by M C Beaton
Agatha bought a ticket and said she would be back. She was now too hot to even think of James. The idea of sailing in a sea breeze was too tempting. Let James wait.
Somehow, perhaps because the heat was affecting her brain, she had imagined she would be the only passenger. But there were eight others, and all English.
There were three upper-class ones sporting expensive clothes and loud braying voices, two men and a woman. One man was elderly with a yellowish-white moustache, glasses and a pink scalp where the sun had scorched his bald spot. The other man was tall and thin and sallow and appeared to be married to the woman, who was also tall and thin and sallow but with a deep bosom and a hard air of sexiness about her. They belonged to that stratum which has adopted the very worst manners of the aristocracy and none of the better ones. They shouted at each other rather than spoke and they stared at the other passengers with a sort of “my God” look in their eyes. Their contemptuous gaze focused in particular on a woman named Rose, middle-aged, blonde-haired with black roots, diamond rings on her long, tapering fingers, who was also accompanied by two men, one quite elderly and the other middle-aged. The three were in their way a sort of mirror image of the upper-class ones, Rose having a sexy appeal, the middle-aged man appearing to be her husband, and the elderly one a friend.
Agatha wished she had brought a book or newspaper to barricade herself behind. The skipper made the introductions. The upper-class ones were Olivia Debenham and her husband George and their friend, Harry Tembleton; the lower-class were the afore-mentioned Rose, surname Wilcox, her husband Trevor and their friend Angus King. Trevor had a beer belly and a truculent look, cropped fair hair and thick lips. Angus was an old Scotsman with sagging breasts revealed by his open-necked shirt. Like Rose and Trevor, he appeared to be pretty rich. In fact, thought Agatha, they probably belonged to the new rich class of Essex man and woman, risen to prosperity during the Thatcher years, and they could probably buy and sell the upper-class ones who were gazing at them with such contempt. Then there was a dreary couple who said in whispers that they were Alice and Bert Turpham-Jones, and Olivia sniggered and said in a loud aside that having a double-barrelled name these days was no longer what it had been.
Agatha would have been accepted by Olivia, George and Harry, who were monopolizing the small bar, but she had taken a dislike to them and so allied herself with the less distinguished, who were sitting in the bow.
Rose had a silly laugh and the glottal-stop speech of what has come to be known as Estuary English, but Agatha began to become interested in her. Despite the fact that Rose was probably somewhere in her fifties, she had cultivated a somewhat baby-doll appearance. She pouted, her eyelashes, though false, were good, her breasts revealed by a low frilly sun-dress were excellent, and her long thin legs ending in high-heeled strapped sandals were brown and smooth. She had wrinkles on her neck and round her mouth and eyes, but every movement, every bit of body language seemed to scream out the promise of Good in Bed.
Trevor was besotted with her, and so was the elderly Scotsman, Angus. In conversation it came out that Trevor owned a prosperous plumbing business and that Angus, a recently made friend, was a retired shopkeeper. The quiet couple had taken out books and had started to read and so the conversation went on among Agatha, Rose, Trevor and Angus.
Rose let slip, almost as if by accident, that she was very well-read. After every occasional comment, it seemed to Agatha as if she remembered her role of silly endearing woman and quickly returned to it. Had she settled for money? The diamonds on the many rings on her fingers were real.
The voyage was short but pleasant, the sea breeze refreshing. They anchored in Turtle Beach Cove.
They swam from the boat. Agatha was a good swimmer, but she was out of condition and found that the shore was much farther away than it had looked from the yacht. Relieved to have escaped from the others, she floated on her back in the shallow water and dreamed of meeting James, her eyes closed against the burning sun above. And then she floated against a rock. It was a flat rock and it was a nudge she felt rather than a bump, but she struggled to her feet, suddenly terrified, and looked wildly around. She had not yet got over the fright of being knocked unconscious by someone and nearly buried alive during what she considered as “my last case.”
She could hear her heart thumping. She took several deep breaths and sat down in the green-blue water, which was shallow enough.
The skipper, whose name was Ibraham, was swimming about, making sure none of his passengers drowned or had a heart attack. His wife, who sailed with him, a short, blackhaired woman called Ferda, was preparing lunch and the clatter of dishes and glasses floated to Agatha’s ears across the water.
Rose’s husband, Trevor, was heaving his great bulk, sunburnt now to a nasty salmon-pink, up the ladder at the side of the yacht. He stopped half-way and turned and glared back across the bay.
Agatha looked to see what had caught his attention. Sitting side by side in the water a little away from Agatha were Rose and Olivia’s husband, George, giggling about something.
Olivia herself was swimming backwards and forwards with powerful back-arm strokes. Trevor was still half-way up the ladder. The elderly friends of the two women, Harry and Angus, were trying to get back on board the yacht. Harry reached up and tapped Trevor on the back. Trevor turned round and fell back into the water, nearly colliding with the two old men. He began to swim towards his wife. Rose saw him coming and immediately left George and began to swim towards him.
Agatha stayed where she was, enjoying the solitude. She suddenly wished with all her heart that she could forget about James and be free again, free to enjoy a peaceful holiday without being haunted and obsessed by the man. Then she heard herself being hailed from the yacht. Lunch was about to be served. Agatha was reluctant to return. Her brief interest in Rose had fled, leaving her with a feeling of distaste for all her fellow passengers. She swam back and pulled herself up the ladder, conscious of her round stomach. She would need to get herself in shape for James.
Lunch was pleasant: complimentary glasses of wine, good chicken, crisp salad. Pleased as any tourist might be to find she had not been ripped off, Agatha mellowed enough to join Rose, her husband and friend. She noticed, however, that Olivia’s husband, George, kept looking over at Rose from his place at the bar. He said something to his wife in an undertone and she answered loudly, “I don’t feel like slumming today.”
When the young meet up on an outing abroad, they exchange addresses at the end of it or arrange to meet in the evening. The middle-aged and elderly, by silent consent, simply part with a nod and a smile. Agatha had enjoyed herself on the sail back, for she had told them all about her detective work and entertained them with highly embroidered stories about how clever she had been.
But she, too, after the yacht had slid into Kyrenia Harbour under the shadow of the old castle, simply said goodbye and walked away. Olivia, her husband and friend were all residing at the Dome Hotel. With luck, she would be able to avoid them. She had more important work to do.
She had to find James.
She was reluctant to dine in the hotel that evening, so she checked her guidebook and selected a restaurant called The Grapevine which looked hopeful, and took a taxi the short distance there, not wanting to bother driving. It was a good choice, the restaurant being in the garden of an old Ottoman house. Agatha ordered wine and swordfish kebab and tried not to feel lonely.
The garden was heavy with the scent of jasmine and full of the sound of British voices. It was a great favourite with the British residents, a blonde woman called Carol who served her meal, told her. There were evidently a great number of British residents in north Cyprus: they even had their own village outside Kyrenia called Karaman, complete with houses called things like Cobblers, and a British library, and a pub called The Crow’s Nest.
Agatha had brought a paperback with her and was trying to read by candle-light when Carol brought her a note. It said simply, “Come and jo
in us.”
She looked across the restaurant. Just taking their seats at a centre table were Rose, husband and friend, and Olivia, husband and friend. They were smiling and waving in her direction.
Intrigued that such an unlikely combination should get together, Agatha picked up her plate and wine and went to join them.
“Isn’t this a surprise?” said Rose. “There we was, just walking down the street, when my Trevor, he says, he says to me, ‘Isn’t that Olivia?’” Agatha noticed Olivia wince. “And Georgie says, ‘Come and join us,’ so here we all are! Innit fun!”
To Agatha’s amazement, Olivia seemed to be making an effort to be polite to Rose, Trevor and Angus. It transpired that her husband, George, had recently retired from the Foreign Office, friend Harry Tembleton was a farmer, and that Olivia herself had heard of Agatha, for the Debenhams had a manor-house in Lower Cramber in the Cotswolds.
The wine circulated and Rose grew more animated. It seemed she was a specialist in the double entendre. She had a really filthy laugh, a bar-room laugh, a gin-and-sixty-cigarettes-a-day laugh, which sounded around the restaurant. George crossed his legs under the table and his foot brushed against Rose’s leg. He apologized and Rose shrieked with laughter. “Go on,” she said, giving him a nudge with one thin, pointed elbow. “I know what you’re after!”
Agatha did not think anyone could eat kebab off its skewer in a suggestive manner, but Rose did. Then she, it seemed deliberately, misunderstood the simplest remarks. George said he hoped there wouldn’t be another tube strike in London when they got back because he had some business in the City to attend to. “A boob strike,” cried Rose gleefully. “Has Olivia stopped your jollies?”
Agatha gave her a bored look and Rose mouthed at her, “Like Lysistrata.” So vulgar Rose knew her Greek classics, thought Agatha, who had only recently boned up on them herself. And somehow Rose knew that Agatha had rumbled her act.
What was an intelligent woman doing being tied to the brutish Trevor and a dreary retired shopkeeper like Angus?
Angus was a man of few words and those that he had were delivered in a slow portentous manner. “Scottish education is the finest in the world, yes,” he said, apropos of nothing. Things like that.
Olivia had a bright smile pinned on her face as she tried to “draw” everyone out, and did it very well, thought Agatha, although noticing that Olivia could not quite mask that she detested Rose and thought Trevor a boor. She entertained them with a funny story about how the man in the hotel room upstairs had let his bath over-run so that it had seeped down into the ceiling of their room and he refused to admit he was guilty and said they must have let the windows open and let the rain in.
To Agatha’s surprise, they all decided to go on an expedition to the Othello Tower in Famagusta the next day and she was urged to join them. They would hire cars. She refused. Tomorrow was James Lacey-hunting day. They had been going to spend their honeymoon at a rented villa outside Kyrenia. She would try to find it.
Trevor insisted on paying the bill, joking that it would be the first time in his life he was a millionaire as he pulled out wads and wads of Turkish lira. Agatha refused a lift, deciding to walk back to the hotel. She was streetwise enough to know that she was safe, and Rose, who had arrived a week before her, had told her with a tinge of regret in her voice that there was no danger of getting your bottom pinched. Rose had also said that there was also no danger of getting your handbag snatched, or of being cheated by shopkeepers. So Agatha strolled down past the town hall and down Kyrenia’s main street.
And then she saw James.
He was ahead of her, walking with that achingly familiar long, easy, loping stride of his. She let out a strangled cry and began to run on her high heels. He turned a corner next to a supermarket. She ran ahead, calling his name, but when she, too, turned the corner, he had disappeared. She had once seen the French film, Les Enfants Du Paradis, and this felt like the last scene where the hero desperately tries to catch up with his beloved.
A Turkish soldier blocked her way and asked her anxiously in broken English if he could help her.
“My friend. I saw my friend,” babbled Agatha, staring up the side street. “Is there a hotel along there?”
“No, that is Little Turkey. Ironmongers, cafés, no hotel. Sorry.”
But Agatha ploughed on, peering at deserted shops, stumbling over potholes. Then she saw a light shining out from a laundry called White Rose, Beyaz Gül in Turkish. A man in shirt-sleeves was working at a dry-cleaning machine. Agatha pushed open the door and went in.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
He was a small man with a clever, attractive face.
“You speak English?”
“Yes, I worked in England for some time as a nurse. My wife, Jackie, is English.”
“Oh, good. Look, I saw this friend of mine come along here a moment ago, but he’s disappeared.
“I don’t know where he could have been going. Sit down. I’m called Bilal.”
“I’m Agatha.”
“Would you like a coffee? I’m working late because it’s cooler at night. Trying to get as much done as I can when lean.”
Agatha felt suddenly tired, weepy and disappointed.
“No, think I’ll go back to the hotel.”
“ North Cyprus is very small,” he said sympathetically. “You’re bound to run into your friend sooner or later. Do you know The Grapevine?”
“Yes, I had dinner there this evening.”
“You should ask there. All the British end up there sooner or later.”
For some reason, Bilal, although probably somewhere in his mid-forties, reminded her of Bill Wong.
“Thanks,” she said, getting to her feet again.
“Tell me the name of your friend,” said Bilal, “and maybe I can find something out for you.”
“James Lacey, retired colonel, fifties, tall with very blue eyes, and black hair going grey.”
“Are you at The Dome?”
“Yes.”
“Write down your name for me. I’ve a terrible memory.”
Agatha wrote down her name. “A laundry is an odd business for a nurse,” she commented.
“I’m used to it now,” said Bilal. “At first I made some awful mistakes. They would give me those Turkish wedding dresses covered in sequins and I’d put them in the dry-cleaning machine, but the sequins were made of plastic and they all melted. And then they come down from the mountains with the suit they bought about forty years ago covered in olive oil and wine and expect me to give it back to them looking like new.” He gave a comical sigh.
“In any case, can I come back and see you?” asked Agatha.
“Any time. We can have coffee.”
Feeling somewhat cheered, she left. She wandered round more streets. Men sat outside cafés playing backgammon, music blared, half-key Turkish music, sad and haunting.
At last she gave up the search and returned to the hotel. She thought she should have gone back to The Grapevine. Maybe tomorrow.
The next morning she awoke heavy-eyed and sweating profusely. She showered and put on a loose cotton dress and flat sandals. She ate a light breakfast of cheese-filled pastry and then went on impulse into the car-rental office.
“Did you by any chance rent a car to a Mr. Lacey?” she asked.
“Yes, I did,” said the man behind the desk. He stood up and shook hands with her. “It’s Mrs. Raisin, isn’t it? I’m Mehmet Chavush. In fact, Mr. Lacey renewed his rental this morning.”
“When?”
“An hour ago.”
“Do you know…did he say where he was going today?”
“Mr. Lacey said something abut going to Gazimağusa.”
Agatha looked blank.
“You probably know it as Famagusta,” he said helpfully.
“How do I get there?”
“Drive up past the post office.” He led her to a map on the wall. “Here. And then take this road up over the mountains. It will le
ad you down onto the dual carriageway on the Famagusta Road. You might have come that way from the airport.”
“Yes, I think I did.”
Agatha set off. Round the roundabout, past the post office, very much an architectural reminder of British colonial days, and so out towards the mountains. The heat was tremendous, but for once she barely noticed it. The air-conditioning in the car was working-just.
The mountains were bare and stark, scorched from the forest fires of the year before. She recognized the army chicanes as she came down from the mountains. A soldier on guard duty beside the road waved to her and gave her the thumbs-up sign and Agatha’s heart began to lift with hope. Ahead lay Famagusta and James. And then she thought, I should have asked for the registration number of his car. All the rented cars looked much the same, with red license plates to denote they were rented. And Mehmet probably had a record of James’s address.
She carefully observed the speed limit through two villages and then the Famagusta Road, which follows the line where the old railway used to run, stretched straight out in front of her across the Mesaoria Plain, straight as an arrow, and no speed limit.
Agatha put her foot down hard and flew like a bird towards the far horizon.
TWO
FAMAGUSTA, called Gazimağusa by the Turks, is the second-largest city in north Cyprus and the main port. It was founded in 300 B. C. by Ptolemy I, one of Alexander’s successors, and settled by refugees from Salamis, but remained an obscure village until Richard I offered the area to Guy de Lusignan as a refuge for dispossessed Christians after the fall of Acre in the Holy Land to the Saracens 1291. Under the Lusignans the town grew rapidly, becoming one of the wealthiest cities on earth, with 365 churches, and became a byword for worldliness and luxury until lost to the Genoese in 1372. It was seized by Venice in 1489. The architecture reflects the glories of the Lusignan period, while the fortifications display Venetian engineering at its most impressive. It was taken by the Turks in 1571-Gazimağusa means “unconquered Mağusa”-in an impressive siege from which the city never recovered, and has been referred to as “one of the most remarkable ruins in the world” with its crumbling structures. Further damage to the city was inflicted by the British in the middle of the last century, when they removed vast quantities of stone to build the quays at Port Said and the Suez Canal, and when it was heavily shelled by the Germans in World War II. Famagusta is thought to be the setting of Acts II to V of Shakespeare’s Othello.