Agatha Raisin and the Terrible Tourist (12 page)

Agatha sat staring into space. This was not how she would have imagined it to be. Her dreams had turned upside-down. No lingering romantic kisses beside the Mediterranean--except from Charles. Every time she thought of that episode with Charles, she felt hot and uncomfortable. How could she have let one man make love to her when she was in love with another? Because, said a nagging voice in her head, maybe you've never really been in love with James but with an imaginary James. The imaginary, or dream, James was always doing and saying the right things while the real James was as cold and distant as ever. Agatha gave a broken little sigh. Her obsession with James seemed to be waning as each day passed.

Over dinner James suddenly said, "I would like to get even with Mustafa for cheating me. I'll bet he's dealing in drugs. You don't have all those villains around just because you're running a brothel."

"Could be dangerous," said Agatha.

"So's poking about in a murder investigation, but it hasn't stopped you yet."

"Oh, well, I'll help you."

"Not this one," said James firmly. "'I'll deal with Mustafa myself."

WHEN Agatha went downstairs in the morning, she found a note on the kitchen table from James. It said briefly, "Gone off on some private business. Be back around lunch-time."

Agatha cursed and crushed the note into a little ball and shied it into the rubbish bin. They were no longer a team, she thought bitterly. She made herself a cup of coffee and sat down at the kitchen table and gloomily revised in her mind all James's coldnesses, all his snubs, and all his lack of affection, until she was perfectly sure she had no feelings left for him at all.

Then she decided to go into Kyrenia and do some investigating for herself. The day was a washed-out milky grey, with wreaths of mist hiding the tops of the mountains. It was very warm and humid.

She parked in a side street and walked down to the Dome Hotel. English tourists with high fluting voices came and went outside the hotel. North Cyprus seemed to be living up to its reputation of being the last genteel watering-hole along the Mediterranean.

Neither Olivia nor the rest were in their rooms. She went to the dining-room. A few people were having a late breakfast but they were not among them. But over at the window sat Charles, holding a coffee-cup between his sum fingers and gazing dreamily out to sea.

Agatha hesitated and then, with a little shrug, she walked towards his table. He looked up.

"Morning, Aggie," he said. "Where's your guard-dog?"

"If you mean James, he's gone off somewhere on his own. Have you see the Debenhams or the bereaved husband?"

"You've missed them. They had breakfast. Then they said something about going to Bellapais."

"What's that?"

"It's a place immortalized by Lawrence Durrell in his book
Bitter Lemons.
There's a Gothic abbey there. I'll drive you there. Got nothing else to do. In fact, I'm getting a bit bored. Thought of going home."

Agatha sat down opposite him. "Why did you sleep with me?"

"How old-fashioned you sound. You mean, why did I have sex with you? Put it down to brandy and moonlight on the Med."

Agatha looked at him curiously. "And the memory doesn't embarrass you?"

He looked at her in surprise. "Not a bit of it, Aggie. I enjoyed myself immensely. Want coffee or want to go?"

"May as well go," said Agatha somewhat sulkily. She felt a gentleman would have professed to have had some sort of affection for her.

Once in his rented car, Agatha fished out her guidebook and looked up Bellapais. "What does it say?" asked Charles.

"The Abbaye de la Paix was founded circa 1200 by Aimery de Lusignan for the Augustine monks forced to leave their Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem by the Saracens. The abbey was sometimes called the White Abbey from the colour of their habits. King Hugues (1267 to 1284) was a major benefactor of the abbey, which grew in size and importance to the extent that the Archbishop of Nicosia had trouble asserting his authority over it, until the Genoese invasion of 1372. In that year its treasures were looted, and the abbey never regained its previous glory. Under the Venetians the abbey declined further, in both prosperity and morality. By the sixteenth century it is recorded that many of the monks had wives, in some cases more than one ..."

"Enough," said Charles. "I'll find out the rest when I get there."

"Did you hear what happened to me at Saint Hilarion?" asked Agatha.

"I heard someone tried to push you out of a window. Probably an enraged tourist, Aggie. Were you reading out of your guidebook at the time?"

"No," said Agatha crossly. "I was in deadly peril."

"This is becoming a tourist trap," said Charles, as they entered the village of Bellapais. "Look at all those holiday villas. Where's the abbey? I think I've missed a turn somewhere."

Agatha consulted her book again. "It says here the ruins are reached by a turning to the right, signposted for Dogankoy and Beylerbeyi off the main coastal road in the eastern outskirts of Girne. Girne is the Turkish name for Kyrenia."

"I know, dear heart. Lecture me no further. I will find it."

Soon they were parked at the abbey in the shadow of a tourist bus.

They walked through the south-west entrance under an arched and fortified gateway.

"I forgot to look for their car," said Agatha.

"Whose?"

"The Debenhams, friends and Trevor. That's why I'm here."

"Well, I want to see the cloisters," said Charles, striding ahead, a very English figure in blazer and white slacks, white panama hat, white shirt and striped cravat.

Agatha followed slowly, not wanting to run after him like a pet dog.

Fragments of delicate arches surrounded the cloisters, warm and humming with insects in the heat. The mist had lifted and a golden sunlight flooded everything. Agatha, wondering idly where Charles had got to, was looking up at the carved bosses and corbels of the vaulting which featured human and animal heads, rosettes and the Lusignan coat of arms when a harsh voice behind her said, "So it's you, snooping around as usual."

Agatha gasped and swung round. Trevor stood there, his hands clenched into fists, his unhealthily pink face full of menace.

"Look," he said, thrusting his head forwards, "it's my wife that's dead, gottit? And I don't want no amateur busybody like you poking her nose in and getting under the feet of the police."

Agatha took a step backwards. "See here, Trevor," she said in the gentle tone of one who hopes to turn away wrath, "you are grieving and upset. But you must see that every bit helps. I have had some experience--"

Trevor took her by the shoulders and shook her. "Bug out," he shouted, "or it'll be the worse for you!"

"Leave her alone!"

Charles's calm voice came from behind them.

Trevor released Agatha and turned and stumbled away.

"You all right?" asked Charles.

"A bit shaken," said Agatha. "I thought he was going to punch me. He threatened me."

"Did he now? Why?"

"He said if I didn't stop investigating it would be the worse for me."

"Was he drunk?"

"I don't know," said Agatha wretchedly. "I wish James were here."

"Well, he isn't. Where is he?"

"He's angry with his old fixer, Mustafa. Mustafa cheated him over the rental of a house. He's a brothel-keeper but James thinks he might be running drugs."

"I say, this isn't England. The silly man doesn't want to get into that or he'll end up floating in Kyrenia Harbour."

"Oh, James can take care of himself. It looks as if it might have been Trevor who murdered Rose. For her money, you know."

"No, I don't know. Tell me."

Agatha hesitated. Such background information as she had should only be discussed with James. James would be furious if she disclosed all their secrets to Charles. But she was shaken and Trevor had frightened her and James wasn't there, only Charles, cool and inquisitive. So she told him all about Trevor's financial difficulties, and how she wondered why Rose, who was rich, had not bailed his firm out of its difficulties.

"I think we should find Trevor and the others and ask him in front of them why he threatened you," said Charles. "We'll keep his financial difficulties in reserve. If he knows you've contacted the police about him, he'll go ape."

They wandered through the rest of the abbey, refectory, undercroft, chapter house and dormitories among throngs of tourists--British, German and Israeli. But of Trevor there was no sign.

"If he's with the rest, they might have gone to some bar in the village," suggested Charles. "We'll look there."

They drove back to the village of Bellapais, parking in a car-park next to the Tree of Idleness Restaurant and then wandering through the narrow streets until Agatha saw two rented cars with the Atlantic sticker on the rear window outside a cafe. She peered through the glass. "They're all there. Maybe I should get back and find James before I say anything."

"He's not your husband, father or keeper," said Charles, giving her a gentle shove in the back. "In you go."

Trevor, pink and sullen, was drinking beer. Olivia and George Debenham, Angus and Harry were having coffees and pastries.

Agatha introduced Charles. Olivia beamed. "How nice to meet you," she fluted. "We're practically neighbours."

Charles removed his panama and sat down after placing a chair at the table for Agatha. He smiled pleasantly at Trevor.

"Why did you threaten to kill Aggie?" he asked.

Olivia stared at Charles, her rather rabbity mouth falling open in surprise.

"Who's Aggie?" demanded Trevor sullenly.

"Mrs. Raisin, Agatha. You seem to think she's poking her nose into the investigation into your wife's murder. When I saw you in the cloisters, you were shaking her and threatening her."

All eyes turned to Trevor.

"I didn't know what I was saying," he mumbled. "I'd already had a bit to drink and it was so hopeless. Sorry."

"Most
off
behaviour," said Charles severely. "What if Aggie here had howled for the police, which she had every right to do? They'd have had you off to Nicosia in irons. Are you sure that's all it was--grief and drink? Not frightened of our Aggie finding out who did it?"

Trevor jumped to his feet, knocking his chair backwards with a crash. "Leave me alone," he shouted. He strode to the door, but stopped and turned and said in a quieter voice, "I'll wait for the rest of you in the car. I've had enough of this."

Olivia put a hand on Charles's arm. "You must make allowances for poor Trevor," she said. "We're doing the best we can for him, but he misses Rose dreadfully, and I think it's unhinged him."

"But why accuse me of investigating the murder?" asked Agatha. "I'm not," she lied.

"Oh, you told us all those stories when we first met about your investigations," said George. "Didn't she, Harry?"

Harry nodded and Angus said in his usual heavy manner, "Aye, we was talking about it the other night and Olivia here, she says to Trevor, she says, 'I hope our Miss Marple isn't getting in the way o' the police investigation. She might put them on the wrong track althegether, her being an amateur, so to speak.'"

"Well, thanks a lot, Olivia," said Agatha bitterly. "That's what must have set him off."

"It's not all my fault," said Olivia. "You added your bit, too, Angus. You said that the police would be so anxious to find someone, anyone, they could pin this on and get the press off their backs that they would take any daft suggestions from Agatha as gospel. And Harry, you said that it was only in books that amateur detectives were any help. You said in real life they were just people who waited until the police solved the murder and then claimed the credit." She turned on her husband. "And darling, it was you who said to Trevor that someone should drop a quiet word in Agatha's ear."

"I
am
good at investigating," said Agatha furiously. "If you don't believe me, you've only got to ask the police at Mircester. Or ask James!"

Olivia gave a brittle laugh. "If you remember, dear, it was your James who suggested you just blundered about."

"For your information," said Charles, "Aggie is not investigating anything. And why should she? You are such a poisonous, dreary lot of people. Come along, Aggie."

Outside the cafe, Agatha strode angrily away until they reached the car-park. Then she turned on Charles. "How could you? How could you insult them like that?"

"Come on, Aggie. They'd all just insulted you."

"But don't you see, I don't want to make enemies of them! I've got to get close to them. Find out what makes them tick."

"Why bother? Does it really matter who killed Rose?"

"Yes, it does!" said Agatha passionately. "It matters desperately who takes the life of another human being. They can't be allowed to get away with it."

"Suit yourself. But if you're going to eat humble pie to that lot, do it on your own. I want lunch. We'll go back to Kyrenia and find somewhere."

"I'm going back to James. I said I would be back at lunch-time, or rather, he said he would be back at lunch-time."