Roman Nights by Dorothy Dunnett Read Free Book Online Page B

to Maurice’s twin-urn burials of his friends’ reputations could stand up to a mad portrait painter with an eye to the main chance like Johnson. Ah, well. Ah bleeding well, Russell.
    The Hassler is built on the Pincio Hill. Through the plate-glass walls of the roof restaurant you can see all of Rome and her hills and monuments and bits of the Tiber. You can also see, as Johnson reported, the Piazza di Spagna and the steps. I sat at a window table with Johnson and had an amber antiseptic negroni with lemon and ice balls, and watched the corner into the Via Condotti to see if Di would come out and where she was lunching. Johnson said, ‘You don’t think he’s in Naples?’
    I said, ‘Do you live here? Or are you living with Maurice?’ Monogrammed napkins had appeared: iced water, rolls and butter in ice. The headwaiter drifted around us in his grey jacket like a shadow, smiling when the bifocals glittered.
    ‘I stay with Maurice for the gossip.’ Johnson said. ‘I come to Rome for the action. If you want to know where he is, I can find out for you. I have a boat at Naples, with radio telephone.’
    ‘The Dolly,’ I said. The lenses, dazzling into my eyes, reflected the yellow-fringed swags of the pavilion. I said, ‘Did Maurice send him to Naples?’
    ‘Maurice,’ said Johnson, ‘is a legal escape clause to himself, as you will recognize. All I have said is that if you want to speak to Charles, I can arrange it.’
    I said, ‘I’m not interested in where he is now. I only want to know where he wants to be.’
    There was a pause. ‘Married to you, I imagine,’ said Johnson.
    The dining-room filled. Roman matrons sat facing each other, bouffant head to perfect bouffant head, the straight cashmere backs rippled with corseting. The businessmen. American, German, Italian, drank and discussed slipped discs and smoking and hotels they had stayed in at Frankfurt. Johnson said, ‘People with good taste don’t change overnight.’
    ‘You think not?’ I said. I thought of Maurice and all his awestruck encomium of Johnson and his cosmopolitan living. I said prosaically, ‘Then why should Charles suddenly want to marry me?’
    I waited for him to flunk it, or bish it, or paper it over. Instead he thought, and then said, ‘To protect you?’
    I stared at him. They were serving us with brochettes of lamb, slipped off the charcuterie wire, with tossed salad glistening beside them. A flagon of Antinori, Chianti classico 1966, had arrived instead of champagne. It was all quite different from what I had expected. I said, ‘It was you who said there was no need to go to the police. We’ve done nothing wrong, except hide the fact that we were in the zoo. We didn’t see the man die.’
    ‘But,’ said Johnson, ‘you know two things the police haven’t discovered. You know who was with the dead man. And you know why he died. You know what was in Lord Digham’s camera.’
    ‘So do you,’ I said. ‘So do Jacko and Innes and Diana and the couture house and Maurice, for all I know, as well as poor Charles himself. If I need protection, then so do we all. How shall we pair off?’ I added.
    ‘Morally, genetically or aesthetically?’ Johnson inquired. The sweet trolley stood to one side, awaiting us: I could see fresh strawberries and a deep bowl of cream; gooseberry tart, pears in brandy and gâteau. The waiter replenished my wine. Johnson said, ‘Who do you imagine killed that man in the loo? Mila Schön or Carlo Palazzi in person? The pirating of a season’s fashions can make the fortune of a wholesale house and bankrupt a couturier. Where big money is involved, big operators are hired. The two men you saw together in the Villa Borghese might even have been rivals. There was a struggle for the film in the toletta, and the first man had his head blown off.’ He broke off. ‘I’m sure he had an obituary.’
    He had several. I recited the most recent one, rapidly:
     
    ‘Just as you were, you will always