Mrs Pargeter 03; Mrs Pargeter’s Package mp-3

by Simon Brett

  Yes! Another detail slotted into place. She remembered how Mr Fisher-Metcalf had started to respond to the overexposed photograph of Spiro. That must have been because Spiro’s face, with the distinctive features smoothed out, looked very much like the scarred face of his identical twin, the solicitor’s client.

  She was now in no doubt that Chris Dover and Christo Karaskakis had been one and the same person.

  ∨ Mrs Pargeter’s Package ∧

  Thirty-Four

  She forced her mind back to Christo’s escape from the boat. Somehow he must have found his way to England, probably arriving at Dover, then changed his name and set out to make a career in his new country.

  He had taken the decision to obscure his real origins and make himself as British as he could be. But, until he perfected the language, he needed some explanation of his accent. How he had come to select Uruguay as a fictitious background there was no way of knowing, but it had been an inspired choice. The British as a nation tend to lump all foreigners together, anyway, but the number who could conduct an intelligent conversation about any aspect of Uruguay is so tiny as to be unworthy of consideration. The number who know anything about the country’s politics is even tinier, and so Chris Dover’s references to political disagreements and even implications of torture would never have been questioned.

  Now this major breach had been made in the wall of logic, other details came tumbling through at a rush. Mrs Pargeter knew why she hadn’t at first recognised Conchita sitting at Spiro’s. The girl looked so natural there because it was the natural place for her to be. Though neither side knew it, she had been sitting amongst her family.

  Another realisation came through. The reason why Chris Dover had deliberately avoided meeting Hamish Ramon Henriques was simply because he didn’t dare come face to face with a native Spanish-speaker. Such an encounter would almost inevitably lead to exposure of the lies he had invented about his Uruguayan upbringing.

  But the question Mrs Pargeter could not yet answer was why Christo Karaskakis had created this huge subterfuge, what had driven him so thoroughly to disguise the truth about himself – even to the extent of landing his daughter with the unlikely name of Conchita, for God’s sake!

  There were two possible explanations for such extreme behaviour – it could be a reaction either of guilt or of fear.

  If Christo Karaskakis had committed some dreadful crime in Agios Nikitas, then guilt might have forced him to flee from the dangers of discovery and retribution. Sabotaging the outboard motor – if it were definitely known that that was what he was doing when it blew up in his face – might well qualify as such a crime.

  Alternatively, though, perhaps he was the intended victim of the sabotage.

  This theory appealed to Mrs Pargeter a lot more than the other one.

  Under those circumstances, Christo Karaskakis might have been so frightened by the incident in the burning boat that he fled from Corfu and made himself unrecognisable to escape further attempts on his life. Perhaps he had spent his whole life in fear that the person who had so nearly killed him in 1959 would not rest until the job had been completed.

  So who could have sabotaged the boat nearly thirty years before?

  The people known to be involved were Georgio and Stephano.

  Presumably Spiro had been around at the time, too.

  But Spiro did seem a pretty unlikely suspect, because he had nothing to gain from his brother’s death. Indeed, he had quite a lot to lose. His dreams of the academic life were still just about alive while there was a chance of Christo reforming to such a point that old Spiro thought him worthy of taking on the family business. But, with his brother dead, young Spiro was condemned to burying his hopes for ever.

  The other two made much more appealing suspects. Georgio had actually gone to London looking for Chris Dover, and Stephano – Sergeant Karaskakis – had been shameless in diverting suspicion about Joyce’s death. Because, following her new logic, Mrs Pargeter now felt certain that the same person who had attempted to murder Christo had succeeded in murdering Joyce, presumably to stop her from exposing the first crime.

  But which of her two suspects was the murderer?

  Mrs Pargeter looked across the taverna’s dancing area to the little table under the window where Georgio sat drinking ouzo with some cronies. The man seemed such an incompetent that it was hard to visualise him planning murder. But when it came to crime, as the late Mr Pargeter had frequently remarked, appearances can be terribly deceptive.

  Sergeant Karaskakis certainly made a more obvious suspect. He was confident, calculating and in his eye at times there burned a light of pure evil.

  Mrs Pargeter looked over towards the taverna doorway and saw the object of her speculation talking to Spiro. They were in exactly the same positions that they had been in when Joyce saw them the evening she died, Spiro with his back to her and the Sergeant visible over his shoulder.

  Another possibility slotted into place. Maybe it hadn’t been the Sergeant who had prompted Joyce’s panic. Perhaps it had been the sight of Spiro’s backview, identical to that of her late husband. If that had been the case, Joyce’s looking as if she had seen a ghost had been almost literally appropriate.

  Immediately Mrs Pargeter recalled the second time her friend had panicked. Inside the taverna. When she saw Theodosia over the bar counter.

  Fiercely excited, Mrs Pargeter rose to her feet and, unaware of Larry Lambeth’s curious look, rushed towards the taverna entrance.

  Sergeant Karaskakis saw her approach and deliberately stood in her way. “Mrs Pargeter,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “The Tourist Police keep records of where all visitors to our island are staying.”

  “Oh?” She looked up at him, all innocence.

  “There is no record of your having stayed in a hotel in Corfu Town or in Paleokastritsa last night.”

  Mrs Pargeter smiled. “Isn’t that dreadful? People are so inefficient these days, aren’t they? You’d think it was a simple enough thing to keep proper records, but for some people even that’s too much trouble.”

  Sergeant Karaskakis wasn’t fooled by her bluff and she knew it. He held her in a long stare, which was undisguisedly threatening. Mrs Pargeter continued to smile her defiance up at him, but she felt a little trickle of fear in the small of her back.

  After a moment, he drew curtly to one side, and let her pass through into the building.

  She stood exactly where Joyce had stood, and looked exactly where Joyce had looked.

  Theodosia was not behind the bar this time.

  There was nobody behind the bar.

  But directly in Mrs Pargeter’s eyeline was the enshrined photograph.

  The photograph of old Spiro. Of the person Larry Lambeth would have described as Christo Karaskakis’ ‘old man’.

  “If you want to find out, the explanation for everything will be found behind the old man’s p – ”

  “Photograph?”

  ∨ Mrs Pargeter’s Package ∧

  Thirty-Five

  “Ah, it’s locked. That’s good.” Larry Lambeth’s whisper was gentle on the night air.

  “Good?” Mrs Pargeter echoed. “Why good?”

  “Because it means no one’s here. Often during the season Spiro sleeps in the taverna rather than going back to Agralias – particularly if he’s been late after a party night. But the fact that it’s locked means he’s gone home.”

  “Will you be able to get in all right?”

  He laughed at the idea that she had even asked the question. “No problem. Not that much choice of padlocks available here on the island.”

  He fished a bunch of keys out of the pocket of his shorts and started testing them. Mrs Pargeter, hunched in the shadow under the taverna awning, looked nervously about her. The darkness was total, but in Agios Nikitas she could never fully relax into a feeling of being unobserved.

  What they were doing, she knew, was risky, but she was determined to
follow through her latest theory. And Larry Lambeth, of course, gave her unquestioning cooperation. He would have done anything – laid down his life without a murmur, if required – for the widow of the late Mr Pargeter.

  She hugged the brown-paper-wrapped package that – in what seemed like another life – Joyce Dover had given her at Gatwick Airport. At least now she knew what it contained. And what the contents were for.

  There was a click as the padlock’s tumblers turned. Larry Lambeth pushed the glass doors open and gestured Mrs Pargeter to follow him in. Safely inside, he clicked on the thin beam of a pencil torch.

  There was no prevarication. Both knew exactly what they were looking for and crossed to behind the bar. Larry climbed adroitly on to the counter, reached up and unhooked the enshrined photograph from its niche.

  Mrs Pargeter remembered Spiro’s proud words. “My father. It was taken just before he died – thirty years ago – but still he keeps an eye on his taverna. Spiro brings good luck to Spiro. The photograph keeps away the Evil Eye.”

  Larry Lambeth put the picture face down on the counter and handed Mrs Pargeter the torch. She trained it on the back of the frame as he brushed off dust and cobwebs. Deftly he slid a knifeblade through the brown paper tape that held the mount in place, then lifted out the rectangular cardboard backing.

  “On this or the photograph itself, do you reckon?”

  “The photograph,” she breathed.

  He eased out the thick sheet and placed it, blank side upward, on the counter. Mrs Pargeter was ready, the ouzo bottle opened and a paper duster bunched over its top.

  Their breathing was fast and shallow. Larry Lambeth nodded. She upended the bottle, felt the duster fill and moisten, then squeezed out the excess fluid.

  Her eyes met Larry’s for a second before she made the first firm wipe across the back of the photograph.

  For a moment, nothing seemed to happen. Maybe there was nothing there… Or maybe the effect of the chemical had simply worn off over the years… The whole edifice of conjecture and connection she had built up swayed and threatened to topple.

  Then, mercifully, the first purplish streaks showed and quickly the swathe of card she had wiped was marked with spidery Greek lettering.

  Involuntary sighs of relief burst from both of them.

  Confident now, Mrs Pargeter wiped another stripe across. And another and another, until the entire rectangle had been covered.

  Her efforts were rewarded by more lettering. “What does it say, Larry? What does it say?”

  He translated what he read fluently but slowly, draining all emotion from his voice.

  “‘I write this, knowing that I will soon be dead, but I do not wish to die without recording the act of evil that I have witnessed. I write this in sadness and in hatred, and that hatred is for my own flesh and blood.

  “‘Christo, you have committed an offence that can never be forgiven. You have tried to kill your own brother by sabotaging the outboard motor on the boat you stole. I know that you had help from Stephano in your evil plan, but he is weak and does whatever you tell him. The outrage was your idea and you must bear the full responsibility of it.

  “‘Spiro told me what happened. He is here with me now. Spiro, who is so clever at his studies, has shown me how to write this so that you will never find it.

  “‘When I die, which as I said will not be long away, I will die hating you, Christo, more than ever father hated son. You have brought shame on our family and you will carry my curse upon you till the end of your life. Your death will be violent and terrifying – you will feel the fear you tried to inflict on your brother. You tried to kill by fire one whom you should have respected above all others, and so by fire you will yourself die. The day may come soon, or it may be many years away, but the fire will catch you eventually. That is a father’s curse, a curse spoken in the name of St Spiridon. And though you try to hide behind a new name, my dying curse will still find you out to destroy you, Christo.” And it’s signed ‘Spiro Karaskakis’.”

  Mrs Pargeter was about to speak, but a terrible sound froze the words on her lips.

  It was just recognisably human, a voice that screamed in pain like a trapped animal.

  ∨ Mrs Pargeter’s Package ∧

  Thirty-Six

  Larry Lambeth shot across the room towards the source of the sound. Mrs Pargeter was a little behind him and stood in the doorway to the kitchen, looking at the sight illuminated by his narrow torch-beam.

  Theodosia was crouched like a cornered animal on the rough pallet which served her as a bed. Her scream had subsided to a feral whimpering, and her usually impassive face was ravaged by tears.

  Larry Lambeth snapped some questions at her in Greek, which reinforced the strength of her sobbing.

  “Be gentle with her,” murmured Mrs Pargeter, as she moved across the room towards the terrified woman. She sat on the pallet and put a plump arm round the quivering shoulders.

  Theodosia’s first instinct was to flinch as if to break away, but Mrs Pargeter’s stroking hands and soothing but uncomprehended words gradually brought calm. The pace of the sobbing slowed, and the woman’s head sank down on to her comforter’s shoulder. Mrs Pargeter could feel the warm dampness of tears through the thin cotton of her dress.

  “She’s a witness of what we done,” said Larry Lambeth twitchily. “She’ll tell Stephano and Georgio and that lot.”

  “She can’t tell them. She can’t speak.”

  “She has ways of communication.”

  As if taking his words as a cue, Theodosia suddenly let out a different sound. A strange, unearthly sound, that seemed to come from deep within her, torn painfully from her frame.

  It took a moment before Mrs Pargeter realised that the woman was speaking.

  The voice was rasping and rusty, but with an incongruously innocent lightness. Through its strangeness, it was the voice of a child, the child Theodosia had been the last time she had spoken, before experiencing the shock which had struck her dumb for thirty years.

  “What is she saying?” whispered Mrs Pargeter urgently.

  “She says that she heard me read her father’s curse. It frightens her very much.”

  More strange sounds were dragged from Theodosia’s body.

  Larry Lambeth interpreted. “She did not know that Christo had deliberately sabotaged the boat. She saw the fire. It was terrible.”

  Theodosia mouthed hopelessly, once again robbed of speech by this recollection. Mrs Pargeter felt sure it must have been the sight of her brother apparently going up in flames that had traumatised her all those years before.

  But the woman regained control and once again the uneven, unaccustomed speech began.

  “She hates her brother now she knows the truth. She adds her curse to her father’s curse. She hopes he will die.”

  Too late, thought Mrs Pargeter. That merciful tumour on the brain of Christo Karaskakis – or Chris Dover – had saved him from the literal fulfilment of old Spiro’s curse. But who knew what flames of conscience had scorched him at the moment of his death?

  Or, though she didn’t really believe in hell, she could recognise that the idea of Chris Dover roasting there for all eternity would neatly tie up all the ends of his story.

  A new urgency came into Theodosia’s voice.

  “She says they’ve got the girl.”

  “Girl?” Mrs Pargeter echoed. “Conchita?”

  Yes, of course. At the time she had seen nothing odd in Conchita’s non-appearance at Spiro’s Greek party, putting it down to some tiff between the girl and Yianni. But now the absence took on more sinister colouring. And that had been late evening. Conchita could have been missing for up to seven hours.

  Larry Lambeth’s translation confirmed her worst fears. “The dark-haired English girl, she says.”

  “Who’s got her?”

  He urgently relayed the question to Theodosia.

  “The tourist woman – that must be Ginnie – the tourist woman arr
anged to meet her on the headland, but Stephano and Georgio were waiting there, and they took the girl.”

  “Oh no!” Mrs Pargeter could not forget the reference to Stephano in old Spiro’s deposition. Stephano had aided and abetted Christo in the earlier crime. Christo was dead, but Sergeant Karaskakis was still very much alive and very dangerous. “Where have they taken her?”

  The translation came back quickly. “There’s an old fisherman’s hut on the headland. They’ve got her in there.”

  Mrs Pargeter grabbed Larry Lambeth’s hand. “Come on! We must get there – quickly! There have already been too many deaths in Agios Nikitas!”

  ∨ Mrs Pargeter’s Package ∧

  Thirty-Seven

  The headland referred to was one of the scrub-covered arms that encircled the bay of Agios Nikitas. It was a steep-sided spine of rock, the end of which thousands of years before had dropped away into the sea to form cliffs. There were a couple of paths across the ridge which led to tiny bays otherwise accessible only by boat, but they were little used. The thorny undergrowth was inimical to travellers in the tourist uniform of shorts and T-shirts, and the gradient unappealing in the daytime sun.

  Heat raised no problems for Mrs Pargeter and Larry Lambeth, but the steep climb and the sharp thorns did. They were both scratched and breathless by the time they approached the dilapidated hut. The darkness was diluted by a thin sliver of moon and their eyes had quickly accommodated to the conditions.

  “I’ll go first,” Larry murmured.

  There had been a path to the door in the days when fishermen used the building regularly, but this now showed only as an indentation in the surrounding scrub, which muscled up close, threatening to engulf the hut. No light showed through the broken glass of the windows, and the only sound was the incessant restlessness of the sea.

  Larry moved cautiously forward to the door, found the handle and pushed it inward with a sudden movement. He paused, but, the silence remaining unbroken, moved forward and was lost in the darkness of the interior.