AGATHA went for a long walk along the beach. There were fewer tourists, and flocks of migrating birds sailed over the cloudless sky overhead.
She was beginning to become angry over her own fear of James and his recriminations. How had it happened that she, Agatha Raisin, once the terror of the public-relations world, should dread another confrontation? Being in love seemed to have sapped her strength. How strange that few people actually talked about love any more. They were obsessed, taken hostage, or co-dependent-anything rather than admit they were not in control, for the very word “love” now meant weakness.
But he was at fault. He was no saint either. He had had affairs even with a woman in the village.
She would need to have it out with him and though she quailed from the idea, she knew she could not go on living under the same roof with him in a hostile atmosphere. As she walked back, the thought that someone was actually trying to kill her made her keep stopping and look warily around. She climbed up the steep hill from the beach to the villa. She felt breathless from the walk and threw away the cigarette she had been smoking. Before smoking had become such a sin, Agatha had thought the whole time about giving up. Now that it was, somehow she could not seem to summon up the will to stop.
She went into the villa. She could hear from the clatter of dishes that James was in the kitchen. She walked in and said to his back, “Come and sit down, James. We can’t go on like this. We have to talk.”
He turned round, his face hard and closed. But he went and sat at the kitchen table. Agatha pulled out a seat opposite him and sat down.
“I want you to listen to me carefully,” began Agatha in an even voice. “You have shown me no love or affection since I came here. I got drunk with Charles and ended up in bed with him. It just happened. I had no reason not to tell you the truth, but I did not want to lose you. But in this loveless whatever-it-is we have between us, you have no right to be angry with me or possessive or jealous. You have hurt me badly. We both want to find out who murdered Rose. But we cannot go on living together like this. What do you suggest?”
He stared at the table in silence.
“James,” Agatha pleaded, “I know that any intimate conversation makes you want to shrivel up, but you are going to have to say something.”
He looked at her bleakly. “You’ll need to give me a little more time, Agatha. I have been behaving badly. In the past I have always had light affairs, nothing very serious. I don’t know why it should have to be you. I like very gentle, feminine women. In fact, I feel at ease in the company of rather stupid women. You smoke, you swear, you are dreadfully blunt. If we were married, I think you would drive me mad, Agatha. You are right, I have always shied away from intimacy, not necessarily sex but discussions like this, talking about my feelings. I’ll try to watch my temper.”
Agatha looked at him sadly. “I don’t think I can change, James. I don’t think I can turn myself into the type of woman you would like me to be. But I could give up smoking…”
He reached forward and took her hand in a warm, firm clasp. “Let’s give it a little time. Friends?”
“Friends,” echoed Agatha, but feeling in a bewildered way that nothing had been resolved at all. “I’ll keep clear of Charles.”
“I can’t under the circumstances dictate to you who you should see or not see. Now let’s discuss our suspects,” he said cheerfully, looking, thought Agatha, for all the world like a schoolboy leaving the headmaster’s study once a dreaded lecture was over.
“Everything points to Trevor,” he said. “And Trevor is drinking like a fish. Sooner or later he is going to betray himself.”
“I’m surprised the press haven’t been beating at our door after this last attack,” said Agatha. “After Olivia’s famous press conference, they seem to have disappeared.”
“Oh, I forgot to tell you. There’s been a dreadful murder over on the Greek side and some British soldiers have been accused. They’ve all gone over there. Our murder is old hat.”
“Well, at least that should give us some peace. Where do we go from here? Back to the hotel this evening?”
“I can’t. I’ve got an appointment in Nicosia this evening.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“No, Agatha, it’s got to do with my investigations into Mustafa, and I don’t want you involved. Don’t go to them on your own. Why not spend a quiet evening here and watch some television?”
“Apart from the local news, there’s hardly anything in English.”
“Sometimes the local station puts on a film in English.”
“All right,” said Agatha. “I haven’t really had a quiet evening since I’ve been here.”
“I’ll go and get ready then,” said James, and Agatha was left to her thoughts.
When he had left, she took a cup of coffee out into the garden and watched the sun set until a nasty mosquito bite drove her indoors to look for ointment. Having applied it, she switched on the television and flicked through the channels. All Turkish. Arnold Schwarzenegger shouted in Turkish, Bugs Bunny shouted in Turkish, everyone shouted in Turkish. She switched it off.
Suddenly the villa seemed very quiet and almost sinister. For once, the sea was calm and no children played in the road outside. She began to feel edgy and jumpy.
And then the phone rang. She stared at it, startled, and then, with relief, decided it must be James.
She picked up the receiver.
“Hullo, Aggie.”
Charles.
“What do you want?” she demanded, feeling a lurch of disappointment. “And how did you get this number?”
“Easy,” he said cheerfully. “You left it with the manager of the hotel. Had dinner?”
“Not yet. But I’m not going to pay for yours.”
“Nasty. I was going to pay for yours.”
“Charles, I’ve got into enough trouble over you. James found out I had slept with you.”
“That wasn’t my fault. They’d found that out from the hotel servants and had tactfully kept that information from James until someone tried to smother you.”
“How do you know James isn’t here?”
“I was coming back into Kyrenia and he passed me like the clappers, heading off in the direction of Nicosia. Come on, Aggie. Come out to play. I’m bored.”
Agatha hesitated, thinking of an evening on her own and jumping nervously at every single sound.
“Oh, all right,” she said ungraciously. “Where will I meet you?”
“Here. The Dome.”
Agatha sighed. “I should be investigating, but I don’t think I want to run into any of that lot this evening.”
“What about that restaurant called The Grapevine?”
“No, they might be there. All the British go there.”
“What about the Saray Hotel in Nicosia?”
“Well…”
“ Nicosia ’s a big place. But if you think James will be there…”
“No, come to think of it, if he is where I think he is, he’ll be nowhere near the centre. I’ll park my car up on the main street, just outside the newspaper shop, and you can drive me from there.”
“What’s the time? It’s only seven. I’ll pick you up there at eight.”
But Agatha suddenly did not want to wait in the villa longer than she had to. “It’ll take me ten minutes to change and about ten minutes to get there,” she said. “Make it seven-thirty.”
She rang off and ran up the stairs and put on the little black dress she had shunned the night before. After a hasty wash-down, she re-applied her make up, grabbed her handbag and fled the villa.
Glad to be out and free of what she felt was the sinister silence of the villa, she headed for Kyrenia along the now familiar road with the mountains towering up on one side and the sea stretched out on the other. Remembering Kyrenia’s irritating one-way system, she went along the ring road to the lights and turned left down into Kyrenia, past The Grapevine, wondering if Olivia and the others were there, past the roundabout and the town hall, and found to her delight that a car was just moving out from a parking place outside the newspaper shop, and slid neatly into the empty space. Charles appeared promptly. She climbed into his rented car.
To avoid going back all around the town, he executed a neat turn under the blaring horn and flashing lights of a Turkish truck and headed back round the roundabout and out towards Nicosia, along past the Onar Village Hotel and up over the mountains until the twinkling lights of Nicosia appeared below them on the plain.
“So how are you feeling?” he asked.
“A bit shaken. Sort of unreal. As if it had all never happened and I’ll wake up in my bed in Carsely.”
“What sort of place have you got?”
“A thatched cottage, like the kind you see on calendars or biscuit boxes. Little garden at the front and a bigger one at the back. Two bedrooms, bathroom, kitchen, dining-room and living-room. God, I wish I were there.”
“I don’t think Pamir can keep you here for much longer. Why don’t you go and see him tomorrow and tell him you want to go home?”
“There’s James.”
“Is he still talking to you?”
“Yes.”
“Amazing. I wouldn’t.”
“I don’t want to talk about James,” said Agatha firmly.
He drove competently into the centre of Nicosia and managed to find a parking place near The Saray.
“What I can’t understand about this hotel,” said Agatha as they ascended in the lift to the restaurant, “is how they get away with only having two loos next to the restaurant. Only two public toilets for a hotel this size. How do they cope when they have, say, a wedding reception?”
“Don’t know. Maybe they piss off the terrace,” said Charles indifferently. “Here we are. Do you want a drink at the bar or will we go straight into the restaurant?”
“The restaurant, I think. I’ve been drinking too much.”
“The trouble is booze here is so cheap.”
“And cigarettes,” said Agatha. “It’s a smoker’s dream. Everyone smokes, ashtrays everywhere, even in the butcher’s.”
They ordered their meal and looked out at the lights of Nicosia.
The hors-d’oeuvre was a light flaky pastry filled with cheese, and the main course was lamb on the bone with salad and rice. Charles had ordered a bottle of wine and Agatha forgot her resolution not to drink. It was so easy to talk to Charles. But then she wasn’t in love with Charles.
“So who do you think tried to murder you?” Charles asked over coffee and brandies.
“Trevor,” said Agatha. “I’m sure it must have been Trevor.”
“I would have thought by three in the morning our Trevor would have been deep in an alcoholic stupor. Was there a strong smell of booze?”
“I was too frightened to smell anything. Besides, I had been drinking a lot myself. It’s like smoking. If you smoke, then you don’t much notice the smell of other people’s cigarette smoke.”
“Let me think. There’s friend Harry Tembleton, old but still quite powerful from a lifetime of shifting bales of hay or whatever. Now he said Rose was a slut. He’s devoted to Olivia. Could he have thought that George was about to stray and, loyal friend that he is, decided to eliminate the temptress?”
“Far-fetched.”
“The whole thing’s far-fetched. Apart from various flare-ups at the border between the Greeks and the Turks, this place is the safest in the Mediterranean. There have certainly been a few burglaries of British residents’ homes, but the police practically always find the culprits. They’ve got a big success rate. Only the tourists bother to lock their cars. So the very idea of the murder of a British tourist in a night-club is extraordinary. And yet Trevor is the obvious suspect. He needs money, Rose has money, she won’t give him any, his business is down the tubes, and she’s a flirt and he’s a jealous man. Must be Trevor. And I don’t think you’re going to have to use your investigative powers on this one, Aggie, because if it’s, Trevor, and considering the amount of alcohol he sinks, I think he’ll crack. Pamir will keep after us all with his endless questions.”
Agatha gave a rueful smile. “‘Could you go through it all from the beginning, Mrs. Raisin?’ He has incredible patience.”
“He’s waiting for one of us to s’p up and tell him something different,” said Charles. “And he thinks James might have tried to bump you off in a fit of passion.”
“James had an alibi.”
“I didn’t. Lucky James. Pamir implied that people like me suffer from inbreeding in the family and could be potty.”
“I sometimes think you’re potty myself, Charles. Why bother with me?”
“You amuse me.”
“Not very flattering.”
“You actually look good in that black dress.”
“Thank you. You must be the only man in this hot climate to wear a tie.” Charles was wearing a striped silk tie with an impeccable white shirt and a white linen suit. “Don’t you ever sweat?”
“Only when I’m making love to you, Aggie.”
Agatha sighed. “If only you were the right man. I’m at least ten years older than you, Charles.”
“I’ve always wanted to be a toy-boy.”
“And I’ve never wanted one.”
“What about that young Chinese policeman? I thought he was rather keen on you.”
“Bill Wong is a friend of mine. In fact, he was my first real friend.”
“But he’s only in his twenties. You can’t have known him long.”
“When I worked in London, before I took early retirement,” said Agatha, resting her chin on her hands, “I was too ambitious to have friends and I didn’t feel the need for any. I built up a successful public-relations business.”
“But surely public-relations involves getting on with people?”
Agatha laughed. “In my case, I think I was successful because I bullied and cajoled and threatened. When I moved to the Cotswolds, things changed. I no longer had my work as my identity. I met Bill on what I like to think as my first case. Then there came other friends.”
“life begins at fifty?”
“Something like that. What about you, Charles? No wish to get married?”
“This is so sudden.”
“Be serious.”
“Never found the right girl. Have no burning desire for children.”
“That’s sad.”
“Then we’re a sad pair, Aggie. You haven’t got children either.”
“No,” said Agatha sadly, “and now I never will. Wasted years, Charles.”
He ordered another two brandies and raised his glass. “Here’s to the wasted years,” he said solemnly.
“Are you sure you ought to be driving after drinking this lot?” demanded Agatha.
“They do breathalyse people here just like back home, but I shall drive home carefully. I don’t feel in the least bit tipsy.”
When they finally rose to leave, Agatha said, “I hope James is back. I don’t relish the idea of being in that villa on my own.”
His eyes twinkled maliciously. “We could spend the night here.”
“Forget it. Let’s just go.”
As they were driving out of Nicosia towards the Kyrenia Road, Agatha saw they were approaching the Great Eastern Hotel and she started to think about James. What was he up to?
And then, with a lurch of her heart, she saw him walking along the street with a girl on his arm, a girl with long brown curly hair, a short, short skirt and long, long legs. They were going in the direction of the town.
“That was James!” gasped Agatha. “Turn the car.”
“You’ll need to wait, Aggie, until the next corner. This is a dual carriageway.”
Agatha waited impatiently until Charles was able to swing round and head back. And then, in front of them on the deserted street and under the lights of the street lamps, they saw James. His arm was around the girl. Charles slowed to a crawl. James and the girl turned a corner into a side street. Charles parked at the side of the road.
“Out we get,” he said cheerfully, “and see where they’re going. Unless you want to confront them.”
“No,” said Agatha hurriedly. “This might be part of his investigations.”
“And very nice, too,” murmured Charles. “What investigations?”
“He wants to find out if his old fixer who runs a brothel is dealing drugs.”
James and his companion turned in at a block of flats in the side street. Charles and Agatha walked along and stood on the other side of the block of flats.
“Now what do we do?” asked Charles.
They gazed up at the block of flats. And then a light came on in one of the windows on the second floor, and like watching people on a stage set, they saw James and the girl.
The girl said something and laughed, and took off her short jacket.
James went up to her, put his arms around her and kissed her, a long, deep embrace. She drew back and began to unbutton her blouse.
James crossed to the window and jerked down the blinds.
Agatha found she was trembling.
“Well, well, well,” said Charles. “Who would have thought it. Don’t break your heart, Aggie. That was a prostitute if ever I saw one.”
“You don’t kiss prostitutes like that,” said Agatha bleakly.
“We can’t stand here all night. Do you want to go up and bang on the door and throw a scene?”
“No,” said Agatha, “I just want to go home.”
They walked back to the car. When they drove off, Agatha said, “That’s that. I don’t feel anything for him any more. How could he?”
“Getting even? Maybe the poor man is still wondering how you could sleep with me.”
“That was different.”
“I suppose it was. You didn’t have to pay me.”
“Aré you sure that was a prostitute, Charles?”
“Pretty sure.”
“But she was pretty.”
“A lot of them here are. They come from God-awful places like Romania.”
There had been girls in the Great Eastern Hotel, but the bar had been very dark and Agatha had not studied any of them very closely.
Perhaps the girl was one of the prostitutes from the Great Eastern Hotel and this was James’s way of finding out information about Mustafa. But he could simply have offered her money. There was no need to kiss her like that. Agatha felt beyond tears.
They drove the rest of the way to Kyrenia in silence.
When they reached Agatha’s car, Charles said, “Want to come to the hotel for a nightcap?”
Agatha shook her head.
“Good-night kiss?”
“No, I don’t feel like it.”
“Try not to weep all night into your pillow. You’re worth better than James, Aggie.”
Agatha got out of the car and waved to Charles as he drove away.
Then she drove back to the villa and let herself in. Grief was being replaced by rage. She paced up and down the living-room, wondering what she should say to him when he returned, wondering whether to say anything at all. He had not laid a finger on her and yet he had kissed that girl so passionately.
She felt lonely, old and unwanted.
Then, with a hardening of the heart, she went upstairs and put her night-gown-froths of satin and lace bought especially to charm James-into a small traveling-bag along with make-up, a change of clothes and a toothbrush. Then she went out, locked up and got back into her car and drove back to Kyrenia.
In the hotel reception a late busload of Israeli tourists had just arrived and were milling around the reception area and so Agatha was able to get into the lift unobserved.
Charles opened his bedroom door in answer to her knock.
“Come in,” he said. “We’ll have a drink and then you’ll take the spare bed, Aggie. I don’t want to be made love to by a woman with a mind full of revenge.”
“You are very kind, Charles,” said Agatha with a break in her voice.
“Not me. You’re a laugh a minute, Aggie. We’ll have a bottle of wine on the balcony.”
“I don’t know what my liver’s going to be like after all this booze,” said Agatha.
“You’ll soon be back in Carsely and you can drink herb tea until it comes out your ears.”
They sat together on the balcony. “I don’t know how to handle this,” said Agatha. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Then do nothing. That’s what I would do, Aggie. When in doubt, do nothing. If you tell him you saw him, he might, as you guessed, tell you it was part of his investigations, and then you’ll start shouting about the way he kissed that girl, and he’ll say he had to make it look good and don’t be silly, and you’ll have got exactly nowhere. Also we’re both assuming naively that he means to spend the night. He may even be back at the villa now. So how do you explain your absence?”
“I’ll say I was frightened to be on my own and so I took a room here.”
“Why don’t you jack the whole thing in, Aggie? It’s all a mess. Go back to Carsely. Go in for something safe like flower-arranging. Forget about Rose’s murder. If Trevor did it, he’ll probably eventually confess when he’s drunk, and you’ll have wasted all this time for nothing.”
“I’ve got to find out,” said Agatha. “There has to be some point to all this. It’ll keep my mind off James.”
“After tonight, my sweet, your mind should be permanently off James.”
“I suppose so. Did you see anything of my suspects today?”
“Not a sign. I suppose Pamir will soon be looking for you again. If sheer doggedness and perseverance can find out who murdered Rose, then he’ll do it.”
“I suppose it’s my vanity,” said Agatha.
“You mean the reasons you’re so hurt by James?”
“No, I mean about solving the murder. James saying I had just blundered about in murder investigations and that’s how they got solved, Olivia’s jeers.”
“If you must, you must. It’s late. Let’s to bed.”
Agatha went into the bathroom, had a shower, and changed into the night-gown.
Charles blinked at her when she emerged. “That nightgown makes me regret I offered you the spare bed. Go to bed, Aggie, before I change my mind.”
Agatha climbed into bed. Her head when she laid it on the pillow swam uncomfortably. No more drink, she thought, whatever James gets up to.
She was then aware fifteen minutes later of Charles emerging from the bathroom. She stiffened under the sheets, waiting for some approach. But he got quietly into his own bed and was soon asleep, snoring dreadfully. How could such a neat and self-contained man snore like that, thought Agatha crossly. She wearily got out of bed and seized him by the shoulders and turned him on his side.
Then she got back into her own bed, now wide awake. She stared at the ceiling, thinking of James, trying to eradicate that bright picture of what she had seen through the apartment window in Nicosia. Then she suddenly fell fast asleep, not waking until the next morning at nine o’clock.
Charles was pottering around the room. “You’d best straighten up your bed and hide in the bathroom while I order some breakfast. We’ll have it on the balcony.”
Memories of the evening before flooded Agatha’s weary brain. But she washed and dressed and waited in the bathroom until she heard room service deliver their breakfast and leave.
Agatha sat on the balcony and crumbled a croissant between her fingers. “I’ve been thinking,” she said slowly, “that I’ll go to Nicosia after I’ve been to the villa and ask for permission to go home.”
“Good idea.”
Agatha stood up. “I don’t want any more breakfast. Thanks for dinner and everything, Charles. I’m sorry I called you a cheapskate.”
“Wait till you get my bill for services rendered.”
Agatha held out her hand. “So this is goodbye.”
He solemnly shook her hand.
“See you around the Cotswolds, Aggie.”
Agatha drove back to the villa. She felt suddenly calm. She would see what James had to say, see how he would react. She would be dignified. She would not rant or scream.
It was another perfect day with only the lightest of breezes.
She took a deep breath and let herself into the villa and called, “James!”
There was no reply and then she noticed that his laptop and research papers and books, which were usually piled up on the table, had all gone. She ran outside again. His car was not there. Something she had been too pent up to notice when she arrived!
She went back in and up to his bedroom. The wardrobe door was open, showing nothing but empty hangers. And the she saw an envelope with her name on it on the pillow.
She opened it.
“Dear Agatha,” she read. “My investigations have taken me off to Turkey for some time. The rent here is paid for another month. I waited for you last night, but you did not come home, so it did not take much imagination to guess where you were. Goodbye. James.”
Agatha sat down on the bed and stared around the empty room. How on earth could James go to Turkey? All of them had been told not to leave the island
She should phone Pamir. In fact, she’d better phone Pamir, for sooner or later he would be round and wondering where James had got to.
She went downstairs. She fished in her handbag for her notebook, where she had written down Pamir ’s number.
When he came on the phone, she told him about James’s going off to Turkey. “Why should he go there?” demanded Pamir sharply.
In for a penny, in for a pound, thought Agatha. “He was annoyed with his old fixer, Mustafa. He wanted to get even with him for having cheated him over the rent of the first villa and so he was out to prove Mustafa was dealing in drugs.”
“He should have consulted us,” said Pamir. “We already told him Mustafa was being investigated.”
“How could he get off the island without your knowing?” asked Agatha.
“Easy. Turkey is only across the water. He could have got a fishing boat or a pleasure boat or a yacht.”
“Aren’t you going to do anything about it?”
“We will look for him, be assured of that. Be careful not to follow his example, Mrs. Raisin, or we shall be very angry.”
“I meant to come and see you anyway,” said Agatha. “I would like to go home.”
“As would the other suspects. Not yet, Mrs. Raisin.”
“When?”
“Soon, I hope.”
“If you find out where James is, will you let me know?”
“We will do our best.”
And that was that. Trapped in north Cyprus.
The phone rang. Agatha snatched up the receiver.
“James? Where the hell are you?”
“Not James. Charles.”
“Oh.”
“Are you off?”
“No, I’m not off. James is off. He’s disappeared to Turkey. Now what do I do?”
“Well, your suspects are off to Salamis today.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s over near Famagusta. In ancient times, it was one of the leading cities of Cyprus. They’re going swimming at Silver Beach first, which is next to it. Want to bring your bathing-suit and observe the murderers at play?”
“May as well. Nothing else to do.”
“Pick me up. Your turn to pay for the petrol. And bring a picnic.”
“All right. But no wine. I need a dry day.”
Agatha went first to the petrol station and then to the supermarket beyond. She bought bread, cheese, olives, a tin of salmon, lettuce, tomatoes, green peppers and some cakes and a bottle of local wine. She had already packed a carton with dishes and glasses before leaving the villa. Not a very exciting lunch, she thought, but if Charles doesn’t like it, he can buy me lunch.
Charles was waiting outside The Dome. “They left about an hour ago, Aggie, but from the conversation I overheard, they plan to make a day of it.”
Once more over the mountains and out on the Famagusta Road. “Give me your guidebook and I’ll tell you about Salamis,” said Charles as Agatha negotiated a hairpin bend.
“In my handbag.”
Charles fished it out. “What a lot of history. Let me see. According to legend, the city was founded by the Homeric hero Teucer when he was exiled by his father, Telemon, king of the Greek island of Salamis, on his return from the Trojan war around 1180 B.C. And so forth. Yawn. By the eighth century it was a major trading centre, became first city in Cyprus to mint its own coinage. Fell to the Persians. Defeated two hundred years later by Alexander the Great. Under siege after his death. Are you taking all this dry stuff in, Aggie? Watch that truck! Glorious place again under the Byzantines. Then shattered by earthquake and tidal wave. City rebuilt, renamed Constantia in honour of Constantius the Second, the reigning Byzantine emperor. Never fully recovered. Harbour silted up. Most of the city under thick cover of sand. Signpost to the place is about five miles north of Famagusta. You can read the rest for yourself. Bring your swim-suit?”
“I’ve got it on under my dress.”
“Well go for a swim, have our picnic and then look for the others. I don’t know if I really want to go trekking around ruins on such a hot day. It says here stout shoes, long socks and some sort of head-covering are strongly recommended. We can park at the site, but I would suggest we park on the beach first and then walk to the site if that’s where the others have gone.”
Silver Beach turned out to be a long stretch of gently shelving sand disappearing into the green-blue waters of the Mediterranean.
They undressed and went for a swim. Agatha turned over and floated on her back, feeling the sun warm on her face. The day was perfect. A world away from murder and mayhem. She wondered what Charles really thought of her and why he should bother to spend time with her. The fact was that Agatha had become so demoralized by her chilly relationship with James that she could not imagine any man wanting to spend any time at all in her company.
She rolled over and headed back for the beach, suddenly hungry.
Charles joined her, in swimming-trunks and with not a hair out of place, as she laid out what began to look like a very uninteresting picnic on a cloth on the beach.
“Don’t you tan?” asked Agatha, looking at his white, smooth chest.
“I never tan. I don’t know why. Thick English skin or something. What goodies do we have? Dear me. I hope you’ve brought an English can opener for that salmon, Aggie. The Turkish Cypriot ones don’t work.”
But Agatha had only a local can opener, which ran around the rim of the tin of salmon without piercing it at all.
“There’s bread and cheese and things,” she said defiantly. “And I got some cakes.”
“There’s a restaurant there.”
“Oh, all right,” grumbled Agatha. “I’ll pack all this up again and have it for supper.”
She then set about performing the tricky business of drying herself and slipping off her swim-suit under her dress and hauling on her knickers over wet and salty thighs. Charles wrapped a large beach towel around his waist and removed his swimming-trunks and put on his underwear and trousers and then a shirt without any of the struggles Agatha was enduring.
They put the unwanted picnic and swim-suits in the car and headed for the restaurant.
Charles ordered wine despite Agatha’s protests that sooner or later they would be stopped and breathalysed. “Not if we keep within the speed limit,” said Charles. “Anyway, we can have a sleep on the beach afterwards.”
“You forget why we came,” said Agatha. “To go look for the others.”
“Later. Let’s not spoil the day.”
Agatha ate kebab and looked out onto the beach. It was a tranquil scene. The water was crystal-clear. She wondered where they put their sewage. Then a sudden longing for James hit her like a wave. How could he go off, just like that? Had she ever really known him?
“He’ll probably turn up in Carsely sooner or later, after playing Lawrence of Arabia or whatever he’s doing,” said Charles, guessing her thoughts.
“You can’t play Lawrence of Arabia in Turkey,” said Agatha with a watery smile. “I don’t want to eat any more. May I have a cigarette?”
“Of course. And give me one as well.”
“Don’t you ever buy any for yourself?”
“No, that would mean I would have to admit to myself that I smoke. Besides, smokers are usually all too eager to pass out their fags. Make another addict like themselves.”
“I shouldn’t give you one.”
He leaned forwards and extracted one from her packet and ht it up.
“So we’ll order coffee,” he said, “and go and find your suspects. Isn’t it peculiar the way they all seemed to have worked each other up to the idea that your interference could cause trouble? Maybe one of them wanted you warned off.”
“Maybe. I’m frightened someone will have a go at me again. One of them is taking me seriously. James shouldn’t have left me to face this alone.”
“I’m here.”
“True, but…”
“I lack gravitas. Bad-tempered people always carry weight.”
“James is not bad-tempered!”
“If you say so.”
Agatha thought of James. She had to admit that he had been bad-tempered since she arrived, but finding yourself in the middle of a murder was enough to make anyone bad-tempered, she thought defensively, to keep the idea at bay that it was her unwelcome pursuit of him that had turned him nasty.
“I suppose you expect me to pay for this,” said Agatha.
“Yes, thank you.”
“You are a cheapskate.”
“No, Aggie, I am your twentieth-century man. You wanted equal rights and that means equal expenses. If you stop bitching fü take you to dinner tonight.”
“James might be back.”
“Dream on. Now the path from this beach only leads to the old harbour. I had a look at your guidebook. We’d better drive round.”
“No sleep?”
“No, I’m awake now.”
They drove round to the site and parked outside the old amphitheatre. A bearded guide in a battered sports jacket was just about to take a party around. “I am Ali Ozel,” he introduced himself after waving them over. “You may join my tour if you like.”
“That’s very kind of you,” said Charles, “but we’re looking for some friends.”
“I may have seen them,” said Ali. “What do they look like?”
“One woman, middle-aged, scrawny, arrogant, high commanding voice, with four men. One her husband, thin and sallow, quiet; friend Harry, farmer, elderly, thinning white hair; Angus, Scottish and proud of it, looks a bit like Harry; Trevor, fair hair, thick lips, beer belly, ghastly pink from the sun, truculent.”
Ali’s eyes twinkled with amusement. “You did say they were friends of yours? I did see some people like that about an hour ago, but I haven’t seen them since.”
“Okay, thanks anyway. We’ll look for them.” Charles took Agatha’s arm and led her into the ruins of Salamis.
They ploughed their way through the ruins. Charles was particularly impressed by an open-plan latrine with seating for forty-four people. The ruins were bright with tourists in multi-coloured holiday clothes. The sun was dazzling. Agatha would just think she had seen her quarry, and then the group would turn out to be totally different people.
The tall columns of the gymnasium stood proudly up against the blue sky. Charles appeared to have forgotten why they were at Salamis and enthusiastically took control of Agatha’s guidebook, wandering here and there, admiring everything.
There are a great many ruins at Salamis and they cover a wide area. Agatha began to become weary and would have liked to sit down somewhere in the shade and wait for Charles, but she did not want to be alone, not with Olivia and the others possibly somewhere around.
They trudged ever onwards until Charles consulted the guidebook and said he would like to see the tombs of the kings. A map showed them to be situated on the other side of the main Famagusta road. “Better walk back and take the car,” said Charles.
They walked back to the car-park and then drove back out to the road and so to the tombs. They bought tickets at a museum which was more of a dusty hut with replicas of a chariot and a hearse. They left the museum and walked towards the tombs.
The nearest tomb has a broad shallow ramp leading to the burial chamber with the skeletons of two horses at the entrance, where the animals were cremated after pulling the king to the burial chamber. The tombs where kings and nobles were buried dated from the seventh and eighth centuries B.C. They were buried along with their horses and chariots, favourite slaves, food, wine and other necessities for the afterlife.
It was when they had got to the fiftieth tomb of the hundred and fifty tombs and just when Agatha thought she could not walk a step farther that Ali Ozel appeared with his tourists.
“I saw your friends,” he said.
“Where?” demanded Agatha.
“Back towards the gymnasium. You said five of them, but there were only four, looking for a fifth, who had disappeared.”
“We’d better go,” said Agatha to Charles, all her energy renewed.
They walked back to the car-park and drove to the gymnasium. There were only a few tourists, but no Olivia, husband or friends. The pillars were beginning to cast long black shadows across the gymnasium.
“Back out to the car-park,” said Charles. “We might just catch them.”
But at the entrance, before they reached the car-park, they could hear Olivia’s voice questioning another guide. “Haven’t you see him?”
Agatha and Charles went up to her. Her husband George, Trevor and Angus stood a little way away.
“What’s up?” asked Agatha.
Olivia swung round. “We lost Harry.”
“Wasn’t he with you?”
“Of course he was. But he wandered off towards the beach. You know, there’s a Roman villa and then a crossroads with a track leading down to the sea. He said he wanted to see what kind of beach it was. We then all agreed to go different ways to look at different things and then meet up in the gymnasium. When he didn’t come back, we went down to the beach but there was no sign of him. We all spread out and began to search and agreed to meet up in the gymnasium again, which we did, but none of us has been able to find Harry, and I’m tired and don’t want to be stuck here all day.”
“You are the murder people,” said the guide suddenly. “I see you on television.”
Olivia ignored him, but Agatha saw the guide go into his little office and pick up the phone.
“We’ll try the beach again for you,” said Charles. “Maybe you missed him.”
“But that’s miles,” groaned Agatha.
“Then you wait here,” said Charles. “I’ll go alone.”
“No, I’m coming with you.” Agatha did not want to be left with them in case one of them tried to murder her.
They set off as the sun fell lower in the sky. There were few tourists now. Ah passed them and shouted, “Any luck?” They shook their heads and pressed on until they came to the crossroads.”
“It should be easier to search now,” said Charles. “Most people will have left the beach.”
They almost ran down the narrow road to the beach, Agatha forgetting her fatigue in her desire to find Harry.
The beach was nearly deserted. A yacht bobbed out on the water. The sea was calm, with only little waves rippling in across the sand.
And then, along the beach, they saw a lone figure, lying prone. The top half of the body was mostly covered by a newspaper, its pages rising and falling in the slight breeze.
Charles pointed. “Do you think that’s him?”
“May as well go and see.” Agatha headed along the beach and Charles followed.
They both stood together at last, looking down.
“Seems to be asleep,” said Charles. “Do you think those are Harry’s feet?”
“I don’t know what Harry’s feet look like,” said Agatha. “Here goes.”
She bent down and gently drew away the newspaper which was covering the man’s face and top half of his body, noting that it was Kibris, a Turkish Cypriot paper.
Agatha knew immediately, before she saw the broad red stain on the front of Harry’s shirt, that he was dead. The face was as lifeless as clay. Someone had closed his eyes.
All the frights she had endured, the two attempts on her life, the long hot day and now this made Agatha feel sick, and dizzy and faint. She sat down on the sand and put her head between her knees.
“Stay there,” said Charles urgently. “I’ll get help.”
So Agatha sat where she was, beside the dead body of Harry. A woman passed her, leading a small child by the hand. She stopped and turned back and stared open-mouthed at the dead body, at the gruesome red stain on the shirt. Then she scooped up the child and ran off down the beach, screaming at the top of her voice.
Agatha stayed, unmoving. Her mind seemed to be a numb blank. In the distance, she heard the wail of police sirens. She felt very tired.
Then she was dimly aware of being surrounded by people, of Charles’s saying sharply, “Can’t you see she’s in shock? I was with her when we found the body. I’ll answer any questions.”
He helped Agatha to her feet. She blinked and stared around in a dazed way.
Pamir was there, his face grim. “If you will just step aside for a moment with Sir Charles,” he said to Agatha. “Only a few preliminary questions.”
With Charles’s arm around her waist, Agatha walked up the beach.
“Now we will sit down here,” said Pamir. “You first, Sir Charles.”
So Charles painstakingly went through their day, ending up with the finding of Harry.
In a dreary little voice, Agatha then told the same story.
“You may go,” said Pamir. “I will call on you later.”
“I’ll be with Mrs. Raisin at the villa,” said Charles.
Agatha wanted to cry out that James might be there, but felt too weak and shaky to protest.
Charles said he would drive. She fell asleep on the road back to Kyrenia, awaking only when they stopped outside The Dome.
“Wait there,” said Charles. “I’ll get my stuff.”
He’s going to move into the villa, thought Agatha with a stab of panic. She still cherished a hope that James might be there waiting for her.
Bright images of the day crowded her head-the ruins, the ancient brutality of the tombs, Harry’s still, dead face and closed eyes facing up to the sun. Who had closed his eyes? The killer, no doubt.
She fumbled in her handbag for a cigarette and ht it. What were they doing in Carsely, sleepy Carsely that she used to despise for its lack of excitement? She thought longingly of the vicarage, where Mrs. Bloxby would produce tea and scones and they would sit by the fire and chat about safe and secure village matters. Would she ever see her home again? Or would the killer, who had tried to get rid of her twice and failed, be successful on the third attempt? She shivered, suddenly glad that she was not going to be alone in the villa. Damn James for a heartless, selfish beast. He should be there to protect her. Yes, he hadn’t even thought of that! Two attempts on her Ufe and he had cleared off, leaving her alone. He didn’t care a rap for her or he would not have gone. Forget the analysis-paralysis and look at the footwork. She could not possibly imagine that a man who had any feeling for her at all could leave her in such peril.
Charles came out of the hotel, carrying two expensive suitcases which he put in the boot.
He slid in behind the steering wheel.
“You’re very kind,” volunteered Agatha.
“Think nothing of it,” said Charles. “You’re saving me a hotel bill.”
The rest of the evening went by like a bad dream. Pamir came at eight o’clock to grill both of them again. His anger seemed to have mounted. Outside, the press waited eagerly. The murder on the Greek side was old hat.
At last Pamir left.
“We can’t go out anywhere without being plagued by the press,” said Charles. “They will keep banging on the door. There they go again. “
But a voice shouted, “British High Commission here.”
Charles went to let a small, dapper man in, blinking in the sudden blast of flashes from press cameras.
He introduced himself as Mr. Urquhart and advised them, unnecessarily, as Charles acidly pointed out, to cooperate with the police. Then he began to question Agatha closely about James Lacey. Where was he? Turkey? Was she sure? He could still be on the island.
“If he were,” said Agatha, “then he certainly would not be at Salamis, murdering poor old Harry Tembleton.”
“This is all most unfortunate,” said Mr. Urquhart. “The police were about to release Mrs. Wilcox’s body and let you all go home, but in the light of this latest murder they are certainly not going to let any of you go.”
He then questioned Agatha about James again, but Agatha would only repeat that James had said he was going to Turkey. She did not mention anything about his investigations into Mustafa.
At last Mr. Urquhart departed the villa in a fusillade of flashes. From outside the villa came the nasal voice of a television reporter talking to a camera.
“Do you want to go to bed?” asked Charles. “Or shall we eat first?”
“There’s nothing much left in the house,” said Agatha. “And I don’t feel like the picnic stuff. The phone’s ringing again. Maybe I should answer it. It might be James.”
“And pigs might fly. I’m hungry. Those few little kebabs at lunch-time didn’t go very far. Tell you what. If we go out the back and shin over the garden wall, we’ll find ourselves in the fish-restaurant car-park. I fancy some of those nice little red fish like mullet.”
“The press will see us.”
“They can’t, surely.” He opened the back door, which was next to a small laundry-room. “Come here, Aggie. All we need to do is sneak round the corner of the building and over the wall. They’ll never see us. That great hedge of mimosa screens us.”
The idea of being with other people in a crowded restaurant appealed to Agatha.
They went out, gently closing the door behind them, and climbed over the low wall which separated the villa garden from the car-park.
“Now let’s just hope none of the press decides to come in for dinner,” said Charles. “But I think they’ll stand outside the villa for a bit and then go back to The Dome to join the others who are trying to talk to Olivia and George. Who knows? Olivia may give another press conference.”
“What we haven’t thought about is who on earth would want to bump off Harry?”
“Harry must have found out who did it,” said Agatha. “I suppose it will turn out he was murdered in the same way as Rose.”
“Probably. And someone must have been desperate. If it was any of the remaining four, then one of them must have been frightened enough to bump off Harry, knowing that now they really would be suspected and hopes of some mad stray Turk losing his head, as in the murder of Rose, just wouldn’t be considered any more.”
“I’ve been thinking about George Debenham,” said Charles, deboning a small fish with neat and surgical precision. “Why should he flirt with Rose? He doesn’t look the type.”
“In the information on them I took down from Bill Wong, it turns out that George suffered heavy losses on the stock exchange. Did I tell you that? And Rose had money.”
“But they had just met. I mean, Rose would hardly say, ‘Look, I’m rich. Stick with me and I’ll see you all right.’”
“She might not have been blunt like that,” said Agatha slowly. “But she might have made some jokey reference to being loaded. No, I think Trevor’s jealousy and rage are the cause of these murders. You said Trevor wanted to punch Harry because Harry called Rose a slut.”
“Do you want to go to the hotel after dinner and see how they’re getting on?”
Agatha repressed a shudder. “After we eat, I just want to go to bed. I’ve never felt like giving up like this before. I have a longing to go home.”
“If you’ve finished, now’s the time,” said Charles, looking out through the restaurant doors. “The press have arrived. Quickly.”
He threw some money pn the table. They had been sitting on the terrace and both went over the edge into the scrub below and made their way cautiously around to the car-park, Agatha hoping that the report of the poisonous snakes keeping to the mountains was true.
They gained the villa without being accosted. “First bath for me,” said Agatha with a yawn.
“We sharing a bed?”
“No, Charles. I am too old for casual sex.”
“Well, if you change your mind, you know where to find me.”
Agatha awoke during the night shivering and found a quilt and put it over her. The weather was beginning to change. The long summer was over.
A police car arrived the next morning to take them to police headquarters in Nicosia. Agatha groaned. “What can he possibly ask us that he hasn’t asked us already?”
“I didn’t tell him about Trevor trying to punch Harry,” said Charles. “I think I should. I mean, I hardly know that bunch and don’t like them.”
“I think that’s why Pamir keeps on at us,” said Agatha wearily. “He gets a little more each time.”
Olivia, George, Angus and Trevor were waiting at police headquarters to be interviewed when they arrived. George looked white and strained under his tan; Trevor, stunned; Angus had aged terribly; and Olivia for once was without any social talk or animation.
They looked up dully when Agatha and Charles entered, but did not say anything.
Agatha and Charles sat down and waited. After half an hour of total silence Pamir arrived, nodded to them and went into the inner room. “Like waiting for the doctor,” said Charles.
George Debenham was summoned first. The morning dragged on, the bright sunlight çutside seeming to mock the grim dreariness within.
Agatha was called last.
“Now, Mrs. Raisin…” began Pamir.
“I know, I know,” said Agatha wearily. “I’ve to tell you all over again, starting at the beginning.”
“Not yet. Do you, Mrs. Raisin, not think that you might have precipitated this murder?”
“How? Why?”
“I gather from Sir Charles that you went to Salamis for the sole purpose of finding the others and continuing your amateur investigation.”
Yes… That’s true. But I didn’t see any of them until after the murder had been committed.”
“But they might have seen you.”
“So what made that different to all the other days they had seen me?” said Agatha impatiently. “And if it hadn’t been for me and Charles, you might not have found the body until the next day and who knows, by that time the murderer might have returned and shoved the body in the sea, forged a note from Harry saying he had left on a fishing boat or something like James, and you would have been none the wiser.”
“We have asked everyone who was on the beach and in the ruins yesterday to come forward. Someone might have seen something. So begin at the beginning…”
So Agatha did, vivid memories of the heat and the ruins coming back into her mind.
Then she said, “If one of them murdered Harry, he must have sneaked back to the beach when they split up. And when they were supposed to be searching for him why didn’t they find him on the beach?”
“They say that after Mr. Tembleton went off to the beach, that they arranged to meet in the gymnasium in an hour. Mrs. Debenham went to look at the basilica; Mr. Debenham said he simply wanted to go back to the gymnasium, sit down and rest and wait for the others; Mr. Wilcox said he wanted to be on his own for a bit; and Mr. Angus King went to look at the tombs. All say they searched the beach, but it was still full of tourists and they did not spot Mr. Tembleton.”
“So it could have been any of them,” said Agatha.
Pamir surveyed her and then leaned back in his chair. “Or you, Mrs. Raisin.”
“Me? Why? I barely knew them. I didn’t know any of them before I came here.”
He leaned forward. “How can I put this? At your age, Mrs. Raisin, ladies can go a little unhinged. It seems to me that since you gave up your career, you have had a desire for prominence and attention, which is why you turned to amateur detective investigation. Perhaps not having any more murders to investigate, you decided to make some of your own.”
“That’s outrageous,” spluttered Agatha.
“Perhaps. But murder is outrageous. Your own behaviour has been erratic.”
“But someone tried to kill me-twice!”
“There are no witnesses to either attempt. We have only your own word for that. You follow James Lacey to Cyprus because everyone seems to know you are romantically interested in him and yet, after moving in with him, you accept a dinner date with an Israeli business man and who knows where that might have led had not his wife turned up, and then you sleep with Sir Charles. I know this is the permissive society. Such behaviour, however, in a middle-aged lady from an English village is most odd.”
“How dare you!” panted Agatha.
“I dare because I am very angry. We have a very low crime rate in north Cyprus. Tourists come here because it is still the safest place in the Mediterranean and I am going to accuse all of you of everything and keep you here until these murders are solved. We have respectable British residents here, Mrs. Raisin, who contribute to the cultural life of the island. They cause no trouble. Until your arrival, we have never suffered anything like this.”
“You are insulting. You are looking in the wrong direction. What about Trevor Wilcox? His business is on the skids and Rose wouldn’t bail him out. He’ll be all right now. He probably inherits her money. And what of George Debenham? He’s in debt as well.”
“How did you find this out, Mrs. Raisin?”
Damn him, thought Agatha. She could not betray Bill Wong.
“They told me,” she muttered.
“They just told you!”
“Something like that.”
“I do not believe you,” said Pamir. “I think somebody in England found out the information for you.”
Sweating now, Agatha hoped the manager of The Dome had not told the police about her fax to police headquarters in Mircester. She wanted to run away from this room, from this inexorable questioning, from the humiliating accusation that she was a batty sensation-seeker driven mad by the menopause.
Pamir then made her tell her story again. If I had anything to hide, it would certainly have come out during this remorseless questioning, thought Agatha.
At last she was free to go. The others, apart from Charles, had disappeared.
“You look awful,” said Charles. “Rough time?”
“It was grim, He accused me of the murders.”
“Why?”
“He thinks I am a sensation-seeker driven potty by the menopause, and not having any murders here to investigate, decided to manufacture some of my own.”
Charles’s eyes crinkled up with laughter. “That’s funny.”
“It’s not funny at all,” said Agatha furiously.
A secretary came out and told them a car was ready to take them home. They travelled in silence, Agatha thinking that she really must find out who murdered Rose and Harry or she would be damned forever as a madwoman.
At the villa, where the press were fortunately absent, Agatha said she would like to lie down and read.
She tried to concentrate on a novel about the complexities of broken marriages, but finally felt too restless to go on reading.
When she emerged from her room, it was to find that Charles had gone off somewhere. Not wanting to be on her own in the villa, she took her own rented car and drove into Kyrenia and parked behind the post office. She walked down the main street looking at the shops, and then saw the turning to the left where she had first pursued James and met Bilal. She turned along the street, wondering suddenly if Bilal was working at his dry-cleaning and laundry business.
He left his work when he saw her hovering in the doorway. “Mrs. Raisin!” he cried. “I was just trying to call you. How are you?”
“Shattered,” said Agatha.
“It is the terrible business,” said Bilal. “Coffee?”
“Yes, please.”
He placed two chairs and a wooden box to act as a table outside his shop and went to the café next door and came back with a tray on which were two cups of Turkish coffee and two glasses of water.
“The owners have been phoning me and Jackie from Australia,” said Bilal. “They would like Mr. Lacey to call them.”
“I meant to phone you about that. Mr. Lacey has gone to Turkey. If I’m still here after the month’s rent has run out, I’ll pay you for another month.”
“Why has Mr. Lacey gone? I thought none of you was supposed to leave. “
“He just took off,” said Agatha. Her eyes suddenly filled with tears. Oh, James, how could you? Where are you?
Bilal handed her a clean handkerchief and looked at her sympathetically while she blew her nose, so sympathetically that Agatha found herself telling him everything.
“The police here are very good,” said Bilal. “Just like British police, Mrs. Raisin.”
“Agatha.”
“Agatha, then, why don’t you just take a holiday. I mean swim and see the sights and forget about trying to find out who did it. Your own life seems to be in danger. Just keep away from them all.”
Agatha gave him a watery smile, warmed and comforted by his concern.
“I think I might just take your advice, Bilal.”
“And come to our place one evening for dinner. Jackie’s a good cook.”
“Thank you. And now I really must go.” They both rose.
“It will be all right. It may seem like a nightmare now, but it will be all right, you’ll see.”
Bilal smiled warmly at her, and moved by his friendship, Agatha put her arms round him and hugged him and gave him a kiss on the cheek.
And then, as Agatha turned to walk away, she saw Jackie standing a little way away down the street, staring at her, and behind her stood Pamir.
And Agatha blushed, suddenly aware of how that affectionate embrace must look to Pamir, let alone Bilal’s wife. She walked towards them.
“I was just talking to your husband,” she said to Jackie.
“So I saw,” said Jackie drily.
“Looking for me?” Agatha asked Pamir with what she felt was an awful, false guilty brightness.
“No, I was on my way to speak to your landlords. I will call on you later, perhaps.”
Agatha trailed off. Pamir would be confirmed in his suspicions that she was some sort of sex-mad, peculiar female.
Her mind was just beginning to accept Bilal’s advice as she walked up to The Grapevine, deciding to have a drink at the bar. The bar was empty, the lunch-time rush being over. Agatha realized she was hungry and ordered a chicken sandwich and a glass of wine and sat down at one of the tables.
And then Trevor came in. At first he did not see Agatha. He asked for a whisky in a hoarse voice and then, turning from the bar with his glass in his hand, he recognized her.
He walked forwards and demanded, “Are you following me?”
“How can I be following you when I was here first?” demanded Agatha.
Now that she had decided to forget about the case, she was dismayed when he sat down next to her. The tables were out in the restaurant garden among the flowers. Sun slanted down through the leaves of a jasmine bush, casting fluttering shadows over Trevor’s pink, bloated face.
“This is a bad business,” he said.
“Yes,” said Agatha, wishing he would go away.
“I mean, why Harry?” he went on.
Agatha’s good resolutions disappeared as she asked, “You tried to punch Harry, didn’t you, because he called Rose a slut?”
“I don’t remember,” he said, shaking his head. “I drink so much, get these big blanks.”
“Why would Harry call her a slut?”
Agatha held on to the table-top, prepared to flee if Trevor lost his temper, but all his usual truculence was absent.
“He probably felt for Olivia.”
“Did Olivia think her husband was after Rose? I mean, was there any reason for her to think so?”
“Could’ve been. Rose liked to flirt a bit. That was all.”
“How did you meet Rose?”
“I was with my wife at this road-house outside Cambridge-that’s my first wife, Maggie. It was our wedding anniversary. Maggie and I had been married for twenty-five years. Got married when I was eighteen. Well, we was sort of Darby and Joan, set in our ways. Got one boy, left home to work abroad, just me and Maggie left. Good housekeeper. Very quiet. Bit fat. Grey hair. Never went out winter or summer without gloves on. We was in the dining-room, but there was this long bar running along the edge of it and Rose was sitting up on a bar-stool.
“I can ‘member that evening as if it was yesterday. She was wearing a short dress and she had all those diamonds on.
“‘Look at all those rocks on that woman,’ I says to Maggie. And Maggie says they’re bound to be paste. Rose saw us looking at her and she asks the barman something. I had told the restaurant to give us a good table because it was our wedding anniversary and the barman must have known, for next thing is that Rose sends a bottle of champagne over to our table.”
“When was this?” asked Agatha.
“Three years ago.”
“I thought you’d been married a long time.”
“To Maggie, not Rose. Anyway, Maggie was very flustered and flattered and asked her over. I’d never met anyone like Rose. She sort of sparkled. She seemed to have a lot of money and travelled a lot. She asked me what I did and I told her about the plumbing business. I bragged a bit and said I was making a fortune. Maggie kicked me under the table, but I didn’t want to let the side down in front of a rich woman. Maggie went off to powder her nose and Rose hands me a card with her phone number, winks at me, and says, ‘Why don’t you call round and see me?’
“When Maggie came back towards the table, I seemed to see her for the first time, all dumpy and those damn gloves and she had thick specs that gave her a dopey look, and I thought, I’ve worked hard all my life, I deserve a bit of fun.”
Trevor sighed. “I called her the very next day and we started an affair. I couldn’t think of anything but Rose, couldn’t see anything but Rose. So I asked Maggie for a divorce.”
There was a long silence.
“How did Maggie take it?” asked Agatha gently.
“She never could sleep proper. Got pills from the doctor. Took the lot.”
Agatha looked at him in horror. “She killed herself?”
He nodded. “My son, Wayne, he hasn’t spoken to me since the funeral. He said Rose had changed me into a monster. But all I could feel was free at last. I’d spent too much trying to impress Rose and the business began to suffer. Rose found out about it before we came here. By that time she’d got Angus in tow. She liked money, did Rose. I was terrified she’d leave me. And now she’s gone.”
His pink face crumpled and fat tears ran down his cheeks.
He took out a scrubby handkerchief and dried his cheeks. “It’s like living in a nightmare. Rose was awful. She liked manipulating people. She liked her bit of power. But I just don’t know how to go on without her.”
Agatha made soothing noises. She wondered whether to offer to buy him another drink but then decided more alcohol might make him truculent.
“How did your friendship with Olivia and George start up?” she asked.
“That was Rose. Before we went for that swim off the yacht, she muttered to me, ’Snobby lot, but I’ll soon sort them out.’”
“Could she have met any of them before?”
“Apart from Angus, no.”
“Is… is Angus, I mean, was Angus in love with her?”
“Angus was safe. He adored Rose and he respected our marriage. I didn’t mind Angus.” He looked around bleakly. “I’ve got to go.” He got up abruptly and strode out of the restaurant.
Agatha finished her half-eaten sandwich and asked for another glass of wine, thinking over what Trevor had told her. She suddenly wished James were with her, so that she could discuss it with him.
At last she left and walked down to the car-park. The sun was setting and the mournful call to prayer rang out from a minaret. She got into her car and sat for a moment.
She did not want to return to the villa, to Charles. Charles had been kind and she was glad of his company, but she blamed her night with him for having prompted James to leave.
She drove west out of Kyrenia, but passed the road which led to the villa and continued on through Lapta and then ever westwards and up a winding road into the mountains, driving steadily, not knowing where she was going, only knowing she was reluctant to return to the villa.
She reached the village of Sadrazamkoy. She was down from the mountains now, and beyond the village the road degenerated, becoming broken and in need of repair as it wound through flat, scrubby country. She drove on until she found herself at Cape Kormakiti, or decided that was where she was after switching on the car light and consulting her guidebook. She climbed out of the car and walked towards the rocks. A navigation light shone on a rusty gantry. The waves crashing over the rocks caused the rock to emit a weird clanging sound, like the tolling of the passing bell for the dead at the church in Carsely, thought Agatha with a shiver.
Then she realized her real need to get away from everyone came from simple fear. Someone was trying to kill her and she was terrified.
And even with James gone and her life in a mess, she felt that she had so much to lose: her home, her cats, her friends in the village. She could not regret the driving hard-bitten years building up a successful public-relations firm, for she was now comfortably off.
The very fact that she had admitted to herself that she was frightened made the fear begin to ebb. She turned back to her rented car. They would all know the number plate now and be able to recognize it. It might be an idea to swap it for another.
She drove back over the mountains and east to Kyrenia, again without stopping at the villa. Mehmet at Atlantic Cars was just closing up his small office when she arrived.
“I would like to change the car,” said Agatha.
“What’s up with the one you’ve got?”
Agatha looked at him thoughtfully. She did not want to go into a long explanation about how someone was trying to murder her and so she wanted another car that would not be immediately recognizable as the one she drove.
“Ashtray full?” she suggested.
He grinned and shrugged, as if inured to the vagaries and whims of tourists. He selected a car key, changed the paperwork and led her to a car across the road.
Feeling more positive than she had felt all day, Agatha drove back to the villa at last.
To her surprise, there was no sign of Charles, nor did he seem to have left a note.
She made herself coffee and a sandwich, not feeling very hungry. She then went upstairs, undressed and went to bed. She began to read but could not really concentrate.
She found herself missing Charles and reluctantly remembering his love-making, what she could remember. It had been warm and pleasant. It was a pity she was so much older than he.
At last, she switched out the light after looking at the clock. Midnight. Where was Charles? She turned on her side and fell asleep.
Agatha awoke with a start as she heard the door opening downstairs. She was about to call out, “Charles!” when she heard the sound of a female giggle and Charles’s voice, saying, “Shhh! You’ll awaken Aggie.”
“Who’s Aggie?” whispered the other voice.
“My aunt,” said Charles.
Agatha lay as stiff as a board. She heard them both come up the stairs, giggling and whispering. Then they went into Charles’s room. More whispering, more giggling and then the unmistakable sounds of love-making.
Agatha put the pillow over her head to try to block out the sounds.
In the morning, Agatha awoke and dressed in shorts and a T-shirt and went reluctantly downstairs. She had no right to complain about Charles’s making love to anyone else, and yet it was the very fact he had described her as his aunt which had hurt so dreadfully, had made her feel old.
Charles was sitting at a table in the garden, as smooth and tailored as ever.
He hailed her with a cheery greeting of “Where did you get to yesterday?”
“Here and there,” said Agatha, sitting down. “Where is she?”
“Who?”
“The woman you bedded last night.”
“Oh, her. Long gone.”
“Who was she?”
“I went out round the clubs and pubs to look for you and picked her up. English tourist. Emily. Very nice.”
“Will you be seeing her again?”
“Shouldn’t think so. She gets her plane home today.”
“Easy come, easy go, as far as you’re concerned, Charles.”
“Want some coffee, Aggie?”
“Yes, please.”
Agatha sat under the orange tree and stared out to sea. It was a clear day and the Turkish mainland was a thin line on the horizon. She felt diminished. She had begun to think she had meant more than an easy lay to Charles, but obviously not.
He came back with the coffee and put it down in front of her. “Why so grim, Aggie?”
“I heard myself being described last night as your aunt.”
“Had to. If she was going to actually meet you, I would have had to say you were my sister. You’re too glam to be an aunt.”
“You’re soft-soaping me.”
“A little bit. Cheer up. Where did you go?”
Agatha told him about her conversation with Trevor.
“Still think he did it?” asked Charles.
“I wouldn’t like to think so now, funnily enough. It was an awful story. Poor Maggie. It was those gloves he mentioned. I kept thinking about his first wife and her whole nice, orderly life being shattered.”
“People think high tragedy belongs to the Greeks and Shakespeare, but mark my words, Aggie, it’s alive and well in the suburbs of England.”
“I still think he did it,” said Agatha, “and I think he’s on the point of cracking up and confessing.”
“And you want to be the one to whom he confesses?”
“Not any more, Charles. I’m sick of the whole thing.”
“Good girl. Let’s go to The Dome for a swim in the pool and have lunch. Let’s not bother speaking to any of them any more.”
“What about the press?” asked Agatha.
“We can’t let the press run our lives. ‘No comment’ and a smile will get rid of them. Cheer up, I have a feeling it will soon all be over.”