it.”
She opened her canvas-coloured shoulder-bag. Ragwort watched this with some anxiety; but she took from it nothing more dangerous than a slim volume nearly covered in brown paper. She laid it on Ragwort’s desk. “I guess Julia’d want me to give it back to you, anyway,” she said.
The tone to adopt, I felt, was one of sympathetic encouragement, as to undergraduates when they are explaining how the complications of their private lives have prevented them from writing an essay. It is my custom, on such occasions, to offer a small glass of sherry; but the only sherry in the Nursery is that kept by Timothy for the refreshment of his more eminent clients. Quite apart from any ethical objection to taking it without his permission, I feared that he might thoughtlessly have locked it away before leaving for Venice.
“My dear Marylou,” I said — the reverence she had shown for my professorship seemed to sanction the use of her Christian name—“we know little or nothing of the circumstances leading to Julia’s detention. It would be most helpful if you could give us any details. Have you any idea, for example, who discovered the murder?”
“Why yes,” said Marylou. “I guess I did.” Selena looked at her in deep reproach. “I mean, I was with my husband and a guy called Kenneth Dunfermline — it was a friend of his who was murdered — we found him in their room. I’m sorry, Professor Tamar, I’m not telling this too well.”
“Why don’t you,” I said kindly, “begin at the beginning?”
“Well,” said Marylou, “I guess that means Friday afternoon. Stanford — that’s my husband — Stanford and I went on a visit to Verona. In a group with quite a lot of people, but we really didn’t know anyone except Graziella — that was our courier — and this guy Kenneth Dunfermline. He’s a sculptor — quite well known, I think. We’d been in the same hotel all week, but we hadn’t had a lot of interpersonal contact — Kenneth never seemed to be around much except at dinner-time. I’d got to know Ned better — that was his friend — Ned and
Julia and I all went to the Lido one day. Well, Kenneth sat next to us on the coach out to Verona and he was really fascinating — he told us all about Venetian art and the Roman and Byzantine influence and everything. It was a wonderful experience, Professor Tamar, having someone like that to explain it all — we really appreciated it. Well, I really appreciated it — Stanford isn’t too much into visual creativity.”
“But so far as you were concerned,” I said, “the visit to Verona was one of unqualified pleasure?”
“Oh yes,” said Marylou. “It’s a really enchanting city, Professor Tamar.”
“And then, I suppose, you all came back together on the motor-coach?”
“Yes — we must have left Verona around half-six and got back to Venice about a quarter of eight. Then we took the launch back to our hotel and it was just about dark by the time we got there. We stood around for a minute or two after we arrived, talking to Graziella and thanking her for everything she’d done for us, because she’d really been an excellent courier.”
“Yes,” I said, hoping that no one else would appear in her narrative whose merits required tribute, “and then?”
“Well, it had been pretty hot all day, so we all wanted to shower and change before dinner. We stopped at reception to collect our keys and Kenneth’s wasn’t there, so he said that Ned must still be in their room. So we all walked back together — our rooms were right opposite each other, not in the main part of the hotel, we had to go across a little bridge to get to them — and Kenneth and I were still talking about things we’d seen in Verona. When we got there, Kenneth went to open the door to his room and it was locked. Then he knocked and called out to Ned to let him in, but there wasn’t any answer.”
“Was it the kind of door,” asked Selena, “which could have been locked from the outside by someone who didn’t have a key?”
“Oh yes — all the bedroom doors lock automatically — I guess they figure it’s better security-wise.”
“I’m sorry,” said Selena. “I shouldn’t have interrupted you — do go on.”
“Well, Kenneth seemed a bit concerned, because Ned hadn’t been feeling too good at lunch-time — he was nervous about the plane flight and Kenneth was afraid he might have passed out or something. I thought Kenneth was over-reacting, because I figured Ned had just gone out and forgotten to leave the key at reception. Well, either way, I didn’t think it made too much sense just standing round in the corridor looking at the door and saying ‘Open Sesame.’ So I looked round and there was a chambermaid just coming out of our room — I guess she’d been turning the sheets down — and I asked her if she could let the Signor Dunfermline into his room, because his friend seemed to have gone out and taken the key with him. And she said perhaps his friend was still there but sleeping, because he was very tired perhaps. And she kind of giggled — I don’t know why.”
“The Italians,” said Selena, “have a very odd sense of humour.”
“I said maybe he was, but he’d have to stop sleeping now, because the Signor Dunfermline wanted to shower before dinner. So she kind of giggled again and shrugged her shoulders and unlocked the door. Kenneth started to go in and he turned the light on and he was still talking to us, you know, looking over his shoulder, saying he wouldn’t be long and he’d see us at dinner. Then he stopped and said ‘Oh, my God,’ and I said ‘What’s the matter, Kenneth?’ and he just said ‘Oh, my God’ again. So I went in to see what was wrong. There wasn’t too much light in the room and at first I thought Ned was just sleeping. I kind of remember thinking, ‘He doesn’t look too comfortable lying that way, I don’t know how he can breathe with his face in the pillow like that.’ And then I saw the blood.”
Respect for property cannot always be paramount. I remembered moreover that Cantrip had acquired at an early age a fair expertise in the art of lock-picking — I suppose it is one of the options in the Cambridge law syllabus.
“Cantrip,” I said, “could you get the sherry from Timothy’s room?”
“Absolutely,” said Cantrip.
It was not only Marylou who required some stimulus to fortitude. Selena, in particular, was disconcerted by the removal from suspicion of Kenneth Dunfermline — Timothy’s opinion that he was the person most likely to be accepted by the Italian police as an alternative to Julia had carried weight with her. She began to look through the guide book lying on Ragwort’s desk.
“According to this,” she said, as Cantrip returned successful and began to pour sherry, “Verona is 124 kilometres from Venice. That, I believe, is about 75 miles. It appears, moreover, that there is easy communication between the two cities by bus, train and motor-car. It sounds, therefore, as if it might be possible, if one arrived in Verona at about three o’clock, to return to Venice and get back again in time to catch the motor-coach at half past six. We know, of course, Marylou, that you remember Kenneth Dunfermline being on the motor-coach. You have told us, however, that when you reached Verona you were deeply absorbed in the artistic and architectural glories of the city—‘enchanted,’ I think, was the word you used — and in those circumstances you might perhaps hardly have noticed, indeed not noticed at all, whether he was still in your company?”
“Not all the time,” said Marylou. “But we had tea right around four o’clock at the Cafe Dante, and Stanford and I shared a table with him.”
“When you got back to the hotel,” I asked, “you’re sure Kenneth could not have gone up to his room ahead of you and then come back to cross the bridge with you for the second time?”
“Quite sure, Professor Tamar,” said Marylou. “It was the way I told you — we were all together the whole time. If you’ve been hypothesizing that Kenneth might have done it — well, I’m sorry, but that’s just totally nonviable in terms of the time-space factor.”
We devoted ourselves with some despondency to our sherry — its excellence was no more than a marginal consolation.
“Reverting,” I said, “if it is not too painful for you, Marylou, to the discovery of the murder — there seem, from your description, to have been no signs of a struggle? Nothing to suggest that the unfortunate young man was stabbed in the course of a quarrel or anything of that nature?”
“No,” she said, “I guess not. It didn’t look like there’d been any kind of confrontation. It just looked like Ned had been lying face down, sleeping maybe, and if someone had come up quietly — well, Ned wouldn’t have known too much about it.”
“Have you any idea,” I asked, “why the Venetian police suspect Julia?”
“That’s what I don’t understand, Professor Tamar — I thought Julia was right out of it. You see, after we found Ned the way I told you, it was a pretty confused situation. I wanted Stanford to go get the Manager but Stanford was very resistant to leaving me. And I wasn’t about to leave Kenneth alone in the state he was in — he was in a really bad way, Professor Tamar. He was just kneeling by the bed with his arm round Ned’s shoulders and — well, I guess he was crying. Stanford said afterwards he didn’t think the British behaved that way. I pointed out
