This Rough Magic (27 page)

‘Did Sir Julian have any news? What has turned up about Spiro?’

‘Search me. He wouldn’t say a word. We had a couple of drinks at the
taverna
, and I thought his manner was a bit odd; I thought at first he was being cagey, and there was something he didn’t want to tell me, but after a bit I realised that he was merely feeling his corn, and trying to hide it. It’s my guess the poor old chap hasn’t had anything stronger than half a mild sherry for a year.’ His mouth twitched. ‘Well, after that I’m afraid I did rather give the party a push along the right lines … I wanted to lay in a few bottles for myself – I was out of ouzo, for one thing, and there was a new
koùm koyàt
liqueur I was wanting to try, so I bought them, but when I suggested we should go along to my place the old man wouldn’t have it. He was mellowing a bit by that time, and insisted on taking me to the Castello, and buying a bottle of gin to treat me to. It didn’t take much of that stuff to get him good and lit, but I’m afraid it finished any hope I’d had of getting sense out of him. He’d got it fixed in his head that the only reason I’d gone to the Castello was to hear the recording of their blasted film music.’ He gave a short laugh where the exasperation still lingered. ‘Believe you me, I got the lot, words and all.’

‘Oh, I believe you! Hunks of
The Tempest
?’

‘Did he do that for you, too?’

I laughed. ‘He was reciting when Mr. Gale and I got up to the house. As a matter of fact I enjoyed it. He did it marvellously, gin or no gin.’

‘He’s had plenty of practice.’

The cruel words were lightly spoken, but I think it was at that moment that I began to hate Godfrey Manning. I remembered Max’s face, strained and tired; Sir Julian’s, blurred and drowning, holding on to heaven knew what straw of integrity; the two boys curled close together on the makeshift bed; Maria’s grateful humility. Until this moment I had been content to think that I was helping Max: this had franked a piece of deception whose end I had not let myself explore. But now I explored it, and with relish. If Godfrey Manning was to be proved a murderer, then presumably he was going to be punished for it; and I was going to help with everything I had. Something settled in me, cold and hard. I sat down in the saddle and prepared to ride him down.

I felt him glance at me, and got my face into order.

‘What actually happened when you got to the house?’ he asked. ‘What did he tell them, Max and the model-boy?’

‘Nothing, while I was there. No, honestly, Godfrey!’ I was pleased to hear how very honest I sounded. ‘They only guessed it was you who’d been with him because you’d thrown a Sobranie butt into the stove.’

He gave a crack of laughter. ‘Detectives Unlimited!
You did have an exciting night, didn’t you? Did they let anything drop in front of you – about Spiro, I mean?’

‘Not a thing.’

‘Nor Yanni Zoulas?’

I turned wide, surprised eyes on him. ‘Yanni – oh, the fisherman who was drowned. No, why?’

‘I wondered. Pure curiosity.’

I said nothing, letting the silence hang. Now we were getting somewhere … It was obvious that he was still uncertain whether the police really had accepted ‘accident’ as the verdict on Spiro and Yanni; and I thought it was obvious, too, that he badly wanted to know. And since he wasn’t the man to sweat about what he had done, it must be what he still had to do that was occupying him: he needed a clear field, and no watchers. His efforts with Sir Julian, and now with me, showed that he had no suspicion that he was being watched, just that he badly needed a green light, and soon.

Well, I thought cheerfully, leaning back in my seat, let him sweat a bit longer. He’d get no green light from me.

The road was climbing now, zigzagging steeply up a wooded hill clothed with vineyards and olive-groves, and the fields of green corn with their shifting grape-bloom shadows.

He said suddenly: ‘Didn’t you see him go back to the body after we’d left it?’

‘What? See who?’

‘Gale, of course.’

‘Oh, yes … sorry, I was looking at the view. Yes, I did. Why?’

‘Didn’t you wonder why he did that?’

‘I can’t say I did. I suppose he just wanted another look.’ I gave a little shiver. ‘Better him than me. Why, did you think he saw something we didn’t?’

He shrugged. ‘Nothing was said to you?’

‘Nothing at all. Anyway, I hardly know the Gales; they wouldn’t tell me things any more than you. You aren’t beginning to think there was more in Yanni’s death than met the eye?’

‘Oh, no. Let’s just say it’s curiosity, and a little natural human resentment at having things taken out of my hands. The man was drowned on my doorstep – as Spiro was from my boat – and I think I should have been kept in the picture. That’s all.’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘if anything had turned up about Spiro Maria would know, and she’d tell my sister and me straight away. If there is anything, I’ll let you know. I realise how you must be feeling.’

‘I’m sure you do. And here we are. Shall we see if they’ll let us in for one drachma?’

The gates were open, rusting on their seedy pillars. Huge trees, heavy already with summer, hung over the walls. A sleepy janitor relieved us of twenty drachmas or so and nodded us through.

The house was very near the gate, set among thick trees. The doors were open. I had vaguely expected a museum of some kind, a carefully kept relic of the past, but this was merely an empty house, a summer residence from which the owners had moved out, leaving doors and windows unlocked so that dead leaves and
insects had drifted year by year into the deserted rooms, floorboards had rotted, paintwork had decayed, metal had rusted … The place was a derelict, set in the derelict remains of formal gardens and terraces, and beyond the garden boundaries crowded the trees and bushes of a park run wild.

I remember very little now of my tour of the Achilleion. I am sure Godfrey was a good guide: I recollect that he talked charmingly and informatively all the time, and I must have made the right responses; but I was obsessed with my new hatred of him, which I felt must be bound to show as plainly as a stain; in consequence I was possibly even a little too charming back again. I know that as the afternoon went on his manner warmed perceptibly. It was a relief to escape at length from the dusty rooms on to the terrace.

Here at least the air was fresh, and it wasn’t quite as hard to linger admiringly as it had been in the dusty rooms of the palace, with their unkempt and shabby grandeurs. The terrace was floored with horrible liver-coloured tiles, and the crowding trees below it obscured any view there might have been, but I did my best with the hideous metal statues at the corners and the row of dim-looking marble ‘Muses’ posing sadly along a loggia. I was a model sightseer. I stopped at every one. You’d have thought they were Michelangelos. Three-fifteen … three-twenty … even at three minutes per Muse it would only keep us there till three-forty-seven …

There remained the garden. We went in detail round it; arum lilies deep in the weeds at the foot of palmtrees;
a few unhappy paeonies struggling up in the dank shade; a dreadful statue of Achilles triumphant (six minutes) and a worse one of Achilles dying (four); some Teutonic warriors mercifully cutting one another’s throats in a riot of brambles (one and a half). I would even have braved the thorny tangle of the wood to admire a statue of Heine sitting in a chair, if the gate hadn’t been secured with barbed wire, and if I hadn’t been afraid that I would wear out even Godfrey’s patience.

I needn’t have worried. It was unassailable. He had to put the time in somehow, and I am certain that it never once crossed his mind that a day out with him could be anything but a thrill for me from first to last.

Which, to be fair, it certainly was. The thrill that I got, quite literally, when he took me by the elbow to lead me gently back towards the gate and the waiting Jaguar went through my bone-marrow as if the bones had been electrically wired. It was only twenty past four. If we left for home now, and if Godfrey, as seemed likely, suggested tea in Corfu, we should just be in nice time to meet the ferry.

There was one more statue near the gate, a small one of a fisher-boy sitting on the fragment of a boat, barelegged, chubby, smiling down at something, and wearing a dreadful hat. It was on about the same level of genius as the Muses, but, of course, I stopped in front of it, rapt, with Baedeker at the ready and my eyes madly searching the tiny print to see if there were any other ‘sights’ between here and Corfu which I could use to delay my blessedly complacent guide.

‘Do you like it?’ Godfrey’s tone was amused and indulgent. He laid the back of a finger against the childish cheek. ‘Do you notice? If this had been done seven years ago instead of seventy it might have been Spiro. One wonders if the model wasn’t a grandfather or something. It’s very like, don’t you think?’

‘I never knew Spiro.’

‘Of course not, I forgot. Well, Miranda, then.’

‘Yes, perhaps I do see it. I was just thinking it was charming.’

‘The face is warm,’ said Godfrey, running a light hand down the line of the cheek. I turned away quickly, feeling my face too naked. Half past four.

He dropped his hand. ‘You keep looking at your watch. I suppose you’re like Phyl, always gasping for tea at this time? Shall we go and look for some in Corfu?’

‘What’s the other way? The coast looked so lovely from the belvedere.’

‘Nothing much, the usual pretty road, and a fishing village called Benitses.’

‘There’ll be a
kafenèion
there, surely? That would be more fun for a change. Wouldn’t there be tea there?’

He laughed. ‘The usual wide choice, Nescafé or lemonade. There might even be some of those slices of bread, cut thick and dried in the oven. I’ve never yet discovered who eats them or even how. I can’t even break them. Well, on your head be it. Jump in.’

We got tea after all at Benitses, at a plain, clean little hotel set right on the sea. It couldn’t have been better placed – for me, that is. There were tables outside, and
I chose one right on the dusty shore, under a pepper-tree, and sat down facing the sea. Just beside us a whole stable of coloured boats dozed at their moorings, vermilion and turquoise and peacock, their masts swaying gently with the breathing of the sea; but beyond them I saw nothing but one red sail dancing alone on the empty and glittering acres.

Godfrey glanced over his shoulder. ‘What’s going on there that’s so interesting?’

‘Nothing, really, but I could watch the sea by the hour, couldn’t you? Those boats are so pretty. Your own is a real beauty.’

‘When did you see her?’

‘Yesterday afternoon. I saw you go out.’

‘Oh? Where were you? I’d been looking for you down on the beach.’

‘What a pity! No, I didn’t go down after all, I stayed up in the woods and slept.’ I laughed. ‘I rather needed the sleep.’

‘You’d certainly had a strenuous time. I wish I’d seen your rescue act with the dolphin. Some pictures by flash would have been interesting.’ He stirred the pale tea, squashing the lemon slice against the side of the cup. ‘I read somewhere – I think it was Norman Douglas – that while dolphins are dying they change colour. I believe it can be a remarkable display. Fascinating if one could get that, don’t you think?’

‘Marvellous. Did you say you were going out tonight?’

‘Yes.’

‘I suppose you couldn’t do with a crew? I’d adore to come.’

‘Brave of you, under the circumstances. You’d not be afraid to crew for me?’

‘Not in the least, I’d love it. You mean I may? What time are you going?’

If he had accepted the offer I’m not sure what I’d have done; broken an ankle at least, I expect. But he said:

‘Of course you may, some day soon, but you’ve got me wrong, I didn’t mean I was going out with the boat tonight. Actually, I’m going by car to visit friends.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry, I must have got hold of the wrong end of the stick. A pity, I was getting all excited.’

He smiled. ‘I tell you what; I’ll take you sailing soon – Friday, perhaps? or Saturday? We’ll go round to Lake Kalikiopoulos and look for the place – one of the places, I should say – where Odysseus is supposed to have stepped ashore into the arms of Nausicaa. Would that be classical enough for you?’

‘It would be marvellous.’

‘Then I’ll look forward to it … Look, there’s the ferry.’

‘Ferry?’ It came out in a startled croak, and I cleared my throat. ‘What ferry?’

‘The mainland boat. She crosses to Igoumenitsa and back. There, see? It’s not easy to see her against the glitter. She’ll be in in about twenty minutes.’ He looked at his watch, and pushed back his chair. ‘Hm, she’s late. Well, shall we go?’

‘I’d like to go upstairs, please, if they have one.’

The owner of the hotel, who was at Godfrey’s elbow with the check, interpreted this remark with no difficulty, and led me up an outside stair and along a scrubbed corridor to an enormous room which had been made into a bathroom. It was spotlessly clean, and furnished, apart from the usual offices, with a whole gallery of devotional pictures. Perhaps others before me had fled to this sanctuary to think …

But it was Baedeker I had come to study. I whipped it open and ran a finger down the page. The print was hideously small, and danced under my eyes.
One drachma a day for the dragoman is ample … valets-de-place, 5 dr. per day, may be dispensed with
…

Ah, here was something that might be expected to appeal to an avid classicist like myself.
The tomb of Menecrates, dating from the 6th or 7th Century B.C
. … And bang on the way home, at that. Now, if only I could persuade Godfrey that my day would be blighted if I didn’t visit this tomb, whatever it was …

I could; and it was a winner, for the simple reason that nobody knew where it was. We asked everybody we met, and were directed in turn, with the utmost eagerness and goodwill, to a prison, a football ground, the site of a Venetian fort, and a pond; and I could have felt sorry for Godfrey if I hadn’t seen quite clearly that he thought that I was trying desperately to spin out my afternoon with him. The man’s armour was complete. In his vocabulary, God was short for Godfrey.