This Rough Magic (24 page)

Max declined the gambit, merely nodding. ‘All right, Spiro, I’ll not bother you any more now. Adoni, I’m going to lock the pair of you in while I take Miss Lucy home. I’ll be back within the half-hour. You have the gun.’

‘Yes.’

‘And this.’ Spiro searched under his pillow and produced, with as much drama as if it had been a handkerchief, a Commando knife sharpened to a murderous glitter.

‘That’s the stuff,’ said Max cheerfully. ‘Now, you go to sleep, and very soon I’ll get you away.’ He stooped, and dropped a hand for a moment on the boy’s shoulder. ‘All will be well,
Spiro mou
.’

Adoni followed us to the door.

‘And Sir Gale?’ he asked softly.

‘I’ll look in on him,’ promised Max. ‘He’ll sleep soundly enough, you can be sure of that. He’s in no danger, so stop worrying, and get some sleep yourself. When I get back I’ll spend the rest of the night in the
kitchen. If you need me, you’ve only to come to the upper door and call me. Good night.’

‘Good night, Adoni,’ I said.

‘Good night.’ Adoni gave me that smile again, perhaps a little frayed at the edges, then let the curtain fall into place across the cave entrance, lopping off the warm glow and shutting Max and me out into the darkness of the rocky passage.

He switched on the torch, and we started up the steps. The rough walls, the curving passageway, the hewn flight of stairs, swam past in a sort of dream of fatigue, but a corner of my brain still felt awake and restless, alert to what he was saying.

‘You can see now why I’m hiding that boy away till I can smuggle him out to Athens? It’s not so much that he’s in actual danger still – though he may well be – as simply that we stand a far better chance of finding out what Manning’s up to if he has no idea that we suspect him. It’s something big – that seems obvious … And I’m pretty sure in my own mind where to start looking for it.’

‘The boat?’

‘Either that or the boat-house. He’s up to something involving that boat, and the damned good “cover” that his photography gives him. If you accept Spiro’s story, which I do, his little quarrel with Manning that morning provides the only faint clue … the only deviation from pattern that I can see … and it could tie in with Yanni’s death as well. I’ve been thinking about that. When Yanni brought Spiro’s message here on Sunday night we discussed it pretty freely, and I let it be seen
that I thought it very odd that Manning hadn’t to be told. Yanni then said that he’d seen Manning’s boat out at odd times and in odd places and that he’d thought for some time he was up to no good, and when I mentioned the photographs, he just shrugged and looked cynical. Well, that’s nothing to go by – a man like Yanni would think that photography was a pretty queer occupation for anyone; but he could have very well been suspicious and curious enough after our conversation to go down that night and snoop around the boat-house, or, somewhere else he had no right to be, and so got himself murdered. It’s my guess he was taken by surprise and knocked out from behind, then bundled into his own boat, with Manning’s dinghy attached, taken out to sea, had his head smashed on the boom, and was dumped overboard. Manning then set the boom loose, emptied a bottle of ouzo around, turned the boat adrift, and rowed himself silently home. Oh, yes, it could have been done. He couldn’t take him a great distance, since he’d have to row himself home, and then there was the squall which washed the body straight back – but it worked; he got away with it. An impulsive chap, our Godfrey … and with one hell of a lot at stake, that’s for sure. Yes, I could bear to know just what it is.’

I said in quick apprehension: ‘You’ve got to promise me something.’

‘What’s that?’

‘You’re not going there tonight? You wouldn’t be so silly!’

He laughed. ‘You’re dead right I would not, my love!
I’ve got to see Spiro safe where he belongs before I go arguing with anyone with Manning’s peculiar ideas on life and death. He must have shot at the dolphin, you’d realised that?’ He nodded at my exclamation. ‘Who else? There’s only one plausible reason, the one you imputed to me, that the word had gone round, and people were beginning to come to this piece of coast to see the creature. When Manning first saw you there in the bay, he may have thought you were one of them – a stranger, getting too close to whatever he was trying to keep secret. As Spiro and Yanni did.’

‘But … those beautiful pictures! They really are beautiful, Max! He
couldn’t
destroy it when he’d worked with it like that! He must have been fond of it!’

His smile was crooked. ‘And of Spiro, too?’ I was silent. ‘Well, here we are. A moment while I push the racks back.’

‘What do you want me to do?’

‘Something I know will be safe, and I hope will be easy. Cover my trip back from Athens with Spiro.’

‘Of course, if I can. How?’

‘By keeping Manning away from Corfu harbour tomorrow at the time when I’m likely to be there. It would be quicker to go by plane, but I can’t take the boy that way without the whole island knowing, so I’ll have to take him in my car, hidden under a rug or something, across by the
Igoumenitsa
.’

‘The what?’

‘The ferry to the mainland. I’ll drive to Jannina and get the Athens plane from there. It means we can’t get there and back in the one day, but I’ll try to get home
tomorrow, and I’ll ring up this evening to let you know which ferry we’ll get. The late one doesn’t get in till a quarter to eleven; it’s pitch dark then, and I doubt if he’d be around. But I’d like to get the earlier one if I can, and that gets in at five-fifteen … So if you could bear to be having tea with him or something, till after six, to give me time to drive home …?’

‘Just at the moment I feel it would choke me, but I’ll do my best,’ I said.

We were back in the kitchen. Its light and warmth and comfortable food-smells closed round us like memories from a real, but distant world, something safe and bright beyond the tossing straits of the night’s dream. He pulled the great door shut behind us, and I heard the key drive the lock shut with a grating snap.

‘There. Now you must go home. Come upstairs and get your things, and I’ll look along to see if my father’s safely asleep.’

‘Let’s hope Phyl is, too, or heaven knows what story I’ll have to cook up! Anything but the truth, I suppose!’ I stared up at him. ‘I can’t believe it. You realise that, don’t you? I know it’s true, but I can’t believe it. And in the morning in daylight, it’ll be quite impossible.’

‘I know. Don’t think about it now. You’ve had yourself quite an evening, as they say; but you’ll feel different when you’ve had some sleep.’

‘My watch has stopped. Oh hell, I suppose I got water in it. What’s the time, Max?’

He glanced at his wrist. ‘So has mine. Blast. That little sea-bathe doesn’t seem to have done either of us much good, does it?’

I laughed. ‘Things that might have been better expressed, Mr Gale?’

He reached out, and pulled me to him. ‘Things that might have been better done,’ he said, and did them.

While you here do snoring lie,
Open-ey’d Conspiracy
His time doth take
.

II
. 1.

I slept very late that day. The first thing I remember is the sound of shutters being folded back, and then the sudden hot blaze of sunlight striking across the pillow into my eyes.

Phyllida’s voice said: ‘And high time, too, Rip Van Winkle!’

As I murmured something, dragging myself up out of the depths of sleep, she added: ‘Godfrey rang you up.’

‘Oh?’ I blinked into the sunlight. ‘Rang
me
up? What did he want – did you say
Godfrey
?’ The jerk of recollection brought me awake and up off the pillow so sharply that I saw her look of surprise, and it helped me to pull myself together.

‘I was dreaming,’ I said, rubbing my eyes. ‘What on earth’s the time?’

‘High noon, my child.’

‘Goodness! What was he ringing about?’

‘To know if you’d got safely home with the ring, of course.’

‘Did he expect Mr Gale to steal it
en route
?’

Too late, I heard the tartness in my voice, and my sister looked at me curiously, but all she said was: ‘I woke you up too suddenly. Never mind, I brought some coffee. Here.’

‘Angel … Thank you. Heavens, I must have slept like the dead … Your ring’s over there on the dressing-table. Oh, you’ve got it.’

‘You bet your sweet life I have. I came in a couple of hours ago and took it, but I couldn’t bear to wake you, you were flat out, you poor kid.’ She turned her hand in the sunlight, and the diamond flashed. ‘Thank heaven for that! Bless you, Lucy, I’m really terribly grateful! I’d have gone stark ravers if I’d had to sit there all night, wondering if someone had wandered by and picked it up. And I wouldn’t have dared go down myself! What on earth time did you get in?’

‘I hardly know,’ I said truthfully. ‘My watch stopped. I thought I’d got water in it, but I’d only forgotten to wind it up. Some ghastly hour of the morning.’ I laughed. ‘There were complications, actually. Didn’t Godfrey tell you about them?’

‘I didn’t quite get that bit. Something about the dolphin being up on the beach, and you and Max Gale wrestling about with it in the water. I must say it all sounded highly unlikely. What did happen?’

‘More or less that.’ I gave her a rapid – and suitably expurgated – version of the dolphin’s rescue, finishing with Godfrey’s arrival on the beach. ‘And you’ll find
the wreck of your precious plastic bag in the bathroom, I’m afraid. I’m fearfully sorry, but I had to use something.’

‘Good heavens, that old thing! It couldn’t matter less!’

‘I’m relieved. The way you were talking last night I thought it was practically a holy relic.’

She shot me a look as she disappeared through the bathroom door. ‘I was not myself last night, and you know it.’

‘Well, no.’ I reached for the coffee pot which she had put down beside the bed, and poured myself more coffee.

She emerged from the bathroom, holding the bag between thumb and forefinger. ‘“Wreck” was the word, wasn’t it? I suppose you don’t even know what happened to my Lizzie Arden lipstick?’

‘Lord, I suppose that was a holy relic, too?’

‘Well, it was gold.’

I drank coffee. ‘You’ll find it in Sir Julian Gale’s dressing-gown pocket. I forgot it. I’m sorry again. You might say I was not myself last night either.’

‘Julian Gale’s dressing-gown? This gets better and better! What happened?’ She sat down on the edge of the bed. ‘I tried like mad to stay awake till you got in, but those beastly pills put me right out, once Godfrey’d phoned and I stopped worrying. Go on. I want to know what I’ve missed.’

‘Oh, nothing, really. We were both soaked, so I had to go up to the Castello to get dry, and they gave me coffee, and I had a bath … Phyl, the bathroom! You’d
hardly
believe
the ghastly – oh, sorry! I forgot, it’s the Forli ancestral palace. Well, then, you’ll know the bathroom.’

‘There are two,’ said Phyl. ‘Don’t forget there are twenty bedrooms. One must have one’s comforts. I’ll say I know the bathrooms. Was it the one with the alabaster bath, or the porphyry?’

‘You make it sound like the New Jerusalem. I don’t know, I don’t live at those levels. It was a rather nasty dark red with white spots, exactly like stale salami.’

‘Porphyry,’ said my sister. ‘Was the water hot?’

‘Boiling.’

‘
Was
it? They must have done something, then. It never used to get more than warm, and in fact I seem to remember a tap for
sea
-water, which was pumped up in some weird way from the caves. There are caves under the Castello.’

‘Are there?’

‘They used to use them to keep the wine in.’

‘Really. How exciting.’

‘Only, shrimps and things kept coming in, which was discouraging, and once a baby squid.’

‘It must have been.’

‘So Leo stopped it. It was supposed to be terribly health-giving, but there are limits.’

‘I’m sure there are,’ I said. ‘Shrimps in the wine would be one of them.’

‘Shrimps in the
wine
? What on earth are you talking about?’

I put down my empty cup. ‘I’m not quite sure. I thought it was the wine-cellars.’

‘The sea-water baths, idiot! Leo stopped them. Oh, I see, you’re laughing at me … Well, go on, anyway. You had a bath. But I still don’t see how you got hot water; they
can’t
have got the furnaces to work. They used to burn about a ton of coal a day, and it practically needed three slaves to stoke all round the clock.’

‘Adoni and Spiro invented a geyser.’

‘Dear God,’ said Phyl devoutly, ‘does it work?’

‘Yes, I told you, the water was marvellous. What’s more, there were hot pipes to dry my things on,
and
an electric fire in the bedroom next door. Well, while my things dried I wore Sir Julian’s dressing-gown – which is why I left all your make-up in the pockets – and had coffee and bacon and eggs in the kitchen. Then Max Gale brought me home with the diamond, and that’s the end of the saga.’ I leaned back and grinned at her. ‘As a matter of fact, it was rather fun.’

‘It sounds it! Was Max Gale civil?’

‘Oh, yes. Very.’

‘I must say I’m surprised he helped you. I thought he was supposed to be trying to get rid of the dolphin.’

‘It can’t have been him, after all. He helped me as soon as I asked him. And it wasn’t his father, either, I’m certain of that. I think it must just have been some beastly local lad out for a bit of fun.’ I sat up and pushed back the coverlet. ‘I’d better get up.’

My sister glanced at her wrist, and stood up with an exclamation. ‘Heavens, yes, I’ll have to run if I’m to be ready.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘To get my hair done, and I’ve got some shopping to
do, so I thought I’d have lunch in town. I ought to have waked you before to ask if you’d like to come, but you looked so tired … there’s cold meat and a fruit flan if you stay home, but you’re welcome to come if you like. Can you make it? I’ll have to leave in about twenty minutes.’

I hesitated. ‘Did Godfrey expect me to ring him back or anything?’