They sat in silence until Fernanda appeared in the archway and called to Johnny to help her. In her arms she carried a large wood-framed picture.
He ran across the cobblestones to take the burden out of her hands. “More struggling artists?” he asked, holding it up for a look. “I suppose I’m to be pack donkey again?”
“You don’t mind,” Fernanda told him cheerfully. “And it really was exciting. A lovely little story for my book. Such a talented young man!”
Johnny turned the canvas for Dorcas to see. The artist had a sense of color, at least. There were bold splashes of yellow and blue, a dash of green, and one great gob of scarlet—all rather indiscriminately arranged.
“Clearly the work of a genius,” said Johnny. “Would you mind telling me if it’s supposed to represent anything?”
Fernanda remained unperturbed. “It’s the walled city and the harbor, of course. The artist explained it to me. Of course this is just his feeling about old Rhodes. He was most hospitable. He gave me a cup of Turkish coffee and let me pet his cat.”
“How much money did he take away from you?” Johnny asked.
Fernanda lifted expressive shoulders. “I paid him more than he asked. The sum he wanted was ridiculous.” She looked up at the twin towers of the entrance to the Palace. “Probably we can check the picture in there for now. I must see what dreadful things Mussolini did in his restorations. Are you ready?”
No, Dorcas thought, she could not stay away any longer. She must get back to the hotel and make sure that everything was all right. It would be better to go now before she panicked completely.
“I’m—I’m sorry, Fernanda, but would you mind—” she began.
Fernanda was all sympathetic concern. “We’ve tried you, haven’t we? And that won’t do at all.”
“She’s worried about Beth,” Johnny put in. “There’s nothing to be done about an anxious mother. I’ve had to deal with them at school.”
Fernanda patted her arm soothingly. “Darling, you mustn’t worry. You mustn’t let small, imaginary things upset you. Last night you were seeing chalk marks on the balcony. If you’re not tired, the sensible thing to do is come along with us and see the Palace.”
“Not now, please,” Dorcas said. “I want to go back to the hotel.”
“Let her go,” Johnny said. “If you like, I can drive her to the hotel, leave this masterpiece in the car, and be back for you in twenty minutes.”
Fernanda was not pleased, but she gave in with reasonable grace. “We mustn’t keep humoring her in these notions,” she told Johnny. “But perhaps for this time your solution will do. I don’t want to feel hurried going through the Palace. Come and look for me inside when you get back.”
She waved them off and walked resolutely toward the twin-towered doorway. Johnny tucked the painting under one arm and took Dorcas’s elbow.
“Come along—it’s downhill back to the car. We can make it fast.”
He had helped her to get away, but she did not feel particularly grateful. She wanted to say, “It’s not imaginary. I’ve perfectly good reasons for being worried.” But she was afraid he would discount the whole thing just as Fernanda had done. The rapport she had felt with him when they had talked about Rhodes had disappeared as though it had never been.
The drive back to the hotel was maddeningly slow because the streets were filled with people. The market was open and a boat had docked. Rodos was wide-awake and going about its business. Dorcas forced herself to sit quietly for the length of the trip and Johnny made no attempt at cheery conversation. She was glad of that, indifferent now to his silent disapproval.
In front of the hotel he came around and opened the door. “I’ll go inside with you and make sure everything is all right.”
“Please don’t trouble,” she told him. “I can manage nicely, now that I’m here.”
She tried to slide out of the car, but he stood on the sidewalk, his hands on the door, blocking her way.
“All right, if that’s what you want,” he said. “But first you’ll listen to Uncle Johnny for a minute.” He grinned at the look she gave him and went right on. “There’s no use telling me to mind my own business. I seldom do. I’ve brought you home because you showed signs of flying apart in all directions. In a moment I’ll let you go in and you’ll march right upstairs and find everything just as it should be. Then maybe you’ll stop and have a good look at this exaggerated course you’ve been steering in your worry about Beth. Fernanda’s right about the need for you to stop it. She tells me you’ve been in a nursing home and she doesn’t want you back in one. Yet if you keep seeing ominous chalk marks that aren’t there and—”
Dorcas pushed his hands from the door and thrust herself out of the car. “The chalk marks were there! It was I who erased them. Maybe she didn’t tell you that!”
He stood aside, looking sorry—not for his own words, but for her. She ran up the steps to the hotel, close to tears because not even Johnny Orion believed in her, and desperate, besides, with anxiety for Beth.
The key was not at the desk, so Vanda must be upstairs with Beth. She ran up to the third floor, to arrive at her door painfully out of breath. The knob turned at her touch and she burst abruptly into the room. The shutters to the balcony were closed and the room was shadowed, orderly. A maid had been in to make the beds, but there was more to the orderliness than that—though Dorcas did not stop to note exactly what it was. Only the fact that the room was empty seemed important. Vanda’s door stood ajar and a look inside told her that neither Beth nor the woman was there. If they had gone out, what was she to do? How was she to find them quickly? How could she bear to wait, not knowing where they had gone?
The sound of voices reached her and she ran to the balcony doors and pulled them open. In the warm morning sunshine Vanda Petrus sat in a low chair with Beth on her lap. She was telling her a story of old Greece, and the scene could hardly have been more peaceful.
Panic and anxiety died sickly. Johnny’s words echoed through her mind as he had promised they would, and behind them sounded Fernanda’s words—and Gino’s! Had Gino been right from the beginning? Had she lost all sense of balance, all normal self-control? Was she too far gone down this road to self-destruction to turn back?
But there had been chalk marks on the balcony last night. Meaningless, perhaps, but real. And other things had been real, too.
Beth, at least, had not noticed her panic, though Vanda was watching her warily. Having greeted her with a ready “hi!” Beth demanded that Vanda go on with the story. The woman made a move to set Beth down, but Dorcas stopped her.
“Don’t get up, please. Go on with your story. I—I came back ahead of the others.”
She returned to the dim room and stood looking around thoroughly sick and shaken. They said that a person who was ill in this particular way was the last to know. The most irrational behavior could seem logical and the world wholly wrong. But this was what she had come to Greece to disprove—that she had ever been irrational in the first place. She must listen to Johnny and regain control of herself. About that he had been right. And she must seek out Markos Dimitriou’s widow at the earliest opportunity because only she could support the truth about Gino. Surely the woman would know something.
Dorcas sat on her bed to still the trembling and stared at the small white room. She saw now why it looked so orderly. Someone had unpacked all her things. Articles she had not taken out last night stood on the dressing table. Suitcases had been thrust under the bed. She felt one against her heel and pulled it out. It had been entirely emptied.
Moving quickly now, she went to the closet. Her dresses and blouses, as well as Beth’s things, had been neatly placed on hangers. Shoes stood in a row on the floor of the closet. Even Beth’s toys had been unpacked and put away. Her canvas tote bag stood in the closet, empty and collapsed upon its own sides. It was obvious that Vanda had gone through all her things. No hotel maid would take such a task upon herself.
&nb
sp; A new throbbing had started at her temples. This was the time to summon reason and self-control. She must not think in terms of “searching.” All that was over back in the States. In Rhodes she was not even Mrs. Nikkaris. Vanda had done a kind, sensible thing—something beyond her line of duty that Dorcas must be grateful for.
She heard a movement from the balcony and Beth’s voice objecting. Then Vanda came in and stood just behind her.
“I hope you do not mind that I unpack the clothes,” she said.
Listening to the sound of the words without turning to see the woman’s face, Dorcas was aware of a not unpleasant cadence, a depth of tone that was quiet and well under command. Control, she thought. She must not fling herself around and cry, “What were you looking for? Why did you go through my things?”
As she turned toward Vanda she spoke, and was relieved to hear the normal, unrevealing sound of her own voice. “It was good of you to help. I came home early to take care of this myself. Why don’t you go now and bring back your own things, Mrs. Petrus?”
The woman nodded unsmiling agreement and left with a certain quiet dispatch, promising Beth that she would finish the story later.
When she had gone, Dorcas stepped out upon the balcony and looked down at the palm-lined street below. In a few moments Vanda Petrus emerged from the hotel entrance and walked to the corner. She moved with a proud, straight carriage, a free stride. Dorcas watched until she turned the corner out of sight.
“You made her stop the story,” Beth accused, and drew dark brows down in an expression that was a reminder of Gino.
“I’ll read you a story,” Dorcas said. “Let’s get one of your books.”
Together they pulled open a lower drawer of the bureau where Vanda had packed Beth’s things. The little girl made a choice and Dorcas sat in the room’s easy chair and switched on a lamp. The sunlight of Rhodes was a little too bright on the balcony. Besides, she liked the seclusion of the room just now. It held her safely in its quiet space. It threatened nothing when she was alone in it with Beth. The child climbed on her lap and they paged through the book. It was a collection of stories and Beth found one she wanted to hear.
As always, it was comforting to have her daughter’s small, warm person leaning against her in the complete trust only a young child could give. Her face was gently rapt as the words were read aloud, and the angry quirk was gone from her brows. Yet even as Dorcas read with all the proper dramatic inflections, a part of her mind was busy elsewhere. She could think more quietly now of the problem of herself and her own emotions. Both Fernanda’s concern for her and Johnny’s impatience had been justified. She had behaved badly, and it would have to stop.
The exciting moment of the story’s climax was reached, and as Dorcas turned a page something fell out of the book. She read on, glancing at the envelope in her lap. It was an airmail envelope with Greek stamps across its face. The handwriting in which it was addressed was unfamiliar, but the name it bore was that of Gino Nikkaris.
She finished the story and set Beth down. “Play with your things for a little while, dear. Mommy has something to do.”
The envelope had already been opened. She herself had opened it when it had come to the apartment soon after Gino’s death. She had made no sense of the note within at the time. Now she read the strange words once more.
The bride of Apollo mourns her loss. Done is the fearful deed. Gone the Princess from her Castle. At the hour of devils shadow lies upon the grave. Dolorosa, dolorosa, dolorosa.
That was all, and there was no more meaning in the words as she read them now than there had been the first time. Yet now they seemed charged with frightening significance—as if they might be a key to some mystery that would hang over her head until she knew the answer to it. The words had a rhythm to them as though they had been carefully composed, rather than dashed off in haste.
She felt certain that she held in her hand the letter for which her possessions had twice been searched at home—the letter for which a friend of Gino had come looking soon after his death. Had it been this that Vanda Petrus searched for also in her unpacking? But that was something she must not think. There was no reason to be suspicious of Vanda and she must not jump impulsively to conclusions. Acting on intuition got her into nothing but trouble.
She held out the envelope to Beth. “Do you remember seeing this before, darling?”
Beth looked at the bright stamps. “That’s mine! I found it in the black-and-gold box on the bookcase at home.”
Which was where it had been placed originally, Dorcas thought. It was Beth who had removed it, drawn by the stamps. Beth who had slipped it between the pages of a picture book, so that it had not come to light until this moment.
“It wasn’t in the box for you to take, dear,” Dorcas said. “Next time you must ask me first. I’ll keep it for now.”
She returned the message to its envelope and glanced about the room for a suitable hiding place. In the end she opened her handbag and slipped the envelope into the green leather folder that held her passport. It would be safe there, and in her possession every moment. She was not sure at this point what might be done with the letter. She would have to think about it a while longer.
Now there was a next step she could take. She called to Beth and they went downstairs together to the hotel desk where she spoke to the clerk.
“I would like to know if there is a Mrs. Markos Dimitriou living in Rhodes at this time.”
Obligingly he brought the telephone book and ran down the Greek lettering. Twice his finger made a journey before he shook his head.
“I am sorry, madame, but we do not have the Markos Dimitriou. Perhaps there is no telephone?”
“Perhaps not,” Dorcas said. She thanked him and took Beth upstairs. When she and Fernanda accepted Madame Xenia Katalonos’s invitation to tea, she would push her inquiries further.
Back in the room, she took out the letter and read the cryptic message through. The words seemed like some knell of warning. A warning of death, perhaps? But of death to come, or death already transpired?
There was something here—something she could not put her finger on. She wished she could discuss this with Johnny Orion, but after his warning that she had become too emotional and overwrought, she could not bring herself to open the subject with him. She must keep her own counsel for now and avoid blurting out what might only be regarded as further evidence of an unbalanced state. In a sense the letter reassured her. It told her there was something here that had not been created wholly out of her imagination.
She studied the paper in her hands. What had Gino been involved in before his death? What machinery of complicated events might he have set in motion which others must carry out now that he was gone? These others could well be the faceless enemy she sometimes sensed about her.
Quiet was all she asked of Rhodes. This letter belonged to the past. Let it stay where it belonged. Yet she could not bring herself to destroy it. As she returned it to its hiding place, she noted something she had not seen before. In the lower right-hand corner, very small and neat, so that it was hardly noticeable, was drawn a small figure. She studied it closely, and saw that it seemed to be a tiny caricature of an owl—an owl with large round eyes.
Had not the owl belonged to Pallas Athena, as did the olive tree? Had it not been a symbol … her fingers tightened on the paper. Suddenly she was seeing only the eyes of the owl. Two exaggerated circles staring up at her from a corner of the letter. Circles such as she had seen twice before. Perhaps even a third time in those chalk marks last night.
Again she was confirmed in her belief that what was happening was no mere figment of an unbalanced imagination. Some stranger, some messenger of her dead husband still pursued her, believing that she possessed something that Gino’s friends needed. Some knowledge, perhaps, contained in this coded letter? Even in death Gino continued to torment her.
5
By the time Fernanda and Johnny returned to the hotel Vanda
Petrus was back as well, bringing with her a cheap suitcase containing things for her stay with Beth.
Fernanda tapped on Dorcas’s door to ask if she had found everything in order, and across the hall Johnny came to his own door to hear her answer.
“I suppose it’s all right,” Dorcas said. “I’m not really sure.”
Let them make of that what they pleased!
Fernanda cocked an eyebrow at Johnny and he grinned. Dorcas knew they were silently agreeing that their notions about her behavior that morning had been correct. She did not mind so much now. There was more justification for her concern than they knew.
Fernanda suggested that they go out for lunch. Mrs. Petrus and Beth were to come to the Roses with them for this meal. Dinner would be too late for Beth, and she explained that an arrangement had been made at the hotel so that Vanda might fix a simple supper for herself and the child in the hotel’s small, unofficial kitchen. Again all had been arranged without consulting Beth’s mother.
Johnny drove them the few blocks to the Hotel des Roses because Fernanda had put on high heels and would not walk. The hotel stood on the water front, with its own private beach—an unadorned monster of a palace built of the yellow stone of Rhodes. Foursquare and solid it loomed, guarded by an iron fence and iron gateway. Into a block of stone beside the doorway was carved the Rose of Rhodes.
Seven Tears for Apollo Page 8
