Death in Damascus: A 1920s Murder Mystery with Heathcliff Lennox

by Karen Baugh Menuhin

  ‘No, not entirely, darling. I think we should search for a carving depicting feasting or something.’ She and Swift set off to examine the outsides of the sarcophagi.

  ‘Right o. Erm… dearest,’ I called out, but too late because she was moving rapidly along the line of tombs.

  I paused to regard a figure on horseback, he was finely dressed in toga and sandals which fascinated me because they were exquisitely detailed. So was the horse’s bridle but the chap had neither saddle nor stirrups, which must have been jolly uncomfortable. A light layer of dust lay over the whole and I stroked some off, feeling the smooth cold stone through my fingers.

  ‘Lennox, what are you doing?’ Swift called back at me.

  I ignored him. They were both quite a long way ahead, but I had another trail to follow. The floor was covered with a thick layer of dust, too powdery to define our footsteps into anything more than undulating dents. But I could tell that someone had been in here with a stick because the point had left a distinct dotted track in the fine residue. I thought it was probably one of the tomb-robbers and I’d have carried a stick too if I’d known about the snakes. I followed the track to the very tomb we were looking for.

  The carving was indeed a mass of revellers having a marvellous time – some of them had even kept their clothes on. Goblets of wine, trays of delicacies and bowls of whatnots were held in hands or at the feet of the cavorting figures. There were depictions of amphora, laden tables, draped beds and couches too; I imagined the departed resident had been fond of good times.

  I took a look around, no dust had been disturbed on the stone figures but it was evident the top had been moved. I swivelled it aside to open a gap.

  ‘Over here,’ I called to the others then peered into its dark interior before stepping smartly backwards. Something was moving inside, I could just make out writhing shadows in the light of my torch.

  ‘Scorpions,’ Persi muttered as she arrived to shine her own flame down onto a mass of shiny brown bodies with scrabbling legs and tails curled in threat.

  ‘I was expecting bones,’ I said as we stared at the creatures, some of them almost three inches long.

  ‘So was I,’ Persi replied. ‘Someone must have put the scorpions in there.’

  ‘Qarsan, or one of his men,’ I guessed.

  ‘Look,’ Persi pointed her torch downwards.

  We looked. As the scorpions moved away from the flames they exposed a rope attached to an iron ring.

  ‘It’s a trap door,’ Swift said. ‘But it’s impossible to reach. We need a hook, or a lever.’

  ‘Even if we could open it, what about the scorpions?’ I asked.

  ‘Perhaps they’ll fall down into whatever is beneath the tomb?’ Persi replied.

  I tried pushing the sarcophagus, it didn’t move.

  ‘Shh,’ Swift hissed suddenly. ‘Voices.’

  ‘French,’ Persi said quietly.

  ‘Fontaine,’ I whispered.

  I doubled over the side of the tomb and set the flames of my torch onto the scorpions. They scrambled around in panic as I chased them with the fire. First one, then the rest, found a small crack in the stone work and they each scuttled through and away into the darkness.

  ‘Well done!’ Swift whispered.

  Persi reached down and yanked up the trap door up by the rope.

  ‘Come on.’ She climbed in and went straight into the black hole below. I must say she was a very plucky lady.

  Swift went next. I climbed inside and bent double to manoeuvre the lid of the tomb back into place. I hoped it would give us a march on the French.

  A steep ladder, wet and slimy to the touch, led downwards. Persi and Swift were already some way ahead and I paused to listen, hearing the echo of dripping water from somewhere far away. Apart from my torch and Persi’s in the distance, it was as black as night and the surrounding darkness felt like a smothering shroud closing around me. My heart sank. Swift and I had been trapped in a dungeon not long ago and the horror had not left me.

  ‘Come on, Heathcliff,’ Persi called from a distance. I could see her torch light and hastened to catch up.

  ‘We’re in an older level of the quarry,’ Persi said as we followed a muddy path. Clear footprints ahead proved someone else had passed this way not too long before.

  I held my own torch above my head, the flames picked out dim shapes of massive stone blocks. There were scratching noises, but I ignored them.

  ‘I think this was abandoned when there was an earthquake.’ Persi led on.

  ‘Earthquake?’ Swift and I stopped in our tracks.

  ‘Yes, there was a description of a terrible one centuries ago which killed thousands and brought down hundreds of houses,’ she replied matter of factly, then pointed. ‘Look there’s an opening!’

  It was a wide gateway, formed from white stone quoins, fixed with the rusted remains of hinges, the wooden doors long since rotted away. We followed the footsteps in the mud and came out onto a stone jetty, overhanging a canal, which gave us pause to stare.

  We were in a tunnel formed from dark red bricks. They were around two inches in depth and held in place with crumbling mortar. Even I could recognise Roman construction when faced with it.

  ‘I’m so thankful this is here.’ Persi knelt on the cold stones of the jetty to pull in a raft of half-rotted logs, lashed together with thick rope. It was tied to a verdigris corroded brass ring by a line which looked fairly new – unlike the rickety raft.

  ‘Didn’t you know it would be here?’ I asked.

  ‘No, I thought we’d have to swim,’ she replied.

  I shone my flaming torch in an arc and realised there was no path or any means to walk beside the watercourse, the canal simply lapped up to the base of the brick walls. I looked into the water, it was difficult to say what depth it was, but by the sluggish flow of murk, I’d say at least a man’s height.

  ‘Did she mean that?’ Swift whispered.

  I shrugged, thankful that we didn’t have to find out.

  The structure held my fascination. The arching top of the tunnel was some fifteen or more feet above our heads and slicked with slime and moisture. In some places, the brickwork gave way to dressed stone walls; they looked like the remains of houses. There were rusted iron pulley systems trailing lengths of perished rope fixed above unglazed windows cut neatly into the stone; I half expected someone to poke their head out to see what the noise was about. I assumed the Roman engineers had simply incorporated them into the underground canal.

  ‘Is it an aqueduct?’ Swift’s voice echoed along the tunnel and into the distance.

  ‘Yes, but its origins aren’t Roman,’ Persi replied while pushing a finger into the rotted wood of the raft to test it. ‘The Arabs made tunnels called Qanats all over Persia, they were built to bring water from the oasis outside the cities to feed wells and fountains. They’re truly ancient.’ She looked around. ‘This one must have been rebuilt many times.’

  A loud plop sounded and we looked over at the water’s surface where rings rippled outwards. A rat swam downstream, away from us. A snake uncurled itself from a hollow in the opposite wall and slid into the flow in leisurely pursuit.

  ‘What are those buildings?’ Swift had taken his battery-powered torch from his pocket and shone the beam onto the wall opposite.

  ‘Cool rooms or laundries,’ Persi replied. ‘They would have been basements belonging to the houses which once stood above here.’ She clambered onto the raft, it swayed alarmingly.

  ‘Look at that, Lennox,’ Swift was still aiming his hand torch around.

  I looked. There was a mosaic on the wall of a blue pool with green crocodiles showing large teeth in gaping jaws.

  ‘That’ll teach us to frighten Greggs with tales of scorpions, snakes and crocodiles,’ I remarked.

  We laughed then swung around as we hea
rd shouting in the quarry behind us. Damn it! It was Fontaine and his men.

  Chapter 21

  ‘Quickly,’ Persi waved for us to get aboard.

  Swift and I hesitated.

  ‘Come on,’ she urged.

  The voices in the quarry grew louder and we scrambled on, the blasted boat almost overturned as we shifted to balance. It was barely wide enough for us all kneeling one closely behind the other like three little Indians.

  Persi untied the rope from its mooring and began paddling with her hands to propel us in the direction the rat and snake had gone.

  ‘Just a minute, Persi,’ I told her. There was something stuck under the logs, I yanked it out, it looked like a flattened cricket bat. ‘Found an oar.’

  Swift held both the flaming torches while I provided propulsion at the rear. We made quite a few yards before Fontaine raced onto the jetty followed by more men armed with lanterns and guns.

  ‘Arretez!’ He yelled, pulled out his revolver and aimed it at us.

  I paddled like fury as Persi peered round at him. He fired a shot over our heads making us duck and causing a reverberating racket to rattle through the tunnel. We rowed hell for leather around a bend and out of his range and laughed because we’d flummoxed the bloody French.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Swift asked as we passed beneath a miasma of old cobwebs strung from mildewed bricks.

  ‘The house of Hanno,’ Persi replied with a note of glee. ‘Look for the sign of the ship with the horse’s head.’

  We paddled on as the smell of mould and decay enveloped us. Cold water dripped onto our heads from the roof and our flames sent shadows writhing along the walls beside us. The only sound we could hear was the oar dipping in and out of the water and the occasional scuffle and splash of creatures in the dark. We followed the canal past more basements, some had been reduced to ruin, others were more or less intact, it was like a subterranean Venice, but long since abandoned.

  ‘There, look!’ Persi broke into the silence and pointed upwards.

  It was a faded blue mural of the image I’d seen on the back of the medallion, only larger and more easily defined. The ship had been painted with two rudders, a single billowing sail and a cresting horse’s head on the prow.

  I stopped paddling and sat back to drift to the foot of the building. It was in better condition than most, with neatly dressed stones fashioned with enough skill to stand the test of millennia.

  There were two window openings set high in the wall above us.

  ‘I can’t see a handhold or cleat,’ I said as the raft bumped against the building’s base.

  ‘I think I can reach…’ Persi stood up, wobbling the boat again as she did. She tried to jump and grab the sill of the nearest window, but missed and nearly threw us all into the water.

  ‘Persi!’ Swift shouted. ‘Sit down. Please, let me do it.’

  She was about to argue, but he shoved the torches into her hands, knelt upright, tightened the belt of his trench coat and started giving out orders.

  ‘Lennox, paddle close to the wall, then when I say ‘brace’, you must brace.’

  ‘Swift…’ I began to protest but he was having none of it.

  ‘Just row!’ he said.

  I rowed.

  ‘Brace!’ he yelled.

  We prepared ourselves as he clambered to his feet and made a leap for the window ledge. His sudden propulsion caused the raft to shoot to the other side of the canal, despite my furious paddling. Persi twisted round to stare as we lurched perilously on the rotten logs.

  ‘I said brace!’ Swift dangled with arms fully extended and feet floundering some way above the water line.

  I cursed under my breath while rowing back to the wall. How the hell did he expect us to brace on a bloody raft!

  I steered underneath him. He managed to put a foot on my shoulder and kick upwards to clamber in through the window. The force of his leap sent us and the raft back across the damn canal again.

  I paddled back.

  ‘Hand me the torches, please, Persi,’ Swift leaned as far as he could from the window.

  She passed them up, almost on her tiptoes to reach. He took them and tossed them somewhere inside, then came back and extended an arm down.

  ‘Come on Persi, grab my hands.’

  She prepared to jump.

  Swift shouted, ‘Brace, Lennox.’

  ‘Swift, will you stop telling me to brace!’

  ‘Ready,’ Persi said and stepped onto my shoulder. Her boots dug into my neck then she leapt upwards, causing the raft, and me, to shoot back to the other side of the bloody canal again. I hit the wall on the opposite bank with a thud and swore, then I paddled back in the bloody dark because they had both the torches and the lanterns.

  ‘Lennox,’ Swift shouted again. ‘Come on.’

  ‘Oh, it’s simply marvellous!’ I heard Persi exclaim from within the room.

  ‘Pass the rope,’ Swift ordered.

  ‘Wait a damn minute, will you.’ I had to fish about to find it and drag it out of the water where it had fallen, fortunately it was still tied to one of the logs. ‘It’s too short to throw and there’s nowhere to tether it.’

  He stared down at me, his face silhouetted from the torchlight behind him.

  ‘If you stand up and throw yourself at the window ledge you should be able to make it.’

  I didn’t reply, I was judging the distance. It was beyond my reach but, if I made a good jump…

  I stood up, took a deep breath, wobbled, leapt with all my might, almost reached Swift’s hand then fell with an almighty splash into the water.

  I was right, it was deeper than a man’s height, absolutely bloody freezing and as black as death. My feet touched mud on the bottom and for a moment I felt as though it were sucking me down. I kicked back, swept my arms forward and rose to the surface gasping for breath.

  ‘Lennox,’ Swift was yelling. ‘Grab the rope.’

  ‘What?’ I spluttered. I couldn’t see a damn thing for water running down my face and the raft had disappeared somewhere into the darkness.

  ‘Heathcliff, I found a rope, can you reach it?’ Persi called. She had extended her arm out of the window while holding a torch. Swift was clutching one end of a thick knotted line which he dangled out of the window. I swam for it, and grasped it in my hands. Water poured from my hair into my eyes and mouth – it tasted foul and stank like a London sewer.

  Hell and damnation! I cursed as I slowly pulled myself up the rope to clamber and fall over the sill and into the room.

  Persi smiled delightedly as I lay in a thick layer of sand, trying to catch my breath. ‘Well done, darling!’

  ‘You’ve lost the raft,’ Swift said.

  ‘Swift,’ I panted, then stumbled to my feet, intent on giving him a piece of my mind – then I caught sight of the walls.

  ‘Good Lord,’ I muttered.

  ‘It’s the house, darling. Hanno’s house, isn’t it extraordinary.’ Persi had turned to stare at the images painted on the walls as I dripped puddles onto the sand.

  She was right, it was breathtaking. From floor to ceiling, on each of the four walls, there were paintings in bright colours of people going about their daily tasks. Men in little more than loincloths were carrying crates and barrels in a procession to waiting ships. Ladies strolled along under stylised parasols, followed by musicians playing instruments. I could make out flutes, lyres, bells and even castanets. A number of scantily clad women wore elaborate head-dresses and carried fans of feathers while another group bore jugs upon their heads. I joined Swift and Persi to stare more closely at the details.

  ‘You would think it was made yesterday,’ Swift remarked, his arms folded while he gazed at hunters on horseback, hounds racing along at their feet. One man held a hawk on his wrist while a splendidly robed fellow held a leopard
on a leash.

  ‘What does it mean, Persi… um dear?’ I asked.

  She shrugged. ‘Life. The life of the Phoenicians of the time, and their trade. Here.’ She raised a finger to indicate a ship piled high with amphora and bales of wrapped cloth. ‘This is their cargo and on this dock here…’ She moved her finger to what appeared to be a wooden jetty. ‘…they’re unloading baskets of rocks which look like silver and tin. And this man here is weighing something against gold coins on a balance.’

  I leaned in for a better view of the details, the coins had indeed been gilded with gold. In fact, all the figures were delicately picked out with intricate detail in red, white, green, purple, blue, silver and all the usual hues. It must have taken months, if not years, to complete the fresco. Each figure held a different feature or expression.

  ‘And here,’ she moved her finger to a picture of workers painting black tar onto upturned boats. ‘Look at how they’re mending their ships.’

  ‘Persi?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘This is extraordinary, but I still don’t understand why everyone is so keen to find this house.’

  ‘Don’t you see?’

  ‘No,’ Swift and I answered as one.

  She smiled then spun around, as a loud thud suddenly reverberated from the ceiling.

  ‘What…?’ I began and stepped backwards, pulling Persi with me against the far wall.

  There was a squared off area in the ceiling, I assume it had once given onto an opening above, but had been sealed off. A crack ran across its plastered surface as another thud fell, more heavily this time, causing chunks of whitewashed stucco to fall to the floor. The next one broke a hole in the centre of the square, followed by a beam of light and then clouds of dust which set us choking.

  ‘Encore.’ It was Fontaine, he was ordering another strike of a huge mallet.

  Another blow opened a gap large enough for the men above to peer through. As the dust and debris fell I could see the face of the Colonel staring down.

  ‘And so,’ he said as he lowered himself to the ground, his feet falling softly in the sand. ‘We find the English here.’ He almost smiled. ‘Vennez,’ he called up to his men.