Wentworth gave the note a brief perusal and put it away in his pocket. “No, indeed! Felicitations in order, it would seem! I say, would you excuse me for a moment, your ladyship? This requires an instant response. London can never seem to work out the time difference … they think the whole world runs on Greenwich time … Ah! There’s young Clarendon arriving. The well-set-up chap with his arm in a sling—javelin thrower, don’t you know. Have you met him? Come and be introduced. Vastly entertaining young fellow. I’ll leave you in his capable hands-um, hand,” he finished vaguely, and beckoned the young man over to him. Introductions made, with a neat bow he headed for the door. The butler eased his passage through the crowds of guests, flushed and chattering in many languages.
“Bloody hell, Grant!” spluttered the First Secretary when they were out of the reception room and he was sure they were unobserved. “Was that necessary? And—Newmarket? That is where they run in October, isn’t it? Do I have that right? Better check the results of one of those damned races.” They hurried through deserted corridors, leaving the sounds of jollity and the string band behind them. “The lady’s mad keen on horse racing … It occurred to me that might be just about the only reason she’d be ready to swallow for my pushing off in a hurry. But she’ll check up on me, that’s for certain! She’s much more on the ball than that husband of hers. The on dit is that she’s the one who’s really in charge in Vassilis Sophia Avenue. Attractive woman, too. Curse you, Grant, for interrupting!”
“I’ll get straight on to it, sir. And if verisimilitude is a priority, why don’t I order up a few copies of the Racing Times for you to be discovered studying?… I put the gentleman to wait in your office. People swarming all over the building … it seemed the safest thing. He could hardly appear at the soirée-he’s not dressed yet. Still in his acting gear.” Grant forged ahead, throwing muttered phrases over his shoulder. “Cool as a cucumber on the surface … writhing with tension underneath. Not sure whether he’s come to report success or failure. Hard to tell with him—not the usual style of Invisible Fixer. A touch histrionic, sure you’d agree?”
“A touch touched, if you’re really asking me,” grunted Wentworth. “Nutty as a fruitcake. Gives me the creeps! Can’t imagine who thought it was a good idea to ship him out to us. Do you suppose every embassy is allocated one like him? Or have we been specially selected? Who’ve we annoyed? Let’s hope he’s clocked in to confess to failure, then we’ll have every excuse to post him back home on the next boat or shunt him up the line to … Salonika! Or, better yet, Mid-Balkans … What’s that dreadful place where I came down with the dysentery in ’25? Pishtush? No—Slopsi Blob. That’s it! We’ll send him up to Slopsi Blob … Over Mount Zlatibor … By mule,” he finished with evil emphasis. “That’ll make our friend a little more respectful.” Wentworth checked himself, suddenly aware that he was chattering nervously.
“But he does possess the essential qualities,” Grant conceded.
“Well, I suppose you’d be likely to recognise them, Grant. Past master at skulduggery that you are.”
Grant replied with the slanting grimace that, with him, signalled displeasure: “He is so quietly effective, so alarmingly professional, isn’t he? It’s rather like owning a not fully tamed predatory creature—a hawk, or a very superior ferret—”
Wentworth shivered. “Polecat, I’d say—polecat,” he muttered. “Sleek, vicious, and uncontrollable.”
Reaching the door of his office, he hesitated. He cleared his throat and fumbled with his white tie, wasting time. Reluctant to walk into his own territory and face the temporary occupant of his bolt-hole, he turned to Grant. “You’re going to sit in on this?” he asked, trying for a neutral tone. He was reassured to see the majordomo’s swift nod and his automatic gesture as he checked the pistol he kept below the well-padded shoulder of his uniform jacket.
“Wouldn’t miss one of his performances for the world,” said Grant with a smile. “As good as a three-act drama at the Old Vic.”
Wentworth made a bold entrance, taking in the robed figure lounging in one of the leather armchairs. One leg was casually crossed over the other; a tragic theatre mask dangled insouciantly from one finger of his left hand. The other hand was holding a glass of whisky to the light. A staged appearance. Did he fancy himself sitting in the lamplight for a portrait by John Singer Sargent, perhaps? Yes, Sargent would have been able to capture the arrogant tilt of the head, the gleam of the narrowed eyes which seemed never quite to focus on the person who was talking to him. It occurred to Wentworth that, if asked, he couldn’t have sworn to the colour of those eyes. Blue? Grey? Brown? He’d never managed to look into them for long enough to know. All he could be certain of was: cold. The French had a word for chaps like this. In fact they had several: poseur, crâneur, il se croit un peu … The First Secretary often wondered what creature lurked behind the flawless façade.
He waited pointedly and for rather a long time until his visitor rose to his feet before saying cheerfully: “Oh, do sit down, old man. I say, may I get you a drink? Oh, I see … you’ve helped yourself. Islay to your taste, is it? And you’ve had the sense to select the twenty-year? Good. Good. Now, Grant will be sitting in on this, of course.”
Grant took up a stance by the door with an air of calm menace, an attitude unconsciously revealing his years of service with a British regiment.
“Always nice to know The Branch is with us,” continued the visitor with a sarcastic nod in his direction. “So—we’re both masquerading this evening, Grant? If I may be permitted an observation, as one third-rate thespian to another? You really ought to work on your deference if you’re going to go about the place butling. Not sure casting have quite got it right …” He tilted his head, affecting to observe critically. “Some might judge the craggy Highland countenance out of place in the douce getup of an Embassy butler … Like coming upon Ben Nevis in the middle of Hertfordshire … And do get Costume to attend to your jacket—that bulge is too big to be taken for a corkscrew.”
Grant acknowledged the advice with a tilt of the head and looked thoughtfully down at the right leg of his trousers where the comforting handle of his preferred weapon nestled in the top of his sock. His dagger. Three seconds was all it would take. He allowed himself a second’s fantasy and smiled.
“We weren’t expecting you to report back quite so soon, were we, old chap? Surely we weren’t looking for news before the opening night?” Wentworth brayed loudly, sensitive to the dangerous animosity between these two. “I say, I trust this is urgent enough to justify breaking into my evening? The French Ambassadress was just about to show me her scars …” he finished on a lighter note. Into the surprised silence he enlarged: “Acquired fighting off a gang of local apaches with her brolly, she tells me …”
“Utter balls! It’s a birthmark. We’ve all seen it—the whole corps diplomatique has been accorded a viewing. All those of us under the age of fifty, that is” was the laconic remark. “The lady is predatory. Be warned, Wentworth—this is her way of sorting out the sheep from the goats—a distinction not always immediately obvious amongst diplomatic staff. All kinds and conditions of men … those who show an interest in surveying the Promised Land more closely go down on her list as exploitable; the others: blackmailable. It’s crude but effective. You’ve had a lucky escape. Something else to thank me for.”
“Ah, yes. Your news?” Wentworth snapped back, goaded into a show of haughty efficiency. “What have you to report?”
“A death. An assassination.”
The visitor allowed the words to make an impression, enjoying the look of astonishment and concern on his listeners, and added: “I come hotfoot from the theatre of Dionysus—or the ‘crime scene,’ as we must now call it, since it’s presently in the hands of the Athens C.I.D. A Graeco-British contingent of the boys in blue are, as we speak, turning over every loose stone looking for clues. That well-oiled double act: Theotakis and Montacute, playing with their fingerprint kits. Doing a lot of
agreeing. Can’t tell you what a happy time they’re having, sleuthing about!”
“Already? But why? Isn’t this a little premature? How could this have happened? And—the police? Who on earth was so stupid as to send for them? Do they normally turn up for accidental death … the death from natural causes we look for? Surely not?” Wentworth was aghast.
“Aren’t you taking all this a little lightly, my lad?” Grant’s first contribution to the conversation was delivered with a mildness that went little way to disguising the steel beneath it.
There was an uneasy pause before the reply came. Information was obviously being sifted, censored perhaps. Prepared for presentation to the real authority in the room. Then: “Rather unfortunate … sure you’d be the first to agree, Grant … these things can happen despite the most careful planning—”
“Get to it!”
“Montacute was right there on the spot as anticipated. But so also was an inconveniently nosey member of the public. William Gunning. You know—Andrew Merriman’s protégé. Some sort of archaeologist or architect … dancing attendance on Lady Merriman and the Talbot girl. He’s no fool and ex-military, I’d say, judging by his bearing. Likely to know a bayonet wound when he sees one. He took one look at the body and sounded the alarm. Can’t say I blame him—it was evident to all that someone had been done to death—and by a professional hand.”
“Bayonet?” Grant could contain his anger no longer. “What a fiasco! This was never intended! Whatever have you done, laddie? You’re telling me you’ve despatched someone, without authority, in a flamboyantly murderous way in full view of a man of the cloth? An English vicar?”
“And no doubt our young friend had the editor of the London Times standing by, pen at the ready,” said Wentworth, a warning hand going out to pat the bristling Scotsman on the tightening muscle of his upper right arm. Grant’s slow-boiling temper terrified Freddy even more than Geoffrey Melton’s snakelike menace. Really, he deserved better, Freddy thought. Why had he been sent these two when he’d put in for a couple of perfectly nice Magdalene men? Hey ho! Perhaps if he arranged to lock them up together in a room, neither would emerge?
The First Secretary’s next question was more in the nature of an accusation, and he just managed not to cast a triumphant glance sideways at Grant. “What you’re telling us is that you’ve made a confounded mess of all this! God knows what the Greek military are going to have to say about it! You’ve queered their pitch—do you know that? I don’t like to think what that appalling old man-eater Konstantinou will have to say to me. And it will be me they call in after breakfast to stand to attention on the carpet and suffer a mauling. Not you. Not Grant. They are supremely unaware of the presence of either of you two buggers on Greek soil. I’m the face of the British Government. The face that gets slapped. Oh, couldn’t you have—? We were assured you were adept at flushing out and disposing of … at arranging accidents.”
“Certainly I could have…. It was all in hand. You approved my plans for a swift theatrical exit. It would have worked out well,” the visitor said thoughtfully. “At the given time. Nothing easier. Tonight, in the backstage mêlée, I could have done away with half the chorus line and got away with it.” The words slowed, a note of puzzlement creeping in. “It’s just that someone jumped the gun. I didn’t kill him.”
“Are we glad to hear that?” Wentworth’s icy tone indicated that he had had quite enough of the games. “Are you requiring us to congratulate you on a non-assassination? Perhaps if you were finally to disclose the identity of the unfortunate victim we could decide whether to pat you on the back or kick you up the arse …?”
A rare smile of devastating charm lit Geoffrey Melton’s austere features briefly as he further confided: “Most odd! I wasn’t the killer and the victim wasn’t the victim—at least not the one any of us has in mind.”
Chapter 14
The moment her doctor left, Maud Merriman changed into the long black evening dress and single row of pearls she judged suitable for her new status in life. She returned to the drawing room and seated herself in a brocade armchair, alone and brooding in the lamplight. Waiting.
She looked at the clock on the mantelpiece when she heard her cousin stamping up the stairs to the second floor, and began to speak the moment Thetis came into the room. “Of course one could never say as much with that bloodhound of a policeman sniffing about, but Andrew would have been very much a target for violence, you know.” It was the voice of a woman eager to express the thoughts that had clearly been occupying her for the past hour. “He risked his life every time he walked unaccompanied down an alley or into the countryside. Salonika, you know … He would never have risked going back north to that hated place. But perhaps Salonika, at the last, came to him?”
Thetis stared at her, uncomprehending. “What on earth are you talking about? A target for violence? Andrew? What’s that supposed to mean?” Her voice was slurred by fatigue. And then, enlivened by a touch of suspicion: “Didn’t I hear you say you thought he’d died of a heart attack …”
“Oh, come now! I couldn’t help noticing the wound in his chest. It seemed to me more dignified not to point it out. Draw a veil over the unpleasantness—that would always be my way. Let the policeman do his ghastly job … the poking and prodding business. Everyone saw it; no one mentioned it. I expect you were aware of it, too? You did spend quite some time peering into the bathtub, Thetis … And you of all people might be expected to recognise a bayonet wound when you clapped eyes on one.”
Her cousin stared straight ahead and ignored her.
Maud pressed on, sweetening her tone: “Yes, poor thing, you must have realised at once. How perfectly dreadful for you! William Gunning certainly was aware—he took it upon himself in his kindly sacerdotal way to explain the situation to me as he drove me home. I smiled and nodded and took his words in the spirit in which they were offered. But I’m not quite the silly old woman Gunning—and others—take me for.”
“Maud, you’ve had the most awful shock. Will you let me call Dr. Peebles and ask him to prescribe a sedative?”
“He’s already seen me. About an hour ago. You’re very late.” The older woman’s voice took on its familiar martyred tone. “I’ve had time to make a few telephone calls, send off a few messages … The caterer had to be stood down, of course-that was a priority. I’ve started another list which you may care to help me work through when you’re feeling a little sharper.” She paused, running an eye over her uncommunicative cousin. “But, Thetis, my dear, you don’t look wonderful yourself … In fact, you look done in. You’re barely listening to me. I hope you didn’t allow yourself to become too embroiled with the detective branch? And I trust that they behaved themselves? I can understand that, as you were the only one of the cast actually armed with a sword at the moment critique, they were bound to show a particular interest, but if they have been overzealous, believe me, I shall take it up personally with the Minister. And you’re still in your stage clothes? They might at least have allowed you the opportunity to change.”
“Maud, I must say, you rush to judgement—as usual. That Inspector What’s-his-name—”
“Montacute. You did meet him here at dinner soon after you arrived. He was at the other end of the table.”
“Ah, yes. I didn’t take much notice, I’m afraid. I heard he was a policeman and switched off.”
“Montacute. It’s an ancient name—Norman, you know. Are we to assume—the Shropshire Montacutes? Or the Northumberland branch?”
“God Almighty, Maud!” Her outburst made Maud flinch. “Does it matter at a time like this?” Thetis could no longer hide her exasperation. “Norman Montacute, whoever he is, seemed to know his trade and, indeed, he appears quite the gentleman. I’d already decided I liked him as an actor and I even liked him when he finally unmasked himself and revealed the policeman tonight. They are, as you know, no favourites of mine! Several of us were quite impressed with the way he conducted himself. But, in th
e end, having taken the roll call, the police couldn’t get rid of us fast enough. They said something about contaminating the crime scene as little as possible,” murmured Thetis. “We all had to make our way home as best we could and wearing whatever we were standing up in.”
“You came through the streets in that bloodstained robe? And your stage jewellery? An open invitation to robbers!” Maud was aghast. “And with your sword stuck in your belt, like Boadicea? You might at least have left that behind! I’m only surprised they didn’t seize it in evidence.” Her shoulders quivered delicately. “No—don’t sit down yet … all that red paint on you … you’ll ruin the new covers. And I see you couldn’t be bothered to wait in the hall for the boy to dust down your boots …” And, sighing: “Why don’t you pour yourself a gin and tonic and take it up to your bath with you before supper?”
“I’d rather have a cup of tea, Maud. And I think I’ll give supper a miss if you don’t mind. I’ll confess I’ve had a drink—or two—already. I found myself caught up with a crowd who were heading off for the Grande Bretagne for a quick one to stiffen the sinews.”
Maud tutted her disapproval. “Drinking in mixed company, dressed as you are? And the management tolerated it?”
“There was a fancy dress party passing through the cocktail bar … we blended in,” said Thetis wearily. “My companions were chaps from the British School up the hill. They may have been a bit tiddly but at least they delivered me to my own front doorstep safe in wind and limb. Don’t fuss, Maud. I’ve got a headache. Haven’t got one of your aspirins handy, have you?”
She sank down with a mutinous face onto the sofa, raising a cloud of dust.
Maud got up and tugged at a bell pull.
Making an effort to gather her thoughts, Thetis frowned and asked: “But what were you implying about Andrew when I came in? That he was a target? Whose target? Everyone loved Andrew.”
A Darker God Page 13
