Roman Nights Read Online Free Page B

all the way.’
    ‘Brindisi,’ said Charles, and I would have kicked him had we been sitting together. I said, ‘We stay north of Rome, at Velterra. I work at the Maurice Frazer Observatory.’
    ‘Do you?’ said Johnson Johnson with interest. He had not yet started the car. Over the wall, we could hear shouting and see the light of torch beams glancing through the tree branches. ‘I thought it was owned by a film company.’
    ‘It’s been refitted and modernized,’ I said. ‘The Zodiac Trust are encouraging Maurice to use it for projects.’
    With lemurlike innocence, the glasses surveyed me. ‘So you’re an astronomer. And is your friend an astronomer also, or are you merely cohabiting?’
    At this point, Charles opened the car door. The light, coming on, illuminated in full technicolour the bloodstained camera lying on the car seat and also brought us, full strength, the volume of shouting from over the wall. He shut the car door very gently.
    ‘Charles,’ I said with some effort, ‘is a photographer. We were chasing after the man in the zoo, who had stolen his camera. We think he wanted to pirate his advance fashion photographs. It would be lovely, really, to be taken to the station; it was so nice of you to rescue us. A police thing would be very boring.’
    ‘I do agree,’ said Johnson Johnson. ‘Especially if Charles is the Marquis’s son. Charles Digham?’
    ‘Digham,’ affirmed Charles sweetly. My heart sank. ‘And this,’ he added, ‘is my friend, Miss Ruth Russell. You haven’t said, sir, what brought you to the zoo?’
    The glasses stared at him. ‘I thought I had,’ said Johnson mildly.
    ‘I mean . . .’ said Charles.
    ‘What am I doing here? Oh,’ said Johnson. ‘I’m painting the Pope. I shan’t blackmail you if you won’t blackmail me. Now then. The Maurice Frazer Observatory. Do help yourself to a tissue,’ he added, ‘if you want to wipe the blood off that camera.’ And he put the Fiat into gear and tooled off.
    We got to the Dome in forty minutes, having done the Piazza Galeno in one dizzy circuit and roared past all the tarts on the motorway, doing roughly a hundred and twenty miles an hour. Whatever was under the bonnet of that Fiat wasn’t cinquecento, and Charles and I by tacit consent gave Johnson Johnson the address of the Dome and not the address of the humble lodgings we both shared with Jacko. We had not only been picked up by a nut: we had been picked up by a well-off and dangerous nut and were likely to be exposed either in print or in prison, whatever we did about it.
    At the Dome we asked him in for a coffee, which unfortunately he accepted, and I went ahead and yelled up to Jacko, who was fixing his plateholder on the swing-up shelf which bars the other side of the cupola door and makes sure that idiots don’t march into the Dome with their torches on.
    He came down a few minutes later to make sure we had all the blinds closed but actually to see what Charles had in his hip flask. Astronomers are not allowed to drink before they go on duty: you can get enough straight hallucinations just looking for eight hours through a telescope without resorting to alcohol. Charles, an intuitive man, poured him a noggin for afters into a yellow Melamine cup and related the event of the evening in four succinct sentences while liberally lacing our coffee. Jacko went becomingly white and said, ‘Christ. The Zodiac Trust’ll have kittens.’
    The top brass of the Trust, in the person of one Professor Hathaway, does not expect its projects to get mixed up in murders or suicides. ‘It won’t,’ I said. ‘It’ll have baby lawyers with letters of dismissal all ready for signing by Mr Frazer.’ I stared at Jacko with what I hoped was a message of despair in my eyes. ‘Maybe,’ I added, ‘since Mr Johnson got us away, the police will never get to hear how it happened. Mr Johnson,’ I added with emphasis, ‘is here to paint the Pope.’
    ‘I know,’ said Jacko. His