Come Away, Death

by Gladys Mitchell

  ‘In the Tholos? At Epidaurus?’

  ‘Where else?’

  ‘As you say, I’m stupid. I can’t tell you. I want to know about the snakes.’

  ‘I want to know about Io.’

  ‘Io?’

  ‘The cow.’

  ‘Oh – Armstrong, I suppose, filthy creature.’

  ‘Armstrong?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You know he’s dead, child, don’t you?’

  ‘Armstrong dead? Good Lord! Oh, well, then, Sir Rudri gets the photographs back, I suppose?’

  ‘Surprise not genuine, and he knows I’m not deceived,’ thought Mrs Bradley. ‘And neither was Marie Hopkinson surprised. Oh dear!’ Aloud she said:

  ‘He’s got them back, child, yes. I got them for him this evening. He doesn’t know he’s got them. I haven’t handed them over to him yet.’

  ‘Where did you get them from – his home?’

  ‘Yes. From Mrs Armstrong.’

  ‘What – the poor old mother?’

  ‘No. The poor old wife.’

  ‘So that was it,’ said Dick. ‘I’m glad to know. I thought she wasn’t his mother. She never seemed – the relationship wasn’t like that.’

  ‘Ronald,’ said Mrs Bradley, ‘what made you go on the expedition with Sir Rudri? You, an archaeologist?’

  Dick blushed.

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘But, really, the temptation was too great. I’ve – of course, it was Megan. As soon as I knew there was the slightest chance that she might go, I told Sir Rudri I’d go with him. He wanted me. You see, I suppose I lent colour to the proceedings.’

  ‘And suppose that Megan had not been going after all?’

  ‘After I’d promised to go, do you mean? Oh, I expect I’d have gone. I’d said I would, and I wanted to go to Mycenae again, you know.’

  ‘Why to Mycenae?’

  ‘Oh – Homer. And Schliemann. I’ve more admiration for Schliemann than for anybody else I know.’

  ‘The inspired Schliemann.’

  ‘The inspired Schliemann.’ He nodded, looking out between the shutters into the street below. After a pause he said, ‘I say, you don’t know how I could get back my piece of Mycenaean gold? I want to present it to the museum.’

  ‘Yes, child. I know how you can get it back. You’ll get it for a wedding present.’ She looked at him expectantly, but Dick licked his lips and asked her:

  ‘What else do you know, I wonder?’

  ‘I know that Armstrong is dead.’

  ‘That’s what you said before. What killed him? How did he die? I didn’t think people so objectionable died off so quickly and conveniently.’ He tried to smile, but could not.

  ‘They don’t die off like that in the ordinary way,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘I fancy he was murdered. We took his head to Ephesus in our luggage.’

  ‘Really? How did you find that out? Are you pulling my leg, by any chance?’ His face, by this time, was ghastly.

  ‘No, child, you know I’m not. One of the sleeping-sacks showed bloody traces, and the head was in the snake-box. Didn’t you know?’

  ‘In the snake-box? Heavens alive! Where, then, were the snakes?’

  ‘In the floods, child. All decapitated, just like Armstrong.’

  ‘Just like —’ He shot off the bed. ‘Excuse me!’ He rushed away. Mrs Bradley sat down and looked closely at a five-inch statuette, a replica of the Winged Victory.

  ‘Better?’ she asked when, white-faced, he returned.

  ‘Thank you.’ He settled down on the bed and rested his head on the pillows. ‘I’m not very fit yet, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Horrid to be sick,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘Yes,’ she went on, with scarcely a pause, ‘all the snakes had their heads cut off. I didn’t find the heads. I didn’t look for them. One arrived at their existence by a process of mingled memory and deduction.’ She cackled heartlessly.

  ‘Yes, you are pulling my leg,’ said Dick, with the air of one who had formed an important opinion. ‘Go away and pull somebody else’s for a change. I’m tired. I want some sleep.’

  ‘Very well, child.’ Mrs Bradley rose. ‘And you really think you’re going to marry Megan?’

  Dick looked at her. His face began to work. Mrs Bradley watched him, not cruelly, but with interest.

  ‘Don’t cry. I’m not going to stop you from marrying her,’ she said with a curious smile.

  3

  ‘You’re determined to find out about Armstrong, I suppose?’ said Marie Hopkinson. She was looking at the whole collection of photographs and had been listening to Mrs Bradley’s detailed descriptions of the tour.

  Mrs Bradley nodded.

  ‘That is why I’ve been boring you like this for the past two hours and a half. A shape is gradually emerging,’ she said with a terrifying smile.

  Marie Hopkinson shuddered.

  ‘A shape? What on earth do you mean?’

  ‘That I begin to see the light. Well, no, I can’t say I begin to see the light, but more and more light floods upon me, like the rising of the sun upon a mountain. Talking of mountains, my dear Marie, it is amazing, is it not, that the scenery of Greece really is as romantic, as improbable, as convincing, as fascinating, and as familiar as people would have one believe.’

  ‘Improbable? Convincing?’ said Marie Hopkinson. ‘Beatrice, are you sure it wasn’t Rudri?’

  ‘Quite sure, dear child. I want to see the ibex horns Dick bought.’

  ‘But we did see them,’ said her hostess, looking at her wild-eyed. ‘He showed us them. We all saw them – or weren’t you there?’

  ‘Yes, I was there. I want to see them again.’

  ‘But why? You don’t mean there’s blood on them, or something?’

  Mrs Bradley cackled.

  ‘No, I don’t think there’s blood on them. I’m sure there isn’t, in fact. I just want to see them, that’s all.’

  ‘Well, ask him for them. He must have got them somewhere.’

  ‘I did ask him. He doesn’t seem keen to show them. I wish you’d ask him for them.’

  ‘Pretending I don’t know they’ve been refused to you?’

  ‘Exactly, child. But the way, did you know that Dick and Megan are engaged?’

  ‘Yes, I know. They told me. He seems delighted about it. But, Beatrice, they can’t be engaged if poor Ronald murdered Armstrong.’

  ‘I don’t see any connexion,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘In any case, I thought you plumped for Rudri. But we don’t know that poor Ronald did murder Armstrong, do we? Any more than we know that Rudri did.’

  ‘That’s what we’ve got to know, though. I mean, it’s got to be one of them. It was you who suggested Ronald by talking about those horns. Anyway, we must know.

  ‘Yes, we had better know. Then the whole thing will be over and done with, won’t it?’

  ‘But no, of course it won’t. What about justice and things? Although, mind you, Beatrice, justice is quite a different thing out here from what it is at home, and it’s as well not to get yourself mixed up in it!’

  Mrs Bradley cackled.

  ‘What is justice?’ she said.

  ‘Oh, don’t let’s begin a political argument. I want my tea,’ said Marie Hopkinson. Mrs Bradley now recognized this as her hostess’s favourite way of changing the subject.

  ‘And I,’ said she, sticking closely to her point, ‘want to see those ibex horns, and then I want to go to Eleusis.’

  ‘Eleusis? What on earth for?’

  ‘Knowledge. Comfort. All that the Mystae ever went there for.’

  ‘But you can’t go alone, Beatrice, can you?’

  ‘I could, but I think I’ll take Ian and little Stewart. Ian can drive the car, and Stewart can put me right in my facts and check my memory for me.’

  ‘You’re really going to – investigate, do they call it?’

  ‘Yes, I believe they do.’

  ‘The thing I can’t understand,’ said Marie Hopkinson, ‘is why they haven’t discovered t
he body before this! You’d think, in a place like Athens —’

  ‘The body of Armstrong lies at Ephesus, I think. Didn’t you think the snake-box was like a coffin, Marie?’

  ‘But the weight?’

  ‘The box was handled chiefly by railway porters, stevedores, and stewards – people who wouldn’t know what it was supposed to weigh.’

  ‘But I always thought – one reads these horrid stories of corpses left in luggage, and someone’s suspicions always seem to be aroused.’

  ‘Ah, that’s at Charing Cross,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘Ephesus isn’t a bit like Charing Cross, in spite of all that poets try to tell us. I didn’t find the body there, although I looked for it. I found the head, as I told you. It really was all that mattered.’

  Marie Hopkinson looked at Mrs Bradley. They had known one another for more than thirty years. Her face was grave and reproachful as she said:

  ‘And to think you used to be such a nice girl, Beatrice.’

  Mrs Bradley screamed with delighted laughter.

  ‘I’ll go to Ronald Dick, and get those horns from him. I’ll tell him it looks suspicious,’ she added, ‘if he keeps them to himself after I’ve asked to see them. Poor boy! He always listens so respectfully to everything I tell him. I suppose I have your permission, Marie, to inform him that I am investigating the death of Armstrong in case suspicion should later fall on Rudri?’

  Marie Hopkinson did not make any reply. She rang the bell, unnecessarily loudly, for tea.

  ‘In the portico, madam?’ asked the maid, in her delicate, lisping English.

  ‘Of course not! You know we don’t have it in the portico at this time of year!’ snapped Marie Hopkinson.

  ‘Pardon, madam.’ The black-haired girl went out. Marie, with a return of her usual manner, said despairingly:

  ‘That was the second of Gelert’s broken hearts!’ Scarcely had she spoken when Gelert himself came in. Mrs Bradley took advantage of his entrance to slip quietly away to speak to Ronald Dick. Dick, who was even more haggard than she had seen him on her previous visit, looked at her guiltily when she demanded the horns, and mumbled something about his lodgings and the museum. Mrs Bradley looked at him reproachfully, and went back to Marie and Gelert.

  ‘But what would the museum want them for?’ Marie Hopkinson demanded, with what Mrs Bradley interpreted as a warning glance at Gelert. Mrs Bradley’s reply took her and her son off their guard.

  ‘Have you heard of the ibex horns that made the back-bent bow of Odysseus, children?’ she said.

  Marie recovered first.

  ‘Oh, all that mythology,’ she said. ‘Poor Ronald. He is so enthusiastic.’

  Next morning Mrs Bradley was driven by Ian towards the plain of Eleusis. Beside her sat Megan. The seat next to Ian was occupied by the politely smiling Dmitri. Ian drove fast. They had set out from Athens at dawn. By the time the sun had risen they were running beside the bay on a road bordered right by the mountains, left by the sparkling sea. The air was still cool. There was nobody about. Ian stopped the car at the entrance to the ruins. Dmitri remained in his seat. The others got out, and walked up to the Hall of the Mysteries.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  ‘Yes, and all that garlic.

  1

  ‘BUT I DON’T know what we’ve come for,’ Megan said. ‘Armstrong wasn’t killed here. I don’t see what Eleusis has to do with it.’

  No secret had been made of the object of this second expedition. Even Dmitri had been told why they had come, and his collaboration had been asked for. He had volunteered two statements as they had come along the road in the car.

  ‘This Armstrong,’ he said in English, ‘he is one bad man. I do not know what is the trouble he should be dead.’

  Mrs Bradley explained that they did not want the wrong person blamed for the death. Dmitri had grunted and then had followed the grunt with his polite, incredulous smile.

  ‘You are with amusement,’ he said, staring straight ahead through the windscreen.

  ‘I think we ought to begin at the beginning,’ said Mrs Bradley to Megan, as they stood in the ruined Hall and looked south to the island of Salamis and its mountains and then north-west to the rest of the excavations. ‘Now, child, let us go back to the night on which all the interesting events took place. First of all, the coming of Ian.’

  ‘He was at Daphni with us.’

  ‘So he was. We established that before. Then he came on here, and first met Cathleen – where?’

  ‘I don’t know exactly, Aunt Adela.’

  ‘He was not on the mysterious ship, that’s certain.’

  ‘That was a plant of father’s – to pretend that the second Iacchus – Armstrong really, you know – was on board the ship, when really, of course, there was no one on board except the sailors.’

  ‘Dressed like ancient Greeks.’

  ‘Yes. He’s potty, of course. They had to wave a lantern to shine on one of them dressed like Iacchus as soon as they got father’s signal.’

  ‘You knew about this from the beginning?’

  ‘I helped him plan it all out. I’d do anything to score off Mr Currie. He behaved disgustingly to father.’

  ‘Yes. I see.’

  ‘My job was to convince all the others that we really had seen something supernatural. It made me rather windy, I might tell you.’

  ‘How was that?’

  ‘I don’t care to muck about with such things. Suppose something really supernatural had turned up, as it did at Epidaurus. I should have screamed myself silly.’

  ‘Let’s leave Epidaurus out of it for the present, child. You sent Stewart with me to the acropolis.’ She pointed a yellow finger.

  ‘To make certain that some unbiased person saw the second Iacchus.’

  ‘But I wasn’t unbiased, child. I was convinced that you and Sir Rudri were up to mischief.’ She cackled. ‘I’ve met fathers and daughters before.’

  ‘Well, you’d have had to say what you saw,’ said Megan stoutly.

  ‘Yes, I see. Then, a little later, Cathleen disappeared. She went to meet Ian, I presume.’

  ‘Well, yes, but the chump got lost. Places do look different in the dark. And Armstrong, the second Iacchus, grabbed hold of her, the beastly idiot, and she was scared stiff, and I hit him pretty hard, and told him to get back to his place on the acropolis, or else he’d lose his job.’

  ‘So that’s how you bruised your knuckles.’

  ‘Yes. And that’s how he bruised his shins. But that wasn’t the only time that night. He must have gone off his head. Ian hooted like an owl, and Cath went off to find him and hooted back – I’m surprised she went; it was rather plucky of her, really – and young Ivor trailed her part of the way, and then the fun began.’

  ‘All that chasing about,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘First Ian and then Armstrong running like hounds before the Mystae —’

  Megan giggled.

  ‘It was a bit silly,’ she said. ‘But you and Stewart – Armstrong must have been mad. I’m glad young Stewart got him on the thigh with his catty. But I don’t think Armstrong could help it where girls were concerned. He even tried it on me, and I’m definitely not his type. He was just made like that.’

  Mrs Bradley concurred in this charitable view by solemnly wagging her head.

  ‘And then Ian. Poor kid! She did have a night,’ said Megan reminiscently. ‘Of course, she ran into Armstrong again instead of Ian, who was waiting where they’d arranged, not far from the site of the temple of Artemis. Queer how Artemis keeps cropping up in this do! Of course, I didn’t know then that Cath and Ian were married.’

  ‘And now, what happened at Ephesus?’ They seated themselves on one of the tiers of stone seats. Megan looked away across the water.

  ‘I really did stay in Athens. I mean, I wasn’t smuggled on board your ship, or anything. I simply followed up later, with the Artemis clothing, and did what we had arranged.’

  ‘You and Sir Rudri again?’

  ‘Yes.
It went very well – or rather, it would have done if poor little Ronnie hadn’t recognized me. I suppose you spotted me, too?’

  ‘I did, child. Dick, then, followed you back to Selçuk?’

  ‘I should think he did, the lunatic. I had an awful job. He came to the inn where I was staying – you know the one that looks like a deserted manor house, with that big, empty garden and the railings through which all the little Turkish children come and stare? – and kicked up a frightful fuss. He cried, and hung on my arms, and said he would never leave me, and a lot of rot like that – as though I should let him, anyway! And in the end I said that if he really wanted to show that he loved me a little he could take the clothes I’d been wearing back to Ephesus and throw them away on a hillside, or do anything else he liked with them, but not trouble to try and hide them because he wasn’t good at hiding things. So off the poor idiot went. I nearly had a fit when I heard he’d been trying to hang himself.’

  ‘Why do you think he did that? Did you quarrel before you parted?’

  ‘Oh – I don’t know – he’s touchy. I shall have to get him out of it when we’re married.’

  ‘You do intend to marry him, then child?’

  ‘Of course.’ She looked surprised.

  ‘I see,’ said Mrs Bradley equably. ‘Who changed over the snakes at Epidaurus?’

  ‘Armstrong, the lunatic! Thought it would be a joke. I got that out of him while we were at Mycenae.’

  ‘But how did he get possession of the adders?’

  ‘Thereby hangs a tale. Mr Currie brought them out with him, in his luggage.’

  ‘Six vipers?’

  ‘Six vipers. He’s frightfully childish, you know.’

  ‘But I thought he dreaded snakes.’

  ‘Oh yes, he does. But he seems to have thought it would be a rag.…’

  ‘You’re not telling me the truth,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘Are you sure it wasn’t Ian who brought the snakes?’

  ‘How do you know Ian brought them?’

  ‘I don’t know it, child. I’m asking for information, so don’t tell any more lies. Why should Ian bring six vipers to Greece?’

  ‘He thought they would eat the frogs and things in his garden. You see, he isn’t going back to the University. He’s got a job out here.’