Everybody seemed to do that.
‘That’s right. Did you know her?’
‘A bit. Not much. Some people take the time to stop and talk, even know my name. Not her. She did chat to my wife, though. She says she was pleasant, not that they had much to talk about. My wife,’ he added, heading off at an apparently unrelated tangent, ‘cleans the rooms here, you know.’
‘Really?’ said Flavia, taking the hint about conversation. ‘How long has she been doing that for?’
‘Oh, years, now. The year of the flood she started.’ Flavia tried to remember. 1966? October? Something like that. Not that it mattered. ‘Eight hours a day. And she helps wash up in the evenings. And do you know how much she’s paid?’
Probably very little, but she had no time to listen to complaints, however well justified. ‘Doesn’t seem very busy now, though. There are only the historians here at the moment, aren’t there?’
He grudgingly admitted that it was pretty slack. ‘Doesn’t mean this place is easy to keep clean,’ he countered.
‘No?’
‘No. Shoddy, that’s what it is. Looks nice, I grant you. But shoddy. Can’t do anything properly round here these days.’
She was on the verge of asking if by chance he was related to an old gondolier she knew. ‘Workmanship. Hah. International conference centre, so-called. Can’t even stop the roof leaking. That’s because all the contracts – you know.’ He glanced at her slyly and put his finger to his nose to imply dirty dealings in high places. She knew what he meant. He was probably right.
‘Do you know, last week, there was water coming in? Would you credit it? Puddles of it in the corridors. Which my wife had to clean up even after her shift had ended. Faulty roofing. Lets in the rain. Lucky none of it got into the bedrooms, or this lot would have complained. They always do, you know. Never satisfied, some people.’
‘There must be some interesting people who come here,’ she ventured desperately, hoping to get him off the subject so she could find out where the meeting room was.
‘Interesting? Don’t know about that. Odd, certainly. Some funny people we’ve had here. Don’t know that I approve. They call themselves respectable, you know.’
‘Are they not?’
‘Some of them. Some I wouldn’t let into my house. Of course, I don’t want to judge them. Live and let live, I suppose, and people always do get a bit frisky in Venice, if you know what I mean.’
She had some idea.
‘Take that lady that got herself killed,’ he continued.
The twinkle in his eye told Flavia he knew quite well he was playing with her.
‘She didn’t get herself killed. Someone murdered her.’
‘That’s what I said,’ he replied, clearly thinking she was being pedantic.
Flavia sighed. ‘Take her how?’ she asked.
‘Is that for me to say? All I know was, that she was a bit of a night-owl, that one.’
‘You mean she worked late?’
The guardian snickered, and rubbed his red, drinker’s nose with the back of his hand. ‘Work, it might have been.’ He leered at her in a peculiarly repulsive fashion.
‘Perhaps she had friends in?’
This he found a great joke and looked at Flavia as though he’d found a soul-mate at long last. ‘Oh, yes,’ he gurgled. ‘Friends, eh?’ He cackled away merrily.
Flavia sighed once more. It was always hard to deal with gossips. On the one hand, they had an incurable urge to tell you what they knew, on the other there was the long-standing unwillingness to say anything to the police at all. The result was often such a series of elliptical hints, designed to satisfy both imperatives.
‘Tell me about the others,’ she began, and promptly abandoned the question when she saw the distrustful expression taking over again. ‘I assume your wife was in the kitchen with Dr Miller on Friday evening?’
This he could answer. No harm in exonerating people. ‘Yes. He came to the kitchen from the laundry-room to ask for some water at about half ten. We had a little chat. Very considerate, charming man.’
‘And he didn’t leave the island at any time?’
‘Oh, no. He was here, all right. No public transport and if he’d taken a taxi I would have seen it. And before you ask,’ he said conclusively, ‘there are no private boats here at the moment he could have taken.’
‘You have to open the door to let people in after hours?’
‘No. People are given their own keys. But, as I say, I was on duty from six to midnight and would have seen anybody coming or going. No one did.’
That seemed pretty conclusive. After a brief pause to note the conversation down, she made her way through to the second cloister in search of the committee’s rooms. Yet again, her sense of direction abandoned her and she ended up at what seemed to be a service entrance somewhere at the far end of the building. With a curse, she turned round and began again, this time finding herself in the kitchens.
Third time lucky, she hit the right floor and made her way along a corridor, with doors that were clearly the rooms of those members of the committee who wanted the free accommodation. Only Miller and Masterson did, it seemed. The rest preferred to make their own arrangements.
Whatever the quality of the workmanship in the roofs, the meeting rooms seemed more than adequate for their purpose. Lashings of oak panelling, a handsome ceiling painting of a suitably religious nature, even though the large number of naked bodies swirling around seemed scarcely designed to keep the old monks’ minds on their devotions, along with all the normal equipment of modern conference centres – comfortable armchairs, settecento tables, Venetian glassware, Flemish tapestries, that sort of thing.
And, in the middle, sitting upright at the end of the long wooden table evidently used for meetings, was Professor Roberts. She was sure it was him, although there were three people in the room; whereas the oldest man very much looked the part of the Great Man of his profession, complete with silver hair, tweed jacket, aquiline nose and aristocratic bearing, the others could never pass as great anythings.
Professor Roberts would, on balance, have approved of Argyll’s brief summary of him as being largely accurate. He was a man who had learned early in life that you cannot arrange matters so that everybody loves you simultaneously. That being the case, the best you can do is to ensure that those who dislike you can do you no harm.
This golden rule he had followed since he had formulated it about a quarter of a century previously, but it should not be taken as the mark of an unpleasant man. Far from it. Roberts had a great reputation for his civility, his hospitality and his grace. An entire generation of young scholars referred to him in awed tones because of his immense knowledge and his kindness to students. As Argyll had said, he valued his reputation for integrity, and worked hard to preserve it.
Flavia’s identification was, of course, correct. Roberts introduced himself
