Come Away, Death

by Gladys Mitchell

  ‘I think,’ said Marie Hopkinson, filled with so much misgiving that she felt she wanted to postpone an evil hour, ‘you’d better tell me about it after dinner. We’d better go down, if you’re coming. How long are you staying in Athens?’

  ‘It depends. A week perhaps. It depends upon Beatrice really. I must have her with me. Have you any idea of the date she intends to go home?’

  ‘She’s got a conference in Bucarest just after Christmas. She won’t go home before that.’

  ‘That’s good. I need her pretty badly.’ He put his arms about Marie Hopkinson, and, although he was a tall man, taller by three or four inches than his wife, it would have looked to an observer as though he was leaning his weight upon her, handing over the burden of his body as well as the burden of his mind.

  ‘Cheer up, Rudri, my poor darling. I dare say nothing is really as bad as you think it is, you know. How has Alexander behaved?’

  ‘I thought he might be difficult at first. But really he’s been pretty good, Mollie. He’s been better than I would have expected. I told you, though, didn’t I, that Alexander has poisoned his leg. A mosquito bite, he thinks. We’ve had to leave him in Corinth. And Cathleen Currie has sprung a husband on us. Did you notice him?’

  Marie Hopkinson had wondered who the quiet, dark, bow-legged, long-armed man could be.

  Dinner was a great success. The various high spots of the pilgrimage were discussed, mostly with laughter. In the middle of the meal Kenneth remembered the vipers. Mrs Bradley went out with him to feed them. The key of the box was returned to Sir Rudri afterwards, and they all went out to stroll in the streets of the city except for the little boys, who went to bed, and Sir Rudri, who was left at home in charge of them.

  Good-naturedly – for fear of the future had begun to give him a strange, pathetic patience with the present, whatever it held – he read them the first three chapters of a detective story which Mrs Bradley had lent him for the purpose, whilst the owner of the book, walking beside his wife towards the temple of Olympian Zeus, described the tour from an angle different from the one which had orientated the conversation at dinner.

  ‘But, my dear, he must be crazy!’ Marie Hopkinson exclaimed. ‘Whatever can we do? Do you really suppose that Armstrong has got these idiotic photographs? You see, it wouldn’t matter so much if poor Rudri hadn’t been shown up so very cruelly over that business of Alexander Currie and the Apollo. But, coming on top of that, those ridiculous photographs will ruin him! Why ever did he play into Armstrong’s hands like that! Oh, Beatrice, think of something! Can we get hold of the plates or negatives, or whatever the beastly things are? Oh, why on earth isn’t Dish an ex-burglar instead of an ex-sailor! It would be so much more useful.’

  ‘The thing is,’ said Mrs Bradley, ‘to persuade Rudri to have no truck with blackmail. Persuade him to defy the young man to publish the photographs. Then let him try to pass off the thing as a joke. It’s the only way out of the mess that I can see.’

  ‘A joke?’ said Marie Hopkinson, very thoughtfully. ‘Do you think it could be done? It’s a pity we don’t know exactly what the photographs are like. Besides, he couldn’t have photographed Iacchus. He was Iacchus, wasn’t he, didn’t you say? Rudri picked him because he was like a Greek god! He is, in more ways than one!’

  ‘As flies to wanton boys, we to the gods,’ said Mrs Bradley, nodding. ‘As for his mania, I really think fear has cured it. And Alexander Currie, after I had pointed out Rudri’s state of mind, has behaved remarkably well.’

  ‘He used to be a nice man. Rudri was very fond of him at one time. Do you really think that people would believe it was a joke, though, Beatrice? Wouldn’t they be certain to think the worst?’

  ‘What do you call the worst, dear child? Let me know.’

  ‘That the photographs weren’t taken merely to hoodwink Alexander Currie, but to hoodwink the scientific world.’

  Marie Hopkinson had never been a fool, Mrs Bradley sagely reflected.

  CHAPTER TEN

  ‘Then, when I tried to get the money out of him, he gave me a nasty look, and kept bellowing.’

  1

  THE NEXT MORNING Gelert was up as soon as it was light, and did not appear at the family breakfast-table. He walked to Hermes Street, and then turned off until he came to a shop which sold tobacco. At that time of day it was not open, neither was it broadcasting its collection of gramophone records, as it did, once it opened, for most of the remainder of the day. Gelert could, and did, curse the gramophone. It was because it had been rendering an excerpt from Don Giovanni one morning as he passed by, that he had stopped to listen. Listening, and casting eyes upon the daughter of the house, he had embroiled himself in a Don Giovanni adventure from which, it appeared, there was no escape, except by paying away money.

  He pushed open the unlocked door and entered the shop. Except for a smell of garlic which indicated a family at breakfast, the place bore little evidence of the presence of human beings. The garlic, however, was sufficient indication, and Gelert raised his voice and shouted for the proprietor.

  ‘Here I am, Aristides,’ he said. ‘How much was it we agreed on?’

  The Greek spread his hands and shrugged.

  ‘Did we say thirty pounds?’

  ‘Twenty. I won’t pay more.’

  ‘But my daughter is compromised! No true Greek will marry her. She is yours.’

  ‘The hell she is,’ said Gelert, with considerable annoyance. ‘Very well, I’ll marry her and desert her. I’m going back to England after Christmas.’

  ‘Too bad, too bad,’ said Aristides gently and sadly. ‘How much do you offer? Wait. Let me work that in drachmas. Ah yes. I will consider it. Twenty pounds. Give me the money, if you please, and I will count it.’

  ‘I can’t give it you now, you chump. I’ve got to cash my sister’s cheque.’

  ‘Oh, you have not the money?’

  ‘Not on me, no. And, in any case, you’ll have to sign a denial of the story that we stayed – were stranded that night. Here it is. I’m not taking chances. You sign along here, look, and I’ll bring you the money this evening, as soon as I’ve cashed the cheque.’

  ‘I do not wait. I do not sign anything,’ said Aristides simply and plainly, ‘until I see your twenty pounds on the counter before my enravished eyes.’

  ‘You needn’t think I’ll cheat you, you rat,’ said Gelert, his thin face flushing, and his knuckles white on his thin, hard, trembling hands.

  ‘Ah no, no. You would not cheat me. I shall see to that,’ said Aristides, smiling pleasantly. ‘Give me the money now. I know you have it. It is nonsense, this talk about a cheque. Why did you come, unless you have the money? I shall not believe you would have come.’

  Gelert put his left hand in his pocket.

  ‘And Mr Armstrong, my relative by marriage, he will support my case,’ Aristides calmly cautioned him. ‘You were better to give me the money and close my mouth.’

  ‘But I’ve no guarantee it would close your mouth! That’s the point. You don’t seem to grasp it.’

  ‘There is that,’ Aristides regretfully agreed, ‘but I ought not to have to wait for my money until to-night. I will not sign any papers. You must trust to my honour. You see?’

  The conversation had been carried on, slowly and constrainedly by Gelert and with good-tempered fluency by Aristides, in modern Greek. Their cat-like spittings and elegant lispings brought the daughter into the shop. She uttered a shrill squeal at the sight of Gelert, and, darting at him, smacked his face very hard. She was followed into the shop by a man whom Gelert did not know, but who turned out to be her husband. Gelert stroked an inflamed cheek tenderly. ‘You will be had up for your daughter’s behaviour to me, Aristides,’ he said indignantly. ‘I’m not going to put up with that. I shall go to the police and complain.’

  ‘The police!’ yelled the newcomer violently. ‘What do we care for the police. They know nothing, they see nothing, and what they do know and see they do not unde
rstand. We have not good police in Athens. We have not a good government, not good newspapers, not good anything in Athens.’

  ‘The government is all right,’ said Gelert, reasonably willing to change the subject. ‘It’s a better government than most of you Greeks deserve.’

  ‘You mock me,’ said the man. ‘It is like this.’ He seated himself. Aristides sat down too. He looked at Gelert in friendly fashion and called to his daughter to bring them something to drink. Then they began to argue, good temperedly at first, but then, in the case of the Greeks, more and more savagely. Gelert, amused, remained on the side of Aristides. Suddenly the son-in-law was seized with violent fury. He crouched like a cat and approached Gelert. ‘Do you make good your remarks? I do not use my knife on my friends, but you are different!’

  Gelert, stepping aside as the young Greek rushed at him knife in hand, hit him under the chin. The knife flew wide. Both dashed for it. Gelert was horribly frightened now at the turn the quarrel had taken. Getting first to the knife, he picked it up and drove at the other man’s breast. Aristides, crying out in horror, his daughter, screaming with terror, leapt to the wounded man’s assistance. Gelert turned and bolted, running up the street with loping strides, his head strained forward, his lean frame stretched in flight. He looked more like a greyhound than ever.

  ‘There’s blood on your shirt, dear child,’ said Mrs Bradley, meeting him as he came galloping into the house. He stopped short, touched the blood-splashes and then laughed shakily. His body was soaked in sweat. It streamed down his face. His palms were wet with it.

  ‘I was arguing about the government,’ he said. ‘One doesn’t argue – with Greeks – about the government.’

  Mrs Bradley gazed after him thoughtfully. It would take a good deal, next time, she decided, to break his heart. No more tobacconists’ daughters would manage it, at any rate.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  ‘I understand. Poor little devil! Now what can have been wrong with the omens when I started?’

  1

  DICK AND MEGAN climbed the Areopagus and looked over the cleft of the Eumenides down to the temple of Theseus. To their left, blue mountains rose behind brown ones, the sky was almost cloudless, and the air, although it was hot, was so clear that they felt energized, not enervated, by it. Dick, breathing deeply, was suddenly emboldened to say:

  ‘Will you – I suppose you wouldn’t marry me, Megan?’

  ‘Well – not yet,’ she replied. He nodded, took off his sun-glasses, blinked, put them back, and said:

  ‘That means, at any rate, that you might.’

  ‘I expect I shall,’ said Megan. ‘But I don’t want to marry until I’m three or four years older. I haven’t had much chance yet to see what I think about life, and —’

  ‘You’ve had nearly twenty years.’

  ‘Ah yes. But I want to do heaps more things before I marry, Ronald. You do appeal to me, but I think it’s only to my motherly side. I might be a really passionate person, you see, and it might not be at all convenient for me to discover that after we were married. Because passion, in such a case, wouldn’t have any connexion with you, I expect. I should probably find myself in love with somebody else, and that would be rather a mess.’

  ‘Yes. You’d leave me, in that case, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Oh, of course. It wouldn’t be right to stay. And then, you see, if we had a child, or children, I should have to take them with me, and the other man mightn’t like that very much.’

  ‘And I should be lonely. I should want them myself. They would be all I should have to remind me of you, you see, Megan.’

  ‘You’re sweet,’ said Megan. She kissed him. She was three inches taller than he was, and very much bigger and heavier. She liked it, and kissed him again. Then she pushed him away and wiped her mouth with her hand.

  ‘You’re rather nice,’ she said. ‘I expect I’ll have you. But, Ronald, you’re to say if you change your mind.’

  ‘No, I shan’t change, Megan, ever. I know that for certain. I love you.’

  ‘All right, then.’

  They scrambled down the slope, and, by the time they had arrived in Hermes Street again on their way back to the house, Megan had shelved the question of their marriage and was detailing her opinion of all the people who had gone on the pilgrimage with them.

  ‘But you never really cared for Armstrong, did you?’ Dick asked, a little timidly, after she had catalogued what seemed to her to be Armstrong’s sins and virtues.

  ‘You silly! But he makes a lot of nasty, insulting remarks about all the other people, and that’s amusing sometimes. For a big boy – he is a good size, isn’t he? – he’s really terribly spiteful.’

  ‘He’s half – he’s only half English,’ Dick remarked.

  ‘And I’m not English at all. Oh yes, of course I am! Mother is. At least, I think she is. But what I really want to know is what Armstrong is playing at over father.’

  ‘Your father? But he employs Armstrong.’

  ‘Oh yes, I know. But, sad to tell, father is completely off his onion. Oh, I don’t mean that he ought to be in an asylum, or anything like that; he isn’t silly or dangerous. But he’s perfectly cracked, all the same. I think Aunt Adela ought to put him under some sort of treatment, but I suppose it’s very difficult if he doesn’t realize for himself that he is bats. I mean, it’s only the willing patients that these psychology people seem to do anything with, and father can’t show willing if he doesn’t know he needs treatment. I’d drop the hint to mother, but she’d be so terribly worried about his going off to Ephesus if I did.’

  Dick nodded.

  ‘You mean Iacchus, and the snakes, and hiding that bit of gold plate where Dish could find it,’ he said. ‘I should think that’s only eccentricity, you know. I don’t see that you could class it as anything more. I mean, if he really were strange, as you say, it would have come out in you, or Gelert, or Ivor, wouldn’t it? I don’t mean —’

  Megan giggled.

  ‘Thank you for your kind certificate of sanity,’ she said. ‘But, not to deceive you, my dearie (if we are going to get married some day), I wouldn’t be so certain about Gelert. He can be a queer fish when he likes. There’s this – what shall I call it? – penchant of his for girls. I know it will get him into trouble one of these days before we leave Athens. There’s a tobacconist’s daughter or something at this very minute. I thought boys got over tobacconists’ daughters whilst they were still at college, but apparently I’m wrong, because Gelert hasn’t.’

  ‘He hasn’t been swine enough to tell you all about her?’

  ‘Well, not exactly. But he thought twenty pounds of my money might be enough to buy him his freedom, and I wasn’t going to part with my twenty quid unless I knew what it was going to be spent on.’

  ‘But I call that damnable to borrow money from his sister for such a purpose!’

  ‘Oh, Ronald darling, don’t be a fool! Boys always have borrowed money from their sisters for such a purpose, and jolly glad the sisters are, too, usually. What on earth could we do with a Greek tobacconist’s daughter in the family? Heaven knows I’m the matiest thing on earth, but I couldn’t stomach – is that the right word? – it is? – I couldn’t stomach any such thing as that.’

  ‘But why didn’t he borrow off me? Or even off Armstrong or MacNeill?’

  ‘He wouldn’t want you to know because you’d disapprove. Gelert’s funny like that. Everybody must approve. He patronizes you a little bit, doesn’t he? And Ian, poor lamb, hasn’t a bean until some relative dies or he gets a job or something. As for Armstrong, between you and me, my dearie, the less that lad knows about our family failings, the better. He’s got father on the end of a string already, as I think I mentioned before.’

  ‘Those beastly photographs?’

  ‘Those beastly photographs. By the way, I mean to have a look at those. It’s no good asking him to let us see them, because, of course, we shall see them – the official ones. He’s working
on them now. And if we then say: “Yes, but show us the others. Show us the faked Iacchus; show us the flashlight of somebody changing the snakes; show us the snapshot of father flourishing the carving-knife over the young son of Alexander Currie; show us all the other photographs you think you’ll be making capital out of later on!” What’s he going to say?’

  ‘That he doesn’t know what on earth we’re talking about. The same as he said to me when I asked him if he’d got my Mycenean gold. Oh, Megan, I feel terribly disappointed over that.’

  ‘Yes, rather,’ said Megan perfunctorily. ‘What worries me,’ she added, halting him by a shop and gazing closely at the goods – ‘all right, don’t look round. A most fearful woman that I loathe the sight of is just passing, and I don’t want her to know I’ve seen her, or else she’ll send me home with a general invitation for us all to go and visit her, and nobody will want to, and I do think we might be allowed five minutes’ peace and quiet in Athens before we go to Ephesus.’

  ‘You were going to tell me what particularly worries you.’

  ‘Oh yes. Well, you may think it is a mad idea of mine, but just before we started out for Eleusis – or was it the next day? – oh well, round about the beginning of the whole do – Cathleen gave me the impression that something very beastly was going to happen.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Well, she’s got second sight a bit – or thinks she has – and she seemed quite clear that one of the party was going to die before we’d finished our trek.’

  ‘But nobody has.’

  ‘Not yet. There’s still the journey to Ephesus, though. And, you see —’ She pulled him away from the shop, and they continued their journey homewards – ‘it’s all right now. That odious creature’s gone. She’s got Turkish blood. It’s the nicest part of her. Yes, well, I often think that father is the suicide type. That’s all.’