M Beaton - Agatha Raisin and the Terrible Tourist

“Who is that glorious creature?” asked Olivia.

“She’s his daughter,” lied Agatha, aware of James’s cynical eyes on his face.

“Then it’s a very incestuous relationship,” cackled Olivia. “She’s just leaned across the table and kissed him on the mouth!”

“Yes, and now they’re holding hands,” said James.

“I don’t really know him,” mumbled Agatha. “Maybe I was mistaken…because of the age difference, you know.” Desperate to turn the conversation away from Bert, and feeling old and plain and unwanted, Agatha asked, “Any more news about the murder?”

George shook his head. “They’ll probably tell us something tomorrow.”

Agatha looked curiously at Trevor. He was drinking steadily. Beside him, Angus was sunk in gloom. In fact, thought Agatha, Angus looked more like the bereaved husband than Trevor.

Olivia turned to Agatha. “You told us on that yacht trip that you had investigated murders, Agatha. Are you going to investigate this one?”

“I might see what I can find out.”

“Oh, mind your own business,” said Trevor suddenly and truculently.

“But, why?” asked Olivia. “Don’t you want to know who killed poor Rose?”

“Of course I want to know and I’ll kill the bastard the minute I find out who he is. But I don’t want some woman poking her nose in because she thinks it’s some sort of game.”

“Steady on, old boy,” said George, putting a hand on Trevor’s arm. Trevor shook him off. He got to his feet. “I’m sick of the lot of you,” he said. He marched out of the restaurant, colliding drunkenly with a table as he went.

“Och, now,” said Angus placatingly. “You’ve not to be minding him, Agatha. We’re all in a state of shock. I’d better go and see if he’s all right.”

Angus left as well.

There was an uneasy silence.

Olivia looked suddenly subdued. “I think I’ll make an early night of it.” She got to her feet and her husband and friend rose as well. “See you at the cop shop tomorrow,” said Olivia.

That left James and Agatha alone.

“I wonder,” said Agatha, “if I wrote to Bill Wong whether he could send me back some background on all of them.”

“Your letter would arrive in Mircester in about five days’ time,” said James. “But his reply might never reach you, or if it did, it would take about four weeks. The post from abroad goes through Mersin in southern Turkey, and I just don’t know why it should take so long to get here but it does.”

“Fax. I could fax him.”

“You could, I suppose. Do you really think one of them is the murderer?”

“Well, it’s odd,” said Agatha. “Olivia was so snobby on that yacht trip. She despised them. I can understand George making a play for Rose. She was a sexy thing. But Olivia! Did she give you a hint as to why they all got so pally?”

“Nothing more than the sort of one-must-do-one’s-bit-for-one’s-fellow-man type of thing.”

“But they all got friendly before the murder!”

“Fax Bill Wong if you like. But I think some drunk did it. There’s a lot of drugs here and pretty freely available. Could have been done by someone stoned out of his mind who doesn’t even remember now he did it. Let’s go, or” he added maliciously, “do you want another word with your boyfriend?”

Agatha’s eyes filled with angry tears.

“Come now,” he said lightly. “A lot of women would be flattered that a man with a wife as beautiful as that would make a play for them.”

Agatha scrubbed at her eyes. “I knew he was married,” she lied.

“If you say so,” said James. “Come along.”

The next day the humidity had lifted. Clear blue skies, the calmest of seas, and the lightest of breezes.

The mountains towered up to the sky on one side of the road and the blue-green sea stretched all the way to Turkey on the other side. Agatha suddenly wished she were simply on holiday instead of being back in the grip of the James obsession and on the way to police headquarters in Nicosia.

When they drew up outside the police headquarters, Agatha began to have a feeling that the whole business was unreal, that it had never happened, that Rose would stroll round a corner, diamond rings flashing and shout, “Owya, Agatha?”

Olivia, Trevor, Angus, George and Harry were already there. They were to be interviewed separately, and to Agatha’s dismay, James suggested that they meet up at the Saray Hotel afterwards for lunch and compare notes.

Agatha had taken the precaution of bringing along a book to read. Trevor was the first to be called, then Olivia, and then Agatha heard her own name being shouted out.

Pamir was sitting behind a large desk. A large portrait of Atatürk in evening dress stared down from behind the desk.

A policeman drew out a chair for Agatha on the other side of the desk. She sat down, suddenly nervous.

Pamir folded those fat hairy hands of his on the desk in front of him. He was wearing a chocolate-brown double-breasted suit and a wide tie with orange-and-yellow stripes, A large yellow silk handkerchief flowered from his top pocket.

“Now, Mrs. Raisin,” he said, “if I can just take you through the whole thing again. You arrived at the disco.”

“James began to dance with Olivia,” said Agatha, “and I danced with Angus, but he danced on my feet so I suggested we sit down.”

“And Rose Wilcox?”

“She was dancing with George, Mr. Debenham.”

“How were they dancing. Close?”

Agatha frowned in concentration. Her eyes had been mostly on James. “They weren’t dancing close,” she said. “Disco dancing. Rose was shaking it all about and George was doing that sort of high-stepping jerky dance that middle-aged gentlemen do when they think they’re being swingers. The music was very loud and the floor was crowded.”

“Was Mrs. Wilcox making a play for anyone in particular? You have told me about Mr. Debenham. What about Mr. Lacey?”

“What about Mr. Lacey?” demanded Agatha, her eyes narrowing.

“Did Mrs. Wilcox, Rose, seem attracted by Mr. Lacey?”

“Not that I noticed,” said Agatha huffily.

“Now we go to last night. You had dinner at The Dome, but not with Mr. Lacey or any of the others but with a visiting Israeli businessman, a Mr. Mort.”

“What’s that got to do with the murder?”

“I must examine all the relationships and you have a very peculiar relationship with Mr. Lacey. You were engaged to be married, nearly got married, had not your husband appeared on the scene. You follow him here, you both share the same villa, and yet you accept an invitation to dinner from Mr. Mort.”

“It was just a friendly chat,” said Agatha hotly. “He was waiting for his wife.”

“A wife you did not know existed until she arrived.”

“That’s not true! Have you been watching me?”

“Mrs. Raisin, one of my colleagues happened to be in that restaurant last night. I had a little man-of-the-world chat with Mr. Mort this morning. He found you attractive and asked you for dinner under the impression, to quote him, that he was ‘on to a good thing’. So you agreed to join him for dinner, for a date, although you are with Mr. Lacey.”

“Anything that was between me and Mr. Lacey is dead,” said Agatha furiously. “We are friends and neighbours, that’s all.”

He bent his head and made some notes. Then he raised his eyes and looked at her thoughtfully. “As I said, I must examine all the tensions in your relationships, you and the rest. And here we have two threesomes, two devoted husbands and two devoted friends. Jealousy could have been a motive.”

“You’ll need to ask them.”

“Oh, I shall. Now either someone had enough medical experience to know where to stick that thin blade which killed Mrs. Wilcox, or it was a lucky blow. Do you have any medical training, Mrs. Raisin?”