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

by Simon Brett

  There were two sounds. A soft thud. A harder thud.

  Then silence reasserted itself.

  Whatever dangers lay inside the hut, Mrs Pargeter had come too far to shirk them. It was no time for pussyfooting. Her dead friend’s daughter was in danger.

  Coolly, Mrs Pargeter pushed through the encroaching brushwood and in through the open door. As she did so, she announced in a clear voice, “Good morning. I am Mrs Pargeter and I am coming in to see what’s happening.”

  The darkness she entered was total. Her feet stepped firmly across the floor of dusty rock.

  There was a loud clatter behind her as the door was slammed shut. She turned, to be met by the dazzling beam of a flashlight.

  “You are a very nosey woman, Mrs Pargeter,” said a voice she recognised.

  “With some justification, I think…” she said, “Sergeant Karaskakis.”

  ∨ Mrs Pargeter’s Package ∧

  Thirty-Eight

  Now she could see the rectangular outline of his uniform against the wall of the hut. His face was in shadow, but she could supply for herself the evil leer beneath that triangular moustache.

  She turned to look round the hut. Conchita was tied to an old wooden chair, which had in turn been tied to one of the hut’s upright supports. Though the girl strained to communicate, only a liquid gurgle could penetrate the gag made by her own scarf, whose overpaid designer had never envisaged this usage for his creation.

  Larry Lambeth lay face downward, unmoving, on the floor. Mrs Pargeter rushed to his side.

  “It’s all right. He’s only unconscious,” said Sergeant Karaskakis languidly, as he hooked the flashlight to an overhead beam.

  Mrs Pargeter turned Larry over. His eyes did not react, but his breathing was regular. She looked up to the Sergeant, who loomed above her, gently tapping against his palm the nightstick which had presumably knocked Larry out.

  “As I say, you are very nosey. Foolishly nosey. Too nosey for your own good, Mrs Pargeter.”

  She stood up and faced him, remembering more of the late Mr Pargeter’s words of wisdom. “The only situation which might justify panic is one in which panic is likely to help. Such a situation never arises. Though pretended panic may sometimes cause a useful diversion, real panic can never be anything other than a waste of energy.”

  “I do know, Sergeant,” she said, “why all this is happening. It is the crime of Christo Karaskakis that is behind it all.”

  He stiffened at the mention of the name.

  “And Joyce Dover was killed because it was feared that she might reveal the secrets of that crime. Which was nonsense. She had no desire to expose anyone. All she wanted to do was to find out about her husband’s past. All his life Chris had managed to keep the truth about his background secret, but his conscience would not allow him to let that secret die with him. In what was perhaps a final gesture of honesty, he offered his wife the chance of knowing the truth. He saw to it that she received a letter after his death. And that letter led her here to Agios Nikitas.”

  Sergeant Karaskakis casually pulled a sheet of paper out of his pocket. “Might this be what you are speaking of?”

  Even in that inadequate lighting, Mrs Pargeter could see the distinctively purple writing on one side of the paper.

  “Yes. You found that in Joyce’s luggage at the Villa Eleni.”

  “So?” he asked insolently, shoving the letter back into his pocket.

  So… that means you were definitely there the night she was murdered. But Mrs Pargeter didn’t bother to say it out loud.

  “Everything you say,” the Sergeant continued, “may be very interesting… but I don’t know what relevance it has to me.”

  “It is relevant to you because you were involved in Christo’s original crime. You and Georgio helped him steal the boat, you helped him sabotage the outboard motor. You were an accessory to the attempted murder that went so horribly wrong.”

  “You’ve done a lot of research, Mrs Pargeter,” he said, without intonation of either praise or blame.

  “Yes. Where’s Georgio?” she asked suddenly.

  The Sergeant smiled. “He has gone home. Gone home with his English whore to get drunk. Georgio was always feeble. He can’t stand it when things get too hot. Thirty years ago, he was with us when we stole the boat, but when we start to fix the outboard, he gets afraid and goes away. He is not a man, Georgio.”

  Mrs Pargeter was pleased that Sergeant Karaskakis made no attempt to deny his crime. But her pleasure was not unmingled with other emotions. His ready admission of guilt suggested that he was not too worried by the possibility of her surviving to bear witness against him. She knew she must try and keep him talking as long as possible, while her mind desperately raced to see a way out of her predicament.

  “Sergeant, there was no need to kill Joyce Dover. She represented no threat to you. And there is certainly no need to harm Conchita. You should release her.”

  “No.”

  “Then at least take the gag off. No one can hear her shouting out here.”

  “No. She talks too much,” he said, affronted. “She talks rudely. She does not behave as a woman should behave.”

  It was not the moment to enter into a feminist debate, so Mrs Pargeter asked coolly, “What are you planning to do with her then? With all of us, come to that?”

  “What happened with the boat,” he began slowly, “has been a secret for thirty years. We want it to remain a secret for ever.”

  “Fine,” said Mrs Pargeter. “That suits us fine. We don’t want to dig up the past. When we get back to England, we’ll never think about it again, promise. I can assure you, your little crime may seem pretty important out here in Agios Nikitas, but the rest of the world has no interest in it at all.”

  “We cannot take risks, I’m afraid. Christo would not wish such risks to be taken.”

  “You shouldn’t still care what Christo thinks. Show a bit of independence. Make a decision of your own for once in your life.”

  This approach did not unfortunately have the desired effect; Sergeant Karaskakis seemed instead to read it as a challenge to his masculinity. “Don’t you dare speak to me like that! Or I will gag you like the other one!”

  “Gagging me won’t help you at all.”

  “It will, Mrs Pargeter. So will tying you up.”

  As he spoke, he reached behind him for a hank of rope. She struggled, but a woman in her late sixties was no match for a man more than ten years younger. Her arms were quickly trussed behind her and she was strapped against another upright beam beside Conchita.

  “All right, well done,” she taunted him. “So you’ve managed to knock out one man from behind and tie up two women. What do you want – a medal for bravery?”

  “Mrs Pargeter,” he sneered, “your death is one that I will not regret at all.”

  “Oh, I see.” She was still managing – with some difficulty – to keep the insolence in her voice. “And how are you proposing that I should be killed?”

  He gave her a smile, though there was no vestige of humour in it. “This is a very dry island in the summer. There are many fires. A wooden building like this would not survive long in a fire.”

  Conchita gurgled and struggled as she heard this spelling out of their fate, but Mrs Pargeter still contrived to appear unruffled, even though she had just noticed two petrol cans against the wall behind the Sergeant. “Fires do get investigated, you know. If you’re proposing to use that petrol, traces would be left. Arson is a fairly simple crime to recognise.”

  “So? There is a lot of arson on the island already. Men from other villages may be jealous of Agios Nikitas’ success with the tourist trade. They will be blamed. As I say, there are many such crimes. It would not be thought strange.”

  “But some of the details might be thought strange. The fact that two of the charred bodies had been tied up is the kind of thing that might be noticed.”

  His mirthless smile grew broader. “That would dep
end, of course, on who was conducting the investigation. I represent the authorities here in Agios Nikitas. I would be the first person on the scene of the tragedy.”

  “So you reckon you could tamper with the evidence again – just as you did after Joyce’s death?”

  He shrugged.

  His next words were more chilling than anything he had said up until that point. “Mind you, it would probably be simpler if the bodies were found not tied up…”

  “You mean dead before the fire got to them?”

  “Why not?” Once again he tapped his nightstick against his palm. He looked across at the two women, assessing his next move.

  Mrs Pargeter was not a religious woman. She was not convinced that God existed, and so her philosophy had always been to enjoy this life to the full, in case the concept of a future life was merely misleading propaganda circulated to control the worst excesses of public behaviour. But she prayed at that moment.

  And, as Sergeant Karaskakis advanced towards her with his nightstick upraised, her prayer was answered.

  The door burst open.

  “No, Stephano! Don’t do it!”

  Framed in the doorway against the first paleness of dawn stood Spiro.

  ∨ Mrs Pargeter’s Package ∧

  Thirty-Nine

  Sergeant Karaskakis lowered his weapon, subdued by the presence of a personality stronger than his own. He was silent, awaiting orders.

  Mrs Pargeter couldn’t understand in detail what orders Spiro gave him, but they seemed to be of the ‘Go outside, I’ll deal with you later’ variety. The Sergeant, with the bad grace of a cat who’s just had its mouse emancipated, slunk out of the hut into the grey dawn.

  “Goodness,” said Mrs Pargeter, “am I glad to see you, Spiro! That was quite a close shave. Do you know, he was proposing to set fire to the headland around us?”

  Spiro shook his head, his dark eyes more melancholy than ever. “Stephano is a dangerous and careless fool.”

  “Yes.” Mrs Pargeter was suddenly garrulous with relief. “I do know all about what happened,” she said.

  Spiro looked puzzled.

  “In 1959,” she explained. “I know about the attempt to kill you, the way the outboard motor was sabotaged. And I know how it went wrong, and how Christo got hoist with his own petard, and how he got burnt and escaped to England and pretended to have come from Uruguay…”

  Spiro still looked uncomprehending.

  “Of course, you wouldn’t have heard about any of that. Don’t worry about it. The main thing is that I know why Joyce was killed and I know who killed her. And I’ve found out all about the curse your father put on Christo.”

  “Curse?”

  “Yes. I found it written on the back of the photograph – you know, in phenolphthalein.” The look of incomprehension in his face was now such that she explained, “Maybe it’s got a different name in Greek, but it’s that stuff that’s used as an indicator in chemistry, you know, to show the degree of alkaline or acidic content of…”

  Her words drained away as she realised how little they meant to him. He did not understand even the most rudimentary details about chemistry.

  And with that knowledge, she felt a whole sequence of other facts slot into place. Spiro had been the studious one who enjoyed chemistry, Christo the tearaway who wanted to own the taverna. But Chris Dover, presumed to be Christo, was the one who always wrote his secret correspondence in phenolphthalein.

  Suddenly she saw a different perspective on the thirty-year-old ‘accident’ with the outboard motor. It was not an ‘own goal’ which had blown up in the perpetrator’s face. It had injured – though not killed – the person for whom it had been intended.

  And old Spiro’s words, ‘though you try to hide behind a new name’, did not, as she had assumed, refer to Christo Karaskakis’ adoption of the pseudonym ‘Chris Dover’. They referred to Christo Karaskakis’ usurpation of the name of his older brother, Spiro.

  Chris Dover had not run away and changed his identity to escape the consequences of any crime he had committed. It had been to escape another attack from his homicidal brother, Christo.

  And, once Spiro had fled to England, Christo had calmly taken over the identity of his identical twin, together with the taverna that he had always set his heart on owning.

  The new Spiro had been confident that no one would reveal his secret. The real Spiro was too frightened of him to risk his anger again. Their father had died almost immediately after the incident, his death no doubt hastened by the knowledge of his young son’s true nature. Their nine-year-old sister, Theodosia, had been traumatised into silence by witnessing the crime.

  And, as for Stephano and Georgio, they were so totally the new Spiro’s creatures that they represented no threat. So long as he gave them both unlimited and never to be recovered credit at the taverna, they’d keep their mouths shut.

  Christo, now called Spiro, had achieved his ambition and was free to concentrate on making money out of his ill-gotten inheritance.

  The facts were undeniable, but Mrs Pargeter tried to pretend they weren’t. “Well, I think you can untie us now, can’t you, Spiro?” she said easily.

  The implacable darkness of his eyes confirmed how forlorn her hope had been. For the first time since she had arrived on Corfu, Mrs Pargeter thought perhaps she understood the meaning of the expression ‘the Evil Eye’.

  “Why did you kill Joyce?” she asked.

  “She was in my way,” he replied shortly.

  “But how?”

  “My brother was a rich man.”

  “You mean you hope to inherit his money…?”

  Spiro did not reply, but Mrs Pargeter knew she had stumbled on the truth. All Spiro’s crimes had the same motivation. His first attempt to kill his brother had been to inherit the taverna. Now he was trying once again to take what was not his.

  “Was it Georgio who told you he was still alive?”

  Spiro nodded. “He was in London. He saw this man Chris Dover by chance in the street, he saw the likeness. He phoned me up to tell me.”

  “And you told him to find out how much Chris Dover was worth?”

  This earned another nod.

  “But, if you were after his money, why didn’t you make another attempt to kill your brother?”

  “I think about it, but it is difficult from here. Then I hear he has died, anyway. Even better, next I hear his wife is coming out here. And then his daughter follows.”

  Conchita whimpered as she took in the implication of what he was saying.

  Spiro let out an unpleasant laugh and opened his hands in a gesture of satisfaction. “St Spiridon helps all Spiros.”

  “But you’re not a real Spiro.”

  “I am now. I might as well be.”

  “Listen,” said Mrs Pargeter firmly. “You’ve got something horribly wrong in all this, and that is the idea that you’ll ever be able to prove you’re related to your brother. Chris Dover covered his tracks so thoroughly that you don’t stand a chance.”

  “I’ll do it,” Spiro insisted doggedly.

  “You won’t. So, for heaven’s sake, stop this ridiculous business now. Joyce has already been killed for money that you’re never going to see – and nothing can be done about that – but stop now before you harm Conchita.”

  “I am going to inherit my brother’s money.”

  Mrs Pargeter looked into those dark eyes and saw no glimmer of hope at all. All that glowed in them was greed, an all-consuming peasant greed which was not susceptible to logic or argument. It was an obsession, a kind of madness, and a madness that could kill.

  “Don’t do it,” she appealed. “Remember we are human beings. Just for a moment, think of Conchita and me as human beings.”

  Spiro said nothing, but, pausing only to pick up the two petrol cans, walked out of the hut.

  ∨ Mrs Pargeter’s Package ∧

  Forty

  Mrs Pargeter had contemplated the possibility of death many times. I
t was a prospect which caused her anger rather than anguish. She had a great taste for life and wanted as large a helping of it as could be cajoled out of the Great Dinnerlady in the Sky.

  The idea that her life was about to end was deeply unappealing. Though aware that her happiest days – those spent in the company of the late Mr Pargeter – were probably past, there were still a great many things she wanted to do, a great many experiences she wanted to cram in before that final shutter fell.

  Though she had survived close calls in the past, this time there really did seem little she could do to ameliorate her situation. Larry Lambeth still showed no signs of movement and he was not near enough for her to test whether a jogging toe might rouse him.

  She was also now disconcertingly aware of the stiff breeze that came directly off the sea and found a route through the broken windows of the hut. Nor was she reassured by the glimpsed sight, through the thin light of morning, of Spiro and Sergeant Karaskakis up-ending petrol cans over the scrub some hundred yards away on the seaward side. Once the match was dropped, it would be a matter of seconds before the flames reached the tinder-dry hut.

  Annoyance still remained her dominant emotion. Death by fire was not her preferred mode of exit from the life she so fervently embraced. Joan of Arc had never figured as one of her heroines. Self-centred, silly adolescent girl, in Mrs Pargeter’s view. Nowadays it wouldn’t have been hearing voices; she’d have drawn attention to herself by anorexia nervosa.

  These angry musings were interrupted by a sound from Conchita, and Mrs Pargeter realised that, through the restrictions of her gag, the poor girl was trying to scream. Dear oh dear, thought Mrs Pargeter, I’m being very selfish here. I have at least worked out a philosophy about death. I’ve thought it through, while this poor kid’s only in her twenties, she can’t feel there’s been enough in her life yet to justify a premature departure from it. I must reassure her.

  “Don’t worry, Conchita, it’ll be all right,” she said meaninglessly.

  Suddenly there was a low line of flame in front of the outlines of Spiro and Stephano, and within seconds all the view from the windows had turned angry orange. The match had been dropped.