A Darker God (13 page)

He got up from his knees, took off his gloves, and squinted into the light, grunting: “See more in daylight tomorrow morning, I hope. Ah! Now, who’ve we got …?” he said to no one in particular.

Two older men in civilian clothes—dark suits and hats-were arriving together at a more dignified pace than the constables had, and they held back at a careful distance, taking in the scene. One carried a soft bag, the twin of Montacute’s, the other a doctor’s attaché case.

“Gentlemen! Come around this way, would you? Glad you’re here. Superintendent Theotakis,” Montacute announced to the crowd. “My colleague in the Greek C.I.D. Over to you, Markos!”

The superintendent took in the situation, raised his hat, and bowed briefly to the gathering.

“And Dr. Petropoulos!” Montacute greeted. “Pathologist extraordinaire. Delighted! Sir, if you wouldn’t mind stepping over here? Our problem is centre stage. I think a swift preliminary examination of the deceased would answer some essential questions. I believe you know him?”

Petropoulos, oblivious of the crowd, went straight to the corpse and delivered a series of staccato exclamations in Greek, so fast Letty could only just follow.

“Good Lord! Of course I know him! It’s Andrew! They didn’t tell me it was Merriman … Poor chap! What a barbaric scene! How on earth did he end up like this? In a bathtub?” The doctor flung an accusing glare at the inspector. “And with
you
here, Montacute, in the thick of it, I’m told? How could you let this happen under your nose, man?”

“Steady on, Doctor!” Montacute replied in the same language with what seemed to Letty’s ear a perfect accent. “It looks worse than it is. Dramatic performance, don’t you know … He died offstage. The widow declares her late husband to have succumbed to a heart attack. If she’s right, then we may all disperse and go home with no further ado. We wait on your decision, Doctor.”

Petropoulos began to mutter, stating the usual caveats concerning a postmortem. Poor conditions … inconvenience … lack
of equipment … no guarantees. Montacute conveyed the gist of this in English and he was heard with nods of acceptance, all willing the pathologist to press on and pronounce the hoped-for words: “natural death.” Everyone noted that he approached the corpse and set about his task before he had even finished speaking his preliminaries. The two inspectors stood at his shoulders, quick exchanges of question-and-answer batting between them in two languages as Montacute put them in the picture.

Letty was aware of a practised efficiency and camaraderie-even friendship—and aware also that all three men were perfectly conscious that their every syllable was being relayed to the audience with clarity. No swearing, no exclamations, the very minimum of information was exchanged. After several minutes of grumbling and sighing, redirecting of arc lights and flourishing of shining and mysterious pieces of surgical equipment, the doctor was ready to pronounce his initial findings.

“The gentleman’s heart did indeed—and in this his widow was expressing nothing less than the literal truth—stop beating,” he began. “But not as the result of an infarction or any natural cause. No, no! He’s suffered a penetrating cardiac injury. It’s the single thrust with a blade of some sort through the chest that did for him. Here, you see? Wound looks like a closed-up doll’s mouth. Haemorrhaging occurred, but there’s a complication. Yes, this is odd … The rest of this … um …” They consulted briefly over the choice of word and Montacute came up with: “Muck?” The doctor waved a dismissive hand at the red stains on arms and legs. “…
Substance
is not associated with the death wound. And there’s rather a lot of it … Any ideas?”

“Ox blood,” said Montacute. “Or so it’s asserted. We’ll need to have a sample tested.”

“So—poor old Agamemnon meets his fate again,” said the doctor, shaking his head sadly. “And just three hours ago.”

“What was that? Are you telling us he’s been dead three hours?”

“Does that surprise you? Well … as far as I can tell—yes. Again I say it … I’ll know more later. For now, shall we say death occurred between two and four hours ago? And, to be on the safe side, I’ll say—nearer four than two. That is to say at about your teatime. Five o’clockish. Well, if you can get a squad of your stout fellows to help out, Markos …” The doctor looked down dubiously at the body. “We have to get him to the morgue … lucky we came in the hospital van. Look, why don’t we just carry him off in the bathtub? Agreed? It’ll keep any evidence intact and in one place and it seems to have done a good job of containment so far.” He began to pack his equipment away.

Superintendent Theotakis, dramatically moustached and authoritative, took over with a few clear gestures of command, assigning four of his men to bathtub transport duties. The Greek inspector turned in surprise as the witnesses on the audience benches, without a word spoken, performed their last act as a chorus. As the policemen, two on each side, lifted the tub, the actors rose to their feet in silent homage and remained standing while the professor was carried offstage. Theotakis fell in with their observance, taking off his hat and bowing his head as the cortège staggered in front of him. He then set other constables to seal off the area and stand guard in shifts until first light. He himself, he announced, would take the opportunity of going over the crime scene for his own satisfaction and would confer with Montacute when he’d dealt with the assembled witnesses. If the chief inspector was agreeable, they might all just as well be sent off home after a routine search for concealed weapons by his officers, of course,
and not left at large to trample over the theatre, compromising potential evidence.

This was greeted by a sigh of relief from the actors but they stayed in their places, docile and watchful. Some were murmuring, some were weeping, and no one protested when Montacute gave the expected advice to hold themselves available for interview and not to contemplate leaving the city until further notice. They finally began to shuffle off when released, after running the gauntlet of two Greek policemen who patted them down with brisk efficiency. The three ladies, Montacute had improvised as an afterthought, could well present themselves to Miss Talbot, who would perform the same service.

Thetis, Zoë, and Sarah came to stand in line in front of Letty, each raising her arms with a conspiratorial smile and a forgiving shrug. They’d endured greater indignities at school. Thetis even murmured: “Poor you! Here—let me save you the trouble.” She held out her sword, presenting the jewelled hilt. Letty checked that it was the stage piece being offered, a confection of wood and glass, and she handed it back. None of the three girls was concealing anything sinister under her light summer clothes. No blade bulged in bra or knickers or garter. Letty discovered not so much as a nail file when they turned out their pockets.

Laetitia was agreeably surprised that Montacute had taken the time to make certain no one was about to attempt to walk home alone. All, he insisted, must be part of a group of no fewer than four. This seemed to fall in with the group’s own desires since, without an instruction given, they lined themselves up and sorted themselves into teams.

“Anyone for Kolonaki? Join us, then. We’re going as far as the British School …”

“Syntagma, anyone? I’m off to the Grande Bretagne for a stiff drink. What about it, Johnny?”

Laetitia was pleased to hear Zoë and Sarah calling over to her: “Hey! Laetitia! Come with us. We’ve found two strapping fullbacks to escort us up the hill. Are you going our way?”

“I’m afraid I must detain Miss Talbot a little longer,” said Montacute. “But don’t worry, I’ll be certain she gets home safely.”

Letty’s shoulders slumped at the thought of her prolonged detention, but she sat back down in her place in the central wedge of seats. The inspector joined her and they both watched the movements of the Greek officer covering the ground Montacute had recently covered. Letty handed him his open notebook and watched as he ran his eye down the pages she’d filled.

She explained succinctly as he read. “Twenty names, including me and Maud Merriman. I allowed two men to leave early. They both had appointments at the Embassy and I’ve noted down where they may be contacted. I sent them to you and I thought I saw you having them checked?”

He nodded. “Beecham and Melton. Clean, both of them.”

Montacute flashed a keen glance at her. “I see. Oh, this is very well done, Miss Talbot! Names, addresses, but more than that—positions onstage at what we had all assumed to be the crucial time. Well anticipated! And additional information confided to you by some of those involved … I shall have to spend some time absorbing all this.”

“Come off it! A waste of time!” Letty was too tired and too distressed to mince her words. And she was not in a mood to be humoured by the inspector. “I mean—in view of what we now know: that Andrew was already lying dead while you lot were prancing about onstage. Three hours? That takes us way back beyond the death scene with that awful screaming and gargling and to a moment before the start of the play. Let me think … Five o’clock. Everyone was frightfully tense. You’d expect that. Very self-absorbed … they only noticed each other to
quarrel about masks and gowns: ‘That’s mine, you swine! Hand it over!… No! Maurice has got yours…’ You know … that sort of thing …” Letty fixed the inspector with a direct look. “Yes. You were right there, in the middle of that backstage circus, weren’t you?”

“I didn’t notice
you
lurking behind the scenes, miss. Why were you there?” he asked, batting back her own question.

“Perhaps you were preoccupied with other business, Inspector.” Letty didn’t quite like his tone of unemphatic suspicion. “I was only there for a minute or two. Everyone had gone out into the open—too stifling in the huts and tents. Most of the actors had found their own bit of space—standing about in corners behind rocks or trees, mugging up lines they hadn’t yet learned properly. I think you must have been one of those?” She gave him a moment to explain himself but as he stolidly resisted her silent offer Letty continued: “I’d slipped backstage, over-officiously you could say, to check my mannequin was in place. It was. I’d draped a discreet length of muslin over the whole lot—it was too distractingly grotesque to just leave exposed.”

“Did you check …?”

“Oh, yes, I peeked underneath. It
was
my dummy. I looked for Andrew to wish him a broken leg and all that stagey rot. All was left ready for him.”

“So you left the dummy in what I might call a ‘dry’ condition?”

“As I said. I’d applied the brown makeup—lashings of Leichner—earlier in the afternoon. The liquid from the flask was to be poured on nearer the time of presentation by Andrew or Hugh.”

“Why wait until that late moment to make the final libation?”

“They wanted it to look fresh—shiny and red and convincing. I believe they added something … glycerine, was it? To
keep it fluid. Plenty of people in the audience would have known the difference … sadly, from recent personal experience. Half the chaps are likely to be ex-military types, half the girls Red Cross nurses … Not an easy lot to fool in the matter of spilt blood. They would have been insulted to be presented with a daubed-up mannequin figure.”

He nodded understanding and encouragement. “This was to be the climax of the play. The show-stopping moment.”

They exchanged glances, then Letty hurried on: “You must have noticed the careful timing. The sun sets at six-fifty but it’s nearer half past when it sinks below the Attic Hills. Andrew was using the natural light of an open-air theatre much as the original playwrights might have done. Though the classical Greeks preferred the morning hours, I believe. The daylight faded as the onstage tension increased—the shadows gathered literally as well as theatrically. With all the grey and white, the gloom, and foreboding, it was Andrew’s intention to create a yearning for colour in the audience and then to assault their senses with a burst of it, switching the arc lights on at the moment of revelation. Bloodred, silver, bronze. Gleaming and glinting. It was meant to take everyone by surprise. He wanted to hear gasps and whimpers. And—on a more practical note—we weren’t forgetting the flies! The weather’s still warm—you don’t expose a pint of ox blood to the elements.

“Well, I was just getting in the way so I left everyone to it backstage. I’d arrived far too early, as usual. It must have been just before five … ah …” Letty paused and frowned. Montacute waited, giving her time to order her thoughts. “I went to find a place front of house where I’d arranged to meet Maud. I was sitting reading the scripts when she wandered over about half an hour later, a decent ten minutes before curtain-up.”

“Ah, yes, Lady Merriman. She and Gunning are the only two apart from Melton to have hopped off without a search.” The inspector ground his teeth in irritation.

“Don’t blame yourself, Inspector—you could hardly have searched the distraught widow in the middle of the orchestra. You’d have been torn to bits by the cast! Maud’s not everybody’s cup of tea but she has her following. So, you’ll have to take my word for it and I give it now—Maud had no bloodstained dagger secreted in her corset. I think I would have noticed. And her bag”—Letty smiled at the thought—“her reticule, was a tiny thing of calfskin … just about big enough for a hanky and a pair of spectacles. Gunning didn’t arrive until the body had been pushed onstage. ‘The body’—I hate to refer to Andrew like that! I never saw him again … in life. If only I …” she added quietly, her voice beginning to break up.

“Hindsight’s a wonderful thing, Miss Talbot,” said the inspector comfortingly. Then: “Oh, what the heck! Why do we say that? Irony? Kindly platitude? Whatever it is, it’s dashed irritating. You should take no account of hindsight unless it can teach you something.” He tapped her pages of notes. “And here’s an example: This information, so meticulously gathered, may now strike you as being beside the point in the light of what we’re now told about the time of death, but the very fact that you decided to record it tells me that you’re a thoughtful and sensible woman. I’m glad you were there.”