‘Are you angry with him because he go and you cannot?’
Damn the woman! Why couldn’t she pick on some other subject. ‘Why should I be?’ My voice sounded harsh.
‘You do not like to talk about it, eh? I hear from Walter that there is a doctor in the Villa d’Este who is not very kind.’
‘Yes. There was a doctor.’ I stared at my drink, thinking of the tone in which Shirer had said Albergo Nazionale as he’d directed the taxi driver. ‘He was very like Shirer,’ I murmured. And then suddenly I remembered. God! Why hadn’t I thought of it before? Upstairs amongst the files in my baggage I had a photograph of il dottore Sansevino. I’d liberated it from the files of the Institute Nazionale Luce. Some perverse sense of the morbid had made me keep it. I got to my feet. ‘I have a photograph I would like you to see, Contessa,’ I said. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I’ll go and get it. I won’t be a minute.’
‘No, please.’ Her hand was on my arm. ‘I have to go in a moment and I did not come here to look at photographs.’
‘I’d like you to see it,’ I insisted. ‘It won’t take a second for me to get it.’
She started to argue, but I was already walking away from the table. I took the lift up to my floor and went down the corridor to my room. The next door to mine was open and I could see the maid making the bed. As I put the key in the lock of my door something banged inside. I entered to find that the windows to the balcony had blown open. The sudden through draught slid my papers across the table and on to the floor. I shut the door quickly, retrieved the papers and closed the windows again.
Then I stood stock still, remembering suddenly that I had closed them and locked them before going down to meet the Contessa. I turned quickly to my bags and checked through them. Nothing seemed to be missing and I cursed myself for being so jumpy. I found the photograph and shut my case again.
As I left my room the maid came out of the next door. She stopped and stared at me, mouth agape in astonishment. ‘Whatever’s the matter?’ I asked her in Italian.
She stared at me stupidly and I was just going to go on down the corridor when she said, ‘But il dottore said you were ill, signore.’