A Darker God

by Barbara Cleverly

  “I check with London on every British subject who looks like staying for any length of time. That way I can head off a lot of trouble. You’d be surprised how many problems are created by us foreigners. I like to know who I’ve got on my patch and what they’re up to.”

  “And what was Thetis ‘up to’—apart from putting in a splendid performance as the wicked queen?”

  “You’ll be surprised! And don’t wonder that her acting was impressive—it’s what she does. It’s her occupation, I mean. It’s what she does for a living. She’s on the stage. An actress.”

  Letty had the impression that he was stumbling somewhat, watching for her reaction.

  “And doesn’t that explain a lot!” she said. “She didn’t confide any such thing over the cocoa last night. I wonder why?”

  “It’s the sort of information that’s not always found digestible by people of your standing in society, Miss Talbot. I imagine that cold shoulders, blank stares, and chilly set-downs are the order of the day for ladies of her profession.”

  Letty couldn’t deny the prejudice of her class. She’s on the stage … The phrase was nearly as condemning as She’s entered a house of ill-repute. It was generally assumed that the exit from one was the entrance to the other. Unless an actress was elderly, ugly but stately, and had the protection of married status—Mrs. Brewster Langdale-Price makes an unforgettable impression in the role of Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt—she was regarded as “no better than she ought to be and a disgrace to her family … if she has a family …”

  “I think it’s very intriguing. I go often to the theatre … I wonder if I may have seen her performing in something?” she asked, confident that the omniscient inspector would have an answer.

  He did not disappoint. “She toured the country with a repertory company after the war. Comedy or tragedy—she could turn her hand to anything. A chirpy Eliza Doolittle one week, a soggy Ophelia the next … you know the sort of thing. Then her talent was spotted and she graduated to the London stage. Love Your Enemy at the Savoy … A Lady of Easy Virtue at the Duke of York’s—wonderful reviews for that one! ‘A revelation!’ the critics said of Miss Templeton’s performance as Chloë, Lady Brunswick-Plaice. ‘Her charm of appearance and beautifully flexible voice are matched by a swift intelligence and forceful personality’, the theatre critic of The Times enthused. I don’t think we could argue with that, could we, miss?”

  “No, indeed,” Letty agreed, amused. “But, Inspector—you are full of surprises! I had no idea you were a masher! You lack only the moustache to twirl. I trust you took the opportunity of getting her autograph while you had her under restraint? Look—I don’t see why this ability and success of hers should make her interesting to the police—or the government—whichever is sticking its nasty suspicious nose into her affairs.”

  “Just background,” he muttered.

  Letty stood and faced him on the pavement. “Which you wouldn’t have bothered to trail before me unless you were about to stun me with the foreground. Do get on with whatever character assassination you have in mind and leave me free to make my own judgement.”

  “Bit of a firebrand, that young lady,” he said tantalisingly, and began to walk off on a second tour around the square. When Letty caught up with him, he was flowing on: “… follower of Mrs. Pankhurst, seat on the board of the Suffragist movement, Bolshevist agitator … you understand I quote from the file we hold on her, and I speak in confidence and without implied criticism … I’m aware that such behaviour has its admirers among what they call the upper-class intelligentsia … She marched down Piccadilly with the coal miners, carrying a banner, in the ’26 strike that brought the country to a standstill. You may well have seen her photograph on the front page of the Herald, Miss Talbot.”

  Letty glanced at the face of the inspector, carefully composed in neutrality, and decided to annoy him. “No, I wasn’t aware of that. But how disappointing! They didn’t take my photograph!” she said. “Not on that occasion.”

  “Someone did,” he replied quietly. “Don’t imagine that you went unnoticed.”

  His reply chilled her.

  “I’m wondering, miss, if I were to pick through the photographic evidence on file, whether I might find you and Miss Templeton in the same shot? Two known female agitators … It would be surprising if you’d never met before you both turned up on the same stage set in Athens. Chummy lot, the Sisters, I understand? And you do seem to be hitting it off rather well … perhaps too well for women so recently acquainted?”

  “What a sinister world you inhabit, Inspector! I think we’ve had this conversation before. You obviously have a short memory. The last time you asked me if I knew Thetis, I said no. I say again: I had never set eyes on Thetis Templeton’s face until the moment she took off her mask onstage last night. And—photographic record? What are you telling me? That all my father’s warnings about the fanatical nature of the present régime at home—the surveillance he hints at, the sabotage of reputations he suspects, the gagging of opposition he has experienced—are well founded?” Letty challenged wildly, expecting no answer.

  Suddenly oppressed by the deadweight of the postwar male hierarchy she had been struggling against for years, she turned on him—the immediately accessible, flesh-and-blood representative of the all-powerful but shadowy forces of the Establishment. “It would be interesting to hear this confirmed—and by an employee—a minion, a tool of the oppressive authorities that run our country. I do not lose sight of your chain of command, Inspector. You, Montacute, are a pawn in the State’s game and you are ultimately answerable, at the highest level of your department, to your king-piece—the most damaging, most retrogressive Home Secretary we’ve had for decades. Do you feel no shame, being a cog in the machine of that prejudiced, vindictive homebred Napoleon? That narrow-minded little peacock?”

  Letty ran out of breath and she waited, expecting to hear the clink of handcuffs. With that speech she had earned a place next to Thetis in the cells. Halfway between the police station and the Embassy, he would be wondering to which authority he should deliver her up on a charge of treason. She cut short her tirade, distracted by the contortion of his facial muscles. Grinding his teeth in fury? Bristling at her insults? In the end she decided he was trying to fight back a smile.

  “A fine mixture of metaphors there, miss,” he commented mildly. “Good effort. But my ‘ultimate authority’ as you call him, my boss—the Home Secretary, Sir William Joynson-Hicks, I think we’re speaking of—has had much worse opprobrium heaped on him. It always slides off,” he said comfortably. “Water off a duck’s back! I’ll disregard your abuse of my superior but I will pick up your original question and answer it directly: yes. You ought to pay attention to your father’s warnings. You should listen to his advice. Sir Richard’s suspicions are not ill-founded.”

  Letty was silenced. This was not the language of a devoted Servant of the Law. Montacute disturbed and puzzled her. She’d heard of agents provocateurs who sidled up at demonstrations and, with a show of friendship, drew one out into making statements against the government, and she wondered whether she was faced with one such now. The police force with its right-wing, anti-Jewish, anticommunist leadership was riddled with Fascisti, it was rumoured. Men who put on black shirts and shorts and paraded at weekend rallies, confident that their antics were shielded from criticism by gangs of their paid bully-boy supporters. She would be wise to hold her tongue. For a C.I.D. man, even one at the forefront of his profession, Montacute seemed to have access to knowledge that she would have reckoned outside his sphere.

  Letty resolved to struggle with the telephone system to put a call through to her father. With his connexions, Sir Richard would be able to make discreet enquiries about the smiling sleuth who’d now tucked her arm companionably under his as they made a second tour of the square.

  “What did you tell me about Maud Merriman?” he mused. “‘Takes people at face value, puts them into pigeonholes and there they stay
…’ Something on those lines? You’ve been learning from her! Don’t assume you know me on two minutes’ acquaintance, miss. But your rush to judgement illustrates neatly the point I was about to make regarding Thetis Templeton and her activities.”

  “Ah, yes. I did wonder what had tempted her to come to Athens. It sounds as though things got a little too hot for her back home in London?”

  “I’ll say! But, in the end, it wasn’t her political activities that got her into trouble last spring. Oh, no. The stage-door Johnny she claims to have had an altercation with in the alley behind the Drury Lane Theatre didn’t just suffer a reproving tap on the cheek with a fan. She decked him—right there in front of a gang of his roistering cronies. Even worse for her, the bloke happens to be related to the Home Secretary. Yes, the gentleman of whom we were just speaking: your hero and mine, Death-Warrant-a-Day Joynson-Hicks himself. Or ‘Jix’ as he is playfully called by one and all.”

  Letty shuddered. “Jix indeed! Is that supposed to endear him? I once knew a Rottweiler called Cuddles.”

  “Well, you can imagine the fuss that ensued. An arrest was made for Grievous Bodily Harm—the man’s jaw bone was broken, so there were grounds. There was the suspicion that she’d used some concealed instrument to deliver such an injury—”

  “What? I can’t see Thetis sporting knuckle-dusters! Can you?”

  He grimaced at the image. “Whatever the circumstances, there was no shortage of well-connected witnesses to support the injured complainant. Miss Templeton was contemplating a guilty verdict. Probably delivered with sententious regret by a beak at the Old Bailey who just happened to be a member of Jix’s Club, don’t you know …” His supple voice slid mockingly into an aristocratic accent. “But no one thought it was a good idea to hear that girl stand up in the witness box to give evidence in a court of law—she’s got a tongue like a hedge clipper and knows how to manipulate an audience! And newspaper editors of the sensation-seeking kind—and who pack the public galleries of the courts—would hang on her every word! And report them!”

  “So—face-saving negotiations were conducted behind the scenes?” Letty guessed.

  “Exactly. A deal of some sort must have been done. It does happen. Threats and favours doled out in the right measure—the usual. No apology was forthcoming from the lady—they were mad to expect it—but she agreed at least to go abroad for a while, in the traditional way, to cool off.”

  “Couldn’t she just have gone to Brighton? Everyone has an old aunt mouldering away in Brighton. An aunt who’ll make you welcome and ask no questions.”

  “No aunts, gaga or otherwise, I’m afraid. Not much in the way of family. Parents both dead. She has two uncles and five male cousins who’ve all disowned her. And a fearfully decrepit old granny tucked away years ago (for very good reason, Miss Templeton assures me) in an institution of some kind on a cliff top near Eastbourne. Our Miss T’s been something of a black sheep for some time now. Her family didn’t much care for her activities and she’s had no contact with them for a few years. It was Lady Merriman who did the decent thing—probably talked into it by her husband, who’s well known for his kind attentions to young ladies—and invited her to stay in Athens with them for a few weeks until it all rolled away.”

  “I wouldn’t put it down to good nature. Maud always liked to have someone around to torment,” said Letty. “And no paid companion would have stuck it for longer than a day or two. But it does seem odd to me that a spirited girl like Thetis would have submitted to such coercion.”

  “Five years’ hard labour in Holloway prison or a summer with Maud in Athens? A difficult choice.” He grinned. “But with her cousin, I think Maud had taken on more than she could handle. A woman of experience and self-sufficiency. Not one to stand any nonsense from Lady Merriman, I think. Very modern.” He paused to give her what she could have interpreted as an approving smile. Definitely warm. “Not unlike yourself, I’d say, miss. I expect a lot of agreeing was going on last night …?”

  She didn’t pick up his invitation to bare Thetis’s soul without her knowledge or consent, though Letty had heard a confidence which would have stopped the man dead in his tracks with astonishment. He could stay in ignorance as far as she was concerned. She was no longer surprised by masculine assumptions that women were always ready to blurt out any information or opinion they might have, the moment it flitted through their mind, but she scorned them. The inspector, she was pleased to note, hadn’t the faintest idea of the depths of his victim’s degradation. He hadn’t heard the desperate confession and he hadn’t plumbed the depths of her overnight bag, either. Letty really wouldn’t want to hear his judgement, which might well have recourse to the Bible for its expressions of disapproval. “Moral turpitude” might feature, and “heinousness” and “sink of iniquity.” No, Letty would leave him in comfortable ignorance with his illusion of slightly risqué modern womanhood.

  “Sleeves-up-and-set-about-it types, the pair of you! Miss Templeton hadn’t been in Athens two minutes before she was spending her days working with the American ladies who run the refugee charity.”

  “Very laudable!”

  “And as good a way as any of getting out from under Maud’s feet,” he suggested.

  “You are too cynical, Inspector,” said Letty. “How do you think a lively woman should choose to spend her time in this exciting city? Sipping tea with the Archbishop or stirring a steaming cauldron of stew in a soup kitchen?”

  “I know she did neither,” he replied quietly.

  Then he knew more than Letty had supposed. She thought she’d test the extent of his information, editing out of her account anything which was not complimentary to Thetis. “No. A surprising and admirable girl. I’m sure you’re aware also that it was the war that opened up previously blocked avenues for her. As it did for many girls of spirit. She tells me she trained as a nurse and worked her way through the last years of the war up to her armpits in pus and gore. I couldn’t have done it even if I’d been old enough, but I remember as a young thing—nine or ten years old—longing to kit up in headdress and apron and take off for the battlefields. I had a much-loved brother fighting there. It was my dream to snatch him and his friends from the jaws of death and nurse them back to life … you can imagine … Thetis is five or six years older than I—she scraped in halfway through the war. And she actually did it. I envy her courage.”

  “And it’s her medical knowledge she puts to good use over here. But it took a strange turn: Somewhere along the line, Miss Thetis turned her attention to midwifery. Yes—midwifery. Not much call for that in the front-line dressing stations, I’d have thought. Bit of a puzzle there … And my records are silent at this point. She helps out, not in the street canteens like most of the foreign women in the capital, but in the refugee mothers and babies facility. Always a demand for that. And she’s been working with Mrs. Venizelos, who’s putting a good deal of money into establishing a maternity unit at the hospital. But perhaps the interest has its origins in those war years?” he said with apparently sudden speculation.

  Letty sensed she was about to be astonished by his next revelation.

  “She married hastily—suspiciously hastily—at a young age during the war. It was one of those rushed weddings performed a couple of days before the groom goes marching off in uniform. Her husband, a Lieutenant Chandos, was hardly much older than she was and disaster ensued. He died on the Somme and the baby she was expecting died soon after birth. Could account for her rather special interests, wouldn’t you say? Mrs. Chandos has had a tough time for the past few years. A hand-to-mouth existence. She’s got by on a meagre widow’s pension supplemented by her earnings from appearances in plays on the London stage.”

  “Good Lord! I had no idea! Poor, brave Thetis!”

  “The lady has, indeed, shown much courage and enterprise.”

  “I wonder why she’s never remarried? She’s intelligent and very beautiful.”

  “And there you have it! Too cha
llenging for most.” He shrugged. “Good men aren’t exactly thick on the ground after the last lot. And there aren’t many Agamemnons left in our postwar world, Miss Talbot. You’d be looking for a bloke with some considerable resilience to take on such a wife. And a stout lock on his bathroom door.”

  He gave a shout of laughter, struck by an entertaining notion.

  “And never forget the prophecy! According to the story, the original Thetis was fated to bear a son who would grow up to be more illustrious than his father. That certainly put off a few contenders. Zeus himself prudently bowed out of the contest for her favours.”

  “And the son turned out to be Achilles, hero of the Trojan War and the Great Alexander’s inspiration. But you’re right, Percy … or the prophecy was … I can’t remember the name of the father. Is it recorded?”

  “Homer mentions it—Peleus, I believe.”

  “And our Thetis kept her maiden name?”

  “That’s right. It’s her stage name. Her husband’s family wouldn’t have been pleased to see their name plastered over theatre billboards in London.”

  “Then that’s the one I shall use, as it’s the one she’s chosen to be known by.”

  “Quite so. I tell you these things to alert you to the possibility of exploitation and deception. It would not be wise to invest too much sympathy in her cause. A little distancing is called for, I think.”

  Letty tapped him lightly on the arm. “You’d do well to take your own advice, Percy. And watch out for that knuckleduster,” she said, and was pleased to see that she had, at last, managed to silence him.

  Much of last night’s magic had faded from the scene at the Embassy. The gravel was being raked, the trees watered, pots lifted back into line, and candle-grease stains scrubbed from the marble steps.

  At least, in the middle of all the bustle, they were expected. With a warning to tread carefully on the black-and-white chequered floor, freshly swabbed, Montacute was greeted by name. The inspector acknowledged the smart young aide who’d hurried forward and presented him to Letty, making it clear that the lady would be accompanying him. Charles Devenish was for a moment disconcerted and seemed prepared to question her presence. Letty was intrigued to see the steel beneath the bland exterior as Montacute, with a smile and a few short sentences, got his way.