Rainford didn’t finish the sentence but I knew too well what she was thinking.
“Eve should have contacted me by now, at least for some advice on how to handle the Markham sentencing. It’s all so ODD!” she wrote finally.
After that, I decided to call Elpida at the kafeneio. That’s how much faith I had in her gut instincts and sleuthing abilities. Though she’d never met the ‘famous hermit’, as she put it, who lived down the hill, she’d heard of her at least and promised to keep her ear to the ground in case one of her customers mentioned anything that could be significant. It was a mighty long shot, but that was the point I was at. I didn’t expect to find Peregrine until she was ready to be found and I’d probably have to make that call to the Messenger in the next few days to fess up.
Angus was pecking at his keyboard when I went downstairs to shower. I didn’t disturb him but went back to my room to read for a while, propped up against my pillow, with Zeffy lying at the bottom of the bed. He yawned three or four times, making a funny squeaking noise with it, as if his jaw was rusty. It made me laugh. First laugh I’d had all day. A short while later, Angus knocked on the door. He came in slowly and sat on the edge of the bed.
“I thought Zeffy wasn’t allowed to sleep on beds,” he grumbled.
“I never said that, did I? Anyway, it’s comforting having him nearby. I know if he hears anything strange in the night, he’ll wake immediately and go to check it out. That’s why I always leave the door ajar now.”
“He’s loyal at least, and that counts for something,” Angus said, looking thoughtful, running a hand through his hair. I noticed his hair was getting long again, as if he were gearing up for another ponytail like the one he’d worn when I first came to Greece and which Polly had persuaded him to cut. He was lucky to have so few grey hairs, despite his age, and his hair was thick and healthy, one of his best features, along with his hazel eyes. For a man in his early 70s I thought him to be quite handsome.
“Tell me now about the other thing you mentioned.”
He chewed on his bottom lip. “I don’t want to add to your woes, but I can’t keep it to myself, sorry.”
“Okay, tell me,” I said, putting down my book, with a sense of foreboding. Even Zeffy lifted his head up and gave Angus a bug-eyed stare.
“Today I went to see an old mate in a bar on Aristomenous, near where we often have coffee in the city.” Aristomenous Street had the city’s main central square, lined with cafes and bars, and the best place to people-watch and catch up with friends. “We had a table outside under the awning. While we were there, I saw Leonidas walking by with someone.”
Someone? “Who?”
Angus looked straight at me. “You won’t believe it. It was Phaedra.”
“Phaedra! Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure. Polly pointed her out to me once in Kalamata. Sexy thing with long black hair. Well, if it wasn’t her, it was her double.”
“Well, it’s probably nothing. She always comes back about a week before Greek Easter to see her family. Polly told me that once.”
“Well, perhaps, but that’s not the whole story. It’s just that … see …. he had his arm around her back, a kind of comforting gesture, I thought. They were so engrossed, Leo didn’t see me sitting there. Anyway, they were walking very slowly, so much so I even managed a picture of them,” he said, pulling his mobile out of his pocket.
I was surprised. Angus was someone who hated using a mobile phone when I first came to Greece. He’d rather have used a homing pigeon. For him to bother taking a picture of Phaedra – well, it had to be bad. My stomach was feeling queasy.
“Here it is,” he said, turning the screen towards me. It was a slightly hazy shot but there was no mistaking that it was Phaedra turned side-on to Leonidas, gazing into his eyes. A tender moment, you could call it, that didn’t delight me.
“Okay, so she’s back and they meet up for some reason. They were together for a while. No big deal perhaps,” I said, though I didn’t believe that.
“Yeah, sure. Maybe. But you told me yesterday Leo said he couldn’t come this weekend because he had family stuff to do, right?”
I nodded. How could I have forgotten?
“Seems to me that it wasn’t family stuff after all and Phaedra was the real reason.”
“It does look that way, doesn’t it?” I said, putting my book on the bedside table and slipping down the bed a bit. Zeffy was fast asleep now. I stared at the ceiling, feeling mortally tired myself.
“I don’t know what to say, pet. Looks a bit off, doesn’t it? I mean, did he mention he was going to see her when she came back?”
“No. But there will be an explanation for them being together. Leo’s a decent guy, you know that.”
“Yes, I do, and I like Leo a lot, so just ask him what’s going on and ….”
He didn’t finish the sentence but squeezed the top of my bent knee. I remembered vividly then that when I was a kid and I’d had an upset he always came and sat on the side of the bed and tweaked my knee like that. It was his paternalistic way of saying everything would be fine. But would it?
“Okay, Angus. We’ll talk about it in the morning. I don’t know what’s going on but the worst-case scenario is that she’s maybe angling to come back to Greece, because …”
“She wants him back, right? And why not? He’s a great catch and anyway … it was her silly fault legging it to England in the first place.”
“Or maybe he wants her back.” I hadn’t wanted to go that far yet but the thought had bubbled up and I couldn’t suppress it. And I remembered how moody he’d been the previous day, after we’d been to the police station.
“You’ve got to confront him, Bronte, otherwise I will.”
I smiled. “Thanks for your loyalty. Appreciate it.”
He patted my knee again and got up, still looking thoughtful.
“Sleep well, if you can. Sorry to bring you grief, but I thought it should be said.”
“Night-night,” I said, as he turned to go to bed.
I lay awake a long while thinking about Phaedra, a problem I didn’t need right now. Leonidas had been going out with Phaedra when I first met him and they had been close to an engagement. But with the crisis beginning in Greece and the expectation that things would get bad in this country for everyone, they had hatched a plan to move to Britain, like thousands of other Greek professionals. Phaedra was to organise a job first in England. As a dentist, with a good practice in Kalamata, she had little trouble in scoring a position in a thriving practice in Brighton. Leonidas had applied for jobs as a GP in health centres in the same area, and one or two were very interested.
He was to follow a year or so later, as he had much to finalise in Greece, not least the fact that he had a nine-year-old son, Adonis, from a former marriage to a local actress, now based in Athens. With his current work schedule, he only managed a quick trip to Athens every couple of months, but the issue of not seeing his son much at all if he moved to England had put a dampener on the plan. Then he met me and that completely scuppered it. Phaedra stayed in England and Leonidas confirmed his commitment to Greece.
I never feared the love affair with Phaedra would fire up again. Until today, I had never doubted his loyalty. He was not a deceitful man or a philanderer. But perhaps the old ties to Phaedra, the family connections, the cultural similarities he once told me had drawn them together were stronger than they both thought. And the reality was that I still knew so little about this man – as much as I loved him. I understood so little of life and love in Greece. I would need to bone up on all these things – and soon.
I finally managed to fall asleep in the early hours of the morning but woke abruptly at seven with a vivid thought that I couldn’t shift. Had I dreamt it? And it was nothing to do with Leonidas and Phaedra. I was thinking of Eve Peregrine. And Vathia. Something had been nagging at me like a stone in a shoe since we’d gone to the village: the faint noise I’d heard when we were walking
back along the pathway to the car. I couldn’t quite grasp it – until now.
Chapter 12
Working hard for the Mani
I leapt out of bed on Saturday morning and went to Angus’s room, shaking him gently awake. He turned a bleary face towards me and pulled the sheet over his head.
“Sorry to wake you,” I said. He groaned. “We’ve got to drive back down to Vathia, Angus. I’ve worked it out. Peregrine’s definitely hiding out in one of those towers.”
He pulled the sheet away from his face. “Jeezy peeps!” he said, using the funny Scots slang for ‘Jesus Christ!’ “You’ve really lost it!”
He shut his eyes again. I went to the kitchen and made some coffee, bringing two mugs back to his room and sitting down on his bed. He pulled up his pillows against the headboard and hauled himself into a slumping position, rubbing his eyes. Poor man, right that minute he looked his age.
“Please explain,” he said, slurping his coffee and grimacing.
“Remember I told you at Vathia I’d heard a peculiar noise I couldn’t quite fathom? I finally realised what it was: the faint tapping sound of an old-fashioned manual typewriter. Someone was up in one of those Maniot towers, typing on one. I’m sure of it.”
He gave me a vague, tired look. “I don’t remember hearing a typewriter.”
“It wasn’t going on continually, that’s the thing, but I should have picked it up straight away. It’s just sometimes, you know, how you don’t recognise a particular noise because the context’s all wrong. It’s not every day you hear an old typewriter, especially not in a deserted village on a Greek hillside.”
“So you think it was Peregrine in one of the towers?”
“Exactly!”
“That’s a stretch, Bronte.”
“Think about it. Those black and white prints she was so keen to show me; the books left in particular places. She’s down there all right and she’s in Vathia. The day we were there, I think she was in that last tower, the one with the nice shutters. She was trying to work on that damned book and get it finished. What else could it be?”
“What, on an old manual typewriter?” He leaned into his pillow and laughed.
“Why not? It looked like most of the towers had no electricity. She’d have to use a manual.”
He shrugged. “But why hide away in Vathia, of all places? She could have stayed at home. Home is pretty chic and remote enough, isn’t it?”
I told him about the agent’s theory that Peregrine wanted to leg it so she wouldn’t have to play ball with the press over Markham.
“Well, she won’t want to play with you either, even if she started out leaving you clues – books, crumbs, whatever – for some other daft reason. This is different now. She absolutely won’t want to talk to you now.”
I chewed at my lower lip. “I agree, but we still have to get down there and flush her out. I have to show willing for this interview. That’s how it works in newspapers. If she won’t talk, fine. At least I’ll have tried. Look, I can go myself if you’re tired. About time I took on a bigger driving challenge. Zeffy can come with me.”
“Is he going to navigate?”
I laughed at the thought of Zeffy in the front seat with the road map.
“I know the way now.”
“It’s a long drive and the roads are tortuous in places. You saw that last time.”
“I’ll be all right.”
He stared at the ceiling. “Oh Jeez! … Okay, I’ll come. I mean, I dragged you up a mountain last year when we went on that wild goose chase to find Kieran.”
“That’s true,” I said, smiling with relief that I didn’t have to do the drive myself.
“But if she’s not in one of those blasted towers, that’s it, we’re heading straight back, okay?”
“Okay. It’s a deal. And thanks,” I said, leaning over and kissing him on the forehead.
We were ready in half an hour, Zeffy fizzing with joy for another drive. He was good company and a great guard dog, should we need him to be. We packed the car again with Zeffy’s bed on the back seat and a few provisions, then drove off. As we came level with Villa Ambelia, Angus slowed the car a bit. Thekla was just coming out of the front door. She stood on the steps watching us, her big blonded hair swaying in the wind. I fancied she had a sly look on her face and it occurred to me that she would know about Phaedra coming back. She knew everything! She probably even approved of the meet-up with Leonidas. Egged them on, perhaps. My thoughts were spiralling downwards when Angus remarked, “I don’t know what it is, but that witch always gives me the heebie-jeebies.”
He gunned the car, as much as a battered Fiat can be, and we drove off without a nod or a wave to Thekla. As soon as we were on the road south, I put the issue about Leonidas out of my mind. There was time enough to fester over it and right now I had to sort out Eve Peregrine.
When we finally arrived at Vathia and parked, I noticed there was only one other car around. It had German number plates and we assumed there would be a few tourists perhaps picking their way around the ghost village today, yet we saw no-one as we trailed along the main path again, Zeffy walking behind us, sniffing the village air.
At the wooden door of the last tall tower, we stopped a moment. There it was again, the sound of the typewriter, louder this time, with a window upstairs apparently open, the shutters pinned back against the wall. It wasn’t a manic, in-full-flow-clickety-clack typing but a slower pecking sound. The muse was sluggish. I looked at Angus. He winked.
“It’s got to be her,” I whispered.
The door had a brass knocker of a clenched hand and a small spy window above it with a wrought iron grille in front of the glass. I rapped the knocker a couple of times. The typing stopped. A minute or so later, the small window opened and a face peered out through the grille. The wisps of strawberry blonde hair were unmistakeable.
“Oh,” a voice said and then the heavy wooden door creaked open.
Eve Peregrine stood before us, dressed in baggy trousers and a T-shirt. Her hair was scraped back, twisted and pinned with a tortoiseshell clasp on top, the ends sticking up a bit like Zeffy’s cockatoo crest, and fanning out chaotically.
“Well, I’m surprised,” she said with a petulant expression, cross perhaps at the intrusion. Then she glanced towards Angus.
“My father and driver.” He dipped his head, flippantly.
“I never expected to see you two back again. You better come in,” she said, turning quickly inside.
“Again?” I mouthed at Angus. His eyebrows flipped up.
“You mean you saw us down here the other day?”
“Yes, from a top-floor window,” she tittered a bit now. “Sorry, but I just wasn’t in the mood for company then.” She wheeled around just as Angus was pulling a massive face. I nudged him with my elbow.
“You could have saved us this drive today, if you’d called out,” I grizzled.
She offered a shrug of mock repentance. “Come in then and I’ll make you coffee.”
She glanced at Zeffy. “Must he come too?”
“Yes,” I said in a way that brooked no opposition.
The dog sloped inside, his ears low and his cockatoo crest flopping. The tower was narrow and quite dark and seemed to have a few levels. There was a small kitchen on the ground floor where she led us, offering some rattan chairs around a wooden table. There were a few candles on it and on the window sills. Zeffy sniffed at the stone wall near the table and slumped against it with a dismal air.
“There’s no electricity here, I’m afraid.”
“How do you manage?” I asked her, wondering what the fascination was for this lonely outpost stuck in another century.
“It’s absolutely fine. I don’t need electricity that much. I do some basic cooking on the petrogazi here,” she said, filling a small saucepan with water and placing it on one of the rings of the small metal cooker standing on a work top, a rubber tube connecting it to a gas bottle.
“Anyway,
this is a good place to write. It’s very secure and quiet. These tower houses were impenetrable, and still are, except when it comes to curious journalists.” She laughed but there was scant humour in her eyes. She turned and took down three mugs from a shelf that had a frill tacked along the front of it, such as you might see in replicas of old kitchens in folk museums. It couldn’t have been further from her gleaming white villa. She prepared the coffees. Angus sat quietly, saying nothing, though I could tell from his eyes he was just as bemused as I was, meeting this one-time TV star in this peculiar setting.
“If you don’t mind me asking, Eve, why the hell did you disappear like that? Your agent has been frantic.”
“Oh, what a fuss!” she said with a sigh, observing me over the top of her coffee mug as she sipped.
I bristled slightly. “Well … your agent said you’d never gone off the radar before and she thought something might have happened to you. So did we. We even went back to your house, talked to your cleaner. You told her nothing.”
She looked surprised. “Why should I? Sophia knows what to do. I don’t need to be there all the time. This is Greece. We have longer reins here, remember,” she said with a faint sneer.
Angus chortled slightly at the ‘Greece’ comment. It was something they might agree on. I guessed that Eve was also someone who didn’t like to follow rules, which might explain her decision to move part-time to Greece, the place that abhors most rules.
“Did you not think to tell anyone where you were going?”
“Obviously not,” she snapped. I noticed her eyes were red-tinged and tired. Too much typing?
“It might have helped. Your agent contacted me a few times and wanted to involve the police, and I admit it was starting to look like a good idea.”
“And did you?”
“Yes, a detective at Kalamata police station, in case you’d come to some kind of harm.”
She groaned. “Oh dear!”
I could sense Angus squirming in the chair next to me. “If I can just add, Miss Peregrine, that Bronte cared about your welfare. She was trying to do the right thing,” he said firmly.
How Greek Is Your Love Page 11