Etruscan Chimera

by Lyn Hamilton

  I looked down into the basement but could see nothing. "Halloo," I called down, but all I could hear was my own voice sounding rather tinny in the space. With absolute dread, I grabbed my pocket flashlight and aimed its weak beam down into the darkness of the tomb. Godard lay sprawled, his body contorted in an awkward position, with his useless legs partly under him, his eyes still open, mouth contorted in a hideous grimace of fear or perhaps rage, as blood seeped from a wound at the back of his head.

  FIVE

  VOLTERRA

  "GODARD IS DEAD," I TOLD LAKE.

  "Dead!" he exclaimed. "This wasn't supposed to happen."

  "No," I said. That was a ridiculous thing for him to say, but still, it was a shock.

  "You didn't give him any money did you, before he passed on?"

  "No."

  "Well, that's something, anyway. At least I won't lose that. Hold on for a minute, will you?" He put his hand over the receiver, and I could hear muffled voices, but none of the conversation.

  "Sorry," he said, coming back on the line. "I was attending to some other business. That Etruscan hydria you spoke of: I don't suppose you could just go back and get it? I don't mean steal it or anything. But you could leave a check for, say, five thousand dollars, payable to the fellow, and it would look as if we'd bought it."

  "Mr. Lake!" I said. "The man has died in a dreadful accident! And anyway, the hydria was gone."

  "Gone, did you say?"

  "Yes."

  There was another pause and again the sound of muffled voices.

  "Okay then," he said, coming back on the line. "We're going to have to regroup here. I've got less than two weeks now. Where are you?"

  "My hotel room in Vichy. I've been talking to the police. I think they'll let me leave soon."

  "Good. Have you got a car?"

  "Yes."

  "All right then. As soon as they let you get on your way, head south. I'll meet you at my villa in northern Tuscany."

  "Wouldn't it be faster to drive back to Paris and fly to Milan or Rome?"

  "You'll take the rest of the day getting the car back to Paris, and you'd have to rent a car in Milan or Rome, anyway. Why don't you just get in your car and drive."

  "Okay," I said.

  "What happened to him, by the way?" Lake said, rather late, in my opinion.

  "He fell into his basement. He was in a wheelchair. .. ."

  "I didn't know that," Lake said.

  "No. He had rigged up a method for getting down into the basement, lowering his wheelchair down and then himself. I guess that was what he was trying to do when he fell."

  "What did he need to go into the basement for. Wine, or something?"

  "He was painting his tomb."

  "Oh," Lake said after a pause. "So he ended up dead in it, did he?"

  "I'm afraid so."

  "Unfortunate timing," he said.

  I decided right then I didn't like Lake, not one bit. He was insensitive, didn't know a thing about antiquities, and was all round, a jerk. But by now I had spent rather a lot of the expense money: Boucher's twenty-five hundred, the airfare, the lovely hotel in Vichy, and the even lovelier one in Paris, the car rental, well it was shrinking rapidly, and the only way to recoup was to find something, anything, for Lake. If I told anyone, most particularly Clive, what had happened, they'd think I was an idiot. There seemed nothing for it but to carry on.

  "I'll drive as far as I can today, then come the rest of the way tomorrow."

  "Good," he said. "I'll see you there. I'll hand you over to my assistant now, to make the arrangements."

  I drove as far as Nice that day, staying at a little inn just north of the city that Lake's assistant, an anonymous woman, had recommended. There would be a room reserved there for me, she'd assured me, which was just as well, because it was about ten at night when I pulled into the parking area. It appeared I was the last to arrive, because I had to sandwich my car into a very tight spot between a red Lamborghini with Italian plates and a bright yellow umbrella tossed in the back window, and a dark green Passat with a scratch on the back fender and a broken taillight. For a minute I debated whether or not to park out on the street, thinking that I might be accused of scratching the Passat or worse yet, putting even the smallest of nicks in the Lamborghini, but I decided I was just being paranoid after a particularly bad day. I could tell by the parking lot that this was going to be another of those expensive places Lake favored. There wasn't, with the exception of the Passat and my rented Opel, and perhaps the silver Renault a little farther along, a car there you could buy for under eighty thousand.

  And in fact, the hotel was really lovely but also very expensive, as anything Lake had anything to do with seemed to be. It occurred to me that while I had enjoyed staying in rather nicer than usual hotels when I first came into Lake's employ, I now just resented the expense. I disliked it even more when, as I crossed the lobby, I heard my name being called out, and once again saw Dottie and Kyle. It shouldn't have been a surprise, given the Renault in the parking lot, but I was surprised, nonetheless, and not particularly happily. I liked Dottie, but I was in no mood for socializing.

  "I can't believe the way we keep running into each other, Lara," she said. "What a nice surprise. Won't you join us for a drink?"

  "I don't think so, Dottie. But thanks. I'm really tired, and—"

  "I'll bet you are," she said. "That's rather a long drive, isn't it? Have you had dinner? No? Well, you must eat something. The food here is fabulous. The dining room's closed, but we can order you something in the bar."

  I was too tired to argue and allowed myself to be led to a chair in the bar.

  "Did you get the horse?" she said.

  "No," I said.

  "I didn't get the furniture, either," she said. "That's why we came down here, to do some more shopping. Did he just refuse to sell it to you?"

  "I didn't get a chance to ask him," I said. "He was dead when I got there."

  Dottie was so startled, she knocked over a glass of water, sending ice cubes across the table. None of us said anything as a waiter rushed over to repair the damage. "What happened?" she said when we were left to ourselves again. "He was perfectly all right when I saw him. Quite chatty and friendly, in fact."

  "He fell into the basement."

  "My goodness," she said. "Oh dear," she added, frowning. "How would that happen?"

  "There was a trapdoor arrangement under the carpet in his study. He had a system for getting down, but I guess it didn't work."

  "Oh dear," she said again. "You didn't find him, did you?"

  "I'm afraid so," I said.

  "You poor thing," she said. "No wonder you look so pale. I'm so sorry. Waiter, a single malt scotch for my friend." She paused for a moment. "You know what he said to me yesterday when I asked if he'd consider selling me the dining room furniture? He said he wouldn't because he had no more need of it. What do you make of that?"

  "I don't know, Dottie," I said. I just didn't want to talk about this, and it seemed it was the only thing Dottie did. She was so entranced by the subject she wasn't touching the food in front of her.

  "And you know what else? He said he was going to someplace ... V, something or other."

  "Velzna," I said.

  "That's it. What do you think that is?"

  "I have no idea," I said.

  "I'll bet it's someplace like Valhalla," she said. "He was hinting he was going to commit suicide, and I didn't even notice. I feel just terrible."

  "He just fell, Dorothea," Kyle said, reaching over and patting her knee. "He couldn't walk. You shouldn't be worrying like this." These were the first words I'd heard him utter, other than hello, and much to my surprise, the man made a lot of sense.

  "I expect Kyle's right," I said. "We should just try to forget it."

  "I suppose," she said. "Are you planning to stay here for a couple of days? It would be a good idea, after what you've been through."

  "I don't think so," I said. "I think
I'll head for Italy. Tuscany."

  "Tuscany!" she said. "That sounds nice. Maybe we'll go there, too."

  Kyle shrugged.

  "Where in Tuscany are you going?"

  "Volterra," I said. I didn't really want to tell her, but she was so persistent. "To start, anyway."

  "Volterra," she said. "I don't know it. Is it nice? Would you recommend it?"

  "I haven't been there before," I said, "so I'm not sure. I just thought I'd go and see if I could find a nice place to stay and take a bit of a break, just like you."

  "Volterra," she said. "Maybe we'll head for Tuscany, too."

  The next morning, I was on my way early, having persuaded the inn to give me a decent breakfast and pack me a lunch. The bellhop placed my luggage in the trunk and a box lunch and a couple of bottles of water in the backseat, and then I headed down the highway for the border between France and Italy. It was a decidedly dreary day, with rain off and on, making the drive difficult and tiring. Shortly after I got under way, the water bottles started rolling around in a most irritating way, and the smell of the lunch was making me slightly nauseated, so I pulled over at a rest stop. I had a coffee, then opened the trunk to put the water and lunch box in.

  The trunk, which until that moment I'd assumed contained nothing more than my suitcase and a spare tire, now held a cardboard box. I thought that I must have opened the wrong car, somehow, or worse still, driven away with somebody else's in Nice, but after a moment of some disorientation, I realized the key fit and it was clearly mine. Had I left the trunk unlocked, and the hotel made a mistake and given me someone else's belongings? I pulled open the box to find something wrapped in a hideous bubblegum pink blanket, which I removed, looking for clues as to the owner. I tugged on the edge of the blanket, and the Micali chimera hydria rolled out.

  My heart almost stopped. I stood in the rain, staring at that thing for the longest time, until a family returned to the car next to mine, and I closed the trunk quickly and got into the car.

  After the family pulled away, I got out again and opened the trunk, hoping rather irrationally that in the interim the hydria had disappeared. It hadn't. I wrapped it up carefully, got back in the car once again, and sat thinking about my current circumstances. In a nutshell, I was approaching the border with an antiquity for which I had no papers. I could call the police from the gas station, but what would I say? That I'd found an Etruscan hydria in my trunk but had no idea how it got there? I could take the hydria back to Vichy and try to stick it back in the glass case in the chateau, but, even in the unlikely event I could get back in the chateau, that option would take many hours of driving, and Lake was expecting me in Tuscany that night. That some person or persons unknown had put this hydria in my car for a reason that could not have been positive did not occur to me at the time, which speaks to the state I was in.

  The only thing I could think to do was to keep on going, hope I wasn't caught with it, and get to Lake's place, where surely between the two of us, we could work something out.

  With the European Union, border crossings in Europe are rather more perfunctory than they used to be, with most people simply being waved through. Holders of foreign passports are treated somewhat more stringently and are occasionally pulled over and their vehicles searched, but relatively rarely. I thought the chances of making it through were reasonably good. I considered trying to hide the hydria under the floor of the trunk or the passenger seat, but if caught like that, I'd look guilty. It was too large to put in my suitcase, but I put my luggage back in the trunk, along with the lunch and the water to provide cover. Then, in a state of high anxiety, I started for the frontier.

  I always think when I have to clear customs and immigration anywhere, that the line I'm in is inevitably the slowest, with either the surliest or the most suspicious agent, and there was no doubt this was the case on this occasion. As my car inched forward, and several cars ahead of me were pulled over, I got more and more frightened. I thought of changing lanes but decided this might call attention to myself. I started making up stories about how the wretched thing had managed to get itself into my trunk. Would my name now be in police computers, given that I'd called for help when I found Godard's body? Worse yet, would they somehow know this hydria had belonged to Go-dard and think I'd stolen it or, heaven forbid, that I'd pushed him into the basement when he'd interrupted me during the robbery?

  My hands were shaking as I handed over my passport, and I suppose noticing this, the guard ordered me to pull over to one side. A rather severe-looking woman came out of the building and demanded I open the trunk. I pushed the button in the glove compartment, and then stood beside her, trying to look as if I hadn't a care in the world as she peered into the car. Miraculously, after a few seconds, and a couple of prods at my suitcase, and even a tug at the blanket, she slammed down the trunk lid and waved me on my way. Perhaps she thought anyone with sufficiently poor taste to have a blanket that color could not possibly recognize anything worth smuggling. A mile or two down the highway, I pulled over and threw up on the side of the road.

  I was still feeling absolutely ghastly by the time I reached Volterra, the town close to where Lake had his villa. Lake had told me to check into another inn, lovely, I'm sure, not that I was in any frame of mind to appreciate it, and, as usual, expensive. It had taken me all day and well into the evening to get there, but despite my fatigue, as soon as I got to the room, I unpacked the chimera hydria, removed the lampshade to give me more light, and had a good, close look.

  It was absolutely beautiful, even more so than I'd thought when I'd seen it in the gloom of Godard's chateau. The scene, Bellerophon killing the chimera, was painted with real elan, embellished with swirls around the neck and base. I loved the feel of it, the smooth surface, so perfectly burnished, the weight and the balance, things most of us don't get to enjoy, given our only opportunity to experience such antiquities is behind glass in a museum. The hydria was in perfect condition, without so much as a crack, let alone a repair, so good, in fact, that I wondered if it were a fake. I was disabused of this notion, however, after I placed a call to the shop.

  "Hi Lara," Clive said. "Enjoying your little holiday?"

  "It's lovely, Clive," I said. "Would you happen to have the Interpol CD handy?"

  "It's here somewhere," he said. "Why?"

  "There's something I want to check," I said, "so do me a favor and load it up, will you?"

  "Okay," he said a minute or two later. "What am I looking for?"

  "A hydria," I said. "Etruscan. Depicting Bellerophon and the chimera."

  "Who or what is a Bellerophon?" he said.

  "Hero on winged Pegasus who killed the chimera, which is . . ."

  "I know," he said. "That thing with way too many heads."

  It took several minutes of combing through the list of stolen antiquities before Clive said, "Give me a little more of a description of the hydria, Lara."

  I did. "I think it's here," he said. "That was a pretty detailed description you just gave me. It's supposed to be painted by some guy called Micali—actually I think Micali is the name of the person who identified him, not the painter him- or herself—or one of this guy Micali's followers. Done around 500 B.C. You wouldn't by any chance have this thing in your possession, would you?"

  "No, Clive," I said. "A vision of it came to me in a dream."

  "I can never tell when you're being facetious, Lara," he said. "But if you do have it, it's stolen, from a museum in the archaeological zone of Vulci, wherever that is."

  "Mmm," I said. This situation just kept getting worse.

  "If you do have it," he said, "you'd better call the French authorities."

  "Italian," I said.

  "I thought you were in Paris," he said.

  "I was," I replied. "Now I'm in Italy."

  "Well, wherever you are, you'd better turn it in. According to the UNESCO resolutions on the subject, if you acquired this chimera thing in good faith, you're entitled to compensatio
n for it. You did acquire it in good faith, did you not? You didn't say, steal it, or anything, did you?"

  "No, I did not steal it, Clive." I sighed. "Thanks so much for that vote of confidence."

  "Sorry," he said. "I just worry about you sometimes, Lara. Rob called, by the way. He says to tell you to stay out of trouble."

  Right. Leaving aside the fact that it was way too late for that, what would have been wrong with "Tell Lara I love her," or "Tell her I miss her terribly every minute she's away"?