Agatha Raisin and the Murderous Marriage

by Beaton, M. C.

  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, according to a blonde woman called Carol who served her meal. 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 candlelight when Carol brought her a note. It said simply, ‘Come and join 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, that 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 overrun 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 left 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 along 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 I can.’

  Agatha felt suddenly tired, weepy and disappointed.

  ‘No, I 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 R
aisin, 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 lead you down on to 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 licence 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.