‘Why not hang on for a while? Even-dare I suggest it-talk it over with me first?’
What could Claudia say? That if she’d waited, Cyrus would not have granted her permission to visit the prisoner? That, if she lived to be five hundred like the ancient Sibyl of Cumae, she could never justify to this high-born policeman her faith in a low-born Spanish gigolo?
Now, as the storm lowered itself on its hunkers over Plasimene, smells of roasted duck and game from the banqueting hall became entwined with the colonnade’s scents of marigolds and bay, and the clatter of knives on silver platters made music with the thunder along the Athens Canal. The combination of pleasure and oppression made her feel faint.
That she had believed in Tarraco was what made it so bloody hard to swallow! Eight years of acting the role of, what did he call it, ‘pleasure boy’ had honed his acting skills and with hindsight, Claudia saw that, after killing the bear, he was not just reading her character. The professional had been sizing her up.
With a violent shove, a terracotta pot filled with white, scented lilies went flying off the balustrade, to smash into a thousand smithereens. By admitting his crimes, actually even stressing his guilt (‘The evidence is overwhelming, is it not?’), Tarraco had manipulated her into believing him innocent, and now, thanks to her, he was free. Free. To keep his head down until the dust had settled. To slither back when the furore died down and step up his filthy campaign.
Croesus, he was going to get away with it, too.
Claudia’s hands raked her hair. With any number of caves and hidey-holes dotted round these wild, Etruscan hills, he could be anywhere. Him and his cronies, biding their time-and how long before the authorities stopped searching? If, indeed, they began. Claudia sent another pot crashing to its doom. As long as the gang remained at large, the townspeople would be too terrified to testify against them for fear of retribution, which begged the question, on what evidence did this conspiracy exist? The hunch of a young investigator whose ambitions were widely recognized? Backed up by a woman whose double-bedded accommodation he was paying for? A woman, moreover, connected to a potential treasonable theft?
Goddammit, were Tarraco to spend a week holed up in those hills, he’d be lucky.
Well. Claudia swiped the hair out of her eyes with the back of her hand. All the fragrant lilies in the world lying shattered on that path won’t solve the problem, but maybe-just maybe-there was another way to fell this mighty oak. It all hung on the courage of one old olive grower, who might or might not be being poisoned…
In the Great Hall, where the air was artificially cool, the hard-eyed, ravaged harpy for whom Claudia’s nickname of Stonyface seemed never more appropriate came bearing down on her. But not in greeting, the way she had the night she’d been conferring with Kamar behind the statue. Lips pinched, eyes narrowed, Stonyface thundered down the stepped marble floor, her snub nose set to the ground and seemingly oblivious to the sparkling watercourse, the guffaws of laughter from the dining hall, and also, it seemed, to pedestrians.
‘Out of my way, you stupid-’ preoccupied features suddenly leaped back into focus ‘-Oh.’ The hand which was about to barge Claudia aside froze in mid-air and the concrete jaw forced itself into some semblance of a smile. ‘I thought you were a slave girl.’
Claudia’s reciprocal smile told Granitepuss how she felt about that.
‘Only I imagined everyone was at dinner,’ the woman snapped in what presumably passed for an apology, before brushing past and slamming the door in her wake. But not before Claudia had caught the full force of the stewed walnut liquor which had freshly dyed out her grey.
Dear me, can’t she see, at her age, that less is more? If she fell into that watercourse right now, all you’d see would be her feet, the sheer weight of cosmetics would keep her under! No, no; subtlety’s the key in middle age. The hand that paints on those eyebrows should be light, and playing down her snub nose would make her infinitely more winsome than the girlishness she insisted on trying to achieve. Yet such was the haughtiness surrounding this old bag, it suggested not so much a blindspot as hardline inflexibility. In fact, so preoccupied was Claudia with wondering what turned perfectly attractive women into dogs that she almost failed to note the significance of what Lavinia was doing as she flung wide the door ‘NO!’ she cried. ‘For gods’ sake, Lavinia, no!’
The little sparrow of a woman lay propped up on her daybed, her fleece of white hair cascading over the strawberry damask bolster, her wig sitting in her lap like a docile, curly lapdog. One wrinkled hand held a red medicinal phial, the other held the bottle’s clear glass stopper.
Claudia flew across the room. ‘Don’t drink that!’
‘Tch.’ The old woman raised the phial to her lips. ‘You can’t win in this place,’ she said, although there was no punch in her voice and those mischievous eyes twinkled like sapphires in the sun. ‘One minute they tell you to finish off your medicine, the next they try and stop you. Well-’ half a second before Claudia reached the wheeled couch, she tipped the contents down her throat ‘-Lavinia has a mind of her own.’
Now what? Oil of lavender burned in a brazier and beside a board set out for Twelve Lines, a silver bowl sat heaped with candied fruits. Much to the delight of a shiny black beetle. A roll of thunder crashed overhead, rattling the counters.
‘I need to talk to you,’ Claudia said.
Lavinia peered down the end of her nose. ‘You didn’t come just to intervene, then?’ If anything, the eyes were brighter than ever.
With slow deliberation, Claudia moved one of the onyx soldiers to a different square on the chequerboard. ‘In a manner of speaking,’ she said, ‘yes.’
As the storm rumbled round the cupola that was Plasimene, she perched on the edge of Lavinia’s couch and gave the old woman a summary of Tarraco and the racket he was working. The figure on the couch didn’t stir, except to fold her arms across her narrow chest. It won’t take long, Claudia calculated. It won’t take long for the medicine to kick in, and then I’ve lost Lavinia until tomorrow. We must move fast.
But for two long minutes after she’d finished speaking, Lavinia remained in silence, and Claudia wriggled as a rivulet of sweat drizzled down her backbone. Two more trickles followed it before the sparrow finally spoke.
‘That’s all very interesting,’ Lavinia said. ‘But I don’t see where I fit in.’
‘Through this.’ Claudia picked up the red glass phial and thought, here goes. We arrive at the moment of truth. ‘With your testimony and the contents of this little bottle as evidence, we can build a case against Kamar and-’ she drew a deep breath ‘-your son.’
‘My son?’
‘All we need is one stepping stone, just one, and from there the investigation will avalanche.’ Tarraco’s associates would squeal like rats in a trap, he’d be back in that cell before the end of the month.
‘I’m sure it would,’ Lavinia said dryly, and a wizened claw lashed out to move an onyx soldier from the sidelines on the chequerboard. Instantly the draw was transformed to an out-and-out rout. ‘But I repeat. I don’t see what this has to do with me.’
‘Don’t you.’ It was not a question-the old woman knew full well. One glance at the chequerboard showed that. Claudia thought of the medicine Lavinia had just swallowed, and knew time was running out. Especially for playing convoluted mind games. Nevertheless- ‘So there was no ulterior motive behind your repeating all that gossip?’ And in such technicolour detail, too.
‘Motive?’
All right. Let’s play this little charade, if that’s what makes you happy. ‘So much scandal.’ Claudia shifted position on the couch and crossed one leg over the other. ‘Adultery, crooked business deals, character assassinations-Atlantis is dripping from the gutterspouts with social sabotage and political intrigue, yet you choose to tell me stories about people who have died in seemingly natural circumstances.’