Death of an Aegean Queen

by Maria Hudgins

  “Because!” Lettie put the back of one hand up to her mouth as if she was whispering a secret, but continued on in a loud voice. “They think Endicott killed Mr. Papadakos! They showed a bunch of pictures to this man who owns the shop in Mykonos where they think the murder weapon, the knife, was bought. The man said he can’t be sure but, of all the photos, Nigel Endicott’s looks the most like the man he thinks bought the knife.”

  “They’re looking for the shirt,” Ollie butted in.

  “Right. The shirt. The shop owner remembers a brightly colored shirt, and Bondurant wants to have a good look at the one Endicott wore when he got off the ship in Mykonos. I told Ollie about the backpack Endicott told us was for the towel and stuff he was taking to the harem.”

  “Hammam.” I corrected her.

  “Whatever. I wonder if it really was towels or if he was sneaking off the ship with the . . .” Lettie waved her fingers in front of my face in what I think was supposed to be a scary manner. “Bloood-staaained shirt!”

  “That sounds like a bit of a stretch to me.”

  “But possible.”

  “Possible. But the thing I came by to tell you is, they’ve found George Gaskill’s watch on the bottom of Brittany Benson’s closet.” I waited for that to sink in. “Kathryn and I were taken to the security office a few minutes ago and she positively identified the watch as George’s. There’s a personal inscription on the back.”

  Ollie sat up with a jerk and planted both feet on the floor. Lettie stood there, mouth open. Ollie said, “Oh, my God. The little fox!”

  “She has the best motive of all,” Lettie said. “Revenge.”

  “They’ve already questioned Brittany. She told them she was with her roommate, Sophie, from the time she finished her last performance until the next morning, and Sophie backed her up.” I realized I was sorting out my own thoughts as I was talking. “I told Bondurant I’d seen both of them on the deck at three a.m., soon after George was killed.”

  “So Brittany and Sophie are in it together?” Lettie sat beside Ollie on the edge of the bed and stretched an arm around his shoulders. “That makes sense. Two young women could do it more easily than one. One could have distracted him, lured him out to that little deck. And the other could have slipped up behind him with a knife.”

  “They could’ve been pretty sure the stern deck would be deserted at that time in the morning.” Ollie added.

  Lettie frowned. “But would the time work out? You left George a bit after midnight. He was on his way back to his room then, and the murder didn’t take place until . . .”

  “That’s just it,” I said. “We don’t know when it took place. We only know it was after midnight and before four.”

  “Right. And I don’t know whether he was on his way back to his own room or not,” Ollie said, folding Lettie’s free hand in his. “I assumed he was. He could have been heading for a secret meeting with Brittany.”

  “Or Sophie.”

  I threw both hands up. “Wait a minute. Now we’re going too far. I don’t know Sophie Antonakos very well, I admit, but she strikes me as an honest girl. She has an innocence about her.”

  Ollie exhaled loudly. “Innocence can be faked. There’s innocence and then there’s good acting.”

  I didn’t feel like going any further with this conversation. I’d let Ollie and Lettie hash it over between themselves and I’d think it over alone.

  Chapter Twenty

  I showered and changed for dinner, without much thought for what I’d wear because it didn’t matter how I looked anymore. Glancing over the evening’s offerings in the “Oracle” bulletin, I found nothing of interest. Maybe I’d go to the library after dinner and read. I hoped Dr. Girard had put the material the museum curator had given him today on the library’s shelves and I wondered what language it was in.

  I put on my makeup robotically, but stopped when my blusher brush scratched my cheek. I examined the brush and found the culprit was a clear, slightly concave, disc. Less than half an inch in diameter. It wasn’t particularly brittle because it yielded a bit when I squeezed it. Could it be a contact lens? If so, what was it doing here, in my blusher brush? Only one way to find out, I thought. I filled a glass of water from the bathroom sink and dropped the disc in. I stuck it up high, on top of my TV, so I wouldn’t forget and drink it. Then I remembered I’d plucked the little disc off the sink that morning after we found the pool of blood. It was in the bathroom at the end of the hall, near the door to the stern deck.

  Before dinner I took a stroll around the promenade deck. I stopped in at the library but no one was there. The sandbox Dr. Girard used for supporting pottery shards while the glue dried was still under the gooseneck lamp. Sophie’s notebook and a couple of catalogs were stacked neatly on a table, pens laid alongside. I wondered if and when this room was ever locked. It seemed to me they trusted passengers a lot, but then it would hardly be worth it to steal big, heavy things like books and sneak them off the ship in your luggage. Anyone with a mind to steal something could find richer pickings elsewhere. Such as in the dining halls. I remembered what Kathryn had told me about Heather Ziegler. Was Heather really swiping the silver?

  I walked around the bow of the ship and down the port side. Most of the round porthole windows on this side had curtains drawn, I assumed, because the late afternoon sun was pouring in. Some of the portholes were open, the breeze rippling the curtains inward. My own window, I had discovered, didn’t open, obviously because my room was on a lower deck and positioned so that, in rough seas, waves could splash in.

  I wondered which of these was Lettie and Ollie’s window. Theirs would be about halfway down, I thought. Not meaning to spy on anyone, because most of the curtains were drawn anyway, I happened to look through a porthole whose curtain was not drawn and saw Kathryn Gaskill. She stood, facing the window but apparently she didn’t see me. I stopped, turned toward the railing, and a few seconds later, glanced over my shoulder at the window again. The sun bouncing off the water had contracted my pupils so that I now saw nothing through the window, but it must have been slightly open because I heard Kathryn’s voice.

  “It had to be done,” I heard her say.

  I stepped aside, out of the line of sight through the window, and closed my eyes to give my pupils time to dilate. It occurred to me Kathryn hadn’t seen or at least hadn’t recognized me because the setting sun was in her eyes. Then, as casually as I could, I ambled back past the porthole window, turned, and looked inside.

  I saw Kathryn in profile. Her head was down, resting on the chest of the man who held her in his arms. The man holding her was Nigel Endicott.

  * * * * *

  I was the last to arrive at our dinner table. Lettie, Ollie, and Kathryn were already there, as were Ernestine and Heather Ziegler. I’d intended to tell Lettie and Ollie not to mention anything about George’s watch before they talked to Kathryn because I wasn’t sure we were supposed to be blabbing that around. While I studied the menu and placed my order, I stayed mum, hoping the conversation around me would tell me who’d already said what. Had Kathryn told them George’s watch had been found? Had Lettie mentioned Agent Bondurant following Nigel Endicott? Had either she or Ollie mentioned Brittany Benson’s visits to their room?

  “Where is our friend, Captain Quattrocchi?” Ernestine asked me. She virtually salivated when she said the name.

  “He was called back to Florence,” I said, handing my menu to the waiter. “About some case he’s working on.”

  “Oh, dear me. Is he coming back?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’ll bet he’s tracking down an international jewel thief!” Ernestine bent forward until her left breast swiped the butter off her roll. Lettie pointed at the problem and Ernestine applied her napkin to the greasy blob. “Or maybe he’s cracking a spy ring! What do you think?”

  “I really couldn’t say.”

  It was as if we’d all been warned to shut up. Throughout the meal, we talked
about families back home, our impressions of Rhodes, other trips we’d taken, but nothing related in any way to the murders, until the dessert plates were cleared and coffee was served. Then Kathryn said, “They found my husband’s watch today. It was in the closet of that bitch, Brittany Benson.”

  “Who?” asked Ernestine.

  “One of the dancers on this ship who also just happens to be the girl who got my husband fired from his job ten years ago!”

  Heather Ziegler’s eyes widened. It was the first expression I’d seen on her face. She’d sat, more or less silent throughout the meal, glancing frequently at the rest of us as if she assessed our alertness and her own chances of successfully filching the salt shaker. What I saw in her countenance now was glee. Excitement. An awakening.

  Ollie rose. “Careful now, Kathryn. I know how Brittany feels, being accused of murder. I’m in the same boat she is.” Ollie, I felt, could afford to be magnanimous now that the fire wasn’t so hot under his own feet.

  Kathryn spluttered and mumbled something I didn’t catch.

  Heather said, “Exactly when was your husband killed, Mrs. Gaskill? I understand they found a pool of blood on the deck at about three in the morning and it was still liquid.”

  We all stared, open-mouthed. For a girl who had been as silent as a Carmelite nun until now, this was quite a debut. Kathryn looked at me, her eyes saying, You take it from here.

  “It was Kathryn and I who found the pool of blood, in fact. It was sometime after three in the morning, and yes—I suppose it’s all right to say it—the blood was still liquid.”

  “So it must have happened between two-thirty and three,” Heather continued, her words now tumbling over each other. “Exposed to the air, the blood wouldn’t have remained liquid for more than a few minutes. I know. I’m a nurse. Blood clots really fast in the presence of oxygen. Otherwise, we’d all bleed to death every time we cut ourselves!”

  Kathryn, her mouth tightly shut as if she was about to vomit, got up and, without a word, left the table. I ran after her, dodging around tables and waiters carrying loaded trays, across the dining hall and out through the double doors at the entrance. There I stopped and looked around, but Kathryn had already given me the slip. Perhaps not, I thought. The last time she did this, I’d found her in the bathroom down the hall on the left. She could have gone there again.

  I didn’t get the chance to find out, however, because at that moment a hand grabbed me firmly by my elbow and dragged me down the hall to the right. Dragged me toward the display case. It was Sophie Antonakos.

  “Dotsy, look! Look at the bracelet. You’ve seen it before, I hope.”

  It took me a second to get my bearings. Then I remembered. “Yes. Dr. Girard showed it to me this morning. We talked about how it has no known provenance and, as far as he knows, it’s never been photographed or described.”

  “Too late now,” Sophie said. “This is not it. Someone has stolen the real bracelet, the one he showed you this morning, and replaced it with this fake!” Sophie’s dark eyes flashed.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course, I’m sure. Look at the workmanship.” The bracelet was a gold spiral that would have wound around the arm twice ending in a serpent’s head on one end, its tail on the other. I couldn’t tell about the workmanship because I’m no expert, but Sophie said, “This spiral is thicker, probably because it’s not solid gold like the real one was. The scales on the snake’s body are different and the carving isn’t nearly as fine. Do you see the stones that are set into the curve of the tail?”

  “Yes.”

  “They’re green, aren’t they?” Sophie backed up and let me get a closer look at the tail. “This morning, they were blue!”

  “Uh, oh.”

  “This is probably a copy from a museum gift shop. Some of the copies are quite good, you know.”

  “But if the bracelet that was here this morning had never been photographed or described, how could it have been copied?”

  “This particular bracelet, as far as we know, had never been described. This type of bracelet, with the coils and the snake head and tail, has been found perhaps a dozen times. I’ve seen some, very similar, in the big museum in Athens.”

  I looked at the display case on all sides. On one side, between the base and the Plexiglas top, I found a key hole. I ran my fingers around and over it. “I see no damage. It looks as if the thief had no trouble breaking in.”

  “Someone had a key,” Sophie said.

  “Someone also had a really good substitute handy. This makes no sense. Are we saying the thief is someone on the ship who travels with duplicates of the display case items?”

  “I’ll bet you could find something like this in one of the shops in Rhodes. There must be a hundred jewelry shops in Old Rhodes.” She was right. I’d walked past more than a dozen myself today.

  “Before we get too upset, Sophie, let’s ask Luc Girard if this is his doing. I know he was concerned about it, and it’s just possible he made the substitution himself. He may have tucked the real one away in the safe.”

  Sophie told me she had to dash off and teach a dance class to a group of passengers, explaining that the class wasn’t supposed to run over into the time for the second dinner seating. I checked the bathroom (no Kathryn) and decided to give it up. Kathryn could mull over what Heather had said, alone. I took the stairs down to the promenade deck and slipped out the port side doors. The sweet night air and the lights on the dark water lured me to the rail. Looking up, I found the Big Dipper and, following the pointer stars, the North Star. So we were headed west. Somewhere, over the horizon ahead, was Italy. And Marco. I wondered what he was doing tonight, and if there was any chance he’d come back. One side of my head said, That’s wishful thinking. The other side said, But that Italian temper of his is as volatile as water on a hot griddle. He can get mad in a flash, but he can also get over it in a flash. Maybe . . .

  I tugged at the library door and found it was now locked. Sophie was teaching a dance class and I had no idea where Luc Girard was, but the night was far too beautiful for me to go to my room, so I took the elevator to the top deck, the deck with the observation bar on the bow, the gymnasium in the middle, and the small open deck where I’d first seen Kathryn and Nigel Endicott together, on the stern.

  A couple of deck tables were occupied. I found one for myself at the stern rail overlooking the pool three decks below, steeling myself to endure calls of “Marco” and “Polo” from the children I saw cavorting in the water. A waiter appeared out of nowhere and asked me if I wanted a drink.

  “Ouzo, please. My room number is three sixty-five.”

  As the waiter walked away, I thought: Who killed George Gaskill? At this point, the easy answer would be Brittany Benson. She had motive and she had the victim’s watch, but did she have opportunity? I rejected Ollie’s suggestion that Brittany and Sophie might have done it together. I couldn’t believe Sophie would be involved in anything so heinous, but Ollie did have a point. I didn’t know Sophie that well, and innocence could be faked. It’s hard to fool me, though. After raising five children, I’m pretty damn near foolproof. I couldn’t believe Sophie was involved, but she may have gone too far when she gave Brittany an alibi for the entire night. Her roommate could have slipped out when Sophie was asleep and slipped back without awakening her.

  But how could Brittany have known where George would be and when? If she had contacted him earlier, letting him know she was on board, would he have consented to a wee-hours meeting? I doubted it. Suppose he’d contacted her? He might, after all, have found out she was on the ship’s staff, contacted her and . . . oh, golly! What if George intended to kill Brittany? He could have rendezvoused with her, or simply bumped into her that early morning, tried to kill her, and Brittany, being younger and more fit than George, could have turned the tables on him. The idea had a certain appeal.

  The waiter brought my ouzo and a glass of water. I wished the deck lights were brighter becau
se I love to see ouzo turn blue when you add water to it. I poured about an equal measure of water into the liquor.

  Now, what about Malcolm Stone and Willem Leclercq? Like Ollie, they could’ve been angry enough over their poker losses to have followed George, accused him of cheating, and then what? Killed him when he refused to give them their money back? No. The amount they lost, though hefty, didn’t call for such drastic measures. More likely, it would have had something to do with antiquities. Malcolm was an avid collector. He’d obviously been up to something today when I ran into him near the Mosque, and his interest in me might be sincere or it might be a way of finding out what Marco did or didn’t know.

  It looked as if Willem Leclercq and Brittany were getting together. Brittany, I knew, was up to her—well, at least her knees—in some sort of funny business with ancient artifacts and Willem was actively seeking the same. Whatever was going on, I knew it had something to do with antiquities. There were too many connections to believe otherwise.

  I turned my thoughts to Nigel and Kathryn. What was going on between them? When did they really meet? I’d bet that morning on the deck wasn’t their first meeting. The scene I’d witnessed earlier this evening wasn’t between two people who’d simply shared a table for coffee. To what had Kathryn been referring when she said “It had to be done”? Did she mean George had to be killed? I shivered at the thought.

  Did she mean Nikos Papadakos had to be killed? Had Nigel, in fact, been Papadakos’s killer and did Kathryn know all about it? The owner of the shop where the alleged murder weapon had been purchased picked Nigel out, from all the photos he was shown, but had admitted he couldn’t be sure. Kathryn couldn’t have witnessed the murder in Mykonos because she hadn’t set foot off the ship that day.

  The waiter dropped by my table and I ordered another ouzo.

  I remembered what Marco had said about Papadakos. Everyone on the ship liked him, or so they said, but he was from Crete. Marco seemed to think that fact might be important because Crete was the source of much of the looted antiquities. We’d be docking in Crete tomorrow, near the town of Heraklion. The Palace of Knossos was one of the main reasons I’d wanted to go on this trip, but now I found myself wondering how far Papadakos’s home might be from Heraklion. If it were possible, would it be instructive to drop by and visit? Forget it. I couldn’t talk to them, anyway. I knew the country folk who lived outside the regular tourist spots rarely spoke anything other than Greek.