Tristram Stanhope bowed to the statue as if she were Athena herself. He strode off back to the College. His followers returned in the same order they had come. The procession was over. Only the four young men with torches stayed in their places by the sides of the building. Shadows and shafts of light played over the surface of the Erechtheion. The Caryatid had found a new home in the Chiltern hills. Now it was for Powerscourt and Inspector Kingsley to determine how permanent that new home should be.
They met in a back room of the King’s Arms, Inspector Kingsley looking preoccupied, Lady Lucy pensive, Powerscourt writing down the order of the procession in his notebook. ‘Well, my lord,’ Inspector Kingsley began, ‘I don’t know what news you have to report but mine is pretty serious. The Twins are in town. God knows how many other criminals from Deptford are at large here in Amersham this evening.’
‘What were they doing?’ asked Lady Lucy.
‘They were watching the entrance to the College, presumably to make sure there were no unwanted visitors. Like yourselves. It’s just as well they didn’t go looking in the grounds around the College, my lady.’
Lady Lucy shuddered. Powerscourt carried on scribbling.
‘There’s more,’ the Inspector went on. ‘Young Smithson, the constable who’s been looking into the traffic in railway containers, reports a number of them passing through Amersham. The dates suggest they may coincide with other developments in the case. It’s not conclusive, of course, but is certainly suspicious.’
Powerscourt looked up, as though he had just returned from a long journey.
‘We saw the Caryatid, Inspector. Let me correct that. We saw a Caryatid. God only knows if it is the real one or a fake. You will recall that the ceremony at the school a couple of hours ago was to mark the completion of the Hellenic College Erechtheion, a temple dedicated to Athena. The real one, like the building here, is close to the Parthenon. There was a ceremony, like the one described on the Parthenon frieze: maidens with baskets, musicians, a trumpeter, animals meant for sacrifice, horsemen, city elders, a charioteer or two. They could have all walked out of the Acropolis in Athens nearly two and a half thousand years ago. This, however, is the key point. The porch of the Caryatids, one part of the building, was covered with a cloth until the climax of the proceedings. When it was revealed, there was a Caryatid, looking remarkably like the British Museum one in the photographs. There too was Dr Tristram Stanhope at the other end of the porch, ranting away with some Homeric poetry.’
‘Do you think my men should go and seize it now?’ said the Inspector.
‘I think it might be better to leave her till the morning,’ Powerscourt replied. ‘Heaven only knows what they’re all getting up to down there now. Bacchanalian orgy? Dionysian revels? Anything could be happening.’
‘Pardon me, Inspector,’ said Lady Lucy. ‘Isn’t this the first time you have seen a link between the Twins and, presumably, their horrid boss in Deptford, and Dr Stanhope and the Hellenic College?’
‘It is,’ said Inspector Kingsley. There was a pause. Lady Lucy and the policeman looked at Powerscourt who seemed to be wrestling with some impossible question in his mind. Through the walls they could hear the sound of singing in the public bar. Outside the town clock struck ten.
‘Let me make a proposal,’ Powerscourt said finally. ‘If either of you don’t like it, I will drop it.’
They both nodded.
‘I was thinking just now about the difference between success and victory.’
‘Success and victory?’ Inspector Kingsley sounded incredulous.
‘Sorry if that sounded rather grand. Let me explain,’ said Powerscourt, now pacing up and down the room. ‘Victory in this case would mean the arrests of the Twins, their keeper, Dr Stanhope and whoever the link is between those two parties. I suggest we refer to him as the missing link from now on. All of them would be tried and convicted for their various crimes.’ Powerscourt stopped under a hunting print where the hounds were just about to tear a cornered fox to pieces.
‘And success?’ Lady Lucy spoke very quietly.
‘Success for me—’ Powerscourt was on the move once again ‘—is not the same as success for the good Inspector here. Success for me is the return of the Caryatid. That, after all, is what I was asked to do by the British Museum. This is how I propose to try for success. It should not rule out, and might even contribute to, a measure of victory.’
The public bar was now singing ‘Jerusalem’. Powerscourt thought it more pleasant than the music of the lyre and the pipes and the incantations from a world that passed away so long ago.
‘I propose to call on Dr Stanhope tomorrow morning. I believe you have a record of his London address, Inspector. I shall, of course, try the College first. I rather fancy he will have spent the night here in Amersham. I shall tell him he has forty-eight hours to return the real Caryatid to the British Museum.’
‘And what will you say if he laughs in your face, my lord?’
‘We have quite a lot we can throw at him, when you think about it. The presence of the Caryatid at the ceremony here this evening, the presence of the Twins, the progress of the railway containers, the large amounts of money floating through his various bank accounts, the fact that he could have organized the original theft more easily than anybody else. I shall have thought of a whole lot more by the morning. But there is one area where I’m sure I need your permission, Inspector.’
‘What would that be, pray?’
‘I propose saying to the fellow that cooperation would mean not that the police would leave him alone, but that any cooperation could be helpful to his case in the future. It wouldn’t be anything specific, there would be no guarantees, just the knowledge that to help would be more profitable than retreating behind a barrage of lies and lawyers.’
‘Permission granted.’
Powerscourt smiled. ‘Thank you, Inspector, thank you very much.’
‘What makes you think this plan might work, Francis?’ Lady Lucy was looking worried.
‘Vanity. The man is very vain. That could be his undoing.’
‘Give it a try, my lord, give it a try. Now, if you will forgive me, I must go and organize my men to seize this Caryatid first thing tomorrow. If there are revels tonight, they may all still be asleep at half past seven in the morning.’
The Isles of Greece docked at Piraeus later that evening. The four monks were in the prow, peering towards the port. Nobody would have expected a welcoming party at that time of night, but there was a force of about twenty more monks, all of them young. They sang the Greek national anthem, rather out of tune and with some words missed out, as they untied the container from the mast and placed it on the back of a cart. The package and the young men set out for the heart of Athens. It was ten minutes short of midnight.
Inspector Kingsley took five men with him on his mission to capture the Caryatid. Dawn was breaking over Amersham. A couple of foxes were making their way home across the fields at the back of the Erechtheion. The birds were staking out their early morning positions in the high trees. The curtain that had shielded the statue during the procession the evening before had been pulled back again to keep the contents of the porch invisible. Sergeant Burke, the Inspector’s right-hand man, gave it a great pull. The porch was empty. The Caryatid had risen.