“Well, it’s odd,” said Agatha. “Olivia was so snobby on that yacht trip. She despised them. I can understand George making a play for Rose. She was a sexy thing. But Olivia! Did she give you a hint as to why they all got so pally?”

“Nothing more than the sort of one-must-do-one’s-bit-for-one’s-fellow-man type of thing.”

“But they all got friendly before the murder!”

“Fax Bill Wong if you like. But I think some drunk did it. There’s a lot of drugs here and pretty freely available. Could have been done by someone stoned out of his mind who doesn’t even remember now he did it. Let’s go, or” he added maliciously, “do you want another word with your boyfriend?”

Agatha’s eyes filled with angry tears.

“Come now,” he said lightly. “A lot of women would be flattered that a man with a wife as beautiful as that would make a play for them.”

Agatha scrubbed at her eyes. “I knew he was married,” she lied.

“If you say so,” said James. “Come along.”

The next day the humidity had lifted. Clear blue skies, the calmest of seas, and the lightest of breezes.

The mountains towered up to the sky on one side of the road and the blue-green sea stretched all the way to Turkey on the other side. Agatha suddenly wished she were simply on holiday instead of being back in the grip of the James obsession and on the way to police headquarters in Nicosia.

When they drew up outside the police headquarters, Agatha began to have a feeling that the whole business was unreal, that it had never happened, that Rose would stroll round a corner, diamond rings flashing and shout, “Owya, Agatha?”

Olivia, Trevor, Angus, George and Harry were already there. They were to be interviewed separately, and to Agatha’s dismay, James suggested that they meet up at the Saray Hotel afterwards for lunch and compare notes.

Agatha had taken the precaution of bringing along a book to read. Trevor was the first to be called, then Olivia, and then Agatha heard her own name being shouted out.

Pamir was sitting behind a large desk. A large portrait of Atatürk in evening dress stared down from behind the desk.

A policeman drew out a chair for Agatha on the other side of the desk. She sat down, suddenly nervous.

Pamir folded those fat hairy hands of his on the desk in front of him. He was wearing a chocolate-brown double-breasted suit and a wide tie with orange-and-yellow stripes, A large yellow silk handkerchief flowered from his top pocket.

“Now, Mrs. Raisin,” he said, “if I can just take you through the whole thing again. You arrived at the disco.”

“James began to dance with Olivia,” said Agatha, “and I danced with Angus, but he danced on my feet so I suggested we sit down.”

“And Rose Wilcox?”

“She was dancing with George, Mr. Debenham.”

“How were they dancing. Close?”

Agatha frowned in concentration. Her eyes had been mostly on James. “They weren’t dancing close,” she said. “Disco dancing. Rose was shaking it all about and George was doing that sort of high-stepping jerky dance that middle-aged gentlemen do when they think they’re being swingers. The music was very loud and the floor was crowded.”

“Was Mrs. Wilcox making a play for anyone in particular? You have told me about Mr. Debenham. What about Mr. Lacey?”

“What about Mr. Lacey?” demanded Agatha, her eyes narrowing.

“Did Mrs. Wilcox, Rose, seem attracted by Mr. Lacey?”

“Not that I noticed,” said Agatha huffily.

“Now we go to last night. You had dinner at The Dome, but not with Mr. Lacey or any of the others but with a visiting Israeli businessman, a Mr. Mort.”

“What’s that got to do with the murder?”

“I must examine all the relationships and you have a very peculiar relationship with Mr. Lacey. You were engaged to be married, nearly got married, had not your husband appeared on the scene. You follow him here, you both share the same villa, and yet you accept an invitation to dinner from Mr. Mort.”

“It was just a friendly chat,” said Agatha hotly. “He was waiting for his wife.”

“A wife you did not know existed until she arrived.”

“That’s not true! Have you been watching me?”

“Mrs. Raisin, one of my colleagues happened to be in that restaurant last night. I had a little man-of-the-world chat with Mr. Mort this morning. He found you attractive and asked you for dinner under the impression, to quote him, that he was ‘on to a good thing’. So you agreed to join him for dinner, for a date, although you are with Mr. Lacey.”

“Anything that was between me and Mr. Lacey is dead,” said Agatha furiously. “We are friends and neighbours, that’s all.”

He bent his head and made some notes. Then he raised his eyes and looked at her thoughtfully. “As I said, I must examine all the tensions in your relationships, you and the rest. And here we have two threesomes, two devoted husbands and two devoted friends. Jealousy could have been a motive.”

“You’ll need to ask them.”

“Oh, I shall. Now either someone had enough medical experience to know where to stick that thin blade which killed Mrs. Wilcox, or it was a lucky blow. Do you have any medical training, Mrs. Raisin?”

“None.”

“And Mr. Lacey?”

“None either.”

“It looks like a premeditated crime.” He leaned forward. “Someone was prepared. Perhaps someone knew of the lighting in that disco-that at moments when the ball overhead swung round it was quite black. Had any of the others been there before?”

“I just don’t know,” said Agatha wearily. “I barely knew them. But perhaps I could be of help to you. I have helped the police before. The clue to the murder must he in their backgrounds, that is, if one of them did it. If I could just study-”

“No,” said Pamir firmly. “No amateurs. I suggest you manage to have something of a holiday and put this behind you.”

“Meaning I am not a suspect?”

“Everyone who was in that disco on the night of the murder is a suspect. You may go, but do not leave Cyprus yet. Send Mr. Lacey in.”

Agatha would have given anything to hear what went on between Pamir and James. Was he asking them about their relationship? And what would James say?

Then she decided gloomily that James would probably just say, again, they were only friends and that for some reason Agatha had followed him to Cyprus, and she would appear a pathetic middle-aged woman chasing lost love.

When James finally emerged, Agatha suggested that they should have lunch in Nicosia alone, but James said they should all have lunch together.

“Why?” demanded Agatha.

“Don’t you want to find out who did this?”

“Ye-es,” said Agatha reluctantly, not being able to say that she only wanted to be alone with him.

At last they had all been interviewed and silently they walked across to the Saray Hotel and took the lift up to the restaurant at the top. The call to prayer sounded out over the red roofs of Nicosia as they sat down at one of the tables next to the window.

“Damned caterwauling,” said Olivia crossly.

“It’s a Muslim country,” said Angus. “Well, ma friends, do ye think that’s it?”

“If you mean, will they question us again,” said James, “then I think they are bound to. They are sure one of us did it.”

He glanced at Trevor, but Trevor was staring stonily out of the window at the minarets of the mosque.

“I’m beginning to think it’s up to me to find out who did it,” said Agatha, and then immediately regretted her words, because she immediately knew she sounded like an insensitive brag.

“Oh, all your stories about solving murders,” said Olivia with a brittle laugh. “Are you sure you weren’t fantasizing, dear?”

“No, I was not!” said Agatha hotly. “I have helped the police in Mircester in several cases.”

“If you say so,” said Harry Tembleton with a slight sneer.

“Tell them, James,” urged Agatha.

“It is true that Agatha, by blundering around in murder investigations, managed to prompt the murderer to show his, or her, hand,” said James flatly.