They were still submerged in their fixative solution along benches in the developing-room. The Questore’s photographs: Violetta in the sarcophagus with her tongue out. Violetta on the stretcher in the mortuary. Mailer’s jaw. Details. Alleyn’s photographs of Mailer, of a scrap of alpaca caught in a rail, of Mailer’s foot, sole uppermost, caught in the fangs of the grille, of boot polish on another rail. Of various papers found in Mailer’s apartment. Regulation shots that would fetch up in the police records.

And now, unexpectedly, views of Rome. Conventional shots of familiar subjects always with the same large, faintly smiling figure somewhere in the foreground or the middle distance. The Baron looking waggish with his head on one side, throwing a penny into the Trevi Fountain. The Baron looking magisterial in the Forum, pontifical before the Vatican and martial underneath Marcus Aurelius. And finally a shot taken by a third person of the Van der Veghels’ heads in profile with rather an Egyptian flavour, hers behind his. They even had the same large ears with heavy lobes, he noticed.

And then—nothing. A faint remnant of the Baron at the head of the Spanish Steps heavily obscured by white fog. After that—nothing. Blankness.

‘It is a pity,’ said the photographic expert, ‘there has been a misfortune. Light has been admitted.’

‘So I see,’ Alleyn said.

‘I think,’ Bergarmi pointed out, ‘you mentioned, did you not, that there was difficulty with the Baroness’s camera in the Mithraeum?’

‘The flashlamp failed. Once. It worked the second time.’

‘There is a fault, evidently, in the camera. Or in the removal of the film. Light,’ the expert reiterated, ‘has been admitted.’

‘So,’ Bergarmi said, ‘we have no record of the sarcophagus. It is of secondary interest after all.’

‘Yes,’ Alleyn said. ‘It is. After all. And as for the group by the statue of Mithras—’

‘Ah, Signore,’ said the expert. ‘Here the news is better. We have the film marked Dorne. Here, Signore.’

Kenneth’s photographs were reasonably good. They at once disproved his story of using the last of his film before meeting Mailer at the Apollo and of replacing it on his way to the Mithraeum. Here in order were snapshots taken in Perugia. Two of these showed Kenneth himself, en travesti in a garden surrounded by very dubiouslooking friends, one of whom had taken off his clothes and seemed to be posing as a statue.

‘Molto sofisticato,’ said Bergarmi.

Next came pictures of Kenneth’s aunt outside their hotel and of the travellers assembling near the Spanish Steps. Midway in the sequence was the picture of the god Mithras.