“No,” said Dick, with a slight smile, “I suppose she would have remained with the party and made herself as unpleasant as she could to Henry. What did cause you to bring up that ancient story about Rudri’s expedition, Beatrice? You had some definite object in mind. I feel certain of that. You caused me the greatest uneasiness. What exactly was your idea?”
“Is it possible that you do not realise what it was?”
“Perhaps I don’t want to realise it. However, I suppose one issue must be faced. You mean that the person with most to gain by Chloe’s death, as matters seem to have turned out, was Megan Metoulides, don’t you? The fact that she is officially dead and buried releases her from police surveillance automatically.”
“As matters have turned out, yes. On the other hand, I have always found that people who bear a strong physical likeness to one another are the last to realise, or, at any rate, to acknowledge it. Twins, of course, are prepared, not only to do so, but to exploit the close resemblance, but it is unlikely that Megan knew how much like Chloe she was. After all, they had not met for nearly twenty years.”
“Hero and Simon are not much alike to look at,” said Dick, “and they are twins.”
“But they are far from being identical twins, either in looks or in temperament. Did you tell Megan which members of the party proposed to visit Leukas?”
“At the time, no, because it was all decided rather quickly, but when I told her, right at the beginning, that we were coming to Greece, I did give her some details as to how the party was constituted.”
“So she knew that Mrs. Cowie would be coming?”
“Oh, yes, but I did not mention that Chloe was the niece whom she had known as Chloe Bosfield.”
“Chloe is not so common a first name, is it? It could have awakened memories, perhaps.”
“But how would Megan have persuaded Chloe to accompany her to Sappho’s Leap? After all, they were not even staying in the same hotel. I can’t see why they should have met.”
“I am not suggesting anything more than that it was providential, from Megan’s point of view, that the body should have been mistaken for hers.”
“I can’t think the doctor who examined the body could have taken much trouble over the post-mortem, you know. The two women may have been superficially alike, but there was a difference of a considerable number of years in their ages. Shouldn’t a post-mortem have established the probable age of the woman?”
“I doubt whether there was a post-mortem in our sense of such a proceeding. Why should there be? The body was fished up out of the sea, identified to the satisfaction of the authorities, and duly buried. If Megan was marked down as a rebel or a traitress, it would seem the most natural thing to their minds that she should commit suicide rather than be apprehended and perhaps submitted to such ill-treatment and insults as have come to be regarded as axiomatic and normal in our sick European society. In any case, nobody on the island was likely to take much trouble over closely examining a body which had been in the water and battered on the rocks. Suicide was the obvious verdict, with murder by some so-called patriot an interesting and, to some minds, a laudable possibility.”
Dame Beatrice did not believe that Henry Owen would have anything more to tell her, but she tackled him when, except for Simon and Edmund (who, in the words of the latter, had decided to go “on the town”) the rest of the party had gone to the Acropolis for son et lumière. She found Henry in the lounge writing up his diary and seated herself to wait until he had finished.
“Well, that’s it,” he said, putting down his pen. “Not much to report. I wish I could come here again in the autumn or late summer. Pancratium maritimum, the Sand Lily, you know, and one of the Mandrakes, the microcarpa. I got the hausknechtii this time, as it flowers in Spring and so I was just in time for it. It is a handsomer thing than microcarpa, but one would wish for both.”
“Yours is a rewarding hobby.”
“Oh, yes, not sorry I came on this trip; not sorry at all, in spite of what’s happened. Dick was telling me about this Metoulides woman. Queer sort of story, and I’ll tell you something else that’s more than a bit odd. Before Chloe disappeared (or whatever it was—too late to wonder now, anyway) she lost some clothes.”
“Lost some clothes? Her luggage went astray, do you mean?”
“No, her bags were there all right, but she claimed that one of them had been rifled and a summer frock and a light, matching jacket had been taken. Of course she made a stink at the hotel, but nothing came of it.”
“When did she find out?”
“When we got to Leukas. I told her she couldn’t have packed the confounded garments. She swore she had, and one thing led to another, and then, of course, we had this basic argument about husbands and wives and parted brass rags.”
The clothes, of course, had been abstracted by Ronald Dick and sent to Leukas for a reason which seemed to him sufficient, Dame Beatrice concluded. She said:
“I wish you would tell me exactly what happened when you got to Leukas.”
“Nothing much. We landed, and the usual rabble surrounded us, offering accommodation, but Dick had booked the hotel for us by telephone, so we sorted out a couple of taxis and had ourselves taken to the Odysseus. Ghastly dump, but I suppose Dick didn’t know that when he booked it, and, anyway, I thought we’d only be there one night. I wouldn’t have stopped off on Leukas at all, if it hadn’t been for Chloe and her wretched Sappho’s Leap. Jolly well wish now I hadn’t, but too late to worry about that, I suppose. Well, the arrangement was that we should go back to Patras the next day, when she’d seen this perishing promontory, and get the steamer from there to Corfu but when she turned up missing we had to stay on. Couldn’t make out what had happened, and then there was all this hoo-ha about a woman’s body being fished up out of the sea. Naturally, until the natives identified it as this Mrs. Metoulides, I concluded that Chloe had done something foolish in the dusk, and tumbled over the cliff. As a matter of fact, I still think that’s what may have happened. She wouldn’t have left us flat and just gone off on her own. Well, she went to her room to unpack, and then there was this flap about missing clothes and then this Leap business. She claimed she’d had a message from Sappho. I tried to persuade her that she’d got a bee in her bonnet and was talking through her hat. I pointed out it was a long way from the hotel and that nobody wanted to go with her until the following morning. Told her we’d fit it in before our boat left to go back to Patras, but, of course, she wasn’t listening to me by then.”
“So she went alone to Sappho’s Leap, if that is where she did go?”
“Must have done. Should have thought she’d have had more sense. You know, I can’t really think there’s been a mistake. You see, I didn’t worry at the time because I thought she was simply sulking in her room and was having something sent up for her and Mary. Then, at the end of dinner—neither of ’em having turned up—I was told a fellow wanted to see me. It was the driver, full of his grievances. He’d been out, as arranged, with the lady, he said, and had waited half an hour for her. I still didn’t really believe that she’d been foolish enough to go to a place like Sappho’s Leap at that time in the evening, although I suppose, after what she’d said, it was the likeliest thing for her to have done.
“Anyway, the driver was babbling away in Greek, apparently to the effect that when there was no sign of the lady he concluded that she had come back earlier than expected and in somebody else’s taxi, and he wanted to see her and get his fare because they’d had a definite arrangement, and she hadn’t paid him for the outward journey either.”
“I see. What did you do then?”
“Didn’t know what the hell to do. Didn’t even know at that time whether Mary was with her. Sent for the manager and asked for his advice. He said, ‘Pay the driver and wait until the morning.’ There were a number of English people on Leukas, he told me. No doubt the lady had met friends and been invited for dinner and they would bring her back in due cours
e. I didn’t believe a word of it, but I thought she might be in spiteful mood after the row we’d had, and was deliberately giving cause for anxiety, so I decided to let it ride. It still never occurred to me that she’d stayed at Sappho’s Leap. I thought she was just playing up.”
“Yes. And the next thing you heard was that this body had been picked up out of the sea.”
“Oh, not then. Oh, no, we went back to Patras, as we’d arranged, thinking she’d be there, but, of course, she wasn’t, so back to Leukas—a cursed nuisance, but I didn’t see what else to do—and that’s when we heard this buzz about the body.”
“Did you ask to see it?”
“Yes, but they weren’t having any. Said they knew who it was, all right, but, since a member of our party had disappeared, we had better stay on a bit in case news came of her. They promised that the police would make some enquiries, and I suppose they did, because the next thing we were told was that a woman had been seen taking a caique, and the description fitted Chloe, particularly as the clothes she was wearing corresponded with a silk suit which Mary claimed was part of her aunt’s holiday wardrobe, and which, from the description, corresponded with the things she claimed had been stolen, so that seemed, at the time, to clinch the thing.”
“And the owner of the caique?”
“Heaven knows! We were told politely to stop wasting the time of the police, as our friend had obviously made her own plans. It’s all completely unsatisfactory, as you can see, but I don’t know what more we could have done.”
“I suppose Mrs. Cowie’s luggage was still at the hotel?”
“Oh, yes, and I concluded from that that she meant to come back, of course.”
“So Mary had re-joined you by the time the body was found. Didn’t you ask her where her aunt was?”
“I didn’t get the chance. She asked me, so, naturally, I had to say I didn’t know.”
“Did you say you spent a night at Patras before you crossed back again to Leukas to see whether Mrs. Cowie had turned up again?”
“Oh, yes. Wish I’d stayed on there in the first place and gone direct to Corfu, then none of this need have happened. It was all Chloe’s own fault, when you come to think of it.”
Dame Beatrice ignored this somewhat heartless view.
“I suppose you have been told that we met Mary at Olympia the day we were there,” she said.
“So that’s where she went! Did she say why she’d bunked off like that on her own?”
“Only that there had been a delay in getting a boat at Patras, so she thought she would fill in the time by going to Olympia, as it would be a pity to miss it.”
“But there wasn’t a delay in getting a boat! I had to haggle a bit, that’s all. You know how these Greeks love to bargain.”
“Then her remarks to me were misleading.”
“Damned lies, you mean. You know, Dame Beatrice, I don’t trust that girl an inch. I wouldn’t be surprised in the least if she engineered that dust-up between Chloe and myself. The girl’s a mischief-maker if ever I met one.”
“Is that how she strikes you?”
“And what’s more, I believe she’s a thief. We examined Chloe’s handbag, which she had left in the hotel safe when she went off in that headstrong, idiotic way. We hoped to find out (when she disappeared like that) whether she’d left any clue as to where she’d gone. Well, there was nothing in the bag in the way of money but a solitary pound note. All her other English money and all her Greek currency had gone, and so had her traveller’s cheques and her driving licence. Whether she’d brought her cheque-book with her of course I don’t know, but, if she had, it wasn’t there.”
“And what did you deduce at the time from all this? It did not immediately occur to you that Mary had stolen from the handbag before it had been locked up in the hotel safe?”
“I couldn’t make it out at all at first. I mean to say, if Chloe had decided to cut her stick and leave us, the first things she’d have thought of would be her handbag and her cash, and, I should have thought, at least a suitcase. The manager was unhelpful, and it was then I began to smell a rat and to wonder whether some of these Greeks had kidnapped her on her outing or something. I went to the local police after we got back to Leukas, not finding her at Patras, but they more or less shrugged their shoulders. You know what they’re like in this country. Anything goes, except politics. If they hadn’t been so positive that the woman they fished out of the rocks below Sappho’s Leap was this female spy, or whatever she was, I might have thought, even then, that it was Chloe, and that they’d murdered her for her cash and then found she hadn’t any money on her.”
“It does sound as though she went to Sappho’s Leap if she did not take her handbag.” (Henry’s story, Dame Beatrice felt, was rather misleading. He seemed unwilling to admit that he knew it was to Sappho’s Leap that Chloe must have gone).
“Oh, I do know that Mary had suggested it was safest to have both hands free in case there was any scrambling about to be done,” he said.
“Did you hear Mary say this to her?”
“Oh, yes, on the boat going over.”
“Mary, if I understood her correctly, claims that she had not been to Leukas when we met her at Olympia.”
“I still don’t understand how you came across her there. I didn’t know you proposed to go to Olympia.”
“Neither did I, until after we had parted from you at Delphi.”
“So Mary would have been surprised to see you.”
“Surprised and somewhat dismayed.”
“How did she get there?”
“By hired car from Patras, so she said.”
“And by hired boat from Leukas. I suppose she got the cash by rifling her aunt’s handbag. Knowing Chloe, I bet she sent the girl down to the hotel desk to get the bag locked away. Isn’t that the most likely thing, that Mary handed it in after she’d helped herself to the contents?”
Dame Beatrice thought it so likely that she did not reply. Instead she said,
“I am greatly concerned about it all. Tell me—I have a reason for asking this which I think you would appreciate if I told you what it was—did you have the ring inscribed?—the engagement ring you presented to Mrs. Cowie?—the ring she declined to return?”
“Mean, dishonest woman! Yes, I did. Mind you, I can understand why she refused to hand it over. It cost nearly three thousand quid.”
“And you think it was the intrinsic value of the ring, and not its sentimental attraction, which made her decide to keep it?”
“Well, what do you think?”
“That it was a valuable property.”
“The stinking part is,” said Henry, in a burst of ill-timed confidence, “that I’d looked on the thing as an investment. What I mean is that naturally one wouldn’t chuck three thousand smackers away on a thing like an engagement ring. Nobody could expect it. I thought that when the time came for Edmund to go to Cambridge, or whatever university would have him, I’d claim the ring back, get it decently copied so that none of our friends would know the difference, give Chloe the paste replica, and flog the original for a better price than I paid for it.”
Dame Beatrice thought of some remarks which had been made to her by Chloe about jewels in general and, in particular, gems owned by people who had replicas made in order to keep up with the Joneses when they had sold the originals.
“And you had the ring inscribed?” she repeated.
“Extra and unwarranted expense, I know, but Chloe wanted some words on the inside of it, so, guided by her, I had young Suffolk write out something for me in Greek and as I’d bought the ring in Athens it was easy enough to have the words done in Greek characters. The jeweller, in fact, thought well of the idea, and got his engraver to make a very neat, nice job of it.”
“And the words?—I stress that I have a reason for asking.”
“The words? Can’t remember exactly. I know they were a quotation of some kind. The meaning, more or less, was The girdle of Aphrod
ite or some such rubbish. Aphrodite! I ask you! Really, the vanity of some middle-aged women is beyond measure!”
“And you paid nearly three thousand pounds for the ring?”
“As an investment, mind you, and now all that lovely money is in the pants’ pocket of some Greek fisherman or rozzer, unless it’s at the bottom of the sea.”
“Mrs. Cowie would have wished her share in the investment to go ultimately to Mary, no doubt,” said Dame Beatrice. Henry stared at her and then laughed.
“Trust the businesslike Chloe to tell other people she put up two-thirds of the money!” he said. “Well, perhaps Mary pinched the ring at the same time as she pinched the cash. I suppose Chloe, when you come to think of it, wouldn’t have been sporting the ring immediately we’d had the father and mother of a row.”
As Dame Beatrice concluded that not until the small hours were the two young men likely to return to the hotel, she decided that it would serve no purpose to wait up for them, especially as they would be, if not slightly inebriated, certainly unwilling to indulge in serious conversation. The ship on which she was to travel had reached Piraeus, but was not scheduled to leave port until four in the afternoon, so there would be plenty of time to talk to the two boys before she had to embark. She decided to tackle Edmund first, and to put off questioning Simonides until later, so that, if there were not time enough to speak to them both, the more important witness would have been interviewed.
The difficulty was to detach Edmund from his brother and Julian and she was obliged to do it in the end by asking him outright for a word in private. This put him on his guard, but, fortunately, not in the way she feared.
“Look here,” he said, in his stolid, ox-like way, “I’ve got a man’s feelings, you know, but I swear I haven’t got the restaurant girl into any trouble.”
Lament for Leto (Mrs. Bradley) Page 19