‘Oh, if only one could trust people’s promises,’ he said almost wistfully.
‘So did you actually strangle Nita?’ asked Carole.
‘Yes,’ he replied with something approaching satisfaction.
‘But why? Why were you at Pinara, anyway?’
‘Ooh, there’s a long history of me going to Pinara, you know, Carole.’
‘What, as a sightseer?’
This seemed to amuse him. ‘No, not as a sightseer … more to see the sights.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘That Lycian tomb where Nita died has seen a lot of action over the years.’
‘You mean sexual action between her and Barney?’
‘Yes, that’s exactly what I mean. How did you find out about that?’ Carole clearly didn’t think it was the moment for long explanations, so he went on, ‘I first came across them by accident. I was there sightseeing, with Phyllis. Just before we got to the car park on our way back, I needed to nip into the woods to have a pee. I saw the little stream, and then through the trees I could see into the tomb.’ He chuckled again. ‘And see what was going on in the tomb. I didn’t have any of my equipment with me then, but I still found what I saw very exciting. So the next time the two of them were there I saw to it that I was properly equipped.’
‘But how did you know when they were going to be there?’
‘Not too difficult to work out. As I may have said, there are no secrets in Kayaköy, so everyone would know when Barney Willingdon was going to be over here. And the schedules of the tours Nita organized were easy enough to access – from holiday companies’ brochures at first, and later on their websites.
‘And Barney and Nita were very regular in their assignations. Eleven o’clock in the morning. Nita would send her tour party off to look at the amphitheatre with the junior guide, then she’d go to the tomb to meet Barney. And I’d be ready waiting with my equipment.’
‘When you say “equipment”,’ asked Carole with distaste, ‘what do you mean?’
‘Binoculars, cameras – particularly cameras.’ He sniggered. ‘With telephoto lenses, of course.’
‘So you mean you’ve got a whole archive of …?’
‘Yes,’ he said complacently.
It was at that moment Carole realized just how unhinged Travers Hughes-Swann was. And how little hope she had of avoiding the fate he had lined up for her.
‘For some years,’ he continued, ‘there wasn’t any activity at the tomb. If Barney came over with his wife – the first one or the second one – he wouldn’t make his assignations at Pinara. But this time I knew he’d come over on his own, and then I heard Nita say that she was going to Pinara on Tuesday.’
Fairly sure she wouldn’t like the answer, Carole asked, ‘When you said you “heard Nita”, where were you when you heard her?’
‘Right here,’ he said smugly. ‘I have microphones set up in Morning Glory. I like to know what’s going on.’
Carole felt physically sick at the thought that this pervert could have been listening to every word she and Jude uttered when they were at the villa. She was grateful that none of their poolside conjectures had featured him as a possible murderer. Otherwise the schedule for her execution might have been moved forward a bit.
Still, she might as well go to her death knowing the solution to the murder mystery she’d become involved in, so she asked bluntly, ‘Why did you kill Nita?’
‘Ah.’ He sounded almost apologetic as he said, ‘Bit of a cock-up on my efficiency front, I’m afraid. There’s an optimum position in the woods near that Lycian tomb, just over the little stream, where I always set up my equipment, but some trees had fallen down there, so it wasn’t terribly safe underfoot. And I’m afraid, just after Nita had got to the tomb, I slipped, and she heard the noise and came out. Then she saw me. And once she’d seen me …’ He spread his hands wide in a gesture of inevitability. ‘Well, there was only one thing I could do, wasn’t there?’
Carole could think of a wide choice of things that could have been done by someone less insane than Travers Hughes-Swann, but she didn’t enumerate them. Instead, boldly, she asked, ‘And did you kill your wife Phyllis too?’
‘Oh, you’re very quick, Carole. Yes, I’m afraid again I had to.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, she found my archive.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘She was looking at my laptop – which I’d many times told her she shouldn’t do – and she came across the archive of photographs.’
‘The ones you’d shot at Pinara?’
‘Amongst others. Amongst many others. You’d be surprised how many people leave their bedroom windows open at night when they’re in a hot country like Turkey. And I have very good telephoto lenses on my cameras and video cameras.’ He giggled at his own cleverness.
‘And did you strangle your wife too?’
‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘It’s the easiest way.’ Then, to Carole’s horror, he reached into the pocket of his grubby shorts and produced something she recognized. It was the lanyard from which Nita Davies’s ID card used to hang.
‘And you maintained that your wife was still alive so that there’d be no enquiry into her death?’
‘Well, that was part of the reason,’ he admitted. ‘But also the state pension is rather more generous for a married couple than it is for a single person.’ He spoke as if all of his behaviour had been prompted by pure mathematical logic.
‘And it was you, Travers, who removed Nita’s body from the tomb?’
‘Yes. Well, I had to, didn’t I? Can’t leave dead bodies in Lycian tombs, can you?’ He seemed to find this very funny. ‘I brought her back in the Land Rover.’
‘And where did you dispose of the body?’
‘Well, obviously, in the same place as I disposed of Phyllis’s. And—’ he smiled – ‘where you will be very shortly joining them.’ He looked across at his home-built travesty of a Lycian tomb. ‘Very fitting, don’t you think?’
And Carole understood why the stone blocks that floored Travers Hughes-Swann’s ‘suntrap’ had been so much less dusty and weed-covered than the rest of the garden. They had just been moved to accommodate Nita’s body beneath them.
He had now unclipped the plastic catch which made the lanyard into a necklace and was wrapping the free ends around his strong thin hands. ‘Now, obviously, it’s going to be easier for me, Carole, if you don’t struggle, but it won’t make a lot of difference either way. I’m still going to kill you.’
Carole began to scream. She wondered why she hadn’t thought of screaming before. But the nylon lanyard was so quickly round her neck, and so tightly round her neck that the screaming sound ended abruptly in a choke. She found her mind turning to her granddaughter Lily – and the brother or sister for Lily whom she would never meet.
Carole Seddon felt her consciousness draining away. She was only half-aware of a commotion at the gates of Brighton House, then a shout and the sound of a gun firing.
She didn’t see Travers Hughes-Swann stagger, slacken his hold on the lanyard as his strength deserted him, and drop to the ground, dead.
THIRTY-TWO
There was no way the police could not be called this time. An ambulance was also summoned, but the paramedic who examined her announced that Carole did not need hospitalization. She would have a very sore throat for a few days, but the bruising would not take long to subside.
The police quickly established the basic facts, Barney having enough Turkish for them to understand each other. Erkan did not deny having shot Travers Hughes-Swann, and his action had been seen by Jude and Barney. There might have been a third witness, but Carole had been too near unconsciousness to be reliable.