M Beaton: Agatha Raisin and the Terrible Tourist

“Thanks,” she said, getting to her feet again.

“Tell me the name of your friend,” said Bilal, “and maybe I can find something out for you.”

“James Lacey, retired colonel, fifties, tall with very blue eyes, and black hair going grey.”

“Are you at The Dome?”

“Yes.”

“Write down your name for me. I’ve a terrible memory.”

Agatha wrote down her name. “A laundry is an odd business for a nurse,” she commented.

“I’m used to it now,” said Bilal. “At first I made some awful mistakes. They would give me those Turkish wedding dresses covered in sequins and I’d put them in the dry-cleaning machine, but the sequins were made of plastic and they all melted. And then they come down from the mountains with the suit they bought about forty years ago covered in olive oil and wine and expect me to give it back to them looking like new.” He gave a comical sigh.

“In any case, can I come back and see you?” asked Agatha.

“Any time. We can have coffee.”

Feeling somewhat cheered, she left. She wandered round more streets. Men sat outside cafés playing backgammon, music blared, half-key Turkish music, sad and haunting.

At last she gave up the search and returned to the hotel. She thought she should have gone back to The Grapevine. Maybe tomorrow.

The next morning she awoke heavy-eyed and sweating profusely. She showered and put on a loose cotton dress and flat sandals. She ate a light breakfast of cheese-filled pastry and then went on impulse into the car-rental office.

“Did you by any chance rent a car to a Mr. Lacey?” she asked.

“Yes, I did,” said the man behind the desk. He stood up and shook hands with her. “It’s Mrs. Raisin, isn’t it? I’m Mehmet Chavush. In fact, Mr. Lacey renewed his rental this morning.”

“When?”

“An hour ago.”

“Do you know…did he say where he was going today?”

“Mr. Lacey said something abut going to Gazimağusa.”

Agatha looked blank.

“You probably know it as Famagusta,” he said helpfully.

“How do I get there?”

“Drive up past the post office.” He led her to a map on the wall. “Here. And then take this road up over the mountains. It will lead you down onto the dual carriageway on the Famagusta Road. You might have come that way from the airport.”

“Yes, I think I did.”

Agatha set off. Round the roundabout, past the post office, very much an architectural reminder of British colonial days, and so out towards the mountains. The heat was tremendous, but for once she barely noticed it. The air-conditioning in the car was working-just.

The mountains were bare and stark, scorched from the forest fires of the year before. She recognized the army chicanes as she came down from the mountains. A soldier on guard duty beside the road waved to her and gave her the thumbs-up sign and Agatha’s heart began to lift with hope. Ahead lay Famagusta and James. And then she thought, I should have asked for the registration number of his car. All the rented cars looked much the same, with red license plates to denote they were rented. And Mehmet probably had a record of James’s address.

She carefully observed the speed limit through two villages and then the Famagusta Road, which follows the line where the old railway used to run, stretched straight out in front of her across the Mesaoria Plain, straight as an arrow, and no speed limit.

Agatha put her foot down hard and flew like a bird towards the far horizon.

FAMAGUSTA, called Gazimağusa by the Turks, is the second-largest city in north Cyprus and the main port. It was founded in 300 B. C. by Ptolemy I, one of Alexander’s successors, and settled by refugees from Salamis, but remained an obscure village until Richard I offered the area to Guy de Lusignan as a refuge for dispossessed Christians after the fall of Acre in the Holy Land to the Saracens 1291. Under the Lusignans the town grew rapidly, becoming one of the wealthiest cities on earth, with 365 churches, and became a byword for worldliness and luxury until lost to the Genoese in 1372. It was seized by Venice in 1489. The architecture reflects the glories of the Lusignan period, while the fortifications display Venetian engineering at its most impressive. It was taken by the Turks in 1571-Gazimağusa means “unconquered Mağusa”-in an impressive siege from which the city never recovered, and has been referred to as “one of the most remarkable ruins in the world” with its crumbling structures. Further damage to the city was inflicted by the British in the middle of the last century, when they removed vast quantities of stone to build the quays at Port Said and the Suez Canal, and when it was heavily shelled by the Germans in World War II. Famagusta is thought to be the setting of Acts II to V of Shakespeare’s Othello.

Most of the population live in the suburbs outside the old walls of the city. Agatha was at first dismayed to find out how large and sprawling the place was, but decided to go to the old historic centre, where James Lacey might possibly have been heading to do a bit of sightseeing. She parked the car in a side street outside the city walls and walked on foot to what looked like a main gate. The heat when she left Kyrenia had been bad, but this heat in Famagusta was appalling. She remembered that the English tourists she had met at The Grapevine had said they were going to Othello’s Tower. Perhaps James had gone there, too. She asked in various shops for the way to the tower. Most did not speak English, but at last a woman in a small dress shop pointed the way down a long main street. Agatha blundered along dizzily in the heat until she came to a square, and there, wonder of wonders, was a large tourist map. She breathed a sigh of relief until she realized the map was all in Turkish and there was no arrow saying YOU ARE HERE. Cursing, she looked around for a street sign but could not see any. She peered at the map again and finally located the tower. It was by the sea, that much she could make out. She could see some old walls at the end of the street leading out of the square. She ploughed on in that direction. She asked at a café at the corner and was told Othello’s Tower was along on the left, and finally she saw it.

She paid for a ticket and entered. A guide was escorting a mixed party of tourists around and had no time for her. He was speaking in English and, by listening in, she learned that the Othello Tower was a moated Lusignan citadel built to protect the harbour and reconstructed by the Venetians in 1492. The name may derive from Cristofero Moro, who was the Venetian Lieutenant Governor from 1505 to 1508-and who apparently returned to Venice without his wife-but Shakespeare’s play simply mentions “a seaport in Cyprus” and there is no evidence that it was based on any historical occurrence. The entrance is surmounted by a Venetian lion and an inscription recording the prefecture of Niccolo Foscarini, under whom the remodelling of the citadel began.

Agatha finally left the group and wandered in the shadow of the thirty-foot walls and up steps to the top of the citadel and looked bleakly out at a boring view of the harbour.

She felt she would have been better off to have stayed in Kyrenia and tried to find that villa. She strolled moodily around the top of the walls, feeling the sun beating down on her, feeling sticky and old and unwanted. She looked down the street along which she had come to reach the tower…and saw James!

He was heading back towards the square, the one with the stupid map.

She called his name, called desperately, but on he went. She ran down the steps, through the dark archway, and collided with Rose, Olivia, husbands and friends.