‘This place is all about putting art back in its original context, and that can be a shock to modern sensibility,’ Jack said. ‘The European aristocrats who plundered Greece and Rome thought they were doing it, arranging statues on pedestals in their neoclassical country houses, but their idea of the classical context was based on the bleached ruins of Greece rather than the Technicolor reality of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Here, you get the real deal, with objects like these bronzes as components of a larger whole, with the villa as a work of art in itself. Classical scholars for too long venerated these things as works of art in the modern sense, in their own right. What the critics didn’t like was that the villa makes these venerated sculptures seem frivolous, and the whole setting more whimsical and fun than they’d bargained for. But that’s what it was really like.’
‘And that’s what I like about it.’ Costas squatted down with a coin in the crook of his finger and eyed the length of the pool. ‘If the Romans could have fun, so can we.’ Jack shot him a warning glance as a man appeared through the entrance portico and made his way briskly towards them. He was of medium height with a close-cut beard, and wore chinos and a shirt and tie with his sleeves rolled up. He raised a hand in greeting to Jeremy, who gestured towards Jack and Costas.
‘Allow me to introduce Dr Ieuan Morgan,’ Jeremy said. ‘An old friend, my mentor when I was here. He’s on secondment from Brigham Young University. Permanently, by the look of it.’
Costas and Jack shook hands with him. ‘Thanks for seeing us at such short notice,’ Jack said warmly. ‘Are you anything to do with the BYU Herculaneum papyrus project?’
‘That’s why I came here originally,’ Morgan said, a hint of Welsh in his accent. ‘I’m a Philodemus specialist, and the infra-red spectrometry on the scrolls from the eighteenth-century excavations was inundating me with new stuff. I needed breathing space, somewhere to put it all in perspective.’
‘And where better than the Villa of the Papyri itself.’ Jack gestured around. ‘I’m envious.’
‘Any time you want a sabbatical here, just give the word,’ Morgan said. ‘Your reputation precedes you.’
Jack smiled back. ‘Much appreciated.’ He winked at Jeremy. ‘Maybe in about twenty years’ time.’
Morgan looked intently at Jack. ‘I understand from Jeremy that you’re on a tight schedule. Follow me.’
He led them along one side of the peristyle, then on to the west porch of the villa and through the open bronze doors that served as the main entrance to the museum. They went up a flight of marble stairs to the upper storey, and came to a second, inner courtyard, another fragrant and colourful place, resonating with the flash and sparkle of fountains. Below the tiled roof, tiers of columns dropped down to surround a garden proportioned in the Roman way, with bronze statues of five maidens in the centre appearing to draw water from a pool. Again Jack felt the extraordinary immediacy of the past. Whatever else came of the day, this Roman villa on the coast of California had been an unexpected revelation, another vivid lens on the ancient world.
Jack narrowed his eyes, and spoke from memory. ‘“Lovely gardens and cool colonnades and lily ponds would surround it, spreading out as far as the raptured eye could reach.” Those are words that Robert Graves in Claudius the God has Herod Agrippa, King of the Jews, saying to his Queen Cypros. I’ve always remembered that description, since I first read Graves as a boy. Herod has always been thought of as anti-Christian, the man who ordered the execution of St James, but to me those words could have been an ancient Christian image of heaven.’
‘You’re talking about Herod Agrippa, friend of Claudius?’ Costas said.
‘That’s the one.’
Costas scanned the courtyard. ‘So if this villa is an accurate replica of the place where Claudius ended his days, he didn’t give up on life’s pleasures completely,’ he said.
‘He had all this to look out on, sure, but I doubt whether he would have cared less,’ Jack replied. ‘As long as he had his books and his statues of his beloved father and brother, he’d probably have been content to eke out his days in a sulphurous cave somewhere up on Mount Vesuvius.’
‘Claudius?’ Morgan said, clearly mystified. ‘Which Claudius?’
‘The Roman emperor Claudius,’ Costas said.
‘Jeremy didn’t mention any emperors.’ Morgan paused, then eyed Jack quizzically. ‘I think you’ve got some explaining to do.’
‘We have,’ Jack smiled. ‘Lead on.’
Morgan led them a few paces further to a room at the back of the portico. He opened the door, ushered them in and gestured at the marble table in the centre. ‘I had the cafe send up some things. Hungry?’
‘You bet.’ Costas launched himself at a plate of croissants, and Morgan poured coffee. After a few moments he gestured at three seats on one side of the table, and walked around to the other side with his coffee and sat down.
‘Okay.’ Jack sat in the middle chair, and leaned forward. ‘You know why we’re here.’
‘Jeremy filled me in. Or at least I thought he did.’ Morgan swivelled in his chair to face Jack, took a sip of his coffee and then set his cup down. ‘When Jeremy had his fellowship here we worked quite closely together, and when he called me yesterday he discovered I had an interest in Lawrence Everett. I’d always kept quiet about it, a private obsession of mine, but of course I told him when he asked. It’s an incredible coincidence, but a man like that can’t go completely underground as he might have wished. And I thought there couldn’t possibly be anyone else on his trail, but there was another enquiry this morning.’
Jack suddenly looked alarmed. ‘Who?’
‘No idea. Anonymous hotmail address.’
‘Did you reply?’
‘After my conversation with Jeremy yesterday, I felt it prudent to claim ignorance. But I sensed that this was someone who wouldn’t go away. Somehow they knew there was a connection here, with the Getty Villa. I checked the online ticket reservations for the museum, and someone with the same e-mail address booked a ticket for tomorrow.’
‘Could be a coincidence, as you say,’ Jeremy murmured. ‘I can’t see how they’d have known.’
‘Known what, exactly? Who are you talking about?’ Morgan said.
Jeremy was quiet for a moment, glanced at Jack and then looked back across the table. ‘You were right. I haven’t told you everything. But what I did tell you was true, that we think Everett had something extraordinary to hide, an early Christian manuscript. That’s the key thing. Let’s hear what you’ve got to say, then we’ll fill you in.’
Morgan looked perplexed. ‘I’ve got no reason to be secretive. My scholarship, the collections here are open to all. It’s the founding ethos of the museum.’
‘Unfortunately this has gone way beyond scholarship,’ Jack said. ‘There’s far more at stake here. Let’s hear you out, then we’ll bring you up to speed before we leave this room.’
Morgan pulled a document box towards him on the table. ‘Fair enough. I can start by giving you a potted biography.’
‘Fire away.’
‘The reason I know about Everett is that he tried to correspond with J. Paul Getty, the founder of the museum. The nuns who looked after Everett during his final illness found the Getty headed notepaper among his belongings, and some architectural drawings. They thought the museum might be interested. I stumbled across the box of papers when I was researching the early history of the Getty villa, and thought they might have some bearing on the Getty interest in antiquities.’ He opened up the box and carefully lifted out a handful of yellowed pages covered in words and figures in a precise, minute hand. He spread them out on the table in front of him, including one page with a ruled-out plan of an apsidal structure. ‘Everett was fascinated by mathematical problems, by the game of chess, crosswords. There’s lots of that kind of stuff here, most of it way beyond me. But before he came to America he’d been an architect, and there’s an unfinished manuscript I’ve been annotating for publication. He was interested in early Church architecture, in the earliest archaeological evidence for Christian places of worship.’