When, at seven o'clock, Carlotti, Grandi and I trooped into the lush lounge that the Vesuvius hotel had provided for him, he had changed, obviously shaved and showered, and was now sitting at the head of a big table in the middle of the room, a cigar between his teeth and a glowering, dark expression on his hard face.
Sitting by the window was his wife, June. She had on a sky-blue silk dress that fined her like a second skin and her long, shapely legs were crossed, showing beautiful knees that attracted Grandi's eyes and made his usually gloomy dark face take on a more animated expression.
I introduced him and Carlotti and we sat down.
For a long moment Chalmers stared fixedly at Carlotti. Then he said in his barking voice, "Okay, let's have the facts."
I've known Carlotti pretty intimately for the past three years. Up to this moment, I had never thought much of him as a policeman. I knew he was thorough, and he had a reputation for solving his cases, but he had never struck me as having any great talent for his job. But the way he faced up to Chalmers during the next twenty minutes gave me an entirely different opinion of him.
"The facts, Signor Chalmers," he said quietly, "will be painful to you, but since you ask for them, you shall have them."
Chalmers sat motionless, his freckled, fat hands clasped on the top of the table, his cigar, drifting smoke past his hard face, gripped tightly between his teeth. His small, ice-pick eyes, the colour of rain, stared fixedly at Carlotti.
"Never mind how painful it is," he said. "Give me the facts."
"Ten days ago, your daughter left Rome and flew to Naples. She took the local train from Naples to Sorrento where she paid a visit to an estate agent," Carlotti said as if he had rehearsed this speech for some time, learning it by heart. "She introduced herself to the estate agent as Mrs. Douglas Sherrard, the wife of an American business man on vacation in Rome."
I sneaked a quick look at Chalmers. He sat impassive, his cigar glowing, his hands slack on the table. I looked from him to his platinum blonde wife. She was looking out of the window and she gave no sign that she was listening.
"She wanted a villa for a month," Carlotti went on in his quiet, excellent English. "She insisted on a place that was isolated, and the cost was immaterial. It so happened that the agent had such a place. He drove la signorina to this villa and she agreed to take it. She wanted someone to come in and look after the place during their stay. The agent arranged with a woman of a nearby village to do the necessary work. This woman, Maria Candallo, tells me that, on 28th August, she went to the villa where she found la signorina who had arrived a few hours earlier in a Lincoln convertible."
Chalmers said, "Was the car registered in her name?"
"Yes," Carlotti said.
Chalmers touched off the ash on his cigar, nodded, and said, "Go on."
"La signorina told Maria that her husband would be arriving the following day. According to the woman, there was no doubt in her mind that la signorina was very much in love with this man whom she called Douglas Sherrard."
For the first time Chalmers gave a hint of his feelings. He hunched his broad shoulders and his freckled hands turned into fists.
Carlotti went on, "Maria came to the villa at eight forty-five on the morning of the 29th. She washed up the breakfast things, dusted and swept. La signorina told her she was going down to Sorrento to meet the three-thirty train from Naples. She said her husband was coming from Rome on that train. Around eleven o'clock Maria left. At that time la signorina was arranging flowers in the lounge. That was the last time, so far as we know, that anyone saw her alive."
June Chalmers recrossed her legs. She turned her pretty head and stared directly at me. Her worldly, violet eyes went over me thoughtfully: a disconcerting stare that made me look quickly away from her.
"What happened between that time and eight-fifteen in the evening is a matter for conjecture," Carlotti said. "It is some-thing probably that we shall never know."
Chalmers's eyes became hooded. He leaned forward.
"Why eight-fifteen?" he asked.
"That was the time she died," Carlotti said. "I don't think there is any doubt about that. Her wrist watch was smashed in the fall. It showed exactly eight-fifteen."
I had stiffened to attention. This was news to me. It meant that I was in the villa, looking for Helen, when she had fallen. No one, including a judge and jury, would believe I hadn't had something to do with her death if it became known I had been up there at the time.
"I would like to be able to tell you," Carlotti went on, "that your daughter's death was due to an unfortunate accident, but at the moment, I can't do it. I admit on the face of it, it would seem to be the solution. There is no doubt that she took a cine camera up on the cliff head. It is possible, when using a camera of this kind, to become so absorbed in what you are taking, that you could get too close to the edge of the path and fell over."
Chalmers took his cigar out of his mouth and laid it in the ashtray. He stared fixedly at Carlotti.
"Are you trying to tell me that it wasn't an accident?" he said in a voice you could cut a stale loaf on.
June Chalmers stopped staring at me and cooked her head on one side: for the first time she appeared to be interested in what was going on.
"That is for the coroner to decide," Carlotti said. He was quite unflustered and he met the icepick eyes without flinching. "There are complications. There are a number of details that need explaining. It would seem there are two alternative explanations for your daughter's death: one is that she accidentally stepped off the cliff head while using her camera; the other is that she committed suicide."
Chalmers hunched his shoulders and his face congested.
"You have reason to say a thing like that?"
He conveyed that Carlotti had damn well better have a reason.
Carlotti let him have it without rubber cushioning.
"Your daughter was eight weeks' pregnant."
There was a long, heavy silence. I didn't dare look at Chalmers. I stared down at my sweating hands that were gripped between my thighs.
June broke the silence by saying, "Oh, Sherwin. I can't believe that ..."
I sneaked a quick look at Chalmers. His face was murderous: the kind of face you see on the screen of some not-too-good actor playing the role of a cornered gangster.
"Hold your tongue!" he snarled at June in a voice that shook with violence. Then, as she turned to look out of the window, he said to Carlotti, "Is that what the doctor said?"
"I have a copy of the autopsy," Carlotti returned. "You can get it if you wish."
"Pregnant? Helen?"
He pushed back his chair and got to his feet. He still looked awe-inspiring, tough and ruthless, but somehow he didn't make me feel quite such a pigmy; some of his big-shot atmosphere had gone out of him.