02 _ Maltese Goddess, The (10 page)

These chains of memory were broken by the sounds, faint above the sound of the sea below the site, of giggling schoolgirls, Sophia among them, who soon hove into view on the causeway above me.

At the head of this delegation, in print shirtwaist dress and straw hat, was the redoubtable Dr. Anna Stanhope. Sophia saw me immediately and rushed to give me a hug, introducing me to five or six young girls with her, and then to Dr. Stanhope.

After a minute or two of polite chatter, Dr. Stanhope sent the girls into the temple, reminding them what to look for, and then sat down on a stone near me.

“Nice place you’ve found here,” she said rather breathlessly, wiping her brow with a lace handkerchief, which she then delicately put down the front of her dress like a Victorian spinster. “Hot,” she added.

“It is,” I agreed. “But it’s a wonderful place and I should thank you for bringing me here.”

She looked surprised. “I attended your lecture last night,” I explained.

“Did you? Did you like it? Set some of them back on their bottoms I daresay.” She hooted.

I had to smile. “I believe you did,” I agreed.

“I’m a feminist, you know. A placard-carrying, bra-burning, raving feminist. Came to it rather late, I’m afraid. But you know what they say. Better late than never. Or more likely, there’s no fool like an old fool.” She hooted again. She wasn’t that old, actually. At close range she appeared to be in her mid-fifties.

“Explains a lot, though. Feminism, I mean. Why I never got the senior academic posts I wanted. Why I had to work so hard to get my papers published while my male colleagues, most of them louts, soared through academia.

“Best I could do was head mistress of a girls’ school. But I’ll get my revenge. Inculcating feminist values in hundreds of little British schoolgirls.” Another laugh.

“What brought you to Malta?” I asked, changing the subject. I consider myself a feminist too, but there was an edge to this conversation that I didn’t want to deal with.

“Sabbatical,” she replied. “I’ve had a few in my day, of course. Never been able to get away before, though. Lived with my mum. I’ve been—what’s that horrid expression?— primary caregiver, that’s it. She died last year. I was sorry, of course. We’d been so close. But I felt… free I guess, for the first time. I’d heard my dad talk about Malta when I was a little girl. He died fifteen years ago. That’s when I moved back in with my mum. He’d been stationed here during World War Two—terrible time they had here, nearly starved to death you know, the Maltese, until the British broke the blockade.

“Anyway, my subject is history. And this place has a fascinating one, not the least of which is its place as a center of Goddess worship. So here I am. How about you? Canadian, I expect. The accent.”

“I am,” I said. I told her about my project in Malta, and how I expected it to be completed in a few days, but that I might—the thought was forming as I spoke—stay on a few more days to look around. We talked in a desultory fashion for a while, the heat of the afternoon making us both a little languid, and then we sat in companionable silence enjoying the site.

As we did so, a man appeared on the causeway above us. With all this talk of feminism and Goddess worship, he seemed a little out of place, and indeed he was the first male I’d seen since the ticket taker at the entrance. The man was attractive, almost movie star good-looking actually, well dressed in a nicely designed lightweight suit, Italian cut I’d say, dark complexion and hair, and he wore those reflecting sunglasses. He reminded me a little of Martin Galea. As we sat, he slowly scanned the site, his gaze resting on Dr. Stanhope and me for only a second. That done, he took off his sunglasses for a moment and carefully polished them. Then he walked around the perimeter of the site and was temporarily lost from view.

“Time to get going,” Dr. Stanhope said, hefting her large frame from the stone. “Come along, girls,” she cried. It sounded like “gulls” to my North American ears. The giggling schoolgirls gathered round.

I walked back up the causeway with the little group, Sophia at my side. The girls had started at Mnajdra first, the reverse of my visit, so I said good-bye and started back to the entrance.

“I don’t suppose you’d like to help me with a little project?” Anna Stanhope called after me as I turned to leave. “The gulls and I are putting on a little play for some visiting dignitaries in a few days. My stage crew of one broke his leg water skiing, silly fool. Do you think you might give us a hand?”

“Say yes,” Sophia mouthed at me.

“Yes,” I said. “I’d like to.” Sophia smiled her placid smile.

“Jolly good. Next rehearsal Saturday afternoon, three o’clock at the University. In the auditorium, same as last night.”

“I’ll be there,” I said.

As I leave the Goddess’s sanctuary, I turn back for one last look. The sun is low in the sky.

I find myself the apex of a perfect triangle. I think if I raise my arms to shoulder height in front of me to form a sixty-degree angle with my body, with my left hand I point to Dr. Stanhope, with my right I point to the man. It is a pattern that will repeat itself.

For a few seconds, we are frozen in perfect symmetry, but then I turn to go and the triangle breaks apart. I see the man begin to walk toward Dr. Stanhope, but do not look again.

I feel a vague twinge of memory. Something about the eyes, when he took off his sunglasses for a moment. Or perhaps the way he walks. Was it recently I knew him, or a long, long time ago?

Somewhere in the brain, a command to retrieve data is sent. Billions of neurons spring into action; minute electrical impulses sprint through the mamillary body and round the hippocampus. Dendritic spines stretch out like tiny hands to meet each other; synapses crack across the voids.

The command is encoded low priority. I will not remember in time.

The next morning the phone rang very early, long before dawn. I groped my way to it and heard what I thought was a honking Canada goose. It was, it turned out, Dave Thomson with a dreadful cold, calling me on his cellphone from what sounded like the end of the main runway at Toronto International.

“We did it!” he croaked. “It’s on its way. Four hours start to finish. Warehouse is still a mess, so we picked up the stuff at the store in one truck and at the house with another. Packed it right on the frigging tarmac outside the hangar. Freezing cold, let me tell you. The wife says I’ll catch pneumonia. But it’s on its way. Skyliner Cargo. It’ll be in Rome in less than seven hours. We’ve got an hour’s turnaround. Everybody’s standing by. It’ll be on the two p.m. for Luqa. Let Azzopardi know for me, will you?” he said, naming his Maltese broker. “Docket 7139Q.”

“Dave, you really are the best.” I laughed. “I’m sticking with you for life.”

“Another satisfied customer,” he honked. Then, “By God, this was a squeaker. I’m going home to bed.”

I knew I’d never get back to sleep, so I put on a pot of coffee and watched the early morning light. Most places are enchanting at this time, none more so than Malta, where the early morning light was as beautiful as I’d ever seen it. I was beginning to love the place, idiosyncracies and all.

Later as I waited for the workmen to arrive, sans Joseph, and had left a message for Mr. Azzopardi on his answering machine, I did my own house inspection. I tried the taps: the water came on, hot and cold. I tested the switches: every light worked. The walls were free of holes, the paint matched perfectly to my eye, the woven hanging looked wonderful in the living room. I checked the kitchen cupboards: glassware, flatware, and dishes all lined up in satisfying rows, ready to be called upon at any time.

And best of all, the furniture was on its way.

“We might just be all right here,” I said to the empty rooms. “We might just be all right.”

By 4:45 that afternoon I was in position at the door, clipboard in hand, as a phalanx of small trucks—Mr. Azzopardi must have commandeered every small truck on the island for the occasion—came along the road and up the driveway one at a time to unload. The cousins stood by ready to unload and install.

“Two carved mirrors. Upstairs hallway,” I said.

“Teak dining table and six, seven… eight chairs. Dining area to the left.

“Wrought-iron and glass table, four chairs. Verandah at back.

“Antique etagere, second floor, far end.”

And so it went. Until the very end when there appeared a large oak chest. The cousins stumbled with its weight.

“What’s this?” I said. I checked the list again. “This is supposed to be a sideboard, not a chest.”

I looked the piece of furniture over. The yellow sticker with my initials on it was plainly visible.

“They’ve sent the wrong piece!” I said in exasperation. “I don’t believe this! What am I supposed to do with this?”

I wanted to kick it, valuable though it might be. Instead, I turned the key and flung the lid open with considerable force.

Someone screams and screams. It is a voice I think I recognize. A tiny rational part of the brain sends a high priority message to seek a match and finds one. The voice belongs to me.

Martin Galea is dead. Very dead. Body stuffed awkwardly into the chest, a brown stain on the front of the impeccable silk shirt. Eyes staring toward eternity.

For a few seconds time stands still for me.

ARIADNE

SIX

Roma Locuta est. Rome has spoken. Benign, perhaps, Pax Romana. But still, another imperial interloper on My shores. You drink My wine, eat My honey. Your villas, baths, and fortifications dominate My lands.
Causa finita est,
you say? Case closed? No, not quite. You too will leave us. Barbarians are soon at your gate. Pax Romana no more. Europe will sleep. I, Malta, My island, will sleep as I watch over it.

“Could we go over this one more time, please, Miss McClintoch?” Vincent Tabone asked. Detective Vincent Ta-bone of the Maltese police, I might add.

I nodded numbly.
‘.
“You came here to get the deceased’s house ready for a social event of some kind. One that was to be attended by what you have referred to—forgive me, you have corrected me on that point already—that the deceased had referred to as important people. You don’t know who these people are, nor when the event is or was to be.”

“That’s right,” I said, nodding again.

“You knew the deceased was coming to inspect your work soon, but you didn’t know exactly when he was due to arrive.”

I nodded.

“Was that a yes?” he asked, looking up from his notebook. I nodded again.

“You were responsible for seeing the furniture was packed and shipped, then placed in the house, but you weren’t sure until today when it would arrive.”

I nodded again. I thought if this questioning kept up much longer, I’d be doing serious injury to my neck.

“There was a piece of furniture in the shipment that shouldn’t have been there, and it just happened to contain the body of the deceased. It was marked with a yellow sticker with your initials in what you say is your handwriting, and you don’t know how it got there?”

“Right again,” I said.

“You’ve been staying in the house for… how long?… six days. The first night you were here you thought you saw someone at the end of the yard, but you don’t know who, or even if there really was someone there. You also found a dead cat, and someone
may
have tampered with the brakes on the car, but you have no idea who or why?”

“Yes,” I said. I could also have told him there was a man, dressed in a safari suit, who had tried to run me off the road because I’d stepped on his toe. But what would be the point?

He looked at me for a long time, then sighed loudly.

“Another day of joy, adventure, and achievement in the service of the Maltese people,” he said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Don’t you have some expression for days which are not going well?”

“Sure. At the shop we say ‘just another day in paradise.” Is that what you mean?“

“Exactly,” he said. Amazingly, he smiled at me. Despite myself, I smiled back. It was the first friendly gesture that had come my way since I’d arrived at police headquarters in the town with the rather charming name of Floriana. Charm had been sadly lacking in its inhabitants, however, until I had met Detective Tabone. While the police may have been prepared to concede Martin Galea’s right as a native-born Maltese to come home to die, they were not pleased with the foreigner who had had the bad taste to find his body.

For the first time since I had arrived there, I relaxed a little, and was able to look closely at him, trying to take the measure of the man. He was slim, tall by Maltese standards, with greying hair, an arresting, shall we say, moustache, and an air of fatigue about him, not so much from the lateness of the hour, I thought, as the chronic weariness of seeing too much of the seamier side of life.

“We don’t get a lot of this kind of thing, you know. Oh, there’s no question people kill each other from time to time. Domestic situations, usually. Find the culprit right away. And people like to throw bombs in doorways every now and then. Blood feuds of some kind, politics at the heart of it most of the time. But people don’t normally get killed by the blast that often. We have more trouble with fireworks factories blowing up as a matter of fact. That seems to happen pretty regularly.”

He tossed his pen and notebook onto the desk. “I expect it’s the wife,” he said. “It usually is.
Cherchez la femme,
you know.”

“Marilyn Galea? I find that hard to believe. Too quiet, timid even.”

“Ah, but it’s often the quiet ones…” We both thought that one over for a minute or two, before he continued, “And you know what they say about women in Malta. That when St. Paul was shipwrecked here, he rid the island of poisonous snakes by transferring the venom to women’s tongues!”

“No, I didn’t know that,” I said, in what I hoped were suitably acid tones. Perhaps, I thought, I should introduce this man to Anna Stanhope and watch her have a go at him.