‘Jane is my maid,’ Emily explained. ‘She has a peculiar care for my welfare.’
‘Her diligence in her duties is to be admired.’ Adam offered his arm. ‘Shall we stroll beneath the trees?’
‘There is a seat by the fountain. I would rather sit.’
Not waiting for any response, the young woman walked to the stone bench and sat primly on its edge. Adam followed and took a seat beside her. He had been rehearsing what he might say to her for much of the hour he had spent sitting outside the café, but now that the moment had come, all his fine words had left him.
‘Well, sir,’ Emily said, after the silence had grown awkward, ‘what is it you wish to say to me?’
Her manner, so different to the warmth with which she had greeted him at St Paul’s, was brusque. Could this be the same woman who had kissed him at Cremorne Gardens? Adam almost began to wonder if he had imagined the more intimate moments of their previous meetings. He felt himself even more at a loss for the right words.
‘I am simply curious, Miss Maitland.’
‘Curious, sir? Curious about what, pray?’
‘I have never learned why you came to visit me that first day in Doughty Street. Why you wished to see me again at Cremorne Gardens. Why you left me so abruptly there. And now here you are in Athens. You are a woman of mysteries, Emily. May I call you Emily? And I long very much to solve some of those mysteries.’
The young woman said nothing. Her eyes gazed into the distance as if seeking out the mountains that surrounded the city on all sides.
‘Will you not throw a little light on my darkness? Will you not tell me what you are doing here? Staying with Garland in the British Embassy?’
Emily remained silent for a moment. Then her head dropped into her hands and she began to cry.
‘Oh, Adam,’ she murmured through her tears, so quietly that the young man could scarcely make out what she said. ‘You must not ask all these questions. I cannot answer them.’
‘But do I not have a right to answers to them?’
‘Perhaps you do, but I cannot give them.’
‘Why, Emily? Why can you not give them?’
Her face still covered by her hands, the young woman shook her head. ‘I cannot,’ she said again. ‘I cannot.’
‘Your questions are upsetting the lady, Mr Carver.’
Adam looked up in surprise. Garland was standing over them. To his right, lurking several paces behind him, was the maid Jane. She had clearly seen fit, Adam realised, to go back to the embassy and summon Garland.
‘I think your conversation with Miss Maitland is now at an end,’ the MP continued. ‘She must return immediately to her lodgings.’
‘It is surely Miss Maitland’s decision, sir, as to whether or not our conversation is over.’ Adam stood and faced the older man. He was suddenly filled with what felt like righteous anger at his interruption. He clenched and unclenched his hands like a boxer awaiting the fitting of his gloves.
Garland smiled grimly. ‘I am the young lady’s godfather and thus, in some sense, in loco parentis. I believe I am well within my rights to insist on an end to this questioning of her. But we will ask Emily herself.’
He looked down at his god-daughter, who was still sitting on the bench. She had pulled a white cambric handkerchief from her pocket and was dabbing at her eyes.
‘Emily, my dear, do you wish to bring your conversation with Mr Carver to a conclusion?’
Without looking up at either Adam or her godfather, the young woman nodded. Garland held out his arm for her to take and she rose from the stone bench. The maid moved forward and picked up her parasol which had fallen to the ground. The three turned from the fountain and began to walk towards the embassy. Adam could do nothing but watch them go. At one point, Emily looked back at him, but at a distance of thirty yards, it was impossible to tell whether her expression was one of apology or outrage.
Adam returned to the Angleterre via the telegraph office. Since arriving in the Greek capital, he had found time to send two lengthy telegrams back to London. With the Dilessi murders still so recent, he felt certain that, although Sunman and his colleagues would have plenty of informants at work in Athens, one more might be welcome. This was confirmed by a telegram back from Whitehall encouraging him to stay in touch. So a third message, conveying what news and impressions he had gleaned from conversations with Rallis and others, was soon sent. When he returned to the hotel, it was to find it, or at least the floor on which he and his party were staying, in an uproar. Members of the staff were hurrying along the corridor, bumping into one another and shouting excitedly at no one in particular. Polly, the usually unflappable manager, was giving a good impression of a man tearing out his hair. In the centre of the hubbub was Professor Fields, standing outside the door to his room. He was stabbing his finger in the air and bellowing with anger.
‘It’s an outrage,’ he yelled at the unfortunate Polly. ‘I leave my room for no more than an hour. And it is invaded by thieves.’
Adam hurried to the professor’s side.
‘What has happened, sir? You must calm yourself.’
‘Calm myself? Calm myself?’ Fields was red with rage. ‘I cannot calm myself when my sanctum has been defiled in this scandalous manner.’
‘Defiled?’ Adam was bewildered. ‘What has been defiled?’
The professor, now rendered speechless by his fury, could only gesture towards his room. Adam pushed at the half-open door and went inside. The room had been ransacked. The bedding had been torn from the bed and thrown to the floor. The door to the vast mahogany wardrobe was open and the professor’s clothing was strewn on the carpet in front of it. His leather travelling cases had been turned upside down. A writing desk by the window had been emptied of its drawers. So too had those of a bureau and a mirrored dressing table. The whole room looked as if a small tornado had recently swept through it, uprooting everything within and hurling it to the floor.
Polly had followed Adam through the door. The manager had recovered some of his customary sangfroid.
‘It is terrible,’ he said mournfully. ‘In all my years here, we have not had such a terrible thing.’
‘Has anything been stolen, Professor?’
Fields had now entered his room again. He marched over to the wardrobe and stooped to pick up one of his shirts from the floor. He threw it onto the dishevelled bed and grabbed at another.
‘Has anything been stolen?’ Adam repeated his question.
The professor waved the shirt in his hand like a flag of distress. His rage had dissipated. He now looked more forlorn than angry.
‘I cannot be certain, Adam,’ he said, ‘but I think not.’
‘They have taken no money? No papers?’
‘There was little in the room worth the thieving.’
‘The professor placed some items in the hotel safe,’ Polly explained. ‘It is, perhaps, a blessing that they were not here.’
‘They are of little value,’ Fields said, still awkwardly holding his shirt as if he could think of nowhere to put it. ‘They would have been of no interest to anyone other than a fellow scholar.’ He threw the second shirt to the bed and seemed to feel another burst of rage.
‘It is not the loss of any object that is so infuriating,’ he said. ‘It is the thought of some wretch invading my privacy. I thought better of your establishment, Pikopoulos. Can any rascal off the streets of Athens simply march into the Angleterre and rifle through the possessions of your guests?’
Polly launched himself into a further round of abject apologies. Adam picked up one of the drawers from the writing desk, which had been left lying on the carpet, and slotted it back into place. He looked around in search of the other drawer.