‘Finally—Barnaby Grant. To my notion, the prime puzzle of the party. Without more ado I would say, quite seriously, that I can think of no earthly reason why he should subject himself to what is clearly the most exquisite torture, unless Mailer put the screws on him in another sense. Blackmail. It might well be one of Mailer’s subsidiary interests and can tie in very comfortably with the drug racket.

‘And as a bonne-bouche we have the antic Violetta. If you could have seen Violetta with her “Cartoline—posta-cardas” and harpy’s face, foaming away under a black headpiece! Il Questore Valdarno can shrug her off with remarks about short-tempered postcard ladies but never trust me again if that one isn’t possessed of a fury. As for Sophy Jason saying it was Violetta’s shadow she saw on the wall by the stone sarcophagus, I think it’s odds-on she’s right. I saw it, too. It was distorted but there was the tray, the shawl and the hitched up shoulder. Clear as mud or my name’s Van der Veghel.

‘And I think Valdarno’s right when he says Mailer could have nipped out under the noses of Father Denys and his boys. There’s plenty of cover.

‘But without any justification for saying so, I don’t believe he did.

‘On the same premise Violetta could have nipped in and I do believe she did. And out again?

‘That too is another story.

‘It’s now a quarter past eight of a very warm evening. I am leaving my five-star room for the five-star cocktail bar where I rather hope to hob-nob with the Lady B. and her nephew. From there we shall be driven to La Gioconda where we shall perhaps eat quails stuffed with pâté and washed down with molten gold. At Mailer’s expense? Well—allegedly.

‘More of the continuing story of Anyone’s Guess tomorrow. Bless you, my dear love, My—’

CHAPTER 5
Evening Out

They had dined by candlelight at a long table in the garden. Between leafy branches of trees and far below, shone Rome. It might have been its own model, laid out on a black velvet cloth and so cunningly illuminated that its great monuments glowed in their setting like jewels. At night the Colosseum is lit from within and at this distance it was no longer a ruin but seemed so much alive that a mob might have spewed through its multiple doorways, rank with the stench of the circus. It was incredibly beautiful.