Mrs Pargeter's Package Read online

  “So, anyway,” Larry concluded, “got two unexplained deaths to think about now, haven’t we, Mrs. P.? I always remember something your old man once said. ‘The explanation for a murder often lies in a previous murder.’ You ever heard him say that?”

  “No,” she replied rather primly. Murder was not a subject that had ever come up in her conversations with the late Mr. Pargeter.

  “Well, I reckon odds are,” said Larry, “that there’s got to be some connection between Joyce Dover’s death and Christo Karaskakis’s death back in 1959.”

  “Assuming, of course,” said Mrs. Pargeter quietly, “that that was when he died.”

  chapter

  THIRTY-THREE

  * * *

  It was Greek Party Night at Spiro’s when they got back to Agios Nikitas. The tourists who had paid for the evening’s entertainment had eaten up their cheese pies and barbecued lamb and were now vigorously applauding the dancing.

  As Mrs. Pargeter and Larry Lambeth arrived, Spiro and Yianni, side by side, arms locked on each other’s shoulders, were solemnly following the ritual of long-remembered steps, while the live group of bouzouki, guitar and drums built up the pace of their music. There was a pagan magnificence about the two men, Yianni justifying the cliché description of a young Greek god, and Spiro, more solid but still impressive and surprisingly light-footed for his bulk. Both their faces were rigid with the concentration of the dance.

  Their audience clapped along with the pounding beat. Mr. Safari Suit was arranging Mrs. Safari Suit in a suitable foreground pose for his next snap. Linda from South Woodham Ferrers was arguing with Keith from South Woodham Ferrers over whether it had been a good idea to bring Craig with them. The little boy evidently didn’t think a lot of Greek dancing and was bawling his head off. Linda wanted to take him back to the villa, but Keith insisted that they’d paid for the evening and they were jolly well going to get their money’s worth. An atmosphere had developed between the couple. Keith said in some ways it’d be quite a relief to get back to the office.

  The Secretary With Short Bleached Hair and the Secretary With Long Bleached Hair lingered on the edge of the dancing area, eager for all this male display dancing to end and for the disco music to start. Their suntans had settled down a little; five days into their package, they looked proudly browner than that day’s air freight delivery of white-skinned English.

  Mrs. Pargeter and Larry found a vacant table, but it was some time before they could order a drink, as the masculine pas de deux gave way to a dance with brightly colored scarves which involved all of the taverna’s waiters.

  Mrs. Pargeter watched Spiro leading the dance with a preoccupied, automatic jollity, and thought perhaps now she knew some of the reasons for the underlying melancholy of his dark face.

  The scarf dance ended. The audience, convinced they were getting an exclusive taste of the authentic Greece (just as the Party Night audience at the taverna did every Monday), clapped enthusiastically. After perfunctory bows, the dancers moved back into waiter mode and hurried towards the many hands that waved for drinks.

  Yianni appeared at their table. “Please, I get you drinks, yes, please?”

  Larry ordered retsina and brandy, but, rather than rushing off to get them, the waiter lingered. “Please, you see Conchita, please?”

  “Sorry, I’ve only just come back here. Been away for a couple of days.”

  “She say she come to Party Night. I not see her, please.”

  His black eyes looked so moist and desolate that Mrs. Pargeter had to say something to reassure him. “She’ll turn up. Don’t worry, it’s early yet.”

  As the waiter slouched disconsolately back into the taverna, she felt very sorry for him. Dear, oh dear, had Conchita fulfilled her ambitions for a purely physical relationship, and had Yianni now served his purpose and been cast aside? Conchita gave the impression of being a tough, modern cookie. Nothing in Yianni’s culture or background could have prepared him—or any Greek man—for the novel experience of being used as a sex object.

  Recorded disco music started up, current British chart successes alternating with banal Euro-hits. The Secretary With Short Bleached Hair and the Secretary With Long Bleached Hair moved keenly into the dancing area where, to their great delight, they were quickly joined by two young men in fluorescent T-shirts and cycling shorts.

  Mrs. Pargeter sipped her retsina and took in the scene. Larry Lambeth, seeing that she was deep in thought, respected her silence.

  She was convinced now that Christo Karaskakis had escaped from the burning boat which was believed to have killed him, and that its flames almost definitely explained the scarring on his face . . .

  Yes! Another detail slotted into place. She remembered how Mr. Fisher-Metcalf had started to respond to the overexposed photograph of Spiro. That must have been because Spiro’s face, with the distinctive features smoothed out, looked very much like the scarred face of his identical twin, the solicitor’s client.

  She was now in no doubt that Chris Dover and Christo Karaskakis had been one and the same person.

  chapter

  THIRTY-FOUR

  * * *

  She forced her mind back to Christo’s escape from the boat. Somehow he must have found his way to England, probably arriving at Dover, then changed his name and set out to make a career in his new country.

  He had taken the decision to obscure his real origins and make himself as British as he could be. But, until he perfected the language, he needed some explanation of his accent. How he had come to select Uruguay as a fictitious background there was no way of knowing, but it had been an inspired choice. The British as a nation tend to lump all foreigners together, anyway, but the number who could conduct an intelligent conversation about any aspect of Uruguay is so tiny as to be unworthy of consideration. The number who know anything about the country’s politics is even tinier, and so Chris Dover’s references to political disagreements and even implications of torture would never have been questioned.

  Now this major breach had been made in the wall of logic, other details came tumbling through at a rush. Mrs. Pargeter knew why she hadn’t at first recognized Conchita sitting at Spiro’s. The girl looked so natural there because it was the natural place for her to be. Though neither side knew it, she had been sitting amongst her family.

  Another realization crashed through. The reason why Chris Dover had deliberately avoided meeting Hamish Ramon Henriques was simply because he didn’t dare come face to face with a native Spanish-speaker. Such an encounter would almost inevitably lead to exposure of the lies he had invented about his Uruguayan upbringing.

  But the question Mrs. Pargeter could not yet answer was why Christo Karaskakis had created this huge subterfuge, what had driven him so thoroughly to disguise the truth about himself—even to the extent of landing his daughter with the unlikely name of Conchita, for God’s sake!

  There were two possible explanations for such extreme behavior—it could be a reaction either of guilt or of fear.

  If Christo Karaskakis had committed some dreadful crime in Agios Nikitas, then guilt might have forced him to flee from the dangers of discovery and retribution. Sabotaging the outboard motor—if it were definitely known that that was what he was doing when it blew up in his face—might well qualify as such a crime.

  Alternatively, though, perhaps he was the intended victim of the sabotage.

  This theory appealed to Mrs. Pargeter a lot more than the other one.

  Under those circumstances, Christo Karaskakis might have been so frightened by the incident in the burning boat that he fled from Corfu and made himself unrecognizable to escape further attempts on his life. Perhaps he had spent his whole life in fear that the person who had so nearly killed him in 1959 would not rest until the job had been completed.

  So who could have sabotaged the boat nearly thirty years before?

  The people known to be involved were Georgio and Stephano.

  Presumably Spiro had
been around at the time, too.

  But Spiro did seem a pretty unlikely suspect, because he had nothing to gain from his brother’s death. Indeed, he had quite a lot to lose. His dreams of the academic life were still just about alive while there was a chance of Christo reforming to such a point that old Spiro thought him worthy of taking on the family business. But, with his brother dead, young Spiro was condemned to burying his hopes forever.

  The other two made much more appealing suspects. Georgio had actually gone to London looking for Chris Dover, and Stephano—Sergeant Karaskakis—had been shameless in diverting suspicion about Joyce’s death. Because, following her new logic, Mrs. Pargeter now felt certain that the same person who had attempted to murder Christo had succeeded in murdering Joyce, presumably to stop her from exposing the first crime.

  But which of her two suspects was the murderer?

  Mrs. Pargeter looked across the taverna’s dancing area to the little table under the window where Georgio sat drinking ouzo with some cronies. The man seemed such an incompetent that it was hard to visualize him planning murder. But when it comes to crime, as the late Mr. Pargeter had frequently remarked, appearances can be terribly deceptive.

  Sergeant Karaskakis certainly made a more obvious suspect. He was confident, calculating and in his eye at times there burned a light of pure evil.

  Mrs. Pargeter looked over towards the taverna doorway and saw the object of her speculation talking to Spiro. They were in exactly the same positions that they had been when Joyce saw them the evening she died, Spiro with his back to her and the Sergeant visible over his shoulder.

  Another possibility slotted into place. Maybe it hadn’t been the Sergeant who had prompted Joyce’s panic. Perhaps it had been the sight of Spiro’s back view, identical to that of her late husband. If that had been the case, Joyce’s looking as if she had seen a ghost had been almost literally appropriate.

  Immediately Mrs. Pargeter recalled the second time her friend had panicked. Inside the taverna. When she saw Theodosia over the bar counter.

  Fiercely excited, Mrs. Pargeter rose to her feet and, unaware of Larry Lambeth’s curious look, rushed towards the taverna entrance.

  Sergeant Karaskakis saw her approach and deliberately stood in her way. “Mrs. Pargeter,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “The Tourist Police keep records of where all visitors to our island are staying.”

  “Oh?” She looked up at him, all innocence.

  “There is no record of your having stayed in a hotel in Corfu Town or in Paleokastritsa last night.”

  Mrs. Pargeter smiled. “Isn’t that dreadful? People are so inefficient these days, aren’t they? You’d think it was a simple enough thing to keep proper records, but for some people even that’s too much trouble.”

  Sergeant Karaskakis wasn’t fooled by her bluff and she knew it. He held her in a long stare, which was undisguisedly threatening. Mrs. Pargeter continued to smile her defiance up at him, but she felt a little trickle of fear in the small of her back.

  After a moment, he drew curtly to one side, and let her pass through into the building.

  She stood exactly where Joyce had stood, and looked exactly where Joyce had looked.

  Theodosia was not behind the bar this time.

  There was nobody behind the bar.

  But directly in Mrs. Pargeter’s eyeline was the enshrined photograph.

  The photograph of old Spiro. Of the person Larry Lambeth would have described as Christo Karaskakis’s “old man.”

  “If you want to find out, the explanation for everything will be found behind the old man’s p—”

  “Photograph”?

  chapter

  THIRTY-FIVE

  * * *

  “Ah, it’s locked. That’s good.” Larry Lambeth’s whisper was gentle on the night air.

  “Good?” Mrs. Pargeter echoed. “Why good?”

  “Because it means no one’s here. Often during the season Spiro sleeps in the taverna rather than going back to Agralias—particularly if he’s been late after a Party Night. But the fact that it’s locked means he’s gone home.”

  “Will you be able to get in all right?”

  He laughed at the idea that she had even asked the question. “No problem. Not that much choice of padlocks available here on the island.”

  He fished a bunch of keys out of the pocket of his shorts and started testing them. Mrs. Pargeter, hunched in the shadow under the taverna awning, looked nervously about her. The darkness was total, but in Agios Nikitas she could never fully relax into a feeling of being unobserved.

  What they were doing, she knew, was risky, but she was determined to follow through her latest theory. And Larry Lambeth, of course, gave her unquestioning cooperation. He would have done anything—laid down his life without a murmur, if required—for the widow of the late Mr. Pargeter.

  She hugged the brown-paper-wrapped package that—in what seemed like another life—Joyce Dover had given her at Gatwick Airport. At least now she knew what it contained. And what the contents were for.

  There was a click as the padlock’s tumblers turned. Larry Lambeth pushed the glass doors open and gestured Mrs. Pargeter to follow him in. Safely inside, he clicked on the thin beam of a pencil torch.

  There was no prevarication. Both knew exactly what they were looking for and crossed to behind the bar. Larry climbed adroitly onto the counter, reached up and unhooked the enshrined photograph from its niche.

  Mrs. Pargeter remembered Spiro’s proud words. “My father. It was taken just before he died—thirty years ago—but still he keeps an eye on his taverna. Spiro brings good luck to Spiro. The photograph keeps away the Evil Eye.”

  Larry Lambeth put the picture face down on the counter and handed Mrs. Pargeter the torch. She trained it on the back of the frame as he brushed off dust and cobwebs. Deftly he slid a knifeblade through the brown paper tape that held the mount in place, then lifted out the rectangular cardboard backing.

  “On this or the photograph itself, do you reckon?”

  “The photograph,” she breathed.

  He eased out the thick sheet and placed it, blank side upward, on the counter. Mrs. Pargeter was ready, the ouzo bottle opened and a paper duster bunched over its top.

  Their breathing was fast and shallow. Larry Lambeth nodded. She upended the bottle, felt the duster fill and moisten, then squeezed out the excess fluid.

  Her eyes met Larry’s for a second before she made the first firm wipe across the back of the photograph.

  For a moment, nothing seemed to happen. Maybe there was nothing there . . . Or maybe the effect of the chemical had simply worn off over the years . . . The whole edifice of conjecture and connection she had built up swayed and threatened to topple.

  Then, mercifully, the first purplish streaks showed and quickly the swath of card she had wiped was marked with spidery Greek lettering.

  Involuntary sighs of relief burst from both of them.

  Confident now, Mrs. Pargeter wiped another stripe across. And another and another, until the entire rectangle had been covered.

  Her efforts were rewarded by more lettering. “What does it say, Larry? What does it say?”

  He read the Greek out loud, translating it slowly and fluently into English, draining all emotion from his voice.

  “‘I write this, knowing that I will soon be dead, but I do not wish to die without recording the act of evil that I have witnessed. I write this in sadness and in hatred, and that hatred is for my own flesh and blood.

  “‘Christo, you have committed an offence that can never be forgiven. You have tried to kill your own brother by sabotaging the outboard motor on the boat you stole. I know that you had help from Stephano in your evil plan, but he is weak and does whatever you tell him. The outrage was your idea and you must bear the full responsibility of it.

  “‘Spiro told me what happened. He is here with me now. Spiro, who is so clever at his studies, has shown me how to write th
is so that you will never find it.

  “‘When I die, which as I said will not be long away, I will die hating you, Christo, more than ever father hated son. You have brought shame on our family and you will carry my curse upon you till the end of your life. Your death will be violent and terrifying—you will feel the fear you tried to inflict on your brother. You tried to kill by fire one who you should have respected above all others, and so by fire you will yourself die. The day may come soon, or it may be many years away, but the fire will catch you eventually. That is a father’s curse, a curse spoken in the name of Saint Spiridon. And though you try to hide behind a new name, my dying curse will still find you out to destroy you, Christo.’ And it’s signed ‘Spiro Karaskakis.’”

  Mrs. Pargeter was about to speak, but a terrible sound froze the words on her lips.

  It was just recognizably human, a voice that screamed in pain like a trapped animal.

  chapter

  THIRTY-SIX

  * * *

  Larry Lambeth shot across the room towards the source of the sound. Mrs. Pargeter was a little behind him and stood in the doorway to the kitchen, looking at the sight illuminated by his narrow torch beam.

  Theodosia was crouched like a cornered animal on the rough pallet which served her as a bed. Her scream had subsided to a feral whimpering, and her usually impassive face was ravaged by tears.

  Larry Lambeth snapped some question at her in Greek, which reinforced the strength of her sobbing.

  “Be gentle with her,” murmured Mrs. Pargeter, as she moved across the room towards the terrified woman. She sat on the pallet and put a plump arm round the quivering shoulders.

  Theodosia’s first instinct was to flinch as if to break away, but Mrs. Pargeter’s stroking hands and soothing but uncomprehended words gradually brought calm. The pace of the sobbing slowed, and the woman’s head sank down on to her comforter’s shoulder. Mrs. Pargeter could feel the warm dampness of tears through the thin cotton of her dress.