Death of an Aegean Queen (11 page)

“Ah, yes!” Stone came to life. “We were browsing through one of the little shops when Miss Benson came out of a back room with the absolutely most wonderful geometric-style krater. A krater to die for. Probably eighth century
b.c
.” Stone’s way of speaking was effete, I thought. I could definitely see him in an antique shop. “She let us look at it for a moment and then she left so I said to Willem, ‘We must get that krater. If you and your client don’t want it, I certainly do.’ ” He waved a hand toward Leclercq and looked around the table, making eye contact with each of us, as if to assure himself we agreed with him that some things were too wonderful to be passed up. “So we followed her outside and offered her nine hundred Euros for it, but she said, ‘No.’ Then Willem said, ‘Tell us what you paid for it and we’ll double it.’

“She still said, ‘No.’ She simply would not negotiate. Then she explained she was picking up the krater for a friend and she had no idea what he’d paid for it. We asked her if she would talk to her friend for us or give us his name so we could deal with him directly. But she wouldn’t tell us his name.”

“So what could we do?” Leclercq said. “Malcolm told me we’d be crazy to let this thing slip through our fingers, so I gave her my card and asked her to please pass it along to her friend. I hope she will. Malcolm, what did you say her name was? I’ve forgotten it already.”

“We met her this morning when we were waiting in line to get off the ship,” I said. “Her name is Brittany Benson.”

All eyes at the table shifted from me to the woman next to me. Kathryn Gaskill’s head jerked forward and horror spread across her face. I glanced across and beyond our table, trying to follow her eyes, to see what she saw, or hear what she heard, that had petrified her. She jumped up from the table, toppling her chair backward, and ran from the room.

* * * * *

“Excuse me.” I started to dash off after Kathryn and then turned, shaking my head at Lettie who, I knew, would follow me if I didn’t stop her. Five dumbfounded faces stared back at me, but no one followed me out.

I ran up and down the hall outside the dining room noting from the lights above the elevators that none of them were descending, so it was unlikely Kathryn was heading to her room. In an L off the main hall, I found a ladies’ bathroom and pulled the door open. Kathryn stood in the middle of the room, her back to a wall of mirrors and sinks, trembling.

“What is it, Kathryn?”

“That name. Didn’t you say . . . Brittany Benson?”

“Yes. I’m sure that’s the name she gave me when I met her this morning.”

“That’s the name of the girl I told you about! The girl who accused George of rape!”

I tried to think fast, but trying to think fast always seems, to me, to make the process actually slow down. “There must be a lot of girls by that name. I’m sure it’s not the same one.” I led her to a chair in the corner and babbled on. “Benson’s a very common last name, and Brittany, why, it’s one of the most popular girls’ names in the U.S.”

Kathryn looked at me as if I had lapsed into another language.

“And besides, you saw her last night, Kathryn. The tall, pretty girl in the center of the dance line? You remember? You commented that she was the best dancer on stage.”

“Did I? I wouldn’t recognize her now anyway. She was in high school the last time I saw her, and even then, I only saw her a few times from a distance. On the other side of the courtroom.”

I continued trying to soothe Kathryn, and eventually she let me walk her back to her room, but all the while I was thinking about the one thing Brittany had told me about herself—that she was from Pennsylvania. Hadn’t the Gaskills mentioned living in Pennsylvania before they moved to Indiana?”

* * * * *

Sophie Antonakos was waiting in the library when I got there. Marco had tootled off to see what he could find out about how the investigations were proceeding, and—at my suggestion—to ask around about Brittany Benson. We agreed to meet later in the bar on the top deck. Ollie and Lettie went to the pool area of the Poseidon deck for a little dancing.

“I had to come dressed for my performance, because I didn’t know how long this would take,” Sophie said, spreading her peasant skirt across the arms of her chair. She wore a heavily embroidered vest and skirt with a white apron. “We go on stage at ten.” Her back rigid, she stared at the library door as if she expected the grim reaper to enter at any moment.

“Relax, Sophie,” I said, seating myself in a chair beside a large, ancient-looking globe. “The girl you were with this morning. Didn’t she say her name was Brittany Benson?”

“Yes.”

“How well do you know her?”

“We’re roommates. We have . . .”

Sophie didn’t finish her sentence because Luc Girard came in, introduced himself formally to her, and handed her a small box. “Open it,” he said.

I got up and leaned over Sophie’s shoulder to see. Inside the box was an ornate gold item, probably a piece of jewelry, I thought. It was about four inches long and it lay on a bed of cotton.

“I heard you were from northern Greece, Miss Antonakos. This was recently found by a colleague of mine. Near Pella, I believe. What can you tell me about it?”

“Me? But I am not an . . .”

“I know you aren’t but never mind. Tell me anything and everything that comes to your mind when you look at this thing.”

Sophie’s hand shook as she lifted the little item and turned it over. I was ever so glad it was unbreakable.

“It is a diadem,” she began. “It appears to be gold but one would have to weigh it to be sure. It’s made of twisted wire and hammered metal, many spirals, and in the center there is a Heracles knot.” She turned the item toward Girard, her pinkie finger pointing to the design in the center. “If it’s a genuine antiquity, it would date from the time of Philip the second or later. It may have been a wedding gift. It originally had five gemstones soldered across the middle but they are all missing.”

Girard tilted his head, twiddled his mustache. “You have studied archaeology, Miss Antonakos.”

“No, sir. I like to go to museums, though, and I read books. I have been many times to all the museums. But I have never been to college.”

This was the second time I’d heard Sophie mention her lack of a college education. I had a sneaking suspicion I knew where this was heading.

“About that white-ground lekythos, Miss Antonakos. The accident this afternoon.” Girard sat back and laced his hands across his chest, resting his elbows on the arms of his chair. A stray strand of hair fell between his right eye and his glasses. “Accidents happen.”

“Oh, but I should have been more careful! I’ve been thinking, Dr. Girard. I don’t know how much it was worth, but I could have the purser make over my paychecks to you until you say it is paid for.”

“No, no, no. Let me tell you something. Last year I was working with Dr. Dieter Matt, the German archaeologist, at an excavation in Crete. Have you heard of Dieter Matt?”

Sophie nodded. “And I’ve also heard of you as well.”

“We found several nice amphorae and I was working to clean them up. These were huge things, more than a meter tall. I let one slip off a bench while I was working on it and, of course, it broke. Dr. Matt flew into a rage. He called me every humiliating name he could think of and he did it in front of the entire crew. I couldn’t work there anymore. I was supposed to be in a position of authority, and I had been made to look like a fool. So I left.”

Girard’s voice was soft but it held no hint of tenderness. “I made up my mind, then, I would never do that to anyone who had simply made an honest mistake.” He looked at me and added, “Stuff happens. You dig?”

I grinned.

“I have a suggestion, Miss Antonakos. There is a way you could repay me. I need an assistant, and if you could find the time between your other duties,” Luc said, gesturing toward her costume with the forefingers of his laced hands, “you could help me catalogue and describe the artifacts I have on the ship. You could organize them for me before each of my lectures. Do you speak Greek?”

Sophie didn’t seem to realize what a silly question that was. She nodded.

“I have to make speeches in Rhodes, in Crete, and in Athens from time to time. When the ship is docked in those places. If my audience is mainly Greek, I try to deliver my lecture in Greek. But my Greek isn’t very good. I’d like for you to read my notes and put them into good, modern Greek for me.”

Sophie nodded vigorously.

I looked at my watch. “I think this sounds great but, Sophie, don’t you need to scoot? You’re supposed to be on stage in three minutes.”

“Oh!” She jumped up, toppling the brass compass on a stand beside her chair and launching it on a new search for north. She lunged forward and caught it before it hit the floor.

Girard watched as she righted the compass, patted it affectionately, and backed through the door to the deck, apologizing under her breath all the way.

“She’ll be all right,” he said. “I think.”

“You’re quite a detective, Dr. Girard. You already knew Sophie was an archaeology enthusiast.”

“I also know she comes from a very poor family and she has a lot of potential. As a scholar.”

Why, I wondered, did he find it necessary to add those last three words? I picked up the box with the diadem and looked at it more closely. The craftsmanship was superb. I hefted it in my hand and felt its weight. “And speaking of detectives, do you remember our conversation before dinner about the vase? The Greek vase that’s to be returned to Italy?”

“The Euphronios vase. Yes.”

“Did the Italian Carabinieri have anything to do with it? I ask that because I have a friend on the ship who is a detective with the Carabinieri in Florence and he has a keen interest in stolen antiquities.”

“I’d like to meet him. But to answer your question, no. This wasn’t a case of anything having been actually stolen, except in the sense that it was excavated illegally to begin with. It was a case of altered identity papers and misrepresentation. But the Metropolitan Museum in New York knew what they had. The question was whether or not they had to return it to Italy.”

“I see.”

“The Italian Carabinieri are doing great work, though. They work with Interpol very effectively.”

“And with Scotland Yard?” I asked because Marco had mentioned working with that London-based agency.

“Sometimes,” Girard said, and his tone of voice may have betrayed a tiny bit of Anglo-French rivalry. “This business of theft, though. There’s hardly a museum in the entire Mediterranean area that hasn’t been hit. Broken into. Looted. The Corinth Museum. Did you hear about that? Thieves broke in, beat up the night watchman, and stole hundreds and hundreds of priceless works. Look!” He jumped up and flew to the book shelves behind me. “I want to show you.”

Girard ran his fingers along one row of books, then along the next row down. He pulled out a thin, soft-cover book and opened it. “In here they have pictures of all the items stolen from the Corinth Museum. See?” He flipped through the pages and handed me the book. In it were photos and descriptions of hundreds of vases, busts, kraters, and sculptures. “Most of these things have been found and returned, thank God.”

“Where did they find them?”

“Believe it or not, they were in a warehouse in Miami, Florida.” He showed me another, somewhat thicker, volume. “And this one has photos of some of the artifacts currently missing from other museums. Only museums in Greece.”

“Incredible.”

“They could do another one as large as this for items missing from Italy, or from Turkey, or from Egypt.”

I thumbed quickly through the thicker book, entitled LAMBDA. I imagined LAMBDA was an acronym for something and certainly an apt title. Lambda, the Greek letter L. L for lost. I wished I had more time to study this book.