“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s a strange thing, Mrs Pargeter. I’ve done a lot of investigation on this and, do you know, as far as I can tell, not a single photograph of Chris Dover exists.”
“Really? But surely there must have been something round the house?”
Mrs Pargeter felt slightly guilty for having said that. Just slipped out. She was never one to pry into any of her helpers’ methods of investigation, but she knew that Truffler would already have entered and searched the Dovers’ home. Shouldn’t have mentioned it, though, she reprimanded herself. Keeping in blissful ignorance of any dubious deeds that might be going on was a talent Mrs Pargeter had refined over the years, and she wondered for a moment whether perhaps she was losing the knack. Still, it had been quite a time since the late Mr Pargeter died. Maybe she was just out of practice.
Truffler seemed unaware of her lapse, anyway, so it didn’t matter. “No, there was nothing. Absolutely nothing. Not in the office, neither. Company photographs, company reports, lots of that stuff, but not one of them shows a photograph of Chris Dover. Almost like he had a phobia about being photographed. Odd, that, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Mrs Pargeter thoughtfully. “Very odd.”
? Mrs Pargeter’s Package ?
Twenty
As she put the phone down, Mrs Pargeter saw Maria lingering in the doorway that led to the hotel kitchen. How long the girl had been there, or how much of the telephone conversation she had overheard, was impossible to guess.
But she gave Mrs Pargeter a large, totally unsinister smile and said, “There was a message for you about an hour ago. From someone who wondered if you could meet her at Spiro’s at ten o’clock this evening.”
“Did she give a name?”
“Yes. Strange name. It sounded like… Conchita Dover?”
“Ah,” said Mrs Pargeter.
¦
At first she didn’t think the girl was there. Though Mrs Pargeter hadn’t seen Conchita since she was a child and so didn’t know exactly what to expect, there was no one under Spiro’s striped awning who looked as if she had just arrived on the island, summoned by news of a dreadful tragedy. There were the usual loud groups of English, louder groups of Germans and a few Greeks, the last no doubt holidaying relatives of the management. They had all had a few rounds of drinks, their food orders were starting to arrive and everyone was very relaxed.
Mrs Pargeter looked round again and realised there was only one person it could be. A dark-haired girl, who at first glance she had taken for a local, was sitting alone at a table, chatting to Yianni. Of course, there are certain very distinctive types right through the Mediterranean, Mrs Pargeter reminded herself. It was the Spanish blood of her father’s relatives, filtered through Uruguay, that made Conchita Dover look so at home in Agios Nikitas.
On closer examination, the girl did look a bit too soignee to be a local. The way her thick black hair had been cut indicated an urban sophistication, which was echoed in the expensively casual flow of her designer pyjama suit.
Mrs Pargeter approached her. “It is Conchita, isn’t it?”
Yianni fired off one of his devastating smiles and left them to get on with the business of introduction.
“I’m terribly sorry about what happened to Joyce, Conchita. ‘Sorry’ sounds a wretchedly inadequate word in the circumstances, but you really do have my sympathy.”
“Thank you.” There was a hardness in the girl’s black eyes. “I wonder if she got what she really wanted.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Mother had been threatening suicide for years.”
“What, since your father died, you mean?”
“No, long before that. Practically since I can remember. She always was a dreadful emotional manipulator. Suicide threats used to be her ultimate weapon.”
“Oh?” This was a new insight into Joyce Dover. Once again Mrs Pargeter was reminded how little she had really known her friend.
“Mind you, she’d cried wolf so often, I’d long ago ceased to listen. Overdid it this time, though, didn’t she? Called her own bluff good and proper.”
“Well…”
“Anyway,” said Conchita, picking up her ouzo glass and taking a savage sip, “I’m not going to let it get to me. Mummy tried to control me all the time she was alive and, if she thinks she can continue the process from beyond the grave, she can forget the idea!”
Only the rigidity of her jaw betrayed the effort with which Conchita was holding in her emotions.
“I think using suicide as an emotional lever is utterly pathetic,” she went on. “I very much doubt whether Mummy really meant it to succeed. Probably just intended another ‘cry for help’, but cocked it up. Presumably the idea, as ever, was just to make me feel guilty. Well, if that was the intention, it isn’t going to succeed!”
Mrs Pargeter hadn’t been prepared for this outburst of recrimination and adjusted the way she had proposed to talk to Conchita. She would hold back her suspicions about Joyce’s death for a while. Spiro’s taverna wasn’t the place for revelations of the kind she had to make.
On the other hand, if Joyce did have a history of threatening to kill herself, that could only help what Mrs Pargeter was now convinced was an intention on Sergeant Karaskakis’ part to cover up the murder as suicide.
“Whatever your mother’s reasons for doing it,” she announced uncontroversially, “it’s still very sad. Any premature death, however it’s caused, is sad.”
“Huh,” said Conchita.
Yianni pirouetted back towards their table. “Please, can I get you something, please?” he asked Mrs Pargeter.
She ordered retsina. Conchita asked for another ouzo. The girl watched the waiter’s retreating hips, very much in the way that her mother had done only a few days before. Her thoughts on the subject seemed quite similar, too. “He’s very dishy,” she murmured.
Mrs Pargeter agreed.
“Be quite nice,” Conchita mused, “to indulge in a purely physical relationship with someone like that. Someone who’s just beautiful, someone who doesn’t speak the language, who can only communicate with his body. I’m sick to death of men who can talk!”
“Ah?”
“The only reason men are able to talk, it seems to me, is so that they can bore you to tears with lies and recrimination and self-justification. God, men are so pathetic – don’t you find that?”
Though this description certainly did not conform with Mrs Pargeter’s experience of the male sex, she didn’t want to stop Conchita’s flow, so she contented herself with a non-committal “Certainly a point of view.”
“There are supposed to be these men around who are caring and concerned and altruistic and thoughtful and don’t spend all their time trying to screw you up, and all I can say is – I’ve never come across any of them. All the ones I meet are complete shits.”
“What about your father?” asked Mrs Pargeter diffidently. “Did he fit into that category?”
Conchita Dover softened instantly. “Ah, my father was something special. He was a very caring man.”
Mrs Pargeter had heard similar views over the years from many only daughters, girls who were more than a little in love with their fathers, and whose fathers, without raising the dramatic spectre of incest, did nothing to discourage such flattering attentions. It seemed more than likely that Conchita Dover’s dissatisfaction with men as a sex arose from the inability of those she had met to measure up to the idolised Chris.
The strong element of sexual jealousy in her next words confirmed this impression. “He was wasted on Mummy, of course. Kowtowed to her, put up with her moods, did everything she wanted, worshipped her. And she just took him for granted. When he died, I really couldn’t believe how God had got it so wrong. She was the one
