Soon we were standing outside the door from which I’d fled in such haste only moments earlier. Markos dropped my hand and put his ear to the door.
“I don’t hear anything.”
“Maybe he’s gone by now,” I suggested. “After all, I was right next door in Maggie’s stateroom, and I wasn’t making any effort to be quiet. He had to know someone was nearby.”
Markos grinned at me. “In other words, you gave him just as much of a scare as he gave you.”
Somehow I doubted it. I had never thought of myself as particularly terrifying, but the absurd picture Markos proposed—a hardened criminal fleeing in terror from a young woman in a bathing suit—was enough to drag a shaky smile from me.
“Let’s take a look inside, shall we?” he suggested.
I fished my key out of the pocket of my robe and opened the door. The sun reflecting off the waves beyond the porthole cast dancing patterns of light onto the ceiling, giving the cabin such a bright and cheerful look that it was hard to believe anything frightening could have taken place here. Granted, it was a bit messy; the cabin steward hadn’t yet been in, just as I’d told Markos, so the bed was still unmade—a circumstance that I should have found highly gratifying, since it proved that my intruder could not have been the steward, as Markos suggested. Instead, something about being in such close quarters with him made my cheeks burn. I suppose it had something to do with my skimpy outfit, combined with the fact that we were of necessity only a few feet from my bed, complete with rumpled sheets and a filmy nightgown thrown across the mattress.
“I’ll check the bathroom,” Markos said, and it seemed to me that he carefully avoided looking at the bed as he slid past me toward the tiny bath.
“Nothing there, nor in the closet,” he said a moment later, returning to where I stood before the nightstand, looking inside my tiny plastic dancing trophy. “Miss Fletcher? Are you all right?”
“Yes,” I said distractedly, noting that Gene’s ring was still right there where I had left it. Whatever someone had been doing in my stateroom, it was clear that ordinary garden-variety theft was not the motive.
Markos glanced up at the bobbing reflections of sunlight on the ceiling. “Is it possible that this is what you saw beneath the door?”
“No,” I insisted. “Someone was in this room, someone who moved between the door and the light coming in from the porthole.”
“Very well, then, is anything missing?”
“No—at least, I don’t think so. Still, something is different, something I can’t quite put my finger—”
But even as I said the words, I realized what had changed. I’d set Pedro on the nightstand facing the door to greet me whenever I returned to the room. But now he sat staring straight ahead at the blank wall directly opposite him.
“That’s it!” I exclaimed. “It’s Pedro!”
“Pedro?” Markos echoed, frowning.
“I’m sorry—it’s the caga tió I bought in Barcelona. I named him Pedro—Pooping Pedro, actually—and I had put him here, facing the door. He’s been moved.”
“Why would anyone break into your stateroom only to rearrange your souvenirs?” Markos asked skeptically.
“How should I know? Maybe someone was poking about looking for something worth stealing.” I pulled open the top drawer of the nightstand and looked inside. There was the little trophy, with my ring inside. “But the only thing of value in the room is my ring, and it’s still here.”
Markos frowned down at it, a sparkling circle of gold lying in a gilt-painted plastic cup. I fully expected him to say something hateful about my being unhappily engaged, but here I misjudged him. “Perhaps it’s as I said, and you frightened him away before he could do any damage. Still, I’d find a safer place to keep this if I were you. The purser can lock it up for you, if you’d like.”
I agreed, and he led me, pale and subdued, to the purser’s desk on Europa Deck, where I filled out a few forms and surrendered my ring. By the time I returned to Maggie, twenty minutes had past since I’d set out in search of her reading glasses.
“There you are!” she exclaimed, setting aside the book she’d been squinting at. “I was beginning to wonder if I should send out a search party. Were they not on my nightstand?”
So much had happened since I’d left her that it took me a moment to remember what “they” were. “Oh, your reading glasses!” I exclaimed, digging them out of my pocket. “Yes, they were just where you said they’d be. I’m sorry it took me so long. I, er, I ran into Markos,” I said with perfect truth. Somehow I couldn’t quite bring myself to burden my aunt by telling her about my scare. I had absolutely no proof, beyond Pedro’s apparently moving about on his stubby wooden legs (which in retrospect I was forced to admit might have been my own unconscious doing), and it seemed to me that between an ankle injury and a budding romance, Maggie had quite enough to worry about. I removed my robe for the second time and finally took my long-delayed dip in the pool—from which I quickly emerged, shivering and with chattering teeth.
“Brrr!” I exclaimed, snatching up my towel. “It’s c-c-cold!”
“It’s the movement of the ship,” Maggie said without looking up from her book. I’d noticed she had shown no interest in taking to the water, and now I knew why. “The ship is moving at thirty knots, so it’s like swimming in a thirty-five-mile-per-hour wind.”
“Now you tell me,” I grumbled, blotting myself dry before stretching out on my deck chair and picking up the book I’d bought for the trip. I’d paid almost five dollars for the new hardcover release by Georgette Heyer, but I couldn’t honestly say I was enjoying A Civil Contract. I had no patience with the heroine, who was so desperately in love with the hero that she was willing to marry him knowing quite well that he had no real interest in her apart from her dowry. Where was her pride? And if a little voice whispered, “Where is yours?”—well, it was nothing a piña colada or two wouldn’t drown out.
* * *
The rest of the day passed uneventfully, which made a welcome change after the hectic pace of the last few days, to say nothing of the scare of that morning. The feeling of pleasant slothfulness continued into dinner, where even Sylvia Duprée yielded to the general lassitude by appearing at the table in a relatively casual halter dress of gaily striped cotton that left her tanned shoulders bare. After dinner, I tactfully left Maggie and Paul alone at a piano bar, listening to love songs from the war years and furtively holding hands beneath the table—as if I didn’t know, I thought, smiling. I wandered up to the Promenade Deck and leaned against the rail, savoring the feel of the breeze on the back of my neck, tugging my hair loose from its chignon and pressing the full skirts of my pink satin dress against my legs. The sun had set, turning the sky from purple to black, and somewhere in the distance a light blinked—on and off, on and off.
“It’s a beautiful night, isn’t it, Miss Fletcher?”
Recognizing the slightly accented English, I turned and saw Markos in his dress uniform, the pristine white fabric a stark contrast to the velvety black of the night sky beyond his shoulder. “Yes, it is,” I agreed.
“I trust you’ve had no more disturbances?”
“No.” I stared fixedly down at my hands on the deck rail, reluctant to revisit the terror of that morning. I still wasn’t sure he believed me—and who could blame him for doubting? There had been no physical proof of an intruder, unless one counted a slight change in the position of a painted log. On the contrary, the fact that my engagement ring had been undisturbed would tend to prove the opposite. Desperate to change the subject, I gestured toward the blinking light in the distance. “What is it? The light, I mean.”
“It’s a lighthouse. Although I, being Greek, prefer to call it a pharos,” he added with a flash of white teeth. “The Greek islands are dotted with them.”
Sure enough, as our ship left the blinking light in its wake, another one became just visible far ahead.
“How many are there?” I asked.
“Islands, or lighthouses?”
I shrugged. “Either one.”
“How many lighthouses, I couldn’t begin to guess. Greek islands, somewhere between twelve hundred and six thousand, depending on how large you require a pile of volcanic rock to be before you consider it worthy of the name.”
“Twelve hundred?” I echoed. “Even the smallest figure staggers the imagination.”
“But only about two hundred are inhabited,” he amended quickly, almost apologetically, as if he were personally responsible for the lack of population distribution.
“Only two hundred?” I scoffed playfully. “Is that all?”
He grinned, but any retort he might have made was suspended when a scream sounded from somewhere aft. Markos and I exchanged bewildered looks for a fraction of a second, then he grabbed me by the wrist and took the Promenade Deck at a run. By the time we reached the stern, a crowd had gathered, many of them leaning over the rail to look down into the dark sea below. The great engines juddered to a stop, and phosphorescent bubbles rose to the surface from the propellers beneath the waves as we lolled aimlessly on top of the water. In the sudden stillness, I could hear murmurs of “man overboard” from my fellow passengers.
Markos tapped the shoulder of a man standing nearby. “What happened?”
“I don’t know,” he said, glancing away from the railing just long enough to answer. “They say someone fell overboard from one of the decks above.”
“Who could fall over these?” I asked, slapping the deck railing with the flat of my hand. “Surely they’re high enough to prevent such a thing.”
“You would think so,” Markos said thoughtfully. “But you’d be surprised how many people have too much to drink and decide it would be fun to climb over the railing.”
By this time a life preserver had been thrown from a deck somewhere far below us and now bobbed crazily on the surface of the water, a pale ring of white against the black of the sea. I couldn’t help noticing that no desperate hands reached up from the depths to grab it. Apparently the would-be rescuers reached the same conclusion, for within minutes a door was opened far below. Bright lights spilled from the hatchway, turning the black water to an eerie green. Unseen hands reeled in the useless life preserver, and a few minutes later two men in scuba gear entered the water with a splash.
Even though they must have had a very good idea where to look, fully half an hour passed before they returned to the ship, bearing between them what appeared at first glance to be a collection of sodden rags. But I was not deceived. I recognized the gaily striped fabric at once, as well as the long dark hair that streamed with water.
It was Sylvia Duprée, and even from this distance I could tell she was dead.
Chapter 9
Things are not always what they seem.
PHAEDRUS, Fables
As the body that had once been Sylvia Duprée was brought back on board along with her rescuers—her recoverers, rather, since no hope of rescue appeared possible—the crowd began to disperse, all murmuring speculations as to what had happened and how. Markos grabbed me by the arm and dragged me backwards, away from the railing and the gruesome sight below. “It’s time you and I had a little talk, Miss Fletcher.”
Mutely, I allowed him to lead me to the nightclub aft, where the lively music of a jazz combo made a bizarre contrast to the somber scene a few decks below. Markos steered me to a small table in a dark corner, plopped me down somewhat roughly onto a spindle-legged chair with a padded seat, and sat down opposite me.
“Well, Miss Fletcher?” he prompted, when I seemed disinclined to talk.
“ ‘Well,’ what, Markos?”
He leaned across the table, and although his voice was pitched softly enough to prevent its being heard over the music, I wasn’t fool enough to mistake his lack of volume for absence of intensity. “Don’t play games with me! You know something you’re not telling. You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”
I turned to look at my reflection in the big picture window stretching across the stern of the ship. In the daytime, it would give a lovely view over the water, but now the darkness beyond turned the glass into an enormous mirror, a mirror that reflected a terrified girl with eyes too big for her white, strained face.
“Isn’t it time to admit that you’re in over your head?” he asked a bit more gently.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” My voice rose, and Markos put his hand over mine and gave it a warning squeeze.
“It’s all right, Miss Fletcher—”
“How can it be all right?” I interrupted, lowering my voice nonetheless. “A woman is dead! Two days ago I was wishing she would go away and leave us alone, and now—” I broke off, pressing a hand to my eyes as if I could somehow erase the sight of Sylvia Duprée’s drowned body.
“I’ll do my best to see you safe if you’ll tell me everything you know about Konstantin Devos.”
“Devos? How can I tell you anything? I never saw the man until that first night out of Barcelona, when I saw him throwing his Pedro overboard.” I considered what I’d just said, and choked back a giggle. “Throwing his Pedro overboard. That sounds a little bit dirty, doesn’t it?”
It was no use. I began to giggle uncontrollably. Markos gave me an exasperated look and flagged down a waiter. “Bring me an ouzo.” He glanced at me again. “On second thought, better make it a double.”
He was silent until the waiter returned, apparently giving up as a lost cause any thought of getting coherent speech out of me without alcoholic stimulant. After the glass was set down before him and the waiter took himself off, Markos pushed it across the table to me. “Drink,” he ordered, “but go slowly. It’s stronger than it seems.”
I took a gulp, and choked. The ouzo was cold—very cold—and yet it burned as it went down. It had none of the fruity flavors of this morning’s piña colada or yesterday’s limoncello, but the taste was not unpleasant. In fact, it reminded me of something—something I hadn’t tasted in a long time.
“Jelly beans,” I announced, holding the glass up to the light and peering into the clear liquid. “It tastes like black jelly beans. Or it would, if black jelly beans scorched your throat on their way down.”
“It’s the anise flavoring,” Markos said, taking the glass from my shaky hand and returning it to the table before I could spill it. “Now, back to the subject at hand. Who is, or was, Pedro?”
“Not a who, but a what.” I said, resisting the urge to start giggling again. “Don’t you remember? I told you.” I reminded him of the caga tió I’d bought in Barcelona, and then described to him the strange fate of Mr. Devos’s identical souvenir.
“Interesting,” he said when I’d finished. “What else do you know about Konstantin Devos?”
I frowned at him. “Shouldn’t you be asking me what I know about Sylvia Duprée? After all, she’s the one who’s dead.”
“Very well, then,” he said with exaggerated patience, “what do you know about Sylvia Duprée?”
“ ‘Very well, then,’ ” I mimicked. “I didn’t know anyone talked like that outside of novels. Where did you learn your English?”
“Miss Fletcher—” he said, sounding considerably less patient this time.
“All right, all right! I know Sylvia—Miss Duprée, that is—made a pest of herself in Rome, sticking to Aunt Maggie like glue. I thought she was making a play for Paul, but apparently I was wrong. Do you suppose she was just lonely, what with Mr. Grimes being ill and unable to accompany her?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea. Anything else?”
“Only that she was rude to the Hollises that first night at dinner, which I find very hard to forgive, because they’re such sweet people! And that at Pompeii, she got into a rather heated argument with—oh!”
“With Konstantin Devos,” Markos finished my sentence. There was also the fact that my name had come up in that conversation, but Markos seemed to be unaware of this circumstance, and some in
stinct told me not to divulge the information.
“Do you think—” I glanced around to make sure no one was listening, then lowered my voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Do you think Mr. Devos pushed her overboard?”
“I couldn’t begin to guess,” Markos said tonelessly. “What do you think?”
“How should I know?” I asked rather wildly. “I know nothing about the man! I never laid eyes on him until four days ago.”
“And yet you were sitting next to him at dinner and dancing with him less than twenty-four hours later,” he pointed out.
“That doesn’t prove anything!” I said, insulted by the suggestion that I had something to hide. “He was assigned to the same table, and there happened to be an empty seat next to me. Besides, I was dancing with you, too, if you’ll recall. That doesn’t mean there’s any deep, dark history between the two of us.”
“Point taken,” he conceded. “Still, the two of you were pretty chummy in Pisa, if your photographs are anything to judge by.”
The ouzo must have gone some way toward settling my frayed nerves, for I instantly recognized the contradiction in this statement. “I thought you said my photos hadn’t yet been developed.”
“I never said any such thing. You said you supposed they weren’t yet ready, and I said nothing to contradict you.”
“If they’ve been developed, then I want them back,” I demanded. “What possible reason do you have for keeping them from me?”
“I’ve fallen desperately in love with you, and can’t bear to part with them,” Markos said, and although he spoke sarcastically, it seemed to me that he flushed slightly beneath his tan.
“Why, sir, this is so sudden!” I exclaimed, no doubt influenced by the Regency novel I’d been reading that afternoon. I felt another fit of giggles welling up, so I picked up my glass and took another sip. “But really, Markos, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I spent the whole day with Maggie and Paul. I never saw Mr. Devos at all.”
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