The Tomb of Zeus (22 page)

Letty's eyes went to the paper knife and she allowed herself a moment's fantasy.

“You flatter yourself, Doctor. I don't think being rejected by you would tip a woman like Phoebe over the edge! She'd have laughed and got over it. She'd have fled to Europe and remade her life.”

Gunning had been very silent. Suddenly, he began to make the movements a man makes when he's about to stand and take his leave. “Look, really, Letty—you have your answers—nothing more to be said, I think.” He put his hand under her arm, hauling her to her feet. He turned to Harry casually. “One more thing, before we leave you in something like peace. A bit of medical information-would you mind awfully?”

He reached into his pocket and put the Minoan votive offering onto the desk in front of the doctor. “Something very wrong with these legs. Are you up to a diagnosis of a condition three thousand years old? Or perhaps you've seen something very similar recently?”

Stoddart turned grey and his jaw dropped. He gasped for breath, unable to speak, and Letty said urgently, “Get Ollie! He's having a heart attack! Oh, William, what on earth have you done?”

N
o! No! For God's sake, don't call Ollie! I'm quite all right,” Harry croaked unconvincingly. “Rather a shock. Just pass me that glass of water, would you? Thank you, my dear.” He stared at the pale clay legs in revolted fascination, making no move to examine them. “Silly of me to react like that. Got so used to hiding it…but I suppose it doesn't really matter anymore. How on earth did you ever manage to— She didn't leave a journal, did she…? No, she wouldn't have been so careless…How did you find out?” he asked again.

Letty could only glance from one to the other, deeply puzzled.

“It was Letty's sharp observation,” said Gunning, baffling her further. “She described to me the condition of Phoebe's legs. Skin macules, lesions, ulcerated in places. Like the ones on this model. And all hidden under the boots she insisted on wearing. Letty was alarmed to see her stumble around Knossos. Assumed she was in pain from blisters but, of course, she was in no pain. Probably numb from the knees down. But muscle weakness would have led her to drag her toes, to trip. There were symptoms, however, that she couldn't hide from the world. In the seven months I was living in the household, and constantly in her company, I couldn't help noticing that her skin deteriorated, became blotchy…she lost her eyebrows. Skilfully pencilled in, it was hard to spot.”

“But there were no tweezers on her dressing table,” Letty murmured, still mystified. “One of the early signs, I understand, of Hansen's disease?”

At the name Stoddart gave a bitter smile and, in an echo of Mariani's quiet but deadly accusation, said, “When, Doctor, did you become aware that your patient had leprosy?”

Letty reached for Gunning's hand, unable to speak.

“And the answer to that is—unbelievably, unprofessionally late in the day,” Stoddart continued. “Her family remains unaware. She herself had no idea for a long while. She dismissed the first signs as a mild skin complaint…was looking forward to stocking up on all manner of cosmetic unguents when she got to Paris…was planning a visit to an Alpine spa…We'd—we'd been intimate for two or three weeks before I began to suspect. Devastating, of course. All relations of that sort had to stop, naturally.”

He looked at the clay legs and, finally, reluctantly, reached out to examine them. “An ancient disease. It's mentioned in Pharaonic Egypt, nearly four thousand years ago. And, yes, these show the symptoms quite clearly. Poor soul! Alexander's soldiers brought it back to Macedonia with them; the Romans imported it from the Middle East. All those centuries of suffering and there's still no cure.”

“None? Are you quite certain?” Letty asked desperately. “William—you gave it a name just now…?”

“Hansen's disease. It's named after the Norwegian who, last century, identified the bacterium that causes it. Gives it a certain scientific flavour, doesn't it? Belies the ugly truth of the matter. Leprosy. It's still leprosy. We don't know how it's caught and we don't know how it's cured. The only certainty is death—following on exclusion from society, lasting anything from one to forty years. Phoebe knew all too clearly what her fate was. She'd taken an interest in George's efforts to improve things in the leprosarium on the island, even accompanied him on occasions, though she would never admit it to me—or anyone—for quite obvious reasons. But— Phoebe being Phoebe—loving, demonstrative, heart on sleeve—I'm quite certain she wouldn't have held back the hugs for the children. I blame George when it comes down to it—you know what he's like—believes himself unassailable, even by disease. Or is he one of those men who courts death? I've come across them in the war. I expect you have, too?” he said, exchanging a glance with Gunning.

“Oh, yes,” said Gunning, remembering. “The ‘Follow me, chaps! Everything'll be all right!’ type. And no one can understand why
he
always returns unscathed while his men litter the battlefield. Sometimes he really is as brave as he appears—is it a kind of numbness or a genuine feeling of God-given invincibility that protects him? Is it an antidote for fear?”

“Perhaps it's just what it appears,” said Letty, fed up with the pair of them. “A determination to do the right thing whatever the odds. To offer your life to protect what you hold dear. The fact that the gods don't choose to take you up on the offer in no way diminishes it!”

“But this time, one of the peripheral victims of this careless bravery was Phoebe. Why? How? It's not the easiest thing, contracting leprosy. It's hardly the 'flu,” Gunning reminded her brusquely. “One sneeze and you're infected. That's not the way it happens—but you'll correct me if I've got that wrong.”

“I told you—we don't know. For thousands of years medical men have been saying that!” Stoddart's voice was desperate. “I could burble on about genetic variation in susceptibility, transfer of bacilli via nasal droplets.
No one knows!
Perhaps if the disease struck London or Paris or Vienna, someone would come up with something. But still we wait. And still the patients crowd into the leper hospitals. Cut off, barely cared for, their lives suspended, waiting to die.”

“Phoebe wouldn't have wanted to do that,” said Gunning. “Spend the rest of her days knitting leprosy bandages.” He looked speculatively at Stoddart. “She was asking you to run away with her to Europe, wasn't she, Doctor? But not to live with her and raise a child. To find medical care? Some discreet sanatorium somewhere?”

Stoddart nodded miserably.

“A terminal and hideous condition, a baby on the way—a child for whom there could be no future—and a lover who washed his hands of her,” Letty said softly, her heart aching. “Too much. Yes, the noose and the beam would have made sense. Professor Perakis had it right, but for all the wrong reasons. What did he say? She died to ‘prevent the poison from spreading to those close about her.’ He couldn't have known just how pernicious the poison.

“But the thing that tipped her over the edge, that turned her brittle cheerfulness into utter despair, was your betrayal,” she finished bitterly. “Your abandonment.”

“I say! That's rather harsh. I've admitted my part in all this, but do bear in mind I've sworn an oath.” He began to quote: “ ‘
I swear by Apollo the Healer, that I will use my power to help the sick to the best of my ability and judgement. I will not give a fatal draught to anyone if I am asked, nor will I suggest such a thing Neither will I give a woman means to procure an abortion,
’” he said, murmuring the ancient oath of Hippocrates.

“Phoebe asked you for that? An abortion? And you refused?”

“Out of the question. Against all my principles.”

“Interesting piece of moral correctness, that venerable oath,” Gunning said. “But you quote selectively, Stoddart. You're silent on a further paragraph:
‘I will not abuse my position to indulge in sexual contacts with the bodies of women or men whether they be freemen or
slaves…’
Pity you didn't observe all the conditions with equal rigour.”

Even Letty flinched to hear his condemnation. The doctor sat, head bowed, still as a stone.

Letty picked up the votive offering and put it in her pocket. “Come on, William. We were looking for George, do you remember?”

“I say—you're not intending to bother Mariani with this, are you?” Stoddart asked. “I haven't even told Ollie. The fewer the people aware, the better, wouldn't you say? We don't want to start a panic…”

His desperate voice followed them to the door, unregarded.

“All the same,” said William, as the front door banged behind them and they hesitated on the pavement, “and considering the weight of guilt he carries—that was quite a performance from the doctor!”

“Performance? What do you mean? Wasn't he telling the truth?”

“Oh, yes. Every word he spoke, I think, was the truth. It's just that not every word of the truth was spoken. It's all right, Letty. It wasn't Stoddart who murdered Phoebe. But I'm sure he thinks he knows who did.”

Letty had a sudden and vivid memory of the doctor's reaction to the sound made outside the window of Phoebe's room. “At the time, he genuinely believed there was someone lurking about, you know. He was very tense, all senses twitching, while I was in the room with him. Expecting someone to burst in, you'd say. And when he heard you climbing the tree—somehow it was no more than he expected.”

“In the circumstances—wound up like that—I'm lucky he didn't knock my head off…Great heavens! What on earth's this?” He pivoted to look up the street in the direction of the noise of a clattering cart and men's voices shouting in fear and concern. “Oh, no! This couldn't be— Oh, no! Letty—bang on the door again! Quickly! Get the doctor out!” And he raced off towards the sinister cortège.

Letty's urgent knocking and her voice, shrill with apprehension, finally managed to bring Harry Stoddart to the door, just as the cart with its hideous burden stopped in front of it.

The panting spokesman addressed the doctor, though what he had to report was evident enough. “Car crash…coast road…He was only yards from the turnoff to the village. Car went right over the cliff into the sea, throwing him out. Bones broken…unconscious but still breathing…He'd have still been there unnoticed if it hadn't been for the women. My wife was on the road home with her sister and her ma and they saw it all. We've been very gentle-pulled and pushed the cart ourselves, two up front and two behind. Didn't want to risk donkeys or wait for them to harness up. We know who it is—it's young Master George.”

The man leaned over the pale features and murmured, “Hang on there, lad! We've done it!
You've
done it! The doctor's right here. He'll see you're all right.”

And their confidence was not misplaced, Letty thought, seeing a different doctor from the hopeless figure they had just left. Instantly in charge, unsurprised, the battlefield surgeon was on parade, swiftly beginning to check what he could there and then in the street, his skilled hands moving with authority.

Tenderly, under Stoddart's direction, four men lifted the improvised stretcher of willow boughs, bearing George from the cart. They'd covered him over with a scarlet saddle blanket and it was impossible for Letty to make out how badly he was injured.

Stoddart paused to catch Gunning by the arm. “His father must be informed. Could you go back to the villa and break the bad news straight away? I think Theo ought to come at once. I'll summon Olivia to help with this.” And he hurried inside ahead of the stretcher.

Gunning exchanged a few words with the rest of the village men before they set off, hearing further details of the accident and their fears for the young man's condition. Letty could make out that Gunning was thanking them and saying that if George survived, it would be due to their care and speed. He promised them that he would bring news of George as soon as there was something to report, most probably in the morning.

“Thank God those men were on the spot,” said Letty, hurrying along beside him. “They saved his life. Aren't you going to give them a reward for doing what they did?”

“Heavens, no! They'd be offended. George is one of them. I shall go to the village sometime later. I'll take a bucket of raki with me and we'll have a night-long party with a good deal of heroic storytelling. And I pray that George will be of the company.” His grim features belied the positive tone of his voice, adopted, she guessed, to jolly her along. “But now, Letty, we have an impossible duty to perform. We've got to go and find out what state Theodore is in. We may even have to shake him awake. And then we must try to find the words to tell him his son's life may be hanging by a thread.”

On Crete,
even the gods may die.
Letty shuddered, remembering.

H
e's dead, surely?”

Theodore Russell stared at the motionless body laid out on the treatment bed in Dr. Stoddart's surgery. Letty had been afraid that he might refuse to see the son he had so recently and so vehemently disowned but he had agreed to go with them to the Stoddarts', the somber news cutting through his gin-induced fog.

His emotion at the sight of the bruised and bloodied face and closed eyes was betrayed by an unnaturally quiet tone and an occasional mistimed gesture.

“Who did this?” He spoke again, breaking the silence. “Some other poor bugger whose wife he seduced?”

“Russell!” Harry brought him up swiftly, indignant and disapproving. “Your son has had a motoring accident. I insist that you moderate your language and adjust your response in the presence of the injured. And I say—
injured.
Your son is not dead.” For a moment, Letty had a glimpse of the man Phoebe might have loved: forceful, calm, and principled. Before he compromised his honour.

“You're wasting your time. He's a goner.” Russell turned to leave.

“No. No. I've given him a sedative. He'll be in considerable pain. There are broken limbs—ribs and a cracked skull. I can't yet say whether there's cerebral damage. It's possible. I'm going to do what I can here and give him a chance to stabilise. He ought, perhaps, to be taken to the hospital, but I don't want to risk a further jolting through the streets. Or a change of surgeon. Really, there's nothing they can do for him that I can't do. We're well equipped here.”

“No one is well enough equipped to bring him back. I can see that. It's a hopeless case. You don't have to wrap it up for me, Doctor. Where did it happen? Was he fleeing to the harbour? Running away from his betrayal?”

Letty decided there were two ways of dealing with Theodore. She rejected her preferred plan to wallop him behind the ear with Stoddart's paperweight and chose the second. “As a matter of fact he wasn't fleeing, Mr. Russell,” she explained in a kindly tone. “He'd left the town and was heading towards a village on the coast…what did you say it was called, William? Mournia, that's it. He would certainly have died up there if he hadn't been spotted by some village women. Just driving away his anger, I suppose, until he ran out of road. And, yes, since you are the one who injured him, you're probably right to blame yourself. But, Theo, when you know the facts that have recently come to light, you may forgive yourself as I'm quite certain George will forgive you.”

Gunning looked at her, sending a question and a warning. She persisted, ignoring him: “George is
not
guilty of the offence you ascribed to him,” she said firmly. “Doctor Stoddart has been raking through his recollections of Phoebe's time in Paris and—”

Dr. Stoddart stiffened. “I say! Miss Talbot! Laetitia! I spoke in confidence—”

“And it will be respected, Doctor!” She smiled reassuringly at him and carried on. “George was indeed in Paris that month with friends, but never managed to meet up with Phoebe. Their itineraries overlapped for only a day or so, and on those days she was engaged with Ollie and Harry.” She dropped her voice. “You wouldn't expect the doctor to name names even if he could remember, but he believes there is question of an old acquaintance from the war years—Phoebe's previous life—who resurfaced at the funeral,” she improvised. “We have the doctor's assurance that George was in no way responsible for poor Phoebe's condition. Just an unfortunate coincidence. Will you confirm this much for Mr. Russell, Doctor?”

“It wasn't George,” Stoddart spoke up. “Couldn't possibly have been George. And I'll swear to that on my honour. And in a court of law, should you wish it.”

Theodore took a moment or two to absorb this, then went to grasp his son's cold hand.

“Speak to him,” said Stoddart surprisingly. “Say something. Anything. Sometimes they can hear you, you know. Men at death's door will occasionally come round and answer a question you've spoken over what you thought was about to become a corpse. I was once roundly ticked off for my barrack-room language by a devout young Methodist who recovered consciousness two days after my outburst. It's worth a try.”

Awkwardly, Theodore began to mutter: “Forgive me, George. Bloody awful temper. Short fuse…act first, think later…you know what I'm like. Understand, old man, that you weren't involved in this to-do with Phoebe at all. 'Nuff said? What? Look here—I'll go to Mournia and see those you'd want me to see. Say what you'd want me to say. And I'll try to get it right this time.” He looked around almost furtively, wondering if he'd said too much.

“Well done!” said Letty, briskly. “I'm certain he's heard that.” She took Theo's place at the bedside and kissed the unconscious man's marble cheek. “We've got you! You're safe now. It's all going to be all right. You're not to worry about a thing.”

The cook had done well, considering, Letty thought, enjoying the scent of herbs that rose from the dish of lamb stew when the lid was lifted. With all the turbulence at the Villa Europa, she was surprised that he'd managed to put together a creditable dinner for the five remaining members of the household. Eleni had not returned after the inquest and it was clear that Theo was feeling bereft of the two female presences in the house. Every time the door opened, he looked up in hope instantly disappointed, and in spite of her dislike and mistrust, Letty felt for him.

“Thank you—we'll wait on ourselves now,” he told the footman who was preparing to spoon out the stew, then waited until he'd left before continuing. “Laetitia—if you wouldn't mind?”

“Eleni sometimes takes the weekend off,” Stewart explained with a show of exasperated eye-rolling. “Goes to stay with her mother and sister. You'd have thought that at a time like this she would have considered it her duty to stay on and make herself available.”

He was silenced by a glare from Theodore and an icy assurance that he could safely leave domestic arrangements to the master of the house.

This was bidding fair to be the most uncomfortable meal of her life. Theo was self-absorbed, Gunning uncommunicative, the two students baffled and awkward, and where one would have looked for the bright good humour of George and the lively, inconsequential chatter of Phoebe, there were two empty places silently reproving them.

The shadows of the house had crept closer. What had Gunning said on her first evening? “…
something alive and growing here, some
thing malevolent.”
The dark presence had not, it seemed to her, been appeased by the double sacrifice. Did George count as a sacrifice? He was still hanging on to life, after all. Fancifully, she wondered whether, once on the hunt, each of the three Furies demanded her own victim. Were the red-eyed goddesses even now savouring the prospect of a third? “Whom will you choose, Tisiphone? Eeny, meeny, miney, mo…Catch a sinner by his toe…” Or
her
toe. Letty glanced around the table. She decided that, of the group, Dickie was most probably the only one who might be immune to their malice.

Theo, she suspected, was capable of the blackest of misdemeanours; Gunning had confessed to her last year that he was in very bad standing with any divine authority minded to roust out sinners, hinting at transgressions too dire to mention; she blushed at the memory of her own bad behaviour, which she had thought forgiven by Magdalene, the saint she had adopted in France; and Stewart—well, no one could reach Stewart's pitch of cynical nasti-ness without having annoyed a divinity or two.

She shivered and began to dole out the
stifado.
“Mmm…smells delicious! Garlic and mushrooms in there, with thyme and rosemary, I think. Help yourselves to pasta, will you?”

Theodore recovered himself for a moment and, remembering the reason for her presence in his house, stirred himself to ask: “You are eating well
chez
Aristidis, I trust? His mother has the reputation of being an excellent cook. I understand she makes the most delicious mulberry raki on the island.”

“The most wonderful food, Mr. Russell! And I do notice that the islanders are the healthiest and most long-lived people I have ever come across. I was overtaken the other day on the steep slope up to Maria's house by an old goat of a man who, I was to discover when I enquired, is ninety next birthday.”

“And, tell me, how goes it with your dig?” He went on to ask sensible, uncritical questions about the progress and managed to listen to most of their answers. Gunning and Letty both replied happily, skating lightly, in deference to his shaken state, over his attempt to hoodwink them by the misleading mapping of the site. Instead of the “You double-dealing fiend!” Gunning might have hurled at Theo, Letty heard him say, almost teasingly: “I say—you'll never guess what those twerps in the planning office did! Reversed the map! Did you ever hear the like? No—no harm done. Aristidis twigged in no time. He put us back on track.”

“We sank a
sondage
pit right where you put your cross, Mr. Russell,” said Letty. “And it gave up wonders! Two more, north and south—the same result. Goodness knows what lies between them! Holy site, quite obviously. Temple? Burial of huge importance? We should know by the end of next week. It's all terribly exciting!” Hating her tone of false jollity, she had to admit that it seemed the only way to lull Theodore into a state of mind where he could just about function in a civilised way. A trick Letty had learned from her nanny. When overexcitement or tears threatened, Nanny's response was to invoke the mundane, even the infuriatingly patronising. “Time for hopscotch, I think, dear.” The beaten track, the road most travelled, the hopscotch square was sometimes what was called for.

A footman entered silently to light the oil lamps standing in a row on the sideboard behind Theodore. In the sudden flare, as Theo turned his head to thank him, Letty saw his silhouette cast on the wall opposite and she caught her breath. She recognised there an outline she had become familiar with: the rugged shape of Juktas. An Achaean warrior lying on his funeral pyre. The beard she had taken for a naval cut was even more of an affectation than she had supposed. She saw it clearly now for what it was—a copy of the aggressively jutting and sculpted beards worn by Greek fighting men on ancient black-figure vases.

With a rush of insight accompanied by pity, she saw that this man who had so disturbed and antagonised her was a man perpetually seeking acceptance. Not happy to be himself, the incomer, the English gentleman, Theodore Russell was emulating the likes of Colonel Lawrence, a man who had so admired the Arabs he had adopted their dress and customs. Her own great-uncle Hubert had vanished into tribal territory on the North West Frontier with the son of a local chieftain and had emerged years later speaking Pashtun and more Afridi than the Afridi. And he'd never been happy again, declared all the aunts, in any society.

Here Theodore sat, looking for all the world like a Levantine pirate, involved emotionally and professionally—and, she had to think, financially—with the life of the island and yet he would never experience the same easy acceptance as his son. Penniless, foreign-looking George was welcomed and loved wherever he went.

The students, subdued and not quite understanding the currents flowing about them, made their excuses as soon as they politely could at the end of the meal and went to their rooms.

“Look—don't rush off, you two,” Theodore told Letty and Gunning. “I have a proposition for you. If you've nothing better to do—why don't you accompany me on a little outing tomorrow morning? Short trip out to the coast. We can take the horses. I keep a Ford in the garage but hardly ever use it. You see so much more from the back of a horse. I thought we could go and find the site of the accident—see if we can work out what pushed him— literally—over the edge.”

Though this was probably the last thing either would have chosen to do with their Saturday morning, both replied warmly, accepting the strange invitation. They fell silent, sensing that there was more he wished to say.

Battling his uncertainty: “But that's not all. I'd like you to come with me to the village. That's where he was heading.”

“Ah, yes,” said Gunning. “George has friends there. They'll be wanting news of him.”

“George has unfinished business there. You heard the promise I made him? Something I have to do on his behalf. Whether he recovers or not. I know what he would want. And it shall be done!” he said with sudden resolution. A grim smile broke through. “I have a good deal to atone for…You're to keep me up to the mark! It won't be easy and I may try to back out at the last moment.”

Briskly, with a return of his old vigour, he rang for staff and made arrangements. Letty found herself dismissed with a jarringly cheerful: “Tomorrow morning at eight, then? In the stables?”

“Hey, don't rush off!” Gunning called after her as she strode ahead of him down the corridor.

Letty turned a strained and anxious face to him. He held up his oil lamp and looked at her carefully.

“You're upset. Anything I can do?”

“Nothing. But thank you. I've suddenly had quite enough of this grim place, William, and these grim people. I can't be easy here. Tragedy has broken over our heads, but I have a feeling I can't squash that there's more to come.” Suddenly losing all confidence, she was aware that her voice had become plaintive: “I don't want to stay on…I just want to go back to my own world, William…”