“No? Oh, well, why should you have thought of it? Were you expecting to be your aunt’s heiress, then?”
“Well, of course. She’s often said so.”
“You do not think her engagement, however temporary it may have been, caused her to alter her testamentary depositions?”
“Good gracious, surely not! And even if she had, she would have altered them again when the engagement was broken off.”
“If she had been given time to do so,” said Dame Beatrice dryly. “But do not let me alarm you. I promised to tell you something about your family connections, so let us confine ourselves to that. Did you ever know Sir Rudri Hopkinson?”
“I’ve heard of him, especially from Mr. Dick when he proposed this trip, but he wasn’t a relative of mine, so far as I know.”
“Sir Rudri Hopkinson, who lived for a considerable part of his later life in Athens, had four children. The eldest, Olwen, married a man named Bosfield. They had one daughter whom they named Chloe. This was the aunt who took you to live with her.”
“So she was Sir Rudri’s grand-daughter! Well, this is the first I knew of it.”
“Possibly for the best of family reasons, as you will see. Rather late in life Chloe married Alan Cowie, your father’s brother, but before that—when she was quite a young girl—she was deceived (shall we say) by a Greek whose name has never been disclosed. The result of what we may call the mésalliance turned out to be twins with whom you have become acquainted.”
“Not—surely not—”
“Hero and Simonides? Exactly.”
“But how do you know all this?”
“I was friendly with Sir Rudri’s wife, Marie Hopkinson, and (as women will, no matter how indiscreet it may be to do so) she told me the family secrets.”
“I can’t believe it of Aunt Chloe! Look at the way she always insisted on a chaperone, even with Mr. Owen when she was engaged to him.”
“How little we know of those to whom we are closest. I daresay your aunt knew as little about your inner life as you knew about hers. We all have a skeleton in our cupboards.”
“Indeed? Even you?”
“Even I, as you so kindly express it. I once committed murder.”
“Murder?” Mary looked more than startled. “You?”
“Oh, yes, it seemed expedient at the time,” said Dame Beatrice placidly, “and I still think it was the best thing to have done considering all the circumstances. I was an altruist in those days.”
“But you weren’t found out?”
“No. Unlike the late George Joseph Smith, whose method I followed, I did not repeat my effects.”
“You’re joking, and I don’t think it’s funny.”
“Well, it is very ancient history, anyway. Shall I continue?”
“Well, I did wonder why Hero is called Metoulides. That was the name of the woman they fished up on Leukas, wasn’t it?”
“It was the name under which she was buried, yes.”
Mary hastened to refer to a previous subject.
“So the father of the twins—I mean, was that his name?”
“No, it was not. Marie Hopkinson did not know his name. All they could get out of Chloe was that he was a Greek and that she had met him in a restaurant in Soho.”
“What a revolting story!”
“Full of human interest, surely?—although a lively young girl—for your aunt was certainly that at the time, according to Marie Hopkinson—had a right to expect something more of life than to be led astray at so early an age.”
“You can’t expect me to pity her. She gave me a home, but it was only a kennel. I was kept on the chain all the time. My life with her was one long bitterness and frustration.”
“The story of the birthright and the mess of pottage is a legend, not history, of course.”
“Well, what happened to the twins? And why is Hero called Metoulides? And is that Simon’s name, too? He’s down on the passenger list as Simon Dick.”
“Yes, Mr. Dick adopted him.”
“What on earth for? How does he come to know him?”
“I told you that the Hopkinsons had four children. Two of these were boys, Gelert and Ivor. Both are now living in the United States and need not concern us. The other child—she was the third, incidentally, and considerably younger than her sister, Mrs. Bosfield—was named Megan. She married a Mr. Metoulides and they agreed to give the twins their name. The first plan was to bring them up as their own children, but Metoulides brought himself into bad odour with the Greek government and so Megan thought it best, in the somewhat difficult and complicated issues which were involved, to foster the children. Hero was put into the care of a Greek widow who had a work permit for England but who subsequently re-married and returned to Greece with her husband. At this juncture Ronald Dick was brought into the picture again, for he had already formally adopted the male twin as his son. Now he agreed to make Hero his ward.”
“But how did he become involved in the first place? He wasn’t related to any of these people, was he?”
“No, but he had been in love with Megan, who had committed murder for his sake.”
“Murder? Why do you keep harping on murder? My aunt wasn’t murdered. If it was her body they buried, she must have met with an accident. Who would want to murder her?”
“Well, there were those who might be thought to have a motive.”
“Oh, more than one person, you mean? Well, that’s a relief, anyway.”
“Yes, I thought it might be,” said Dame Beatrice.
“But who are these people who had a motive?”
“Yourself, if you expected to be your aunt’s heiress—”
“But I was back at Patras by then!”
“Oh, yes, of course. Your Olympian alibi,” said Dame Beatrice.
“Well, you don’t imagine I think of it like that!”
“Do you not? In your place I am inclined to think I should. But let us continue. There is a strong suspect in the person of Mrs. Metoulides, who wanted to leave the country.”
“Why should she want to do that?” asked Mary, looking relieved.
“Her husband was executed for subversive activities and she herself was implicated and, I fancy, had been traced to Leukas, where she was virtually in hiding.
“Well, apart from those I have mentioned, there are others. Supposing Mrs. Cowie had altered her will in favour of Henry Owen when they became engaged to be married and had not had time to alter it again when the engagement was broken, Henry would have had a motive similar to your own, would he not, for wishing her out of the way?”
“Oh, but, surely—surely she wouldn’t play such a wicked trick on me as that! She owed it to me to leave me her money! I’d never have stayed with her, and put up with all that I did, if I hadn’t thought all the time that what she had to leave would be mine some day. Why should Mr. Owen come into it, even if they were engaged to be married? It’s most horribly unfair!” Mary was clearly shaken.
“You do realise, though, don’t you,” said Dame Beatrice gently, “that, even if she had not altered her will in Henry Owen’s favour, it would be invalidated upon her marriage to him, and would have had to be re-made.”
“I didn’t think she would marry him after the row they had,” said Mary.
Dame Beatrice’s next conversation was with Roger. He waylaid her on their way up from lunch.
“I say,” he said, “I want to tell you something. Where can we go?”
“That depends upon how long it will take you to tell me your story and how much credence I am to place in it.”
“Oh, look, I’m sorry I was such an ass about Knossos. I won’t try to lead you up the garden again, really I won’t. Anyway, it isn’t any good, because you seem to know all the answers. But this is a sort of—well, I think I ought to tell somebody, and Suffolk wouldn’t be any good, and Hero and Mary, well, I mean, they’re just girls, aren’t they?”
“I pass over this obvious prejudice against women,” said
Dame Beatrice, with a mirthless chuckle, “and I await your confession with interest tinged, I am compelled to admit, with incredulity.”
“Yes, I can see you’re not going to believe me, but I want to get it off my chest. After that, it’s up to you.”
“You should do well in the kind of official capacity where anything doubtful or difficult is always passed to somebody else. I am reminded of a brilliantly satirical comic strip I once saw in a newspaper.* A young woman had a complaint about a garment she had purchased. The assistant referred her to the buyer, the buyer to the department manager, he to the sales director, he to the department for complaints and adjustments and from there she was still urged onwards, from one to another, only to find herself in the end confronted by the girl who had actually sold her the goods in question, and to whom she had made her first complaint.”
“Yes, it’s called passing the buck,” said Roger, unimpressed. “Everybody does it if he gets the chance. What about it?”
“Only that you are attempting to pass the buck to me.”
“Well, you’re grown up and I still rate as a child.”
“Some children are known to be precocious. Let us retire to the ship’s gymnasium, which is unlikely to be requisitioned so soon after the midday meal, and there you shall unfold your story.”
“You don’t like me much, do you?” said Roger, as they strolled along the deck.
“Do you expect an answer to that question?”
“No, not really. I mean, one answer wouldn’t be true and the other might hurt my feelings. I don’t think you’re awfully keen on hurting people’s feelings, somehow.”
They repaired to the gymnasium.
“You’d better sit on the ‘camel,’ ” said Roger. “It’s all right so long as you don’t start the mechanism. Do you mind if I just gently punch the ball while I’m talking? It helps me to think and I like to adjust my ideas.”
“This sounds like the preliminary to a confession of faults. Is it?” asked Dame Beatrice, declining to avail herself of the amenities of a seat on the “camel.”
“I suppose it is, but I swear I never meant to do her any harm.”
“You are referring to Mrs. Cowie, no doubt.”
“Yes, I’m afraid so.” He beat a light tattoo on the punching ball. “It was just a rather corny joke, you know. You see, she had this crackpot idea that she was Sappho come back to life. She kept harping on it until the governor almost went crazy and the rest of us kept right out of her way whenever we could. So Edmund and I got this idea that we’d kid her along. Incidentally, Edmund told you I couldn’t do it, but I can.”
“Ventriloquism, I presume.”
“Yes. So we tossed up, and I won. Well, we knew she was determined to go to Sappho’s Leap, because that was the only reason we’d gone to Leukas at all, and the governor was actually rather sick about it because it was wasting the time he wanted to spend on Corfu. Anyway, I lurked about and when I heard her enquiring about hiring a car I tried to bribe the man to smuggle me into the boot, but he didn’t seem to understand, and insisted upon shoving me into the back seat instead. Well, that wasn’t really what I wanted, because I betted that she would want the back seat herself, not to sit beside the driver, but the chap had more savvy than I thought. He loaded a crate of hens on to the back seat—I was on the floor, of course, so I guessed she wouldn’t spot me straight away—and what with the hens and so forth, she decided to take the seat next the driver after all.”
“And during the journey you played your joke on her?”
“Well, yes. It went extremely well. The driver was most impressed and, I think, a bit scared at first, because I made my voice seem to come from the steering wheel. However, he knew I had some game on hand, so, apart from one frightful wobble when I first began to speak, he kept pretty good control, considering that we must have been going at a cracking rate—you know the way these fellows drive—one finger on the horn and one foot on the accelerator. It was great. Of course, as soon as I’d got off a piece about Sappho, which I had to do sitting up, I’d dodge right down again out of sight, just in case she suspected something, but she didn’t seem to.”
“And the driver aided and abetted you?”
“Oh, yes, like a real good chap. These Greeks have a great sense of humour, and I don’t think this one cared awfully much about Mrs. Cowie because she told him she was going to knock something off his price because of the hens. Anyway, it was a long drive, but we got at last to the point where he told her she’d have to get out and do the rest of the journey on foot, so she did, and walked towards the cliffs, after telling the driver to be sure to wait for her, as she wouldn’t be long.”
“Were you not surprised that she had decided to make the journey alone?”
“Not really. Mary was supposed to go with her, as usual, but to stay in the car while Mrs. Cowie ‘communed alone with glorious Sappho.’ That was how she put it, if you ever heard such ghastly punk. But Mary claimed to be too ill to travel, and, instead, she must have sneaked back to Patras to go to Olympia, which nobody knew at the time, but, of course, it came out later.”
“Was Mrs. Cowie the only visitor to Sappho’s Leap that evening?”
“Oh, no. Leukas is quite a holiday island, and there were a couple more cars about, not so very far from ours, but they left soon after Mrs. Cowie got out of our car, so we were left until last, and, of course, Mrs. Cowie didn’t come back.”
“How far were you parked from the edge of the cliffs?”
“Oh, a goodish way. You’re thinking of hearing anybody yell if they went over, aren’t you? Well, we might have been near enough for that, but my driver had a radio and so we had music loud enough to split your eardrums while we waited.”
“And almost as soon as you arrived the other cars drove off?”
“Well, one did. The other stayed longer, and someone got in but we stuck about for Mrs. Cowie. In the end my chap began cursing, so I hopped out and went to look for her. I did quite a bit of scrambling about—I’m used to climbing, you see, and I’ve never had an accident yet—and I yelled out for her, but there wasn’t any reply, so, in the end, I went back to the car and reported nothing doing.
“ ‘I expect she was fed up about your hens on the back seat,” I said, ‘and has gone back with somebody else.’ Well, of course, he cursed like mad about that, reversed the car, and we rocketed back at about a hundred and twenty miles an hour, and Mrs. Cowie never turned up again at the hotel.”
“Or anywhere else, and there was a body brought back from Sappho’s Leap for burial,” said Dame Beatrice sombrely. “However, I thank you for your story and declare you free of all blame. Your ventriloquist act, although naughty and somewhat ill-natured, made no difference. Mrs. Cowie was determined to go to Sappho’s Leap. Her death cannot be laid at the door of a mischievous boy. So you and your brother were both ventriloquists. That is very interesting. Tell me, how did Mary know that you went with Mrs. Cowie to those cliffs?”
Roger was astounded by this question, but Dame Beatrice thought she knew the answer to it. Mary had been in one of the other cars.
* * *
* Sunday Express, June 21st, 1970. The Gambols.
CHAPTER TEN
Holmesia, the Muse of Deductive Reasoning
“ ‘Tush’ (said I), ‘you speak you cannot tell what. Behold, I am a man all of iron, and have never desire to sleep, and am more quick of sight than lynx or Argus.’ ”
“So now,” said Mrs. Solomons on the following morning, seating herself heavily beside Dame Beatrice, “you tell me how you get back my rubies for me.”
“I’m afraid that is a trade secret,” said Dame Beatrice. “So long as they were returned to you, that is sufficient, is it not? I can give you no explanation.”
“Tricks of a trade I respect. Look, now, when you want clients, you send to me. Here is my card. I find you plenty of people who want husbands or wives followed, or somebody to look after the wedding pres
ents—all kinds of things. You pay me twenty per cent commission and I make your fortune, isn’t it?”
“It is very kind of you. I will certainly apply to you if I am short of clients. But I see Miss Metoulides approaching, and I am afraid you are occupying her deck-chair.”
“Oh, I do not need the chair any longer,” said Mrs. Solomons graciously. She heaved herself out of it with a grunt. “I go to find out what Leah is up to. She picked up a boy and he is on board. There are cabins to spare because some are staying off in my country, and I am not sure whether this boy is suitable. His father is in furs, and I see no future in furs. Too much synthetic about, and at a cheaper price.”
She waddled off and Hero seated herself.
“What on earth did she want?” she asked.
“Merely to render me a passing salutation, with an offer to make my fortune.”
“Really? It is no harm to be friendly with Jews. What kind of fortune will she make for you?”
“She offers to get me commissions as a private eye.”
Hero giggled.
“That will be good fun for you. Will you have to stand outside Brighton hotels in the rain, watching for Mr. X to offer the shelter of his umbrella to Mrs. Y?”
“Something of the kind, no doubt. I do not really feel it to be my métier, but Mrs. Solomons meant well and spoke in the kindest and most grateful way of a small service I was able to render her on the outward voyage.”
“Her silly, extravagant, beautiful rubies, yes. Were you a private eye when you got them back from the thief?”
“No, merely an observant one, I think.”
“Roger seems a subdued, well-mannered boy this morning. Have you been taking him to task?”
“That is not my métier either. I was an interested listener while he cleansed his bosom of some perilous stuff which seems to have been weighing upon his heart and troubling his conscience.”
“I would not have thought either of those boys, or their father, come to that, had a conscience. I have never known such a heartless, selfish family. As well for Mrs. Cowie that she did not marry into it.”
Lament for Leto (Mrs. Bradley) Page 21
