Free Territorial Rights by Muriel Spark Page A

them, always preaching at them, whether they cared or not, the evils of East-West détente—‘What have we defected for?’ Sometimes she remembered Serge’s white teeth biting into the peach on that summer evening far away.

Chapter Five
    A T THE INVITATION OF the voice over the loudspeaker, Grace Gregory, the former matron of Ambrose College, looked out of the plane window at the Alps below and, having found no apparent fault with them, returned her attention to her companion.
    ‘Leo,’ she said, ‘I’m sure we’re doing the right thing. I can’t wait to get there. Poor Anthea, she’s the injured party all along the line and I’m going to sort out those two debauchees there in Venice.’
    ‘Well,’ said young Leo. ‘We’ll have a good time, Grace, depend on that. I don’t myself see that there’s much to choose between the injured party and the other parties. It’s all one and the same, isn’t it?’
    ‘Adultery,’ mused Grace. ‘Rather than fornication. Anyway, I’m a definite friend to Anthea and injury or no injury I’m going to add insult to it. Fancy her going to a private detectives’ and giving them the story. She never had reason to go to a private detective when I was Matron at Ambrose. I used to keep Arnold temperate myself in the sick-bay when there were no boys sick. Otherwise he would have been a libertine. I remember so clearly the smell of hyacinths on the window-sill and the sparkling medicine-trolley. If Anthea didn’t suspect it she should have, and been grateful. Well, all that’s past, Leo, and I appreciate the reduction on the ticket and this opportunity to sort them out. Mary Tiller’s a cook, Leo, a whole cook and nothing but a cook. I’m a Matron. That’s the difference.’
    ‘Oh, never mind them,’ said Leo. ‘It’s Venice we’re going to see.’
    ‘Oh, the gondoliers!’ Grace said.
    ‘As a matter of fact,’ said Leo, ‘compared to the people in the rest of Italy the Venetians are very austere.’
    Violet de Winter, chief agent of Global-Equip Security Services Ltd for Northern Italy and adjacent territories, had been feeling the pinch of modern immorality, as she put it. Over the past ten years her business, on the GESS side, had deteriorated by seventy-five percent largely because unmarried lovers no longer chose Venice as the most desirable place to be together and, moreover, the lovers’ husbands and wives no longer seemed to care if they did. The bottom has fallen out of the love-bird business,’ she frequently told her old friend Curran, who, in his turn, had always found her useful in many ways.
    The point about GESS was that they operated on a commercial basis, and Violet got ten percent. She had a strict range of territory in which to operate. Everything about GESS was strict, especially her instructions within the territory. Violet’s job was to:
    1. locate the subjects (two or more, as may be);
    2. find out as quickly as possible their financial status;
    3. exercise persuasion on any rich or susceptible party;
    4. if none of the subjects was really rich, drop the enquiry and report back to GESS.
    For ‘persuasion’ read blackmail. In this way, GESS was able to pursue its policy of dealing only on a strictly commercial basis. For the most part, they regretfully told their clients that ‘after prolonged investigations nothing of importance has emerged relating to your esteemed enquiry. Yours sincerely, [squiggle for signature] Global-Equip Security Services.’
    Ca’ Winter, the large palace on the Grand Canal where Violet still lived, was in a fair state of preservation. She owned part of it and gathered in the rents from several of the apartments. The other parts were owned by other people, and by the relatives of the dead Count de Winter whom Violet, an Englishwoman, had married in 1935 after meeting him in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. Now, occupying a quite splendid flat in the palace, she considered herself to be one of the stones, if