Emily, who had left Garland to supervise the care of the horses, approached Adam as if unsure of the greeting she might receive. Quint, showing unwonted tact, immediately retired.
‘As you can see, Miss Maitland, I have survived my ordeal.’ Adam looked to catch Emily’s eye but she turned away.
‘I rejoice to know that we arrived in good time and that you are unhurt.’
A silence fell between the two.
‘Oh, Emily,’ Adam said, after a long pause, ‘how long ago it seems since you came to Doughty Street for the first time. When Quint broke the plates.’
‘That was not my first visit. I came to your rooms several days earlier. When neither you nor Mr Quint were present.’
‘Of course,’ Adam said, smiling wrily. ‘I had forgotten. My landlady – a formidable termagant named Gaffery – saw you as you left. I am surprised that she did not attempt to detain you. Or have you arrested.’
‘I was convinced that she would.’ Emily laughed. ‘She watched me descend the stairs with the door to her own rooms ajar. But she did not show herself any further.’
‘I think perhaps she must have feared that the respectability of her house would have been compromised had she confronted you. But she spoke to me. She berated me fiercely.’
‘I am sorry to cause you such trouble.’
‘It was nothing. Her bark is worse than her bite. But how did you breach the Gaffery fortress in the first place?’
‘There is another lodger on the floors above you.’
‘Dupont? The Frenchman?’
‘Is he French? I knew only that he was not English. I approached him as he was leaving the house. I told him that I was your lady friend and that I needed to leave you a message.’
‘And he believed you.’ Adam could easily envisage the delight with which Dupont, an engaging and chatty salesman for a French furrier in Mayfair, would have responded to Emily’s approach. He would have been only too pleased to assist a beautiful woman in any scheme he thought might further a romantic dalliance.
‘He let me in. I thought perhaps you would not have locked your doors. But I could find no way to enter your rooms.’
‘So you returned a few days later.’
‘On the Tuesday, yes.’
‘But why did you leave us so abruptly? Was Quint’s clumsiness with the plates so terrifying?’
Emily paused. For a moment it seemed as if she might not reply.
‘You were so kind to me. Such a gentleman. I grew ashamed of what my father had asked me to do. When Mr Quint provided the distraction, I decided to leave.’
‘Ah, your father. I had not realised that Creech was your father until Fields informed me of the fact. I am sorry that he met his death so cruelly.’
Emily bowed her head.
‘We should not have plotted to deceive you. But my father was eager to learn as much of you as he could. That is why he wished me to make your acquaintance.’
‘And Garland? When did you meet Garland?’
‘As you must surely be aware, my father and Lewis Garland were boys together at school. We have known one another for a long time.’
‘Of course, he is your godfather.’
There was another pause as Emily turned her head towards Garland, thirty yards away, who was pointing to the horses and delivering instructions to two of the servants.
‘Mr Garland is not my godfather.’
Adam waited for her to say more.
‘He is my fiancé.’
‘That cannot be,’ the young man blurted out and would have spoken further, but Emily held up her hand to stop him.
‘There is no more to be said, Adam. I am engaged to Lewis Garland and that is all that you need to know.’
‘But the difference in your ages.’
‘Many a happy marriage has been contracted between a man of mature years and a younger woman.’ Emily spoke with a confidence that Adam was certain she did not feel. He stared miserably at the distant mountains. The highest peak of Mount Olympus, where the gods of the ancient Greeks held court, glittered in the afternoon sunshine. They would be looking down and laughing at this latest unexpected twist of fate, he thought.
‘I can think little of a man who would place the woman he loved in such danger,’ he said eventually. ‘Garland should never have allowed you to leave Salonika with him.’
‘It was at my insistence, Adam.’
‘She was really most persuasive, Mr Carver.’ Unseen by either of the young couple, Lewis Garland had left the horses by the camp. He was now standing six feet from them. Adam noticed once again the deep black of his hair and beard, so dark that it must be dyed. He felt he should hate this older man, engaged to marry the woman he now recognised he loved himself, but he found that he could not. ‘I defy any man to resist the arguments she used to carry her case.’
‘I am still uncertain why you travelled out here from Salonika in the first place. Although I am glad, of course, that you did.’
Garland took two paces closer to them and rested his hand on his fiancée’s arm. Was it Adam’s imagination, or did Emily move ever so slightly away from him as he did so?
‘I was curious as to why my old and – forgive me, my dear – wicked friend Sam Creech was interested in this place Koutles. He had told Emily that he was. Although he had told her little else. We were spending time in Salonika anyway. As you know, Emily and her mother live here. I thought it would be easy enough to satisfy my curiosity by an excursion out here.’
‘He was blackmailing you, was he not?’ Adam could see no reason now to beat about the bush or indulge in the evasions of polite conversation. Garland looked startled at first by his directness but he rapidly recovered what little composure he had lost.
‘Yes – the ties of old friendship meant little to Sam where money was involved. And then, after he was killed, the canary man came calling. Also intent on extorting money from me.’
‘Jinkinson was also killed.’
‘I am sorry to hear that. In a strange way, I rather liked the man, garrulous and greedy as he was. But I hope you now understand that I was not responsible for his death.’
‘No. It was the professor who killed him. He killed Creech as well. And Andros. He thought he had killed Rallis. He was planning, I think, to kill me, although he denied it. Once he had unburdened himself to me as much as he did, I do not think he could have allowed me to stay alive.’
‘You must tell us all that Professor Fields confessed,’ Emily said.
‘It will be a long story.’
‘We have the time,’ Garland said, gesturing towards the camp. ‘My men have prepared the horses for departure, I believe. It will take us several days to return to Salonika.’
‘What of the professor’s body?’ Adam asked.
‘We shall bury it here. Where his dreams turned to ashes.’
CHAPTER FORTY
Like distilled mud, the fog swirled in filthy and foul-smelling clouds around Adam’s head as he stepped out into Doughty Street. Although it was still the afternoon, the city was given over to the gaslights as he made his way to the Marco Polo. The smoking room was empty save for Mr Moorhouse, sitting in his favourite chair, lost in thought. Adam joined him.
It was nearly two months since his struggle with Fields on the edge of the pit in Macedonia. Together with Emily and Garland and Quint, he had left the camp near Koutles and ridden back towards Salonika. On the way, they had overtaken Rallis and the two men deputed to look after him. Perhaps it was as well for his own comfort that the Greek lawyer had remained more or less unconscious for most of their journey. Once in Salonika, in the care of Roman Catholic nuns there, he had made a surprisingly swift recovery from his wounds. When it came to the time to make their farewells, Rallis was once again on his feet.
‘Goodbye, Alexander,’ Adam said as he stood by the dock, awaiting the moment to step on board Garland’s private yacht. ‘If you ever visit London again, I shall insist that you see the sights in my co
mpany.’
‘I shall accompany you to the British Museum, my friend,’ Rallis replied with a smile, holding out his hand. And I shall point out all the treasures there that one day will be returned to Greece.’
Adam laughed and took the lawyer’s hand. ‘I might even help you to smuggle some of them out of the museum,’ he said.
The journey back from Salonika to Athens had proved uneventful. After a few restorative days enjoying Polly’s hospitality at the Angleterre, Adam and Quint had taken ship for Malta. From there, another steamer had transported them to Marseille. The French railways had taken them to the Channel coast and the end of October had seen the pair settled once again in Doughty Street.
To Adam’s misery, Athens had been the scene of a parting from Emily and her husband-to-be. Looking, in Quint’s words, ‘as sad as a sick monkey’, the young man had been a poor companion on the journey back to London. Once back in his rooms, he had been unable to find the enthusiasm to return to any of his former pursuits. His photographic equipment had remained untouched. His friends had seen nothing of him. He had spent his days locked away in the sitting room in Doughty Street, idly reading novels and brooding over the events of the summer. There had been times when he had thought that he would never be able to reconcile himself either to Fields’s treachery or to Emily’s preference for Garland. Quint, his spirits oppressed by the atmosphere in the rooms, had spent long periods away from them. On many occasions, Adam had called for his manservant only to find that he was alone in the flat. He had been too melancholy to complain when Quint, often smelling strongly of brown ale, had returned to Doughty Street long after night had fallen.
One afternoon, more than a fortnight after they had arrived back in England, Quint had strode into the sitting room from his own reeking little den at the rear of the flat. Adam had looked up from his copy of Wilkie Collins’s Man and Wife, the latest book to fail to hold his attention. His manservant had thrown down a newspaper on the table.
‘Thought you might want to cast your peepers on that,’ he had said.
‘What is it, Quint?’ Adam had asked irritably. ‘I am busy.’
‘Reynolds’s News from last Sunday.’
‘Since when did you become a follower of the press?’
‘I likes to keep myself informed,’ Quint had said indignantly. ‘Anyways, there’s word in it of someone we know.’ He had opened the newspaper and pressed a grubby finger on the centre of one of its pages. ‘Here.’
Curious, Adam had stood and walked across to the table. He had looked to where Quint had been pointing. It had been an item in what seemed to be a kind of gossip column.
‘Word has reached your correspondent,’ it had read, ‘of the return of a distinguished parliamentarian from a long sojourn abroad…’
After months spent travelling in Greece, Mr L-w-s G-rl-nd is once more a resident of our noble city. Rumours of his impending marriage to a beautiful maiden from fair Hellas have proved to be unfounded. Your correspondent understands that the lady in question, a Miss Em-l- M--tl-nd, has brought the engagement to an end and that the heartbroken Mr G-rl-nd is, and is likely to remain for the foreseeable future, one of the city’s most eligible bachelors.
Adam had read it through and read it through again. He had looked at Quint, who was visibly smirking.
‘But this is splendid news,’ the young man had said.
‘Reckoned you might see it that way.’
‘Emily is free.’
‘’Alfway across bleedin’ Europe, of course.’
‘But she is free. She is no longer engaged to that man.’
‘’Ard to bill and coo between ’ere and Salonika, mind.’
‘This calls for a celebration.’ Adam had ignored his servant’s remarks. ‘I shall go to the Marco Polo. I have not been there since we returned home.’
And so Adam now found himself in the smoking room of his club, puffing cheerfully on a cigar from Philip Morris’s shop in New Bond Street and gazing companionably at Mr Moorhouse.
‘Bit of a fog out there, I gather,’ the old man said.
‘A London pea-souper, Mr Moorhouse. The strangest atmospheric compound known to science.’
‘Quite like the fog myself. Damned inconvenient, of course, if you’re a man of business. But the city always looks rather beautiful in it, I think. Shapes looming out of the dark and all that.’
The two men fell silent. The smoke from their cigars drifted towards the ceiling.
‘I do like a play with a good murder in it, don’t you?’ Mr Moor-house said suddenly. He had a faraway look in his eye, as if he was recalling happy theatrical experiences from his youth. ‘Blood and gore. Murder in the Red Barn. That kind of thing.’
‘With the murderer brought to book at the end, of course,’ Adam suggested. Did Mr Moorhouse, he wondered, know something of the dramatic events that had overtaken Adam while he had been abroad? Perhaps the old man was not quite the innocent he usually appeared. He looked across at his companion but Mr Moorhouse’s face revealed nothing more than bland contentment.
‘Absolutely,’ the old man agreed. ‘All topped off with repentance in the condemned cell. And a speech warning younger members of the audience not to follow his example. Educational and moral. Not enough plays like that any more.’
Silence descended again on the room. All that Adam could hear were the distant sounds of voices in another part of the building. Probably the Marco Polo’s servants, he thought, preparing for the influx of members in the evening.
‘Haven’t seen you around for a while, Carver,’ Mr Moorhouse said. ‘Been up to anything interesting?’
Adam thought for a moment or two, then decided there could be no harm in satisfying Mr Moorhouse’s curiosity, regardless of how much, or how little, the old clubman already knew. His decision was vindicated, since Mr Moorhouse proved a good listener as Adam related the salient points of his adventures in European Turkey. He said little himself but he made the right noises of encouragement at the right points in the narrative. When all was told, he sank back in his chair and stared upwards at the stucco decoration on the ceiling.
‘So this Euphorion chap was wrong, then, was he?’ he said, after thinking the matter over for a while. ‘No gold to be found?’
‘On the contrary, Mr Moorhouse. Euphorion was entirely correct, I think. We were the ones who went astray. We failed to find the right place in which to dig. Garland arranged further excavations but nothing was found. As a consequence, all we have are a few beautiful objects like this.’
Adam held up the gold ring to the gas lamp and, for a minute, both he and Moorhouse admired its twinkling in the light. Then the young man folded his hand round it and slipped it back into his pocket.
‘But the tomb of Philip is out there somewhere in those hills,’ he said. ‘Someday it will be found. And when it is, the treasures it holds will make that poor ring look like a trifle indeed.’
The young man drew deeply on his cigar and allowed himself a brief reverie of future triumphs. One day, he would return to the Macedonian hills himself. He would follow the trail to Philip’s tomb and he would unearth its hidden riches. It would, as Fields had predicted, be the archaeological sensation of the era. He would be a famous man. And – who knew? – perhaps Emily would be there to share his success. Despite what Quint said, Salonika was not so distant.
Adam Carver blew out the smoke of his cigar and watched it spiral and disperse into the already fuggy air of the room. It was now early evening and other members of the Marco Polo were conversing in the corridor outside. He felt himself called back to the present and so turned to speak once more to Mr Moorhouse. But there was little point. The old clubman had fallen fast asleep.
HISTORICAL NOTES
Although, as Professor Fields rightly points out, there are several Ancient Greek writers with the name of Euphorion, there is no record of any Euphorion of Thrace, nor is there any trace of a work similar to Pausanias’s Ellados Periegesis that could have
contained clues to the whereabouts of Macedonian gold. However, Creech and Fields were right to suspect that the hills in central Macedonia did contain a treasure worth discovering. In 1977, the Greek archaeologist Manolis Andronikos undertook an excavation near the small town of Vergina and unearthed what he claimed was the tomb of Philip II, father of Alexander the Great. The exact identity of the tomb’s inhabitant is still the subject of scholarly debate but there is no doubt about the significance of the objects that Andronikos found there, and in other tombs, in what was clearly an important burial site for the ancient Macedonians. Many of the objects, including delicate golden crowns and a beautiful golden larnax, the box used to contain human remains, can be seen in the museum at Vergina.
The monasteries at Meteora, now a UNESCO World Heritage site, provide one of the most extraordinary tourist attractions in Greece, but there is not and, to the best of my knowledge, there never has been one called Agios Andreas. They were visited on a number of occasions in the nineteenth century by English travellers who left accounts of the hair-raising methods employed by the monks to haul their guests up to their lofty retreats. The water-colour painter and writer of nonsense verse Edward Lear visited Meteora and painted some memorable views of the rock formations, although, unlike the characters in my story, he chose not to be winched to the monasteries on their pinnacles.
The Marco Polo Club does not exist outside the pages of my novel but I have imagined it to be somewhere close to the other gentlemen’s clubs in Pall Mall and to share some of the characteristics of the Travellers’ Club. Poulter’s Court, home to Jinkinson, is an imaginary London address. So, too, are the lane near Holy-well Street containing the brothel in which Adam and Quint find Ada and the Wapping backstreet in which the Cat and Salutation is open for business. With the exception of a few individuals (Sir Richard Burton, W.S. Gilbert, Effie Millais and others) who flit peripherally across its pages, all the characters in Carver’s Quest are my own invention. Any historical errors in the novel are similarly my responsibility.
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