I nodded. I couldn’t speak. I clung to him, flinching and shaking as the sound of the fight crashed round the terrace. It was impossible, in that diffused and rocking light, to see which man was which. I saw Papadopoulos standing near me, legs apart, the gun in his hand moving irresolutely as the locked bodies stamped and wrestled past him. Godfrey’s gun spat again, and the metal table whanged. Papadopoulos yelled something, and the injured constable lurched to his feet and ran to the windows, dragging the curtains wide, so that the light poured out.
But already they were beyond the reach of it, hurtling back against the balustrade that edged the steep and tree-hung cliff. I saw them, dimly silhouetted against the sky. One of them had the other rammed back across the stone. There was a crack, a sound of pain. Sir Julian’s breath whistled in my ear and he said ‘Christ Almighty’, and I saw that the man over the stone was Max.
Beside us was a scraping sound and a harshly-drawn breath. Spiro’s voice said urgently: ‘Koumbàre …’ and a hand thrust Sir Julian aside. The boy had dragged himself through the welter of broken plaster to the window, and lay on his belly, with the levelled rifle hugged to his cheek. I cried out, and Sir Julian shot a hand down and thrust the barrel lower. ‘No! Wait!’
From the locked and straining bodies over the balustrade came a curse, a sudden flurry of movement, a grunt. Max kicked up savagely, twisted with surprising force, and tore sideways and free. He lost his grip of Godfrey’s gun-hand, but before the latter could collect himself to use it Max smashed a blow at the bad side of his face, a cruel blow which sent Godfrey spinning back, to lose his balance and fall in his turn violently against the stone.
For two long seconds the men were feet apart. Beside me, Spiro jerked the rifle up, and fired. I heard the bullet chip stone. Max, flinching back, checked for a vital instant, and in that instant Godfrey had rolled over the wide stone parapet in a sideways, kicking vault, and had dropped down into the bushes out of sight.
By all the laws he should have broken his back, or at least a leg, but he must have been unhurt. There was a series of slithering crashes as he hurled himself downhill, and then a thud as he jumped to the track.
I don’t even remember moving, but I beat Papadopoulos and Miranda to Max’s side as he hung, gasping, over the parapet.
‘Are you hurt?’
‘No.’ It was hardly a word. He had already thrust himself upright and was making for the shallow steps that led down from the terrace to the zigzag path.
Godfrey was visible below, a shadow racing from patch to patch of starlight downhill between the trees. Papadopoulos levelled his pistol across the parapet, then put it up again with an exclamation. For a moment I couldn’t see why, then I realised that Adoni was on the branch of the zigzag path below Godfrey, and more or less in line with him. Godfrey hadn’t seen him for the bushes in between.
But the boy must have heard the shots and the fracas up above, and now the thudding of Godfrey’s racing steps must have warned him what was happening. He stopped. One moment he was there in the path, standing rigid, head up, listening, then the next he had melted into the shadow of the trees. Godfrey, unaware or uncaring, ran on and down.
Beside me, Miranda caught her breath. Papadopoulos was craning to see. Max had stopped dead at the head of the steps.
Godfrey turned the corner and ran down past the place where Adoni stood waiting.
Ran down … and past … and was lost to sight beyond the lower thicket of lime trees.
Miranda cried out shrilly, and Papadopoulos said, incredulously: ‘He let him go …’
I said quickly: ‘He has the evidence I sent him for. He had to keep it safely.’
‘He is a coward!’ cried Miranda passionately, and ran for the steps.
Next moment Adoni emerged from the trees. I couldn’t see if he had the package, but he was coming fast uphill. Max had started down the steps in what was now obviously a futile attempt to catch the fugitive, but Miranda flew past him, shrieking, and met Adoni head on, her fists beating furiously against his chest.
‘Coward! Coward! Coward! To be afraid of that Bulgar swine! After what he did to your brother, to let him go? Coward! Woman! I spit on you, I spit! If I were a man I would eat his heart out!’
She tried with the last words to tear away and past him, but he caught and held her with one arm, whirling her aside with an almost absent-minded case as he stepped full into Max’s way and thrust the other arm across his chest, barring his path. As I ran down the steps and came up to them I heard, through Miranda’s breathless and sobbing abuse, Adoni saying, quick and low: ‘No. No, Max. Wait. Wait and see.’
Where there had been pandemonium before, now quite suddenly there was stillness. Max, at the boy’s words, had stopped dead. The three of them looked like some group of statuary, the two men still, staring into each other’s eyes, Adoni full in Max’s path, looking in the starlight like Michael barring the gates of Paradise; the girl collapsed now and weeping against his side. At some time the telephone must have stopped ringing. Papadopoulos had run back to it and could be heard shouting urgently into it. Sir Julian must have gone to Spiro. The constable was starting down the steps, but slowly, because of his wound, and because it was so obviously too late …
The last of the wind had died, and the air was still with the hush before dawn. We heard it all quite clearly, the slam of the boat-house door, and the quick thud of running feet along the wooden platform. The pause, as he reached the Aleister and tore her loose from her rope. He would be thrusting her hard away from the jetty …
The sudden stutter of her motor was as loud as gunfire. There was a brief, racing crescendo as the Aleister leaped towards the open sea and freedom.
Then the sound was swallowed, shattered, blanked out in the great sheeted roar of flame as the sloop exploded. The blast hit us where we stood. The flames licked and flared over the water, and were gone. The echo of the blast ran up the cliff and beat from rock to rock, humming, before it died into the rustle of the trees.
Sir Julian was saying: ‘What happened? What happened?’ and I heard a flood of breathless Greek from Spiro. Papadopoulos had dropped the telephone and ran forward above us to the parapet.
‘Max? What in hell’s name happened?’
Max tore his eyes from Adoni. He cleared his throat, hesitating. I said shakenly: ‘I think I know. When I was on board I smelled gas … It’s a terribly easy thing to do … leave a gas tap on by mistake in the galley, and then the gas leaks down and builds up under the deck boards. You don’t notice it, but as soon as the engine fires, up she goes. I – I once saw it happen on the Norfolk Broads.’
‘Spiro was saying something about gas.’ He mopped his face. ‘My God, what a night. My God. I suppose it must have been … Had he been using the galley?’
‘Not on the way out. It stands to reason, anyway, he’d have noticed the smell when he took the boxes out from under the deck, if it had been really bad. No, he must have used it on the way home. When I took a box out myself the smell was pretty faint. Did you get the box, Adoni?’
‘Yes.’
‘You got a box?’ The Inspector’s attention sharpened, diverted for a moment. ‘This is what you were going to tell us, eh? Is it a radio set?’
‘It is not. It’s a batch of forged currency, Inspector Papadopoulos, part of a cargo of seven hundred thousand Albanian leks that he took across tonight. I managed to steal one package, and hide it in the boat-house before he–he took me. That’s where Adoni’s been; I sent him to collect it.’ I added: ‘I think that you may find that this – accident – has saved everybody a lot of trouble. I mean, if the Greeks had had to shoot him …’
I let the sentence hang. Beside me, Max and Adoni stood very still. The Inspector surveyed us for a moment, then he nodded.
‘You may be right. Well, Miss Waring, I’ll be with you again in a minute or two, and I’ll be very glad to listen to you then. You have the box safe, young Adoni? Good. Bring it up, will you? Now we??
?d better get down there and see if there’s anything to pick up. Are you still on your feet, Petros?’
The two police vanished down the track. There was another silence. Everyone turned, as if impelled, and looked at Adoni. He met our eyes levelly, and smiled. He looked very beautiful. Miranda said, on a long, whispered note: ‘It was you. It was you …’ and sank down to the ground beside him, with his hand to her cheek and a face of shining worship lifted to his.
He looked down at her, and said something in Greek, a sentence spoken very tenderly. I heard Max take in a sharp little breath, and then he came to me and took me in his arms and kissed me.
Sir Julian was waiting for us on the terrace. We need not have been afraid that he would comment on what had just passed between his son and me. He was basking in a warm bath of self-congratulation.
‘The performance of my life,’ he said complacently.
‘It certainly was. It fooled me. Did you know he wasn’t drunk?’ I asked Max.
‘Yes. I wasn’t quite sure what he’d try on, but I thought it might break the situation our way. Which it did – but only just. You’re a lousy shot, father.’
‘It was the waste of good whisky. It put me off my stroke,’ said his father. ‘However, there was enough left in the glass to put Spiro under; I’ve got the poor child strapped up again, and flat out on the sofa in there. That’ll be another trip to hospital as soon as it’s light, I’m afraid. Oh, and I telephoned your sister, Lucy. I reassured her quite successfully. It’s been quite a night, as they say.’
‘And not over yet by a damned long way,’ said Max, a little grimly. ‘I shan’t get any rest till I’ve heard Lucy’s story … No, it’s all right, darling, we’ll leave it till Markos gets back. You won’t want to go through it all again for him. You must be exhausted.’
‘I think I’ve gone beyond that. I feel more or less all right … floating a bit, that’s all.’ I went slowly to the parapet, and leaned there, gazing out over the dark sea. The dawn was coming; the faintest glimmer touched the far Albanian snows. ‘Do you suppose there’ll be – anything – for them to find?’
‘I’m sure there won’t.’ He came to my side and slipped an arm round me. ‘Forget it. Don’t let it haunt you. It was better this way.’
‘I know.’
Sir Julian, at my other side, quoted:
‘“Let us not burthen our remembrances, with
A heaviness that’s gone …’
And I may say, Max, that I have come to the conclusion that Prospero is not for me. A waste of talent. I shall set my sights at Stephano for this film of ours. I shall write and tell Sandy so today.’
‘Then you’re coming back to us?’ I said.
‘I shall hate it,’ said Sir Julian, ‘but I shall do it. Who wants to leave an enchanted island for the icy, damp, and glorious lights of London? I think I might try don’t you?’
Max said nothing, but I felt his arm tighten. Adoni and Miranda came softly up the terrace steps, heads bent, whispering, and vanished in through the french windows.
‘Beatrice and Benedick,’ said Sir Julian softly. ‘I never thought to hear that magnificently Shakespearian outburst actually in the flesh, as it were. “O God, that I were a man! I would eat his heart in the marketplace.” Did you catch it, Lucy?’
‘I didn’t understand the Greek. Was that it? What did she actually say?’ When he told me, I asked: ‘And Adoni? What was it he said when she was kissing his hand?’
‘I didn’t hear that.’
Max glanced down at me, hesitated, and then quoted, rather dryly:
‘“You wanted to eat his heart, little sister. I have cooked it for you.”’
‘Dear Heaven,’ I said.
Sir Julian smiled. ‘You’ve seen the other face of the enchanted isle tonight, haven’t you, my poor child? It’s a rough sort of magic for such as we are – a mere musician, and a couple of players …’
‘Much as I adore being bracketed with you,’ I said, ‘it’s putting me too high.’
‘Then could you bear to be bracketed with me instead?’ asked Max.
‘Well, that is rather going to the other end of the scale,’ said his father, ‘but I’d be delighted if she’d give the matter some thought. Do you think, my dear, that you could ever consider dwindling as far as a musician’s wife?’
I laughed. ‘I’m not at all sure who this proposal’s coming from,’ I said, ‘but to either, or to both of you, yes.’
Far out in the bay a curve of blue fire melted, rolled in a silver wheel, and was lost under the light of day.
Also by Mary Stewart
Madam, Will You Talk?
Wildfire at Midnight
Thunder on the Right
Nine Coaches Waiting
My Brother Michael
The Ivy Tree
The Moonspinners
Airs Above the Ground
The Gabriel Hounds
Touch Not the Cat
Thornyhold
Stormy Petrel
Rose Cottage
THE ARTHURIAN NOVELS
The Crystal Cave
The Hollow Hills
The Last Enchantment
The Wicked Day
The Prince and the Pilgrim
POEMS
Frost on the Window
FOR CHILDREN
The Little Broomstick
Ludo and the Star Horse
A Walk in Wolf Wood
Mary Stewart, one of the most popular novelists, was born in Sunderland, County Durham and lives in the West Highlands. Her first novel, Madam, Will You Talk?, was published in 1955 and marked the beginning of a long and acclaimed writing career. All her novels have been bestsellers on both sides of the Atlantic. She was made a Doctor of Literature by Durham University in 2009.
Mary Stewart, This Rough Magic
(Series: # )
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