Death in Cyprus Read online

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  To

  MAXINE

  and the Enchanted Island

  Author’s Note

  Back in 1949, while my husband’s regiment was stationed in Egypt, and we were living in an army quarter at Fayid in what was then known as the ‘Suez Canal Zone’, a friend and I decided to spend a painting holiday in Cyprus. We went there on a ship sailing from Port Said to Limassol, and once on the Island, hired a self-drive car for the duration. (Incidentally, cars in those days were still built with running-boards, and had a luggage-grid instead of a boot!) We stayed in the enchanting house in Kyrenia that I have described in this story, and the plot was practically handed to me on a plate by a curious series of incidents that occurred during our stay. But owing to the fact that I was too busy painting and, later, because of a multiplicity of army moves, I did not get around to writing it for almost five years. Reading it now, I am interested to see that even during that halcyon holiday I must have been aware that the Cyprus I was living in and painting was much too good to last, and that one day greedy quarrelling factions were bound to destroy it. That day came sooner than I thought; and nowadays the Island is divided into two hostile sections. Kyrenia and Hilarion, lovely Aiyos Epiktitos and beautiful Bellapais, and most of the places I knew best, are now held by the Turkish Cypriots, while the Greek Cypriots, who hold the remainder, have turned their sleepy little coastal towns into roaring tourist resorts, complete with vast holiday hotels and ‘recreation complexes’. ‘O world! O life! O time!’ … Shelley said it all.

  1

  Amanda had not been really frightened until she found the bottle. Horrified certainly: shaken by incredulity and shock, but not with fear. Not with this cold, crawling apprehension of evil …

  One minute Julia Blaine had been alive and talking in that high, hysterical, sobbing voice. And almost the next minute she was dead—sprawled on the floor of Amanda’s cabin in an ungainly satin-clad heap.

  It had all happened so suddenly, and without a word of warning. Or had there been a warning? Somewhere in the happenings of the past few days or weeks had there been nothing to suggest that such an ugly and fantastic thing might possibly occur…?

  * * *

  Amanda Derington had been staying with an aunt at Fayid in the Suez Canal Zone while her uncle and guardian, Oswin Derington of Derington and Company, looked into his business affairs in the simmering stock-pot of the Middle East.

  A night raid on London during the autumn of 1940 had left Amanda an orphan, and she had been subsequently and arbitrarily annexed by her Uncle Oswin. This despite the fact that there had been several sympathetic aunts only too ready and willing to take charge of the child. But then Oswin Derington, a bachelor and a misogynist, had little or no opinion of any of them, and a great many opinions on everything else: including the upbringing of children.

  The head of Deringtons—that ubiquitous firm whose name and multitudinous activities crop up like measles spots wherever the shoe of the white man has managed to gain a foothold—was a stern moralist in whom the blood of Calvinistic ancestors ran strongly. He was, in addition, successful, egotistical, selfish and frequently inclined to pompousness, and it was his firm conviction that the majority of his fellow-men led sinfully immoral lives. Anyone hearing him holding forth on his favourite subject might well gain the impression that, in the mind of the speaker at least, the entire population of the world was given over to sinful and riotous living with the solitary exception of that pillar of uprightness, Oswin Greatorex Derington.

  Uncle Oswin apparently included Amanda’s aunts among the ranks of the ungodly, for his action in assuming sole charge of his brother Anthony’s only child was prompted as much by a desire to save a tender brand from the burning, as to put into practice various long-held theories on the correct method of bringing up the young. And Anthony having left a will in which he had lightheartedly named his brother as trustee and sole guardian of his daughter, there was nothing that anyone else could do about it.

  The outlook for Amanda might well have been bleak, had it not been for the fact that she had inherited her mother’s physical beauty, together with much of her father’s gaiety and courage. Three useful legacies that a series of strict boarding schools, constantly changed, and her Uncle Oswin’s selfish and Victorian ideas on the correct behaviour of young ladies, had done nothing to diminish.

  In the years that followed on the heels of Hiroshima, and saw a startling shrinkage of those pink-tinted portions of the map that depicted territories governed by or owing allegiance to the Crown of Great Britain, the trading empire of Derington and Company saw many changes. A number of branches, mainly in the Far East, had been compelled to close down with unexpected suddenness. But other and newer branches had sprung up to replace them, and there came a time when Oswin Derington (whose harassed but resourceful medical adviser had recommended him to take a long sea voyage) decided to combine business with the pursuit of health, and personally inspect a few selected Outposts of the Derington Empire.

  He had taken Amanda, now aged twenty, with him; in pursuance of a favourite and often expressed theory that women have an instinct in the matter of irregularities, and that no Branch Manager however efficient occupied—at least in Mr Derington’s opinion—the position of Caesar’s wife.

  He intended to visit Alexandria, Cairo, Aden, Mombasa and Nairobi, and to return via Tripoli. But finding that travel in or to various of these cities was likely to prove full of unpleasant surprises, he had, on reaching Cairo, ordered his niece to return to England forthwith, while he continued the journey alone. There being no return passage immediately available, and as he had a rooted objection to flying (except on those occasions when it happened to suit his convenience) he had packed her off to the temporary care of one of his sisters whose husband, a Brigadier, was stationed in Fayid.

  Amanda enjoyed Fayid, and had ultimately administered an even more unwelcome surprise to her Uncle Oswin than his discovery of a strange tendency among certain coloured races to take an actively unappreciative view of Empire builders. She had announced her intention of remaining in Fayid for several months and, later, of visiting the Island of Cyprus.

  Since she had in the meantime celebrated her twenty-first birthday and come into control of a small but adequate income, there was little that her Uncle Oswin could do about it beyond losing his temper, which he had done to exhaustion and no effect. His niece had remained sweetly adamant; aided and abetted by her aunt, who had waited a good many years for a chance to repay Oswin for a few forceful criticisms he had uttered on the subject of her choice of a husband, in the days when the Brigadier had been a high-spirited subaltern in the Horse Artillery.

  Amanda had extended her stay in Fayid, and eventually carried out her intention of visiting Cyprus, where she had planned to put up in some hotel in Kyrenia. But here, after several weeks of sulky silence, Uncle Oswin had once more intervened:

  Deringtons, it appeared, ow
ned a wine business in Cyprus: a post-war venture that was not of sufficient importance to warrant a personal visit from Derington of Deringtons. The management of the business was in the hands of a Mr Glennister Barton, and—wrote Uncle Oswin—if Amanda insisted on gallivanting all over the Middle East in this un-maidenly and unladylike manner, it was only right that she should have some consideration for his good name, if not for her own, and, as an unmarried female, stay in some respectable private house rather than in a public hotel. He had therefore taken it upon himself to appraise the Bartons of his niece’s arrival, and demand that they should put her up for the duration of her stay, offer her all facilities and see that she came to no harm. He had already received a favourable reply, and Mr and Mrs Barton would meet Amanda at Limassol …

  ‘You are on no account to fly. I hear that there was an accident only last week. I am further informed that anti-British feeling runs high among those Cypriots who support Enosis and wish the Island to be united to Greece. If you had the slightest consideration for the name of Derington you would abandon this rash and unwomanly project and return to Hampshire,’ wrote Uncle Oswin—but without much hope.

  Amanda read the letter and sighed. She would have much preferred a hotel and independence, but although she could not be fond of her Uncle Oswin, she felt a certain sense of duty towards him. Despite his selfishness and pomposity, and his conviction that he had been sent into the world to reprove Vice and restore Victorianism, he was—or had been—her legal guardian. And if he had arranged for her to see Cyprus under the auspices of these Bartons, she did not feel like pouring oil on the smouldering embers of his disapproval by refusing to be their guest. She therefore wrote dutifully to say that she would be delighted to accept their kind hospitality.

  To the dismay of her aunt and uncle, who pointed out that it would entail travelling to Port Said with an armed convoy and going through the Egyptian Customs, Amanda booked a passage on the S.S. Orantares sailing from Port Said to Limassol. They were, however, relieved to discover that others from Fayid, also bound for a holiday in Cyprus, had decided to travel the same way, and that she would be accompanied by Captain Gates, Major and Mrs Blaine and Persis Halliday.

  Captain the Hon. Tobias John Allerton Gates was a pleasant young man whose more engaging qualities were at present somewhat obscured by the state of his emotions. Toby was in love—not for the first time—and his failure to make the present object of his devotion, Miss Amanda Derington, take him seriously was casting a deep gloom over a hitherto volatile nature.

  Toby had not intended to go to Cyprus for his leave. He had had other plans that included Roehampton and Cowdray Park. But on hearing that Miss Derington meant to visit Cyprus, he had hurriedly cancelled these arrangements and booked a room at the same hotel in Kyrenia that his divinity had intended to patronize. And now it seemed that she was not to stay there after all. She would not even be staying in Kyrenia. She was staying instead at Nicosia with the manager of the Cyprus branch of some Derington & Co. enterprise, and Captain Gates wondered gloomily if it would be possible for him to cancel his room at the Dome Hotel and obtain one in some hotel in Nicosia instead?

  Major Alastair Blaine of the 6th Hussars and his wife, Julia, were to spend three weeks with cousins who had a house in Kyrenia. They had intended to go by air, but the only passages available had been on a plane leaving on the 13th of the month, and Julia, a superstitious woman, had refused to fly on such an inauspicious date and had insisted on going by sea. The fifth member of the party from Fayid was Persis Halliday.

  Mrs Halliday, although perhaps not so well known outside her own country, would have needed no introduction to anyone living within the bounds of the United States. Persis was a writer of romances, and unlike most of that sisterhood managed to look it. Her books sold by the hundred thousand and her name on the cover of any woman’s magazine could be guaranteed to boost its circulation into astronomical figures. She had been widowed by an air disaster three years previously, and her presence in Fayid was accounted for by the fact that she had been on a world tour collecting material for Love in an Eastern setting, and was a friend of Amanda’s aunt.

  Persis, having heard Amanda mention that Venus-Aphrodite was supposed to have arisen from the foam off the coast of Cyprus, had immediately decided to visit the Island.

  ‘Why, honey—it’s a natural for me,’ declared Persis. ‘The birthplace of the Goddess of Love! Say, that’s wonderful. You can count me in on the tour. I just can’t miss it!’

  ‘When one thinks of the money you must have made out of the woman,’ commented Julia Blaine acidly, ‘I suppose the least you can do is to pay her birthplace a visit.’

  That had been at a dance at the Fayid Officers’ Club, and Persis had raised her brows in real or affected astonishment at the vehemence of Julia’s tone, and then laughed and drifted away on a wave of expensive scent.

  ‘Twaddle!’ said Mrs Blaine angrily, watching her go.

  ‘What is?’ inquired Amanda, startled.

  ‘Her books. Silly, sloppy, sentimental twaddle with a nasty, slimy streak of sex. I can’t think why anyone ever reads the stuff.’

  ‘Escape,’ said Amanda promptly. ‘Just think what life must be like for millions of girls? A deadly, boring grind. Then they read something by Persis and they think, “That might be me!” and feel a lot better.’

  ‘Do you mean to say that you read them?’ demanded Mrs Blaine incredulously.

  ‘I used to. My last headmistress banned them on the strength of one about a poor but honest hat-check girl who got mixed up with racketeers, dope peddling and white slavery. She emerged spotless of course—all Halliday heroines do—but the ban was enough to make us smuggle them into the dormitories by the dozen.’

  Julia Blaine produced a sound uncommonly like a snort and said sharply: ‘That merely bears out what I have just been saying. Only giggling schoolgirls would read them!’

  She rose abruptly and walked away, angrily jerking at a long chiffon scarf that she wore about her plump, bare shoulders, the end of which had caught on the back of her chair.

  ‘Sour grapes, I’m afraid,’ said Amanda’s aunt regretfully. ‘Poor Julia. She used to write herself—or at least she tried to write. She once had a short story accepted by a magazine and thought that she had really arrived. But nothing came of it and she gave it up. Nothing has ever gone quite right for Julia.’

  ‘Whose fault is that?’ grunted the Brigadier, mopping the sweat from his brow and trying to edge his chair round so as to get a more direct blast from the nearest electric fan. ‘I know she’s your cousin, but the woman’s a fool.’

  ‘I know,’ sighed Amanda’s aunt. ‘She is difficult. Poor Julia! She’s always angry about something—usually something that doesn’t matter at all, like Persis Halliday’s books. If she hadn’t anything to be angry about I believe she’d invent it. It’s a habit of mind. Such a pity that she’s never had any children. Alastair’s father was one of a family of eighteen I believe, but only two of them married. Alastair is the very last of the Blaines of Tetworth and I think Julia feels it rather. Perhaps that’s why she’s turned so sour. She shouldn’t be sour. Stout people are usually rather placid and jolly.’

  ‘Probably the result of all those pints of lemon juice and iced water that she drinks,’ said the Brigadier. ‘Enough to sour anyone. Can’t think why she does it!’

  ‘To make her thin,’ said Amanda’s aunt. ‘Not that it seems to do much good. All the same it’s really very stupid of her to be rude to Persis. Persis may seem gay and good-tempered, and her books may drip with sentiment. But underneath all that she has a good hard streak of vanity and cast iron. She wouldn’t have got where she has without it. And because she makes fun of her own books, it doesn’t necessarily mean that she takes kindly to other people doing so.’

  ‘Julia,’ said the Brigadier, ‘is jealous.’

  ‘I know, poor dear. But then she’s always been like that ever since she was a child. She’s pre
tty—or she was pretty—and she’s got plenty of money. But she would so like to have been fascinating and famous and filthy-rich. And she’s automatically jealous of anyone who has anything she hasn’t got.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that,’ remarked the Brigadier. ‘I meant Alastair.’

  ‘Oh that!’ said Amanda’s aunt, and sighed. ‘That’s just an occupational disease with her. She wouldn’t speak to Amanda for days just because he started giving her those riding lessons, and she still sulks every time he asks Amanda for a dance.’

  Amanda laughed. ‘I can’t think why,’ she said. ‘He’s very nice and he has charming manners. But he’s as dull as—well I don’t believe that ditch water is dull. Isn’t it supposed to be simply teeming with weird and peculiar and wriggly forms of life? I don’t believe that you’d find anything weird or peculiar about Alastair Blaine if you pushed him under a microscope. He’s just a nice reliable glass of water—slightly chlorinated. The sort of thing you drink at every meal without thinking about it, and pass up at once if anything better offers.’

  ‘Such as what?’ demanded the Brigadier. ‘Champagne? Seen anything yet that looks like champagne to you, Mandy?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Amanda, her dimples suddenly in evidence.

  They had been sitting, all three of them, in a corner of the ballroom, and Amanda’s aunt had turned in her chair to watch Persis Halliday and Major Blaine, who were dancing together.

  Alastair Blaine was not a particularly good-looking man, but he possessed a pleasant tanned face, the lean lines of a cavalryman, thick blond hair and a pair of frosty blue eyes. He was forty, but did not look it, and was frequently taken to be at least five years younger than his wife’s stout and embittered thirty-eight. He was popular, especially with men, and his manner towards his nagging, discontented wife was generally admitted to be beyond reproach, for Julia Blaine cannot have been an easy woman to live with. She had been the spoilt only child of rich and elderly parents, and as a plumply pretty debutante with a more than adequate income she had fallen in love with young Alastair Blaine, home on leave from India, and had married him.