In the Shadow of Vesuvius Page 7

  For the next three days, Colin and I conducted a new series of interviews with every single person employed in the excavations. Any of them might have committed the crime, but very few raised in us suspicion. I did not give full credence to Callie’s continued insistence that she never spoke to Mr. Walker on the ship, and her brother’s disproportionate anger when he talked about her potential suitors tugged at me. Mr. Stirling’s behavior, when he sought us out to see my sketch, struck me as odd, but, so far, we could not identify any connection to link him with the dead man.

  Kat elected to make plans of her own rather than accompany us during this time. She wanted a darkroom of her own, and had arranged for Benjamin to take her to Naples to help her procure supplies. Colin balked at her going alone with a young man, and his daughter, all charm, begged Ivy to play chaperone. I didn’t regret not being asked. I should have liked Kat—she was spirited and smart and reminded me more than a little of myself at her age—but every time I laid eyes on her black hair and beautiful face, I saw her mother. That she spoke to me only when it was categorically unavoidable and, even then, refused to make eye contact, didn’t help. Someday, perhaps, we could be friends, but it felt as if that wouldn’t happen until another geological era.

  Once our interrogations were complete, Colin and I turned to the hotels in Pompeii, and scoured their registers (the Italian hoteliers were far more accommodating than others I have dealt with elsewhere) until we identified the place Mr. Walker booked to stay upon his return to the city. Arriving before his room was ready, he had left his luggage—a single small bag—at the desk, but never returned to collect it.

  “Is the case still here?” Colin asked.

  “Of course, sir,” the clerk said. “We assumed Signore Walker had a change of plans, but that, eventually, he would come for it.”

  “I’m afraid that won’t be possible. Mr. Walker was murdered. We’ll need to take possession of his luggage immediately.” Colin’s voice, strong and low, could persuade nearly anyone to do nearly anything.

  “I will get it for you without delay.” He disappeared into a small room behind the desk and returned a few minutes later. “You are his family?”

  “No,” Colin said. “We’re the people who will bring his murderer to justice. I assure you, however, that his possessions will be returned to his next of kin.”

  We did not open the bag until we were back at the villa. Its modest contents did little to illuminate its owner. Inside, we found a change of clothing, a nightshirt, a copy of National Geographic that included an article about Pompeii, a book—Red Men and White, a collection of stories set in the American West by Owen Wister—and a return ticket for passage back to New York on a ship sailing only a week after he had arrived.

  “He must have left the rest of his things at the dock,” Colin said. “Probably with the shipping company. He would have needed more clothing for a transatlantic crossing. I’ll send a telegram to them.”

  In an effort to learn more about our victim, he also contacted the American Embassy in Rome, but, when they replied the next day, provided only scant information. Beyond his two trips to Pompeii, Mr. Walker had never traveled outside the United States. He had left a steamer trunk with the shipping company, but it contained nothing of note. Neither his family nor his employer could offer the slightest insight as to who might have wanted him dead or why he had returned to Pompeii. His editor at The New York Times assured us that the reporter had not penned controversial stories, but focused more on culture and the arts. His election piece was originally assigned to someone who had fallen ill before completing it. Mr. Walker had not done the research, but had finished it on behalf of his colleague.

  “As if we needed more confirmation that the Camorra has nothing to do with this,” I said, flinging down the folder the embassy had sent us. “So far as we can tell, Mr. Walker led a wholly unremarkable life until the moment of his death. Or at least until several moments before his death. Half an hour, perhaps.” Colin and I were alone on the terrace. Callie, naturally, was working, but Jeremy and Ivy had abandoned us to spend the day at the seaside. Kat was with Benjamin, setting up her darkroom in a small chamber off the sitting room. “Why did he revisit a place he supposedly found uninteresting? And how is it that no one saw him when he did? We know that he arrived in Europe on the same boat as Callie and Benjamin, but we have no way of accounting for his movements between the time the ship landed and when he was killed.”

  “What about the ship?” Colin asked. “It’s quite the coincidence that he was on the same vessel as the Carters. Perhaps they knew him better than they are willing to admit?”

  “Callie was adamant in her dismissal of him, but I suspect you’re right,” I said. “Mr. Walker wasn’t the sort of individual who would catch the attention of a woman of her tastes. Benjamin, however … remember how they argued on the terrace when they came for dinner? There’s something more there. Perhaps Mr. Walker had attempted a flirtation, angering Benjamin. Could he be a dangerously overprotective brother?”

  “Who went so far as to murder a man in whom his sister expressed no romantic interest?”

  “No, that’s ridiculous.” I frowned. “Why don’t we invite Mr. Taylor for tea and see what he can tell us about his industrious employees, the Carter siblings?”

  * * *

  Mr. Taylor arrived at the villa a few hours later in a motorcar, dust swirling around him. He peeled off his goggles, hat, driving coat, and gloves, thanking the maid as she took them from him. “I can’t say how delighted I was to receive your invitation. I’m passionate about archaeology, but am no scientist. I prefer the results to the act of digging, and so far this season things have been slow going. I’m more than willing to wield a spade and do my part. Heaven knows I’m better at unskilled labor than anything requiring a delicate hand, but confound it, I do look forward to what will eventually come. Frescoes, Hargreaves, that’s what I’m after. I’m convinced we’ve found ourselves a villa, and an enormous one at that, but it will be a long time before we get through the layers that have buried it.”

  We took tea on the terrace, although both gentlemen refused the genial beverage in favor of Colin’s whisky and cigars. Mr. Taylor was a cheerful guest, quick to smile and eager to regale us with stories about his previous seasons in Pompeii.

  “As I said, I’m nothing more than an enthusiast, but an enthusiast with a great deal of money. I first saw Pompeii years ago, when I made my Grand Tour of the Continent, but only later had the idea of digging here myself. Mau agreed to have his men train me, and they are taskmasters. I can’t say I precisely enjoyed the work, but I’m not the sort of man who wants to be a mere dilettante. Yes, I could throw my money around, hire experts, and swan in and out like so many do in Egypt, but I find that distasteful. I won’t waste my time on something for which I have no aptitude—you should see the disastrous results of my attempt to learn how to draw—but archaeology is something I can do. I’d rather lend a hand than sit back and play benevolent patron, but I’ve always hired experts. I know I’m not knowledgeable enough to direct a dig.”

  “How did you settle on the site you now occupy?” I asked.

  “In the past, I’d funded projects already in progress, but decided I wanted a dig of my own. We know that there were many villas beyond the city walls. The area offered more space to build and gave the wealthy more privacy than in town,” he replied. “The literature—Pliny and so forth—tells us as much. I polled every archaeologist I could find who has worked in the region and then bought the land the majority of them recommended as the most promising.”

  “Did you bring Mr. Stirling on board before or after you’d chosen a location?” I asked.

  “Before. He was with me last season. We did a great deal of preliminary work before I could come to a decision—digging test trenches, evaluating the merits of various options.”

  “Did you hire the rest of your staff or did he?” Colin asked.

  “I left most of it to h
im. He is, after all, director,” Mr. Taylor said. “He chose to consult me when it came to evaluating candidates.”

  “You did handpick a few of your workers,” I said. “Benjamin Carter, for example.”

  “Yes, and I suppose there were a few more. Perhaps I’m more of a tyrant than I’d like to believe.”

  “Tell us about the Carters,” Colin said, watching the smoke streaming from his cigar.

  “An enterprising pair, aren’t they?” Mr. Taylor bared his teeth with a broad smile, his eyes crinkling in his tanned face. “I met Benjamin in New York last autumn. He was in the Metropolitan Museum, drawing in one of the Egyptian galleries. I recognized his talent at once, assumed he was interested in archaeology, and offered him a position on my staff. He refused, explaining his focus was landscape painting, and that he was sketching ancient artifacts only as an academic exercise. A month or so later, he wrote to me at the insistence of his sister. Miss Carter is a force of nature, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. She studied at Radcliffe and, after finishing there, took it upon herself to learn everything she could about archaeological method. That girl’s going to be a real lally-cooler. Spent a season in Egypt with Flinders Petrie, one of the best-respected archaeologists in the world. His wife took her under her wing and would have happily kept her on staff, but Miss Carter prefers the Romans to the Egyptians. She did mention that she’d hoped to work with someone else, another Englishwoman married to an Egyptologist even more famous than Petrie. Unfortunately that lady was unwilling to take her on.”

  “But you were,” I said.

  “I told her so long as her brother came, too, I’d be happy to have her. I don’t care much about social niceties, but one can’t entirely ignore the problems that would arise from having an unescorted female working on the site.”

  He would believe what he wanted. Until men stopped viewing unescorted females as problematic, we would continue to struggle for our rightful place in the world. “How is her work?” I asked.

  “Flawless. She has endless patience, and, so far as I can tell, that is the most valuable quality an archaeologist can possess. She loves nothing better than digging a trench with painstaking care, keeps meticulous records, and is more comfortable in mud up to her ankles than in a ballroom.”

  “And her brother?” Colin refilled Mr. Taylor’s whisky.

  “He’s an artist of astonishing technical skill and is good with a camera. There’s not much for him to do yet for me, but, as you know, he’s doing a series of paintings for Pais.”

  What a far cry from the early days of excavation at Pompeii! The Kings of Naples had refused to let anyone visit the site without a permit. Even with one, tourists were required to always be accompanied by an approved guide, and all drawings and notes were strictly forbidden. They did arrange, in the mid-eighteenth century, to have a book of engravings produced, but it was not made available to the public, only given by the king as gifts to select individuals. These policies led to outrage by many visitors, Goethe included, and to the production of illegal books based on the memories of artists lucky enough to have been granted access to the site. How fortunate we are to live in more enlightened times, when archaeology has become a science and Pompeii is open to all!

  The conversation veered to Greek literature, and Mr. Taylor and I had a lively debate about the depiction of women in the Iliad and the Odyssey. His opinions were what I would expect of any ordinary man. He carelessly tossed off the contributions of the goddesses and hardly noticed the mortal females, assuming them all to be slaves and seductresses. Most disappointing, however, was that it had never before occurred to him to consider the topic.

  “The scathing look on your face tells me I’ve made a grave mistake in my analysis of the works of Homer,” he said.

  “I don’t mean to offend,” I said, “but so long as you gentlemen consider the female of the species as only slightly more useful than decorative furniture, we all lose out. Think of the contributions women could make, if only we were allowed a seat at the proverbial table. The ancients had better sense than we in this regard. Compare Ares and Athena. He is all blood and brutality, but she, equally talented on the field, brings an added dimension to war, concerned with the nuances of justice and a more intellectual approach to strategy.”

  “They provide an interesting contrast, and Athena’s more feminine characteristics suggest we should value these things more, but you can’t claim the ancients were more enlightened than us. Women in Pericles’s Athens were little better than prisoners in their homes, kept out of view in the gynaikonitis. They had no public role.”

  “Most did not, that is true, but it’s significant that the goddesses were equally respected as the gods. Our culture and our religion don’t give females so much. And as for us mortals, women have long been skilled at using backstage manipulations to achieve political ends. I’ve no doubt that was true, even in fifth century Athens. Consider Aspasia, Pericles’s mistress. Plato tells us she trained Socrates in rhetoric and wrote her lover’s funeral oration.”

  “And Pliny tells us she was a woman of ill repute,” Mr. Taylor said.

  “As men often do when faced with women of uncommon wit and education,” Colin said.

  “Hence, centuries of being forced into the background,” I said. “I should like to see that change in my lifetime.”

  “I can see why you and the intrepid Miss Carter get along so well. I’m impressed with your knowledge of the ancient world, Lady Emily. Should you and your husband ever wish to see Herculaneum, I’d be delighted to play guide. The ruins there are even better preserved than those at Pompeii. We take one day off a week, so consider this a standing offer for a picnic and tour on the Sunday of your choice.”

  “That would be delightful,” I said. “But don’t think you’ve distracted me from my defense of lady archaeologists.”

  He grinned. “Callie is one of the best in the field, yet, as things stand, she would never be able to get permission to lead a dig, and, even if she could, I don’t think many of her male colleagues would take direction from her. Perhaps there’s something in the nature of men that prevents us from giving you ladies your full due.”

  “Nature is nothing but a convenient excuse,” I said. “We’re quick to blame our shortcomings on it, when instead we should be working to overcome those faults. Had you been born in a society that treated women as the equals of men, it would never occur to you that Miss Carter shouldn’t lead a dig or that men would balk at her orders.”

  “We have free will, but we are not free from original sin,” Mr. Taylor said.

  “Before this conversation descends into a pit of religious mire, I should like to circle back to another topic, that of Clarence Walker,” Colin said. “Other than his piece on Pompeii, are you familiar with his work, Mr. Taylor? You live in New York, so it’s not unlikely that you’ve read him.”

  “I have a house there, but spend very little time at it. Mrs. Astor and her Four Hundred bored me to tears. I prefer European society; it’s far less prudish than its American equivalent. I don’t know Walker beyond the article you mentioned. I read it, but it didn’t make much of an impression on me. I certainly never ran into him in Manhattan.”

  “It is probable that whoever killed him was connected to the excavations,” I said, “but that doesn’t preclude someone he could have met in New York. There are a considerable number of Americans working at Pompeii.”

  “Most of them at my dig,” Mr. Taylor said. “I don’t make a practice of hiring violent criminals, at least not so far as I know.”

  “How long have you known Stirling?” Colin asked. “He’s a bit of an odd fish.”

  “That may be, but he’s a fine fellow. Met him a few years ago and took to him at once. Might be too obsessed with poetry for his own good, but I can’t imagine he’d hurt any living creature, even if provoked. He’s soft.”

  “Unlike Benjamin Carter,” I said.

  “Carter? Another decent man. Sure, his temper flare
s on occasion, but he’s never given me cause for worry. And on that note, I’m afraid I must take my leave. I’ve a dinner engagement with a delightful young lady in Naples this evening. Her mother is chaperoning us, wholly unaware that I find her more charming than her daughter. I do hope I can avoid making a mess of the whole thing.”

  AD 79

  12

  The argument that ensued after my father and I left Plautus was one for the ages. I can admit now that my fury over losing every familiar part of my life was not merited, but at the time, it consumed me. My father let me shout and rail against him, not commenting until I had finished, and then only to say something about Achilles and rage. This only further fueled my anger.

  I stormed out of the house—something I couldn’t have done without permission while still a slave—and stalked through the streets, so furious that all coherent thought was impossible. And then, as I turned a corner, I noticed a graffito on the wall of a thermopolium that so shocked me I could not breathe. It was two lines from one of the poems I had given Silvanus. Below them, a second person (the handwriting markedly different from that of whoever had scrawled the verse) had commented that truer words had never been so beautifully expressed.

  This improved my mood, slightly.

  I kept walking and then I saw them again: the same lines of my poem, this time scratched into the wall of a house. No one had responded, but I couldn’t help feeling bolstered. Had Silvanus liked my poems enough to share them with someone else? Someone inspired to share them with the rest of the city? Or had he, himself, hired someone to do it?

  By the time I returned to Plautus’s house, I was no longer filled with ire. My mistress, Claudia, sent for me soon thereafter and presented me with a wooden box. Inside, were two heavy gold bracelets, formed as snakes that would curve up the wrists when worn, their eyes bright emeralds.