Mrs Pargeter's Package (16 page)

CHAPTER 36

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 questions 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.

'She's a witness of what we done,' said Larry Lambeth twitchily. 'She'll tell Stephano and Georgio and that lot.'

'She can't tell them. She can't speak.'

'She has ways of communication.'

As if taking his words as a cue, Theodosia suddenly let out a different sound. A strange, unearthly sound, that seemed to come from deep within her, torn painfully from her frame.

It took a moment before Mrs Pargeter realised that the woman was speaking.

The voice was rasping and rusty, but with an incongruously innocent lightness. Through its strangeness, it was the voice of a child, the child Theodosia had been the last time she had spoken, before experiencing the shock which had struck her dumb for thirty years.

'What is she saying?' whispered Mrs Pargeter urgently.

'She says that she heard me read her father's curse. It frightens her very much.'

More strange sounds were dragged from Theodosia's body.

Larry Lambeth interpreted. 'She did not know that Christo had deliberately sabotaged the boat. She saw the fire. It was terrible.'

Theodosia mouthed hopelessly, once again robbed of speech by this recollection. Mrs Pargeter felt sure it must have been the sight of her brother apparently going up in flames that had traumatised her all those years before.

But the woman regained control and once again the uneven, unaccustomed speech began.

'She hates her brother now she knows the truth. She adds her curse to her father's curse. She hopes he will die.'

Too late, thought Mrs Pargeter. That merciful tumour on the brain of Christo Karaskakis – or Chris Dover – had saved him from the literal fulfilment of old Spiro's curse. But who knew what flames of conscience had scorched him at the moment of his death?

Or, though she didn't really believe in hell, she could recognise that the idea of Chris Dover roasting there for all eternity would neatly tie up all the ends of his story.

A new urgency came into Theodosia's voice.

'She says they've got the girl.'

'Girl?' Mrs Pargeter echoed. 'Conchita?'

Yes, of course. At the time she had seen nothing odd in Conchita's non-appearance at Spiro's Greek party, putting it down to some tiff between the girl and Yianni. But now the absence took on more sinister colouring. And that had been late evening. Conchita could have been missing for up to seven hours.

Larry Lambeth's translation confirmed her worst fears. 'The dark-haired English girl, she says.'

'Who's got her?'

He urgently relayed the question to Theodosia.

'The tourist woman – that must be Ginnie – the tourist woman arranged to meet her on the headland, but Stephano and Georgio were waiting there, and they took the girl.'

'Oh no!' Mrs Pargeter could not forget the reference to Stephano in old Spiro's deposition. Stephano had aided and abetted Christo in the earlier crime. Christo was dead, but Sergeant Karaskakis was still very much alive and very dangerous. 'Where have they taken her?'

The translation came back quickly. 'There's an old fisherman's hut on the headland. They've got her in there.'

Mrs Pargeter grabbed Larry Lambeth's hand. 'Come on! We must get there – quickly! There have already been too many deaths in Agios Nikitas!'

CHAPTER 37

The headland referred to was one of the scrub-covered arms that encircled the bay of Agios Nikitas. It was a steep-sided spine of rock, the end of which thousands of years before had dropped away into the sea to form cliffs. There were a couple of paths across the ridge which led to tiny bays otherwise accessible only by boat, but they were little used. The thorny undergrowth was inimical to travellers in the tourist uniform of shorts and T-shirts, and the gradient unappealing in the daytime sun.

Heat raised no problems for Mrs Pargeter and Larry Lambeth, but the steep climb and the sharp thorns did. They were both scratched and breathless by the time they approached the dilapidated hut. The darkness was diluted by a thin sliver of moon and their eyes had quickly accommodated to the conditions.

'I'll go first,' Larry murmured.

There had been a path to the door in the days when fishermen used the building regularly, but this now showed only as an indentation in the surrounding scrub, which muscled up close, threatening to engulf the hut. No light showed through the broken glass of the windows, and the only sound was the incessant restlessness of the sea.

Larry moved cautiously forward to the door, found the handle and pushed it inward with a sudden movement. He paused, but, the silence remaining unbroken, moved forward and was lost in the darkness of the interior.

There were two sounds. A soft thud. A harder thud.

Then silence reasserted itself.

Whatever dangers lay inside the hut, Mrs Pargeter had come too far to shirk them. It was no time for pussyfooting. Her dead friend's daughter was in danger.

Coolly, Mrs Pargeter pushed through the encroaching brushwood and in through the open door. As she did so, she announced in a clear voice, 'Good morning. I am Mrs Pargeter and I am coming in to see what's happening.'

The darkness she entered was total. Her feet stepped firmly across the floor of dusty rock.

There was a loud clatter behind her as the door was slammed shut. She turned, to be met by the dazzling beam of a flashlight.

'You are a very nosey woman, Mrs Pargeter,' said a voice she recognised.

'With some justification, I think . . .' she said, 'Sergeant Karaskakis.'

CHAPTER 38

Now she could see the rectangular outline of his uniform against the wall of the hut. His face was in shadow, but she could supply for herself the evil leer beneath that triangular moustache.

She turned to look round the hut. Conchita was tied to an old wooden chair, which had in turn been tied to one of the hut's upright supports. Though the girl strained to communicate, only a liquid gurgle could penetrate the gag made by her own scarf, whose overpaid designer had never envisaged this usage for his creation.

Larry Lambeth lay face downward, unmoving, on the floor. Mrs Pargeter rushed to his side.

'It's all right. He's only unconscious,' said Sergeant Karaskakis languidly, as he hooked the flashlight to an overhead beam.

Mrs Pargeter turned Larry over. His eyes did not react, but his breathing was regular. She looked up to the Sergeant, who loomed above her, gently tapping against his palm the nightstick which had presumably knocked Larry out.

'As I say, you are very nosey. Foolishly nosey. Too nosey for your own good, Mrs Pargeter.'

She stood up and faced him, remembering more of the late Mr Pargeter's words of wisdom. 'The only situation which might justify panic is one in which panic is likely to help. Such a situation never arises. Though pretended panic may sometimes cause a useful diversion, real panic can never be anything other than a waste of energy.'

'I do know, Sergeant,' she said, 'why all this is happening. It is the crime of Christo Karaskakis that is behind it all.'

He stiffened at the mention of the name.

'And Joyce Dover was killed because it was feared that she might reveal the secrets of that crime. Which was nonsense. She had no desire to expose anyone. All she wanted to do was to find out about her husband's past. All his life Chris had managed to keep the truth about his background secret, but his conscience would not allow him to let that secret die with him. In what was perhaps a final gesture of honesty, he offered his wife the chance of knowing the truth. He saw to it that she received a letter after his death. And that letter led her here to Agios Nikitas.'

Sergeant Karaskakis casually pulled a sheet of paper out of his pocket. 'Might this be what you are speaking

of?'

Even in that inadequate lighting, Mrs Pargeter could see the distinctively purple writing on one side of the paper.

'Yes. You found that in Joyce's luggage at the Villa Eleni.'

'So?' he asked insolently, shoving the letter back into his pocket.

So . . . that means you were definitely there the night she was murdered. But Mrs Pargeter didn't bother to say it out loud.

'Everything you say,' the Sergeant continued, 'may be very interesting . . . but I don't know what relevance it has to me.'

'It is relevant to you because you were involved in Christo's original crime. You and Georgio helped him steal the boat, you helped him sabotage the outboard motor. You were an accessory to the attempted murder that went so horribly wrong.'

'You've done a lot of research, Mrs Pargeter,' he said, without intonation of either praise or blame.

'Yes. Where's Georgio?' she asked suddenly.

The Sergeant smiled. 'He has gone home. Gone home with his English whore to get drunk. Georgio was always feeble. He can't stand it when things get too hot. Thirty years ago, he was with us when we stole the boat, but when we start to fix the outboard, he gets afraid and goes away. He is not a man, Georgio.'

Mrs Pargeter was pleased that Sergeant Karaskakis made no attempt to deny his crime. But her pleasure was not unmingled with other emotions. His ready admission of guilt suggested that he was not too worried by the possibility of her surviving to bear witness against him. She knew she must try and keep him talking as long as possible, while her mind desperately raced to see a way out of her predicament.

'Sergeant, there was no need to kill Joyce Dover. She represented no threat to you. And there is certainly no need to harm Conchita. You should release her.'

'No.'

'Then at least take the gag off. No one can hear her shouting out here.'

'No. She talks too much,' he said, affronted. 'She talks rudely. She does not behave as a woman should behave.'

It was not the moment to enter into a feminist debate, so Mrs Pargeter asked coolly, 'What are you planning to do with her then? With all of us, come to that?'

'What happened with the boat,' he began slowly, 'has been a secret for thirty years. We want it to remain a secret for ever.'

'Fine,' said Mrs Pargeter. 'That suits us fine. We don't want to dig up the past. When we get back to England, we'll never think about it again, promise. I can assure you, your little crime may seem pretty important out here in Agios Nikitas, but the rest of the world has no interest in it at all.'

'We cannot take risks, I'm afraid. Christo would not wish such risks to be taken.'

'You shouldn't still care what Christo thinks. Show a bit of independence. Make a decision of your own for once in your life.'

This approach did not unfortunately have the desired effect; Sergeant Karaskakis seemed instead to read it as a challenge to his masculinity. 'Don't you dare speak to me like that! Or I will gag you like the other one!'

'Gagging me won't help you at all.'

'It will, Mrs Pargeter. So will tying you up.'

As he spoke, he reached behind him for a hank of rope. She struggled, but a woman in her late sixties was no match for a man more than ten years younger. Her arms were quickly trussed behind her and she was strapped against another upright beam beside Conchita.

'All right, well done,' she taunted him. 'So you've managed to knock out one man from behind and tie up two women. What do you want – a medal for bravery?'

'Mrs Pargeter,' he sneered, 'your death is one that I will not regret at all.'

'Oh, I see.' She was still managing – with some difficulty – to keep the insolence in her voice. 'And how are you proposing that I should be killed?'

He gave her a smile, though there was no vestige of humour in it. 'This is a very dry island in the summer. There are many fires. A wooden building like this would not survive long in a fire.'

Conchita gurgled and struggled as she heard this spelling out of their fate, but Mrs Pargeter still contrived to appear unruffled, even though she had just noticed two petrol cans against the wall behind the Sergeant. 'Fires do get investigated, you know. If you're proposing to use that petrol, traces would be left. Arson is a fairly simple crime to recognise.'

'So? There is a lot of arson on the island already. Men from other villages may be jealous of Agios Nikitas' success with the tourist trade. They will be blamed. As I say, there are many such crimes. It would not be thought strange.'

'But some of the details might be thought strange. The fact that two of the charred bodies had been tied up is the kind of thing that might be noticed.'

His mirthless smile grew broader. 'That would depend, of course, on who was conducting the investigation. I represent the authorities here in Agios Nikitas. I would be the first person on the scene of the tragedy.'

'So you reckon you could tamper with the evidence again – just as you did after Joyce's death?'

He shrugged.

His next words were more chilling than anything he had said up until that point. 'Mind you, it would probably be simpler if the bodies were found
not
tied up . . .'

'You mean dead before the fire got to them?'

'Why not?' Once again he tapped his nightstick against his palm. He looked across at the two women, assessing his next move.

Mrs Pargeter was not a religious woman. She was not convinced that God existed, and so her philosophy had always been to enjoy this life to the full, in case the concept of a future life was merely misleading propaganda circulated to control the worst excesses of public behaviour. But she prayed at that moment.

And, as Sergeant Karaskakis advanced towards her with his nightstick upraised, her prayer was answered.

The door burst open.

'No, Stephano! Don't do it!'

Framed in the doorway against the first paleness of dawn stood Spiro.