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M Beaton: Agatha Raisin and the Terrible Tourist

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M Beaton Agatha Raisin and the Terrible Tourist

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The tough and brassy Agatha Raisin is not a woman to sit at home wringing her hands. Soon she is off to north Cyprus to track down her ex-fiance. Instead of enjoying the honeymoon they once planned, however, they witness the murder of an obnoxious tourist in a disco, and James is as sullen as usual. Two sets of terrible tourists – one set posh and rude, the other nouveau riche and vulgar – surround the unhappy couple, arousing Agatha's suspicions. And, much to James's chagrin, she won't rest until she finds the killer. Unfortunately, it also seems the killer won't rest until Agatha is out of the picture. Agatha is forced to track down the murderer, try to rekindle her romance with James, and fend off a suave baronet, all while coping with the fact that it's always bathing suit season in north Cyprus.

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She settled down in the air-conditioning to read about Kyrenia instead. Although it was called Gime by the Turks, most still used its old name. In the same way Nicosia had become Lefkoça, but was often still called Nicosia. Kyrenia, she read, is a small northern port and tourist centre with a famously pretty harbour dominated by a castle; founded (as Kyrenia) in the tenth century B. C. by Achaeans and renamed Corineum by the Romans. It was later walled against pirates and became a centre for the carob trade but fell largely into ruin in 1631 and by 1814 had become home to only a dozen families. It was revived under the British, who improved the harbour and built the road to Nicosia. Prior to the partition of the island after 1974, when the Turks landed to save their own people from being killed by the Greeks, Kyrenia was a popular retirement town for British expatriates. After 1974 it was settled by refugees from Limassol in the south of the island and once again resumed its role as a genteel resort, with a new harbour to the east of the town.

Agatha put down the guidebook. The mention of the new harbour had reminded her of the receptionist’s suggestion of a sail.

She went out again and walked dizzily in the blinding heat round to the harbour, wandering among the basket chairs of the fish restaurants until she saw a board advertising a cruise. It was a yacht called the Mary Jane. The skipper saw her studying the board and came along the gangplank and hailed her. He said the cruise cost twenty pounds and included a buffet lunch. They sailed in half an hour and she would have time to go back to the hotel and fetch her swim-suit.

Agatha bought a ticket and said she would be back. She was now too hot to even think of James. The idea of sailing in a sea breeze was too tempting. Let James wait.

Somehow, perhaps because the heat was affecting her brain, she had imagined she would be the only passenger. But there were eight others, and all English.

There were three upper-class ones sporting expensive clothes and loud braying voices, two men and a woman. One man was elderly with a yellowish-white moustache, glasses and a pink scalp where the sun had scorched his bald spot. The other man was tall and thin and sallow and appeared to be married to the woman, who was also tall and thin and sallow but with a deep bosom and a hard air of sexiness about her. They belonged to that stratum which has adopted the very worst manners of the aristocracy and none of the better ones. They shouted at each other rather than spoke and they stared at the other passengers with a sort of “my God” look in their eyes. Their contemptuous gaze focused in particular on a woman named Rose, middle-aged, blonde-haired with black roots, diamond rings on her long, tapering fingers, who was also accompanied by two men, one quite elderly and the other middle-aged. The three were in their way a sort of mirror image of the upper-class ones, Rose having a sexy appeal, the middle-aged man appearing to be her husband, and the elderly one a friend.

Agatha wished she had brought a book or newspaper to barricade herself behind. The skipper made the introductions. The upper-class ones were Olivia Debenham and her husband George and their friend, Harry Tembleton; the lower-class were the afore-mentioned Rose, surname Wilcox, her husband Trevor and their friend Angus King. Trevor had a beer belly and a truculent look, cropped fair hair and thick lips. Angus was an old Scotsman with sagging breasts revealed by his open-necked shirt. Like Rose and Trevor, he appeared to be pretty rich. In fact, thought Agatha, they probably belonged to the new rich class of Essex man and woman, risen to prosperity during the Thatcher years, and they could probably buy and sell the upper-class ones who were gazing at them with such contempt. Then there was a dreary couple who said in whispers that they were Alice and Bert Turpham-Jones, and Olivia sniggered and said in a loud aside that having a double-barrelled name these days was no longer what it had been.

Agatha would have been accepted by Olivia, George and Harry, who were monopolizing the small bar, but she had taken a dislike to them and so allied herself with the less distinguished, who were sitting in the bow.

Rose had a silly laugh and the glottal-stop speech of what has come to be known as Estuary English, but Agatha began to become interested in her. Despite the fact that Rose was probably somewhere in her fifties, she had cultivated a somewhat baby-doll appearance. She pouted, her eyelashes, though false, were good, her breasts revealed by a low frilly sun-dress were excellent, and her long thin legs ending in high-heeled strapped sandals were brown and smooth. She had wrinkles on her neck and round her mouth and eyes, but every movement, every bit of body language seemed to scream out the promise of Good in Bed.

Trevor was besotted with her, and so was the elderly Scotsman, Angus. In conversation it came out that Trevor owned a prosperous plumbing business and that Angus, a recently made friend, was a retired shopkeeper. The quiet couple had taken out books and had started to read and so the conversation went on among Agatha, Rose, Trevor and Angus.

Rose let slip, almost as if by accident, that she was very well-read. After every occasional comment, it seemed to Agatha as if she remembered her role of silly endearing woman and quickly returned to it. Had she settled for money? The diamonds on the many rings on her fingers were real.

The voyage was short but pleasant, the sea breeze refreshing. They anchored in Turtle Beach Cove.

They swam from the boat. Agatha was a good swimmer, but she was out of condition and found that the shore was much farther away than it had looked from the yacht. Relieved to have escaped from the others, she floated on her back in the shallow water and dreamed of meeting James, her eyes closed against the burning sun above. And then she floated against a rock. It was a flat rock and it was a nudge she felt rather than a bump, but she struggled to her feet, suddenly terrified, and looked wildly around. She had not yet got over the fright of being knocked unconscious by someone and nearly buried alive during what she considered as “my last case.”

She could hear her heart thumping. She took several deep breaths and sat down in the green-blue water, which was shallow enough.

The skipper, whose name was Ibraham, was swimming about, making sure none of his passengers drowned or had a heart attack. His wife, who sailed with him, a short, blackhaired woman called Ferda, was preparing lunch and the clatter of dishes and glasses floated to Agatha’s ears across the water.

Rose’s husband, Trevor, was heaving his great bulk, sunburnt now to a nasty salmon-pink, up the ladder at the side of the yacht. He stopped half-way and turned and glared back across the bay.

Agatha looked to see what had caught his attention. Sitting side by side in the water a little away from Agatha were Rose and Olivia’s husband, George, giggling about something.

Olivia herself was swimming backwards and forwards with powerful back-arm strokes. Trevor was still half-way up the ladder. The elderly friends of the two women, Harry and Angus, were trying to get back on board the yacht. Harry reached up and tapped Trevor on the back. Trevor turned round and fell back into the water, nearly colliding with the two old men. He began to swim towards his wife. Rose saw him coming and immediately left George and began to swim towards him.

Agatha stayed where she was, enjoying the solitude. She suddenly wished with all her heart that she could forget about James and be free again, free to enjoy a peaceful holiday without being haunted and obsessed by the man. Then she heard herself being hailed from the yacht. Lunch was about to be served. Agatha was reluctant to return. Her brief interest in Rose had fled, leaving her with a feeling of distaste for all her fellow passengers. She swam back and pulled herself up the ladder, conscious of her round stomach. She would need to get herself in shape for James.

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