Carver's Quest

by Rennison, Nick

  ‘Christ in heaven,’ Quint moaned. ‘Ain’t it jiggered yet?’ He risked raising his head slightly and was astonished by what he saw. A quarter of a mile ahead was a group of horses and riders. They had stopped by a small grove of trees and were all gazing towards Quint and his mule as the pair raced towards them. One of the riders was standing in his stirrups to get a better view.

  Quint and his mount bore down on the group. At the speed they were travelling, the distance between them shortened rapidly. The man was yelling incoherently, the beast was braying at full volume. The horses and their riders scattered as the mule charged into their midst. It dug its hooves into the ground beneath it and came to a sudden stop. Quint did not. He hurtled over the mule’s head and crashed to earth. Stunned and winded, he lay in the grass as confused thoughts drifted through his mind. Briefly, he was back in Doughty Street, ushering a young woman into the sitting room. She was looking at him in a strange way. He was, of course, used to people looking at him in a strange way. Usually he didn’t mind but he felt a strong urge to explain himself to this young woman. He knew her name, he was sure of it, but he just couldn’t recall it. She leaned forward and stared into his eyes.

  ‘Mr Quint,’ she said. ‘Is that you? Are you all right?’

  Emily, he thought, Emily something. Then he lost consciousness.

  * * * * *

  ‘It was that contemptible man Creech who began all this,’ Fields said to Adam, his face screwing up with anger as he remembered the man with the crescent moon scar. ‘He sought to cheat me. He sought to make use of my scholarship and knowledge for his own sordid ends. And yet, when our plans to travel to Koutles and unearth the treasure were already well advanced, he wanted to cast me aside. He approached you, one of the few other Englishmen who had travelled in the region recently. He sent his daughter to discover more about you.’

  Adam started with surprise. ‘His daughter?’

  ‘Did you not realise the identity of your mysterious visitor in London, Adam? The chit of a girl who has followed us to Greece? Perhaps you believed that it was your charms that attracted Emily to your company?’ The professor laughed. ‘She was working on her father’s behalf. At her father’s behest. He assumed that you would be more forthcoming when questioned by a pretty girl than you would be if he came to you in person. He was correct, of course.’

  Adam’s face fell. He recalled the occasions on which he had met Emily Maitland. In Doughty Street. At Cremorne. Her questioning of him, he was forced to admit, had seemed odd. But not so odd that he had not wished to continue their conversations as long as possible. Not so odd that they had outweighed the power of her beauty and vivacity to stir him. He could not think what to say but that seemed to matter very little. Fields was in full flow. He wanted to talk.

  ‘Emily is not English, of course,’ the professor went on. ‘Not in the sense that you and I are English. Or even in the sense that Quintus is English. Where the name of Maitland has come from, I do not know. Plucked from the air or borrowed from one of her mother’s grubby cavaliers, I suppose. You must have noticed that although she speaks our language so well, she does not speak it as if it were her mother tongue. Her mother tongue – indeed, her mother – is Greek. She is the daughter Creech fathered on some Peloponnesian trollop when he was in Athens twenty years ago.’

  ‘But why has she not spent her life with her father?’ The young man knew the answer to his own question as soon as he voiced it aloud.

  ‘Do not be so naive, Adam. Why should Creech have acknowledged a child who was merely the unfortunate end result of an indiscretion? He proved surprisingly honourable in his own way. He paid a yearly allowance to her but no more. I doubt he saw her more than half a dozen times in twenty years.’

  ‘So she lived with her mother.’

  ‘The trollop has been mistress to a Jewish merchant for the last decade. She and Emily have trailed after him as he has moved from city to city. Constantinople to Salonika. Salonika to Aleppo. Aleppo to Athens. Athens back to Salonika.’

  ‘But what was she doing in London?’

  ‘The merchant – Margolis, I believe, is his name – had come to England on business. He was travelling in the north and he arranged for his supposed wife and supposed stepdaughter to stay at Brown’s while he was gone. Under the name of Maitland. The good Lord alone knows why the people at the hotel allowed it. They must have been aware that all was not as it appeared. Their moral standards have clearly plunged in recent years.’ Fields sniffed with disapproval. For a moment, he seemed genuinely concerned that Brown’s was not maintaining its reputation. ‘Emily had long wished to know more of her real father,’ he continued. ‘Somehow she had learned that he was also then in London and she contacted him. He saw a means of making use of her and she was happy to oblige him.’

  ‘I cannot see that I could have told her anything that would have been of interest to him.’

  ‘Perhaps not. But he learned enough to confirm what he already suspected: that you might also be of use to him. He went to visit that idle dauber Jardine and asked him a whole series of questions about you – and about myself and my whereabouts – which that young idiot answered. Then Creech contrived to meet you himself at the Marco Polo. I found out about the dinner and I guessed that he had probably dropped hints about Philip’s gold. But I did not know how much he had told you. I went to see him at Herne Hill Villa.’

  ‘And murdered him,’ Adam said, in little more than a whisper. Suddenly the young man could see the truth of what had happened and he was appalled by it. Somehow the killing of Creech in his own suburban London home seemed even worse than the shooting of Rallis and Andros here in Greece.

  ‘I did not intend to kill him. Why should I? He and I had been partners in a very profitable venture for years, despatching antiquities from this benighted country to England for safe-keeping. Rallis has doubtless told you all this already, putting the worst possible interpretation on my actions, I have no doubt. No, I went to remonstrate with Creech.’

  ‘With a pistol in your pocket.’

  ‘Samuel Creech was a dangerous man, Adam. He was not only an importer of Greek statues and Attic vases. In London, you discovered much about his activities as a blackmailer. Do you suppose that a man can spend half a lifetime extorting money from the wealthy and the powerful and still thrive unless he is prepared to act ruthlessly? I knew Creech’s temperament. I took the pistol with me for protection.’

  Adam eyed the gun that the professor now had trained on him. He tried to judge the distance between them. Six yards, perhaps. Too far for him to run at Fields without being brought down. He could only hope that he could keep the professor talking until Quint returned and then, together, they might overpower him.

  ‘So you were obliged to shoot him in self-defence?’

  ‘He laughed at me, the wretch. He said he had no more need of me. That he was about to recruit another “assistant”. Can you believe it? He referred to me as an “assistant”. The arrogance of the man. But that was not the reason he had to die.’

  The professor paused and shifted the revolver in his hands.

  ‘He had been foolish as well as treacherous. In endeavouring to blackmail his old friend Garland, he had made a dangerous enemy. The man was making enquiries of his own. Sooner or later my name would have emerged. I could not allow that to happen.’

  ‘So you pointed your pistol at him and warned him that he must stop his attempts to extort money from Garland.’

  ‘Yes. And the rogue laughed again. He refused to listen to reason. He said that his dealings with Garland were his affair only.’

  ‘But I cannot understand why you felt obliged to kill the man.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Adam, he attacked me. He threw himself upon me and we struggled. The pistol fired as we fought.’ Fields had raised his voice close to screaming pitch. He seemed on the verge of losing all self-control. ‘Do you suppose I wanted to kill him? Do you suppose I want to kill you? Or Quintus? I did not
even wish to kill that interfering Greek lawyer. I am a man of peace and scholarship. But events have conspired to drag me into blood and destruction. It sometimes feels as if I have faced a fate as inevitable as the doom of the House of Pelops.’

  The professor looked to be on the verge of tears of self-pity. Adam wondered if the man’s mind had collapsed completely. His account of Creech’s killing could not be correct. There had been no signs of a struggle in his library. Fields had shot him quite cold-bloodedly as he sat at the table. The young man eyed once more the ground between him and the gun. Fields again guessed what he was thinking.

  ‘Do not imagine for one moment that I will not shoot you if necessary, Adam,’ he said. ‘I am fond enough of you but nothing and no one must stand between me and the gold.’

  A silence fell on the two men, frozen as they were like a stage tableau in the afternoon sun. To Adam, it seemed as if the professor could not decide what he should do next. Could he keep him talking for a while longer? Would Quint not be returning soon to camp? And what of Garland? His party might surely arrive at any moment.

  * * * * *

  ‘And you did not pass Professor Fields or Mr Rallis and his man as you made your way here? You saw no sign of them?’

  Quint shook his head and then winced. Twenty minutes after his tumble from the runaway mule, it hurt still. He was sitting in the shade of a tree, a wet handkerchief across his brow. Lewis Garland stood over him.

  ‘Ain’t seen a soul,’ the servant said. ‘Not since a mile out of Koutles.’

  ‘But you were travelling in their tracks?’

  ‘So the Greek cove said. The one I met beyond the village. Leastways I think he did.’

  ‘You understand the language?’

  ‘A few words. But ’e waved his hands around a lot as well. As clear as I could make out, ’e was saying that the professor and the others had passed ’im a bit before. So I keeps on going.’

  ‘And then what happened?’

  ‘And then that black devil of a mule took it into its ’ead to run away with me.’

  ‘Never mind the wretched mule. Before it bolted with you, you saw nothing and no one on the trail. Is that correct?’

  ‘Ain’t I just said that? ’Ow many more times do you want me to say it? There was nobody between ’ere and Koutles save the Greek I told you about.’

  Quint was getting very exasperated. When he had returned to consciousness after his fall, he had found himself to be the centre of attention. It was an unaccustomed position for him and he had begun to enjoy it. Emily Maitland had fussed over him, despatching a servant to the stream to wet one of her handkerchiefs and place it on his forehead. She had ordered two of the other Greek servants in the group to pick him up from where the mule had deposited him and carry him to a grassy knoll beneath a tall tree. He had told his story to her and to Garland. He had described to them all that had happened since he and Adam and the others had left Athens. It had been a novel experience to find a beautiful young woman and a man of Garland’s importance hanging on his every word and he had relished it. He had been eloquent and, he reckoned, comprehensive in his answers. He had said all that he wanted to say. Now Emily had retired to the shade of another tree further along the bank of the stream where a servant had set up a folding chair for her. Garland, however, was still leaning over him and badgering him with more questions. The enjoyment had disappeared. Quint just wanted to go to sleep.

  ‘I give you the lowdown, didn’t I? Can’t you leave a man to get some shut-eye?’

  He stretched back on the grass and half closed his eyes. Garland stared down at him for a moment before turning abruptly and walking away. Quint rolled over on his side and watched him go. The MP joined Emily and there was a brief but animated discussion between them. Quint could see the girl gesturing in the direction of the path along which the mule had so lately carried him. She seemed to want the party to take it immediately but her companion looked less enthusiastic about the idea. After two or three minutes, Garland began to walk back to where Quint was lying beneath the tree. The servant saw Emily start to follow him. He rolled hastily onto his back and shut his eyes again. He experimented with a few feigned snores as they approached.

  ‘Wake up, Devlin.’ The MP prodded Quint with his toe. ‘If, indeed, you are asleep. We have one more question that needs to be answered.’

  The servant made a great performance of yawning and stretching his arms.

  ‘When you took the manuscript at Fields’s promptings,’ Garland went on, ‘was your master pleased that you had obeyed the professor?’

  Quint looked warily from the MP to the young woman and back again.

  ‘Not exackly,’ he said, after a brief pause. ‘’E give me a bit of a wigging, if truth be told.’

  ‘So Adam is not implicated in this thievery, my dear.’ Garland turned to Emily, who smiled at him. ‘But I fear for the safety of our Greek friend.’

  ‘He had his servant with him, had he not?’

  ‘He could send Big Ben Caunt to grass with one ’and tied behind his back, that ’un,’ Quint remarked encouragingly. ‘’E’s the size of an ’ouse.’

  ‘It matters little what size a man is,’ Garland said. ‘If he is not on his guard, he can be brought low. As I say, I grow anxious for Rallis.’

  ‘That is why we must hurry on our way,’ Emily said. ‘We are wasting precious time here.’

  ‘We may hasten into a trap, my dear.’

  Quint was bewildered. ‘Trap? What trap?’ he asked.

  Neither Garland nor the young woman answered him.

  ‘We must be off immediately,’ Emily said.

  ‘What’s up?’ Quint looked at her and then swung his head round towards the MP. Both of them ignored him. ‘’Oo’s going to set a bleedin’ trap?’

  ‘Be quiet, Devlin,’ Garland snapped. ‘And mind your language when ladies are present.’

  The MP stared at the distant mountains, lost in thought.

  ‘Very well, my dear,’ he said, after a long minute had passed. ‘After consideration, I believe that you are right. Let us be on our way. Devlin, you can ride with Giorgios. His horse will take two. You can leave the mule behind.’

  * * * * *

  ‘What of poor Jinkinson?’ Adam asked, curious as to how much more the professor might tell him. ‘Was it you in the darkness at Wapping? Did you kill him?’

  ‘Do you recall that German braggart Schliemann we met once in Athens? In the summer of sixty-seven, I think it was.’ Fields seemed not to hear Adam’s questions. He made no attempt to deny responsibility for Jinkinson’s death. He had set off on a digression of his own. ‘I came across him again the following year. I was riding with two of the servants in the mountains south of Salonika when we saw a group of horsemen in the distance. At first, we feared they were brigands, but in the event it turned out to be Schliemann and a band of potential cut-throats who had taken his money to guide him on a long and pointless tour of the region. I was obliged to join him in his encampment for dinner and to listen to his interminable rantings about Troy and the Homeric epics. About the discoveries he is destined to make. Of how his name will for ever be in the annals of archaeology. The man is impossible – a noisy megalomaniac who listens to no one but himself.’

  ‘Why should anyone else listen to him? The plain of Troy has long been a battleground for scholars as well as for heroes. Schliemann will not be the first to fall upon it nor the last. Why should you concern yourself with him?’

  ‘Because I fear that he may be correct. That he will unearth the secrets of Priam’s city as he claims he will. It is so often the Schliemanns of this world who gain the glory.’

  Suddenly the professor sounded so weary, like an ageing Atlas longing to take the weight of the world from his shoulders. His posture slumped and the barrel of his revolver began to point closer to the ground than to Adam’s chest. The young man wondered yet again if he could make the six-yard dash to Fields that he had earlier dismissed. Before h
e could steel himself to do it, the professor seemed to gain a new energy. He jerked upright once more.

  ‘The golden treasure hoard of the Macedonian kings! Can you imagine what it would be to unearth it, Adam?’ Fields was excited now, and sweating profusely. ‘It would be the archaeological sensation of the age! The discoveries of Layard and Rawlinson would pale into insignificance beside it. Even the discoveries Schliemann boasts he will make in Asia Minor. Would even the ruins of Troy match Philip of Macedon’s gold?’

  ‘Layard and Rawlinson did not murder men in pursuit of their discoveries. Nor, I assume, will Schliemann.’

  ‘Do you think I wished lives to be sacrificed?’ Fields sounded indignant. ‘Of course I did not. But what choice did those fools leave me? That grasping devil Creech cared only for the money he thought he would make from Philip’s gold. The history, the romance meant nothing to him. As for that sot of an investigator, he did not even realise what he had stumbled across.’

  Adam could not yet see clearly in his mind the connection between Fields and Jinkinson. ‘How did you know of the man’s existence?’ he asked.

  ‘He approached me. He must have come across my name during his dealings with Creech. Perhaps Creech even confided in him, although I doubt that.’