Contents
Cover
About the Book
About the Author
Also by Gladys Mitchell
Title Page
Author’s Note
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
More from Vintage Classic Crime
Copyright
About the Book
Sir Rudri Hopkinson, an eccentric amateur archaeologist, is determined to recreate ancient rituals at the temple of Eleusis in Greece in the hope of summoning the goddess Demeter. He gathers together a motley collection of people to assist in the experiment, including a rival scholar, a handsome but cruel photographer and a trio of mischievous children. But when one of the group disappears, and a severed head turns up in a box of snakes, Mrs Bradley is called upon to investigate…
About the Author
Gladys Maude Winifred Mitchell – or ‘The Great Gladys’ as Philip Larkin described her – was born in 1901, in Cowley in Oxfordshire. She graduated in history from University College London and in 1921 began her long career as a teacher. She studied the works of Sigmund Freud and attributed her interest in witchcraft to the influence of her friend, the detective novelist Helen Simpson.
Her first novel, Speedy Death, was published in 1929 and introduced readers to Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley, the heroine of a further sixty-six crime novels. She wrote at least one novel a year throughout her career and was an early member of the Detection Club along with G. K. Chesterton, Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers. In 1961 she retired from teaching and, from her home in Dorset, continued to write, receiving the Crime Writers’ Association Silver Dagger Award in 1976. Gladys Mitchell died in 1983.
ALSO BY GLADYS MITCHELL
Speedy Death
The Mystery of a Butcher’s Shop
The Longer Bodies
The Saltmarsh Murders
Death at the Opera
The Devil at Saxon Wall
Dead Men’s Morris
St Peter’s Finger
Printer’s Error
Brazen Tongue
Hangman’s Curfew
When Last I Died
Laurels Are Poison
The Worsted Viper
Sunset Over Soho
My Father Sleeps
The Rising of the Moon
Here Comes a Chopper
Death and the Maiden
The Dancing Druids
Tom Brown’s Body
Groaning Spinney
The Devil’s Elbow
The Echoing Strangers
Merlin’s Furlong
Watson’s Choice
Faintley Speaking
Twelve Horses and the Hangman’s Noose
The Twenty-Third Man
Spotted Hemlock
The Man Who Grew Tomatoes
Say It With Flowers
The Nodding Canaries
My Bones Will Keep
Adders on the Heath
Death of the Delft Blue
Pageant of Murder
The Croaking Raven
Skeleton Island
Three Quick and Five Dead
Dance to Your Daddy
Gory Dew
Lament for Leto
A Hearse on May-Day
The Murder of Busy Lizzie
Winking at the Brim
A Javelin for Jonah
Convent on Styx
Late, Late in the Evening
Noonday and Night
Fault in the Structure
Wraiths and Changelings
Mingled with Venom
The Mudflats of the Dead
Nest of Vipers
Uncoffin’d Clay
The Whispering Knights
Lovers, Make Moan
The Death-Cap Dancers
The Death of a Burrowing Mole
Here Lies Gloria Mundy
Cold, Lone and Still
The Greenstone Griffins
The Crozier Pharaohs
No Winding-Sheet
GLADYS MITCHELL
Come Away,
Death
AUTHOR’S NOTE
All the chapter headings in this book are quotations from The Frogs of Aristophanes, translated by D. W. Lucas, M.A., and F. J. A. Cruso, M.A., 1936
‘Just as when a man from its dark spring leads forth a stream of water along a channel amid his crops and garden, and, a mattock in his hand, clears all hindrances from its path; and, as it flows, it sweeps the pebbles before it, and, murmuring, swiftly on it slides, down a sloping place, and outstrips even him who leads it; so did the river-flood overtake Achilles, make what speed he could; for the gods are mightier than men.’
HOMER, The Iliad. BOOK 21
Translated by Peter Quennell
CHAPTER ONE
‘Phoebus Apollo! Give me your hand, let’s kiss and kiss, and in the name of Zeus, the patron of our knavery, tell me, what is all this hubbub of shouting and cursing within?’
1
SEATED IN THE launch, waiting to be conveyed from the side of S.S. Medusa to the shore, Mrs Bradley found herself chiefly aware of the smell of sewage, which seemed, like a siren-song, to emanate from everywhere, subtle as the colours of the bay, and yet all-pervading as the sea-mist through which the ship had sailed upon leaving England.
The launch, collecting flotsam about its bows, was almost as still as any of the buildings which could be seen on the edge of the bay. South of it was the island of Salamis; to the north the rock of the Acropolis stood up hard and square, framed against dark Lycabettos, with bare mountain slopes beyond it, and the ruins of pillared temples crowning its head.
A Cypriot of dark and pitted complexion who had been making persistent efforts to interest the passengers in sheets of used postage stamps, views of Athens, and small dolls dressed in the peasant costume of Greece, now leaned confidentially towards Mrs Bradley and pointed over the rail.
‘Acropolis,’ he said; then, with the air of a conjurer who produces the rabbit, he whipped out a sheet of stamps. Mrs Bradley grinned. The vendor, letting go the sheet of stamps, muttered anxiously in prayer and crossed himself. He then retrieved the stamps and gave them a vigorous shake before spreading them out in front of the next passenger.
Mrs Bradley, still inhaling, perforce, the smell of the bay, watched two sailors putting her luggage on to the launch. She got up and gave them some money. Two little boys, who had been restlessly touring the launch, came up, stared at the baggage, and then went off to their people.
‘Somebody else is staying off, as well,’ said one.
‘The bearings are getting red-hot,’ declared the other. As though the captain of the launch had also observed this idiosyncrasy on the part of the bearings, the launch gave a sudden, defiant toot on her whistle which echoed round the harbour, and, with all the bustle and excitement lacking which, in a foreign port (Mrs Bradley had often noticed), it seemed impossible to persuade any vehicle, whether mechanically propelled or otherwise, to start on its way, the ship began to grow smaller, the houses on the shore more distinct, the smell of the sewage more intense, the air, if possible, hotter, and the Cypriot more cajoling, fluent, and inspired.
Greece approached them in the form
of a long iron jetty. The launch drew up; was moored; the passengers climbed iron steps and then walked ashore. The smell of the sewage (even more difficult to ignore than were the persistent vendors of wooden serpents, photographs, dolls, and small white statuettes of Milo’s Venus who thronged the quay and solicited every traveller), caused Mrs Bradley to walk briskly towards the cab-rank. Hired men followed with her luggage. The broad walk, yellow and sanded, stretched before her. Little boys bathed in the sewage-haunted water. Taxi-drivers leapt on her and her porters. She produced quantities of drachmas and disbursed them. The taxi-drivers grew frenzied. She pointed at one and observed:
‘Sir Rudri Hopkinson’s house.’
‘Yes, yes,’ said the taxi-driver. He wrenched open the door of his vehicle. Other taxi-drivers, deprived of the main source of revenue, fell upon the luggage. Amid pantings, scufflings, and rapid modern Greek, it was got on to the taxi. There was a slight jerk or two as the taxi reared and bucked over half a dozen pot-holes and a piece of paving-stone which appeared to have been left in the way by accident or because those responsible for it had grown suddenly weary of their responsibility, and soon Mrs Bradley found herself careering madly from Phaleron into Athens at the risk of her own life and the lives of some dozens of intrepid pedestrians who democratically refused to recognize any point of view but their own, and crossed the road almost under the bonnet of the car, most of them reading newspapers.
In an incredibly short time the taxi drew up outside the Hotel Grande Bretagne, the door was wrenched open again, the driver handed Mrs Bradley out, the commissionaire held open the hotel door, a page swiftly cleaned her shoes, and a desk-clerk advanced to meet her.
‘I don’t want the hotel; I want Sir Rudri Hopkinson’s house,’ said Mrs Bradley firmly. So they handed her into the taxi, two pieces of luggage which had been dumped on to the ground were put back, the driver was addressed by the commissionaire who had been addressed by the desk-clerk, and the taxi leapt to life once more. In less than five minutes Mrs Bradley was being greeted by her hostess.
‘But Megan and Ivor went to meet the ship,’ said Marie Hopkinson. She was a large, slightly untidy woman, friendly and pleasant. ‘I can’t think why they didn’t bring you back in the car. I described you to them, and everything.’
Mrs Bradley removed a mauve motor veil with yellow spots and took off a small, dark crimson hat. Then she smoothed her black hair with a claw-like hand, and grinned.
‘I expect your description erred on the side of tactfulness, dear child. How old is Ivor?’
‘Twelve, and Megan is nineteen, and my poor dear Olwen twenty-four.’
‘Then Gelert, I suppose, is twenty-seven.’
‘Awful, isn’t it?’
‘But what a satisfactory family, dear Marie.’
‘I don’t know so much. Are you tired? Do you want to be shown your room? Not that you’ll be in it long, poor dear. I do think,’ she continued, without troubling to get her questions answered, ‘that it really is rather a fortunate thing, Beatrice, that you did miss the rest of the party and come on ahead. You see, I’m terribly worried.’
‘Yes, indeed I am. Olwen is going to have a baby – her first – you know she married the headmaster of that ridiculous school – and I feel I ought to be with her. It is due at the end of this month – absurd in all this heat.’
‘There’s no need to worry, even about a first baby, with Olwen, my dear. She’s a splendid girl.’
‘It isn’t Olwen. She’s in excellent form. I just feel I’d like to be there, that’s all. It’s Rudri.’
‘Sunstroke?’
‘Heavens, no! It’s only in England that English people get sunstroke. They take precautions when they are abroad. But my poor Rudri! – Now, Beatrice, you’re to pretend you know nothing of this when Rudri tells you. I wouldn’t for the world have him think that I’d gone behind his back, but I do wish you’d agree to go with them. It would be such a weight off my mind. I hate to ask you, but if only you would go!’
‘But where, dear child?’
‘Where? Where not would be a simple thing to answer. He’s got one of his crack-brained ideas.’ She went over to the door and closed it.
‘Not like the one when he went to the British Museum and tried to raise the ghosts of the Egyptian kings with the intention of getting them to verify the information given in the Book of the Dead?’ said Mrs Bradley, with interest and considerable relish. ‘I often think it was short-sighted of the trustees that he couldn’t get permission. I thought it a splendid notion, and really, for Rudri, almost practical.’
‘Exactly like that one, only a great deal worse.’
‘I am afraid you’ve been discouraging him, Marie. What do you mean by worse?’
‘Virgins,’ said Marie Hopkinson, in tragic tones.
‘Virgins?’ Mrs Bradley gazed with benign inquiry at her hostess. Marie Hopkinson nodded.
‘You’ll hear all about it soon enough. Of course, I had no idea when I invited you. I mean, I wouldn’t have let you in for it for anything!’
‘Tell me from the beginning. I am all ears and interest.’
‘Well, it all began with the Eleusinian Mysteries You see, Eleusis is only thirteen miles from here, and the road follows the old Sacred Way. Rudri walked it as a kind of pilgrimage – of course we’d both been several times in the car – but I think the walk went to his head, and anyway, he came home very tired, and slept in his chair the whole evening, and in the very middle of the night he suddenly said, “I wonder what the Mysteries really were?” I made some snarling reply, because, after all, if he had slept all the evening, I hadn’t, and the subject dropped for the time, but was revived and made energetic in the morning.’
‘And what were the Mysteries?’
‘Nobody really knows. But Rudri thinks – or says he thinks – that if one could reproduce all the conditions, one would find out.’
‘Doubtful, don’t you think, dear child?’
‘Quite mad. In fact, most unlikely! But you know what he is. So now nothing will satisfy him but to make this ridiculous tour. All the children are to go, and he’s sent for Alexander Currie and his two children – and that Cathleen Currie – twenty, my dear – at school with Megan until two years ago – far too beautiful to be allowed to roam about Greece with a lot of young men – not to mention the Greeks, who, my dear, have to be experienced to be believed!’
‘How curiously unnerving, dear child.’
‘Most forward and immoral, and so feline, Beatrice.’
‘Delicious,’ said Mrs Bradley with a cackle. ‘Are we now referring to Cathleen Currie or to the Greeks?’
‘So I wish you’d go, because he’s not going to stop at Eleusis if I know anything about him,’ went on Marie Hopkinson, disregarding the pertinent query.
‘I am to go to chaperone Cathleen and Megan. Is that it?’ asked Mrs Bradley, after spending a moment’s thought upon the ambiguity of her hostess’ last sentence.
‘Good gracious, no. They will have fathers and brothers for that. No. It’s the boys who worry me most – after poor Rudri, of course.’
‘The boys?’
‘Ivor, Kenneth Currie, and a little fellow the Curries are bringing with them – you used to know his mother, Beatrice, surely? – Paterson their name is. She married again after that dreadful accident. You remember? A self-contained and rather clever girl.’
‘I remember. I didn’t know there was a child.’
‘Oh yes. Posthumously born. Nobody imagined for an instant that he would live – a most intelligent little boy. Eleven years old last month. Freckled and rather solemn. Quite a dear. I think I hear Rudri. Now, Beatrice, please know nothing. He’ll want to tell you all about it, and then you can offer to go – as though you are interested, you know.’
‘But why are the boys to go with him?’
‘I don’t see very well how to leave them behind. Of course, they’ll run completely wild, but I
don’t see how it can be helped. Of course – I don’t mind for Ivor, but I feel responsible for Kenneth and little Stewart – you know how it is with other people’s children. Anyhow, Rudri – oh, hush, now! Here he comes. Now, lead him up to it – oh well, he won’t need that – he’s more than full of the subject.’
Sir Rudri Hopkinson was a tall, fair, greying man with the eyes of a visionary, the hands and shoulders of a blacksmith, and a luxuriant Viking moustache. He greeted Mrs Bradley, and plunged immediately into what were evidently some of the details of the proposed expedition.
‘I’ve got young Armstrong to come and take the photographs,’ he announced to his wife, ‘and Dmitri Mycalos is coming as well.’
‘I don’t like either of those young men,’ said Marie Hopkinson, but the remark was waved aside by her husband, who continued, turning to Mrs Bradley:
‘We are going first to Eleusis, Beatrice; from there to Epidaurus, to see what we can do with the Aesculapius cult – the god of healing – thence to Mycenae for the Homeric offerings, then back here again before we cross to Ephesus, unless it seems better to return to Nauplia and take a boat from there. At Ephesus, of course, we revive the Artemis worship.’
‘I think it would be far better to take the train from here to Corinth, and to approach Mycenae from the north,’ said Marie Hopkinson. She went to the window and peered out between the slats of the blind. ‘Those children seem to be taking their time for Phaleron.’
‘Hanging about for Beatrice. Where’s Gelert?’ asked Sir Rudri.
‘He is at the museum, I expect.’
‘What, again? I shall be glad to have him come on this expedition. The fellow’s gone mopy. Wants some fresh air and sunshine,’ said his father.
Gelert came in as he said it. He was a tall young man, not much like either of his parents in appearance, for where Sir Rudri was somewhat leonine, and Marie was pleasantly large with dark hair and a wide friendly smile, Gelert was like a greyhound. His fair hair was long, but was brushed severely from his brow. He wore pince-nez, chiefly, Mrs Bradley decided, as an affectation, for, when his father had gone, he sat at the side of the room and read a book of which the print was small and close whilst the pince-nez dangled at the end of their moiré ribbon.