She moved to the front windows. The shutters and tall glass doors were pinned back, the view obscured by gauzy curtains which bellied and slackened restlessly in the sea breeze.
Mrs Pargeter pushed through them to the white glare of the sun, which challenged her aching head. But when her eyes accommodated to the brightness, the beauty of the scene melted away all thoughts of pain.
The tops of olive trees and cypresses shielded the sea frontage of Agios Nikitas from view, and Mrs Pargeter looked straight out across to the blurred outline of Albania. The sea was of that uniform blue that one distrusts in travel brochures, its surface raked here and there by the lazy swirls of currents. A large cruise ship slid sedately across the centre of the channel. The white sails of a yacht flotilla moved like formation seagulls over the blue. Nearer to the coast, awning-topped motorboats puttered along, searching for those secret bays which were rediscovered every day by new pioneers. A speedboat, planing high out of the water, towed behind it the white smudge of a waterskier.
Yes, thought Mrs Pargeter, I am going to like it here.
As she turned back into the villa, her shadow crossed a basking lizard which flicked out of sight, a black comma instantly erased from the whiteness of the wall.
She moved through the bedroom to the back windows, whose translucent curtains strained outwards into the garden. Once through them, she stood on the little balcony, looking out on a scene perhaps more beautiful than that at the front.
The flowers glowed in reds, mauves, blues, pinks and yellows against the dusty green of their leaves. All were neatly trimmed and tended, many rising from cans and drums painted in a powdery blue. The pots nearest the villa, still shaded by the building’s edge, were circled with dampness. The white cement pathways had been punctiliously brushed. Whoever kept the garden in such a pristine state had already completed that morning’s servicing.
As she looked at the display, Mrs Pargeter wished she knew more about flowers. She had always liked having a nice garden to walk in, but never taken much interest in how gardens got to be nice places to walk in. Nor had the late Mr Pargeter had ‘green fingers’ (other adjectives had been applied to his fingers with some frequency, but never ‘green’). However, when they lived in the big house in Chigwell, there had always been a continuing supply of labour to look after the grounds. The men who came to stay had all been happy to pay with weeding and digging for the privilege of a few days’ invisibility behind the garden’s high walls.
But, as she looked at the splendour of that array of Corfiot blooms, Mrs Pargeter wished she had had a little more ‘hands-on’ experience of horticulture. It would be nice to be able to give names to the flowers. She felt pretty confident about the geraniums, both the red and pink varieties, and would have been prepared to risk identification of the climbing plant with cornet-shaped blooms of bright blue as Morning Glory, but the rest stumped her completely.
Pretty, though. She could recognise that. They were all very pretty.
Distressing, she thought with mild regret, that there weren’t any better words to mean ‘pretty’. Always sounded so limp. Particularly when applied to a woman. “Oh, she’s very pretty” – huh, talk about damning with faint praise. Almost as bad as calling a man ‘sweet’.
Mrs Pargeter grinned at the way her thoughts were flowing. When irrelevant ideas started to interconnect in her mind like that, it was always a sign that she was beginning to relax. Not bad, really, one night in Corfu and already the therapy was taking effect.
Yes, one long, relaxed night in Corfu. Her headache had gone now. How long had she slept? For the first time that morning she looked at her watch.
Good heavens! A quarter to twelve. It was years since she’d slept that long. Something in the Corfiot air perhaps?
She moved out of the shadow of the balcony and stood there, blinking, letting the sunlight wash over her. Soon she would have to have a shower, get dressed… what then? Wander down to Spiro’s to pick up her flightbag, mustn’t forget that. Have some lunch there too, maybe. (Mrs Pargeter had already firmly decided that, though the package had been described as ‘self-catering’, breakfast would be the only meal prepared in the villa. And, if she was going to wake this late every morning, she didn’t think breakfast would figure very large in her daily schedule.)
She wondered if Joyce was up yet. Had her friend slept equally well, or been kept awake by her troubled thoughts? There was no sound from the other bedroom. Perhaps she’d already gone out. Down to the minimarket, maybe even to one of the beaches for a swim. If Joyce was doing things on her own, that was good. The two of them might have come on holiday together, but both had agreed that they didn’t want to live in each other’s pockets.
Mrs Pargeter looked idly down at the white cement path and saw that she was causing a traffic hazard. One of her plump bare feet was blocking the advance of a file of tiny ants. With uncomplaining efficiency, they had made a detour, circling the obstruction and then continuing their column in a perfectly straight line.
Amazing organisation and discipline you have to have to be an ant. Amazing ability to sublimate your own personality to that of the community. Wouldn’t suit me, thought Mrs Pargeter.
She watched where the line of ants was going. The file moved, relentlessly regular, along the path towards the villa. Then, making no concession to the change of plane, it continued vertically up the wall on to Joyce’s balcony.
Mrs Pargeter moved forward and saw how the line progressed across the marble platform and under the billowing curtains into the bedroom. Intrigued, she followed them, wondering what attraction prompted this dedicated troop movement. And, come to that, why there was no returning line of ants.
Inside the room her questions were answered. The single line of ants stopped by the side of the nearer bed, where it joined a mass, an orgiastic mealee of other ants.
Ants gorging themselves on the browning pool of blood that disfigured the spotless marble floor.
Other ants had climbed up the brown-stained sheet which dangled off the side of the bed. They moved in hungry confusion over the white crumpled linen.
And over Joyce Dover’s equally white, equally crumpled body.
And ants seethed round the dried-up gash on her wrist, through which Joyce Dover’s lifeblood had flowed away.
∨ Mrs Pargeter’s Package ∧
Nine
Mrs Pargeter moved out on to the balcony and took a long series of deep breaths. The innocent scent of flowers in her nostrils felt obscenely inappropriate. Life with the late Mr Pargeter had trained her well in coping with shock, but she had still been profoundly shaken by what she had seen. She swallowed back nausea, forced herself into a straitjacket of calm, took one more deep breath, and went back into Joyce’s room.
The only way, she knew, was to dissociate herself, depersonalise what she saw, imagine that she had to examine the scene for some kind of test, that questions would be asked later. Horror can only be borne if one ceases to think of the individual identity of those involved; too much compassion can be crippling. All carers – doctors, policemen, ambulancemen – learn to cope by manufacturing a professional distance between themselves and the disasters they face.
As she had this thought, Mrs Pargeter realised that the necessity for distance applied equally to murderers, rapists and other violent criminals. It is only when one has ceased to think of people as individuals that one can perpetrate such horrific abuse to their bodies.
She looked down at the corpse. Thinking of it as ‘the corpse’ helped. The corpse, the deceased, the victim, the body… any word was better than a proper name.