Nemesis of the Dead (18 page)

‘I don’t suppose we could
roll
him down to the boat?’ Jack wondered.

‘What – and deliver him back to Marjorie covered in bits of dead crab and seaweed? I don’t think so. Come on, grab your end, we’re nearly there.’

The original idea of lying him flat in the bottom of the boat covered decorously with a blanket was clearly a non-starter. On the other hand, if they sat him upright he could topple sideways and capsize the boat.

‘We could turn him over and slide him, bum first, under the thwart board,’ suggested Jack, stroking his chin thoughtfully.

‘That’s no way to transport the dear departed – all trussed up like a Tesco’s turkey,’ said Sid shocked. ‘No, he’ll have to sit next to you in the stern.’

After a good deal of manoeuvring, they finally propped him up on the seat and Sid draped the blanket over his rigid legs.

‘What did you do that for?’ asked Jack. ‘He’s hardly likely to feel the cold, is he?’

‘I know – I know.’ Sid felt awkward. ‘It just seems more respectful, that’s all. Now put your arm around him and hold him steady and I’ll row us back to the hotel.’

The boat slid silently over the dark indigo sea like the nocturnal cortège of a sombre Viking funeral until Sid observed, ‘Apart from being a funny colour and not blinking, no one would ever clock him for a stiff.’

It was after two in the morning when they sculled wearily into the landing stage. Jack’s back was throbbing and Sid’s arms felt as though they were being torn from their sockets. They decided they would need some extra muscle to get Dobson’s body out of the boat and up to the hotel. As Sid remarked, in their weakened state they could easily lose their grip on him and drop him in the drink, which was unthinkable. The professor would hardly be much use, he was more brains than brawn, so they would wake Yanni. Apart from anything else, they needed to find somewhere in the hotel to lay Ambrose out. Sid went to knock on his bedroom door.

Jack found Corrie asleep on the bar. She was sitting on a stool with her head resting on her arms. It was unlike her to fall asleep before he came home, but then he saw the bottle of brandy at her elbow. Someone had given it a bit of a hammering. He jogged her arm, gently.

‘Corrie – I’m back. Where’s Diana?’

Corrie surfaced reluctantly from the depths of a deep, alcohol-induced sleep. She struggled to get her bearings and tried to shake off the idiot who was disturbing her.

‘Go way. Tired.’ She dropped her head back on her arms. Then memory of the night’s terrible revelations returned with a start and she sat up abruptly, her eyes wide, her speech slurred. ‘Jack! Something ghastly! Got to tell you!’

‘What?’ He became agitated then. ‘Is it Diana?’

Corrie frowned, puzzled. ‘No. Diana’s in bed with Cuthbert.
She
hasn’t killed anybody.’ She grabbed his arm, her eyes crossing with the effort of focusing on his face. ‘Try to keep up, Jack. It’s important.’ She picked up a jug of water from the bar and took a long drink from it, dribbling some down her chin. She wiped it away with the back of her hand, then she grabbed two handfuls of his shirt-front, pulled his face very close to hers and spoke in an exaggerated stage whisper. ‘Ambrose is dead!’

‘Yes, I know.’ Jack reeled slightly from the blast of brandy fumes. ‘Sid and I have just brought him back in the boat. Is Marjorie all right?’

‘’Course not!’ Corrie gave him a pitying look.

‘No, I suppose not,’ conceded Jack. ‘I guess it was always on the cards that Dobson might pop his clogs suddenly with a heart as dodgy as his, but all the same, it must have been a nasty shock for her.’

Corrie continued to be very agitated and kept shaking her head, maintaining her vicelike grip on his shirt and much of the hair beneath it. Jack reckoned he might soon have to uncurl her fingers.

‘Wasn’t a heart attack.’ Her face was so close to his their noses were touching.

‘What do you mean? Of course it was. Ambrose was rowing them around the coast in a boat and his heart gave out.’

‘No.’ She paused theatrically, looked right and left to ensure she was not being overheard, then whispered again, hoarsely. ‘Marjorie murdered him.’

Jack sighed. ‘Corrie, if this is another of your lurid deductions pulled together from scraps of spurious information, I shall—’

‘She did it. She killed him. Told me so herself. Going to confess in the morning.’

‘Are you sure, sweetheart?’

She nodded vigorously. ‘Positive.’

‘Oh wonderful! Bloody wonderful!’ Jack closed his eyes wearily. ‘A murder confession from the wrong person. That’s all I’m short of.’

‘You’re not going to arrest her, are you? I mean, he was a beastly little bully with a fat gut and beady eyes. Felt like topping him myself. We all did. She won’t go to prison, will she Jack? She isn’t …’ Corrie eyes glazed over and her grip on his shirt slackened. Then she slid slowly and gracefully down off the bar stool into a tidy heap on the floor. Passed out – probably for some hours, thought Jack. He covered her up then went to help Sid with what now looked like the victim of a suspicious death.

J
ack tossed and turned until dawn, kept awake by Corrie’s stentorian snores and the vexed issue of whether Marjorie had, in fact, murdered her husband. His gut instinct was that she was incapable of such a crime. A decent lady, who had, by all accounts, loved and cared for her husband for thirty years despite the appalling way he treated her, was unlikely to bump him off on their anniversary. But then his dispassionate, analytical policeman’s brain kicked in and told him that here was a woman, pushed beyond endurance, who had finally cracked, encouraged by the hypnotic, compelling effect of Katastrophos which might well have ‘made her subject to an indiscretion outside the boundaries of her narrow domestic life’. Could be she had brought him here, their first trip away from home since their honeymoon, with the express purpose of getting shot of him. What better location than a remote island with no emergency services and all formal law and order miles away on the mainland? She wasn’t to know there would be a DI from the murder squad present, and when she did find out, she might have judged it worth the risk anyway.

She was in the perfect position to kill him, of course, and she had both motive and opportunity. She understood exactly the vulnerability of her husband’s heart and was in sole charge of his medication. How simple it would be to give him too much – or too little. No one would question his death after all that rowing, not even his doctor, and not only would she be rid of her tormentor for ever, she would have a nice big pay-out on his life insurance to help her enjoy the rest of her life. But if that was the case, why would she then confess to his murder? That fouled up the whole theory. No lump sum from the insurance company and maybe a long stretch behind bars. It made no sense at all.

He got out of bed and padded to the bathroom to splash cold water on his face. It didn’t make things any clearer and he decided it was pointless to speculate further. He would wait until he had heard Marjorie’s version of events but he couldn’t help remembering what Corrie had said the first night they arrived – everybody is capable of one murder.

Predictably, Ariadne’s explanation was that the fat, rude Englishman had died because he had violated St Sophia’s sacred grotto. She could not be shifted from this view, however much sensible evidence there was to the contrary. The only point she was not clear about was why his wife had not died too. Eventually, she decided that the saint had spared Mrs Dobson because she had suffered enough already after thirty years in a cruel, loveless marriage and, unlike the others, she hadn’t already offended St Sophia by desecrating the pilgrimage to the monastery. It was a pity, she thought, that all husbands could not be like Professor Gordon – a god among men. Always, on his visits, he brought her expensive presents, wonderful charms and amulets for St Sophia from holy shops in the big cities. She had been privileged to help him with his work for many years in her own, modest way, and she was proud that he trusted her. Everyone else, even Maria, treated her as if she were simple and senile, no longer able to understand important things – but not the professor. They shared many jokes – many secrets. She would do anything for him.

Thursday morning. Breakfast, not surprisingly, was a solemn affair. Jack, Sidney, Diana, and unusually, Tina, sat silently around the big olive-wood table, toying half-heartedly with melon and yogurt. Mostly they just sipped coffee. Marjorie had not yet come down and the professor, as was his custom, had gone out at dawn in search of samples. Corrie was still in bed nursing a monumental hangover.

Sinister news travelled fast on Katastrophos and by nine o’clock few people were unaware that the blustering, red-faced Englishman in the straw hat was dead. The island’s hypotheses regarding the manner of his demise were many and varied – always imaginative, often grisly, rarely close to the truth. For the time being, Jack, Sid and Yanni had put the deceased in the cellar – the coolest part of the house – sitting with his back against the south-facing wall.

‘Should we leave him like that?’ Sid had asked. ‘Might give someone a nasty turn if they wander in looking for a bottle of wine and see him sitting there. Maybe we ought to hammer him straight.’

‘No need,’ Jack had replied. ‘He’ll start to ease off after a few more hours then we can lay him flat and cover him up.’

Now, in the warm, golden beginnings of what promised to be another scorching Katastrophan day, Jack had many things on his mind, not least the irreversible disturbance of what might now turn out to be a crime scene and what to do with a rapidly decomposing corpse down in the cellar. He seriously doubted whether there were any facilities for refrigeration of bodies on Katastrophos. Yanni certainly didn’t know of any and displayed a typically Katastrophan reluctance to speak about dying and its implications. Maria had been a little more forthcoming regarding how death was managed on the island.

‘When someone in the family dies,’ she said quietly, ‘we stay with them for twenty-four hours. Everybody sits around and tells religious stories. The body must face the east, towards the sun. To prepare it, we first wash it with wine and wrap it in white material. Then we dress the dead person in normal clothes, tie the jaw shut, cross their hands and tie them together, and fasten the feet with a white ribbon. Finally, an icon and flowers are placed on top of the body inside the coffin. When people come to pay their respects, they give money to light a candle. They ask the deceased to pass on messages to their dead loved ones. Then burial takes place in the churchyard of St Sophia. Before they are buried, the deceased’s hands, feet and jaw are untied so they are free to go to their new life. All this is done respectfully but with necessary haste. The hot climate … you understand?’

That, mused Jack, was in cases where death had been from natural causes. After he had spoken to Marjorie, it might well turn into a murder enquiry, in which case he would have to find some way of preserving the body until it could be taken to the mainland and then back to England for an autopsy and an inquest and all the other paraphernalia of a suspicious death. The last thing he needed, now that his operation was approaching crisis point, was the distraction of another case. It was at this point in his deliberations that Corrie crept gingerly down the stairs, holding her head in her hands. She went outside to the pergola and sat, carefully.

‘Marjorie is on her way down.’

‘How is the poor old duck?’ asked Sidney.

‘Surprisingly calm under the circumstances.’ Corrie poured herself some of the thick, black Greek coffee. ‘She wants to talk to you, Jack.’

When Marjorie came out and sat next to Jack under the sun-dappled vine leaves, the others stood up awkwardly, intending to leave, but she stopped them.

‘No, please, don’t go. I’d like you all to hear this, as you knew Ambrose.’

Diana reached across the table to grip Marjorie’s hand. ‘I’m real sorry, Marjorie.’ Now the man was dead, she would never mention the number of times Dobson had whispered filthy obscenities in her ear whenever he could corner her, alone. ‘I didn’t know your husband had passed over until this morning.’

‘Thank you, dear. But he didn’t pass over unaided – his death was my fault.’

Jack interrupted hastily. ‘Marjorie, before you say anything else, I really think you should wait until we get back to England and you can have your solicitor present …’

‘Bless you, Jack, but I want to get it off my chest. Tell you exactly what happened while it’s fresh in my mind. Then I’ll leave it to you to decide what’s best.’ She sipped some of the coffee Sid had poured her, then began, diffidently: ‘You see, Ambrose wasn’t quite the respectable English gentleman that you all believed him to be.’ They exchanged furtive glances but didn’t contradict her. ‘He liked to spy on people, women especially. Yesterday morning, he saw you, Diana, rowing away to the other end of the island to sunbathe in the nude and he ran down to get the other boat and follow you.’ She paused. ‘I’m sorry, dear. It’s horrible, I know, the thought of an ageing peeping Tom hiding in the olive trees to ogle you. Well, I saw him from my window and I knew what he was up to, and I decided to put a stop to it. Just as I got close, the professor appeared with a picnic basket, so I stayed back behind the oleanders and did a little spying of my own. I heard him say to Ambrose that since he was going out in the boat anyway, would he kindly drop off your lunch as you’d forgotten it. Of course, this gave him the perfect excuse to make a nuisance of himself, so I came out of my hiding place and jumped into the boat. I told him I had decided to go with him. Of course that didn’t suit his purpose at all and he was very unkind – told me to go away. When I wouldn’t, he stood up and went to climb back on to the jetty. Said he didn’t feel like a boat trip any longer. If I had let him go, he would still be alive today.’ Marjorie’s voice broke a little and she pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes. ‘But I was so cross with him, I said that I quite fancied a trip round the coast.’ She turned to Jack. ‘I goaded him, you see, I asked if there was a reason why he didn’t want to take me with him, knowing full well he wouldn’t admit what he was really up to. I forced him to row when I knew his heart was weak.’

Corrie interrupted. ‘But that isn’t murder, Marjorie. He didn’t have to do it, did he?’

Marjorie smiled wanly. ‘Maybe not, but that isn’t the worst of it. While we were rowing along in the sunshine, I asked him if he realized that day was our thirtieth anniversary. I told him thirty years meant “Pearl” and how I’d really like a pearl necklace I had seen. I was happy to buy it myself. He snarled at me then – told me to save my little bit of money because I was going to need it. He had decided to throw me out when we got back to Hampshire. He’d had enough of me and my quarrelsome attitude – answering him back all the time. He said I could take just what I stood up in, nothing more. He was furious, really red in the face. Everything was in his name, he said, the house, the car, everything and I wasn’t getting any of it. He told me to go and live with Dan.’

She stopped again and sipped coffee, clearly finding it harrowing to recall the cruel insults. Sid put an arm around her.

‘You don’t need to tell us any more, Marjie. It must have been awful for you.’

‘Yes, I do, Sidney. I have to tell you how Ambrose died. I stood up for myself, you see. I shouldn’t have argued, but I did. I said divorce wasn’t like that these days. Wives had rights. I would get myself a good solicitor and sue him for every penny that I was entitled to. He started to rant and rage and I told him not to get so worked up – to think of his heart. He sneered at me, then. Said his heart wasn’t as bad as I thought. Never had been. He had exaggerated, so I would wait on him like a servant. He said he had every intention of getting very worked up – especially when we got to your cove, Diana. He said some hideous things – things I couldn’t repeat – about what he was going to do to you. It made me feel sick and ashamed. He even suggested I should stay and watch – I might learn something. It was then that I lost control of myself. The worst of it was his blithe assumption that I had to go along with his wickedness – that years of bullying had made me too feeble and pathetic to do anything about it. I told him he was a disgusting, filthy old man and I was going to put a stop to him. It was then he hit me with the oar.’

She fingered the angry red weal running down the length of her face. ‘We were quite a distance from the shore and I was frightened he intended to knock me out of the boat – leave me to drown. I grabbed the end of the oar and we struggled, then the blade struck a patch of rotten wood in the bottom of the boat and went right through it. Water came pouring in through the hole. I don’t swim very well and I was terrified. Ambrose jumped over the side and left me – just splashed ashore without a backward glance. I climbed out and managed to cling on to the boat until my feet touched the sand, then I dragged it ashore, as far as I could.’

‘Why?’ Jack asked. ‘Why didn’t you just leave it to sink?’

‘Well, for a start it was hotel property. Loaned to us in good faith. I couldn’t just abandon it. Besides, I thought if I left it out there on the beach, you’d spot it when you came to look for us.’

‘Good thinking, Marjie,’ said Sid.

‘The picnic basket was still in it, so I rescued that too, seeing as I didn’t know how long it would be before we were missed and someone came to find us. I hadn’t a clue where we were but I knew we were a long way from the hotel. Then I went to look for Ambrose. He was sitting on the floor in the cave where you eventually found us. I thought he’d be feeling terribly ill but he seemed fine for a man with a badly congested heart – just a bit out of breath. Straight away he started shouting at me, telling me I was a stupid, useless, dried-up old woman and how this whole disaster was my fault. He said he’d never loved me and now he couldn’t even bear to be anywhere near me. As soon as we got home, he had every intention of replacing me with a young prostitute he had met who knew how to please him, how to satisfy him. Then he spotted the basket and he said, “Give that to me. I’ve had nothing since breakfast and it could be hours before those idiots find us.” He snatched it and started to help himself to Diana’s lunch. After that, he completely ignored me and just sat there cramming food into his mouth and slurping orange juice.’

‘Didn’t the bastard share it with you?’ Diana asked, appalled.

‘No dear. That wasn’t his way. I wasn’t hungry anyhow.’ She hesitated, then braced herself and looked steadily at Jack. ‘It was then that I did something really terrible. Something I must confess to you, Jack, and a crime I shall have to pay for – not just in this world but probably in the next.’

It went deathly silent – not a breath of breeze or birdsong. Even the cicadas stopped chirping.

‘I went across to the shrine of St Sophia, knelt down, and I prayed to her to punish him. Right then and there, in her sacred grotto. I asked her, on behalf of all wretched and oppressed women, to destroy him. A few minutes later, he started to gasp for breath and moan. I went across to him and felt his chest. His heart was beating wildly, erratically, much faster than it was supposed to. Naturally, I didn’t have any of his medication with me – his digoxin. He wasn’t due a dose until evening and he wasn’t supposed to take extra ones in between. I tried to loosen his collar so he could breathe better but he beat me off, yelling and screaming, as if he was having some kind of hallucination. He vomited violently a couple of times – then he shuddered and slumped back against the wall, still and quiet. I felt his pulse but I knew straight away that he was dead. That I’d killed him.’