He was questioned by Bergarmi with occasional interjections from Valdarno. This time there was no translation and only Alleyn knew what was said. The travellers leant forward in their chairs and strained and frowned as if they were physically rather than intellectually deaf. It was difficult, indeed, to think of any good reason why their presence was supposed to be desirable. Unless, Alleyn thought, we are to become bilingual again and some sort of confrontation is envisaged.

The official manner with Giovanni was formidable. Bergarmi shot out the questions. Valdarno folded his arms, scowled and occasionally threw in a demand if not a threat. Giovanni alternately sulked and expostulated. A good deal of what went on, Alleyn reflected, would be meat and drink to defending counsel in Great Britain. The examination was twice interrupted by reports of further violence in the street and the Questore flung orders into the telephone with the precision of a souped-up computer. Alleyn could not escape the feeling that they all three greatly relished running through this virtuoso performance before their baffled and uncomprehending audience.

After a prolonged skirmish leading nowhere in particular Giovanni suddenly flung out his arms, made a complicated acknowledgement of his own stainless integrity, and intimated that he was prepared to come clean.

This turned out to be the overstatement of the day. What he was prepared to do, and did, was to accuse Major Sweet of murdering Sebastian Mailer. He said that while he himself was innocent of all knowledge of Mailer’s side activities and had merely acted in good faith as a top-class courier for Il Cicerone, it had come to his knowledge that there was some kind of hanky-panky going on between Mailer and Sweet.

‘Something told me it was so,’ said Giovanni. ‘I have an instinct in such matters.’

‘For “instinct”,’ Il Questore said, ‘read “experience”.’ Bergarmi laughed rather in the manner of deferential junior counsel.

‘And what steps,’ Valdarno asked nastily, ‘did this instinct prompt you to take?’ He glanced at Alleyn.

Giovanni said he had observed, when Violetta attacked Mailer in the portico, that Sweet watched with a certain eagerness. He became even more interested in Sweet. When the party went below he strolled into the basilica and said a prayer to S. Tommaso for whom he had a devotion. Major Sweet, he said in parenthesis, was an atheist and made several abominable remarks about the holy saints.

‘His remarks are unimportant. Continue.’