And as his companion talked Barnaby found himself engaged in the occupational habit of the novelist: he dwelt on the bullet head, close-cropped like an American schoolboy’s, and the mouse-coloured sparse fringe. He noted the extreme pallor of the skin, its appearance of softness and fine texture like a woman’s: the unexpected fullness and rich colour of the mouth, and those large pale eyes that had looked so fixedly into his in the Piazza Colonna. The voice and speech? High but muted, it had no discernible accent but carried a suggestion of careful phrasing. Perhaps English was no longer the habitual language. His choice of words was pedantic as if he had memorized his sentences for a public address.

His hands were plump and delicate and the nails bitten to the quick.

His name was Sebastian Mailer.

“You wonder, of course,” he was saying, “why you have been subjected to this no doubt agonizing delay. You would like to know the circumstances?”

“Very much.”

“I can’t hope that you noticed me the other morning in Piazza Colonna.”

“But yes. I remember you very well.”

“Perhaps I started. You see, I recognized you at once from the photographs on your book jackets. I must tell you I am a most avid admirer, Mr. Grant.”

Barnaby murmured.

“I am also, which is more to the point, what might be described as ‘an old Roman hand.’ I have lived here for many years and have acquired some knowledge of Roman society at a number of levels. Including the lowest. You see I am frank.”

“Why not?”

“Why not indeed! My motives, in what I imagine some of our compatriots would call muck-raking, are aesthetic and I think I may say philosophical, but with that I must not trouble you. It will do well enough if I tell you that at the time I recognized you I also recognized a despicable person known to the Roman riff-raff as — I translate — Feather-fingers. He was stationed at a short distance from you and behind your back. His eyes were fastened upon your attaché case.”