A Rich Full Death

been in love yourself, and had used his influential connections to foil a police enquiry into the circumstances of her death! Yes, I felt I deserved my glass of brandy.

It was this last, more than anything else that had happened, which struck me with a cruel piquancy. I had been duped, no question about it! By Miss Chauncey, certainly-but she was a professional, and that was to be expected. What was far more disturbing was to find that I had been duped by Robert Browning.

Here was a man whom I had taken to be a very pillar of integrity: one truly great, from whom I had thought to catch-like one in a valley looking longingly up at the far gleaming peaks he no longer aspires to-a little reflected radiance from that sun which had set for ever on my own life. And now not only had this man brutally rejected me once, when he thought my utility was at an end, but I found that in other ways too he was no better than anyone else: another trimmer and drifter whose life was crammed with compromises and secrets-and apparently up to his neck in this whole murky business, into the bargain!

I finished my brandy and wandered back out into the streets, where some sunlight had now contrived to break feebly through the glower overhead, making ghostly shadows on the huge flagstones of the street. As I passed the Badia-an old monastery whose bell-tower is one of the landmarks of the city-I realised with a start that the street on whose corner I was standing was none other than Via Dante Aligheri. Already I could see the house where Browning had called on our way out to Maurice Purdy’s-and in another moment I was on my way towards it, determined to find out once and for all the truth behind Browning’s lies and evasions.

The building was three tall storeys high, the ground floor being given over in the Italian fashion to stables and storage. I represented myself as being in search of my friend Signor Browning, and uncertain as to which suite he occupied, and by this means I soon discovered that the piano nobile was inhabited by a decaying countess, all chattels and no cash, and by various of her relatives-none of whom, clearly, had ever heard the name Browning, or knew any Englishmen, or had any idea what I was talking about.

On the next floor I found three servants of the countess, two squinting seamstresses, a consumptive singing teacher, a German student of art, a bookbinder, and a crazy old man who appeared at his door draped in the flag of the Guelph party. He watched me attentively as I knocked at the one remaining door.

‘Non c’e!’ he cackled-which might have meant either ‘he is not there’ or ‘she is not there’.

‘Who lives here?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know.’

‘When will (he or she) return?’

‘Late. (He or she) works.’

‘What work does (he or she) do?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Very well. I shall return this evening.’

‘Gregory returned from Avignon,’ the old man responded. ‘It is as God wills.’

Thus foiled for the moment, but with high hopes of imminent success, I returned home-where I went back to bed for a few hours. I awoke at four o’clock feeling properly refreshed at last, had a bath, and then read a few cantos of Dante while Piero prepared me a light meal. I was not sure what the evening would hold in store, and I wanted to be ready for anything.

Shortly before seven o’clock, while completing my toilet before leaving, I was informed that Robert Browning was at the door. I had never thought to see the day when this event would find me wishing that I had told Piero to say I was not at home, but such was now the case. After what I had learned that morning I had not the slightest desire to see Browning until I had returned to the house on Via Dante Aligheri and had a clearer idea just exactly what was afoot. His arrival just as I was preparing to go there was therefore extremely awkward.

There he was, however, and I could not very well send him away-although I made the point that I had an important engagement and could spare only a few minutes. Fortunately he was in the same position, which made matters considerably easier.

I gave him a brief account of what had happened the previous evening at the Chaunceys’, and its sequel that morning at police headquarters. The point which Browning seized upon was the inscription on the paper found in Edith Chauncey’s hand.

‘That of course proves that her death was no accident, but the latest in this series of murderous outrages. This time, however, we may at least console ourselves with the thought that the wretched woman brought it upon herself. She had learned the truth about how Mrs Eakin and DeVere died from my wife-who most unfortunately permits herself to be imposed upon by these foul creatures. I had of course told Elizabeth, as I tell her everything.’

Oh, really? I thought. Not quite everything, surely!

‘Miss Chauncey immediately saw a way to increase her standing in the spiritualist world-to thrust herself up amongst the celebrities of her rotten trade, beside that dung-ball Home. Sooner or later, she must have calculated, the truth about the murders would be revealed-and then everyone would remember how the spirits of Isabel Eakin and Cecil DeVere had said as much, long ago, at one of her “seances”! What an advertisement for the spiritualist movement, and for Miss Chauncey in particular! How the number of her followers would have increased, and with it the fees she might command and the donations she might expect! Remember, all this was bread and butter to her-she lived on the vomit she peddled, and would have lived like a queen if this scheme had worked! Instead she is justly hoist with her own petard-which in French, remember, means “to break wind”. Miss Muck the “medium” wanted to extinguish the feeble light our reason gives us, like blowing out candles with a breech-blast-only instead she blew herself up!’

This violent and immoderate language surprises, shocks you? But it is thus he ever talks of the spiritualist fraternity. His emotion soon spent itself, however, and was replaced by a calmer musing on the problems posed by this new abomination.

‘He frightens me, this murderer,’ Browning commented. ‘He is so clever-so terribly clever!’

‘He does not seem very clever to me,’ I retorted. ‘On the contrary, I believe he has made a mistake which may well prove fatal to him. For by killing Edith Chauncey-evidently to prevent her contacting the spirits of his earlier victims, and thus exposing his identity-he has identified himself in two ways: we know that he must believe in spiritualism and have been present at last night’s “seance”. That much, surely, is certain!’

‘It is just that which terrifies me,’ Browning replied quietly. ‘As you say, it appears certain- too certain! And the more I consider the matter, the more I am tempted to look for our killer in precisely the opposite direction, and figure him to myself as a confirmed sceptic who was nowhere near the Chaunceys’ rooms last night.’

‘Someone like yourself, in fact!’ I quipped.

Browning, to my astonishment, shot me a look of scorn.

‘Well as a matter of fact I was hard at hand, visiting a friend who lives on the floor below the Chaunceys’ suite-so you are quite wrong about that.’

I could by no means see the logic behind this pronouncement, but I said nothing, for I was impatient to be gone, and said as much to my visitor. We walked downstairs together, and Browning then strode off towards the Cathedral-whilst I cut across Florence to the street where her most famous son, himself an exile, once lived.

I walked quickly, impatient at the thought that this mystery was at last to be resolved, and by the time I reached the house and had run up the four flights of dark stairs I was quite out of breath. When I reached the landing I saw with an indescribable thrill a thin line of yellow light under the door at which I had knocked in vain that morning!

I paused until I had a little recovered my breath before knocking. My heart was thumping madly.

In the event I did not have long to wait. Almost immediately there was a quick scurry of footsteps, and the door was opened by a child I took to be a maid of some sort, dressed in a sort of loose shift, her long raven hair all undone, and on her face as was a look of wonder.

Nevertheless, she recovered her wits first, for she recognised me before I knew that it was Beatrice Ruffini, Isabel’s maid, that I was looking at.

We gazed at each other in silence for a long moment. Then she said, ‘Ah, you’ve come.’

‘Yes,’ I said-I did not know what else to say. Another long moment passed-or so it seemed, although strangely enough I did not feel in the least embarrassed by this bizarre scene.

‘I’m glad,’ she said at last. ‘But I can’t see you now.’