Mortal Remains (22 page)

‘I felt a bit sick in the coach,’ said George. He looked at Patrick pleadingly. ‘Sit with us at lunch, won’t you?’

But it was impossible. Elsie had already secured places for herself and George among strangers. Manolakis, too, had taken a seat between one of the pair who had met on the coach and were now the happiest of men, and a stout Swedish woman. He looked prim, just like a rather subservient bank clerk. Patrick spared time to admire his impersonation; he must be a first-class policeman, too, for his presence here was by no means coincidence. He hadn’t been satisfied, in Challika, about Felix. The smell of things, Colin called it; a copper’s hunch. Patrick’s own tendency to develop it had led Colin to suggest he changed his career before now.

The only place left for Patrick was on the far side of the two homosexuals, next to the elder one, with a youngish German woman on his other side. He ignored the man; in any case he had no choice, for the other was intent on charming his new friend. Patrick talked to the German woman in her own tongue throughout the meal. He found that she was travelling alone, so he invited her to sit in Vera’s place and flirted with her mildly all the way to Mycenae. Manolakis was obliged to sit with her former travelling companion, a Belgian lady who spoke no Greek and very little English. The inspector did not seem to include French among his accomplishments, and they travelled in silence.

The guide lectured them diligently over the loudspeaker, describing the citadel and the tombs. She gave her spiel in English, French and German. When they reached Mycenae and got out of the coach the atmosphere was at once totally different from that of Epidaurus; this was a place of tragedy, and the aura of menace clung here still. The ruins brooded over the surrounding plain and there was a sense of doom in the air.

Schliemann had excavated this place: a German archaeologist. Patrick’s thoughts flew off at a tangent, and he disciplined them sternly back to the present while the guide talked about the Treasury of Atreus, once thought to be the burial place of Agamemnon but in fact older still. They went into the enormous beehive tomb and stood awed inside. Manolakis was close to Patrick now; so were Elsie and George. The guide pointed out the entrance to the smaller burial chamber beyond the first great tomb, and a number of people filed through it.

Patrick stepped through the entrance. Now the reason why Nikos had given him the torch became clear; he stood on a rough earth floor in total darkness. Here and there, people lit cigarette lighters or struck matches, and wan lights flickered in the gloom. Patrick moved further in, the torch in his hand. Someone pressed against him, and he moved on slowly; how big was this place? Sweat sprang out on his brow. Damn it, she could jab a needle into him now and no one would know what was wrong with him. Why hadn’t he told Manolakis about the insulin? He wouldn’t scream: of course he wouldn’t. Britons didn’t scream if they were being injected with death before thirty strangers. How quickly would it take effect? He licked his dry lips. If only she could be caught in the attempt; that was what he had hoped for.

He felt a movement behind him, very close, and swung round suddenly, switching on his torch, the beam high. It lighted Elsie’s face as she stood next to him. She blinked and stepped backwards and at the same moment, he felt a sharp pain in his hand. There was a clatter, and an exclamation. Elsie had dropped her handbag.

In a second, there was a bustle as people helped her to gather up her dropped belongings; Patrick withdrew towards the outer tomb trying to keep calm; his hand seemed to be damaged, but it had not felt like the thrust of a hypodermic.

Manolakis was suddenly beside him, leading him out into the fresh air, where Patrick, to his surprise, found that the palm of his left hand was bleeding.

‘You are all right,’ Manolakis told him, firmly.

‘Yes, of course I am,’ said Patrick, indignantly. Did the fellow think he would pass out at the sight of his own blood? He mopped at it with his large white linen handkerchief, which he then wrapped round the wound. It was a nasty cut, the type that bleeds freely, but not serious enough to require stitching. Manolakis glanced round. No one seemed to be watching them; those who were not helping Elsie with her possessions were photographing the entrance to the tomb, or each other. The policeman slipped something out of his pocket. It, too, appeared to be a white linen handkerchief, but as he unwrapped it and held it in his palm for Patrick to see, he revealed a slim, stiletto knife. He wrapped it up again and replaced it in his pocket, then led Patrick on towards the citadel where their guide was impatiently waiting, looking at her watch. The schedule was tight and if the tourists strayed, so did her timetable.

‘Try not to let her see you were hurt. She thinks she has lost the knife in the tomb. She will be happy to leave it there,’ said the inspector in a soft murmur.

‘It’s all right. It’s not serious,’ said Patrick. His relief at finding he had merely avoided a stabbing, not an injection, was profound. He was stupid to have thought she would try that, though; how could she load a syringe in the dark, much less press it home?

‘We’ll move a little away. Then we can see if we must get you something to—to—’ his English deserted Manolakis as he sought for the word for a dressing. ‘To stop blood,’ he said firmly. ‘It is some hours till we reach Athens.’

It would be a pity if he bled quietly to death in the coach while they waited for more evidence against Elsie, thought Patrick, melodramatically. Was this not enough? But it wasn’t; of course not. Specific proof of the crime against Felix was what they wanted.

The guide was talking about Schliemann’s finds and instructing her hearers to look at them in the Archaeological Museum. She frowned as Manolakis, talking about Orestes, led Patrick off to the top of the acropolis. Here they were able to inspect the damage; it was not at all severe, and some sticking plaster would soon hold the sides of the small wound together, but they had none.

‘One of the ladies will have some, in her handbag,’ said Manolakis. ‘Or the coach driver.’

‘We don’t want Elsie Loukas to see, though. It’s all right, it’s stopping,’ said Patrick. He wrapped his handkerchief round it more tightly; Manolakis tied it in position. ‘I’ll put my hand in my pocket, then it won’t show,’ he said. What a fuss.

‘It is clean. No germs,’ said Manolakis, earnestly.

Fancy knowing the word; Patrick did not know the equivalent in either French or German.

‘Your English is getting better every minute,’ he said.

They sat together in the coach returning to Athens, to the chagrin of the German woman whose acquaintance Patrick had been so busily cultivating. On Manolakis’s advice, Patrick tucked his hand under the lapel of his jacket in a Napoleonic manner, to raise it and thus help the bleeding to stop.

‘She’s a diabetic, Elsie Loukas,’ he informed the policeman. ‘I think if you inject a healthy person with insulin they go into a coma.’

‘I think you speak truth,’ said Manolakis. ‘And it is hard to find in the dead one, unless you look for it – how do you say it – because you believe it is there. There is a new test in recent years.’

‘So if she put Felix Lomax in the sea unconscious, he’d be sure to drown,’ said Patrick. ‘And it would seem to be an accident.’

‘It would seem to be.’ Manolakis repeated the intricate construction, docketing it away in his mind for future use, Patrick was sure.

‘You suspected this?’ he asked.

‘I knew it was not as easy as it would seem to be,’ said Manolakis, triumphantly. ‘But there is no proof.’

‘Her first husband,’ said Patrick, thinking aloud. ‘She said he was an archaeologist, killed in Crete. She was posing as British, so of course that meant her husband was British too. If he was German—’ his thoughts went back to Schliemann. German archaeologists had been interested in Mikronisos before the war. ‘His name was Freddie. That may have been Friedrich. She just changed her own name round, after all. If you could discover who he was—? I expect it was true that he was killed in Crete, but by the British or the Greeks. It would be difficult to trace him.’ He told Manolakis what Elsie had said about Mikronisos. ‘There might be records of archaeologists interested in the island,’ he suggested.

‘We would need help from Germany,’ said Manolakis. ‘It could be tried. It would not be quick.’ And even if something were found, by then the Loukases would have left Greece.

Felix could be exhumed and his remains tested for insulin, but even if it were found where was the link with Elsie? Unless they could force her to tell them, how would it ever be known? And George! What about George? In all their theorising, they had forgotten him.

‘I think she does not realise that her husband heard you, at
Epidavros
,’ said Manolakis, thoughtfully. ‘I would not like it if I had in error married myself to one who had killed my people.’ He meditated briefly. ‘We younger ones are not so bitter, it is true. But the older men – like Loukas – it is different.’

Manolakis was perhaps a year or two younger than Patrick; quite old enough to remember the war and what had happened in Crete; he might have run errands for the
andartes.
He could have had relatives who were massacred.

What would George do? Did he believe what he had heard?

The coach stopped at old Corinth on the way back, and Patrick regretted his inability to appreciate the scene of St. Paul’s activities. Manolakis had resumed his bank clerk role and even asked questions of the guide, which unnerved her since she was well aware of his true identity. Everyone was tired by this time, and most people would have preferred to drive straight back to Athens without stopping, as they did, for more refreshments on the toll road. Elsie disappeared into the cloakroom, and Manolakis spoke to one of the
kafenion
assistants who produced a first-aid box. The policeman took it into the men’s room, bidding Patrick follow. Here he carried out a neat cleaning-up operation on Patrick’s hand, bathing it and securing the wound with gauze and plaster. The job was just complete when George came out of one of the cubicles. He looked at Patrick’s hand, and at the bloodstained handkerchief which lay on the washbasin beside him, but he made no comment.

‘That’s fine. Thanks,’ said Patrick in a bright voice to the inspector. He dropped the handkerchief into a waste-bin; it was of no further use to him. Then he went out of the cloakroom leaving the two Greeks together. Perhaps Manolakis would say something to George. But he followed Patrick, clearly having maintained his
incognito.
When George reappeared all three started to admire the sunset.

Elsie did not return until just before the coach left. She was pale but looked composed.

‘Ah – there you are, honey,’ said George, going up to her. He seemed better himself now; the grey, pinched look had gone from his face and his voice was normal as he greeted his wife. It was a brave effort, for Greeks are not good dissemblers. The two were dropped at the Hilton on the way in to the centre of Athens; Manolakis left the coach when it stopped outside another hotel, but with no more than a casual goodbye.

Patrick knew that they would meet again shortly, and he had just entered his own hotel, having paused to buy
The Times
on the way, when Manolakis followed him through the doors.

There was a message for Patrick from the Athens police, who wanted to speak to him. Well, they must wait. There was also a cable from Colin which said:

WIFE UNIMPEACHABLE ALIBI PAST FORTNIGHT

MARRIAGE GUIDING AND MORAL REARMAMENT.

So that was how Gwenda had been occupied recently. Had she known about Felix’s new will before his death? It did not matter now. There was a letter, too, from England, in an unknown hand. Probably from Jeremy or Celia, thought Patrick, bemoaning what had happened at the end of their holiday.

‘Let’s have a drink,’ he said to Manolakis.

‘Are you not going to read your letter?’ asked the inspector when they were sitting in the bar with their ouzos.

It was really a most refreshing drink, thought Patrick, watching the liquid turn cloudy as he added some water; he had long ago stopped finding its flavour like cough syrup.

‘I’ll just see who it’s from,’ he said, and ripped the envelope open. The writing was large and clear; he glanced at the signature and then at the address which headed the first page. It was a long letter.

‘It’s from Gwenda Lomax,’ he said.

‘The widow?’

‘Yes.’ Patrick had begun to read intently. ‘Good heavens,’ he said. ‘It’s all here – what we want. The motive, I mean.’

Gwenda had telephoned Jane, whom she knew slightly, to find out where Patrick was staying in Crete and had learned of his move to Athens. She was not satisfied about the manner of Felix’s death, but did not want to cause a disturbance by asking for further enquiries without adequate grounds. She could think of no reason why Felix should have gone to Crete so suddenly unless he had stumbled upon some ghost from the past, and the one thing that had haunted him through all the years of their marriage had been the terrible death of a friend of his, during the war. She wanted Patrick to make some judicious investigations, and if he felt there was cause, take up the matter with the police again.

Felix had been in a German hospital in North Africa after his capture, wounded. In the next bed was a friend of his, Tom Lacey, wounded more seriously but recovering. Both officers had been receiving excellent care, like every patient; the German doctors and nurses were above the conflict. It was chance that Tom and Felix were together, for Tom had served in Crete; they were not in the same regiment.

One night, when most of the men in the ward were asleep, a nurse had approached Tom and said it was time for his shot. He’d had it, said Tom. Another had been ordered, said the nurse. She had then injected Tom in the arm and had gone away. She had been on the ward for some time, and her name was Elise. The men did not know her surname, but she was a widow.