Tickled to Death and Other Stories of Crime and Suspense Read online

  The proprietor of the bar shrugged that round-shouldered gesture that encompasses the whole world of marital misery.

  Brad chuckled. “Sure beats me why people get married at all.”

  Inspector Kantalakis and the others gave man-of-the-world laughs, siding with him and conveniently forgetting their own tenacious little wives. The American turned to me. “You married?”

  I shook my head. “Never felt the necessity.”

  “Too right. There is no necessity.”

  The married men laughed again, slightly less easily. Brad called their bluff. “Now come on, all you lot got wives. Give me one good reason why, one argument in favour of marriage.”

  Inspector Kantalakis guffawed. “Well, there’s sex . . .”

  “You don’t have to get married for that,” I said.

  The Inspector looked at me with distaste. For some reason he never seemed to like me much.

  “Come on, just one argument for marriage,” insisted Brad.

  They looked sheepish. Faced by this transatlantic sophisticate, none of them was going to show himself up by mentioning love, children, or religion. They wanted to appear modern, and were silent.

  “You think of any reason, Rick?”

  “Money,” I said, partly for the laugh I knew the word would get, but also because the idea had been going through my mind for some years. Marriage remains one of the few legal ways that someone without exceptional talents can make a quick and significant change in his material circumstances. I reinforced the point, playing for another laugh. “Yes, I reckon that’s the only thing that’d get me to the altar. I’m prepared to marry for money.”

  As the laugh died, Brad looked at me shrewdly. “If that’s so, then you ought to set your cap at what’s just arriving.”

  I turned to see the girls from Villa Costas getting out of a hire car. “Those two,” Brad continued, “are the daughters of L. K. Stratton of Stratton Petrochemicals. When the old man goes, the elder one gets the lot.”

  I was feeling sore. The two girls had joined us at the table and had a couple of drinks. Seeing them together again had only reinforced my previous impression. Miss S. (Samantha) Stratton was not only beautiful, but also poised and entertaining. Miss C. (Candice, to give her full name) Stratton was not only drab in appearance, but mouselike and tentative in conversation. I waited for a lull in the chat, so that I could ask Samantha to dance. If she had needed any recommendation other than that body, Brad’s words had just supplied it.

  But the minute I was about to suggest a dance, damn me if Brad, who seemed to know the girls quite well, didn’t say, “C’mon, Sam, let’s bop,” and lead her off into the flashing interior of the disco. The way they started dancing suggested that they knew each other very well.

  Within minutes, Niko and his relations and Inspector Kantalakis had melted away, leaving me in a role I had suffered too often in double dates from schooltime onwards—stuck with the ugly one.

  And what made it worse was that I gathered in this case she was also the poor one.

  I stole a look across at her. The sun had already started its work on her pale flesh. The nose glowed; in a couple of days the skin would be coming off like old wallpaper.

  She caught my eye and gave a gauche little smile, then looked wistfully to the thundering interior.

  No, no, I wasn’t going to be caught that way. That terrible old feeling that you ought to ask a girl to dance. Hell, I was twenty-six, not some creepy little adolescent.

  Still, I had to say something, or just leave. “Your big sister seems to be enjoying herself,” I commented sourly.

  “Half-sister, actually. And only big in the sense that she’s taller than I am.”

  “You mean you’re older than she is?”

  “Two years and four months older.”

  “Would you like to dance?”

  Candice was very shy and I played with her exemplary tact. Met her every evening for most of the next week. Picked her up at the Villa Costas and took her down to Niko’s. She was too shy to go there on her own, and Sam and Brad (who turned out to be engaged, for God’s sake) seemed anxious to be off on their own most of the time.

  So I courted Candice like a dutiful boy-next-door. Looked at her soulfully, danced close, kissed her goodbye, nothing more. I was the kind of young man every mother would like their daughter to meet—serious, respectful, with intentions honourable even to the point of matrimony.

  And, once I’d written off any chance with Samantha, Candice really didn’t seem too bad. Not unattractive at all. Any personal lustre she lacked I could readily supply by thinking of her father’s millions.

  The fourth night, as I kissed her goodbye with boyish earnestness, I explained that a new planeload of tourists was arriving the next day and I wouldn’t have time to pick her up. She looked disappointed, which showed I was getting somewhere. Rather than not see me, she agreed to go under her own steam to Niko’s, meet me there at nine. That was a big step for her. I promised I wouldn’t be late.

  By the middle of the following afternoon it was clear I was going to be. The flight from London was delayed by an hour and a half.

  Never mind. Still the dutiful, solicitous boy-next-door, I rang the Villa Costas. Brad answered. Sorry, would he mind telling Candice I couldn’t get to Niko’s till half-past ten? Either I’d see her there or pick her up usual time the next evening.

  Sure, Brad’d see she got the message.

  When I saw her face at ten-twenty that night at Niko’s, it was clear she hadn’t got the message. She was sitting at the same table as, but somehow not with, Niko’s relations and Inspector Kantalakis. And she looked furious.

  It didn’t surprise me. Greek men don’t really approve of women, even tourists, going to bars alone, and that lot wouldn’t have made any secret of their feelings. I moved forward with smiling apologies on my lips.

  But I didn’t get a chance to make them. Candice rose to her feet. “I only stayed,” she spat out, “to tell you that I think you’re contemptible, and that we will not meet again.”

  “Look, I left a message with Brad. I said I’d be late and . . .”

  “It’s not just your lateness I’m talking about. Goodbye.” And she swept off to the hire car.

  I sat down, shaken. Inspector Kantalakis was looking at me with a rather unpleasant smile. “What the hell did you say to her?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “I may have mentioned your views on marriage.”

  “What? Oh shit—you mean about marrying for money?”

  “I may have mentioned that, yes.”

  “But when I said it, it was only a joke.”

  “You sounded pretty serious to me,” said the Inspector, confirming my impression that he didn’t like me one bit.

  But that evening wasn’t over. I started hitting the local paint-stripper brandy. I was furious. The Inspector and the others sauntered off, as if satisfied by their evening’s destruction. I gazed bitterly across the black sea to the few mysterious lights of Albania.

  “Rick.” I don’t know how long had passed before the sound broke into my gloom. I looked up.

  It was Samantha. And she was crying.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “It’s that bastard, Brad . . .”

  “Oh. I’ve got a bone to pick with him too. What’s he done?”

  “Oh, he’s just . . . It’s always the same. He treats me badly and he goes off with some other girl and always reckons he can just pick up again as if nothing has happened and . . . Well, this is the last time, the last time . . .” She was crying a lot by then.

  “Can I get you a drink or . . .?”

  “No, I just want to go back to the villa. I was looking for Candy. I wanted a lift. Brad’s driven off in his car and . . .”

  “Candy’s gone, I’m afraid.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’ll give you a lift.”

  When we were in the car park, she was seized by another burst of crying and turned towar
ds me. Instinctively my arms were round her slender, soft, soft body and I held her tight as the spasms subsided.

  “Doesn’t take you long,” said a voice in Greek.

  I saw Inspector Kantalakis’ sardonic face in the gloom.

  “Mind your own business,” I said. At least, that would be a paraphrase. The expression on the Inspector’s face showed that I was making great strides with my colloquial Greek.

  “She’s upset,” I continued virtuously. “I’m just comforting her, as a friend.”

  But I wasn’t, I wasn’t.

  Amazing how quickly things can change. Actually, since by “things” I mean women, I suppose it’s not so amazing.

  I got to know a lot more about Samantha on that drive back, and I discovered that appearances can be distinctly deceptive. For a start, the great engagement with Brad was not, as it appeared, the marriage of true minds, but a kind of possessive blackmail exerted on an unwilling girl by a selfish and violent man. She had been trying to break it off for years.

  Also—and this was the bit I enjoyed hearing—the reason for the quarrel of that night had been her admitting she fancied someone else. Me.

  “But if you’re so keen to get rid of him, why did you mind his going off with another girl?”

  “Only because I know he’ll be back. He never stays away for long. And then he thinks he can just pick up where he left off.”

  “Hmm. But he couldn’t do that if he found you’d got someone else.”

  “That’s true.”

  The car had stopped outside Villa Costas. We were suddenly in each other’s arms. Her body spoke its clear message to mine, while our tongues (when free) mumbled meaningless nothings. Yes, she wanted me. Yes, I was the only man who she’d ever felt like that about.

  But no, I’d better not come into the villa now. Because of Candy . . . And she didn’t really fancy the beach. Tomorrow. Tomorrow afternoon at three. She’d see that Candy was out. And then . . .

  The way she kissed me, and where she kissed me, left me in no doubt as to what would happen then.

  I arrived sharp at three the following afternoon in a state of . . . well, let’s say in a predictable state of excitement.

  But things weren’t initially as private as I had hoped. Theodosia, the live-in maid, was sitting on the verandah under the shade of an olive tree. (Corfiots, unlike the tourists, regard sun as a necessary evil, and avoid it when possible.) She grinned at me in a way that I found presumptuously knowing.

  And then, as if that wasn’t enough, Candice Stratton appeared from the villa and stood for a moment blinded by the sun. She wore a bikini in a multi-coloured stripe that accentuated her dumpiness; she carried a box of Turkish Delight that would no doubt, in time, accentuate it further. The other hand held a striped towel and an Agatha Christie.

  When her eyes had accommodated to the brightness, they saw me, and an expression of loathing took over her face. “You bastard! I said I never wanted to see you again. So don’t think you can come crawling back.”

  Any intentions I might have had to be nice to her vanished at that. “I didn’t come to see you,” I said, and walked past her into the villa. I felt Theodosia’s inquisitive eyes follow me.

  Samantha was on the balcony in the white bikini. Momentarily I played the aggrieved lover. “I thought you were going to see Candy was out.”

  “Sorry, we got delayed. Brad came round.”

  I hadn’t reckoned on that.

  “Don’t worry, Rick. I sent him off with a flea in his ear.” She looked at me levelly. “I haven’t changed my mind.”

  I relaxed. “How’d he take it?”

  “Usual arrogance. Said he’d be back. Even tried his old trick of making up to Candy to make me jealous. Brought her a big box of Turkish Delight and all that. He ought to know by now it doesn’t work.”

  “On you or on her?”

  “On me, you fool.” She rose and put an arm round my waist. Together we watched Candy across the little private bay, settling on her towel for further ritual peeling.

  I looked into Samantha’s brown eyes, screwed up against the glare of the sun. I was aware of the tracery of fine lines around them as her body pushed against mine.

  “Candy be out there for some time?” I murmured.

  “You betcha. She’ll eat her way right through that box of Turkish Delight. Always eats when she’s unhappy.”

  My hand glided up the curve of her back and gave the bikini strap a gentle twang. “Shall we go inside?”

  There was a double bed (a rarity in the world of Corforamic, another luxury feature of the Villa Costas). We lay on it and I reached more purposefully for the strap.

  “Oh damn,” said Samantha.

  “What?”

  “Candy didn’t take her drink.”

  “Hmm?”

  “There’s a large Coca-Cola in the fridge. She was going to take it with her.”

  “So?” I shrugged.

  “So . . . if she hasn’t got it, she’ll be back here as soon as she’s thirsty. And the Turkish Delight’s going to make her very thirsty.”

  “Ah.”

  “You take it over to her.”

  “But she doesn’t want to see me . . .”

  “Then we won’t be disturbed.” There was a kind of logic in that. “Go on, Rick. And while you’re away, I’ll slip out of these heavy clothes.”

  When I got back, Samantha had slipped out of her few milligrams of clothes. She had on nothing but a bottle of Remy Martin and two glasses on the flat table of her stomach.

  Candy had been predictably annoyed to see me, but had accepted the bottle of Coke wordlessly. And Theodosia’s beady little eyes had followed me all the way across the beach and back.

  But I soon forgot both of them. Samantha’s body would have cleaned out the memory bank of a computer.

  With the body and the brandy, time telescoped and distorted. We caressed and made love and dozed and caressed and made love and dozed . . . Sam’s hands had the softness of a mouth and her mouth the versatility of fingers, so that after a time I ceased trying to work out which bit was doing what and succumbed to the bliss of anatomical confusion.

  Darkness came and we didn’t notice it. Through the sea-breathing blackness our bodies found new games to play, and as dawn started its first grey probings, we still found the possibilities had not been exhausted.

  I didn’t hear whether Candice came in or not. Quite honestly, I had other things on my mind. Not only on my mind, either.

  Sleep eventually claimed us, but in my dreams the ecstasy seemed to continue.

  It was therefore an unpleasant shock to be woken by the sight of Inspector Kantalakis at the foot of the bed, and by the sound of his voice saying, in English, “Still furthering your marriage plans, Mr Lawton?”

  We both sat up. Samantha raised a sheet to cover her breasts, and I was pleased about that. I felt a proprietary interest; they weren’t there to be drooled over by Greek policemen.

  She was still half-asleep. “Marriage?” she echoed. “You did mean it, Rick, what you said last night, about wanting to marry me?”

  “Uh?” I was still pretty much asleep too.

  “I have bad news,” said Inspector Kantalakis.

  We looked at him blearily.

  “Miss Stratton, your sister was found this morning on the beach. Dead.”

  “What?”

  “She appears to have been poisoned.”

  I don’t know if you’ve ever been involved in a murder inquiry in Greece, but let me tell you, it is something to be avoided. Questions, questions, questions, endlessly repeated in hot concrete police cells. And expressions on the cops’ faces that show they don’t subscribe to the old British tradition of people being innocent until proved guilty.

  I was with them for about 24 hours, I suppose, and the first thing I did when I got out was to go up to the Villa Costas. Sam looked shaken. She’d had quite a grilling too, though some connection of her father’s had pulled strings thr
ough the American Embassy in Athens and it hadn’t taken as long as mine.

  “And now the bastard’s disappeared,” were her first words.

  “Who?” My mind wasn’t working very well.

  “Brad.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Brad must have poisoned her.”

  “Why?” I couldn’t catch up with all this.

  “Because of the money.”

  “Uh?”

  “He wanted me and Daddy’s money. With Candy dead, I inherit.”

  “Good Lord, that never occurred to me.”

  “Well, it’s true.”

  “But how did he do it?”

  “Obvious. The Turkish Delight.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “The Inspector says he hasn’t had the forensic analysis yet—everything takes that much longer on an island—but I’d put money on the results.”

  “Brad’ll never get away with it.”

  “Oh, he’ll have sorted out some sort of alibi. He’s devious. He will get away with it, unless we can find some proof of his guilt.”

  “But it will all have been for nothing if he doesn’t get you.”

  “Yes.” She sounded listless.

  “And he hasn’t got you, has he?”

  She pulled herself together and looked at me with a little smile. “No, he hasn’t. You have.”

  “So that’s all right.”

  She nodded, but still seemed troubled. “The only thing that worries me . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “Is that he does still have power over me when I see him.”

  “Then we must ensure you don’t see him. If he’s disappeared, that doesn’t sound too difficult. Anyway, as soon as the analysis of the Turkish Delight comes through, the police’ll be after him.”

  “But suppose they’re not. Suppose he’s sorted out some kind of alibi . . .”

  “Don’t worry.” Suddenly I was full of crusading spirit. “If the police won’t do it, I’ll prove myself that he poisoned Candy.”

  “Oh, thank you, Rick. Thank God I’ve got you.”