Violetta, he said, had sold postcards in the entrance to S. Tommaso for some months. She was a Sicilian of dubious origins, was not as old as Alleyn may have supposed and when she first appeared carried upon her the remnants of ferocious good looks. Her story, which she never ceased to pour out, was that her husband had deserted her and in doing so had betrayed her to the police.

‘For doing what?’Alleyn asked.

‘Ah, she never lets on exactly. Something to do with passing prohibited articles. Likely enough stolen, though she makes out she’d no notion what mischief was in it till the pollis came down upon her and destroyed her. She’s very wild in her conversation and the saints themselves wouldn’t know which was fact and which was fantasy.’

She had behaved herself reasonably well, however, reserving her outbursts for the Dominicans and sticking to her legal postcardvending territory until about two days ago when he had found her squatting in a corner of the porch letting out the most frightful animadversions in a hissing torrent and shaking her fists. She literally foamed at the mouth and was quite incoherent, but after Father Denys had rebuked her for blasphemy and, Alleyn gathered, sorted her out in a pretty big way, she became slightly more comprehensible. Her rage, it emerged, had been directed at a person who had visited the Sacristy to discuss arrangements for sightseeing trips by a newly-formed enterprise called—

‘Don’t tell me,’ Alleyn said as Father Denys paused for dramatic effect. ‘Let me guess. Called “Il Cicerone”.’

‘Right for you.’

‘In the person of Mr Sebastian Mailer?’

‘Right again,’ cried Father Denys, clapping his hands together. ‘And the poor creature’s husband or if he’s not he ought to be, God help him.’

III

It was past five o’clock on that very warm afternoon when two cars arrived at the Palatine Hill. The air smelt of sunny earth, grass, myrtle and resin. In lengthening shadows poppies made little scarlet exclamations and legions of acanthus marched down the contours of the hill. The skies had deepened behind broken columns and arches: the bones of classic Rome.

Giovanni, the driver, had responded with gusto to the role of guide. He said that he had no notion of what had befallen Mr Mailer but suggested that a sudden onslaught of the affliction known to tourists as Roman Tummy might have overtaken him. By its nature, Giovanni delicately reminded them, it necessitated an immediate withdrawal. He then led his party across the ruins of Domus Augustana and down a little flight of steps towards a grove of pines. Back again and here and there he led them giving names to ruins and with sweeps of his arms laying Rome at their feet.