of trouble if you – ” Ginnie’s manner suddenly changed as, her professional grin firmly in place, she turned to welcome Mr and Mrs Safari Suit, who had just walked into the room.
“Well, here you are. I think you’ll find this villa is a lot more convenient for the shops and the beach.”
“Oh yes.” Mr Safari Suit nudged his wife. “Won’t have so much trouble with your varicose veins here, will you, love?” He then favoured Ginnie with one of his witticisms. “Sorry I had to make a fuss, but at least my efforts haven’t been in…
He laughed immoderately at this inept sally. Mrs Safari Suit also thought it pretty hilarious. Ginnie smiled weakly.
“But tell me,” Mr Safari Suit went on, emboldened by his own brilliance, “how does this villa suddenly come to be free? Hasn’t been any trouble here, has there?”
“Good heavens, no,” said the rep, her eyes daring Mrs Pargeter to disagree. “Just happened to be free, that’s all.”
Mrs Pargeter didn’t contest it. No point in making Mr and Mrs Safari Suit feel uncomfortable. She had nothing against them – well, nothing if you excluded his jokes.
It was interesting, though. Not only had Joyce’s murder been swept aside as a suicide; now Ginnie was even denying that the suicide had taken place.
Another thing was interesting, too. Mrs Pargeter had no doubt in her mind that, at the moment when Ginnie was interrupted by the entrance of Mr and Mrs Safari Suit, the rep had been threatening her.
? Mrs Pargeter’s Package ?
Nineteen
“Basically,” Truffler Mason’s despondent voice intoned from the other end of the phone, “I can’t find out anything about Chris Dover’s life before he came to England.”
“Ah,” said Mrs Pargeter. She was standing in the reception area of the Hotel Nausica, at the only phone available to residents (or, quite possibly, the only phone in the hotel). There didn’t seem to be many people about, but she still felt exposed. Next time she talked to Truffler, she would do it from Larry’s. The sense of conspiracy around Agios Nikitas was strong, the feeling that everything anyone said or did was very quickly communicated along the local grapevine.
“I mean,” Truffler continued, “obviously I haven’t had a chance yet to get proper investigations going in Uruguay, and maybe I’ll be able to unearth something through my contacts out there. But it does seem from all accounts that Chris Dover kept very quiet about his origins. In fact he seems to have worked hard on presenting himself as the perfect English gentleman. Uruguay was hardly ever mentioned.”
“Perhaps that was just because nobody was interested,” suggested Mrs Pargeter.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you know how insular the English are. So far as most of them are concerned, a foreigner’s a foreigner – doesn’t matter where he comes from. They just about recognise the difference between a Frenchman and a German, but when it comes to less well-known countries, so far as your average Englishman is concerned, they’re pretty much interchangeable. I bet most people you stopped in the street in England couldn’t even tell you where Uruguay is.”
“So what are you saying?”
“I’m saying that possibly at first Chris Dover talked about his former life, but when it became clear no one was interested, he gave up and decided if you can’t beat them, join them. Perhaps presenting himself as English made things easier for business.”
“You could be right.”
“Oh, by they way, you didn’t find out what his real name was, did you, Truffler?”
“No records of him ever being called anything other than Chris Dover.”
“Hm, doesn’t sound very Uruguayan, does it? Not very Hispanic. Must’ve been made up. Probably,” Mrs Pargeter went on, suddenly remembering how Larry Lambeth had arrived at his surname, “based on his port of entry into England.”
“Could be. Anyway, he seems to have arrived in London in the late Fifties. Difficult to find out much about the early years, but he must’ve got involved in the export business at some level. First time there’s much about him is when he started up his own company in 1963.”
“And was his business always legitimate?”
“Well…” Truffler paused ponderously. “Certainly in recent years no problems. Pure as the driven snow. Reading between the lines, though, I’d have said his early dealings was a bit more dubious. Haven’t got anything definite yet, but hints I’ve heard from people in the business suggest Chris Dover may have started out as a bit of a villain.”
“What, not violence? Not gang stuff?”
“No, no. More your sort of white-collar crime. Export business, but it was what he was exporting that was interesting.”
“What was he exporting?”
“Arms, it seems.”
“Oh?”
“To Africa, mostly. Always some nice little war going on in Africa to keep up the demand, isn’t there? Anyway, from what I can gather, that’s what he was into in the early Sixties – exporting stuff whose paperwork might not bear too close an investigation.”
“Gun-running.”
“Always one to call a spade a spade, wasn’t you, Mrs Pargeter? So, anyway, presumably he made a pile from that, which provided the capital when he started his company in 1963. From then on, though, as I say, all very respectable.”
“Yes, certainly Joyce always seemed the soul of respectability. One would never have imagined that her husband was involved in anything he shouldn’t be.”
Mind you, thought Mrs Pargeter with a little inward smile, of course the same could be said of me.
“But, Truffler,” she went on, “you didn’t manage to find any connection between Chris Dover and Greece?”
“Absolutely none. Certainly had no business dealings with Greece. Didn’t go there on holiday. So far as I can tell, he’d never been near the place.”
“Hm.” Mrs Pargeter mused for a moment. “Incidentally, did you get in touch with the daughter?”
“Conchita? No. I tried, but I think you’ll find it easier to contact her than I will.”
“What?”
“She’s on her way out to Corfu. The grisly business of taking back her mother’s body.”
“Ah.” Mrs Pargeter wondered whether that meant the suicide verdict had already been achieved and the cover-up completed. “Right. Well, I’ll look out for her. Do you think you’re likely to find out much more about Chris Dover?”
“Well, Mrs Pargeter, I got a lot of enquiries out. Something unexpected might come in from one of them. Though, in my experience, when you get a case like this where someone’s deliberately covered their tracks, if you don’t get a lead early on, you ain’t going to get one.”
“Right.”
“I’ve found out the name of a solicitor Chris Dover dealt with a lot. Mr Fisher-Metcalf. I’m going to try and get to see him. Maybe find out something there, but I’m not overoptimistic,” he concluded in the voice which had never been heard to sound even mildly optimistic, let alone
“And what about his death? Anything odd there?”
“I’ve checked with the hospital. And his family doctor. Nothing. It was a brain tumour. Difficult thing to engineer, a brain tumour. Not like a heart attack – that’s easy.”
“Yes. Did he look ill… you know, in photographs?” Mrs Pargeter knew Truffler’s
