She leaned forward over the chair-back. ‘Well, Adoni says that Mr Max is making a play out of this story, like … like …’ She searched her mind, and then, being a Greek, came up with the best there is … ‘like Oedipus (that is a play of the old gods; they do it in Athens). I asked Sir Gale about this play, and when he told me the story I said that the priests should know of this, because I had not heard it, and the papàs in my village has not heard it either, and he must be told, so that he can ask the Bishop. Why do you smile, Miss Lucy?’
‘Nothing.’ I was thinking that I need hardly have worried. The Greeks invented cynicism, after all; and every Greek is born with an inquiring mind, just as every foxhound is born with a nose. ‘Go on; what did Sir Julian say?’
‘He laughed, and said that his story – of the magic and the books – is not true, or perhaps it is only a little true, and changed with time, and that the poet who wrote the story added things from other stories and from his own mind, to make it more beautiful.’ She looked earnestly at me. ‘This happens. My koumbàros said it was like the story of Odysseus – that is another story of this island that we have in our schools, but you will not know it.’
‘I do know the story.’
She stared. ‘You know this, too? Are all English so learned, Miss Lucy?’
I laughed. ‘It’s a very famous story. We have it in our schools, too.’
She gaped. This was fame indeed.
‘We learn all your Greek stories,’ I said. ‘Well, Sir Julian’s story of the magician may have some tiny fragment of truth in it, like the legends about Odysseus, but I honestly think not much more. I’m sure he didn’t mean you to believe it word for word. The story he told you, that Mr. Max is making a film play out of, is just something that a poet invented, and probably nothing to do with the real St Spiridion at all. And you must see for yourself that the bit about the cave and the princess can’t possibly be true—’
‘But it is!’
‘But look, Miranda, when the Saint was brought here in 1489, he was already—’
‘Dead many years, I know that! But there is something that is true in Sir Gale’s story, and the priests must be told of it. We can prove it, Adoni and I! I told you, we found the proof today!’
‘Proof that The Tempest is true?’ It was my turn to stare blankly. Somehow, after the mounting excitement of Miranda’s narrative, this came as a climax of the most stunning irrelevance.
‘I don’t know about any tempest, but today we found them, in the cave behind the lime-trees. There’s a passage, and a cave, very deep in the cliff, with water, and that is where he drowned his books.’ She leaned forward over the chair-back. ‘That is what Adoni found today, and he took me in and showed me. They are there in the water, plain to see, in the very same place where Sir Gale told us – the magic books of the Saint!’
Her voice rose to a dramatic stop that Edith Evans might have envied. Her face was shining, lighted and full of awe. For a full half-minute all I could do was sit there, gazing blankly back at her, framing kind little sentences which might explain and question without too cruel a disillusionment. Adoni had been with her, I thought impatiently; what in the world had Adoni been thinking about to allow this fantasy to go on breeding? Certainly he would not share her beliefs, and she would have accepted an explanation from him, whereas from me, now …
Adoni. The name stabbed through the haze in my mind like a spearpoint going through butter-muslin. What Adoni did, he usually had a good reason for. I sat up, demanding sharply: ‘Adoni found these – things – in a cave in the cliff? Where’s the entrance?’
‘Round the point, half-way up the cliff, above the boat-house.’
‘Ah. Could it be seen from the bay – our bay?’
She shook her head. ‘You go halfway up the path to the Villa Rotha. Then it is above the path, in the rocks, behind bushes.’
‘I see.’ My heart was bumping again. ‘Now, when Adoni saw it was you, what did he say? Try to remember exactly.’
‘I told you, he was angry at first, and would have hurried me away, because we should not have been there. Then he stopped and thought, and said no, I must come into the cave, and see what he had found. He took me in; it was a steep passage, and long, going right down, but he had a torch, and it was dry. At the bottom was a big cave, full of water, very deep, but clear. Under a ledge, hidden with pebbles, we saw the books.’
‘A moment. What made you think they were books?’
‘They looked like books,’ said Miranda reasonably. ‘Old, old books, coloured. The corners showed from under the pebbles. You could see the writing on them.’
‘Writing?’
She nodded. ‘Yes, in a foreign tongue, and pictures and magical signs.’
‘But, my dear girl, books? In sea-water? They’d be pulp in a couple of hours!’
She said simply: ‘You forget. They are holy books. They would not perish.’
I let that one pass. ‘Didn’t Adoni try to get at them?’
‘It was too deep, and very cold, and besides there was an eel.’ She shivered. ‘And he said they must not be disturbed; he would tell Sir Gale, he said, and Mr Max, and they would come. He said that I was his witness that he had found them there, and that I was to tell nobody about them, except you, Miss Lucy.’
I put my hands flat on the table and held them there, hard. I could feel the blood pumping in the finger-tips.
‘He told you to tell me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Miranda. You told me earlier that Adoni had said these books were “proof”. Did he say proof of what?’
She knitted her brows, ‘What could he have meant, but proof of the story?’
‘I see,’ I said. ‘Well, that’s marvellous, and thank you for telling me. I can hardly wait to see them, but you won’t tell anyone else, will you, anyone at all, even your mother? If – if it turns out to be a mistake, it would be dreadful to have raised people’s hopes.’
‘I won’t tell. I promised Adoni. It is our secret, his and mine.’
‘Of course. But I’d love to ask him about it. I think I’ll go over to the Castello now. D’you think you could get him on the phone for me?’
She glanced at the clock. ‘There will be nobody there now. Sir Gale was going back to Corfu with Mr Karithis for dinner, and Adoni went with them.’
‘But Max has the car. Adoni didn’t have to drive them, surely?’
‘No, Mr Karithis brought his car. But Adoni wanted to go into Corfu, so he went with them, and he said he would come back with Mr Max later.’
Of course he would. Whatever he had found in the cave by the Villa Rotha, whatever ‘proof’ he had now got, Adoni would get it to Max at the first possible moment, and if he was right about his discovery – and I had no doubt he was – then tonight the hounds would close in, and the end I had wanted this afternoon to hasten, would come.
I glanced at my watch. If the ferry docked at ten-forty-five … give Max an hour at most to hear Adoni’s story and possibly collect police help in Corfu … half an hour more for the drive … at the outside that made it a quarter past midnight. Even if Godfrey had got back from his date, whatever it was, he might be in bed by that time, not where he would hear or see explorers probing the secrets of the cliff …
My hands moved of their own accord to the edge of the table, and gripped it. My thoughts till now formlessly spinning, settled and stood.
Godfrey had said he was going out tonight; and there was the impression I had had of urgent business to be done and a clear field needed to do it in. Was it not conceivable that the objects so mysteriously hidden under his house were part of this same night’s business? That in fact by the time Max and the police were led to the cave in the small hours, the ‘proof’ would have gone? And even with Adoni’s word and that of his witness there would be nothing to show what had been there, or where it had gone? We would be back where we were, possibly with Godfrey’s business finished, and himself in the clear …
> Reluctantly, I worked it out. Reluctantly, I reached the obvious, the only conclusion. I stood up.
‘Will you show me this cave and the books? Now?’
She had started to stack the supper things back on the tray. She paused, startled. ‘Now, Miss?’
‘Yes, now. It may be important. I’d like to see them myself.’
‘But – it’s so dark. You wouldn’t want to go along there in the dark. In the morning, when Adoni’s back—’
‘Don’t ask me to explain, Miranda, but I must go now, it might be important. If you’ll just show me the cave, the entrance, that’s all.’
‘Well, of course, Miss.’ But the words dragged doubtfully. ‘What would happen if Mr Manning came down?’
‘He won’t. He’s out, away somewhere in his car, he told me so, so he’s not likely to be using the cliff path. But we’ll make sure he’s out, we’ll ring up the house … I can pretend I left something in the car. Will you get me the number, please?’
Somewhere in Godfrey’s empty house the telephone bell shrilled on and on, while I waited, and Miranda hung over me, uneasy, but obviously flattered by my interest in her story.
At length I put the receiver back. ‘That’s that. He’s out, so it’s all right.’ I looked at her. ‘Will you, Miranda? Please? Just show me where the cave is, and you can come straight back.’
‘Well, of course, if you really want to … If Kyrios Manning is away I don’t mind at all. Shall I get the torch, Miss Lucy?’
‘Yes, please. Give me five minutes to get a coat, and some other shoes.’ I said, ‘and have you got a coat here, or something extra to put on?’ I didn’t bother to ask if it was something dark; by the saint’s mercy the Corfiote peasants never wore anything else.
Three minutes later I was dressed in light rubber-soled shoes and a dark coat, and was rummaging through Leo’s dressing-table drawer for the gun I knew he kept there.
16
This is the mouth o’th’ Cell: no noise, and enter.
IV. 1.
The bay was dark and silent: no sound, no point of light. It was easy enough to see our way across the pale sand without using the torch we had brought; and once we had scrambled up under the shadow of the pines where the dolphin had lain, and gained the rocky path along the foot of the southern headland, we found that we could again make our way without a betraying light.
We turned off the track into the bushes some way before reaching the zigzag path that led up towards the Villa Rotha. Miranda led the way, plunging steeply uphill, apparently straight into the thickest tangle of bushes that masked the cliff. Above us the limes leaned out, densely black and silent. Not a leaf stirred. You could hardly hear the sea. Even after we had switched the torch on to help us, our stealthy progress through the bushes sounded like the charge of a couple of healthy buffaloes.
Fortunately it wasn’t far. Miranda stopped where a clump of evergreens – junipers, by the scent – lay back apparently right against the cliff.
‘Here,’ she whispered, and pulled the bushes back. I shone the torchlight through.
It showed a narrow gap, scarcely more than a fissure, giving on a passage that sloped sharply downwards for perhaps four yards to be apparently blocked by a wall of rock. The floor of the passage looked smooth, and the walls were dry.
I hesitated. A puff of breeze brought a murmur from the trees, and the bushes rustled. I could feel the same breeze – or was it the same? – run cold along my skin.
‘The passage goes to the left there’ – Miranda’s whisper betrayed nothing but pleased excitement – ‘and then down again, quite a long way, but it is easy. Will you go first, or shall I?’
I had originally intended merely to stay hidden where I could watch the cave’s entrance until Adoni brought the men down, and to send Miranda home out of harm’s way. But now it occurred to me that if Godfrey did come to remove the ‘books’ before Max arrived, I, too, should need a witness. This was to put it at its highest. To put it at its lowest, I wanted company. And even if Godfrey found us (which seemed unlikely in this tangle of darkness), there was no risk of our meeting with Yanni’s fate. I was prepared, and there was the gun – the gun, and the simple fact that two people were more than twice as hard to dispose of as one.
But still I hesitated. Now that we were here, in the quiet dark, with the sounds and gentle air of the night so normal around us, I wanted nothing so much as to see for myself what it was Adoni had found. If Godfrey did come tonight to remove it, if I should be unable to get a look at it, or to follow him, then we were back at the post, and no better off than before …
Three parts bravado, three parts revenge for these people I had come so quickly to love and admire, and three parts sheer blazing human curiosity – it was no very creditable mixture of emotions that made me say with a briskness that might pass for bravery in the dark: ‘Is there anywhere to hide once you get inside the cave?’
I saw the glint of her eyes, but she answered simply: ‘Yes, a lot of places, other caves, with fallen rocks, and passages—’
‘Fair enough. Let’s go. You lead the way.’
Behind us, the juniper rustled back into its place across the gap.
The passage led steadily downwards, as sharply right-angled as a maze; I guessed that the mass of rock had weathered into great rectangular blocks, and that the passage led down the cracks between them. Here and there side-cracks led off, but the main route was as unmistakable as a highway running through a labyrinth of country lanes.
Miranda led the way without faltering; left, then right, then straight on for thirty feet or so, then right again, and along … well into the heart of the promontory, I supposed. At the end of the last stretch it looked as if the floor of the passage dropped sheer away into black depths.
She paused, pointing. ‘The cave is down there. You can climb down quite easily, it is like steps.’
A few moments later we were at the edge of the drop, with before us a sort of subterranean Giants’ Staircase – a vast natural stairway of weathered rock leading down block by block on to a ledge that ran the length of a long, lozenge-shaped cave floored with black water. The ledge was some four feet above the level of the water, overhanging the smooth, scooped-out sides of the pool.
We clambered down the stairway, and I shone the light forward into the cave.
This was large, but not awesomely so. At the end where we stood the roof was not so very high – perhaps twenty feet; but as the torchlight travelled further, it was lost in the shadows where the roof arched upwards into darkness. There, I suppose, would be the funnelled cracks or chimneys which carried the fresh air into the upper caves, and through which Adoni had first detected the existence of the one where we now stood. Further along the ledge there were recesses and tunnels leading off the main cave, which promised a good choice of bolt-hole should the need arise. The walls were of pale limestone, scoured and damp, so that I guessed that with the wind on shore the sea must find its way in through more of the cracks and crevices. Now the deep vat of sea-water at our feet lay still and dead, and the place smelt of salt and wet stone.
Miranda gripped my arm. ‘Down there! Shine the light. Down there!’
I turned the torch downwards. At first I could see nothing but the rich dazzle as the water threw back the beam, then the light seemed to soak down through the water like a stain through silk, and I saw the bottom, a jumble of smooth, round pebbles, their colours all drained by the torchlight to bone-white and washed green and pearl. Something moved across them, a whip of shadow flicking out of sight into a crevice.
‘See?’ Miranda crouched, pointing. ‘In under the ledge, where the stones have been moved. There!’
I saw it then, a corner like the corner of a big book, or box, jutting out from among the pebbles. It looked as if the object, whatever it was, had been thrust well under the ledge where we stood, and the stones piled roughly over it.
I kneeled beside Miranda, peering intently down. Some stray movement
of the sea outside had communicated itself to the pool, and the water shifted, shadows and reflections breaking and coalescing through the rocking torchbeam. The thing was coloured, I thought, and smooth-surfaced; a simple mind conditioned by Sir Julian’s stories might well have thought it was a book: myself, I took it for the corner of a box with some sort of a label. Vaguely, I could see what might be lettering.
‘You see?’ Miranda’s whisper echoed in the cave.
‘Yes, I see.’ Any thoughts I might have had of braving the eel and the icy water to get at the object died a natural and unregretted death. Even if I could have dived for the thing, and lifted it, I couldn’t have climbed the four smooth feet of overhang out of the pool without a rope.
‘It is a book, yes?’
‘It could be. But if it is, I don’t think you’ll find it’s a very old one. The only way it could be kept down there is if it was wrapped in polythene or something, and that means—’
I broke off. Something had made a noise, some new noise that wasn’t part of the cave’s echo, or the faint whispers of the night that reached us through the invisible fissures in the cliff. I switched the light out, and the darkness came down like a candle-snuffer, thick as black wool. I put a hand on the girl’s arm.
‘Keep very still. I heard something. Listen.’
Through the drip of water on limestone it came again; the sound of a careful footstep somewhere in the passage above.
Here he came. Dear God, here he came.
Miranda stirred. ‘Someone coming. It must be Adoni back already. Perhaps—’
I stopped her with a touch, my lips at her ear. ‘That won’t be Adoni. We mustn’t be found here, we’ve got to hide. Quickly …’
I took her arm, pulling her deeper into the cave. She came without question. We kept close to the wall, feeling our way inch by inch till we came to a corner, and rounded it safely.