Angel of Death (20 page)

If she was honest with herself, she was curious to see the interior of the house, and curious, too, about Alex Manoussi. She knew so little about him or his family. Even what she had thought she knew, had heard from Pandora and Charles, from Milo, was obviously not entirely true. They had left Alex out of the stories they told, and that made what they had said flawed, unreliable, as well as making her uneasy about them. As they had lied to her by omission, they were no longer the people she had believed they were.

‘Come along,’ he said softly, coaxingly, and took her elbow.

She could have pulled away, but she didn’t. She let him lead her into the house, although she was trembling inside, her head swimming with doubt and uncertainty.

He unlocked the front door and took her into a hall from which a flight of beautifully polished stairs rose into a shadowy first floor. There was a scent of summer flowers; roses and lavender mingled. A large green glass bowl of them stood on a heavy oak table by a fireplace whose blackened chimney bore witness to years of fires. Charles had said it was cold here in the winter; snow often lay on the ground for days, which was why the hotel now had central heating, although Pandora had laughingly said that in her childhood before the central heating was installed they had had huge fires of wood, perfumed by pine cones from the pines in their grounds.

Had she really meant the hotel, or had she been talking about this house?

‘Is the house old?’ she asked Alex, as they entered a large sitting room leading off the hall.

Alex let go of her and walked through the shadowy light to the windows, pressed a button which operated the shutters.

‘By English standards, no. It was built in eighteen sixty-one; Greece had a King, then, King Otto. He was driven out in eighteen sixty-two, just a year after this house was built.’

‘Did your family build the house?’

‘My great great grandfather, Philip built it.’ He pointed to a brightly coloured painting hanging on one wall. ‘That is him.’ She studied the proud, weather-beaten, hawk-nosed face.

‘I can see a resemblance.’

Alex laughed. ‘Thank you. He was fifty when he built this house. He had just married for the third time, a girl of eighteen called Helena. His first wife and child were killed in an earthquake in Athens. He married again, but that wife died in childbirth. Medicine was very primitive here in that era. It was bad luck. But he tried again, with my great great grandmother, and she had four children – two boys, two girls.’ He gestured to another painting of a similar-looking man with the same black hair, black eyes, flashing stare. ‘My great grandfather, Constantine, was the eldest. He was married at twenty, but his wife didn’t have a child for ten years, and then only had one, my grandfather, Basil. That’s him, that photograph over there.’

Miranda went over to look at the faded, monochrome photograph standing on a highly polished sideboard. The resemblance to Alex was striking; the family face was oddly uniform, they all looked much the same.

‘That was a very early photograph. Apparently my grandfather was a keen amateur photographer. He was too busy constructing his boat-building yard to get married. He finally chose a girl whose father was well-to-do; one of grandfather’s customers. My grandmother was beautiful, but we don’t have any photos or paintings of her here. There are photos taken by my grandfather, but a cousin of mine has those, in Athens.’

‘What was her name?’

‘Sophie. When she had a daughter first, she gave her the same name. My father was her third child and first son. She had seven children in all, but several of them died in infancy, which was not uncommon in those days.’

‘Did they live in Piraeus, near the boat yard, or here?’

‘Sometimes here, sometimes in Piraeus. Once children started to arrive, my grandmother chose to live here. I spent my childhood here, with my mother, while my father lived on the mainland and came over here at weekends.’

‘It must have been a difficult life for your mother.’

‘Yes, she missed my father when he was away, but she was a good wife and accepted the way of life he wanted.’ He turned to look down at her, his dark eyes glinting mischievously. ‘Greek women were very submissive then.’

‘Not now?’

‘We have feminists now. Life is not so easy for men as it used to be. Women argue back more than they did.’

‘Good,’ she said, chin lifted, and his mouth went crooked, half in amusement, half in derision.

‘Home life was much more peaceful in those bad old days, though.’

‘For the men – I wonder if women liked their lives much?’

‘They had their children, and their home to run. They were not powerless, not in their own homes.’

‘And you would like to go back to those times, I suppose?’

He considered her drily, then shook his head. ‘I don’t believe you can ever turn the clock back. No, I’m perfectly happy with the way things are now.’ He walked over to a drinks tray and lifted a glass. ‘What would you like to drink? White wine, retsina?’

‘White wine, please. Retsina is interesting but it is an acquired taste, a glass of it now and then is OK, but I wouldn’t want to drink too much of it.’

‘Nor would I,’ he agreed, pouring them both white wine.

Taking her glass she sat down. The furniture was mainly golden oak, the armchairs covered in dark blue velvet which matched the curtains hanging at the windows. She got an impression of tranquillity; the room was cool and elegant. The walls were painted a soft eggshell blue; on them hung family portraits and watercolours of the Greek landscape.

A face caught her attention; younger and softer but familiar all the same, and very beautiful. The woman she had seen with Charles – Elena. Was she a member of the Manoussi family, then?

Watching her, Alex said, ‘Shall I order lunch from room service, or shall we make our own?’

‘Well . . . have you got anything here?’

‘Plenty of salad in the fridge. Would you like fish or lamb with that? I’ve got some lamb chops and some sea bream, or squid.’

‘Sea bream would be lovely.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘I’m a bit dubious about squid, I’m afraid.’

‘We’ll have to teach you to love it. It tastes like chicken, you know.’

‘I’ve been told that, but I can’t get over those tentacles, and the horrible little suckers. When I see squid I keep thinking it is going to slither off the plate and grab me by the throat.’

He laughed. ‘You’re letting your imagination run away with you! By the time it turns up on a plate, it’s dead and has been cooked.’

She shuddered. ‘Maybe, but I still don’t like the look of it. Can I help with the cooking?’

‘Would you make the salad and the dressing while I cook the fish?’

‘Of course.’

‘Well, come through to the kitchen.’

She was still staring at the portrait of Elena. Should she ask Alex about her? Slowly she turned to follow him.

The kitchen was an ultra modern room with high windows through which the sun streamed once Alex had opened the shutters.

The cabinets were made of golden pine, there was a bright yellow range and a tall refrigerator on top of which sat a tabby cat with a huge, bushy, stripy tail. It stood up, yawning widely, showing sharp little white teeth.

‘Oh, isn’t he sweet? Is it a he?’

‘Yes, but he is not sweet, nor would he want to be if he understood what you were saying. His name is Attila, and his occupation is mostly murder. He prowls through the grounds and kills everything he can catch; mice, rats, shrews, birds. Red in tooth and claw, I’m afraid. Not sweet at all.’

She stood on tiptoe to stroke the cat’s silky head. ‘You’re not an assassin, are you?’ she whispered. It narrowed its eyes to a slit and humped its back, making a growling noise.

‘Careful, he bites and scratches, for no reason at all,’ Alex warned.

A second later the cat launched itself on to her stroking hand, dug its very sharp claws into her and bit her at the same time.

‘Ow,’ she squawked, jumping away.

‘I warned you,’ Alex said, taking her hand and looking with concern at the red marks scarring the smooth surface of her skin. ‘Does it hurt? I’ll find some cream for it.’

‘No, don’t bother. It isn’t serious.’

His long fingers were caressing her hand, sending shivers down her back. She pulled free and he gave her a quick, upward glance but said nothing.

Moving away, he opened the fridge, got out a plate on which lay a shiny, silver-scaled sea bream. Then he got out a large plastic bowl of salad; lettuce, cucumber, green peppers, tomatoes.

He put the salad on the kitchen table, took the fish over to the sink and began preparing it, holding it under a running tap and scraping off the scales with a knife into a bowl. When he had finished he put the bream on a wooden board and neatly gutted it while she watched.

‘Cutlery is in the table drawer right next to you,’ he told Miranda. ‘Vinegar, olive oil, pepper, to make a dressing, you’ll find on the shelf over here.’

She walked over to the shelf and took down the condiments. Alex got a copper frying pan down from the wall, poured a little olive oil into it and set it on top of the range.

Then he began chopping onions, which he dropped into the smoking oil before crushing some garlic and slicing tomatoes, which he added to the pan. When they were all cooked he cleared a space in the pan for the bream. The kitchen filled with the fresh scent of cooking fish.

Miranda put the ingredients for the salad dressing into a glass bowl and beat them lightly, added some smoky Greek honey and a few spoonfuls of orange juice. In the fridge she found some feta cheese, the white goat’s cheese you found everywhere in Greece, and with which she was already very familiar from eating it in the hotel. She chopped it into cubes and sprinkled them over the salad before pouring the dressing over it, adding a handful of stoned black Kalamata olives and a few capers.

‘There’s some fresh bread in the wicker bin here,’ Alex told her over his shoulder.

She got the domed golden-brown bread out. The smell was delicious, she felt as if she had never smelt bread before. By the time she had cut some slices the bream was cooked. Alex put it out on warmed plates, and added the stir-fried vegetables. They sat down at the kitchen table. Alex poured her another glass of Greek wine. She was suddenly very hungry, inhaling the scents of the food.

‘Don’t add any salt,’ he said. ‘The fish isn’t too salty, but the capers and olives are.’

‘And the feta, a little,’ she said, putting a white cube into her mouth along with a fragment of fish. ‘You’re a very good cook.’

‘Thank you. I can do any job in the hotel, from portering to cooking, doing accounts and reservations, or waiting at table.’

‘Like Milo.’

He smiled. ‘Exactly. He trained me. He’s a wonderful teacher; patient and long-suffering. He was my father’s closest friend.’

‘And now he’s yours?’

Alex nodded. ‘Now tell me about the murder – you were in an office nearby and overheard Sean with a girl?’

She put down her fork. ‘They were arguing – the girl said she was pregnant and the child was Sean’s, and he must break off his engagement with Nicola to marry her. Sean flew into a rage, then I heard . . .’ She stopped, swallowing convulsively, staring down at her plate, at the red of tomatoes, the white flesh of the fish.

‘Heard her drowning?’ Alex gently prompted.

‘Yes,’ she whispered.

‘Then what?’

‘Afterwards . . . it went so quiet. Sean came to the window and saw me. He looked . . . horrified. I fainted. Because I knew I hadn’t imagined it, I could see from his face that he realised I’d heard everything. When I came to, I’m afraid I panicked and rushed out. I was so desperate to get away that I never thought of ringing the police. I just had to escape. I drove away, then my head sort of cleared and I started to think. I parked and sat there, realising I had to go back, had to call the police. Which was what I did.’

‘But the body had gone, the bathroom was empty, there was no evidence to back up your story?’

She stared at him. ‘Who told you all that?’ Surely Terry hadn’t talked to him about the murder? She knew Alex was close to the Finnigans. Just how close? Was he entirely in their confidence? Was he involved with them in hushing up the murder?

‘The police. A Sergeant Neil Maddrell. He interviewed me after your accident, and told me the whole story.’

Her face lit up. ‘Oh, he’s a nice man, he’s been very kind to me.’

‘Has he?’ Alex coolly said. ‘You don’t surprise me. I gathered that he fancied you.’

A flush kindled in her face. ‘That wasn’t what I meant.’ Changing the subject she quickly asked, ‘Did you tell him you planned to bring me here?’

Alex nodded.

‘So he knew?’ Neil had advised her to go to Greece, he hadn’t warned her who was behind the offer of a job here. Why hadn’t he said anything? Did he trust Alex? Could she trust him, too? It disturbed her to feel distrust of everyone around her – yet how could she dare risk trusting? She would have sworn that you could trust Terry Finnigan, but he was prepared to have her killed to save his son.

‘We talked about it for some time. I promised him I wouldn’t say a word to Terry, so that Neil could be sure you would be safe here.’ His dark gaze fixed on hers. ‘I meant it. You are safe here, Miranda.’

She wanted to believe him, but over the last few terrible weeks she had learnt fear and distrust. When Tom drowned her distress had been compounded by her own underlying sense of guilt, her uncertainty about the wreck of the boat, her dread that Alex was somehow responsible, and was guilty too. She had never shaken off her grief and guilt, and from the day she heard that girl drowning her anxiety had grown worse; her mind was awash with dark emotions and fears. How could she feel safe, anywhere?

Even Charles, who had seemed so nice, and so deeply in love with his wife, had turned out to have secrets.

Terry took his plane up for a brief trip, flying from the airfield to the south coast, to pick up some small components which had been left out of a recent delivery. It only took half an hour to land, load the boxes, drink a cup of coffee and take off again. He had used the collection as an excuse for a flight; a courier could have picked the boxes up easily enough, but Terry wanted to fly for a few hours.