“Ah,” said Cantrip, “that just shows you’re not as familiar with
“Cantrip is reminding us,” said Selena, fearing that our grasp of the Cambridge idiom might not be sufficient to enable us to follow this explanation, “that prior to strangling his wife Othello gave instructions to his subordinate for the murder of Michael Cassio, his supposed rival in her affections.”
“Right,” said Cantrip. “So if Julia wasn’t around, the Major would have done in the chap from the Revenue.”
“I do not recall,” said Ragwort, “that Othello completed his revenge by stealing Cassio’s holdall. One feels that the dramatist would have thought it something of an anticlimax.”
“Never mind about the holdall,” said Cantrip. “I expect it had incriminating evidence in it or something. Apart from that, the two cases are practically identical — even the handkerchief business.”
“I don’t suppose,” said Selena, “that the handkerchief which the Major gave Julia was woven by a two- hundred-year-old sibyl from the silk spun by sacred silkworms. If it had been, the Major, being a dealer in antiques and objects of virtue, would hardly have given it to Julia to stem a nosebleed. Shall I read the rest of her letter?”
Terrace of the Cytherea.
Friday morning.
I have a rather curious, possibly even sinister, incident to relate to you. One might call it, perhaps, the Phenomenon of the Recurring Mayor. Before coming to it, however, I should mention, by way of prelude, an episode which occurred at breakfast time.
I don’t know if you have ever noticed, Selena, how after a few months of doing without the pleasures of the flesh and being more or less resigned to it — of thinking, that is to say, that it would be nice if they were available but that since they are not one had better get on with construing the Taxes Acts — how, after such a period, an interruption of the celibate life tends rather to stimulate than allay the appetite. It is, I have found, the same with strawberries: during the winter I am not subject to any overpowering desire for them; but when I eat my first strawberry of the season and am reminded by direct experience of their warm yet un-cloying sweetness and their yielding firmness between one’s teeth, then I can by no means content myself with one, or two, or even three, but go on eating them with immoderate greed until the bowl is empty or forcibly taken from me.
Thus, when I woke this morning, I began to reflect on the unlikelihood of any further success with Ned, and on the prettiness of the waiter who brings my breakfast. The travel agents did say, after all, that service was included.
The procedure for taking advantage of Italian waiters — equally applicable, so far as I am aware, in other areas of the Mediterranean — does not merit any long exposition. It consists chiefly of staying in bed until they bring one’s breakfast and then smiling benevolently. Waiters, generally speaking, seem not to mind being taken advantage of.
It is to be remembered, however, that they are an overworked and exploited profession, who have to spend much of their energies running to and fro carrying drinks and so on, so that the duration of the pleasure given is not always commensurate to the enthusiasm with which it is offered. If the coffee brought me by the pretty waiter had been cold by the time he left, I should have been willing, in the particular circumstances, to forgive him; but my forgiveness was not called for. Still, one must not be ungrateful — strawberries are strawberries.
I come now to the curious and possibly sinister incident.
For the reasons indicated above, it was rather later than usual — though not so much later as I could have wished — that I was ready to leave my room. On opening my door, however, I observed that the corridor contained the Major. Fortunately, he did not see me, being at that moment in the act of closing the door to his room. To avoid meeting him being at present one of my chief objects, I withdrew again to my room and lit a Gauloise. When I had smoked half of it, I thought it must be safe to leave.
The Major was still in the corridor and was still closing a door. Well, you will say, Selena, that there was nothing very startling about that — he had forgotten something, you will say, had gone back to his room for it and was now leaving for a second time. I do not think, however, that your hypothesis is tenable; for it seemed to me that the door he was closing on this occasion was not that of his own room — it was that of the adjoining room, which is occupied by Ned and Kenneth Dunfermline. Much perplexed, I withdrew again and smoked the rest of the Gauloise. Then, with the utmost caution, I looked out again into the corridor.
The Major was still in the corridor. He was still closing a door. This time, if my observation by now was at all to be relied on, the door of his own room.
Much shaken, I withdrew yet again and consumed in two gulps what remained of my duty-free brandy. The liquid which saw Napoleon across the Russian Steppes did not fail me — when next I opened my door, the corridor was empty. Without further untoward incident, I made my way to the terrace.
The incident I have described seemed to me extraordinarily disquieting. I could think of no sensible reason for the Major to spend some ten minutes rigidly posed in the attitude of one closing a door. The likely explanation, I felt, was that the suggestion of marrying him had had such traumatic effects on me as to induce a series of paranoid hallucinations: whenever I opened a door, I would imagine, unless previously fortified by brandy, that I saw the Major closing one. This, with brandy the price it is, would be an inconvenient affliction.
“Odd,” said Selena. “It looks as if the Major went into the room occupied by Ned and Kenneth and stayed there for about five minutes. After that, evidently, he went back to his own room and stayed there for another five minutes or so before finally going out. I wonder why.”
“It is possible,” said Ragwort, “that he visited the other room with the consent of the occupants. But the timing seems a little furtive — it sounds, doesn’t it, as if he had waited until everyone else in the annexe could be expected to have left their rooms and gone about their lawful business — all those, that is to say, who were not conducting themselves disgracefully with the domestic staff. Don’t you think that it sounds like a first attempt to steal whatever was in the holdall?”
“No,” said Cantrip, “what I think it sounds like is Othello looking for Desdemona’s handkerchief.”
“You are suggesting,” asked Selena, “that the Major, entertaining some suspicion of Julia’s dealings with Ned, was searching Ned’s room for corroborative evidence?”
Cantrip nodded.
My intention in going on to the terrace had been to write to you immediately of this disturbing experience. I was diverted from my purpose, however, by the discovery there of the lovely Ned, leaning in a graceful attitude against the balcony which divides the terrace from the canal.
This was not altogether a piece of good fortune, for he was looking more beautiful than ever. The sunlight catching his pale hair, his white shirt a little open to show the smoothness of his neck, his translucent skin warmed by eight days in Venice — if he reminded one before of something by Praxiteles, one thought now that the artist had cast his work in gold. The effect was to inspire in me as ardent a passion as I had felt when I first saw him on the aeroplane. It seemed to me, after all the trouble I had been to, that Wednesday afternoon had done me no good at all. Well, I suppose that is not strictly true — it is always better to have had Wednesday afternoon than not to have had Wednesday afternoon; but I could find in myself none of that quiet contentment which one looks for as the consequence of an achieved desire.
“You appear,” I said, “at some risk of falling into the canal. Do at least avoid the danger of looking at your reflection in it. Remember Narcissus.”
At this he smiled and looked pleased; but I was prevented from further compliment by the arrival on the terrace of Marylou, free, for once, of matrimonial surveillance.
“I haven’t seen you two in days,” she said, sounding reproachful.
“The loss is ours,” I answered, “rather than the fault.”
“Anyway,” she went on, “I hope you’re both coming on the trip to Verona this afternoon. Stanford didn’t want to go, because he’s already been to Verona. But I told Stanford no way was I going to miss seeing Verona just because he’d been there at the weekend seeing a business acquaintance.” Her tone suggested no improvement in her opinion of such a person. “And I don’t figure we’ll be seeing the same things he saw over the weekend. He won’t have looked at anything historically relevant, not unless you count a ten-year-old bottle of rye. I mean, Stanford is not exactly aesthetically aware. He is a fine person in many ways — but when they dished up aesthetic
