This Rough Magic

  ‘They certainly were.’ He laughed. ‘Well, you can see the whole palace as well, today, and it will cost a damned sight more than a drachma, and I imagine the gate money’ll go straight to the Greek Government. As usual, charity begins at home … I wish there’d been some classical relics to take you to – Phyl told me you were interested – but I don’t know any, apart from some temple or other inside the Mon Repos park, which is private. However, you might say Achilles is the patron saint of the Achilleion, so perhaps it’ll do! There’s some talk of turning it into a casino, so this may be the last chance of seeing it more or less in the original state. And the drive up there is very pretty, you’ll enjoy it.’

  ‘You’re very kind,’ I said. It was all I could do not to stare. He spoke so easily and charmingly, sitting there relaxed and handsome at the wheel, the sun throwing up fair highlights in his hair, and a dusting of freckles along the bare brown arms. He was wearing an open-necked shirt, with a yellow silk scarf tucked in at the neck – Top People summer uniform – which suited him very well. He looked calm and contented, and perfectly normal.

  Well, why not? When a felon’s not engaged in his employment, he has to look as ordinary as possible for his own skin’s sake. I supposed it was perfectly possible for a man to drown two young men one week, and enjoy a pleasant day out with a girl the next, take a lot of trouble to plan an outing for her, and even enjoy the view himself …

  ‘And there’s a marvellous view,’ he said. ‘The palace is set on a steep wooded hill over the sea. From the belvedere you can see practically the whole way from Vutrinto in Albania, to Perdika along the Greek coast. On a clear day the harbour at Igoumenitsa’s quite plain.’

  ‘How splendid.’

  ‘And now supposing you tell me exactly what happened last night at the Castello?’

  It took every scrap of discipline and technique I had not to jump like a shot rabbit. ‘What happened? Well … nothing much – what should? I got home with the diamond, you know that.’

  ‘Oh, to hell with the diamond, you know quite well what I mean.’ He sent me another sideways, amused look. ‘Did you see Julian Gale?’

  ‘Oh. Yes, I did. Adoni was with him when we got up there.’

  ‘Ah, yes, the faithful watch-pup. He would be. How was Sir Julian?’

  ‘He went to bed pretty soon,’ I said cautiously. I kept my eyes on the road, and in the windscreen I saw Godfrey glance at me again. ‘He was – tired,’ I said.

  ‘Say what you mean,’ said Godfrey. ‘He was stoned.’

  ‘How do you know?’ The question came out flatly and even accusingly, but since he himself had hit the ball into the open with the last phrase there was no reason why I shouldn’t keep it there.

  ‘Come off it, they knew who’d been with him, didn’t they?’

  ‘We-ll, it was mentioned.’ I leaned back in my seat and let a spice of mischievous amusement creep into my voice. It sounded so like Phyl as to be startling. ‘Mr Gale wasn’t awfully pleased with you, Godfrey.’

  ‘Damn it all, what’s it got to do with me if he wants to get plastered? By the time I saw which way the land lay, he was halfway there. Do they imagine it was up to me to stop him?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know. But I’d watch out for Mr Gale if I were you.’

  ‘So?’ His mouth curved. ‘Pistols for two and coffee for one, or just a horsewhip? Well, maybe he does owe it me, after all.’

  I knew then. I’m not sure what it was, something in his voice, or the infinitesimal degree of satisfaction at the corners of his mouth; something at once cruel and gay and quite terrifying. All the daylight doubts fled, once and for ever. Of course he was a murderer. The man was a natural destroyer. Evil be thou my Good … And the instinct that had allowed him to create those pictures wasn’t even incongruous: no doubt it had given him much the same pleasure to destroy Spiro as it had to photograph him. Destroying Sir Julian would hardly have cost him a moment’s thought.

  I dragged my eyes and thoughts away from the evil sitting beside me in the car, and concentrated on the idyll of silver olive and black cypress through which the XK 150 slashed its way in a train of dust.

  ‘What a lovely road.’

  ‘I wish they’d do something about these pot-holes, that’s all. Don’t side-track, Lucy. Was it really horsewhips?’

  ‘I wouldn’t be surprised. I mean, Mr Gale had had a trying evening. I’d had hysterics all over him and dragged him out to help with the dolphin, and he fell slap in the sea, and then on top of it all when we got up to the house we found his father drunk … in front of me, too. You can’t blame him if he’s out for your blood.’

  ‘I suppose not.’ He didn’t sound as if it worried him vastly. ‘Where is he today?’

  ‘I believe he said he was going to Athens. It was just some remark to Adoni – I didn’t take much notice. But you’re probably safe for today.’

  He laughed. ‘I breathe again. Just look at the colour of that girl’s frock, the one picking up olives over there, that dusty red against the rather acid green.’

  ‘Don’t you side-track. I want to know what happened.’

  He raised his brows. ‘Heavens, nothing, really. I saw the old man at the garage on the harbour, and he was looking for a lift, so I took him home. I was rather pleased to have the chance to talk to him, as it happened – you can never get near him alone, and it was too good a chance to miss.’

  ‘What on earth did you want to get him alone for? Don’t tell me you’re looking for a walk-on in the next Gale play!’

  He grinned. ‘That’ll be the day – always providing there is one. No, there were things I wanted to know, and I thought he’d be the softest touch. Max Gale and I aren’t just the best of friends, and the watch-pup dislikes me. I can’t think why.’

  ‘Godfrey! Are you telling me you got him drunk on purpose?’

  ‘Good God, no. Why should I? I wasn’t trying to get State secrets out of him. But by the time he’d had a couple there was no stopping him, and it wasn’t my business to stop him, was it? I admit I didn’t try.’ That fleeting smile again, gone in an instant; a flash of satisfaction, no more. ‘It was quite entertaining up to a point.’

  ‘What on earth were you wanting to get out of him?’

  ‘Only what the police were up to.’

  ‘Police?’

  He glanced at me with a lifted eyebrow. ‘Don’t sound so startled. What have you been doing? No, it’s only that on this island everything gets to the Gales’ ears and to no one else’s. I had a hell of a job finding anything out about the Spiro affair – nobody seemed to think it was my business, but I’m damned sure they tell the Gales everything that turns up.’

  ‘Well, I gather there’s some sort of family connection.’

  ‘So I’m told. But I don’t see why that gives them an “exclusive” on a police inquiry that involved me as closely as Spiro’s death did.’

  ‘I do so agree,’ I said sympathetically. ‘It must have been a terribly nerve-racking time for you.’

  ‘It still is.’ Certainly if I hadn’t known what I knew, I’d have heard nothing in the grave rejoinder but what should properly be there. But, keyed as I was, the two brief syllables hid a whole world of secret amusement. I found that the hand in my lap was clenched tightly, and deliberately relaxed it.

  ‘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 seve
n 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.