Mrs Pargeter bought herself a large straw hat for the expedition, and felt like an intrepid Victorian tracking down the source of the Nile as she set off up the little track out of the village. Although it was not yet eleven o’clock, the sun seemed already to have been turned up to ‘full’, and she was glad of the protective tracery of olive branches above her head.
She enjoyed the walk. Though undeniably overweight for her height, Mrs Pargeter was not unfit. Indeed, she was in better condition than most women in their late sixties. This state had not been achieved, however, by the indignities of calorie-counting or prancing in leotards. Its provenance was good eating, good drinking and, it must be admitted, a degree of pampering. But the main source of her well-being was the fact that Mrs Pargeter felt at home – and even at peace – in her own body.
Keratria proved, as promised, a beautiful beach. At one end a simple concrete taverna offered bamboo- covered shade and refreshment, and a few villas spotted the shoreline woods. Under a beach umbrella a mahogany-skinned young man kept a desultory eye on piles of blue fabric-covered loungers, a line of orange pedalos and a stack of sailboards, whose vivid sails splashed the pebbles behind him. He’d done all right with the loungers, there were a couple of pedalos circling lazily out in the bay, but nobody seemed interested in hiring the sailboards. Too much like hard work, as the sun spread its hazy lethargy. The young man didn’t appear to be troubled by his lack of business.
Mrs Pargeter recognised a few people on the beach. The renters of the villas of Agios Nikitas did not stray far; they soon homed in on favourite beaches and tavernas. Even those with hire-cars tended, after a couple of days of frizzling sightseeing, to settle down and use their expensively-hired vehicles only to save the quarter-mile walk to minimarket or beach.
She saw Keith and Linda and Craig from South Woodham Ferrers. Linda, wearing a bikini which advertised her decision not to worry about stretchmarks, was trying to interest Craig in building a tower of stones, while Keith pored over his calculator, working out how the cost of the kilo of plums they had bought from the mobile fruit van that morning compared to English prices. Every now and then he commented to Linda how sorry he felt for all those poor devils stuck back in the office.
Craig was finding stone architecture less than riveting. He tried pottering down to the sea, but soon subsided on to his bottom, crying that the stones hurt his feet. With a child that age, Mrs Pargeter thought, Keith and Linda should really have gone to the sandier west of the island. Still, Craig’d be all right if his parents bought him some plastic sandals. Give Keith something else to compare the prices of.
She nodded at them and, a little further along the beach, passed the Secretary with Short Bleached Hair and the Secretary with Long Bleached Hair. They were prone on loungers, Walkmans plugging out the reassuring susurration of the sea. Both that day wore bikinis apparently designed by the inventor of the garotte, but the skin of their shoulders and thighs testified to the outline of every garment they had worn over the last forty-eight hours. Thin strap-lines showed white in the middle of the pink bands left by wider straps, while the puce area which had been exposed all the time already bore the tell-tale white flaking that presaged the loss of a whole layer of skin.
Now, belatedly, they had started to baste each other with cream and oil, but the damage had already been done. They were both going to be very uncomfortable for a couple of days, in no state to enjoy the abandoned Greek dancing of the taverna party nights which they had been promising themselves. Mrs Pargeter felt a maternal urge to tell them just to keep out of the sun for a couple of days, but she knew it wasn’t her place to say anything.
She moved a little further along the beach, took a towel out of her bag and laid it down on the stones. Then she slipped off the cotton dress to reveal a brightly printed bikini beneath. Hers was more substantial than those worn by the two secretaries, but made no attempt to hide her voluptuousness. Mrs Pargeter knew her skin to be smooth and unmarked, and people who found plumpness unattractive were under no obligation to look at her. ‘My Goddess of Plenty’, that was how the late Mr Pargeter had always referred to her, she remembered fondly as she stepped in sandalled feet down to the sea.
The water was deliciously warm and Mrs Pargeter, a strong swimmer, enjoyed its therapy for more than half an hour. Then she rubbed herself down with the towel and slipped her dress back on, confident that any damp patches would dry as she walked along to the taverna.
The menu at Keratria was remarkably similar to that at Spiro’s (which in turn bore an uncanny resemblance to the one at the Hotel Nausica). The predictability of Greek taverna food was something that Mrs Pargeter always forgot until, two or three days into a holiday, she was forcibly reminded of it.
Still, it was healthy. And tasty. She had a plate of moussaka, a Greek salad and half a litre of retsina. Very pleasant. Again glad of the olive trees’ shadow, she set off back to Agios Nikitas.
¦
It was probably just perverseness that made Mrs Pargeter go back to the hotel via the Villa Eleni, but she wanted to see how efficiently the murder scene had been sealed off, pending police investigation.
The answer, she discovered with only the mildest of surprises, was that it hadn’t been sealed off at all.
The shutters and windows at the front were open, their thin curtains shimmering a little in the light breeze.
The front door was also wide open. Mrs Pargeter walked in. The living-room looked immaculate, every surface gleaming, as if ready to welcome new tenants.
She heard a slight sloshing sound from the room that had been Joyce’s and moved towards it. Through the crack by the door hinges she could see the maid Theodosia on the far side of the bed, her arms busily swishing an unseen mop across the marble floor.
Mrs Pargeter went into the room. Theodosia looked up and caught her eye, but only stopped for half a beat in her rhythmic floor-washing. The rest of the marble was still damp from her ministrations.
Mrs Pargeter moved round the foot of the two beds and looked at the patch of floor she had last seen hideously discoloured with her friend’s blood. Nothing remained. She looked at the bucket into which Theodosia had wrung her mop, but the water showed no brown tinge. This was not the first clean-up of the murder scene, just a final spit-and-polish.
How very convenient, Mrs Pargeter found herself thinking, almost like the houseproud ‘little woman’ she had never been, how very convenient marble floors are. Household stains… jam, mud, tomato ketchup, even someone’s lifeblood… all vanish with a few easy strokes of a wet mop. No mess, no fuss – make sure
The detached cynicism of these thoughts pained her and Mrs Pargeter felt tears threaten. Again she caught Theodosia’s eye and seemed for a moment to see in them a reflected pain. Oh, if only the woman could speak… It would be in Greek if she could, of course, but the words could be interpreted. Mrs Pargeter felt certain that Theodosia knew something about Joyce’s murder. If only there were a way of extracting that information…
“What are you doing here?”
The voice was shrill with anger. Mrs Pargeter turned to face Ginnie. The bruising on the rep’s face had subsided a little, but was still painfully evident.
“I thought I’d just come in to see how the police were getting on with their investigations.”
“As you can see, they’ve finished.”
“If they ever started.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I mean that Joyce Dover was murdered, but there seems a marked unwillingness for anyone out here to investigate that crime.”
Once again Mrs Pargeter saw the light of fear in Ginnie’s eye, the same fear she had seen when she first told the girl of her friend’s death.
“That’s nonsense, Mrs Pargeter. Joyce Dover killed herself.
“No, I won’t,” said Mrs Pargeter cheerfully.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that if the proper authorities aren’t going to investigate Joyce’s murder, then I’ll find out who killed her myself.”
“I think you’d be extremely foolish to pursue the matter, Mrs Pargeter. You could get yourself in a great deal
