Mrs Pargeter's Package (17 page)

CHAPTER 39

Sergeant Karaskakis lowered his weapon, subdued by the presence of a personality stronger than his own. He was silent, awaiting orders.

Mrs Pargeter couldn't understand in detail what orders Spiro gave him, but they seemed to be of the 'Go outside, I'll deal with you later' variety. The Sergeant, with the bad grace of a cat who's just had its mouse emancipated, slunk out of the hut into the grey dawn.

'Goodness,' said Mrs Pargeter, 'am I glad to see you, Spiro! That was quite a close shave. Do you know, he was proposing to set fire to the headland around us?'

Spiro shook his head, his dark eyes more melancholy than ever. 'Stephano is a dangerous and careless fool.'

'Yes.' Mrs Pargeter was suddenly garrulous with relief. 'I do know all about what happened,' she said.

Spiro looked puzzled.

in 1959,' she explained. 'I know about the attempt to kill you, the way the outboard motor was sabotaged. And I know how it went wrong, and how Christo got hoist with his own petard, and how he got burnt and escaped to England and pretended to have come from Uruguay . . .'

Spiro still looked uncomprehending.

'Of course, you wouldn't have heard about any of that. Don't worry about it. The main thing is that I know why Joyce was killed and I know who killed her. And I've found out all about the curse your father put on Christo.'

'Curse?'

'Yes. I found it written on the back of the photograph – you know, in phenolphthalein.' The look of incomprehension in his face was now such that she explained, 'Maybe it's got a different name in Greek, but it's that stuff that's used as an indicator in chemistry, you know, to show the degree of alkaline or acidic content of . . .'

Her words drained away as she realised how little they meant to him. He did not understand even the most rudimentary details about chemistry.

And with that knowledge, she felt a whole sequence of other facts slot into place. Spiro had been the studious one who enjoyed chemistry, Christo the tearaway who wanted to own the taverna. But Chris Dover, presumed to be Christo, was the one who always wrote his secret correspondence in phenolphthalein.

Suddenly she saw a different perspective on the thirty-year-old 'accident' with the outboard motor. It was not an 'own goal' which had blown up in the perpetrator's face. It had injured – though not killed – the person for whom it had been intended.

And old Spiro's words, 'though you try to hide behind a new name', did not, as she had assumed, refer to Christo Karaskakis' adoption of the pseudonym 'Chris Dover'. They referred to Christo Karaskakis' usurpation of the name of his older brother, Spiro.

Chris Dover had not run away and changed his identity to escape the consequences of any crime he had committed. It had been to escape another attack from his homicidal brother, Christo.

And, once Spiro had fled to England, Christo had calmly taken over the identity of his identical twin, together with the taverna that he had always set his heart on owning.

The new Spiro had been confident that no one would reveal his secret. The real Spiro was too frightened of him to risk his anger again. Their father had died almost immediately after the incident, his death no doubt hastened by the knowledge of his young son's true nature. Their nine-year-old sister, Theodosia, had been traumatised into silence by witnessing the crime.

And, as for Stephano and Georgio, they were so totally the new Spiro's creatures that they represented no threat. So long as he gave them both unlimited and never to be recovered credit at the taverna, they'd keep their mouths shut.

Christo, now called Spiro, had achieved his ambition and was free to concentrate on making money out of his ill-gotten inheritance.

The facts were undeniable, but Mrs Pargeter tried to pretend they weren't. 'Well, I think you can untie us now, can't you, Spiro?' she said easily.

The implacable darkness of his eyes confirmed how forlorn her hope had been. For the first time since she had arrived on Corfu, Mrs Pargeter thought perhaps she understood the meaning of the expression 'the Evil Eye'.

'Why did you kill Joyce?' she asked.

'She was in my way,' he replied shortly.

'But how?'

'My brother was a rich man.'

'You mean you hope to inherit his money . . . ?'

Spiro did not reply, but Mrs Pargeter knew she had stumbled on the truth. All Spiro's crimes had the same motivation. His first attempt to kill his brother had been to inherit the taverna. Now he was trying once again to take what was not his.

'Was it Georgio who told you he was still alive?'

Spiro nodded. 'He was in London. He saw this man Chris Dover by chance in the street, he saw the likeness. He phoned me up to tell me.'

'And you told him to find out how much Chris Dover was worth?'

This earned another nod.

'But, if you were after his money, why didn't you make another attempt to kill your brother?'

'I think about it, but it is difficult from here. Then I hear he has died, anyway. Even better, next I hear his wife is coming out here. And then his daughter follows.'

Conchita whimpered as she took in the implication of what he was saying.

Spiro let out an unpleasant laugh and opened his hands in a gesture of satisfaction. 'St Spiridon helps all Spiros.'

'But you're not a real Spiro.'

'I am now. I might as well be.'

'Listen,' said Mrs Pargeter firmly. 'You've got something horribly wrong in all this, and that is the idea that you'll ever be able to prove you're related to your brother. Chris Dover covered his tracks so thoroughly that you don't stand a chance.'

'I'll do it,' Spiro insisted doggedly.

'You won't. So, for heaven's sake, stop this ridiculous business now. Joyce has already been killed for money that you're never going to see – and nothing can be done about that – but stop now before you harm Conchita.'

'I am going to inherit my brother's money.'

Mrs Pargeter looked into those dark eyes and saw no glimmer of hope at all. All that glowed in them was greed, an all-consuming peasant greed which was not susceptible to logic or argument. It was an obsession, a kind of madness, and a madness that could kill.

'Don't do it,' she appealed. 'Remember we are human beings. Just for a moment, think of Conchita and me as human beings.'

Spiro said nothing, but, pausing only to pick up the two petrol cans, walked out of the hut.

CHAPTER 40

Mrs Pargeter had contemplated the possibility of death many times. It was a prospect which caused her anger rather than anguish. She had a great taste for life and wanted as large a helping of it as could be cajoled out of the Great Dinnerlady in the Sky.

The idea that her life was about to end was deeply unappealing. Though aware that her happiest days – those spent in the company of the late Mr Pargeter – were probably past, there were still a great many things she wanted to do, a great many experiences she wanted to cram in before that final shutter fell.

Though she had survived close calls in the past, this time there really did seem little she could do to ameliorate her situation. Larry Lambeth still showed no signs of movement and he was not near enough for her to test whether a jogging toe might rouse him.

She was also now disconcertingly aware of the stiff breeze that came directly off the sea and found a route through the broken windows of the hut. Nor was she reassured by the glimpsed sight, through the thin light of morning, of Spiro and Sergeant Karaskakis up-ending petrol cans over the scrub some hundred yards away on the seaward side. Once the match was dropped, it would be a matter of seconds before the flames reached the tinder-dry hut.

Annoyance still remained her dominant emotion. Death by fire was not her preferred mode of exit from the life she so fervently embraced. Joan of Arc had never figured as one of her heroines. Self-centred, silly adolescent girl, in Mrs Pargeter's view. Nowadays it wouldn't have been hearing voices; she'd have drawn attention to herself by anorexia nervosa.

These angry musings were interrupted by a sound from Conchita, and Mrs Pargeter realised that, through the restrictions of her gag, the poor girl was trying to scream. Dear oh dear, thought Mrs Pargeter, I'm being very selfish here. I have at least worked out a philosophy about death. I've thought it through, while this poor kid's only in her twenties, she can't feel there's been enough in her life yet to justify a premature departure from it. I must reassure her.

'Don't worry, Conchita, it'll be all right,' she said meaninglessly.

Suddenly there was a low line of flame in front of the outlines of Spiro and Stephano, and within seconds all the view from the windows had turned angry orange. The match had been dropped.

The terrified sounds from behind Conchita's gag redoubled in intensity. Time perhaps, Mrs Pargeter thought, for a tactical lie. If she could only calm the girl and keep her cheerful for a couple of minutes, it would all be over. The smoke in that enclosed place would probably asphyxiate them before they felt the real force of the flames.

'It's all right, love,' she reassured, with no basis of truth whatsoever. 'Larry had warned Yianni we were coming up here. He's waiting nearby. He'll save us.'

This did something to steady Conchita, though of course it didn't comfort Mrs Pargeter much. Nor did the flames racing towards the hut, grotesquely parodying the warmth and brightness by which package tours to Corfu are sold.

Well, it's been a good life, she concluded, with a little nod of thanks towards the late Mr Pargeter for making it so.

Then she had a thought.

Pagan, ridiculous, yes, but she wasn't in a position to take too long in assessing the pros and cons of any course of action.

She'd tried prayer. All that had brought her had been release from Sergeant Karaskakis and his replacement by Spiro. Out of the frying pan, all too literally into the fire.

But then maybe her prayers had been misaddressed. When in Rome and all that . . . Got to abide by local customs, after all, haven't you?

And it couldn't do any harm.

'St Spiridon!' Mrs Pargeter loudly supplicated. 'Please save our lives!'

CHAPTER 41

Now of course the wind could have been about to change at that moment, anyway. Winds do change all the time for no particular reason – it's regarded as part and parcel of the job, if you happen to be born a wind – and they are particularly prone to variation near the sea shore.

But the speed with which those flames, at one moment about to swallow up the wooden hut, had in the next changed their minds and retreated, leaving only skeletal vestiges of smouldering brush in their wake, did seem more than coincidental.

Mrs Pargeter was not by nature superstitious, but thereafter she always felt a particular affection for the memory of St Spiridon and, in subsequent moments of extremity, was more than once heard to invoke his name.

The recession of the flames, which consumed lustily everything they found in their path to the point of the headland, coincided with the return to consciousness of Larry Lambeth. After a few minutes of reorientation, he released the two women from their bonds.

As they were easing their stiffened limbs, they heard approaching shouts and saw a crowd hurrying up from the village. Arming themselves with branches of brushwood, the men of Agios Nikitas attacked the fire's last pockets of resistance.

And soon they heard drawing near the drone of the first fire-fighting aeroplane.

By romantic serendipity, it was Yianni who first entered the hut to check if anything was alight in there. And a romantic novelist might have observed, from the enthusiasm with which she threw herself into his arms, that the only flame therein was the one that burned in Conchita's heart.

It was only when the last sparks of the real fire were being extinguished that the bodies were found.

Sergeant Karaskakis, fleeing from the flames, had stumbled over the cliff edge and broken his neck on the rocks below.

Spiro, by contrast, had stood his ground and the flames had consumed him so thoroughly that he could only be identified by a process of elimination.

St Spiridon had not only answered Mrs Pargeter's prayer, but had also, with a godlike facility for killing two birds with one stone, contrived at the same time to fulfil the prophecy of the older Spiro Karaskakis.

CHAPTER 42

It was the last evening of the fortnight's package. Last visits had been paid to favourite beaches. The minimarket had been raided for souvenirs – sponges, ceramic drink mats, 'No Problem' T-shirts, lighters with outlines of Corfu on them, pencils topped by white-skirted soldiers, and a good few ouzo bottles in the shape of classical Greek columns. A few people had even bought retsina, under the mistaken impression that it would taste the same when they got it home.

And now everyone had homed in on their favourite taverna for that last celebratory meal. Before the end of the evening a good few would have pushed the boat out by ordering what the menu inaccurately called lobster 'because, after all, it's our last night', others would have made the unwise decision to give the old Greek brandy a bashing 'because, after all, it's our last night', while yet more would have made rash promises to taverna-owners and waiters that they 'really would be back next year'.

And the taverna-owners and waiters of Agios Nikitas would have nodded and smiled farewell with those assurances of undying friendship which they would accord impartially to every departing visitor of the summer, before they retired to Agralias to spend the winter moaning about the decline in the tourist trade.

Though she had been well looked after at the Hotel Nausica, it did not occur to Mrs Pargeter to spend her last evening anywhere other than Spiro's taverna. Or rather Yianni's taverna, as it now was.

The young man had come to the inheritance by an easier route than his predecessor, but already showed signs of a new maturity in handling its responsibilities. With the help of his aunt Theodosia, who was taking the first faltering steps back to normal life, he promised to be a good businessman.

Already he had demonstrated a steelier side of his nature by cutting off a long-standing credit account. If Georgio wanted to continue drinking ouzo all day, from now on he was going to have to pay for it.

Georgio, soon realising that he didn't actually have any money, had turned to Ginnie and been astonished to have his appeals turned down. The worm had finally turned and she walked out on him, announcing that at the end of the season she would return permanently to England. Georgio felt confident that he could probably woo her back, but somehow never got round to doing anything about it.

After a couple of days without the means to buy drink, he readily succumbed to Yianni's offer of a job in the kitchen, where he was destined to spend the rest of his life washing up and dreaming of ever more impracticable ways of making money.

That last evening Conchita had been sitting with Mrs Pargeter, but had just gone inside the taverna. That's where she'd spent most of the evenings of the last week, sitting at the bar with a drink under the benign gaze of old Spiro, and trying to get some attention from an increasingly preoccupied Yianni.

Mrs Pargeter looked around at the crowd under the awning.

Linda from South Woodham Ferrers was regretting her decision to see whether Craig liked moussaka, as she picked oily slivers of aubergine off the white tasselled 'Corfu Sport' T-shirt she'd bought that afternoon. Keith from South Woodham Ferrers was poring over the menu with his calculator, trying to estimate the bill for that evening's meal and come up with an overall total for what the holiday had cost them. He really wouldn't mind getting back to the office now. Been feeling that for most of the last week, actually. Great to get away, of course, but a fortnight was a long time.

At another table the Secretary with Short Bleached Hair and the Secretary with Long Bleached Hair, now both more or less uniformly brown, were sitting with two squaddies they'd picked up the night before in a disco in Dassia and invited for the evening. The boys had hitched a lift to Agios Nikitas, but there was no way they'd be able to get back that night. Which of course meant that they'd have to come back to the villa. Which meant they'd try and get into bed with the girls. Which wasn't a problem in itself. But for the fact that both girls fancied the tall Yorkshire one with the butterfly tattooed on his shoulder, and neither fancied the short Welsh one with the snake tattooed up his right leg. They watched each other warily, trying to cover every move.

At another table Mr Safari Suit was setting some new arrivals at their ease. 'Been very hot today, hasn't it? Cor! Phew!'

The new arrivals decided it really was time they got their bill. Mr Safari Suit comforted himself by arranging Mrs Safari Suit artistically against the taverna wall for the 'and this was on our last evening' shot.

Mrs Pargeter decided it really hadn't been a bad fortnight. Not sure that she'd choose to go on a package holiday again, though.

She let out a little shudder as she contemplated the next day's arrangements – the steamy queueing at Corfu Airport, the inevitable delay in the departure lounge, the plastic food in the crowded plane. No, next time, she decided, she'd let Hamish Ramon Henriques make her holiday arrangements. His attitude to the business of travel was comfortingly close to that of the late Mr Pargeter.

She saw Conchita coming out of the taverna towards her, and felt a momentary pang for Joyce's death. Conchita would be travelling back tomorrow by scheduled flight, but her enjoyment of that comfort might be inhibited by the knowledge that her mother's coffin was accompanying her.

The suicide verdict, incidentally, had been ratified, which was fine by Mrs Pargeter. She didn't care whether official records were right or wrong, so long as she herself knew that justice had been done.

'Yianni busy?' she asked, as Conchita sat down.

'So what else is new?'

'Sorry you'll be saying goodbye to him tomorrow?'

'I'll survive.'

'Think you'll be back to see him again soon?'

Conchita laughed and shook her head. 'No way. Beautiful he may be, but he's as conventional as hell. Deeply shocked when I suggested he should go to bed with me.'

Mrs Pargeter, not for the first time, contemplated the cultural differences between the Corfiots and the tourists who provided their pitta bread and butter. Must put quite a strain on the men, she imagined, being surrounded all day by half-naked tourists and then going back to the rigid peasant morality of their homes.

'No,' Conchita was saying, 'only way I could come back here to Yianni would be if I married him.' A shiver passed through her. 'Just imagine it. No, most of the men I know in London may be bastards, but at least they sometimes let me be myself.'

Suddenly Mrs Pargeter stopped feeling sorry for Conchita. The girl kept meeting bastards because she wanted to meet bastards and she'd go on doing it all her life. What was more, she'd see to it that she gave them at least as much hell as they gave her.

'Hello, Mrs P. Conchita.'

Larry Lambeth had bustled up to join them. He waved to a waiter for more drinks, sat down and handed a brown envelope across to Mrs Pargeter.

'Here it is.'

No one had been able to find her passport after Sergeant Karaskakis' death. She had said maybe she should get on to the British Consul to organise a replacement, but Larry Lambeth wouldn't hear of it. 'Take for ever, that would. You leave it with me. Fact is, I'd be insulted if you didn't,' he'd said, and winked.

She pulled out the passport and studied it. 'It looks terrific.'

He smiled with quiet pride. 'Quite pleased with it myself. A first for me, actually, you know.'

'Oh, really?'

'First time I've ever had to do one for someone's real identity.'

'Ah,' said Mrs Pargeter.

She was about to ask where he'd got the original passport which he had so skilfully doctored, but stopped herself in time.

She recognised yet another of those situations when it wasn't necessary for her to know all the details. The late Mr Pargeter had trained her frightfully well.