Nemesis of the Dead (23 page)

Corrie was fascinated, mesmerized, succumbing readily to the world of myth and mystery that she had been unable to resist since she arrived.

‘Are you saying that Nemesis summoned us here to avenge Lavinia’s death?’

‘Of course. Nemesis is vengeful fate, personified as a remorseless goddess, the implacable executrix of justice – she could not allow it to pass unpunished. On Katastrophos we believe the dead have the power to punish the living if atonement for their death has in any way been neglected. We all owed Mrs Braithwaite a debt in some way. Now those debts are paid and her murder is avenged – and everyone played their part in it.’

‘Yes, I suppose we did,’ mused Corrie. ‘Diana and I tricked her murderer and forced his confession. Jack and Sid arrested him. Tina saved Ellie’s life so she was able to send us, via Tim, valuable forensic information about the toxin before it decomposed, and Marjorie sadly witnessed her husband’s death from the same poison – but provided more incriminating evidence to ensure the murderer is convicted.’

‘Leave off, you two. You’re giving me the creeps.’ Sid shivered. ‘You don’t believe all that divine vengeance stuff, do you Jack?’

Jack shrugged. ‘I believe there are more layers to life and people than just what you see on top. And I believe coppers like me are put here to stop murderers like Cuthbert Gordon. Whether Nemesis has a hand in it depends on your personal beliefs, I guess.’

‘What the hell’s “hubris” when it’s at home?’ asked Sid.

‘Hubris is exaggerated, overbearing pride,’ answered Corrie. ‘Professor Gordon certainly had plenty of that.’ Corrie knew little about Nemesis, certainly not as much as Tina, but one fact had stuck in her mind – Nemesis had been dealing out her brand of justice on Olympus long before Zeus arrived.

‘A toast is called for, I think,’ said Sid, raising his coffee cup. ‘To Nemesis!’

‘Nemesis!’ they echoed.

Tina drank then solemnly threw a few drops in the dust as a libation to the divine settler of scores.

Two Greek policemen came to escort Professor Gordon on to the police launch. The young officers had never been to Katastrophos but had heard many imaginative and disturbing rumours about it. They were formal, efficient and wary. Gordon, incongruous in an immaculate Ossie Clark suit and handcuffs, was meek and compliant – no sign of hubris now. As they led him up the gangplank, Ariadne scuttled up out of nowhere and pushed a flowering hibiscus plant into his manacled hands. The fact that he had been responsible for the near fatal poisoning of her daughter, Maria, on the monastery steps was totally beyond her comprehension and she still regarded him with abject adoration. A blissful smile spread across the professor’s face and, ignoring Ariadne, he began to talk lovingly to the flowers.

A small crowd of Katastrophans had assembled on the quay, silent and grim-faced, no doubt wanting to witness the exodus of the troublesome visitors from their island. Some of the younger ones had never seen a police launch – or a uniformed policeman, come to that. Tina was in the crowd, accompanied by a large contingent from the Stephanides family. Releasing herself gently from her mother’s tearful embrace, she stepped forward and approached Jack, holding out her wrists bravely. She looked him in the eyes, unflinching.

‘You will want to put the handcuffs on me now, Detective Inspector. I have said goodbye to my family and I am ready to come with you.’

Jack took both her hands in his. ‘I don’t think so, Tina. No real harm was done and I can’t think of any good that will be served by arresting you and taking you back for trial. I’m supposed to be very careful about the appropriate use of public funds.’ He smiled at her.

Her expression was a mixture of doubt and relief. Tears sprang into her eyes and she brushed them away. ‘Does that mean I am free to stay here, on Katastrophos?’

‘If that’s what you want.’

‘It is. This island badly needs a nurse – especially for the children.’

‘Sounds like an excellent idea.’

‘I shall try to run weekly surgeries, obtain some basic medical supplies. The priest may allow me to use the small ante-room in the church.’

Jack was glad to see she was already planning a more positive future.

‘I guess I could help there.’ Diana strode down the gangplank on four-inch heels, sassy and magnificent, like a supermodel on the catwalk. ‘I seem to have a few spare bucks that I figured I’d be spending on … well, something else.’ She swallowed hard then looked up, resolutely cheerful. ‘Why don’t I build you a health centre? This island could sure use one!’

‘You would do that?’ Tina was astonished.

‘Sure. Why not? Sid’s coming back home to the States with me. He’ll help set it up with my lawyers, won’t you, baby?’

Sidney had been plodding morosely behind her, carrying her luggage. He perked up instantly. This was the first he’d heard about going to Manhattan with Diana. Dared he hope it was a chance to spend just a few more precious days with her? Then he descended rapidly into depression again. It sounded like she just wanted him to work for her. A hired help, along with the hundreds of others her ‘daddy’ must employ. His instinct was to say no, he had too many plumbing jobs waiting in the UK. He had his pride. On the other hand, it would be churlish to refuse to help build a badly needed health centre and he’d always wanted to see America. He’d go over at his own expense and only stay for as long as it took to organize the work. He wouldn’t plan on anything beyond that and he wouldn’t take any liberties with her. The holiday was over.

‘Sure, Di. Be glad to help. Just tell me what you want done.’

‘There you go, hon,’ said Diana cheerfully to Tina. ‘With Sidney on the job, it’ll be built before you know it.’

For the first time in many weeks, Tina smiled. It transformed her face.

‘
Efharistó
,’ she said. ‘Thank you very much.’

T
he crossing to the mainland on the police launch was much quicker and less stomach-churning than the trip out on old Charon’s ferry had been. It was also quieter and less smelly. Jack was even able to dispense with the paper bag long enough to hold a decent conversation.

‘Dead rats,’ said Corrie, thoughtfully.

‘Pardon?’

‘The dead rats that we kept seeing around that awful tree stump that Ariadne used as a chopping block. And the mad one that bit Sidney in the olive grove. That was the professor experimenting with the strength of his new, improved toxin. He admitted it.’

‘I expect Ariadne was given the job of feeding it to them. It wouldn’t have done for someone to see Gordon doing it. Might have raised suspicion, whereas nobody would have thought twice about Ariadne doing a bit of vermin control.’

‘Mm. Mad old Ariadne must have helped him a lot without realizing what she was doing. I noticed she had the same blistery rash on the back of her hands that the professor and Sidney had. Side effects of handling plants without surgical gloves, I suppose.’

‘Plants can be vicious. Look at stinging nettles, for example. Do you remember I asked Gordon about the rash on his hand when we were seeing Ellie and Tim on to the ferry. He said he’d nicked a hole in his glove. He didn’t have any more with him and you can’t buy them on the island so he had to do the rest of his work without any protection. With any luck, that means we’ll find his fingerprints on the phials of poison.’

‘Do you need fingerprints? Diana and I heard him confess to everything –
modus operandi
, the lot.’

‘Belt and braces, love. You can never have too much evidence. A clever brief might try to claim entrapment or confession under duress, that’s if he ever gets to trial, which I doubt. My guess is they’ll find him unfit to plead.’

Not for the first time, Corrie was impressed by the precision and orderliness of her husband’s approach to his job, no matter how distressing the circumstances and despite the fact that they were supposed to be honeymooning. No guess-work policing for him. It all had to be strictly by the book. She would be surprised if he hadn’t been keeping a daily written record of events. By contrast, her own instinctive nature – whilst an asset to something creative, like catering – would make her a lousy copper. And as for her masterly intuition – it had gone into overdrive on Katastrophos, freefalling into something much more sinister and controlling. It might easily have got her killed. She shuddered.

‘I wonder how Sid got the rash.’ Corrie needed all the loose ends to be tied in her mind.

‘It was on the first Monday we were here. Sid and I went to the olive groves to watch Gordon taking his samples. I was trying to work out what plants he used to make his poisons. He’d just harvested a very large sea squill bulb, one of the mutated varieties he’d been cultivating for some time during previous visits. Sid lifted it out of his sample case to look at it. Handling fresh squill, particularly the onion-like bulbs, can cause blistering and rashes in some people. Gordon tried to put me off the track by pretending Sid’s rash was due to the squirting cucumber, but it was the wrong hand.’ Jack frowned. ‘It was probably toxin distilled from that very bulb that nearly killed Maria and Ellie and caused Dobson’s death.’

‘How do you know? The professor hasn’t made a statement, has he?’

‘Good Lord, no. I don’t suppose he ever will. He hasn’t spoken a word since I arrested him. Once the telephones were restored, I made a few phone calls, found out a lot of useful information. The professor had already told me that peasants on the island made rat poison from the red squill and that the white squill could be used pharmaceutically as a heart stimulant. It didn’t take a botanical genius to work out that if he’d managed to genetically engineer a hybrid containing both properties and concentrate its essence, it could make a very effective poison. Of course, I only suspected, what Gordon knew for certain, that it decomposes in the body very rapidly leaving no trace. Then Tim came back with Ellie’s message from the hospital and confirmed it.’

‘The perfect murder weapon. It certainly worked on Lavinia.’ Corrie shuddered again. ‘And he’d obviously refined his latest batch. The one Ariadne dropped by accident was colourless and had no smell, unlike the first lot. They stank like a compost heap. And even if it had a bitter taste, you probably wouldn’t notice it in strong red wine or ouzo.’

‘Or on an oily lampwick,’ added Jack. ‘When Gordon came roaring in after the women came down from the monastery he saw someone lying on the ground wearing an orange shawl. He naturally expected it to be Diana, hence the exaggerated marital concern. When he realized it was Maria, he covered his confusion very cunningly and tried to put me off the scent by saying it was due to a rotten egg. I knew then it wouldn’t be long before he tried again but I hadn’t expected the next victim to be Ellie.’ Jack was still beating himself up about that. ‘It shouldn’t have been Ellie.’

‘It explains why the professor became slightly agitated when Charon arrived earlier than expected and took her to hospital. He wasn’t entirely sure that the time lapse would be long enough for all the poison to have vanished.’

‘Because he hadn’t had as long as he would have liked to finish testing his product. Time was running out and the Swiss university was threatening to give his job to another professor – his closest rival. As it turned out, there was still a little poison left in Ellie’s system for the hospital to trace. I spoke to the toxicologist on the phone and he also explained why Dobson died so quickly after swallowing the poison Gordon put in Diana’s lunch. Do you remember Dobson telling us he took digoxin?’

‘Difficult to forget. He always made such a performance of insisting Marjorie prepared the exact dose at the exact same times every day.’

‘He was right, in a way, although I agree he didn’t have to be so pompous about it. Digoxin is used primarily to improve the pumping ability of the heart in congestive heart failure. You have to be careful about doses because there’s very little margin between a therapeutically beneficial level of digoxin and a toxic level, which is why Dobson couldn’t drink coffee. Even a small amount of caffeine could upset the balance. Squill has an effect on the heart similar to that of digoxin.’

‘So if Ambrose ingested both of them together …’

‘Exactly. Chemicals found in squill have been proved to increase the rate of heartbeats and worsen several kinds of heart disease. Large oral doses of it have resulted in seizures, intense vomiting, heart stoppage and death. The victim often experiences vision disturbance and hallucinations. Sound familiar? Symptoms that were all displayed by Lavinia, Maria, Ellie and Dobson. The toxicologist told me that squill is not recommended in any form for medical purposes.’

‘I’m not surprised. I’m glad it exonerates Marjorie, though. It was nothing she or St Sophia did that precipitated Ambrose’s death. Her conscience is clear.’

‘I took a gamble that she wasn’t responsible in any way when I agreed to his burial without an inquiry.’

Corrie leapt back in mock amazement. ‘You took a gamble, Jack? I thought that was the prerogative of scatter-brained women who run catering businesses.’

‘Shut up or I’ll chuck you over the side and you can swim the rest of the way.’

On the port side of the launch Tim was telling Marjorie how much he was looking forward to seeing Ellie again. If he had felt protective of her before this latest shocking revelation, his urge to shield her from anything that might make her unhappy was now even stronger. Marjorie in return was telling Tim about her son, Dan, and how she hoped to see more of him now that Ambrose wasn’t there to prevent it.

The conversation to starboard was of an entirely different nature. Sidney, whilst secretly delighted at the prospect of more time in Diana’s company, was nevertheless apprehensive and at great pains to ensure she didn’t think he was after her money.

‘Naturally, I’ll have to get the necessary paperwork sorted out, visas and that, but I’m happy to come to the States and help out with the planning. I haven’t much experience in building health centres, although I have plumbed in one or two in my time, but I like to think of myself as a sound businessman who knows the value of an investment. I imagine I’ll be working with your financial team, will I? Just until the job’s done. Then I’ll go back home to …’ He was unable to continue because Diana wrapped both arms and one sinuous thigh around him and kissed him, long and hard. When she’d finished, Sid felt as if he had just surfaced after a long spell under water in the clutches of a very sexy octopus.

‘Sidney, don’t be a klutz. You won’t be working for me – not in any capacity. We have enough technical guys in our companies to design and build a hundred health centres.’

‘Well, what do you want me to do, then?’

She kissed him again. Longer and harder – grinding her groin into his crotch in a way that caused the Greek policemen to look away and study the horizon.

‘I see,’ he said eventually. ‘You’re just after my body. You’re not interested in my brain at all.’ He pretended to be offended and pursed his lips, primly. She giggled. Something she realized she hadn’t done since Cuthbert had tried to murder her.

‘Seriously, Diana, are you sure about this? I mean, there’ll be loads of handsome millionaires in Manhattan trampling each other to get to you now that you’re … well, you know … on your own. It was a terrible thing that the prof did and you must be shocked and hurt and I shouldn’t want you to make any rash decisions while you’re still upset.’ He looked into her passionate green eyes and felt himself weaken. Sod it, he’d do anything she asked, go anywhere she wanted him to, never mind the consequences. British gallantry, however, demanded that he had one last try at reasoning with her.

‘I don’t mind admitting I’m a bit shaken up myself. Unless you’re an out-and-out cowboy, a rogue trader, plumbing is generally a murder free profession. It was a bit of a stretch to witness a brilliant academic, a respected botanist, going around poisoning people. Maybe we should wait until we’ve both recovered – calmed down a bit.’

She was wildly excited now, unstoppable. ‘But I don’t want to calm down, my darling! I’ve spent the last ten years being so calm I’ve had to take my own pulse to make sure I was still alive. I want to go on being thrilled, laughing, having fun. For the last two weeks, you believed I was a penniless blonde living off a rich sugar daddy, but despite that you still cared about me – and I loved you because of it. You wouldn’t believe the number of guys who hang around me with one eye on my breasts and the other on my bank balance.’ She grasped the front of his jacket and pulled him close. ‘Sid, this is me, Diana, the lady who jumped you in the Cave of Nymphs. I don’t recall you wanting to make a federal case out of it then. Since I met you, I’ve been happier than I’ve been in my whole life, and I’m not letting you go. God help me, I’ll even charter a plane so you can go back home and watch your beloved Arsenal!’

That clinched it, really. How could a man resist? Sidney still couldn’t believe his luck, but he was a beaten man. Brace yourself, Sidney Arthur Foskett, he thought as Diana slipped her fingers inside his shirt and kissed his mouth again. Looks like you’re going to be a love slave.

From a distance, Corrie had noticed the exchange between Sidney and Diana and was inordinately happy for them. Maybe one good thing had come out of the last hideous fortnight.

‘I think Sidney and Diana are planning to stay together,’ she said to Jack, putting her arm through his, ‘at least for a while.’

‘You’re just a sad old romantic. I hope you’re right though. I think they complement each other. Like tin and tang.’

‘I think you mean yin and yang, but I agree.’ She looked at his weary face. ‘I suppose this arrest is a pretty good result for you?’

‘Not really,’ said Jack, ruefully. ‘Maria and Ellie could so easily have died and Ambrose Dobson actually did. Not what I would call a successful, well-run police operation – one stiff and two near misses.’

‘But you got your man – and the evidence. And you stopped him before he did what he came to do, murder his wife. As for Ambrose, you don’t know that he might not have died anyway after all that rowing. He was a victim of his own beastly lust.’

‘Maybe, sweetheart. We’ll never know.’

‘The really frightening part for me is how plausible and kind Cuthbert seemed. I had some fascinating conversations with him and he appeared to adore Diana. How can a man so gifted and intelligent be so crafty and evil?’

‘I’m no psychologist, Corrie, but I can recognize a psychopath when I meet one and it’s often a very fine demarcation between genius and insanity. Gordon is a text-book example. He’s a callous predator, he uses charm, manipulation and violence to satisfy his own selfish demands. He has no conscience or feelings for others, he just takes whatever he wants without guilt or remorse. In other words, what’s missing in his personality are the very qualities that make the rest of us relatively decent human beings. Mind you, not all psychopaths are violent offenders. Some have become dynamic leaders in a highly competitive business world, using their manipulative skills to get quick results for themselves and their corporations. Eventually, though, they cause long-term damage to colleagues and their companies because although they’re enterprising, they’re also deceitful, abusive and fraudulent.’

‘I can think of a few chief executives like that. You can’t help feeling sorry for Diana, though. Cuthbert didn’t want a wife – just access to her money. But he must have convinced her and her father that he loved her when they were married.’

‘Very probably. A psychopath’s real emotions are superficial at best, that’s if they exist at all. They’re incapable of forming lasting relationships or showing any kind of meaningful love and they never perform any action unless they consider it beneficial to themselves. The reason he was able to fool Diana and her father, and even you, into thinking he was a nice, caring bloke is because he watched normal people and mimicked their feelings and behaviour when it suited his needs.’