Death in Cyprus: A Mystery

by M. M. Kaye

  Amanda laughed and Steve said sadly: ‘It is no laughing matter I assure you. Just as it becomes vitally necessary to keep one’s eye on the ball, along comes a naked and nauseous infant with a brain suitable to its tender years, whom someone has inadvisedly armed with a lethal weapon in the form of a bow and arrow. And whang!—there is a spanner in the works.’

  ‘Are you speaking from personal experience?’ inquired Amanda with interest.

  Mr Howard sighed. ‘Yes, alas!’ he looked down at her and grinned. ‘In fact you can take it that my recent crispness on the subject of dear Glenn is caused by the demon of jealous gnawing at my vitals. No one ever rushes to my defence or sobs sympathetically over my woes. And neither do I win rounds of applause by risking my neck rescuing damsels from certain death. I find it very discouraging.’

  Amanda looked at him doubtfully. There was a derisive gleam in his eye and she was quite sure that he did not mean a word of what he had said. Or was there, perhaps, a grain of truth in it?

  They had reached the turn down to the Villa Oleander and Amanda noted that once again there was a man standing in the shadow of the wall, lighting a cigarette. It was not the same one who had been there when she had passed earlier that evening, but there was about him the same indefinable suggestion of deliberate and observant loitering that the other man had had.

  The quiet, tree-lined road was white with moonlight, but the pavement was a dark patchwork of shadows and Amanda was suddenly intensely grateful to Steven Howard for insisting on accompanying her. It would not have been pleasant to walk through those black shadows alone.

  Steve stopped at the gate, glanced at the luminous dial of his watch and said: ‘See you tomorrow at the inquest. Don’t let them faze you and don’t get led off into side issues. Just answer the questions in as few words as possible and lay off unnecessary detail. Keep it short and you’ll be okay. Goodnight.’

  Amanda said: ‘But I thought you wanted to see Miss Moon.’

  ‘She’ll have been told all about it by now. You were being a bit haughty about accepting my offer to escort you, so I had to bring pressure to bear. Be seeing you.’

  He turned away and Amanda said: ‘Steve____’

  Steve Howard stopped and turned rather slowly. ‘Yes?’

  Amanda said: ‘It was you who took those things from the cabinet, wasn’t it? The____’

  Steve took a swift stride towards her and the palm of his hand was hard and warm over her mouth. She saw him throw a quick look left and right into the shadows and draw a short breath of relief. He dropped his hand and said low and tersely: ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘The Fabergé egg,’ said Amanda in a whisper. ‘I noticed it in the cabinet just before I–before I found Monica Ford. The diamonds glittered____’

  ‘Damn!’ said Mr Howard softly.

  He looked down at Amanda and the moonlight showed a deep crease between his brows.

  ‘Have you mentioned that to anyone?’ he demanded curtly.

  Amanda shook her head.

  ‘Then don’t! Not to anyone at all—do you understand?’ His voice held a hard edge of command.

  ‘Yes,’ said Amanda in a whisper.

  Once again he turned his head to look into the shadows and then he shrugged his shoulders in a faintly fatalistic gesture and turned and walked quickly away, his footsteps audible in the silence long after his tall figure had been swallowed up by the shadows.

  16

  ‘Is that you dear?’ called Miss Moon, peering over the banisters of the upper hall. ‘I shall be down in a moment. Tell Euridice we will dine at once.’

  Amanda delivered the message to the kitchen and went upstairs to brush her hair. She came down to find Miss Moon awaiting her in the dining-room, arrayed in a regal robe of yellow velvet and wearing a magnificent parure of topazes that would have been greatly improved by cleaning.

  Amanda looked down a little guiltily at her own short cotton frock and apologized for not changing.

  ‘Nonsense dear. You look exceedingly nice as you are, and had you delayed to change, the soup would have been cold. I only change from habit. Dear papa would have considered it most odd had I not, but I often think how foolish I am to continue doing so. What did Anita wish to see you about? Such a pity she should have called just then, for Claire and several of your friends dropped in not so very long afterwards. I had a most social evening. They inquired so kindly after you: although I fear that on Claire’s part it was less a visit of condolence than of curiosity. But perhaps I am being unkind. That Major Blaine is a very quiet, pleasant-mannered man. His wife committed suicide I hear—so tragic for him. It seems that she____But of course dear, you know all about it. You were on the same boat. Quite dreadful.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Amanda in a colourless voice. She did not in the least wish to discuss the death of Julia Blaine, and hoped that Miss Moon would not pursue the subject. Miss Moon did not. She was far more interested in the fact that Lumley Potter had had the effrontery to accompany Claire and her friends to the Villa Oleander.

  ‘Such impertinence, dear! I have always considered him a most tiresome man. Spiritual aromas indeed! Anyone who can depict our enchanting harbour in a welter of dirty browns and blacks—and that particularly unpleasant shade of Prussian blue—I cannot but feel to be lacking in honesty. And when he knows quite well how fond I have always been of Glenn—not to mention Anita—his action in calling at this house becomes quite inexplicable. Naturally I could not turn him from the door; particularly as Claire had brought him. But I let him see quite plainly that I considered his visit an unwarrantable intrusion. He did not look at all comfortable,’ added Miss Moon with satisfaction.

  Amanda was suddenly reminded of something that Anita Barton had said about Lumley Potter and Claire, and she turned to Miss Moon and said abruptly: ‘Do you think he wants to marry Mrs Barton?’

  ‘Marry Anita?’ said Miss Moon as though such a thing had never occurred to her. ‘I am quite sure he does not.’

  ‘Then why do you suppose he ran off with her?’

  ‘I do not think he did—though of course I may be wrong. I think Anita ran off with him. Just to make a scandal. So that Glenn would divorce her. She is obviously quite determined, for reasons of her own, to obtain her freedom; though I am convinced that her object cannot be marriage with Lumley Potter. But Anita—as I think I told you—has a strangely childish streak. When she wants something, she wants it badly and at once and without counting the cost. And you would be surprised, dear, what silly and quite childish things many people will do when their tempers and emotions get the upper hand of them. Things that they would never dream of doing if only they would give themselves time for reflection.’

  ‘No I wouldn’t,’ said Amanda sadly. ‘I’m just as bad. I lost my temper and slapped someone across the face the other day. I didn’t think that anyone ever really did things like that.’

  ‘Mr Howard,’ said Miss Moon placidly. ‘It left quite a mark did it not? I own I was interested. Such a dear boy! What had he done to provoke you?’

  Amanda laughed, and followed the laugh with a frown. ‘He asked me if I’d fallen in love with Glenn Barton.’

  ‘What a foolish question!’ said Miss Moon. ‘But then gentlemen are often so unobservant, dear. Even the most intelligent of them. And when they are jealous they can behave with quite surprising stupidity. Look at Lumley Potter, who has always been devoted to Claire. Not that I consider him intelligent: quite the reverse! I imagine that Mr Howard thought that you had laid claim to that flower of Anita’s to please Glenn.’

  Amanda said: ‘Do you notice everything, Miss Moon?’

  ‘Oh I wouldn’t say that, dear—but I hope that I am not too unobservant.’

  ‘How did you know that it belonged to Mrs Barton?’ inquired Amanda curiously. ‘Had you seen her in that dress?’

  ‘No,’ said Miss Moon. ‘Not to my knowledge. But I was aware that both you and Glenn had recognized it, and when I saw him look at
you like that of course I knew at once that it must be something of Anita’s. I supposed that you had seen her wear it.’

  Miss Moon selected a peach and peeled it while Amanda wondered how many other things Miss Moon had noticed and had kept to herself?

  ‘Claire had heard about it too,’ said Miss Moon presently. ‘She was trying to pump me. I soon put a stop to that! I imagine Glenn, poor boy, must have asked her to warn Anita. He should have known Claire better. But then, as I have said, gentlemen are lamentably unobservant in such matters, and I do not think that Glenn is a particularly good judge of character, or he would have seen through Claire years ago. Let us take coffee in the drawing-room.’

  She rose with a clash of bracelets and jewellery, and over the coffee informed Amanda that a police officer had called earlier to notify her that both of them would be expected to attend the inquest on Monica Ford the following morning.

  ‘Only a formality, my dear,’ said Miss Moon. ‘Nothing to worry about. I understand that all those who were at Hilarion that afternoon have also been asked to attend. I cannot think why. Corroborative evidence on the times of arrival and departure I suppose. Even Lumley and Anita have been requested to be present. Quite unnecessary I should have thought. So hard on poor Glenn.’

  Miss Moon turned the conversation on to general topics and shortly after nine o’clock expressed her intention of retiring to bed:

  ‘I feel that we could both do with an early night, dear.’

  Amanda was feeling far from sleepy, but she had no intention of remaining alone in the shadowy drawing-room with those shimmering circles of looking-glass that had reflected Monica Ford’s lifeless hand.

  Euridice had already retired to bed—Andreas slept out—and Miss Moon turned out the lights, closed and bolted the french windows and went into the dining-room to fetch a jug of barley water off the sideboard, the train of her yellow velvet dress trailing regally behind her and collecting a small wash of dust.

  ‘I usually take a jug of this up with me to my bedroom during the hot weather,’ said Miss Moon. ‘Can I offer you a glass of anything, dear? No? Then let us turn out the lights.’

  Amanda relieved her of the jug and carried it upstairs to her room, and Miss Moon said: ‘Thank you, dear. Just put it on the bedside table.’

  Amanda did so and turned to look about her. She had not been inside Miss Moon’s bedroom before, except for those few frantic minutes on the previous evening, when she had had no attention to spare for her surroundings. Miss Moon’s bedroom was worth a second look, comprising as it did a magnificent mixture of French baroque and Victorian mahogany. The massive dressing table and wardrobes belonged to the later period, while the carved and gilded vastness of the canopied bed would have done credit to the Pompadour in her hey-day.

  On either side of the bed two marble-topped console tables supported a clutter of books, bottles and other oddments, and on one of them stood a massive silver candelabrum that had been converted into a bedside lamp. Amanda switched it on, and the warm glow illuminated the jumbled contents of the table and glinted on gilded garlands and the worn brocaded hangings of the bed.

  Something moved on the pillow and she gasped and took a quick step backwards. But it was only Euridice’s grey cat, who had been lying curled up in a warm nest formed by an elderly lace-edged bed jacket.

  ‘What is it, dear?’ inquired Miss Moon, looking round. ‘Oh it is that dreadful cat! Chase it off, dear. I do wish that Euridice would get rid of it. I suppose that there will now be hairs all over the pillow. How very vexing.’

  Amanda scooped up the cat, deposited it in the passage, and returning, shook out the bed jacket and picking up the pillow beat off the few short grey hairs that clung to it.

  She bent to replace it and stood suddenly very still, her eyes wide with shock and an icy prickle of panic running down her spine.

  Something had been lying under that pillow. An insignificant object that was yet horribly familiar.

  A small bottle containing a few white tablets and bearing a red poison label.

  But it could not be the same one! It could not possibly be! She had not brought it away with her. Steven Howard had taken it. He had wrapped it carefully in his handkerchief and had put it into the pocket of his dressing-gown. Yet it was the same bottle—or its twin.

  Amanda found that she was shivering, and she caught her lip hard between her teeth to stop it trembling.

  Miss Moon had seated herself before her dressing table and was engaged in removing various necklaces, bracelets and rings and replacing them in an old-fashioned and much worn morocco jewel case the size of a small hatbox. She was still talking, but the flow of her words slid over Amanda without making any impression on her. She could only stare and shiver.

  Discovering that she was still holding the pillow, she laid it down carefully on the bed and reached out a shrinking hand for the bottle. But just before she touched it she remembered what Steve had said about finger-prints, and stopped.

  There was a small, crumpled lace-edged handkerchief on the table beside Miss Moon’s bed, and Amanda picked it up and lifted the bottle with it, holding it with extreme care.

  She looked at Miss Moon’s unconscious back and suddenly her brain seemed to clear, and she knew____

  She knew that there would be no finger-prints on that bottle and just exactly why it had been placed there.

  There was to have been a repetition of a scene that had been planned to take place in a cabin of the S.S. Orantares. But this time it would be Miss Moon and not Julia Blaine who would die. Miss Moon who should have been at Lady Cooper-Foot’s bridge party, but had stayed at home instead, and who might therefore have heard or seen something or someone at the hour that Monica Ford had died. Miss Moon who knew and noticed so much and who might be waiting her chance to say a word that might lead to the hanging of Monica Ford’s murderer …

  She would have laid her head on that single down pillow and have felt the small hard lump of the bottle, and would have removed it, looked at it in some surprise and put it aside until the morning—as Julia would have done.

  Amanda could almost hear the coroner’s verdict. Elderly and eccentric lady, shocked by Miss Ford’s murder and distressed by the consideration that her own refusal to keep her house locked was responsible for it, felt herself unable to face a public inquiry and allowed the tragedy to prey on her mind, and the recent suicide of Mrs Blaine to suggest a way out. Yes, it would have been something like that. And but for Euridice’s cat and the fact that Amanda had carried up the jug of barley water for her, Miss Moon would have been found dead in the morning.

  The barley water!

  Amanda whirled round and stared at it. Someone who knew that Julia drank lemon juice and water had made use of that knowledge to disguise the acidity of a poison. Because Miss Moon drank barley water, had that someone laid the same trap for her? There was no innocent iced drink on Miss Moon’s bedside table, but there was an empty glass—and the jug that Amanda herself had placed there.

  Amanda forced herself to speak, waiting until Miss Moon ceased talking, and not having heard one word that she had said.

  ‘May I have some of your barley water please?’ Her voice sounded high-pitched and like a gramophone record, as though it did not belong to her.

  Miss Moon turned. ‘Why, of course dear. Help yourself.’

  Amanda said: ‘There’s a glass in my room. I’ll take some if I may and bring the jug back.’

  ‘Do, dear.’

  Amanda thrust the small bottle in its crumpled handkerchief into her pocket and picked up the jug. Once in her own room she filled her own glass from it, her hands shaking so badly that the liquid splashed on to the table. She poured the remainder out of the window, and ran down the passage to the bathroom where she turned on both taps and rinsed the jug again and again. Having dried it on a towel she half-filled it with cold water, and returned to Miss Moon; her face chalk white and her hands still shaking uncontrollably.

 
; ‘I’m most awfully sorry,’ explained Amanda breathlessly, ‘but I’m afraid I’ve spilt your barley water. I’ve brought you some water instead.’

  Miss Moon tutted indulgently and said that Amanda was not to bother about it.

  ‘I–I have to telephone someone,’ said Amanda, finding it difficult to keep her voice under control. ‘Something I have to ask about. Do you mind?’

  ‘No dear, of course not. You know where the telephone is, do you not? Now don’t stay up too late. You are not looking at all well.’

  Amanda said goodnight and left the room hurriedly, shutting the door behind her and standing for a moment with her back to it, fighting off an absurd feeling of faintness and aware that her heart was beating unpleasantly fast.

  The stairs stretched down into the blackness below, and she was suddenly afraid to go down into the darkness of the deserted hall and past the open doorway of the drawing-room where Monica Ford had died. Supposing that there was someone hiding there, waiting to make sure that Miss Moon died too? Waiting to make sure that they were safe for ever from Miss Moon’s observant eyes and chattering tongue?

  But of course that was absurd! Whoever had laid that deadly trap for Miss Moon would make certain of being as far away as possible from the Villa Oleander that night. There was nothing to be afraid of. Nothing except the darkness and the silence …

  Amanda set her teeth and forced herself to walk down that long dark stairway, remembering as she did so that other stairway and the footsteps that had crept down behind her. She groped her way to the electric light switch, and a moment later the hall was flooded with soft light from the few candle bulbs in the dusty crystal chandelier that hung from the high ceiling.

  The passage off the hall yawned shadowy and silent, and facing it the door stood open on to the dark drawing-room. Amanda shivered and walked resolutely down to the end of the passage, and after a few moments of ineffectual groping, found the switch of the small lamp that hung above the telephone.