The Shortest Way to Hades (22 page)

“What’s got into you, Hilary, old thing?” asked Cantrip, observing my abstraction. “You’ve been moaning all week about us being too busy to gossip and buy you drinks, and now we’re taking you out to lunch you sit there looking like a wombat that wishes it was somewhere else. What’s up? Was something wrong with the lobster?”

“No indeed,” I answered, touched by the boy’s solicitude. “The lobster was excellent. I was reflecting—I was reflecting on the familiarity between the solicitor and the temporary typist.” There is a sense in which this was entirely true.

It was not until the others had left us and Timothy was settling our account that I mentioned my need to borrow a rather substantial sum of money: the holiday season being at its height, I feared that it would only be by tendering the first-class fare that I could persuade any airline to convey me to Corfu by the following morning. Unfortunately, since the rewards of Scholarship are not of a material nature…

“Yes,” said Timothy, seeming perplexed, “yes, Hilary, I know about the indifference of the Scholar to worldly wealth, you’ve told me about it before. But why have you suddenly decided that you want to be in Corfu by tomorrow morning?”

“Because tomorrow is the day of the cricket match between the Writers and the Artists, and Sebastian is not a young man to default on such an obligation. He and Selena will therefore return to Corfu tomorrow. There is little doubt that they will receive an invitation to spend tomorrow night at the Villa Miranda; and I am concerned for their safety.”

“My dear Hilary,” said Timothy, “you can’t possibly be serious.” It took me several minutes to persuade him that I was in earnest.

“Well,” he said at last, “if you really think there’s going to be some sort of unpleasantness, I suppose it would be better if I went. God knows what Henry will say.”

“There is no need,” I said, “to disrupt your professional engagements. My dear Timothy, you cannot imagine that I propose to engage in any adventure of a physical nature—it is simply a matter of persuading Selena and Sebastian not to return to the Villa Miranda.”

Eventually, though not without doubtful looks and anxious murmurs, he agreed that it was I who should go—only, perhaps, because he still did not altogether believe that the matter was a serious one.

“I can understand,” he said, “that Camilla might be in danger. But what earthly reason could anyone have for doing any harm to Sebastian and Selena?”

“I think,” I said, “because Sebastian talked too much about Book XI of the
Odyssey
and the transmission of the texts of Euripides.”

The Esplanade at Corfu, if considered as a public park, is not particularly extensive. The Corfiots, however, do not choose so to regard it, but boast instead that it is the largest public square in Europe. An elliptical space of ground lying between the town and the Citadel, encircled and traversed by avenues of chestnut and acacia, it beguiles the memory into recalling it as green—a varied and luxuriant green; though the truth is that the grass does not flourish there, and much of its area is a bare and sunburnt brown. From a table on the pavement in the Liston, the arcade of shops and cafes which occupies the north-western quarter of its circumference, I sat looking across at the more westerly of the two peaks of rock on which the Citadel is built, trying in vain—so precipitous is the rock and so massive its fortification—to distinguish the work of Nature from the work of man. The eastern summit, though hardly less formidable, is hidden by its companion from the view of spectators in the Liston.

Corfu has the charm of a place which reminds one of other places—which and for what reason one is not altogether certain. The deviousness of the narrow streets, winding in and out of small, unexpected squares; the elaborate little balconies tête-à-tête above long flights of marble steps; the bazaar-like profusion of merchandise outside obscure shopfronts; the noises of seafaring; the occasional smell of drains mingling with the scent of flowers—these things, I suppose, remind one chiefly of Venice, especially of those things in Venice which remind one of Istanbul. The Liston, however, has a certain Parisian flavor; and there is something about the Esplanade—the neo-Classical architecture and the circular bandstand—which irresistibly recalls Cheltenham or Bath. A town, one can hardly deny it, in every sense provincial; but with the faded, rather sluttish elegance of a provincial beauty who a long time ago spent a season in the capital.

I had lunched at the Aiglou restaurant, thinking it the probable rendezvous for those engaged to play cricket on the Esplanade in the afternoon. Two or three of those who passed by were known to me from previous visits, and paused to exchange greetings; but of those concerned in the matter which brought me there there was no sign.

I removed, having eaten, to the adjoining cafe, where the purchase of a small black coffee and a Metaxa would secure me the undisturbed occupation of a table for the rest of the afternoon. I chose a position from which I could observe both ends of the Liston and the far side of the Esplanade, supposing that if anyone approached it would be from one of those directions. I had forgotten that the shops and cafes of the Liston have entrances also on Capodistria Street, and that a new arrival at the table behind me might escape my notice.

“If I see an Oxford don being ravished by my sister,” said a cheerful English voice, “is it my duty to interpose myself between them?”

Looking round in some alarm, I saw that the occupants of the table were the copper-haired Fairfax twins. Their attention, however, not being directed towards me, I concluded that I was not the imagined victim of the hypothetical outrage.

“Chance,” said Lucinda, “would be a fine thing. I do think it’s mean of Selena to keep Sebastian away until the last moment—she might at least have brought him back to Corfu in time to have lunch with us. Didn’t anyone ever tell her that she ought to let other little girls play with her nice toys?”

“The toy doesn’t want to be played with,” said Lucian. “Take the advice of a brother who has your best interests at heart—forget this man and stick to Greek fishermen. Sebastian doesn’t fancy anyone but Selena.”

“I don’t see why,” said his sister plaintively. “What’s she got that I haven’t got?”

“Absolutely nothing, sweetheart, lots less of practically everything. But that’s how it is
—le coeur a ses raisins,
as the French say, which the raisins know nothing about. You might as well ask why men go overboard about Mama.”

“I’ve given up trying to explain that,” said his sister. “I just watch out for the signs and stand by to help with the debris.”

They both sighed, overtaken by that indulgent despair so often induced in children by reflecting on the conduct of their parents—closely resembling that induced in parents by reflecting on the conduct of their children.

The news that Sebastian and Selena were not as yet in the company of the Demetriou family filled me with a relief little short of euphoria. Moreover, it occurred to me that the circumstances afforded a happy opportunity to verify my opinion concerning a particular aspect of the matter under investigation.

I had still in my possession the photographs which Julia had found in the pocket of Deirdre’s coat. I took them out and put them down on my table, in the manner, as I hoped, of the conscientious tourist preparing to write postcards to family and friends. When next the waiter came hurrying past me I contrived a slight collision between us, in apparent consequence of which the photographs went flying in a colorful cascade across the space of ground between myself and the Fairfax twins. The two young people jumped up in good-natured haste to set about retrieving them.

“Thank you,” I said extending my hand, “that is most kind.” They made no attempt, however, to restore my property to me, but stood as if rooted to the pavement under the sunlit arcade, staring at the photographs, then at each other, then at me, then again at the photographs.

“Where—?” said Lucinda.

“How—?” said Lucian.

“I must apologize,” I said, “for their rather indelicate nature. They were not intended for public display.”

“It’s not that,” said Lucian. “It’s just—it’s just that we’d awfully like to know where you got them.”

“Yes,” said his sister. “Yes, we would. Can we offer you a Metaxa or anything?”

I accepted the invitation and joined them at their table.

“It would be indiscreet of me,” I said, “to explain exactly how the photographs which engage your interest come to be in my hands. I may say, however, that they were formerly in the possession of a young woman—now, sadly, no longer living—who had acquired them by rather dubious means from two cousins of hers. I believe, not to put too fine a point on it, that she had stolen them.”

“It was Deirdre,” exclaimed Lucinda. “I always said it was Deirdre—the little beast. Oh dear,” she added, biting her knuckles, “I shouldn’t say that now she’s dead. Oh dear, poor Deirdre.” The difficulty seemed almost universal of remembering, in relation to Deirdre, the maxim
de mortuis nil nisi bonum.

“I perceive,” I said, “that you have some knowledge of the matter.”

“It’s an extraordinary coincidence,” said Lucian, “but we think that this girl’s cousins are people who are friends of ours. Quite close friends, actually.”

“So you see,” said Lucinda, “if we keep the photographs and promise to give them back to these friends of ours, it will all be all right, won’t it?” She made this suggestion with such lively enthusiasm that I hardly had the heart to disappoint her.

“I am afraid,” I said, “that that will not quite serve. Your friends, you see, had also acquired them by means not entirely orthodox—their title to them is by no means clear. Your friends, as you may know, have a relative whom they rather dislike—I will call him their uncle, though that is not the precise relationship. In recent years they have had few personal dealings with him; but there are certain points of contact between the circles in which they move. Their uncle has seen fit to interest himself in their activities and to inform their father of matters which he thought to merit disapproval. What especially infuriates your friends—a young man and a young woman, I believe, of similar age to yourselves—what especially infuriates them is that their uncle, in his own private life—but perhaps they have told you all this, and I trespass on your patience by repeating it?”

Shaking their coppery heads, they mutely reassured me that my narrative still held their interest.

“—that their uncle, in his own private life, is himself accustomed to indulge in practices which would cause a raised eyebrow among the strictly conventional. Last autumn, finding themselves in London, they saw an opportunity to be innocently revenged. Having learnt from some mutual acquaintance that their uncle had invited several of his friends to join him on a particular evening in certain idiosyncratic diversions, they intruded on the gathering in the guise of members of the police force, conducting what is known as a raid.”

“I say,” said Lucinda, resolutely ingenuous, “how awful of them. Weren’t they afraid they’d be recognized?”

“Evidently not. Their uncle had not seen them since they left school, and they made liberal use of wigs and false mustaches. You may perhaps think, knowing them as you do, that the girl would have had some difficulty in disguising her strikingly feminine appearance; but it is surprising—I have had a little experience with amateur theatricals—how easily a young woman of voluptuous figure may, with suitable padding, pass as a substantially built young man, provided that she does not open her mouth. Well, the enterprise succeeded beyond their expectations—not only did they embarrass their uncle, but they also secured possession of his camera, with which he and his friends had been photographing one another in various interesting poses. They developed the film, and the photographs which you are holding are the result. Your friends, I gather, made no immediate use of them, though they were comforted by the thought that if their uncle made any further attempt to interfere in their private lives material was at hand to discredit his opinion. Meanwhile, they kept the photographs in a place which they fondly imagined to be secure and private, taking them out from time to time merely for their personal amusement.”

“Deirdre didn’t know about all this,” said Lucian, “you can’t have heard about it from Deirdre.”

“No,” I said. “No, it wasn’t from Deirdre—though she evidently had a certain talent for knowing things she was not supposed to know and finding things she was not supposed to find. Certainly she found these photographs, on some occasion when she was visiting her cousins, and decided—I say nothing of her motives—to take possession of them. When her cousins discovered the loss they were, I rather think, more than a little perturbed: much as they disliked their uncle, they had never intended that such damaging photographs should pass into general circulation. Still, there was nothing to be done: they had almost forgotten the incident, until a few months later the photographs were scattered on the ground before them on the Esplanade at Corfu.”

“Oh,” said Lucinda despondently, “you know it’s us.”

They sat gazing at me with bewildered apprehension. Lucinda sought or offered reassurance by surreptitiously clasping her brother’s hand.

“I don’t understand how you know all this,” said Lucian. “You seem to know things that no one could know except us.”

“It’s as if you could see into people’s minds,” said his sister. “Who are you? How do you know all these things?”

“I am a scholar,” I said. “Few mysteries are impenetrable to the trained mind.”

They continued, however, to gaze at me with a sort of superstitious dread, as if supposing me studied in some darker and more secret learning than is to be found in the statutes of Edward I or the books of Glanvil and Bracton. My heart warmed to these delightful young people: it was such a different response from any I could have hoped for in Lincoln’s Inn, where my carefully reasoned deductions would have been described as mere guesswork, or else as so childishly simple that the members of the Nursery, had they not been occupied with more important matters, could have worked them out for themselves in half the time.