by M C Beaton
“What’s a Natasha pasha?”
“Brothel-keeper.”
“I don’t know what took you so long to complain,” said Agatha. “Let’s find the tourist office and put in a complaint.”
“It wouldn’t do us any good. I think I should cut my losses and find somewhere else. The manager at the Onar Village Hotel, Stefan, has been letting me use the telephone and fax. I’ll call there and see if he knows of any place I can move to.”
At James’s suggestion, before they went back, they went into the old part of Nicosia, wandered around the covered market, Agatha being restrained by James from haggling for a brass pepper mill. Unlike mainland Turkey, you were expected to pay the marked price. Then they went to the Saray Hotel for lunch. The centre of Nicosia was a pleasant, friendly place with a lot of interesting old buildings and shops. Agatha would have been happy to spend the day there, exploring, but James was determined to set out back to the Onar Village Hotel and see if he could find somewhere else to Uve.
“Why not just return with me to Carsely?” asked Agatha as he drove out of Nicosia.
“I’m not yet ready for that,” he said and then drove on in silence.
At the Onar Village Hotel, the manager, Stefan, told them that the hotel housekeeper was leaving for Australia and would perhaps rent them her home. It was out at Alsancak, next to the Altinkaya fish restaurant.
They drove there to meet the housekeeper and her friendly family. It was a large villa near the beach and seemed to have every home comfort. To Agatha’s dismay, she heard James say he would take it for three months, perhaps longer.
The door opened and Bilal of the laundry came in with his English wife. “These are my friends,” said the housekeeper. “They will look after you.”
Bilal smiled. “So you found Mr. Lacey,” he said to Agatha.
James looked sharply at Agatha. “We’ve met before,” muttered Agatha, who somehow had no wish to tell James how she had run after him.
James agreed to move in the following day.
“What about Mrs. Raisin?” asked Bilal, his eyes bright and mischievous. “Loads of room here. No need to go on paying a hotel bill.”
Jackie, Bilal’s wife, a woman in her forties with intelligent eyes and a rosy tan that Agatha envied, said, “Yes, why don’t you move in as well, Mrs. Raisin?”
“I suppose so,” said James grudgingly. “Mrs. Raisin is only here on a short holiday.”
Agatha knew in that moment that if she said, yes, she would stay, James would hate it, would think she was crowding him.
“Thank you,” she said brightly. “I’ll check out of the hotel tomorrow.”
James gave a little sigh but settled down to arrange the rent and ask about local shops.
Agatha went upstairs. There was a big bedroom with a double bed. French windows opened up onto an upstairs terrace. Next to it was a single bedroom. Then, through a narrow bathroom and down wooden steps, there was another bedroom with a view of the sea and with a single bed under the window.
She would take this, she decided, and give James the double bedroom.
She went back downstairs by a back stair which led off her new room. There was a summer living-room which looked out onto a terrace and garden, and a winter living-room where the negotiations were taking place. The kitchen was vast. Looking out of the kitchen window, she saw the car-park of the restaurant through a screen of mimosa bushes.
Jackie joined her. “That’s a very good fish restaurant. The manager, Umit Erener, is a friend of ours.”
“I might try it.”
Jackie’s eyes twinkled. “Does Mr. Lacey always call you Mrs. Raisin?”
“Only in the company of strangers,” said Agatha stiffly. All the time she was thinking, I shouldn’t have said I would stay. I’ll have driven him further into his shell. “He’s old-fashioned.”
As she and James finally drove off. Agatha said, “I’ve selected that little single bedroom at the front of the house, you know, the one you have to walk through the bathroom to get to.”
He swivelled his head angrily and glared at her. “You WHAT?”
“I-I said I thought I’d sleep in that little room at the front of-”
“I thought that’s what you said, Agatha, but I can hardly believe my ears. I am renting this villa, not you, and yet you immediately take over and decide where you want to sleep!”
“I’m sorry,” said Agatha huffily. “I thought you would like the master bedroom.”
“Just stop thinking for me, will you?”
Agatha bit her lip. She had been about to say, forget it, she would stay at the hotel, but the whole reason she was there was to get him back.
Why do you want such a cold pig? sneered a voice in her head.
When he stopped outside The Dome, he said in a cold voice and staring straight ahead, “No doubt I shall see you tomorrow.”
Agatha cracked. “Oh, stuff you and your stupid villa,” she howled, tears starting to her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “I’m still angry at being ripped off by Mustafa and I shouldn’t have taken it out on you. See here, we’ll have dinner tonight. I’ll see you in the dining-room of your hotel at eight.”
Agatha gave a watery sniff. “See you then.”
The trouble was, she thought, when she stood out on her hotel balcony and watched the surge of the grey-black Mediterranean pounding on the rocks below, that being in a foreign country made her feel lost and vulnerable.
But they would have dinner together. In the evening, the tables were set out in the open air on the terrace. She would reserve a table at the edge overlooking the sea. She would put on her best gown.
She walked back in and studied her face in the glass. Oh, those treacherous lines around the eyes and round the mouth! She slapped on a face pack and settled down to wait for the evening ahead.
By five to eight, she was ready to go downstairs to the dining-room. She felt she had never looked better. Her hair was brushed and shining, her face smooth under carefully applied foundation, lipstick and mascara. She was wearing a low-cut red chiffon gown and high-heeled black patent-leather shoes. She felt sure she had lost inches already with the sauna-like heat.
Her mind wandered off into a dream. The blustery wind had stopped blowing. They would sit at that table she had reserved earlier, looking at each other across the candle-light. At the end of the meal, he would reach across the table and take her hand. An electric current would pass between them. Silently he would lead her up to her room and then…and then…
She jerked out of her dream with an effort. It was now eight o’clock and James was always punctual.
When she stood at the entrance to the dining-room, the noise hit her full in the face. It was Saturday night and a belly-dancer was performing. Everyone was clapping her and cheering and laughing.
And then she saw James. He was not sitting at the table she had reserved for them but at a table in the centre of the dining-room-with Rose, Olivia, Harry, George, Angus and Trevor. They waved to her and she went reluctantly to join them.
“We heard your fellah asking the metter dee for Mrs. Raisin’s table,” shouted Rose, “so we says, she’s a friend of ours. Come and join the party. Park your bum next to Trevor and we’ll have some wine.”
Agatha looked desperately at James but he was talking to Olivia. She tried to talk to Trevor, but the noise of the music was so loud that she gave up. How was Olivia managing to cope? Probably braying as usual.
The belly-dancer approached their table and Trevor asked her to dance on it for them, which she promptly did. But she was joined by Rose, who climbed up on the table as well and began gyrating beside the belly-dancer. Agatha closed her eyes to block out the sight, for Rose was wearing a very short, fringed skirt and no knickers.
At last, with a roll of drums, the belly-dancer swayed out of the restaurant and the music fell silent.
“That was a bit of all right, hey, James,” said Rose, batting her eyelash
es at him.
“Not enough belly,” said James. “Too thin.”
“That’s why you like old Aggie,” shrieked Rose. “Good armful.”
Agatha’s glass of wine trembled in her hand. She was restraining herself from throwing the contents into Rose’s face.
James began talking to Olivia and George. It seemed they had friends in common, which left Agatha to talk to the common friends, namely Rose, Trevor and Angus.
“So what’ve you bin doing today, Agatha?” asked Rose.
“We went to rent a villa together,” said Agatha stiffly.
“Fast worker, Aggie,” said Rose.
“She isn’t the only one,” said Trevor, his voice thick with drink.
“I wasn’t talking about Agatha. I was talking about James,” said Rose. “How did you meet him, Agatha?”
“We solved several murder cases together,” said Agatha. “He’s my neighbour.”
Rose’s eyes sharpened. “After we ’ad that talk on the boat, I remembered something. It came back to me. You pair were about to get married when your husband turned up at the wedding. Read it in the papers and laughed myself silly. You’re a character, Agatha.”
“And I wonder a lot about people,” said Agatha in a thin voice. “I often wonder, for example, why some clever women insist of behaving like stupid sluts.”
There was a silence. James had paused in his conversation with Olivia and heard Agatha’s remark. So had Olivia, and her eyebrows had risen to her hairline.
And then Trevor said, “I’ve often noticed the same thing. That’s why I’m lucky I’ve got Rose. She’s always just herself.”
“Yes,” said Angus portentously, “with Rose, what you see is what you get.”
Rose winked at Agatha, who immediately felt ashamed of herself. “Let’s have another couple of bottles of wine on me,” she said.
This was hailed with cheers and only then did Agatha regret her generosity. With the exception of James, the party began to get drunk. They had already drunk a copious amount, and Agatha’s gift tipped them over the edge.
Agatha began to wonder if she could manage to persuade James to go somewhere after the meal for a quiet coffee, somewhere quiet. There was a pleasant outdoor café along from the hotel. They would sit there and chat. They would…
“The night is young,” cried Rose, her face flushed and her eyes glittering. “There’s disco along the coast. Let’s boogie.”
Agatha pleaded with her eyes at James, but he made no move to protest. She opened her mouth to say she was tired, she wanted to go to bed. But Olivia smiled at James and said, “Good idea. First dance with me, James.”
Agatha tightened her lips. Olivia was wearing a jade-green silk shift and a jade necklace. She kept bending forward every time she spoke to James, letting the cleavage of her dress droop. He must be able to see her navel, thought Agatha.
Worse happened outside the hotel. James went off with Olivia, George and Harry in one car, leaving Agatha to follow with Rose, Trevor and Angus.
They stopped at a disco attached to a hotel outside Kazraoğlanoğlu, a place which looked like a frontier town, just along the coast from Kyrenia. More noise, more thudding music. Agatha’s head ached.
James took the floor with Olivia and started throwing himself energetically about in movements which seemed to have nothing to do with the beat of the music.
Angus asked Agatha for a dance, put a beefy hand at her waist and tried to propel her in a foxtrot to the disco beat. “I think we should sit down,” shouted Agatha in his ear after he had trodden on her feet, painfully, for about the third time.
“Aye, I’m no’ verra good at this,” said Angus. “You should see me do an eightsome reel.”
“Really?” said Agatha politely.
They sat down at a table at the edge of the floor. Gradually the others joined them. Rose sat down, gave a hiccup and a giggle and slipped slowly under the table, a suddenly puzzled look on her face.
Laughing, the men all reached for her. “She’s had too much,” said Trevor. “I’d better take her back.”
“Which hotel are you in?” asked James.
“The Celebrity, along at Lapta.”
Above their heads, a spinning ball of light put their table alternatively in pitch-black darkness and then glaring light. Trevor got hold of Rose and slung her over his shoulder. “Better take baby home,” he said with a grin.
He turned to go, one large pink hand firmly on Rose’s narrow bony back.
And then he stopped.
He slowly took his hand away and looked at it.
Darkness. Then the ball swung again and they all saw it in the glaring light-the red stain of blood on his hand and the red stain of blood on Rose’s back.
THREE
THE police did not allow anyone to leave the disco until the following morning. The duty officer from the British High Commission was there to look after his compatriots. They were questioned over and over again. Agatha could only shake her head each time and say she did not know what could have possibly happened. Rose, she said, appeared to have become the worse for drink and had sunk under the table. The men had crowded around, laughing, to reach down to get her, but there were a lot of men other than those in their own party there when Rose was pulled out from under the table.
The police force in north Cyprus is still run on British lines. They keep a considerably lower profile than the army, who have their own police force, the ASIZ. The civil police work is in close conjunction with the tourist department, and visitors are usually treated with a special tolerance and helpfulness. The crime rate is exceptionally low, and the civil police are used to dealing mostly with traffic accidents.
But here was the murder of a British tourist. And the authorities were determined to solve it. Detective Inspector Nyall Pamir, who spoke good English, during one of his many interrogations of Agatha seemed to think it was a crime of passion. Agatha asked why. Pamir said that Rose was knickerless and that seemed to him to be as good a clue as any. He was a short, tubby man with skin as dark as an Indian’s and small black eyes which gave nothing away. Agatha had an odd feeling he was trying to be funny but then decided she must be wrong.
Rose had been stabbed with a thin, sharp instrument, probably some sort of knife, was the preliminary finding.
They were all told not to leave the island, and to hold themselves ready for further questioning. Then they all shuffled out into the blazing sunlight of early morning.
Angus stood there, old and trembling, tears rolling down his cheeks. “Rose, gone,” he kept saying. “I cannae believe it.” Trevor was grim and silent.
To Agatha’s relief, because she wanted time to rest and think, James had ordered a taxi for both of them. He dropped her at her hotel, saying, “I’ll see you at the villa in an hour. We’ll talk then.”
Agatha packed slowly and carefully. She found she was reluctant to check out. There was something safe about The Dome with its balconied rooms and large ornate lounges. And she hadn’t even had a swim yet at that pool. She was too tired to think much about who had murdered Rose or why.
She was finally finished. She took a last look round and then went down to the reception and paid her bill. This time there was a Turkish Cypriot girl on duty at the desk. News travels fast in north Cyprus, and so it transpired that the girl had not only heard of the murder but that Agatha had been present at the disco.
“How bad for you,” she said sympathetically as Agatha paid her bill. “It was probably one of those mainland Turks. They’re not like us. Always getting drunk and stabbing people.”
This was a wild exaggeration and Agatha did not yet know that the Turkish Cypriots regard themselves as being superior to the mainland Turks, and she found it comforting. At first the thought had crossed her mind that if she and James entered into another murder hunt, it might be the very thing to draw them back together again, but now she had a weary distaste for the whole business and a longing for home. She searched arou
nd her mind for that old obsession for James, but it seemed to have died.
Soon she set out in her rented car along the road out of Kyrenia, past the disco where police cars were still lined up, carefully observing the thirty-miles-an-hour speed limit, out past the monument to the Turkish landings, and then turned right by a sign to Sunset Beach and parked beside the hedge of cactus and mimosa behind James’s car.
The front door was standing open. She lugged her cases inside. She called, “James!” but there was no sound but the wind and the sea. She walked through the kitchen out into the garden. James was sitting in a garden chair under an orange tree, intently listening to the news on the BBC World Service.
“Anything?” asked Agatha.
He shook his head. “You wouldn’t think it was the British Broadcasting Service,” he complained. “I can tell you everything that’s going on in Africa and Russia, but not a word about anyone or anything British.”
Agatha pulled up a little white wrought-iron garden chair and sat down opposite him. Behind the orange tree was a vine, its leaves rustling in the breeze. The air was heavy with the scent of vanilla from a large plant to Agatha’s left. Her eyes felt gritty with fatigue.
“I hope you had a shower before you left the hotel,” said James.
“I haven’t even changed my clothes,” said Agatha, indicating her party dress. “Why?”
“This isn’t a day for water. There might be some later. I think we both need sleep.”
“Which bedroom is mine?”
“The one you chose. I’ll take your luggage up.”
They went inside. He carried up her cases to her new room. With a curt little nod, he left her. Agatha stripped off her clothes and fell naked on top of the bed. The windows were open and a light breeze was blowing in, bringing with it snatches of voices from the beach. She plunged down immediately into a heavy sleep and awoke three hours later, sweating from every pore. The breeze had died and the stifling humidity had returned.
Still naked, she trekked up the shallow wooden steps and through to the bathroom. The bathroom had a door at either end. The one opposite to the one she had entered suddenly opened and James came in.