Death Among the Ruins (9 page)

“Then, when you said just now that I come second to God in your eyes, were you telling me that you serve everything else in the universe first, and me last? I must say that I find that more than a little insulting!”

“Pray, ignore her, Mr. Kendrick,” said Belinda. “Your actions speak for themselves. As for the medal, I have always believed that protection is a good thing, whatever its form.”

She turned to the next page of the CIN. “What is this?” she asked Arabella.

“My current theories on the case. You may read them aloud, if you like.”

 

“I am making an effort to mentally reconstruct the crime, you see,” Arabella explained. “Suppose this Alfred Jones, the man who sent me the sketch and to whom John Soane and I gave our money, was paying his workers a pittance to dig the site, hunting for swag. Then one day they tunneled into a villa, and found the most magnificent items ever discovered here. Imagine those fellows, dirt all over their faces, holding up their small oil lamps and gazing on things not seen for seventeen hundred years! It fair gives me chills! All right. Now imagine that
you
are one of those workers. The artifacts have been found and covered up again, and Alfred Jones instructs you to return with him on a certain night, with a cart, to retrieve the goods in secret. You know that these things are worth a lot of money, but
he’s
going to get it all. So what do you do?”

“Kill him, and take them for myself,” said Belinda promptly, shocking the rector.

“Yes?” Arabella pursued. “But
then
what do you do? You cannot sell them, because the murder is too well publicized. Everyone is on the lookout for you and the artworks, and you will surely hang if you are caught.”

“Could she not store them someplace and wait a few years for things to calm down?” asked Kendrick.

“She could do that. But what if she had already found a buyer,
before
murdering Jones, between the time she found the treasure and the night she went to collect it? That would make it easier, would it not? And then, you see, Belinda would have a place to take the statue right away, so that she should never be caught with the contraband.”

“What we need to do now, then,” said Belinda, “is to find that buyer.”

“Quite,” said Arabella.

“So! Here you all are!” exclaimed Charles in a voice slurred by alcohol. He stood unsteadily in the doorway, stoutly supported by Osvaldo.

“Well,” said Arabella, slamming her notebook shut. “We all have a long day ahead of us tomorrow. I shall therefore go to bed without more ado.”

“Who is ‘Moradu’?” Osvaldo leered. “And might I persuade you to let-a me take his place?”

She regarded the Pear-Head with acute dislike. Had he just attempted a witticism? Or was he merely abysmally dim? It scarcely mattered; Osvaldo was at once the most obnoxious and the silliest-looking person she had encountered since coming abroad. Arabella shifted her gaze from his portly form and began vaguely to gaze about her, as though in search of some misplaced object.

“May I help-a you find something,
signorina?”
he asked eagerly.

“Yes,” she replied, looking him full in the face, and through him at the same time. “I am searching for the
peach sauce
.”

This was possibly the moment at which Osvaldo realized the hopelessness of his position. But being possessed of an empty, and therefore buoyant, sort of head, it did not disturb him overmuch. In fact, he fixed on a remedy almost immediately, and resolved thereafter to transfer his amorous attentions to Belinda.

 

 

A
rabella’s bedroom was cold, and she dreamt of penguins. In fact, waking in the small hours and wanting a drink, she discovered a thin crust of ice upon the water in her bedside carafe.

“Well, you
will
sleep with the window open,” said Belinda at breakfast next morning. “What did you expect?”

“I am not complaining,” replied Arabella, calmly buttering a roll. “It was quite exhilarating, in fact. I was merely noting that the weather is changing, and I promised Mrs. Janks we should be home by Christmas. Was there any post this morning, Charles?”

“Nothing for you,” said he, “though I’ve had notices from three creditors, already. How the devil they knew where to find me beats all understanding!”

Belinda, who had taken the seat next Osvaldo’s, gave a sudden, visible start, and regarded him with a shocked expression, whilst he, in turn, leaned in toward her with a meaningful smile, and penetrated her with his stare.

“Do you always leave your window open, Miss Beaumont?” asked the rector, pushing his chair back from the table in order to let Belinda out.

“Yes, Mr. Kendrick. But if you were thinking of climbing up to my balcony some night, I should not advise it. The railings are certain to be slippery when frost-covered, and I would hate to have to tell your family how you came to break your neck.”

A year ago, such a statement, made before virtual strangers, would have caused him to blush deeply. But the rector had by now grown used to Arabella’s sallies, and the slight flush raised by her words was barely even discernable, though Renilde marked it.

“No,” he said, “I merely ask because I, too, keep my window open at night. The fact is, I cannot sleep if my feet become overheated.”

Arabella nodded. “For my part,” she said, “I cannot endure a hot pillow.”

“Oh!” said he, “I am suddenly reminded of the dream I had! Charles and I were wearing togas and selling food from a stall in Herculaneum—some sort of dumplings, fried in hot fat. I fished them out with a wire scoop, and they looked just like little pillows.”

“I don’t suppose I bought any from you, then, my feelings about hot pillows being what they are.”

“No, Miss Beaumont; regrettably, you were not in the dream.”

“I, too, have had strange dreams since coming here,” said Renilde, biting suggestively into a grape. “They are . . . deeply sensual. They are also long, and require some time in the telling. And since you and I are the only ones who are interested in dreams, Mr. Kendrick, I should hate to bore the rest of the company with them. Perhaps we should remove ourselves to one of the smaller coffee rooms.”

This remark, besides being in bad taste, was not even true, since everyone at the table had a dream, either dreamt on the previous night or several nights ago or when they were small, that they were most eager to share with the others.

“I . . . I pray you will excuse me,
signorina,
” stammered Kendrick, “but I really must . . . that is, I cannot be . . . I . . .”

Fortunately . . . or not, depending on one’s viewpoint, Professor Bergamini popped his head in at that moment, and Belinda, on moving from Osvaldo’s immediate vicinity, had taken a chair directly opposite the door. This, her second shock of the morning, nearly caused the poor girl to jump out of her clothing, though she did preserve sufficient presence of mind to stifle her shriek with a table napkin.

“Ah!” said Bergamini. “You are still at breakfast, I see!”

From this, you might expect that he was referring to the entire party. But the professor only had eyes—or so one might assume from the direction in which his nose was pointing—for the rattled Belinda. He smiled broadly and executed a courteous bow. “I am ready to escort you to Ercolano, whenever you wish.”

“Thank you, Signor Bergamini,” muttered the rector, setting his knife and fork closely together on his plate. “I rather think that we are ready
now
.”

“Why didn’t you interview Miss Rinaldo?” Arabella hissed at him as they left the room. “When she offered you the perfect opportunity to do so?”

“There will doubtless be other opportunities,” he whispered back. “Besides, I should not have had the time to interview her properly, unless I had missed the excursion.”

To this, Arabella said nothing. But having thoughtlessly brought her napkin with her from the breakfast table, as they passed through the hall, she flicked it with frustration at the suit of armor, and left it hanging from the articulated arm.

After they had gone, Signora Terranova appealed to her son.

“Felice, can’t you do something?”

“I flatter myself that I can do plenty of things,
madre mia
.”

“You know what I mean! People of our caliber should not have to mingle with common
puttane!
You must speak to the landlord and have them put out at once!”

“By no means,” he replied. “I have not enjoyed such stimulating conversation since my seminary days. Besides, what harm are they doing you?”

“Better you should ask what harm they are doing Renilde!”

He affected surprise. “Oh, but surely they are
not
doing Renilde? I think she would have told us! Although, I
did
see her talking the ear off the unfortunate Mr. Kendrick last night. Are you worried lest she should strain her voice from overuse?”

“Felice! You know very well what I mean! Those
puttane
are setting your cousin a bad example, and the men have evil designs upon her!”

“Hmm. And what is your opinion, Aunt Ginevra?” he asked, passing the preserves.

“To be fair,” said she, “the English are well dressed, and speak like educated persons. However, the women have brought no maid with them, and who travels like that but mountebanks?”

“Why does no one ask me what
I
think?” Renilde demanded.

The rest of the family fell silent.

“Renilde,” said her aunt at last, “you will oblige me by having no further intercourse with either of those men. They will only upset you, dear!”

“A singular choice of words,” murmured the prelate, with a smile.

“I do not like Signor Beaumont,” Renilde said. “But there is no harm in talking to Reverend Kendrick.
He
shan’t make me angry!”

“No, probably not. Very well, then, you may speak to the rector. But not alone, mind! Osvaldo or someone must always be in the room with you. And do not go getting any funny ideas about him,” she added. “Remember, he’s C of E!”

“If Renilde really has the chance of marrying, Mama,” said Terranova, quietly, “I should not care if the fellow worshiped grasshoppers and were king of the monkey people. Should you?”

She snorted. “He has no money! And why is a man of the church, even a Protestant church, traveling with
puttane?
”

“I expect that it is rather a complicated story.”

 

Herculaneum was sparkling in the morning sunshine, looking . . . well, almost new, as the Beaumonts and Mr. Kendrick and the professor strolled along the wide pavement beside the ancient roadway. The wonderful thing about these ruins was that they hardly looked like ruins at all—many of the buildings still retained their roofs and wooden balcony railings. One could walk down streets that were almost perfectly intact, and conjure a sense of the city before the eruption.

“I wonder what everyone thought when they came back afterwards—the people who got out, I mean,” mused Belinda. “Could they tell that their city had been buried, or did they think it had been burnt to nothing, or swept out to sea?”

“The survivors left no record of their reactions,” said the professor, “and when they died, the disaster was all but forgotten. Pompeii and Herculaneum came to be regarded as mere legends. Eventually, someone discovered Pliny the Younger’s eyewitness account, but unfortunately, that is the only record we have.”

“Why ‘unfortunately’?” asked Kendrick. “I should have thought it fortunate indeed to have such a record!”

“Because,” said Arabella, who could never resist showing off what she knew, “Pliny the Younger only observed the eruption from the safety of his drawing room window in Naples, and never bothered to write about it at all until years later, when Tacitus asked him to. One has to wonder how accurate his recollection was.”

Charles cleared his throat as a caution, but there was no stopping her now.

“His uncle, Pliny the Elder, a naval officer and a man of science, attempted to rescue the Pompeians who were stranded on the beach. He was fascinated by the eruption, and left the safety of Naples with a small fleet, to get as close as possible.”

“This little Pliny went to mark it,” sang Belinda, “and
this
little Pliny stayed home!”

“Whilst this little Pliny ate dormouse,” added Charles, “which he had at a restaurant in Rome!”

Arabella was not amused. In fact, she was on the verge of vexation.

“What about the uncle, then?” asked Kendrick. “Even
I
have heard of Pliny the Elder! Why don’t we have his account?”

“Because he never wrote one. The poor man died on the beach, probably from a combination of poisonous fumes and heart failure.”

Throughout Arabella’s little showing-off lecture, the professor had said nothing, leading his group through the ancient streets and keeping his own counsel. Arabella glanced over now and then, to see whether she was impressing him, but the tinted spectacles and broad-brimmed hat effectively concealed his thoughts from her. Presently, he brought them to a halt.

“This is where the murder occurred,” he said quietly, indicating a mound with a tunnel opening at its base. “The bronze in which you are so much interested,
signorina,
was taken from the villa which lies buried in there, and brought outside, to this spot.” He pointed out the places with his walking stick, where the ground had been scarred and scuffed about.

“Good,” said Arabella. “I should like to inspect the tunnel, as well.”

“That will not be possible, I am afraid. A section of the roof has collapsed since the statue’s removal, and it is no longer safe.”

Viewing the tunnel and the villa to which it led could not possibly have helped her investigation, but she should have liked to see them all the same. Perhaps there were other interesting pieces down there that the looters missed. And then she noticed a dark stain, splashed across the wall of the neighboring house. Arabella did not need to ask what it was, and she stared at it, horrified.

Misinterpreting her interest, Bergamini began to describe the building:

“ . . . A fairly typical construction of its type. We shall explore it after lunch, to give you a general sense of how the ancients actually lived.”

Charles caught the word “lunch,” and his flagging spirits revived somewhat. He had felt no desire to come out here in the first place, but Kendrick had wanted to, and Arabella, as ever, was adamant that Charles not be left by himself.

“We could eat now, you know!” He had to shout this, for he had lagged behind the others, in order to poke at things with his stick. Food and a sit-down would make a change from walking around, trying to avoid listening to Arabella.

“Is it just my imagination,” he asked, catching up with the rest, “or are those little brutes following us? Drive them off, Professor, there’s a good chap. Tell them that we’re foreign devils who want to roast and eat them.”

The urchins Arabella had encountered on the previous evening—or different ones, perhaps—were watching from a distance and keeping the group in sight. Yet they made no attempt to approach them directly.

“Oh, let them alone, Charles,” she said. “They’re not bothering us.”

She took the pencil from behind her ear and began sketching the murder scene into her CIN.

“I don’t see what good that will do,” said Charles, peering over her shoulder.

“Neither do I, but one never can tell. Professor, before I forget, will you show us a vomitorium?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You know: the room where the Romans went to be sick during orgies, so that their stomachs could hold more.”

A child’s laugh reverberated off the stones, and Pietro skipped over to their side of the street.

“Is not true,
signorina!
It means ‘go out.’ You see?” He pointed to a partially standing public building, where the word was painted over a doorway.

“‘Vomitorium’ means ‘exit’?” she asked. He nodded vigorously. “It is not true, then? There were no special rooms for . . . I mean, the Romans never did that?”

“They never! One crazy man, perhaps, or two.” He shrugged. “But they were not normal. Who could like to eat again after being sick?”

“Myself!” cried another boy, emphatically stabbing his own little chest with his index finger. “I would eat and eat and eat, and if there was more food, I would throw up the old food and eat that, too!”

The other children were creeping forward now, under the guise of interested listeners.

“Bell,” said Belinda quietly. “These poor children are hungry! We must do something for them!”

“Yes, indeed,” said Arabella. “Let us invite them to share our lunch.”

Bergamini was against this, but Arabella prevailed.

“Come along, darlings,” called Belinda, taking up the hamper and waving her hand. “We’ve plenty of food here!”