“He left on the three-forty plane from Naples.” I made myself a highball. “Hold everything for a moment. I want something to eat. I haven’t had a thing since lunch.”
“Well, come out. I’ll buy you something.”
“It’s too late now.” I picked up the telephone recover and called the hall porter. I told him to get me a chicken sandwich and bring it up pronto.
“Well, give us the dope,” Maxwell said, when I had hung up. “Did you find what she was doing in that place all alone? How did she die?”
I was careful what I told him, I said it looked as if there was a man in the background, that the police weren’t entirely satisfied that Helen’s death bad been accidental, and that Chalmers had told me to stick around and watch his interests. I didn’t tell him what June had said, nor that Helen had been pregnant.
He sat listening, sipping his brandy.
“So you’re not going home right away?”
“Not for a while.”
“I told you the old sonofabitch would want an investigation, didn’t I? Well, thank my stars,
I’m not involved.”
I said he was lucky.
“What’s biting the police? Why aren’t they satisfied?”
“Carlotti likes mysteries. He always turns molehills into mountains.”
“Does Chalmers think it was an accident?”
“He’s keeping an open mind about it.”
“Do you?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“This girl was a ripe little bitch. You don’t think her boy friend shoved her over the cliff, do you?”
“I hope not. Chalmers would love a set-up like that.”
“There’s bound to be a man in this, Ed. She wouldn’t have taken a villa in Sorrento if she hadn’t a man to share it with. Any idea who he could be?”
“Not the vaguest, but never mind that, Jack. Tell me something: who’s June Chalmers?”
He looked surprised, then grinned.
“She’s a pippin, isn’t she? But if you’ve got ideas about her, I’d forget them. You wouldn’t get to first base.”
“Nothing like that. I want to know who she is. Where does the come from? Do you know anything about her?”
“Not much. She used to be a torch singer at one of Menotti’s night spots.”
I stiffened. Menotti again.
“Is that how she and Helen met?”
“Could be: did they meet?”
“She told me she had known Helen for some years.”
“Did she now? I didn’t know that. I heard Chalmers met her at a party, took one look at her and practically married her on the spot. It was lucky for her that he did. The night club she was working at closed down when Menotti was knocked off. Although the certainly has a shape, she can’t sing for dimes.”
The night porter interrupted us by bringing my sandwich.
Maxwell got to his feet.
“Well, here are your victuals. I’ll be pushing along. When’s the inquest?”
“Monday.”
“You’ll go down, I suppose?”
“I guess so.”
“Rather you than me. Well, so long. Will you look in at the office to-morrow?”
“I might. I’m leaving you to handle that end. Officially, I’m still on vacation.”
“And having a wonderful time,” he said, grinned and went away.
I sat down and munched my sandwich. I did some heavy thinking at the same time. I had hoped to have found a list of telephone numbers or an address book among Helen’s papers that might give me a lead on her friends. If she had kept such a list, then someone had taken it. The only clue I had so far was Carlo’s telephone number. There was a girl I knew who worked on the Rome telephone exchange. She had once won a beauty competition, and I had given her a write-up. One thing had led to another, and for a couple of months we had been more than friendly. Then I lost sight of her. I decided I’d look her up in the morning and persuade her to get me Carlo’s address.
Apart from Carlo, who else was there.
I dug down into my mind to recall anything that Helen had said during our various meetings that would give me a lead on her other friends. It wasn’t until I was about to give up and go to bed that I suddenly remembered she had once mentioned Giuseppe Frenzi, who wrote a
political column for L
When Frenzi wasn’t writing his column, he was going around with women. He claimed that an association with a beautiful woman was the only true meaning of life. Knowing Frenzi, I was pretty sure that he and Helen had been a lot more than just friends. Frenzi had a technique of his own, and if I was to believe Maxwell, Helen wasn’t the kind of girl to say no.
I thought Frenzi might be an important lead.
I looked at my watch. The time was twenty minutes to midnight: the beginning of a day for Frenzi, who never got up before eleven o’clock in the morning and never went to bed before four.
I picked up the telephone receiver and called his apartment. There was just a remote chance that he would still be there.
He answered immediately.
“Ed? Well, this is something,” he said. He prided himself on his American expressions. “I was about to call you. I’ve only just read the news about Helen. Is it true? Is she really dead?”
“She’s dead all right. I want to talk to you, Giuseppe. Can I come around?”
“Of course. I will wait for you.”
“I’ll be right over,” I said, and hung up.
I left the apartment and ran down the staircase to where I had left the Lincoln.
It was raining, as it will do suddenly and unexpectedly in Rome. I ducked into the car, set the windscreen wipers in motion; started the engine and backed out of the parking space.
Frenzi had an apartment on Via Claudia in the shadow of the Colosseum. It wasn’t more than a six-minute drive from my place to his.
There wasn’t much traffic and, as I accelerated, I saw, out of the corner of my eye, a car that was parked nearby suddenly turn on its parking lights and, a moment later, it swung out into the road and came after me.
As it passed under the glare of a street light I saw it was the Renault.
II
It isn’t often that I lose my temper, but when I do, I have a field-day. The sight of the Renault gave me a rush of blood to my head.
I became determined to find out who the driver was, and what he was playing at. So long as the car was behind me, there wasn’t much I could do about it. Somehow I had to get him in front of me, then I could crowd him into the kerb, force him to stop and get a look at him. If he wanted to play it rough, I was in the mood to hang one on his jaw.
I drove around the Colosseum with the Renault fifty yards in the rear. When I reached a dark patch in the road, I slammed on my brakes, swung the car to the kerb and pulled up.
Taken by surprise, the driver of the Renault had no chance to stop. The car shot past me. It was too dark to see whether the driver was a man or a woman. The moment the car had passed me, I let in my clutch and went
