Free Death of an Elgin Marble by David Dickinson Page A

who you are. We know where you are. We have ways of making you pay and in ways you might not have thought of. Quite soon you will receive reminders that it is neither wise nor prudent to ignore our demands. It is not too late. Correspondence regarding the money transfers can still be sent to The Friends of the British Museum, Ritz Hotel, London W1.’
    Ragg knew he ought to take a walk or read a Shakespeare sonnet or two, to calm himself down. Shakespeare sonnets, he had discovered some years before, were much more successful in assuaging his rages than any pill or potion. He remembered the last conversation with his doctor who had advised him that he should consider taking early retirement because of his health. His heart was not strong, the doctor said, and any strain or great upset could have severe consequences. But the wrath was upon him. He thought that if he had been younger and more martial he would have issued a demand for a duel. He grabbed a pen and wrote a reply:
    ‘Dear Blackmailer,’ he began. ‘Yet again you have insulted me and my family and the Museum I represent. You are beneath contempt.
    ‘“Rage – Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles” – these are the opening words of Homer’s great epic of ancient warfare
The Iliad
, which tells the story of the battle for Troy. May it contain a lesson and a warning for you. “Would to god my rage,” Achilles tells the Trojan hero Hector just before he kills him, “and my fury would drive me now to hack your flesh away and eat you raw, such agonies you have caused me.”
    ‘He then kills Hector, ties him to his chariot, and drags him behind it for a period of twelve days. I pray to the ancient gods of Achaea and the spirits of the Aegean that a latter-day Achilles may return from the dead and tear you into a thousand pieces.’
    Ragg realized he was still shaking. He did not read his letter again. He called for a porter to take it immediately to the Ritz Hotel in Piccadilly.
    He reached inside the top left-hand drawer of his desk and pulled out a well-worn leather volume containing the sonnets of William Shakespeare.
    Inspector Kingsley felt he was progressing well with his work for eight- to ten-year-olds about the Elgin Marbles and the Caryatid. He knew now that the Caryatid was cleaned in a mixture of mild soap and water once a week, and that she didn’t seem to mind when her hair was washed. He learnt about the different time scales of the various pieces of statuary. The Parthenon frieze and the metopes that had been placed around the outer walls of the building were older than the Caryatid and had probably been created by a different generation of sculptors. The Parthenon, one of the young curators told him, was built at the height of Athens’s glory, when she had an empire that spread out all over the Aegean Sea, and when her temples and public buildings were the glory of the city. The Caryatid, the young curator said, was created a generation later when the empire was lost, public life debased, and the city about to lose its thirty-year struggle with Sparta known as the Peloponnesian War. Athens had fallen from the height of glory into ignominious defeat, and the Caryatid, in a way, had marked the passing. Like Icarus, perhaps, Athens had dared to fly too close to the sun. The Athenians could always erect another temple, the Erechtheion, on the Acropolis, but they could not bring back the past.
    The Inspector wrote down what he was told in a special blue notebook with his name on the inside, written in a large, childish hand by his son to remind him of his duty. He took a special interest in the routines of the museum, what happened after dark, what happened before the museum closed last thing at night. Above all, he was interested in the fire alarm that had occurred some time before. It was, people discovered afterwards, a trial run to test some new equipment, but the porters had hurried everybody out of the building into the forecourt