Death of an Elgin Marble (38 page)

The Inspector nodded. ‘It could all have been the other way round, of course. Stanhope’s love of Greece might have been the driving factor, but I’m not convinced. I read
Dr Faustus
at school, my lord. I remember the teacher telling us that Faust was like Icarus, the boy who flew too close to the sun and fell to earth. Maybe Stanhope is not only Stanhope Faust but Stanhope Icarus as well. There’s another thing about Easton, by the way. He told me he was the man in the taxi at the Ritz, the one who took Ragg for a ride. Easton’s as bald as a coot.’

‘You don’t think we are avoiding the real question, gentlemen?’ Lady Lucy was refilling the glasses.

‘Which is?’ said the Inspector.

‘Why, which is the real one?’ Lady Lucy replied. ‘The American Caryatid? The Athenian Caryatid? The Hellenic College Caryatid? The British Museum Caryatid, if there is one tomorrow?’

‘I’m going to be very boring,’ said her husband. ‘I’m going to sound like a parent telling his children on Christmas Eve that they have to wait until the morning to find out what Santa Claus is going to bring them. We’ll just have to wait and see. If a Caryatid comes back tomorrow, the museum experts will have a view, but that may take time. I believe that American academic who told the museum that the current one was not the original is still in Europe somewhere. Presumably Ragg can bring him back to London.’

‘I’ve just thought of something, my lord.’ The Inspector looked worried suddenly. ‘Nobody at the museum knows the statue may come back tomorrow. It’s going to take time for the different experts to have a view. We must make sure that no word leaks out to the newspapers that the Caryatid has returned, if it has. That would be a sensation. The only bigger sensation would be if it transpired a week later that the thing was a fake.’

‘Well done, Inspector,’ cried Powerscourt, ‘you’re absolutely right. One person in particular will have to be sat on. He might even try to go about saying he had secured her return. There are no prizes for guessing who I am talking about. Call him Icarus. Call him Dr Faustus. Call him Dr Tristram Stanhope.’

Nobody knows who was the first person to see the six Caryatids on their porch in Athens’s new Erechtheion 2,300 years ago. Maybe the high-born young ladies broke with protocol and came out of seclusion to see what the sculptors had made of them. It was hard to tell who was the first to see the Caryatid that returned to the British Museum early on Tuesday morning. Inspector Kingsley’s officers might have relaxed their vigil in the night hours, but they were about in force from six o’clock onwards. As Londoners began their journey to work, a young constable spotted what he thought was a packing case in the shadows at the side of the great loading bay at the back of the museum. Inspector Kingsley was summoned. Torches revealed that it was a battered railway container. The Inspector greeted it like a long lost friend.

‘Just keep an eye on this thing, boys,’ he said. ‘I’m fairly sure there’s a Caryatid inside. I’m going to see if we can get her into the building before it gets light.’

The staff of the museum, the curators and the librarians and the archivists began work at nine. The cleaners and the maintenance staff came much earlier. The Inspector found the Buildings Manager at his post just after a quarter past seven. Tom Harris took one look at the container and had it moved to a side room off the loading bay. He sent for a couple of porters.

‘I’d like to open it now, Inspector, I really would, but I think it would be only fair to wait for Deputy Director Ragg before we open the box. He’s had to take most of the strain, after all.’

The policeman and the Buildings Manager talked about football while they waited. There was a needle match between Tottenham Hotspur and Arsenal the following Saturday. Theophilus Ragg arrived just after eight o’clock with Powerscourt in tow.

‘Thank you for waiting,’ he said, ‘thank you so much. Please carry on now. Let’s see what’s inside.’

The porters took their crowbars and inserted them very carefully at the top of the container. After a few minutes the top was off. Wrapped in many layers of cotton, lying on a series of blankets that held her in position, was a Caryatid. The Buildings Manager gestured to his porters to stand back out of the light.

‘My God,’ said Ragg quietly. ‘She’s come back. I never thought she would. I never thought I’d see this day. Thank God for his mercies.’

‘Amen to that,’ said the Inspector. Powerscourt was peering at the statue and realized he had absolutely no way of telling if she was real or a fake. Everybody waited for the Deputy Director to announce what was to happen next.

‘If I could make a suggestion, Mr Deputy Director, the Inspector and I were discussing the possibility of this return only yesterday.’ Powerscourt did not choose to mention that the Caryatid had only come back to the British Museum because he had blackmailed the Head of Greek and Roman Antiquities into producing her. He wondered where Stanhope was now and how he would react. ‘Forgive me if I am speaking out of turn,’ he continued.

‘Please, please,’ said Ragg, ‘this is such a shock. Any suggestions would be more than welcome. My mind is in such a whirl I can hardly think.’

‘We wondered if it might not be prudent to keep the Caryatid under wraps for a little while. Not to tell anybody just yet that she has been returned. That will give the experts a window in which they can determine whether this is the real thing or not. Maybe that young American from Yale, Stephen Lambert Lodge, who pointed out that the original Caryatid had disappeared, could be brought back to London. I don’t need to tell you, Mr Deputy Director, of the fuss there would be if you pronounced it real today and had to say it was a fake next Monday. The museum would be humiliated.’

‘Quite so, quite so.’ Ragg was on his knees now, feeling the Caryatid’s face very gently with the tips of his fingers. ‘I so hope this is the real thing. But you speak wisely, Powerscourt.’ He turned and looked his Buildings Manager in the eye. ‘Tom, you have heard this discussion. Could you arrange to have the statue kept here, out of sight, with the door locked at all times, and one of your porters permanently on duty near the entrance?’

Harris nodded. Ragg rose slowly to his feet. He seemed reluctant to leave the presence. Finally he led the little company out into the main body of the building.

‘I had a letter from young Lambert Lodge only the other day, you know. It won’t take him very long to get back. You’ll never guess where he was.’

‘Berlin?’ said the Inspector.

‘Vienna?’ offered Powerscourt.

‘Those are two good guesses,’ said Ragg happily, ‘but you’re both wrong. He’s in Athens.’

Powerscourt wondered if the American had been in the city two days before when he could have seen a different Caryatid carried in triumph through the streets of her native city and restored to her place on the Acropolis.

Dr Tristram Stanhope had disappeared. His staff at the British Museum sent word to all his London clubs but he was not there. His flat in St James’s Square was empty. The lady who looked after him reported to the police that she had not seen her gentleman for several days. The Hellenic College in Amersham where Powerscourt had directed Inspector Kingsley’s men said he had not been in the building since Sunday when he had been seen departing with two large suitcases.

‘It is nearly midnight in Christopher Marlowe’s
Faustus
,’ Powerscourt said to Lady Lucy, ‘the doctor has nearly come to the end of his twenty-four years with the power and the glory. Listen, the clock strikes eleven.

‘“O Faustus, Now hast thou but one bare hour to live, And then thou must be damned perpetually! Stand still, you ever moving spheres of heaven, That time might cease and midnight never come.”’

Inspector Kingsley spent six hours that day with William Tyndale Easton in the interview room at Maidstone police station. Sergeant Burke’s record filled a notebook and a half. At the end he sent a message to Inspector Ferguson in Deptford. Carver Wilkins was arrested shortly after five o’clock. Two of the three principals were behind bars, the third still missing, his bones perhaps, like Faustus’s, to be discovered strewn across a stage.

The Inspector felt cheerful when he went to report his news to Powerscourt and Lady Lucy.

‘It just remains to find the wretched Stanhope,’ said Inspector Kingsley. ‘Do either of you have any idea where he may have gone?’

‘To hell,’ said Powerscourt cheerfully, ‘straight to hell, like Dr Faustus. The clock strikes twelve.

‘“It strikes, it strikes! Now, body, turn to air Or Lucifer will bear thee quick to hell! Oh soul, be changed into small water drops And fall into the ocean, ne’er to be found . . . I’ll burn my books! Oh Mephistopheles.”’

‘Do be serious, Francis, for heaven’s sake. That’s quite enough
Dr Faustus
for one day. I believe, Inspector, that Dr Stanhope has family in the West Country. Taunton perhaps?’

‘I tell you what worries me,’ said Kingsley. ‘These ladies he has affairs with, would they be so besotted that they would hide him away somewhere?’

There was a knock at the door. Rhys, the Powerscourt butler, coughed in his usual way as he entered the room.

‘Telephone,’ he said, as if he had only just encountered the instrument, ‘it’s for you, Inspector. Perhaps you would like to take it in my lordship’s study. This way, please.’

‘Nobody’s rung the Inspector here before, have they? I do hope nothing’s wrong,’ said Lady Lucy.

‘It’s probably routine,’ said Powerscourt, ‘some minor matter that needs to be cleared up this evening.’

But when Inspector Kingsley came back into the room it was clear that this was no routine matter. His face was dark and he was wringing his hands.

‘Damn, damn, damn!’ he said.

Powerscourt and Lady Lucy waited to hear the news.

‘It’s Lucas Ringer,’ he announced. ‘The undertaker. Holed up in his seafront hotel in Aberystwyth.’

‘What of him?’ said Powerscourt.

‘He’s dead!’

‘He can’t be.’

‘He is.’

‘Was it natural causes?’ Powerscourt knew only too well why the Inspector was devastated. They might have Carver Wilkins and Easton behind bars but the people who had, so far as they knew, committed the murders, were the Twins. And the only witness prepared to give evidence against them in court was Lucas Ringer, now the late Lucas Ringer, gone to meet his maker by the sea in the middle of Wales.

‘How did he die?’ asked Powerscourt.

‘His heart gave out. The local doctor thought he might have been suffocated but the hotel staff swore blind that nobody else had gone into the hotel yesterday evening. So the verdict looks like accidental death.’

‘In which case,’ said Powerscourt, ‘unless we come up with a plan, the Twins will be left at large, able to continue intimidating witnesses and killing off their adversaries. I would not wish to end this case in these circumstances. I couldn’t live with myself if I did.’

Powerscourt began walking up and down his drawing room, running his hands through his hair.

‘You don’t have anything else you could arrest the Twins for, Inspector?’ Lady Lucy was worried about any plans her husband might cook up on his progress up and down the carpet.

‘Believe me, Lady Powerscourt, Inspector Ferguson, the man on the ground in Deptford, has been trying to arrest those two for years now. Nobody from Deptford would dare appear in court to give evidence against them. The last person to threaten to speak out in front of a judge and jury can just about get around in a wheelchair. He’ll never walk again.’

‘Dear me,’ said Lady Lucy, ‘I wish there was something I could suggest.’

‘How about this?’ Powerscourt had returned and resumed his seat by the fire. ‘I can’t say it’s my favourite of all the plans I’ve ever dreamt up, but I think it would work.’

‘How would it work, my lord?’ asked the Inspector.

‘Well,’ Powerscourt replied, ‘we can’t obviously suggest that we ask someone to get killed by the Twins in front of witnesses just so the Twins can be brought into court. But suppose they were observed just about to assault somebody? Suppose the watchers were not going to be intimidated by any threats and will appear in court whatever happens? We just need the right piece of bait.’

Lady Lucy turned pale.

‘Did you have something in mind, my lord?’

‘As a matter of fact, I do, Inspector. I’m the bait. Sorry, Lucy, I don’t think it’s dangerous at all. Consider where we are now. You reported that the Twins had been seen in Amersham the other evening. I have noticed a couple of unsavoury-looking characters knocking about the square here recently. And I have also noticed a number of police officers who seem to be stationed discreetly round this house twenty-four hours a day. The two events may be related, I do not know. And I don’t think I want to know if you have put those officers here, Inspector.’

‘You’re not suggesting we arrange some sort of showdown in broad daylight in Markham Square, are you, my lord?’

‘Certainly not,’ said Powerscourt. ‘But suppose we change the venue. Suppose I go to our place in the country, Rokesley. Johnny Fitzgerald comes too. You, Inspector, and as many policemen as you can muster are concealed round the house. The bait goes for a walk. We hope the Twins have followed us there. Maybe you could work out how to tell them where we are going, Inspector. The Twins prepare to attack. You come out of your hiding places. Johnny and I are both armed in any case. You arrest the Twins. They appear in court with lots and lots of unimpeachable policemen as witnesses. They may not hang but they go down for a very long time. How’s that?’

‘It sounds very dangerous to me,’ said the Inspector, reluctant to support the plan until he knew what Lady Lucy’s reaction would be.

‘Dangerous? Dangerous?’ Lady Lucy cried. ‘I’ll say it’s dangerous. You could get yourself killed!’

‘I’ve been in more dangerous places before,’ said Powerscourt, ‘battles in India, that sort of thing.’ He had realized suddenly that there had been a number of very dangerous encounters in his career which he had forgotten to mention to Lady Lucy.

‘Well,’ said Lady Lucy, who could tell from her husband’s expression that his mind was made up. There was a loud creak from a floorboard in the hall. Lady Lucy realized that the Inspector had forgotten to close the door when he came back from his phone message. She heard a set of footsteps hurrying towards the upper floors but she saw nobody.