“What was it at the butcher’s?” he called.

  “Four lamp chops!” screamed a shrew from within.

  “Four lamb chops,” said the man mildly. He shrugged and turned again. In so doing he obtained a clearer impression of Nicholas than on his first harassed passing, and a look of uncertain recognition lit his uneven features.

  “Mr. . . . Calvin. So nice to see you again,” he said obsequiously.

  “You . . . you know me?” asked Nicholas in surprise.

  “It is the pride of our establishment that we always remember our clients and their particular requirements,” said the other. Nicholas felt that his manner was supercilious rather than deferential. Was there, too, a hint of malice?

  “When did we meet?” asked Nicholas.

  “Why Mr. Calvin, sir,” said the singular fellow in mock surprise, “have you forgotten us already?”

  Nicholas felt a sudden urge to strike the man.

  “Forgotten who already?” Each word, clipped and harsh, told of his antipathy.

  “Oh Mr. Calvin,” said the fellow, “I am disappointed. And you one of our star turns as well.”

  Nicholas now observed a hint of rouge on the man’s cheeks, a touch of vermilion on his lips and a subtle shading over his eyes.

  “What precisely are you trying to say?” he said, realizing all too well what the euphemistic “Mayfair Gentlemen’s Club” really meant.

  “Don’t let it concern you, Mr. Calvin,” said the man, his feigned servility now giving way to undisguised insolence. “Some of our clients do prefer to forget in the warm light of day the facilities and services extended to them by our house. They don’t find our ever-­open door so uninviting when darkness falls and loneliness and cold slither hand in hand into their sterile bachelor apartments. Good cheer, human comfort and relief for a soul in need we provide then, don’t we?”

  Brough had by this time arrived and was standing behind Nicholas listening to the curious dialogue.

  “Nathaniel Potts,” said Brough. The man looked up, startled.

  “Brough,” he said, a note of hostility taking his voice up half an octave. “What trouble have you come to stir up?”

  “Trouble?” said Brough. “Now when was I ever anything but a good friend to you?” Potts was a man he could happily have throttled.

  “Prick,” said Potts.

  “Potts, I don’t care how you and your kind sport yourselves. Law or no law, I think you should be left to follow whatever path you choose, providing it’s in private and doesn’t harm anyone else. That’s how I was content to leave it. Your morals didn’t interest me.”

  “Hoppit.”

  “It was you who introduced little boys into your odious cabaret, and you who bear the sole responsibility for the retribution that followed.”

  “Retribution, my tits,” said Potts, now openly hostile. “I did two years for you and your William Wilberforce act. Don’t talk to me about morals.”

  “Shall we go, Nicholas?” said Brough.

  “So you two know each other? Now isn’t that a thing?” pursued the bitter Potts. “I’d have thought you’d have more sympathy now you’ve got yourself a girl friend too,” he said to Brough. “Helps you wile away the long winter hours, does she?” Without another word he strolled off with his nose in the air.

  “Nicholas?” said Brough.

  “Who was that man?” was the reply. “I’ve never seen him in my life before.”

  “But he knew you.”

  “So it seems, though God knows how.”

  “You’ve never been here before?”

  “No . . . Well—yes,” he stammered, confusion rising and flooding his mind once more. “Yes, I told you. I have been here before. It all seems so familiar, like something glimpsed in a dream. But it has associations with a past so dim it must have been way back in my early childhood.”

  A rushing of feet along the hall of the establishment interrupted them. In a moment an enormous woman in a mass of red- ­and white-­check cambric and an ill-­fitting wig emerged into the street.

  “Nathaniel,” she bellowed to the retreating Potts, who turned nonchalantly around to face her from the end of the street.

  “What is it, old woman?” he shouted contemptuously.

  “Get some tallow from Fatty Richardson!”

  “All right, Flabby Flo,” said Potts, taking venomous delight in reminding her that Mr. Richardson was not the only example of obesity in the neighborhood.

  “Aaach!” she spat, and shook an oversize fist at him. Potts stepped lightly on his way. As she turned to go back indoors, Flo’s moist eyes alighted on the two companions.

  “Why, Mr. Calvin, sir, you’ve brought a friend along,” she beamed, her manner switching from belligerence to false bon­homie with disarming speed.

  “You know me too?” said Nicholas.

  Her bulbous nose twitched and she frowned almost imperceptibly.

  “Know you, Mr. Calvin?” she said, and the words dripped like syrup from a broken jar. “Know is hardly the word for it, would you say?”

  “Exactly when am I supposed to have been to this God­forsaken place?” cried Nicholas, exploding.

  “Come in, Mr. C., and I’ll give it to you chapter and verse. Bring in your lady friend too.”

  Brough winced and exchanged a silent glance with Nicholas. Nicholas, his gorge rising, followed the great beast up the steps into her lair, while Brough brought up the rear. The air inside the house smelled dank, and mildew painted a mad pattern on the walls. In stark and inexplicable contrast, purple hangings adorned the windows and the moldings on the doors were picked out in gold. The gargantuan harlot vanished into a room on the left and reappeared moments later with a small tin box, which she placed on a side table.

  “No skin off my nose if your memory’s troubling you,” she said, opening the box. “And if you really want to know I’ll tell you exactly when you were here.”

  She shuffled through a wad of promissory notes and checks until she found the one she wanted. “Here it is,” she said. “Last time you settled up was on the twenty-­first of last month.”

  “Show me that,” said Nicholas, striding toward her and snatching the check. He read it. He reread it. He stared at it un­comprehendingly. At last he handed it to Brough.

  “God help me, it’s true,” he whispered.

  “I’ll leave you to it,” said the puzzled woman, retrieving the check and stuffing it back into its box. “If you want me I’ll be in the back. If you decide you want your usual, Conrad’s in the Saffron Room, first floor.” She bustled off.

  “Something else you didn’t know about?” said Brough with ill-­concealed skepticism.

  “I have no memory of all this,” said Nicholas. “The very thought of what goes on here revolts me.”

  A veil seemed to descend in front of Nicholas’ eyes and he seemed incapable of looking directly at his uncle. The detective could not decide whether the apparent furtiveness meant Nicholas was deceiving him, or whether his behavior stemmed from the fear that he would be judged a liar, or worse. Without a word, Nicholas walked out into the street.

  “The blackouts you mentioned to Dr. Orchard,” said Brough when they were outside and walking toward Piccadilly. “On what dates did they occur?”

  “I let the first few pass, thinking they were a temporary thing,” said Nicholas, beads of sweat breaking out on his forehead. “The rest of them I marked down.” He took out his diary and handed it to Brough. As he had suspected, November 21st was marked as his nephew’s most recent memory lapse.

  Woke up at 10:20 p.m., he read. Don’t know where I’ve been or what doing since lunchtime. Must see the doctor.

  The detective made a mental note that Sir Patrick Lovell had met the strangler on the same day.

  “You didn’t see Dr. Orchard until December 14th,” said Brough.

  “No,” said Nicholas, but he was no longer aware of Brough’s presence. Images began to cross and recross in his mind in a dreadful nightmare procession. He began to sway on his feet and he grasped some railings for support.

  Strangling fingers — love — hate — perversion — death — fire burn­ing—torture racking—father—mother—death—hate—Rogano—Deptford—murder—hate, hate, hate—the man with odd eyes!

  Brough was not quick enough to save him as he fell senseless to the ground.

  20

  The fall had given Nicholas a nasty graze on his forehead, and as he stirred into consciousness his head was throbbing with pain. He sat up and looked about him. It was late afternoon and the sun was setting. He rose unsteadily to his feet and dusted himself down, surprised that Brough was no longer at his side. Wondering in which direction he should go, he surveyed the darkening landscape. Behind, the ground rose steeply to a wide plateau. Beyond that Monte Arretto and the smaller but no less formidable Monte Bellanone reared up at the head of the great army of peaks that formed the Brenta Dolomites. The mountains on the opposite side of the valley, at least eight miles away, were ranged almost parallel to those upon whose slopes he stood. Looking across at the squatter peaks, Nicholas felt he was between two opposing legions that only awaited the signal of their commanders to rush headlong into bloody battle at the valley bottom. Glancing back over his shoulder at the majestic hulk of Monte Arretto, he was in no doubt as to the leader of the nearer army. The sinking sun had splashed Arretto’s summit with liquid fire and the glaciers glinting on its eastern face were no longer white but a dazzling shade of pink. The wooded foothills, by contrast, were looking dark and forbidding as the sunlight climbed slowly out of the valley. To his right, the land sloped away to one of the cascading mountain streams that fed the Pergino River, which he could see winding through the valley far beneath him. It would eventually flow into the Lago di Garda near Verona and on, by way of the River Mincio, to the Adriatic. Hundreds of feet below, and at least five miles along the valley at a point where the river took a sudden turn to the east and then curved dramatically back on its original course, he could see Rogano.

  It lay under a mantle of snow, the elegant spires of the cathedral pointing heavenward like the beringed fingers of the sybarite cardinal who had erected them in the twelfth century as a lasting monument to himself. Cardinal Montenigro’s fingers, thought Nicholas, not realizing how he knew the traditional local name for the spires. Much of the rest of Rogano was rambling and medieval and sprawled higgledy-­piggledy about the central mound on which the cathedral was built. The outer areas were more modern and the new classical architecture of the Renaissance, with its fluted ceilings, its pediments and its Corinthian columns, encircled the old city and hemmed it in. Rogano had long ago broken out of its ancient walls, but the heritage-­conscious chief architect of the town had constructed two magnificent gates at the eastern and western extremities that he bragged emulated the gates of ancient Rome. They were a costly piece of affectation, for almost nobody traveled by road to Rogano, except those from other communities within the valley. Those from farther off came by river. Nor had the architect neglected the water-­borne visitors. Almost an island, situated as it was within the horseshoe curl of the river, Rogano possessed many places suitable for use as landing points. Indeed, for hundreds of years almost the entire perimeter of the city had been one long unbroken wharf. With the rise to eminence of Pietro Gatta as chief architect he resolved to build a properly equipped harbor at the zenith of the river’s curl. Not only had he persuaded the city elders to raise taxes in order that a harbor could be constructed, he had appealed to their rediscovered love of aesthetic beauty and he had created a harbor that he believed would earn for his city the name Ephesus of the North.

  The peal of a great bell began to resound along the valley. It was the early summons, for the benefit of the peasants in the outlying villages of the valley, to vespers at the cathedral. By the time they reached the town, by donkey, by foot or by the portable coracles peculiar to the region, the bell would be thundering out its more urgent reminder to the inhabitants of Rogano itself. Few dared ignore its call, even the old and sick. The taint of heresy was nigh impossible to expunge. Nicholas guessed that Brough had gone into Rogano to find help. He started the long downward trek.

  It must have been a trick of the light, but however far he walked, he seemed no nearer his destination. After half an hour the main buildings of Rogano, their windows now illumined with flickering yellow candlelight, seemed as aloof and unattainable as when he had started. By now quite tired, the muscles in his calves aching through the unaccustomed exertion of the downward climb, his progress was becoming slower. At least the crisp mountain air had begun to clear his head. The shadow of the mountains crept imperceptibly across the valley to meet the unmoving shadow of the dark Forest of Amprizio that clung to the foot of the mountains on the other side. In the last light of day Nicholas now saw for the first time the magnificent spectacle of the abbey, rearing up on its great natural foundation and looking more like an ogre’s castle than a house of God. With its four round towers and its high crenelated walls, it looked impregnable. It clearly wasn’t, mused Nicholas, and the Rogano murderer had proven it. As darkness enclosed the abbey, Nicholas saw its enormous drawbridge rising slowly upward, cutting off the sole link with the outside world, and leaving a fifty-­foot chasm at the end of the dusty road that meandered up from Rogano.

  An alarm bell began to shrill beneath the now muted pain in Nicholas’ head. Something was wrong. Something . . . something . . . was . . . out of place. He searched his mind tensely but could not isolate the gnawing doubt. Where was Brough? Why had he deserted him? He had last seen him . . . where? Something clicked in his memory. But it was like a forgotten name salvaged from the depths of the mind, rising swiftly to the surface and then sinking like a stone as one reached out to grasp it. Just as he reached the point of remembering the place he had last seen his uncle, the memory slipped through his fingers and sank into the unplumbed depths of his subconscious. As compensation, his mind replaced the lost truth with an assumption based on logic, which his mind instantly accepted as fact: he had last seen Brough as they climbed under the lee of Monte Arretto. Then he had stumbled on a stone. Fallen. Blacked out. It was true, he knew it was true, but the answer did not satisfy him. Something . . . terrible . . . was . . . wrong. He stumbled on, the barren soil of the foothills now giving way to the fertile, rolling lands closer to the valley bottom. Though he couldn’t see the grass under his feet, he could feel its springy softness as he trod. It told him he had reached the slanting meadows carpeted in spring in bright-­blue gentians and pink dwarf rhododendrons, which he had seen from above when twilight illumined the valley. Beneath him, he knew, were the highest of the sloping vineyards that covered hundreds of acres of lowland around Rogano. He remembered playing hide and seek here as a child; secreting himself in a patch of lush soft turf in an indented part of the hillside while Giuseppe searched vainly below. Giuseppe? Doubt engulfed him once again. Who is Giuseppe? Almost before the question formed in his brain it was answered. Giuseppe, my brother. Colorful, flamboyant Giuseppe, the blue of the flowers and the brown of the mountains. Strong, beloved Giuseppe.

  Mist was beginning to rise from the river, and with it swarms of mosquitoes. Climbing back up the hill in the hope of rising above the mist, he found himself on an overgrown track, long disused, that ran around the hill parallel to the path he normally used.

  “The specter of the Santine Hill holds no terror for you, signore?” a voice said in Italian from somewhere in a clump of pine trees to his left.

  “Who’s there?” called Nicholas in alarm. To his surprise, he spoke in English, a language unknown to him.

  “It is only I, signore, I—Alessandro of Porfino.” As he spoke, the owner of the voice shambled, as if from nowhere, into view. He stood, barely visible, in the undergrowth of mushrooms and creepers at the edge of the path. He was an old man. Lank greasy locks fell onto his narrow shoulders and a wispy white beard tumbled down his chest. He was dressed in a coarse smock and a mangy dog yelped and frisked at his feet.

  It is the old herdsman who saw the lights and the men on the hill, thought Nicholas. Then he remembered the tale of the ghost of the Santine Hill with which he had so mercilessly ragged Giuseppe in childhood. Giuseppe. Now the story of the malevolent shade, said endlessly to haunt the cave where in life it had summoned the devil to turn rocks into gold, returned to mock him. The cave. Nicholas had quite forgotten. The cave. The epicenter of the mystery. The lair of the Rogano Strangler. There lay salvation . . . it must be close by.

  “Where is the cave?” he said suddenly to the herdsman.

  “There, signore,” said Alessandro, pointing the gnarled finger of retribution along the path into the wood. He looked, thought Nicholas, like a man defeated by life. Sad, exhausted, he shrugged his bony shoulders and turned away. He trudged off into the darkness. As he vanished to God alone knew what miserable hide­away, Nicholas heard him muttering to himself like one delirious. “Beware.” He was repeating over and over, “Beware the ghost of the Santine Hill.” In a moment even the sound of his voice died away and Nicholas was alone on the whispering hillside.

  Panic suddenly seized him. Where was he to go? Why had he been abandoned? Why could he not reach the safety, the warmth, of Rogano?

  “Nich-­o-­l-­a-­s!” That was Brough’s voice!

  “Uncle!” he called. “Uncle!” And he began running toward the voice.

  “Where are you?” called Brough.

  “I’m over here,” shouted Nicholas in relief.

 

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