The Shortest Way to Hades

understand that, they like being married — it makes them feel safe and secure. You wouldn’t want poor Sebastian to feel insecure, would you?”

I suggested that the ideal arrangement might be to have both a husband and an admirer — that being the correct term, I believe, for a man who looks forward to having dinner with one.

“Oh, it is,” she said, with more enthusiasm than you might expect from a respectable married woman. “But you can’t make it last, you see. The admirer always wants to marry you and be safe and secure, so you end up with complications and unpleasantness.” I suppose she was thinking of her divorce from George Fairfax.

It was silly of me, in such a light-hearted conversation, to make any mention of Deirdre’s death. It seemed heartless to have said nothing at all about it, and I thought this a suitable opportunity to offer some sort of condolence; but I ought to have guessed that Dolly would find it upsetting.

“Poor Deirdre,” she said. “And the awful thing is, I hardly notice she isn’t here — it’s as if she never existed. I tried to love her as much as the others, but I couldn’t quite — I did try, but it wasn’t enough. She must have been so unhappy — oh, poor Deirdre.” She buried her nose in a paint-stained handkerchief. I found myself reminding her that Deirdre’s death had been an accident and had nothing to do with her being unhappy. “You were with her, weren’t you,” I said, “just before it happened, and she seemed quite cheerful?”

“Yes,” said Dolly. “Yes, that’s true — I was with her on the roof terrace just a minute or two before, and she seemed in very good spirits — quite excited about something. I told them that at the inquest.”

But the thing is, you see—

You know how it is, Julia, when one is cross-examining a witness, that sometimes there is something about the way they answer a particular question which means they are not telling the truth? Well, the thing is — it would be absurd, of course, to think oneself infallible — but if we had been in court when Dolly told me about being with Deirdre on the roof terrace, and if she had said it in the same tone and manner — well, the thing is, Julia, I’d have staked my reputation that she was lying.

Even if I’m right, it’s nothing to make a great fuss about: if Deirdre was not in such good spirits as Dolly led the Coroner to believe, one can hardly blame her for doing what she could to avoid a verdict of suicide. Still, I felt slightly uncomfortable: I left the studio as soon as I could, and came into the garden to continue writing to you.

After telling you about the things which disconcerted me, I see they are even more trivial, and my sense of uneasiness even less reasonable, than I thought when I began. There is no more to it, I suppose, than this: Sebastian would evidently be quite happy to stay at the Villa Miranda for as long as our welcome lasts, whereas I would prefer to go on sailing round the Ionian Islands. You will say that if I insisted—

Oh yes, I dare say, if I insisted on leaving Sebastian would not insist on staying. Things, however, are not as simple as that. When Henry disrupted my plans for Easter and then again for Whitsun he also disrupted Sebastian’s; and Sebastian, it is fair to say, behaved rather well about it — there are men who would claim that their holiday arrangements are more important than my brief in the Court of Appeal, even in a leading case on equitable estoppel. If translating the work of Constantine Demetriou is Sebastian’s equivalent of a brief in the Court of Appeal, I should not like to do anything to interrupt the progress of their friendship: it would make me feel selfish and ill-natured and see myself in a bad light. I do not at all want to spend ten days sailing round the Ionian seeing myself in a bad light.

There is also the matter of the cricket match — no, Julia, your eyes do not deceive you, we are involved in a cricket match: the annual fixture between the Writers of Corfu on one side and the Artists on the other, the former under the captaincy of Constantine Demetriou. Lucian, though unpublished, is considered eligible to play for the Writers and was to have done so; but his broken arm has put him out of action. Sebastian has been invited to take his place; he regards this, I need hardly say, as a most extraordinary honor, and there could be no question of his refusing. Fortunately, it isn’t feasible to remain in Corfu until this event takes place: the terms of my charter require me to re-deliver the Kymothoe at Preveza on Friday week, and the match is to be played on the following day, so that whatever happens we shall have to sail back to the mainland at some stage before the match and return to Corfu by ferry. But if Sebastian gets the idea that he ought to have some batting practice—

It seems unreasonable and ungrateful of me to object to remaining at the Villa Miranda: I expect you would think it a perfect Paradise. Somehow, though, it is not quite my sort of place. Besides, having meant to go to Ithaca, it seems a pity not to.

With very much love,

Selena.

Having an Opinion to write on the construction of the Taxes Act, Julia felt unable to join me for dinner. It was perhaps fortunate that I could not share with her the disquieting reflection which found its way into my mind in the course of the meal — namely, that with the exception of Tancred all those who had been present on the occasion of Deirdre’s death would also have had the opportunity to tamper with Camilla’s safety-harness.

Even Rupert and Jocasta had been in Corfu in the fortnight preceding the storm and would presumably have had access to the Sycorax, though it seemed to me that Rupert, quite apart from any considerations of paternal affection, must have every reason to hope that his daughter would survive to enjoy her inheritance; and there was no reason for the girl’s grandmother to wish any harm to her. Her cousins, however, would have had the plainest motives; so also, by the same token, would Dolly and her distinguished husband, since it is natural for parents to seek the advantage of their children.

If Camilla’s harness had been indistinguishable from those worn by the others aboard the Sycorax, I might have dismissed these tiresome notions; but hers, it appeared, had been the only one which incorporated a life-jacket. I reminded myself that tampering with it would nonetheless have been a haphazard and uncertain means of achieving any sinister objective. The storm could not have been contrived: even Demetriou, however magical the power of his Muse, could not to that extent clothe himself in the mantle of a Prospero or an Aeolus. If an adventurous and athletic young woman spends three months sailing the Mediterranean there is a possibility, but no more than that, that she will at some point depend for her life on her safety-harness. An attractive possibility, no doubt, to a person wishing malice to seem like accident: I thought, however, that such a person would not rely on a single hazard, but would arrange to place in Camilla’s path a sufficient number of similar traps and pitfalls to multiply risk into certainty. There was nothing to suggest that this had occurred.

Not until the next letter arrived.

CHAPTER 14

Spare room at the Villa Miranda.

Wednesday morning.

Dear Julia,

A rather disagreeable thing has happened to Sebastian — I almost hesitate to write to you about it.

It occurred to our host during dinner yesterday evening that we should on no account miss seeing Palaeocastritsa, a village some twenty miles away on the north-western coast of the island; it was, he said, a place of great magnificence and natural beauty; also, by tradition, the site of the palace of King Alcinous, who gave hospitality to Odysseus on his way home to Ithaca.

“Ah, Sebastian, my dear friend, I know that you don’t believe King Alcinous ever existed — you think that Homer imagined him, him and his palace and his wife and his daughter and his daughter’s washing. Wouldn’t you think, though, with all that imagining, that he could imagine some better reason for a princess to go down to the seashore in the morning? Something sublime and majestic and suitable to be mentioned in a great epic? But no, it’s to do her washing, just like a peasant girl. Oh, he’s hopeless, poor fellow — just fancy thinking a princess would ever make her clothes dirty.” He sighed and looked very satirical. “But who knows? Perhaps if you go to Palaeocastritsa and search carefully you’ll find the Princess Nausicaa’s laundry-list, and be able to tell your archaeologist friends that she existed after all. Or perhaps, when you stand alone on the seashore at Palaeocastritsa, and see the great cliffs rising above you and the dark sea foaming against the rocks, perhaps you