‘He is, Miss Maitland. And, arrived in the birthplace of democracy, he has proved even more of a free spirit than he was in London. It is sometimes difficult to look at the pair of us and decide which is the master and which the man.’
‘You have encountered Carver’s servant, Emily?’ Garland said, turning back to them and seizing on the girl’s remark. ‘Was he also devoting his time to the assistance of necessitous gentlewomen?’
Emily said nothing. She looked at Adam.
‘He was waiting with a cab when I left the tea party,’ the young man said. ‘Miss Maitland was good enough to condescend to speak briefly to him then. He has not forgotten it. He will be gratified that you remember him,’ Adam added, certain that Quint would be nothing of the kind.
The carriage, with its two greys, now stood close to them. One of Garland’s servants was sitting with reins in hand. Another had climbed down from the landau and opened one of its doors.
‘I am sorry that we cannot stay longer, Carver,’ the MP said. ‘No doubt you and Emily would find further Kensington memories to share. But we have a luncheon appointment that cannot wait. Perhaps we will see you again. You are at the Angleterre, I assume?’
Adam nodded.
‘You must tell Polly to serve you one of his best bottles of burgundy at dinner tonight and charge it to my account.’ Garland took Emily’s hand to help her into the carriage. ‘He has a habit of forcing his guests to drink the most filthy wines if he is not watched carefully.’
‘Goodbye, Mr Carver,’ the young woman said, as she settled into her seat. ‘It has been a pleasure to meet you again in so unexpected a fashion.’
Adam raised his hat as Garland climbed into the landau and tapped the driver on the shoulder with his stick. The horses were eager to be on their way. The carriage moved abruptly into the road and departed in a furry of dust. Adam caught a last view of Emily, her head turned to look at him and her hand waving farewell.
‘Garland? That’s the MP chappie, ain’t it? My pater knows him, I think.’ Samways, seated behind a large desk in an airless office in the embassy, was red in the face and sweating fiercely. On the wall behind him was a portrait of the queen. The artist had caught Victoria at one of her sterner moments and she looked to be scowling down on her perspiring representative in Athens.
‘He is in the House, yes.’ Adam turned his eyes away from the glowering queen and glanced briefly from the one window in the room. He could see the leaves of a tree fluttering in a light breeze outside and hear the faint noise of traffic in the square below. ‘But he is in Athens at present. I saw him at St Paul’s on Sunday.’
‘Oh, I know he’s in Athens, old boy. Saw him at the service myself.’
‘And you know where he is staying in the city, do you?’ Adam had assumed that Garland was staying at the Angleterre but enquiries had shown this assumption was wrong. He was now hoping that the man at the embassy could help to locate him.
‘Might do, old boy.’ Samways moved a bronze inkstand from one side of his desk to the other. He stared at it, as if judging the aesthetic effect of shifting its position, and, clearly dissatisfied, moved it back again. ‘Might do. But I’m not sure I ought to let you in on the secret.’
‘It is a secret, is it?’
The embassy man smiled slyly. ‘Not sure I’d go so far as to call it that,’ he said, tempting Adam to remark that that was exactly what he had just called it.
‘Did I, old boy? Just a turn of phrase. It’s not a secret. Or at least not a secret that the embassy wants kept. But Garland himself might not want you knowing it.’
‘This is not a matter of any great consequence, Samways.’ Adam tried to make his voice as casual in its tone as he could. He sensed that, if the man from the embassy thought there was much significance in his enquiry, he would not tell him what he wanted to know. It seemed there must be some hidden motive behind Garland’s arrival in the city, some reason for his visit of which the embassy was aware. Why else would Samways be so circumspect? ‘I met Garland at my club in London last month. The Marco Polo. I thought I would leave my card. But it is of no great moment. If you do not know where he is staying…’ Adam rose from his seat as if to leave the room.
‘I did not say that I didn’t.’ Samways’s desire to appear a man in the know was at war with his belief that discretion on the subject of Garland was required. He reached an arm across the table as if to seize Adam by the hand and prevent his departure. Discretion, it seemed, had lost.
‘Look, I’m sure you’re a man who can keep his mouth shut, Carver, when it’s required.’
Adam agreed that he was.
‘Garland’s here on a delicate mission. Not many people know he’s here. Can’t tell you more than that. Probably shouldn’t have told you anything at all. But you’re a college man, ain’t you? If I can’t trust an old college man, who can I trust?’
Adam assumed that the question was a rhetorical one and left it unanswered.
‘And if you know Garland of old, no harm in telling you he’s staying here at the embassy.’
‘At the embassy?’ Adam was surprised.
‘Thought he’d be more inconspicuous here than at the Angleterre. He’s only here for a few days. If you want to leave your card, I’ll make sure he receives it.’
Adam reached into his pocket and took out his silver card case. He opened it and handed one of the cards to Samways. The diplomat turned it over suspiciously, as if he thought it might have some hidden message scribbled on its rear face, and then placed it in a small tray on his desk.
‘When you saw Garland at St Paul’s,’ Samways said, ‘you must have seen the girl who was with him.’
‘There was a girl with him, yes.’
‘Quite a stunner, ain’t she? She’s staying here as well. Calls herself his god-daughter.’ Samways leered unpleasantly. ‘Ain’t heard that one before.’
Adam felt a strong temptation to lean across the desk and punch the embassy man on the nose, but he resisted it.
‘She’s very beautiful, certainly. Do you know anything more of her?’
Samways shook his head.
‘Garland has a reputation, though, don’t he? Randy old devil. He’s old enough to be her grandfather, never mind her godfather.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The young Englishman drew a long breath as he reached the top of the Acropolis. He turned to his companion and forced a strained smile to his face. Their exertions, so soon after breakfast, had tired him more than he had thought they would. Adam was a fit man. He had been one of the first men at Cambridge to box under the new Queensberry rules for the sport and he had rowed on the river as one of the college eight. Since moving in to Doughty Street, he had been a regular patron of the German gymnasium in St Pancras where he had exercised with dumb-bells and weights. And yet the climb from the ancient agora to the Acropolis had taken its toll in the morning heat. Behind him, the white colonnade of the Parthenon gleamed in the sun. Adam took a handkerchief from his pocket. He removed his hat and mopped his brow. Now standing at his side, Rallis, just as elaborately attired as the Englishman, seemed not to feel the heat.
‘It is a fine sight, is it not?’ he said.
‘The finest in the world,’ Adam agreed. ‘I saw it once before, in sixty-seven, and I have never forgotten it. The memory of it has warmed many a chilly day in London in the last few years.’
The two men continued to stand and admire the ancient temple to Athena. Adam, recovering swiftly from the rigours of the climb, was the first to move.
‘It is a great pity that it was impossible to bring my camera to Athens,’ he said, holding up his hands to frame the view he might have taken.