Pandora(58)

His niece shakes her head, points to the basement doors, a sharp stab in the air.

‘For years the basement was closed to me. I never questioned it before since it was closed to me as a child, but then that crate arrived and you were so desperate to keep me away from it! Now I know why.’

‘Do you?’ he asks. Wary.

‘The black-market.’

Dora says the words in an almost-whisper. There is hatred in her eyes now, but in the face of her words Hezekiah almost laughs in his relief. Is that all she thinks? He conceals his relief quickly, strokes the scar on his cheek, turns his voice sickly sweet.

‘Do you understand what you’re accusing me of, my dear?’

‘I do.’ Dora lifts her chin. ‘You mean to sell the pithos, all the pottery in the crates. Illegally.’

‘And why would I do that?’

‘Because you have not acquired them by legal means. It is the only explanation. If you had, why would you not sell them up here?’

She makes a good point. Still, she only has half of it. Hezekiah takes another small step forward, breathes heavily through his nose.

‘I am restoring them. Nothing more.’

Dora glowers at him. ‘You lie. They need no restoration. Certainly the pithos is in perfect condition considering its considerable age.’

‘Its considerable age?’ Hezekiah echoes.

‘Yes, Uncle. I know it to be so old it cannot even be dated. It predates all known history.’

Hezekiah tries to conceal his shock. Then he thinks she is teasing him, makes to laugh instead. But there is no amusement on her face, and that gives him pause.

Dora must be mistaken. How could she know, after all? She, who has no knowledge of antiquities beyond the limitations of the shop, limitations he himself has put in place to prevent her meddling? But, he considers, it seems she knows far more than he realised. Still, the how does not wholly concern him. Predates history …

He knew it was old. Of course he knew – he helped Helen find it, did he not? But he had no notion it was that old. Not even Helen thought it was so great an age. Why, what he seeks might not even matter at all!

This reminds him.

‘Did you open it?’

‘The pithos?’

‘Of course the pithos!’

‘Yes, I—’

‘It opened?’

The cutting question seems to take Dora off guard. Her brows knit.

‘Yes.’

‘How?’

‘I … lifted the lid.’

‘Just like that?’ he asks, dubious.

Dora blinks. ‘I don’t understand.’

Nor does he. Hezekiah tries to swallow, but his paranoia has returned and his breath is trapped painfully in his chest, as if a stone has lodged itself there.

‘Was there anything in it?’

‘No.’

She hesitated. Hesitated! The look on her face is one of puzzlement, but Hezekiah feels the blood drain from his cheeks, resents her clever play. She almost had him fooled, the little witch.

‘No?’

He asks this almost gently, watching.

‘As I said,’ Dora says, slowly, for she watches him, too.

‘Nothing?’

‘Nothing at all.’

And there it is. There, on her face, so like her mother’s (just like her mother’s): the look of barefaced deceit.



The lid opens easily. Lifts right off, no difficulty at all.

Why? How?

He checks for a mechanism, something that might have prevented him from opening it before.

There is nothing.

He turns the lid over, runs a fat finger inside the deep lip-groove. Red dust comes loose on the pad of his finger.

But. Nothing.

He does the same to the lip of the pithos itself, lays the flat of his hand on the neck, runs it round and round and round.

Nothing.

He takes the chair from the desk, stands on it – unsteady – peers within. Cannot see. He returns with a candle, angles it, tries to view the bottom.

Shadows, a flame-dance against terracotta.

And there is nothing. Nothing!

There is a hiss. Frowning, Hezekiah blows out the candle. The hiss stops.

Perplexed, he steps down from the chair, leans his weight on its spindly back.

Dora has found it, Hezekiah thinks. She must have found it, and therefore she knows! She must know! But if she knows, why does she not say anything?

She is planning something, then. She means to distract him with talk of the black-market, means to scare him. Well, he will not let her. He has come too far, waited too long to be thwarted now.

‘Hezekiah?’

Lottie calls hesitantly from the top step. He keeps his back to her, grips the rim of the vase, his anger fully ripe now, his frustration fierce.

‘Are you all—’

‘Get out, damn you!’ he shouts.

‘But—’

‘Get out!’

He listens to her retreat, her awkward shuffle, the bell that separates shop from apartment. Tries to breathe.





CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE





Hezekiah instructed her to go to her room, to not come down again for the rest of the day, and so to her room Dora has gone. But she has no intention of staying there. No, indeed, she thinks as her heartbeat steadies – she will go to Edward. She must tell him what has happened, how Hezekiah’s guilt can no longer be doubted. He denied the matter, yes – restoring them, indeed! – but Dora has lived with her uncle too long now not to recognise when he speaks a lie. She laces her boots, reaches for her shawl on the back of the door, her threadbare bonnet, ties the ribbon under her chin.