The Tomb of Zeus (32 page)

Letty believed her.

“I waited for a moment when I knew there would be no one in the house but Russell himself and Eleni doing her household chores in the pantry,” Aristidis said. “I had the entrée to the house—no one ever challenged me. I came and went as I pleased. I talked to the servants…I knew where everyone was likely to be at any moment in the day and whether they kept their doors locked or unlocked. But I had no intention of being caught out. I walked, behaving as I normally would, into the courtyard.” He smiled. “Slinking and concealment do not come naturally to me and would have drawn attention. I intended to climb the tree and get into his room and stab him with my father's dagger.”

Letty stared, fascinated, at the silver hilt gleaming in his cummerbund across the breakfast table, between the coffeepot and the bread basket. She'd last seen its blade slicing through the neck of a snake, she remembered. The same dagger was proudly worn by Ioannis in his photograph. It had done its lethal work on those hot August nights thirty years ago and remained charged with one more task.

“George's car was in the coach house but I thought nothing of that—I knew he'd gone with William on foot to the cave on the coast. But there was an interruption. The doctor's wife was hanging about and I had first to send her away. I couldn't imagine why she was loitering there but I suspected she was up to no good. I returned and climbed into the tree. When I got to the top, just below the level of the sill, I froze. There were voices speaking in the room. I decided to stay still. If I'd been found I would not have liked to explain myself to Russell. He is a man eaten up by jealousy and suspicion. He might well have turned on his own wife.

“But it was no more than the good doctor Stoddart. He prescribed a sleeping pill for her…Eleni came in and brought some water, and I assumed Mrs. Russell was dutifully taking the pill. After a while the doctor left. I decided to wait until the sleeping tablet had worked and then creep in and let myself into Russell's bedroom adjoining. I knew he took a siesta there every Sunday afternoon. I knew the door was kept unlocked. But then, as I was about to make my move, I heard Mrs. Russell sigh. She got off the bed and began to pace about. I heard her walk to the door. She moved around, sighing and muttering the while, for a few more minutes. She was praying, I'm sure. And then she went over to her desk. The next thing I heard was the sound of a chair falling over. I didn't guess what she was doing and when I risked an eye over the sill, I didn't at first see her. Then I caught sight of her twitching limbs hanging at the far end of the room, right by her husband's door. No one else had entered the room. No one had left the room.”

“Oh, my God!” Letty whispered. “She did do it herself! She committed suicide.” She put her head in her hands in distress. “Oh, Phoebe, forgive me! Did I wilfully misunderstand? I don't know. William…” Letty struggled with her memory. Only the strictest accuracy would do now. “Her very last words to me were: ‘Time to go.’ It was
after
she'd said, ‘I'll be sure to test you when you get back.’ I've been deceiving myself, as well as everyone else. She was just making social noises, telling me to be a good pupil, saying what she would normally say. Her real message, I chose to ignore. ‘You've had your fun…Time to go now.’ I think she knew all along that Stoddart wouldn't help her. There was no other way out. I didn't mention it because it didn't fit with my theory. I
wanted
Theodore to be guilty.”

Aristidis breathed deeply, waiting for her outburst to end, impatient at the interruption. “Wait! You must judge yourself, Miss Laetitia, when I have finished. And you must prepare for a painful outcome. She was dangling from the beam but she wasn't dead. She made a sound—a sickening gurgling noise. Worse—her arms suddenly went up to the rope and she tried to pull herself upwards to release her neck. In agony? Regretting her action? Men have been known to thrash around in a noose for many minutes before death.”

He acknowledged the insensitivity of his remark by covering his mother's trembling hand with his own. “But I was glad to see it—there was time for me to save her! I had one leg over the sill to leap into the room and cut her loose when the door burst open. And there he was. Theodore Russell. Not at all sleepy and confused. He'd been listening, I thought, as I had. He hurled himself towards her and I shrank back down with relief. He had eyes only for his wife in her agony—he hadn't seen me. No need now to reveal myself. Her husband would rescue her from her folly.”

Aristidis paused, finding it difficult to choose the words to continue. “He put his hands up around her thighs and heaved. But not upwards. He swung his whole weight down on that slender woman and I heard her neck break. Then he padded over to the desk and I heard the rustling of papers. A minute later he went back into his own room. He closed the door.”

The stunned silence was broken by Maria clucking with irritation. “A wasted opportunity, don't you agree, William?”

U
m…not entirely sure I'm following you, Maria,” said Gunning, stunned and apologetic for his confusion.

“He should have proceeded! He could have killed Russell in such a way as to make it appear the man had hung his wife and then done away with himself. What could be more obvious? It's what I would have done.”

“I sometimes think I'm being a great disappointment to my mother,” said Aristidis with a smile full of affection for the stiff old lady.

Letty had got up in a whirl of mixed emotions and gone over to the window to hide her disgust, pity, fear, and hatred. She was remembering her own instinctive dash forward to lift, to save, to fight with Death for Phoebe's precious essence, and she tried to imagine what depth of hatred it could have taken to pull down instead, to listen for the snap of her neck. Hatred or self-interest? A deadly combination?

She heard Gunning's voice, measured, practical: “And are you intending to communicate this evidence to Mariani when he appears, Aristidis?”

She didn't wait to hear his reply. “Well, here's your chance,” she said, staring out down the street, “because here he comes. At least I think it's him…Alone, for once. No attendants. And he's not in uniform—he's wearing Cretan clothes. Dressed for the country, you might say.”

She continued to watch as the inspector trotted up the cobbled street on a tall chestnut. He was greeted at the door by Maria, who went herself to tether the horse behind the house. Aristidis's wide-armed gesture at once welcomed him and dispelled the tense atmosphere in the room. Gunning waved the coffeepot enticingly.

The inspector was pleased to see them; the inspector was jovial and hearty. He exchanged a warm glance with Letty and gave an imperceptible nod before flinging his cape over a chair back and sitting down at the table. He accepted gratefully the glass of water offered, the cup of black coffee, and a chunk of fresh bread from the basket. “No, no!” he responded at once to Gunning's suggestion that he be left alone with Aristidis. “I'm delighted to find you all together, plotting and planning, no doubt. I take it that you, Aristidis, my friend, have been put, as they say, in the picture, concerning certain allegations made against you by the doctor's wife…? Good, that saves my time. Off you go, then—start from there.”

He listened with few interruptions to Aristidis's account, the ground gone over rather faster than the first time, since no allowances or explanations had to be made for lack of local knowledge. They rattled away in Greek and Letty quickly became lost, though she sensed Gunning was managing to hold on to the thread.

Finally—“I think I can help you,” said Mariani, reverting to English. “Impossible, as all would agree, to charge Russell for the murder of his wife, Phoebe, since she herself initiated her own death and we have the coroner's verdict of suicide, which would be, in any case, difficult to overturn. Aristidis, I am assuming, would refuse to appear as witness, disappearing into the hills, no doubt, at a moment's notice.” He raised a quizzical eyebrow.

“Naturally,” said Maria firmly as she re-entered.

“Cretan that I am, you must excuse me for understanding, at least, the compulsion to rid the world of Mr. Russell, though I hurry to say I do not condone it and will never support or conceal such an attempt.”

Letty wondered.

“But there are more ways than one of skinning a cat,” he said thoughtfully. “Aristidis! Maria! Your need for vengeance stems from a hanging? Would this ancient injustice be avenged, your grief be assuaged, by a
further
hanging? I think that is exactly what I may be in a position to offer. Retribution—but without a drop of blood on your own hands?”

He caught sight of Letty's anguished face and hurried to add: “A perfectly lawful proceeding, Miss Talbot! Do not concern yourself! I am not planning a country lynching party! But a man like Russell, a violent, arrogant, and mischievous man—if he did indeed kill his wife, and it was always my strongest suspicion—he is likely to have committed earlier crimes in his lifetime. I had not known about his treatment of your father, Aristidis, or I would have added that to my list of his sins.”

“Your list?” Gunning questioned.

“I'm thorough in my investigations,” said Mariani blandly. “If a person takes my interest, I investigate him.” He turned and looked at Gunning until he saw in his face the doubt and suspicion he had intended to sow, and went on, “Many records of business activities, shipping lists, newspaper cuttings, police and military reports are available to me should I be
inspired
to consult them.” He smiled at Letty. “Filing cabinets fly open at my request. I investigated Russell. And I found something disquieting in his past. His past here on the island—I cannot answer for his previous life. And my suspicious mind began to pull together facts and weave them into a story. A story grotesque and distressing. And, in the light of what you now tell me, Aristidis, about this man's conduct, I think it is high time Theodore Russell's past caught up with him. Time for his Nemesis to step forward.” He added quietly: “Indeed, I think she may already have presented herself.”

He smiled around the table, involving them all in his triumph and excitement. “Miss Talbot? Mr. Gunning? Will you meet me at the Villa Europa on Saturday morning? I need a few days to pursue my researches but I think by Saturday all will be in place. And I shall need to call on the services of you, Aristidis, and several of your men.”

He added with evident satisfaction: “I think it only appropriate, don't you, that a man who has lived by the spade should die by the spade?”

M
ariani had done his stage-managing discreetly and well. With efficient staff-work by his recruited lieutenants, Talbot and Gunning, everyone was in place. William had balked at the idea of deceiving his employer, and it was Letty who had welcomed the inspector and his officers to the Europa on Saturday morning. Theodore had come from the breakfast room into the hall to greet them, and he listened to Mariani's apologetic request that he accompany his men to the station, where a further statement and his signature on several more documents were required. “…A great nuisance, of course, but it would not take long…” Laetitia knew that orders had been issued to hold him until word was sent to release him. Mariani needed a clear field of operations. He also needed the time to make repairs in case his theories should prove embarrassingly wrong.

Theodore stood, eyeing the inspector in silence as he slid through his prepared speech. Finally, and still without comment, he turned to Letty. “My hat and gloves,” he said. She fetched them for him. “Pipe?” he asked. “You wouldn't know the whereabouts of— No? I thought you might.” At the door he turned to her. “Oh, tell William, would you, Laetitia…It's just come back to me…The lines we were searching for last night at dinner. They're from Tennyson, of course:

“Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.

“From
Ulysses.
Ulysses—splendid sailor, and a man who knew how to take his chances.
To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield.
You've got to admire that! I hope he made it to the Happy Isles.”

He nodded good-bye and left, walking ahead of the officers.

They assembled in the courtyard when invited by the inspector. To Letty's surprise, Dr. Stoddart made an appearance, looking bemused and anxious. Mariani hurried to reassure him, “Morning, Stoddart! Glad you could come. I've invited you here in your capacity of physician. Hope you don't mind? We may well need to seek a medical opinion. Here are Miss Talbot and Mr. Gunning to witness events, you see…And now,” he said, looking about him, “we just lack the presence of Aristidis and his men.”

“Oh, they're here,” said Stoddart. “I saw them a moment ago— they were gathering outside in the square. A squad of four. Armed with spades,” he added, mystified. “Now what trick are you pulling, Kosta? And I don't see Theo. Shouldn't he be here? What have you done with Theo?”

“Ah…Mr. Russell has been detained in town. He will be joining us later,” said Mariani vaguely. “If all goes well.”

The men emerged from the coach house, stubbing out their cigarettes, and presented themselves, quiet and watchful.

“Gentlemen!” said Mariani, gesturing them to come forward. “Accompany me, will you, to the centre of the courtyard. There's someone I wish you to meet.”

They all trooped over and the inspector waved a hand at the statue of Dionysos, looking no less sinister in the light of day. “Remove him, will you? Shouldn't present a difficulty—he is not, I'd say, planted on a very secure base. And, having set him carefully on one side, I want you to continue to dig down underneath. To a depth of…possibly…six feet.”

At the sinister measurement, the men looked at each other lugubriously and made the sign of the cross on their chests. They looked to Aristidis before attempting to carry out the order. Silently, he nodded and himself made the first move to seize Dionysos by his thick neck to test his firmness. By waggling the stone and digging around at the base, they soon had the carving on its side and pulled to the edge of the parterre.

The earth underneath was removed a spadeful at a time and placed on a tarpaulin Mariani had spread out beside the hole. At a depth of five feet below the surface, one of the men called out. He had struck something soft. At once, experience took over. The gravediggers were, at a stroke, transformed into an archaeological team. Without a word spoken, the two senior men produced trowels from their belts, sank to their hands and knees and, with skilful flicks of the sides of their tools, began to expose the object that lay beneath. A pattern began to emerge. Inch by inch, the underside of a Persian rug was revealed. With a glance at all around, subdued now and almost fearful, Mariani dismissed the men and jumped into the pit. Taking up an edge, he began to tug at the carpet, peering underneath.

“I'd like you to lift this rug by the corners—careful now!—and lay it down on the grass,” he said when he had satisfied himself as to the contents. “Doctor! If you would oblige?”

They peeled the faded fabric back and stood silently staring at the pathetic rotted remains it had covered and held together. No longer a corpse: a browned skeleton, an impersonal horror.

“Who is this? Was this?” Letty whispered.

Harry Stoddart was already on his knees, studying the body. “Female. Dead some years…impossible to say how many on the spot but decay is complete, as you see. I think we can say,” he went on, “looking at the improvised shroud, that this is no ancient burial. That's a jolly good Persian rug. She was youngish, judging by the good state of the teeth. A tall woman,” he said thoughtfully. He flashed a glance upwards at Letty, “and—dolichocephalic, I have to say. Not much else I can tell you from this regarding identification…but I think I can tell you right away how she died.”

They all unconsciously took a step towards the body, peering down. “Here,” said Harry, magnifying glass in hand, “just a first impression and I guarantee nothing until this has been confirmed in a postmortem, but d'you see this little U-shaped bone? The hyoid bone, and it's broken. She's been strangled. That much at least is certain. There may be other things, of course…”

Letty had a feeling that he knew the answer to his own question when he asked, “Anyone have a theory as to who this might be?”

“My mother. It's my mother.”

The voice came from behind the huddled group. All whirled in shock to see George, propping himself on Eleni's shoulder, taking a hobbling step towards them.

Stoddart was on his feet at once, putting himself between his patient and the remains of the dead woman. “Eleni! What are you thinking of? Take George back inside at once! His leg! You'll undo all my good work! To say nothing of upsetting his psychological equilibrium! He ought not to be here witnessing this! Off you go! At once!”

Eleni flinched, but she never had any doubt as to which man she must obey. She stood her ground. “If anyone has a right to be here, it is surely George!” she said, bristling with defiance. “You heard him! This is his mother, Ilse!”

“I feared as much,” said Stoddart. “But—oh, as long as you're here, my boy—tell us, what makes you so certain?”

Pale but determined, George said, “The rug. It's the one she had in her study. I remember it well. I used to sit and play on it when I was a child, while she wrote her letters at her desk. The border, you see? I used to race my toy cars around it. There may still be an ink stain on the lower left-hand corner. I spilled a bottle of ink over it and got my bottom smacked…It disappeared when she left for Europe. It didn't occur to me to wonder why. Look—I've understood for years that my mother lay dead, drowned, somewhere at the bottom of the Rhine. Her body was one of the number never recovered. My father showed me the newspaper report. Is someone going to tell me why I'm to think I'm looking at her now, lying there in the soil with her neck broken?”

“Shall we go into the drawing room? Gunning? Letty? Doctor?” suggested Mariani.

“No,” insisted George. “We'll all stay right here. All of us. Until we've heard a few answers. We all want to know. We all deserve to know. And I won't leave her by herself again until it's all settled.”

Eleni helped him to lower himself onto the statue and put a supporting arm around him.

“Blame me—or thank me—you will please yourself when you have heard all,” said Mariani. “It occurred to me that your father had lost two wives in tragic circumstances. His first wife, your mother, George, we are told, met her death in a continent where war was raging and terrible things were happening. Millions died in those years…what was one more death? Unfortunate but hardly surprising. Nothing to trigger an enquiry. But I have a suspicious and mischievous muse who leads me down corridors others would avoid. I made certain checks. I looked at everything I could lay my hands on published at the time of your mother's leaving for Europe. I found the shipping records for the day she sailed. There was a first-class cabin booked in her name, but it was a double cabin and there were two occupants listed. Would it surprise you, George, to hear that the second name was
yours?
Were you aware of her plans?”

George shook his head numbly, and looked again at the bones, his eyes filling with tears, his face suddenly that of a stricken child. “Mamma didn't tell me that. Father would never have let me go. He'd have punished her if he'd known she was thinking of taking me away.”

“Punished?” Mariani asked gently.

George nodded. “He was…unkind sometimes. Before she left…I can't remember how long…a week or two…they had a quarrel. Not for the first time. I remember when I was quite small…I'd forgotten all about it until the other day…I was playing behind the sofa in the drawing room. Pa came in and shouted at Mamma. Usually she didn't shout back but this time she did. He slapped her face. When I crawled out, crying, she was just standing there, silent, as though nothing had happened. But there was blood running down her face and onto the front of her white blouse. He used to wear a ring with a seal stone in those days. It must have cut her. He just stared at me and walked away without a word.”

George glanced at Letty.

“The wine Phoebe spilled?” she asked.

“Yes. The colours. Blood-red flowing on white linen, and Father's outburst. It all came back to me.”

“So. It would seem that for personal and domestic reasons, Mrs. Russell was secretly intending to take her son home to Germany with her,” said Mariani, bringing them back into his framework. “I had thought so. I asked myself why. I asked myself whether she had been planning to return. I asked myself why these two first-class places had subsequently not been taken up. The purser's log is still a matter of record.”

The young man was looking more sickened by the minute. It was Eleni who spoke for him. She chose to speak in Greek. “Inspector, if you are willing to hear evidence reported by a servant from the mouth of her drunken employer, then listen,” she announced. “In the early days, before he realised how close I was to George, he would often, when he had drunk too much, become
maudlin, whining, and wearisome. And he would always harp on the same theme. His wife, Ilse, had deceived him. She had been betrothed to a compatriot before Theodore came on the scene, and somehow he had persuaded her to drop her young man and marry him instead. But the man remained here on the island and when George was born, so fair, so grey-eyed, Theodore began to suspect that Ilse had failed to break off her association with her old lover, that she had regretted her choice. He thought George was not his son, though he never voiced these suspicions when he was sober. Indeed, I believe he loves George—as far as he is capable of loving. But he never had more children. And his second wife had no children. He thought he might be sterile. The thought was corrosive for such a man. He chose to blame the women in his world.

“This all happened before I came to work here and I've only heard his maundering, wine-fuelled version, but if I'm allowed my own theories, Inspector?” She paused and waited for the inspector's encouraging nod. “The man has a suspicious mind and has his ways of gathering information. I'd say when Ilse told him she was returning home at a turbulent time, and he discovered she was taking her son with her, he became convinced that she was planning not to return to him. Perhaps if you were to study your lading lists even more closely, you might find a certain German name among the passengers? A lover who made an unexpectedly solitary journey home?”

“Indeed so, miss,” Mariani murmured his agreement. He sighed and glanced at the overturned Dionysos. “I have also the name of the stonemason who was asked to produce this…um…marker. And the date of delivery. He is ready to stand witness.” Mariani turned to the doctor. “Stoddart, will all this medical evidence stand up in a court of law, do you think?” he wanted to know.

The query, with its implications for his father, was greeted with a howl of despair from George and, at a sign from Eleni, the men came forward and carried him back inside the house. Letty reached out for Gunning.

“Nothing we can do, Letty,” he whispered. “It's out of our hands. It's in the lap of the gods, you might say.”

“And I think I can hear bloody old Tisiphone swooping in for the third victim,” she said, softly.

They found the third victim an hour later dangling from the plane tree in the square by the cathedral. Gunning made a formal identification of the body.

Summoned by a distraught sergeant arriving hell-for-leather at the Europa, voluble in his account and excuses, Mariani had run off, calling Gunning and Aristidis to accompany him. They had come to the square, now cleared and surrounded by a police cordon. A crowd, gesticulating and horrified, bombarded the officers with their testimonies. Everyone's eyes were drawn to the body of Theodore Russell as it turned slowly and grotesquely over the café tables. One of the tables lay, overturned, beneath his feet.