by M. M. Kaye
His shoulder was warm and firm and smelt comfortingly of shaving soap, clean linen and Turkish cigarettes, and Amanda struggled with a childish desire to turn her head against it and burst into tears. It is possible that Mr Howard was aware of this, for he said sharply: ‘Take a pull on yourself, Amanda!’
Amanda steadied herself with an effort and said: ‘It was Glenn____’
‘Glenn? You mean Barton? Was he there?’
‘No. He came to tell me about her—Anita. Because he’d pretended that she was ill, and when he heard that she was in Kyrenia he knew that I’d find out…’
She told him the story as Glenn had told it to her that afternoon, and how she had offered to see Anita Barton and had arranged with Toby Gates to get Lumley Potter safely off the premises.
‘And what happened when you got there?’ demanded Steve brusquely.
He listened without interruption to her account of that unsatisfactory and abortive interview with Anita Barton, and when she had finished he said:
‘What was that about someone on the stairs?’
‘There was someone,’ whispered Amanda, and shivered.
Steve’s arms tightened about her momentarily and he said: ‘Go on. Tell me.’
She told him of that brief, ugly, terrifying interlude on the dark rickety staircase, and when she had done he said curtly: ‘Quite sure you didn’t imagine it?’
‘Quite sure,’ said Amanda, and shivered again.
‘Any idea who it was?’
‘No.’
‘Could it have been Mrs Barton?’
‘No,’ said Amanda again, entirely positive.
‘What makes you so sure?’
‘She had the gramophone on. If she had opened the door it would have sounded louder at once.’
‘H’mm. Maybe. On the other hand there is probably another door.’
He brooded for a moment or two, absently rubbing his cheek against her hair, and then said abruptly: ‘Who knew that you were going there?’
‘No one. Only Glenn—Mr Barton. And Toby of course. No one else.’
‘And Toby told me—choosing a nice public spot to do it in—and probably half a dozen other people as well. So that’s not much help to us.’
Amanda said with a quaver in her voice: ‘What’s wrong with that house?’
She was aware of a brief, fractional tension of Steve’s body, but he only said: ‘Nothing that I know of.’
‘Then why did you come there as soon as Toby told you where I was?’
‘Because,’ said Mr Howard with commendable restraint, ‘I do not consider it healthy for you to wander around alone after dark. I warned you once that you’d have to watch your step. Well I meant it. In case you’re not aware of it, this afternoon, in the absence of any other evidence, a verdict that amounted to “suicide while of an unsound mind” was returned on Mrs Blaine.’
‘But—that means it’s all over!’ said Amanda. ‘If the police think it was suicide, then no one would want to____’
‘Can’t you understand?’ interrupted Steve roughly. ‘Mrs Blaine was murdered; and as far as the murderer knows, you are the only person who may be aware of it. If you had talked—if you talk now—that verdict would not stand. Use your head, Amanda!’
‘Then you think that–that someone in that house meant to stop me talking by____’ Amanda’s voice died in her throat.
‘I don’t know about that. You can’t say that because you heard someone coming down a staircase behind you it was necessarily someone who meant to harm you. Or, for that matter, that he or she even knew who you were. It is just on the cards that another visitor may have been expected to pay a call on Mrs Barton tonight, and that in the dark you were mistaken for someone else.’
‘For–for someone who … somebody meant to kill? You mean another murder? Oh no!’
‘It’s possible. An attempt at one, shall we say?’
‘I don’t believe it. Why? Why should there be?’
‘I’m not sure yet. It’s just a theory. But it might account for that incident on the staircase. There are, of course, various other possibilities____’ There was an odd inflection in Steve Howard’s voice.
‘I know,’ interrupted Amanda bitterly. ‘One of which is that I might really have murdered Julia Blaine, and then invented a story of someone on the stairs just to make it look as though it couldn’t possibly have been me!’
‘Yes,’ agreed Steve thoughtfully. ‘There is always that of course. I hadn’t lost sight of it.’
He heard Amanda’s quick gasp of rage and continued reflectively: ‘Poison, you see, is a woman’s weapon. Women do not as a rule use a gun, and hardly ever a knife. They don’t like noise or blood. They prefer poison or pushing someone off a cliff—something which produces death, but death at arm’s length so to speak. Men don’t mind the bang, or the blood getting on their hands.’
‘You–you____’ words appeared to fail Amanda. ‘You dare to think that I____’ She attempted to wrench herself free and Steve tightened his hold.
‘There’s no need to fly off the handle, Amarantha. One has to look at every angle. It’s a possibility. There are, as I said, others.’
Amanda pulled back against his arms and stared up at him; but the moon was behind him and his face was only a dark shadow against the pale sky and the silver sea. She said in a breathless, furious whisper:
‘There’s something I haven’t lost sight of either! You told me not to tell about that bottle. And you took it away—and the glass! How do I know that you didn’t do that because your own finger-prints were on both? I don’t believe that you were in Fayid, or on the ship, just because you paint. You were there for a reason. Something to do with Julia—or Toby, or Persis, or someone who was on that ship. There’s something horrible going on, and you’re mixed up in it!’
She stopped, breathless and trembling, and Steve said reflectively: ‘You look charming when you’re angry. Like an infuriated kitten.’
Amanda made another ineffectual attempt to free herself, but the arms about her were suddenly like a vice, hard and painful, and there was no longer any trace of levity in Steven Howard’s voice. He said harshly: ‘Keep out of this, Amanda! I mean that. Murder is a diabolical thing. You can’t risk taking an interest in the private affairs of anyone who was on that boat. It isn’t safe.’
‘Why?’ asked Amanda uncertainly.
‘Because it’s essential that you avoid any appearance of suspicion or meddling. It’s no secret that you were with Julia Blaine when she died, and someone knows that there was a small bottle containing the poison she died of under the pillow in that cabin. That someone is bound to wonder what you thought when you found it, and why you never mentioned it, and what you have done with it. Remember that a murderer always has a guilty conscience, and that a killer knows quite well that even if he kills a dozen people—or twenty—he himself can only hang once.’
Amanda said in a choking whisper: ‘But I don’t know anything—I don’t want to!’
‘You know about the bottle,’ said Steve grimly. ‘You also questioned the stewardess about that glass. I heard you, so the chances are that several other people did as well. And because of that, someone may be interested enough—or scared enough—to keep a pretty wary eye on you and to get unpleasantly upset when you behave as you did tonight.’
‘But I only called on Mrs Barton. There’s nothing suspicious in that!’
‘No? Not when you tell Toby Gates to lure Mr Potter out of the house? Not when you slip out after dark and—I am willing to bet—sneak along in the shadows with a veil half over your face and lurk in some alleyway until Potter has left, and then steal into the house like a stage conspirator in Act II about to plant the time bomb in the Prime Minister’s portfolio? You did, didn’t you?’
‘Well____’ began Amanda defensively, and stopped.
‘I thought as much,’ said Mr Howard, resigned. ‘Listen to me, Amanda—and I’m not going to tell you this again. You are in the unfortu
nate position of being able to produce evidence that what has scraped past as suicide was, in reality, murder. If, on top of that, you start paying elaborately furtive visits to a woman whom you have never met before, but who was a fellow passenger on board the Orantares, someone with a guilty conscience and a single-track mind may begin to ask themselves why all this First Conspirator stuff, if your visit to Mrs Barton is just a social call?—or could it be that you are beginning to make discreet inquiries among the passengers, and if so, what are you after? On the other hand, provided you behave in a perfectly normal manner, whoever was responsible for the murder of Mrs Blaine may be led to believe that you made nothing of that bottle after all, but merely threw it out of the porthole and dismissed the incident—maybe! Now do you get the idea?’
‘Yes,’ said Amanda with a shudder.
‘Good. Keep thinking of it. And keep out of it!’
Amanda said haltingly: ‘But–but Julia—If somebody killed her it isn’t right that they should get away with it just because I–I hadn’t the courage to tell.’
‘Don’t worry; they won’t,’ said Steve grimly. ‘I promise you that. And it wasn’t a question of your not having the courage to tell. You’d have told all right, if I hadn’t stopped you.’
‘Why did you?’
‘Because it was too late to do anything for Mrs Blaine by then, and I had an idea or two of my own that I preferred to follow up without the issue being confused by a cat among the pigeons.’
‘Ideas about what?’
‘Limes, Times and Temperature,’ said Steve lightly. ‘And now, as I am beginning to get cramp, I think that the sooner we terminate this tender interlude, the better. Look at me!’
Amanda looked up, startled, and Steve bent his head and kissed her.
It was, as Persis would have said, quite a kiss, and indicated if nothing else that Mr Howard must have had plenty of experience in such matters. Amanda, who owing to a strict policy of chaperonage enforced until recently by Uncle Oswin, had not, had the oddest conviction that the ground under her feet was no longer solid and that for a long moment the moon and stars were describing circles about her head.
‘That,’ said Mr Howard, releasing her, ‘was just for the record.’
‘Was it?’ said Amanda breathlessly. ‘Then this is just for____’
Steve caught her hand a fraction of a second before it reached its mark.
‘That would have hurt you much more than it hurt me,’ he remarked reprovingly. ‘Another time use your fist instead of your palm, and go for the point of the jaw. Like to have another shot?’
‘Yes!’ said Amanda, breathing stormily. ‘With a flatiron!’
‘Very wifely,’ commented Mr Howard. He looked down at her and laughed.
‘I apologize—there! But it was quite irresistible. Don’t quarrel with me, Amarantha.’ He kissed her hand lightly and tucked it under his arm. ‘Come on; it’s quite time you got back, or Miss Moon will begin to wonder if you really are a nice girl after all.’
He turned her about and walked her back along the sea wall and up through the moonlit town to the gates of the Villa Oleander.
10
Amanda avoided the harbour on the following morning. In the hot, brilliant sunlight that streamed through the open windows of the Villa Oleander and filled the dusty, gracious rooms with sunbeams, the events of the past night seemed unbelievable and unreal, and even faintly ridiculous. Amanda was almost tempted to wonder if she had not, after all, imagined the sound of those furtive feet on the stairs. Had they perhaps been only an echo of her own footsteps, or a trick played upon her nerves by darkness and an unfamiliar and empty house?
There was only one thing about the happenings of the past night that was entirely real. The fact that Steve Howard had kissed her.
Amanda, standing in the hot sunlight of the garden and remembering that kiss with a return of the curious sensation of dizziness that had accompanied it, was inclined to discount all that Steve Howard had told her, and to suspect that it had merely amused him to see how long he could keep her standing in a close embrace in the moonlight. Hadn’t he made some flippant remark on the previous morning about only making love by moonlight?
‘I wouldn’t put it past him to have done it for a bet!’ thought Amanda with sudden bitterness. ‘He probably makes a habit of it, and I expect he has kissed Persis already!’
The reflection annoyed her unreasonably, and she did not realize that in the process of brooding over Steve Howard’s outrageous behaviour she had very nearly lost sight of the terrifying and infinitely more important fact that she had been indirectly involved in what was almost certainly murder, and that she had entirely forgotten to be frightened. An end that Mr Howard may possibly have had in view when he had terminated their macabre conversation on the harbour wall in that particular manner.
Amanda stood among the freckled shadows of the lemon trees, with the pigeons cooing and fluttering in the deep stone arches of the ruined wall behind her and the scent of roses and syringa and sunbaked dust sweet on the windless air, and thought exclusively of Steven Howard and not at all of Julia Blaine …
Miss Moon, a blaze of emerald green, appeared upon the creeper-covered verandah outside the drawing-room windows and called down to say that Captain Gates was on the telephone asking if Amanda would go bathing with him.
‘Tell him I’ve gone out!’ begged Amanda.
‘Certainly, dear. Where to?’
‘Just out,’ said Amanda, seized with an urgent desire for solitude and a feeling of inability to cope with the conversation of Toby Gates or anyone else—with one possible exception.
She ran across the garden and out into the road, and taking the first turning that offered, presently found herself leaving the town behind her.
The houses became fewer and the road wandered between olive groves, dark pointed cypress trees and stony sun-baked fields where goats grazed among the coarse grasses, weeds and asphodel. An ox cart creaked towards her and a black-haired, black-eyed, bare-footed urchin riding a donkey flourished a branch of oleander and grinned at Amanda as he ambled past. The road was hot and white under her feet and she began to wish that she had thought to bring a hat.
A car swept past, covering her with dust. It drew up abruptly some distance ahead, and reversed until it drew level with her.
‘Amanda!’ said Alastair Blaine, leaning out over the door. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’
‘Walking,’ said Amanda. ‘Hullo, Persis. Where are you two off to?’
‘We are doing our duty as self-respecting tourists,’ said Persis. ‘According to the Guide Book, we should not fail to see the Abbey of Bellapais. We are not failing.’
‘Come on Amanda,’ said Alastair Blaine, leaning out to open the back door. ‘Get in. You’ll get heat-stroke or a peeling nose or both if you wander around the countryside in this sun, and as you’ll have to do the sights some time you may as well do this one now.’
Amanda looked back down the hot dusty road and capitulated. She said: ‘You will get me back by one o’clock, won’t you?’
‘Of course. Half an hour is about my limit for looking at ruins. Hop in.’ He slammed the door behind her and changed gear.
Persis had not seconded the invitation and Amanda had the sudden and uncomfortable impression that she was not too pleased at the addition of a third person to the party. But it was too late now, for the car was already moving again.
The white road ran parallel to the sea and the long, narrow barrier of the Kyrenia range that lay between the coast and the central plain. The mountains were blue in the hot sunlight; a clear transparent blue that made them look as though they had been fashioned out of Lalique glass, and their pale serrated peaks, shimmering in the heat haze, had the strange beauty of those distant ranges that Leonardo da Vinci has painted as a background to the Mona Lisa and the Madonna of the Rocks.
A light breeze blew in from the sea, turning the olive trees to silver, and Amanda relaxed into
a day dream and made no attempt to talk. Even Persis Halliday’s clear and incisive voice had softened and slowed as though the warm peace of the morning was also having its effect on her, and she conducted a low-toned conversation with Alastair Blaine to which Amanda, occupied with her own thoughts, paid no heed.
The car changed gear as the road wound up through a village perched on a low hill. A village of white-walled, pink-roofed houses, bell towers and minarets, encircled with olive groves, silver in the wind, and spiked with the sharp dark green of cypress trees.
Persis said: ‘Say, isn’t this the cutest place you ever saw! Where’s that map?… Aiyos Epiktitos. That’ll be it. Do stop, Alastair, I want to take a photograph.’
Major Blaine looked at his watch and said, resigned: ‘I’ll give you five minutes. And no wandering round the place if you want to see the Abbey and get back by one.’
The streets were full of people in holiday attire and gay with a flutter of paper flags and green branches, and Amanda suddenly caught sight of a familiar face. It was Euridice, the prop and stay of the Villa Oleander, and Amanda remembered that Miss Moon had mentioned a fête at Aiyos Epiktitos that both Euridice and her nephew Andreas, the odd-job man, were to attend that day.
Euridice, however, appeared to be in anything but a festive mood. She was talking to a small group of black-clad women, one of whom was wailing aloud, and her normally cheerful face was full of woe. She looked up and, seeing Amanda, hurried over to the car.
This meeting, it was providential! declared Euridice. Her English was strangely scrambled and interlarded with whole sentences in her native tongue, but Amanda gathered from her flood of agitated speech that neither she nor Andreas would be able to return to the Villa Oleander that day, and that she wished Amanda to convey this information and her apologies to Miss Moon.
‘Tomorrow morning, for the breakfast I come,’ said Euridice. ‘Today, no.’ A relative had died, she explained; the husband of a cousin who kept a Taverna on the road beyond Nicosia. Apparently the cousin’s husband had got into some bar-room brawl in Nicosia and had ended up in a culvert with a knife in his back.