The Tomb of Zeus Read online

  Eleni had entered quietly, carrying a tray laden with dishes and glasses.

  “Mmm,” said Theodore, sniffing the air and miming distaste as the tray went by, “more herb-scented porridge of some sort. Sure you wouldn't prefer a slice of roast beef, my boy? I'll carve you a slice if you like? No? Well, whatever she's feeding you, I have to say it seems to be working!” He nodded at Eleni and left.

  “Thank you, Eleni,” was all George said, but the three words conveyed a wealth of meaning to Letty. She'd heard him say them before—automatic words spoken from master to servant. But now she heard them—hardly able, in their simplicity, to bear the weight of affection and intimacy which suffused them. She looked a question at Gunning. Should they withdraw? Find an excuse to leave? He shook his head. At once she understood that for Eleni's sake at least they should stay. There were things she would want to convey to them.

  Eleni moved to the chaise longue, leaned over, and straightened the blanket draped about his legs. “Roast beef would be a good idea, George,” she murmured, “if you feel like it. I'm sure Miss Talbot and Mr. Gunning would agree?”

  They both hurried to agree.

  And then, at last, the touch. Tender, proprietorial. She briefly cupped his cheek in her hand as she passed. “I know what I'll do! I'll cut off the top slice for you. The brown, crisp bit you like best, shall I?”

  Letty smiled, intrigued to think that for years George had been the recipient of such little clandestine treats. He thanked her again and, with a last long look, Eleni left.

  Letty had a vision of the two, no more than children, twelve years ago, half-orphans both, thrown together in this depressing house. Each looking out for the other. Eleni must have become everything for George—nurse, mother, sister, and eventually, lover. And soon to be mistress of the house?

  “You're both aware of my changed circumstances?” George asked quietly when Eleni closed the door.

  William went at once to his side and clasped his good hand in both his. “We are, and, believe me, old man, we couldn't be more happy for you both!”

  “We've seen Andreos and Teodoro,” said Letty. “Wonderful boys! You're very blessed to have them.”

  “I'm fetching them both home when the plaster comes off and I can get about a bit,” said George. “Though I don't expect they'll be happy here, away from their grandmother and their friends. They can be wherever they're comfortable. I shall be a shockingly indulgent papa, I'm afraid!”

  “Quite right, too!” said Letty. “I have one such myself. I heartily recommend paternal indulgence. But now it's time for your treat, George. Prepare to be amazed! Open the box, William.”

  They enjoyed George's chortle of surprise and wonder. “Ouch! Poor chap! Know just how he feels! But this man's problems were caused by malice aforethought, are we saying? This was no chariot accident.”

  “Yes. We've just been present at his autopsy. Stoddart would agree—a case of murder. But tell me—what does an anthropologist make of him?”

  “I'm sure you've seen it. He's not Cretan. He's a foreigner, like me! In fact he could be my brother! Quite a shock—seeing him like this…” He laughed. “Greenery-yallery, Grosvenor Gallery, Foot-in-the-fire young man. Give him a floppy-brimmed hat and a Charvet scarf and set him down in Bloomsbury and no one will bat an eyelid! He has northern European ancestry. Looks more like anyone's idea of Apollo, I'd say—all that sun-gold hair! Lyre player rather than javelin hurler. Definitely the arty type! He'd have appealed to the womenfolk, wouldn't you agree, Letty?”

  “Oh, yes! And how! I have my own theory about who this boy is but, I wondered, George, if his bracelet might give us a clue? Do you see it? It appears undamaged.”

  Gunning passed him a magnifying glass and George peered at the incised top layer of the bracelet. “Odd mixture of metals…clasped and welded together. We're in the Bronze Age but this black layer is iron, wouldn't you say? Probably viewed as rare and imbued with magical powers in those days. The top layer is silver, and when you've cleaned it up, I think you'll find it's engraved with…” He paused and peered, turned the box around for a better view, and said: “It shows a scene of epiphany. Here's a young god revealing himself in human form…long wind-blown hair…ascending to heaven. He's rising up in front of what looks like a shrine and a sacred tree…olive probably. And there's something in his right hand. A spray of wheat or barley.” He passed the glass to Gunning.

  “Ah! When he first came to light, I wondered if he might be a spring god,” said Letty, encouraged. “You know—an Adonis, a Tammuz, Osiris…reigning cosseted in luxury for a year before he's destined to die. And his death ensures that the crops continue to grow, children continue to fill the cradles…”

  “Aphrodite's young lover, Adonis? Letty—what a perfectly capital notion! Why, yes…it makes splendid sense. Adon is a Semitic word. It means lord.’ Connections between ancient Crete and the Semitic world are known to have existed…The agricultural peoples of the eastern Mediterranean believed the Corn Spirit, their lord, died to guarantee perpetual fertility. It's thought that living men died a violent death, representing the god. Their blood and their flesh fertilised, literally, the soil, and their spirits returned with the spring flowers and the sprouting wheat and barley.”

  “Oh, good heavens!” said Letty, “didn't Robert Burns have something sinister to say on the subject…John Barleycorn—?”

  “They wasted o'er a scorching flame/The marrow of his bones,” Gunning remembered. “It makes grim reading!”

  “And what do we see from up there in the place where he was buried?” George prompted.

  “Yes, of course! At this moment of the year we see fields green with crops. Mile after mile of them—wheat, barley, vegetables, herbs, groves of olives and oranges. Stretching all the way back to Knossos. His domain. The Garden of Adonis.”

  “I wonder how many young men have given up their lives in that place?” said George. And then, uneasily: “Look, shall we agree not to tell Pa about Letty's mad theory? He wouldn't want to think Zeus had slipped through his fingers again. You should have heard him this morning! He's already planning his next publication! Lecture tour of Europe and lord knows what else! I've heard him rehearsing already—ranting on about the conflation of ideas in the primitive mind or some such…His thesis appears to be that the double discovery of temple and tomb on the same site indicates a confusion and blurring of image down the ages. The worship of the god and the burial of the priestess have been stirred together and have filtered down through folk story into written history as one intriguing Divine Burial. And, inevitably, Letty—and I must warn you to prepare yourself for this—he's planning that it shall go down in the annals as Theodore Russell's great discovery. And, of course, in his scenario, the King of the Gods is firmly restored to his Cretan throne.”

  George paused, apologetic and embarrassed. “Somehow, I don't think he'll be at all entertained by the notion that his Tomb of Zeus has, overnight, become Letty's Garden of Adonis.”

  “Tin hats on?” suggested Gunning. And, suddenly earnest and with an uncharacteristic impatience: “Look—must we endure more petty squabbling? Why can't everyone see what is so obvious? That it doesn't matter a jot whether the presumed Divine Being is wearing a skirt or a codpiece! Is the goddess or god brandishing an ear of wheat or a thunderbolt? Fascinating stuff, but it oughtn't to provoke a tap on the head with a fan, let alone an all-out battle for supremacy. These ancient people were sophisticated; they had a sense of humour and proportion. They would laugh and despair if they could see the dry bones of their civilisation being snatched at and snarled over by the lapdogs of archaeology. They reached sublime heights of skill and invention. Their religious art expresses a joy, a power, and a freshness that must dazzle and humble all who see it, but more than this—it brings the Divinity down to earth.”

  He glanced at the statue. “This isn't an epiphany we're being privileged to see; it's not a god revealing himself. It's the opposite of that. This beautifu
l young boy is descending. He's here with us. Close to Man. He is Man.”

  Letty wondered, as she crept down to the ground floor, how many crimes were committed in the hour of the siesta. She guiltily hoped that the one she was about to embark on wouldn't be discovered and go down in Mariani's records. It was a fortnight since Phoebe died and Letty was no nearer to offering her shade the solution she felt was demanded. She was conscious that the excitement of her discoveries at Kastelli had overshadowed the concerns of the Villa Europa, conscious also that this was welcomed and even engineered by Theodore. She was becoming increasingly a thorn in the man's side, an irritating and openly hostile presence who would not be tolerated for much longer.

  There was one more thing she felt impelled to find out, something she had been promising herself she would do the moment the opportunity offered. And here it was at last. The Sunday lunch had been a traditionally heavy meal. Stifling a yawn, Theodore had retired to his room, as was his custom. Eleni had taken George off for a rest and Gunning had cheerfully allowed himself to be lured to the library by Dickie and Stewart, who were desperate to be filled in on the developments in Kastelli.

  “Don't worry about me,” she'd said, settling down with a book in an armchair in the drawing room. “I'm going to pretend to finish War and Peace.”

  She reached the hall and stood for a moment listening to the sounds of the house, calculating where everyone would be and how long she had to carry out her search. She moved silently down the rear corridor, almost feeling the ball of thread in her hand as she crept towards Theodore's lair, as George had called his father's study. A draught caught the back of her neck in icy fingers, and continued on its way, trickling down her spine. She stopped and listened again. Had she heard a door open? Nothing more.

  Reaching the door Gunning had told her belonged to Theo's room, she tapped discreetly twice and waited. Receiving no response, she turned the doorknob and pushed. Like all the other rooms in this house, the door did not have a lock. She slid inside. She knew exactly what she wanted to establish. Theodore Russell would not, according to Gunning, have had the knowledge of the text of Hippolytus to enable him—had he killed his wife—to select exactly the pages to act as her suicide note. And yet his skilful steering of Gunning through the implications had made Letty suspect otherwise.

  Trembling at her presumption, she left the door slightly ajar, though the warning sound of boots ringing down the tiled corridor would be of little use to her. There was no other exit from this small room. A window looked out over the garden but offered no escape route. Vile old Dionysos, directly in line, caught her eye and scoffed. The sill was high and a large desk occupied the space below it.

  The ordinariness of the room began to have a calming effect on her. There was nothing alarming here or even noteworthy. She sniffed the air. A not unpleasant smell of tobacco and a trace of something else…something chemical. She noticed a half-smoked pipe lying in an ashtray on the desk, whose surface was perfectly neat; inkwell, blotter, and pen tray were arranged with naval precision. Books lining two of the walls were in alphabetical order within their categories. A swift glance along the shelves told her what she wanted to know.

  To the left of the desk, within easy reach, was a group of six textbooks. Their spines were familiar to her from her own school-days: grammars, primers, dictionaries. She took out one she remembered: An Approach to Ancient Greek. It was well-thumbed with answers pencilled in over the questions at the end of each chapter. The name in the front was Charles St. George Russell, but the writing in the body of the text was Theodore's. Encouraged, Letty looked further, finding on a low shelf a collection of Greek and Roman literature.

  A self-taught classicist? A man too unconfident, too proud, to embark on a discussion with a scholar like Gunning who came with a glowing reputation from Professor Merriman? Russell would never engage in a struggle with a man he knew he could not outdo, she thought. Yes, he would keep quiet on this. Letty sighed. It seemed a petty and demeaning victory she had won over Theodore, and she started towards the door. Hand already on the doorknob, her attention was tugged back into the room by a feeling of unease. She glanced around again, trying to locate the source, and suddenly she had it— At the heart of this intimate space, this quiet retreat, was an emptiness. There were no photographs. None of wives, parents, not even one of George. There was one painting on the wall. She went closer, surprised to find an oil of the young Theodore himself in naval uniform.

  The only other framed offering was more surprising. She crossed the room to examine it. It was, strangely, a half-page of yellowing print cut from a German newspaper. Letty could just make out that it carried the report of the sinking of a ferryboat attempting to cross the Rhine in June 1914. Thirty-five passengers, German and foreign, had lost their lives in the disaster. Someone had written at the bottom: R.I.P. ILSE RUSSELL and below that in a child's hand: I love you, Mamma.

  In a room crowded with personal mementoes it would hardly have been remarkable but here it stood out, the last, perhaps the only, reminder of the death of a loved wife and mother in a far-off land. Bleak and touching, it was the one emotional note she could tune to. Letty felt tears start to scald her eyes, the unexpected tragedy calling to her over a waste of seas and time.

  Turning to leave, she caught sight of an object tucked away to the side of the desk and she stopped in her tracks. A small Vuitton suitcase nestled there. Surely her suitcase? The luggage label was still attached to the handle so the question was easily answered. She picked up the case and put it down on the desk. Empty, as it should be, judging by its weight. And, yes, the label was hers, one of the shipping company's own, the blue and white of the Stella Maris line, giving her address at the Villa Europa on one side and, on the other, her return address c/o Professor Merriman in Athens. She had assumed it was safely stowed away in an attic somewhere with the rest of her luggage. What was it doing here in Theo's room? And when did he intend to return it to her?

  She clicked the clasps and opened the case. The sight of the dark blue silk lining greeted her, but nothing else. Eleni had emptied it on her arrival and nothing so much as a hair grip remained. Letty felt inside the two ruched pockets in the lid. Nothing. She was about to close the case when she noticed the smell. Glue. There was quite a strong smell of glue trapped inside the small space. Full of suspicion, she began to slide her fingers along the lining until she found what she was looking for: a stiffness in the silk marked the place on the left side where the seam had been cut open and stuck down again. She poked at the area below and felt a flat but lumpy form. Reaching for the paper knife on the desk she slid it carefully along, reopening the incision. It put up a very poor resistance, damp as it still was with unset glue. The operation was obviously quite recent. As recent as this morning?

  Letty reached inside and drew out a woman's stocking. Not one of hers. Phoebe's, perhaps? She shook the contents of the stocking out into the suitcase. Five small objects gleamed against the blue silk, making her catch her breath in astonishment. Mechanically, she made an inventory: a pair of gold earrings in the form of bulls' heads, a ring with a representation of the goddess in a boat, a chalcedony seal stone set in gold, and, most devastating, a broad gold pendant showing the goddess with spreading arms, a dove settling on each wrist, lions curled at her feet. The delicately crafted jewel still bore, in its crevices, crumbs of earth from Juktas.

  Letty stood staring, unable to move, sickened as the wickedness of Theodore's scheme became clear to her. He would plan to engineer her departure to suit himself and, as she made her way to the port with her things, a messenger would arrive with a discreet note. The customs official would have no difficulty in spotting her. He would, smiling, summon the police officer on duty to witness events when he asked the young English miss to open up her baggage.

  And, even if she escaped arrest, at the very least the young English miss would, at a stroke, find her reputation in tatters, any thoughts of a career at an end. Even Andrew would
find it difficult to support her in such circumstances, she guessed. The establishment would sympathise with Theodore, who would, more in sorrow than anger, make feeble attempts to account for her actions. “Well, women and jewellery, you know…Too tempting…Young Miss fancied herself as Sophia Schliemann, no doubt.”

  She was standing holding the betraying pendant in her hand when she heard a heavy tread along the corridor. An unmistakable tread. Letty flinched and, ridiculously, looked about her for a weapon. Not even a doorstop presented itself.

  And then, a shout along the corridor. A peremptory call. “Sir! Mr. Russell! It's found! You left your pipe up in the drawing Iroom. Miss Talbot found it under the chair. She's about the house somewhere, looking for you to return it.”

  The footsteps had halted. Theodore turned, grumbling. “Thank you, Eleni. I'll go in pursuit. Though I'll probably get my head bitten off. And be subjected to a lecture on the evils of tobacco.” He stomped off back towards the stairs.

  Letty swiftly replaced the contraband and pressed the lining together as best she could. She put the case back where she'd found it. A time bomb is no danger if you know where and when it's likely to go off. She'd let him go on thinking he had the upper hand for a while longer.

  Before she left the room, she paused to pick up his pipe and put it away in her pocket, breathing her own thanks to Eleni. The Spirit of the House, Gunning had called her fancifully. Not necessarily the compliment he had intended, Letty felt, now she knew the house better, but it was good to think that someone in this malevolent place was looking out for her.

  Her examination of the room had thrown up as many questions as it had solved but, with renewed vigour and knowing at last exactly what she had to do, Letty made her plans for the rest of the day. Plans that included a trip to the offices of the Stella Maris line at the port and an audience at the embassy if she could arrange it at such short notice. Depending on what she found there, a consultation with Inspector Mariani would follow. She had, since Phoebe's death, been haunted, been harried, been drained by a need to find out the truth, and she thought she was within a whisker of turning up the evidence she needed. There could be only pain ahead, and most of it for others, but she was contemplating a noxious and growing boil that needed to be lanced, and as skilfully as possible. Mariani could do it. He had the instruments to hand. All she had to do was place them in his capable fingers.