It would not be true to say that Mr Mailer listened to their raptures sardonically. He merely listened. His detachment was an acute embarrassment to Barnaby Grant. When it had all died down: the predictable hope that he would join them for drinks—they were staying in the hotel—the reiterated assurances that his work had meant so much to them, the apologies that they were intruding and the tactful withdrawal, had all been executed, Barnaby found himself alone with Sebastian Mailer.

‘I am not surprised,’ Mr Mailer said, ‘that you were disinclined to renew our acquaintance, Mr Grant. I, on the contrary, have sought you out. Perhaps we may move to somewhere a little more private? There is a writing-room, I think. Shall we—’

For the rest of his life Barnaby would be sickened by the memory of that commonplace little room with its pseudo Empire furniture, its floral carpet and the false tapestry on its wall: a mass-produced tapestry, popular in small hotels, depicting the fall of Icarus.

‘I shall come straight to the point,’ Mr Mailer said. ‘Always best, don’t you agree?’

He did precisely that. Sitting rather primly on a gilt-legged chair, his soft hands folded together and his mumbled thumbs gently revolving round each other, Mr Mailer set about blackmailing Barnaby Grant.

II

All this happened a fortnight before the morning when Sophy Jason saw her suddenly bereaved friend off at the Leonardo da Vinci Airport. She returned by bus to Rome and to the roof-garden of the Pensione Gallico where, ten months ago, Barnaby Grant had received Sebastian Mailer. Here she took stock of her situation.

She was twenty-three years old, worked for a firm of London publishers and had begun to make her way as a children’s author. This was her first visit to Rome. She and the bereaved friend were to have spent their summer holidays together in Italy.

They had not made out a hard-and-fast itinerary but had snowed themselves under with brochures, read the indispensable Miss Georgina Masson and wandered in a trance about the streets and monuments. The friend’s so-abruptly-deceased father had a large interest in a printing works near Turin and had arranged for the girls to draw most generously upon the firm’s Roman office for funds. They had been given business and personal letters of introduction. Together, they had been in rapture: alone, Sophy felt strange but fundamentally exhilarated. To be under her own steam—and in Rome! She had Titian hair, large eyes and a generous mouth and had already found it advisable to stand with her back to the wall in crowded lifts and indeed wherever two or more Roman gentlemen were gathered together at close quarters. ‘Quarters’, as she had remarked to her friend, being the operative word.