Death of an Aegean Queen

by Maria Hudgins

  “It went to court. George was charged with taking indecent liberties with a minor, because the rape charge, they knew, would never stick. All the girl’s friends testified that . . . well, it seemed as if they were competing to see who could make up the most outlandish story! It got worse and worse. George resigned because he knew he couldn’t be an effective principal after all that, but it wasn’t good enough for them. They wanted blood.”

  “And the verdict?”

  “George was convicted but he was spared a prison term. He’s required to register as a sex offender everywhere he goes. Wherever we live, our neighbors always find out he’s a sex offender because all they have to do is go on the Internet.” Kathryn had been fiddling with a hairbrush as she talked, but now she wrung it in both hands, banged it on the edge of the bed, and flung it against the far wall. The brush ricocheted, landing back at her feet. “He can’t get a decent job. We have no friends. Even me, I know my co-workers talk about me behind my back. You know, ‘Kathryn’s husband is a sex offender!’ ”

  The phone rang. Kathryn, still shaking, asked me to answer it for her. It was Marco and he was looking for me. I told him I’d meet him in the lounge as agreed, but I might be a few minutes late. I went to my own room and called the main number, asking them how I might get a message to a member of the staff. “For Sophie Antonakos. I don’t know her room, but she’s a dancer.”

  “I’ll give her a message for you, Mrs. Lamb.”

  “Tell her to call or come see me as soon as possible.

  Chapter Nine

  The lounge was jammed. As I edged my way around the room in search of Marco, bits of conversation flew past me and they all seemed to be about the twin tragedies. The disappearance of a guest from America and the chilling murder of the photographer. Of the two, it seemed the latter concerned them more. Quite natural, since the photographer was the one who had greeted and photographed every one of them. They had all heard his cheery “Say tsatziki!” at least once.

  “He was stabbed! In the alley!”

  “I can’t believe no one noticed a man running around with a bloody knife.”

  “They said there was blood all over the deck back there.”

  “I, for one, am about ready to ask for my money back.”

  Marco, I saw, had been buttonholed by a dough-faced woman shaped like a butternut squash. She had him by the arm and was blinking something like Morse code at him with her eyelashes. Beside her was a younger woman, rather plain and wispy-looking. I got close enough to hear the older one twitter, “You simply must help them solve these cases. A Carabinieri captain! You simply must!”

  Oh, barf.

  At the far end of the lounge, Luc Girard and a man in a white dinner jacket held a large book between them while Girard ran his finger across the page. I turned sideways and ran a gauntlet of arms holding cocktails. Girard closed the book and handed it to the other man when he saw me coming his way.

  “I left a message for Sophie to call me,” I said. “Remember? The girl who dropped the lekythos?”

  “Of course, I remember.” He introduced me to the man holding the book. “We’ve been discussing the return of the Euphronios vase to Italy.”

  “A Greek vase? To Italy?”

  “It was dug up from an Etruscan tomb somewhere north of Rome so it belongs to Italy.”

  “Of course.” Being something of an Etruscan enthusiast myself I was surprised I didn’t already know about it. “The Etruscans seem to have been enamored of Greek art and philosophy,” I said.

  The dinner jacket man raised one eyebrow as if he was surprised to hear such a comment from a woman with an American accent.

  “Quite right.” Luc Girard went on. “It was traded under false pretenses and purchased by the Metropolitan Museum in New York where it has remained for some years. Its return to Italy is the result of an agreement between Italy and the Metropolitan Museum.”

  “Perhaps this will set a pattern for the return of other antiquities,” the dinner jacket man said, nodding to me. Taking the book with him, he turned and left.

  Girard told me the Greek red-figure vase—signed by the painter, Euphronios, and unearthed 2,500 years later—was a masterpiece and in pristine condition.

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “How is this buying and selling done? Surely the Metropolitan Museum wouldn’t have bought the vase with no provenance, no paper to prove where it came from.”

  “These antiquities dealers have a hundred ways to falsify provenance. In this particular case, the vase came with papers that actually described a similar but much less valuable piece. This other piece has miraculously disappeared.” His mouth turned up a little on one side. “You dig?”

  Sophie Antonakos appeared at the door to the lounge and waved at me. I made come-here motions with my own hand, but she shook her head.

  “I see our little fumblefingers now,” I told Girard. “Shall I try to get her to come in?”

  Girard shook his head. “Could we both meet with her in the library? It’s too noisy in here. How about after dinner? Are you free?”

  I made my way to the door, glancing toward Marco as I went. He caught my eye and made a desperate sort of throat-cutting motion with his hand, a gesture I interpreted as meaning, “Please rescue me from this woman before I cut my own throat.” I pointed toward the door and kept walking.

  Sophie had tucked herself discreetly behind the open door to the hall, pulling me aside as I stepped out. “I can’t come in, Mrs. Lamb. I’m not dressed properly.”

  “You’re dressed fine, but Dr. Girard suggests we three meet in the library after dinner. Say about nine? Better make it nine-thirty,” I added, remembering that dinner last night had been a rather lengthy affair.

  “What is he going to do to me?”

  “Do to you?” I laughed. “He’s not going to do anything to you, Sophie. He’s quite harmless, I think. And by the way, call me Dotsy.”

  I joined Marco, who by this time had shaken off the squash-shaped woman, and together we located Ollie and Lettie. Willem Leclercq and Malcolm Stone were talking to them.

  Ollie took my elbow and turned me away from the conversation group. “I’ve asked Leclercq and Stone to join us for dinner. Is that okay?”

  “Why ask me? I’m not the social director,” I said. “But Kathryn Gaskill says she might join us, too. Do you think it will be awkward?”

  Ollie reddened. He paused for a minute. “She has as much right to that table as we do. We can’t ban her because her husband’s dead and she thinks I killed him. Either me or Leclercq or Stone. Wow. The victim’s widow and the three top suspects at the same table.” He paused and ran a hand over his bald head. “Maybe me and those two guys could take a different table. Make it seem like they invited me to their table.”

  “That’s not necessary.” I felt as if I should give Kathryn and the men credit for having some couth. “We’ll simply stay off the subject of what’s happened to George.”

  * * * * *

  When we entered the dining room, I saw Kathryn was already sitting at the table we’d had the previous night. She was decked out in widow’s weeds: black dress, black shoes, black necklace, and a little black bow in her black hair. Our waiter quickly grabbed two more place settings from his little service bay, but I whispered to him that only one more setting was needed since Mrs. Gaskill’s husband would not be with us. The poor waiter, just grasping the situation, backed away so quickly he sent a tray on the portable stand behind him skittering across the carpet. I managed to get Marco and myself seated on either side of Kathryn. Sort of like insulation.

  Since “How has your trip been so far?” and “What did you do today?” were forbidden topics, Lettie started us off with, “This is such a beautiful time of year to be in Greece. I’ve heard it’s horribly hot in mid-summer. I told Ollie, I said, ‘I’m glad you were able to take time off now,’ because he can’t leave town when he’s in the middle of a construction project.”

  Kathryn sa
id, “For us it was a matter of finding time between surgeries. George has been having dental work done—caps and things—and he’s scheduled for bypass surgery soon after we go home.” Kathryn was still referring to her husband in the present tense. “You never know, do you? George told me he wanted to take this trip before his surgery because he’d always wanted to see the Greek islands and with heart surgery, you never know.” Kathryn’s napkin flew to her face as if she had just realized George wouldn’t be needing that operation after all.

  Marco changed the subject and directed a question to Leclercq and Stone about their search for antiques. Leclercq reminded us this was a buying trip for him because he was looking for furnishings for a wealthy client’s new home, and Stone’s job was to advise him about the purchases he hoped to make. A nice, safe topic. Good job, Marco.

  Lettie told us about Ollie’s buying every sponge on the island and Marco got us all laughing at his description of Lettie entering the urbane coffee house with a bag of sponges and two pelicans. The laughter sort of morphed into coughs and throat-clearings as everyone decided they should act, if not somber, at least sober.

  “That reminds me,” I said, looking at Leclercq and Stone, “Marco and I saw you two today on Mykonos. You were talking to one of the dancers from the ship. She had a package, I remember.”

  “Ah, yes!” Stone came to life. “We were browsing through one of the little shops when Miss Benson came out of a back room with the absolutely most wonderful geometric-style krater. A krater to die for. Probably eighth century b.c.” Stone’s way of speaking was effete, I thought. I could definitely see him in an antique shop. “She let us look at it for a moment and then she left so I said to Willem, ‘We must get that krater. If you and your client don’t want it, I certainly do.’ ” He waved a hand toward Leclercq and looked around the table, making eye contact with each of us, as if to assure himself we agreed with him that some things were too wonderful to be passed up. “So we followed her outside and offered her nine hundred Euros for it, but she said, ‘No.’ Then Willem said, ‘Tell us what you paid for it and we’ll double it.’

  “She still said, ‘No.’ She simply would not negotiate. Then she explained she was picking up the krater for a friend and she had no idea what he’d paid for it. We asked her if she would talk to her friend for us or give us his name so we could deal with him directly. But she wouldn’t tell us his name.”

  “So what could we do?” Leclercq said. “Malcolm told me we’d be crazy to let this thing slip through our fingers, so I gave her my card and asked her to please pass it along to her friend. I hope she will. Malcolm, what did you say her name was? I’ve forgotten it already.”

  “We met her this morning when we were waiting in line to get off the ship,” I said. “Her name is Brittany Benson.”

  All eyes at the table shifted from me to the woman next to me. Kathryn Gaskill’s head jerked forward and horror spread across her face. I glanced across and beyond our table, trying to follow her eyes, to see what she saw, or hear what she heard, that had petrified her. She jumped up from the table, toppling her chair backward, and ran from the room.

  * * * * *

  “Excuse me.” I started to dash off after Kathryn and then turned, shaking my head at Lettie who, I knew, would follow me if I didn’t stop her. Five dumbfounded faces stared back at me, but no one followed me out.

  I ran up and down the hall outside the dining room noting from the lights above the elevators that none of them were descending, so it was unlikely Kathryn was heading to her room. In an L off the main hall, I found a ladies’ bathroom and pulled the door open. Kathryn stood in the middle of the room, her back to a wall of mirrors and sinks, trembling.

  “What is it, Kathryn?”

  “That name. Didn’t you say . . . Brittany Benson?”

  “Yes. I’m sure that’s the name she gave me when I met her this morning.”

  “That’s the name of the girl I told you about! The girl who accused George of rape!”

  I tried to think fast, but trying to think fast always seems, to me, to make the process actually slow down. “There must be a lot of girls by that name. I’m sure it’s not the same one.” I led her to a chair in the corner and babbled on. “Benson’s a very common last name, and Brittany, why, it’s one of the most popular girls’ names in the U.S.”

  Kathryn looked at me as if I had lapsed into another language.

  “And besides, you saw her last night, Kathryn. The tall, pretty girl in the center of the dance line? You remember? You commented that she was the best dancer on stage.”

  “Did I? I wouldn’t recognize her now anyway. She was in high school the last time I saw her, and even then, I only saw her a few times from a distance. On the other side of the courtroom.”

  I continued trying to soothe Kathryn, and eventually she let me walk her back to her room, but all the while I was thinking about the one thing Brittany had told me about herself—that she was from Pennsylvania. Hadn’t the Gaskills mentioned living in Pennsylvania before they moved to Indiana?”

  * * * * *

  Sophie Antonakos was waiting in the library when I got there. Marco had tootled off to see what he could find out about how the investigations were proceeding, and—at my suggestion—to ask around about Brittany Benson. We agreed to meet later in the bar on the top deck. Ollie and Lettie went to the pool area of the Poseidon deck for a little dancing.

  “I had to come dressed for my performance, because I didn’t know how long this would take,” Sophie said, spreading her peasant skirt across the arms of her chair. She wore a heavily embroidered vest and skirt with a white apron. “We go on stage at ten.” Her back rigid, she stared at the library door as if she expected the grim reaper to enter at any moment.

  “Relax, Sophie,” I said, seating myself in a chair beside a large, ancient-looking globe. “The girl you were with this morning. Didn’t she say her name was Brittany Benson?”

  “Yes.”

  “How well do you know her?”

  “We’re roommates. We have . . .”

  Sophie didn’t finish her sentence because Luc Girard came in, introduced himself formally to her, and handed her a small box. “Open it,” he said.

  I got up and leaned over Sophie’s shoulder to see. Inside the box was an ornate gold item, probably a piece of jewelry, I thought. It was about four inches long and it lay on a bed of cotton.

  “I heard you were from northern Greece, Miss Antonakos. This was recently found by a colleague of mine. Near Pella, I believe. What can you tell me about it?”

  “Me? But I am not an . . .”

  “I know you aren’t but never mind. Tell me anything and everything that comes to your mind when you look at this thing.”

  Sophie’s hand shook as she lifted the little item and turned it over. I was ever so glad it was unbreakable.

  “It is a diadem,” she began. “It appears to be gold but one would have to weigh it to be sure. It’s made of twisted wire and hammered metal, many spirals, and in the center there is a Heracles knot.” She turned the item toward Girard, her pinkie finger pointing to the design in the center. “If it’s a genuine antiquity, it would date from the time of Philip the second or later. It may have been a wedding gift. It originally had five gemstones soldered across the middle but they are all missing.”

  Girard tilted his head, twiddled his mustache. “You have studied archaeology, Miss Antonakos.”

  “No, sir. I like to go to museums, though, and I read books. I have been many times to all the museums. But I have never been to college.”

  This was the second time I’d heard Sophie mention her lack of a college education. I had a sneaking suspicion I knew where this was heading.

  “About that white-ground lekythos, Miss Antonakos. The accident this afternoon.” Girard sat back and laced his hands across his chest, resting his elbows on the arms of his chair. A stray strand of hair fell between his right eye and his glasses. “Accidents happen.”

/>   “Oh, but I should have been more careful! I’ve been thinking, Dr. Girard. I don’t know how much it was worth, but I could have the purser make over my paychecks to you until you say it is paid for.”

  “No, no, no. Let me tell you something. Last year I was working with Dr. Dieter Matt, the German archaeologist, at an excavation in Crete. Have you heard of Dieter Matt?”

  Sophie nodded. “And I’ve also heard of you as well.”

  “We found several nice amphorae and I was working to clean them up. These were huge things, more than a meter tall. I let one slip off a bench while I was working on it and, of course, it broke. Dr. Matt flew into a rage. He called me every humiliating name he could think of and he did it in front of the entire crew. I couldn’t work there anymore. I was supposed to be in a position of authority, and I had been made to look like a fool. So I left.”

  Girard’s voice was soft but it held no hint of tenderness. “I made up my mind, then, I would never do that to anyone who had simply made an honest mistake.” He looked at me and added, “Stuff happens. You dig?”

  I grinned.

  “I have a suggestion, Miss Antonakos. There is a way you could repay me. I need an assistant, and if you could find the time between your other duties,” Luc said, gesturing toward her costume with the forefingers of his laced hands, “you could help me catalogue and describe the artifacts I have on the ship. You could organize them for me before each of my lectures. Do you speak Greek?”

  Sophie didn’t seem to realize what a silly question that was. She nodded.

  “I have to make speeches in Rhodes, in Crete, and in Athens from time to time. When the ship is docked in those places. If my audience is mainly Greek, I try to deliver my lecture in Greek. But my Greek isn’t very good. I’d like for you to read my notes and put them into good, modern Greek for me.”