Nightwork

There was no address or date on the luxuriously tinted sheet of paper.

'Love,' the letter began, 'Oh, dear! I hope you won't be too frantically disappointed. I can't make it to St Moritz this year....' I felt a tremor go through my body as I read this, as though an avalanche had dropped down the side of one of the surrounding peaks and shaken the foundations of the city. 'Poor old Jock tell off his trusty steed hacking home from a hunt three days ago and broke his hip and has been in agony ever since. The local witch doctor, whose practice dates back to the Crimean War, just made pitiful little cries when asked for a diagnosis, so we've moved Jock down to London. The surgeons here are debating whether or not to operate and don't seem to be able to make up their minds and meanwhile the poor old darling just lies there groaning on his bed of pain. Naturally, dear little wife can't go swinging off to the Alps while the drama is so hideously fresh. So I'm back and forth to the hospital, carrying flowers and gin and 139

soothing the fevered brow and telling him he'll be able to hunt again next year, which, as you know, is his chief and practically single occupation in life.

'However, all is not lost. I have promised to visit my sweet old Aunt Amy in Florence, arriving on Feb Quatorze. The situation should have subsided by then and I'm sure dear old Jock will insist I go. Aunt Amy has a house full of guests, so I'll be staying at the Excelsior. Which is just as well. Or even better. I'll look for your beaming, welcoming face in the bar. Longingly, L.'

I read the letter again, getting a clear and not very flattering impression of the lady who had written it. I considered it an affectation on her part not to put an address or a date on her letter, writing Quatorze instead of the honest English fourteen and signing it only with her initial. I tried to picture what she probably looked like. A cold, fashionable English beauty between thirty and forty, with lofty airs, and a manner that owed a great deal to the works of Sir Noel Coward and Michael Arlen. But whatever she looked like and however she behaved, I would be at the Hotel Excelsior in Florence to greet her, along with her paramour, on February fourteenth. St Valentine's Day, I remembered, anniversary for lovers and massacre.

I tortured myself briefly with the thought that I might have brushed shoulders with the adulterer in the dining room of the Palace Hotel or on the slopes of St Moritz and even thought for a moment of returning there. The idea of Madam L's friend squandering my money undisturbed in St Moritz for another full week was harrowing. But if I hadn't found him there before, there was no reason to suppose that I could find him now. The only clue to his identity in the letter was that he was probably not married or at least was not accompanied by a wife on this trip to Europe, that he could count in French, at least up to fourteen, and that in the presence of his partner in sin he would be expected to have a beaming and welcoming face. It was information that was of no practical value at the moment. I would have to be patient and wait seven days.

I left Davos, with its regiments of coughing ghosts, happy to be able to get out of the regions of snow. The train from Zurich to Florence passed through Milan, and I got off and spent the night there, using my time to go see The Last Supper, fading sadly into the past on its stone wall in the ruined church. Leonardo da Vinci helped me feel that there was an escape possible from comedy. Milan was covered in fog and I soaked myself in healing melancholy.

I had one moment of uneasiness, when I was followed through the vaulted gallery which presides over the center of Milan by a swarthy youngish man in a long overcoat, who waited across from the door of a cafe I went into for an espresso. I had felt safe, although uncomfortable, in Switzerland, but here I couldn't help remembering what I had read about the Italian connections to organized crime in America. I ordered another espresso and drank it slowly, but the man didn't budge. I couldn't wait in the cafe forever, so I paid and left the place, walking rapidly.

The man in the long overcoat crossed the arcade swiftly and cut me off. He grabbed my elbow. He had one wall-eye, which somehow made him seem extremely menacing, and the grip on my elbow was like a steel clamp.

'Hey, boss,' he said, walking along with me. 'What's a da hurry?' 'I'm late for an appointment.' I tried to tug away, but it was useless.

He put his other hand in his pocket and I feared the worst

'Wanna buy beautiful piece genuine jewelry?' be said. 'Big bargain.' He let go of me then and produced something that clinked and was wrapped in tissue paper. 'Beautiful gift for lady.' He pulled back the tissue paper and I saw a gold chain.

'I have no lady,' I said, beginning to walk again.

'Interesting piece.' Now he was pleading. 'You would pay twice, three times, in America.'

'Sorry,' I said.