Come Away, Death

by Gladys Mitchell

  ‘And how do you like the thought of the excursion, dear child?’ said Mrs Bradley, when he laid the book aside as his mother went out of the room and he was left for a minute or two to entertain the guest.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Are you coming, Aunt Beatrice?’

  ‘I haven’t been invited.’

  ‘You will be. We’ve all been dragged in. The idea is ridiculous, but the actual walking should be good fun. Greece is easily the most uncomfortable of all the countries of Europe. No inns, many bugs, high mountains, no roads, a difficult language, uneatable food – I quite adore it.’

  ‘So do I, dear child. I once walked from the Vale of Tempe to Sparta.’

  ‘Did you? I say, that’s rather nice! Do tell me about it. What do you think of Delphi? And how did you get on with the dogs?’

  ‘I sat down, like Schliemann, and prayed to Olympian Zeus.’

  ‘That’s marvellous. Are you serious? But, yes,’ added the young man, replacing his pince-nez, ‘I can see you are.’

  They talked on, Mrs Bradley noting that Gelert seemed tired and under nervous strain. Their conversation was interrupted by the entrance of Marie Hopkinson.

  ‘Go and wash, dear, if you’re going to. Lunch is in five minutes,’ she said to her son. ‘Beatrice — By the way, Gelert,’ she added, ‘you might just see whether – oh well, never mind! Here they are.’

  The party which now invaded the house consisted of the two little boys Mrs Bradley had seen on the launch and one other, whom she recognized as her hostess’ younger son. Following them came two girls and a bald-headed man of about fifty. There were introductions – although Mrs Bradley had already met the Curries, father, daughter, and son, and little Stewart Paterson, on the ship. Explanations, exclamations, interjections, and conversation followed. This was continued during lunch, and Sir Rudri’s project was not mentioned.

  After lunch Sir Rudri carried off Alexander Currie, Gelert went off with his sister and Cathleen Currie, the little boys – their hats placed firmly upon their heads by Marie Hopkinson – went out in the broiling sunshine to explore the city under Ivor’s guidance, and the two women were left together.

  ‘I’m worried about Gelert,’ said his mother. ‘He’ll be in love with Cathleen Currie before he’s known her twenty-four hours. It is always the same. I quite dread his meeting any fresh girls. His heart has been broken six or seven times already in the twenty-one months we’ve been here. It’s really too unnerving. I’ve had to tell him that I won’t have any more of them in the house.’

  ‘Girls?’

  ‘No. Broken hearts. He’s such a nuisance with them. Mopes and moons, and finds fault with his meals, and absolutely refuses to go near the museum, and quarrels with Greeks – very insular of him, I think. And the only way I can possibly run this house, Beatrice, so that Christians can occasionally come and stay in it, is to keep him and Rudri fully occupied, and out of one another’s way. Of course, they can’t bear the sight of each other! Too terribly Freudian and Oedipus. You’ll understand all that. I don’t know why Rudri wants Gelert to go with him; and I’m sure I can’t understand why Gelert has consented to go. He’s supposed to be so busy.’

  ‘But if he is interested in archaeology, dear child —’

  ‘Yes, but this isn’t archaeology. It’s just sheer idiocy. If they were going to do a bit of honest digging, I shouldn’t worry so much. But it’s all this classical philandering that I find so tiresome and upsetting. Oh, and Beatrice, you will be careful of Rudri and Alexander Currie, won’t you? They always quarrel so bitterly. That’s the worst of having been friends for forty years. And that boy Armstrong. I don’t like him. He’s half-Greek and looks like Apollo or someone. Perfectly tiresome. Besides, I caught him ill-treating the cat. I expect he’ll interest you. I believe he’s sadistic. I don’t really think he has any morals at all. He has the most unpleasant table manners I think I ever saw.’

  2

  During the next few days Mrs Bradley had ample opportunity for becoming acquainted with the members of the expedition and of acquiring first-hand information from its promoter as to its object.

  ‘The worship of the gods of Greece,’ said Sir Rudri, vaguely, but with magnificence, waving his hand.

  ‘Rubbish!’ said Alexander Currie, his bald head sweating and shining in the heat, and his blue eyes bright and fierce.

  ‘Horribly unscientific,’ said Gelert.

  ‘A fearful rag, though,’ said Megan. She was in a way like her mother – large, but far more muscular and not nearly as pleasant and friendly. Cathleen Currie, aloof, secret, and beautiful, said nothing, and the little boys, Ivor, dark-haired and thin, Kenneth Currie, with his father’s bright blue eyes and beefy redness of complexion, and Stewart Paterson, serious-faced, red-haired, and heavily freckled, kicked one another, joyously wordless, but full of intelligent plans for making the most of their time.

  ‘Whipping-boys,’ said Marie Hopkinson to Mrs Bradley, under cover of an argument about the sixth city of Troy which had now broken out among her husband, her son Gelert, and Alexander Currie. ‘That’s what he wants them for. That’s what he told me at one o’clock this morning. Although why, I can’t see. I don’t believe in all this flogging. It just makes boys irresponsible. It covers such a multitude of sins that they end up by not caring what they do or how much annoyance it is!’

  Mrs Bradley, with black eyes as bright as a bird’s, absorbed this startling contribution to one of the questions of the day, and glanced from the whipping-boys to the virgins, and from them to her host, his friend, and his elder son. The argument had grown acrimonious except on the part of Gelert, who, pince-nez dangling, had merely assumed an expression of bored amusement which was driving his father frantic.

  ‘But what do we do at Eleusis?’ asked Cathleen Currie. Gelert suddenly hitched himself out of the sphere of the older men, looked at her with the air of brooding protection which his mother had been expecting since Cathleen came into the house, and, leaving his father and Alexander Currie in the middle of the sixth city, went over and sat beside her.

  ‘Oh heavens,’ said Marie Hopkinson, with great exasperation to Mrs Bradley. ‘It’s happened! I knew it would. He’s fallen in love again.’

  Gelert, who overheard her, shot at her a glance of mingled pleading and fury, but, ignoring this appeal to her finer feelings, she went on calmly:

  ‘And then there’s that poor boy Ronald Dick! Heaven knows why, but he’s madly in love with Megan. I only found that out yesterday, but I must say, Beatrice, I think it so unsuitable that they should both be going. He’s such a temperamental boy – most boys with spectacles are! – and dear Megan, although I say it, is entirely crude and heartless. And little Stewart Paterson’ – Mrs Bradley looked across at him – ‘I’ve realized, since he’s been here, that he’ll lead the others into mischief. He has twice the character of Ivor, and, of course, little Kenneth is like his father – entirely volatile and ridiculous.’

  Mrs Bradley nodded and sighed. She would be sorry, she reflected, to give up the comfort of this modern Athenian house and her hostess’ refreshing adjectives, for the dangers and discomforts of the tour.

  ‘It will be pleasant to have the boys with us,’ she remarked.

  ‘I’m glad you think so,’ said Ivor’s mother, without irony, but pensively. ‘And that Dmitri! I wouldn’t trust him an inch. All Greeks are pick-pockets and extremely lustful. But he will be invaluable for the language. Rudri and Gelert make themselves understood very well here in Athens, where the people, on the whole, are courteous and intelligent, but I shall never forget the day at Tiryns, when Rudri addressed a girl who was harvesting tobacco. My dear, she positively fled, and that with the shrillest cries! You might have thought that Rudri was a Mormon elder – although I believe the reports about them have always been exaggerated. But what can one expect in a country like this? I don’t wonder it has such a bad effect on Gelert. He’s a very impressionable boy. Dear Dish is going with the expedition
, by the way, just in case.’

  In case of what, Mrs Bradley did not discover. Sir Rudri, escaped from the toils of the Trojan argument, which had gone heavily against him, spoke to the little boys, and at that moment Kenneth came over to her and said:

  ‘I say, excuse me, but would you come with us to bathe? We’ve all got to bathe to-day. It’s to do with the doings, you know.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ Mrs Bradley remarked, recalling Sir Rudri’s instructions to mind. ‘We are to go for purification to the sea.’

  ‘You mustn’t rot about in the water. It’s like being christened, you know,’ said Ivor, going to Kenneth and leaning affectionately on his neck. To Marie Hopkinson’s relief, all three of the little boys had accepted the fact of Mrs Bradley’s presence on the pilgrimage as a matter of course.

  ‘She will be in my place,’ she had informed her son Ivor, who had replied:

  ‘O.K., big baby.’

  As soon as the bathing party – more correctly, the lustration party – augmented by Cathleen, Megan, and Gelert, had gone, another acrimonious argument broke out between Alexander Currie and his host.

  ‘The purification ought to take place at Eleusis, not here,’ said Alexander.

  ‘What gave you that ridiculous idea?’ said Sir Rudri.

  Marie Hopkinson sewed placidly, and then, as soon as she could get a word in, said:

  ‘Whatever does it matter? Where would you all like tea? I don’t really think it will be too hot in the portico.’

  This well-meant red-herring did nothing to deflect the flood of argument, quotation, counter-quotation, instance, and (last magnificent effort by Alexander Currie, whose face was so red and bright blue eye so fierce that Marie switched the electric fan to a faster rotation to cool him) appeals to common sense. Even when the young people and Mrs Bradley had returned to the house, the discussion was still at its height, and scarcely died down before the protagonists had tea.

  ‘Oh well, we can bathe again at Eleusis if the bathing’s good there,’ Megan observed, in the manner of her mother. Sir Rudri snorted; Alexander Currie ate sandwiches with savage intensity; the little boys swung their feet and stodged; Gelert held a sotto voce conversation with Cathleen; Megan and her mother talked with Mrs Bradley; the paint on the portico blistered in the sun.

  ‘It is not the little boys who need to be managed and kept in order,’ Mrs Bradley said later, to her hostess. ‘I think Rudri and Alexander ought to be searched for knives before the party sets out.’

  ‘They used to write horrid letters to each other in learned journals,’ Marie Hopkinson replied. ‘But even that outlet is denied them here in Athens. I can’t think why Rudri asked Alexander to come. They’ve annoyed each other since boyhood. I can’t think why they’re still friends.’

  ‘You think they are friends?’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘You don’t think that Sir Rudri has brought Alexander here to score off him in some way or another?’

  ‘He may have done. I don’t know. One comfort, the feud doesn’t seem to have been taken on by Ivor and Kenneth Currie. Sometimes I think that Ivor makes friends too easily. He has no discrimination. Gelert has discrimination, but it leads him astray.’

  3

  A day or two later, very early, Sir Rudri marshalled the company in the shadow of the house and addressed them. The party was at full strength, and included, besides the families of Hopkinson and Currie, Mrs Bradley, little Stewart Paterson, and a couple of young men whom Mrs Bradley identified as Mr Dick and Mr Armstrong. Ronald Dick was short, intelligent, nervous, and spectacled. Armstrong was tall, arrogantly handsome, straight-nosed, and golden-haired; but, in spite of his god-like good looks, his face gave an impression of brutality. He carried a camera and took no notice of Dick, although he had nodded offhandedly to Gelert when they met. At the left side of the party stood Dish, the English manservant, an ex-sailor, and Dmitri, the sleek-haired, half-smiling Greek interpreter.

  Mrs Bradley surveyed her fellow-adventurers with interest and amusement. The young people – Ronald Dick excepted – were obviously looking upon the sacred quest as an informal holiday; Cathleen and Megan, in fact – leaning against the pillars of the portico – were exchanging low-voiced views on the care of the complexion in Greece. A change had come over Cathleen, Mrs Bradley had noticed. From the dreary, lethargic person whose beauty had been her only recommendation, she had become, by turns, lively, jumpy, shy, laughter-loving, solitary, sociable, and nervous. Mrs Bradley suspected at first that Gelert had been responsible for this mercurial behaviour, but it was soon obvious that this was not the case.

  Of the three young men, only Dick, the archaeologist, small and pale, appeared to be listening to the leader of the expedition. Armstrong was fastening the strap of his smaller camera-case, and Gelert was seated cross-legged upon the ground on his shantung jacket, absorbed in a book. Dish stood to attention, for having been in the Navy, he was accustomed to unnecessary dissertations from his superiors. Dmitri, still smiling faintly – his habitual expression, it seemed – was rolling cigarettes which he placed with neat despatch in a tin box. Alexander Currie was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘Yesterday,’ concluded Sir Rudri, ‘we prepared ourselves by fasting until the evening. The day before that, we went for purification to the sea. Now we go to Eleusis along the Sacred Way, to penetrate the meaning of the Mysteries.… We are only waiting for the wagon,’ he added, with an incongruous lapse into the practical, and Mrs Bradley was startled to see, coming round the bend of the road, a quartette of magnificent oxen. The young men raised a cheer at their approach. The boys followed suit. The girls drew back. Dish stepped forward and saluted, for Sir Rudri, who had his back towards the road, had not seen the oxen coming.

  ‘Sir, the draught animals,’ said Dish.

  Sir Rudri turned round.

  ‘Ah, here we are,’ he said. ‘The wagon is at the Dipylon Gate then. Come. Women, pick up your caskets.’

  Feeling not a little foolish, except for Mrs Bradley, who was enjoying herself, and Dick, who apparently took the expedition seriously, the little procession moved off, the oxen and Dish in the van, followed by Sir Rudri and the politely smiling Dmitri, the three boys next, the girls and Mrs Bradley close behind them, and the young men bringing up the rear. Marie Hopkinson waved from the house. The little street turned into a larger street. From this they came out into the Place de la Constitution and turned into Hermes Street. Down it they were accompanied by a policeman and two soldiers, and some of the Athenian citizens, who, being early astir, were sufficiently at leisure, apparently, in spite of the hour at which business commences in the city, to follow the procession to the Dipylon.

  ‘I wish,’ said Sir Rudri, turning and speaking over his shoulder to his son, ‘that we could have prevailed upon some of them to undergo the purification rites and follow the wagon to Eleusis.’

  Gelert snorted. Armstrong hitched his camera up; Dick put on his sun-glasses over his spectacles. Traffic rushed by and motor-horns hooted continuously. The boys, taking turns with a catapult belonging to Ivor, potted the policeman and the soldiers. Gelert, quickening, cuffed his younger brother’s ear. Armstrong laughed. The soldiers looked round, and the policeman scowled. Mrs Bradley glanced about her with basilisk eyes which took in everything. She cared nothing for heat, flies, or dust, for she had the constitution of a lizard. Perceiving, however, that the catapult was going to be a nuisance, she twitched it from Ivor’s hand and put it into her casket. From the north-west side of the Acropolis they came to the Street of Tombs. Here the party halted. The wagon, drawn up at the right-hand side of the street, and bearing a wattled crate of pomegranates and poppy seeds, was made fast to the oxen, and the Hera-eyed creatures were prodded forward by Sir Rudri, who elected to walk at their head.

  ‘Women in the rear, bearing their caskets; men and boys grouped about the wagon,’ he said, in tones of dignified leadership. ‘To-morrow we bring the statue of Iacchus.’

  ‘The next day, surely,’ said Alexander Curr
ie, who had been waiting beside the wagon at the Dipylon Gate.

  ‘I meant the next day,’ snapped Sir Rudri, the Viking moustache appearing to stiffen at the ends.

  ‘That’s well,’ said Alexander Currie, soothingly. ‘I should be sorry to have everything miscarry because of an error in the very beginning. Detail was never your strong point, my dear fellow.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  ‘I want you to tell me whose houses you stayed in that time when you went to fetch Cerberus. Tell me whose, and then tell me all the ports, the bakeries, the brothels, the resting-places, the cross-roads, the wells, the roads, the cities, and the apartments and landladies where there are fewest bed-bugs.’

  1

  THE WALK WAS long and tiring. After the first few miles, along a dull and dusty road which led them westwards from the Dipylon gate with its slums, the party, becoming for the most part a little sullen because of the dust and flies, showed a tendency to straggle and loiter, and had to be whipped up by Sir Rudri, who seemed, like Mrs Bradley, impervious to dust and heat.

  Three and a half miles out from Athens the road began its ascent of the pass over Mount Skaramanga, and it seemed a long, steep climb. The heat became more intense, and there was general grumbling, from the bitter invective of Alexander Currie to the ‘Golly! It’s hot’ of the little boys, until at five miles out the road descended to Daphni and its convent.

  Here they halted and rested, and inspected the eleventh-century mosaics on the walls of the little church. Here Armstrong took the opportunity to remark upon the character of the last inmates of the convent. He was silenced by Gelert, who displayed a sudden fierceness which his appearance would not have led one to suspect he could summon up to deal with such a situation. The girls were regretful, and encouraged Armstrong to continue, but, meeting Gelert’s eye, the tall youth laughed somewhat awkwardly, got up, and strolled away.