Alleyn had his own and very particular little camera. While Bergarmi and his staff were fully extended in other directions, he took three quick shots of the inner-side rails. He then returned to the basilica. He told Valdarno what he had done and said that he would now take advantage of his kind offer and visit Mailer’s apartment. Valdarno instructed one of his drivers to take him there and, having shaken hands elaborately for the second time in an hour, they parted.

Mailer’s apartment was in a side street behind the Pantheon. It was reached through a little run-down courtyard and up the first flight of a narrow outdoor stairway. Valdarno’s man on duty let Alleyn in and, after a look at the all-powerful card, left him to his own devices.

The rooms, there were three of them, struck Alleyn as being on their way up. One or two new and lusciously upholstered armchairs, a fine desk, a sumptuous divan, and on Mr Mailer’s bed, a heavily embroidered and rather repellent velvet cover, all pointed to affluence. A dilapidated kitchenette, murky bathroom and blistered walls suggested that it was of recent origin. The bookshelves contained a comprehensive line in high-camp pornography, some of it extremely expensive, and a selection of mere pornography, all of it cheap and excessively nasty. Signor Valdarno’s man was whiling away his vigil in a sample of the latter kind.

Alleyn asked him if the contents of the desk had been examined. He said Vice-Questore Bergarmi had intimated that he would attend to it later on if Mailer did not return.

‘He has not returned,’ Alleyn said. ‘I will look at it. You, perhaps, would prefer to telephone Il Questore Valdarno before I do so.’

This did the trick. The man returned to his book and Alleyn tackled the desk. The only lock that gave him any trouble was that of a concealed cupboard at the back of the knee-hole and it was in this cupboard, finally, that he struck oil: a neatly kept ledger: a sort of diary-cum-reference book. Here, at intervals, opposite a date, was a tick with one, or sometimes two letters beside it. Alleyn consulted his own notebook and found that these entries tallied with those connected with suspected shipments of heroin from Izmir to Naples and thence, via Corsica, to Marseilles. He came to a date a little over a year ago and found: ‘Ang. in Aug. B.G.’ and four days later: ‘B.G. S. in L.’ This he thought very rum indeed, until, in a drawer of the desk he found a manuscript entitled Angelo in August. He returned to the ledger.