orange juice bottles round which a crowd of American students were gathered. “See—we got here!” the girl called. “And isn’t it
fun?”

“Great fun,” said Lammiter, recovering quickly, smiling, waving back, walking on.

“I like the green bow on her hair,” Camden said. His eyes were as quick as ever. “Who is she?”

“A maniac, bless her. Without whose help we might not be walking down the Corso right now.”

“Oh?”

But Lammiter did not respond to that one. He was looking, now, along the final stretch of the Corso, towards the piazza. That was where the rows of cars lay tightly boxed, like cigars. Beyond, the street continued into a little park with trees and benches, and ended in a balustrade cutting across the green-tinged sky. The park lay right at the edge of the cliff he had noticed when Joe’s car climbed up from the plain. Dusk was coming rapidly, bringing a sudden breeze, the last gasp of a dying sun. The far edges of sky were washed with dark blue light.

“It’s still there,” Lammiter said with relief. “Whitelaw’s car. That cream-coloured job. Do we have to pass it?”

“Yes,” said Camden. “The hotel is just beyond it, facing the park. But don’t look interested in the car. Ignore it!”

“Am I just a little too worried, or do there seem to be more innocent bystanders than necessary on this stretch of sidewalk?”

“Keep walking,” Camden said abruptly.

“There’s someone following us.”

“That’s one of Bevilacqua’s men.” At least, Camden thought, I hope it is. Bevilacqua had promised a constant guard on Eleanor for the next twenty-four hours. By that time, the trouble would be over. Evans would either have escaped or have been arrested, and Perugia could go back to entertaining its summer-school guests.

“I’d like to meet Bevilacqua,” Lammiter was saying.

“You did,” Camden said absent-mindedly, as his eyes now studied the little park, with its benches and trees and small groups of people.

“Where? When?” And then Lammiter, guessed. “You mean that dark-haired Italian, back in the restaurant? The one who talked about the moment of luck, of accident?”

“I see our Canadian friend. He seems to be as interested in that car as we are,” Camden said very quietly. MacLaren was slumped on a stone bench, giving an excellent imitation of an exhausted tourist who hadn’t strength enough left even to invent a good way to spend his evening. “And I see Joe, too.” Joe was in the park, arm in close arm with a yielding brunette. “We’ve got our point men out,” Camden said, with forced cheerfulness. “The situation is well in hand. I hope.” Then he added, “I’ve been thinking over your suggestion—that guess you made—”

“My plot for a play?” Lammiter couldn’t resist a touch of sarcasm in his voice.

“That’s right,” Camden said equably. “You know, you may have something there.”

“But no one will buy it. So you said.”

“I was half-way to buying it,” Camden admitted. “Not quite, but almost. Now—” he shook his head “—I’ve seen the car, and it’s too noticeable. Our Mr. E. wouldn’t set one foot inside it, right there on the main piazza. He’s waiting quietly around some corner. He’s the type who likes to fool people.” And, thank God, here was the hotel. He ushered them both quickly through the wide-open mahogany and plate-glass doors.

Lammiter had noticed, too, how obviously the car looked. He relinquished part of his theory, but with regret. Not altogether, though: he was still quite sure that Whitelaw had come to Perugia to keep an appointment. He said, “You don’t have to come any farther, Bunny.” Camden must have his own plans for this evening.

“I’ll see you into your rooms,” Camden said determinedly. Convoy duty didn’t end within sight of land. “You stay with Eleanor.” He went over to the reception desk at one side of the small lobby, more like the entrance to a men’s club than to a hotel.

But his judgment isn’t always as good as he thinks it is! Evans was not the only hidden Communist who has used him as a transmission belt.” And that last order, thought Lammiter with a touch of annoyance, was totally unnecessary. Then he decided, as he led Eleanor towards a big room opening out of the lobby, and found a massive chair at its entrance, that Bunny was perhaps more worried than he had allowed himself to appear as they walked along the Corso together. The unnecessary order was often a sign of worry. If Bunny Camden had had his own free choice, he would not have brought Eleanor to Perugia any more than Lammiter would have. Or Joe. Here we are,
Lammiter thought, as he settled Eleanor into her chair and sat on its arm and pretended to look around him nonchalantly, all of us, caught up in a business that is none of our choosing. What day is it now—Friday? The beginning of a week-end, the time for relaxing... He gave an outright scowl at a potted palm beside him.

The hotel had been built for the convenience of the rich Englishman of seventy years ago who demanded all the amenities of home when he travelled abroad. Now, judging from the people who were making their way towards the dining-room, the visitors were mostly scholars, interested in Etruscan remains or early Renaissance art, or tourists making a comfortable overnight stay in their journey through the Italian hill towns. But the atmosphere of solid Victorian respectability still hung placidly over the hotel. An Italian family, the only native sons among so many French, Germans, English, and Americans, completely subdued into silence, stared in horrid fascination from their circle of heavy armchairs and lace antimacassars, less at the foreigners marching at funeral pace to a ridiculously early dinner than at the surroundings: Knightsbridge Victorian was far removed from Milan Modern.

Camden came over to them. “All we need are the documents, Eleanor—have you your Embassy identity card? Good. we’ll need it. And your passport, Bill. You do have your passport, don’t you?” This moment of anxiety passed as Lammiter nodded.

“A foreigner wouldn’t get very far without one,” Lammiter said, and then, his hand still in his pocket, he looked quickly at Camden.

“What’s wrong?”

Lammiter’s face was taut. He kept his voice low. “What if our Mr. E. didn’t telephone Whitelaw just because of a car?”

“No?” Camden was smiling a little. Here we go again, he seemed to be saying: another of old Bill’s twists and double twists.

“No. That’s what we were supposed to think, perhaps, if we were clever little boys who were trying to reason out Whitelaw’s arrival in Perugia!”

“And what weren’t we supposed to think?”

Lammiter pulled out his passport. “Our Mr. E. may be more in need of a good authentic British passport with a name that is known. Whitelaw wouldn’t be questioned at any road block, would he?”

Quickly, Camden said to Eleanor, “Did you notice any resemblance between those two men?”

“Well—not exactly, but they are something of the same type: well brushed, well shaven, gaunt cheekbones, bony forehead. And, of course, grey hair.” She exchanged a little smile with Lammiter, at some private joke.

“Height?”

“Tall. And thin. Both of them.”

“That’s enough,” Camden said dispiritedly. A passport carried height and weight: it’s photograph often was only half a resemblance. “It’s a crazy idea of yours,” he told Lammiter, “but I’ll telephone Bevilacqua while you get your registration forms all filled up and signed.” He turned back into the lobby, towards the porter’s desk, where pigeon-holed keys and letters, sedate post cards and newspapers and telephones were to be found. Lammiter and Eleanor crossed over to the other desk, where the assistant manager, a man of thirty-five, neatly tailored, politely mannered,
was waiting for them with an enormous ledger spread wide on a polished desk, a pen already dipped in ink, and a welcoming smile for the young lady. She was pale: perhaps tired with her journey. He rushed round his desk to offer her a chair, while the American filled out the registration forms. “So tedious,” he commiserated with her. “But soon it will be over.” He made a sign over her shoulder to the policeman—a tourist policeman, but
grazie a Dio
, in ordinary clothes, no scandal, no publicity—to be more alert. The young lady must be as important as she was beautiful to have been given such an escort. Film stars and Cabinet ministers were always guarded like this. Who was she?

Bill Lammiter paused in filling out the registration details. “Eleanor, what date did you arrive in Italy?” He looked up with a smile to cover the embarrassment of his ignorance. And then he saw the strange look frozen on her face (a mixture of puzzled memory and hesitating doubt), and he turned to follow the direction of her eyes. They were fixed on the back of a man, a short and thick-set man, fair-headed, wearing a broad-shouldered suit of extremely light grey, who was standing in front of the porter’s desk. The man turned to leave—his expansive smile showed a mouthful of irregular teeth with lavish metal trim—and Eleanor’s head was bent, her face hidden, as she searched in her bag for a handkerchief.

“Who’s that square-shaped character?” Lammiter asked, as the man left the lobby.

“I—I’ve seen him—somewhere. Recently...”

The assistant manager said, “Signore Lammiter, if you would just finish writing...”

“Subito, subito,”
Lammiter said impatiently, and turned back to Eleanor. “He must have been important,” he suggested,

“or you wouldn’t have remembered you ought to remember him.”

“That’s just the trouble. He wasn’t someone important, and yet—” She suddenly looked up at him. “I remember. Tivoli.”

“Well—” Camden had returned and was looking at them worriedly. “What’s the trouble?”

Quickly, quietly, Lammiter explained.

“You saw him out at Tivoli?” Camden insisted.

Eleanor nodded. “He served dinner. I’d never have paid any attention to him except that I felt he was watching all the time, watching and listening. Remember,” she turned to Bill again, “I told you I was being inspected.”

“By a servant?” Lammiter was a little incredulous. I was too eager to have her identify that man, he thought: I pushed her memory into being too helpful.

“Could be,” Camden said. “That’s the way they work. It’s often the Soviet Embassy servant who—”

“I know, I know. Never look at the Ambassador, look at his chauffeur.”

“The registration—” It was the assistant manager again.

“Shortly. But first—who was the man who just went out? A hotel guest?”

“No.” The assistant manager was nervous. Could this be trouble, just after he had been congratulating himself on the peace of the evening? “I think he was leaving a message.”

Camden said, “Let’s go and find out.” They moved in a close group to the porter’s desk.

“I’m afraid—” the assistant manager began.

Camden said to the porter, a capable-looking Etruscan watching them as unemotionally as one of his ancestors from
his funeral couch deep down in the underground tombs, “The
signore
who was just talking to you—did he leave a message?”

The porter nodded, and his cold blue eyes measured them in turn. “A message and a package.” His English was excellent.

“Could you tell us—”

“I am sorry,” the assistant manager said most unhappily, “it is impossible to tell anyone what messages are left. You understand, such things are private matters.”

“Wait here,” Camden told Lammiter. “I’ll go and fetch someone who can be told.” He almost ran out of the hotel’s entrance.

Lammiter said to the porter, “For whom were the message and the package delivered?”

“For Professor Stark.”

“English?”

“He is,” the assistant manager inserted, “the famous archæologist from the University of London. He arrived yesterday for the summer school for foreigners. You have heard of him? He is an expert on Etruscan tombs. He is spending the week here.”

“Oh...” Lammiter’s voice drifted. The moment of excitement drained out of him. He smiled for Eleanor. It was possible that Tivoli and its ill-omened dinner party had become a little confused in her mind: too much had happened since, too many emotions had been stirred, too many tensions and fears. “Let’s sit down and wait for Bunny,” he said, trying to lead her back to the chair, and failing.

“I didn’t make a mistake,” she told him, shaking her head. She was close to tears.

The porter—it was, of course, his normal routine, but Lammiter thought the man picked up the telephone very briskly—was now asking for room 67. “Professor Stark?” the porter asked. “Your taxi is waiting outside. And a package has been delivered for you. Shall we hold if here for you at the desk? Very good.” And then to the assistant manager, “Professor Stark will collect the package on his way to the taxi.” The porter’s eyes, intelligent, sympathetic for all their coldness, swept over Eleanor’s unhappy face as much as to say, “There now, it wasn’t very much to worry about, was it?” Then he scribbled a note on a pink slip and pushed it into pigeonhole 67 on the wall behind him.

Lammiter had automatically looked at pigeonhole No. 67. There was no package in it, only the pink slip, which possibly meant that a package too large for the pigeonhole was waiting to be collected, A passport, he thought, could surely have fitted into an envelope and be sitting in the pigeonhole right now. A passport?—He suddenly felt how ludicrous his suspicions had become. He had been trying to solve a puzzle simply by imagining himself the man Evans. It was the sure way to work the plot of a play, knowing his characters, being each of them in turn, letting the events form their decisions and their decisions shape, events. But in real life, here in this hotel lobby, between his imagination and his belief in Eleanor, he had almost created an Evans whose N.K.V.D. guard had murdered Whitelaw to obtain a passport to safety. Not that Evans’s friends wouldn’t hesitate at eliminating anything that stood in the way of their purpose, but still. Our apologies to the learned Professor Stark, he said to himself as he took Eleanor’s arm and insisted on steering her back to the large arm-chair at the entrance to the sitting-room.