a door stood open; from it came the sound of gargantuan snores. John put his fingers to his lips and we tiptoed past. The cat opened one eye, looked at us with the ineffable contempt only cats can express with one eye, and closed it again.
There was a stairway on each of the four sides of the court, leading up to the apartments. It sounds more pretentious than it was. Everything about the place, except the cat, was weedy and shabby. The staircase smelled of garlic. We went up on tiptoe, meeting no one. On the top floor John produced his key and opened the door.
I was so on edge I half expected Bruno to come bounding out at us. But the apartment was empty. It had the dusty, unoccupied smell of a place that had been uninhabited for many days. Yet my nostrils seemed to catch another, more elusive scent, though it was almost buried under the aroma of garlic from the hall. John noticed it too. His nostrils quivered. Then he shrugged.
‘My things are in the bedroom,’ he said softly. ‘Wait here.’
He closed the door. It had an automatic spring lock that snapped into place. As John crossed the room I looked the place over. A cubicle at the end of the living room had a tiny refrigerator and a two burner stove. Apparently that was all there was to the place – living room and bedroom and, presumably, a bathroom.
John opened the bedroom door.
He stopped in midstride as if he had run into a wall of hard, invisible glass. I ran to him. He lifted one arm to keep me out. His muscles were as rigid as steel. I couldn’t get past him, but I could see; and after the first glance I had no desire to proceed any farther.
The room had a single window and two doors, probably those of bathroom and closet. It was a small room. The bed almost filled it.
She was lying on the bed. She wore a pale-blue negligee of thin silk, all wrinkled and crushed under her, as if she had struggled. Her body was beautiful – a little too plump, but exquisitely curved. I recognized the curves, and the silky pale hair that fanned out across the pillow; but I would never have recognized her face.
I TURNED ASIDE and leaned against the door-frame, my hands over my eyes. Through the roaring in my ears I heard John’s footsteps, then a series of rustling, rubbing noises, unpleasantly suggestive. Finally he spoke, in a voice I never would have recognized as his.
‘It’s all right. I’ve covered her.’
I looked out of the corner of one eye. The thing on the bed was anonymous now – a long, low mound of white cotton sheeting. But it would be a long time before I could forget that hideous, bloated face. John was standing by the bed. His features were under control, but a tiny muscle in his cheek quivered like a beating pulse.
‘Why?’ I whispered. ‘Why would anybody want to kill her?’
‘I don’t know. She was so harmless. Stupid and vain and silly, but utterly harmless . . . And so proud of her pretty face.’
There was a note in his voice as he said that, a look on his face . . . It reminded me of the way he had looked earlier that day when I had asked him whether anyone knew about his apartment.
‘She knew,’ I said. ‘That’s how the gang found out. You brought her here. You and she were – ’
‘For God’s sake, do you think I’m that stupid? She was Pietro’s mistress, and utterly without guile. I wouldn’t risk telling her, or bringing her here.’
‘But you and she – ’
‘That makes no difference,’ John said. ‘Except, possibly, to me.’
‘You’ve got to get out of here,’ I exclaimed. ‘They put her here so that you would be blamed for her death.’
‘That was a mistake,’ John said, in the same quiet voice.
‘I can give you an alibi.’
He shook his head.
‘She’s been dead at least twelve hours, possibly longer. They will claim I killed her last evening, before they locked me in the cellar.’
I understood then why he looked so sick. It could not have been easy for him to handle the cold flesh he had once caressed.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said haltingly. ‘I rather liked her.’
The faintest ghost of his old smile touched the corners of his pale mouth.
‘So did I . . . This changes the situation, Vicky. I’m too confused to think clearly, but I don’t believe I can walk away from this.’
‘You must. I can’t seem to think either . . . When do you suppose they brought her here? John, you must have told her about this place. How else would they know about it?’
He started to speak. Then his jaw dropped, and the most extraordinary expression transformed his face.
Knowing what I know now, I’m not sure he would have told me the truth about the revelation that had just struck him, but I am sure that things would have worked out much more neatly for us if he had had time to think it over. But at that moment someone started knocking at the door of the apartment.
This final shock, on top of all the others, was almost too much for my bewildered brain. I can’t say I was surprised – only infuriated that I had not anticipated this. If the gang wanted to incriminate John, what better way to ensure that he would be caught than by making an anonymous phone call to the police? They had laid a neat little ambush, and now we were trapped.
John slammed the bedroom door shut and – after a moment’s hesitation – shoved the bed up against it.
‘There’s no way out,’ I gasped. ‘Maybe we should give ourselves up. John, I’ll tell them – ’
‘Shut up.’ He crossed the room in a single bound and flung up the window.
The wall went straight down, three stories, to a narrow alley paved with stone.
‘I am not a human fly,’ I said. The pounding at the outer door was now decidedly peremptory.
‘Up,’ John said. He had his head and shoulder out of the window. I looked out.
This building wasn’t one of your palatial high-ceilinged old mansions. The eaves of the roof were less than six feet above the windowsill. It still didn’t strike me as such a great idea, and I was about to say so when John grabbed me around the waist.
‘I hope you aren’t afraid of heights,’ he said, and helped me out the window.
I am not afraid of heights. As I stood there, my fingers curved over the eaves, and John’s arms clasping my thighs, I heard the outer door give with a crash. The pounding recommenced, on the bedroom door.
‘Get to a phone,’ John snapped. ‘Call Schmidt. Tell him everything.’
I started to say something, but before I could speak he transferred his grip to my knees and heaved me up. I saw his face go dead white as his arms took my full weight. Then my elbows were over the edge of the roof. From then on it was a piece of cake. John’s hands on the soles of my shoes gave one last push that took me onto the flat roof.
He had time to close the window and move away from it before the bedroom door gave way. When I peered down, I saw the window was closed, and I heard the sounds from inside the room. He put up quite a fight.
He could never have climbed onto the roof. I kept telling myself that as I scuttled across the steaming, tarred surface. Without his pushing me from below I couldn’t have made it myself, and he only had one good arm. I also kept telling myself that he was safe now, in the hands of the police, and that as soon as I could reach Schmidt he would be all right. At least he wouldn’t be charged with murder. I wondered if the Italian police used the third degree on suspects.
I knew he hadn’t killed Helena. I couldn’t think of a reason why anyone would want to kill her. Pietro wasn’t the type to fly into a jealous passion, even if he had discovered she was unfaithful to him; he would just curse and shrug and dump her. There was, of course, the possibility that she had stumbled on some information that made her dangerous to the gang. But what? She wasn’t awfully bright, poor girl, and I doubted that she could have learned more than John and I knew. The gang had imprisoned us when they decided we were dangerous. Perhaps they had meant to kill us. But why kill her? A handful of diamonds would have shut her mouth quite effectively – and they needn’t have been real diamonds. One of Luigi’s pretty copies would have fooled her nicely. No, there was no
