Come Away, Death Read online

  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.’

  ‘My dear Marie!’

  ‘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.