A Dead Man in Athens (6 page)

She laughed, then sobered up.

‘Actually, my mother doesn’t like that kind of talk. And she likes it still less now that Andreas is getting –’

She broke off.

‘Getting?’

‘Getting involved, you might say. Certainly he’s very excited. All the young men are. My father gets very angry. he says that war is stupid. The rush of the Gadarene swine, he says. And my mother says it’s immoral.’

‘And what do you say?’

She shrugged.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘It’s both, of course: stupid and immoral. But maybe it’s inevitable. That’s what everyone is coming to feel. My father says it’s the politicians. You know, Venizelos and his “Great Idea”. He says it would be a greater one if Venizelos led us in exactly the opposite direction. But the politicians are leading us all astray, he says. Especially the young, who don’t know any better. He says.

‘I’m not sure about that. There’s a lot of talk about it at the university, with people arguing on both sides. But my brother, Andreas, isn’t really interested in all that, the ideas, I mean. He’s just – excited. They all are, all the aviators – that’s what we call the ones that fly. They’ve taken to going over to the army base every afternoon. There’s a new man there who knows a lot about flying machines, an Englishman, an engineer, named Stevens. They talk a lot to him and he says that war would be a great opportunity for aviation. It would bring it on immensely, it always does. It would make aviation really big, he says, and that would change the world.

‘It seems unlikely to me. But he’s very enthusiastic and they listen to him. It appeals to them, both as young men and as flying men. And it does to Andreas, too. He see himself as a sort of flying hero.

‘It makes my father very angry. “You see yourself as a flying Hercules,” he says. “But remember the story of Daedalus and Icarus. Daedalus built wings so that man could fly. And he went up with his son, Icarus, to show them. But they flew too near the sun and the wax holding the wings on melted. Icarus fell into the sea and was drowned. And Daedalus, who had thought it all up, landed safely. Venizelos will be like Daedalus and land safely. But you bloody won’t.” Says my father.’

When they reached Constitution Square, the carriage stopped and everyone got out.

‘I am going to find my father,’ said Aphrodite. ‘Why don’t you come with me? He will be glad of masculine reinforcement.’

The square was now full of people. Every table outside the caf´es was occupied and often there were people standing beside them chatting. Everyone was chatting. The cab drivers dismounted from their carriages to join in the general conversation. Around each cab a small group, usually of men, was gathered. In the middle of the square, with total disregard for any cart or carriage that might be passing, people walked to and fro: chatting.

Old Tsakatellis, back in London, had said something about this, too.

‘The Greeks,’ he said, ‘love to talk. Everyone has an opinion and wants to express it. That is the basis of democracy.’

‘Yes,’ said Dr Metaxas, when Seymour put this view to him, ‘but the trouble is, it’s just talk. They never
do
anything.’

They found him sitting at a table with some friends.

‘My God!’ he said, looking up. ‘What is this: a posse? The police as well? That, surely, Aphrodite, is unnecessary: I’ll come quietly!’

Aphrodite was shaking hands with the other people around the table. Evidently she knew them all.

‘It’s all right, Aphrodite!’ one of them said. ‘We were just throwing him out!’

‘A likely story!’ said Aphrodite.

‘It’s true, though. We’re supposed to be meeting some friends.’

One of them glanced at his watch.

‘Supposed to have met some friends,’ he amended. ‘A quarter of an hour ago!’

They hurried away.

Dr Metaxas stayed put.

‘I don’t suppose I can persuade you . . .’ he said.

Aphrodite relented.

‘This once,’ she said. ‘Since you have a friend from England.’

‘I regard myself as in custody,’ said Dr Metaxas.

He asked how Seymour had been getting on. Seymour told him about the harem.

Aphrodite frowned.

‘I don’t like these Eastern practices,’ she said.

‘Well, they’re not exactly catching on,’ said Dr Metaxas.

‘No, but I don’t like them,’ said Aphrodite. ‘It’s the disregard for women that I can’t stand. One thing I will say for you, Father, is that you brought me up to be equal with men.’

‘No, I didn’t,’ said Dr Metaxas. ‘You forced it on me. You and your mother.’ He sighed. ‘Why did the Greeks have to become independent? Why didn’t we stick to the good old Ottoman ways? When man was king, there was no dispute in the house, and everything ran perfectly.’

‘For men,’ said Aphrodite.

‘True. And now nothing runs perfectly for anybody. Well, that, too, is democracy.’

‘You will be pleased to know,’ said Seymour, ‘that, in one respect at least, Aphrodite has been listening to your words. She spent the afternoon at the lab.’

‘Did she?’

Dr Metaxas turned to her with some surprise. He asked her what she had been doing and the two had a little, informed discussion of that part of the syllabus. Seymour’s attention drifted away.

But suddenly came back again.

‘Those are shots!’

‘Yes,’ said Dr Metaxas.

‘But they’re over there! In the square!’

‘Yes,’ said Dr Metaxas again.

‘They’re just like silly children,’ said Aphrodite indulgently.

‘Yes, but –’

‘Everyone in Athens carries a gun,’ said Dr Metaxas. ‘At least, quite a lot of people do.’

And, now that Seymour looked, he saw that it was true. Many of the men wore short loose jackets which concealed their belts. And in the belt, very often, was stuck a revolver. It was like some kind of Wild West town.

‘It harks back,’ said Dr Metaxas, ‘as everything in Athens does, to the days when they lived in the countryside. Everyone had a gun then. You needed it against the brigands. Of course, that was forty years ago. But when they moved into the towns, they brought the guns with them.’

‘But doesn’t it lead to . . .?’

All you would need in the East End, thought Seymour, on top of everything else, would be guns.

‘Mayhem?’

‘Sometimes. But not as often as you might think. They fire them, these days, mostly into the air.’

‘They’ve got a law about it,’ said Aphrodite casually. ‘Against carrying guns, that is. But no one pays much attention.’

The people at the tables had barely looked up.

‘It’s not that the Greeks are against having laws,’ said Dr Metaxas. ‘It’s just that they think they apply only to other people.’

A cooling puff of breeze went through the square sending up little ruffles of dust. Dr Metaxas put a hand over his glass. When the ruffle had passed there was a thin film of dust on the table. Not far from where they were sitting was a small garden planted with orange trees. The oranges were covered with dust too.

‘Among the things I’ve been looking at today,’ said Seymour, ‘is how the poison could have got into the harem.’

‘Still on that cat?’ said Dr Metaxas.

‘Yes. You see, once you’re in the harem, you’re not allowed out. So you couldn’t have gone out and got it. You would have to find some means of bringing it in. And the trouble about that is that no one is allowed into the harem either. The poison would have to have been given to the eunuchs at the door, in the same way as everything else, even food.’

‘They might have brought the poison to Athens with them,’ objected Dr Metaxas.

‘Even if they had acquired it in Salonica, the constraints of the harem would still have applied. And the same is true if they had acquired it in Istanbul. So I have been trying to find a way in which poison could have entered the harem.’

‘And have you found it?’

‘It could have come in in the guise of medicine. The ladies of the harem are presumably allowed to ask for medicine. They might even have got a doctor to provide it. And there have been plenty of opportunities recently, with all the doctors who have been called in for the Sultan, for them to see a doctor.’

‘Yes?’

‘You, yourself, for instance, have been called in.’

‘True, but I did not prescribe poison.’

‘No, of course not. But what you prescribed might have been switched. Poison for medicine.’

‘Well, I suppose it might,’ said Dr Metaxas. ‘But –’

‘Could you tell me about what happened when you were called in? The procedure?’

‘It was barbaric. Ridiculous! I wasn’t even allowed to see her. She stood behind a curtain all the time!’

Aphrodite laughed.

‘No, it’s true!’ Dr Metaxas insisted. ‘I wasn’t allowed to examine her. All I could go on was her description of her symptoms.’

‘And could you proceed on that basis?’

‘I did proceed. A physician, as I’m sure you’ve spotted, is a man with principles. And one of the principles is never to refuse a good fat fee.’

‘Did you, in fact, prescribe something?’

‘I did. For constipation. I assumed that her problems were largely the same as those of the cat. In fact, I detected considerable similarities with the cat.’

‘It’s monstrous,’ said Aphrodite. ‘Keeping women like that!’

‘The results are much the same,’ said Dr Metaxas. ‘Neuroticism, obesity –’

‘You wrote out a prescription, presumably?’

‘I did.’

‘And then what? Did you give it to her? Personally?’

‘I didn’t get close enough to give her anything. As I say, she remained behind the curtain all the time. I handed the prescription to one of the eunuchs.’

He smiled ironically.

‘So,’ he said, ‘is that what you wanted? An explanation of how it got into the harem? Something at least for you to investigate. If you have nothing better to do.’

He made a dismissive gesture.

‘Pah!’ he said. ‘Eunuchs, harem, poison – and this in Athens! An enclave of Ottoman backwardness in a city of cars and flying machines! Cat!’ he said scornfully. ‘You are wasting your time, Mr Seymour.’

Seymour felt inclined to agree with him.

Chapter Five

Seymour had a deep scepticism for government, and that scepticism grew as he walked up the drive to the Sultan’s residence the next morning. The increase in guards promised at the meeting he had attended looked as if it had been implemented. The Greek guards had grown in numbers and now spread right across the road, which was obstructed by a hastily erected road block. Further up the drive the Ottoman soldiers, bayonets pointing, were out in force. At the gates to the house French military uniforms mingled with English naval uniforms and there was an unusually businesslike air.

Inside the house there were cavasses everywhere. Seymour captured one and asked if he could speak to Orhan Eser, the Acting-Vizier’s assistant. A cavass went off but did not return. After some time Seymour collared another cavass, but with the same result. In the end he went to the kitchen, which was about the only place where there seemed to be people, and people he could talk to without going through intermediaries.

In the kitchen everyone was scurrying around except for the small girl, Chloe, who was standing by the door anxiously chewing her fingers. Someone put a huge tray of dishes into her arms and she rushed off. Other servants came in and collected trays. Breakfast, it appeared, was being served late this morning.

One of the servants stopped for a moment near Seymour and he took the chance to ask what was going on.

‘Haven’t you heard? The Sultan’s been poisoned!’

Poisoned! He seized one of the cavasses and demanded to be taken to the Sultan’s apartments.

Outside the large, ornate doors a crowd of people were waiting: picturesquely dressed guards, dark-suited officials and a group of elderly men whom Seymour guessed to be doctors. Among them was Dr Metaxas. He caught Seymour’s eye and came across.

‘Again!’ he said, and shrugged his shoulders.

‘Again?’

‘We’ve been here before.’

‘He’s not . . . dying, then?’

‘Unfortunately not,’ said Dr Metaxas.

Someone called him and he went back to the doctors. A little later they went through the large doors.

Seymour saw Orhan Eser.

‘Can I be of use?’

Orhan Eser considered.

‘Possibly,’ he said. ‘Wait here.’

He disappeared.

‘It looks as if it’s real this time,’ said someone in the crowd.

‘It will be one day,’ said another.

Orhan Eser came back.

‘You are to see Abd-es-Salaam,’ he said. ‘Only he can’t see you just now. Please wait.’

Seymour waited. After a while the crowd thinned out. The officials went away. The doctors were all inside. Eventually only the guards were left.

There was little he could do here. He went back to the kitchen.

The little girl was still standing by the door, still chewing her fingers.

‘Hello!’ he said. ‘Are you Chloe?’

She gave him a frightened look.

‘Yes, sir,’ she said, almost inaudibly. She was so young that she wasn’t wearing a veil. Or perhaps she wasn’t a Muslim.

‘You’ve been taking the food to the harem, have you?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Perhaps I’ll come with you the next time you go. I want to speak to the eunuchs.’

‘They’re having their breakfast.’

‘Oh. Right.’

She hesitated, and then seemed to pluck up her courage.

‘I have to go back to fetch the dishes,’ she confided.

‘Perhaps I’ll come with you then and you can show me where it is.’

‘Yes, sir.’

He smiled at her encouragingly.

‘You’re a local girl, are you?’

‘Yes, sir.’ And then, after a moment: ‘I live up in the mountains. We have a farm there.’

‘Oh, yes.’ Then a thought struck him. ‘You’re not anything to do with Ari, the milkman, are you?’

‘His niece.’

‘And you’ve come to work here?’

‘Had to. There’s nothing up in the mountains.’

‘Do you like it here?’

She thought.

‘It’s very big.’

‘And are they nice to you?’

‘Amina beats me sometimes.’

‘She’s hard on you, is she?’

‘She’s an old devil!’ she said, with sudden energy.

‘What about the eunuchs?’

‘They’re all right. Usually. They don’t pay much attention to me.’ Then, after a moment, confidingly: ‘They’re a bit odd.’

‘And what about the ladies of the harem?’

‘I don’t see much of them. I usually stop at the door. But the Lady Irina was nice to me.’

‘Oh? When was that?’

‘There was a dish. And it was chipped. And the eunuch said I’d done it, though I hadn’t. And he hit me. And the Lady Irina said, “Do that again and I’ll hit you!” The way she spoke! You wouldn’t speak to a man like that up in our village, I can tell you! I was frightened they might hurt her. Amina told me afterwards that the eunuchs had complained to Abd-es-Salaam but that Abd-es-Salaam had said, “Count yourselves fortunate that she didn’t have you for breakfast!” And she patted my hand and told me not to cry and that if they were ever nasty to me again I was to come to her.’

‘Well, that was very kind of her. Although I don’t know how you could go to her, because you can’t go in the harem, can you?’

‘I don’t usually go in. But sometimes they invite me in and the eunuchs don’t mind, they let me slip past. And they show me their dresses. They have such lovely dresses. And sometimes the Lady Samira lets me put on her shoes. But I prefer the Lady Irina. She gives me chocolates.’

Another cat, thought Seymour, for them to play with.

When Chloe went to collect the dirty dishes from the harem, Seymour went with her. The eunuch on duty at the door raised his eyebrows.

‘I am afraid, sir, that you cannot –’

‘I am not seeking entrance,’ said Seymour swiftly. ‘It is you I have come to see.’

‘Me?’

This was clearly troubling and the eunuch looked anxiously over his shoulder.

‘I have some small questions I want to put.’

‘I am afraid, sir, that I could not – not without permission, that is.’

‘And of course I could get it. But I do not wish to bother Abd-es-Salaam just now when he has so much on his mind. And they are just small questions, hardly worth making a fuss over.’

‘Well . . .’

‘Of course, I could if necessary. And will.’

There was something to be said, he had decided, for Lady Samira’s high-handed approach, especially when dealing with Ottoman bureaucracy.

‘If you insist.’

‘Well . . .’ said the eunuch, looking over his shoulder again desperately. But reinforcement did not appear. Reinforcement, probably, was keeping sensibly out of sight.

‘Good. Then I will put my questions. They are, as I said, just small ones.’

Small or large, they were not, the eunuch clearly felt, for him to answer. Best to fall back at once on traditional defence: the blank wall. No one and nothing was allowed to pass into or out of the harem. Food? Well, of course. But nothing else. Medicine? Well, possibly. But only with Abd-es-Salaam’s permission, of course, the eunuch added hastily. So whoever was on duty would always seek permission before admitting any medicine? Naturally. And when had this last occurred? Well . . . The eunuch didn’t think it
had
occurred. Not recently.

Seymour said that that was funny because he had gathered that several of the royal ladies had recently taken advantage of the doctors’ visits to the Sultan to consult them on their own behalf.

The eunuch did not think so.

That, too, was strange, Seymour said, because he had spoken to the doctors and that was what they had said.

Well, perhaps there had been an isolated case or two.

Could the eunuch supply the names and the occasions?

Alas, the eunuch couldn’t. There was so much coming and going.

But he had just said that there wasn’t. That no one or nothing could get in?

The Effendi must have misunderstood him.

And the medicine? Medicine had been prescribed. Had it been let in? With or without permission? If with, Seymour would be able to confirm that by recourse to Abd-es-Salaam’s office. If without . . .

The eunuch blank-walled desperately. But the blank wall did not come down. Seymour was tempted to unleash the Lady Irina on him.

But then the Lady Irina was precisely the person he didn’t want to involve over this.

In the corridor, as he was coming back from the harem, he ran into Dr Metaxas.

‘You have seen the Sultan? How is he?’

‘As well as can be expected.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘It means as well as you would expect given your initial position.’

‘I’m sorry?’

Dr Metaxas sighed.

‘Take me, for instance. In my opinion the Sultan is suffering from an over-active and self-pitying imagination. I would expect to find him self-pitying away. And that is precisely what I have found. Whereas . . .’

‘Whereas?’

‘My colleague, Fahkri Bey, has perceived symptoms consistent with mild arsenic poisoning.’

‘I see.’

‘Yes. The trouble is, Fahkri Bey is, possibly alone among my colleagues, an experienced, competent physician.’

‘He could be right, you mean?’

‘We shall have to await the results of the tests.’

‘But, meanwhile, the Sultan’s life is not in danger?’

‘That depends on your initial position.’

‘Hmm.’

‘There is, though, common ground among us. We are all agreed on the need for continual close monitoring of the patient’s condition. We are all professionals,’ he said, carrying on down the corridor, ‘and we want to keep the money coming in,’ he said over his shoulder.

‘Your view?’ asked Abd-es-Salaam, as they sat in his dimly lit room.

‘I have not changed my view,’ said Seymour, ‘that this is merely the consequence of a trivial harem squabble.’

The Acting-Vizier nodded.

‘A stupid dispute between silly women. I think I understand you. You see a dead cat and you think: this is silly, I should not be spending time on this. You wonder what you are doing here.’

‘More or less, yes.’

‘Despite what happened this morning?’

‘If anything happened this morning.’

Abd-es-Salaam nodded again.

‘I have, I must admit, sometimes been tempted to share your view. I have sometimes wondered if the Sultan’s stomach cramps are merely a physical expression of his natural fears and anxieties. I put this to Fahkri Bey, and he said he had sometimes wondered this too. But not this morning. He thinks the pains are real and caused by the ingestion of a noxious substance. The symptoms, he said, are consistent with mild arsenic poisoning.’

‘If that proves to be the case then my view will naturally be affected.’

‘Of course, if may be partly right. It may well be a harem matter. Only not a trivial one, not the issue of a silly dispute between foolish women, but something far graver.

‘You see,’ he went on, ‘I see it differently from you. I see a man surrounded, an animal at bay. Imagine a man with power, nearly absolute power. And then suddenly it is snatched away. He feels naked, vulnerable. And this is not just imagination. He really is in danger. In his time wielding power he will inevitably have made enemies. Now is their chance to be revenged. My job is to protect him from them.

‘But that is just my first job. My second is to protect him from a different kind of enemy. Do you play chess, Mr Seymour? Imagine a king who has become a pawn. He is now a piece that others can play with, fit to their designs. Possibly take. The Balkans are a turbulent world and there are many players and different designs. And many of these designs involve His Highness.

‘So I see a man surrounded. I see a man in the middle of a ring of enemies each of whom may wish to kill him. Well, of course, I am not alone in seeing this and there are other people, some with great power, who, for their own reasons, do not wish to see him killed. They try to guard him, and, of course, I try to guard him too.

‘The attack from without, I think I and my allies can guard him from. But an attack from within is a different matter.

‘And now, perhaps, you can see why a dead cat may be important. It may mean that an enemy has got behind the defences.

‘So I do not dismiss the cat as silly: and I hope, Mr Seymour, that you will not do so either. And you may be right –I think you are – that this is a harem matter. But wrong in thinking that this is just a question of a silly dispute between foolish women. They, too, may be pawns in a much bigger game.’

One small, immediate result of Seymour’s interview with Abd-es-Salaam was that when he next went to see the eunuchs, the blank wall had been removed. No one could have been more helpful or more cooperative. They agreed at once to supply a list of the occasions on which the royal ladies had sought medical help. They thought they could work out the occasions on which medicines had passed into the harem. They even agreed to attempt to recover such medicines as they could.

‘Do it, if you can, without alerting the royal ladies. You might use the maids.’

They thought they might.

‘Although, of course,’ Seymour said to the Acting-Vizier’s assistant afterwards, ‘the eunuchs themselves are not above suspicion. It might be better if some way could be found in which I myself could conduct a search.’

In the harem? Orhan Eser was aghast. No, he said, shaking his head firmly, it definitely could not. Not all walls were dismountable.

Seymour thought he was beginning to work Orhan Eser out now. He was a sort of personal secretary to the Acting-Vizier and so in a position of considerable power. He ‘had the ear’ of Abd-es-Salaam, as the Eastern world put it. It was through him that everyone had to approach the Acting-Vizier and through him that all instructions came outward. He was clearly a person to stay on the right side of.

What Seymour could not work out, though, was what he was doing here. There was no future for an able, presumably ambitious, man at the court of an exiled Sultan. What induced him to stay? Loyalty? Some strong family bond? Or hope for something better, a change in circumstances, perhaps a return to Istanbul or power, where he could hope to benefit?

Or was – and this was the point – his allegiance elsewhere? Ambitious men in Turkey these days were usually on the side of the new reforming Government. Could they have placed him here? To keep an eye on the Sultan? Or be in a position to act, should action, for some reason, become necessary.