Come Away, Death

by Gladys Mitchell

  ‘Bags I,’ said Ivor. He followed Kenneth’s lead, and, falling, cut both knees. Stewart walked over to one of the pits on the other side of the path, near the fortress wall. He gazed earnestly into it.

  ‘Interesting place,’ he said. ‘When are we going to see the beehive tombs?’

  ‘Now, I fancy,’ Mrs Bradley replied. But Sir Rudri who, having called his tribe about him, was directing his steps towards the gate, hesitated, and then halted.

  Kenneth and Ivor, tired of the shaft graves, climbed out of them up a steep and stony incline, and joined Stewart and Mrs Bradley.

  ‘What should you have done, inquired Ivor suddenly, ‘if we had broken our legs?’

  ‘Set them for you. It would have hurt you,’ Mrs Bradley replied. The boys laughed happily, because they had not broken their legs. Sir Rudri said:

  ‘Candles, candles?’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Alexander Currie, who had scrambled to the top of the hill to get the view over the plain of Argos, and had been disappointed in it. ‘We shall barely see the beehive tombs before dusk. The sun is beginning to set.’

  Armstrong, who had taken the bandage off his head, but was wearing a large coloured handkerchief underneath his hat, produced half a dozen bits of candle from the pockets of his linen jacket and handed them to his employer.

  ‘Ah, good,’ said Sir Rudri, ignoring Alexander Currie, who continued to stand in the middle of the path and expostulate. ‘You boys shall have your turn later. Stay where you are for the present.’

  He turned and led the way to the almost invisible ruins of the palace above on the hill. The boys looked at Mrs Bradley. She shook her head.

  ‘The postern stair. We can go down later. Let us forestall Sir Rudri at the Treasury of Atreus,’ she said. The idea of being in the van of the sightseeing appealed to the three little boys. They followed her under the Lion Gateway, down the broad entrance, back to the road, and across it and up a bank on the farther side to the vaulted tomb, the haunt of innumerable bees.

  A wide path, bordered by great walls, led up to the entrance of the tomb or treasury, and over its opening a lintel-stone of a hundred and thirteen tons was fitted upon the hewn-stone walls. The interior was pitch dark until Mrs Bradley switched on her electric torch, and by its light showed the boys the walls. Then they penetrated to a smaller, inner chamber where the blackness was thick and seemed to have weight and body. Ivor suddenly clasped Mrs Bradley’s arm.

  When they were back in the vaulted chamber they stamped upon the hard ground and the sound seemed to run in ever-lessening circles through the floor and round the whole foundation of the tomb.

  ‘I like this place,’ said Stewart, as they came out on to the entrance path. ‘I hope we stay here a week.’

  ‘I shouldn’t think we’d stay here more than a night,’ said Kenneth. ‘The whole thing’s a wash-out so far.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Ivor as, on impulse, they all walked back towards the tomb again, and stood in its entrance waiting for the others.

  ‘Well,’ said Kenneth kindly, ‘it might have been all right if your father could have got away with the snakes, but everybody knows it was a plant.’

  ‘Oh, was it? Well, then, what cured that beast Armstrong? Didn’t he nearly die?’

  ‘No. That was your brother’s funk.’

  ‘My brother isn’t a funk!’

  ‘Yes, he is,’ said Mrs Bradley mildly. ‘So should we all be if we thought we had killed a fellow-creature by accident at night, in a strange land, in a strange place, with neither witnesses nor apparent justification.’

  The little boys accepted this judgement, which seemed to them reasonable, in silence, and were soon engaged in chasing one another along the entrance way, and over the rough ground which bordered the road.

  Sir Rudri and the rest of the party, daubed with candle-grease, came on with the keeper who had unlocked the Treasury previously for Mrs Bradley and the boys. He liked the boys, and took them back into the tomb to show them, by the light of his lantern, the walls once studded with bronze rosettes, and to light for them again the inner chamber.

  Armstrong did not go inside the Treasury. He lounged in the doorway, and when Cathleen, who soon grew oppressed by the darkness inside the vault, came out again and began to stroll back towards the cars, he followed her. He said:

  ‘So you go off at nights with one of the drivers, do you?’

  Cathleen swung round and looked at him. Not liking what she saw, she continued her walk. He lengthened his stride and caught up with her.

  ‘Get away,’ said Cathleen, reading his intention, which was to kiss her. Her voice, which she had raised, brought Ian leaping up the bank from the road where the cars were stationed.

  ‘Mind away,’ he said. He clumped Armstrong on the mouth, but not very hard, because he remembered that Armstrong had hurt his head. ‘You must not annoy the ladies, sir,’ he said.

  Armstrong, whose front teeth had begun to bleed, dabbed at his mouth, and turned to walk back towards the tomb.

  ‘If you please, I will escort you, madam,’ Ian continued loudly.

  ‘You men,’ said Armstrong, shouting, ‘are employed because you can’t speak English. I shall get you dismissed, you half-breed lout, do you hear?’

  Ian took no notice, and walked respectfully beside his wife.

  ‘It would not do for that one to know who I am,’ he said serenely.

  ‘I love you,’ said Cathleen. She spoke violently because she had never said those words before, and they sounded, in her ears, strange and immodest. ‘He tried to kiss Megan the other day,’ she added very quickly, to cover them up, ‘but she slapped his face and stamped on his toe.’

  ‘She’s a fine, big girl,’ said Ian with approval. ‘I am for seeing the tomb of Clytemnestra, and the tomb of Aegisthus. They are just at the top of this road. Are you willing?’

  ‘Wait for me,’ said Mrs Bradley behind them. ‘I, too, want to visit the tomb of Clytemnestra. Ian, go back to the car. Sir Rudri and Alexander Currie are immediately behind me.’

  Ian grinned, saluted, and walked off.

  ‘Armstrong is making himself a nuisance,’ said Cathleen, as they stood before the smaller ruinous beehive tomb just beyond the Lion Gate.

  ‘I guessed it. We ought to send him home. He is altogether out of his element, I think. I wonder what is Gelert’s quarrel with him?’

  ‘Do you not think it is true about the boys?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ replied Mrs Bradley. ‘The boys are irritating to any right-minded young man. Gelert should be helping Armstrong to kick them, not trying to stop him.’

  ‘I see. Do they irritate you?’

  ‘No. I see them through a glass, darkly, because of my sex and my advanced years. The young men see them face to face, and exceptionally clearly at that. Gelert must long to correct all his own faults in Ivor, and, of course, Kenneth must be a very trying boy. He epitomizes boyhood. The other two are much more individual.’

  ‘Is Mr Armstrong a very clever photographer?’

  ‘I think there is no doubt of it.’

  ‘Shall we have to take him to Ephesus? If so, I don’t think I’ll go. Ian won’t be coming. His engagement with Sir Rudri terminates at Athens. I think I’ll go back with him to Scotland, and write to father from the ship.’

  ‘An excellent idea,’ said Mrs Bradley, who realized that nothing would be gained at the moment by either party if Cathleen told her father to his face that she was married to Ian and intended to return to their native land with him.

  ‘I suppose,’ said Cathleen, ‘you couldn’t do anything for us?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Of course. To begin with, I can get Ian a job when he’s finished his college course. I suppose he is bound to do well?’

  ‘I don’t see how he can help it. He’s very clever and works tremendously hard. But I didn’t mean anything like that.’ She looked distressed.

  ‘I admire him, child, on both accounts,’ said Mrs Bradley firmly,
waving the protest aside. ‘Do you wish to penetrate this tomb?’

  ‘No. I know more about Clytemnestra without doing so. I wonder why I didn’t like you at first?’

  ‘These mutual antipathies are interesting,’ Mrs Bradley replied with a gentle cackle. Cathleen looked startled. ‘I – I hope we’ve both changed our minds,’ she said hesitantly, with attractive simplicity.

  ‘Oh, yes, I am sure we have, child.’ They walked back to meet the rest of the party, which, headed, as usual, by Sir Rudri, and gambolled round by the three little boys, was coming to find them in order to make arrangements for the night.

  ‘We’re going to make Homeric sacrifice both at the palace and at the Treasury of Atreus,’ Sir Rudri observed. ‘The difficulty is the oxen. However, this good man’ – he indicated the keeper of the keys – ‘thinks he can prevail upon one of the peasants to let us have two goats. No doubt the result cannot be the same as with oxen, but with blood and entrails at our disposal, we surely should be able to evoke something.’

  ‘Yes, a putrid stink,’ said Kenneth, sotto voce, behind his father. Alexander Currie turned and smiled upon his son.

  ‘I don’t think goats are a good idea, father,’ said Gelert. ‘They have a definite connexion with the Black Art. I think we should pause and consider before committing ourselves to goats.’

  He broke off and held a spirited conversation in modern Greek with the custodian.

  ‘He says they are black goats,’ he added, after he and the Greek had adjusted themselves to one another’s system of pronunciation. ‘To my mind to introduce black goats as an offering in a place like this is simply asking for trouble.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ‘There are weighty, weighty doings afoot among the dead, and a great deal of party feeling.’

  1

  BEFORE THE SUNSET had gone from the sky, Sir Rudri had made up his mind that cattle must be found for the sacrifice. The sleeping-bags were brought out of the cars, and preparations were made to camp by the roadside. Gelert and Dick went off in one of the cars, although not the one driven by Ian, and Dmitri, who had skill in driving oxen, went with them to manage the beasts.

  Before Sir Rudri could get to sleep his servant Dish came and stood before him, and said:

  ‘Sir, come to make a complaint.’

  ‘What is it, Dish?’

  The spectacle of his employer rearing up, caterpillar-like, in a sleeping-bag, had no effect upon Dish. He answered stolidly:

  ‘Mr Armstrong took upon hisself to refer to me as a slow-moving swine, sir, as I was assisting of him to stow away his photography, so ’ead or no ’ead, sir, I took upon me to resent what he had to say.’

  ‘Oh? And how did he – what did you do?’

  ‘I dotted him one, sir, for luck.’

  ‘But that,’ said Sir Rudri mildly, ‘was very wrong of you, Dish. Have you hurt him, do you think?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Oh – well, ask Mrs Bradley to have a look at him, then.’

  So saying, he resumed a recumbent attitude, moved his head irritably as though he found the soil of Greece uncomfortable and blamed it for the fact, and then remained perfectly still. After about three minutes he observed, ‘Do you think they’ll be back with those oxen by daylight, Dish?’

  Dish, however, did not answer. He was nearly fifty yards away, in earnest conversation with Mrs Bradley.

  ‘Go away, Dish,’ was her first response to the summons to attend to Armstrong.

  ‘But, mam, Sir Rudri’s orders to me was to fetch you.’

  ‘What’s the matter with Mr Armstrong, anyway?’

  ‘I struck him, mam.’

  ‘Good for you, Dish. Where?’

  ‘On the sn —in the front of the head, mam.’

  ‘Ah, yes. What for?’

  ‘He called me a swine, mam.’

  ‘Oh, did he? That wasn’t kind.’ She emerged from her sleeping-sack and put on the skirt she had discarded and her shoes. ‘Lead on, Dish.’

  Armstrong was somewhat bloody. Mrs Bradley looked at, without touching, his bleeding nose.

  ‘What a nuisance you are, Mr Armstrong,’ she said pleasantly. ‘I wonder why you don’t behave yourself better? I’m not interested in your wounds. From what I know already of your blood, I suppose it will clot quite nicely. You’d better go to sleep now, and wash off the mess in the morning.’

  ‘I don’t need to behave myself. I’ve got this whole joint cold,’ said Armstrong, bubbling out the words and spitting and swearing.

  Mrs Bradley went back thoughtful to her sleeping-bag, crawled into it, and very soon was asleep.

  Morning came, but brought no sign of the oxen. Sir Rudri sweated as the day grew hotter, but not from the heat alone. Two or three times he climbed to the citadel to look over the Argive plain in search of the sacrifice patiently plodding towards the altar which he had built at dawn near the grave-circle, and at intervals of fifteen minutes he sent the little boys up to look, and even lent them his field-glasses as a bribe. It made something for them to do, for the countryside was desolate, and even the postern stair, which the keeper good-naturedly lighted for them with candles – Armstrong having possession of all those belonging to the expedition – palled when they had been down it seventeen or eighteen times.

  Megan and Cathleen spent the hours together, chatting, doing bits of needlework, reading a book aloud to each other by turns, and occasionally writing a two-handed letter to a mutual friend in England.

  At times Sir Rudri would break off from his preoccupation with the plans for the sacrifice, and call upon Armstrong to take photographs. The Lion Gate, the entrance to the tomb, the grave-circle, the ruins of the citadel – what there were of them – and various other objects were carefully photographed, and Alexander Currie, bored, hot, and fly-eaten, could be heard, at intervals, demanding to know what point there was in photographing all that had ever been photographed before.

  ‘You can buy it on a picture-postcard,’ was his bitter and erroneous summing-up of the proceedings.

  ‘Not these you won’t be able to,’ said Armstrong in a voice that was loud enough to carry to the ears of Alexander Currie, who turned to the young man, and said:

  ‘I should be glad to know what you mean by that, my boy.’

  ‘I dare say you would,’ said Armstrong. ‘But Sir Rudri would prefer that you didn’t.’

  Alexander Currie glowered at him, and then walked off. He sought Mrs Bradley and found her, in the full glare of the sun, dark glasses shielding her eyes, writing up her diary.

  ‘Look here, what’s going on, do you know?’ he demanded.

  ‘Yes, I think so, child.’ She patted the bank whereon she sat. ‘Sit down.’

  ‘What, there? I’m nearly cooked to death as it is! For goodness’ sake come into the shade and talk.’

  ‘I like it here,’ she answered, and directed her attention solely to her little note-book. Alexander unwillingly sat down.

  ‘Now, what’s all this?’ he said. Mrs Bradley looked up at him. ‘Try my sunshade,’ she said. He opened it and sheltered under it gratefully.

  ‘Well, to cut a long story short,’ she began with great enjoyment, ‘you shouldn’t have upset poor Rudri.’

  ‘I’m sorry about that.’ He mopped his bald head, a gesture as much of remorse as of necessity.

  ‘I think it turned his brain a bit, Mrs Bradley continued deliberately. ‘He has schemed and planned to be even with you. He hasn’t yet succeeded.’

  ‘The snakes were obviously a plant.’

  ‘Quite so. He knows you know that.’

  ‘What about it, anyway?’

  ‘That’s all I know.’ With an air of absorption very provoking to watch, she applied herself to her writing.

  ‘How does Armstrong come into it?’

  ‘I think he’s going to fake some photographs, child.’

  ‘Rudri wouldn’t do that! He must be mad! He’s got a freakish mind about all these things, but he�
�s honest. I ought to know.’

  ‘You ought,’ said Mrs Bradley. Her tone was a rebuke. ‘You traded on his honesty, didn’t you, child?’

  ‘It was only a joke,’ said Alexander Currie.

  ‘Very well. Now I’ll tell you another joke, and mind you take it as well as you expected poor Rudri to take yours.’

  ‘What are you talking about now?’

  ‘Your daughter Cathleen.’

  ‘Cathleen?’

  ‘She is married to Ian MacNeill.’ On the words, she took smelling-salts out of her pocket and held the unstoppered bottle underneath his nose. Alexander inhaled too deeply. His eyes filled. He choked, and then pushed the bottle away.

  ‘That’s enough! That’s enough!’ he said.

  ‘Furthermore,’ continued Mrs Bradley, ‘it’s just as well, perhaps. It has saved her two very unpleasant experiences out here, both of them on this trip.’

  ‘But —’

  Mrs Bradley waved his words away, and went on calmly but irresistibly:

  ‘Both in connexion with this wretched boy Armstrong. The first Ian doesn’t know about. It took place at Eleusis. The second he does know about. It took place here.’

  ‘But —’

  ‘Ian, like a good man and a husband, hit Armstrong. I think he will very soon give away the fact that he is Cathleen’s husband’ – she underlined the last word very slightly – ‘and that is one of the reasons why I am telling you the news before Armstrong gets the opportunity to do so.’

  ‘But —’

  ‘Ian is a fine young man,’ said Mrs Bradley firmly, ‘and I shall get him a job with a commencing salary of three hundred and fifty a year. They will be making him a partner before he’s thirty-five. A fine young man,’ she repeated, taking off her sun-glasses and bending a hypnotic gaze upon Alexander’s face. ‘Don’t you think so, dear child?’

  ‘A MacNeill once beat me over a bargain,’ Alexander muttered childishly.