by M C Beaton
James was there, sitting with what she thought of coldly as “the murder suspects.” She nodded to them curtly and sailed past them to a table overlooking the sea, where Bert was rising to greet her.
“I think I’ll sit here,” said Agatha brightly. “I like to watch the sea.” She turned her chair around so that her face was to the sea and her back was to James.
“Have you been a widow long?” asked Bert after he had ordered wine.
“Not very long,” said Agatha.
“And do you miss him?”
“No, it was a strange business. I had left him years ago and I thought he would have died of drink, but he only died a few months ago.” Agatha did not want to say her husband had been murdered in case this new beau thought she might be responsible for the murder of Rose.
“What about you?” she asked.
“My wife died two years ago. I’ve been pretty lonely since then.” He laughed. “And frustrated. I’m not one for casual affairs.”
“Nor me,” said Agatha, eyeing him speculatively and wondering what life would be like in Israel.
“When I saw you in the pool, do you know, I had this funny feeling I had known you a long time,” said Bert. “Have some more wine.”
Behind Agatha, Olivia brayed with laughter and said, “Oh, James, you are wicked.”
Agatha held out her glass and smiled into Bert’s eyes. “This is a very romantic setting,” she said.
“Isn’t it?”
The sea was calmer that evening and heaved itself up against the rocks below the hotel with rhythmic little splashes. Agatha had a heady feeling of elation. She was embarking on a new chapter of her life. She could forget all about Carsely, about James, about murder. Nothing really mattered except this handsome man whose eyes were glowing at her across the table.
There was a sudden rustling in the restaurant, then a silence. Agatha turned round. A beautiful young woman had entered the restaurant. She looked like a foreign film star. She had long black, glossy hair, which she wore down on her tanned shoulders. She was wearing a short white lace dress. Her long, long tanned legs ended in high-heeled strapped sandals. Her large brown eyes were rimmed with thick black lashes. The silence ended and there was a murmur of appreciation.
Bert looked as if he had been shot through the heart. “She is very beautiful, isn’t she,” asked Agatha uneasily.
He made a funny croaking sound. The vision was approaching their table.
“Surprise!” she cried.
Bert rose to his feet. “Barbara!” he said. “You’re the last person I expected to see.”
“I thought I’d join you earlier than I’d planned.” She looked down at Agatha inquiringly.
“Oh, this is a tourist who’s staying at the hotel-Mrs. Raisin.”
Agatha looked up at the beauty, bewildered. “Your daughter, Bert?”
“I’m his wife,” she said with a laugh. “Aren’t you pleased to see me, Bert?” She turned to Agatha. “He wasn’t expecting me until next week, but I thought I would surprise him.”
Agatha stood up. “Please have my chair,” she said stiffly.
“But you haven’t finished your meal, Mrs. Raisin!”
“I see my friends over there. I’ve got something I want to talk to them about.”
Agatha walked over, pulled out a chair and sat down between James and Olivia. A waiter brought over her half-eaten plate of kebab and rice and placed it in front of her.
“Who is that glorious creature?” asked Olivia.
“She’s his daughter,” lied Agatha, aware of James’s cynical eyes on his face.
“Then it’s a very incestuous relationship,” cackled Olivia. “She’s just leaned across the table and kissed him on the mouth!”
“Yes, and now they’re holding hands,” said James.
“I don’t really know him,” mumbled Agatha. “Maybe I was mistaken…because of the age difference, you know.” Desperate to turn the conversation away from Bert, and feeling old and plain and unwanted, Agatha asked, “Any more news about the murder?”
George shook his head. “They’ll probably tell us something tomorrow.”
Agatha looked curiously at Trevor. He was drinking steadily. Beside him, Angus was sunk in gloom. In fact, thought Agatha, Angus looked more like the bereaved husband than Trevor.
Olivia turned to Agatha. “You told us on that yacht trip that you had investigated murders, Agatha. Are you going to investigate this one?”
“I might see what I can find out.”
“Oh, mind your own business,” said Trevor suddenly and truculently.
“But, why?” asked Olivia. “Don’t you want to know who killed poor Rose?”
“Of course I want to know and I’ll kill the bastard the minute I find out who he is. But I don’t want some woman poking her nose in because she thinks it’s some sort of game.”
“Steady on, old boy,” said George, putting a hand on Trevor’s arm. Trevor shook him off. He got to his feet. “I’m sick of the lot of you,” he said. He marched out of the restaurant, colliding drunkenly with a table as he went.
“Och, now,” said Angus placatingly. “You’ve not to be minding him, Agatha. We’re all in a state of shock. I’d better go and see if he’s all right.”
Angus left as well.
There was an uneasy silence.
Olivia looked suddenly subdued. “I think I’ll make an early night of it.” She got to her feet and her husband and friend rose as well. “See you at the cop shop tomorrow,” said Olivia.
That left James and Agatha alone.
“I wonder,” said Agatha, “if I wrote to Bill Wong whether he could send me back some background on all of them.”
“Your letter would arrive in Mircester in about five days’ time,” said James. “But his reply might never reach you, or if it did, it would take about four weeks. The post from abroad goes through Mersin in southern Turkey, and I just don’t know why it should take so long to get here but it does.”
“Fax. I could fax him.”
“You could, I suppose. Do you really think one of them is the murderer?”
“Well, it’s odd,” said Agatha. “Olivia was so snobby on that yacht trip. She despised them. I can understand George making a play for Rose. She was a sexy thing. But Olivia! Did she give you a hint as to why they all got so pally?”
“Nothing more than the sort of one-must-do-one’s-bit-for-one’s-fellow-man type of thing.”
“But they all got friendly before the murder!”
“Fax Bill Wong if you like. But I think some drunk did it. There’s a lot of drugs here and pretty freely available. Could have been done by someone stoned out of his mind who doesn’t even remember now he did it. Let’s go, or” he added maliciously, “do you want another word with your boyfriend?”
Agatha’s eyes filled with angry tears.
“Come now,” he said lightly. “A lot of women would be flattered that a man with a wife as beautiful as that would make a play for them.”
Agatha scrubbed at her eyes. “I knew he was married,” she lied.
“If you say so,” said James. “Come along.”
The next day the humidity had lifted. Clear blue skies, the calmest of seas, and the lightest of breezes.
The mountains towered up to the sky on one side of the road and the blue-green sea stretched all the way to Turkey on the other side. Agatha suddenly wished she were simply on holiday instead of being back in the grip of the James obsession and on the way to police headquarters in Nicosia.
When they drew up outside the police headquarters, Agatha began to have a feeling that the whole business was unreal, that it had never happened, that Rose would stroll round a corner, diamond rings flashing and shout, “Owya, Agatha?”
Olivia, Trevor, Angus, George and Harry were already there. They were to be interviewed separately, and to Agatha’s dismay, James suggested that they meet up at the Saray Hotel afterwards for lunch and compare notes.
Agatha had taken the precaution of bringing along a book to read. Trevor was the first to be called, then Olivia, and then Agatha heard her own name being shouted out.
Pamir was sitting behind a large desk. A large portrait of Atatürk in evening dress stared down from behind the desk.
A policeman drew out a chair for Agatha on the other side of the desk. She sat down, suddenly nervous.
Pamir folded those fat hairy hands of his on the desk in front of him. He was wearing a chocolate-brown double-breasted suit and a wide tie with orange-and-yellow stripes, A large yellow silk handkerchief flowered from his top pocket.
“Now, Mrs. Raisin,” he said, “if I can just take you through the whole thing again. You arrived at the disco.”
“James began to dance with Olivia,” said Agatha, “and I danced with Angus, but he danced on my feet so I suggested we sit down.”
“And Rose Wilcox?”
“She was dancing with George, Mr. Debenham.”
“How were they dancing. Close?”
Agatha frowned in concentration. Her eyes had been mostly on James. “They weren’t dancing close,” she said. “Disco dancing. Rose was shaking it all about and George was doing that sort of high-stepping jerky dance that middle-aged gentlemen do when they think they’re being swingers. The music was very loud and the floor was crowded.”
“Was Mrs. Wilcox making a play for anyone in particular? You have told me about Mr. Debenham. What about Mr. Lacey?”
“What about Mr. Lacey?” demanded Agatha, her eyes narrowing.
“Did Mrs. Wilcox, Rose, seem attracted by Mr. Lacey?”
“Not that I noticed,” said Agatha huffily.
“Now we go to last night. You had dinner at The Dome, but not with Mr. Lacey or any of the others but with a visiting Israeli businessman, a Mr. Mort.”
“What’s that got to do with the murder?”
“I must examine all the relationships and you have a very peculiar relationship with Mr. Lacey. You were engaged to be married, nearly got married, had not your husband appeared on the scene. You follow him here, you both share the same villa, and yet you accept an invitation to dinner from Mr. Mort.”
“It was just a friendly chat,” said Agatha hotly. “He was waiting for his wife.”
“A wife you did not know existed until she arrived.”
“That’s not true! Have you been watching me?”
“Mrs. Raisin, one of my colleagues happened to be in that restaurant last night. I had a little man-of-the-world chat with Mr. Mort this morning. He found you attractive and asked you for dinner under the impression, to quote him, that he was ‘on to a good thing’. So you agreed to join him for dinner, for a date, although you are with Mr. Lacey.”
“Anything that was between me and Mr. Lacey is dead,” said Agatha furiously. “We are friends and neighbours, that’s all.”
He bent his head and made some notes. Then he raised his eyes and looked at her thoughtfully. “As I said, I must examine all the tensions in your relationships, you and the rest. And here we have two threesomes, two devoted husbands and two devoted friends. Jealousy could have been a motive.”
“You’ll need to ask them.”
“Oh, I shall. Now either someone had enough medical experience to know where to stick that thin blade which killed Mrs. Wilcox, or it was a lucky blow. Do you have any medical training, Mrs. Raisin?”
“None.”
“And Mr. Lacey?”
“None either.”
“It looks like a premeditated crime.” He leaned forward. “Someone was prepared. Perhaps someone knew of the lighting in that disco-that at moments when the ball overhead swung round it was quite black. Had any of the others been there before?”
“I just don’t know,” said Agatha wearily. “I barely knew them. But perhaps I could be of help to you. I have helped the police before. The clue to the murder must he in their backgrounds, that is, if one of them did it. If I could just study-”
“No,” said Pamir firmly. “No amateurs. I suggest you manage to have something of a holiday and put this behind you.”
“Meaning I am not a suspect?”
“Everyone who was in that disco on the night of the murder is a suspect. You may go, but do not leave Cyprus yet. Send Mr. Lacey in.”
Agatha would have given anything to hear what went on between Pamir and James. Was he asking them about their relationship? And what would James say?
Then she decided gloomily that James would probably just say, again, they were only friends and that for some reason Agatha had followed him to Cyprus, and she would appear a pathetic middle-aged woman chasing lost love.
When James finally emerged, Agatha suggested that they should have lunch in Nicosia alone, but James said they should all have lunch together.
“Why?” demanded Agatha.
“Don’t you want to find out who did this?”
“Ye-es,” said Agatha reluctantly, not being able to say that she only wanted to be alone with him.
At last they had all been interviewed and silently they walked across to the Saray Hotel and took the lift up to the restaurant at the top. The call to prayer sounded out over the red roofs of Nicosia as they sat down at one of the tables next to the window.
“Damned caterwauling,” said Olivia crossly.
“It’s a Muslim country,” said Angus. “Well, ma friends, do ye think that’s it?”
“If you mean, will they question us again,” said James, “then I think they are bound to. They are sure one of us did it.”
He glanced at Trevor, but Trevor was staring stonily out of the window at the minarets of the mosque.
“I’m beginning to think it’s up to me to find out who did it,” said Agatha, and then immediately regretted her words, because she immediately knew she sounded like an insensitive brag.
“Oh, all your stories about solving murders,” said Olivia with a brittle laugh. “Are you sure you weren’t fantasizing, dear?”
“No, I was not!” said Agatha hotly. “I have helped the police in Mircester in several cases.”
“If you say so,” said Harry Tembleton with a slight sneer.
“Tell them, James,” urged Agatha.
“It is true that Agatha, by blundering around in murder investigations, managed to prompt the murderer to show his, or her, hand,” said James flatly.
Agatha looked at him in amazement. “If you were a woman, James, you would be called a bitch.”
There was an awkward silence and then Trevor found his voice. “I wish the lot of you would realize I have lost my wife,” he said flatly. “I think it was some local crazed on drugs. All I want to do is get the hell out of this buggering island and never see it again.”
The waiter came up and they ordered food. Agatha studied Angus. Trevor had shown all the signs of being a very jealous husband and yet he had allowed this doting friend to join them on holiday. Why? Did he think Angus too old and too pompous to be any competition at all? Or had Angus paid for it?
She suddenly thought that she really ought to fax Bill Wong at Mircester Police Headquarters and ask him for the background on all of them.
Olivia decided her social skills were needed to guide them all through this awkward lunch. She encouraged James to talk about his book, and Angus to talk about what he did in his retirement and Harry to talk about farming. Trevor kept to a morose silence and somehow Olivia kept steering the conversation so that Agatha was excluded.
When they finally left the restaurant and were grouped on the pavement outside the Saray Hotel, Agatha linked her arm in James’s and said firmly, “Well, goodbye. I would like to take a look at the covered market again.”
She led James off. When they were clear of the others, Agatha said, “That was a nasty crack of yours about the way I solved those murders.”
“I thought you were being insensitive with Trevor sitting there. Besides, if we’re going to investigate this and you think one of them is a murderer, it’s a good idea no
t to advertise what you’re doing.”
“Oh, Mr. Know-All!” Agatha stopped short in front of a jeweller’s window. “Those Rolex watches look remarkably cheap.”
“Pirated,” said James curtly. “Probably only run for about a week. Do you really want to see the covered market again?”
“Not really. I wanted to talk to you without the others listening. Somewhere in their backgrounds must be some sort of clue to Rose’s death. What if we fax Bill Wong from the Onar Village Hotel on the way back and ask him to dig something up?”
“Let’s leave it for another day,” said James cautiously. “They may find out something here and then we do not need to bother Mircester police. In fact, why don’t we do some sightseeing and pack up a picnic tomorrow and go and have a look at some of the sights. We’ll start with Saint Hilarion.”
Agatha was still staring into the jeweller’s window as he talked. She suddenly pressed his arm warningly. For behind them, and in the window, she saw the reflections of Olivia and party.
How long had they been standing there?
They swung round. “We thought we’d take a look at the covered market as well,” said Olivia.
“We’ve changed our minds,” said Agatha before James could speak. The weather was still very warm and Olivia was wearing a brief sun-dress which showed her excellent breasts. I wish it would start to freeze, thought Agatha.
“What about dinner tonight?” asked Olivia.
“There’s a very good restaurant at Zeytinlik, just outside Kyrenia,” said James to Agatha’s dismay. “The Ottoman House. Eight o’clock?”
“Great. We’ll see you there.”
“Aye, we’ve got to stick together,” said Angus.
“Why on earth did you say that?” demanded Agatha angrily as they walked away. “Surely we’ve seen enough of them for one day.”
“You want to investigate, don’t you?” demanded James, steering her round a cartful of watermelons. “What do we really know about Harry and Angus, apart from the fact that Harry is a farmer and Angus a retired shopkeeper?”