Death Among the Ruins (Arabella Beaumont Mystery)

by Christie, Pamela

  “Why, no! Not at all! That is, I hope that you will not think me a bad person, Pietro, but I do not care so much about the murder. It was a terrible thing, to be certain, and I am sorry the man was killed, but I never met him. Do you see? I bought a statue. I have already paid for it, and I very much want it found. That is the only reason I have come here. Did you see where the cart went?”

  “No, signorina. But I showed you the wheel prints in the mud, remember?”

  Arabella felt her heart sink. The boy was not going to be helpful after all.

  “Pietro,” she said gently. “How can you know for certain that those wheel ruts even belonged to the cart that took the statues? They might have been made by any cart that has gone through there recently.”

  “No, signorina! Those wheel tracks lead to the old goat path. My friends and me, we saw the cart leave that way! No one ever uses that road anymore!”

  Her pulse quickened. “And will these tracks lead me to the statue?”

  “No, signorina. The wheel marks lead to the main road. Then she disappear.”

  Dashed again! “Pietro,” she said, “this does not really help me.”

  But the boy was nodding, rapidly. “One of the wheels,” he said. “She is chipped on the inside edge, so that when she go round, there is a mark like the moon look when she is . . . not round. I do not know where your statue is, but I know where the man lives who owns the cart that took it away.”

  “You do? But why should you notice a little thing like a chipped wheel rim?”

  “Because I chipped it! The man pretends he is a farmer, but really he is a smuggler. I mark his wheel, then I report what he does, where he goes, to people who pay me for informazione . Do you see?”

  “You clever boy! Can you take me to the house of this man?”

  “No, signorina. I check before I come here. He has gone to Naples to wait for a shipment of . . . a shipment. And he has taken his cock with him, which means he will be staying with his cousin.”

  “His cock?”

  “Si. His fighting cock. It always win. And his cousin own the cockpit. But you would not be safe there. The place is full of bad mens. Is better to wait here until he returns.”

  “Oh, very well! But will you promise to take me to this smuggler, or farmer, or whatever he is, the moment he should come home?”

  “I will take you to the road outside his house. Then I must leave you. This man has never seen me. That is why I am safe from him. He is dangerous, signorina. You must bring other men with you when you go there, in case of trouble.”

  Chapter 16

  FELLATIO . . . ORATIO . . . OSVALDO!

  The next morning, Arabella was up with the proverbial larks—all 7,328 of them. “There’s a to-do!” she grumbled, getting up to slam the casement closed. But then she stopped, and stared at a sunrise that looked more like the last sunset of a dying world. The horizon appeared to be composed of rippling, radiating cloud tentacles, in hot pink and rose gold with violet linings.

  “Quel spectaculari!” she breathed. (Arabella was inclined to invent new words and phrases when she did not know the correct ones.)

  A servant came in with a tray and set a cup of coffee down upon the nightstand.

  “Look, Geppetta!” cried Arabella, pointing to the window. “Malto bella, no?” (Also, her Italian was not very good.)

  But the woman only scowled, muttering and crossing herself as she turned from the window. Then she screamed aloud, and clapping a hand over her mouth, pointed to the wall where a miniature scroll, some three inches long, had been nailed over the bed.

  “Maledizione!” croaked Geppetta, as if through a severed windpipe. Then she fled the room without asking whether the signorina required anything else.

  Reaching up, Arabella tugged out the nail and removed the scroll. The message inside was short, crudely lettered, and written in Italian, but she guessed, both from the look of the thing and the servant’s violent reaction to it, that it was not exactly a love poem.

  When she went down to breakfast, Arabella encountered Bergamini and Father Terranova having a whispered, yet heated, argument at the bottom of the staircase. They ceased immediately at her approach, and stepped hastily away from each other.

  “Good morning, Signorina Beaumont!” cried Father Terranova heartily. “How fortunate for me that I am arrived in time to escort you to breakfast!”

  The professor bowed to her. “I shall wait upon your leisure, signorina,” he said, “but please try not to prolong your meal. Pompeii is some miles distant, and the roads are not what they were in the old days. Above all, we need to get started before the streets become congested. You will find me in the library when you are ready to start out.” He bowed again, and withdrew.

  “I had no idea you two were acquainted,” said Arabella as she and the priest walked down the passage together.

  “We are not,” said Terranova. “That is to say, we have only just met. Did you happen to see that beautiful sunrise this morning?”

  “Oh, yes, indeed! But when I tried to point it out to the maidservant, she crossed herself and would not look at it.”

  “I am not surprised. People here are very superstitious. They believe that a morning sky like that is an omen.”

  “Of what?”

  “Who knows? Some foolishness about the displeasure of the Roman gods. I would not trouble myself over it, if I were you.”

  “Roman gods? But she crossed herself!”

  “Yes; the old beliefs live on here, despite all we do, and mingle incestuously with present-day Church practices. I think, if you and I could see inside Geppetta’s head, we would both be very surprised by what we should find there.”

  “And what about this?” Arabella asked, showing him the scroll. “It was nailed to the wall in my room.”

  He took it from her, frowning, and crumpled it in his hand after reading it.

  “This is nothing,” he said. “Peasants are very stupid!”

  “How do you know it was a peasant? It does not appear to be signed.”

  “Because only peasants think like this! An educated person would not be capable of conceiving such a thing!”

  “I did not think peasants even could write.”

  “Some can.”

  “But what does it say?”

  “Nothing,” he insisted, tearing the paper to pieces. “What you do not know can not hurt you, yes? Please! Oblige me by forgetting you ever saw it!”

  The uncomfortable feeling with which Arabella had begun her day carried on through breakfast and beyond: She had assumed that the whole party would be making the trip to Pompeii with her, as the professor had hinted at having got up something rather special for their benefit. But Mr. Kendrick could not go, on account of his ankle, and Charles begged off—“If you’ve seen one buried city, you’ve seen them both”—because he had begun a phenomenal winning streak, and had set his heart upon attending some gambling venue or other. He proposed to take Kendrick along with him in a Bath chair. So the ladies and Bergamini were to be on their own.

  “Bell, I don’t think I shall come after all,” whispered Belinda. “In the absence of Charles and Mr. Kendrick, I am afraid the professor will increase his odious attentions to me to the point where I shan’t be able to bear it! In any event, I shall not enjoy myself.”

  “Professor Bergamini arranged this for us on purpose, Bunny. It would be most ungracious to refuse him. Besides, I shall feel ashamed to go home having seen Herculaneum and not Pompeii. Everyone will be asking us about them . . . if we still have any friends, that is. I am sorry if ruins do not interest you like they do me, but your only alternative is to spend the day at the cock fights with Charles, wheeling Mr. Kendrick around in his Bath chair.”

  When she put it like that, Belinda saw reason, and climbed into the carriage without further argument.

  “Now there’s an odd thing,” said Arabella, looking out the window where Bergamini stood making arrangements with the driver. “The professor
is wearing a tiny faggot through his buttonhole.”

  “A what?”

  “A faggot. You know; a stick of kindling wood. At least, that is what I think it is. It looks to have been cast from pewter, or some other dullish metal.”

  “That is strange,” said Belinda. “Father Terranova wears a hatchet pin on his cassock.”

  “I’m afraid I do not follow you.”

  “Well: a stick of kindling, and a hatchet to cut it with. Father Terranova’s pin also looks to be pewter. Do you suppose the two men are connected in some way?”

  “I do, now. I had thought they were unacquainted until I saw them arguing on the stairs this morning.”

  “Well, that does not signify,” said Belinda. “Charles is always having arguments with strangers.”

  “But they were whispering.”

  “Whispering?”

  “As though they were afraid of being overheard. Of course, they were speaking Italian, and I should not have understood them in any case, but they left off the moment I appeared, and Terranova whisked me off to the dining room.”

  “Bell,” said Belinda suddenly, “I do not like this place. We should go home.”

  “Nonsense! It is an excellent spot! We have wonderful weather—warmer than England, anyway. And romantic views, and delicious food . . .”

  “Charles does not like the food.”

  “Hang Charles! He would find something to complain about in Paradise, not that he is likely ever to see that place. Why do you not like it here?”

  “I sense things going on beneath the surface; sneaking, horrible things. You feel it, too, don’t you? The Italians are very kind, very courteous, and yet, everything is sub rosa and sotto voce. The professor, with his dark spectacles, and Father Terranova with his pointed beard.... D’you know,” said Belinda, straying from the subject, “I think I may abhor the beard even more than the spectacles?”

  “Don’t be silly. Beards are the fashion over here. I expect they soon will be in England, too.”

  Belinda shuddered. “Then I shall die a spinster.”

  “Well, I am sorry if it makes you uncomfortable, but I am not going home without my statue. You volunteered to come along—I should never have come here at all but for you. Then you insisted I bring Charles, and now you both want to go home before I am ready to oblige you. Why cannot the two of you follow Mr. Kendrick’s example? He never complains.”

  “No. And yet the rector has more reasons for dissatisfaction than even Charles and I do,” said Belinda.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You are using him, and you are being unkind, as well. Mr. Kendrick only came out here because he loves you, Bell. You are taking unscrupulous advantage of a decent, honest gentleman. And he is not an imbecile. One day he will shake you off like a summer cold and get on with his life, ennobled by suffering, while you . . . you will be the poorer for the loss of such a man.”

  “Nevertheless,” said Arabella, “he does not complain, whilst you and Charles do little else.”

  “I suppose, then, on balance, it equals out,” said Belinda not unreasonably. “We shall probably be asked to leave the hotel, in any case, owing to the indiscretion lately committed by ‘the man who does not complain.’”

  “Do you think so?”

  “Certainly. After last night’s wretched Renilde affair, the landlord will have no choice. You and I know that Mr. Kendrick was only trying to get something out of her, but I fear that everyone else thinks he was trying to put something into her. And the proprietors, being good Catholics . . .”

  “ . . . will do exactly as Terranova bids them,” Arabella finished. “He won’t have us put out. After all, Mr. Kendrick is a fellow professional.”

  Belinda had told her sister of the previous night’s doings insofar as she herself was acquainted with them, but she had not actually seen very much, and there were gaps in her knowledge; Mr. Kendrick had been either unwilling or unable to acquit himself; and Charles, who had probably seen more than Belinda, had done nothing but roar with laughter when asked about it, till he’d passed out from too much wine and too little food.

  “There seems to be a great deal about this statue affair that we do not know, and never can know,” Belinda said. “But then, you like mysteries, don’t you? This one should satisfy even your peculiar tastes!”

  They had been waiting more than a quarter of an hour for the professor, but so engrossed were they in their conversation that Arabella had only just realized it. And for the first time, she noticed how thronged the street was. But Bergamini appeared at the instant she decided to go in search of him, fighting his way through the masses—where had so many people come from?—to reach the carriage.

  “What is happening?” asked Arabella as the professor took a seat next to Belinda. “What is the meaning of this crowd?”

  “Hmm? Oh. They are only peasants. No one in particular. I expect they have come for the festival.”

  “What festival?”

  “Some local festival. In honor of a saint.”

  The professor did not seem to know which saint it was, though. And then they were off, somewhat slowly, due to all the people clogging the road. The so-called celebrants had a grim, determined look about them, and they seemed entirely too quiet for a holiday crowd.

  Arabella made several unsuccessful attempts to engage the professor in conversation, but as he appeared to be lost in thought, she picked up the thread of her discussion with Belinda, and behaved as though he were not present, either.

  “I do not really care for a mystery,” she said. “I only wish to find my statue and take it home!”

  “Ah,” replied Belinda, arching her brows. “But it is your duty to seek the Mystery. For if you are less than diligent, the Mystery will find you.”

  “How do you mean?” asked Arabella, paling.

  “I don’t know,” her sister replied with a dismissive shrug. “I read that in one of your volumes on Sufi mysticism.”

  Arabella was not comforted, despite her affinity for the wisdom of the Dervishes. She thought again about the curse scroll, and decided not to mention it to Bunny. There was no point, after all, since she was never to know what it said.

  If Pompeii is less well preserved than Herculaneum, it is also larger, so there is more to see, and one’s feet become tired before one has half been over the place. After only three quarters of an hour in the famous city, Belinda was quite worn-out, and begged leave to sit down upon a bench astutely placed for that purpose by the site administrators. Bergamini and Arabella continued to explore nearby, for nothing imparts energy to the body like feeding the mind, and these two persons were in their element here.

  “ . . . The disaster was capricious,” the professor was saying. “Most of the bronze statues from Herculaneum, including, probably, the one you are seeking, signorina, have been recovered in beautiful condition. But here in Pompeii, the rain of pumice stones which hit this place has pockmarked and oxidized all the bronzes we have found here so far. Like this one.” He indicated a bronze tableau, depicting a gladiator beset by lions and pitted by lapilli.

  It had not occurred to Arabella that her statue might be marred. She mightn’t want it, after all, in that case! No . . . no, she did want it, but she fervently hoped that it had not been damaged. At any rate, as it had not come from here, she could be reasonably certain that it had not been damaged by lapilli.

  “Professor,” Belinda called, when he and Arabella had wandered back in range of her voice. “Are we the only visitors? I had understood that Pompeii was quite a popular destination.”

  “It is, signorina. But because I have arranged this tour for you today, the site is closed to everyone but ourselves.”

  Belinda was astonished. “How ever did you manage that?”

  “Through my connection with the university.”

  “Yes, I see,” she said, half to herself, “but even so . . .”

  Arabella was sniffing the air. “Do you know? It is the queere
st thing, but I believe I can smell meat roasting!”

  “That is nothing,” said the professor. “Now, if the signorina Belinda has quite recovered, I shall take you into a buried villa through a tunnel that is quite safe. We have just time to explore it before lunch. Please follow me closely.”

  Of course it was dark in the tunnel. All tunnels are dark. But the mists that slipped, serpentlike, through the passageways were somewhat unexpected, and the cold water and slime that dripped from the ceilings and walls gave the place an uncanny atmosphere. One might imagine death to feel like this, if one could manage, somehow, to be both dead and frightened at the same time.

  Then the tunnel curved, and Arabella caught her breath. “There’s a light!” she whispered, and knew not why she was whispering. “Up ahead!”

  “Is there?” asked Bergamini. “That is odd!”

  They had reached the door of the villa, and light was, indeed, issuing from beneath it. Arabella later wrote John Soane a long letter all about it:

  . . . The door was opened from within by a handsome servant dressed as a Roman slave, who escorted us straight through to the triclinium. Here, tall bronze oil lamps had been placed about the chamber, illuminating the wall paintings. Three were of delightful if prosaic subjects: fruit bowls, fish, and dishes of eggs. But the fourth wall featured a disturbing depiction of a sphinx, devouring a hapless traveler.

  In the center of the room stood a table of bronze and marble, surrounded by three wooden couches. These were inlaid with silver, ivory and mother of pearl, and heaped with cushions of all shapes and sizes, sensuously soft and saturated in rich colors. Professor Bergamini had had them brought in, of course. I presumed the originals had long since disintegrated.

  The table was set for three persons, with plates of ancient silver. We were much amazed to see, laid out in the center, and also upon a kind of sideboard, a great variety of foodstuffs, which, fortunately, were of more recent vintage than the paintings, furnishings and tableware!