The Tomb of Zeus (33 page)

“Not—I take it—an organised lynching?” Gunning thought it prudent to establish.

“Not at all. Police carelessness perhaps a factor,” admitted Mariani, “but not malevolence. A clever man. And more than a match for my officers. He used his air of authority to get under their guard before ever they got to the station and made off into the avenue. Headed straight for the tree and hung himself with his belt. Waiter who tried to stop him got a kick in the teeth for his pains. Had Russell worked out that it was all over for him? A last flamboyant way of making amends? Will we ever know? I don't suppose he's left us the satisfaction of an explanatory note!”

“Hardly necessary,” said Aristidis, hypnotised by the sight. “When we are granted the satisfaction of his death.”

“ ‘Suicide while the balance of his mind was disturbed.’ I think this time the coroner may well feel justified in using the phrase,” said Gunning. He shouldered his way through the cordon to stand and murmur a prayer at Theodore's feet.

* * *

“No time for an explanation?” Unconsciously, Letty echoed Mariani's thoughts. She had fled after church on Sunday morning with Gunning to the anonymity of the harbour-front hotel, the familiar decadence of the potted palms, the tinkling piano, and the calming cup of Earl Grey. An essential touch of normality after the bleak drama of the previous day. And an opportunity to be alone together, to question, to regret and despair.

“Grossly unfair of the man, even in extremis. He had the audacity to tinker with his wife's suicide note but leaves not a clue as to his own dying thoughts.”

“Not sure I'd want to hear them,” said Gunning.

“Did Mariani ever find Phoebe's original letter? No, of course not,” she answered her own question. “He would never have left it about the place. But I can guess, can't you? What Phoebe was saying to George at the last moment?”

“Oh, good lord!” breathed Gunning. “Of course! When Theodore opened the envelope, whatever else she said by way of good-bye and ever so sorry and all that, she must have referred to the changes in the terms of her will. ‘It's all yours now, George, I know you'll make good use of it. My love to the boys.’ Do you think?”

“I'm afraid so. And Theodore, with his wife's death rattle still sounding in his ears, learns that he is not to get his hands on the fortune he might have expected—but his son is. At least, the man he acknowledges as his son. Except when he's drunk! I can't begin to imagine his disbelief and fury. Why should George be so favoured? His suspicions and his rage must have choked him. He stole Phoebe's letter and substituted the pages he tore from the play. He did know more Greek than he was letting on, you know!
‘Hippolytus, what have you to say?’
He was prompting us, leading us on. And we couldn't see it. We were so blinded by the strength of a familiar myth, we never questioned it.”

“He was perfectly prepared for George to take the blame if the authorities judged that there was blame to be assigned,” said Gunning, his voice heavy with sadness.

“And, in any case, it gave him just the opportunity he'd been hankering after—to tear into George, with all the pent-up resentment of years. And with the added bonus of apparent justification for his bad behaviour. He could play the part of wronged husband and wronged father. Everyone who knew would pity, not blame him. We did ourselves! He wouldn't have minded a bit if George had died driving over the cliff, would he? He'd have got his hands, legally, on the money, and I think Eleni and her boys would have had a thin time of it.”

“It's all right, Letty,” Gunning said gently, anxious to break through her bleak vision. “George is still with us and he's mending well. He's having the boys brought over tomorrow and I must say that's a good idea. Just what that old house needs—a couple of noisy lads tearing about the place. I said we'd stay and help—thought you wouldn't mind.”

“Well, that should complete its restoration to normality,” said Letty. “You were away giving statements for most of the day and I don't suppose you've noticed, but George gave orders for Dionysos to be buried. The ugly brute is to be broken up and used as filling for the hole and the area is to be turfed over. The goddesses were put on a cart, still quarrelling, and I'm not going to ask where they've fetched up. Though the Artemis was really rather special…museum, do you think? Anyway, I approve! The changes will go a long way to banishing the shadows.”

“Of course I'd noticed. Like pulling out a bad tooth! The swelling and the pain begin straight away to fade.”

“Sometimes, you know, I've heard my aunts say, it's hard to pin down the pain to the right tooth,” Letty said slowly, feeling her way. “I thought I was being pushed by Phoebe into avenging her death but I'm not so sure. I had uneasy feelings about that house from the moment I stepped through the door. Do you think, William, I was responding to an earlier horror…quivering like a violin string after the bow has passed on?”

Gunning, the rationalist, was uncomfortable with the thought. “Ilse, you mean?”

“Yes. When I read that news cutting in his study, I had a strong feeling of grief and anger. How could any man, William, kill his wife and then lie to her son about her death? He must have got hold of the paper from the embassy, days…weeks later and made use of it. A child is likely to believe a dramatic story like that, and the dates fitted. And no list of the deceased to spoil his story, I noticed. But Mariani managed to get his hands on the information from the German embassy. Theodore sat by and watched as his little boy wrote
I love you, Mamma,
on the bottom of a sheet of evil deception.”

“A deeply unhappy man,” said Gunning, his eyes lifting over the city walls, seeking the jutting outline of the sacred mountain.

“Who communicated unhappiness.” Letty remembered Aristidis's judgement. “If ever a man had the ability to stir up thunderclouds, it was Theodore. I hope he's at rest.”

W
illiam! You haven't ever mentioned it, but it must surely have occurred to you to wonder why Andrew didn't raise any objection to my coming out to Crete? In fact, he encouraged me. Prepared my way. I've had an awful thought! Could the old bastard be trying to get rid of me, do you suppose? Perhaps Maud finally rumbled him! Went for his knick-knacks with a paper knife! William?”

Letty shot upright, suddenly alarmed to find she'd been talking to herself. The grass at her side still bore the imprint of his body. Oh well, she'd put the question to him the moment he got back from his ramble.

Ten minutes later, she was beginning to be concerned that he hadn't returned. She looked around her at the grove of oak trees where they'd chosen to have their lunch. Cheese and fruit packed up for them by Maria to take with them on one of their rare days off, away from the dig. An April sun scorched down, its heat filtered through the lush spring foliage, and she realised she had no idea where she was, but, whatever this place, it was a long way from home in Kastelli. The horses twitched their tails in the shade, content to be taking time off from the adventurous attempt to circumnavigate the massif of Juktas their riders had embarked on.

No one else had offered to accompany them, refusing with complicit smiles and covert glances. Aristidis was increasingly absorbed by his work on the promontory, grasping the reins of authority, which Letty was gladly passing to him. It was George who had made the suggestion: Why not hand the whole thing to Aristidis? George was prepared, with his newly acquired funds, to set him up in the enterprise. Letty had agreed to contribute half the expenses and eventually handle the publication of results from London.

Fifteen minutes.

“William! Where are you? If you've done a disappearing act again, this time I shan't forgive you!”

A shower of stones down the cliff face behind her announced the arrival of Gunning, red in the face and breathless, at her side. He pulled out of his shirt-front a bruised bunch of herbs and thrust it at her. Instantly she understood.

“This is dittany?
Erotas?
And you got it from up there?” She raked the face of the precipice in amazement, spotting an outcrop of the herb at the very top. “Oh, my God! William, not even a mad mountain goat with a stick of ginger up its rear end would attempt that climb!”

He nodded, pleased with himself, still panting with the effort.

“Come and sit by me and get your breath back. I was really quite worried. Here, have a hug. And this is the proof of love George was telling us about?” She considered the sorry bundle for a moment, pressing her nose into it appreciatively.

“…a sure relief,

To draw the pointed steel and ease the grief,”
he gasped.

“Whatever did I do with my life before you came into it, sketching and rhyming?” she asked. “And climbing cliffs. Well, I have to tell you—it works. I'm impressed. Outraged at the risks you take but—impressed.”

“Jolly good,” he said. “In that case perhaps the effort will have proved to be worth it.”

“Will have
proved? Whatever do you mean? Is that the future perfect you're using?”

“Certainly is. In an hour, perhaps longer, I'll think again and substitute a past perfect. If the dittany does its stuff.”

“William! Am I to interpret that as a proposition?”

“Well, I'm not Zeus to just leap on a girl without a by-your-leave.”

“Very well, in that case…”

She bent and began to tug at his boots.

“I say, Letty. Um, I can't say I've had much experience of being undone by a Dryad in an oak grove, and I'm sure you woodland spirits have your ways, but I'd say you were starting at the wrong end, surely?”

She looked back at him with innocent eyes. “Just doing what I was told,” she said. “Checking for cloven hooves.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

BARBARA CLEVERLY is the author of six novels of historical suspense, including
Tug of War, The Damascened Blade,
winner of the CWA Historical Dagger Award,
The Last Kashmiri Rose, Ragtime in Simla, The Palace Tiger,
and
The Bee's Kiss.
She lives in Cambridge, England, where she is now at work on the second Laetitia Talbot mystery.

ALSO  BY  BARBARA  CLEVERLY

The Bee's Kiss

The Palace Tiger

The Damascened Blade

Ragtime in Simla

The Last Kashmiri Rose

AND  COMING  SOON  FROM  DELTA

Tug of War

If you loved Barbara Cleverly's
The Tomb of Zeus,
you won't want to miss any of her award-winning
novels of historical suspense.

Look for the acclaimed Joe Sandilands novels—
The Last Kashmiri Rose, Ragtime in Simla,
The Damascened Blade, The Palace Tiger,
and
The Bee's Kiss—a
t your favorite bookseller's.

And read on for an exciting early look at the next
Joe Sandilands mystery,
Tug of War,
coming soon from Delta.

On sale summer 2008

Chapter One

Champagne, northern France, September 1915

Aline Houdart got off her bicycle and stood still, holding tightly to the handlebars. At this moment she needed to have her feet firmly on the ground and she fought down a ridiculous urge to take off her shoes, the better to connect herself to the earth. Surely she was mistaken? The sound she'd heard was a tree crashing to the ground in the forest around her. Or thunder. A snap of her starched headdress in the breeze as she rounded the bend perhaps. The explanations she snatched at were elbowed away by a single word: cannon. But at such close quarters?

Aline thought at once of her parents. They would have been able to identify the make, calibre and direction of fire. Her parents knew all about cannon. In their distant youth they'd been trapped in Paris during the Prussian siege of 1870 and, round a good fire in the wintertime, they still vied with each other to convey the horrors of bombardment by von Moltke's fifty-ton siege gun. Aline tried to recall their lurid accounts of the hellish din with its earth-trembling accompaniment.

The sound came again. She got her bearings and as she stood with her face to the north, the late afternoon sun over her left shoulder threw a shadow to the east and north in the direction of the blast. She stretched out an arm, extending the line, trying to remember what lay over there. The plain of Champagne, stretching for wide miles around Suippes and over to the bristling fortifications clustering around Verdun. She could deceive herself no longer. This was heavy artillery but were the guns French or German? Perhaps General Joffre had begun the longed-for offensive to clear von Bülow out of Champagne, but at all events the war was coming closer. No longer static, bogged down in trenches, not even creeping up quietly but advancing openly, snarling, in leaps and bounds. Soon they'd hear its roar in the mountains to the south, one day perhaps in the hills of Provence. And by then her world would have been consumed, this perfect place reduced to rubble.

She'd been lucky in her choice of day last month when she'd ventured north to look at the battlefield. It had been a quiet day at the front. She'd persuaded old Felix to get out the carriage and the one decrepit nag they had left in the stables and drive her up to the very edge of the high country overlooking the plain with Reims at its centre. They'd found up there an ancient chapel which, unscathed so far, appeared to have enjoyed the protective sanctity of an even more ancient Celtic grove and, from its shelter, they'd stared out in silence, too shocked by what they saw to try to share their thoughts. The skylarks and wood doves had been making more of a clamour, she remembered, than the guns that day.

Framed by a canopy of beech leaves, under a hot August sky, the land of Champagne should have stretched out its smooth curves languorously, seductively, as it did in the coloured picture postcards. For nearly two thousand years it had been a bountiful vineyard. Vines planted by Roman soldiers had thrived, the land had prospered.

It had taken less than one year to bring the ordered countryside to this obscene state of devastation.

Arrogant pigs, like all armies, the Romans at least had understood the lands they had conquered; they had trodden lightly and worked hard, leaving behind fertile and civilized provinces. Unlike the present invaders. The chalky lines of their trenches tore hideous scars across the terrain, each countered by an allied trench but all advancing towards the centre where stood, blackened and fire-bombed, roofless, its towers still raising defiant fingers at the enemy, the mighty Gothic cathedral of Reims.

The trenches. Clovis was there. Not riding, lance at the port, across open country towards the enemy but in this modern war, bogged down, hedged in, crouching in the sketchy protection of one of those scars. She'd blinked and stared at the distant battlefield swimming before her eyes. It was distorted, not by tears, but by a heat haze shimmering over the plain. She made an effort to concentrate her thoughts on her husband, to feel his discomfort. After all these months of battle, his uniform would be quite worn out. Blue captain's jacket and red trousers—it was designed for cavalry officers peacocking about on chargers—a musical-comedy costume unsuitable for men wriggling on belly and elbows through mud and dust. And the steel helmet with a horsehair plume dangling down his back—what protection was that Napoleonic flourish against bursting shells and German snipers? In this heat the cuffs of his jacket would be chafing his wrists, his high collar would be too tight, his feet blistered.

His physical state was easily imagined but with his thoughts and emotions it was more difficult to attempt a connection. Did he raise his head and glance behind him to the hills looking towards the home he was fighting for? Were his eyes seeking the familiar outline of the grove on the hill, all unknowing, at that very moment, as she gazed down? What would he be thinking? Aline smiled. A smile soured by a dash of irony. She knew what Clovis would be thinking. He'd be calculating the number of hods per hectare this wonderful summer would produce. If there were only hands available to fetch in the harvest. If there were still grapes to be harvested. He wouldn't know.

The vineyards surrounding Reims had been destroyed in the desperate German push to the south the previous summer. For two agonizing months, von Bülow's troops had swarmed down over the Marne in an impetuous and unscheduled dash, ravaging, destroying, stealing whatever resources they could lay hands on. Aline had fled with her son before the guns sounded, obedient to Clovis's instructions. But their cellar-master and his men had stayed on guard. No command, no plea, no reasoning from Aline had been able to shake these men, elderly but stout-hearted, from their resolve to stay and guard their life's work. A deserted château is the first to be pillaged, they'd maintained. The best vintages had been carefully concealed behind hastily erected and plastered walls in the miles of tunnels in the chalk under the vineyard, and the bottles immediately on view to a pillaging army were the less good wines, deceptively relabelled.

And their determination had paid off. Being well beyond the protecting bulwark of the Montagne de Reims and some miles distant from the river crossings, their remote valley and the
vignoble
had escaped with the lightest of German attention. General Joffre, calculating that the enemy forces were impossibly overstretched, had reversed the retreat of the French from the north and unleashed his Fifth and Ninth Armies against the invaders. With the support of the British Expeditionary Force and the gallant dash of the French cavalry tearing into the gap between the two halves of the German army, the Boche had regretted their incursion and made off back across the Marne to the north again. They had been unequal to the task of hauling spoil from such an awkward piece of country, across a formidable river whose bridges had been blown up by the British, and the compulsion to lay greedy hands on heavy loot was more easily resisted when there were much richer pickings to be had on the accessible plain around Reims.

And now the
vendange
had come again. The second of the war. The grapes were safely in, and how ironic if this year of misery and destruction were to yield a good vintage. Smaller but of a better quality perhaps than the legendary one of 1900? A daydream! Everyone said a war always began with a poor crop and ended with a good one. Nature's way of showing her disapproval of Man's activities, Aline thought, though the villagers said—God's way. Clovis would be concerned that his estate should be running as well as could be without him. He didn't trust her to manage it. At the last moment before leaving for the war, as he'd turned to mount his horse and ride off at the head of his small squadron of cuirassiers, he'd swung on his heel, breastplate glittering, hand negligently on sword-hilt, and called her over to him. The soldier's farewell. She knew what was required of her. Suppressing the tears and tumbling endearments which would have come more naturally to her, she went to him calmly and presented her cheek for a last kiss. He had taken her by the shoulders and murmured: “Copper sulphate, my dear. Absolutely vital that you keep up supplies. Should you encounter difficulties you will have to apply to our cousin Charles.”

If Clovis knew that she'd taken four days off and wasted Felix's time driving up on a fruitless expedition to gape at the battlefield where perhaps he might be fighting, he would have called her into his study and wearily delivered a ticking off. Her Parisian ways had lost much of their charm after six years of marriage, she knew that, but she could change. She was determined to change. This war would leave no one as they had been before. And, perhaps, when finally he was allowed to come home on his much overdue leave, he would notice what she'd achieved. He'd notice, approve and love her for it. Perhaps.

On leave. She'd seen him only once since this war broke out and he'd told her firmly not to expect him again until she heard that it was all over. Leave was hardly ever accorded to officers in his position. The thought of seeing him again was as alarming as it was attractive. She feared that the war would have demolished the barriers they had so carefully built between them over the years, leaving them without cover to see each other as they truly were—or had become. Would the lubricants of convention and good manners ease them through the demands of a four-day pass? She was unsure, but at their next encounter she was determined she would hold up her head and speak with pride of what she had done.

Every available person, male or female, young or old, living within ten miles of the château had been lured by her— Parisian charm had its advantages on occasion—into coming to work on the estate. The oldest recruit, Jean-Paul, rheumatic and toothless at seventy-five, had come out of retirement and found the energy to shuffle every morning along the rows in the vineyard, pruning, training and singing to the vines. The youngest recruit was her own son, five-year-old Georges, who scampered about screaming defiance and throwing stones at the invading birds.

She'd raised a squad of thirty willing but sporadically available workers. The vineyard had even had the good luck to avoid attack by the phylloxera pestilence which had ravaged production on the great estates to the north. Aline paid her workers with the little cash she could lay hands on, with eggs and milk from the home farm and with promises of a share of the wine production. Well—why not? It was better shared out. If they had to leave it in the cellar before fleeing away again there was every chance it would be drunk by a regiment of swaggering Boches bombing and gassing their way south. And she had devised a scheme to outflank the enemy. If they could just be held at bay until the first cold snap of the winter came, stilling the fermentation, she could arrange to have some of the barrels shipped south to a cousin's estate to await maturity in a Provençal haven. A mad notion. She could imagine his wry comment: “Not, perhaps, one of your more considered ideas, Aline.” But it was the product of her resolve to preserve a vestige at least of Clovis's world. And evidence of her own achievement. She would have felt defeated if the one gap in the run of vintages for hundreds of years had occurred during her stewardship.

More practical was her plan to find out from Jean-Paul, while he still had the memory, how to take shoots, samples, cuttings—whatever they were—of the strongest and best of their undiseased crop and to make off with them to safety. Aline hadn't discussed these plans with Clovis. She hadn't mentioned them in her letters, fearing she might irritate and distract him from the business of war; anxious also to appear confident and capable. It would be all too easy to make a foolish remark, betraying her ignorance. He had never expected the war to go on for so long or to loom so close. Would he be pleased at her foresight or would he shake his head, pitying her innocence and wild optimism?

A third booming crash had her once again on her bicycle and pedalling fast for the château.

It lay sunning itself in sleepy elegance, ancient and lovely, its two wings extending, she always thought, with their perfect symmetry, to enfold anyone approaching in a welcoming embrace. But it seemed she wasn't the first person to be welcomed down the carriage-drive this morning. A battered old transporter lorry with army markings was sitting, cocking a rusty snook at the white marble sweep of the staircase up to the double front doors which, unusually, were standing slightly open.

And something else was wrong. She looked for Clovis's dog. When she left the château and cycled off to do her weekly stint in the military hospital the greyhound always went on watch, positioning itself with bored resignation to cascade elegantly down the top three steps. But today the familiar form was absent from its post.

Aline's heart began to race as the implications became clear. Of course, he'd been driven home on leave. She slapped away a quick tug of doubt as a more sinister reason for a military presence raised itself: he'd been killed and someone had been sent to report his death. No. That couldn't be. They always sent a telegram or a letter or even the mayor. To announce the death of someone of Clovis's standing the Prefect himself might be paraded. She propped her cycle against the wheel of the lorry and ran up the steps. She called out for the housekeeper before remembering that it was Madame Legrand's afternoon off. The hall was dim and deserted but in a distant back room a door banged and she caught a blast of hearty male laughter. A maid, pink and giggling, hurried shyly towards her, fluttering with the responsibility of taking on the housekeeper's duty.