Death on the Aegean Queen

by Maria Hudgins

  “It was a surprise, all right.”

  While the cabbie and I waited for our interpreter to buy a map at the kiosk, an Iráklion police car pulled onto the dock and Marco hopped out. He waved at me, then stuck his head back into the car and said something to the driver. After I introduced Marco and the cabbie to one another, they launched into a bilingual gesturing frenzy that included a good bit of forehead-slapping. At length, Marco called out to the policeman, still sitting in the squad car. He got out and approached us as the man from the front desk loped over from the kiosk with a map.

  It didn’t take the policeman and Marco long to locate on the map the approximate area where the action had taken place. Although I only understood bits and pieces of the discussion, I gathered we all had to go back to the site. The policeman needed more information from me about what led up to Sophie and me jumping out of the moving vehicle, and I could do that most effectively on the actual site. The cabbie, of course, needed to pick up his car, and Marco could fill in the parts of the story I’d missed when Sophie and I had been face-down in the dirt.

  “Do I really need to go with you?” the desk clerk said as he refolded the map and handed it to the policeman. “You speak English, don’t you? I’m supposed to be on desk duty now, and you already have four people going up in the same car.”

  “We’ll be all right. Mrs. Lamb can write out a statement for me, in English.” The policeman looked at my brace. “Can you write, Mrs. Lamb?”

  “I’m right-handed. I should be able to.”

  The cabbie took the front passenger seat, leaving the back of the squad car to Marco and me. Following several exchanges in Greek between the men in the front seat, the policeman turned around and asked if either of us had the keys to the taxi. We didn’t, so that meant we had to swing by the police station and see if Goatman had them.

  The keys, Goatman told them through the bars of his cell, should still be in the ignition.

  As we wound southward, back to the hill country and to the scene of the crime, I tried to write my statement on the yellow pad the policeman handed me, but I couldn’t. Not because of my fractured collar bone, but because we bumped and bounced along the rutted road, like so many balls in a Lotto machine. I gave up and held my left arm tight against my stomach with my right. Marco looked over at me, and winced in sympathy. He reached over and touched my hair, lifting a wisp off my face. He touched my cheek with the back of his hand.

  “You haven’t shaved in a while, have you?” I said.

  “Not since I left Rhodes.”

  “Why?”

  “You did not like me without a beard.”

  “It was just a shock when I first saw you. I’d never seen you without one.”

  Marco called out to the policeman, “Sorry, I didn’t see the road. Back up a little and turn down this road on the right.”

  The taxi was still there with the keys in the ignition. The cabbie kissed its hood and drove away immediately. Marco and I walked the policeman through the events surrounding the shooting, using tire tracks and skid marks as our guides. The shrub I’d landed on still waved a few purple threads it had ripped from my scarf, and the rocks I’d dragged Sophie over in our desperate rush for cover still bore traces of her blood or mine. Did I break Sophie’s arm when I pulled her out of the car? Did it break when she hit the ground? It occurred to me I’d rather not know.

  I sat under an olive tree and wrote my statement while Marco and the policeman trekked back to locate the place where Goatman had veered off the main road. I filled only a page and a half, realizing as I wrote that parts of the scene were a blur in my mind. Rolling down the hill, for instance. How far had we rolled? It could have been a foot or a football field. All I recalled was a swirl of rocks and thorny bushes. Looking up at the slope now from my seat under the tree, I could see it had been about a twenty-foot slide. I signed and dated the statement, rested my head against the trunk of the tree behind me, and dozed off.

  * * * * *

  The policeman dropped us off at the ship. I went straight to my room, kicked off my shoes, and lay down. Less than a minute later, Lettie knocked at my door. She worked herself into an awful snit when she saw my brace, so I took it off to prove it wasn’t holding me together.

  I went back to my bed and explained the day’s happenings from a reclining position while Lettie sat at my dressing table, her hands clasped so tightly her knuckles were white. When I finished my harrowing tale, I asked her how she’d spent her day.

  She shook her head as if she was waking from a nightmare. “Nothing as exciting as that, I can assure you. Ollie and I went to the Palace of Knossos and so did Nigel Endicott and Malcolm Stone. I watched them carefully every chance I got, but they didn’t do anything suspicious. Agent Bondurant wasn’t following Nigel today, but the security man, Chief Letsos, followed us the whole time.”

  “They had all their bases covered. Bondurant and Villas were with the group at the funeral. Did you notice who, in particular, Chief Letsos seemed to be watching?”

  “Ollie and Malcolm. He didn’t seem to care about Nigel Endicott, but he watched every move Ollie or Malcolm made.”

  Lettie was on her way out when we heard a knock at the door. Lettie opened it and gave a little squeal when she saw Marco. She pinched his cheeks. “Welcome, back! Dotsy told me everything about being kidnapped by a goat man and bullets flying and you riding up in a silver car to rescue her in the nick of time.”

  Marco glanced from Lettie to me and blushed.

  “I must say, you certainly know how to make an entrance,” Lettie continued. “Like Dudley Doright.”

  “Who?”

  “Oh I forgot. You probably didn’t have the same cartoons in Italy.”

  I butted in because I knew Lettie could go on for hours about Rocky and Bullwinkle and Boris and Natasha. “You didn’t leave the gun in the back of the Mercedes, did you?”

  “It is at the Iráklion police station. Bagged and tagged, as they say.” Marco came over to the bed where I lay and touched my forehead, as if he was checking for a fever. “I am going to the purser’s office and return my passport to the safe.”

  “Oh. May I go with you?” I had an idea. While I had been analyzing things last night, through an ouzo-induced haze, it had occurred to me George and/or Kathryn Gaskill’s passports might shed some light on whether or not they had truly come on this trip for a simple vacation. I’d also wondered about Nigel Endicott. Where was he from? Was he even American? “I’d like to see where they keep the passports.”

  “I doubt they will let either of us go into the safe. The purser will probably take my passport and lock it up for me.”

  “Marco, I want to go into the safe. Please. Make up some reason why you and I have to go in there ourselves. Can you please do this for me?”

  “Probably not. If they do not want to let me go in, I cannot go in. It is that simple.”

  “Can I at least go with you to the purser’s office?”

  He turned around, looking for Lettie, but she wasn’t there. She’d slipped out while Marco and I had been talking. “If you will give me a kiss, I will let you go with me.”

  He kissed me. It was the longest and best kiss I’d had since Rome.

  * * * * *

  The purser, the officer in charge of monetary transactions, wasn’t in, and a young assistant was on duty. We were in luck. He sat behind a tall counter, swiveling back and forth on a tall stool as he talked to Marco. Behind him was a small office-like room with file cabinets, a desk, and a computer. By stepping to the right, I could see a polished steel door with a combination lock on the front. It had to be the safe and it looked as if the door might be ajar. Could I be so lucky? From the size of the door, I figured it had to be a walk-in type safe.

  “Sorry, sir,” the young man said. “I don’t know anything about the passports. Could you come back when the purser is in?”

  Here was Marco’s chance. But would he take it?

  “I do not want
to walk around with it, because you never know. I might drop it overboard and then where would I be?” Marco glanced quickly at me and winked. “I know how they keep the passports. They put them in a drawer inside the safe. I have been in there. I know.”

  “Well, sir, I’m not sure . . .”

  “Look. Call your purser on the phone. Tell him it is Captain Marco Quattrocchi. I am a police officer from Florence.” Marco leaned conspiratorially over the counter and lowered his voice to a whisper. “He knows me, and he knows I am helping Chief Letsos with his investigations. The murder investigations.” He flipped his passport open, showing that he was, indeed, Marco Quattrocchi, and slipped his hand inside his jacket as if searching for his police ID.

  The young man didn’t wait for Marco to actually pull out any additional identification and didn’t make the suggested call, either. “All right, sir. If you’re sure you know where to put it, go on back. The door’s open.”

  Marco rounded the counter and I slipped through with him, attached to his side like a leech. I didn’t look at the attendant or give him a chance to stop me. He could, after all, watch us so we wouldn’t have been able to steal anything. The safe wasn’t really big enough to walk into. Inside were three walls of shiny metal drawers, most with keyholes, some without. The whole floor area was no more than three feet wide and two feet deep. From the counter outside, the attendant could watch us as we worked. On the wall in front of us and about halfway down, I saw two drawers, conveniently labeled Passports A–M and Passports N–Z. Marco pulled the second one open and I did likewise to the first.

  I turned to the assistant, who was swiveling rather nervously on his tall stool, and said, “My name is Lamb. I’m just checking something on my own passport.” I fingered through the Gs until I found the two Gaskills, pulled them out, and looked. They were both United States passports, recently issued. The photo of George looked like the man I recalled having dinner with that first night. Both documents bore only one stamp each, indicating they had immigrated into Athens, Greece, on June fifteenth.

  The assistant slipped off his perch and came toward me. Marco was pretending he couldn’t find the Qs in the second drawer. “I’m sorry madam, but I must ask you to wait on the other side of the counter.” I guess he figured I’d had enough time to check something on my own passport.

  “Oh dear,” I said. “I’m keeping a journal, you see, and I’ve forgotten exactly when I entered and left each country on my tour. It’s so confusing. One day I’m in Germany, and the next day it’s Switzerland. Or is it Hungary? Or Greece?” I laughed. “If I don’t get it straight now, I’ll never be able to sort it out when I get home, because I write an entry in my journal every day and . . .”

  He left and returned to his stool.

  I found the Es and pulled out Nigel Endicott’s document. The photo showed the man I knew as Nigel. He was, after all, a U.S. citizen because he had a U.S. passport. His had also been issued recently, within the past year, but he had two immigration stamps and one visa stamp. On June fifteenth, Nigel had entered Istanbul, Turkey, an immigration that also required a visa, and on June seventeenth, Athens, Greece.

  Marco nudged me with his elbow. “We must go.”

  Thanking the young man, and holding up both my hands so he could see I hadn’t swiped anything, I made my exit and headed for the elevator. “Thank you, Marco. That worked perfectly.”

  “Did you find out what you wanted to know?”

  “I found out Nigel Endicott didn’t come here straight from America. He went to Istanbul first, then here.”

  “Very interesting! Who is Nigel Endicott?”

  The elevator doors opened and we stepped inside. “Oh, dear. You’re so far behind. We really need to talk.”

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Shortly after I returned to my room, Sophie dropped by, proudly displaying the cast on her left arm. I showed her my multicolored arms and legs, and she pulled up her pants legs to show me she had as many mustard-yellow patches as I had.

  “I thought you were going to buy me lunch,” she said. “I go through all this and I still don’t get lunch!”

  We both laughed. I said, “Was Luc Girard still at the hospital when you got out of surgery?”

  “Yes. He and the ship’s nurse brought me back.”

  I filled Sophie in on the parts of the day she had missed, up to the time when I fell asleep under the tree. “That reminds me. The police may need a formal statement from you. Marco and I both gave them our versions.”

  “They’ll have to ask quickly because the ship is getting ready to pull out, and I’m going to the clinic. The nurse is making up a bed for me because she wants to watch me until tomorrow morning. The anesthesia, you know. The hospital let me go sooner than they normally would, because the nurse told them the ship was leaving.” Sophie stared out my window for a minute. “And besides, I don’t want to go to my room, anyway. I don’t know what to say to Brittany.”

  “How were things this morning before you left?”

  “Strained. Very awkward. Brittany is practically under house arrest. Letsos told her she’d have to have an escort if she left the ship today. And, although we didn’t talk about it, she knows I let you into our room that day.”

  “And, if she didn’t leave Gaskill’s watch in her closet herself, she obviously believes I did. The watch, Sophie, is the key to everything. Do you suppose I was the only person who sneaked into your room? Might there have been someone else who wanted to throw suspicion on Brittany?”

  “Maybe Willem Leclercq? He’s been hanging around with her lately. Perhaps he’s flirting with her as a way of getting into our room.”

  “An interesting thought. We have to find out how that watch got into Brittany’s closet because whoever put it there either killed George Gaskill or knows who did. And that includes Brittany herself.”

  I walked Sophie to the clinic, aware that she was still woozy from the anesthesia. The nurse I’d last seen in the hospital waiting room took over and said she’d have Sophie’s dinner sent up from the kitchen. Hearing the thunk of gears engaging somewhere deep in the ship, I hurried down to the promenade deck to watch us pull out of the harbor. From the rail, I scanned the horizon, knowing the Palace of Knossos, number two on my list of things I most wanted to see, would have to wait for another time. Maybe. Would I ever be back? Number one on my list, the ruins of Akrotiri on the island of Santorini, was yet to come. It was the 3,500-year-old Minoan town, excavated in the late twentieth century. Buried under volcanic ash in antiquity, it had emerged beautifully preserved, wall frescoes of boys fishing and children boxing still brightly colored. From my reading at home I knew excavators had covered the entire town with a sort of canopy, but I didn’t know if the site was open to the public now. If not, I would miss seeing both of my top two places.

  Crewmen on the dock below started to drag the ramp away from our ship and shouted to each other in preparation for dropping the dock lines wrapped around huge cleats on the dock. A man came flying across from the street that ran along the harbor, waving his arms, shouting “Wait! Wait!” Two dockhands called out something to the bridge high above me, and the engine shifted to a deeper rumbling sound.

  Malcolm Stone, carrying a large package, dashed up the ramp, yelling, “Don’t close the door!” and leaped across a foot-wide gap from the top of the ramp to the ship. The ship, still moving away due to the inertia, would have been out of jumping range if he’d been a tenth of a second later. From all along the promenade deck, from the dock below and the deck above me came a chorus of “Crazy!” and “Proséxte!” and “Who is that nut?”

  * * * * *

  The conversation at dinner that evening was revealing, if hardly appetizing. We mostly talked about blood. Lettie, Ollie, Marco, and I joined Kathryn Gaskill and the Zieglers who were already seated. I figured Ernestine Ziegler had discovered Marco was back and had wangled a place for herself and Heather at our table, because their earlier assignment had been elsewhere
and our table only seated six comfortably. Tonight we were seven.

  Marco brought up the subject. “Kathryn, you said your husband’s blood type was AB positive, didn’t you?”

  This, I believe, was Marco’s very first use of a contraction. I could have proposed a toast to this big linguistic step forward but I didn’t want to change the subject.

  “Yes. His doctor at home told him that was good because it made him a universal recipient,” Kathryn said. “In other words, he could receive blood from most anyone, but he couldn’t donate it except to another person with AB blood.”

  “It’s not quite as simple as that,” Ernestine Ziegler, who I recalled telling us she was a nurse, butted in. Her gaze shifted around the table. When it came back to Marco, her eyelashes fluttered. “Blood has a number of factors other than the A, B, O, and Rhesus factors. Not to mention the fact that it needs to be screened for hepatitis, HIV, and a lot of other things. But you’re right, generally speaking.”