My Brother Michael (32 page)

‘Did you find it?’

‘No. I didn’t have time. There was a lot of paper with the rubbish in a tin on the floor in his room. That fool Dimitrios hadn’t thought it worth bothering about. But in fact if that’s where the drawings are, nobody’s going to take any notice of them. They’ll just think he’s tidied up and left.’

‘They do. The English couple think he’s gone on a trek over the hills – with the mule.’

‘Do they?’ He sounded amused. ‘Then that’s that, isn’t it?’

He had cleared the boxes now of their covering of stones. He stooped to work one of them clear of the pile. She watched the play of the great muscles for a few minutes in silence. Then she said again: ‘Where is he?’

‘Who?’

‘My God, Nigel, of course! Did you leave him out there for the vultures?’

‘Not likely. They’d have given us away more quickly than anything else. He’s here.’

For the first time I saw some strong feeling move her. It was like a spring tensing. ‘
Here?
’

He jerked his head sideways. ‘Over there.’ He wrenched the box free at last, straightened up, and carried it out of the cave. The torch still shone strongly enough from its niche on the pillar. Danielle stood still for a moment, staring towards the dark corner where Nigel’s body lay, then, as if with an effort, she walked forward, took the torch down from its niche, and went over to the pile of rubble that hid the pathetic body. The light shone down on what lay, mercifully, beyond my range of vision.

It was at that moment that I remembered my own torch, dropped near Nigel’s body. If she saw it … if the light from her torch picked up its glint in the dust …

Angelos was coming back. He said irritably: ‘Still no sign. He seems to have taken one of the small boxes down himself by the lower track. We’d have seen him else.’ Then he looked across and saw where she was. She still had her back to him. The heavy face watching her didn’t change its expression, but something in the look of the eyes made my blood thicken. ‘Well?’

She turned abruptly: ‘Are you going to leave him here?’

‘Where else? Take him in the jeep to the bay at Galaxidion?’

She ignored the irony. ‘Aren’t you going to bury him?’

‘My God, girl, there’s no time. I’ve got enough to do shovelling half Parnassus off this stuff. You can throw some dirt down over him if you like, but it hardly matters. Something for you to do while I load up.’

She came quickly back into the middle of the cave. ‘I’m not staying here.’

He laughed. ‘As you wish. I thought you weren’t squeamish,
ma poule?
’

‘I’m not,’ she said pettishly, ‘but can’t you see it won’t do to leave him here, even if we do cover him? It’s obvious already there’s been someone at work here, and if anyone does come up they’re bound to see—’

‘Why should anyone come?’

She hesitated, eyeing him. ‘The Englishman, Simon—’

‘What of him? You told me yourself he’d gone off to Levadia.’

‘I know, but – well, I was still thinking about what happened in the theatre, on Monday night.’

In the theatre, on Monday night
… I leaned back against the rock, trying, through the mists of tension and fear, to remember … The sounds I had heard as I sat there: the tiny jingling … it had after all been Danielle, taking the stolen mule off to meet the men. And Simon and I had talked, down there in the theatre … It wasn’t only the speech from the
Electra
that those wonderful acoustics would have sent up to Danielle, above us in the dark. And Danielle understood English … What had we said?
What in heaven’s name, had we said?

It appeared that, whatever it was, she had reported it
to him before. He laughed. ‘Oh, that. It’s no news. Of course he knows Michael was murdered. D’you think Stephanos wouldn’t tell him that? What difference does it make? Nobody knows
why
.’

‘But if he suspected you were still alive—’

‘Him?’ The thick voice held nothing but amused contempt. ‘In any case, how should he? Nigel’s dead, and no one’s going to recognise that picture now.’

‘There was the gold,’ said Danielle.

The dark was boiling round me. As clearly as if he were just beside me, I heard Simon’s voice again: ‘
It’s not over … till I find what Michael found … the gold
.’

‘Gold, gold, gold – you see it everywhere, don’t you,
ma poule
?’ He laughed again. For some reason his spirits seemed be to rising. ‘You didn’t
see
it was gold, now, did you? She picked something up and you saw it glitter, and your imagination did the rest.’

‘I tell you it was gold. I saw her staring at it.’

The dark slowly cleared. Against it I saw a picture – not the one they were speaking of, but later; Simon, coming away from the centre mark just before he spoke … She hadn’t heard. By the mercy of the gods of the place, she hadn’t heard.

Angelos had turned away and was lugging another box clear of the pile. ‘There. That’s as much as the poor bloody mule can take on one trip … Now, forget that nonsense for five minutes, and you can give me a hand loading up. He found no gold yesterday, and that’s a fact. He’s got no reason to come back here. He’s been, and seen all he can. Why should he come again? To bring a posy for Michael?’ He laughed again,
unpleasantly. ‘By God, I almost wish he would! … I owe him something, after all.’

She said, with a sort of spite: ‘And her. She hit you.’

‘She did, didn’t she?’ he said cheerfully. ‘I think we’ll wait till Dimitrios comes. He can’t be much longer.’ He paused, looking round the cave. ‘It’s queer to be back … and it looks just the same. Just the same. These pillars, and that bit of rock like a lion’s head, and the drip of water somewhere. I never found the spring … Can you hear it?’

She said impatiently: ‘But Nigel. You must do something about the body. Can’t you see—?’

‘You may be right.’ His voice was almost absent. It was clear that Nigel had long since ceased to matter at all. ‘In fact he may do us a better turn dead than he did alive …
He
can go over the cliff with the jeep. Yes, there’s the water. I thought so. It’s over here somewhere …’

Danielle’s voice stopped him as he moved. There was a note in it that I hadn’t heard before. ‘The jeep? Over the cliff? I didn’t know you planned to do that.’

‘You don’t know all I plan to do, my fair lady,’ he said. He turned back to her as he spoke, and I couldn’t see his face. I saw hers. It looked suddenly thinner, and sharp, like a frightened urchin’s. He said: ‘What is it now? We’ve got to get rid of the jeep somehow, haven’t we? If the boy’s found in the sea with it that accounts for him as well.’

She said, almost in a whisper; ‘It’s mine. Everybody knows I brought it up from Athens.’

‘So what? Everybody’ll assume you were in it, too, and that will be that.’

Still she didn’t move, but stared up at him. She looked very childish in the turquoise top, and scarlet bell of skirt. He went towards her till she had to tilt back her head to look him in the eyes. He said on a note of impatience, and something else: ‘What is it now? Scared?’

‘No. No. But I was wondering—’

‘What?’

She spoke still in that hurried whisper. ‘What you were going to do with the jeep if you … if you hadn’t had Nigel’s body to send over the cliffs with it?’

He said slowly: ‘The same, of course. They’d have thought you were in it and had been—’

He stopped abruptly. Then I heard him laugh. His big hand went slowly out and ran down her bare arm. It looked very dark against her pale olive flesh. There were black hairs on the back of it. ‘Well, well, well … My poor little pretty, did you really think I’d do a thing like that to you?’

She didn’t move. The thin arm hung slack by her side. Her head was tilted back, the big eyes searching on his face. She said in that flat little voice: ‘You said “
He
can go over the cliff in the jeep …” as if you’d planned it for someone else. As if—’

He had an arm round her now, and had pulled her close to him. She went to him unresisting. His voice thickened. ‘And you thought I meant you?
You?
My little Danielle …’

‘Then who?’

He didn’t answer, but I saw her eyes narrow and then flare wide again. She whispered: ‘
Dimitrios?
’

His hand came quickly over her mouth and his body shook as if with a laugh. ‘Quietly, little fool, quietly! In Greece, the mountains have ears.’

‘But,
Angelos mou—
’

‘Well? I thought you said you knew me, my girl? Don’t you see? I had to have his help, and his boat, but when did
he
earn the half share of a fortune? The stuff’s mine, and I’ve waited fourteen years for it, and now I’ve got it. D’you think I’m going to share it – with anyone?’

‘And – what about me?’

He pulled her unresisting body closer to him. He laughed again, deep in his throat. ‘That’s not sharing. You and I,
ma poule
, we count as one …’ His free hand slid up her throat, under her chin, and then forced her head up so that her mouth met his. ‘And I still need
you
. Do I still have to convince you of that?’ His mouth closed on hers then, avidly, and I saw her stiffen for just a moment as if she was going to resist, then she relaxed against him and her arms went up to his neck. I heard him laugh against her lips, and then he said hoarsely: ‘Over there. Hurry.’

I shut my eyes. I turned my head away so that my cheek, like my hands, pressed against the cool rock. It smelt fresh, like rain. I remember that under my left hand there was a little knob of stone the shape of a limpet shell …

I don’t want to write about what happened next, but
in justice to myself I think I must. As I shut my eyes the man was kissing her, and I saw his hand beginning to fumble with her clothes. She was clinging to him, her body melting towards his, her hands pulling his head down fiercely to meet her kisses. Then when I couldn’t see any more I heard him talking, little breathless sentences I couldn’t catch – didn’t try to catch – in a mixture of Greek and his thick fluent French. I heard him kick a stone out of the way as he pulled her down on to the dusty floor of the cave near the rubble-pile … near Nigel’s body …

I only heard one sound from her, and it was a little half-sigh, half-whimper of pleasure. I’ll swear it was of pleasure.

I was shaking, and covered with sweat, and hot as though the chilly cleft were an oven. Under the fingers of my left hand the stone limpet had broken away. I was holding a fragment of it in my curled fingers, and it was embedded in the flesh, hurting me.

I don’t know how long it was before I realised that the cave was quiet, except for the heavy breathing.

Then I heard him getting to his feet. His breathing was heavy and even. He didn’t say anything, and I didn’t hear him move away. There was no sound from Danielle.

I opened my eyes again, and the dimming torchlight met them. He was standing beside the pile of rubble, smiling down at Danielle. She lay there, still, looking up at him. I could see the glint of her eyes. The sweat on his face made the wide fleshy cheeks gleam like soapstone. He stood quite still, smiling down at the girl
who lay at his feet staring back at him, her bright skirt all tossed-looking in the dust.

I thought, with crazy inconsequence: how uncomfortable she looks. Then, suddenly: she looks dead.

Presently Angelos stooped, took her body by the shoulders, and dragged it across the cave to pitch it down in the rubble beside Nigel.

And that is how Danielle Lascaux was murdered within twenty yards of me, and I never lifted a finger to help her.

B
Y
the mercy of providence I didn’t faint, or I’d have pitched straight out into the torchlight. But the narrow cleft held my body up, and my mind (numbed, I suppose, by the repetition of shock) seemed only very slowly to take in what had happened.

It was as if some sort of mental censor had dropped a curtain of gauze between me and the scene in the cave, so that it took on a kind of long distance quality, the murderer moving about his dreadful business at a far remove from me, as a creature of fiction moves on a lighted stage. I was invisible, inaudible, powerless, the dreamer of the dream. With light would come sanity, and the nightmare vanish.

I watched him, still in that queer dead trance of calm. I think if he had turned in my direction I would hardly have had the wit to draw back, but he didn’t. He dropped Danielle’s body down in the dust beside Nigel’s, and stood for a moment looking down at
them, lightly dusting his hands together. I wondered for a moment if he was after all going to shovel the dirt over the bodies, then it occurred to me that Danielle’s useless spark of instinct had been right; his plan for disposing of Nigel in the jeep had come a little too pat. It was Danielle who had brought the jeep; it was Danielle who was to be found with the wreck of it … That had been his plan all along. I saw it now clearly. I didn’t believe for a moment that he intended to kill his cousin Dimitrios – but, even if that were true, he had certainly never intended to share anything with Danielle. What she had to offer was only too easily found elsewhere. What was equally certain was that he hadn’t wanted to kill her here. He must have intended to save himself the transport of her body by killing her when the job was over, but her half-frightened queries had aimed just a little too near the mark for comfort. Better kill her now, and risk the extra load to be ferried down after dusk.

He had turned back now to the pillar where the torch was lodged. I watched him, still as if he were an actor in a play – a bad actor; there was no expression on his face, no horror, or anxiety, or even interest. He reached up a hand, picked up the torch, and switched it off. The darkness came down like a lid on a stifling box. He seemed to be listening. I could hear his untroubled breathing, and the tiny rustle of settling dust under the girl’s body. There was no sound from outside.

He switched on the light again and went out of the cave. A bridle jingled as the mule moved, but it appeared that he hadn’t untied it. I heard him move
off, his soft footsteps unaccompanied by the sharper ones of the beast. He must have decided to reconnoitre the corrie before daring to lead out the mule …