Mortal Remains (8 page)

A young man was following Jill. He was small and dark, but he was older than Spiro and had a moustache.

‘No.’

He could have been the man who was with Jill and Spiro the night Patrick first saw them, but he was not sure. They both went down the steps and aboard the
Psyche,
and disappeared into the cabin.

‘I wonder if she’s living on board that boat with those two young men,’ Ursula said. She sounded interested.

‘Probably, said Patrick. He was not sure that the second young man was a permanent part of the crew.

‘Well, she’s got it the right way round – two men and a girl,’ said Ursula.

A few minutes later Spiro appeared on the quayside and hurried aboard after the other two. Ten minutes afterwards the boat cast off her moorings and chugged out of the harbour towards the open sea.

The next day Patrick and Ursula went to Knossos, calling at the museum in Heraklion on the way. They started early ahead of the coach, and had one of the few perfect days of a lifetime, reaching the museum before the main crowds so that they had time to enjoy the vivid frescoes. They stayed there till it closed at one o’clock and both said they would return if they had the chance another time.

‘Lunch now. I’m very hungry,’ said Ursula, and taught Patrick how to say it in Greek.

They sought about for a good spot and eventually found a
tavema
in a street leading down to the harbour. There was a shady garden with tables arranged under a vine.

They chose
tarasamalata
followed by
dolmades.

‘A very Greek meal, so it should be good. Sometimes Greek food is disappointing,’ Ursula remarked.

‘I’ve discovered that,’ said Patrick.

‘Never mind. Love the Greeks and love their food, even when it’s tough and tepid,’ said Ursula. ‘I am enjoying myself.’

They finished their meal with fruit and coffee, then, before going back to the car, they walked along the road past the harbour. Two cruise liners were in, their upperworks gleaming white against the skyline. The shops were closed now and would not re-open until four o’clock, or even later. The whole town rested in the heat. Patrick saw a female figure in a pair of brief, frayed cotton shorts walking along the road in front of them.

‘There’s Jill. The Canadian girl from the
Psyche
,’ he said.

‘Is it? Are you sure?’

Patrick would have recognised her shape anywhere.

‘Yes. I’m sure.’

The girl took a turning to the right and walked off towards the centre of the town. She had a long, loping stride that was very graceful.

‘The boat wasn’t in the harbour when we left this morning. We saw them put out last night, if you remember.’

‘Do you think they came here all the way by sea?’ asked Ursula.

‘Why not? I suppose it’s the obvious way, when you think about it,’ Patrick said.

Friday and Saturday

Athens and the island

Patrick flew to Athens in the morning. Before he left Crete, Ursula Norris gave him the telephone number of a villa near Vouliagmeni where she would be the following week, and he promised to ring her.

‘We’ll probably meet by chance in the museum or somewhere, anyway,’ she said. ‘I hope we do.’

‘So do I,’ said Patrick, and meant it.

Their afternoon at Knossos had been an enchantment to them both. Aided by Sir Arthur Evans’s reconstructions and the paintings they had seen in the museum, they were able to imagine the palace as it was. They had wandered about the site for over two hours and pitied the visitors from the cruise liners who spent only fifteen minutes there. In the evening they dined in Challika, and this time there was mullet.

The
Psyche
was not yet back at her mooring.

‘I suppose it would take her some time,’ said Ursula.

‘An hour. More, perhaps. I don’t know how many knots she’d do,’ said Patrick. ‘As long as the sea was calm it should be an easy trip – no winding about like the road.’

‘There’s the little girl from the shop – Sophia, did you say her name was? We’ve never been back there,’ said Ursula.

She was looking across the road, and Patrick followed her gaze. Sophia had come down the steps between the buildings. She crossed the road and stood on the quayside looking at the boats. Then she stared out to sea. Finally she walked right round the harbour to the very end of the jetty, from where she could look beyond the confines of the bay to the open sea. She stayed there for some time, and then walked back slowly, dejection in every line of her body.

‘Mama must be in charge of the shop tonight,’ said Patrick. ‘I wonder if Sophia’s looking for the
Psyche?’

‘Maybe. But I expect there are other boats, and other young men besides Spiro and his friend,’ said Ursula.

The next morning, as he drove past on his way to the airport where he had arranged to surrender the car, Patrick paused at the harbour and looked towards the
Psyche’s
mooring-place. She was still away.

Athens was hot, dusty, and very noisy.

In the plane Patrick had felt a mild nostalgia for Crete and his utilitarian room at the Hermes; he had grown used to the town of Challika, and the whole tempo of the place. But he was no closer to finding Yannis, and more days spent idling would diminish his resolution. However, all feelings of regret fled when he saw the Parthenon again. It must, he thought, be the most beautiful building in the world. He had booked a room at a hotel just off Constitution Square, which was central and convenient. From it he could discover how to get to the island of Mikronisos, and he could go to Delphi to intercept the
Persephone
when she called at Itea on Monday. It was this, much more than the search for Yannis, which was driving him now. He must try to discover why Felix left the ship; someone from among her crew or passengers might know.

He checked in at the hotel and was shown to a small cell with a tiny balcony overlooking a well between the inner walls of the building. More balconies were ranged in tiers all round. The city was full of tourists; he was lucky to find a room in such a central hotel at such short notice, and one that was away from the street, where the noise was unabating all round the clock.

Half an hour after his arrival he was sitting under a mulberry tree in the Plaka, at a
taverna
just below the great bulk of the Acropolis, with an iced beer and a salad lunch.

This was more like it.

Though it was the hottest part of the day now when life, in theory, came to a halt, there were still people about. A flow of tourists eddied up and down the wide flight of steps past the
taverna.
The buildings baked in the heat but it was cool under the big, spreading tree. Patrick felt his whole system shifting into faster gear after the torpor of the last few days in Crete.

There would be a ferry boat from the Piraeus to Mikronisos, he supposed. He wondered how best to pursue his enquiries when he got there. The unforthcoming attitude of the old men in Ai Saranda made him favour a furtive approach; it might not be prudent to ask for Yannis Pavlou outright. Anyway, there would be time to go there before he need be in Delphi to meet the
Persephone.
He would spend at least one night on Parnassus. The people from the ship would have a mere five hours up there, and Patrick knew from an earlier visit that this was not enough; but no doubt it was convenient to take your hotel with you wherever you went, with experts like Felix to bring the famous places to life in their lectures. He wished he knew more about ancient stones himself.

He finished his meal, and, profiting from Ursula’s tuition, asked for the bill in Greek. Then he went down Diaskouron and through the streets of the old town towards Ermou. The heat was scorching, but he strode out briskly, his head protected by his Cretan straw hat. Every now and then he turned around to look for the Acropolis; the bulk of it loomed perpetually above the city, drawing the eye to the white temple there that was sometimes tinged with gold. He turned right and lost it behind the tall buildings of the modem city. Cars sped past with horns tooting and tyres squealing. In spite of the heat, there were still crowds in the centre; tourist buses went by, and yellow trolley buses, and he saw the blue local buses too. The city seemed well served by public transport. He knew that every incoming bus converged upon Constitution Square but he had made no forays by bus in an outward direction from there when he was in Athens before.

That reminded him.

He had promised to put flowers on Miss Amelia Brinton’s grave in the main cemetery when next he came to Athens. Her life-long friend, to whom he had made the promise, was now dead too. It seemed to Patrick that he had become hung about with obligations to the dead, the others much less easy to discharge than this one, which was merely a question of time and drachmas.

He hailed a taxi. It was too hot to walk to the cemetery.

The driver, a huge man with enormous shoulders like the bull of Minos himself, was amiable, and understood Patrick’s diffident
‘Nekrotafaeion, parakalo,’
without any trouble. His cab was adorned with artificial flowers, charms, and religious emblems, and he drove with such verve that Patrick felt it was prudent of him to have thrown out a few spiritual anchors.

There were flower stalls, Patrick knew, at the entrance to the cemetery. Beside the huge gates he saw gladioli, Michaelmas daisies and dahlias like those Miss Brinton had grown in her cottage garden. He bought an armful of white gladioli and blue daisies; they would die at once in the heat, but he would have fulfilled his promise.

Carrying them, he walked through the wide gateway into the cemetery and along the main path. He had forgotten what an immense place this was, but in spots it was shady for it was thickly planted with trees. Right down the middle, he seemed to remember, past a central building that looked like a chapel, and then somewhere up a pathway to the left lay the protestant section. There was a choice of turnings, and he made several errors before he found the right one. Eventually he came to Miss Brinton’s last resting-place. A simple cross bearing her name and the dates of her birth and her death now marked the spot.

He laid the flowers on the grave and stood there for a moment. It was well-tended; the whole place was curiously peaceful and not at all sad. He moved away at last, and saw nearby an open grave, freshly dug, the dry stony soil in a heap at the side of it. As Patrick turned to go, a very thin young man in a linen jacket and wearing a clerical collar appeared among the headstones and walked towards the empty grave, looking anxious. Patrick absently glanced at him, then looked more closely, and at the same time the young man saw him.

‘Good Lord! Dr Grant,’ he exclaimed.

‘That sounds like an invocation, Jeremy,’ said Patrick. ‘What are you doing here? You look troubled.’

‘I am. I’m walking the course, as it were,’ said Jeremy Vaughan. ‘I’ve got to take a funeral service here tomorrow.’

Patrick stared at the hole in the ground.

‘Yes, that’s right,’ said Jeremy.

He had started his undergraduate life as a pupil of Patrick’s, later switching subjects when he decided to go into the church. Patrick had lost track of his subsequent movements.

‘Are you working in Athens? Attached to the Embassy?’

‘No. I’m here with a group, actually, doing the sites, you know. A W.E.A. party. The regular chaplain’s away just now, so when this happened to one of our party it seemed obvious that I should step in. It’s a bit different from Croydon.’

‘I’m sure it is.’ Patrick looked round at the pines and the dry, dusty ground. ‘I came to a funeral here once,’ he said. ‘That’s why I’m here today.’

‘Oh, I see.’ Jeremy looked across at the flowers on the other grave. ‘A sad affair, I suppose.’

‘Yes. But a nice funeral, if they ever are.’

‘There’s this lengthy procession,’ said Jeremy, doubtfully. ‘All the way from the gate. It’s miles.’

‘I think someone leads the way,’ said Patrick, helpfully. ‘You shouldn’t get lost. The undertakers must be used to it. It was all quite casual and friendly, that part of it, I remember. Whose funeral is it?’

‘A man called Dermott Murcott. He fell while climbing up a hill on Mikronisos.’

‘Mikronisos?’ Patrick looked up sharply. “The island?’

‘Yes. Do you know it?’

‘I’ve heard of it.’

‘It’s a pretty spot – rather bare – not much vegetation. He was clambering about looking at lava formations in the rocks or something – it’s full of volcanic traces – and he fell.’

‘Did you see it happen?’

‘No. No one did. He’d wandered away from the group. Everyone else was bathing. It took ages to find him.’

‘How dreadful,’ said Patrick.

‘I heard about Dr Lomax. It was in the
Athens News.
That was terrible too,’ said Jeremy. ‘Rather the same sort of thing, in a way.’

‘Yes, I suppose it was,’ said Patrick.

They began to walk slowly back along the path. Jeremy was very small and slight, with steel-framed spectacles through which a pair of blue eyes gazed out at the world with assumed severity. He looked youthful in the extreme. Patrick remembered him coxing the Mark’s Third Eight in a determined attempt to progress higher up the river. He had been, in those days, an admirable but much too serious young man, and seemed unaltered.

‘I thought of going to Mikronisos tomorrow. Is it easy to get there?’ Patrick asked.

‘Oh yes. You get a steamer from Piraeus. It calls at some other islands first. Takes just over two hours.’

‘Every day?’

‘I think so – in the season anyway. But don’t take my word for it. Better check it.’

‘Tell me about the island. What’s special about it?’

‘Nothing, really.’

‘Why did you go there?’

‘Well, it’s easy to reach, and it makes a change from the ordinary tourist run to Aegina and Hydra – we’d already done that. It’s been so hot that we ditched some of our prearranged excursions and added a few that weren’t so tiring. People were wilting all over the place. They’re quite elderly, most of them,’ said Jeremy.