James went up to her, put his arms around her and kissed her, a long, deep embrace. She drew back and began to unbutton her blouse.
James crossed to the window and jerked down the blinds.
Agatha found she was trembling.
“Well, well, well,” said Charles. “Who would have thought it. Don’t break your heart, Aggie. That was a prostitute if ever I saw one.”
“You don’t kiss prostitutes like that,” said Agatha bleakly.
“We can’t stand here all night. Do you want to go up and bang on the door and throw a scene?”
“No,” said Agatha, “I just want to go home.”
They walked back to the car. When they drove off, Agatha said, “That’s that. I don’t feel anything for him any more. How could he?”
“Getting even? Maybe the poor man is still wondering how you could sleep with me.”
“That was different.”
“I suppose it was. You didn’t have to pay me.”
“Are you sure that was a prostitute, Charles?”
“Pretty sure.”
“But she was pretty.”
“A lot of them here are. They come from God-awful places like Romania.”
There had been girls in the Great Eastern Hotel, but the bar had been very dark and Agatha had not studied any of them very closely.
Perhaps the girl was one of the prostitutes from the Great Eastern Hotel and this was James’s way of finding out information about Mustafa. But he could simply have offered her money. There was no need to kiss her like that. Agatha felt beyond tears.
They drove the rest of the way to Kyrenia in silence.
When they reached Agatha’s car, Charles said, “Want to come to the hotel for a nightcap?”
Agatha shook her head.
“Good-night kiss?”
“No, I don’t feel like it.”
“Try not to weep all night into your pillow. You’re worth better than James, Aggie.”
Agatha got out of the car and waved to Charles as he drove away.
Then she drove back to the villa and let herself in. Grief was being replaced by rage. She paced up and down the living-room, wondering what she should say to him when he returned, wondering whether to say anything at all. He had not laid a finger on her and yet he had kissed that girl so passionately.
She felt lonely, old and unwanted.
Then, with a hardening of the heart, she went upstairs and put her night-gown-froths of satin and lace bought especially to charm James-into a small traveling-bag along with make-up, a change of clothes and a toothbrush. Then she went out, locked up and got back into her car and drove back to Kyrenia.
In the hotel reception a late busload of Israeli tourists had just arrived and were milling around the reception area and so Agatha was able to get into the lift unobserved.
Charles opened his bedroom door in answer to her knock.
“Come in,” he said. “We’ll have a drink and then you’ll take the spare bed, Aggie. I don’t want to be made love to by a woman with a mind full of revenge.”
“You are very kind, Charles,” said Agatha with a break in her voice.
“Not me. You’re a laugh a minute, Aggie. We’ll have a bottle of wine on the balcony.”
“I don’t know what my liver’s going to be like after all this booze,” said Agatha.
“You’ll soon be back in Carsely and you can drink herb tea until it comes out your ears.”
They sat together on the balcony. “I don’t know how to handle this,” said Agatha. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Then do nothing. That’s what I would do, Aggie. When in doubt, do nothing. If you tell him you saw him, he might, as you guessed, tell you it was part of his investigations, and then you’ll start shouting about the way he kissed that girl, and he’ll say he had to make it look good and don’t be silly, and you’ll have got exactly nowhere. Also we’re both assuming naively that he means to spend the night. He may even be back at the villa now. So how do you explain your absence?”
“I’ll say I was frightened to be on my own and so I took a room here.”
“Why don’t you jack the whole thing in, Aggie? It’s all a mess. Go back to Carsely. Go in for something safe like flower-arranging. Forget about Rose’s murder. If Trevor did it, he’ll probably eventually confess when he’s drunk, and you’ll have wasted all this time for nothing.”
“I’ve got to find out,” said Agatha. “There has to be some point to all this. It’ll keep my mind off James.”
“After tonight, my sweet, your mind should be permanently off James.”
“I suppose so. Did you see anything of my suspects today?”
“Not a sign. I suppose Pamir will soon be looking for you again. If sheer doggedness and perseverance can find out who murdered Rose, then he’ll do it.”
“I suppose it’s my vanity,” said Agatha.
“You mean the reasons you’re so hurt by James?”
“No, I mean about solving the murder. James saying I had just blundered about in murder investigations and that’s how they got solved, Olivia’s jeers.”
“If you must, you must. It’s late. Let’s to bed.”
Agatha went into the bathroom, had a shower, and changed into the night-gown.
Charles blinked at her when she emerged. “That nightgown makes me regret I offered you the spare bed. Go to bed, Aggie, before I change my mind.”
Agatha climbed into bed. Her head when she laid it on the pillow swam uncomfortably. No more drink, she thought, whatever James gets up to.
She was then aware fifteen minutes later of Charles emerging from the bathroom. She stiffened under the sheets, waiting for some approach. But he got quietly into his own bed and was soon asleep, snoring dreadfully. How could such a neat and self-contained man snore like that, thought Agatha crossly. She wearily got out of bed and seized him by the shoulders and turned him on his side.
Then she got back into her own bed, now wide awake. She stared at the ceiling, thinking of James, trying to eradicate that bright picture of what she had seen through the apartment window in Nicosia. Then she suddenly fell fast asleep, not waking until the next morning at nine o’clock.
Charles was pottering around the room. “You’d best straighten up your bed and hide in the bathroom while I order some breakfast. We’ll have it on the balcony.”
Memories of the evening before flooded Agatha’s weary brain. But she washed and dressed and waited in the bathroom until she heard room service deliver their breakfast and leave.
Agatha sat on the balcony and crumbled a croissant between her fingers. “I’ve been thinking,” she said slowly, “that I’ll go to Nicosia after I’ve been to the villa and ask for permission to go home.”
“Good idea.”
Agatha stood up. “I don’t want any more breakfast. Thanks for dinner and everything, Charles. I’m sorry I called you a cheapskate.”
“Wait till you get my bill for services rendered.”
Agatha held out her hand. “So this is goodbye.”
He solemnly shook her hand.
“See you around the Cotswolds, Aggie.”
Agatha drove back to the villa. She felt suddenly calm. She would see what James had to say, see how he would react. She would be dignified. She would not rant or scream.
It was another perfect day with only the lightest of breezes.
She took a deep breath and let herself into the villa and called, “James!”
There was no reply and then she noticed that his laptop and research papers and books, which were usually piled up on the table, had all gone. She ran outside again. His car was not there. Something she had been too pent up to notice when she arrived!
