Lament for Leto (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  “Dear me! That sounds very high-handed and, surely, somewhat unreasonable,” said Dame Beatrice.

  “I can’t see that. A husband must have some rights over his wife, even in this day and age. He is, after all, the senior partner.”

  “I would exclude the word ‘senior.’ ”

  “Oh, you women always stick together! Anyway, she refused my terms and also refused to hand me back the ring. And then she bounced herself off and I haven’t set eyes on her since.”

  “But she kept the ring,” said Dame Beatrice. “Was that cupidity, I wonder, or a sign that perhaps the fortress would fall to you after all?—that she intended, after keeping you on tenterhooks, to let you have your way?”

  “I took it to mean the latter. If it didn’t, then I shall sue her for the return of the ring. Half-hoops of diamonds come expensive.”

  “I believe, my dear fellow,” said Dick, “that a recent judicial pronouncement would preclude you from suing for the return of your gift. In any case, I think a court of law would regard your terms as very unreasonable. Chloe had built herself up a pleasingly lucrative source of income, and, no doubt, was under contract to her publishers. Perhaps, if she had agreed to slow down her output, let us say—producing one book in the time she now devotes to two or even three—could you not have struck a bargain along those lines? However, I am afraid that all this is now beside the point. I am afraid our poor, unfortunate friend is gone from us for ever. As soon as Mrs. Metoulides realises what has happened, and that this is a case of mistaken identity, you will have to face the truth. Poor Chloe must have lost her footing at Sappho’s Leap and fallen to her death. The Leap was her reason for ever going to Leukas, and I am certain that when she left you in such a tempestuous way that is where she went.”

  Henry rose abruptly from his chair.

  “Well, the sooner the one of them who is alive turns up again, the sooner we can set our minds at rest,” he said.

  “I suppose they never managed to reach Corfu,” said Dick, when he was left alone with Dame Beatrice. “No wonder Henry is unreasonable and short-tempered.”

  “He is certainly not overcome with grief at the loss of Mrs. Cowie. Whichever of you is right about the identity of the dead woman, there is little doubt in my mind that she has left him for good, whether she is dead or alive.”

  “There is no doubt in my mind that she is dead,” said Dick. “If she had merely left him, she would have taken Mary with her. That is my surest proof.”

  “Not if Mary was in hiding from her.”

  “You mean that Mary had already returned to Patras on her way to Olympia?”

  “Oh, no, I do not mean that. I think that, unwittingly or not, she did take Mary with her—and to Sappho’s Leap.”

  “Really, Beatrice, you are speaking in riddles. What are you suggesting we should do?”

  “I am wondering whether we ought to make representations to the British Embassy.”

  “Oh, Megan will put things right. She is bound to see the account in the newspapers, and as soon as she does she’ll come forward.”

  “I am not so certain about that. Did she say in her letter where she was going?”

  “No, she made no mention of any particular destination. It would not be safe, perhaps, for her to do so if she thought, as apparently she did, that she was under suspicion.”

  “All the same, it seems to me that if Mrs. Metoulides had been going to come forward, she would have done so by this time. To the best of my recollection, Mr. Owen’s party left Andritsena last Monday. Allowing that they did not spend the night at Patras before going on to Leukas, it seems that Mrs. Cowie—if it was Mrs. Cowie—met her death some time on Tuesday. That was exactly a week ago. We arrived in Athens yesterday, so here it is Tuesday again.”

  “I see what you mean about Megan. Perhaps, then, we ought to take steps. I will go to the Consulate first thing in the morning and ask for help in tracing Chloe. It seems to be my duty, and probably won’t do Megan any harm.”

  “I really think it would be best. Apart from anything else, if the dead woman is Mrs. Cowie, there is Mary’s future to be considered. Her circumstances may have changed in dramatic fashion if the body is that of her aunt.”

  “You mean that if Mary is her aunt’s heiress . . .”

  “Exactly.”

  “If only I could understand what possessed Chloe to do such a stupid thing! The very last woman to have made away with herself, I would have said, and far too sensible to have met with a fatal accident by falling over a cliff.”

  “You have not brought yourself to consider the possibility that she was made away with, I notice, and that is the likeliest thing.”

  “Beatrice, really! Your suggestion horrifies me! I attempted to remove it from my mind when you offered it a moment ago. Whoever would think of committing such a dreadful crime?”

  “Well, agreeing that this is merely an academic discussion, there are various possibilities, are there not? Mary wants independence; Julian wants to keep his employment if he is not going to marry Hero and her money; the two boys do not want a stepmother; Henry’s story of the quarrel may be entirely fictitious, and the truth may be that he has changed his mind about wanting a wife and was angry enough to kill her when she would not return the ring. Incidentally, I think she may well have been entitled to it, since she would have helped to pay for it.”

  “Oh, really, Beatrice! Even in fun . . .”

  “Oh, I am not speaking in fun. Apart from the fact that she must have helped to pay for the ring, if Mrs. Cowie is dead it was either accident or murder. Under no circumstances was she the woman to put an end to her own life. You know that as well as I do.”

  The British Embassy was in Gennadion Street. Dick had made an appointment by telephone and returned from it in the late afternoon. Henry and his sons, with Julian, had gone to Eleusis in quest of plants, particularly some varieties of the Greek anemone, although these would be past the flowering stage. Hero had greeted Julian coolly on the previous evening when they met at dinner, sufficiently so to inform him that anything there might have been between them was now at an end. In revenge he had devoted himself to Mary, but she had been distraite and he found his efforts singularly unrewarding.

  Hero and Simon had opted for the beach again, and this time Mary and Dame Beatrice had accompanied them. On the morrow the ship’s party were due to embark, and those who had to return to England by air were to catch their plane in two days’ time. Dame Beatrice had volunteered to remain in the hotel so that she could be on the spot to hear Dick’s news when he returned from the Embassy, but he told her that he had promised to spend the rest of the morning with fellow-archaeologists at the British School. When they met again at the hotel in the late afternoon he had unexpected news.

  “I put my point about fearing it might be Chloe who was killed at Sappho’s Leap,” he said, “but it appears that the authorities have the best of reasons for accepting the identification of the body. It appears that Megan’s husband did not die in the ordinary way. He was executed.”

  “Really? What had he done?”

  “Plotted against the State. What is more, Megan has long been suspected of doing the same thing, and it appears that the military police, or whatever they are, were on the point of catching up with her. It seems that her suicide was a foregone conclusion unless she wished to be arrested and tried.”

  “But, as a British citizen . . .”

  “She wasn’t. She assumed Greek nationality when she married. They were very nice to me at the Embassy, but what it all amounted to was a shrug of the shoulders and an attitude of, ‘Well, what do you expect when foolish people marry abroad and then meddle in foreign politics? The Greeks, like the Irish and most unlike ourselves, take their politics seriously, and it is not for us at the Embassy to interfere in local matters.’ So there we are and, unless you have anything to suggest, there, I suppose, the matter must be allowed to rest. It is extremely unsatisfactory, but what more can we do
?”

  “Find out who killed Chloe Cowie,” said Dame Beatrice. “She was an untoward and irritating woman, but she did not deserve to die. One thing is quite certain. If Megan Metoulides was in the kind of trouble you suggest, we can expect no help from her. She would be more than foolish to come forward and identify herself.”

  “Yes, indeed. One could not expect that. It would be too quixotic, especially as it would do nothing to bring Chloe Cowie back to life. As I see it, the death was providential for Megan. You don’t think . . .?”

  “No, I don’t think that about Megan Metoulides, even to save her own skin,” said Dame Beatrice. “I think a few questions might be put to the members of the Leukas expedition, though, beginning with Mary Cowie.”

  “You surely do not really suspect Mary of murdering her aunt?”

  “I think her trip to Olympia needs more explanation than, so far, she has given. There are some glaring discrepancies in the account she gave me, you know.”

  “But that gentle, unassuming girl . . .”

  “Would you have called her last outburst gentle and unassuming? There is no doubt that she has longed for her aunt’s death. Whether she engineered it, is, of course, another matter.”

  “As I think you may have gathered, I have had thoughts of making Mary an offer of marriage. That would have released her quite effectively from her aunt’s domination, would it not?”

  “I doubt it very much. Apart from that, did Mary know of your intention?”

  “Well, I need hardly tell you that I have made no mention of it to her in so many words.”

  “So that would not dispose of her motive for compassing the death, would it?”

  “Oh, you are too hard, Beatrice, much too hard on the girl! That is a dreadfully cynical point of view.”

  “I am hard on nobody. She is by no means the only suspect. I thought I had made that clear.”

  “But I find it impossible to suspect any one of the party! I am sure not one of them is capable of committing such a crime.”

  “Well, we will look at each of them impartially and see what we can learn.”

  “There will not be much time. You and the rest of the steamer people join the ship at Piraeus tomorrow.”

  “Very true, so I will not begin with Mary. I can question her, as well as Julian, Roger, and Hero, on the cruise.”

  “Hero?”

  “She is outside the area of suspects, I admit, but she may be able to fill in some details. Besides, she was present when Mary told those lies at Olympia. However, perhaps I ought to begin with you yourself, and then pass on to Henry, Edmund, and Simonides.”

  “My dear Beatrice, why not leave matters as they are? What good can come of all this questioning? None of our party can tell you anything more.”

  “I dislike untidiness, and to leave Mrs. Cowie’s disappearance unsolved would be very untidy, don’t you think?”

  Dick sighed.

  “You never did appear to take things very seriously,” he said.

  “I took them seriously enough, the last time you and I were both in Greece, to make certain that you were not allowed to take the blame for a murder which you had not (and could not have) committed. Have you forgotten the strange death of the young man Armstrong?”

  “Oh, that! But it was all so long ago, and Armstrong, who was a brute and a bully, deserved everything he got. I have always thought that. He cumbered the ground and the world is better without him.”

  “You have not forgotten that it was Megan Hopkinson who brought about his demise?”

  “You never managed to prove that. Besides, from what I’ve learnt since, even his close relatives were glad to know that he was dead.”

  “That is beside the point. Tell me, Mr. Dick, after your ghastly experiences on that early tour, when, if Rudri Hopkinson was not insane, he was certainly not in a balanced frame of mind, why did you decide to plan this tour in honour of his memory? He really was not worthy of it, you know.”

  “I think I wanted to see Megan again. When the whole thing had blown over—and, after all, I was as much to blame for Armstrong’s death as she was . . .”

  “You purchased the ibex horns from which the lethal weapon, the bow, was fashioned, yes.”

  “And I found the piece of Mycenean gold which Armstrong filched from me. That was the thing, in the end, which caused all the trouble. Morally, I was guilty of his death.”

  “And you attempted suicide. And Rudri attempted to foist a photograph of Iaccus on to an unsuspecting public . . .”

  “And Armstrong tried to blackmail him on the strength of it. Yes, it was a disgraceful business, all of it. I often think that nobody but Megan came out of it with any degree of credit, and yet you label her a murderess.”

  “And you did not marry her.”

  “And neither did you make public the fact that she shot and killed Armstrong.”

  “It was a justifiable action, as you indicate. I do not feel that the death of Chloe Cowie was justifiable, whoever caused it, and for whatever reason. By the way, I understood you to say, just now, that you made this journey because you wanted to see Megan again, yet although you knew she was living on Leukas (for you have been in constant touch with her, you allege) you did not choose to go with Mr. Owen and his party to visit her on the island. Why was that?”

  “I don’t know, Beatrice. The suggestion that they should go to Leukas was made so suddenly that I was caught in two minds and my courage failed me at the crucial point, I suppose.”

  “I did not think it was made so suddenly. You knew that Mrs. Cowie was determined to go to Sappho’s Leap. You knew that she, in her arrogance, equated herself with that poet of the Golden Age.”

  “You’ll be telling me next that I followed her there, and killed her, hoping that she would be mistaken for Megan. It would make a good story,” said Dick, with a gentle smile.

  “I might believe it if I could work out when you would have had the opportunity to leave the rest of us,” retorted Dame Beatrice, giving him a very sharp glance. “Another thing: those voices you claim to have heard in the museum here and on the Acropolis and again on Delos; were they subjective, or was it one of the boys or Julian Suffolk playing tricks on you, do you think?”

  “I’m not sure that you are justified in taking your present tone. In any case, we have discussed all this before.” Dick’s nervous manner had left him. The suggestion that he might have killed Chloe Cowie appeared to give him pleasure.

  “I know we have discussed it before, and I wish I could come to a settled conclusion concerning it,” said Dame Beatrice. “You see, it could be that a ventriloquist lured Chloe Cowie to her death. She was foolishly obsessed with this idea that Sappho had been re-incarnated in her, and one of those boys, intending her no harm, might have played upon her imagination with fatal, if not tragic, results.”

  “You mean she was lured to those dangerous cliffs—she who confessed to having no head for heights—and there met with a fatal accident?”

  “I am more inclined to think a fatal push. At present, conjecture as to the manner in which her death was brought about is useless. We need more evidence, and I think it is doubtful whether any more evidence will be forthcoming.”

  “Then why do we not agree that it must have been accidental death, and leave it at that?”

  “The official verdict must stand, I suppose, but surely not a single one of us should rest or be able to compose our minds until we have found out the truth?”

  “I cannot see that we can ever be sure that murder has been committed, any more than we can ever be sure whether it is Chloe or Megan who lies in that grave out on Leukas. And why did you drag up that dreadful affair of thirty years ago? What bearing can Armstrong’s death . . .”

  “His murder. It was no ordinary death.”

  “Very well, his murder. What bearing can it have on what has happened now?”

  “Probably none. But does it not appear to you more than strange that both these so-called
pilgrimages have ended in violent death? Could it be more than coincidence?”

  “If you are asking me whether I’m superstitious, well, of course I am, but on this second pilgrimage the circumstances, all of them, have been so utterly different that there could not be any connection.”

  “You have no objection, I take it, to my questioning Simonides here in Athens, and Hero when she and I are on board ship?”

  “You are a law unto yourself, of course. In any case, as they cannot possibly be implicated, either by accident or design, so far as I am concerned you may ask them anything you wish.”

  “Yes,” Dame Beatrice agreed, “they are the only members of the party who would not appear to be implicated, but I should not wish to leave them out of the reckoning because, in their very innocence, they might provide a pointer to the guilty party, and, after all, Chloe Cowie was their mother.”

  “If there is a guilty party. But I should have hoped that Henry Owen and I could also be regarded as guiltless.”

  “Mr. Owen went with the party to Leukas and admits to a quarrel. And I have already explained about you.”

  “Yes,” said Dick, “you’ve already explained about me.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Clio, the Muse of History

  “All those things that happened astonished the goodman of the house and the residue that were present, insomuch they could not tell what to do, or with what sacrifice to appease the anger of the gods.”

  “And what do you suppose would happen,” Dame Beatrice enquired, striking another note entirely, “if we began making enquiries about a valuable diamond ring on the finger of a woman who was under suspicion of subversive practices and of plotting to overthrow the government?”

  “I don’t know what would happen, but I suppose we could take it for granted that, if the ring was on the dead woman’s finger, then the body was certainly Chloe’s.” Dick’s voice indicated his relief at the turn the conversation had taken.

  “That is if the fishermen, or whoever picked up the body, had not taken the ring before they reported the fatality. No, I am afraid that clue is lost to us for ever. Besides, I am in no doubt—I have never been in any doubt—about the identity of the body. Chloe Cowie would not have left the island without Mary, and without a word to the others, simply because she had broken off her engagement and was quarrelling with Mr. Owen about the return of the ring.”