Agatha drove back to the villa, feeling as she approached it like a guilty and adulterous wife-which was ridiculous, she told herself angrily.

She saw with a sinking heart that not only was James’s car outside the villa, but the long, low, official black one used by Pamir.

Agatha was suddenly very tired and upset. Her legs shook and her eyes filled with weak tears. She felt she had endured enough for one day.

James and Pamir were in the kitchen.

“What the hell have you been up to?” demanded James.

“Sit down, Mrs. Raisin,” said Pamir. “You have had an upsetting morning. It could have been children. A lot of the local children are very spoilt these days, just like in England. Videos and computers and no discipline. Perhaps some tea for Mrs. Raisin?”

James grumbled something under his breath but got up and switched on the kettle.

“Now, Mrs. Raisin,” said Pamir in a more gentle voice than he usually used, “perhaps you might begin at the beginning…?”

“I’m beginning to think if I ever hear those words again, I’ll weep,” said Agatha.

But she told him everything, about Trevor’s threats, which seemed to have been caused by the others’ frightening him into thinking that her investigations might cause the wrong suspect to be arrested, and then about the rock thrown at her.

James put a cup of tea in front of her and sat down again.

“And where does Sir Charles come into all this?” asked Pamir. “He was on the island at the time of the murder. I think I should ask him what he was doing.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” snapped Agatha. “He couldn’t possibly have anything to do with it. He didn’t know any of them.”

“Nonetheless…”

“Nor is he magician enough to stand outside the car-park when he was already inside it and throw a rock at me.”

“Besides,” jeered James, “he’s a baronet, so he couldn’t possibly do anything wrong, could he, dearest?”

Pamir ’s black fathomless eyes flicked from one angry face to the other.

“Ah, jealousy,” he said. “What were you doing, Mr. Lacey, when all this was going on?”

“I was in Nicosia,” said James curtly.

“Doing what?”

James flashed Agatha a warning look. “Shopping.”

“Where? Which shops?”

“I haven’t any warm clothes with me and so I bought a couple of sweaters. I’ll probably still be here when the cold weather sets in.”

“Let me see.”

James went over to the kitchen counter and came back with a plastic bag. “You will find two sweaters in it and the receipt showing they were purchased today.”

“And that was all you did?”

“I went to the Mevlevi Tekke Museum near the Kyrenia Gate, had a look around and then came back here. I came back two hours before you arrived.”

Pamir turned and questioned Agatha again, taking her through her whole story, making various notes. Then at last he stood up.

“I would advise you to be careful, Mrs. Raisin. It would be as well if you kept away from the other suspects until this murder is solved.”

“I can’t be a suspect,” said Agatha. “Someone’s been trying to kill me.”

“Ah, if I were a cynical man, which I am not, I might say there is no evidence of that, only your word.”

“But the rock!”

“As I say, that could have been children. I will be talking to you soon.”

James saw him out. When he returned to the kitchen, Agatha said, “Before you start jeering about baronets: Like I told Pamir, I went to look for the others, heard they’d gone to Bellapais, and took Charles’s offer. I’m tired. Right now I want to forget about the whole thing. Maybe you’d better investigate on your own. Charles blew it for me.”

“What do you mean?”

“Charles told them I wasn’t investigating anything. He called them a dreary, poisonous bunch of people.”

James smiled for the first time. “And so they are. I wouldn’t let that stop you. For some reason the Debenhams are staying friends with Trevor and Angus when they would, in ordinary circumstances, walk on the other side of the road if they saw them coming. You’ve only to show up and smile and apologize for Charles’s outburst and they’ll be all over you like a rash. Why didn’t you come back earlier?”

“I was shaken and hungry and I decided to take up Charles’s offer of lunch, only he turned it into my offer by skating off to the toilet when the bill arrived. He’s a cheapskate.”

James smiled again. “You’ll know to keep clear of him in future.”

“So what did you really get up to in Nicosia?”

“That’s my business. I don’t want you interfering in it.”

“All I’ve heard today is ‘stop interfering,’” said Agatha. “I’m going to have a bath.”

“There’s water,” said James, “and when you’ve had it, have a rest and then we’ll go and make friends with our suspects.”

“Are we going to confront Trevor with the fact we know he inherits-or probably inherits-Rose’s money?”

“Not yet. No point in driving them away from us. We’ll go along and charm them later.”

Agatha lay in the bath and stared up at the louvered window above it through which came the roaring sound of the Mediterranean. The events of the day remembered seemed small and bright and not quite real, as if they were all something she had seen in a film.

She was suddenly engulfed in a wave of homesickness. In Carsely she would have had her support group of friends: Mrs. Bloxby, Bill Wong and the members of the Carsely Ladies Society. The trees would be beginning to turn red and gold and the roads around the village would be full of pheasants who seemed well aware that the shooting season had not yet begun. She missed her cats. She hoped Doris Simpson was looking after them properly.

Above, all, she wanted to get away from James. The therapy-speakers would ask, “Why are you letting someone live rent-free in your head?” Well, the plain answer to that was that she still liked the lodger. She thought briefly of Charles and then her mind winced away from him.

She climbed out of the deep bath and dried herself. In the bedroom, she switched on the radio in her room, which was tuned to a local English-speaking station which played records. Then the remorselessly bright DJ, a woman with a nasal Essex voice, sang along with the records in a flat monotone, and the records were mostly rap. But as Agatha reached out to switch it off, the music died away and an interview with some member of the north Cyprus National Trust was announced. Agatha decided to listen while she chose something glamorous for the evening ahead. She picked up a little black dress and held it against her. Black could be very ageing. A well-modulated English voice on the radio was talking about snakes, explaining that the poisonous snakes were in the mountains and the harmless snakes at the coast. “But,” went on the voice, “the other day I found one of those harmless snakes in my kitchen sink in Kyrenia. I decided just to leave it and after some time it emerged with a rat in its mouth, which all goes to show you what useful creatures snakes are.”

Lady, I wouldn’t even have a cup of tea in your kitchen, thought Agatha with a shudder.

She tried on the black dress. It was a simple sheath and short enough to show plenty of leg. Perhaps some gold jewellery to brighten it up? Agatha sat down and carefully made up her face in her “fright” mirror, one of those magnifying ones which showed every pore. Then she walked through the bathroom and into James’s room where there was a long mirror. Her make-up looked like a thick beige mask and the dress was a mistake. She went into the bathroom and scrubbed off her make-up. Time to start again.

It was only when James shouted up the stairs, “Agatha, are you ready?” that Agatha at last made up her mind what to wear. She put on a white satin blouse and a black pleated skirt, high heels and restrained make-up, and hung some gold chains round her neck. Not exciting, but all she could think of in the final rush.