Nemesis of the Dead (9 page)

She sank to her knees beside him and breathed a throaty sigh that sent tremors through the only thing she was wearing – her diamond necklace. Then she kissed him again, slipping her tongue slowly into his mouth. This came as a surprise to Sid, whose main experience of women’s tongues was hearing them nag him about how slowly he worked and how expensive he was. Before he could recover, Diana grasped his head and pulled his face against her bare breasts, bouncing his lips from nipple to nipple.

‘You don’t give up, do you?’ he said, muffled.

‘No, Sidney, baby. You’re the one who’s going to give up.’ She pushed him gently backwards until he was lying on the blanket, then slowly straddled him, looking deep into his eyes. He heard himself jabbering inanely, anything to take his mind off what he knew was about to happen so he might keep a vestige of control over the rampant bulge which was threatening to burst through his speedos.

‘’Course, the beaches where I come from – you know, Southend and Margate, the councils spend their money on deckchairs and bandstands and lifebelts and coloured lights on the lampposts and stopping the piers from rotting and going round with spikes, picking up rubbish off the sand and …’ he gulped as she slid her fingers into the top of his speedos and eased them down.

Sidney felt a brief – a very brief – pang of guilt. It wasn’t his style to have it off with another man’s wife. On the other hand, the prof didn’t seem to care or even notice. He was more turned on by the pudenda of a hibiscus – whatever that was. It was such a terrible neglect of a passionate, beautiful woman. Too late now, anyway. Diana was already well on top of the situation. So he lay back and thought of England. They must have been playing unusually well because pretty soon he heard himself shouting out loud with sheer joy.

With Corrie occupied in the kitchen, Jack the All-Seeing was lounging outside the hotel on Ariadne’s camp bed, admiring the crescent of turquoise glass that was Katastrophos Bay. One half-open but vigilant eye had spotted Diana, rowing swiftly away in the direction of the deserted, north-west end of the coast. He was surprised, briefly, knowing Diana to be a gregarious, fun-loving woman who became bored very quickly with her own company. As far as he knew, that part of the island had only historic or mythological interest. There were sea grottos where pirates had once hidden their loot and, according to Corrie, a couple of monsters whose names he couldn’t remember had lived in one of the caves, eating passing sailors alive and making deadly whirlpools by sucking in and spitting out seawater. Charming. A few minutes later he saw Sidney come out of the hotel with a bottle of wine and climb into the other boat. After a shaky start, he had set off in the same direction. Jack shrugged. So that was it. Well, whatever they were about to get up to, he didn’t think it had much to do with pirates or sea monsters – and anyway, it was none of his business. At least it meant he could relax for a bit. He closed his all-seeing eyes.

Jack, I’ve just remembered!’ Corrie came hurrying out of the kitchen and into the shady olive grove where she plumped down hard on the foot of his camp bed. The head end rose several inches into the air, bouncing Jack upright.

‘What have you remembered, my little suet dumpling?’

‘I’ve remembered where I last saw Marjorie.’

‘I hadn’t realized we’d mislaid her.’

‘For goodness’ sake, Jack, try to concentrate. This is important – or at least, I think it is. Do you remember when we first arrived, I said I thought I’d seen her before, without Ambrose, but I couldn’t remember where?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, now I’ve remembered.’

‘Good for you.’ He tipped her gently off the end of the bed on to the scrubby grass and lay down again.

‘Don’t you want to know?’

‘Not especially.’

Corrie sat down again, harder this time, and Jack had to grip the sides to avoid being catapulted off. ‘I know why you’re doing this.’ She pulled a cross face. ‘It’s to put me off the scent, isn’t it? Stop me from helping you.’

He grinned. ‘Helping me with what?’

‘The case – the person you’re keeping an eye on. It’s Marjorie, isn’t it?’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Because I’ve remembered where I last saw her.’

‘I think this is where I came in.’ He struggled to sit up. ‘Shall we have a cup of tea or would you prefer a glass of wine?’

Corrie pushed him back down. ‘Neither, thank you. Marjorie was at Lavinia Braithwaite’s funeral.’

This made Jack sit up. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Quite sure. She was standing on the other side of the grave when I accidentally threw my glove in.’

‘Why would she be at Lavinia’s funeral?’

‘She must have been one of her fund-raisers. It all fits if you think about it. She told me Ambrose won’t allow her to get a job. She said he makes enough fuss about her charity work. And she recently came into a little money which she used to pay for this holiday on Katastrophos. It was a legacy from Lavinia, like the one she left me to buy a new van. I’ve got it all worked out. You never did explain why
you
were at Lavinia’s funeral when you barely knew her. I asked you at the time if you were investigating one of the mourners. It was Marjorie Dobson, wasn’t it?’

Jack looked convincingly nonplussed. ‘Why would I want to investigate Marjorie?’

‘Because she’s married to Ambrose, who’s been a bastard to her for thirty years. He has a bad heart and she has him insured for a very large amount. And because you think she’s brought him to Katastrophos to bump him off.’

T
he following Saturday morning at breakfast, everyone gathered around the olive-wood table chatting cheerfully and tucking into scrambled eggs with tomatoes and smoked Greek sausages, fragrant with nutmeg and cinnamon. Everyone, that is, except Ambrose Dobson.

‘Where’s Old Misery Guts this morning?’ asked Sid, mopping his plate with Corrie’s home-made bread. ‘Doesn’t he want any grub?’

‘He’s having a lie-in,’ replied Marjorie. ‘He wants me to take him some up on a tray.’ She carried on eating without showing any sign of the anxious haste to carry out his orders that had been so apparent when they first arrived.

‘And are you going to?’ asked Corrie.

‘Eventually.’ She helped herself to more sausages from the communal dish of food in the middle.

‘Better hurry up, Marjie, or there won’t be any left,’ said Sid, blithely unconcerned.

‘Well, he’ll have to go without, then, won’t he?’

Whilst Corrie delighted in Marjorie’s new-found spirit, she was nevertheless uneasy. Ambrose struck her as, like Poseidon, his mythological
alter ego
, an insidious kind of bully, exerting his power over weak women and glorifying masculine brutality. He was of the kind who would not hesitate to use violence when he lost his temper and, like Poseidon, would consider it his right to inflict fear and punishment. Enough to provoke even the most timid woman into bumping him off. She spoke quietly so the others wouldn’t hear.

‘You will be careful, won’t you, Marjorie?’

Marjorie put a hand on her arm and smiled. ‘Don’t worry, dear. I’ll be careful. I’m really good at it. I have a diploma in careful.’

Maria appeared at the end of the meal, hollow-eyed and noticeably thinner, but back on her feet and smiling.

‘Thanks to St Sophia, I am now well again,’ she announced.

To be fair, thought Corrie, a few others of us had quite a lot to do with it, Sky in particular, but she said nothing.

‘My mother is now able to take over the cooking again,
kiría
Dawes, and we are most grateful for your kindness in helping out. It is after all your holiday and you are our guest.’

Corrie nodded graciously.

‘Tonight,’ continued Maria, ‘there will be another, very special feast.’

Sid and his stomach groaned inwardly at the news of Ariadne’s reinstatement. He looked glumly at Maria. ‘Don’t tell me – let me guess. This time the feast is to celebrate the accidental martyrdom of St Crematorios, patron saint of barbecues. They’re going to carry his chargrilled remains through the village on a ceremonial bap.’

Diana giggled and prodded him. ‘Sidney, don’t be a dork.’

‘No,’ said Maria politely, not understanding any of it. ‘Yanni and I simply wish to give thanks to St Sophia and everyone here for their part in my safe recovery.’ She lowered her eyes, shyly, and the guests had the good grace to applaud and even cheer a bit.

That evening, there was a real party atmosphere. Yanni hung every candle lamp he could find in the olive trees and hired the best band in the village. This meant there were now four wrinkly geriatrics with
bouzoúki
instead of the usual three, but their playing was superb. Their gnarled old fingers flew across the strings like mad brown moths round a flame.

Everyone had made a special effort to dress up. Diana looked particularly breathtaking in a long white evening gown, low-cut and split daringly to the thigh. It fell in soft folds from a huge gold brooch, obviously wildly expensive, clasped to one shoulder. Tonight, she wore her hair piled high on her head in a mass of shining curls held by two gold combs. Undulating around the tiny dance-floor, she was teaching a helplessly captivated Sidney how to rumba. He had abandoned his T-shirt and army surplus shorts and borrowed a Gianni Manzoni dinner jacket from somewhere. The slightly too-long sleeves suggested it might be one of the professor’s, but he looked surprisingly suave and they made a striking couple.

Watching them, Jack felt sure from the satisfied gleam in Diana’s eye and their unmistakable body language, that she had, as he suspected, devoured poor defenceless Sidney in one of the sea caves to the north of the island. Jack wasn’t in the least surprised. Goodness knows, most blokes would succumb to Diana’s charms if she were really determined, especially on Katastrophos where everybody seemed to be out of their tree anyway. And as Jack expected, the professor was now so deeply engrossed with his plant experiments that he wouldn’t even have noticed that Diana was missing, let alone care what she was doing. Although it was none of his business, Jack reckoned it could really make his job difficult if it meant that Sidney and Diana would spend the remainder of the fortnight welded to each other and sneaking off out of sight, like Tim and Ellie. So much so that Jack thought he might have to take one or both of them into his confidence.

He put an arm around Corrie’s shoulders and leaned across to murmur in her ear. She snuggled close, waiting for him to say something romantic.

‘Doesn’t Diana look smashing in that dress? Like a Greek goddess.’

‘Diana was a Roman goddess, actually,’ Corrie replied, stonily, wishing she had brought her posh frock after all, ‘but I suppose the name does suit her.’

Jack raised a quizzical eyebrow.

‘The goddess, Diana, was a huntress,’ she snapped. ‘On the other hand, she was also a virgin goddess and an emblem of chastity, so maybe it isn’t so appropriate after all.’ She looked at Jack’s dopey expression and gave him a sharp dig. ‘Stop drooling or I’ll stamp on your tongue!’

‘Timsy’ and ‘Elliekins’, as everyone now called them, drifted down from their room wearing the invariable matching shorts and shirts. Looking deep into each other’s eyes, they strolled dreamily on to the dance floor, where they meshed as silently and smoothly as Bentley clutch-plates. They had a definite glow, thought Corrie fondly, the kind that is turned up to full wattage when people are in love. She wondered if she and Jack glowed – probably not. At their age, they probably just flickered, like a candle just before it sputters out.

Jack had also noticed Tim and Ellie arrive but he was satisfied that he no longer needed to keep such close surveillance. He conceded that he may have been over-zealous there, much of the information in his briefing being based on hypothesis rather than evidence. Besides, he had enough on his plate watching the rest of them.

Professor Gordon’s eyes glittered with excitement. He seemed totally oblivious to the fact that his wife now had one long, shapely leg wrapped around Sid’s thigh and was gyrating sinuously up and down it like a pole-dancer. The professor pointed to the wine, said something in Greek to Yanni and slapped him on the back. They both burst out laughing. Jack, the All-Seeing, watched them.

‘We shan’t be staying long, Marjorie,’ said Ambrose, his shifty little eyes darting this way and that, hoping for surreptitious glimpses of Diana’s bare thigh. ‘This alleged religious feast has all the signs of turning into a disgusting pagan orgy. An excuse for bawdy and vulgar behaviour. We shall eat our dinner, since we have paid for it, then we shall go straight up to our room.’

‘Shall we, dear?’ said Marjorie, calmly. She was wearing a touch of lipstick and eye-shadow, another small rebellion.

Ambrose looked hard at her. ‘I’m not sure I understand your tone, Marjorie. And I hope I don’t need to remind you that I haven’t yet taken my nine o’clock medication, so we must be back in our room by five minutes to nine at the very latest.’

‘Must we, dear?’ repeated Marjorie, absently.

He gestured at the
bouzoúki
players, twanging like mad.

‘Mind you, I doubt we shall get a wink of sleep with that infernal racket going on half the night.’

‘I rather like it, dear.’

Maria appeared, staggering beneath the weight of a huge earthenware platter – the main dish of the feast. She placed it in the centre of the table with some ceremony, as though it were a rare delicacy to be appropriately admired before eating.

‘What are they, Maria?’ enquired Sidney, peering at the long skewers of unidentifiable meat with what looked like fat brown worms wrapped around them.

‘
Kokorétsi
,’ she announced, proudly. Then seeing the blank faces, she fetched out the dog-eared phrase book. ‘Spitted entrails. It is the goat’s
sikotária
– er – spleen, liver, heart and lungs tied with intestines and spitted. My mother’s spit is the best in all Katastrophos.’

It went ominously quiet.

‘Let’s all have some wine.’ The professor broke the silence, filling everyone’s glass with an encouraging flourish. ‘Yanni has opened a case of something really special to celebrate. Superior vintage, eh Yanni? As good as anything you’d find on the mainland.’ They winked at each other.

Sidney noticed that everyone, including Old Misery Guts, appeared to be enjoying the dark, ruby-coloured wine. Even Tim and Ellie, who mostly drank water, were sipping it with relish. Only Sky abstained, taking a plateful of
kokorétsi
and disappearing up to her room as usual. Sid was a life-long lager-drinker but if wine was on the menu, then wine was what he drank and he intended to taste it properly, like the experts on the telly. To everyone’s amusement, he stood up and went through the motions of swirling it in his glass, sniffing it ostentatiously then swilling it round his mouth with a noise like bath water going down the plughole. Finally, he swallowed and rolled his eyes.

‘Oh yes, definitely a rugged, versatile little wine, cheeky but not impudent. First used – if I’m not mistaken – by Hannibal the Great to dispatch his elephant after it broke a leg in battle.’ He took another mouthful. ‘I’m getting paint-stripper on the nose …’ he gulped again, ‘… and on the palate, turpentine strained through a bus driver’s sock.’

That set the tone for the evening and it was all downhill after that. In terms of a religious feast giving thanks to St Sophia, it had more in common with an eighteen-to-thirty reps’ night out. Dionysus would be proud of us, giggled Corrie, drawn irresistibly into her parallel world of myth. Of course! That was who Sidney reminded her of – Dionysus, god of wine, whose mission was to end care and worry and promote peace and happiness. He represented all the benefits of wine as well as its intoxicating power to liberate mortals from their mundane selves. So it was under the influence of Dionysus that everyone drank too much, laughed too much and ate too little – except for Ambrose and Marjorie, who went up to their room at 8.50 precisely. Corrie watched them go. Poseidon and his insignificant wife Amphitrite, considered too inconsequential for myth to link her with her tyrannical husband on equal terms and further diminished by poets to a mere metaphor for the sea. But then, thought Corrie, Amphitrite didn’t have Poseidon’s life insured for a very large amount of cash.

August is the month for folk dancing in the Greek islands and Katastrophos was no exception. When the
bouzoúki
began to play a throbbing
syrtáki
– Yanni had to dance. The music started slow and heavy. He stood in the centre of the floor, arms outstretched and eyes half-closed, bending his knees and swaying as if in a trance. As the tempo increased, he danced a sudden sharp twist or leap in the air before returning to the pulsating rhythm. Sidney, who considered himself a snappy little mover especially when he’d had a few, reckoned it looked just like ‘Zorba’s Dance’ and he’d done a bit of that in the clubs. He joined Yanni on the floor, one arm around his shoulders. It was a bloke’s dance, this, so he motioned to the others and soon Tim and the professor had joined in, circling the floor in a line holding each other’s shoulders.

‘Go on, Jack,’ Corrie urged.

‘Not on your life. I don’t …’

Corrie pulled him to his feet and shoved him on to the floor. She owed him one for putting her on the spot with the cooking. Sid and Tim grabbed him as they danced past and he joined the line winding its way round the floor, stumbling self-consciously while he tried to sort out his feet.

The music was faster now and the ladies were cheering them on, including Marjorie, who had given Ambrose his nine o’clock medication and left him to sulk while she came back down to enjoy the rest of the evening. An even larger rebellion, Corrie noted. It was just as the professor described. Katastrophos really did encourage behaviour outside people’s normal, domestic lives. Corrie leaned across, raising her voice to be heard above the music.

‘We’ve met before, briefly, haven’t we?’

Marjorie smiled. ‘I didn’t think you’d recognize me, dear. It was at poor Mrs Braithwaite’s funeral, wasn’t it? We were on opposite sides of the grave. What an amazing coincidence we should both choose the same island for a holiday.’

‘Mm. Wasn’t it.’ Corrie was starting to believe that nothing about Katatsrophos was coincidence. It was all part of a mystical, cat-and-mouse game designed by the gods to manipulate the lives of mere mortals.

‘Terrible thing to happen, her dying like that in the middle of lunch,’ continued Marjorie. ‘Such a kind, generous lady. I expect you’ve already worked out that it was her legacy that paid for this trip. I used to help raise funds for her charities.’ Marjorie leaned closer. ‘Of course, I didn’t believe for a single moment that it was anything from Coriander’s Cuisine that poisoned her.’

‘Thanks,’ said Corrie grimly, ‘but I expect you’re the only one.’

The dancing was starting to hot up. Yanni took one step forward then one step back. The others followed suit. Sometimes his movements were sultry and athletic, other times they were were simply joyful. Yanni took two steps to the left then two to the right. All the line moved in unison. Then Yanni whirled away in front of them, arms raised sideways, taking fast and tricky steps. Suddenly he leapt – waist high it seemed – his body inclining sideways in the air as he fetched his right hand down to slap both his flying heels. Sid crossed his legs, leapt in the air, flicked up his heels and fell over, bringing the whole chorus line down with him.

The shrieks of raucous laughter were so loud that for some time, nobody noticed a different shriek – piercing and tortured. Then the musicians stopped abruptly and everyone turned to see where the screaming was coming from.