actually trying to kill her made her keep stopping and look warily around. She climbed up the steep hill from the beach to the villa. She felt breathless from the walk and threw away the cigarette she had been smoking. Before smoking had become such a sin, Agatha had thought the whole time about giving up. Now that it was, somehow she could not seem to summon up the will to stop.
She went into the villa. She could hear from the clatter of dishes that James was in the kitchen. She walked in and said to his back, “Come and sit down, James. We can’t go on like this. We have to talk.”
He turned round, his face hard and closed. But he went and sat at the kitchen table. Agatha pulled out a seat opposite him and sat down.
“I want you to listen to me carefully,” began Agatha in an even voice. “You have shown me no love or affection since I came here. I got drunk with Charles and ended up in bed with him. It just happened. I had no reason not to tell you the truth, but I did not want to lose you. But in this loveless whatever-it-is we have between us, you have no right to be angry with me or possessive or jealous. You have hurt me badly. We both want to find out who murdered Rose. But we cannot go on living together like this. What do you suggest?”
He stared at the table in silence.
“James,” Agatha pleaded, “I know that any intimate conversation makes you want to shrivel up, but you are going to have to say something.”
He looked at her bleakly. “You’ll need to give me a little more time, Agatha. I have been behaving badly. In the past I have always had light affairs, nothing very serious. I don’t know why it should have to be you. I like very gentle, feminine women. In fact, I feel at ease in the company of rather stupid women. You smoke, you swear, you are dreadfully blunt. If we were married, I think you would drive me mad, Agatha. You are right, I have always shied away from intimacy, not necessarily sex but discussions like this, talking about my feelings. I’ll try to watch my temper.”
Agatha looked at him sadly. “I don’t think I can change, James. I don’t think I can turn myself into the type of woman you would like me to be. But I could give up smoking…”
He reached forward and took her hand in a warm, firm clasp. “Let’s give it a little time. Friends?”
“Friends,” echoed Agatha, but feeling in a bewildered way that nothing had been resolved at all. “I’ll keep clear of Charles.”
“I can’t under the circumstances dictate to you who you should see or not see. Now let’s discuss our suspects,” he said cheerfully, looking, thought Agatha, for all the world like a schoolboy leaving the headmaster’s study once a dreaded lecture was over.
“Everything points to Trevor,” he said. “And Trevor is drinking like a fish. Sooner or later he is going to betray himself.”
“I’m surprised the press haven’t been beating at our door after this last attack,” said Agatha. “After Olivia’s famous press conference, they seem to have disappeared.”
“Oh, I forgot to tell you. There’s been a dreadful murder over on the Greek side and some British soldiers have been accused. They’ve all gone over there. Our murder is old hat.”
“Well, at least that should give us some peace. Where do we go from here? Back to the hotel this evening?”
“I can’t. I’ve got an appointment in Nicosia this evening.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“No, Agatha, it’s got to do with my investigations into Mustafa, and I don’t want you involved. Don’t go to them on your own. Why not spend a quiet evening here and watch some television?”
“Apart from the local news, there’s hardly anything in English.”
“Sometimes the local station puts on a film in English.”
“All right,” said Agatha. “I haven’t really had a quiet evening since I’ve been here.”
“I’ll go and get ready then,” said James, and Agatha was left to her thoughts.
When he had left, she took a cup of coffee out into the garden and watched the sun set until a nasty mosquito bite drove her indoors to look for ointment. Having applied it, she switched on the television and flicked through the channels. All Turkish. Arnold Schwarzenegger shouted in Turkish, Bugs Bunny shouted in Turkish, everyone shouted in Turkish. She switched it off.
Suddenly the villa seemed very quiet and almost sinister. For once, the sea was calm and no children played in the road outside. She began to feel edgy and jumpy.
And then the phone rang. She stared at it, startled, and then, with relief, decided it must be James.
She picked up the receiver.
“Hullo, Aggie.”
Charles.
“What do you want?” she demanded, feeling a lurch of disappointment. “And how did you get this number?”
“Easy,” he said cheerfully. “You left it with the manager of the hotel. Had dinner?”
“Not yet. But I’m not going to pay for yours.”
“Nasty. I was going to pay for yours.”
“Charles, I’ve got into enough trouble over you. James found out I had slept with you.”
“That wasn’t my fault. They’d found that out from the hotel servants and had tactfully kept that information from James until someone tried to smother you.”
“How do you know James isn’t here?”
“I was coming back into Kyrenia and he passed me like the clappers, heading off in the direction of Nicosia. Come on, Aggie. Come out to play. I’m bored.”
Agatha hesitated, thinking of an evening on her own and jumping nervously at every single sound.
“Oh, all right,” she said ungraciously. “Where will I meet you?”
“Here. The Dome.”
Agatha sighed. “I should be investigating, but I don’t think I want to run into any of that lot this evening.”
“What about that restaurant called The Grapevine?”
“No, they might be there. All the British go there.”
“What about the Saray Hotel in Nicosia?”
“Well…”
“ Nicosia ’s a big place. But if you think James will be there…”
“No, come to think of it, if he is where I think he is, he’ll be nowhere near the centre. I’ll park my car up on the main street, just outside the newspaper shop, and you can drive me from there.”
“What’s the time? It’s only seven. I’ll pick you up there at eight.”
But Agatha suddenly did not want to wait in the villa longer than she had to. “It’ll take me ten minutes to change and about ten minutes to get there,” she said. “Make it seven-thirty.”
She rang off and ran up the stairs and put on the little black dress she had shunned the night before. After a hasty wash-down, she re-applied her make up, grabbed her handbag and fled the villa.
Glad to be out and free of what she felt was the sinister silence of the villa, she headed for Kyrenia along the now familiar road with the mountains towering up on one side and the sea stretched out on the other. Remembering Kyrenia’s irritating one-way system, she went along the ring road to the lights and turned left down into Kyrenia, past The Grapevine, wondering if Olivia and the others were there, past the roundabout and the town hall, and found to her delight that a car was just moving out from a parking place outside the newspaper shop, and slid neatly into the empty space. Charles appeared promptly. She climbed into his rented car.
To avoid going back all around the town, he executed a neat turn under the blaring horn and flashing lights of a Turkish truck and headed back round the roundabout and out towards Nicosia, along past the Onar Village Hotel and up over the mountains until the twinkling lights of Nicosia appeared below them on the plain.
“So how are you feeling?” he asked.
“A bit shaken. Sort of unreal. As if it had all never happened and I’ll wake up in my bed in Carsely.”
“What sort of place have you got?”
“A thatched cottage, like the kind you see on calendars or biscuit boxes. Little garden at the front and a bigger one at the back. Two bedrooms, bathroom, kitchen, dining-room and living-room. God, I wish I were there.”
“I don’t think Pamir can keep you here for much longer. Why don’t you go and see him tomorrow and tell him you want to go home?”
