The Moonspinners (17 page)

10

And, swiftly as a bright Phoebean dart

Strike for the Cretan isle: and here thou art!

KEATS
:
Lamia

‘Well,' said Frances, ‘it's very nice to be here. And the tea is excellent. I suppose Little Lord Fauntleroy makes it himself?'

‘Hush, for goodness' sake, he'll hear you! He says if you want him, you only have to yell, he's always around. What's more, he's rather sweet. I've fallen for him.'

‘I never yet met the male you didn't fall for,' said Frances. ‘I'd begin to think you were ill, if you weren't somewhere along the course of a love affair. I've even learned to know the stages. Well, well, this is really very pleasant, isn't it?'

We were sitting in the hotel ‘garden', in the shade of the vine. There was nobody about. Behind us, an open door gave on the empty lobby. Tony was back in the bar: faintly, round the end of the house, came the sound of talk from the café tables on the street.

The sun was slanting rapidly westward. There was a little ripple now, running across the pale silk of the sea, and the breeze stirred the sleepy scent from the carnations in the winejars. In full sunlight, at the edge of the gravel, stood a big pot of lilies.

Frances stretched her long legs in front of her, and reached for a cigarette. ‘Yes, this was a ve-ery good idea of yours. Athens at Easter could be a bit much. I can see that. I'd forgotten, till you wrote, that the Greek Easter would be later than ours. We had it last weekend when we were in Rome. I imagine the Greek country Easter'll be a bit of a contrast, and I must say I'm looking forward to it. Oh, thanks, I'd love another cup. Now, how long since I saw you? Good heavens, nearly eighteen months! Tell me all about yourself.'

I regarded her with affection.

Frances, though a first cousin, is very much older than I. She was at this time something over forty, and though I know it is a sign of immaturity to think of this as being a vast age, I know that it seemed so to me. From the earliest days I remember, Frances has been there. When I was very small I called her ‘Aunt Frances' but she put a stop to that three years ago – at the time when, after my mother's death, I went to live with her. Some people, I know find her formidable; she is tall, dark, rather angular, with a decisive sort of voice and manner, and a charm which she despises, and rarely troubles to use. Her outdoor job has given her the kind of complexion which is called ‘healthy'; she is as strong as a horse, and an excellent business woman. She dresses well, if severely. But her formidable exterior is deceiving, for she is the most genuinely tolerant person I know, and sometimes carries ‘live and let live' to alarming lengths. The only things she cannot stand are cruelty and pretentiousness. I adore her.

Which is why, on her command to ‘tell her all about myself', I did just that – at least, I plunged into a haphazard and pretty truthful account of my job, and my Athens friends. I didn't trouble to edit, though I knew that some of the latter would have fitted a bit oddly into Frances' staid Berkshire home.

She heard me out in amused silence, drinking her third cup of tea, and tapping ash into the nearest
píthos
.

‘Well, you seem to be getting a lot of fun out of life, and after all that's what you came for. How's John? You don't mention him.'

‘John?'

‘Or was it David? I forget their names, though heaven knows why I should, as your letters are spotted with them like a currant-cake, while the fit's on. Wasn't it John, the reporter from the
Athens News
?'

‘Oh, him. That was ages ago. Christmas, anyway.'

‘So it was. Come to think of it, your last two letters were remarkably blank. Heart-whole and fancy-free?'

‘Entirely.' I pulled a pink carnation near to me on its swaying stalk, and sniffed it.

‘Well, it makes a change,' said Frances mildly. ‘Of course, it's all very well having a heart like warm putty, but one of these days your impulses are going to land you in something you won't easily get out of. Now what are you laughing at?'

‘Nothing. Is the
Paolo
calling for us on Monday?'

‘Yes, all being well. You are coming with us to Rhodes, then? Good. Though just at the moment I feel I never want to move again. This is what the travel guides call “simple”, but it's nice, and terribly restful . . . Listen.'

A bee in the lilies, the soft murmur of the sea on the shingle, the subdued Greek voices . . .

‘I told Tony I wished they could keep it like this,' I said. ‘It's heaven just as it is.'

‘Mmm. And you were right, my love. The flowers I've seen so far, even just along the roadside, are enough to drive a woman to drink.'

‘But you came by boat!'

‘Oh, yes, but when we were stuck that Sunday night, in Patras, three of us hired a car and went exploring. We didn't have time to go far before dark, but I made the driver stop so often, while I rushed off into the fields, that he thought I was mad – or else that my bladder was permanently diseased. But as soon as he gathered that it was just the flowers I was looking at, do you know what he did?'

I laughed. ‘Picked some for you?'

‘Yes! I came back to the car, and there he was, six foot two of what
you
would recognize as magnificent Hellenic manhood, waiting for me with a bunch of orchids and anemones, and a kind of violet that sent my temperature up by several degrees. Aren't they sweet?'

‘Well, I don't know which violet—'

‘Not the violets, ass, the Greeks.' She stretched again, luxuriously. ‘My goodness, I'm glad I came! I'm going to enjoy every minute, I can see that. Why, oh
why
do we live in England, when we could live here? And incidentally, why does Tony? Live here, I mean, when he could live in England?'

‘He said there was money to be made here when they put up the new wing, which is a polite way of saying when they build a hotel that
is
a hotel. I wondered if he had money in it himself. He
says
he's got a weak chest.'

‘Hm. He looks a pretty urban type to settle here, even for a short spell . . . unless the
beaux yeux
of the owner have got something to do with it. He came with him from London, didn't he? What's
he
like?'

‘Stratos Alexiakis? How did you – oh, of course, I told you the set-up in my letter, I forgot. He seems very nice. I say, Frances.'

‘Mmm?'

‘Would you care for a walk along the shore? It gets dark here fairly soon. I – I'd quite like a stroll, myself.'

This was not true, but what I had to say could hardly be said under the listening windows.

‘All right,' she said amiably, ‘when I've finished this cup of tea. What did you do with yourself in Chania, if that's how you pronounce it?'

‘You don't say the “ch” like ours; it's a
chi
, a sort of breathed “k”, like in “loch” . . . Chania.'

‘Well, what was it like?'

‘Oh, it – it was very interesting. There are Turkish mosques.'

Another thing I should have mentioned about Frances: you can't fool her. At least, I can't. She's had too much practice, I suppose, in detecting the little off-white lies of my childhood. She glanced at me, as she shook another cigarette loose from the pack. ‘Was it, now? Where did you stay?'

‘Oh, it's the biggish hotel in the middle of the town, I forget the name. You're chain-smoking, you'll get cancer.'

‘No doubt.' Her voice came muffled through the lighting of the cigarette. She looked at me across the flame, then she got to her feet.

‘Come along, then. Why the shore?'

‘Because it's lonely.'

She made no comment. We picked our way through the vivid clumps of ice daisies, to find that a rough path of a sort led along the low, dry rocks that backed the shingle. Further along there was a ridge of hard sand, where we could walk side by side.

I said: ‘I've got something I want to talk to you about.'

‘Last night's stay in Chania?'

‘Clever, aren't you? Yes, more or less.'

‘Is that why you laughed when I said that your impulses'd land you in trouble one day?' As I was silent, she glanced at me sideways, quizzically. ‘Not that I'm any judge, but Chania seems an odd place to choose to misbehave in.'

‘I wasn't even
in
Chania last night! And I haven't —!' I broke off, and suddenly giggled. ‘As a matter of fact, I
did
spend the night with a man, now that I come to think about it. I'd forgotten that.'

‘He seems,' said Frances tranquilly, ‘to have made a great impression. Well, go on.'

‘Oh, Frances, darling, I do love you! No, it's not some foully embarrassing love tangle – when did I ever? It's – I've run into trouble – not my trouble, someone else's, and I wanted to tell you about it, and ask you if there's anything in the world I can do.'

‘If it's not your trouble, do you have to do anything?'

‘Yes.'

‘A heart like warm putty,' said Frances resignedly, ‘and sense to match. All right, what's his name?'

‘How d'you know it's a he?'

‘It always is. Besides, I assume it's the one you spent the night with.'

‘Oh. Yes.'

‘Who is he?'

‘He's a civil engineer. His name's Mark Langley.'

‘Ah.'

‘It isn't “ah” at all! As a matter of fact,' I said, very clearly, ‘I rather detest him.'

‘Oh, God,' said Frances, ‘I knew this would happen one day. No, don't glare at me, I'm only teasing. Well, go on. You've spent the night with a detestable engineer called Mark. It makes a rousing start. Tell all.'

Her advice, when I had at length told all, was concise and to the point.

‘He told you to get out and stay out, and he's got this man Lambis to look after him. They sound a pretty capable pair, and your Mark's probably fairly well all right by now. The two of them will be back on their boat, you may be sure, with everything under control. I should stay out.'

‘Y-yes, I suppose so.'

‘Besides, what could you do?'

‘Well, obviously, I could tell him what I've found out. I mean, I'm absolutely certain it must be Tony and Stratos Alexiakis and Sofia.'

‘Quite probably. Granted that your Mark remembers accurately what he saw and heard, and that there was an Englishman there on the scene of the murder, along with a man in Cretan dress and another Greek, and a woman . . .' She paused a moment. ‘Yes, once you've accepted Tony's involvement, the others follow as the night the day. It's a little closed circle, Tony, Stratos, Sofia, Josef – and the stranger, whether English or Greek, whom Tony certainly knew and talked to.'

I stopped in my tracks, staring at her. ‘Him? But how? He wasn't there. There was only the Greek, and the Cretan, and—'

‘My dear,' she said gently, ‘you've got yourself so involved with Mark's side of this that you've forgotten how it started.'

‘How it started?'

‘There was a murdered man,' she said.

Silence, broken only by the crisping of the shingle at the sea's edge. I stooped, picked up a flat pebble, and skimmed it at the surface of the water. It sank immediately. I straightened up, dusting my hands.

‘I've been awfully stupid,' I said humbly.

‘You've been right in the thick of it, honey, and you've been frightened. It's easy for me, walking calmly in at half-time. I can see things more clearly. Besides, I'm not emotionally involved.'

‘Who said I was?'

‘Aren't you?'

I was still watching the place where my pebble had struck. ‘Frances, Colin Langley's only fifteen.'

She said gently: ‘Darling, that's the point. That's why I'm telling you to keep away from it unless you actually do find out what's happened to him. Otherwise you might only do harm. Look, don't you think we'd better go back now? The sun's nearly gone, and the going's getting beastly rough.'

This was true. As I had told my story, we had been making our way round the bay, and had reached the foot of the big cliffs at the far side. What had looked from the distance like a line of shingle round their feet, proved to be a narrow storm beach of big boulders piled there by the south wind and the sea. Above this, between the topmost boulders and the living cliff, ran a narrow path, steep and awkward. It skirted the headland, then dived steeply down towards the crescent beach of a small, sandy bay.

‘It looks nice along there,' said Frances. ‘I wonder if that's your Bay of the Dolphins?'

‘I think that's further along, the water's too shallow here at the edge, and Georgi said you could get right out along the rocks above deep water, and even dive. Look, that must be it, beyond the next headland, I think you can see the rock stacks running out. With the sun going down behind them, they look just like shadows.'

We stood for a few minutes in silence, shading our eyes against the glitter of the brilliant sea. Then Frances turned away.

‘Come along, you're tired. And you could do with a good stiff drink before dinner, by the look of you.'

‘It's an idea.' But my voice sounded dreary, even to myself. I turned to follow her back the way we had come.

‘Don't think I don't know how you feel.' Her tone was matter-of-fact and curiously soothing. ‘It isn't just to keep you out of trouble that I'm telling you to keep away from Mark. I can give you good reasons. If you went trailing up there looking for him, you might be seen, followed, anything: you might lead them to him. Or, if you made them suspicious, you might – and this is more important – frighten them into killing Colin . . . if, that is, Colin is still alive.'