Honeymoon with Death

by Vivian Conroy

  Jasper hitched a brow. “Involved?”

  “Yes. If I had told you something, anything, you would have asked more questions.”

  “As I am about to do now.’

  “Why?” Achilles leaned forward. “You already know about the young man, the death, the little girl witnessing it. I wasn’t there that afternoon. I know nothing. What can I possibly tell you?’

  “Perhaps why your brother hates you and wants to implicate you in this thing?” Jasper leaned back and eyed him. “I am no fool. I know it when a man tries to play me. It was very clever with the letter he allegedly received recently, about Arthur Reynolds.’

  Jasper paused a moment, apparently to establish that he did know about the letter, and as Stephanos had mentioned it in passing, as a reason for his renewed interest in the old case, Achilles nodded curtly.

  Jasper said with a little smile, “But he didn’t receive that letter. He made it himself.”

  “Stephanos made that letter? Why? What for? And how can you even know that he made it?”

  “He made a mistake with the envelope. He addressed it to himself to make it look like someone from back then had found out he had led the investigation, or should we say, had not done much to have any kind of investigation as her alleged killer was already dead, and had sent the letter to him as a warning. But try and picture it. If someone who was pursuing the case now had found out about him and wanted a letter to reach him, he or she would have sent it to the police station where he had worked at the time, and that police station would have passed it on to the station where he is now. But the letter came to his home. Now, you tell me how someone who only knew the name of an officer in charge at the time would have found out his address today—? And I discovered he only just moved into that new flat. He didn’t live there before.”

  Achilles didn’t like Jasper’s appraising stare. “If he created that letter himself, I know nothing about it. So why ask me?”

  “I didn’t ask you about the letter. I asked you about his reason for implicating you in the crime. Making you my translator, knowing you would either have to tell the truth about your acquaintance with Mrs Ramsforth’s parents, the murdered woman, or lie to me and then later look suspicious. The letter ensured I knew the victim’s name and could look into his past so I could not overlook the connection between the villa, the family living there and you, his own brother.”

  Achilles’s coffee was brought and he waved off the solicitous waiter impatiently. He said to Jasper, “I have no idea what my brother wants.”

  “I asked you before how you knew Eureka was stabbed. I had not told you. Did your brother tell you?”

  “Next thing you will be asking me if it’s possible he stabbed her so the old case would be reopened?’

  “Is it possible?”

  Achilles jumped to his feet and bashed the table. His coffee sloshed over the rim of its cup. “I need not listen to you incriminate my family! We have a name in this region. An untainted record. And I want to keep it that way.” He reached out to take the paperwork back, but Jasper placed a hand on it.

  Achilles hissed, “You will be sorry you did this. I’m not a man to toy with.’

  “Is that also why Mrs Ramsforth’s mother had to die? Because you believed she admired you but at some point you found out she didn’t admire you in quite the way you had imagined it to be?”

  Achilles felt like grabbing the damask table cloth and pulling it away so all the china and crystal would shatter on the floor. But he realised in time that showing his temper might serve to further turn the inspector’s attention on to him. He had already come too close.

  He stepped back and nodded as if he was saying goodbye after a perfectly normal exchange. “Have a pleasant evening, Inspector.’

  He felt Jasper’s eyes burning into his back as he walked to the door. He was worried for a few heartbeats the inspector would come after him to grab his arm and say he couldn’t leave again. That he would be handed over to the police for questioning and possibly be charged with a connection to the murders.

  Murders plural.

  It would be madness if he was handled that way. His own brother was the chief of police. A local would understand at once that he would never be charged, let alone convicted.

  But with a sinking feeling Achilles Kyrioudis realised that Jasper was no local.

  And that Stephanos might not want to protect him at all.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Damaris Ramsforth walked around the walled garden, stopping every now and then to look about her. She said to Mrs Valentine, “I remember now what grew here before. Like I’ve seen it just the other day. Isn’t that odd? I couldn’t remember for all those years.”

  Mrs Valentine said, “I’ve heard it before that people who suffer from memory loss after a traumatic experience do sometimes regain their memories.”

  “Has someone tried to make me forget?” Damaris looked at her. “Jasper said something about a psychiatrist who treated me after my mother died.” She said died, not was killed, to keep the horror of it away from her. Deep inside of her she knew and it was alive like a burning pain eating her, but she didn’t have to say it over and over. On the surface she could act like a normal person again, discussing it rationally.

  “I don’t know about that. But I do know that whatever that psychiatrist decided he had your best interest at heart.”

  Damaris felt bitterness well up inside her. “Like my father had my best interest at heart by leaving me with my aunt? I don’t understand why he did that. After a loss like that, a family should be together.”

  “He might not have known what to do with a grieving little girl.”

  “Or he blamed me somehow.” Damaris stared at the blossoming bushes. “I can’t help but feel he blamed me, or else he would have taken me in his arms and never let me go again. I was there when she died. I could have died as well. Why didn’t he keep and caress me like something precious? Why did he cast me off like something unwanted?”

  “I don’t know. But you must not torture yourself with these questions.”

  “I can never forget what I learned here. My life will not be the same again.” Damaris stopped and looked at her nurse. “It changed everything. Not just the past, also the present. I wonder” – she swallowed hard – “if Teddy ever loved me.”

  “Why would he not love you? He didn’t know a thing about your past. It’s so unfortunate you came here for your honeymoon.”

  “Unfortunate? Coincidence?’

  “Yes, of course, what else could it have been? He didn’t bring you here so you could discover that your mother died here.”

  “Why not? A solicitor came to inform me I have a vast sum of money to my name and, right after, Teddy asked for me to lend it to him.” Damaris clenched her hands, her nails digging into her palms. “Or no, I should tell it to you like it really was. I offered it to him, blind little fool that I was. I believed that a woman should stand by her husband. I offered him the money to make him happy again as he seemed so sad. But what if he… just wanted my money? I can’t get it out of my mind. Because he immediately believed I had murdered the old woman. Why? To get me convicted and hung?” Her voice cracked on the last word and she burst into tears.

  Mrs Valentine came over and patted her shoulder. “Now, now, don’t get yourself upset. You’ve had a few shocks since coming out here and it has affected the way you look at things. But you mustn’t think the worst of everyone. I’ve not seen much of Mr Ramsforth but he seems like a nice enough young man. This is a time of confusion for both of you. You should try to stand together, not let this break you apart.”

  Damaris took a deep breath. “You may be right. It would be terrible to end my marriage and return to London to my old job. If I can even get it back. Or I’d have to start over completely. And how?” She might have money now, but that didn’t seem appealing after having lost Teddy. She hadn’t wanted any money, just love. The feeling she belonged somewhere.

&n
bsp; She rubbed her face. Her eyes felt sandy, as if she had already rubbed them too long. She needed a good night’s sleep but her thoughts wouldn’t let her. They kept going back and forward asking: Didn’t my father love me? Why did he leave me? Has Teddy never loved me? Why doesn’t anybody love me?

  Mrs Valentine took her hand and said, “We’re going out for a nice vigorous walk. All this sitting about here is just making you feel even worse. Fetch your sun hat or whatever else you need and we’re on our way.”

  Damaris protested a few moments but then realised that the thought of being away from the hotel and the memories was wonderful. She ran inside to get her sun hat and her handbag.

  As she came back out, Mrs Valentine was talking to someone who had just come in. A short man bent down even further by old age. She just pointed him in the direction of Jasper’s room.

  “You speak such good Greek,” Damaris said. “How ever did you manage to learn it? It sounds so different to my ears.”

  “You start with one word, then another. Then a short sentence like “How do you do?” And before you know it, you can have a real conversation. My grammar is no doubt not perfect but people can understand me and I can understand them.” Mrs Valentine put her arm around Damaris’s shoulders. “I will teach you some as we walk. How about that?’

  “I would like that.”

  “Then we’ll get started right away.”

  Damaris glanced back over her shoulder. “Who was that man who wanted Jasper?”

  “An old doctor.”

  “Doctor? What does he want with Jasper?”

  “I don’t know, but we can leave that to Jasper. Now, repeat after me.”

  Damaris fell into step with Mrs Valentine and repeated the words she said. She suddenly had a spark of hope: that if she just took life like that, one word at a time, then another, one moment at a time, then another, she could survive this. She could make it through.

  * * *

  “Come in,” Jasper called, staring at the door in alertness at the sudden knock. He had been engrossed in the paperwork Achilles Kyrioudis had given him about the Hawtrees. Had the adopted Gideon killed his brother or at least lured him to his death, and had he killed again, out here, for the money he needed for his invention, his career, his future?

  Or was there an even deeper connection, something Jasper had only tentatively started to feel out?

  An old man shuffled in. He stood at the door, fingering his hat.

  “Yes?” Jasper asked.

  The man started to speak in rapid Greek.

  Jasper raised his hands. “Excuse me, but I can’t understand you. I need… Wait a moment.’

  He ran out of the door and looked in the walled garden for Mrs Valentine and Damaris Ramsforth. When he didn’t see them, he asked Medea where they were. Medea told him they had just left, apparently intending to go somewhere. They had both been wearing sun hats and carrying their handbags.

  Jasper sighed in frustration.

  “Can I help you translate?” Medea asked.

  Jasper looked her over. He wasn’t certain she had been telling him the full truth about her connection to Eureka and the past. Hadn’t he heard from Dupin that she had been arguing with the old woman? What about? Could he trust her to translate what the man really said?

  But what other choice did he have? His own Greek wasn’t sufficient.

  He gestured for her to come along

  In his room the old man stood at the table where Jasper had spread out his papers. For a moment Jasper felt a shock of dismay that he had left him alone with evidence. Then he told himself to stop being so paranoid.

  He asked Medea to ask the old man what he was here for. Again a rapid stream of Greek emerged.

  After a few moments, Medea said, “He has heard about the old matter of the English woman being murdered being looked into again. He has come out to tell you his part in it.”

  “In the murder?” Jasper asked, stunned.

  “No, in the investigation. He was the doctor who looked at the body.”

  “Ah. I thought that after the alleged killer was driven into the sea the police considered the case closed. But they did ask a doctor to look at the body of Mrs Ramsforth’s mother?”

  Medea shook her head. “My grandmother asked for it.”

  Jasper stood motionless. “Your grandmother?” he repeated.

  “Yes. Apparently she washed the body after the murder and dressed it for burial. She asked this doctor to look at it and tell her what the cause of death had been. She also wanted to know” – Medea flushed and looked at the floor – “if the woman had been with child when she died.”

  “I see. And why did she want to know about this?”

  Medea asked and the old man began to speak again, pacing the room, waving with his arms.

  After a few minutes, Medea gestured to him to wait and told Jasper: “My grandmother never believed that the young man who was driven into the sea was the killer. So she wanted to know how her mistress had been killed.”

  “Her mistress?” Jasper asked.

  “Yes. She worked at the villa.”

  Jasper narrowed his eyes. “And she knew her mistress was having an affair? Why else would she ask about her being with child?”

  “She thought jealousy might have been a motive for murder,” Medea explained. “But the doctor here says that he looked closely at the body and she was not with child.”

  “I see. So your grandmother’s assumption was wrong.” About a pregnancy, at least, but perhaps not about an affair.

  Jasper stared up at the ceiling.

  Achilles Kyrioudis teaching her about mythology.

  Arthur Reynolds stopping by to play with her children.

  And Stephanos Kyrioudis?

  Somehow Jasper was certain he had also been a part of it, or he need not go through so much trouble to involve his brother in Eureka’s murder and ensure Jasper found out about his part in the past.

  So which of those men had been the lover?

  If there had been a lover at all.

  He focused on the doctor again and asked, “Did you find anything peculiar about the body?”

  Medea translated and listened to the answer, which was again long, and delivered with much pathos. At last she said, “He said the wound in the chest of Mrs Ramsforth’s mother was made by a narrow blade. Smooth, not like a table knife. He wasn’t sure what it could have been. Perhaps a boning knife like fishermen carry to clean their catch. There was some…” – she seemed to search for the right word in English – “defilement in the wound? It wasn’t clean. There was something in it, something that had been on the weapon, perhaps.”

  “Something that could determine what kind of weapon it had been?” Jasper asked, excitement rushing through him. “For what it had been used previously?” That might provide a clue as to who the killer had been.

  “At the time he didn’t have the means to look closer, have it analysed. But he was certain it had come from the weapon.”

  “Dirt, like mud or earth?” Jasper suggested. His mind raced to think of options and connect them to the possible suspects.

  The old man shook his head. He explained with wide hand gestures.

  Medea said, “Something not natural.”

  “Could it have come from the inside of something in which the weapon had been kept? I mean, the killer must have brought it along with him.”

  The old man looked sad. He hung his head as he spoke.

  Medea said, “He excuses himself that he doesn’t know more. He didn’t have the means to look better and he was also told not to do anything with what he had discovered.’

  “He was told by whom?” Jasper asked sharply.

  A short question followed by a short answer, and then Medea said, looking uncomfortable, “The chief of police.”

  Stephanos Kyrioudis. Again.

  Jasper rubbed his forehead. Every piece he added to this puzzle seemed to shine the light on another suspect. He had been happy bui
lding his case against Gideon Hawtree for Eureka’s murder, on the beach, but he couldn’t connect it properly with the past.

  Was it possible that someone had killed Mrs Ramsforth’s mother and that Eureka’s murder had been committed by someone else and for a completely different reason? Not because the old woman had known something but because Mrs Ramsforth had to look insane? So a connection between the past and the present after all, but only in a plot to get her money?

  Or did it make much more sense to assume that the killer of old, confronted with Mrs Ramsforth appearing on the island, had decided that his secret should not get out? Someone who had lived on the island at the time.

  What about Mrs Murray so conveniently on the spot as well, holidaying with her husband? Revenge for the death of her only son? Blaming it all on Mrs Ramsforth, who had cried out and alerted the mob to Arthur?

  Jasper stood at the table staring at the paperwork and the old watch that he had put there to study closer. Arthur Reynolds hadn’t just left a father and mother when he died. He had also left a wife and children. A son from his wife’s earlier marriage, and the child they had brought into the world together.

  Eureka had been carrying the pocket watch on a chain around her neck.

  The thief had hidden it among the loot in his cans.

  Both of them were dead.

  Because of some secret the pocket watch held? Some connection it could prove which would be very dangerous to someone involved?

  * * *

  After dinner that night Jasper shared his new information with Mrs Valentine as they stood in front of the hotel watching Damaris Ramsforth, who walked down the path admiring the skies as sunset drew near. As long as they could see her, it was safe for her to walk on her own and Mrs Valentine insisted that plenty of physical exercise would help her to sleep at last.

  “Natural sleep is much better than that induced by powders,” she said to Jasper. “Now, who on earth was that interesting-looking doctor?”

  “You met him?’

  “He asked for you and I sent him your way.”