Seven Tears for Apollo

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  Dorcas held out her hand. “Look at this, please.”

  The coin had been recently polished and the silver gleamed in the lamplight. Fernanda picked it up and put on her glasses.

  “Interesting,” she said. “It looks like an old coin.”

  “I found it just now on the bed table in my room,” Dorcas said. “It wasn’t there before I left and Vanda says she knows nothing about it.”

  Johnny left the map and took the coin from Fernanda’s hand. “Athena’s bird, the owl. With the imprint of an olive twig beside it. All symbols of Athens in its days of power—the ‘sterling owl’ of Aristophanes.” He looked at Dorcas. “This is real enough,” he said, and she knew he had sensed her doubting of herself.

  “Do you mean,” Fernanda demanded, “that some mysterious person came into your room and left an old Greek coin on your bed table?”

  “I’m not imagining things now,” Dorcas said.

  “Of course not, dear,” Fernanda assured her soothingly. “In fact, I find this quite exciting myself. Undoubtedly we have a little mystery here. I hope the solution won’t prove disappointing.”

  There was no use in talking to Fernanda. Dorcas turned to Johnny, a question in her eyes.

  “Show me where you found this,” he said. “I’ll be back in a minute, Fernanda.”

  It was an excuse to speak to her alone. As soon as they reached Dorcas’s room he put his question.

  “The Owl of the note? That’s what you think, isn’t it?”

  “Who else?” Dorcas said. “He has either been here, or sent this through someone else. Vanda, perhaps. As a further warning, I suppose.”

  “I don’t like any of this,” Johnny said. “Why not give me that letter to keep? You shouldn’t be carrying it around in your handbag, asking for trouble.”

  “No one knows for sure that I have it,” Dorcas said. “I’ll keep it where it is for now. It’s proof that I’m not imagining these things, just as this coin is proof.”

  “Stop doubting yourself,” he said gently. “There’s a perfectly real answer to all this. In the meantime we’ve got to be more careful. Tomorrow we’ll all go to Petaloudes together. No separations. You and Beth—and Vanda, too, if she likes.”

  He touched her lightly, reassuringly on the shoulder and went back to Fernanda’s room.

  When she was in bed she lay for a long while thinking over the evening, trying to face and accept her own feelings as they concerned Johnny Orion, yet fearful still of full acceptance. Always her mind returned to the coin and the marks on the mirror.

  9

  In the morning there was an unexpected change of plans. While they were still at breakfast, Madame Katalonos’s chauffeur arrived with a note for Dorcas. His mistress wrote that she had discovered the whereabouts of a Mrs. Markos Dimitriou. She would call for Dorcas at ten o’clock and accompany her to this place.

  With the desk clerk as interpreter, Dorcas tried to explain to the chauffeur that other plans had been made for the morning. Would it be possible to make this visit in the afternoon?

  The man stood beside the lobby desk, foursquare and burly—a large, unlikely figure in his correct uniform. He shook his head, dismissing the suggestion. Madame had given orders, Dorcas gathered, and lesser mortals were expected to accommodate themselves. His words filled the lobby with sound.

  “Stavros says he will return at ten o’clock,” the clerk translated. “It is better if you are ready.”

  Dorcas gave in. It was more important to find Mrs. Dimitriou than to visit Petaloudes. She would keep Beth with her today and out of Vanda’s hands.

  “Tell him I’ll be ready,” Dorcas said.

  Stavros’s salute was of the G.I. variety. For a man so large, he trod lightly across the lobby as he returned to his car.

  When Dorcas went back to the breakfast table to announce her changed plans and suggest that Beth stay home, she met with double opposition. Beth wailed that she wanted to go to the butterfly place, and Fernanda supported her.

  “I can’t approve of this delving into the past,” she said. “I doubt that Madame Xenia has really found this woman, but if she has, it will only upset you to see her.”

  “That’s for me to decide,” Dorcas pointed out.

  “I suppose you’ll have to go, even if it’s a wild-goose chase,” said Fernanda. “But let’s not spoil Beth’s fun. We’ll talk about this later.”

  After breakfast Dorcas confronted Fernanda in her room as she got ready for the trip.

  “I want Beth with me today,” Dorcas told her. “I can’t trust Vanda after what happened yesterday, and—”

  “I know,” Fernanda broke in, watching herself in a mirror as she wrapped a scarf about her head. “Vanda told me you thought you had seen marks on the bathroom glass and then accused her of washing them off. Not very diplomatic, my dear.”

  “There were such marks,” Dorcas said. “Two white circles like the ones you saw for yourself at home. Circles like the eyes of an owl.”

  Fernanda regarded her sadly. “Owl’s eyes! Dorcas, I wish I knew what to do. I’d counted so much on this trip to iron out these aberrations of yours. But they keep on, and all this is terribly bad for Beth. That little scene at breakfast—”

  “There was no scene at breakfast and I’m not having aberrations. I simply want Beth with me today.”

  Abruptly Fernanda took her by the shoulders and turned her to face the dressing-table mirror. “Look at yourself, dear—just look!”

  Thus forced, Dorcas stared angrily at the girl in the glass. The face she saw was frighteningly familiar. Her reflection had the look of the distraught, frustrated, wildly furious girl whom Gino had given over to the attendants in the nursing home—a girl who had been hysterical. But she wasn’t hysterical now, and she had no intention of being made to seem so. She was simply angry, and with every justification.

  “Are you looking?” Fernanda asked. “Do you really believe you can give Beth the calm, loving atmosphere she needs about her? Not this morning you can’t, my dear.”

  This at least was true. In this Fernanda was right. She could not deliberately submit Beth to the side effects of her anger, however justified it might be. Beth’s welfare came first, although she hated to submit to Fernanda.

  “All right,” she said. “I’ll let Beth go with you this time. But the matter isn’t settled. Something is wrong and I’m not going to rest until I find out who is trying to get at me, and why.”

  Having won her way, Fernanda smiled benignly and Dorcas ran from the room, not trusting herself to further words.

  The car trip got off before ten o’clock and Dorcas stood on the terrace, watching them leave. Johnny had tried to reassure her and he had promised to keep an eye on Beth. But he had no knowledge of the words that had been spoken between her and Fernanda, and there was no way to make him understand the true issue.

  Anger had left its residue and Dorcas still felt shaken. If only she could meet what happened with a calm, forthright manner, instead of getting furious. Her anger, she knew, grew out of an increasing fear that Fernanda was moving with deliberation to take Beth out of her care. Undoubtedly she fancied herself as the child’s foster grandmother and she had, too, an almost fanatical loyalty to her memories of Gino and what she imagined he might want. But she, Dorcas, was not so helpless now as she had been with Gino and she must not let herself be baited and tricked into defeat at Fernanda’s hands.

  Madame Katalonos was a mere half-hour late, which was not very late in Greece. Dorcas waited in the lobby until Stavros came to fetch her. Madame Xenia greeted her warmly as she got into the car.

  “I am pleased if I can arrange this for you,” she told Dorcas in response to her thanks. “I think this must be the woman you look for.”

  Stavros turned the car in the direction of the old city and he and Madame Xenia conversed heatedly in Greek for several blocks. At length her driver raised both hands from the wheel at once in a gesture of defeat. His mistress smiled.
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  “My friend there thinks this would be a lovely day for a drive to Lindos,” she told Dorcas. “He has a passion for driving, that one. It is remarkable that we are still alive. But he is devoted to my interests. He understands that while he may argue with me, I do not have to do as he says. We Greeks are always what you call—individualistic.”

  For the rest of the drive Madame Xenia chatted about the lovely weather, which of course was to be expected in Rhodes, and asked questions concerning Fernanda’s doings. There was no mention of the touchy subject of Constantine’s whereabouts.

  The car was left not far from the nearest gate of the old town and Madame Xenia and Dorcas entered on foot and started up the Street of the Knights. Before an open doorway a short distance up the hill Madame paused.

  “I think this is the place. We will go inside.”

  Ancient stones arched the doorway overhead, and they stepped through into a bare courtyard. Here geometric figures in black and white pebbles made a flooring of Turkish design. Worn stone steps rose beneath another arch, curving out of sight overhead. Beyond the stairs sunlight fell upon a patch of garden where a cat lay curled asleep.

  Madame Xenia stepped through to the sunny garden and Dorcas followed. Walls studded with windows surrounded them and bougainvillaea dripped brilliant blossoms against the stone. Madame Xenia called out in an imperative voice, and a woman appeared on a stone balcony above and looked down at them.

  The exchange was in Greek and it went on with a good deal of fire and excitement, though without producing Mrs. Dimitriou. After listening for a few moments, Dorcas walked across the garden and stood beside the sleeping cat. From a high room with the pattern of a cross in the window symphony music drifted down to her, surprising the silence of ancient stone. Someone up there must have a record player. As she waited for the discussion between the two women to end, she listened to the music and let the thought that was burgeoning come alive in her mind.

  At last the woman on the balcony threw up her hands and shook her head vehemently. In apology Madame Xenia turned to Dorcas.

  “This I do not understand. She says there is no Mrs. Dimitriou here and that such a person has never been in this place. My servants have asked in the market and in the old city, and this is the place they tell me where Mrs. Dimitriou is living.”

  She addressed the woman again, and again the response was a vigorous negative.

  Dorcas spoke on impulse. “Ask her the name of the cat, will you?”

  Though she looked puzzled, Madame Xenia obliged. The woman laughed, rolling out a mouthful of syllables, and her interrogator laughed as well.

  “This cat has been given the name of a very famous wise man of old Rhodes,” Madame Xenia said. “The name of Cleobulus.”

  Cleobulus—Cleo, Dorcas thought. Yes, she had been right. And they would not find Markos Dimitriou’s wife in this place. She knew that now.

  “Never mind,” she told her companion. “I’m sorry I’ve troubled you for nothing.”

  Madame Xenia shrugged and gave up her inquiries. When they were in the car, she returned to the matter of the work on Constantine’s poetry Dorcas had promised to do for her. Would tomorrow be possible, perhaps?

  Since her identification of Constantine as the man whom Gino had sent for her that unhappy time three years ago, Dorcas had hoped that Madame Xenia would forget about asking her to come to her house. She found herself reluctant to go. She wanted to let that part of the past be forgotten and do nothing to revive it. But the woman beside her was waiting so anxiously for her assent that Dorcas had not the heart to refuse. After all, what did it matter? Constantine’s wife would soon realize that there was nothing to be gotten from her, and it would not be necessary to go again.

  “If it is all right with Miss Farrar, tomorrow will be fine for me,” she said.

  Back at the hotel she waited impatiently for the others to return. Vanda had run off to the old city yesterday with Beth, and Beth had reported petting a cat named Cleo. It appeared likely that Vanda had gone on an errand to Mrs. Dimitriou, who had lived in this place, and had now vanished. There were certain questions she wanted to ask Fernanda as soon as possible.

  When the trippers returned shortly before lunchtime Dorcas followed Fernanda to her room.

  “I’d like to talk to you, please,” she said.

  “Must you now, dear?” Fernanda was already shedding shoes, handbag, head scarf, and earrings as she crossed the room. “I do want a tub before we go to lunch.”

  “Then I’ll wait till you’re through,” said Dorcas, and plumped herself into a chair.

  Fernanda gave up and stretched out comfortably on the bed, wriggling her toes in satisfaction. “You sound as though you’d had a bad morning. You didn’t find Mrs. Dimitriou, I suppose?”

  “You knew I wouldn’t find her,” Dorcas said evenly. “Perhaps you warned her away.”

  Fernanda punched a pillow behind her head and crossed her legs. “You’d better begin at the beginning, dear, and explain what you’re talking about.”

  “I don’t need to,” Dorcas said. “The first time we went to the old city you left us to buy a painting from an artist in one of those courtyards. I think it was the same place to which Madame Katalonos took me today. There was a cat in the garden whose name was Cleobulus. I asked.”

  Fernanda quirked an eyebrow. “I’m afraid I don’t know a single Rhodes cat by name. What on earth are you getting around to?”

  It grew increasingly difficult for Dorcas to keep a rein on her temper. She must not repeat this morning’s outburst.

  “Yesterday,” she went on, “you sent Vanda on an errand to the old city and she took Beth along. Beth said she’d been to see a cat named Cleo. There’s too much coincidence for me not to see the truth. How could you want to keep me from seeing Mrs. Dimitriou when you know how much it means to me?”

  It was possible to see the changes of emotion chasing one another across Fernanda’s innocently open face. She was not dissembling now, but simply trying to make up her mind which direction to take.

  Dorcas pressed her advantage. “You might as well tell me the truth.”

  “You used to be such a gentle girl, Dorcas.” Fernanda’s sigh was a large one. “Sometimes now you sound almost hard: I’m distressed about you. The whole thing was only a plan for your own protection. You must understand that, dear.”

  “What whole thing?”

  Fernanda sighed again. “When you were ill, Gino and I both knew how terribly upset you’d been by your friend Markos’s death. It really threw you a little off balance, you know. In the nursing home you kept talking about seeing Mrs. Dimitriou when you were well. Gino said you must not see her. He said all those upsetting memories must be wiped out of your life.”

  “Gino said that?”

  “Of course, dear. He felt we should do something for Mrs. Dimitriou, since Markos was your father’s friend and yours. Gino was capable of a fine, generous gesture more often than you were willing to see. He sent me to Mrs. Dimitriou and I found that all she wanted was to get home to Rhodes. Gino furnished the money, with something over as well. She no longer had anyone here, but he had friends in Rhodes and he sent her to them. He wanted you to know nothing about it. He said it was better for your own peace of mind if she just disappeared.”

  “And safer for him,” Dorcas said.

  “What do you mean, dear?”

  For an instant Dorcas thought of speaking out, of putting into words her belief that Gino had taken a violent hand in Markos’s death. But the very look in Fernanda’s wide eyes stopped the words on her tongue. What was the use? Fernanda would not believe her. She would not listen, and she would use the accusation as further evidence of Dorcas’s own lack of balance.

  “So you helped Mrs. Dimitriou out of the country. And you knew where she was staying in Rhodes,” she stated.

  “I’m afraid that’s true, dear.”

  “Then you’ve seen her since we came here?”

 
Fernanda nodded a little guiltily. “Of course I have. For Gino’s sake I had to follow the thing up once I was here. That was natural, wasn’t it?”

  Dorcas walked over to the bed and stood looking down at Fernanda. “I’m glad you’ve told me the truth. Now you’ll be able to take me to her, arrange for me to see her.”

  Fernanda closed her eyes and moved her head in the negative. “Of course I can’t do that. Gino said you were to forget about the Dimitrious. He felt that if you tried to follow this mad notion of yours, whatever it was, you would be thrown back into your illness again. And from the signs you’ve been showing lately, I’m afraid it’s true.”

  “I’m not ill any more,” Dorcas said. “Perhaps I never was as ill as everyone tried to make me believe.”

  Fernanda reached out gently and touched her hand. “Poor darling. Let’s not go over all this again. You can’t push me, you know. Not any farther than you have. Gino has left me a trust where you and Beth are concerned. He knew what was best. If only you would believe that.”

  The impasse was clear. What could one do with a woman like Fernanda? When she chose she could be completely obstinate, and from the most generous reasons in the world. If Dorcas was to track Mrs. Dimitriou down, it would have to be done without Fernanda’s help. Finding the woman seemed more important than ever. Only when Fernanda was confronted with the truth about Gino—a truth she could not evade—would she give up her efforts to come between Dorcas and Beth. Until then she would remain a threat and a danger. She had in her hands the weapon of Dorcas’s illness and it was frightening to think what she might do if she decided to use it.

  Back in her own room Dorcas found Vanda getting Beth ready for lunch. She did not want the woman around. Not now, when all her new worries might be evident. Vanda had been brought here by Fern Farrar. Yesterday she had been sent on an errand to Mrs. Dimitriou. Dorcas was sure of that now. One of her functions must be to watch and report to Fernanda on everything Dorcas said. Or was she really imagining too much? How was she to distinguish, what was she to trust and believe within herself?