Page 125 of Pandora

“It wasn’t hard to find the kinks in the site; it was already weak. The land was sinking. There’d been plans to reinforce it but Elijah and Helen, they always had been impatient. Hamilton said it was sound enough, that it would keep for a while longer and it might well have... if not for me.” His mouth twists. “It was nothing to knock down a retaining wall, a beam here and there. I set it all up, ready. A swift kick, a swing of a hammer, that’s all it would take. But I wanted to give them another chance. I wanted to make them see reason. So I went back down into the tunnels while Hamilton slept, knowing they would be working there alone. They were arguing, the vase between them, still half-buried in the earth. I hid.” Hezekiah’s eyes glaze over. “Helen knew, knew what I would do. Always sharp, that one. Hezekiah means to kill us, she had said, and what will happen to Dora then? Elijah tried to convince her to leave the dig but Helen refused, said they hadn’t come all that way only to abandon the vase. And then. Then! They spoke of a private collection, a fortune back in London, but they did not say where it was. I watched as Helen took out a sheet of paper from her pocket. Elijah told her to write it down. Instructions. For you, Dora. A failsafe, he called it. A fortune! Hidden from me, all this time... I lost my temper. Flew at them. Helen pulled a knife.” Hezekiah raises a finger to the scar at his cheek.

In disgust Dora watches him run his finger down the length of it, and she swallows hard.

“Then what happened?”

Her uncle’s face splits into a humorless smile. “I snatched the paper from her and fled. It was late afternoon. We had hired locals, so the dig site was empty. Mesimeri. Everyone was still sleeping in their tents. No one saw me. I collapsed a wall, some beams... The sound was deafening. It all came down so fast.”

They watch each other. Dora takes an unsteady breath.

“How did you know there was a note in the pithos? Why claim it back, after all these years?”

Suddenly Hezekiah lets go of the pickaxe. Dora jumps as it clatters to the floor.

“I wondered at the time why they did not come after me. Why they did not try to get the paper back. If they had they would have caught me, I’m sure. But they didn’t come, and in the commotion that followed I did not look at it. It was only later that evening I realized the paper was ripped, that all I had was a blank piece. And when the bodies were retrieved not far from the site entrance and no note was found... I understood, then, what Helen had done. As the walls collapsed around them Helen must have hidden the note in the vase, knowing Hamilton would take charge of its excavation. She knew, otherwise, the note would have been passed back to me. But what she could not have anticipated is how long it would take to reopen the dig. A failsafe, indeed.” Hezekiah dips his hand into his trouser pocket. “Twelve years it’s taken me to get the vase back. Do you have any idea how much I have suffered? Knowing that a fortune exists, but not knowing where?”

She cannot stand it any longer.

“Did you plan to kill me?” Dora asks, her voice a pained whisper.

Hezekiah cocks his head. “Honestly? No. I didn’t even realize you were down there. It’s a shame Hamilton managed to dig you out but, alas, he did. And you’ve been an inconvenience ever since.”

“Then why keep me alive?”

Somewhere behind her, another muffled sound.

“Oh, Dora,” Hezekiah mocks. He half-turns, reaches for a candle in one of the sconces behind him. “I’ve done many a damning thing in my life, but murdering a child in cold blood didn’t sit well with me. Besides.” His eyes narrow. “You had no knowledge of any of this. You would never have known that the fortune existed if not for me, now. No, there was no point in killing you. You’ve been useful to me in many ways, after all.” He cocks his head. “You realize, Dora, there will be no way you can prove anything I’ve just said.”

Very slowly Hezekiah lifts his hand from his pocket. In it he holds a folded piece of paper, the edge ripped at the bottom. It is creased, yellow with age, but Dora knows what it is.

“The note,” she murmurs.

Hezekiah looks down at it, runs a dirty thumb across its yellowed side. “‘For the care of Sir William Hamilton on behalf of our daughter, Pandora Blake,’” he reads. He unfolds the note, looks up once more. “Tell me, Dora. What is the gold-and-black key?”

The emphasis on the last four words takes her off guard. She stares at him in confusion.

“The gold-and-black key?”

“You heard me.”

Dora shakes her head. “I don’t know. The safe is black and gold...”

“It isn’t that. I’ve already tried.”

She says nothing. For a long moment Hezekiah stares at her.

“This note was meant for you. Helen says to use the gold-and-black key. She must have thought that meant something to you.”

Her heart drums heavily in her chest, she does not understand what he wants from her. She looks at Lottie tied so cruelly behind her, the looming pithos, the rubble on the floor, and in confusion Dora shakes her head.

“But it means nothing to me,” she whispers.

Again, Hezekiah stares. Then he raises his arm, holds the note out in front of him like a prayer.

“Well, then. If I can’t have their fortune, neither can you. I still have the pithos, after all. Think how much money I’ll make from that alone.”

Hezekiah is smiling, a smug, knowing smile that makes her stomach turn, and it takes Dora a moment to understand what he means to do. But then he is moving the candle, is touching a corner of the paper to the flame...

“No!”

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