arcane literature. Now I was being granted the rare privilege of entry to this inner sanctum. What would I find there?
I sat for a while with eyes closed, listening to the muffled aria that thrilled through the sunshine. How I loved Italy! The heat assuaged by salty air, bright with dragon-flies humming over starched white tablecloths. I caught sight of a woman a few tables from me. She had her back to me and I took the opportunity to drink in the details of her exquisite carriage.
She wore a splendid canary-yellow creation with a high, transparent collar, tight against her throat and her hair was hidden beneath the brim of a huge oval hat. Of course, there are few things in life more deceptive than a person’s back view. How many times have you yourself spotted someone at the theatre or on the underground whose magnificent bearing and gorgeous, swan-like neck have lured you into a state of unconditional lust? Only to discover, as they bend to read, to adjust a shoe or step off the staircase, that they have a face like a Transylvanian fish-wife.
I ordered tea with lemon and sat with my chin on my hand, surveying the lovely, graceful woman before me who would, any moment now, turn and reveal herself to be a gorgon.
The woman seemed to be listening to the aria as well. Her head was cocked attentively. I imagined she was smiling. At last she shifted in her seat and the sunshine illumined her face.
My teacup clattered on to its saucer.
The woman was Bella Pok.
I rose and, raising my hat, stepped into her line of sight. Shading her eyes, she smiled sweetly at me as though we had simply run into one another at the Cafe Royal.
«Lucifer!» she cried. «I’m so delighted. I had anticipated traipsing all over Naples to find you and yet here you are, large as life.»
She gestured to a chair and I sank into it. «I don’t suppose this is a coincidence?»
«Not a bit,» she said with a grin. «You really can’t expect a girl to return to her drab little existence after becoming involved in Mr Miracle’s adventure! Whatever’s going on, I yearn to be part of it. Please say you’ll have me!»
Which is the sort of invitation one longs to hear from such as Mademoiselle Pok.
I shook my head, however. «There is nothing going on. As I told you, I have business here in Naples which I hope to combine with a little sketching. You know it is vital for we daubers to refresh ourselves now and then.»
She looked hard at me.
«Don’t be so disappointing,» she said.
I sighed. «I’m afraid I must escort you back to your hotel, Miss Pok,» I said, «and then put you on the first boat back to England.»
«You certainly shan’t put
«Bella»
«I want to be at your side, Lucifer!»
«On no account!» I snapped.
«But if there’s nothing to fear, then why ever not? Am I such an embarrassment?»
«Of course not.»
«Well then.»
She sighed and sat back in her chair, the brim of her hat eclipsing the dazzling disc of the sun. «Whatever can I do to persuade you?»
Well, she didn’t have to do much in the end. Fact is, I was fearfully besotted with her and her boldness in following me to Naples had only endeared her more to me. Over a kir or three, she cajoled and argued until all I could think of was the glow of her lovely face and the wide, inviting mouth I so longed to kiss.
«Very well,» I said at last. «If you mean to stay then you are welcome. But this is no holiday for me. You must excuse me if I have to… dash off at the most inopportune moments.»
«Of course.»
«May I see you to your hotel?»
She was staying, appropriately enough, at the Vesuvio. We made an appointment to meet there the next day and I walked back to the Santa Lucia,
Well, she would certainly help take my mind off the business in hand. The danger was that she would do so too effectively. I had work to do in Naples. This was not a honeymoon.
After dressing for dinner I hailed a cab and barked out Quibble’s address in my ever-so-good Italian. I am, naturally, a master of languages. I have, in addition to robust Eye-tie, a little French, a little German and some particularly filthy Latin. I am also quite good at American.
Stooping to conquer with a «
The weather had deteriorated into a stinker of an evening. Sweaty mist hung in great miasmic wreaths around the jumble of crumbling stucco, my carriage cutting a coffin-shaped swathe through it as we climbed ever higher. The humidity was so thick that the traffic seemed scarcely to move at all. I could hear the soft clop of horseshoes on the cobbles, muffled by the atmosphere as though for a funeral.
As we ascended the mountain, the mist cleared slightly to reveal verdant countryside thick with dark olive groves until, at last, the carriage drew to a halt. Six or seven lonely cottages clustered around the edifice of a mansion like mournful piglets around a long-dead sow.
It must have been a grim place at the best of times, but on an oppressive evening like this one, I felt positively mournful as I bid the driver wait and made my way up the weed-throttled gravel to the gates. Thick creepers were enmeshed in every part of the ironwork, as though a mob trying to get in had been turned, by some spell, into a jungle of rain-rotted vegetation.
I pulled at the bell and ran a finger under my stiff collar.
Presently, the gates juddered open, squealing as they were hauled over ground thick with a sediment of dead leaves.
«Good evening,» I said to the ancient butler who emerged around the edge of the gate.
«Good evening, sir. Mr Box, is it? Sir Emmanuel is expecting you, sir.»
«You’re English?»
«Naturally, sir. As are the entire staff. My name is Stint. Might I advise you to loosen your garments, sir?»
«Beg pardon?»
«It is a trifle warm within, sir,» he wheezed.
He was like a column of smoke in livery. Pale eyes, pale face, wispy white hair and whiskers. To my very great surprise he appeared to be shirt-less beneath his threadbare uniform.
Stint kicked the front door to open it, so swollen was the woodwork. Once inside, he ushered me down a stifling corridor, the once-bright blooms of its wallpaper faded into bleak greys. Piled high in heaps all along the walls, their cloth bindings waxy with age, were hundreds of books.
«It’s very…um… dark, Stint,» I said at last, removing my coat.
«No lamps, sir.» He shook his white head mournfully. «Sir Emmanuel does not care for the light, you see. I have been trying to persuade him as to the virtues of the electricity. But that, as they say, will be the day.»
The room I now entered was fat with books. They lined the walls, covered the floor, hung around in tottering heaps in the shadowed corners. The combined mass of ruddy old leather and faded gilt should have lent the room a jolly air, but the fire blazing in the hearth made the place like a hot-house.
The firelight illuminated the figure of Emmanuel Quibble, swathed in black like some behemothal spider. The impression was reinforced by a number of mahogany reading-stands that projected from his chair on telescopic appendages thus allowing him to consult as many as eight or nine volumes at any one time.
He wheeled himself forward with one china-blue hand. The other, inevitably, clutched a book over his blanket-covered lap. He was probably sixty-odd yet contrived to look twice that. What little hair he had was of an almost translucent blond, as though old straw had been carelessly applied to his scalp with gum. Forever in the habit of licking his lips, an angry red halo had developed around them and his eyes were nigh on invisible behind a pair of ancient, filthy, thickly lensed pince-nez.
