The Tomb of Zeus

by Barbara Cleverly

  “Ten minutes ago,” Letty supplied softly.

  “William and I were just back from the coast when we heard Letty calling out. We dashed up here but—but—there was nothing we could do. She's been dead a while, I'd say, but the doctor will have a view, no doubt. Eleni's sending for him now. Awfully sorry, Pa. Just tell us what we can do. Anything.”

  “For a start you can get the police. Inspector Mariani—contact him. She didn't kill herself! Why would she? I don't believe it—nor should you!” Theodore looked around him desperately. “Where was she hanging? I take it she was hanging?” He fingered the rope around her neck. “Good lord! This is the cord from my old dressing gown. The one I keep on the back of her door.” He pointed to a dark brown monklike garment suspended from a hook, then turned his gaze back to her still features. One large hairy hand reached out to close her eyes and mouth, and he bent to kiss her brow.

  “She gave no hint…she didn't confide…” he started to say, and then looked wildly about him.

  With sinking hearts they watched as he caught sight of the envelope on the dressing table.

  “Ah! That may tell us more,” he said. With an aggrieved look at Phoebe's contorted face, he went to gather up the letter. Before he could tear it open he saw the name written on the front and looked at them, puzzled and affronted. “It's for you, George. Why the hell would she be writing to you before she died?” Grudgingly, he handed the envelope over to his son. “Only one way to find out, I suppose.”

  The tension was too much to bear. Letty tried again to sidle to the door, murmuring wild excuses. Gunning attempted to follow her.

  “Are you deaf? I told you to stay where you are! Both of you!” shouted Theodore. “We don't know what we're dealing with here, and I may need witnesses if a crime has been committed under my roof—which I am quite certain it has. You must understand that.”

  “I say, Theo, er, if we're being punctilious, perhaps you should confirm, before any tearing takes place, that this is Phoebe's hand-writing?” said Gunning.

  “I can. Unmistakably her neat girls'-school script. Let's ask George. What do you say, George?”

  George shrugged his shoulders in a helpless gesture. “Not sure I'm familiar enough with her writing to give a firm opinion.”

  His father glowered. “Come now, my boy, you've seen your name written often enough on her cheques. With her signature at the bottom. Why suddenly so coy?”

  “Hardly ‘coy’ Pa! Devastated…dislocated…wishing myself a thousand miles away. Wondering what sort of horror is waiting for us in this envelope. If you insist, I'll open it. Better do it carefully, though.”

  He took the knife Gunning silently offered him and slit the envelope along the top. He peered in. “There's no note in here,” he said, puzzled. “Just a…What is this, William?…A page torn from a book? It appears to be a sheet of ancient Greek…poetry? No…a play, would you say?” He handed the folded paper to Gunning and looked carefully again inside the envelope, finding nothing more.

  Exchanging a look with George, Gunning unfolded the sheet. As he silently read, Letty drank in every shiver of emotion that disturbed the familiar features, understood them, and prepared herself for further racking disclosures.

  “Well, man?” said Theodore impatiently. “Am I to be allowed to be privy to my wife's last thoughts? Or do you want me to summon the cook and the bottle-washer to take a look first?”

  “Sorry, Theo, sorry,” said Gunning and passed it over like a hot potato.

  Theodore read avidly, then, shaking his heavy head, thrust it back at Gunning.

  “I don't understand. What on earth are we meant to make of that?” He looked once again at Phoebe's body and, with a grunt of disgust, reached over and tucked the rope out of sight under the pillow. “Poor lass! Perhaps she had suffered some sort of a brain fever. Didn't know what she was doing? Where's that damned doctor?”

  He sighed and began to pace about the room. Finally: “Look, while we're waiting, why don't you identify that piece of nonsense for us, William? Can you translate? Looks like a play to me but my ancient Greek was never much good.” The admission clearly made him uncomfortable. Another reason for his dislike of the classically educated Gunning, perhaps, Letty thought.

  Gunning offered the text first to George. “Would you like…?”

  George shook his head, dismissive and distancing.

  “Very well, then,” said Gunning heavily. “Just tell me to stop if this looks like being disturbing. For anyone.

  “I recognise it. It's a passage from a play by Euripides.”

  “A play? Which play?”

  “Um…it looks like Hippolytus.”

  At the name, Letty's knees buckled with dread and she went to sit down on the twin of the tapestried chair, which still lay on the floor. If her suspicions were to prove correct, Gunning was about to embark on a feat of bull-dancing that would demand the fast footwork and suppleness of an acrobat in the arena of Minos.

  “Get on with it, man! Do I have to ask you again? What is it saying?”

  The bull had entered the arena, snorting.

  * * *

  “It's a section not far from the beginning of the play. We're still in the exposition phase, where Phaedra, Princess of Crete and now the second wife of Theseus of Athens, is telling the chorus why she's decided to kill herself. It goes something like this…will an approximate translation do? The gist of it? Very well. Phaedra says:

  “‘When love wounded me, I wondered how I could best endure it. My first thought was to stay quiet about this sickness and keep it hidden.

  “‘My second thought was this—I planned to overcome my madness through self-control and thus to bear it more easily.

  “‘My third course—since the first two were gaining me no victory over the Goddess of Love—was to decide on death.

  “‘This was the best plan—no one could deny that. I knew that the act and the sickness brought disgrace with them and besides, I was well aware that I am a woman—and must be an object of loathing to all men.

  “‘It is right that the most despicable of deaths should fall on the woman who shames her marriage-bed with a man who is not her husband.’”

  There was a silence interrupted only by the sudden cooing of a pair of doves in the courtyard. And the sound to Letty's ears was a mockery, a gloating comment, chilling and unbearable. These were Aphrodite's birds, her sacred symbols and messengers. Exclaiming with outrage, Letty strode towards the window.

  “Here, use this,” said Gunning guessing her intention and as she passed him he slipped into her hand a potsherd from his pocket. She located the lovebirds perching in the wisteria below and hurled her missile along with a muttered and very personal curse in case the Goddess of Love still thought she held sway on this island.

  Even before the squawks of indignation had died away, Theodore spoke: “Remind me, William,” he said in the tone of a Lord Advocate, questioning but totally chilling, “of the nature of the lady's problem. I refer, of course to the ancient Greek lady.”

  “Um…Phaedra, who was very much in love with her husband, King Theseus, suffered a sort of rush of blood to the brain and imagined herself in love with another man. All brought about by the jealous and vindictive behaviour of Aphrodite, who had thought herself slighted in some way. Probably one too few oxen sacrificed that week or the wrong colour…something of that kind. It didn't take much to bring the wrath of the gods down on your heads in those days…”

  “And Theseus was unaware of his wife's state of mind?”

  “Completely. He was miles away at the time. Consulting an oracle, I believe.”

  “One might question the efficacy of the oracle. And she carried out her threat?”

  “Yes. She hanged herself from a beam in her bridal chamber.”

  “Mmm…the remaining point of interest would seem to be, then, the identity of the man she was in love with,” said Theodore harshly, “the man she died for…the man whose image was before her e
yes when the noose tightened and cut off the light. Well?…Well?” he demanded again into Gunning's awkward silence.

  “The play bears his name.” Gunning was cornered but not ready to give up on his defensive skirmishing. “It was Hippolytus.”

  “Ah, yes. Hippolytus. And what more do you have to tell us about the eponymous hero, this fornicator?”

  “He was the son of the Amazon queen, the beautiful fair-haired Hippolyta. The young man was handsome, but he was utterly virtuous and had dedicated himself to the service of Artemis, the virgin Goddess of Hunting, who was, of course, his mother's favourite deity…”

  Theodore was not to be drawn aside into the thickets of mythology. “Impeccable parentage on one side—and the father of this paragon was…?” He was pressing Gunning with the quizzical tone of a schoolmaster shepherding an uncertain pupil along a predetermined path.

  Gunning sighed. He said resignedly, “Theseus, King of Athens. Hippolytus was the son of his first marriage.”

  Theodore turned slowly to stare at his son. “Ah. George? Or should I say—Hippolytus? What have you to say?”

  It was all a piece of nonsense, Mr. Russell!” Letty burst out. “A dreadful misunderstanding! In the play, I mean. Hippolytus wasn't guilty of anything! Horrid, horrid boy—impossible to like him—an unsympathetic prig of the worst kind, but a complete innocent! He declares that he was so uninterested in all things carnal he didn't even like to look at dirty pictures on vases—he had what he called a virgin soul. He never looked twice at Phaedra even though she was lusting after him…oh, I mean…That's how the tale goes…” she finished lamely, recollecting that further details of the murky saga of lust, blame, vengeance, and death could only make matters much worse.

  To her surprise, George went to his father and enveloped him in a hug. “Letty's right, Pa. It is all a story. A disgusting and dishonourable story! No one came out of it well. No one!” He held his father by the shoulders and looked him in the eye. “I've no idea why Phoebe should have left this envelope and addressed it to me. You have my word that there has never been any feeling between my stepmother and myself other than warm and proper regard. If there had been—I swear to you—I would have been the first one to die.”

  Seeing the purity of his profile and the tears starting down his cheeks, Letty believed him.

  More important, so did his father. Theodore clapped him on the back murmuring, “You've never lied to me, lad. And you're not lying now. But I swear I won't rest until I know the truth of all this.”

  Dr. Stoddart came panting in, bag in hand, distraught, in time to witness the scene of filial affection and consolation. But he barely noticed; his attention was all for the dead woman. He took a moment or two to pull himself together, then in a clipped professional tone he commented on his routine examination as it progressed. He shone a torch onto the dilated pupils and commented on the cyanosed state of the lips and tongue. He eased the noose away from her neck and examined the pattern of the bruises in the flesh. Guided by Letty, he checked the beam where she had been found hanging and looked carefully at the monk's robe on the hook behind the door. Finally, he announced that on initial examination the death appeared to be due to compression of the neck, apparently self-inflicted and achieved by hanging in the manner Miss Talbot had described. He would, however, wish to have the body conveyed to the city hospital where further examination might be carried out. He assured Theodore it was the usual routine. The police would have to be notified, of course, before removal. Had anyone thought to…?

  Theodore and George left the room to make arrangements, Harry Stoddart saying he would stay by the body. As Letty and Gunning reached the door, Stoddart called after them. “I say, Miss Talbot? Laetitia? Would you mind awfully waiting behind a moment or two? Women's matters…Could use a bit of help…” he finished limply.

  This was the last thing Letty wanted to do. She had been longing to creep away into some corner with William to talk about and mourn for Phoebe. Though she had known her for only a few hours, she had thought the young woman could become a lifelong friend. Her sudden loss was devastating. She saw her own desolation reflected in the downcast eyes of Dr. Stoddart, but there was something more there, surely: anger, perhaps?

  “I could do with a nurse,” Harry told her, “but I'm not going to summon Olivia. Those two were quite close, you know. Olivia's tough, but I fear this would be too much for her to bear. Can't be easy for you, I understand that—I oughtn't to burden you with this and I wouldn't ask if I didn't take you for a levelheaded young lady who had become fond of Phoebe. But, you see, there's things about this death I'm not happy with. I want you to look and see if you can see what I'm getting at.”

  Puzzled, Letty went to stand by the bed.

  “Help me turn her over, will you?” he asked. “She's as light as a bird. I can probably manage…There. Thank you. Now…” He selected a thermometer from his bag. “I'm going to check the body temperature. Impossible to take an anal temperature with the family standing around…You may look the other way if you're squeamish. Fine…Now, you say you handled the body when you found her—I want you to tell me in what state of stiffness her limbs were.” While Letty recounted her impressions Dr. Stoddart bent and prodded. She helped him to take off Phoebe's boots and peel down the silk stockings she'd worn to prevent chafing. The doctor checked the condition of her feet. “Slight discolouration— hypostasis setting in. Here—do you see? That bluish-red blotching around her ankles.”

  Letty looked and exclaimed. “I see it. And are those blisters on her feet?”

  “Yes, they look like blisters to me.”

  “Oh, poor Phoebe! She didn't complain…not once…and it must have been agonising walking round Knossos with me!” It was this small detail that caught Letty out and finally threatened to submerge her in a flood of emotion.

  “New boots, would you say?” The doctor smiled sadly. “How she loved her boots! She brought several pairs back from Paris. Not all, I'm afraid, entirely suitable for Crete.” And finally: “I'm going to remove the noose. Please watch me do it and you'll be able to bear witness for the inspector if he asks you.”

  Stoddart inspected the knot before he turned his attention to the neck. “Efficient,” he muttered. “A running knot. Did Phoebe know about knots? We must find out. Abrasions on the neck…such a fragile little neck…” He turned aside and for a moment Letty thought he was going to break down but he recovered himself and went on. “She died quickly…broken neck. People can linger, you know, caught up in a noose. Usually it's the lighter ones who have problems.” He cleared his throat. “In fact, I would have expected her, with such little body weight, to have strangled to death in the rope with all the unpleasantness that implies. Drawnout asphyxiation. But I'd say her neck broke almost at once.”

  Letty appreciated that he was offering what consolation he could and in terms she would understand, and was grateful for it.

  “You say the chair was overturned? Just as we see it now?”

  Letty nodded grimly, thinking she could see where his thoughts were leading.

  “I say, Laetitia, I wonder if you'd mind…” His request was so distasteful he could not voice it.

  “Of course I'd mind, but I will. For Phoebe,” said Letty, gritting her teeth.

  She took the noose, replaced the chair, and stood on it underneath the beam. “Let's remember that Phoebe is—was—a good three inches shorter than I am,” she warned and reached upwards demonstrating the length and position of the rope where it had been secured to the beam. “There. Do you see? I can attach the rope here…slip the noose over my neck—no, don't worry!—then…” She grasped the beam in both hands, kicking the chair out from under her feet before jumping back to the floor. “Well, there you are. That's exactly where I found it. She could have done it as easily as that.”

  “And the obvious solution,” said Stoddart doubtfully. “But tell me, Laetitia—you were with her for most of the morning—did she give any warning of this? W
as she depressed? Weepy?”

  “Not at all,” answered Letty. “She was cheerful, positive, full of life. Even what my aunt would describe as un peu surexcitée.” Letty struggled to crystallise her half-formed impressions of Phoebe's mood. “She was looking forward to something. Mind not quite on the present…as though she were going on holiday the next day.”

  “Mmm…I think I'd agree with that. You know, Laetitia, I'm not sure we have the full story,” said the doctor. “Come and look at this.”

  He pushed up the hem of Phoebe's divided skirt.

  “Didn't think it was quite the thing to draw attention to this, with her grieving family standing about. There's bruising. On each leg. Very faint. I think the marks didn't have long to develop— they would have ceased forming the moment her heart stopped beating—incurred preceding death, at any rate. I think it wasn't just luck that snapped her neck so quickly. I think she had help. Someone prepared her for death and then when she was hanging and the chair pushed away, the assistant pulled sharply on her legs. It's a well-known executioner's trick when the, er, the procedures are going too slowly. She was wearing her shiny boots so, to get an adequate grip, that second person had to reach higher around the thighs, you see. That could be a thumbprint there and another over the other side. One violent tug from below would be sufficient.”

  Letty looked around the room for the hundredth time. “Doctor, there's no sign of a struggle. Phoebe wouldn't have just let someone do that to her. She'd have fought back, hit out, bitten, wouldn't she?”

  Stoddart extended the dead woman's hands. “Take a look. The nails are unbroken. No sign of skin or flesh under them. No scratches. I'd say she didn't defend herself.”

  “She could have screamed, overturned the furniture—made a noise that alerted her husband. Theodore was having his siesta right next door—through there.” Letty pointed. “You can hear quite clearly what's going on in the next room—we all heard him yawning when he woke up. A scream would certainly have been quite audible. She'd have left some sign of attack by an intruder, surely?”