For a moment I thought I was going to catch him. My front bumper was only a foot off his rear fender, and I was ready to swing the wheel over and hit him, but he began to pull away.
We were travelling now at around eighty miles an hour. I heard a shrill, indignant police whistle blasting somewhere in my rear. I saw beyond the speeding Renault the Piazza Venezia looming up. I saw the slow-moving traffic ahead, and my nerve faltered. I knew I couldn't roar into the piazza at this speed without hitting a car or killing someone. My foot went down on the brake pedal and I slowed.
The Renault kept away from me. Its horn gave a long, warning blast, and men the car went screeching into the piazza, missing two cars by inches, and forcing another to skid to a standstill. Only slightly slackening it's mad speed, the Renault; its horn blaring, stormed across the piazza, and disappeared into the darkness and towards the Tiber.
I heard the police whistle shrill again. Anxious not to have an argument with the law, and pretty certain I had been travelling too fast for any policeman in this light to have taken my number, I swung into the Via Cavour, slowed down to a respectable speed and took a long circular run back to the Colosseum.
I was rattled that the Renault had got away, but I would rather he escaped than for me to attempt to compete with his kind of driving. At least, I had the satisfaction of knowing I had given him a scare.
I arrived at Frenzi's ground-floor apartment, parked the Lincoln outside and went up the steps to the front door.
Frenzi answered my ring immediately.
'Come in,' he said. 'It is good to see you again.'
I followed him into his attractively furnished lounge.
'Will you have a drink?' he asked.
'No, I don't think so, thanks.'
I sat on the arm of a lounging chair and looked at him.
Frenzi was slightly built, under medium height, dark, handsome with intelligent, shrewd eyes. His usually bright face was grave and he wore a worried frown.
'You must have something to keep me company,' he said 'Join me in a brandy.'
'Well, okay.'
While he was fixing the drinks, he went on, 'This is a very bad business, Ed. The account only says she fell off a cliff. Have you any details? What was she doing in Sorrento?'
'She was on vacation there.'
He brought the drinks over and, giving me mine, he began to move restlessly about the room.
'It's straightforward, isn't it?' he asked, without looking at me. 'I mean, it was an accident?'
This startled me.
'Confidentially, there is some doubt about it,' I said. 'Chalmers thinks she was murdered.'
He hunched his shoulders, his frown deepening.
'And the police – what do they think?'
'They're coming around to the same idea. Carlotti's handling the case. At first, he was sure it was an accident; now he's changing his mind,'
Frenzi looked at me.
'I'm willing to bet it was murder,' he said quietly.
I lit a cigarette and slid into a chair.
'What makes you say that, Giuseppe?'
'Sooner or later, someone was bound to get rid of her. She was asking for trouble.'
'What do you know about her then?'
He hesitated, then came over and sat opposite me.
'You and I are good friends, Ed. I need your advice. I was going to call you when you called me. Can we talk off the record?'
'Of course. Go ahead.'
'I met her at a party about five days after she had arrived in Rome. I was foolish enough to become friendly with her for four-or five days – or rather nights.' He looked at me and lifted his shoulders. 'You know how it is with me. She seemed beautiful, exciting and everything a man could wish for. She was also alone. I made my offer and she accepted it, but ...' He broke off and grimaced.
'But – what?'
'After we had spent four nights together, she asked me for money.'
I stared at him.
'You mean, she wanted to borrow money from you?'
'Well, no. She wanted money for services rendered: as sordid as that – quite a lot of money.'
'How much?'
'Four million lire.'
'For the love of mike! She must have been crazy! What did you do? Laugh at her?'
'She was serious. I had trouble in persuading her that I hadn't such a sum. There was a very disagreeable scene. She said if she told her father, he would ruin me. He would get me dismissed from my paper.'
I felt a sudden chill crawl up my spine.
'Wait a minute. Are you telling me she tried to blackmail you?'
'That's the technical name for it, I believe.'
'Well, what happened?'
'I compromised. I gave her a pair of diamond ear-rings.'
'You didn't submit to blackmail, Giuseppe?'
He shrugged.
'It is easy to criticize, but I was in a very difficult position.
'Chalmers is powerful enough to get me removed from my paper. I like my job. I'm not good at anything else. It was her word against mine. I haven't a very good reputation with women. I was pretty sure she was bluffing, but I couldn't afford to take the risk. The ear-rings cost me thirty-four thousand lire, so I suppose I got off fairly lightly: much lighter than one of your colleagues.'
I was sitting forward now, staring at him.
'What do you mean?'
'I wasn't the only one, of course. There was another newspaper man – an American – who she tricked in the same way. Never mind who he is. We compared notes together later. He parted with a diamond collar that cost him most of his savings. Apparently, she specialized in newspaper men. Her father's influence was more readily felt in that field.'
I felt suddenly sick. If what Frenzi had said was true, and I was sure it was true, then it was obvious that Helen had set a trap for me, and if she hadn't fallen over the cliff, I also would have been taken for a blackmail ride.
I saw then that if this story of Frenzi's got out, and the police discovered that I was the mysterious Mr. Sherrard, here was the obvious motive for her murder. They would say she had tried to blackmail me; I was unable to pay, and, to save my new job, I had pushed her off the cliff.
