Death of an Elgin Marble (34 page)

The sun was setting in a ball of blazing orange behind the Parthenon. Shafts of golden light were lighting up the building, a half-sized replica of the one on the Acropolis in Athens. Powerscourt and Lady Lucy were lying on a rug just behind the top of a little hill by the Hellenic College in Amersham. They had booked a room for the night at the King’s Arms in the town. They could see the main entrance to the school below their position. In front of them was the long glade that led up to the newly completed Erechtheion. The porch where the Caryatids would have lived was covered with a large gold cloth, gold being one of the colours of Athena. Inspector Kingsley and his men were not far away. The Inspector had given Powerscourt a whistle to blow if he needed assistance. ‘Pretend you’re some ancient warrior,’ he had suggested to Powerscourt, ‘calling for help in your time of trouble.’

Powerscourt had a pair of German binoculars, Lady Lucy had her finest opera glasses. Powerscourt also had a pistol in his right-hand pocket.

‘God knows what’s going to happen, Lucy,’ he whispered. ‘I still don’t understand why no parents are allowed in.’

‘We should know fairly soon,’ said Lady Lucy, squeezing her husband’s hand.

Eight o’clock, the hour mentioned in the literature as the start time for the ceremony, came and went. There was a rumble of noise from the Hellenic College, and the sound of horses neighing from the direction of the stable block. Powerscourt wondered if they wanted more darkness before they started. At a quarter past eight four young men, dressed in Greek-style chitons, simple linen tunics that hung down to the knee, carrying burning torches, marched very slowly across the grass to the Erechtheion and stood to attention at the four corners of the building. Just in front, clad in long white robes, were a couple of musicians, one with a lyre who might have been Apollo and one with pipes who might have been Pan. They began to play a haunting tune, standing in front of the temple, facing the College. Somewhere behind them, concealed on the other side of the Erechtheion, a drum sounded a rhythmic beat, like a call to arms. The young men held their blazing brands very high and very straight.

Then the procession began. In front, making their way slowly and deliberately out of the front of the College, was a group of elder men bearing olive branches in robes of dark blue, another of Athena’s colours, heading for the Erechtheion. Lady Lucy poked her husband in the ribs. ‘This lot are the staff, Francis,’ she whispered. ‘That’s the Headmaster in front. Two behind is Mr Blakeway, the man from Burford.’ The soft pipes played again. A girl of about sixteen was the next member of the procession. She was leading a reluctant heifer with a garland round her neck.

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?

To what green altar, O mysterious priest,

Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,

And all her silken flanks with garlands
drest?

Then came four horsemen, naked apart from a cloak thrown loosely over their shoulders, young men of about eighteen years, Amersham’s answer to the cavalry that rode across the field at Marathon. The drum beat on, slightly faster now. There was a rattle from the ground. Powerscourt and Lady Lucy could not see what caused it. Then a chariot emerged, obviously home-made, with two riders, one of whom got on and off repeatedly as it trotted slowly towards the shrouded temple. It was dark. The lyre and the pipe sounded more insistent now.

‘My God, Lucy,’ Powerscourt whispered, although there was little chance of their voices being heard above the music and the crying of the heifer and the neighing of the horses, repeatedly restrained by their riders from galloping towards their goal. ‘This is the Parthenon frieze in the British Museum come to life, my love. This procession is marble in Bloomsbury. It’s real here in Amersham. This is the great procession of the Panathenaica, the greatest festival in Athens to their goddess Athena. It’s meant to happen in the summer, I think. Maybe Stanhope has decided to move it.’

‘What are they going to do with that heifer?’ asked Lady Lucy, who hated bloodshed.

‘God knows.’

Four pairs of young men with torches came out next. They moved ahead to place themselves between the marchers. There were long shadows on the grass now, one or two of the horses bright on one side and dark on the other. A strange cart, pulled by a pair of oxen, came next. In the middle of the cart Powerscourt and Lady Lucy could see a tall shape like a ship, with a great slew of material draped across the mast.

‘My God, Lucy.’ Powerscourt was pulling very hard at the grass. ‘That’s the
peplos
, a new cloth for the goddess on top of the ship. The point of the festival is to bring a new
peplos
to Athena. The women spend months weaving it. These people are leaving nothing to chance.’

Twenty-four young girls, some of them the team brought by Artemis Metaxas from London, came next, carrying baskets. This was the reason for Artemis’s weekend trips to the Hellenic College. The girls she brought had helped to weave the
peplos
. Now they were making up the numbers of maidens, an important part of the great parade. Then came another pair of musicians. The top of the procession had reached the Erechtheion now and began to line up in rows in front of it, facing the porch of the Caryatids. Powerscourt remembered how the procession was in two separate streams on the Parthenon frieze, the two joining together shortly before the finale. The music was beating faster now. A last charioteer brought up the rear, shuffling anxiously on his feet as if he felt he might fall off at any moment. Powerscourt thought all the inhabitants of the Hellenic College must be on parade now.

What little town by river or sea-shore,

Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,

Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?

And, little town, thy streets for evermore

Will silent be; and not a soul to tell

Why thou art desolate, can e’er return.

It was completely dark now, the torches shining more powerfully than before. A gust of wind blew over the watchers towards the charioteers and the musicians. Powerscourt hoped it wasn’t going to rain.

The musicians fell silent. The drum beat on. The procession was over. All those taking part were now lined up in front of the temple. The heifer, Lady Lucy noted, seemed to have disappeared, led away to have its throat cut in more peaceful surroundings, or just put out to pasture. The torches were all around the front and the near side of the Erechtheion so that the new building and the porch, still covered in its cloth, were bathed in flickering light. The charioteers were hopping from foot to foot. The horsemen were holding back their steeds. The drum stopped. There was a moment of complete silence. Then the
salpinx
, the Greek trumpet, whose noise was described by the ancient playwright Aeschylus as shattering, sounded from inside the temple. The leader of the men at the front of the procession stepped forward and took hold of the rope holding the cloth over the porch. When the
salpinx
stopped, the drummer started up again, his beats loud and insistent. The Headmaster pulled on the rope. The cloth fell away. Leaning forward, Powerscourt saw that space was there on the temple porch for six maidens, just like the original, but only one was in place. At one end of the line stood a single Caryatid, her long gown falling down below her waist, her face proud and haughty. She looked at the crowd as if they were riff-raff outside her palace gates. At the other end stood Dr Tristram Stanhope in a very ornate robe with vine leaves in his hair.

‘Is that the real Caryatid, Francis?’ murmured Lady Lucy.

‘Heaven knows,’ her husband replied, ‘but that’s certainly the real Stanhope.’

‘I begin to sing of Pallas Athena,’ Tristram Stanhope began, ‘the dread Protectress of the city, who with Ares looks after matters of war, the plundering of cities, the battle cry and the fray.’

‘That’s a Homeric hymn to Athena, my love,’ Powerscourt whispered. ‘They don’t think Homer actually wrote it, but it’s bloody old.’

‘It is She who protects the people,’ Stanhope went on, ‘wherever they might come or go. Hail, Goddess, and give us good spirits and blessed favour!’

The little audience stayed silent, uncertain if they were in church or a pagan temple. Stanhope raised his voice once more. ‘Day and night, eternally, in even the loneliest hours, Hear my prayer . . .’

‘God help us, Lucy, here’s another of those bloody hymns. Some of them go on for ever. We could be here all night.’

‘. . . and grant us an abundant peace, fulfilment, good health. Make prosperous the hour, grey-eyed One, inventor of Art, The object of the people’s ceaseless prayers – Athena My Queen!’

Tristram Stanhope bowed to the statue as if she were Athena herself. He strode off back to the College. His followers returned in the same order they had come. The procession was over. Only the four young men with torches stayed in their places by the sides of the building. Shadows and shafts of light played over the surface of the Erechtheion. The Caryatid had found a new home in the Chiltern hills. Now it was for Powerscourt and Inspector Kingsley to determine how permanent that new home should be.

They met in a back room of the King’s Arms, Inspector Kingsley looking preoccupied, Lady Lucy pensive, Powerscourt writing down the order of the procession in his notebook. ‘Well, my lord,’ Inspector Kingsley began, ‘I don’t know what news you have to report but mine is pretty serious. The Twins are in town. God knows how many other criminals from Deptford are at large here in Amersham this evening.’

‘What were they doing?’ asked Lady Lucy.

‘They were watching the entrance to the College, presumably to make sure there were no unwanted visitors. Like yourselves. It’s just as well they didn’t go looking in the grounds around the College, my lady.’

Lady Lucy shuddered. Powerscourt carried on scribbling.

‘There’s more,’ the Inspector went on. ‘Young Smithson, the constable who’s been looking into the traffic in railway containers, reports a number of them passing through Amersham. The dates suggest they may coincide with other developments in the case. It’s not conclusive, of course, but is certainly suspicious.’

Powerscourt looked up, as though he had just returned from a long journey.

‘We saw the Caryatid, Inspector. Let me correct that. We saw
a
Caryatid. God only knows if it is the real one or a fake. You will recall that the ceremony at the school a couple of hours ago was to mark the completion of the Hellenic College Erechtheion, a temple dedicated to Athena. The real one, like the building here, is close to the Parthenon. There was a ceremony, like the one described on the Parthenon frieze: maidens with baskets, musicians, a trumpeter, animals meant for sacrifice, horsemen, city elders, a charioteer or two. They could have all walked out of the Acropolis in Athens nearly two and a half thousand years ago. This, however, is the key point. The porch of the Caryatids, one part of the building, was covered with a cloth until the climax of the proceedings. When it was revealed, there was a Caryatid, looking remarkably like the British Museum one in the photographs. There too was Dr Tristram Stanhope at the other end of the porch, ranting away with some Homeric poetry.’

‘Do you think my men should go and seize it now?’ said the Inspector.

‘I think it might be better to leave her till the morning,’ Powerscourt replied. ‘Heaven only knows what they’re all getting up to down there now. Bacchanalian orgy? Dionysian revels? Anything could be happening.’

‘Pardon me, Inspector,’ said Lady Lucy. ‘Isn’t this the first time you have seen a link between the Twins and, presumably, their horrid boss in Deptford, and Dr Stanhope and the Hellenic College?’

‘It is,’ said Inspector Kingsley. There was a pause. Lady Lucy and the policeman looked at Powerscourt who seemed to be wrestling with some impossible question in his mind. Through the walls they could hear the sound of singing in the public bar. Outside the town clock struck ten.

‘Let me make a proposal,’ Powerscourt said finally. ‘If either of you don’t like it, I will drop it.’

They both nodded.

‘I was thinking just now about the difference between success and victory.’

‘Success and victory?’ Inspector Kingsley sounded incredulous.

‘Sorry if that sounded rather grand. Let me explain,’ said Powerscourt, now pacing up and down the room. ‘Victory in this case would mean the arrests of the Twins, their keeper, Dr Stanhope and whoever the link is between those two parties. I suggest we refer to him as the missing link from now on. All of them would be tried and convicted for their various crimes.’ Powerscourt stopped under a hunting print where the hounds were just about to tear a cornered fox to pieces.

‘And success?’ Lady Lucy spoke very quietly.

‘Success for me—’ Powerscourt was on the move once again ‘—is not the same as success for the good Inspector here. Success for me is the return of the Caryatid. That, after all, is what I was asked to do by the British Museum. This is how I propose to try for success. It should not rule out, and might even contribute to, a measure of victory.’

The public bar was now singing ‘Jerusalem’. Powerscourt thought it more pleasant than the music of the lyre and the pipes and the incantations from a world that passed away so long ago.

‘I propose to call on Dr Stanhope tomorrow morning. I believe you have a record of his London address, Inspector. I shall, of course, try the College first. I rather fancy he will have spent the night here in Amersham. I shall tell him he has forty-eight hours to return the real Caryatid to the British Museum.’

‘And what will you say if he laughs in your face, my lord?’

‘We have quite a lot we can throw at him, when you think about it. The presence of the Caryatid at the ceremony here this evening, the presence of the Twins, the progress of the railway containers, the large amounts of money floating through his various bank accounts, the fact that he could have organized the original theft more easily than anybody else. I shall have thought of a whole lot more by the morning. But there is one area where I’m sure I need your permission, Inspector.’