The conversation did not scintillate. The dowager addressed a few courteous remarks to me, but she spoke mostly to Luigi, urging him to eat more, asking how he had slept, and so on. He was faultlessly sweet to her, and I decided that Pietro was too hard on the boy. He had lovely manners. So what if he was untidy and absent-minded? There are worse faults.
Pietro was too busy gobbling to talk much, though he and Smythe exchanged a few words on business matters – all Greek to me. Helena didn’t say a word. She was seated directly across from me, and her unblinking stare would have gotten on my nerves if I hadn’t been so fascinated by the way she was eating. Her hair kept getting in the spaghetti. I kept expecting her to fork up a strand of it, but she never did.
There was plenty of wine with the meal, and by the time the servants removed the last plates I was, to say the least, replete. Pietro was in far worse condition. When he stood up, I feared for the cummerbund. It was strained to the utmost.
The dowager was helped out of her chair by one of the footmen. She limped towards the door, leaning heavily on a handsome ivory-headed stick, pausing only long enough to thank me for coming and to apologize for the infirmity that made it necessary for her to retire.
Pietro tried to bow to his mother. He managed to incline his head a couple of inches, but he didn’t bend well. The look he turned on me was fond, but glazed.
‘He will make the arrangements,’ he wheezed, waving a pudgy hand in Smythe’s general direction. ‘Tell him when you will be ready, dear lady; the car will be there. I anticipate that moment. You will doubtless wish to return to the hotel now to pack. Sir John will have the car brought round.’
Helena came up out of her chair as if she had been stung.
‘Car?’ she repeated, in a voice as shrill and toneless as an old phonograph record. ‘Tomorrow? What is this, Pietro?’
Pietro was already halfway to the door.
‘Later, my treasure, later. I must retire now. You will excuse me – my old war wound – ’
He went scuttling out. Helena turned furious eyes on me.
‘What is this? The car, tomorrow – ’
Smythe came around the table and stood beside me.
‘Car, tomorrow,’ he agreed. ‘The lady is joining us at Tivoli. Ah’ – as she started to speak – ‘don’t lose your temper, Helena. Think it over. It won’t do you any good to make scenes, his Excellency hates them. In fact, I think he is getting weary of your scenes.
‘Ah, you think so?’ Helena had no gift of repartee. ‘You think so, do you?’
‘Yes, I think so. Have another piece of cake, my dear, and calm yourself. You will excuse us? I felt sure you would . . .’
To my amusement, Helena took his advice, sinking back into her chair and beckoning to one of the servants. John Smythe took my arm and led me out.
‘Don’t bother ordering the car for me,’ I said. ‘I need a walk. I feel like a stuffed cabbage.’
‘You’ll soon lose your girlish figure if you visit the count,’ Smythe said. ‘And that isn’t all you might lose . . . Don’t you ever listen to advice?’
‘Not from people named Smythe,’ I said. ‘Couldn’t you think up a better name than that?’
‘Why bother? Most people aren’t as critical as you. Stop trying to change the subject. If you hurry, you can catch the evening express to Munich.’
I started across the hall, putting my feet down hard.
‘I will be ready tomorrow morning,’ I said. ‘Nine o’clock?’
‘Pietro doesn’t get up till noon. Did you hear what – ’
‘I heard. I’ll be ready at nine; tell Pietro that. I don’t think,’ I added thoughtfully, ‘that he would appreciate your attempts to interfere with his private arrangements.’
‘If that were all you had in mind, I wouldn’t interfere,’ said this deplorable man. ‘Helena is about due to be retired; the position will be open.’
I saw no reason to dignify this suggestion with a reply. As I approached the front door, the butler slid out of an alcove and opened it for me. I turned and waved gaily at Smythe. He was standing with his arms folded, and if looks could kill . . .
‘Until tomorrow,’ I said. ‘Arrivederla, Sir John.’
Michaelangelo’s ‘Pietà’ is behind glass now, ever since that maniac tried to hack it up a few years ago. There are no words to describe it, although a lot of people have tried. As I stood looking up at it I wondered, as I have so often, what flaw of the flesh or the soul impels vandals to want to destroy beautiful things. Even religious sanctions couldn’t save works of art; the followers of one god use ‘faith’ as an excuse for mutilating the images of another. The two strains run through the human race, from the earliest time: dark and bright, foul and fair – the destroyers and the creators. Sometimes I get the feeling that the former type is winning.
I had walked across to St Peter’s from the Aventine, and a darned long walk it was, too. I needed it, not only for the physical exercise. I had some thinking to do, and I think best when I’m moving. Besides – not to be morbid about it – I thought I might not have a chance to do much more sightseeing in Rome.
I wasn’t worried about being followed.
Why should they follow me when I was about to walk into the lions’ den like a good little Christian? I did not doubt that the palazzo was the lions’ den, but I wasn’t at all sure who the lions were. Pietro couldn’t be the mastermind. He just couldn’t be. It was possible that there were things going on in the palace that he didn’t know about; it was a huge pile, a city block square, three or four stories high; there was room enough there to train a guerrilla army without his noticing.
Nor could I believe that Smythe was the head crook. A crook he was, undoubtedly, but not the boss. Of the other inhabitants of the palazzo only one seemed to me to be a likely possibility – the dowager. Helena was classically stupid, the boy was too young. On the face of it, it might seem silly to suspect a bent old woman, but the mastermind needn’t be actively engaged; all he (she) had to do was plot. And I suspected there was an active mind behind the contessa’s wrinkled face.
However, there might be other people in the family whom I had not yet met. Or Pietro might be a subordinate conspirator under the direction of a smarter crook who lived elsewhere. Certainly someone in the palace was involved in the plot. It was the only lead I had, and I had been presented with a unique opportunity to follow it.
I managed to put the whole business out of my mind when I reached the basilica, feeling I was entitled to a few hours off duty. I had bought a guidebook from one of the shops along the Via della Conciliazione, and I wandered around the vast body of the church reading and looking like any other tourist. My mind kept wandering, though. The monument to the exiled Stuart kings reminded me of Smythe. The little statue of St Peter, whose bronze foot has been worn smooth by the kisses of generations of pilgrims, recalled his less saintly namesake. The porphyry disk on the paving near the main altar marked the spot in the old basilica where Charlemagne had received the imperial crown, and I thought of the sapphire talisman that had started me on my quest.
It was a pleasant interlude, though. I sat for a long time on the rim of one of the fountains in the piazza, drinking a warm (and outrageously expensive) Coke I had bought from a vendor, and admiring the sweeping curves of the great colonades.
After I had gotten back to the hotel I wrote a long letter and made a telephone call. I gave the letter to the concierge when I went down to dinner. He swore he would see to its dispatch personally. He looked like a nice, honest man, but I figured a ten-thousand-lira tip wouldn’t hurt. It was a legitimate business deduction, after all.