Agatha Raisin and the Terrible Tourist (19 page)

"Now let's just hope none of the press decides to come in for dinner," said Charles. "But I think they'll stand outside the villa for a bit and then go back to The Dome to join the others who are trying to talk to Olivia and George. Who knows? Olivia may give another press conference."

"What we haven't thought about is who on earth would want to bump off Harry?"

"Harry must have found out who did it," said Agatha. "I suppose it will turn out he was murdered in the same way as Rose."

"Probably. And someone must have been desperate. If it was any of the remaining four, then one of them must have been frightened enough to bump off Harry, knowing that now they really would be suspected and hopes of some mad stray Turk losing his head, as in the murder of Rose, just wouldn't be considered any more."

"I've been thinking about George Debenham," said Charles, deboning a small fish with neat and surgical precision. "Why should he flirt with Rose? He doesn't look the type."

"In the information on them I took down from Bill Wong, it turns out that George suffered heavy losses on the stock exchange. Did I tell you that? And Rose had money."

"But they had just met. I mean, Rose would hardly say, 'Look, I'm rich. Stick with me and I'll see you all right.'"

"She might not have been blunt like that," said Agatha slowly. "But she might have made some jokey reference to being loaded. No, I think Trevor's jealousy and rage are the cause of these murders. You said Trevor wanted to punch Harry because Harry called Rose a slut."

"Do you want to go to the hotel after dinner and see how they're getting on?"

Agatha repressed a shudder. "After we eat, I just want to go to bed. I've never felt like giving up like this before. I have a longing to go home."

"If you've finished, now's the time," said Charles, looking out through the restaurant doors. "The press have arrived. Quickly."

He threw some money pn the table. They had been sitting on the terrace and both went over the edge into the scrub below and made their way cautiously around to the car-park, Agatha hoping that the report of the poisonous snakes keeping to the mountains was true.

They gained the villa without being accosted. "First bath for me," said Agatha with a yawn.

"We sharing a bed?"

"No, Charles. I am too old for casual sex."

"Well, if you change your mind, you know where to find me."

Agatha awoke during the night shivering and found a quilt and put it over her. The weather was beginning to change. The long summer was over.

A police car arrived the next morning to take them to police headquarters in Nicosia. Agatha groaned. "What can he possibly ask us that he hasn't asked us already?"

"I didn't tell him about Trevor trying to punch Harry," said Charles. "I think I should. I mean, I hardly know that bunch and don't like them."

"I think that's why Pamir keeps on at us," said Agatha wearily. "He gets a little more each time."

Olivia, George, Angus and Trevor were waiting at police headquarters to be interviewed when they arrived. George looked white and strained under his tan; Trevor, stunned; Angus had aged terribly; and Olivia for once was without any social talk or animation.

They looked up dully when Agatha and Charles entered, but did not say anything.

Agatha and Charles sat down and waited. After half an hour of total silence Pamir arrived, nodded to them and went into the inner room. "Like waiting for the doctor," said Charles.

George Debenham was summoned first. The morning dragged on, the bright sunlight cutside seeming to mock the grim dreariness within.

Agatha was called last.

"Now, Mrs. Raisin ..." began Pamir.

"I know, I know," said Agatha wearily. "I've to tell you all over again, starting at the beginning."

"Not yet. Do you, Mrs. Raisin, not think that you might have precipitated this murder?"

"How? Why?"

"I gather from Sir Charles that you went to Salamis for the sole purpose of finding the others and continuing your amateur investigation."

Yes ... That's true. But I didn't see any of them until after the murder had been committed."

"But they might have seen you."

"So what made that different to all the other days they had seen me?" said Agatha impatiently. "And if it hadn't been for me and Charles, you might not have found the body until the next day and who knows, by that time the murderer might have returned and shoved the body in the sea, forged a note from Harry saying he had left on a fishing boat or something like James, and you would have been none the wiser."

"We have asked everyone who was on the beach and in the ruins yesterday to come forward. Someone might have seen something. So begin at the beginning..."

So Agatha did, vivid memories of the heat and the ruins coming back into her mind.

Then she said, "If one of them murdered Harry, he must have sneaked back to the beach when they split up. And when they were supposed to be searching for him why didn't they find him on the beach?"

"They say that after Mr. Tembleton went off to the beach, that they arranged to meet in the gymnasium in an hour. Mrs. Debenham went to look at the basilica; Mr. Debenham said he simply wanted to go back to the gymnasium, sit down and rest and wait for the others; Mr. Wilcox said he wanted to be on his own for a bit; and Mr. Angus King went to look at the tombs. All say they searched the beach, but it was still full of tourists and they did not spot Mr. Tembleton."

"So it could have been any of them," said Agatha.

Pamir surveyed her and then leaned back in his chair. "Or you, Mrs. Raisin."

"Me? Why? I barely knew them. I didn't know any of them before I came here."

He leaned forward. "How can I put this? At your age, Mrs. Raisin, ladies can go a little unhinged. It seems to me that since you gave up your career, you have had a desire for prominence and attention, which is why you turned to amateur detective investigation. Perhaps not having any more murders to investigate, you decided to make some of your own."

"That's outrageous," spluttered Agatha.

"Perhaps. But murder is outrageous. Your own behaviour has been erratic."

"But someone tried to kill me--twice!"

"There are no witnesses to either attempt. We have only your own word for that. You follow James Lacey to Cyprus because everyone seems to know you are romantically interested in him and yet, after moving in with him, you accept a dinner date with an Israeli business man and who knows where that might have led had not his wife turned up, and then you sleep with Sir Charles. I know this is the permissive society. Such behaviour, however, in a middle-aged lady from an English village is most odd."

"How dare you!" panted Agatha.

"I dare because I am very angry. We have a very low crime rate in north Cyprus. Tourists come here because it is still the safest place in the Mediterranean and I am going to accuse all of you of everything and keep you here until these murders are solved. We have respectable British residents here, Mrs. Raisin, who contribute to the cultural life of the island. They cause no trouble. Until your arrival, we have never suffered anything like this."

"You are insulting. You are looking in the wrong direction. What about Trevor Wilcox? His business is on the skids and Rose wouldn't bail him out. He'll be all right now. He probably inherits her money. And what of George Debenham? He's in debt as well."

"How did you find this out, Mrs. Raisin?"

Damn him, thought Agatha. She could not betray Bill Wong.

"They told me," she muttered.

"They just told you!"

"Something like that."

"I do not believe you," said Pamir. "I think somebody in England found out the information for you."

Sweating now, Agatha hoped the manager of The Dome had not told the police about her fax to police headquarters in Mircester. She wanted to run away from this room, from this inexorable questioning, from the humiliating accusation that she was a batty sensation-seeker driven mad by the menopause.

Pamir then made her tell her story again. If I had anything to hide, it would certainly have come out during this remorseless questioning, thought Agatha.

At last she was free to go. The others, apart from Charles, had disappeared.

"You look awful," said Charles. "Rough time?"

"It was grim, He accused me of the murders."

"Why?"

"He thinks I am a sensation-seeker driven potty by the menopause, and not having any murders here to investigate, decided to manufacture some of my own."

Charles's eyes crinkled up with laughter. "That's funny."

"It's not funny at all," said Agatha furiously.

A secretary came out and told them a car was ready to take them home. They travelled in silence, Agatha thinking that she really must find out who murdered Rose and Harry or she would be damned forever as a madwoman.

At the villa, where the press were fortunately absent, Agatha said she would like to lie down and read.

She tried to concentrate on a novel about the complexities of broken marriages, but finally felt too restless to go on reading.

When she emerged from her room, it was to find that Charles had gone off somewhere. Not wanting to be on her own in the villa, she took her own rented car and drove into Kyrenia and parked behind the post office. She walked down the main street looking at the shops, and then saw the turning to the left where she had first pursued James and met Bilal. She turned along the street, wondering suddenly if Bilal was working at his dry-cleaning and laundry business.

He left his work when he saw her hovering in the doorway. "Mrs. Raisin!" he cried. "I was just trying to call you. How are you?"

"Shattered," said Agatha.

"It is the terrible business," said Bilal. "Coffee?"

"Yes, please."

He placed two chairs and a wooden box to act as a table outside his shop and went to the cafe next door and came back with a tray on which were two cups of Turkish coffee and two glasses of water.

"The owners have been phoning me and Jackie from Australia," said Bilal. "They would like Mr. Lacey to call them."

"I meant to phone you about that. Mr. Lacey has gone to Turkey. If I'm still here after the month's rent has run out, I'll pay you for another month."

"Why has Mr. Lacey gone? I thought none of you was supposed to leave. "

"He just took off," said Agatha. Her eyes suddenly filled with tears. Oh, James, how could you? Where are you?

Bilal handed her a clean handkerchief and looked at her sympathetically while she blew her nose, so sympathetically that Agatha found herself telling him everything.

"The police here are very good," said Bilal. "Just like British police, Mrs. Raisin."

"Agatha."

"Agatha, then, why don't you just take a holiday. I mean swim and see the sights and forget about trying to find out who did it. Your own life seems to be in danger. Just keep away from them all."

Agatha gave him a watery smile, warmed and comforted by his concern.

"I think I might just take your advice, Bilal."

"And come to our place one evening for dinner. Jackie's a good cook."

"Thank you. And now I really must go." They both rose.

"It will be all right. It may seem like a nightmare now, but it will be all right, you'll see."

Bilal smiled warmly at her, and moved by his friendship, Agatha put her arms round him and hugged him and gave him a kiss on the cheek.

And then, as Agatha turned to walk away, she saw Jackie standing a little way away down the street, staring at her, and behind her stood Pamir.

And Agatha blushed, suddenly aware of how that affectionate embrace must look to Pamir, let alone Bilal's wife. She walked towards them.

"I was just talking to your husband," she said to Jackie.

"So I saw," said Jackie drily.

"Looking for me?" Agatha asked Pamir with what she felt was an awful, false guilty brightness.

"No, I was on my way to speak to your landlords. I will call on you later, perhaps."

Agatha trailed off. Pamir would be confirmed in his suspicions that she was some sort of sex-mad, peculiar female.

Her mind was just beginning to accept Bilal's advice as she walked up to The Grapevine, deciding to have a drink at the bar. The bar was empty, the lunch-time rush being over. Agatha realized she was hungry and ordered a chicken sandwich and a glass of wine and sat down at one of the tables.

And then Trevor came in. At first he did not see Agatha. He asked for a whisky in a hoarse voice and then, turning from the bar with his glass in his hand, he recognized her.

He walked forwards and demanded, "Are you following me?"

"How can I be following you when I was here first?" demanded Agatha.

Now that she had decided to forget about the case, she was dismayed when he sat down next to her. The tables were out in the restaurant garden among the flowers. Sun slanted down through the leaves of a jasmine bush, casting fluttering shadows over Trevor's pink, bloated face.

"This is a bad business," he said.

"Yes," said Agatha, wishing he would go away.

"I mean, why Harry?" he went on.

Agatha's good resolutions disappeared as she asked, "You tried to punch Harry, didn't you, because he called Rose a slut?"

"I don't remember," he said, shaking his head. "I drink so much, get these big blanks."

"Why would Harry call her a slut?"

Agatha held on to the table-top, prepared to flee if Trevor lost his temper, but all his usual truculence was absent.

"He probably felt for Olivia."

"Did Olivia think her husband was after Rose? I mean, was there any reason for her to think so?"

"Could've been. Rose liked to flirt a bit. That was all."

"How did you meet Rose?"

"I was with my wife at this road-house outside Cambridge--that's my first wife, Maggie. It was our wedding anniversary. Maggie and I had been married for twenty-five years. Got married when I was eighteen. Well, we was sort of Darby and Joan, set in our ways. Got one boy, left home to work abroad, just me and Maggie left. Good housekeeper. Very quiet. Bit fat. Grey hair. Never went out winter or summer without gloves on. We was in the dining-room, but there was this long bar running along the edge of it and Rose was sitting up on a bar-stool.