The Tomb of Zeus (9 page)

She turned in the direction of the Royal apartments. “Now, you're to have an audience with His Highness, the Prince of the Lilies! Come on!” But she came to an abrupt halt, staring anxiously in the direction of a confusing jumble of half-repaired walls to their right. She frowned and hissed, “Tourists! Drat! Did you see them, Letty?”

“Er…no. I can't see anyone.”

“I'm sure I caught sight of someone. There's one person, at least, down there. A man, I'd say. I was thinking just for once we were going to have the place to ourselves. It was some chap in a panama hat. English probably. Double drat! I don't much want to have to stop and pass the time of day with a fellow-countryman.” Her voice sank to a stage whisper. “We'll creep over to the throne room and skulk about until they've gone by. Follow me.”

For a light-headed moment, Letty felt herself back on a school outing, slinking off with an adventurous friend, making for a discreet corner. She could almost feel the clandestine packet of Craven A and matches tucked away in the pocket of her knickers.

The cheerful halloo stopped them in their tracks.

“Coo-ee! Phoebe! It's me!”

O
h! Oh, I say! It's not a man at all—it's…yes, it is…it's Olivia!” Letty followed her gaze and saw a woman emerge from behind one of the walls. She was tall and well-built, wearing trousers and a man's panama hat.

“Coo-ee!” Phoebe called back excitedly. “Hello there, Ollie!”

The two women hurried across the courtyard to greet each other with an affectionate hug and kiss. Phoebe turned, blushing with pleasure, to introduce Letty. “Olivia, this is the student I told you about: Laetitia Talbot from Cambridge. I'm just giving her my edited highlights tour. Laetitia, this is my good friend and bridge partner Olivia Stoddart. I think I mentioned that I travelled as far as Paris with her last December? That Stoddart. Or should I say— those Stoddarts? What have you done with Harold, Ollie? Left him basting the Sunday joint?”

“Oh, he's about the place somewhere,” replied Olivia cheerfully, taking off her hat and fanning her face. Olivia Stoddart was the kind of woman who was always cheery, Letty thought. Her straw-coloured hair had been tentatively bobbed by an inexpert hand and her skin, darkened by weather and early spring sunshine, flattered the watery green of her eyes under their sandy lashes. She exuded health and good humour. Flat-chested and angular, she could not have presented a more different picture of womanhood from the dark-eyed voluptuous beauties they had so recently been admiring. “We bicycled up. Can't stand donkeys,” she explained to Letty. “Awful little squirts—I always feel I should be carrying
them.
Boots trailing in the dust…one feels so silly…Harry? He's probably found some trench to fossick about in. Or dug up some herb he's never seen before.
Harold!”
she shouted in a voice that would have carried the length of a hockey field.
“Present yourself!”

A figure kneeling twenty yards away broke cover and stood up reluctantly. He began to shamble slowly towards them. This was turning into just the kind of expedition Letty found annoying: enforced jovial time-wasting with two strangers she had no particular desire to meet. Not when her attention was claimed with such magnetic force by her miraculous surroundings. Not when the Prince of the Lilies was next on her calling list.

Harold Stoddart when he reached them was introduced as Dr. Stoddart…“If you fall over and break your ankle within a hundred miles of Herakleion, it's Harry who'll minister to you…” Phoebe prattled. “We're all so lucky to have him on the island…I should have called him in last night to advise on your seasickness, Laetitia—he's wonderful with seasickness…”

Letty looked at the doctor and decided she was being unkind. Though no rival for a golden, almond-eyed Minoan in flamboyant crown of lilies and peacock feathers, Dr. Stoddart at close quarters was a very presentable man. He took off his straw hat and smiled. Ah! Better than presentable, Letty thought. In fact, jolly handsome in a very English way. In early middle age, he had a pleasant face, with the friendly but guarded expression doctors seemed to acquire. His hazel eyes were warm, his thick chocolate brown hair was turning grey, and he wore a well-trimmed moustache. He transferred a clump of herbs to the hat he held in his left hand, dusted off his right on his trouser leg, and seized Letty's hand in a warm and gritty clasp.

“Fennel,” he explained. “Doesn't grow everywhere…lucky to find it. I usually come across it up here. It's my theory—though I'm no botanist—that its great long roots enjoy a disturbed soil. They go deep and like it best when they're encountering no resistance. It makes an excellent tisane, did you know?”

Small talk apparently was not his speciality. Letty's opinion of the doctor continued to rise. “No, I didn't!” she answered. “Now tell me—would that be the root or the green feathery bit you use?” She peered into his hat. “The seeds? Ah, really? Last evening, before retiring, I had dittany—prescribed by Phoebe. I see I shall have to try a different one every night,” said Letty and began to respond to his enquiries about her reactions to the brew Eleni had served up.

Phoebe and her friend, seeing them happily engaged in herbal conversation, rolled their eyes indulgently, linked arms, and began to stroll ahead along the paved courtyard. Phoebe turned and called back to them: “Olivia's agreed to have lunch with us. We've brought a hamper full of good things, plenty to go round. Why don't we go and find it? I asked the boys to leave it over in Ariadne's dancing place. Harry knows the way, Letty, in case you get diverted by a herb or two.”

Letty was amused by the scene the two women presented, so similar was it in style to the friendship portrayed in the ancient painting.

Harry Stoddart seemed at once to understand her smile. “Do I imagine it, or is Phoebe looking a little, er, brighter today? Silly question—as well as unprofessional! Forgive me. You can't, of course, be expected to have the slightest idea of what she normally looks like, Miss Talbot!” said Dr. Stoddard (“Call me Harry”).

“You're Phoebe's personal physician?”

“Yes. Again, I apologise for my indiscretion.”

He didn't seem apologetic, she thought, and was encouraged to reply frankly: “Well, even
I
noticed that she looked better this morning than she did last evening. In fact—and at the risk of flouting some ridiculous convention—I will say I was rather concerned for her when I arrived. I feel an awful tattletale even speaking of it, but she looked so pale and strung up and she didn't eat any of her supper. No one else commented on it or asked her how she was doing so I didn't think it was my place to bring it up.”

Into his encouraging silence she stumbled on: “She didn't really have any breakfast either—just crumbled a piece of toast onto her plate. I tricked her into sharing an orange with me and she felt obliged to eat up her half, but that was as much as I could persuade her to have. She seems to be living on her nerves. I think you ought to be made aware.”

Harry coughed slightly. Ill at ease, she thought.

“Oh, I know! I'm embarrassing you! I'm meddlesome and I'm always sticking my oar in when it's not wanted. I'm sorry.”

“No! No! I'm interested to hear what you have to say. Truly,” he hurried to reassure her. “Without breaching patient confidence, may I just say…I'm thankful—Olivia and I are both thankful (I know I speak for her)—that there is someone of Phoebe's own sex and age—more or less—in the house. Someone who would notice if there were any deterioration in her condition…someone who would have the sense to contact me at once.”

“Surely Theo or George would be quick to alert you if they sensed something was wrong?” Her question was delivered in a neutral voice but her eyes were watching his reaction closely.

The doctor was not a poker player, she decided. He looked away but not in time to conceal the scorn and impatience that flashed across his features. She decided she could like Harry Stoddart.

“You may not have had the chance to notice that the gentlemen in Phoebe's life are…shall I say…preoccupied with their own academic world. I honestly don't think they'd pay attention until she fainted in coils at their feet.” He fished about in an inner pocket and gave her a visiting card. “At any moment of the day or night, Laetitia.”

She glanced at it and put it away in her pocket, nodding.

“If I'm not there Olivia will always substitute.”

Seeing Letty's surprise, the doctor smiled. “We met in Mesopotamia during the war. I was an army surgeon and Olivia a Red Cross nurse. She's as competent in medical matters as I am—for all my qualifications.” He stopped and gazed around the site. “You're an archaeologist, I understand? And all this is about to become your playground? I do envy you!”

“I wish that were so! No, this is my schoolroom. I look and learn here, that's all. They're letting me get out my bucket and spade in earnest tomorrow, but I must travel a little farther to use them. Over there!” She pointed to the lowering shape of Juktas in the middle distance.

“They're sending you off into the mountains? So soon?” The thought appeared to concern him.

“Just during the week—I'm to come back to Herakleion at the weekends.”

“Good—then we may look forward to seeing you regularly. There's quite a lot going on for such a small town. Many nationalities here. I think you'll find a lot of people you can like, Laetitia.”

A peremptory shout from Olivia drew them on towards a flat area in the shade of a cypress tree. There lunch for four had been spread out over a checked cloth.

“Ah!” sighed Harry. “Idyllic scene! What a feast! Local cheese, good bread, olives, and red wine. And do I see pâté de foie gras?” He quivered with a simulated ecstasy that made Letty giggle. “We lack only the trumpets! All this and the charming company of three fair-haired Graces. I do believe I've died and gone to Heaven!”

“Don't be so soppy, Harry! And don't tempt the Gods. Remember where you are!” advised his wife sternly.

* * *

Phoebe collapsed between the main course and the dessert.

Getting up to fetch spoons from the hamper, she stumbled and gasped. Letty thought she'd tripped over the picnic cloth and lunged forward to catch her. But it was Dr. Stoddart who leapt to his feet as her knees buckled and she lost consciousness.

Olivia went instantly into action, reaching for her pulse. “Not surprised! Been expecting something of the sort. Silly old thing got up too sharply. She was sitting in full sun and will never put on a hat. Harry, carry her over into the shade. I'll get my smelling salts. Laetitia, fetch the water flask.”

“I think, Olivia, it may be something more serious than a swoon,” Harry said grimly. “We'd better get her back to town as quickly as possible so we can find out what the real problem is. You say you drove here?” he asked Letty.

“The car's at the villa. I'll run and get it—”

“Would you? There's a quick way of getting up to the road from here—”

“Yes, of course,” interrupted Olivia. “She can go along the Processional Way. Let me show you. Down here, Laetitia. Follow the paved road and it will bring you out right opposite the Ariadne. We'll haul Phoebe along between us, Harry and I, and meet you on the road.”

Phoebe was conscious and walking with support when Letty reached them, backing down the narrow Minoan roadway to save time. The Stoddarts had made their arrangements. “Look—I think it makes sense if
I
drive her back,” said Harry, brisk and calm. “Laetitia has no medical training and Ollie doesn't drive…Would you mind awfully riding home on one of the bicycles, Laetitia? Can you ride a bicycle?”

“Can you drive a Bugatti?”

They nodded at each other and after a swift familiarisation with the controls, Harry experimentally revved the engine and prepared to take off with Phoebe slumped in the passenger seat. A slim hand stole out and clutched Letty's. With a final effusive rush of apology, Phoebe murmured, “Finish off the tour, Laetitia. Take your time. Get Ollie to show you the House of the Axes. I shall be sure to test you when you get back!”

Still holding her hand, she fixed Letty with a look full of meaning. “We've had our fun!” she said, waiting for her response.

“We've eaten and drunk enough,” Letty said, the words of Gunning's grace coming back to her.

Phoebe smiled with pleasure and nodded.

“Time to go now,” she whispered.

A
fter her friend's departure, Olivia seemed rather preoccupied, Letty thought, and belatedly concerned, but the older woman assumed command of the clear-up and retreat with expected efficiency. In spite of Phoebe's wish for her to carry on with their plans, the heart, the reason, the joy had gone from the day. Letty was in no mood to be marched around the site by Olivia. Letty's suggestion that they call off the rest of the afternoon's entertainment and make for home was accepted with unflattering alacrity by her companion. The hamper was packed and left ready to be picked up by the boys from the villa. A note excusing themselves from tea was left tucked into the handle and Letty was assigned the lady's bicycle of the pair. Each wrapped in her own thoughts, the two women set off down the road to Herakleion.

“Stiff wind blowing in our faces! You're going to have your skills and endurance tested, Laetitia! Now come along—don't lag behind! Give it ten!” Olivia cried, clearly relishing the challenge and forcing the pace.

Letty got off her bicycle, exhausted, at the Stoddarts' substantial old house near the harbour, refusing Olivia's automatic and blatantly insincere offer of refreshment. She abandoned the bike and made her way back down the crowded streets she remembered from the previous evening, discovering, as she strolled along, and marking down for further attention, several smart boutiques. The house, when she entered, was cool and still, to all appearances abandoned. Letty rang the bell and Eleni appeared.

As far as Letty could make out from the housekeeper, the doctor had arrived with the mistress and had taken Phoebe to her own room. He'd stayed to check her over and administer a sleeping pill before he left. The mistress had a supply of her own but never used them. Exhaustion, he'd declared. No need for concern, but Mrs. Russell was to be allowed to sleep and not be disturbed. This last comment was delivered as a clear warning for Letty. Mr. Russell was not at home, she was told repressively, and the students were lunching in town with friends. Master George was out with the architect looking for bones. Eleni expected them back at teatime.

Tea and iced water were sent to her in the drawing room but, unable to settle, Letty soon went upstairs to her own room to wash and to change her clothes, write letters, and do what she'd been advised was the custom in Crete for women and foreigners—take an afternoon nap. Feeling she qualified on both counts, she gave in and indulged. She emerged from her room, fresh once more but restless and with a dragging concern for Phoebe. In spite of Eleni's warning, she found herself prowling down to Phoebe's room, which she'd been told was on the first floor but along the corridor and at the back away from the public rooms, overlooking the garden. All was still and silent. She found an impressive pair of gilded double doors and put her ear to one. She heard nothing. Remembering the doctor's concern and the charge he had laid on her to be alert to Phoebe's condition, her hand crept to the porcelain doorknob.

“Meddlesome!” she reminded herself. “Don't do what you're about to do!” Then she reasoned that if Phoebe was, as might be guessed, fast asleep, she wouldn't notice that a kindly face had looked in. If she was still awake, she might well be pleased to see the kindly face. She might like to have a gossip or even be read to for a bit. The door wasn't locked. Letty eased it open a few inches and listened, ready to make off at the slightest sign that her presence would not be welcome.

A current of air through the doorway told her that the window over the courtyard must be wide open. She opened the door farther and looked for Phoebe on the bed against the right wall. The blue patterned toile de Jouy counterpane was rumpled as though someone had lain there briefly, and there was a dent in the pillow where a head had rested, but the bed was empty.

A breeze rattled the open shutters setting up a creaking and a slight movement on her left side, shielded from her by the half open door. Alert and concerned, she slipped inside and closed the door behind her.

And shut herself in with a horror.

Unable to blink or breathe, Letty stood transfixed and staring. All her senses were absorbing information that her brain was refusing to process.

The rush of air had stirred into pendulum motion a shape, a human form, that dangled, head at an impossible angle, eyes open and staring upwards at the rope looping over a gilded beam above her head. Below Phoebe's feet lay an overturned tapestried chair.

With a swallowed scream, Letty launched herself forward and seized Phoebe by the legs, hoisting her upwards, fighting to release the clutch of the rope on her neck. Struggling to hold up the slight frame with one arm, Letty fumbled for the pulse in the frail right wrist. Remembering with frustration that she had never had any luck in locating even her own pulse, she reached up and felt for a heartbeat.

Nothing.

It was the hardest thing Letty had had to do in her life: Relinquishing her support of the body was to admit that Phoebe was indeed dead. With a shudder and a moan, she let go and dashed across the room to tug violently at the bell pull that dangled by the bed head. Then she flung the door open and called for help, hurrying along the corridor to lean over the balcony, looking down the stair-well to the black and white tiled floor of the hallway on the floor below. She was weak with relief to hear her name being shouted back.

Two men had entered the hall, and it was William Gunning's voice that called up to her. “Letty? Is that you? Letty—what the hell?”

In seconds he was at her side, accompanied by George Russell.

“Phoebe! In her room! I think she's dead!” she moaned, pointing.

George shot off without a word, leaving Gunning to fold Letty briefly in a comforting hug. When they joined him, it was to see George repeating Letty's instinctive gesture, bearing the weight of Phoebe's body, thrusting it upwards in a compulsion to counteract the dragging finality of death.

“Cut her down, for pity's sake!” he said through gritted teeth. “Knife in my right pocket, Will!”

But Gunning's own army-issue clasp knife was already in his hand. He reached up and sawed through the fibres where they strained against the beam. Released, Phoebe's featherlight body, slumped in George's arms, was carried over to the bed and placed gently on the counterpane.

“Did someone ring?” The staccato Greek syllables rang out into the silent room with the force of machine-gun bullets.

“Eleni! Thank goodness!” said George. “There's been an accident. Phoebe needs attention. Get Dr. Stoddart at once, will you? Send a runner. Tell him it's of the utmost urgency.”

Eleni's eyes raked the room, noting the company and resting, lingering, on the pale face and broken neck from which the frayed rope still trailed its way across the pillow. She turned and disappeared as suddenly as she had arrived.

“How long before…?”

“If he's at home he can get here within ten minutes,” George told Letty. “Nothing he can do, of course. Nothing anyone could have done. She chose a time when the house was empty.”

“
I
was here,” murmured Letty. “I was in my room. If I'd come down sooner…I was told not to disturb her.”

“People who are seriously bent on doing away with themselves work to ensure seclusion.” George said it gently. “She probably left those instructions herself. But why? Why would she do this? ‘Suicide while the balance of her mind was disturbed.’ That's what they say, isn't it? But, really, that answers no questions. Poor old Pa! He'll be devastated. Horrified! Where is he, by the way? Anyone know?”

William and Letty both shook their heads. “Eleni just said he was ‘not at home.’ He could be anywhere. Surely you know, George?”

“ ‘Not at home’ could mean anything. He sometimes tells Eleni to say that when he's having a sleep in his room. That's next door.” He pointed to a door in the west wall. “But sometimes when he's working at something in his lair—” He looked uncomfortable, then explained: “Pa has a study on the ground floor. His own private domain. Full of books and treasures of one sort or another. No one is encouraged to enter. Even if they could get through the door—it's stacked high with his things.” He drew himself upright. “I'd better go down and check. I should be the one to break this ghastly news.”

“Poor, poor Theo! Did she leave him a letter, I wonder?” said Gunning. “People who commit suicide normally do, you know.”

They all looked about them. Letty saw it first. “On the dressing table. Look. Under the paperweight. There's an envelope.”

She went to look at it and, without touching it, turned to stare at the two men, uncomprehending, startled. “But it's not addressed to Theo. The name on the envelope is
George.”

His exclamation of surprise went unheeded, drowned as it was by the shock of hearing a rumbling and a stirring from the adjoining room. Through the door they heard the unmistakable sounds of a man just swimming back to consciousness. An ear-cracking yawn was followed by a cheerful bellow.

“Phoebe!” Theo called out. “Pheeb, old gel! You there? Why don't you come and plump up my pillow, eh?”

The lascivious invitation was unmistakable.