“You know, I really am not an Eoka agent in disguise,” Nigel said, seriously and kindly.
Primrose stared at him with a stony expression. Then a sly look came over her face.
“Oh, that!” she said contemptuously. “Do you think I really believe such rot?”
“You did at first, didn’t you?”
“All that spy stuff is just compensatory fantasy-building. I soon saw through it.”
“Let’s hope it’s nothing worse.”
Primrose looked sly and secretive again. Nigel took a shot in the dark.
“And now you’ve got better fish to fry?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Curiosity,” said Nigel, “can be an admirable thing. It can also be dangerous. It killed the cat.”
“What cat?”
Nigel gave it up. The fat child just stood there, gazing at him through her thick spectacles, answering him in her flat, pedantic voice, like a dictaphone playing back a conversation. It seemed impossible to make any human contact with her.
Later, Nigel was sorry that he had not persevered.
VI
A little before midday, the party went down the mountain to look at the cave where St. John, in exile, is believed to have written the Book of Revelation. The cave was very dark; and not till their eyes were accustomed to the darkness did they perceive that it had been made into a church. The low ceiling, the uneven floor, the gleam of an ieon, the voices subdued to whispers—one felt at the centre of a mystery here.
The Bishop of Solway gave a short address, read a passage from the Book of Revelation, his deep voice rumbling through the gloom like a river rolling boulders, then asked them to join with him in a prayer. He had barely begun the prayer when a woman’s voice broke out into a wild, muttering gabble, which sounded unnaturally loud in the hollow place.
“Take me out, Mel! I can’t stand it! The dark, it’s so dark. Make him stop! Let me out—it’s like being buried alive!”
There was a shocked hush; then a scuffling sound as Mrs Blaydon took her sister out of the cave. The Bishop, who had paused, began his prayer again: the strong voice, the noble words came like a purification: the amen they all uttered was very far from perfunctory.
When they came out of the cave-church, Nigel asked the Bishop to walk down to the port with him.
“I’m worried about Miss Ambrose,” he said as they started off.
“Should you not leave her case to Dr Plunket?” the Bishop replied, a little formidably; then smiled. “Or to the Church?”
“I think she’s in need of both. But there are other aspects.” Nigel hesitated. Then, drawing a certain document from his wallet, he handed it to the Bishop. “This is confidential, of course.”
“What’s this? . . . Oh, from the Assistant Commissioner C. . . . Well, I’d never have thought you moved in that world. But, my dear fellow, surely Miss Ambrose is not a criminal?”
“Not to my knowledge. But I’m afraid of worse unpleasantness breaking out on this cruise, unless—Look here, sir, I’d be very grateful if you would tell me what you know about Miss Ambrose and her sister, when they were children. You said, at dinner the other night, it was a sad story.”
The Bishop of Solway gave Nigel a piercing scrutiny from beneath his bushy eyebrows. What he saw seemed to satisfy him.
“Very well, if you think it might help. E.K. Ambrose and I were Fellows of St. Teresa’s for some years, before I took up parochial work. He was married—didn’t live in College; but I saw quite a lot of his family. Melissa must have been—oh, about seven when I first met her: Ianthe was a year younger. The mother died giving birth to Ianthe.”
“Ah.”
“Yes. It explains a good deal. E.K. could never prevent himself feeling resentment against Ianthe—and, I’m afraid, showing it. Mind you, he tried to be fair, but there was a coldness in his attitude towards her: she was a sensitive child, and she must have noticed the efforts he made to be fair. I’m sure she felt shut out.”
“Whereas Melissa was the reigning favourite?”
“Yes. She was an artful puss—could twist old E.K. round her little finger.”
“And much more attractive to look at, I suppose.”
“Oh, I don’t know. They were both pretty children. Very much alike then, in fact. But Melissa had those coaxing ways. And Ianthe had killed the mother. So there it was.”
“Ianthe tried to level the balance by appealing to the scholar in her father,” suggested Nigel.
“You’re very perceptive. Yes. It was rather pathetic, you know. She was always much cleverer than her sister. She learnt to read quicker, and so on. She used to come and lay her little intellectual triumphs at E.K’s feet. And he couldn’t really accept them—he had to pretend interest and enthusiasm, and she’d see through it. She tried so many ways of getting at his heart.”
“Stealing, no doubt?”
“Yes, I’m afraid that was one of them. The phase didn’t last long. Clowning was another. She was an extraordinarily good mimic, and she used to imitate dons who came to the house, to make E.K. laugh. That did win him, but only while the performance lasted. Yes, she was a bright little thing; but strained, anxious, even in those days: trying too hard you know—permanent frown on her forehead. I say, I’m babbling on rather, aren’t I?”
“Not a bit. Did she try becoming a boy?”
“What? Oh, I see what you mean. Yes, that came later, I seem to remember. She started playing games a lot. Riding. Tennis. Caddying for her father. That sort of thing. And of course she’d begun Latin and Greek very young. But it didn’t work. It’s sad, when a child wants love as desperately as that, and——”
“How about Melissa? Did she and Ianthe hit it off?”
The Bishop hesitated. “It’s so long ago. I don’t remember them quarrelling. But I doubt if they were ever close. They hadn’t much in common, after all, And everything was so easy for Melissa—except, of course, the intellectual life: and she had no need of that.”
“So she got thoroughly spoilt?”
“Well, it isn’t good for anyone to have things coming too easily. I’m all for a few frustrations in childhood. And later. Doesn’t do to feel yourself the centre of the universe. Which is what she was, for E.K. Apart from his studies, I mean—they took first place.”
The two fell silent for a minute, negotiating a rough section of the track. Then Nigel said meditatively,
“And now Melissa is a rich widow, and Ianthe a failed schoolmistress. Nothing succeeds like success.”
From under the beetling grey eyebrows, the Bishop gave him another keen look.
“I don’t understand what you expect to do with all this past history.”
“Ah, if it were past history—” Nigel broke off. “I don’t even know, myself. I’m inquisitive about people, and I tend to get involved with them,” he went on slowly. “I’ve spent a lot of my life dabbling in criminology. I’ve helped to hang quite a few murderers. But I’ve never yet prevented a crime.”
“But what crime do you imagine you might prevent here?”
“If I knew that—. I just feel there’s too much explosive material lying about on the Menelaos.”
“Can I do anything?” asked the Bishop in his forthright way.
“You could pray,” said Nigel seriously. “In particular, for Ianthe Ambrose.”
VII
The bathing place was already crowded when Nigel and Clare, after a leisurely lunch under trees outside a little restaurant, arrived there. Some of the passengers were still exploring Patmos; a few had returned to the ship: but most of them, having collected their bathing clothes and picnic lunches from the quay, had made their way to the beach some time ago.
Nigel had a theory that, since the digestive processes do not start work till forty minutes after a meal, it was perfectly in order to bathe during this period. The water was deliciously warm, with so much salt in it that one was buoyed up and cushioned on the silky surface. He swam out f
ifty yards, then turning over lay on the sea, his eyes closed against the glare of the sun, his mind a blank. Nikki drove past him at a powerful crawl, his black head sleek as a seal’s. The shouts and laughter of the bathers seemed to come, muted, through a haze of distance. Like a voice heard in a trance, a line from Lucrece irrationally repeated itself in Nigel’s brain—’ Tis double death to drown in ken of shore. Vaguely disturbed, he swam back to dry land.
Where he got out, Ianthe Ambrose was sitting, huddled up with her back against a rock.
“Not going in?” he asked pleasantly.
“I can’t swim.”
“It’s quite shallow for a bit, you know.”
“And I’m afraid of the sea-urchins.”
Nikki had warned the passengers, before their first bathe at Delos, to watch out for these unpleasant creatures, which leave their spines broken off in one’s flesh, like splinters of glass, if one treads on them.
“Oh, I don’t think there’d be any here,” said Nigel. “You only get them on rocks, and you can see them through the water—black patches on white rocks.”
Miss Ambrose shuddered, though she did not seem to have paid much attention. Her eyes, screwed up against the sunlight, were fixed on some point beyond him. Nigel followed her seaward gaze, and saw Melissa Blaydon, in her distinctive saffron-yellow bathing helmet, throwing a beach ball to Peter Trubody. He threw it back. The ball went wide, and Melissa swam a dozen swift effortless strokes to retrieve it.
“Your sister swims well.”
“She has all the social graces,” Ianthe tartly replied.
“Is that her aqua-lung?” asked Nigel, pointing to an object lying near at hand.
“No. I believe it belongs to that boy—what’s his name?”
“Peter Trubody?”
“Yes.”
Ianthe Ambrose seemed as difficult to make contact with as Primrose Chalmers, who sat a few paces away with her parents, reading a book, her stomach bulging in a tight blue swimming-suit. Primrose, he thought, will grow up to be another Ianthe, if she isn’t careful. There was something physically repugnant to him, alike in the precocious child and the unbalanced woman: their pasty faces, pebbly eyes, ungainly bodies. Why must Ianthe sit sweating in a woollen jumper and tweed skirt, martyring herself and making this everlasting tacit demand on her sister?
Ashamed of his physical reaction, Nigel tried again.
“The Bishop spoke well at the monastery, didn’t he?”
“Oh, he knows his stuff,” Ianthe ungraciously replied. Then her fingers began to writhe on her lap. “I’m told I made an exhibition of myself in that cave afterwards.”
“It’s a pretty claustrophobic place,” said Nigel gently.
“Huh! But nobody else started kicking and screaming there. No. It had to be me,” she added dismally.
“Well, you’ve been ill, you can’t expect to——”
“I know what you’re really thinking,” she burst out. “You’re thinking that I exploit my illness. Just a hysterical, exacting female. Everybody thinks so. Melissa. Everybody.”
“Oh, no, no.” Nigel was dismayed. The woman was as prickly as a sea-urchin. She disregarded his protest.
“But they’ll feel differently when I’m gone—” the woman was muttering to herself now oblivious of Nigel— “that’ll teach them a lesson, all these womanisers and bores and rich harlots——”
“So you’re thinking of suicide?” Nigel’s voice was so frigidly dispassionate that it had the effect of a douche of cold water on Ianthe. She stopped ranting and stared at him in amazement.
“Well! I must say!”
Giving her no pause to recover, talking in the same emotionless tone, Nigel said,
“How do you propose to do it?”
“Do be quiet! People can hear you.”
“No one’s listening. Are you going to kill yourself, or provoke someone else into doing it for you?”
“I—this is fantastic. You must be mad.”
“There’s young Peter. And Jeremy Street. Both itching for your blood. Have you made any other enemies recently? Or are you your own worst enemy?”
What effect this shock-treatment might have had on Ianthe, he was unable to judge; for Melissa and Peter Trubody came walking out of the sea towards them. Peter was gazing at Melissa like a dog at its mistress. When he noticed Ianthe, he gave a curt nod, picked up his aqua-lung and moved away.
“Hello, hello!” said Melissa gaily. “Well, I’ve done my bit by the Youth Club. Now I can relax.”
She was wearing only a bikini. She could afford to. Her brown skin was flawless, unwrinkled still. The broad hips and the opulent slope of the haunches contrasted with her rather narrow shoulders, but such was her grace of movement, as she walked up the beach, that she gave the impression of perfect symmetry.
“Do put this on, Mel,” said Ianthe, throwing her sister a beach robe. “That get-up may be all very well on the Riviera, but the Greeks don’t like it.”
“How do you know what the Greeks don’t like?” Melissa good-humouredly replied. Ianthe turned her head sharply away. She thinks Melissa is referring to Nikki, Nigel reflected: oh dear, oh dear.
Melissa had taken her lipstick and mirror out of a wicker basket, rectangular-shaped like an attaché case, and was touching up her full lips. Everything was so normal. Nigel could hardly believe that his recent conversation with Ianthe had taken place.
“Have you been using my scissors, darling?” asked Melissa, rummaging in the basket.
“What? To open my veins with? Of course not.”
“Don’t be silly. Oh, here they are.” She turned to Nigel, holding up a bunch she had taken from the basket. “Have some grapes?” The robe falling open, her body seemed to be preening itself at him: her mouth quivered at the corners: her eyes held him so that it felt like a strenuous physical effort to drag his own away. For a few seconds this pose of shameless, almost aggressive, invitation was sustained; then Melissa withdrew, as it were, behind her own frontiers.
She just can’t help it, said Nigel to himself as he walked away presently, eating the last few grapes: maybe she’s hardly conscious of what she’s doing. Lilith, the temptress. A dangerous, primeval force.
Clare was sitting in a group of people—Faith Trubody and her father, Jeremy Street, and the ubiquitous Bentinck-Jones—higher up the beach. Faith was not so prepossessing in bathing costume, which revealed the thinness of her arms and legs, the bony knobs of the collarbones, and the rounded shoulders. But her freckled face, as she chattered to Jeremy, had the charm of ingenuousness and animation.
“Have you seen Peter?” ask d Mr Trubody, as Nigel joined the party.
“He’s gone off somewhere with his aqua-lung.”
“He said he wanted to try it off those rocks: there’s deep water,” Faith told them.
“I do hope he’ll watch out for the sea-urchins. He’s such a reckless boy.”
“Oh, don’t be absurd, Daddy!” Faith turned again towards Street, whose bronzed, oiled body was stretched full length beside her. “Are you never going in, Jeremy?”
“I prefer Apollo to Poseidon,” said the distinguished lecturer lightly.
“The water’s absolutely dreamy. And I bet you’re a super swimmer.”
Jeremy Street’s smile was almost a smirk. He seemed able to lap up any amount of this schoolgirlish flattery. Nigel suspected that Street’s preference for Apollo might be due to his deficiency as a swimmer, and his vanity would not allow him to betray even this in public.
“Well, I’m going in again,” announced Bentinck-Jones. “You coming, Miss Trubody?”
“No. Not yet.”
Ivor was an absurd spectacle, scampering down to the water on his short legs. But, once in the sea, he showed himself extremely proficient.
“Silly little man,” said Faith pettishly. “Why does he hang around all the time?”
“He’s an emotional parasite.” Jeremy Street’s tone, like a thin, immature claret, set Nigel�
��s teeth on edge. “No life of his own, presumably. So he has to attach himself to others. Hence all this spurious vitality.”
“What does the fellow do for a living?” Mr Trubody asked.
“I gathered from him, on the train to Venice—he attached himself to me for some reason—that he had some sort of export business. He’s not tried to sell me anything yet, however—except, of course, himself.”
“Or to sell you back anything?” murmured Nigel.
Jeremy’s eyes were concealed by sun-glasses. “Sell me back? I don’t follow you. But the procedures of the business world are all Greek to me—except that I know Greek.”
“Ah. Christopher Fry,” Mr Trubody put in. “We business-men are not all Philistines, you know, Street.”
“No indeed,” returned Jeremy, with a negligent, graceful wave of the hand. “I find that the most enlightened patronage of the arts comes from big industrial concerns nowadays. But there is plenty of room for extension.” Street’s voice itself had a note of patronage which Nigel found insufferable.
They were still discussing the subject when Faith cried out, “What’s the matter, Peter?”
The boy was walking towards them along the beach, his face dead white and grim.
“Just somebody tried to drown me,” he said, throwing the aqua-lung at his father’s feet.
“Drown you? What do you mean?” Faith exclaimed.
“I did a deep dive, and found the aqua-lung wasn’t working. Look. See the hole in the tube here?”
“It must have got damaged——”
“Damaged my foot! I know for a fact it was all right when I used it an hour ago. Somebody’s bored a hole in it. Damn near suffocated me before I got to the surface again.”
“May I see it?” asked Nigel.
“Here you are. And I know who did it, what’s more. When I went in with Mrs Blaydon, I left it——”
“Just a minute, Peter,” interrupted Nigel, with such authority in his voice that the boy stopped short. “I’d like a word with you.”
He took Peter aside to an empty part of the beach.
“Before you go and start another row with Miss Ambrose, remember that she is in precarious health, mentally, and also that you’ve no proof—the aqua-lung was lying about for some time where anyone could get at it.”
The Widow's Cruise Page 6
