My Brother Michael (25 page)

‘Well?’

His eyes lifted. ‘An expensive need. And he’s a sailor. Why would he want a car?’

I sat down again on the bed. ‘I don’t know. Go on.’

Absently, he flicked a gout of ash into the wash-basin.

‘Danielle hired a car for him, but then got the better offer of a jeep from her French friend Hervé Clément, and came up in that. She didn’t revisit the garage to let them know … and she hadn’t given them Dragoumis’ name – hence all the nonsense about “Monsieur Simon”, and the interfering but well-meant efforts of Miss Camilla Haven. But Danielle’s actions do spell something, don’t they?’

‘Urgency,’ I said slowly, ‘yes. And secrecy?’

‘Exactly. And I could bear to know what’s urgent and secret about Danielle, and Dimitrios the cousin of Angelos,’ said Simon.

A
PAUSE
. A beetle blundered in through the open casement, hit the wall with a crack like a pistol-shot, and zoomed out again into the dark.

‘But – the car?’ I said, seizing on what was still my own piece of the mystery. ‘Why the car? You said Dimitrios Dragoumis was a fisherman. What would he need a car for, from Athens, with all that hush-hush nonsense about it?’

‘That’s just it,’ said Simon. ‘He is a fisherman, and he owns a boat. And now he has a jeep … got from Athens and kept very quiet locally. To me, that adds up to one thing. Transport.’

I said, in a voice that sounded queer: ‘Urgent, secret transport …’ Then, sitting up briskly: ‘But –
no
, Simon. It’s absurd.’

‘Why?’

‘I can see what you’re getting at … the reason why
Angelos’ cousin might need this urgent and secret transport. You mean that you think Dimitrios has found Angelos’ cache – whatever it was that Michael found on Parnassus? And the jeep and the caique are to carry – oh!’

‘Well?’

‘
The mule!
Simon – the mule!’

He nodded. ‘You can’t take a jeep up Parnassus, can you? The mule was stolen the night I saw Stephanos. Danielle brought the jeep up the same day. I’ll bet you anything you like that Dimitrios’ caique will shortly be lying carefully invisible in one of the tiny inlets beyond Amphissa.’

I said: ‘Look, hold on, Simon. You’re only guessing. It
could
have been Nigel who took the mule. He’s gone off somewhere, and we were talking about the Dutch boy to him, and—’

‘And it would have been very much simpler for Nigel to have bought the donkey – which went dirt cheap – off the Dutch boy,’ said Simon, ‘than to have stolen a mule from the excavations. He wasn’t all that hard up, and there really wasn’t all that need of secrecy for
him
. In fact, if he was off on a trek of that sort, you’d even have thought publicity was necessary.’

‘Yes, I suppose so. All the same, he looked pretty secretive when I saw him sloping off yesterday morning.’

‘Oh? But I still don’t think he took the mule. It vanished on Monday night, and that night Nigel was up here. Of course he did go out for a walk later with Danielle, but I hardly think—’

I said tautly: ‘You’re right. It wasn’t Nigel. I’ve just remembered something. When we were in the theatre, and you were reciting, I was up near the top row of seats, and I heard something moving up the hillside above me. You know how you hear something without really taking it in consciously, until, later, something reminds you? Well, it was like that. I thought nothing of it – if I heard it at all, I thought it was just the breeze, or a stray goat or donkey or something. But I remember now that I heard metal – a small chinking of metal, like a shod hoof, or the nails of a boot.’

Simon smiled slightly. ‘The beasts here aren’t shod. Hadn’t you noticed? And the locals wear rope-soled espadrilles on the hill. If you heard movement and the chink of metal, Camilla, then you heard a beast’s bridle. It sounds to me as if you really might have heard the mule being stolen. Friend Dimitrios, taking the mule off up the hill. Well, well.’

There was a little silence. Then I said: ‘But Simon, you can’t be right. It really is absurd. Maybe Dimitrios
is
up to no good, and maybe Danielle
is
in it, and maybe they
did
steal the mule and hire the car to transport something, but it can’t, it just can’t, be Michael’s “treasure”!’

‘Why not?’

‘Because it’s too much to swallow that Dimitrios should have spent fourteen years or so looking for the stuff, and just have found it now. Oh, I grant you he could have searched a thousand years and never found it, especially if he didn’t have precise information from Angelos – and he probably didn’t, because you can be
sure Angelos meant to come back when things had simmered down enough for him to leave Yugoslavia and come home. He may not have told Dimitrios at all. Dimitrios may merely have guessed that Angelos had hidden something, and not have known where to start looking. But what I can’t swallow is the assumption that he should have found Angelos’ cache
now
, this week, the very week you’re in Delphi. That’s too much of a coincidence, and I don’t believe it.’

‘But is it?’

‘How d’you mean?’

He said slowly: ‘You’ve got it the wrong way round. Supposing those two things
have
happened at the same time: I am here in Delphi, and Dimitrios finds Angelos’ cache on Parnassus. You call it coincidence. I call it cause and effect.’

‘You mean—?’

‘That the two incidents are certainly related, but not by chance. Dimitrios found the hiding-place, not just while I happen to be here – but simply
because
I’m here.’

I stared up at him. I passed my tongue over my lips. ‘You mean – that he followed us up to the corrie yesterday?’

‘Precisely that. He could have found out when we were going and he could have come to spy.’

I said hoarsely: ‘He did. When I was sitting there in the corrie and you were in the cave with the other two men, I thought I saw something move at the top of the cliff. It could have been someone watching.’

His gaze sharpened. ‘Are you sure of that?’

‘Not really. But I thought there was movement, and looked up, but couldn’t see anything. The sun was in my eyes.’

‘I see. Well, it might have been Dimitrios. And then he followed us down, intending to meet Danielle on top of the Shining Ones. Could be.’

I said: ‘I did her an injustice. I thought they’d been together, and I’d interrupted them.’

‘He’d hardly have had time to get down there before you. Most of the way it’s pretty open, and we might have seen him.’ He thought for a few moments. ‘Well, let’s look at the sequence of events, shall we? Dimitrios, you’ll remember, did try to find out from Stephanos – the only man who knew anything definite about the place where Michael died – anything he could about Michael’s death. He didn’t get anything out of Stephanos. Perhaps he did try to find the place himself. Perhaps he did gather a slender clue or two from his cousin before he left the country. But even with definite instructions from Angelos he still could have been raking the mountain all this time and found nothing. All the marks, like the Cat’s Tooth pinnacle, have gone, and anything could lie buried under that earthquake rubble for fourteen years – or fourteen hundred – undiscovered. Angelos himself, if he were still alive, and if he came back to look, would be in exactly the same case.’

I said, rather breathlessly: ‘Niko said there were ghosts on the hill … lights … d’you remember?’

‘Niko talked a lot of rubbish, but he may well have told the truth here. Dimitrios may have been searching.
But, to go on with the story – supposing he
had
searched all that time, and had had no luck in locating the cache, then, after years, he heard that I, Michael Lester’s brother, was coming to Delphi. This might prove to be his chance. What is more likely than that Stephanos would show me, Michael’s brother, the place? When I arrived Stephanos was away in Levadia, but Dimitrios could easily find out when he was coming back. It’s quite some time since I planned this visit; Dimitrios could have known, and taken time over his preparations. Supposing we were right, and he had noticed Danielle driving down almost daily to Itea with the jeep to bathe? Here was transport of the kind he would need. He wouldn’t dare buy or hire transport locally; he’s well known, and people would ask questions. But it would be easy enough to scrape acquaintance with Danielle, and buy her silence – and her help – with a promise to cut her in on the final haul. It would only remain to collect a mule or a donkey, and there again Danielle was the answer. I’ll bet you she took the mule: she’d worked with the archaeologists for weeks, and she knew just where everything was kept and how to get at it … What is it?’

‘I’ve just remembered. It wasn’t only a mule. I remember. The guide said “
some tools and a mule
”.’

‘
Did
he?’ His voice was still quiet, but the light-grey eyes blazed in his brown face. ‘Well, well, well … Does it make sense, or not? Or am I jumping ahead too fast?’

‘Pretty fast. They’re rather scrappy bricks, and made with awfully little straw, but they could be solid. Go on.’

‘Where was I? Yes: Dimitrios has everything lined up for the day when Simon Lester should arrive and lead him straight to the spot where Michael died. But then he – Dimitrios – has a stroke of bad luck.’

‘Danielle’s boss leaves Delphi, and she has to go too – with the jeep?’

‘Exactly. She went on Sunday, perforce. She must have gone straight to the garage in Athens and arranged to pick up a car next day, as soon as she could get free of Monsieur Clément.’ He grinned. ‘We know what happened next. Her error. But luck came in again, as she persuaded Hervé to let her have the jeep. And she came back. She took the jeep down to Itea. Whether she brought Dimitrios up that night with her we can’t know, but she probably did. She – or he – took the mule and a crowbar or so from the workmen’s sheds above the shrine,
et voilà
.’

I said: ‘And then all Dimitrios had to do was to wait and follow us. Too easy.’

‘Much too easy. I should have thought of it after what Stephanos told me, but I admit it never seriously occurred to me (till I saw the earthquake damage up there) that anything that Mick found might still be hidden. However, there it is. You can bet your boots he was up there yesterday, and now all he has to do is to hunt that fairly small stretch of cliff, and then he and Danielle are made for life.’ He smiled down at me. ‘I admit it
is
a lot of bricks to make with very little straw, but where else is the straw to go? We have certain facts, and we must fit them in somewhere with the knowledge that friend Dimitrios is up to no sort of good.’

‘And he is the cousin of Angelos … Yes, I see what you mean. But why did he come here tonight? Just to see Danielle again?’

He said soberly: ‘Ah, that … That’s what I meant when I said I didn’t like the feel of this affair. What we’ve discovered – or guessed, if you like – so far, is straightforward enough, but Nigel …’ He paused, then turned to pitch the stub of his cigarette out of the open window. ‘Nigel. He’s in this somewhere and I want to know where.’

‘You mean Dimitrios came to see
him
?’

‘No. Dimitrios came here looking for something. And I could bear to know what.’ He glanced round the room. ‘And I could also bear to know where Nigel is.’

I said: ‘The drawings have gone.’

‘What? Oh, the ones on the wall. So they have. Well, the sooner we find out what else is gone the better …’ He began to move round the bare untidy little room as he spoke. ‘We’ll soon see if he intended – no, don’t you bother, Camilla. Sit still. There’s not much searching to be done in a place this size, even if a couple of gorillas have turned everything upside down first …’

‘Dimitrios didn’t take anything with him, anyway,’ I said.

‘No, he didn’t, did he? One might say he hardly had time. That’s one satisfactory thing about tonight’s affair.’

‘Perhaps Danielle was telling the truth. Perhaps he did only come in here to hide from you when he heard you move.’

‘Not on your life.’ He had opened the shower-cup-board
and was rummaging inside. ‘He didn’t have time, after he’d heard me move, to take that light-bulb out. He did that as soon as he got into the room, and to me that means he had some business in here that was going to take a minute or two, and he didn’t want to risk being surprised and recognised. I must have heard him almost straight away – I’d been lying awake wondering where the blazes Nigel was, and as soon as I heard the movements I got up. It didn’t take me long to roll off the bed and grab my flannels and get into them, and then to get to the door. He hadn’t quite shut the door – for quietness’ sake, I suppose – and when I saw a torchlight moving beyond it I knew it wasn’t Nigel, and I went carefully. As I shoved the door open, I saw the light swinging round the room as if it was looking for something. That was all, because of course he turned on me.’

I laughed. ‘Yes, and you told Danielle he attacked you – which, sir, was a lie. I was watching, and you went bald-headed for the poor chap before he even had time to say “good evening”!’

He grinned. ‘And for a very good reason. He whipped round when he heard me at the door, and he pulled a knife. I thought it best not to give him time to think about using it.’

I drew a long breath. ‘I – see. You were right about the feel of this thing, weren’t you? All I can say is, that for a member of our staid and slightly stuffy profession, your reactions are – well, fairly rapid – not to say decisive.’

He was still smiling. ‘Two strenuous years’ conscription
in the tough end of the Artists’ Rifles … besides what Michael taught me all unofficial-like. It bears fruit – besides, I’m rather afraid I enjoyed it. I like a good and dirty fight … I say, Camilla.’

‘Yes.’

‘His things
are
all gone.’

‘Everything? Not just his painting things?’

‘Everything, I think. The rucksack – see, he used to hang it on this peg. I suppose he didn’t carry a razor, but the towel’s gone, too, and the soap, and what clothes he had. And unlike me he was conventional even in this climate and wore pyjamas. Are they tucked down there under the sheet?’