The Pleasure Seekers (15 page)

Chapter 7

People were strangely relieved, though there was still fear in their hearts and it showed in their faces. The verdict had been bad, it could not have been worse, but it was at least declared and out in the open. That evening the port was swarming with people. Old and young, entire families, people who rarely came to the port at night, those who did only on holidays or when there was an event. The shops, restaurants and cafes were doing a booming trade. Three more policemen had arrived by boat and now Manoussos’s investigative team’s presence could be felt everywhere. They were interviewing everyone casually as they wandered about and not so casually in the police station. The place was alive with talk about Arnold and his undoing. And speculation as to who had done it? Well, there wasn’t any. That was what kept everyone intrigued, the mystery of Arnold’s death. And that was all they could talk about – how it was possible for a man, a friend, a neighbour, whom they had all known so well, to have met such a mysterious end.

Manoussos and his team were asking for information: anything that anyone could tell them about Arnold that might lead them to someone with a motive for
murder. But equally important, possibly even more so, he had explained to his team, were the movements and behaviour, after Arnold’s body had been discovered, of everyone who knew or had any dealings with him. A priority that must be checked out immediately.

There were about twenty people at the table at the Kavouria where D’Arcy was dining that evening. Among them Mark and Laurence, Rachel, most every one of the foreign residents, several Livakians, and sitting in a chair several feet from the table but near Mark, Melina. Max was sitting on one side of D’Arcy, Laurence on the other. Of course everyone knew that they had split up, that D’Arcy had walked out on him. It only took one person to be told about what had happened between them, that had been Max, and everyone knew. The usual form: no one asked any questions, no one interfered, it was accepted, as all things were accepted, friends’ own affair.

Manoussos joined the table and was offered food. While he waited for it to be cooked, a plate was produced and passed down the table by the other diners. They filled it from the platters already there. Someone filled his glass with red wine. ‘Just what was needed,’ he told everyone and smiled. It was his smile that broke the lull in conversation that had occurred when he appeared at the table.

He broke off a piece of bread and someone refilled his glass, then he asked, ‘Look, since you’re all assembled here, would anyone mind if we talk about what’s happened and I ask a few questions while I have my dinner? The more information I have the better, whether it’s usable or not. If it’s upsetting anyone, say so. We can
talk about the weather, how romantic it is to look across the anchored fishing caiques and out across the water shimmering silver under that fat white moon.’

This was Manoussos at his best, the way they knew him, loved and admired him: direct, to the point, but considerate, witty even about a disaster to lighten the burden of sorrow he knew they were all carrying. And clever, oh, so clever as a policeman. They had to smile, they dropped their guard, and Rachel left her chair to go to him with a near empty platter. She batted her eyelashes and Manoussos removed the last remaining stuffed pepper and placed it on his plate.

He forked some food into his mouth and took stock of the people round the table. Mark seemed particularly subdued, but then he had been since Arnold’s death. He had been drinking more, been in the port more: sitting round most afternoons and evenings, but more or less behaving as usual, Melina like a shadow sitting close by. She too seemed somehow more subdued, more polite, ready to do anyone’s bidding. Mark seemed more anxious than ever that people be nice to her, offer her work. He was more solicitous to her. Manoussos saw the change in the way Mark looked at her. Guilt for how they had behaved to Arnold on the last night he was alive? Possibly. But Mark couldn’t have slipped that plastic bag over Arnold’s head, he had been in Rethymnon at the same time as Laurence and D’Arcy and then in Athens. And Melina? Arnold could have fought her off easily, he was incredibly strong. Laurence and D’Arcy’s absence from Livakia eliminated them, not that they would have been suspects. No motive. Manoussos needed a motive if
he had any hope of finding the murderer, and he needed information to find that motive. And no one liked to talk or hold the floor more than Mark did. He would start with Mark. ‘Any theories, Mark?’ asked Manoussos.

‘About what?’ He seemed somehow enlivened by the question.

‘Why anyone would want to kill Arnold? What kind of a person that might be? What Arnold might have said or done to provoke someone to do such a thing? In spite of your differences, your irritation with him, you were good friends. You were closer to him than anyone. Did you have any inkling of anything different happening in Arnold’s life in the days, weeks, or even months before his death?’

‘The only change was that he fell off his chair more because time and drink had affected his brain and his nervous system more and that meant that I or someone else had to drag him home more often. He was increasingly more mean about money. But he was working just as hard as ever at surviving on a minimal level with as little effort as he could possibly make. You can imagine what torture that was for me, still the ambitious writer I have always been and always will be, fighting every day to survive and make my mark in this world. I’m living off no one, not even Arnold. I always paid back to the penny any money he lent me. We were both part of this community and so stayed civil to each other but that does not mean I had to respect him or his weaknesses or his life. I am desperately sorry he came to such a terrible end but he was a bore and a burden in this old port, and I am certain that, as disloyal as I may sound, I am not the only
one who thought so. But you know the code here, a man has the right to live as he wants to live, in the privacy of his own soul.’

‘Was he in love with someone?’

‘Never!’ answered Mark.

‘I’m not so sure as you are about that, Mark,’ said Jane Plum.

All eyes were directed on her. ‘I know no more than that. I just had a feeling he was in love with someone, a very young someone.’

‘What makes you say that, Jane?’ asked Manoussos.

‘Just a feeling. He once asked me if I thought huge age differences mattered where love was involved. I thought at the time it was an odd question for Arnold to ask.’

‘Poppycock! Arnold knew the difference between love and infatuation and he preferred infatuation,’ said Laurence.

‘And Laurence would know about that,’ said D’Arcy.

The remark passed over most everyone’s head. Laurence glared at her; Max patted D’Arcy on the thigh under the table and smiled. She was annoyed with herself; it was a facetious, bitchy thing to say and had not been at all necessary. She’d thought she had risen above wanting to make digs at a man who’d promised so much in love and delivered so little. He’d deserved that little slap but she had not enjoyed delivering it. It would not happen again. She removed Max’s lingering hand from her thigh, gave it a short, sharp little slap and placed it on his own, then smiled at him. The incorrigible Max threw back his handsome head and laughed, drawing everyone’s attention.

‘Sorry about that. I was thinking about infatuations – my own. We’ve all been there.’

The distraction over, Mark continued: ‘One thing is for certain – if it was one of his infatuations who killed him, it had to be a Cretan. He hadn’t had a foreign infatuation for several years, and I think we can all agree that none of us in residence here held him enthralled.’

No one at the table said a word. The Cretans sitting there looked uncomfortable. One of them scraped back a chair and, standing up, said, ‘You should have more proof than theory before you make an accusation like that, Mark.’ A second Cretan rose from his chair, his face like thunder. They were friends, very good friends, of Mark’s.

‘Oh, do sit down,’ he said to the two men and rose from his own chair. Taking a bottle of wine, he walked slowly around the table to fill their glasses. He patted them on the back but none of the anger went out of their eyes.

‘That was not an accusation. This is an open discussion of an event we would all like to get to the bottom of as quickly as possible. It was just a thought, as unpleasant as it may be. I think you have to agree there is a strong possibility I might be right and we have to face that, not get at odds with each other if that should be the case,’ said Mark, not at all defensively. The men, reasonable types, had to nod their heads in agreement. Each of them hugged Mark, manly bear-like hugs, and sat down. Tom Plum shook hands with one of the men, D’Arcy smiled across the table at them and nodded, a silent expression of admiration for their calming their temper and facing the reality of the situation.

Manoussos’s grilled lamb chops arrived, a heap of them, mostly long slender bone with a small eye of flesh in each. They were sizzling and smelled of roasting meat and rosemary. The aroma invaded everyone’s senses, set off their taste buds. Yet another Cretan at the table shouted to the departing waiter to bring lamb chops for everyone, post haste. Some raised their glasses in appreciation. Manoussos picked one up with his fingers and ate the eye of meat off the bone while feeling quite satisfied that choosing Mark to do his work for him had been the right move. Long before the verdict on cause of death had come in Manoussos had worked out who had killed Arnold, but he had not one shred of proof as yet that he was right. He liked the way things were going at the dinner table. Mark had the bit between his teeth, he wouldn’t let go now, but would he prove Manoussos right? He gave Mark more rope to work with.

Manoussos put down the long, slender bone, now stripped of its meagre flesh. ‘A Cretan with whom Arnold was infatuated? Do we know of such a Cretan? Would that person be a man or a woman? What kind of a person would that be? We know that Arnold had many Cretan friends and acquaintances whom he liked and who liked him, but what sort of Cretan would he become infatuated with? And are we using the term infatuation instead of sex? He had had sex shortly before he died, remember. All interesting questions which need answering. It’s possible Jane is right, maybe he had a secret love or infatuation, one he kept from everyone because of the person involved. What kind of a person or people would he keep from his friends? And if there
was such a person or persons, then why would they turn on him, want to destroy him? Had he made promises he could not keep? Was this a crime of passion? A crime of lust?’ Manoussos had everyone at the table hanging on his every word.

‘Revenge. A crime of revenge. You’ve forgotten that possibility,’ said Mark.

‘Revenge for what, Mark?’ asked Max.

‘Arnold was not the angel he liked us all to think he was. He involved himself with boys and young men, not particularly for sex, though there was, on the odd occasion, that too. Poor people, simple in mind and less educated than himself, rough and ready types who did odd jobs for him as they do for us all. I can think of a few who were a bit simple he liked having around him and was not particularly clever with, in fact downright insulting to, and in public. Arnold should have known better than to shame them in front of people, but would he learn? Had I been any one of them I might have sought revenge. How could he expect to humiliate a proud Cretan in public and get away with it? He always knew what Cretan pride demanded.’

Mark was on his bandwagon, just where Manoussos wanted him to be. He gave him a little more rope. ‘I wish we had been party to such an incident. It would have been useful to see how Arnold might have provoked someone, made himself their enemy.’

Mark looked anxiously down the table at Melina. He asked her if she would kindly do him a favour, go home and return with his diary. She left immediately, almost at a run, slavish as always to Mark’s commands.

‘I sent Melina on a fool’s errand because I didn’t want to embarrass her, poor kid. But she is a case in point. You all heard Arnold, that last night we were together. Melina is a simple girl. She was offended by his accusations, all exaggeration and distortion of the facts. Yet she turned a blind eye to the hurtful things he would say about her out of a sense of pity for him. Others in her position might not have, they would have sought revenge, but she did not. Instead she feels our loss and is sad for his death rather than being angry that he owed her money and didn’t give her the few trinkets he promised. Promises were how he kept her working for him.’

D’Arcy was horrified. Mark had just delivered Melina to Manoussos: a suspect, on a silver platter. More than a few others at the table realised what Mark’s megalomania had cost the girl, you could see it in their faces. Unbelievably Mark was not one of them.

‘It’s true, Melina was very forgiving, that was not the first time Arnold had humiliated her. I remember sitting with him on the beach one day when she arrived with those little boyfriends of hers and he called across to her for all to hear, “You, little thief, unless you return my watch by the time I go home this evening I’ll report you to the police.” They had a confrontation on the beach and I had to beg him to stop calling her a thief, he must have repeated it a dozen times,’ offered Jane Plum.

‘Didn’t she ask him to stop, didn’t she even defend herself?’ asked Manoussos.

‘Oh, yes, she denied taking the wristwatch and begged him to stop. I felt so sorry for her, there were tears of rage in her eyes.’

‘How did it end?’ asked Manoussos, ever so casually.

‘Oh, the usual thing when people are having fights. She saying one day he would be sorry for what he’d said and running off with her friends. It all ended well enough, though. That evening at dinner I noticed that he had his watch on and Melina, when she passed by the table, waved to him. Months went by after that and he did his usual carping about her inefficiency with the ants and the painting of his kitchen, but nothing more than that. I think she was very forgiving indeed, and had a soft spot for Arnold as we all did. Yes, maybe it’s true that someone else might not have been.’