Carver's Quest (54 page)

Quint and his mount bore down on the group. At the speed they were travelling, the distance between them shortened rapidly. The man was yelling incoherently, the beast was braying at full
volume. The horses and their riders scattered as the mule charged into their midst. It dug its hooves into the ground beneath it and came to a sudden stop. Quint did not. He hurtled over the
mule’s head and crashed to earth. Stunned and winded, he lay in the grass as confused thoughts drifted through his mind. Briefly, he was back in Doughty Street, ushering a young woman into
the sitting room. She was looking at him in a strange way. He was, of course, used to people looking at him in a strange way. Usually he didn’t mind but he felt a strong urge to explain
himself to this young woman. He knew her name, he was sure of it, but he just couldn’t recall it. She leaned forward and stared into his eyes.

‘Mr Quint,’ she said. ‘Is that you? Are you all right?’

Emily, he thought, Emily something. Then he lost consciousness.

* * * * *

‘It was that contemptible man Creech who began all this,’ Fields said to Adam, his face screwing up with anger as he remembered the man with the crescent moon scar.
‘He sought to cheat me. He sought to make use of my scholarship and knowledge for his own sordid ends. And yet, when our plans to travel to Koutles and unearth the treasure were already well
advanced, he wanted to cast me aside. He approached you, one of the few other Englishmen who had travelled in the region recently. He sent his daughter to discover more about you.’

Adam started with surprise. ‘His daughter?’

‘Did you not realise the identity of your mysterious visitor in London, Adam? The chit of a girl who has followed us to Greece? Perhaps you believed that it was your charms that attracted
Emily to your company?’ The professor laughed. ‘She was working on her father’s behalf. At her father’s behest. He assumed that you would be more forthcoming when questioned
by a pretty girl than you would be if he came to you in person. He was correct, of course.’

Adam’s face fell. He recalled the occasions on which he had met Emily Maitland. In Doughty Street. At Cremorne. Her questioning of him, he was forced to admit, had seemed odd. But not so
odd that he had not wished to continue their conversations as long as possible. Not so odd that they had outweighed the power of her beauty and vivacity to stir him. He could not think what to say
but that seemed to matter very little. Fields was in full flow. He wanted to talk.

‘Emily is not English, of course,’ the professor went on. ‘Not in the sense that you and I are English. Or even in the sense that Quintus is English. Where the name of Maitland
has come from, I do not know. Plucked from the air or borrowed from one of her mother’s grubby cavaliers, I suppose. You must have noticed that although she speaks our language so well, she
does not speak it as if it were her mother tongue. Her mother tongue – indeed, her mother – is Greek. She is the daughter Creech fathered on some Peloponnesian trollop when he was in
Athens twenty years ago.’

‘But why has she not spent her life with her father?’ The young man knew the answer to his own question as soon as he voiced it aloud.

‘Do not be so naive, Adam. Why should Creech have acknowledged a child who was merely the unfortunate end result of an indiscretion? He proved surprisingly honourable in his own way. He
paid a yearly allowance to her but no more. I doubt he saw her more than half a dozen times in twenty years.’

‘So she lived with her mother.’

‘The trollop has been mistress to a Jewish merchant for the last decade. She and Emily have trailed after him as he has moved from city to city. Constantinople to Salonika. Salonika to
Aleppo. Aleppo to Athens. Athens back to Salonika.’

‘But what was she doing in London?’

‘The merchant – Margolis, I believe, is his name – had come to England on business. He was travelling in the north and he arranged for his supposed wife and supposed
stepdaughter to stay at Brown’s while he was gone. Under the name of Maitland. The good Lord alone knows why the people at the hotel allowed it. They must have been aware that all was not as
it appeared. Their moral standards have clearly plunged in recent years.’ Fields sniffed with disapproval. For a moment, he seemed genuinely concerned that Brown’s was not maintaining
its reputation. ‘Emily had long wished to know more of her real father,’ he continued. ‘Somehow she had learned that he was also then in London and she contacted him. He saw a
means of making use of her and she was happy to oblige him.’

‘I cannot see that I could have told her anything that would have been of interest to him.’

‘Perhaps not. But he learned enough to confirm what he already suspected: that you might also be of use to him. He went to visit that idle dauber Jardine and asked him a whole series of
questions about you – and about myself and my whereabouts – which that young idiot answered. Then Creech contrived to meet you himself at the Marco Polo. I found out about the dinner
and I guessed that he had probably dropped hints about Philip’s gold. But I did not know how much he had told you. I went to see him at Herne Hill Villa.’

‘And murdered him,’ Adam said, in little more than a whisper. Suddenly the young man could see the truth of what had happened and he was appalled by it. Somehow the killing of Creech
in his own suburban London home seemed even worse than the shooting of Rallis and Andros here in Greece.

‘I did not intend to kill him. Why should I? He and I had been partners in a very profitable venture for years, despatching antiquities from this benighted country to England for
safe-keeping. Rallis has doubtless told you all this already, putting the worst possible interpretation on my actions, I have no doubt. No, I went to remonstrate with Creech.’

‘With a pistol in your pocket.’

‘Samuel Creech was a dangerous man, Adam. He was not only an importer of Greek statues and Attic vases. In London, you discovered much about his activities as a blackmailer. Do you suppose
that a man can spend half a lifetime extorting money from the wealthy and the powerful and still thrive unless he is prepared to act ruthlessly? I knew Creech’s temperament. I took the pistol
with me for protection.’

Adam eyed the gun that the professor now had trained on him. He tried to judge the distance between them. Six yards, perhaps. Too far for him to run at Fields without being brought down. He
could only hope that he could keep the professor talking until Quint returned and then, together, they might overpower him.

‘So you were obliged to shoot him in self-defence?’

‘He laughed at me, the wretch. He said he had no more need of me. That he was about to recruit another “assistant”. Can you believe it? He referred to me as an
“assistant”. The arrogance of the man. But that was not the reason he had to die.’

The professor paused and shifted the revolver in his hands.

‘He had been foolish as well as treacherous. In endeavouring to blackmail his old friend Garland, he had made a dangerous enemy. The man was making enquiries of his own. Sooner or later my
name would have emerged. I could not allow that to happen.’

‘So you pointed your pistol at him and warned him that he must stop his attempts to extort money from Garland.’

‘Yes. And the rogue laughed again. He refused to listen to reason. He said that his dealings with Garland were his affair only.’

‘But I cannot understand why you felt obliged to kill the man.’

‘For God’s sake, Adam, he attacked me. He threw himself upon me and we struggled. The pistol fired as we fought.’ Fields had raised his voice close to screaming pitch. He
seemed on the verge of losing all self-control. ‘Do you suppose I wanted to kill him? Do you suppose I want to kill you? Or Quintus? I did not even wish to kill that interfering Greek lawyer.
I am a man of peace and scholarship. But events have conspired to drag me into blood and destruction. It sometimes feels as if I have faced a fate as inevitable as the doom of the House of
Pelops.’

The professor looked to be on the verge of tears of self-pity. Adam wondered if the man’s mind had collapsed completely. His account of Creech’s killing could not be correct. There
had been no signs of a struggle in his library. Fields had shot him quite cold-bloodedly as he sat at the table. The young man eyed once more the ground between him and the gun. Fields again
guessed what he was thinking.

‘Do not imagine for one moment that I will not shoot you if necessary, Adam,’ he said. ‘I am fond enough of you but nothing and no one must stand between me and the
gold.’

A silence fell on the two men, frozen as they were like a stage tableau in the afternoon sun. To Adam, it seemed as if the professor could not decide what he should do next. Could he keep him
talking for a while longer? Would Quint not be returning soon to camp? And what of Garland? His party might surely arrive at any moment.

* * * * *

‘And you did not pass Professor Fields or Mr Rallis and his man as you made your way here? You saw no sign of them?’

Quint shook his head and then winced. Twenty minutes after his tumble from the runaway mule, it hurt still. He was sitting in the shade of a tree, a wet handkerchief across his brow. Lewis
Garland stood over him.

‘Ain’t seen a soul,’ the servant said. ‘Not since a mile out of Koutles.’

‘But you were travelling in their tracks?’

‘So the Greek cove said. The one I met beyond the village. Leastways I think he did.’

‘You understand the language?’

‘A few words. But ’e waved his hands around a lot as well. As clear as I could make out, ’e was saying that the professor and the others had passed ’im a bit before. So I
keeps on going.’

‘And then what happened?’

‘And then that black devil of a mule took it into its ’ead to run away with me.’

‘Never mind the wretched mule. Before it bolted with you, you saw nothing and no one on the trail. Is that correct?’

‘Ain’t I just said that? ’Ow many more times do you want me to say it? There was nobody between ’ere and Koutles save the Greek I told you about.’

Quint was getting very exasperated. When he had returned to consciousness after his fall, he had found himself to be the centre of attention. It was an unaccustomed position for him and he had
begun to enjoy it. Emily Maitland had fussed over him, despatching a servant to the stream to wet one of her handkerchiefs and place it on his forehead. She had ordered two of the other Greek
servants in the group to pick him up from where the mule had deposited him and carry him to a grassy knoll beneath a tall tree. He had told his story to her and to Garland. He had described to them
all that had happened since he and Adam and the others had left Athens. It had been a novel experience to find a beautiful young woman and a man of Garland’s importance hanging on his every
word and he had relished it. He had been eloquent and, he reckoned, comprehensive in his answers. He had said all that he wanted to say. Now Emily had retired to the shade of another tree further
along the bank of the stream where a servant had set up a folding chair for her. Garland, however, was still leaning over him and badgering him with more questions. The enjoyment had disappeared.
Quint just wanted to go to sleep.

‘I give you the lowdown, didn’t I? Can’t you leave a man to get some shut-eye?’

He stretched back on the grass and half closed his eyes. Garland stared down at him for a moment before turning abruptly and walking away. Quint rolled over on his side and watched him go. The
MP joined Emily and there was a brief but animated discussion between them. Quint could see the girl gesturing in the direction of the path along which the mule had so lately carried him. She
seemed to want the party to take it immediately but her companion looked less enthusiastic about the idea. After two or three minutes, Garland began to walk back to where Quint was lying beneath
the tree. The servant saw Emily start to follow him. He rolled hastily onto his back and shut his eyes again. He experimented with a few feigned snores as they approached.

‘Wake up, Devlin.’ The MP prodded Quint with his toe. ‘If, indeed, you are asleep. We have one more question that needs to be answered.’

The servant made a great performance of yawning and stretching his arms.

‘When you took the manuscript at Fields’s promptings,’ Garland went on, ‘was your master pleased that you had obeyed the professor?’

Quint looked warily from the MP to the young woman and back again.

‘Not exackly,’ he said, after a brief pause. ‘’E give me a bit of a wigging, if truth be told.’

‘So Adam is not implicated in this thievery, my dear.’ Garland turned to Emily, who smiled at him. ‘But I fear for the safety of our Greek friend.’

‘He had his servant with him, had he not?’

‘He could send Big Ben Caunt to grass with one ’and tied behind his back, that ’un,’ Quint remarked encouragingly. ‘’E’s the size of an
’ouse.’

‘It matters little what size a man is,’ Garland said. ‘If he is not on his guard, he can be brought low. As I say, I grow anxious for Rallis.’

‘That is why we must hurry on our way,’ Emily said. ‘We are wasting precious time here.’

‘We may hasten into a trap, my dear.’

Quint was bewildered. ‘Trap? What trap?’ he asked.

Neither Garland nor the young woman answered him.

‘We must be off immediately,’ Emily said.

‘What’s up?’ Quint looked at her and then swung his head round towards the MP. Both of them ignored him. ‘’Oo’s going to set a bleedin’ trap?’

‘Be quiet, Devlin,’ Garland snapped. ‘And mind your language when ladies are present.’

The MP stared at the distant mountains, lost in thought.

‘Very well, my dear,’ he said, after a long minute had passed. ‘After consideration, I believe that you are right. Let us be on our way. Devlin, you can ride with Giorgios. His
horse will take two. You can leave the mule behind.’

* * * * *

‘What of poor Jinkinson?’ Adam asked, curious as to how much more the professor might tell him. ‘Was it you in the darkness at Wapping? Did you kill
him?’