The New Black Mask (No 5)

William Haggard Timeo Danaos

William Haggard has written few short stories, preferring the space of the novel, which allows him to develop his plots. He regards “Timeo Danaos” as his most successful story. It first appeared in Winter's Crimes 8 (London: Macmillan, 1976); this is its first publication in America.

Agnes Withers, who'd been born van der Bijl, could do most things but blindly follow convention. She realised that on this island she'd asked for it, since she'd flown in the face of the local establishments. The English here were traditionally pro-Greek, accepting the prevalent view of the Turks as a barbarous and inferior people. Agnes Withers was therefore odd girl out Poets had sung of the Isles of#

Greece, politicians of democracy’s cradle. Agnes cared not a fig for either. Northern Dutch by birth and now British by marriage, she had a simple and often alarming directness which a Greek would most surely mistake for stupidity, and a disinclination to hide her opinions which were as Dutch as the Rubensplein, Dutcher than Bols. She thought that the Turks had been fiddled and diddled, despised in what was still partly their country as a helot and uncivilised people. That couldn’t go on forever, of course: they were bound to come in and take what belonged to them. Once it had almost happened already, and Agnes looked forward to when it did. Since she never concealed her views from anyone, it was natural that all Greeks detested her.

And now she’d been called to the local police station, and the signature was clearly Greek. To one who could read the island’s omens that signature was coldly ominous, for this wasn’t a formal no-go area where a Greek policeman would have been run out of town, but an oasis of comparative tolerance where the two races lived as near to peace as events in the rest of the island let them. But now they had changed the head man to a Greek. “Inspector,” he’d written below his name, which could only mean they were tightening up. The last one had been a Turkish sergeant. Agnes had called him Çavus Bey, which wasn’t quite correct and she knew it, but it had amused him and also flattered him greatly. She had learnt to speak Turkish and spoke it well. She wouldn’t or couldn’t speak Greek at all.

Another black mark, she thought, unrepentant, as she put on an ancient linen hat. Normally she never wore one. Well, she’d better go up to the station and see.

She began to walk steadily up the hill, a striking woman in the prime of her life. She went at a brisk light infantry pace, since she’d a pound or two to lose and meant to. Above her was the little town from which this troublesome Inspector had summoned her, and above that again was the underground lake without which these smiling fertile slopes would be as dourly parched, as grimly impoverished, as the land on the other side of the mountain. Below her the ground fell away to the sea, a warm blue sea in the strong spring sunshine.

She had gone perhaps three hundred yards when the gunman pulled his trigger and got her. He’d been hidden behind a wall and fired quickly. Agnes Withers fell down in the dark red dust.

She lay there for at least five minutes, for the busy road had emptied magically. One minute it had been full of people, carts, and the occasional lorry; the next the dust on which she lay could have been sand in an uninhabited desert. This island had heard plenty of gunfire and had developed its own technique to deal with it: you simply hadn’t been there at the time.

Agnes Withers lay still and considered calmly, for she realised she hadn’t been seriously wounded. From its blast, the weapon had been a shotgun, and its owner had been less than a marksman. Just the same, her left leg was decidedly painful and it was probable# she couldn’t use it. So she lay till she saw the old man, walking strongly.

“Zekky,” she called. “Come here and help me.” Zekky was a Turk and her gardener. He lived with an unmarried daughter, and this daughter was Agnes’s general maid. She wouldn’t have Greek servants inside her house.

He’d been too far away to hear the shot and was also a little dim in the head; he hadn’t noticed that the road was deserted, but he could see a woman lying prone in it. He broke into a lumbering canter.

When he arrived at his mistress he wished her good morning, then stood over her and thought it out. It took him some time to do so; he was slow. Finally he asked, “You are ill?”

She almost said, “I’ve been shot,” but didn’t. Instead she told him, “I’ve hurt my leg.” He might or might not notice the wound. He was getting pretty blind by now and there didn’t seem to be much blood.

“You would wish to go home?”

“Do you think you could carry me?”

The old man didn’t bother to answer. He bent his strong back and picked her up. He didn’t sling her across his shoulder but carried her, three hundred yards down the hill to her villa. His daughter, the maid, was already there and together they put Agnes to bed. The maid saw the wound and began to clamour. Agnes silenced her at once.

“It is nothing.”

“But your ladyship has been shot. The police…

“Keep away from the police.”

She understood that without asking questions.

“But go and get the doctor quickly.”

The doctor arrived on his moped in half an hour. He was a Belgian struck off the Belgian Register, and he wasn’t supposed to practise at all. But “practise” was an elastic word, and there were more ways of paying a man than with money. The authorities knew most things about him but had shrugged their shoulders in resignation. He wasn’t taking much bread from local leeches, for however pro-Greek were the British in theory, they preferred a doctor from nearer home. They were that sort of people with that sort of prejudice. So this doctor made a modest competence provided he didn’t flaunt that he did so, and any Englishman needing serious surgery could mostly afford to fly home to receive it.

He looked at Agnes’s leg and whistled. “Gunshot wound,” he said with professional blandness; he looked again, then added softly, “Just between the two of us. You call the tune.”

Like Agnes’s maid he knew local form.

“Naturally,” she said in Dutch. The doctor had learnt a good deal of English, but she could understand Flemish and he her Dutch.

“It isn’t very serious, but I’ll have to give you a local injection.”

She knew that he wasn’t supposed to do it. There was nothing to prevent him prescribing — there was nothing to stop any oaf prescribing if a second was fool enough to accept it — but using a hypodermic was# near the line “Thank you,” she said. Agnes Withers meant it.

He took out the pellets and looked at them quizzically. “Number eight shot, I think,” he said. “What they use for the birds.”

“I’m not a bird.”

The doctor had bandaged her up and laughed. For a Fleming he had a sharp sense of humour. “Since you offer the opening, no, you are not. But I can see that the Greeks might well think you a pest. Your political opinions, you know—”

“They’ve reached your ears?”

“They could hardly fail to. If I may say so, you’re a very Dutch Dutchwoman.”

“Eoka?” she asked softly.

He shrugged. “I’m inclined to discount it and pretty strongly. Eoka is away in the mountains, and in any case whoever shot you was hardly up to their standard of marksmanship.” He considered, then added blandly again, “Have you offended anyone recently? I mean rather more than you always do. More than just disliking them and not bothering to hide your contempt.”

“It’s as bad as that?”

“I’m afraid it is.”

“Well, I knocked a man about a bit.”

“You did what?” He was shaken.

“He was only a youth, but he’d busted the greenhouse. I’m trying to grow some English roses, and when my husband comes down for visits here he experiments with sprays and powders for an answer to the local greenfly. When I found this youth he’d# smashed most of the glass, and when he saw me he picked up a pot and threw it. It didn’t hurt much, but I lost my temper. There was a pickhelve around, so—”

“Say nothing more, please.” The doctor sighed. A woman beating a man — unforgivable. Unforgivable down to the grave and beyond it. He asked at last “Did you tell the police?”

“Of course I didn’t.”

“And not of this wound?”

“That’s rather more tricky. I was on my way to see the police when whoever it was took a pretty poor shot at me. Since they’d sent for me, not vice versa, they’re pretty sure to come here when I don’t turn up.”

“Tricky, as you say.”

“But manageable. I shall tell them I’ve sprained my ankle badly. They’re hardly likely to pull the sheets down. Old Zekky is too far gone to remember even if he ever noticed, and his daughter won’t talk to a Greek on principle.”

“But I thought the local boss was a Turk?”

“He was, but they’ve changed him.”

“I don’t like that. For God’s sake, be careful.”

“I’ve lived here for nearly six years. I’ll survive.”

The doctor rose and took his leave. He thought Lady Withers excessively tactless, but he admired her forthrightness and envied her courage. Just the same, she had used the word survive. He very sincerely hoped she would, but if they had really marked her down…

He shrugged again. There was nothing he could do about that in this race-torn, corrupt, and bloodstained island.

The new Inspector arrived on the doctor's heels. The maid showed him in, and he bowed and sat down. Agnes saw what she’d expected to see, a slick town Greek in a carefully pressed uniform. He had crisp, curly hair, not too clean but pomaded, with a pencil moustache over rather coarse lips. He wore dark glasses which were quite unnecessary. The Inspector saw an attractive woman with startlingly blue eyes and still naturally blonde hair. He put her in her later twenties. In fact, she was a little more.

“My name is Zephos,” he said. “Inspector.”

“It is kind of you to call here.”

“Not at all. It has reached me that you met with an accident as you were presumably on your way to see me.

He left it at that, for the next move was hers. As it happened, he had the whole story on ice, for he knew she had clobbered a petty thief, and a youth had been seen with a gun and reported. The trouble about that simple equation was that the boy’s uncle was a politician, neck-deep in the island’s least savoury scandals. The Inspector could never book this boy, his job wouldn’t last a week if he did, and he was a good deal more than a simple policeman. But if Agnes complained, he must go through the motions of trying to hunt her assailant down. That, though a fiddle and therefore congenial, would also be a tedious business, and like most Greeks he was very easily bored. But equally she had motive for silence. He had an even chance that she wouldn’t embarrass him.

So he was relieved when she simply repeated, “An accident. I was clumsy and tripped. I’ve sprained my ankle.”

“I trust it will be well in a fortnight.”

Most women might well have reacted obliquely, but Agnes asked promptly, “Why a fortnight?”

“Because that is all the time you have left. After that I’m afraid you must leave this island.”

For once she thought before she spoke. So she’d been right to think they were tightening up, that the change from a Turk to a slick Greek policeman was an omen of worse things to come. With the water from the underground lake, these slopes were fertile, their inhabitants prosperous, and Turks held good land as well as Greeks. But any Turk with good land was always vulnerable: they caught his land with some crooked lawsuit or maybe he simply lost his water rights. Without water his fields would be useless in weeks.

Silently Agnes Withers swore. She saw world politics with exemplary realism. In the American Congress there was a powerful Greek lobby, but there wasn’t a soul to speak for poor Turks.

But this time she answered almost mildly. “You intend to withdraw my permit of residence?”

“I regret the decision, but I have my instructions.”

It was a lie, for he was a natural bully. In any case he detested this woman. Beating up boys and speaking good Turkish, refusing to employ Greek servants, shooting her mouth about local rackets. His bile rose, but he kept his temper.

So, with a secret struggle, did Agnes; she asked mildly again, “May I know the reason?”

“I don’t see why I shouldn’t tell you. It would have to come out in any case if you were foolish enough to complain to your diplomats.” He looked at her. “May I smoke?”

“If you must.”

He lit a cigarette, black and noxious, and Agnes, who loathed tobacco smoke, drew away as far as the bed allowed. Her room was going to stink for a week.

“We have evidence you’re a Turkish agent.”

“Godverdomme,” Agnes said instinctively.

“You consider that opinion extravagant? Then please listen to a little story.” Now his voice had an edge; he was greatly enjoying himself. “Four days ago Turkish fighters flew over here, an outrageous breach of our sovereign airspace. Over this village they dipped and came low.”

“They weren’t saluting me.”

“That is probable. They were reading the message you’d put out on your lawn.”

She knew this was ridiculous, but all Greeks were suspicious, psychopathically edgy, and the charge had a sort of crazy logic. For four days ago had been a Monday, and on Mondays the maid washed the sheets and pillow slips. Being Turkish, she didn’t hang them on lines; she pegged them out on the lawn to dry in the sun.

Agnes knew it was futile to argue with policemen, but silence could be read as admission. “I can only assure you that you’re quite mistaken.”

He didn’t answer her but rose instead; he walked to the window, threw his stub into the garden, and when he returned he was openly menacing.

“I do hope you’ll think it over carefully. Your house will be sold if you haven’t done so and the proceeds remitted freely to England. Your furniture will follow. Consider it. You haven’t, if I may say so, madam, the reputation of a tactful woman, but surely for once discretion is indicated. A discreet disappearance back to England.”

He walked to the door and saluted respectably. “Think it over,” he said. He went away.

Agnes sent for the maid, and she wheeled the bed out to the sunny veranda. The lawn was covered with linen again, and Friday wasn’t a day for washing. The maid saw her puzzled frown and explained.

“There was too much on Monday to do in one go, so I finished the leftovers early this morning.”

“Thank you,” Agnes said. She slept.

She woke from her sleep to the roar of aircraft. They were flying very low again, right over her house in a tight goose V. She could see the star-and-crescent markings.

There was a telephone by her bed and she reached for it, but her hand was still in the air when it rang.

“Lady Withers?”

“Speaking.”

“I see that you do not heed fair warning. I thought it generous to have given a fortnight. Regretfully it is now a week. A week to return to your husband in England.” Like most Greeks, he’d assumed since they lived apart that they weren’t on good terms and had more or less parted. The opposite was in fact the truth.

“Inspector…” Agnes began.

No answer.

She put the receiver down and then dialed, an immediate call to England, to Wiltshire. It came through in an hour, but not Sir William. He was the boss, and it took time to find him. When he was found he said casually, “Nice to hear from you.”

“I don’t think you’re going to think so.”

“No?”

“I’m in serious trouble.”

“You do not surprise me.”

“Can you come down here at once?”

“Of course.”

There hadn’t been even a second of doubt, no talk of his work or important engagements. She knew he had many; she loved him dearly. His voice went on without hint of resentment.

“I’ll get a seat on the overnight flight this evening. Just meet me at die airport, will you?”

“I’ve been shot in the leg.”

“Then get a taxi.”

She met him at five o’clock the next morning, having ordered a car with a Turkish driver. This was partly because she favoured Turks, but also for a more practical reason: with a Turk she could drive to the airport directly, through the no-go land where all Greeks went in convoy. The other way round the hills was much longer.

She eagerly watched him come down the gangway, a spare man in his fifties, not showing his age. It had been a rum sort of marriage, she thought, but successful. He had married her because he’d had to. They had met at a party, and both had been tight. Three weeks later she had known she was pregnant. Distinctly un-Dutch, but she’d also been younger.

He hadn’t been Sir William then, and her own family had been influential. She knew that he’d always been quietly ambitious and her family, if they couldn’t break him, could put his career back by many years. They’d held the gun; William Withers had bowed to it.

She smiled as she remembered it. How Willie had carried the whole thing off! He’d arrived in Amsterdam in style, with a Bentley which he’d happened to own and a manservant whom he’d temporarily hired, where he’d put up in a suite in the Doelen Hotel. He could afford all three since he was comfortably off. Then he’d telephoned to her father politely. The marriage, he understood, was at noon so he’d arrive at the church at a quarter to. Yes, he’d be suitably dressed and attended. He’d remembered to bring a best man.

He’d rung off.

Lady Withers laughed, for she still thought it funny. To a shotgun wedding you took your Purdey, not some miserable pumpgun made in Belgium.

Then he’d driven her off on a formal honeymoon, and on it she had fallen in love with him. Not that that had solved all problems. Her baby had, alas, been born dead, and they’d told her she couldn’t have another. And she hadn’t liked England, or not darkest Wiltshire. They’d had a comfortable house in the guarded Establishment, but Establishment life she had found intolerable, the endless jockeying and the bitchy women. It had been Willie himself who in the end had suggested it. Why didn’t she go and live on that island, the island where they’d spent most of their honeymoon? He’d have his work, which she knew absorbed him, and he’d visit her every six weeks at most. That is, if she wished it.

She’d said she did. The Inspector of Police had been ludicrously wrong. Their married life was a series of honeymoons.

So she watched him come down the gangway eagerly. He was twenty years older than she was — what of it? He knew precisely what he was doing and did it. She wouldn’t change him for any debutante’s dream.

He went through customs and came up to the car. “Kind of you to meet me,” he said. It was typical Sir William Withers, and Agnes had accepted it happily. He never showed affection in public.

He climbed into the car and went to sleep. He had the gift of instant relaxation. He didn’t look his age by ten years, and Agnes, though she didn’t wake him, held his hand between her own and waited.

She waited until they reached the villa, where her husband woke up and shook his shoulders. “Home,” he said.

“I’m delighted you think so.”

“Home is where you hang your hat. In point of fact, I left mine on that aircraft.”

“Home is where a man has his breakfast.”

“Point taken. I’d be glad of a good one.”

She made him a generous English breakfast, and he ate it with an evident gusto. When he had finished he pushed his plate away. He wasn’t a man who indulged in apologies, but he was always prepared to explain his actions.

“You caught me at rather short notice yesterday. I hope it doesn’t sound like self-pity, but I stayed up most of the night to fix things. Then I didn’t get a wink on that aircraft. An hour in the car…” He shrugged and smiled.

“So what you want is your bed?”

“I’ll be useless without it.”

“Do you mind if I join you?”

“I’d ardently hoped for it.”

Agnes woke at three in the afternoon and stretched in a happy languor like a cat. She slipped down to make tea and brought it to William. “Six hours,” she told him. “You’ve had a fair ration.”

“Five hours if you deduct the irrelevant.”

“I don’t call that irrelevant.”

“Good.”

She saw he was refreshed and vigorous. “Now I'll tell you why I sent for you.”

“Right.”

She told him her story crisply and succinctly. At the end he said simply, “There’s something missing.”

“I’m afraid I’m not with you.”

“That inspector gave you time — first a fortnight and then, you tell me, a week. He gave you that, but why I don’t know. Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes.”

She’d heard that one and translated it back to him: “I fear Greeks bearing gifts.”

“Correct. If his case had been cast iron, he’d have run you straight out. That spy story wouldn’t stand up for long, not if I went to the High Commission. All diplomats have damp ears, that’s an axiom, and the lot we have here in the island’s capital are wetter than a baby’s nappy. Just the same, they could hardly stand for that. Not, if I may say so with modesty, not for the wife of Sir William Withers. But this isn’t just bluff, or not bluff all through. They mean to get you out all right.”

“Then what’s going to happen next?”

“I don’t know that, but I’ll stay till I do.”

“But you can hardly hang around here indefinitely. Your work—”

“Can, as it happens, wait a while. In any case I think you forget something.”

“What do I forget, then? Tell me.”

He said on a note of affectionate irony, “You forget that your family made me marry you.”

“What a four-letter man you are.”

“But your husband.”

The development William Withers had looked for came quickly and in an unusual form. It was the sound of angry women lamenting. The language was presumably Turkish, but it might have been French or Chi# nese or Hindi. The noise of a female altercation was unvarying across the world.

They put on dressing gowns and went down to the kitchen. The maid was there and two other women. The maid held a cleaver, doing most of the shouting, and the other two sat on chairs and wept. Occasionally they wailed in unison, a sort of classical chorus underscoring the maid. She was waving the cleaver and bawling, “I’ll kill him.”

William Withers said, “For God’s sake quieten them.”

Agnes knew better; she touched the maid’s arm. “And whom are you going to kill, my dear?”

“That Inspector, that fiend from hell—”

“Quite so. But hadn’t you better tell me first? If you’re doing it in my time, that is.”

The maid let a last despairing shriek, then sat down on a chair. Agnes took the chopper from her.

“They’ve cut off my father’s water. Old Zekky.”

Agnes translated; she knew it was serious. She was also very angry indeed. The usual swindle, she thought — it had happened before. They cooked up some preposterous claim, then they went to a court and took out an injunction. They did if they were also Greeks. Then a padlock went on the sluice in question and the owner of the land had had it. He’d be lucky if he could sell for tuppence.

William Withers had been thinking coolly; he said in the end. “So that’s the real ploy — not spies but water. Old Zekky first, then that odious Englishwoman. It all falls into place very neatly. They’re# going to squeeze us out with the water.” He considered again. “How much does the tank hold, the one on the roof?”

“Four days perhaps.”

“Then we’d better be careful.”

“What can we do?”

“You could let me think.”

He settled to do so, but not for long. There was another violent interruption, men this time, but only slightly less strident. They began to shout too, and the maid collapsed finally. Agnes stood still and listened silently.

“They’ve got Zekky in prison.”

“That’s really outrageous.” Sir William was getting angry too. “But they must have had some excuse.”

“They had. You know he’s a little bit ’round the bend, and when they stole his water he went the whole way. If he couldn’t have water, nobody else should. So he goes to our conservatory and pinches all those tins we had there; he climbs up the hill to that grille in the rock face, where the water comes out—”

“I know it, I’ve walked there.”

“Then he breaks the grille down and throws the tins in. Plenty of people saw him do it. They’ve arrested him for poisoning the water.”

“Preposterous,” Sir William said promptly. “That stuff was fungicides and garden sprays which some fool in his garden might perhaps use improperly, but in a solution of millions of gallons of water it wouldn’t poison an ant, far less a man. Besides, he’s very clearly dotty.”

“So much the better for them. He’ll be certified. Then what sort of a chance will he have in a lawsuit?”

“From what you’ve told me before, he hadn’t one anyway.”

“But we’ve got to get Zekky out. That inspector—”

“We have to consider our own water, too.” He was mildly reproving, but only mildly. “Poisoning,” he said softly. “Poisoning. Now that’s an idea, and it might just work.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Play my name. If it doesn’t sound disagreeably pompous, I do have a certain reputation.”

“I know that you could poison half Europe.”

“Precisely the point.” He rose in decision. “Now get this rabble out of here and bring me a jar of treacle or honey. I shall also want a fair-sized paint brush.”

“But Willie, how—”

“Woman, be quiet.”

It was a tone he seldom used to her, but when he did she jumped like a corporal.

“And get that inspector down here quickly. Tell him there’s been a cosmic disaster.”

The inspector arrived, but condescendingly. Agnes was Dutch and literally minded, and since her husband had used the words cosmic disaster, she’d repeated them when she rang the inspector. He hadn’t been anywhere near believing them, but he’d understood the position perfectly. Or had thought he had, and it went like this: he’d been putting much pressure on Agnes Withers, so she’d sent for Sir William to plead# her case. That was natural and he’d half expected it, but there was nothing her husband could say or do which would change his own intention, indeed his orders. On the other hand Sir William was eminent: it might look bad if he simply declined to see him.

William Withers for his part had set up the props. He wore his heaviest horn-rimmed spectacles and a formal suit which he kept at the villa for the very rare occasions he needed it. Since he was going to play the establishment scientist, it was proper to look like a Greek’s idea of one, not the husband of an unpopular woman on what amounted to his forty-fourth honeymoon.

He greeted the inspector courteously, but wasted no time on spies or his wife.

“Come into the garden, please.”

It was polite, but it had the ring of authority. The inspector was surprised but went with him. There was something about this solemn Englishman, the authentic aura of serious business. William Withers walked to a bush of hibiscus.

“I'd like you to look at that very carefully.”

“A fine plant,” the inspector said. He was puzzled. This wasn’t working out his way. No apologies, no pleading, no bribes. He could have dealt with all three but not a lesson in gardening.

“I said carefully,” Sir William said. Making his point, he turned a leaf. He had put on rubber gloves before doing so. On the back was a blob of viscous stain. The inspector touched it.

“Don’t do that” The voice had been sharp with an urgent warning.

“What is it then?”

“It’s KD-27, I fear.” William Withers was modestly proud of that; he’d invented it as he’d been changing his clothes.

“What’s that?”

“It’s a killer.”

“You mean it could kill me?” He had noticed the gloves.

“Improbable, but it’s still a killer, so it’s very unwise to risk spreading it carelessly. It kills plants and trees and crops, not men.” Withers waved at the smiling slopes below them. “In a month all that will be screaming desert.”

The inspector was silent, thinking hard, for he knew where Sir William worked and at what. He hadn’t believed him yet but was doubting. William Withers began to drive the doubt home. He did it smoothly and with increasing confidence, for he had taken the inspector’s measure. This man had some formal education, and men with a formal education which was also not one in the world of science were more vulnerable to mumbo jumbo than the most ignorant peasant with no schooling at all.

“This disease does not occur in nature. It has to be induced by chemicals.”

The inspector went up like a premature rocket. “That Zekky! I’ll make him pay with his life.”

Sir William Withers spread his gloved hands. “I# cannot pretend to understand it.” He sounded sincere and solemn — behind these scared; he’d been an amateur actor of notable competence. “This blight is produced by a deadly defloriant. The Americans used it a lot in Vietnam.”

“Christ,” the inspector said. He crossed himself. He did it right to left. He was Orthodox.

“But you must not misunderstand me, inspector. To produce a defloriant useful in war you need laboratories, biochemicals, breeders — the sort of secret and sinister setup where I work myself at my own shameful trade.”

“Then this has nothing to do with Zekky’s foolishness?”

“I did not say that. I cannot say it.”

The inspector was very severely shaken. “Then what are you trying to tell me, please?”

“I am telling you what any good scientist would. The first rule of science is nonomniscience. If you’d asked me if it was possible to produce an utterly deadly defloriant from a mixture of tins of commercial insecticides, I’d have said that no man had so far done so and offered you odds of ten thousand to one. But I’ve sufficient scientific discipline never to use the word impossible.”

The inspector sat down on a wooden bench. He looked at the land below him. He wept.

Sir William lit a cigarette. He smoked seldom and only out of doors. Agnes hated it and, as he’d said, he had discipline. When the inspector had finished crying, he gaffed him.

“No antidote, alas, is known.” It was a statement, but held a note of uncertainty. The inspector caught it.

“None whatever?”

“I use words with precision. I said ‘known,’ not ‘exists.’ ”

The inspector raised his hands in a sort of prayer. “In the name of God, of His Mother, the Saints…

William Withers exhaled his smoke deliberately. “You put me in an appalling dilemma. Naturally if one finds such a thing, it’s a secret of the utmost importance. I’d be in breach of a dozen regulations to say nothing of my professional conscience if I even considered unauthorised use of it. Nevertheless…”

He broke off; he was pacing it.

“Please,” the inspector said. “I beg of you. I beg you in the name of my people.”

“With whom my wife has lived in amity.” He knew that she hadn’t, but that wasn’t the point. “She and her servants, one of them senile.” He was too clever to state his terms and humiliate.

Nor did he need to. “I quite understand, sir.”

“Then I’ll telephone to England at once and enough will be on a flight tomorrow. You dissolve it in water and spray from an aircraft. Of course there may be procedural difficulties. I told you this was highly secret so it cannot travel alone, without escort. And it will probably be a commercial flight so the escort will have to be armed as well.”

Young Watson would do it, he thought, and love it. It was exactly the sort of black joke he enjoyed.

“There’ll be no trouble at the airport. None.”

“Good.” They shook hands. “I wish you well. And I hardly need stress the need for secrecy.”

He went back into the house and to Agnes. “Zekky will be out quite soon. Don’t pester him, just let him potter. And I don’t think you’ll hear any more about spying.”

She opened her mouth but shut it quickly. He had used that voice an hour ago, and she knew what it meant. It meant No Questions.

He woke her in the night with laughter. For of course they wouldn’t play fair, they were Greeks. They’d spray the stuff in a tearing hurry, some concoction of harmless household chemicals, but it was supposed to be a Great State Secret and there was money in any sort of secret. So sooner or later they’d have some analysed…

He laughed again, for it wouldn’t matter. In his work he needed the best information, and from the latest he thought the Turks were coming. A week or maybe ten days at the most.

When Agnes would do something silly. She’d run up the Turkish flag and join them; she might even ask for arms to fight When they’d promptly lock her up as a nuisance.

Sir William Withers rolled over contentedly. She’d get out all right — he could fix all that — but a week in a Turkish cell might sober her.

Or maybe it wouldn’t. He reversed his position. Living the way they did they were happy.