‘I give you the lowdown, didn’t I? Can’t you leave a man to get some shut-eye?’
He stretched back on the grass and half closed his eyes. Garland stared down at him for a moment before turning abruptly and walking away. Quint rolled over on his side and watched him go. The MP joined Emily and there was a brief but animated discussion between them. Quint could see the girl gesturing in the direction of the path along which the mule had so lately carried him. She seemed to want the party to take it immediately but her companion looked less enthusiastic about the idea. After two or three minutes, Garland began to walk back to where Quint was lying beneath the tree. The servant saw Emily start to follow him. He rolled hastily onto his back and shut his eyes again. He experimented with a few feigned snores as they approached.
‘Wake up, Devlin.’ The MP prodded Quint with his toe. ‘If, indeed, you are asleep. We have one more question that needs to be answered.’
The servant made a great performance of yawning and stretching his arms.
‘When you took the manuscript at Fields’s promptings,’ Garland went on, ‘was your master pleased that you had obeyed the professor?’
Quint looked warily from the MP to the young woman and back again.
‘Not exackly,’ he said, after a brief pause. ‘’E give me a bit of a wigging, if truth be told.’
‘So Adam is not implicated in this thievery, my dear.’ Garland turned to Emily, who smiled at him. ‘But I fear for the safety of our Greek friend.’
‘He had his servant with him, had he not?’
‘He could send Big Ben Caunt to grass with one ’and tied behind his back, that ’un,’ Quint remarked encouragingly. ‘’E’s the size of an ’ouse.’
‘It matters little what size a man is,’ Garland said. ‘If he is not on his guard, he can be brought low. As I say, I grow anxious for Rallis.’
‘That is why we must hurry on our way,’ Emily said. ‘We are wasting precious time here.’
‘We may hasten into a trap, my dear.’
Quint was bewildered. ‘Trap? What trap?’ he asked.
Neither Garland nor the young woman answered him.
‘We must be off immediately,’ Emily said.
‘What’s up?’ Quint looked at her and then swung his head round towards the MP. Both of them ignored him. ‘’Oo’s going to set a bleedin’ trap?’
‘Be quiet, Devlin,’ Garland snapped. ‘And mind your language when ladies are present.’
The MP stared at the distant mountains, lost in thought.
‘Very well, my dear,’ he said, after a long minute had passed. ‘After consideration, I believe that you are right. Let us be on our way. Devlin, you can ride with Giorgios. His horse will take two. You can leave the mule behind.’
‘What of poor Jinkinson?’ Adam asked, curious as to how much more the professor might tell him. ‘Was it you in the darkness at Wapping? Did you kill him?’
‘Do you recall that German braggart Schliemann we met once in Athens? In the summer of sixty-seven, I think it was.’ Fields seemed not to hear Adam’s questions. He made no attempt to deny responsibility for Jinkinson’s death. He had set off on a digression of his own. ‘I came across him again the following year. I was riding with two of the servants in the mountains south of Salonika when we saw a group of horsemen in the distance. At first, we feared they were brigands, but in the event it turned out to be Schliemann and a band of potential cut-throats who had taken his money to guide him on a long and pointless tour of the region. I was obliged to join him in his encampment for dinner and to listen to his interminable rantings about Troy and the Homeric epics. About the discoveries he is destined to make. Of how his name will for ever be in the annals of archaeology. The man is impossible — a noisy megalomaniac who listens to no one but himself.’
‘Why should anyone else listen to him? The plain of Troy has long been a battleground for scholars as well as for heroes. Schliemann will not be the first to fall upon it nor the last. Why should you concern yourself with him?’
‘Because I fear that he may be correct. That he will unearth the secrets of Priam’s city as he claims he will. It is so often the Schliemanns of this world who gain the glory.’
Suddenly the professor sounded so weary, like an ageing Atlas longing to take the weight of the world from his shoulders. His posture slumped and the barrel of his revolver began to point closer to the ground than to Adam’s chest. The young man wondered yet again if he could make the six-yard dash to Fields that he had earlier dismissed. Before he could steel himself to do it, the professor seemed to gain a new energy. He jerked upright once more.
‘The golden treasure hoard of the Macedonian kings! Can you imagine what it would be to unearth it, Adam?’ Fields was excited now, and sweating profusely. ‘It would be the archaeological sensation of the age! The discoveries of Layard and Rawlinson would pale into insignificance beside it. Even the discoveries Schliemann boasts he will make in Asia Minor. Would even the ruins of Troy match Philip of Macedon’s gold?’
‘Layard and Rawlinson did not murder men in pursuit of their discoveries. Nor, I assume, will Schliemann.’
‘Do you think I wished lives to be sacrificed?’ Fields sounded indignant. ‘Of course I did not. But what choice did those fools leave me? That grasping devil Creech cared only for the money he thought he would make from Philip’s gold. The history, the romance meant nothing to him. As for that sot of an investigator, he did not even realise what he had stumbled across.’
Adam could not yet see clearly in his mind the connection between Fields and Jinkinson. ‘How did you know of the man’s existence?’ he asked.
‘He approached me. He must have come across my name during his dealings with Creech. Perhaps Creech even confided in him, although I doubt that.’
‘He came to visit you in Cambridge?’
‘He arrived one evening just before dinner.’ The professor laughed bitterly. ‘The good Lord alone knows what my servant made of him. The man was half-drunk. He babbled to me of how we might work together to make our fortunes.’
‘Jinkinson was aware of the treasure?’
‘In some limited sense, I believe. He had succeeded in gathering little snippets of information from here and there. He knew of the Euphorion manuscript. He knew that it held the key to something of immense value.’
‘But a London enquiry agent with a fondness for the bottle was unlikely to have the means to travel to Greece in search of the treasure, if you refused to help him. Why was it necessary to kill him?’
‘He knew my name, Adam,’ Fields said, as if explaining some elementary proposition in logic to a singularly dense student. ‘He knew of the existence of the Euphorion manuscript and of my interest in it. And he was in contact with that man Garland. I feared that he would tell him of the gold.’