Lament for Leto (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  Past tombs hollowed out of the mountain rock, past the Castalian spring, up to the Roman wall which enclosed the Sanctuary, climbed the pilgrims.

  “Although,” said Dick, as he and Dame Beatrice followed the S-bends of the zig-zag Sacred Way, past the bases of vanished statues and the remains of unidentified buildings, to the small, beautiful, carefully restored Doric temple called the Treasury of the Athenians, “we have not bathed, as pilgrims did in the past, in Kastalia’s waters, or offered a cake or a sacrificial victim to the god, I think we will risk entering what was the cella of the great temple, when we get to it, and imagine that we are seating ourselves in the adyton, seekers after knowledge from the tripod over the cleft.”

  “And what,” she enquired, “shall we ask of the Oracle when we get there?”

  “If the enquiry did not turn out to be a frivolous one,” said Dick, “I would like to know how Mary contrived to slip away from the rest of her party—particularly from the vigilance of Chloe—and get to Olympia by herself.”

  “Yes, speculation about that is interesting. I confess that I myself have given it some thought. Perhaps, for once, Mrs. Cowie was glad to be rid of the girl for a bit, although, judging from her usual predatory attitude towards Mary, I find that difficult to credit. I had speech with Mrs. Cowie one day when we were still on board the cruise ship, and she made it very clear that she intends to keep Mary in her service as secretary and companion as long as the girl is useful to her.”

  “The poor child is in a difficult and unenviable position, I am afraid,” said Dick. “She confided to me—oh, some time ago, when first I made her acquaintance—that she has been trained for nothing except for having received lessons in touch-typing paid for rather grudgingly by her aunt. She was brought up in a country vicarage and acted as her parents’ housekeeper. Her mother, it seems, was an invalid. I suppose one ought to take the charitable view and say that it was goodhearted of Mrs. Cowie to give the girl a home when she lost her parents and they left her nothing—”

  “I am not at all sure that Mary thinks so,” said Dame Beatrice. “She longs for independence. I had proof of that on board ship.”

  “She asked me whether I had need of a private secretary,” said Dick, “but I was obliged to tell her that such of my work as I decide to publish is amply catered for. Besides—” he smiled—“I can hardly imagine Hero and Mary living together in the same house.”

  “No, indeed,” said Dame Beatrice, with her saurian smile, “particularly as their circumstances and standing in your ménage would be so very different, apart from the fact that their temperaments are so unlike.”

  “I had a suspicion—well, more than a suspicion, but, of course, I did not dream of carrying the matter further—that one day last summer, when we formed a party to picnic and bathe—Chloe has a beach hut at Canford Cliffs—Mary picked my pocket,” said Dick. “She was the only person who would have had the opportunity to abstract the money from my wallet. The wallet was replaced in the inside pocket of my jacket, but, except for a solitary pound note, all the money had disappeared.”

  “Really?” said Dame Beatrice. “But had you anything to go on in suspecting Mary of the theft?”

  “Unfortunately I had. I had been coerced into buying a raffle ticket for some local enterprise. It was a flimsy scrap of paper, and it floated out of Mary’s handbag when she pulled out her handkerchief. I had put it in the ticket-pocket of my wallet, so it is difficult to see how it had come into her possession unless she had had access to the wallet itself.”

  “Interesting,” said Dame Beatrice. She was unwilling to recount the story of the attempted theft of Mrs. Solomon’s rubies, but was inclined to exchange, in a small way, confidence for confidence, in view of the nature of the conversation. “I had my suspicions in a little matter which occurred on board ship, but fortunately all ended happily and Mary was not finally involved.”

  “I’m glad of that,” said Dick sincerely. “The poor child must be subject to great temptation when those about her have so much and she has next to nothing. Of course, she may be better off in many ways if Henry marries Chloe. Some prospects may then come her way. I do hope so. She is a nice enough girl, although she seems rather colourless at times.”

  “One could hardly have called her colourless at Andritsena. She loses a great deal, of course, by contrast with Hero. I wonder how she will get on with Edmund and Roger when the marriage takes place?”

  “I am glad those boys are not here.” He offered Dame Beatrice his arm, and they walked on towards the remains of the great temple of Apollo. It had been carefully restored, so far as this was possible, but only the peristyle and the podium were complete, although some of the Doric columns were in their original position. They stood and studied the ruins. Ronald Dick took off his hat. In automatic response to this, Dame Beatrice made a slight genuflexion, much as she would have done out of politeness in a church. Dick replaced his panama and observed:

  “I wish I thought that this trip had been more of a success. I am wondering whether it is my own fault as leader of the party that we seem to have had so much disharmony, or whether the company was ill-chosen. Of course, I had not realised that someone—and he can only be one of Henry’s sons—would be possessed of the art of ventriloquism. I cannot help feeling that that is where the mischief began. Then, of course, there have been, to put it as tactfully as possible, other inconveniences.”

  They were standing on the terrace of the temple. Dame Beatrice looked down upon the widely-scattered ruins of the sanctuary and shook her head.

  “Whether Mr. Suffolk, Edmund, or Roger is an adept in the art of ventriloquism, he would be sadly out-of-place here,” she remarked.

  “Whichever of the three?” asked Dick, puzzled.

  “One cannot exclude Julian Suffolk, I think.”

  “But he is a serious-minded young man.”

  “He may have retained a boyish sense of humour.”

  They spent the afternoon in the museum, and in the early evening Dame Beatrice looked out from the hotel balcony over a scene of grandeur, isolation, and mystery and thought of earthquakes, divinations, myths, and the bronze Charioteer, perfectly on balance, straight-legged, close-footed, long-gowned, watchful, austere, his right hand loosely holding the vanished reins, his chariot, his raison d’être, gone from under him and nothing left to show what once he was except a bent right arm, a turned wrist, and a parted finger and thumb. She had seen him in the museum and had wondered at his almost divine austerity.

  On the following morning, which happened to be Sunday, Hero announced her intention of going to church.

  “For all these days,” she said, “last Sunday also, I worship this Apollo of yours, Papa Ronald. Now I make proper observances. Do you wish to come with me?”

  “No,” Dick replied, “but Dame Beatrice may like to have a change. You had better go to Itea and then hire a caique for Galaxidion. I take it that Simon is going with you.”

  “Oh, yes. It is necessary for him also to attend church. How far is Galaxidion from Itea?”

  “Just across to another arm of the bay,” said Simon. “Does Dame Beatrice desire to accompany us?”

  Dame Beatrice said she thought she would like it very much. This was partly true and partly in answer to a pleading glance from Dick, who obviously wanted her to go. She suspected that he still had doubts about the advisability of trusting his ward and his adopted son alone together for the whole of a summer day. Apart from that, however, she thought that a day by the sea, even on the Bay of Itea, would make a welcome change from the somewhat arid atmosphere of the pilgrimage, and she also thought that Dick would enjoy a solitary day at Delphi.

  Soon after breakfast, therefore, the three set out in the car for Itea, not many miles to the south-west. It was easy enough to hire a caique with its attendant boatman, and while Hero and Simonides attended the thirteenth-century Byzantine Church of the Saviour at Galaxidion, Dame Beatrice strolled about the port and then sat in
an open-air café for mid-morning refreshment.

  “This afternoon,” said Hero, when the three met again, “we go to Amphissa and through the gorge and pass of Gravia as far as Brallos. At Amphissa Simon says there is a ruined Frankish castle. Me, I am weary of ruins, but at least this will be a change from temples of Apollo. The gorge and the pass are good for scenery, I think, and at Brallos there is nothing, so we come back to Livadhia and so to Delphi.”

  “It sounds a long journey for a hot afternoon,” said Dame Beatrice.

  “Too far, you think? Maybe I think so, too, so we go only to look at the Frankish castle and then back, like good, dutiful children—” she laughed and looked challengingly at her twin brother—“to dear Papa Ronald, no?”

  “Very well,” agreed Simonides. “It was your idea we should make that journey, not mine. I am still wondering what made Mary go to Olympia. She is not so pleased to look at ruins, and, even if she is, she goes nowhere except with Mrs. Cowie.”

  “Perhaps Mrs. Cowie has been looking for wild flowers with Mr. Owen,” said Hero, “and Mary slips away. If so, much trouble when she gets back, I think. She ought to marry Julian, except that then their children would be afraid of their own shadows, having such cowardly parents. Even so, she would be free from Mrs. Cowie, and that is what she wants.”

  “You are too hard on Julian,” said Simon. “Every man must serve his master if he is to earn his wages. My soul tells me this, and it is true. All the same, I hope you will continue to think that you do not want to marry him. He might do for Mary, but he is not good enough for you.”

  “The wisest thing Mary could do would be first to kill Mrs. Cowie—without pain to her, if possible, of course—and then to marry Julian as soon as the lawyers let her have Mrs. Cowie’s money,” said Hero. “I have thought it all out and unquestionably that would be the best and the simplest way.”

  “And after that, Mary and Julian would be happy ever after?” Simon smiled incredulously.

  “Well, Mary would be. Those who have the insensitivity to commit murder would be insensitive enough to be happy ever after, I think. What do you say, Dame Beatrice, you who have known so many murderers?”

  Dame Beatrice thought over such murderers as, either in her role as psychiatrist or in her capacity as unpaid private detective, she had been acquainted with, and replied,

  “So few of them have remained acquaintances of mine, once their crime was brought home to them, that it is difficult to predict what their state of mind may have been. It is suggested to me by your conversation that you regard your commitment to Mr. Suffolk as being at an end. Would that be so, I wonder?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Simonides, “of course it is at an end. Hero and I are going to charter an island in the Hesperides, and there, without a doubt, we shall be happy ever after.”

  “Papa Ronald will not like that,” said Hero. “The island, I mean.”

  “Papa Ronald will be ‘beyond the shores of Styx and Acheron’ by the time we get around to it,” said Simon, “if ever we do.”

  On the following morning the party of four returned to Athens by way of Livadhia and Thivai.

  “We traverse a road peculiarly sacred to the Muses,” said Dick. “To begin with, as you may know, they were but three. Their chief haunt was Mount Helicon, beneath whose range we are passing. The Three are thought to have represented the strings of the lyre, and their names were Melete, Mneme, and Aoide, and they were connected with springs of water. They also had power over a sacred plant, one of whose properties was to render snakes harmless. They were, from early times, associated with Apollo, but later Zeus decreed that their number should be nine. Thalia, broad and buxom (as I see her), carried a shepherd’s crook, for her role was the inspirer of bucolic comedy and from her derives, no doubt, the slapstick humour of our own time.”

  “Custard pies,” said Hero, without turning her head. She was seated, as usual, beside Simon on the front seat of the car.

  “Terpsichore,” went on Dick, “held a kithera, as became the Muse of the dance. Erato does not appear to have troubled herself with a personal symbol . . .”

  “It might have got in her way. One needs the use of all one’s body to make love,” said Simonides. “Well, you should know,” said Hero. “You and your many Athenian girls!” She giggled appreciatively.

  “. . . but Urania held a globe depicting the heavens. She also carried a pair of compasses. No doubt she represented astrologers before she was connected with the science of astronomy,” Dick went on.

  “Oh, dear! Those coffee cups!” said Hero. “And somebody was to die. It just shows how much trust one should put in any kind of soothsaying, because nobody has died.”

  “Euterpe, the Muse of lyric poetry, whom I imagine as being perhaps the youngest and fairest of the Nine,” Dick continued earnestly, ignoring the flippant interpolations, “is shown holding a flute; Calliope, who not only inspired epic poetry but was also the Muse of that eloquence in which the Greeks delighted, held a stylus and tablets, for whereas lyric poetry could be tossed off, no doubt, by any well-educated youth who desired to pay tribute to loveliness, the epic needed thought and the consumption of the midnight oil. Polymnia at some time seems to have had her original status of the inspirer of divine hymns reduced (in my opinion) to that of the Muse of mime, although this was also sometimes considered to be a subsidiary attribute of Erato and, I feel, more suitably so.”

  “What have you against Erato, Papa Ronald?” demanded Hero, turning, this time, to look at him.

  “Perhaps I do not care for her because she has never smiled on me,” said Dick, “and is now unlikely to remedy this lapse.”

  “If she had wished Mrs. Cowie on you I would rather Mrs. Cowie were dead,” said Hero, without heat but with simple truthfulness. “Fancy having to share one’s life with the deadly nightshade!”

  “Yes. What a woman!” said Simon. “I am even sorry for Owen, the botanical bear, although I do not like him, that he has condemned himself to marry her.”

  “What of Melpomene and Clio?” asked Dame Beatrice, playing what seemed to have become her rôle of deflecting conversations into more suitable channels.

  “Of Melpomene I know nothing,” said Dick flatly. “She has never troubled my life since I lost my parents.”

  Dame Beatrice thought of Megan Hopkinson, who had killed a man for his sake, and found herself unable to believe him.

  “But Clio,” went on Dick, “to me the greatest of the Muses (although the Greeks gave that honourable place to Calliope) is always shown bearing a trumpet. And now, Simon, if you will find a spot where you can safely drive the car off the road, I have here some wheat grains and honey, and in this flask a mixture of honey, water, and milk. I think we will offer a libation to the Muses before we go on our way.”

  “And then for Athens!” cried Hero. “Athens, with lovely shops and restaurants and night-clubs and all the amenities of civilisation! Oh, I cannot wait to get there! What fun we will have! What entertainment! Plays, son et lumière on the Acropolis, dancing, and cabaret! Let us depart from this austere place at once, and then I will sing hymns to Apollo and the Muses until Papa Ronald himself shall ask me to be silent.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Melpomene, the Muse of Tragedy

  “For they will come like sirens to the mountains, and yield out their piteous and lamentable cries.”

  “Wherefore, without any further delay, she went up to a high tower to throw herself down headlong . . .”

  An enquiry at the desk elicited the information that the Corfu party had not yet booked in at the Athens hotel. Dick was unperturbed and Hero and Simonides were pleased.

  “So we go shopping tomorrow, you and I, while Papa Ronald goes to find his friends at the archaeology school and Simon meets his girls,” said Hero to Dame Beatrice. “How long that dreadful Mrs. Cowie and the poor Mary stay on Corfu, it troubles me not at all, and I dislike those primitive boys.”

  “One would th
ink they should be here by now, though,” said Dame Beatrice, “if they are to catch the boat and the aeroplane.”

  “Oh, that Henry Owen, he is a maniac for his silly plants. Perhaps he and that dreadful little Roger fall and break their necks,” continued Hero cheerfully. “Do you know why Papa Ronald would not let us go to Leukas? It is because he knows some woman, I think, who lives there, and he is embarrassed to encounter her again.”

  “Dear me!” A former suspicion returned to Dame Beatrice’s mind.

  “Oh, not afraid for his life or that perhaps he have to marry her—nothing like that. I think he knows her in the old days before Simon and I were born, and I think perhaps it was a love affair—you know?—and would make for embarrassment nowadays. She might even be our mother, whom we do not remember.”

  In the morning there was still no sign of Henry Owen and his entourage, and it was not until the following day that there was any news of them. Dame Beatrice and Hero had come back to lunch after a morning’s shopping in Stadium Street and Dick had just come back from the British School of Archaeology. Simon was in the hotel lounge after visiting Vouliagmeni beach with a mixed party of friends for a swim, and was looking at a newspaper while he waited for the others to join him. When Dame Beatrice and Hero came down from their rooms after their outing, he said,

  “Leukas is in the news, and by somebody of your name, Hero. A Madame Metoulides has been fished up out of the sea by the promontory called Sappho’s Leap. This is an English paper two days old, and it says the lady was an Englishwoman. Perhaps we shall hear more about it from Mr. Owen when he comes.”

  “May I see the paper?” asked Dame Beatrice. Simon handed it to her, and she read the short paragraph twice before she handed the paper back.

  “I think it is our mother,” said Hero unemotionally. “I know Papa Ronald did not want to go to Leukas. There was a story—oh, a long time ago, long before we were born—and it was very sad, I think. My Greek foster-mother knew a little—perhaps more than she told me.”