When in Rome. Ngaio Marsh
four arches that lead into the porch of S. Tommaso in Pallaria are of modest proportion and their pillars, which in classic times adorned some pagan temple, are slender and worn. The convolvulus tendrils that their carver twined about them have broken in many places but the work is so delicate that the stone seems to tremble. In the most shadowed corner of the porch sat a woman with a tray of postcards. She wore a black headscarf pulled forward over her face and a black cotton dress. She shouted something, perhaps at Mr Mailer. Her voice was strident which may have caused her remark to sound like an insult. He paid no attention to it.
He collected his party about him and looked at his watch. ‘Major Sweet,’ he said, ‘is late. We shall not wait for him but before we go in I should like to give you, very shortly, some idea of this extraordinary monument. In the fourth century before Christ—’
From the dark interior there erupted an angry gentleman who shouted as he came.
‘Damned disgusting lot of hanky-panky,’ shouted this gentleman. ‘What the hell—‘ He pulled up short on seeing the group and narrowed his blazing eyes in order to focus upon it.
He had a savage white moustache and looked like an improbable revival of an Edwardian warrior. ‘Are you Mailer?’ he shouted. ‘Sweet,’ he added, in explanation.
‘Major Sweet, may I—’
‘You’re forty-three minutes late. Forty-three minutes!’
‘Unfortunately—’
‘Spare me,’ begged Major Sweet, ‘the specious excuses. There is no adequate explanation for unpunctuality.’
Lady Braceley moved in. ‘All my fault, Major,’ she said. ‘I kept everybody waiting and I’ve no excuses: I never have and I always do. I dare say you’d call it “ladies’ privilege”, wouldn’t you? Or would you?’
Major Sweet turned his blue glare upon her for two or three seconds. He then yapped ‘How do you do’ and seemed to wait for further developments.
Mr Mailer with perfect suavity performed the introductions. Major Sweet acknowledged them by making slight bows to the ladies and an ejaculation of sorts to the men. ‘Hyah,’ he said.
‘Well,’ said Mr Mailer. ‘To resume. When we are inside the basilica I shall hand over to our most distinguished guest of honour. But perhaps beforehand a very brief historical note may be of service.’
He was succinct and adequate, Sophy grudgingly admitted. The basilica of San Tommaso, he said, was one of a group of monuments in Rome where the visitors could walk downwards through the centuries into Mithraic time. At the top level, here where they now stood, was the twelfth-century basilica which in a moment they would enter. Beneath it, was the excavated third-century church which it had replaced. ‘And below that—imagine it—’ said Mr Mailer, ‘there has lain sleeping for over eighteen hundred years a house of the Flavian period: a classic “gentleman’s residence” with its own private chapel dedicated to the god Mithras.’ He paused and Sophy, though she regarded him with the most profound distaste, thought: He’s interested in what he’s talking about. He knows his stuff. He’s enjoying himself.
Mr Mailer went on to describe briefly the enormous task of nineteenth-century excavation that had so gradually disclosed first, the earlier basilica and then, deep down beneath it, the pagan household. ‘Rome has risen, hereabout, sixty feet since those times,’ he ended. ‘Does that surprise you? It does me, every time I think of it.’
‘It doesn’t me,’ Major Sweet announced. ‘Nothing surprises me. Except human gullibility,’ he added darkly. ‘However!’
Mr Mailer shot him an uneasy glance. Sophy gave a little snort of suppressed amusement and caught Barnaby Grant looking at her with something like appreciation. Lady Braceley, paying no attention to what was said, let her ravaged eyes turn from one man’s face to another. The Van der Veghels, standing close together, listened intently. Kenneth Dorne, Sophy noticed, was restless and anxious-looking. He shuffled his feet and dabbed at his face with his handkerchief. And the tall man, what was his name—Allen?—stood a little apart, politely attentive and, Sophy thought, extremely observant.
‘But now,’ Mr Mailer said, ‘shall we begin our journey into the past?’
The woman with the postcards had sidled between the group and the entrance. She had kept her face down and it was still shadowed by her black headscarf. She muttered, almost inaudibly, ‘Cartoline? Posta-carda?’ edging towards Sebastian Mailer. He said generally to his company, ‘There are better inside. Pay no attention,’ and moved forward to pass the woman.
With extraordinary swiftness she pushed back her headscarf, thrust her face up at him and whispered: ‘Brutto! Farabutto! Traditore!’ and added what seemed to be a stream of abuse. Her eyes burned. Her lips were retracted in a grin and then pursed together. She’s going to spit in his face, thought Sophy in alarm and so she was, but Mr Mailer was too smart for her. He dodged and she spat after him and stood her ground with the air of a grand-opera virago. She even gave a hoarse screech of eldritch laughter. Mr Mailer entered the basilica. His discomforted flock divided round the postcard-seller and slunk after him.
‘Kenneth, darling,’ Lady Braceley muttered. ‘Honestly! Not one’s idea of a gay little trip!’
Sophy found herself between Barnaby Grant and Alleyn. ‘Was that lady,’ Alleyn asked Grant, ‘put in as an extra touch of atmosphere? Does she recur, or was she a colourful accident?’
Grant said, ‘I don’t know anything about her. Mad, I should think. Ghastly old bag, wasn’t she?’ and Sophy thought: Yes, but he hasn’t answered the question.
She said to Alleyn, ‘Would you suppose that all that carry-on, if translated into Anglo-Saxon terms, would amount to no more than a cool glance and an indrawn breath?’
Grant looked across Alleyn at her, and said with a kind of eagerness, ‘Oh, rather! You have to make allowances for their sense of drama.’
‘Rather excessive in this instance,’ she said coolly, giving, she said to herself, snub for snub. Grant moved round and said hurriedly, ‘I know who you are, now. I didn’t before. We met at Koster Press didn’t we?’ Koster Press was the name of his publisher’s house in London.
‘For a moment,’ Sophy said and then: ‘Oh, but how lovely!’
They were in the basilica.
It glowed sumptuously as if it generated its own light. It was alive with colour: ‘mediterranean’ red, clear pinks, blues and greens; ivory and crimson marble, tingling gold mosaic. And dominant in this concourse of colour the great vermilion that cries out in the backgrounds of Rome and Pompeii.
Sophy moved away from the group and stared with delight at this enchantment. Grant, who had been left with Alleyn, abruptly joined her.
‘I’ve got to talk about this,’ he muttered. ‘I wish to God I hadn’t.’
She looked briefly at him. ‘Then why do it?’ said Sophy.
‘You think that was an affectation. I’m sorry.’
‘Really, it couldn’t matter less what I think.’
‘You needn’t be so snappish.’
They stared at each other in astonishment.
‘I can’t make this out,’ Grant said unexpectedly. ‘I don’t know you,’ and Sophy in a panic, stammered, ‘It’s nothing. It’s none of my business. I’m sorry I snapped.’
‘Not at all.’
‘And now,’ fluted Sebastian Mailer, ‘I hand over to my most distinguished colleague, Mr Grant.’
Grant made Sophy an extremely stuffy little bow and moved out to face his audience.
Once he was launched he