Read Online When in Rome by Ngaio Marsh - Free Book Online Page B

enclosure, about six feet by three in size. They collected round it with little cries of recognition.
    It encompassed an open rectangular hole like the mouth of a well. Fixed to the rails was a notice saying in five languages, that climbing them was strictly forbidden.
    ‘Listen,’ Grant said. ‘Can you hear?’
    They stood still. Into the silence came the desultory voices of other sightseers moving about the basilica: the voice of a guide out in the atrium, footfalls on marble and a distant rumour of the Roman streets. ‘Listen,’ Grant repeated and presently from under their feet, scarcely recognizable at first but soon declaring itself, rose the sound of running water, a steady, colloquial voice, complex and unbroken.
    ‘The Cloaca Maxima?’ Major Sweet demanded.
    ‘A pure stream leading into it,’ Grant rejoined. ‘More than sixty feet below us. If you lean over the rail you may be able to see that there is an equivalent opening immediately beneath this one, in the floor of the earlier church. Yet another thirty feet below, out of sight unless someone uses a torch, is a third opening and far down that , ifa torch is lowered, it’s possible to see the stream that we can hear. You may remember that Simon dropped a pebble from here and that it fell down through the centuries into the hidden waters.’
    The Van der Veghels broke into excited comment.
    Grant, they warmly informed him, had based the whole complex of imagery in his book upon this exciting phenomenon. ‘As the deeper reaches of Simon’s personality were explored—’ on and on they went, explaining the work to its author. Alleyn, who admired the book, thought that they were probably right but laid far too much insistence on an essentially delicate process of thought.
    Grant fairly successfully repressed whatever embarrassment he felt. Suddenly the Baron and Baroness burst out in simultaneous laughter and cries of apology. How ridiculous! How impertinent! Really, what could have possessed them!
    Throughout this incident, Major Sweet had contemplated the Van der Veghels with raised eyebrows and a slight snarl. Sophy, stifling a dreadful urge to giggle, found herself observed by Alleyn and Grant, while Lady Braceley turned her huge, deadened lamps from one man to another, eager to respond to whatever mood she might fancy she detected.
    Kenneth leant far over the rail and peered into the depths. ‘I’m looking down through the centuries,’ he announced. His voice was distorted as if he spoke into an enormous megaphone. ‘Boom! Boom!’ he shouted and was echoed far below. ‘Ghost beneath: Swear,’ he boomed, and then: ‘Oh God!’ He straightened up and was seen to have turned a sickly white. ‘I’d forgotten,’ he said. ‘I’m allergic to heights. What a revolting place.’
    ‘Shall we move on?’ said Grant.
    Sebastian Mailer led the way to a vestibule where there was the usual shop for postcards, trinkets and colour slides. Here he produced tickets of admission into the lower regions of San Tommaso.
III
    The first descent was by way of two flights of stone stairs with a landing between. The air was fresh and dry and smelt only of stone. On the landing was a map of the underground regions and Mailerdrew their attention to it. ‘There’s another one down below,’ he said. ‘Later on, some of you may like to explore. You can’t really get lost: if you think you are, keep on going up any stairs you meet and sooner or later you’ll find yourself here. These are very beautiful, aren’t they?’
    He drew their attention to two lovely pillars laced about with convolvulus tendrils. ‘Pagan,’ Mr Mailer crooned, ‘gloriously pagan. Uplifted from their harmonious resting place in the Flavian house below. By industrious servants of the Vatican. There are ways and ways of looking at the Church’s appropriations are there not?’
    Major Sweet astonished his companions by awarding this remark a snort of endorsement and approval.
    Mr Mailer