The Baron finished his drink and with a well-managed air of briskness, lightly slapped his knees and stood up.

‘And now I go,’ he said. ‘It is unlikely we meet again, unless at whatever formalities the authorities may require of us. I believe that I am your debtor, Mr Alleyn, to—to an indefinable extent. You would not wish me to say more, I think.’

‘Not another syllable.’

‘As I supposed. May we—?’

For the only time during their brief acquaintance Alleyn saw the Baron Van der Veghel really uncertain of himself. He looked at his enormous hand and then doubtfully at Alleyn.

‘But of course,’ Alleyn said and his own hand was briefly engulfed. ‘I am truly grateful,’ said the Baron.

Alleyn watched him go, bouncily as ever, to the lift.

By and large, he thought to himself, that was the nicest murderer I have met.

CHAPTER 10
When in Rome

‘The case was clinched,’ Alleyn wrote, ‘when I saw young Dorne’s snapshot. No Baron.

‘It’d been a possibility all along. While we were lined up in that preposterous group scarcely able to see each other he hadn’t spoken. She talked to him. When she told him to stand farther back and not to speak he wasn’t there. While she fussed about hunting for her second flashlamp—and of course the first dud was a put-up affair—he was off by the passage behind that smirking little god. He had his date with Mailer. He had to hand over the money. Mailer was to dispose of it—in the car I expect—and had stayed behind for that purpose.

‘At the moment when we all heard Violetta’s voice, Van der Veghel was in the passage. I don’t believe he witnessed the murder. I think he came upon Mailer with Violetta dead at his feet. I think Mailer bolted and Van der Veghel chased him up the iron stairs to the next landing. There was a struggle. Mailer was knocked out and throttled and tipped over the well-head. The body fell like a plummet into the well below and in doing so a coat sleeve brushed the inner side of the rail and was torn.

‘Van der Veghel climbed the rail at the upper well in order to look down and discover whether his victim had, in fact, made a straight fall into the depths. In doing so the rubber studs on his shoes scored through the brown boot polish that may well have been left there by the abominable Sweet on his way back from dumping Lady B. in the atrium. His brogues were polished underneath the instep, à la the batman he never had. Sweet may have caught sight of Violetta or Mailer or both and snooped.