“I understand how justice works, and I thought that was meant to be universal. Don’t you have justice out here?” she asked in deliberately infuriating mock-innocence.
“Yes, of course we do! And of course this death will be properly investigated. But it will be more easily investigated without your interference.” His voice took on a softer, more cunning note. “Anyway, what is it that makes you think your friend was murdered?”
“Various things.”
“What things?”
“I will tell that to the appropriate investigating authorities,” Mrs Pargeter replied.
He was stung by the answer, as she had meant him to be. “You will regret this stupidity.”
“Why?”
“You will regret it because, if you insist on calling the death murder, you automatically become a suspect.”
“I don’t see why.”
“But it is obvious. You were here in the villa last night. You came out from England with Joyce Dover. She knew no one in Corfu. It is generally found that murders are committed by people known to their victims.”
“All right. So I become a suspect. That doesn’t worry me, because I know I’m innocent.”
“You could still have a very inconvenient time during the investigation until you are proved to be innocent.”
“That’s a risk I’m prepared to take.”
“You would not be allowed to leave the island. You would have to hand over your passport until the investigation was over. That could take months.”
“There’s nothing I’ve got to rush back for,” said Mrs Pargeter with infuriating calm.
Sergeant Karaskakis made one more attempt to frighten her. “You will only be making trouble for yourself. You would do better to mind your own business and return to England straight away. Otherwise I am afraid you might regret it.”
But Mrs Pargeter didn’t frighten that easily. She smiled a sweet smile and, at least for the time being, Sergeant Karaskakis knew he was beaten.
∨ Mrs Pargeter’s Package ∧
Thirteen
The Hotel Nausica wasn’t Mrs Pargeter’s idea of a hotel, but then she had been rather spoiled in such matters by the late Mr Pargeter. It was clean, though, and the tracksuited black-haired girl who greeted her in American English was friendly. So long as she didn’t think of it as a hotel, but as a taverna with rooms above, Mrs Pargeter reckoned it would be fine.
Her second-floor bedroom was almost identical to the one at the Villa Eleni, though it only had French windows and shutters one end. These gave out on to a small balcony, with a lounger on which one could lie and look out over the perfect stillness of the bay.
“Is there anything I can get for you?” asked the girl.
“No, I don’t think so, thank you very much. My bags will be coming over at some point, so if they could be brought up when they do arrive…”
“Sure.”
“Your English is very good – or should I say your American?”
“Oh, thank you. Actually I’m studying at Boston University. Psychology.”
“Ah. And you’re just over here for the summer?”
“Yes. My father owns the hotel.”
“I see. Can I ask what your name is?”
“Maria.” The girl hovered in the doorway. “If you’re sure there’s nothing you need…”
“No. Oh, one thing…”
“Yes?”
“I might need to use a telephone. Is it true that Spiro’s taverna’s got the only one in the village?”
Maria grinned wryly. “Did Spiro tell you that?”
“No.”
“You surprise me. It’s the sort of thing he does. Sharp businessman, old Spiro. Tells tourists they can only cash travellers’ cheques with him, only hire cars and boats through him, only use his telephone…”
“So there is another one?”
“Here in the hotel. Just say when you want to use it.”
“Thank you. Am I to gather that there’s a bit of rivalry between Spiro and the Hotel Nausica?”
“Just a bit.” Maria shrugged. “Always rivalries on Corfu. Most have been going on for generations. Family arguments over who had the right to certain olive trees, that kind of thing. Tourist trade just provided a new battleground for the old rivalries.”
“I see you have lots of opportunities for applying your psychology out here…” said Mrs Pargeter mischievously.
The girl grinned. “Yeah. Quite a culture shock coming back here after Boston.”
“I’m sure. Very different societies.”
“You can say that again. Takes a bit of adjustment sometimes. I mean, I love Corfu, but there are things like… well, the attitude to women, the expectations of women…” A wry shake of the head.
“Not at the sharp end of the feminist movement?”
Maria grimaced. “That is something of an understatement. You should just hear the wails of disappointment when some poor woman has the nerve to give birth to a girl.”
“But there are shrieks of delight when it’s a boy?”
“You said it.”
“You said,” Mrs Pargeter began, taking advantage of their new intimacy, “that most of the rivalries out here were family rivalries. Do you mean that your father is related to Spiro?”
“Oh, certainly,” Maria replied with a laugh. “Everyone in Agios Nikitas is related to everyone else. My father and Spiro are cousins – not first cousins but some sort of cousin. Everyone comes from the same town, you see – Agralias.”
“So they’re not from Agios Nikitas originally?”
“No – or yes. Let me explain. Agralias is about five miles inland from here. That is where everyone still has their main home. But many people from Agralias also own a bit of land on the coast, plots that have been in their families for years. Suddenly, when the tourist boom started, those bits of land on the coast became very valuable.”
“So people built tavernas…?”
“Sure. Tavernas, villas, shops, hotels…”
“And it was good business?”
“Oh yes. If you owned a taverna in the early years you could do very well indeed. Well by Corfiot standards, anyway. Before the tourists came, it was pretty much a peasant economy here, you know.”
“Yes. I see. That’s explained a lot. Thank you.”
“No problem.” Maria thickened her accent, parodying the Corfiot catch-phrase. She moved out into the corridor. “So, if there’s anything you want, just say…”
♦
Mrs Pargeter waited five minutes to make sure that the girl had really gone and, even then, opened the bedroom door again to check. Feeling ridiculously surreptitious, she went out through the French windows to ascertain that she couldn’t be overlooked from another balcony. The scene that greeted her was as idyllically innocuous as ever. Unless Albanian spies had superpowered binoculars trained on her, she could feel confident that she was unobserved.
She sat on the side of the bed and unzipped her flightbag.
The package which Joyce had entrusted to her at Gatwick Airport was just as she had remembered it. Under the brown paper and cardboard wrapping was an irregular rectangle, the glugging of whose contents suggested some kind of bottle.
When first handed over, the package’s significance had seemed minimal, at worst perhaps a symptom of the seriousness of her friend’s drinking problem.
But when Joyce’s prognostication had been proved correct by the Customs search of her luggage at Corfu Airport, the potential significance of the package had grown. (As Mrs Pargeter had this thought, she was reminded of the striking likeness she had noted between the Customs officer and Sergeant Karaskakis. Given what Maria had just told her, it would perhaps not be fanciful to guess at some family connection between the two men.)
Now that Joyce had been murdered by someone who had searched her belongings in the Villa Eleni, the package she so carefully offloaded on to her friend had become extremely significant.