‘Jinkinson was also killed.’
‘I am sorry to hear that. In a strange way, I rather liked the man, garrulous and greedy as he was. But I hope you now understand that I was not responsible for his death.’
‘No. It was the professor who killed him. He killed Creech as well. And Andros. He thought he had killed Rallis. He was planning, I think, to kill me, although he denied it. Once he had unburdened himself to me as much as he did, I do not think he could have allowed me to stay alive.’
‘You must tell us all that Professor Fields confessed,’ Emily said.
‘It will be a long story.’
‘We have the time,’ Garland said, gesturing towards the camp. ‘My men have prepared the horses for departure, I believe. It will take us several days to return to Salonika.’
‘What of the professor’s body?’ Adam asked.
‘We shall bury it here. Where his dreams turned to ashes.’
CHAPTER FORTY
Like distilled mud, the fog swirled in filthy and foul-smelling clouds around Adam’s head as he stepped out into Doughty Street. Although it was still the afternoon, the city was given over to the gaslights as he made his way to the Marco Polo. The smoking room was empty save for Mr Moorhouse, sitting in his favourite chair, lost in thought. Adam joined him.
It was nearly two months since his struggle with Fields on the edge of the pit in Macedonia. Together with Emily and Garland and Quint, he had left the camp near Koutles and ridden back towards Salonika. On the way, they had overtaken Rallis and the two men deputed to look after him. Perhaps it was as well for his own comfort that the Greek lawyer had remained more or less unconscious for most of their journey. Once in Salonika, in the care of Roman Catholic nuns there, he had made a surprisingly swift recovery from his wounds. When it came to the time to make their farewells, Rallis was once again on his feet.
‘Goodbye, Alexander,’ Adam said as he stood by the dock, awaiting the moment to step on board Garland’s private yacht. ‘If you ever visit London again, I shall insist that you see the sights in my company.’
‘I shall accompany you to the British Museum, my friend,’ Rallis replied with a smile, holding out his hand. And I shall point out all the treasures there that one day will be returned to Greece.’
Adam laughed and took the lawyer’s hand. ‘I might even help you to smuggle some of them out of the museum,’ he said.
The journey back from Salonika to Athens had proved uneventful. After a few restorative days enjoying Polly’s hospitality at the Angleterre, Adam and Quint had taken ship for Malta. From there, another steamer had transported them to Marseille. The French railways had taken them to the Channel coast and the end of October had seen the pair settled once again in Doughty Street.
To Adam’s misery, Athens had been the scene of a parting from Emily and her husband-to-be. Looking, in Quint’s words, ‘as sad as a sick monkey’, the young man had been a poor companion on the journey back to London. Once back in his rooms, he had been unable to find the enthusiasm to return to any of his former pursuits. His photographic equipment had remained untouched. His friends had seen nothing of him. He had spent his days locked away in the sitting room in Doughty Street, idly reading novels and brooding over the events of the summer. There had been times when he had thought that he would never be able to reconcile himself either to Fields’s treachery or to Emily’s preference for Garland. Quint, his spirits oppressed by the atmosphere in the rooms, had spent long periods away from them. On many occasions, Adam had called for his manservant only to find that he was alone in the flat. He had been too melancholy to complain when Quint, often smelling strongly of brown ale, had returned to Doughty Street long after night had fallen.
One afternoon, more than a fortnight after they had arrived back in England, Quint had strode into the sitting room from his own reeking little den at the rear of the flat. Adam had looked up from his copy of Wilkie Collins’s Man and Wife, the latest book to fail to hold his attention. His manservant had thrown down a newspaper on the table.
‘Thought you might want to cast your peepers on that,’ he had said.
‘What is it, Quint?’ Adam had asked irritably. ‘I am busy.’
‘Reynolds’s News from last Sunday.’
‘Since when did you become a follower of the press?’
‘I likes to keep myself informed,’ Quint had said indignantly. ‘Anyways, there’s word in it of someone we know.’ He had opened the newspaper and pressed a grubby finger on the centre of one of its pages. ‘Here.’
Curious, Adam had stood and walked across to the table. He had looked to where Quint had been pointing. It had been an item in what seemed to be a kind of gossip column.
‘Word has reached your correspondent,’ it had read, ‘of the return of a distinguished parliamentarian from a long sojourn abroad…’
After months spent travelling in Greece, Mr L-w-s G-rl-nd is once more a resident of our noble city. Rumours of his impending marriage to a beautiful maiden from fair Hellas have proved to be unfounded. Your correspondent understands that the lady in question, a Miss Em-l- M-tl-nd, has brought the engagement to an end and that the heartbroken Mr G-rl-nd is, and is likely to remain for the foreseeable future, one of the city’s most eligible bachelors.
Adam had read it through and read it through again. He had looked at Quint, who was visibly smirking.
‘But this is splendid news,’ the young man had said.
‘Reckoned you might see it that way.’
‘Emily is free.’
‘’Alfway across bleedin’ Europe, of course.’
‘But she is free. She is no longer engaged to that man.’
‘’Ard to bill and coo between ’ere and Salonika, mind.’
‘This calls for a celebration.’ Adam had ignored his servant’s remarks. ‘I shall go to the Marco Polo. I have not been there since we returned home.’
And so Adam now found himself in the smoking room of his club, puffing cheerfully on a cigar from Philip Morris’s shop in New Bond Street and gazing companionably at Mr Moorhouse.
‘Bit of a fog out there, I gather,’ the old man said.
‘A London pea-souper, Mr Moorhouse. The strangest atmospheric compound known to science.’
‘Quite like the fog myself. Damned inconvenient, of course, if you’re a man of business. But the city always looks rather beautiful in it, I think. Shapes looming out of the dark and all that.’
The two men fell silent. The smoke from their cigars drifted towards the ceiling.
‘I do like a play with a good murder in it, don’t you?’ Mr Moor-house said suddenly. He had a faraway look in his eye, as if he was recalling happy theatrical experiences from his youth. ‘Blood and gore. Murder in the Red Barn. That kind of thing.’
‘With the murderer brought to book at the end, of course,’ Adam suggested. Did Mr Moorhouse, he wondered, know something of the dramatic events that had overtaken Adam while he had been abroad? Perhaps the old man was not quite the innocent he usually appeared. He looked across at his companion but Mr Moorhouse’s face revealed nothing more than bland contentment.
‘Absolutely,’ the old man agreed. ‘All topped off with repentance in the condemned cell. And a speech warning younger members of the audience not to follow his example. Educational and moral. Not enough plays like that any more.’
Silence descended again on the room. All that Adam could hear were the distant sounds of voices in another part of the building. Probably the Marco Polo’s servants, he thought, preparing for the influx of members in the evening.