This was very much a town of secrets, Posie thought to herself: a town to lose things in, and to lose yourself in. A town it would be easy to remain anonymous in. But would it be a town to find things in, too?
She needed to move forwards. The sheer stupidity of her feelings for Len and the fact that it was just possible that she had been made to look a complete fool by Len and his wife (and that Inspector Lovelace could well have known all of this all along and been too gentlemanly to tell her) had proved to be a lethal cocktail of thought-material on the long and lonely sea journey over to Sicily. So much so that Posie had not managed to read a single page of Ianthe’s novel.
But now she had had enough of moping.
She was grateful for the magic of the new place, and this, coupled with the very real task at hand of finding Alaric Boynton-Dale, gave her an energy she knew she would not have managed to seize on anywhere else. Although the shops had been closed since her arrival in the afternoon, it was comforting to find that the twisty-turny streets below the Locatelli guesthouse were far from quiet. Throngs of people walked along the narrow streets, most eating ice-creams. Posie leant over the balcony edge and watched as a man wearing an eerie white Venetian carnival mask and a flamboyant black cloak came along the street wielding a lit taper on the end of a long wooden pole. He stopped every couple of paces along the street and lit one of the ancient street lamps which hung from metal brackets on the walls. Close behind him came a procession of other masked people, all dressed in gaudy carnival clothes. They were banging at drums, many wielding brightly-coloured puppets in their hands; hundreds of little knights and wooden horses bobbing along on strings.
One of the men in the procession caught sight of Posie staring and shouted up at her, gesturing at the puppets.
‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand!’ Posie shouted back, feeling very stupid, wishing she had inherited her clever father’s seemingly effortless knack of picking up languages. The entire group of puppeteers had now stopped in the alleyway below her balcony, half in shadow, and were peering up at her with interest.
‘You American?’ a girl with a wild and curly mop of hair in the group called up, pulling off her mask.
‘English,’ Posie shouted down.
‘Come along with us! We have a Puppet Theatre at the end of the street. We are very famous for our shows! We will be starting in ten minutes. We wait for you here, no? Come now!’
Normally more cautious, Posie found herself nodding along in delight; after all, she had no other plans. She downed the rest of her glass of wine in one go and grabbed up her bag, heading off for an evening’s entertainment with this mysterious masked group of strangers, desperate to banish all thoughts of Len from her mind.
****
Frustratingly, the next day being Monday, everywhere that sold anything was closed, including the shop which sold the Hyblaean honey, whose details Mr Redmayne had given her. Posie would need to wait until Tuesday to move forwards with her investigation, but she decided to locate the shop anyhow.
Feeling refreshed after a good night’s sleep, she set out armed with her map from Stanford’s and a Thermos flask of English tea which she had made herself.
The shop (whose name, when translated, meant ‘The Amber Jewel’) was one of a muddle of tiny tobacconists and apothecaries in La Giudecca, the crowded medieval part of Ortigia, where lemon trees and palm trees fought each other for space among the cobbled yellow houses, and linen hung in zig-zags of ropes between the flats and apartments above. Most of the shops and restaurants were boarded up with unfriendly-looking metal shutters but Posie found ‘Il Gioiello Ambra’ easily enough. Bright golden letters proclaimed its name across a wide glass window, and, to her surprise, while the place was obviously closed up for business, the metal shutters were not pulled down.
Posie pressed her nose right up against the glass door, spying into its dark recesses.
The shop was tiny, with a curving, low ceiling. It looked like a strange sort of cave. Posie had been expecting something which was all about bees, or honey at least, or with some obvious reference to the Hyblaean honey which was so legendary, but she had been wrong. There was no advertising for anything of the sort: no pictures, no posters, no signs up indicating prices or giving a clue as to what the goods for sale in the shop might be. The owners of the shop were obviously very wealthy, and every visible surface glittered with gold, even the floor and ceiling. There was very little in the way of products on display, just one narrow shelf running behind the main counter and the till, and that carrying perhaps just twenty glass jars of what looked like dried herbs and flowers, all with golden screw-tops.
Her breath misted up the golden-stencilled glass door and as Posie rubbed it with a bit of her linen jacket she gave a sudden start: a young man with very dark olive-coloured eyes was staring at her from the back of the shop in the gloom inside. He was wearing what looked like a strange long white gown and he stared at Posie’s throat in a searching, hostile manner. Instinctively, and without knowing quite why, she reached up and covered the bee coin at her collar-bone with her right hand, obscuring it from the young man’s view. How long had he been there, standing motionless, watching her?
Posie smiled and waved at the man, feeling like a first-rate fool. He stared Posie out, his arms crossed over his chest protectively, his lips set in a thin, grim line. His whole posture was guarded. She couldn’t feign touristy ignorance: everything in Siracusa, and certainly everything on the island of Ortigia, was well known to be closed today; she couldn’t pretend surprise at finding the shop not open for business. Posie made stupid and probably unfathomable ‘I’ll come back tomorrow’ movements, all the while feeling like a fat-head.
Just then a bright, vicious, luminous light lit up the whole shop, bouncing off the golden, glittery surfaces and filling the glass door, blinding Posie and making her scrunch up her eyes in pain. Could the young man have actually been taking a photograph of her from the other side of the glass door?
Was he trying to scare her off?
****
Her real quest thwarted, the rest of Monday was spent being a good tourist: Posie shuffled around the inside of Ortigia’s dark but cool Cathedral; sipped on a frozen almond granita in the busy Piazza del Duomo; meandered by the romantic Roman fountain of Aretusa and then ate a tasty seafood lunch at a café near her guesthouse.
After a refreshing nap Posie decided to cross out of Ortigia and visit another part of Siracusa. She had heard much about the Archaeological Park made up of Roman and Greek ruins and she headed there by bus. She happily spent a couple of hours wandering in the dry, rough-hewn Roman Amphitheatre and the Greek Theatre and sat under the palm trees drinking her tea, fanning herself in the heat, watching the lizards sunbathing on the ancient rocks.
On her way out she quickly visited the lower part of the Archaeological Park, the old quarry, where the famous whispering cave could be found hidden amongst lush undergrowth and groves of orange trees. A long queue of people snaked in the heat to enter the huge cave. Nicknamed the ‘Ear of Dionysius’ due to its pointy shape, Posie was not keen to spend much time inside as it was embarrassingly full of amorous young couples trying out the famous acoustics, which ensured that you could whisper something at one end of the vast cavern and hear it perfectly well at the other end. Posie had no desire to be reminded of how very alone she was on this visit, and how she had no-one to whisper to.
She strolled through the Ear of Dionysius as quickly as possible. She had just reached the far end and was heading out into the brilliant sunshine again when she heard a sharp whisper beside her, coming from the depths of the rock:
‘POSIE! POSIE PARKER!’
Gasping, Posie swung around, holding onto the cool stone wall for support.
But of course there was no-one there, and if someone was whispering her name at the cave entrance she wouldn’t be able to see them anyway. But had she heard correctly? She frowned: probably too much sun and not enough water to drink were
making her hallucinate. Almost laughing at herself, Posie recovered herself and was about to move off outside when the voice came again:
‘POSIE! POSIE PARKER…’
Her heart pounding, Posie searched around frantically, and then started to run back the way she had come, through the many couples and tourists enjoying the shadowy cool. She was back at the entrance to the cave within a minute, coming out the wrong way, much to the chagrin of the museum guard who started shouting in a babble of angry Italian and making desperate hand gestures at her. Ignoring him and the stares of the other people in the queue, she looked around desperately, searching this way and that among the shrubbery and the lumpy old stone sculptures lurking in the undergrowth.
Something made her fearful, and it was with a distinct feeling of creeping unease that she made her way back to the ranks of tourist buses outside the Archaeological Park, checking all the way to make sure she was not being followed.
Getting out at one of the bridges to the island of Ortigia, Posie walked the rest of the way to the Locatelli guesthouse, turning at every street corner to make sure she was alone.
It was just as she had convinced herself of her mind’s fabulous ability to play tricks on itself that she saw a strange figure out of the corner of her eye, a block behind her, seemingly matching her pace. It was a tall figure in a black cloak wearing a black broad-rimmed hat and a white Venetian-style carnival mask, just like the man she had seen lighting street lamps near the guesthouse the night before.
She felt a smidgen of relief at having recognised him as the lamp-lighter, but experience had told her to test her hunches before disregarding them completely. Coming off the wide square at the Cathedral and speeding up considerably, she forced herself to walk at a trot down the winding higgledy-piggeldy streets filled with cafés and eateries. For a second she thought she had lost him and that she had been imagining that the lamp-lighter was following her, but there he was again, coming faster now down the cobbled street behind her.
She took off her wide straw-brimmed hat to make herself more inconspicuous in amongst the crowds of tourists and she slowed right down. Likewise, so did her tracker. Her heart beating wildly and fluttering up into her throat, Posie realised that the maze of streets in the old baroque town were indeed good for hiding things, but at the same time, and for someone who perhaps knew these streets better than she did, they were a gift: a trap.
What on earth was she being tailed for? Had this man been hired by someone she knew – someone to do with this case – or an older enemy altogether?
At a junction in the tight road just before the fountain of Aretusa, Posie spied an ice-cream shop which didn’t have a queue outside it, and which promised a cool, dark interior with locals standing at a counter sipping their coffees and reading their newspapers. She ducked inside and peered out.
Sure enough, her mysterious tracker had come to a standstill at the junction, and was now moving his head left and right, and turning around, as if checking he hadn’t somehow outpaced Posie and left her behind him.
Unseen, just a couple of feet away, Posie almost gasped in sick horror at what happened next: she had somehow assumed that the man dressed up in a carnival mask was a local, that he knew the streets like the back of his hand. But she had been wrong: the man took a map from the folds of his black cloak and shook it out in frustration. Posie recognised it at once, for it bore the unmistakeable red and gold cover of Stanford’s Map Shop in Covent Garden, and Posie had the very same map in her bag! It was an English map, and the Venetian-clad stalker must therefore be English!
No-one in the street gave the strange carnival figure a second glance, and it was with a feeling of real relief that Posie saw him fold back the map into its neat squares and seemingly make up his mind. He turned down a dark alleyway to the left, away from her.
She ordered a granita and stood drinking it through a paper straw, declining the café owner’s kind and persistent attempts to draw out a chair and cloth-covered table for her outside on the street. She preferred instead to stand in the cover of the dark shop, fathoming out how she could get back to her guesthouse, and just who on earth the strange figure might be…
****
Later, she placed a call with the International Operator, having paid the owner of the Locatelli an exorbitant amount for the privilege of talking on the telephone just for three minutes. She got through to Inspector Lovelace at Scotland Yard just as he was leaving for the day.
She gave him her exact location and the name and telephone number of her guesthouse as fast as she could. She could hear him sighing and a scribbling noise of pen on paper.
‘I wasn’t at all pleased to get your note to say you’d just upped and left like that, all alone. For one thing it would have been good to have you at Ianthe Flowers’ Inquest – now I’ll have to rely on your Witness Statement. I take it you actually have some good leads on the evasive Mr Alaric Boynton-Dale? Hard evidence that he is actually out there in Sicily?’
Posie didn’t have anything of the sort, but she wasn’t about to admit that. She had a hunch, at best. She ignored the question and skilfully changed the subject:
‘How is the investigation into Ianthe Flowers’ death going?’
‘The formal Inquest is set for Wednesday.’
‘Any clue who did it yet?’
The Inspector harrumphed down the line. ‘No. I was there again at Boynton Hall on Friday afternoon, going over statements and re-questioning witnesses. They were all complaining of course, going stir-crazy all locked up together in one place, under house arrest. But to be honest, if one of them did it, they’ve been ruddy clever about it. There’s not a single rogue fingerprint or bit of evidence to incriminate any of them! Not even Lord Roderick, who I’d hoped to nab for this murder pretty quickly…’
‘So you’ve let them all go?’ asked Posie sharply. Sharper than she had intended.
The Inspector caught the edge in her voice. ‘No. No, we haven’t. I’ve still got round-the-clock surveillance on the house. The local police force are standing guard, but no-one has left the place, I guarantee it. On Wednesday the whole household will be taken by police escort to the Inquest. I want to see their reactions in Court. After that, unless I get some concrete evidence on one or some of them, I’m going to have to let them all go. Why do you ask, Posie?’
‘No reason!’
‘WHY?’
She crumbled, and told him about the person whispering at her in the Ear of Dionysius, and the person following her in the street earlier. Just then the International Operator cut in, asking if they wanted three minutes of extra time. Posie accepted readily, regardless of the cost. It was a comfort to hear the Inspector’s voice, so calm and reassuring. He seemed very close by.
‘I had this stupid feeling that somehow the person following me today was connected to Boynton Hall. That it could have been Ianthe’s murderer, come here for Alaric. Perhaps warning me off?’
‘Not possible,’ said the Inspector firmly, assuring her, and she could visualise him shaking his russet-red head in the failing light of his office, grabbing his homburg from the hatstand. ‘No way. Which makes me feel strangely comfortable with the fact you’re over there all alone. Are you sure you’re not imagining things?’
Posie tutted non-committally.
‘Well, take care Posie. Don’t go looking for trouble. And if I was you I’d try and find Mr Boynton-Dale as quickly as you can and then turn on your heel and get out of there, pronto. I can protect you from the little lot at Boynton Hall, but heaven only knows who else you might have twitching on your heels over there! Goodness me, you court danger like no-one else I’ve ever met before! I have to go, but if you need me, I’m here. I can always try and find someone in the Sicilian police force to lend a hand, I suppose…’
No puppet shows were on the agenda that evening for Posie. In fact, she didn’t even venture out on the balcony to watch the sunset over the lagoon, scared in case the strange carnival-clad figure had s
omehow found her and was lurking in the shadowy street below.
Instead, Posie started to read Ianthe’s book. She hadn’t got far through it when she fell into a deep sleep on the counterpane of her four-poster bed. But her dreams were far from restful.
In them she was spinning around in a circle, chased by figures who were all wearing white carnival masks and black cloaks and hats. However, she knew who they all were: one was clearly discernible as Codlington, with those bright sparkling ruby-and-gold cufflinks flashing from underneath the dark folds of his cloak, the engraved initials ‘B-D’ clearly prominent; one was Lord Roderick, swigging from a silver hip-flask which he hid in the depths of the black outfit; another was Mr Burns, his gaudily-coloured tartan trousers sticking out conspicuously from under the Venetian outfit and one was Eve, Lady Boynton, a blush-coloured Sobranie cigarette dangling from her scarlet-painted mouth beneath the white mask. And then another figure appeared, dressed in the same way, leading Posie and the others through Ortigia’s tiny, crowded streets to the strange Il Gioiello Ambra shop.
‘Here we are!’ said a familiar voice in her dream, and the figure turned and took off her mask, grinning with impish pleasure, shaking out her fair curls. And it was with a mixture of horror and delight that Posie recognised poor, murdered Ianthe.
And as the door opened to the strange little shop, Len stepped out, beaming. He was holding his camera aloft and blinding the whole group with the strong white light.
****
Eleven
Tuesday morning found Posie bright as a button at the Il Gioiello Ambra shop. She was their first customer of the day. It was very early and still a little fresh out, and Posie had studied her own red and gold map from Stanford’s carefully before setting out, swearing to find a way through the jumble of streets of the Giudecca area which a non-local pursuer would be hard-pushed to follow her through. And sure enough, although she had been vigilant and prepared, no-one had been on her tail.
The Tomb of the Honey Bee: A Posie Parker Mystery (The Posie Parker Mystery Series Book 2) Page 12