I had five days ahead of me before I left for Sorrento. During that time I had a lot to do, but I found concentration difficult.
I was like a teenager looking forward to his first date. This irritated me. I had imagined I would be blasé enough to take the situation Helen had engineered in my stride, but I wasn’t. The idea of spending a month alone with this exciting girl really got me going. In my saner moments — and they were few - I told myself I was crazy to go ahead with this, but I consoled myself with the knowledge of Helen’s efficiency. She had said it would be safe and I believed her. I argued that I would be a fool if I didn’t grab the chance of taking what she was offering me.
Two days before I was due to leave, Jack Maxwell arrived in Rome to take over the office in my absence.
I had worked alongside him in New York way back in 1949. He was a sound newspaper man, but he hadn’t much talent for anything but news. I didn’t care much for him. He was too goodlooking, too smooth, too well-dressed and too generally too.
I had an idea that he didn’t like me any more than I liked him, but this didn’t stop me from giving him a big welcome. After we had spent a couple of hours in the office going over future work, I suggested we should have dinner together.
“Fine,” he said “Let’s see what this ancient city has to offer. I warn you, Ed, I expect nothing but the best.”
I took him to Alfredo’s which is one of the better eating places in Rome, and gave him porchetta, which is sucking pig, roasted on a spit, partially boned and stuffed with liver, sausage-meat and herbs: it makes quite a meal.
After we had eaten and had got on to the third bottle of wine, he let his hair down and became friendly.
“You’re a lucky guy, Ed,” he said, accepting the cigarette I offered him. “You may not know it, but you’re the white-headed boy back home. Hammerstock thinks a lot of the stuff you’ve been turning in. I’ll tell you something off the record: only not a word to anyone. Hammerstock is having you back in a couple of months’ time. The idea is I’m to replace you here, and you’re going to get the foreign desk.”
“I don’t believe it,” I said, staring at him. “You’re kidding.”
“It’s a fact. I wouldn’t kid about a thing like that.”
I tried not to show my excitement, but I don’t think I succeeded very well. To be given the foreign desk at headquarters was the top of my ambition. Not only did it mean a whale of a lot more money, but it was also the plum job of all the jobs on Western Telegram.
“It’ll be official in a couple of days,” Maxwell told me. “The old man has already okayed it You’re a lucky guy.”
I said I was.
“Will you mind leaving Rome?”
“I’ll get used to it,” I said and grinned. “A job like that is worth the move out of Rome.”
Maxwell shrugged.
“I don’t know. I wouldn’t want it myself. It’s too much like hard work and it would kill me to work so close to the old man.” He sank lower in his chair. “That pig wasn’t half bad. I think I’m going to take to Rome.”
“There’s no city in the world to touch it.”
He fed a cigarette into his mouth, scratched a match alight and puffed smoke into my face.
“By the way, how’s rampaging Helen getting along?”
The question startled me.
“Who?”
“Helen Chalmers. You’re her nurse-maid or something, aren’t you?”
The red light went up. Maxwell had a nose for scandal. If he got the faintest suspicion that there was something between Helen and me, he would work at it until he had found out just what it was.
“I was a nurse-maid to her for exactly one day,” I said casually. “Since then I’ve scarcely seen her. The old man asked me to meet her at the airport and take her to her hotel. She’s working at the university, I believe.”
His eyebrows jerked up.
“She’s-what?”
“Working at the university,” I repeated. “She’s on some architecture course here.”
“Helen?” He leaned forward, stared at me, then burst out laughing. “That’s the funniest thing I have ever heard. Helen on an architecture course!” He leaned back in his chair and roared. People turned around to stare at us. He certainly sounded as if he had heard the funniest joke of the century. I didn’t find it all that funny. It was as much as I could do not to kick my chair away and plant my fist in his handsome face.
When he got over laughing, he caught my eye. Maybe he saw I wasn’t all that amused because he made an effort to control himself and he waved an apologetic hand.
“Sorry, Ed.” He took out his handkerchief and mopped his eyes. “If you knew Helen like I know Helen…” He broke off to laugh again.
“Look, it can’t be all that funny,” I said, a rasp in my voice.
“What gives?”
“It is funny. Don’t tell me she has taken you in too? Up to now the only guy on the Telegram staff who isn’t on to her is her old man. Don’t tell me you haven’t got her taped yet?”
“I’m not fallowing this. What do you mean?”
“Well, you certainly can’t have seen much of her. I had an idea she might have gone for you: she seems to fall for big, husky he-men. Don’t tell me she showed up in Rome in her flat heels, specs and scraped-back hair-do?”
“I’m still not following you, Jack. What is all this?”
“All this?” He grinned. “It seems you’re luckier than I thought possible, or unlucky, depending how you look at it. All the boys back home know about her. She’s notorious. When we heard she was heading for Rome and the old man wanted you to keep an eye on her, we all thought, sooner or later, you’d be a dead duck. She’ll make a play at anything in trousers. You
mean to tell me she hasn’t tried to make a pass at you?”
I felt myself turn hot, then cold.
“This is something new to me,” I said, speaking casually.
“Well, well. She’s a menace to men. Okay, I admit she has everything. She has looks, comeon eyes and a shape that would bring a corpse alive, but the trouble she can get a guy into! If Chalmers wasn’t the biggest power in newspapers, every paper in New York would be carrying headlines about her at least once a week. She only escapes publicity because no newspaper wants to get on the wrong side of the old man. She gets into pretty near every damn mess there is. It was only because she was involved in the Menotti slaying that she cleared out of New York and came here.”
I sat very still, staring at him. Menotti had been a notorious New York gangster, enormously wealthy, powerful and a onetime killer. He had been hooked up with the Union and vice rackets and had been a bad man to know.
“What had she to do with Menotti ?” I asked.
“Rumour had it she was his piece,” Maxwell said. “She was always going around with him. A little bird told me it was in her apartment that be got knocked off.”
About two months ago Menotti had been brutally murdered in a three-room apartment which he had rented as a love nest. The woman he had been visiting had vanished, and the police hadn’t been able to trace her. The killer also had disappeared. It was generally thought that Menotti had been slain on the orders of Frank Setti, a rival gangster, who had been deported as a drug trafficker and was now supposed to be living somewhere in Italy.
“What little bird?” I asked.
“It was Andrews who, as you know, has his ear right to the ground. He usually knows what he is talking about. Maybe he was wrong this time. All I do know is that she used to go around with Menotti. She left for Rome soon after Menotti was killed. The janitor of the apartment block in which Menotti was strangled gave Andrews a pretty good description of the woman in the case: the description fitted Helen Chalmers like a glove. Our people closed the janitor’s mouth before the police got to him, so it never came out.”
“I see,” I said.
“Well, if you haven’t anything juicy to tell me about her while she’s in Rome, it looks as if
she has had a scare and is at last behaving herself.” He grinned. “Frankly, I’m disappointed. To tell the truth when I heard I was going to take your place, I thought I might have a try at her myself. She’s really something. As you were told to look after her, I was hoping to hear by now that you and she were more than old friends.”
“Do you imagine I’d be such a pea brain as to fool around with Chalmers’ daughter?” I asked heatedly.
“Why not? She’s worth fooling around with, and when she handles this kind of situation, she takes good care the old man will never find out. She’s been fooling around with men since she was sixteen, and Chalmers has never found out. If you haven’t seen her without her specs and that awful hair-do, you haven’t seen anything. She’s terrific, and, what’s more, I hear she is very, very keen. If she ever makes a play at me I’m not going to stop her.”
Somehow I got him off the subject of Helen and back on to business. After another hour of his company, I took him back to his hotel. He said he would be in the office the following morning to tie up the loose ends and thanked me for entertaining him.
“You really are a lucky guy, Ed,” he said as we were parting. “The foreign desk is about the best job in the business. There’re guys who would give their left arms to have it. Me — I wouldn’t want it. It’s too much like hard work, but for you…” He broke off and grinned. “A guy who can let a babe like Helen slip through his fingers — well, for heaven’s sake! What else could you do except hold down the foreign desk?”
He thought it was a good joke and, slapping me on the back, he went off laughing towards the elevators.
I didn’t think the joke was so good. I got into my car and drove through the congested traffic until I reached my apartment. During the drive I did some thinking. The information I had from Maxwell about Helen shocked me. I didn’t doubt that what he had told me was true. I knew Andrews was accurate in any story he had to tell. So she had been mixed up with Menotti. I suddenly began to wonder who she was mixed up with here. If she had acquired the taste for dangerous racketeers in New York, she might have continued to cultivate the taste here. Was that the explanation of her high style of living? Was some man financing her?
By the time I had undressed and got into bed, I was asking myself if I were really going to get on that tram to Sorrento. Did I want to mix myself up with a girl of this type? If I were really going to get the foreign desk, and I was pretty sure Maxwell wouldn’t have broken the news unless he was certain of his facts, I would be crazy to take the slightest risk of the job coming unstuck. As he had said, it was the plum job on the paper. I knew if Chalmers found out that his daughter and I had become lovers that would be that: I’d not only lose this job, but I’d be out of
the game for good.
“No,” I said aloud as I turned off the light. “She can go to Sorrento by herself. I’m not going. She can find some other sucker. I’ll go to Ischia.”
But two days later I was on the local train from Naples to Sorrento. I was still telling myself that I was a fool and crazy in the head, but no matter how much I talked to myself, telling myself not to go ahead with this, it made no difference. I was on my way. The train couldn’t move fast enough for me!
Before I caught the train to Naples, I had looked in at the office around ten o’clock for a final check and to see if there were any personal letters for me.
Maxwell was out, but I found Gina sorting through a stack of cables.
“Anything for me?” I asked, sitting on the edge of her desk.
“No personal letters. Mr. Maxwell can handle all this,” she said, flicking the cables with a carefully manicured fingernail. “Shouldn’t you be on your way? I thought you wanted to leave early.”
“I’ve lots of time.”
My train to Naples didn’t leave until noon. I had told Gina I was going to Venice and I had had trouble in preventing her booking a seat for me on the Rome-Venice express.
The telephone-bell rang at this moment and Gina picked up the receiver. I leaned forward and began to look idly at the cables.
“Who is that speaking?” Gina said. “Mrs. — who? Will you hold on a moment? I’m not sure if he is in.” She looked at me, frowning, and I could see a puzzled expression in her eyes. “A Mrs. Douglas Sherrard is asking for you.”
I was about to say I had never heard of her and didn’t want to speak to her when the slightly familiar sounding name suddenly rang a clear alarm-bell in my mind. Mrs. Douglas Sherrard! That was the name Helen had said she used when renting the villa at Sorrento. Surely this couldn’t be Helen on the line? Surely she couldn’t be so reckless as to call me here?
Trying not to show my consternation, I reached forward and took the receiver from Gina’s hand. Half-turning my back so she couldn’t watch my face, I said cautiously, “Hello? Who is that?”
“Hello, Ed,” It was Helen all right. “I know I shouldn’t be calling you at the office, but I tried your apartment and there was no answer.”
I wanted to tell her she was crazy to call me here. I wanted to hang up, but I knew Gina would wonder what it was all about. “What is it?” I asked sharply.
“Is there someone listening?”
“Yes.”
To make things more complicated, the office door jerked open and Jack Maxwell breezed in.
“Good grief! You still around?” he exclaimed when he saw me. “I thought you were on your way to Venice by now.”
I waved him to silence, said into the mouthpiece: “Is there something I can do?”
“Yes, please. Would you mind bringing me down a Wratten number eight filter for my camera? I find I need it and I can’t get it in Sorrento.”
“Sure,” I said. “I’ll do that.”
“Thanks, darling. I’m so impatient for you to get here. The scenery is too marvelous….”
I was afraid her low, clear voice might reach Maxwell’s ear. He was obviously listening. I cut in on her.
“I’ll fix it. Good-bye for now,” and I hung up.
Maxwell stared inquisitively at me.
“Do you always treat your lady callers like that?” he asked as he glanced through the cables on the desk. “That was a trifle abrupt, wasn’t it?”
I tried not to show how rattled I was, but I was aware that Gina was looking at me, puzzled, and as I moved away from the desk, Maxwell was also staring at me.
“I just dropped in to see if there were any personal letters for me,” I said to him, lighting a cigarette in the effort to hide my confusion. “I guess I’ll get off now.”
“You want to learn to relax,” Maxwell said. “If you weren’t such a stolid, well-behaved newspaper man, I’d say from your furtive expression that you were up to some form of mischief. Are you?”
“Oh, don’t talk crap!” I said, not being able to restrain the snap in my voice.
“Hey! You’re a bit sour this morning, aren’t you? I was only kidding.” As I said nothing, he went on, “Are you taking your car?”
“No. I’m travelling by train.”
“You’re not travelling alone?” he asked, looking slyly at me. “I hope you’ve got some nice blonde laid on to console you if it rains.”
“I’m travelling alone,” I said, trying not to look as hot as I felt.
“I bet! I know what I’d do if I were going on a month’s vacation.”
“Maybe we don’t happen to think alike,” I said, going over to Gina. “Look after this guy,” I said to her. “Don’t let him make too many mistakes, and don’t work too hard yourself. Be seeing you on the 29th.”
“Have a good time, Ed,” she said quietly. She didn’t smile. This worried me. Something had upset her. “Don’t worry about us. We’ll be all right.”
“I’m sure you will.” I turned to Maxwell. “So long and good hunting.”
“Better hunting to you, brother,” he said, shaking hands.
I left them and, going down in the elevator to the street level, I called a taxi and told the driver to take me to the Barberini. There I bought the photographic filter Helen had asked me for, then I took another taxi back to my apartment. I completed packing, made sure everything was locked up, and took a taxi to the station.
I regretted not having my car, but Helen was taking hers and there was no point in having two cars in Sorrento. I wasn’t looking forward to the train journey from Rome to Naples. After I had paid off my taxi, I waved a porter aside who wanted to grab my suitcase, and hurried into the vast station.
I bought a ticket for Naples, checked that the train wasn’t in yet, and went over to the newspaper kiosk where I bought a bunch of newspapers and magazines. All the time I was keeping my eyes open for any familiar face.
I was acutely aware that I had too many friends in Rome for my peace of mind. At any moment someone I knew might appear. I didn’t want tales to get back to Maxwell that instead of catching the eleven o’clock train to Venice, I had been seen boarding the noon train to Naples.
As I had ten minutes to wait, I went over to one of the benches, away in a corner and sat down. I read a newspaper, sheltering behind its open pages. Those ten minutes were fidgety ones. When I finally made .my way to the platform, I hadn’t as yet run into anyone I knew. I got a seat on the train with some difficulty, and settled down again behind my newspaper.
It was only when the train moved out of the station that I began to relax.
So far all was going well, I told myself. From now on I could consider myself safely launched on my vacation.
I still felt uneasy. I wished Helen hadn’t called up. I wished Gina hadn’t heard the name of Mrs. Douglas Sherrard. I wished I was strong-minded enough not to be so infatuated with this blonde, exciting girl. Now I knew a little about her past history, I realized she couldn’t be my type. A girl who fooled around with a man like Menotti just couldn’t be my type. I told myself this was just a physical thing. I was being a sensual, dumb fool to be infatuated with her.
All this reasoning didn’t get me anywhere. I knew if there was one thing I wanted more than anything else in the world, it was to spend a month in her company.
This was just another way of saying as far as Helen was concerned, I was a dead duck.
The local train arrived at Sorrento station twenty minutes late. The train was pretty crowded, and it was some minutes before I could work my way past the barrier and out into the station approach where a line of taxis and horse-drawn cabs waited to be hired.
I stood in the hot sunshine, looking around for Helen, but there was no sign of her. I put down my bag, waved away an eager beggar who wanted to conduct me to a taxi, and lit a cigarette.
I was surprised Helen wasn’t there to meet me, but, bearing in mind that the train was late, I thought she might have gone to look at the shops to pass the time. So I leaned against the
station wall and waited.
The crowd pouring out of the station slowly disappeared. Some were met by friends, some walked away, some hired taxis and carriages until I was the only one left. After perhaps fifteen minutes, and with still no sign of Helen, I began to get impatient.
Maybe she was sitting at some cafe in the piazza, I thought. I picked up my suitcase and carried it to the left luggage office, where I dumped h. Then, relieved of its weight, I wandered down the street to the centre of the town.
I walked around looking for Helen, but I couldn’t see her. I visited the car park, but I couldn’t see any car that could be Helen’s. I went over to one of the cafes, sat down at a table and ordered a cafe espresso.
From there I could watch the approach to the station and also see any car that arrived in the piazza.
The time was getting on for four-thirty. I drank the espresso, smoked three cigarettes, then, bored with waiting, I asked the waiter if I could use the telephone. I had a little trouble in getting the number of the villa, but after some delay the operator found the number and, after more delay, told me that no one was answering.
This was a let-down.
It was possible that Helen had forgotten the time the train arrived and had only just left the villa and was on her way down to the station. Containing my impatience, I ordered another espresso and sat down to wait, but by ten minutes after five, I was not only irritated, I was uneasy.
What had happened to her? I knew she had moved into the villa. Then why hadn’t she come down to meet me as we had arranged?
From the map she had shown me, I knew more or less where the villa was. At a rough guess it was five miles up-hill from Sorrento. I told myself I would be easier in mind doing something, rather than sitting at the cafe, so I decided to walk towards the villa in the hope that I would meet her as she drove down.
There was only one road to the villa so there was no chance of missing her. All I had to do was to follow the road, and sooner or later we must meet.
Without hurrying, I set off on the long walk towards the villa.
For the first mile I had to make my way through crowds of tourists who were shop-window gazing, waiting for buses and generally cluttering up the landscape, but once free of the town, and on the snake-back road that led eventually to Amalfi, I had only the fast traffic to contend with.
Two miles along this road brought me to the side road that would take me off the main road and up into the hills. The time was now twenty minutes past six, and there was still no sign of Helen.
I lengthened my stride and began the long, tortuous climb into the hills. After I had gone a mile, still without seeing any sign of Helen, I was sweating and anxious.
I saw the villa, perched on a high hill, overlooking the bay of Sorrento, a good half-hour before I reached it. It was as lovely and as exciting as Helen had said it was, but right then I wasn’t in the mood to appreciate its beauty. My one thought was to find Helen.
She had been right when she had said the villa was isolated. If anything, isolation was an under-statement. The villa stood in its own grounds, and there was no other house within sight.
I pushed open the wrought-iron gates and walked up the broad drive, bordered on either side by six-foot high dahlias, their heavy heads eight inches across, and of every colour in the book.
The drive opened out on to a tarmac on which stood Helen’s Lincoln convertible. Well, at least, I hadn’t missed her on the road, I thought, as soon as I saw the car.
I climbed the steps leading to the villa. The front door was ajar and I pushed it open.
“Helen! Are you there?”
The silence that came out of the house had a depressing effect on me. I walked into a large marble-floored hall.
“Helen!”
I went slowly from room to room. There was a large lounge with a dining-room alcove, a kitchen and a big patio that overlooked the sea, some two hundred feet below. Upstairs there were three bedrooms and two bathrooms. The villa was modern, well furnished and an ideal place for a vacation. I would have been thrilled with it if Helen had been there to greet me. As it was I only took time to assure myself that she wasn’t in the villa before going out into the garden and beginning to hunt for her there.
No answer came to my repeated calls and, by now, I was getting really rattled.
At the end of one of the garden paths I discovered a gate that stood ajar. Beyond the gate was a narrow path that led upwards to the top of the hill that rose above the villa. Could she have gone that way? I wondered. I decided I wasn’t going to sit around in the hope she would turn up. This path appeared to be the only other exit from the villa. I knew I couldn’t have missed her on the walk up from Sorrento. There was a chance she had gone for a walk along this path and had either forgotten the time or had met with some kind of an accident.
I hurried back to the villa to leave a note in case she happened to be still in Sorrento and I had somehow missed her. I didn’t want her to go rushing back to Sorrento if she returned from there, and not find me at the villa.
I found some beaded notepaper in one of the drawers in the desk and scribbled a brief note, which I left on the table of the lounge; then I left the villa and walked fast along the garden path-to the gate.
I had walked for perhaps a quarter of a mile and was beginning to think that Helen couldn’t have possibly come this way when I saw below me, built into the hill face, a big white villa. It was in the most inaccessible place I have ever seen for a house to be built in. There was only a flight of steep steps leading from the cliff head down to the villa. The only practical way of reaching the place was by sea. I wasn’t interested in the villa and I didn’t even pause, but I looked at it as I continued my way along the winding path. I could see a big terrace with a table, lounging chairs and a big red umbrella. Down a flight of steps, I could see a harbour in which were moored two powerful motor-boats. As I Walked on, I wondered who the millionaire could be who owned such a place. I hadn’t walked more than three hundred yards before the villa was completely blotted out of my mind, for lying directly in my path was Helen’s camera case.
I recognized it immediately and I stopped short, my heart skipping a beat.
For a long moment I stared at it; then, moving forward, I stooped to pick it up. There was no doubt that it was hers. Apart from the shape and the newness of the pigskin leather, there were her initials on the cover flap in gold. The case was empty.
Holding the case in my hand, I hurried on. Another fifty yards further on the path suddenly twisted at right angles, and cut away inland into a thick wood that covered the last quarter of a mile to the top of the hill.
The right-angle bend in the path brought the path dangerously close to the overhang and, pausing there, I looked down the sheer hillside at the sea that lapped against the massive boulders some two hundred feet below.
I drew in my breath sharply as I caught sight of something white that lay, half-submerged in the sea and was sprawled out like a broken doll on the rocks.
I stood transfixed, peering down, my heart thudding, my mouth dry.
I could see the long blonde hair floating gently in the sea. The full skirt of the white frock billowed out as the sea swirled around the broken body. There was no need to make wild guesses. I knew the dead woman down there was Helen.