Ngaio Marsh - When in Rome

also published as

DEATH ON A GUIDED TOUR

For

H. E. The Ambassador and Mrs. McIntosh

and the Staff of the Residence, New Zealand Embassy in Rome,

who made it possible

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Il Cicerone conducted tours

Mr. Sebastian Mailer the cicerone

his patrons

Mr. Barnaby Grant author of Simon in Latium

The Baron and Baroness Van der Veghel

Miss Sophy Jason writer of childrens stories

Lady Braceley

The Honourable Kenneth Dorne her nephew

Major Hamilton Street

Superintendent Roderick Alleyn C.I.D. London

officers of the roman police department

Il Questore Valdarno

Il Vice-Questore Bergarmi

Sundry members of the questura

dominicans in charge at san tommaso in pallaria

Father Denys

Brother Dominic

sundry persons in rome

Giovanni Vecchi his assistant

Violetta a postcard vendor

Marco a restaurateur

A British consul

Signor Pace a travel agent

A porter and sundry waiters

Barnaby Grant looked at the Etruscan Bride and Bridegroom who reclined so easily on their sarcophagal couch and wondered why they had died young and whether, as in Verona, they had died together. Their gentle lips, he thought, brushed with amusement, might easily tilt into the arrowhead smile of Apollo and Hermes. How fulfilled they were and how enigmatically alike. What signal did she give with her largish hands? How touchingly his hand hovered above her shoulder.

from Cerveteri, said a guide rapidly. Five hundred and thirty years before Christ.

Christ! said a tourist on a note of exhaustion.

The party moved on. Grant stayed behind for a time and then, certain that he desired to see no more that morning, left the Villa Giulia and took a taxi to the Piazza Colonna for a glass of beer.

As he sat at a kerbside table in the Piazza Colonna, Barnaby thought of the Etruscan smile and listened to thunder.

The heavens boomed largely above the noon traffic, but whatever lightning there might be was not evident, being masked by a black canopy of low and swollen cloud. At any moment, thought Barnaby, Marcus Aurelius Column will prick it and like a foul bum-bard it will shed its liquor! And then what a scene!

Before him on the table stood a glass and a bottle of beer. His mackintosh was folded over the back of his chair and on the ground, leaning against his leg, was a locked attach case. Every so often his left hand dropped to the case and fingered it. Refreshed by this contact his mouth would take on an easier look and he would blink slowly and push away the lock of black hair that overhung his forehead.

A bit of a swine, this one, he thought. Its been a bit of a swine.

A heavy rumbling again broke out overhead. Thunder on the left, Barnaby thought. The gods are cross with us.

He refilled his glass and looked about him.

The kerbside caff had been crowded but now, under threat of a downpour, many customers had left and the waiters had tipped over their chairs. The tables on either side of his own, however, were still occupied: that on his right by three lowering young men whose calloused hands jealously enclosed their glasses and whose slow eyes looked sideways at their surroundings. Countrymen, Grant thought, who would have been easier in a less consequential setting and would be shocked by the amount of their bill. On his left sat a Roman couple in love. Forbidden by law to kiss in public, they gazed, clung hand-to-hand, and exchanged trembling smiles. The young man extended his forefinger and traced the unmarred excellences of his girls lips. They responded, quivering. Barnaby could not help watching the lovers. They were unaware of him and indeed of everything else around them, but on the first visible and livid flash of lightning, they were taken out of themselves and turned their faces towards him.

It was at this moment, appropriately as he was later to consider, that he saw, framed by their separated heads, the distant figure of an Englishman.

He knew at once that the man was English. Perhaps it was his clothes. Or, more specifically, his jacket. It was shabby and out-of-date, but it had been made from West Country tweed, though not, perhaps, for its present wearer. And then the tie. Frayed and faded, grease-spotted and lumpish: there it was, scarcely recognizable but, if you were so minded, august. For the rest, his garments were dingy and non-descript. His hat, a rusty black felt, was obviously Italian. It was pulled forward and cast a shadow down to the bridge of his nose, over a face of which the most noticeable feature was its extreme pallor. The mouth, however, was red and rather full-lipped. So dark had the noonday turned that without that brief flash, Barnaby could scarcely have seen the shadowed eyes. He felt an odd little shock within himself when he realized they were very light in colour and were fixed on him. A great crack of thunder banged out overhead. The black canopy burst and fell out of the sky in a deluge.

There was a stampede. Barnaby snatched up his raincoat, struggled into it and dragged the hood over his head. He had not paid his bill and groped for his pocket-book. The three countrymen blundered towards him and there was some sort of collision between them and the young couple. The young man broke into loud quarrelsome expostulation. Barnaby could find nothing smaller than a thousand-lire note. He turned away, looked round for a waiter, and found they had all retreated under the canvas awning. His own man saw him, made a grand-opera gesture of despair, and turned his back.

Aspetti, Barnaby shouted in phrase-book Italian, waving his thousand-lire note. Quanto devo pagare?

The waiter placed his hands together as if in prayer and turned up his eyes.

Basta!

lasci passare

Se ne vada ora

Non desidero parlarle.

Non lho fatto io

Vattene!

Sciocchezze!

The row between the lover and the countrymen was heating up. They now screamed into each others faces behind Barnabys back. The waiter indicated, with a multiple gesture, the heavens, the rain, his own defencelessness.

Barnaby thought: After all, Im the one with a raincoat. Somebody crashed into his back and sent him spread-eagled across his table.

A scene of the utmost confusion followed accompanied by flashes of lightning, immediate thunderclaps and torrents of rain. Barnaby was winded and bruised. A piece of glass had cut the palm of his hand and his nose also bled. The combatants had disappeared but his waiter, now equipped with an enormous orange and blue umbrella, babbled over him and made ineffectual dabs at his hand. The other waiters, clustered beneath the awning, rendered a chorus to the action. Poverino! they exclaimed. What a misfortune!

Barnaby recovered an upright posture. With one hand he dragged a handkerchief from the pocket of his raincoat and clapped it to his face. In the other he extended to the waiter his bloodied and rain-sopped thousand-lire note.

Here, he said in his basic Italian. Keep the change. I require a taxi.

The waiter ejaculated with evident pleasure. Barnaby sat down abruptly on a chair that had become a bird-bath. The waiter ludicrously inserted his umbrella into a socket in the middle of the table, said something incomprehensible, turned up the collar of his white jacket and bolted into the interior. To telephone, Barnaby hoped, for a taxi.

The Piazza Colonna was rain-possessed. A huge weight of water flooded the street and pavements and spurted off the roofs of cars as if another multiple Roman fountain had been born. Motorists stared through blurred glass and past jigging windscreen wipers at the world outside. Except for isolated, scurrying wayfarers the pavements were emptied. Barnaby Grant, huddled, alone and ridiculous under his orange and blue umbrella, staunched his bloody nose. He attracted a certain incredulous attention. The waiter had disappeared and his comrades had got up among themselves one of those inscrutable Italian conversations that appear to be quarrels but very often end in backslaps and roars of laughter. Barnaby never could form the slightest notion of how long he had sat under the umbrella before he made his hideous discovery, before his left arm dangled from his shoulder and his left hand encountered nothing.