by Simon Brett
She went in that way, ignoring the open French windows on either side. There was no reason for her approach to look surreptitious.
As soon as she was inside, Mrs. Pargeter sensed that she was not alone. Silently, she moved through into Joyce’s bedroom.
A tall man in uniform stood there, facing the far window. He turned at the sound of her entrance. In his gloved hands, he held the bloody bottle end which had slashed Joyce Dover’s wrist.
It was Sergeant Karaskakis.
chapter
TWELVE
* * *
“What are you doing here?” His English was heavily accented but precise. Cold and efficient, like his small dark eyes and that triangle of black mustache. Mrs. Pargeter was forcibly reminded of the last time she had seen Joyce and Sergeant Karaskakis together, and of her friend’s shocked reaction to the sight of him.
“Well, I’m staying here, aren’t I?” she replied pugnaciously. She sensed that the Sergeant was trying to overawe her, and Mrs. Pargeter had always been very resistant to being overawed.
“I understood you were being transferred to the hotel.”
“Well, yes, I am, but I remembered something I wanted to pick up here.”
“You should not have come in. The villa is closed during police investigations.”
“And is that what you are involved in at the moment, Sergeant?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Police investigations? I always understood that nothing should be moved at the scene of a crime.”
He looked down at the murderous piece of glass in his gloved hands. “I am a police officer. I am entitled to examine the premises.”
“But you’re Tourist Police,” Mrs. Pargeter insisted. “I didn’t know that violent deaths in Greece were investigated by the Tourist Police.”
“Of course they are not,” Sergeant Karaskakis said tetchily. “I am merely having a preliminary look round. Then I will report back and officers from the relevant department will take over.”
“And will the ‘officers from the relevant department’ be pleased to know that you have moved some of the evidence?”
Her words had the effect of making him put the piece of glass back down on the floor, but there was no apology in his voice as he said, “This is not your business.”
“I’d say it was very much my business. It’s my friend who’s dead.”
“Yes, and of course I am very sorry about this. It is unfortunate for you at the beginning of your holiday. Also unfortunate for us. It is not good that people bring their troubles out here and do things like this. It makes for complications. Death always makes for complications.”
Mrs. Pargeter didn’t disagree.
“I suppose,” the Sergeant went on, “that you will be returning to England now as soon as possible—yes?”
“Well, no,” Mrs. Pargeter replied firmly. “I’ve decided I’m going to stay for a while.”
“I don’t think there is much point in that. You will not enjoy your holiday after this tragedy. It is better you should go home.”
The final suggestion was spoken with the force of an order. As ever, such an approach only made Mrs. Pargeter dig her toes in more firmly. “I don’t want to go home until I’m confident that Joyce’s death is being properly investigated.”
Sergeant Karaskakis bridled at this implied criticism of Corfiot police procedure. “The proper investigations will of course take place. I was only thinking from your point of view. For you to be too involved can only be painful. What I am proposing is that you should make a statement about how you found your friend dead, about the state of mind she was in, and then you would be free to go home. The other tedious details could be sorted out without you.”
“Which tedious details?”
“Organizing the return of the body, that kind of thing. Don’t worry, it can all be done very discreetly.”
“Swept under the carpet, you mean?”
“I’m sorry, I do not understand. What have carpets to do with this?”
“I mean ‘hushed up.’ You want to have Joyce’s death hushed up, don’t you, Sergeant?”
“That is not so unusual. It is for her family. Very few people want a great deal of publicity about a suicide.”
“I don’t think Joyce’s death was suicide,” said Mrs. Pargeter quietly.
This really did shake him. “What! But it is obvious. Her husband has just died, she is in very bad state, she kills herself.”
“She didn’t leave a note.”
“Maybe not. We don’t know yet. Perhaps we will find one. Anyway, she told people the bad state she was in. Ginnie heard her talking about it.”
That had been rather quick, thought Mrs. Pargeter, for Sergeant Karaskakis to have had time to discuss the case with Ginnie.
“Of course she committed suicide.” His voice had now taken on a bullying note.
But Mrs. Pargeter was impervious. The late Mr. Pargeter had told her how few bullies can cope with having their bluff called. Ignoring their threats completely was the course of action he always recommended. And he did know—rather well—what he was talking about.
“I am convinced,” said Mrs. Pargeter quietly, “that Joyce Dover was murdered.”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” Now the Sergeant was really angry. “You say things like that, you make trouble for everyone. A murder investigation causes great disturbance. You don’t want that—particularly when there is no murder to investigate,” he added as an afterthought.
“I know she was murdered,” Mrs. Pargeter persisted, “and nothing you say will convince me otherwise. What is more, I am going to stay here in Corfu until the person who killed her is brought to justice.”
Sergeant Karaskakis gave her a stern, cold stare. “You are being very foolish. You do not know how much trouble your stupid attitude will cause. This is not your country. You do not understand how things work out here.”
“I understand how justice works, and I thought that was meant to be universal. Don’t you have justice out here?” she asked in deliberately infuriating mock-innocence.
“Yes, of course we do! And of course this death will be properly investigated. But it will be more easily investigated without your interference.” His voice took on a softer, more cunning note. “Anyway, what is it that makes you think your friend was murdered?”
“Various things.”
“What things?”
“I will tell that to the appropriate investigating authorities,” Mrs. Pargeter replied.
He was stung by the answer, as she had meant him to be. “You will regret this stupidity.”
“Why?”
“You will regret it because, if you insist on calling the death murder, you automatically become a suspect.”
“I don’t see why.”
“But it is obvious. You were here in the villa last night. You came out from England with Joyce Dover. She knew no one in Corfu. It is generally found that murders are committed by people known to their victims.”
“All right. So I become a suspect. That doesn’t worry me, because I know I’m innocent.”
“You could still have a very inconvenient time during the investigation until you are proved to be innocent.”
“That’s a risk I’m prepared to take.”
“You would not be allowed to leave the island. You would have to hand over your passport until the investigation was over. That could take months.”
“There’s nothing I’ve got to rush back for,” said Mrs. Pargeter with infuriating calm.
Sergeant Karaskakis made one more attempt to frighten her. “You will only be making trouble for yourself. You would do better to mind your own business and return to England straightaway. Otherwise I am afraid you might regret it.”
But Mrs. Pargeter didn’t frighten that easily. She smiled a sweet smile and, at least for the time being, Sergeant Karaskakis knew he was beaten.
chapter
THIRTEEN
* * *
&n
bsp; The Hotel Nausica wasn’t Mrs. Pargeter’s idea of a hotel, but then she had been rather spoiled in such matters by the late Mr. Pargeter. It was clean, though, and the tracksuited black-haired girl who greeted her in American English was friendly. So long as she didn’t think of it as a hotel, but as a taverna with rooms above, Mrs. Pargeter reckoned it would be fine.
Her second-floor bedroom was almost identical to the one at the Villa Eleni, though it only had French windows and shutters at one end. These gave out onto a small balcony, with a lounger on which one could lie and look out over the perfect stillness of the bay.
“Is there anything I can get for you?” asked the girl.
“No, I don’t think so, thank you very much. My bags will be coming over at some point, so if they could be brought up when they do arrive . . .”
“Sure.”
“Your English is very good—or should I say your American?”
“Oh, thank you. Actually I’m studying at Boston University. Psychology.”
“Ah. And you’re just over here for the summer?”
“Yes. My father owns the hotel.”
“I see. Can I ask what your name is?”
“Maria.” The girl hovered in the doorway. “If you’re sure there’s nothing you need . . .”
“No. Oh, one thing . . .”
“Yes?”
“I might need to use a telephone. Is it true that Spiro’s taverna’s got the only one in the village?”
Maria grinned wryly. “Did Spiro tell you that?”
“No.”
“You surprise me. It’s the sort of thing he does. Sharp businessman, old Spiro. Tells tourists they can only cash traveler’s checks with him, only hire cars and boats through him, only use his telephone . . .”
“So there is another one?”
“Here in the hotel. Just say when you want to use it.”
“Thank you. Am I to gather that there’s a bit of rivalry between Spiro and the Hotel Nausica . . . ?”
“Just a bit.” Maria shrugged. “Always rivalries on Corfu. Most have been going on for generations. Family arguments over who had the right to certain olive trees, that kind of thing. Tourist trade just provided a new battleground for the old rivalries.”
“I see you have lots of opportunities for applying your psychology out here . . .” said Mrs. Pargeter mischievously.
The girl grinned. “Yeah. Quite a culture shock coming back here after Boston.”
“I’m sure. Very different societies.”
“You can say that again. Takes a bit of adjustment sometimes. I mean, I love Corfu, but there are things like . . . well, the attitude to women, the expectations of women . . .” A wry shake of the head.
“Not at the sharp end of the feminist movement?”
Maria grimaced. “That is something of an understatement. You should just hear the wails of disappointment when some poor woman has the nerve to give birth to a girl.”
“But there are shrieks of delight when it’s a boy?”
“You said it.”
“You said,” Mrs. Pargeter began, taking advantage of their new intimacy, “that most of the rivalries out here were family rivalries. Do you mean that your father is related to Spiro?”
“Oh, certainly,” Maria replied with a laugh. “Everyone in Agios Nikitas is related to everyone else. My father and Spiro are cousins—not first cousins but some sort of cousin. Everyone comes from the same town, you see—Agralias.”
“So they’re not from Agios Nikitas originally?”
“No—or yes. Let me explain. Agralias is about five miles inland from here. That is where everyone still has their main home. But many people from Agralias also own a bit of land on the coast, plots that have been in their families for years. Suddenly, when the tourist boom started, those bits of land on the coast became very valuable.”
“So people built tavernas . . . ?”
“Sure. Tavernas, villas, shops, hotels . . .”
“And it was good business?”
“Oh yes. If you owned a taverna in the early years you could do very well indeed. Well by Corfiot standards, anyway. Before the tourists came, it was pretty much a peasant economy here, you know.”
“Yes. I see. That’s explained a lot. Thank you.”
“No problem.” Maria thickened her accent, parodying the Corfiot catchphrase. She moved out into the corridor. “So, if there’s anything you want, just say . . .”
Mrs. Pargeter waited five minutes to make sure that the girl had really gone and, even then, opened the bedroom door again to check. Feeling ridiculously surreptitious, she went out through the French windows to ascertain that she couldn’t be overlooked from another balcony. The scene that greeted her was as idyllically innocuous as ever. Unless Albanian spies had superpowered binoculars trained on her, she could feel confident that she was unobserved.
She sat on the side of the bed and unzipped her flight bag.
The package which Joyce had entrusted to her at Gatwick Airport was just as she had remembered it. Under the brown paper and cardboard wrapping was an irregular rectangle, the glugging of whose contents suggested some kind of bottle.
When first handed over, the package’s significance had seemed minimal, at worst perhaps a symptom of the seriousness of her friend’s drinking problem.
But when Joyce’s prognostication had been proved correct by the Customs search of her luggage at Corfu Airport, the potential significance of the package had grown. (As Mrs. Pargeter had this thought, she was reminded of the striking likeness she had noted between the Customs officer and Sergeant Karaskakis. Given what Maria had just told her, it would perhaps not be fanciful to guess at some family connection between the two men.)
Now that Joyce had been murdered by someone who had searched her belongings in the Villa Eleni, the package she so carefully offloaded onto her friend had become extremely significant.
The paper had been roughly secured with a couple of strips of Sellotape. Mrs. Pargeter broke these and reached into the cardboard sleeve to pull out its contents.
She didn’t know precisely what she had been expecting, but certainly not what she found.
The package contained a bottle of ouzo.
A decorative bottle of ouzo, fashioned in the shape of a Greek column. The kind of souvenir that is available at every airport shop and supermarket in Greece.
Now, Mrs. Pargeter could just about imagine that someone with a drinking problem might suffer from a paranoid fear of running out and carry emergency supplies . . . but why ouzo?
And why take ouzo bought in England into Corfu, where it’s available at a fraction of the price?
That really was coals to Newcastle, thought Mrs. Pargeter.
chapter
FOURTEEN
* * *
“So far as I can gather,” said Mrs. Pargeter, “Joyce didn’t know anyone out here. She wanted to go to Greece because she’d never been there with Chris, so it wouldn’t raise painful memories. Having made that decision, she just trotted down to her local travel agent and asked what was available. They recommended this package, and that’s how we ended up in Agios Nikitas.”
Larry Lambeth tapped his teeth pensively. “You’re sure she didn’t say anything, which now, like with hindsight, might make you think she had got some connection out here?”
Mrs. Pargeter shook her head. “I’m positive she didn’t say anything. The only detail that could suggest a connection is the strange way she reacted when she saw Sergeant Karaskakis. And when she saw the girl, Theodosia. I suppose she might have met one of them before in England.”
“It’s just possible that Sergeant Karaskakis had been abroad, but I’m sure Theodosia never has. Very unlikely ever to have left Corfu, particularly with her not being able to speak and that . . .”
“Hm.” Musing, Mrs. Pargeter looked out from the terrace of Larry Lambeth’s villa towards the sea. The Mediterranean night had just fallen with its customary suddenness, and the lights of Albania
once again twinkled mysteriously over the water.
The villa was set in a hillside olive grove, about three miles from the coast. It was an older building than the mushroom developments of Agios Nikitas, with floors of comfortingly worn stone. The terrace was peaceful under its awning of woven bamboo, and the night air seemed to have released the perfume of the surrounding trees. Every now and then a distant donkey let out an affronted bray.
After opening Joyce’s package, Mrs. Pargeter had enjoyed an overdue shower and then rung Larry Lambeth from the hotel. He had instantly invited her out to the villa. Over retsina and brandy she had brought him up to date on Joyce’s death and the events which had followed it.
Then they had sat down to a dinner of herb-scented lamb stew, served by a very pretty dark woman with a shy smile. Whether this woman had a role in Larry’s life beyond that of cook was hard to guess. Though the direction of her smile occasionally hinted at intimacy, she was not invited to join them at the table and he certainly seemed to treat her like a servant. But then, from what Mrs. Pargeter had seen in the twenty-four hours she had been on the island, that was how most Corfiot men treated their womenfolk.
It always made her slightly cross to see a woman undervalued. Though Mrs. Pargeter was no feminist, and had no wish to challenge for the traditional territories of male dominance, she was a great believer in equality within relationships. But then, of course, she had been rather spoiled by her life with the late Mr. Pargeter.
“No, I think,” she continued, “that the reason behind Joyce’s death lies in the past. In her life in England, not out here.”
“You don’t think it could have been just, like, a robbery that had gone wrong? You know, some local lad breaks into the Villa Eleni, looking for cash, cameras, jewelry, that kind of stuff—Joyce wakes up—he tops her . . . ?”
“If you’re doing that, why bother to make it look like suicide?”
“That’s a point.”
“And, anyway, is there that much burglary out here?”
