Death Among the Ruins (Arabella Beaumont Mystery)

by Christie, Pamela

  “Well, I don’t see that it matters,” said Belinda. “They are dead, after all.”

  “No, your sister is quite right, Miss Belinda,” said Mr. Kendrick, stepping through the open doorway. “To those of us who believe in any sort of an afterlife, what is done to the soul, either before or a thousand years after it leaves the body, matters very much indeed.”

  “I believe in an afterlife,” said Belinda. “However, I do not believe that the actions of a living person can have an effect on anyone’s soul but his own.”

  “That is true for most people. But clergy are different, you see. We do have authority over the souls of others, and our authority comes straight from the Almighty. If Father Terranova baptizes everyone who lies buried in Herculaneum, those souls will all go to heaven. The question is, do they have the right to be there?”

  “More importantly,” said Arabella, “do they want to be snatched from whatever pagan twilight they now inhabit with their friends from all over the ancient Roman empire, to spend eternity with a lot of Christians? What could those two groups possibly have in common, apart from the accident of having been born on the same peninsula? The ancient Romans hated the Christians. I do not think they would like it at all.”

  “What a silly conversation,” said Belinda, yawning. “What were you writing, Bell, when I came in, just now?”

  “I was making an entry in my new CIN.”

  “Oh?” asked the rector interestedly, believing he had heard the word “sin.” “Is it anything for which I may be of assistance?”

  “No, thank you, Mr. Kendrick. A ‘CIN’ is a criminal inquiry notebook.”

  “I thought you said it stood for ‘crime investigation notebook, ’” said Belinda.

  “I daresay I did. But ‘criminal inquiry’ sounds well, too. In fact, I think it sounds better. Last year, Mr. Kendrick, I kept a blue one, if you remember. I find it helps to store all my findings in one place.” She stroked the cover. “This time, I’ve chosen a parchment-colored book,” she said, “to remind me of my own dear parchment-colored ponies. How I should love to be able to ride one of them now! All that time spent on the ship was most debilitating.”

  “What have you written, then?” asked Belinda eagerly. “May I see?”

  “It isn’t much yet,” Arabella admitted, handing her the book, “but I hope to have more to add very soon. The part pertaining to the crime is in the front.”

  1. Were there any witnesses?—perhaps.

  2. Was that shovel I saw the murder weapon?—possibly.

  3. To whom does it belong?—I cannot say.

  4. Where is my statue now?—I have no idea.

  “Do you know,” said Belinda slowly. “I think I am only just beginning to appreciate how difficult this is going to be. The trail must be quite cold by now.”

  “Yes, but I am not going to give up before I have even started! Besides, we must needs stay here, statue or no, until London has had time to forget about us. I only wish that I had some leads to investigate.”

  “Oh! But you do have a lead!” cried Kendrick, who was so fatigued that he had quite forgotten about it until that moment. “Signorina Rinaldo says that her family was involved in the theft! We have not yet spoken about it at any length. But she claims to possess considerable knowledge on the subject.”

  “Well, that is splendid, if it is true,” said Arabella doubtfully. “Will you examine her tomorrow, Mr. Kendrick?”

  “I live but to serve you, Miss Beaumont!”

  “Truly?” she asked with a smile. “And what about God?”

  “Oh. Well, yes; God, too, of course. But you, dear Miss Beaumont, are second only to Him in my eyes.”

  He took her hand, in an excess of feeling. And as he bowed over it, Arabella noticed something swing out from his neckcloth.

  “What is that?”

  He removed the chain from around his neck and handed it to her. “It is a St. Christopher medal. He is the patron saint of travelers, you know. Father Terranova gave it me, in appreciation of tonight’s musical performance.”

  Arabella arched an eyebrow. “A graven image? Received from the hands of a papist? Does not that contradict your beliefs, Reverend?”

  He smiled. “Not a bit. I believe God to be everything: the universe itself, and all it contains. After all, one can scarcely see or hear or smell or touch anything that is not part of the universe.”

  “Then, when you said just now that I come second to God in your eyes, were you telling me that you serve everything else in the universe first, and me last? I must say that I find that more than a little insulting!”

  “Pray, ignore her, Mr. Kendrick,” said Belinda. “Your actions speak for themselves. As for the medal, I have always believed that protection is a good thing, whatever its form.”

  She turned to the next page of the CIN. “What is this?” she asked Arabella.

  “My current theories on the case. You may read them aloud, if you like.”

  Possible Suspects:

  1. a rich art collector, who, wanting the Herculaneum treasures for himself, arranged to have the dealer killed. But a single collector would never risk, or even know how to risk, having so many workers conspiring in a murder. It would be too easy for them to turn him in for the reward, or blackmail him. No, it would have to be:

  2. someone capable of ensuring the loyalty of every one of the looters. Like Robin Hood. Or, perhaps:

  3. an organization. The Church? Some church, anyway, or:

  4. possibly a secret society.

  “I am making an effort to mentally reconstruct the crime, you see,” Arabella explained. “Suppose this Alfred Jones, the man who sent me the sketch and to whom John Soane and I gave our money, was paying his workers a pittance to dig the site, hunting for swag. Then one day they tunneled into a villa, and found the most magnificent items ever discovered here. Imagine those fellows, dirt all over their faces, holding up their small oil lamps and gazing on things not seen for seventeen hundred years! It fair gives me chills! All right. Now imagine that you are one of those workers. The artifacts have been found and covered up again, and Alfred Jones instructs you to return with him on a certain night, with a cart, to retrieve the goods in secret. You know that these things are worth a lot of money, but he’s going to get it all. So what do you do?”

  “Kill him, and take them for myself,” said Belinda promptly, shocking the rector.

  “Yes?” Arabella pursued. “But then what do you do? You cannot sell them, because the murder is too well publicized. Everyone is on the lookout for you and the artworks, and you will surely hang if you are caught.”

  “Could she not store them someplace and wait a few years for things to calm down?” asked Kendrick.

  “She could do that. But what if she had already found a buyer, before murdering Jones, between the time she found the treasure and the night she went to collect it? That would make it easier, would it not? And then, you see, Belinda would have a place to take the statue right away, so that she should never be caught with the contraband.”

  “What we need to do now, then,” said Belinda, “is to find that buyer.”

  “Quite,” said Arabella.

  “So! Here you all are!” exclaimed Charles in a voice slurred by alcohol. He stood unsteadily in the doorway, stoutly supported by Osvaldo.

  “Well,” said Arabella, slamming her notebook shut. “We all have a long day ahead of us tomorrow. I shall therefore go to bed without more ado.”

  “Who is ‘Moradu’?” Osvaldo leered. “And might I persuade you to let-a me take his place?”

  She regarded the Pear-Head with acute dislike. Had he just attempted a witticism? Or was he merely abysmally dim? It scarcely mattered; Osvaldo was at once the most obnoxious and the silliest-looking person she had encountered since coming abroad. Arabella shifted her gaze from his portly form and began vaguely to gaze about her, as though in search of some misplaced object.

  “May I help-a you find something, signorina?�
�� he asked eagerly.

  “Yes,” she replied, looking him full in the face, and through him at the same time. “I am searching for the peach sauce.”

  This was possibly the moment at which Osvaldo realized the hopelessness of his position. But being possessed of an empty, and therefore buoyant, sort of head, it did not disturb him overmuch. In fact, he fixed on a remedy almost immediately, and resolved thereafter to transfer his amorous attentions to Belinda.

  Chapter 13

  DREAMS AND THE BURIED CITY

  Arabella’s bedroom was cold, and she dreamt of penguins. In fact, waking in the small hours and wanting a drink, she discovered a thin crust of ice upon the water in her bedside carafe.

  “Well, you will sleep with the window open,” said Belinda at breakfast next morning. “What did you expect?”

  “I am not complaining,” replied Arabella, calmly buttering a roll. “It was quite exhilarating, in fact. I was merely noting that the weather is changing, and I promised Mrs. Janks we should be home by Christmas. Was there any post this morning, Charles?”

  “Nothing for you,” said he, “though I’ve had notices from three creditors, already. How the devil they knew where to find me beats all understanding!”

  Belinda, who had taken the seat next Osvaldo’s, gave a sudden, visible start, and regarded him with a shocked expression, whilst he, in turn, leaned in toward her with a meaningful smile, and penetrated her with his stare.

  “Do you always leave your window open, Miss Beaumont?” asked the rector, pushing his chair back from the table in order to let Belinda out.

  “Yes, Mr. Kendrick. But if you were thinking of climbing up to my balcony some night, I should not advise it. The railings are certain to be slippery when frost-covered, and I would hate to have to tell your family how you came to break your neck.”

  A year ago, such a statement, made before virtual strangers, would have caused him to blush deeply. But the rector had by now grown used to Arabella’s sallies, and the slight flush raised by her words was barely even discernable, though Renilde marked it.

  “No,” he said, “I merely ask because I, too, keep my window open at night. The fact is, I cannot sleep if my feet become overheated.”

  Arabella nodded. “For my part,” she said, “I cannot endure a hot pillow.”

  “Oh!” said he, “I am suddenly reminded of the dream I had! Charles and I were wearing togas and selling food from a stall in Herculaneum—some sort of dumplings, fried in hot fat. I fished them out with a wire scoop, and they looked just like little pillows.”

  “I don’t suppose I bought any from you, then, my feelings about hot pillows being what they are.”

  “No, Miss Beaumont; regrettably, you were not in the dream.”

  “I, too, have had strange dreams since coming here,” said Renilde, biting suggestively into a grape. “They are . . . deeply sensual. They are also long, and require some time in the telling. And since you and I are the only ones who are interested in dreams, Mr. Kendrick, I should hate to bore the rest of the company with them. Perhaps we should remove ourselves to one of the smaller coffee rooms.”

  This remark, besides being in bad taste, was not even true, since everyone at the table had a dream, either dreamt on the previous night or several nights ago or when they were small, that they were most eager to share with the others.

  “I . . . I pray you will excuse me, signorina,” stammered Kendrick, “but I really must . . . that is, I cannot be . . . I . . .”

  Fortunately . . . or not, depending on one’s viewpoint, Professor Bergamini popped his head in at that moment, and Belinda, on moving from Osvaldo’s immediate vicinity, had taken a chair directly opposite the door. This, her second shock of the morning, nearly caused the poor girl to jump out of her clothing, though she did preserve sufficient presence of mind to stifle her shriek with a table napkin.

  “Ah!” said Bergamini. “You are still at breakfast, I see!”

  From this, you might expect that he was referring to the entire party. But the professor only had eyes—or so one might assume from the direction in which his nose was pointing—for the rattled Belinda. He smiled broadly and executed a courteous bow. “I am ready to escort you to Ercolano, whenever you wish.”

  “Thank you, Signor Bergamini,” muttered the rector, setting his knife and fork closely together on his plate. “I rather think that we are ready now.”

  “Why didn’t you interview Miss Rinaldo?” Arabella hissed at him as they left the room. “When she offered you the perfect opportunity to do so?”

  “There will doubtless be other opportunities,” he whispered back. “Besides, I should not have had the time to interview her properly, unless I had missed the excursion.”

  To this, Arabella said nothing. But having thoughtlessly brought her napkin with her from the breakfast table, as they passed through the hall, she flicked it with frustration at the suit of armor, and left it hanging from the articulated arm.

  After they had gone, Signora Terranova appealed to her son.

  “Felice, can’t you do something?”

  “I flatter myself that I can do plenty of things, madre mia.”

  “You know what I mean! People of our caliber should not have to mingle with common puttane! You must speak to the landlord and have them put out at once!”

  “By no means,” he replied. “I have not enjoyed such stimulating conversation since my seminary days. Besides, what harm are they doing you?”

  “Better you should ask what harm they are doing Renilde!”

  He affected surprise. “Oh, but surely they are not doing Renilde? I think she would have told us! Although, I did see her talking the ear off the unfortunate Mr. Kendrick last night. Are you worried lest she should strain her voice from overuse?”

  “Felice! You know very well what I mean! Those puttane are setting your cousin a bad example, and the men have evil designs upon her!”

  “Hmm. And what is your opinion, Aunt Ginevra?” he asked, passing the preserves.

  “To be fair,” said she, “the English are well dressed, and speak like educated persons. However, the women have brought no maid with them, and who travels like that but mountebanks?”

  “Why does no one ask me what I think?” Renilde demanded.

  The rest of the family fell silent.

  “Renilde,” said her aunt at last, “you will oblige me by having no further intercourse with either of those men. They will only upset you, dear!”

  “A singular choice of words,” murmured the prelate, with a smile.

  “I do not like Signor Beaumont,” Renilde said. “But there is no harm in talking to Reverend Kendrick. He shan’t make me angry!”

  “No, probably not. Very well, then, you may speak to the rector. But not alone, mind! Osvaldo or someone must always be in the room with you. And do not go getting any funny ideas about him,” she added. “Remember, he’s C of E!”

  “If Renilde really has the chance of marrying, Mama,” said Terranova, quietly, “I should not care if the fellow worshiped grasshoppers and were king of the monkey people. Should you?”

  She snorted. “He has no money! And why is a man of the church, even a Protestant church, traveling with puttane?”

  “I expect that it is rather a complicated story.”

  Herculaneum was sparkling in the morning sunshine, looking . . . well, almost new, as the Beaumonts and Mr. Kendrick and the professor strolled along the wide pavement beside the ancient roadway. The wonderful thing about these ruins was that they hardly looked like ruins at all—many of the buildings still retained their roofs and wooden balcony railings. One could walk down streets that were almost perfectly intact, and conjure a sense of the city before the eruption.

  “I wonder what everyone thought when they came back afterwards—the people who got out, I mean,” mused Belinda. “Could they tell that their city had been buried, or did they think it had been burnt to nothing, or swept out to sea?”

  “The su
rvivors left no record of their reactions,” said the professor, “and when they died, the disaster was all but forgotten. Pompeii and Herculaneum came to be regarded as mere legends. Eventually, someone discovered Pliny the Younger’s eyewitness account, but unfortunately, that is the only record we have.”

  “Why ‘unfortunately’?” asked Kendrick. “I should have thought it fortunate indeed to have such a record!”

  “Because,” said Arabella, who could never resist showing off what she knew, “Pliny the Younger only observed the eruption from the safety of his drawing room window in Naples, and never bothered to write about it at all until years later, when Tacitus asked him to. One has to wonder how accurate his recollection was.”

  Charles cleared his throat as a caution, but there was no stopping her now.

  “His uncle, Pliny the Elder, a naval officer and a man of science, attempted to rescue the Pompeians who were stranded on the beach. He was fascinated by the eruption, and left the safety of Naples with a small fleet, to get as close as possible.”

  “This little Pliny went to mark it,” sang Belinda, “and this little Pliny stayed home!”

  “Whilst this little Pliny ate dormouse,” added Charles, “which he had at a restaurant in Rome!”

  Arabella was not amused. In fact, she was on the verge of vexation.

  “What about the uncle, then?” asked Kendrick. “Even I have heard of Pliny the Elder! Why don’t we have his account?”

  “Because he never wrote one. The poor man died on the beach, probably from a combination of poisonous fumes and heart failure.”

  Throughout Arabella’s little showing-off lecture, the professor had said nothing, leading his group through the ancient streets and keeping his own counsel. Arabella glanced over now and then, to see whether she was impressing him, but the tinted spectacles and broad-brimmed hat effectively concealed his thoughts from her. Presently, he brought them to a halt.