Lament for Leto (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  “Not quite. I was opposite the Apollo, with Roger. Suffolk was looking at something else and was a little distance away. You note the voice said Clio?”

  “The Muse of history.”

  “That’s what makes it so alarming.”

  Dame Beatrice did not ask for an explanation of this remark, although it puzzled her.

  “Young Roger, of course, is a fellow of infinite jest, but I should not have supposed that of Mr. Suffolk who, you say, was also with you in the museum,” she observed.

  “No; like myself he is singularly without a sense of humour. In fact, I would have thought he had a strain of melancholy in him.”

  “What did you do when you heard this voice? I take it, by the way, that it spoke in English?”

  “No, it did not. It spoke in Greek. I gave you the rough translation. You said yourself that the phrases were such that a schoolboy would know, but I have my doubts about that.”

  “And the voice? Was it that of a man, a woman, or a boy?”

  “That is difficult. I had thought, until now, that the voice was that of a man, but it spoke in little more than a whisper, so I suppose it could have been a woman or a boy speaking. In fact, I demanded of young Roger what the joke was. He appeared to be very much surprised and asked me what I meant. I was not prepared to tell him that the statue seemed able to speak, so I passed it off and we all walked away. What do you make of it, Dame Beatrice?”

  “Nothing, at present. What was the other experience you mentioned?”

  “Oh, that, yes. It was quite as mysterious and far more frightening—physically frightening, if you know what I mean. At this time last week—well, not exactly at this time, because it was some two or three hours earlier—I received a note referring to our Apollo pilgrimage suggesting that I should visit the Acropolis at a time when there would be few people there, when I would be given some news which would be of help to me. I dined at eight, therefore, which, as you know, is unusually early for these parts, and left the hotel at a time when most people would be going in to dinner.

  “Well, in any case it was early in the year for tourists and my correspondent’s idea that the Acropolis would be deserted, or nearly so, turned out to be correct.”

  “Was the note signed?”

  “No, nor could I hazard a guess as to the identity of the writer. I ought to add that Henry and Edmund had retired early, as they proposed to leave at sunrise on their expedition and that Simonides had gone to visit friends of ours who live in Piraeus.

  “Henry had filled up the tank of my car—in spite of the coolness between us I had offered it to him as usual and I did not think I ought to make inroads on his petrol—and Simon had gone off in the one he borrows, so I took a taxi to the foot of the hill and told the man either to wait or to come back in an hour. I climbed up the steps to the Propylaea, picking my way with some care, for although, by daylight, the way is easy enough, by the light of a moon not at the full there were deep and treacherous shadows and parts of the ascent were very rough, for the marble steps (laid down by order, possibly, of the Emperor Claudius) end in some broken stonework which can be tricky at night.

  “I came out past the plinth which once held the statue of Athena Promachus and then walked up to the Parthenon. I entered the pronaos and gazed out through the arches of the eastern colonnade. It was while I was standing there, with a hand on one of the fluted columns, that I became aware that I was not alone, but that my correspondent was with me. I don’t know what gave me my first feeling of fear, but perhaps it was because I don’t remember hearing any footsteps, or anybody cough, or having definite indication at all, in fact, of the presence of another person. Yet I was as certain as I could be that somebody else was there, and was standing not very far away from me.

  “Why this should have made me uneasy I do not know, except that the assignation was a mysterious one, but, after all, every visitor to Athens comes to the Parthenon as a matter of course and although, at night, those who visit it try to come at a time when the moon is full, there was still enough light to make a visit to these fabulously beautiful buildings well worth while, and it seemed a good place for a meeting. However, as I say, I felt suddenly uneasy. I turned and looked about me, but there was nobody to be seen, and it occurred to me that my neighbour must be standing behind one of the pillars.

  “I turned and walked back by the way I had come, but still saw nobody and was not accosted. I persuaded myself that I had been imagining things and as I am by nature extremely timid I convinced myself that this was so. Glancing behind me, nevertheless, two or three times, I crossed to the Erectheum, with its beautiful little Porch of the Maidens and I grieved, not for the first time, that one of the caryatides had been reft from her five sisters and was incarcerated in the British Museum, to be replaced in Athens by an easily identifiable changeling.

  “Well, from the south side, as doubtless you remember, four of the stone, basket-topped maidens can be seen, but the steps in front of the plinth are broken up and are rough, weed-grown, and uneven. I did not need to surmount them, but was standing on the bare ground at the bottom when a voice said, ‘The best place to worship Apollo nowadays is from the west side of Athena Nike.’ I was startled, but concluded that this was my unknown correspondent.”

  “Did you recognise the voice?”

  “No. It spoke in a hoarse whisper, and in English.”

  “But the speaker must have been very close to you if a whisper, however hoarse, carried to you in the open air.”

  “That is what I thought. I looked round again, but could see nobody. The dreadful thing was, Dame Beatrice, that, although I looked round for the speaker, I could have sworn that the words had come from one of the caryatides.”

  “But they were quite a distance from where you say you were standing.”

  “I know. I can’t explain it, but there it is.”

  “Did you go to the little temple?”

  “Yes,” said Dick defiantly, “I did. I had come to look at the Acropolis as well as to contact my correspondent and I did not intend to leave out any part of it which I had made up my mind to examine.”

  “And you call yourself a timid man?”

  “Oh, Athena Nike was on my way out. However, when I had looked at the little temple from the steps on the east side—the Ionic columns and the remains of the frieze are very fine—you may be sure that I was disinclined to go much further, for the west side stands near the top of a high, blank, retaining wall, and, apart from my sudden fear of my unknown adviser, I have not a very good head for heights if the drop is perpendicular.”

  “But nobody followed you, so far as you know?”

  “Nobody. I could not have failed to see and hear whoever it was. I said, ‘What do you wish to tell me?’ There was no answer. My heart was beating in a most uncomfortable way and I did not stay very long. I made my way as quickly as I could to my cab. The driver had decided to wait. I suppose that, during the dinner time, there were few fares to be picked up in the city, so he thought he would make sure of mine.

  “I was delighted to see him. I asked him whether anybody else had visited the Acropolis since I had left him, but he assured me that he had seen nobody. As all these fellows dream away their time and smoke or snooze when they’ve nothing to do and nobody with whom to gamble, I took little notice of his assertion. I am convinced that somebody followed me and intended to do me a mischief.”

  “And have your two mysterious experiences caused you to change your mind about our travels?”

  “No,” said Ronald Dick stoutly, “they have not. I undertook to make this pilgrimage to honour Sir Rudri’s memory, and I am not going to be deterred. I wanted to confide in another member of the party, however, and, sorry though I am to burden you with the knowledge that somebody seems to be against our project, you seemed much the best person with whom to share my fears.”

  “But I do not share them,” said Dame Beatrice. “They have not communicated themselves to me. I think we have
to deal with a practical joker, not an enemy agent, and the field of our enquiry into his identity is beautifully narrow.”

  “You mean that it must have been Henry or his son, or even Simon, who spoke on the Acropolis, since the rest of you were on board ship? I agree that it could have been one of them, although I felt certain that Henry and Edmund intended to go to bed. But then there was the time when I was in the museum.”

  “When neither Mr. Owen nor Edmund was there?”

  “Or Simon, either, if it comes to that.”

  “To whom, in Athens, have you mentioned the expedition?”

  “Oh, to several people, but I have not referred to its object. My friends think I am merely taking a party to look at some of the more interesting archaeological sites, that is all.”

  “And your friend who is lending you the yacht?”

  “He knows nothing except that we plan to cruise among the islands.”

  “You have not mentioned the cult of Apollo or the reason for our pilgrimage to anyone outside our own party?”

  “People would think I was eccentric.”

  “Well, Rudri Hopkinson most certainly was.”

  “I know, and I would not have people laugh at his memory.”

  “Well, we can afford to bide our time until our party is complete again. After that, who knows? Maybe we will hoist our practical joker with his own pétard.”

  “You comfort me a great deal, Dame Beatrice. You mean that there are two wags in our party and both are harmless.”

  Dame Beatrice did not comfort herself. Dick’s experience in front of the bronze Apollo was all very well if it were true. It could be dismissed as someone’s idea of a joke. A puerile sense of humour might well have been tickled by making a statue appear to speak. She was much less inclined to believe in Dick’s experience on the Acropolis. He was a nervous imaginative little man, and the night could have been fairly dark in spite of the moonlight. Furthermore, the Acropolis could be ghostly at such an hour. Apart from that, Dick had never, she thought, grown up. The whole nature of the Apollo pilgrimage indicated that. No one but a born hero-worshipper would have planned it, and hero-worshippers, in her opinion, were seldom mentally adult.

  Another manifestation of his childishness was the way in which he had not refused a “dare.” He had been afraid to go to the temple of Athena Nike, but, like a boy unwilling to be jeered at for cowardice, he had gone, all the same. Whether, had he not lacked a head for heights, he would have walked round to the west side, where the Ionic columns were separated only by a flight of steps from the top of the sustaining wall, she could not and did not attempt to determine. His story of the voice she entirely discredited. She had even asked him to produce the note he had received, but he said he had thrown it away.

  As to the identity of the ventriloquist in the museum, in spite of her contention that the field was narrow, it was impossible to determine, on the evidence available, which of the suspects was the joker, again allowing for the fact that Dick might have imagined the whole thing. She cast her mind back to the ship’s concert and the glee of Roger at the success of the ventriloquist act. If Percival Dearwater was the ventriloquist, then both Dick’s experiences had been subjective and could be ignored in consequence, but if either Julian or Roger possessed the art of speaking from the stomach, then either of them could have been the joker in the museum. Anyway, it all seemed quite harmless and, but for the performance on board ship, she would have dismissed both Dick’s experiences as fantasies.

  Of course, if Dick really had heard a disembodied voice on the Acropolis, the chief suspect was Edmund. He was Roger’s brother, they were closely allied and might possess the same warped sense of humour. She called to mind Roger’s tall stories of murder and kidnapping. As for Edmund, he might be in collusion with his brother, the one to carry out the joke on the Acropolis, the other to repeat it in the museum.

  There remained the uncomfortable possibility that, for some reason known only (so far) to himself, Dick had deliberately invented both experiences. Keeping this in mind, there was one thing she could do. The Dearwaters had come ashore in the same tender as herself and had told her that they were staying in Athens until a ship returned to pick them up in a fortnight’s time. They had even told her the name of their hotel. Now that the ship’s concert was a thing of the past, with nothing, it was to be assumed, but pleasant memories for Percival Dearwater, he would be prepared, she thought, to tell her which of the three of them had been the ventriloquist and which the supporting characters. She wanted to track down the joker—if there was one—because she could foresee trouble and confusion if he intended to make use of his talent on the pilgrimage itself.

  On the following morning the hotel porter, an expansive, agreeable man with a magnificent moustache, connected her by telephone with the Dearwaters’ hotel and ultimately with Mrs. Dearwater.

  “Oh, Dame Beatrice! How nice of you to ring us up! Do come to lunch here, won’t you? Two o’clock, but come before that, and we’ll compare notes and have a drink. Percy doesn’t care for retzina or ouzo, but they suit me well enough. I never did care much about drinks, anyway,” said Mrs. Dearwater in her plummy but agreeable voice.

  There were no odious comparisons to be drawn between the hotel at which Dame Beatrice was staying and the one which she visited. The only notable difference was that from the latter there was no view of the Acropolis. Mrs. Dearwater was alone when Dame Beatrice arrived and apologised for her husband’s absence.

  “Percy is in bed,” she explained. “He ate some shellfish last night. They never did agree with him, although he loves them. So there’s only me.” She rang for drinks and settled down for a cosy gossip, mostly about the people they had met on the ship. Dame Beatrice seized a favourable moment and said,

  “Your husband was a great success at the concert.”

  “Oh, yes,” agreed Mrs. Dearwater, beaming. “He was in his element over that, and people were very good in offering to do turns. Your young friends made quite a bargain with him, though. They agreed to perform, but only if he would join in with them in one particular act. It was to be a lot of spoof, of course.”

  “Oh, the ventriloquist thing!”

  “Yes. It took people in completely and was lots of fun. Nobody could make out which of them was really doing it, and, of course, none of them was.”

  “Really? How was it worked, then? I was right at the back, and was completely taken in.”

  “So was everybody else, except the real ventriloquist. He was sitting in the front row of the audience, so Percy told me afterwards. He wouldn’t go on the stage with them because, although he can throw his voice, he still has to move his lips, so people would spot him at once. Of course, they didn’t have time to rehearse the act properly, that’s why they all talked together so much, but luckily the audience thought that made it all the funnier. They got a wonderful lot of laughs, didn’t they?”

  “Yes, indeed. It was quite the most successful act on the programme, although I thought your husband’s conjuring tricks were extremely skilful, too.”

  “Yes, he’s greatly in request at children’s parties down our way, although, naturally, not for money. He only does it to please friends. It was a pity he couldn’t have used his best props, but, of course, we couldn’t bring the magic cabinet and the circular saw on board with us.”

  “And who discovered that we had a ventriloquist on board—your husband?”

  “Oh, your boy Roger, I think, told Percy about it.”

  “So the ventriloquist was Mr. Suffolk, Roger’s tutor?”

  “I really have no idea, Dame Beatrice. My husband wouldn’t tell me because he said it would queer the man’s pitch if he ever wanted to do the thing again on another cruise. Cruising becomes a holiday habit, you know, and the same people go year after year. This was our fifth, as a matter of fact, and I found that we knew quite a number of the people on board. I wanted to know who the man was, but Percy says I babble and would be sure to let it o
ut, not meaning to, of course, so he wouldn’t tell me. Putting two and two together, I think it must have been Mr. Suffolk. He was certainly in the front row. Tell me, is he engaged to that lovely girl with the black hair?”

  “Not so far as I know.”

  “Oh? Not that I want to tattle or pry, of course, but he seemed to be in and out of her cabin a good deal, and when he wasn’t in it, she wasn’t, either—or so it seemed to me. She was on our deck, you know, and in the same little corridor thing, so I knew quite a bit about the comings and goings.”

  Dame Beatrice remembered Roger’s remark about sleeping on deck to oblige Suffolk.

  “We’re only young once,” she said tolerantly, “and must gather the rosebuds where we find them, I suppose.”

  She went back to her hotel to think things over. There seemed no reason, she told herself, why anybody should want to frighten Ronald Dick, and, in any case, the performance of the ventriloquist act on board ship had been nothing but innocent fun. The same could be said of Dick’s experience in the Athens museum except that, if one coupled it with his story of the voice and the presence on the Acropolis, it could mean, as she had already thought, that somebody did not want the Apollo pilgrimage to take place.

  She went over in her own mind the various people who were involved in it and could see that there might be five who had had no choice—or very little—about joining the party. Neither of the boys may have wanted to accompany their father, and there was the possibility that Julian was not a volunteer but a pressed man. He might have thought that a vacation on his own in late spring would be far more desirable than to act as bear-leader to his pupils in Greece.

  Against this there was the attraction which Hero had for him. By the time the voyage was over there was no doubt about his feeling for her, although to what extent this was reciprocated was not obvious. All the same, it followed that, although he might have made some attempt to sabotage the pilgrimage while the party was still in England, it was impossible to imagine that he would want to end it once he and Hero were in Greece.