Laetitia was agreeably surprised that Montacute had taken the time to make certain no one was about to attempt to walk home alone. All, he insisted, must be part of a group of no fewer than four. This seemed to fall in with the group’s own desires since, without an instruction given, they lined themselves up and sorted themselves into teams.
“Anyone for Kolonaki? Join us, then. We’re going as far as the British School …”
“Syntagma, anyone? I’m off to the Grande Bretagne for a stiff drink. What about it, Johnny?”
Laetitia was pleased to hear Zoë and Sarah calling over to her: “Hey! Laetitia! Come with us. We’ve found two strapping fullbacks to escort us up the hill. Are you going our way?”
“I’m afraid I must detain Miss Talbot a little longer,” said Montacute. “But don’t worry, I’ll be certain she gets home safely.”
Letty’s shoulders slumped at the thought of her prolonged detention, but she sat back down in her place in the central wedge of seats. The inspector joined her and they both watched the movements of the Greek officer covering the ground Montacute had recently covered. Letty handed him his open notebook and watched as he ran his eye down the pages she’d filled.
She explained succinctly as he read. “Twenty names, including me and Maud Merriman. I allowed two men to leave early. They both had appointments at the Embassy and I’ve noted down where they may be contacted. I sent them to you and I thought I saw you having them checked?”
He nodded. “Beecham and Melton. Clean, both of them.”
Montacute flashed a keen glance at her. “I see. Oh, this is very well done, Miss Talbot! Names, addresses, but more than that—positions onstage at what we had all assumed to be the crucial time. Well anticipated! And additional information confided to you by some of those involved … I shall have to spend some time absorbing all this.”
“Come off it! A waste of time!” Letty was too tired and too distressed to mince her words. And she was not in a mood to be humoured by the inspector. “I mean—in view of what we now know: that Andrew was already lying dead while you lot were prancing about onstage. Three hours? That takes us way back beyond the death scene with that awful screaming and gargling and to a moment before the start of the play. Let me think … Five o’clock. Everyone was frightfully tense. You’d expect that. Very self-absorbed … they only noticed each other to quarrel about masks and gowns: ‘That’s mine, you swine! Hand it over!… No! Maurice has got yours…’ You know … that sort of thing …” Letty fixed the inspector with a direct look. “Yes. You were right there, in the middle of that backstage circus, weren’t you?”
“I didn’t notice you lurking behind the scenes, miss. Why were you there?” he asked, batting back her own question.
“Perhaps you were preoccupied with other business, Inspector.” Letty didn’t quite like his tone of unemphatic suspicion. “I was only there for a minute or two. Everyone had gone out into the open—too stifling in the huts and tents. Most of the actors had found their own bit of space—standing about in corners behind rocks or trees, mugging up lines they hadn’t yet learned properly. I think you must have been one of those?” She gave him a moment to explain himself but as he stolidly resisted her silent offer Letty continued: “I’d slipped backstage, over-officiously you could say, to check my mannequin was in place. It was. I’d draped a discreet length of muslin over the whole lot—it was too distractingly grotesque to just leave exposed.”
“Did you check …?”
“Oh, yes, I peeked underneath. It was my dummy. I looked for Andrew to wish him a broken leg and all that stagey rot. All was left ready for him.”
“So you left the dummy in what I might call a ‘dry’ condition?”
“As I said. I’d applied the brown makeup—lashings of Leichner—earlier in the afternoon. The liquid from the flask was to be poured on nearer the time of presentation by Andrew or Hugh.”
“Why wait until that late moment to make the final libation?”
“They wanted it to look fresh—shiny and red and convincing. I believe they added something … glycerine, was it? To keep it fluid. Plenty of people in the audience would have known the difference … sadly, from recent personal experience. Half the chaps are likely to be ex-military types, half the girls Red Cross nurses … Not an easy lot to fool in the matter of spilt blood. They would have been insulted to be presented with a daubed-up mannequin figure.”
He nodded understanding and encouragement. “This was to be the climax of the play. The show-stopping moment.”
They exchanged glances, then Letty hurried on: “You must have noticed the careful timing. The sun sets at six-fifty but it’s nearer half past when it sinks below the Attic Hills. Andrew was using the natural light of an open-air theatre much as the original playwrights might have done. Though the classical Greeks preferred the morning hours, I believe. The daylight faded as the onstage tension increased—the shadows gathered literally as well as theatrically. With all the grey and white, the gloom, and foreboding, it was Andrew’s intention to create a yearning for colour in the audience and then to assault their senses with a burst of it, switching the arc lights on at the moment of revelation. Bloodred, silver, bronze. Gleaming and glinting. It was meant to take everyone by surprise. He wanted to hear gasps and whimpers. And—on a more practical note—we weren’t forgetting the flies! The weather’s still warm—you don’t expose a pint of ox blood to the elements.
“Well, I was just getting in the way so I left everyone to it backstage. I’d arrived far too early, as usual. It must have been just before five … ah …” Letty paused and frowned. Montacute waited, giving her time to order her thoughts. “I went to find a place front of house where I’d arranged to meet Maud. I was sitting reading the scripts when she wandered over about half an hour later, a decent ten minutes before curtain-up.”
“Ah, yes, Lady Merriman. She and Gunning are the only two apart from Melton to have hopped off without a search.” The inspector ground his teeth in irritation.
“Don’t blame yourself, Inspector—you could hardly have searched the distraught widow in the middle of the orchestra. You’d have been torn to bits by the cast! Maud’s not everybody’s cup of tea but she has her following. So, you’ll have to take my word for it and I give it now—Maud had no bloodstained dagger secreted in her corset. I think I would have noticed. And her bag”—Letty smiled at the thought—“her reticule, was a tiny thing of calfskin … just about big enough for a hanky and a pair of spectacles. Gunning didn’t arrive until the body had been pushed onstage. ‘The body’—I hate to refer to Andrew like that! I never saw him again … in life. If only I …” she added quietly, her voice beginning to break up.
“Hindsight’s a wonderful thing, Miss Talbot,” said the inspector comfortingly. Then: “Oh, what the heck! Why do we say that? Irony? Kindly platitude? Whatever it is, it’s dashed irritating. You should take no account of hindsight unless it can teach you something.” He tapped her pages of notes. “And here’s an example: This information, so meticulously gathered, may now strike you as being beside the point in the light of what we’re now told about the time of death, but the very fact that you decided to record it tells me that you’re a thoughtful and sensible woman. I’m glad you were there.”
“Keeping the herd from swirling about and stepping in something they shouldn’t? Something you might want to swab and bottle up?” she teased gently.
“Yes. And I’m not insensitive to choreography. I was pleased to see you timed your own performance to the second. Again—well done! And this wasn’t the time-wasting exercise you seem to think it was. Police investigations are divided into three parts, Miss Talbot: Observation. Interrogation. Information. They normally occur in that order but I’m adaptable—not a stickler for routine. I’ve done just enough observation to be able to make sense of any information you may have gathered. I have to confide that, embarrassingly, it’s the last of the three aspects that clinches most cases. The general public so
lve more murders than the élite detective division … though we take the credit. People tell you things. Can’t seem to help it. You’ve heard the initial responses from this lot, raw and delivered under shock with no time for editing out inconvenient elements. I should like to hear your impressions … your insights into the behaviour of members of the cast. They are your class and age—-you would understand them. You would be alert to any false notes. Were any of them acting more strangely than they normally do? Did anyone break down and confess under the gaze of your grey eyes, shining with innocence?”
“Will I be class sneak, you mean?”
“If you like. Though I think Andrew Merriman, in the circumstances, might have found a more dignified term to define the activity. We’re not seeking to establish which bounder stole the sticky buns from Smith Minor’s locker.”
Letty regretted her own unconsidered response.
“You haven’t yet confided the nature of your relationship with the Merrimans,” Montacute said. “Professional? Family? I don’t wish to assume too much—or too little. I’m sorry I have to ask indiscreet questions—prying is part of the job.”
“Part of my job too, Inspector,” Letty replied. “We’re both in the business of solving mysteries. Though my dead are long dead and, in studying them, I don’t risk annoying the living.”
“Not what I hear, miss,” he said with a grin.
Letty glowered and wondered from where exactly the inspector got his information. “My relationship with Andrew was professional, certainly, but more than that. He’s an old family friend … of my father’s. Archaeologists tend to be men of action and resource. To put down a pick and take up a Lee-Enfield is an easy gesture for them. Scholars and soldiers both, he and my father were drawn together by mutual interests and passions.
“Andrew was wounded, and for him the war should have been over but he insisted on doing his bit. His particular talents were recognised and he was sent out to the Middle East. Indeed, I believe he spent some of the war years here in Greece. But you probably know more of that than I do.”
“His talents?”
“Knowledge of ancient languages … hieroglyphs … He was of use in the cypher department out here. Encoding and decoding—that sort of thing. And I believe he was given some light survey work to do while he was recovering from his wound. Andrew was never a man to sit twiddling his thumbs doing nothing, especially when the world was burning around him. You know what the military are like …”
He nodded and smiled.
“They gave him a horse and sent him off into the country around … oh … up north in Macedonia.”
“Salonika?”
“That’s right. Thessalonike, Andrew always called it, pedantically. Named for the sister of Alexander the Great. With his background, Andrew was appointed Surveyor of Ancient Monuments, Northern Division … or some such. And he had a wonderful time! He may even have had plans to dig there one day but he never discussed them with me. ‘Macedonia, Rich in Gold,’ I’ve heard him chortle. ‘Letty, I wonder, how would you look in a headdress of Thracian gold?’ He knew I despised Schliemann for making a dolly of his wife.”
Her voice wobbled in distress at the memory of Merriman’s enthusiasm for a fancy never fulfilled and she fell silent. Andrew’s following words were only ever to be replayed for herself alone.
“And presumably he made contacts that would prove useful in later life?”
“Presumably.”
“And after the war?”
“He picked up the threads of his academic career and made fast progress.”
“Ah, yes. Many chairs left empty at the high tables of Academe. A talented man would move swiftly towards the centre.”
Letty was not entirely comfortable with Montacute’s questions. She felt there were implications in each one that she was intended to refute or confirm. She was being invited to give away more than she felt she had any right to do. Her best defence was attack; she would turn his queries back onto him.
“Dead men’s boots? No doubt you’ve tried a few for size yourself, Inspector, judging by your eminence in the Force?” she commented, closing down that line of enquiry. “But you were asking about dubious behaviour among the cast,” she said, steering him back onto safer ground. “It’s hard for me to judge. I only know one or two of these people slightly. Students come and go … The staff at the Embassy washes in and out with every boat … I was here in Athens staying with the Merrimans for six weeks early in the spring. I was being prepared for an expedition to Crete—my first chance to direct a dig, and Andrew was determined I should do him credit. He put me through an intensive course in Minoan and Mycaenean archaeology and culture. I left in March and returned only last week, so my knowledge of the Athenian social scene is a bit patchy and out-of-date.”
“You hadn’t met Lady Merriman’s cousin?”
“No. I’ve only just settled back in … I hadn’t realised she even had a girl cousin. But a lot can happen in eight months’ absence. You’ve happened, Inspector—a new star in the Athenian heavens, I understand?”
He shrugged dismissively. A discussion of his stardom was not tempting enough to distract him, apparently. “You know the Merriman family well?”
“No. And it’s hardly a family. They have no children. I don’t count Maud my friend. Maud is … I have always found her uncongenial … cold. She’s a good deal older than I am. My mother’s age, in fact. She’s always made a parade of maternal interest in me.” Letty shuddered. “You’ll find this with Maud-she categorizes people. Pops them into a pigeonhole at first acquaintance. It’s very annoying. She’ll most likely have you marked down as Policeman Plod, the Bumbling Bobby. For her, I’ll always be a sort of delinquent daughter, one who trails after her carrying the shopping and can’t quite be trusted to behave herself.”
“Shows a lamentable lack of judgement?”
Letty looked at him suspiciously and pressed on: “She’s older than her husband. Forty-five, perhaps? Andrew is … was … about five years younger. They married before the war, when he was quite young. Maud is well-off and well-connected and was reckoned to be something of a beauty in those days. It was a good marriage for him, I think. At first. Maud has grown more and more ill over the time I’ve known them, which must be nearly ten years. And her temper has declined with her health.”
Montacute nodded.
Letty realised that he had what she had come to recognise as the best quality of a police officer: He was an intelligent listener. He would go on hearing her confidences for as long as she was willing to make them. A danger. Policemen were not to be trusted with confidences like priests and doctors. They heard what you had to say and then used it in evidence, almost always against you. She fell silent and tried ostentatiously to consult her wristwatch.
He caught her raised arm and tucked it companionably under his. “It’s ten past eight. Past your bedtime, are you thinking? Well, listen! Before I take you home I’m going to tell you a story. You’re from Cambridge, aren’t you? Then you probably know this one. Or a version of this one. Stop me when you realise you’ve heard it.
“Once upon a time, in a university city through which a green river ran,” he began with a confidential dip in his voice that she found intriguing despite her hostility, “a group of learned gentlemen—dons, they called them—formed a secret society. Innocent enough pastime, you’ll think, when I tell you that their entertainment consisted of gathering on those warm Sunday mornings before the war at a secluded spot along the riverbank to re-create scenes of their boyhood. In pursuit of the modern fad for Naturism they met at the river to bathe in the buff—naked!”
Of course she knew the old story. Letty smiled encouragement and he went on: “One Sunday an innocent young lady of the city, accompanied by three of her equally unworldly friends, set off to explore the riverbank. They made their way through the overhanging willows along a far reach of the river. Imagine their astonishment when they came upon a dozen dons en déshabillé,
leaving the river and making for the clothes they had left hanging on a branch!
“The reaction was instant! Shrieks and confusion amongst the ladies, of course. And the gentlemen? All the dons, with one exception, automatically put their concealing hands over their private parts. The exception chose to put his hands over his face.”
Letty was intrigued by his version of the well-known tale and waited for the dénouement.
“When the danger had passed, the dons turned on their fellow and asked why he’d behaved differently. ‘I’m not entirely certain how you chaps are known about the town,’ he answered virtuously, ‘but I’m identifiable by my face.’”
“Ah—that might well have been my father,” murmured Letty, unsure where the inspector was going with this. She feared she could guess. And if she was right, she saw clearly why she’d been singled out by him from the herd.
Suddenly serious, he turned his dark eyes on her and said softly: “I was struck just now by an unexpected reaction within the group. An oddity. Omissions, differences, and changes, Miss Talbot, are always interesting to me. Now, let me tell you what struck me—though perhaps I shouldn’t: Of the assembled crowd, only two people recognised the dead man for who he was from a glimpse of the naked torso. Even William Gunning, who was standing very close by and knew the deceased intimately … am I right in supposing this?”
“You’re right. Gunning knew Andrew well,” Letty whispered, now certain she knew what was coming next.
“Even Gunning had to wait until I removed the concealing wig from the features before he recognized him. You, Laetitia Talbot, were one of the two present who was able to identify the professor from … um … the neck down,” he finished delicately.
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