Ngaio Marsh
When in Rome
also published as
DEATH ON A GUIDED TOUR
For
H. E. The Ambassador and Mrs. McIntosh
and the Staff of the Residence, New Zealand Embassy in Rome,
who made it possible
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Il Cicerone conducted tours
Mr. Sebastian Mailer — the cicerone
his patrons
Mr. Barnaby Grant — author of Simon in Latium
The Baron and Baroness Van der Veghel
Miss Sophy Jason — writer of children’s stories
Lady Braceley
The Honourable Kenneth Dorne — her nephew
Major Hamilton Street
Superintendent Roderick Alleyn — C.I.D. London
officers of the roman police department
Il Questore Valdarno
Il Vice-Questore Bergarmi
Sundry members of the questura
dominicans in charge at san tommaso in pallaria
Father Denys
Brother Dominic
sundry persons in rome
Giovanni Vecchi — his assistant
Violetta — a postcard vendor
Marco — a restaurateur
A British consul
Signor Pace — a travel agent
A porter and sundry waiters
1
Barnaby in Rome
Barnaby Grant looked at the Etruscan Bride and Bridegroom who reclined so easily on their sarcophagal couch and wondered why they had died young and whether, as in Verona, they had died together. Their gentle lips, he thought, brushed with amusement, might easily tilt into the arrowhead smile of Apollo and Hermes. How fulfilled they were and how enigmatically alike. What signal did she give with her largish hands? How touchingly his hand hovered above her shoulder.
“—from Cerveteri,” said a guide rapidly. “Five hundred and thirty years before Christ.”
“Christ!” said a tourist on a note of exhaustion.
The party moved on. Grant stayed behind for a time and then, certain that he desired to see no more that morning, left the Villa Giulia and took a taxi to the Piazza Colonna for a glass of beer.
As he sat at a kerbside table in the Piazza Colonna, Barnaby thought of the Etruscan smile and listened to thunder.
The heavens boomed largely above the noon traffic, but whatever lightning there might be was not evident, being masked by a black canopy of low and swollen cloud. “At any moment,” thought Barnaby, “Marcus Aurelius’ Column will prick it and like ‘a foul bum-bard’ it will shed its liquor! And then what a scene!”
Before him on the table stood a glass and a bottle of beer. His mackintosh was folded over the back of his chair and on the ground, leaning against his leg, was a locked attaché case. Every so often his left hand dropped to the case and fingered it. Refreshed by this contact his mouth would take on an easier look and he would blink slowly and push away the lock of black hair that overhung his forehead.
“A bit of a swine, this one,” he thought. “It’s been a bit of a swine.”
A heavy rumbling again broke out overhead. “Thunder on the left,” Barnaby thought. “The gods are cross with us.”
He refilled his glass and looked about him.
The kerbside caffè had been crowded but now, under threat of a downpour, many customers had left and the waiters had tipped over their chairs. The tables on either side of his own, however, were still occupied: that on his right by three lowering young men whose calloused hands jealously enclosed their glasses and whose slow eyes looked sideways at their surroundings. Countrymen, Grant thought, who would have been easier in a less consequential setting and would be shocked by the amount of their bill. On his left sat a Roman couple in love. Forbidden by law to kiss in public, they gazed, clung hand-to-hand, and exchanged trembling smiles. The young man extended his forefinger and traced the unmarred excellences of his girl’s lips. They responded, quivering. Barnaby could not help watching the lovers. They were unaware of him and indeed of everything else around them, but on the first visible and livid flash of lightning, they were taken out of themselves and turned their faces towards him.
It was at this moment, appropriately as he was later to consider, that he saw, framed by their separated heads, the distant figure of an Englishman.
He knew at once that the man was English. Perhaps it was his clothes. Or, more specifically, his jacket. It was shabby and out-of-date, but it had been made from West Country tweed, though not, perhaps, for its present wearer. And then — the tie. Frayed and faded, grease-spotted and lumpish: there it was, scarcely recognizable but, if you were so minded, august. For the rest, his garments were dingy and non-descript. His hat, a rusty black felt, was obviously Italian. It was pulled forward and cast a shadow down to the bridge of his nose, over a face of which the most noticeable feature was its extreme pallor. The mouth, however, was red and rather full-lipped. So dark had the noonday turned that without that brief flash, Barnaby could scarcely have seen the shadowed eyes. He felt an odd little shock within himself when he realized they were very light in colour and were fixed on him. A great crack of thunder banged out overhead. The black canopy burst and fell out of the sky in a deluge.
There was a stampede. Barnaby snatched up his raincoat, struggled into it and dragged the hood over his head. He had not paid his bill and groped for his pocket-book. The three countrymen blundered towards him and there was some sort of collision between them and the young couple. The young man broke into loud quarrelsome expostulation. Barnaby could find nothing smaller than a thousand-lire note. He turned away, looked round for a waiter, and found they had all retreated under the canvas awning. His own man saw him, made a grand-opera gesture of despair, and turned his back.
“Aspetti,” Barnaby shouted in phrase-book Italian, waving his thousand-lire note. “Quanto devo pagare?”
The waiter placed his hands together as if in prayer and turned up his eyes.
“Basta!”
“—lasci passare—”
“Se ne vada ora—”
“Non desidero parlarle.”
“Non l’ho fatto io—”
“Vattene!”
“Sciocchezze!”
The row between the lover and the countrymen was heating up. They now screamed into each other’s faces behind Barnaby’s back. The waiter indicated, with a multiple gesture, the heavens, the rain, his own defencelessness.
Barnaby thought: “After all, I’m the one with a raincoat.” Somebody crashed into his back and sent him spread-eagled across his table.
A scene of the utmost confusion followed accompanied by flashes of lightning, immediate thunderclaps and torrents of rain. Barnaby was winded and bruised. A piece of glass had cut the palm of his hand and his nose also bled. The combatants had disappeared but his waiter, now equipped with an enormous orange and blue umbrella, babbled over him and made ineffectual dabs at his hand. The other waiters, clustered beneath the awning, rendered a chorus to the action. “Poverino!” they exclaimed. “What a misfortune!”
Barnaby recovered an upright posture. With one hand he dragged a handkerchief from the pocket of his raincoat and clapped it to his face. In the other he extended to the waiter his bloodied and rain-sopped thousand-lire note.