Strangers in Company Read online

  But she was here, on a Greek hillside, gold with sunshine, silver with asphodel, and the girl beside her needed help more than she did. No doubt Stella’s explanation of her tears was part the truth, but it was most certainly not the whole. But best, perhaps, to accept it for the time being? Thinking of Stella helped her own trouble. She was less certain, now, that hateful eyes were watching her from behind that gaping oriel window, that door opening on vacancy. All absurd. The sun was comforting; the cold sweat had passed. And Stella’s shoulders had stopped shaking. Marian took her hand off her shoulder to open her bag. “I think Cairnthorpe and Co. are coming back.” She could hear voices from above. “I don’t know about you, but I feel a wreck.”

  Stella turned over and sat up, showing a surprisingly calm face. “Thanks, Mrs. F. I said you were a honey.” She gave back the crumpled handkerchief and pulled a mirror out of her bag. “You’re fine, you always are, but I look like hell.” She began an expert elaborate rescue operation on her face.

  “You don’t, you know.” Marian was surprised at how little damage that dreadful crying bout had done to Stella’s eye makeup.

  “Hysterics,” said Stella angrily. “I’m ashamed. You won’t tell anyone.… No”—with apology—“of course you won’t. Hullo, here comes the professor. I say! What’s the matter?”

  They both jumped to their feet, as Professor Edvardson came hurrying down the hill towards them. He had lost his hat and was carrying his binoculars by their broken strap. Everything about him spoke of crisis. “Where’s Cairnthorpe?” he shouted as he approached. “I’ve been attacked.”

  “Attacked?” said Marian.

  “Who?” said Stella.

  “I don’t know. I was quite close to the edge. I’d seen a blue rock thrush and thought I might even find its nest. I didn’t hear a thing, but suddenly someone was trying to push me over. And, boy, was there some over to go.” Telling it seemed to make him feel better. “I’d have been clear down in the valley by now.”

  “But what happened?” asked Marian.

  “I guess I surprised him.” The professor was pleased with himself. “I was in the army once. I still remember a trick or two they taught us. And he thought he had a pushover.” It had shaken him more, Marian thought, than he would admit. “Very literally a pushover,” he went on. “A long, long way down. Only I didn’t want to go, so I walloped him one with my binoculars—broke the strap, dammit. Excuse me—” To Marian.

  “Him?” asked Stella.

  “I think so. Can’t be sure, though; not when you girls all wear trousers, and the young men grow their hair. But if he was a girl, he sure had some muscles. We had quite a tussle there, for a minute. Then I guess he gave up. He got out. of there so quickly that I never did see more than lots of dark hair and blue jeans.”

  Instinctively, Marian looked at Stella. Dark hair and blue jeans. Absurd to be grateful they had been together all the time. But the professor was speaking again. “Where’s young Cairnthorpe?” he asked. “I have to warn him, round up the party. It has to be a maniac,” he explained. “No chance of robbery; not with me a goner down in the valley. We ought to get the hell out of here and report it.”

  “Here he comes.” But Marian’s heart sank at the thought of Mrs. Duncan, Mrs. Spencer and the Adamses, all, so far as she knew, wandering about on the upper reaches of the mountain. And Charles Esmond. Who had dark hair and was wearing blue jeans. Horrible. She listened quietly while Edvardson retold his story to Cairnthorpe and his horrified party.

  “A madman,” Edvardson summed it up. “It can’t be anything else. I mean, why me? Not robbery. No reason. Don’t you have any way of calling the others back?”

  “How could I? Go out looking for them? No.” He dismissed it at once. “It would only add to the risk. We’d best stay here, all together, until the others come back.”

  “If they come back,” said Pam, and then burst into a nervous, apologetic giggle.

  But she had voiced everybody’s hidden fear, and it was a subdued and gloomy group that settled on stones and patches of grass, almost uncomfortably close round Cairnthorpe and Edvardson, who were still standing and canvassing possibilities.

  “At least I could go down and get Mike,” said the professor. “Was he planning to spend the morning with his friend at the café?”

  “I don’t know. He said he’d be there for lunch. But, yes.” Cairnthorpe made up his mind. “I would be grateful if you’d go on ahead, Professor, and if Mike’s not there, find someone who can understand your story—there’s always your German. I’m afraid it means the police again, whatever happens.”

  “I’m damned sure it does,” said Edvardson grimly. “That was no joke up there, believe me. Not by a long shot. And I’d like to have a look in the parking lot, as soon as possible, and see what else there is in the way of transport.”

  “Absolutely.” Unspoken between the two men was the possibility that the attack had been committed by a member of their own party. “There’s a second one, a little farther up,” David continued. “You might take a look there if you get the chance. And watch yourself, going down.” He thought about that for a moment. “I think someone should go with you. There are plenty of places among the ruins.…”

  “Yes.” The two men looked consideringly at the anxious group around them.

  Their problem was obvious. Who was safe company? Jeans and dark hair covered about half the younger members of the party. Any one of the loose, inchoate group that had accompanied Cairnthorpe could have slipped away for long enough to attack the professor, who had, he had explained, been on his way back when it had happened.

  Marian spoke up. “Miss Marten and I were together the whole time. I’m afraid we’ve just been lying here in the sun.”

  No need to say more. David Cairnthorpe’s face cleared into obvious relief. “Then you’re the ones to go down with the professor. And, perhaps, Mrs. Frenche, while he’s reporting what happened, you could go and take a look at the other car park. Only, keep together, won’t you? On the way down?”

  “We certainly will,” said Marian.

  Chapter Nine

  Mike was not at the café, but the proprietor turned out to speak very passable French. “Just as well you came,” said the professor as Marian succeeded in establishing this. “I only had a year of French, and damn little good it did me. Tell him what happened, would you, and ask him to send for the police? Oh, and you might ask him where Mike went, too.”

  Jeans and dark hair again. But that was impossible. Marian put the question and learned that Mike had gone down to the hotel in new Mistra to make arrangements for another party. “He’ll be back any moment.” She interpreted the man’s answer for Edvardson, then quickly told him what had happened. The man pantomimed amazement, pulled three chairs up to a table on the quiet little terrace behind the café, produced a bottle of ouzo and three glasses and disappeared into the interior. They could hear his voice, strident and incomprehensible on the telephone.

  “Trusting.” Edvardson poured lavish shots for them all. “I’m afraid we’d better forget that other parking lot, don’t you think?”

  “Yes.” Stella had moved over to the edge of the terrace. “But I’ll tell you one thing, there’s nothing here but our bus and a red car.”

  “The same one?” asked Marian.

  “God knows. It looks the same.”

  “Same as what?” the professor asked, and Marian had just finished explaining their previous encounters when the café proprietor returned to tell them the police would be coming—“Vite, vite,” from Sparta.

  “I wonder how long the others will be,” said Marian. “And come to that, what’s become of the rest of the party? The ones who didn’t even get as far as the palace?”

  “That’s a good question,” said the professor. “No, no,” he hurried on, noticing that Stella had gone very white, “I don’t seriously think there’s been a wholesale massacre, but it is peculiar. Ask the man, Mrs. Frenche.”

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bsp; Asked, surprisingly, he spat, then burst into an explosive torrent of words, part Greek, part French. “Oh, I see.” Marian got the gist of it at last. “There’s a new café up the road. It’s always happening, he says. There’s another way out of the site there, and they’ve got a menu as long as your arm, and—oh—I’m not quite sure what else, but anyway people who are supposed to come here go there instead.”

  “So what do we do about that?” asked Edvardson.

  “Nothing, I should think. Mike and David will have to sort it out. Just so long as we know they’re somewhere.”

  Stella finished her ouzo and looked a little better. “I was really beginning to think the earth had opened and swallowed them.” She was laughing at herself or, Marian thought, trying to.

  “A kind of mass Persephone.” Marian could not help a smile. “Just think of all those good ladies turning up in hell.”

  The professor refilled all their glasses. “I bet the boss would run for it. Well, here’s to survival.”

  “Everyone’s,” said Stella, and caused a cold little silence.

  The police came first, and this time the professor was able to tell his story in English. Finishing it, he asked the inevitable question and got the answer Marian had feared. They were the only tour on the site so far, but there were, it appeared, a few private cars at the upper park, as well as the red one down here. No one was being allowed to leave. “For the moment,” added the policeman, and began, patiently, to take Edvardson through his story all over again, point by point. It came out exactly the same as before, and he turned politely to Marian. “You will forgive me, kyria, since I can see you are all friends, but when the gentleman told you this story the first time, was it the same?”

  “Just the same.”

  “And you did not think, at all, that he might, perhaps, have imagined this attack? It is a strange place, Mistra,” he hurried on. “A place where one might, just possibly, imagine things.”

  “Ghoulies and ghosties,” said Stella.

  “Not me,” said the professor.

  “You had heard, perhaps, of what happened here after the war?” The courteous voice made it at once a question and a suggestion.

  “Yes, I know about that. But if you think it made me try and push myself over a cliff, you’re crazy.”

  “Oriste?” For the first time the courteous voice was puzzled. “I beg your pardon,” he amended, and Marian found herself wondering what rank he held. A high one, she rather thought. Higher than one would have expected?

  “I meant,” the professor explained patiently, “that I don’t make a habit of imagining things.” He reached into the pocket of his shabby windbreaker, produced a wallet and, surprisingly, a card. “I am a professor of classical studies.” He handed over the card.

  “And you do not speak Greek?”

  Edvardson laughed, threw back his head and recited a magnificent, incomprehensible speech. “You understand it?”

  The young man smiled politely. “Homer, I think. The catalogue of ships, perhaps? I take your point, Professor. We have come a long, hard way since Homer, we Greeks.” He looked at his watch. “How long since you came down? I think we must admit that the rest of your party are a long time coming.” He spoke quickly to one of his two men. “Whatever has happened, they should come down now, and I must telephone.”

  “It’s bad, isn’t it?” Marian had waited till he had left them alone with only the other man, who spoke no English.

  “I’m afraid so. They should have been here long ago.”

  “Not necessarily,” said Stella. “David didn’t set any time. He just said, ‘back for lunch.’ Any of them might have decided to stay up top all morning. And of course he’d wait.”

  “That’s true.” Marian jumped at it.

  The professor looked at his watch. “It’s one o’clock now.”

  “And here they come.” But one look at Cairnthorpe’s face confirmed their fears.

  “Mrs. Duncan,” he said. “There’s not a sign of her. We split up into pairs, and called, and searched. Nothing.”

  “There’s another way out,” said the professor, but they all knew it for a forlorn hope.

  The chief policeman, returning at this point, listened to Cairnthorpe’s story and took this point at once. “The rest of your party were at the other café,” he said. “They are on their way here now. Then we will know.”

  But none of them expected Mrs. Duncan to be among the group who came grumbling down the road. They had been comfortably settled at the upper café and were not at all pleased to be dragged away—and by a policeman, too—to this, in their opinion, inferior place.

  “You will find the food delicious,” said the young policeman firmly. “My friend here is ready to serve you now, if you will all be so good as to be seated.”

  “And a drink all round first, on Mercury Tours,” said Cairnthorpe. “If you wouldn’t mind organising it, Mrs. Frenche? I gather you can communicate with the boss?”

  It was a good idea, Marian thought, as she moved between the anxious little groups, where Cairnthorpe’s party were telling the others what had happened. There was agitation so far, but no panic. If they were lucky, the police, who had now arrived in force and spread out to search the hill, were to find at best Mrs. Duncan with a broken ankle or at worst some local lunatic responsible for whatever disaster had happened to her, the party might survive, as a party. But it seemed horribly unlikely to Marian. Only she knew what had happened to her on the Palamede, and she was deeply grateful that she had made so light, to Stella, of Mrs. Duncan’s fright there. For the unpleasant fact was that once again she and Mrs. Duncan had been wearing their almost identical blue wind-breakers. It was a thought to chill the blood, but one she meant to keep to herself. After all, she might so easily be wrong. And Cairnthorpe had enough on his hands as it was. She felt horribly sorry for him and watched with surprised respect as he moved among the party, settling them at tables, giving a word of reassurance here and there, where it seemed most needed.

  Mrs. Esmond was on the verge of hysterics. “Just think.” She said it over and over again. “Charles insisted on leaving me alone up in that horrible palace. If I hadn’t met you, Mr. Cairnthorpe, God knows what would have happened to me.”

  The fourth time she said this, Marian, sitting at the next table, could stand it no longer. “Actually”—she leaned across—“you weren’t alone. Miss Marten and I were there; we heard it all.”

  “I didn’t see you.” Suspiciously.

  “We were lying among the asphodel.” Marian felt more foolish than ever.

  “Have you told the police chief?” Cairnthorpe, who was helping the owner hand out the drinks, paused behind her chair.

  “No.”

  “You should, I think. When he comes back. In the meantime, here is food, and very good it smells.” The proprietor and his two bright-eyed, dark-haired daughters were busy handing out plates of grey-looking meat with grey mounds of potatoes and the mixture of carrots and peas that seemed to be the only vegetable served to tourists. Cairnthorpe moved quickly through the small indoors of the café to look out at the members of the party who had settled on the other terrace at the front, then returned to the table where the professor was still sitting with Marian and Stella. “May I?” He pulled out the fourth chair. “Everyone seems to be settled, thank God.”

  “Except Mrs. Duncan,” said Stella, and Marian could have kicked her. Why on earth did she tease poor Cairnthorpe so?

  The meat was fatty but delicious, strongly flavoured with garlic and rosemary. “This needs retsina,” said the professor. “And I certainly do. It’s been a long morning. And if we’re not lucky, the afternoon will be worse.” He caught the eye of one of the smiling girls and gave his order. “Basic Greek,” he said.

  “The classical is so different?” Anything, Marian thought, for a neutral topic.

  “It looks the same, but it sounds different as hell. And of course, all the meanings have slipped.”

/>   “Like boy into knave?” asked Marian.

  “Right.” He smiled at her as on a bright pupil and discoursed for a while about language changes. Marian was intensely grateful to him. Cairnthorpe was understandably preoccupied, and Stella had plunged deeper and deeper into one of her impenetrable silences. And no wonder. This shock, coming on top of that bout of hysteria up in the palace, would be enough to shake anyone. And there must, almost inevitably, be worse to come.

  The young policeman, returning as they disposed of the inevitable choice of apples or oranges, confirmed this. His face was grave. “We have found her, I am afraid,” he told Cairnthorpe. “Or rather a goatherd has, down in the valley. She had fallen a long way. Poor lady. Too long a way.”

  “From the top?” Cairnthorpe had gone very white, but spoke with a calm that Marian respected.

  “No. We think not. Probably from not much higher than the upper chapel. There are many places there where an accident could easily happen.” He was looking almost pleadingly at the professor.

  “If it was not for my story?” Edvardson returned look for look. “I’m sorry, sir, but it happened just the way I told it, and, remember, I told it before any of us knew Mrs. Duncan was missing.”

  “Unless you knew,” said the policeman.

  “That’s not stupid.” Edvardson might have been conceding a point to a bright student. “You mean, I went mad or something? Pushed the poor woman over, and then made up my story as a cover? But it wouldn’t have been all that smart, would it, because without my story it would have been taken for an accident, just as you said.”

  “One is not always very wise when one has just committed murder,” said the policeman quietly.