PART FOUR
I
The police launch rounded the bend of the high cliff. I was sitting in the stern of the boat by Carlotti. He was smoking, and he wore blue-tinted sunglasses. It seemed odd to me that a policeman should wear sunglasses. I felt he should be above such luxuries.
Grandi and three uniformed policemen were amidships. Grandi didn’t wear sunglasses: whatever he did would always be official and correct.
As soon as we got around the bend, I recognized the tiny bay and the massive boulders on which Helen had fallen.
Carlotti stared up at the cliff head. He made a little face. I could see he was thinking what it must have felt to have fallen from such a height. Looking up, I also thought the same thing. The distant cliff head up there made me feel like a pigmy.
The boat chugged into the bay. As soon as it drew alongside the rocks, we scrambled out.
Grandi said to Carlotri, “We haven’t touched anything. I wanted you to see it first. All we did was to remove the body.”
He and Carlotti began a systematic search of the spot. I and two of the policemen sat on one of the bouiders, out of the way, and watched them. The third policeman remained in the boat.
It wasn’t long before Grandi found the camera case I had tossed over the cliff. It was lying half-submerged in water, between two boulders. He fished it up. Both he and Carlotri examined it the way a couple of professors would have examined something that had fallen off Mars.
I noted the careful way Carlotti handled the case, and I was thankful I had got rid of all my prints.
Finally he looked over at me.
“This must be hers. Was she interested in photography?”
I very nearly said she was, but caught myself in time.
“I wouldn’t know,” I said. “Most Americans on a visit to Italy bring a camera.”
Carlotti nodded and handed the camera case to one of the policemen who put it carefully into a plastic bag.
They continued their search. After about ten minutes and after they had climbed some distance from where I was sitting, I saw they had made another discovery. Grandi bent and picked something up from between the cliff face and a rock. The two men stood close together, their backs to me while they examined whatever it was they had found.
I waited, smoking, aware that my heart kept thumping and my mouth was dry.
Finally, after what seemed to me a lifetime, Carlotti made his way to where I was sitting. I pushed off from the rock and went to meet him. I saw he was holding what remained of Helen’s Paillard Bolex camera. It had obviously hit a rock in its fall down the cliff face. The telephoto lens had snapped off and there was a dent in its side.
“This could explain how the accident happened,” Carlotti said, showing me the camera. “She was probably taking a picture; holding it like this.” He held up the camera and peered through the viewfinder. “If she had stood on the edge of the path up there, it would be easy for her to take a false step with this thing obscuring her view’.”
I took the camera from him and looked at the little window panel at the back that showed how many feet of film you have run off. It showed twelve feet.
“There’s a film in it,” I said. “From the look of the camera the water hasn’t got into it. Get the film processed, and you’ll know for sure if she was taking something from the cliff head.”
This seemed to please him.
All the time we had been driving down to the harbour and all the time we had been in the boat, heading towards the place where Helen had died, I knew he had been secretly worrying about the trouble Chalmers might make for him.
“If she hadn’t called herself Mrs. Douglas Sherrard,” he said, taking the camera from me, “this would be a very straightforward affair. We will go to the villa now. I want to talk to the village woman.”
We returned to the harbour of Sorrento, leaving two of the policemen to continue the search for clues. They seemed pretty depressed at being marooned on the rocks. I didn’t blame them. It was very hot out there, and there was no shade.
When we reached the harbour, we took the police car and drove out to the villa.
The trip back from the bay and the drive up to the villa took a little over an hour and a half.
We left the police car at the gates and walked up the drive. The Lincoln convertible still stood on the tarmac before the villa.
Carlotti said, “Did this car belong to her?”
I said I didn’t know.
Grandi broke in impatiently to say that he had already checked the registration plates. Helen had bought the car ten weeks ago: soon after she had arrived in Rome.
I wondered where the money had come from. It puzzled me. I told myself that it was possible that she had cabled to her father, and he had sent her the money but, remembering what he had said about her keeping within her allowance, it didn’t seem likely the money had come from him.
We trooped into the lounge. Carlotti asked me politely if I would sit down and wait while he examined the villa.
I sat down and waited.
They spent some time in the bedroom. After a while, Carlotri came out carrying a small leather box: the kind of box you buy in Florence when you’re hard put to give a friend at home a present.
“You had better take charge of these,” he said, putting the box on the table. “They must be given to il Signor Chalmers. Perhaps you will give me a receipt?”
He lifted the lid. In the box were some pieces of jewellery. There were two rings: one of them had a large sapphire stone; the other had three diamonds. There was a collar of diamonds and a pair of diamond ear-rings. I don’t know much about the value of jewellery, but even I could see that these would be worth quite a lot.
“They are very nice,” Carlotti said. He sounded a little wistful as if he coveted the jewels. “It is fortunate no one broke in here while the place was unguarded.”
I remembered the tall, broad-shouldered intruder.
“Where did you find them?” I asked.
“They were on her dressing-table for anyone to steal.”
“They’re genuine? I mean, they’re not paste?”
“Of course they are genuine.” He frowned at me. “I should say at a rough guess they are worth three million lire”
While he was scribbling out a receipt for me to sign, I stared at the box and its contents. On her dressing- table for anyone to steal! I felt a little chill of uneasiness crawl up my spine. It didn’t seem then that the intruder I had seen had been a sneak thief. Then who had he been? The sound of the telephone bell startled me.
Carlotti answered it.
He said, “Si… si.… si.” Listened for a long moment, then grunted something and hung up.
Grandi came into the room. His face wore an expectant expression.
Carlotti lit a cigarette before saying to me, “They have just had the autopsy report.”
I could see something had upset him. His eyes were uneasy again.
“Well, you know how she died,” I said in an attempt to bridge ever the long pause that followed.
“Yes, there is no doubt about that.”
He moved away from the telephone. I could feel his uneasiness the way you feel the touch of a hand in the dark.
“Is there anything else?”
