‘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.