Death Among the Ruins (Arabella Beaumont Mystery)

by Christie, Pamela

  She walked through the silent streets as late-forming clouds returned to obscure the sun once again. There would be no sunset, now; just a gradual fading of light and color, reducing the world to a uniform gray before the darkness took over. Herculaneum was mostly gray, anyway. She shivered as shadows began to lengthen in the ancient doorways. A burst of cold air sprang up from nowhere, blowing her bonnet askew.

  The certainty of knowing oneself to be the only living soul in an empty city is one that few will ever encounter, and thankfully so. But Arabella was enjoying the sensation. To be walking and thinking in a place uninhabited for a thousand years was a memory she would cherish for the rest of her life.

  But then, she was not alone, after all.

  Awareness of this fact broke upon her in subtle stages, building up so gradually that it was more like the subtle seepage of fluid through a porous membrane than a clear moment of certainty. But the instant she detected a slight movement out of the corner of her eye, an occurrence that coincided with the audible dislodgment of a pebble, her mind reacted immediately, and she turned to confront this intruder on her solitude, only to find the street empty.

  She realized, with a jolt, that she might actually be in danger . But Arabella continued to saunter along the pavement, to all appearances unaware of the escort who stalked her just beyond that row of shops, because she was seeking the road by which she had come, and the way back to safety. There was not a soul down here excepting herself . . . and one other. Now and then, she thought she saw a partial face peeping at her from behind a date palm, or fingers emerging from a gap between the ancient bricks. In the waning light it was becoming harder to see. Where, oh, where was the exit road?

  Arabella had completely lost her bearings. She could no longer recall which streets she had walked along, or where the hotel had stood in relation to them. Now she was aware of her own heart, thumping in her breast, and she began to walk a little faster. But only a little faster, lest her fright be perceived by the “other,” and the time judged ripe for pouncing on her. Was that just the wind soughing through the umbrella pines? No. It was someone whispering.

  Dear God. There was more than one of them. Either that, or the only one there was . . . was insane. Arabella keenly felt her vulnerability now. She was alone and unprotected in a strange place, where she neither spoke the language, understood the customs, nor knew how to find her way back. John Soane had spoken truly: She had got herself embroiled in a mad scheme. Upon regaining the hotel precincts, the first thing she would do would be to get a map of this place. But . . . what if she never got back to the hotel? She must not think like that! She must not! Because then she would panic, and panic was a type of surrender, and she was not made that way.

  Now she could make out multiple human shapes in the gathering darkness. The people who had worshiped Pan were said to “panic” when they were filled with the divine presence, weren’t they? She wouldn’t, though, because she did not want the god; only his statue. She would find it soon and take it home, and relax with a cup of tea and her feet propped up on something, and she must keep on with this inner monologue, this inner, mindless chattering, so as to keep from thinking about those people following her on both sides of the road, and how more of them were appearing up ahead and coming toward her. She was being surrounded.

  Suddenly, Arabella broke into a run, and fled down a side street. The movement was so unexpected that her pursuers failed to react for a moment, but soon they were giving chase, a pack of hounds hunting a stricken doe. She left the street and zigzagged across a series of alleys, praying to God, to nature, to her dead grandmother, but knowing it was only a matter of time before she would fly unwitting down some cul-de-sac and come up short against a wall of solid stone.

  And then, on rounding the next corner, Arabella saw some sort of official up ahead—a night watchman, perhaps—shoveling a dead animal into a sack. She was struggling to draw sufficient air into her lungs to scream for help and still running as hard as she could, when someone stepped directly in her path.

  “Signorina! Hello, signorina! You need a guide?”

  A small ragamuffin in an oversized man’s shirt was grinning up at her, and Arabella had a fleeting impression of white teeth in a dirty face. Mortified by the shriek that she had been unable to suppress, and still panting for breath, she brushed past him toward the watchman, with a hastily mumbled “No, thank you. Not just now.”

  “Not just now?” he persisted, jogging along at her side. “So, how do you think? Later is possible? I am good guide! I know all these houses and secret buried places. My name is Pietro! When later comes and you are ready to look, ask for me! I can show you anything, anytime you like!”

  Her pursuers had stopped running behind her, and now she saw that they were children, also. But unsupervised children, Arabella knew, could be every bit as dangerous as adults. She halted and looked at the boy. “Anytime?” she asked. “Don’t you ever go home, then?”

  “This my home!” he cried, with a sweep of his arm that included his compatriots. “I . . . they . . . all of us, live here! In Ercolano!”

  They were the filthiest children she had ever seen, and Arabella was a Londoner! Pitifully thin, and shoeless, with pointed little feral faces. The watchman shooed them away like chickens and admonished her. His English was not as good as the boy’s, but his meaning was clear: The children were bad. She should not speak to them. She should go home. He brought his lantern and showed her the way out.

  Returned to the hotel at last, Arabella dragged herself upstairs, where she found Belinda revived, refreshed, and dressing for dinner.

  “There you are!” cried her sister gaily. “I wondered where you’d gone! Should I wear pearls in my hair tonight? Or do you think them too sophisticated for Resina?”

  “Too . . . sophisticated . . .” Arabella gasped. “The silk baby’s breath is much . . . more suitable. Bunny . . .”

  “Hmmm?”

  “Bunny, I think I need to lie down for a bit before dinner. Would you mind?”

  “Well . . . we haven’t much time, Bell. You should have had a nap, like I did, rather than go exploring right away.”

  And then, for the first time, she had a really good look at her sister.

  “Bell! Are you all right? Here, lie on my bed! I’ll ring for a glass of . . . whatever it is they drink here!”

  A short time later, Arabella was propped up with a lot of pillows and a glass of . . . whatever it was they had brought her. She was feeling much better.

  “Thank goodness!” said Belinda with heartfelt relief. “You gave me a terrible fright just now!”

  “Yes, well, I’d had one myself, you see. But it turned out to be only fancy on my part. There was actually nothing to be afraid of, at all.”

  By the time the dinner bell sounded, the fair explorer had recovered her healthy complexion so completely that she was able to wear pale green brocade, without it making her look the least bit jaundiced.

  Chapter 11

  AN INDECENT PROPOSITION

  A welcoming fire was crackling in the sala da pranzo, and the aromas wafting in from the kitchen (a circumstance that would have been regarded as a travesty in an English household) excited the appetites of the expectant diners, with the exception of Charles. But Arabella was irritated to find eight persons already seated when she entered the room. And where she had expected to see a number of tables, or in any event, two, there was only the one. Evidently, the guests would all be obliged to dine and converse together, whether they would or no.

  Later that night, she described her fellow guests in the CIN. On her only other detection adventure, Arabella had used her crime investigation notebook solely to record her impressions pertaining to a murder. But she had not been traveling then. In the present instance, moreover, she had forgot to bring a separate travel diary with her. And so, having surmised that little detection work would be required of her this time, she was using the back of her CIN to chronicle her travels.
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  The head of the table was occupied by a broad, powerfully built priest of middle age, his square face set off by stiff salt-and-pepper hair and a Vandyke beard. He wears pince-nez, and though he affects the standard cassock and collar of the Catholic lower clergy, he is evidently a Primary Force of considerable importance, for he also wears impressive jewelry, and is followed about wherever he goes by three silent monks. He somewhat singularly failed to rise from his seat when Bunny and I entered the room, and if I am not to take umbrage at his behavior, I must conclude that the practice is not observed amongst adherents of the Roman faith.

  Our landlord and host effecting the introductions. I learned that the Primary Force hails from Palermo, and goes by the name of Father Terranova. I was mildly surprised that no ecclesiastical titles were appended to his name, but I suppose that the prelate—for I am certain that he is one—has his reasons for not wishing to use them.

  His mother, Simonetta Terranova, resembles him. But she is shorter, possibly broader, and her beard is not so well-trimmed as his! Signora Terranova orders everyone about in superior tones, an affectation of which the great man himself has no need, and basks in the reflected brilliance of her shining son. Her sister, Ginevra Rinaldo, is wan and unassertive, where the Signora is robust and imposing.

  Ginevra’s grown children round out the family group. Renilde has premature jowls, and a long-bridged nose with a blobby tip. She scrapes her hair severely back from her heavy face, a look which does nothing for her, and plucks her eyebrows ridiculously thin. This gives her a hard look, and I think she is hard. Miss Rinaldo sat like a hobbledehoy during the introductions, rudely spooning her soup as though we were not there. She did look up, though, and I thought I saw her eyes glint with interest, when Charles and Mr. Kendrick were presented.

  Osvaldo, her half brother, is the puffy fellow who was playing cards with Charles when I went out this afternoon. He’s an utter beefwit, with affected English mannerisms. So, predictably, his two main occupations, in which he indulges with such frequency that they seem more like behavioral tics, are the taking of snuff (even at the table!) and repetitive recourse to his quizzing glass. The hair of his head is brushed forward from behind, à la execucion, and it peeps over the top of his exaggerated collar in a manner suggestive of vegetation. When viewed from the side, this extraordinary style choice produces an impression of a grass hummock, spied above the upraised wing of a duck. One simply cannot make out the profile at all. Nor can his face really be seen from the front, owing to the quizzing glass perpetually pressed against the socket of one eye.

  There is also a trio of sycophantic monks, who were not introduced to us. I have concluded that they are not important in themselves, but merely constitute a kind of fashion accessory for the Primary Force .

  Once introductions had been made and the Beaumont party was seated, soup was served to these latest arrivals, and the silence that now seized the company had more to do with the English group’s fatigue, and both parties’ desire for privacy, than with concentration upon the food. Belinda was fading again after a brief revival—her nap having been either too prolonged or not long enough. Charles did not like the soup and stirred it about without taking any, brooding over the two or three games of vingt-et-un lately lost to Osvaldo. Arabella was in a state approaching stupefaction from the combined effects of her tiring day and her scare in the ruins. And Reverend Kendrick, who had been kept constantly busy tending to the luggage, signing the register, seeing the passports safely secured, and watching over Charles, had been unable to procure a restorative of any kind, and nearly fell face-first from exhaustion into the pasta puttanesca.

  After a while, though, when Arabella attempted to invest the occasion with a modicum of civility by recounting her recent adventures in the buried city, he mustered sufficient energy to rebuke her for having ventured out without a chaperone.

  “Anything might have happened to you, Miss Beaumont! Please remember that a murder occurred in that place only recently! The watchman had a shovel, you said? Isn’t that what the victim was killed with? Perhaps it was the very murder weapon itself you saw! I implore you to exercise more common sense, in future!”

  “The murder weapon!” Arabella exclaimed. “You are right, Mr. Kendrick! It could have been the very one!” And she might have been killed whilst the spirit of the ancient Roman had been occupying a part of her consciousness. How sad for the poor soul, waiting over seventeen hundred years to reanimate in a receptive mind, only to be killed again, almost immediately, with a shovel this time.

  “The reverend is indeed right, signorina,” said the priest, nodding sagaciously. “You must not allow your eagerness to run away with you. Otherwise, some vagrant, seeing how easy it is, will try to run away with you, also!”

  The other members of his party laughed gently at their leader’s little sally, except for Renilde. She had the sort of face that looks a stranger to laughter.

  “It is, if I may say so,” added the prelate, “an unusual season for sightseeing.”

  “That is why I have chosen it,” Arabella replied. “I cannot bear crowds. Has your journey been a long one, Mr. Terranova?” She would not address him as “Father.” He was not her father, and she was not of his faith. Arabella was determined to shew this fellow that he was no better than she was: After all, in their respective universes they were both stars, each with its host of orbiting bodies.

  “It has, indeed,” he replied. “We should have arrived before you, but for a slight accident which delayed us some hours. ‘Don’t worry, Felice,’ I say to myself. ‘You will be there soon enough. There will be few people traveling at this time of year, and Osvaldo can go on ahead to procure the rooms. Just trust in God.’ So I do. And what happens? I find your group already here, and in possession of the very suite we were to have had!” He shrugged. “Such things, they happen. Who can say why? Those of us with faith, trust that God knows what He is doing.”

  “And you have faith, of course!”

  He smiled. “I do not always have it, but I always try to have it. Signorina,” he said, addressing Arabella, but looking at Charles. “Do you think that your brother would consider changing rooms with us?”

  “No, I do not think that he would. This is my expedition, signor, and I make the decisions. Charles has no say in what we do here.”

  “Oh! But this is most unusual, yes? Even for the English?”

  “Quite. Yet I can assure you that it is the case.”

  “Then, would you consider changing rooms?”

  “No. I like the balcony, and am partial to the view it affords. Why do you ask?”

  “Because,” he said grimly. “I, too, am partial to that particular view.”

  Perceiving the conversation to have reached an impasse, Arabella now addressed herself to the garlic bread, whilst on her right, Mr. Kendrick and Father Terranova commenced the sort of religious discussion in which she took no interest. With Osvaldo on her left, there was no one to talk to, for the fellow was inspecting her through his quizzing glass as though she were a museum exhibit.

  Across the table, his sister was asking impertinent questions of Belinda concerning her relationships to Charles and Mr. Kendrick, since Renilde had been too absorbed in the soup course to mark the landlord’s introductions.

  “Of course,” said she, with a toss of her head, “we might have taken a more exclusive hotel than this one, but my cousin had very specific reasons for wanting to be here. And the beds are tolerable, I suppose.”

  “Yes, they are very comfortable,” said Belinda, and she could not for the life of her think of anything else to say. Because in the whole of her life she had never before sat for such an extended period in such close proximity to such a thoroughly disagreeable person.

  “I know who you are,” said Osvaldo abruptly, addressing Arabella and pocketing his quizzing glass.

  “You can hardly expect me to be impressed by that news,” Arabella replied. “I have known it for years. I also seem to re
call being introduced to you a short time ago at this very table.”

  “Yes. And I think at once that your name, she’s familiar. But only this moment I remember where I see you before. You are Arabella Beaumont, the London courtesan, are you not?”

  Osvaldo had chosen to make this remark during another lull in the conversation, so that it was heard by everybody in the room.

  “Yes,” said Arabella simply. “I am.”

  The priest’s mother and aunt hastily excused themselves from the dinner table. They tried to induce Miss Rinaldo to come with them, but unfortunately for Belinda, they were unsuccessful.

  “Quite so,” lisped Osvaldo in a horribly accurate imitation of a typical London dandy’s voice, without the typical London dandy’s command of English. “My Mayfair friends, they point you out to me at the theater, once. I spend fully much of the time amusing to myself in London, you see. I am-a, how you call, a natural son of the Duke of Clarence.”

  And how many times had she heard that before? Foreigners were ever wont to claim relatives amongst the nobility of one’s own country, although, as a matter of fact, Osvaldo did somewhat resemble the duke, with that pear-shaped head.

  “Where I come from, sir,” said Arabella frostily, “illegitimacy is considered a severe social disadvantage!”

  “Ah!” he replied. “And where you come-a from, the courtesan, she is also the social outcast, no? But this is not so much true in Italy. Not if one can boast of noble blood in one’s veins!”

  The guests now found it convenient to withdraw to the coffee room, where Mr. Kendrick attempted to join Arabella on a small divan. But the Powerful Force got there ahead of him, settling his bulk emphatically down upon the cushions and practically tipping the side with Arabella on it up into the air.

  “So!” said the priest, with evident relish. “This is a most unusual circumstance! I do not believe I have ever shared after-dinner coffee with a whore.”