to being loaded. No, I think Trevor’s jealousy and rage are the cause of these murders. You said Trevor wanted to punch Harry because Harry called Rose a slut.”
“Do you want to go to the hotel after dinner and see how they’re getting on?”
Agatha repressed a shudder. “After we eat, I just want to go to bed. I’ve never felt like giving up like this before. I have a longing to go home.”
“If you’ve finished, now’s the time,” said Charles, looking out through the restaurant doors. “The press have arrived. Quickly.”
He threw some money pn the table. They had been sitting on the terrace and both went over the edge into the scrub below and made their way cautiously around to the car-park, Agatha hoping that the report of the poisonous snakes keeping to the mountains was true.
They gained the villa without being accosted. “First bath for me,” said Agatha with a yawn.
“We sharing a bed?”
“No, Charles. I am too old for casual sex.”
“Well, if you change your mind, you know where to find me.”
Agatha awoke during the night shivering and found a quilt and put it over her. The weather was beginning to change. The long summer was over.
A police car arrived the next morning to take them to police headquarters in Nicosia. Agatha groaned. “What can he possibly ask us that he hasn’t asked us already?”
“I didn’t tell him about Trevor trying to punch Harry,” said Charles. “I think I should. I mean, I hardly know that bunch and don’t like them.”
“I think that’s why Pamir keeps on at us,” said Agatha wearily. “He gets a little more each time.”
Olivia, George, Angus and Trevor were waiting at police headquarters to be interviewed when they arrived. George looked white and strained under his tan; Trevor, stunned; Angus had aged terribly; and Olivia for once was without any social talk or animation.
They looked up dully when Agatha and Charles entered, but did not say anything.
Agatha and Charles sat down and waited. After half an hour of total silence Pamir arrived, nodded to them and went into the inner room. “Like waiting for the doctor,” said Charles.
George Debenham was summoned first. The morning dragged on, the bright sunlight cutside seeming to mock the grim dreariness within.
Agatha was called last.
“Now, Mrs. Raisin…” began Pamir.
“I know, I know,” said Agatha wearily. “I’ve to tell you all over again, starting at the beginning.”
“Not yet. Do you, Mrs. Raisin, not think that you might have precipitated this murder?”
“How? Why?”
“I gather from Sir Charles that you went to Salamis for the sole purpose of finding the others and continuing your amateur investigation.”
Yes… That’s true. But I didn’t see any of them until after the murder had been committed.”
“But they might have seen you.”
“So what made that different to all the other days they had seen me?” said Agatha impatiently. “And if it hadn’t been for me and Charles, you might not have found the body until the next day and who knows, by that time the murderer might have returned and shoved the body in the sea, forged a note from Harry saying he had left on a fishing boat or something like James, and you would have been none the wiser.”
“We have asked everyone who was on the beach and in the ruins yesterday to come forward. Someone might have seen something. So begin at the beginning…”
So Agatha did, vivid memories of the heat and the ruins coming back into her mind.
Then she said, “If one of them murdered Harry, he must have sneaked back to the beach when they split up. And when they were supposed to be searching for him why didn’t they find him on the beach?”
“They say that after Mr. Tembleton went off to the beach, that they arranged to meet in the gymnasium in an hour. Mrs. Debenham went to look at the basilica; Mr. Debenham said he simply wanted to go back to the gymnasium, sit down and rest and wait for the others; Mr. Wilcox said he wanted to be on his own for a bit; and Mr. Angus King went to look at the tombs. All say they searched the beach, but it was still full of tourists and they did not spot Mr. Tembleton.”
“So it could have been any of them,” said Agatha.
Pamir surveyed her and then leaned back in his chair. “Or you, Mrs. Raisin.”
“Me? Why? I barely knew them. I didn’t know any of them before I came here.”
He leaned forward. “How can I put this? At your age, Mrs. Raisin, ladies can go a little unhinged. It seems to me that since you gave up your career, you have had a desire for prominence and attention, which is why you turned to amateur detective investigation. Perhaps not having any more murders to investigate, you decided to make some of your own.”
“That’s outrageous,” spluttered Agatha.
“Perhaps. But murder is outrageous. Your own behaviour has been erratic.”
“But someone tried to kill me-twice!”
“There are no witnesses to either attempt. We have only your own word for that. You follow James Lacey to Cyprus because everyone seems to know you are romantically interested in him and yet, after moving in with him, you accept a dinner date with an Israeli business man and who knows where that might have led had not his wife turned up, and then you sleep with Sir Charles. I know this is the permissive society. Such behaviour, however, in a middle-aged lady from an English village is most odd.”
“How dare you!” panted Agatha.
“I dare because I am very angry. We have a very low crime rate in north Cyprus. Tourists come here because it is still the safest place in the Mediterranean and I am going to accuse all of you of everything and keep you here until these murders are solved. We have respectable British residents here, Mrs. Raisin, who contribute to the cultural life of the island. They cause no trouble. Until your arrival, we have never suffered anything like this.”
“You are insulting. You are looking in the wrong direction. What about Trevor Wilcox? His business is on the skids and Rose wouldn’t bail him out. He’ll be all right now. He probably inherits her money. And what of George Debenham? He’s in debt as well.”
“How did you find this out, Mrs. Raisin?”
Damn him, thought Agatha. She could not betray Bill Wong.
“They told me,” she muttered.
“They just told you!”
“Something like that.”
“I do not believe you,” said Pamir. “I think somebody in England found out the information for you.”
Sweating now, Agatha hoped the manager of The Dome had not told the police about her fax to police headquarters in Mircester. She wanted to run away from this room, from this inexorable questioning, from the humiliating accusation that she was a batty sensation-seeker driven mad by the menopause.
Pamir then made her tell her story again. If I had anything to hide, it would certainly have come out during this remorseless questioning, thought Agatha.
At last she was free to go. The others, apart from Charles, had disappeared.
“You look awful,” said Charles. “Rough time?”
“It was grim, He accused me of the murders.”
“Why?”
“He thinks I am a sensation-seeker driven potty by the menopause, and not having any murders here to investigate, decided to manufacture some of my own.”
Charles’s eyes crinkled up with laughter. “That’s funny.”
“It’s not funny at all,” said Agatha furiously.
A secretary came out and told them a car was ready to take them home. They travelled in silence, Agatha thinking that she really must find out who murdered Rose and Harry or she would be damned forever as a madwoman.
At the villa, where the press were fortunately absent, Agatha said she would like to lie down and read.
She tried to concentrate on a novel about the complexities of broken marriages, but finally felt too restless to
