Sam Weller - Shadow Show

Nobody seemed interested in his panic as he stumbled between the sunbeds. There was his meaningless book, a lump of paper lying inert on the bed draped with his towel, and within arm’s length of it Joyce’s paperback occupied her empty lounger in the shadow of the umbrella. He was staring apprehensively at the swimmers in the sea, none of whom was wearing orange, when somewhere above him her voice said “Ewan.”

As he swung around he had the disconcerting notion that he still wouldn’t be able to see her. She was gazing down at him with amused impatience from a table in the Philosophia. Before he’d finished clambering up the path he gasped “What on earth are you doing in there?”

“I fancied some olives, since you didn’t get any.” Quite as defiantly she said “It’s like being away all on my own.”

He mustn’t argue. Too many of their recent disagreements were so trivial that he felt they were reducing him and Joyce, shrivelling their intelligence and drying up their affection. “Are you ready for lunch, then?”

“I’ve been ready for a while. Were you looking at your bit of paper all this time?”

“No, finding out about it.”

A waiter bringing olives interrupted him. Ewan thought Joyce was content to be quiet once they’d ordered lunch until she said “Get it over with if you’re so anxious to tell me.”

“The author wrote just that one book. I wouldn’t be surprised if he published it himself.”

“What’s it supposed to be about?”

“Nobody was saying.”

“Do you even know who it’s by?”

“A person by the name of Jethro Dartmouth.”

“Never heard of him.”

“I got the impression pretty well nobody has.”

“Excuse me, some have, yes.”

This came from the waiter, and Ewan thought one of them must have misheard. “Sorry, I don’t think I caught what you said.”

“Mr. Dartmouth came to live here in Ikonikos.”

“How do you know that?” Joyce asked or objected.

“His daughter told us who he was.”

Ewan waited while the man poured two glasses of wine and set down the carafe. “Would you happen to know which his house is?”

“He called it Villa Biblion,” the waiter said, gesturing beyond the village.

Joyce emitted a snort at the name. Otherwise she was silent until the waiter moved away, and then she murmured “You aren’t thinking of giving him that bit of paper.”

“If you’d seen him you’d understand how much he wants it.”

“Well, I don’t understand,” Joyce said, making sure Ewan knew this included him.

During lunch he felt as though Dartmouth was loitering close by, all the more insistent for being unseen—the subject of him and his page, at any rate. It followed them to the beach in the form of their uneasy silence. Joyce spent some time in arranging herself and her various items on and around the sunbed before glancing at Ewan as if she’d forgotten he was there. “Go on your mission if you’re going.”

“I don’t like to leave you down here by yourself.”

“For pity’s sake,” she cried and dragged her legs so vigorously off the bed that it almost toppled over. “Take me to the room if you need to think I’m safe.”

He hadn’t meant that, or perhaps he had. On the uphill road he thought she resented having to take his arm. As he let them into the apartment he caught sight of the safe at the back of the doorless wardrobe. For an instant he was certain the display above the keypad said ERROR. The letters vanished as he stepped into the room. “Did you see that?” he blurted.

“What now, Ewan?”

“It looked as if someone just tried to open the safe.”

“I didn’t see anything like that at all.”

Perhaps the sunlight had outlined the message, although when he tried to recapture the illusion it stayed stubbornly invisible. He typed the year of their marriage and opened the safe. Hadn’t he laid the page flat? Part of it was resting against the door, and unfolded to meet him. Rather than point this out to Joyce he said “Are you sure you wouldn’t like to come with me?”

“I’m very sure, Ewan. You do whatever you feel you have to.”

“I’ll try not to be long.”

“We’ve plenty of time. We’ve eleven days yet.” With a frown that seemed to tug the corners of her lips towards a smile she said “Just stop worrying about me.”

When he glanced back from the doorway she looked defiant, close to insulted by his concern. As he made all the speed he could uphill the page fluttered in his hand. He might have imagined someone was trying to snatch it, and he slipped it into his breast pocket, where it struggled to unfold before lying still.

The Villa Biblion wasn’t on the outskirts of Ikonikos. Every house he passed took him another minute’s walk or more from Joyce. He was on the edge of going back to her when he saw the name on the gatepost of a villa in an olive grove beyond high spiky railings. He thumbed the bellpush below the nameplate, and in time a grille emitted a metallic rattle and a woman’s voice. “Hello?”

“I’ve something that belongs to Mr. Dartmouth.”

The response was a clatter that sounded ominously final. As Ewan looked for a security camera to show the page, the door of the villa opened and a woman strode down the wide marble drive. She was tall and thin with a long face and cropped pale hair. She wore shorts with many pockets and a T-shirt that bestowed on her small breasts the slogan NET ASSETS. Ewan was swallowing a giggle when she demanded “What was it you said?”

“I found this on the beach. I brought it back.”

She gazed at the page and then at him for some moments before opening the gates. “Come and tell me about it,” she said, extending a hand several degrees cooler than the afternoon. “I’m Francesca Dartmouth.”

“Ewan Hargreaves.” As he followed her up the drive he said “Your father must be doing well to live here.”

“I bought it.” She turned to point at the words on her T-shirt. “There’s a fortune to be made in properties abroad.”

She led the way through a broad marble hall into a large white room furnished with a plump black leather suite. “What will you have to drink?”

“Do you mind if I don’t? I’d rather not leave my wife on her own longer than I have to.”

“Just let me hear your tale, then.”

“I saw someone chasing this on the beach in all that wind and later on I found it. Am I right to think he was your father? I believe his book’s quite rare.”

“Pardon me a minute,” Francesca Dartmouth said and hurried out of the room.

Ewan heard her open a door across the hall and utter a muffled cry. A window slid shut, and her footsteps hesitated before she reappeared, carrying a book as carefully as she might have handled a baby. The bulk of the pages had been torn away from the rear flyleaf, exposing their bandaged spine. “The wind got in,” she said almost to herself. “It blew this off his desk.”

Ewan held out the loose page, hoping it might lessen her distress. “Your father can get it bound again, can’t he?”

She gazed at the page and clutched the book harder. “He can’t, Mr. Hargreaves.”

Ewan wasn’t sure he wanted to establish why. Instead he asked “What’s the book about?”

Francesca Dartmouth raised her eyes to his and held out the book. “See for yourself.”

Ewan was moved to be trusted with it. He laid the page on a low table before carefully leafing through the book. It was the tale of Tom Read, a man with a mission to change those who were doing most harm to the world—to persuade them or, failing that, execute them. Was he inspired by God or deranged or both? Some of his intended victims were political leaders, others ruled religions, and one was a media mogul. Read never learned who sent an assassin to kill him in the end, where Ewan thought another page might be missing, but there was only the one he’d retrieved. “I’m not sure I understand,” he said.