Murder in Midsummer

by Cecily Gayford

  Dora made a deprecating movement with her hands. ‘We just walked past you. It was terribly hot, wasn’t it?’

  ‘You’re being very charmingly discreet, Mrs Wexford – or may I call you Dora? The point was, Dora, my wife wanted to climb one of the local mountains and I was telling her just how impractical this was. I mean, in that heat, and for what? To get the same view you get from the walls.’

  ‘So you managed to dissuade her?’ Wexford said quietly.

  ‘Indeed I did, but you came along rather at the height of the ding-dong. Another drink, darling? And how about you, Dora? Won’t you change your mind?’

  They replied simultaneously, ‘Another slivovic,’ and ‘Thank you so much, but we must go.’ It was a long time since Wexford had seen his wife so huffy and so thoroughly out of countenance. He marvelled at Nyman’s continuing efforts, his fixed smile.

  ‘Let me guess, you’re staying at the Adriatic?’ He took silence for assent. ‘We’re at the Bosnia. Wait a minute, how about making a date for, say, Wednesday? We could all have a trip somewhere in my car.’

  The Wexfords, having previous engagements, were able to refuse with clear consciences. They said good night, Wexford nodding non-committally at Nyman’s insistence that they must meet again, mustn’t lose touch after having been so lucky as to encounter each other. His eyes followed them. Wexford looked back once to see.

  ‘Well!’ said Dora when they were out of earshot, ‘what an insufferably rude woman!’

  ‘Just very nervous, I think,’ said Wexford thoughtfully. He gave her his arm and they began the walk back along the waterside path. It was very dark, the sea inky and calm, the island invisible. ‘When you come to think of it, that was all very odd.’

  ‘Was it? She was rude and he was effusive to the point of impertinence, if you call that odd. He forced himself on us, got us to tell him our names – you could see she just didn’t want to know. I was amazed when he called me Dora.’

  ‘That part wasn’t so odd. After all, that’s how one does make holiday acquaintances. Presumably it was much the same with Werner and Trudi.’

  ‘No, it wasn’t, Reg, not at all. For one thing, we’re much of an age and we’re staying at the same hotel. Trudi speaks quite good English, and we were watching the children in the paddling pool and she happened to mention her grandsons who are just the same age as ours, and that started it. You must see that’s quite different from a man of thirty walking into a café and latching on to a couple old enough to be his parents. I call it pushy.’

  Wexford reacted impatiently. ‘That’s as may be. Perhaps you didn’t notice there was a perfectly clean ashtray in the middle of that table before they sat down at it.’

  ‘What?’ Dora halted, staring at him in the dark.

  ‘There was. He must have put it in his pocket to give him an excuse for speaking to us. Now that was odd. And giving us all that gratuitous information was odd. And telling a deliberate lie was very odd indeed. Come along, my dear. Don’t stand there gawping at me.’

  ‘What do you mean, a deliberate lie?’

  ‘When you told them we’d seen them on the walls, he said he remembered it and we must have overheard the quarrel between himself and his wife. Now that was odd in itself. Why mention it at all? Why should we care about his domestic – or maybe I should say mural – rows? He said the quarrel had been over climbing a mountain, but no one climbs the mountains here in summer. Besides, I remember precisely what he did say up on the walls. He said, “We can’t find anyone to take us.” OK, so he might have meant they couldn’t get a guide. But “there’s nowhere to land”? That’s what he said, no doubt about it. You don’t land on mountains, Dora, unless you assault them by helicopter.’

  ‘I wonder why, though. I wonder what he’s up to.’

  ‘So do I,’ said Wexford, ‘but I’m pretty sure it’s not pinching ashtrays from waterside cafés.’

  They rounded the point and came within sight of the lights of the Hotel Adriatic. A little further and they could see each other’s faces. Dora saw his and read there much to disquiet her.

  ‘You’re not going to start detecting, Reg!’

  ‘Can’t help it, it’s in my bones. But I won’t let it interfere with your holiday, that’s a promise.’

  On Tuesday morning Racic’s taxi boat was waiting at the landing stage outside the hotel.

  ‘Gospoda Wexford, it is a great pleasure to meet you.’

  Courteously he handed Dora into the boat. Its awning of green canvas, now furled, gave it somewhat the look of a gondola. As the engines started, Dora made her excuses for the following day.

  ‘You will like Cetinje,’ said Racic. ‘Have a good time. Gospodin Wexford and I will have a bachelor day out. All boys together, eh? Are you quite comfortable? A little more suitable than that one for a lady, I hope.’

  He pointed across the bay to where a man was paddling a yellow and blue inflatable dinghy. The girl with him wore a very brief bikini. The Nymans.

  ‘If you could manage to avoid passing those people, Mr Racic,’ said Dora, ‘that would make me very comfortable indeed.’

  Racic glanced at Wexford. ‘You have met them? They have annoyed you?’

  ‘Not that. They spoke to us last night in Mirna and the man was rather pushing.’

  ‘I will keep close to the shore and cross to Vrt from the small peninsula there.’

  For most of the morning there was no one else on the little shingly beach of Vrt, which Racic had told them meant a garden. The huddle of cottages behind were overhung with the blue trumpet flowers of the morning glory, and among the walls rose the slender spires of cypress trees. Wexford sat in the shade reading while Dora sunbathed. The dinghy came close only once, but the Wexfords went unrecognised, perhaps because they were in swimming costumes. Iris Nyman stood up briefly before jumping with an explosive splash into the deep water.

  ‘Rude she may be,’ said Dora, ‘but I’ll grant she’s got a lovely figure. And you were wrong about her legs, Reg. Her legs are perfect.’

  ‘Didn’t notice,’ said Wexford.

  Josip took them back. He was a thin smiling brown man, not unlike Racic, but he had no English beyond ‘thank you’ and ‘good-bye’. They hired him again in the afternoon to take them into Mirna, and they spent a quiet, pleasant evening drinking coffee with Werner and Trudi Muller on the Germans’ balcony.

  Wednesday came in with a storm at sunrise, and Wexford, watching the lightning and the choppy sea, wondered if Burden had been over-optimistic with his guarantee of fine weather. But by nine the sun was out and the sky clear. He saw Dora off in the Mullers’ Mercedes, then walked down to the landing stage. Racic’s boat glided in.

  ‘I have brought bread and sausage for our lunch, and Posip in a flask to keep it cool.’

  ‘Then we must eat it for our elevenses because I’m taking you out to lunch.’

  This they ate in Dubrovnik after Racic had taken him to the island of Lokrum. Wexford listened with deepening interest to the boatman–professor’s stories. How the ease and wealth of the city merchants had led to a literary renascence, how Dubrovnik-built ships had taken part in the Spanish Armada, how an earthquake had devastated the city and almost destroyed the state. They set off again for Lopud, Sipan and Kolocep, returning across the broad calm waters as the sun began to dip towards the sea.

  ‘Does that little island have a name?’ Wexford asked.

  ‘It is called Vrapci, which is to say “sparrows”. There are thousands of sparrows, so they say, and only sparrows, for no one goes there. One cannot land a boat.’

  ‘You mean you can’t get off a boat because the rocks are too sheer? What about the other side?’

  ‘I will pull in close and you shall see. There is a beach but no one would wish to use it. Wait.’

  The island was very small, perhaps no more than half a mile in circumference, and totally overgrown with stunted pines. At their roots the grey rock fell sheer to the water from a height of about
ten feet. Racic brought the boat about and they came to the Adriatic side of Vrapci. No sparrows were to be seen, no life of any kind. Between ramparts of rock was a small and forbidding beach of shingle over which an overhanging pine cast deep shade. Looking up at the sky and then down at this dark and stony cove, Wexford could see that, no matter what its altitude, the sun would never penetrate to this beach. Where the shingle narrowed, at the apex, was a cleft in the rock just wide enough to allow the passage of a man’s body.

  ‘Not very attractive,’ he said. ‘Why should people want to come here?’

  ‘They don’t, as far as I know. Except perhaps – well, there is a new fashion, Gospodin Wexford, or Mister as I should call you.’

  ‘Call me Reg.’

  Racic inclined his head. ‘Reg, yes, thank you. I like the name, though I have not previously encountered it. There is a fashion, as I mentioned, for nude bathing. Here in Yugoslavia we do not allow it, for it is not proper, not decorous. No doubt you have seen painted on some of the rocks the words – in, I fear, lamentable English – “No Nudist”. But there are some who would defy this rule, especially on the small islands. Vrapci might take their fancy if they could find a boat and a boatman to bring them.’

  ‘A boat could land on the beach and its occupants swim off the rocks on the other side in the sun.’

  ‘If they were good swimmers. But we will not try it, Reg, not at our age being inclined to strip ourselves naked and risk our necks, eh?’

  Once more they were off across the wide sea. Wexford looked back to the city walls, those man-made defensive cliffs, and brought himself hesitantly to ask:

  ‘Would you tell me what you overheard of the conversation between that English couple, Philip and Iris Nyman, when you took them out in your boat?’

  ‘So that is their name? Nyman?’ He was stalling.

  ‘I have a good reason for asking.’

  ‘May I know it?’

  Wexford sighed. ‘I’m a policeman.’

  Racic’s face went very still and tight. ‘I don’t much like that. You were sent here to watch these people? You should have told me before.’

  ‘No, Ivo, no.’ Wexford brought out the unfamiliar name a little self-consciously. ‘No, you’ve got me wrong. I never saw or heard of them till last Saturday. But now I’ve seen them and spoken to them I believe they’re doing something illegal. If that’s so it’s my duty to do something about it. They’re my countrymen.’

  ‘Reg,’ said Racic more gently, ‘what I overheard can have nothing to do with this matter of an illegality. It was personal and private.’

  ‘You won’t tell me?’

  ‘No. We are not old housewives to spend our time in gossip over the garden walls of our kucice, eh?’

  Wexford grinned. ‘Then will you do something for me? Will you contrive to let these people know – subtly, of course – that you understand the English language?’

  ‘You are sure that what they are doing is against the law?’

  ‘I am sure. It’s drugs or some kind of confidence trick.’

  There was silence, during which Racic seemed to commune with his sea. Then he said quietly, ‘I trust you, Reg. Yes, I will do this if I can.’

  ‘Then go into Mirna. They’re very likely having a drink on the waterfront.’

  Mirko’s boat passed them as they came in and Mirko waved, calling, ‘Dobro vece!’

  On the jetty stood a queue of tourists, waiting to be ferried back to the Adriatic or to the hotel at Vrt. There were perhaps a dozen people, and Philip and Iris Nyman brought up the end of the line. It worked out better than Wexford could have hoped. The first four got into Josip’s boat, bound for Vrt, the next group into Mirko’s which, with its capacity of only eight, was inadequate to take the Nymans.

  ‘Hotel Adriatic,’ said Philip Nyman. Then he recognised Wexford. ‘Well, well, we meet again. Had a good day?’

  Wexford replied that he had been to Dubrovnik. He helped the girl into the boat. She thanked him, seeming less nervous, and even gave him a diffident smile. The motor started and they were off, Racic the anonymous taxi-man, the piece of equipment without which the vehicle won’t go.

  ‘I saw you out in your dinghy yesterday,’ said Wexford.

  ‘Did you?’ Philip Nyman seemed gratified. ‘We can’t use it tonight, though. It’s not safe after dark and you’ve really got to be in swimming costumes. We’re dining at your hotel with another English couple that we met yesterday and we thought we’d have a romantic walk back along the path.’

  They were rather more dressed up than usual. Nyman wore a cream-coloured safari suit, his wife a yellow and black dress and high-heeled black sandals. Wexford was on the alert for an invitation to join them for dinner and was surprised when none came.

  Both the Nymans lit cigarettes. Wexford noticed Racic stiffen. He had learned enough about the man’s principles and shibboleths to be aware of his feelings on pollution. Those cigarette butts would certainly end up in the sea. Anger with his passengers might make him all the more willing to fulfil his promise. But for the moment he remained silent. They rounded the point on to a sea where the sun seemed to have laid a skin of gold.

  ‘So beautiful!’ said Iris Nyman. ‘A pity you have to go so soon.’

  ‘We’re staying till Saturday,’ said Nyman, though without renewing his suggestion that they and the Wexfords should meet again. The girl took a last draw on her cigarette and threw it overboard.

  ‘Oh, well,’ said Nyman, ‘there’s so much muck in there already, a bit more won’t do any harm,’ and he cast his still-lighted butt into the ripples of melted gold.

  They were approaching the hotel landing stage and Racic cut the motor. Nyman felt in his pocket for change. It was Wexford who got up first. He said to Racic as the Yugoslav made the boat fast:

  ‘I’ve had a splendid day. Thanks very much indeed.’

  He wasn’t looking at them but he fancied the amused glance Nyman would have given his wife at this display of the Englishman’s well-known assumption that all but cretins speak his language. Racic drew himself up to his not very great height. What accent he had, what stiltedness and syntactical awkwardness, seemed to be lost. He spoke as if he had been born in Kensington and educated at Oxford.

  ‘I’m glad you enjoyed it, I certainly did. Give my regards to your wife and tell her I hope to see her soon.’

  There was no sound from the Nymans. They got out of the boat, Racic saying, ‘Let me give you a hand, madame.’ Nyman’s voice sounded stifled when he produced his twenty dinars and muttered his thanks. Neither said a word to Wexford. They didn’t look back. They walked away and his eyes followed them.

  ‘Did I do all right, Reg? I was moved by the foul contamination of my sea.’

  Absently, still staring, Wexford said, ‘You did fine.’

  ‘What do you look at with such concentration?’

  ‘Legs,’ said Wexford. ‘Thanks again. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  He walked up towards the hotel, looking for them, but they were nowhere in sight. On the terrace he turned and looked back and there they were, walking hurriedly along the waterfront path back to Mirna, their new friends and their dinner engagement forgotten. Wexford went into the hotel and took the lift up to his room. Dora wasn’t back yet. Feeling rather shaken, he lay down on one of the twin beds. This latest development or discovery was, at any rate, far from what he had expected. And what now? Somehow get hold of the Dubrovnik police? He reached for the phone to call reception but dropped it again when Dora walked in.

  She came up to him in consternation. ‘Are you all right, darling?’

  His blood pressure, his heart, too much sun – he could tell what she was thinking. It was rare for him to take a rest in the daytime. ‘Of course I am. I’m fine.’ He sat up. ‘Dora, something most peculiar …’

  ‘You’re detecting again! I knew it.’ She kicked off her shoes and threw open the doors to the balcony. ‘You haven’t even asked me if I’ve had a nice
day.’

  ‘I can see you have. Come in, my dear, don’t be difficult. I always like to think you’re the only woman I know who isn’t difficult.’ She looked at him warily. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘Do something for me. Describe the woman we saw on the walls.’

  ‘Iris Nyman? What do you mean?’

  ‘Just do as I ask, there’s a good girl.’

  ‘You’re mad. You have had a touch of the sun. Well, I suppose if it humours you … Medium height, good figure, very tanned, about thirty, geometric haircut. She was wearing a jade green halter top and a blue and green and pink skirt.’

  ‘Now describe the woman we saw with Nyman on Monday.’

  ‘There’s no difference except for a black top and a stole.’

  Wexford nodded. He got off the bed, walked past her on to the balcony and said:

  ‘They’re not the same woman.’

  ‘What on earth are you suggesting?’

  ‘I wish I knew,’ said Wexford, ‘but I do know the Iris Nyman we saw on the walls is not the Iris Nyman I saw in Mirna on Monday morning and we saw that night and we saw yesterday and I saw this evening.’

  ‘You’re letting your imagination run away with you. You are, Reg. That hair, for instance, it was striking, and those clothes, and being with Philip Nyman.’

  ‘Don’t you see you’ve named the very things that would be used to make anyone think they’re the same woman? Neither of us saw her face that first time. Neither of us heard her voice. We only noticed the striking things about her.’

  ‘What makes you think they’re not the same?’

  ‘Her legs. The legs are different. You drew my attention to them. One might say you set me off on this.’

  Dora leaned over the balcony rail. Her shoulders sagged. ‘Then I wish I hadn’t. Reg, you never discuss cases with me at home. Why do it here?’

  ‘There’s no one else.’

  ‘Thanks very much. All this about their not being the same woman, it’s nonsense, you’ve dreamed it up. Why would anyone try and fake a thing like that? Come to that, how could anyone?’