“I heard it again last night. That woman wailing down by the sea.”

Martha James was in the act of pouring herself some more coffee from the tall black thermos. As she poured, her face under its veil of streaky fair hair was hidden from Jemima Shore.

“She sounded so unhappy. Not like a real live woman at all. I think it’s a ghost.” Martha’s tone was purely conversational: she might have been commenting on the lights of a fishing boat seen at night, the wind which had arisen at dawn (and since dropped) or just mentioning with renewed delight the even sunshine now spreading across the terrace of the Villa Elia.

Then Jemima looked at Martha James’s hands and saw that they were shaking. The coffee which she had visualized being poured confidently into the huge blue and white pottery breakfast cup was in fact being splashed into the saucer. And on to the rough blue and white tablecloth.

“Martha,” exclaimed Jemima with alarm, jumping up and taking the thermos from her. Then incredulously, “You’re really upset.”

Martha James stared at her for a moment. The impression given by the long straight hair and the slim figure, clearly visible since she was wearing a pink T-shirt, cherry-coloured bikini bottom and nothing else, was of youth—athletic youth at that; the legs were firm and muscled as well as brown. But Martha, when you looked into her face, was not all that young. In fact she was not really young at all. There were fine lines, a good many of them, round her eyes, despite the tan. It was the face of a middle-aged woman. This morning she also looked quite haggard. Or frightened.

Suddenly Martha smiled. She took the thermos back from Jemima, saying ruefully, “What a mess! Irini will murder me. Bad night, I’m afraid. And then that—crying I suppose it was. Kept me awake for hours. I kept thinking I should do something. Thus: the shaking hand of Martha James, the ruined tablecloth of our dear Irini. A cup of coffee is definitely the answer. If I can somehow get it into the cup.”

“Have a fresh cup.” There were still a few unused ones on the long wooden table which served for all their meals on the terrace.

“A fresh cup and a fresh start. Most appropriate to this holiday.” Martha sat down and began drinking composedly. The moment of anguish, fear or whatever it was had evidently passed. Jemima Shore decided to forget the incident: this despite her own slightly unruly curiosity—the quality after all which had made her into a leading television investigative reporter. She had, as she then believed, other more urgent matters to preoccupy her.

Jemima Shore thought instead about the subject of fresh starts. It was, as Martha had observed, appropriate to the holiday and, for that matter, appropriate to Jemima’s own presence on the island of Corfu.

The party now staying at the Villa Elia, situated just above a small beach beside a rocky headland, was not exactly a party in the strict sense of the word. That is to say, according to the hostess, Alice Garland, none of the guests had been known to her in advance. They were also all paying—quite heavily—for the privilege of being there in the first place. That included Jemima Shore herself (although Megalith Television, her employer, would end by picking up the tab). The important point was that she was receiving no reduction from the full rate, despite the handsome offers made by her hostess.

“But you really needn’t pay! Not the whole amount, at least. After all, if you did make a programme about our little party venture, it would be the making of us!” Alice Garland had sounded appealingly wistful in London. But then she nearly always did sound wistful, Jemima decided. Even in her London clothes—check jacket, white silk blouse, short black skirt—Alice had the air of an elegantly dressed doll. She certainly looked too young and virginal to be running her own business, despite having a husband—somewhere—no further details given. At the Villa Elia itself, straight hair falling, she looked a positive infant. It was in fact the same kind of pretty light-and-dark hair as Martha’s and the two women were not so dissimilar in type. But Alice’s face was genuinely youthful; standing beside her, Martha looked a rather weary echo.

Long before she reached Corfu, Jemima Shore had however appreciated that there was nothing notably childish about Alice Garland’s business methods. Alice was—justifiably of course—quite determined to make her so-called “Fresh Perspective Holidays” a success; but Jemima fancied that Alice could probably show herself quite ruthless if the occasion offered, beneath that naïve exterior. Alice, yes. But this Alice was hardly in Wonderland. She was in business in London and Corfu, competing with a number of tour operators, not by offering cut prices—far from it—but by offering a holiday of a particular, and rather special, type.

Fresh Perspectives, as advertised, were for those who felt themselves to be at some kind of turning-point in their lives; it might be marital, professional, spiritual or all three. Whatever its nature—with which Fresh Perspectives was not concerned—“guests” took advantage of some weeks at the Villa Elia to contemplate this turning-point. There was only one theoretical condition laid down: guests were supposed to arrive solo, spouses, live-in-lovers, companions, mere friends being none of them officially welcome.

“And if a fresh perspective on life happens to include encountering a fresh partner at the Villa Elia?” Jemima had asked Alice.

“Naturally it happens,” Alice had replied in her soft little-girl voice. “At least I presume it happens, human nature being what it is. We wouldn’t know of course. Most people don’t sleep in the house, only the officially elderly or infirm. People who might have some difficulty making their way to the various guest-houses scattered about the property at night. And we don’t get many of those, as you will see. But in any case one of the things which prevents the burgeoning of ‘Fresh Perspective’ romances, even in this day and age, is the fact that far more women than men seem to want to come.” Alice smiled enchantingly. “I suppose it means that far more women than men need to make a fresh start in life,” she added.

“It may mean that,” commented Jemima drily. “Or it may simply mean that more women than men have the courage to realize it.” Was there perhaps something smug about this elfin creature, with her husband and her rapidly expanding business? You could not imagine Alice Garland herself needing to make a fresh start … but if she did, plenty of people would want to help her do it. For Alice was one of those people who had the effect, consciously or unconsciously, Jemima had yet to decide, of arousing a kind of hero-worship in those around her; or just a desire, quite simply, to be in her presence. Jemima had once or twice surprised Martha James, for example, gazing at Alice with a kind of yearning. Another of the guests, a somewhat older woman called Mrs. Vascoe, was inclined to try and engage Alice in earnest private conversation whenever possible. (Then Jemima reflected that Mrs. Vascoe, although dressed in a much older style, was probably not much older than Martha James in years.)

Looking at Martha James now, Jemima wondered precisely what kind of turning-point it was that she had reached. Martha was a painter: Jemima recognized the name although she had not heard of her work for some years. Was that the problem? Waning fame? Waning inspiration? Some other kind of distraction? At the Villa Elia it was in any case a camera not a sketch-book which was generally to be found in her hand. And Jemima had happened upon Martha once or twice taking photographs in the maze of paths bordered with rosemary and other odorous shrubs which led among the various cottages. You stopped on a path, turned, and there was the cerulean sea below you, framed by rocks. The views sprang up, fell away, emerged, vanished, in seemingly artless fashion; until you gradually realized that the vistas of the Villa Elia, like everything else to do with it, must have been carefully planned.

If Martha James was not to be found painting or sketching, another of the guests had recently started to parade a sketch-book. This was an American girl in, say, her early 30s, called Felicity Dalbo but known at her own request by the nickname of “Fizzy.” As Martha might be surprised with her camera, Fizzy could be seen, rather more ostentatiously, placed in the centre of a popular path, with her sketch-book. Fizzy was actually Alice Garland’s greatest fan: if Martha followed Alice about—sometimes—with her eyes and Mrs. Vascoe requested little chats with her, Fizzy was publicly loud in her admiration for everything Alice did or said.

“This villa! Isn’t it something?” she exclaimed several times a day. “How I wish I could get it all together like Alice—maybe I will when I’ve been here long enough!”

The results of Fizzy’s artistic labours had a slightly primitive air. The bright blue shutters of the villa, actually folded flat against the white-washed walls, sprang out at you in Fizzy’s water-colour as though with an energy of their own; they were also way out of scale. All the same, Jemima found Fizzy’s various efforts not unpleasing: like Fizzy herself, they conveyed a certain indomitable cheerfulness. Jemima was a good deal more doubtful about Fizzy’s habit of producing her latest sketch—and she worked rapidly—at lunchtime.

“Go on. Criticize it. You can say whatever you like. I want to learn, dammit,” Fizzy would say, smiling eagerly at one of the other guests. Fizzy, it was clear, was not a professional painter, nor was her turning-point to be supposed to concern “art.” In any case, Fizzy herself had left no doubts on that score.

“Bad marriage,” she had announced at large to the company at the pre-dinner drink session on the day of her arrival. They were drinking a delicious local white wine called Boutari (with the exception of Martha who always drank water). “Or rather a good marriage to a bad guy. Fizzy Dalbo,’ I said to myself one day, ‘you just don’t have to live with this man any more. The compromises you have been making are just not acceptable for a woman in the eighties. It’s yourself you have to live with. That’s the bottom line. Learn how to do it, why don’t you?’ So here I am.” Fizzy gave a wide smile, displaying her large and even white teeth. It was the beauty of the teeth, thought Jemima, more than anything else, which revealed Fizzy’s transatlantic origins; Fizzy herself had been and possibly still was working for some English publisher in London. And Fizzy’s unsatisfactory husband had, it seemed, been English.

“Not a reticent character,” had been Martha James’s comment to Jemima, after Fizzy, large tote bag over her shoulder, a fresh glass of Boutari in her hand, had swept off to unpack.

“It’s so wonderfully tranquil here, isn’t it?” murmured one of the other guests rather nervously after a short silence. Sarah Halliwell was a gentle girl, dressed in a green and gold shirt of Indian design, with thick, shining hair coiled at the moment but which loose could reach to her waist. She obviously had some Indian blood: the mixture of Indian and European had produced in her a lovely delicate bone structure which put even Alice Garland’s physical neatness to shame. But for all her elegance Sarah had a haunted air. To Jemima, she spoke briefly of “a betrayal where I had least expected it. Perhaps with hindsight I should have done so.” She said nothing about what that “betrayal” might have been. “A fresh perspective was certainly necessary in my case,” she ended.

Jemima forbore to ask any questions. She was after all looking for ideas not material. Were she to decide to include some film of the villa in her planned series (tentatively entitled “Possible Dream? Starting All Over Again”) it would obviously not be this party she dealt with. For one thing, all guests interviewed on television would have to give their permission in advance. But she did note that Sarah spent a lot of her time reading abstruse-looking journals with titles like Classical History and Graeco-Roman World. She also, alone of the party, spoke some modern Greek. For Sarah Halliwell at least, the choice of a Greek island like Corfu for her repose did not seem to be a coincidence. As for Sarah’s comment concerning Fizzy, it was clear to Jemima that what she really meant was: “Is Fizzy going to ruin all our precious tranquillity?”

So far Martha had not been asked to give an opinion of Fizzy’s work, despite her professional qualifications to do so. Perhaps it was unfortunate, thought Jemima, that Fizzy chose the lunchtime following Martha’s nerve-wracked coffee drinking to do so. The session was as usual held on the terrace, Fizzy with the first Boutari of the day (“I guess I deserve this”) in her hand. The conversation certainly got off to an uncomfortable start. Besides which, there was undoubtedly an element of rivalry or jealousy between Martha and Fizzy over the subject of Alice, all the stronger because it was generally unspoken.

“Fizzy, that’s my cottage you’ve been painting,” exclaimed Martha abruptly. “Well, I think that’s quite a—” She stopped. The missing word was not going to be a pleasant one. Cheek? Yet once again Martha looked frightened, or at any rate more upset than angry.

“Why, Martha, don’t be piggy,” and Fizzy gave a good-humoured pat to Martha’s thin brown arm; she touched people a lot, Jemima noticed. Martha moved away immediately; unlike Fizzy, Martha went out of her way to avoid physical contact.

“Gee, I’m sorry. But you know me, I guess I go everywhere just looking at it all, just loving it all. Nothing personal. I certainly did not mean to invade your space. I really respect your need for privacy. Hey, I’m like that myself We’re all like that here. It’s just that your cottage being on its own. Furthest away from the house and being on that kind of real cliff over the beach. And the cute headland on the other side of the bay. You were out—”

“How did you know I was out?” But before Fizzy could answer with another long explanation—she really did talk a lot especially when embarrassed—Martha seized Fizzy’s sketch-book and made a rapid and not unkindly assessment. She finished, “For an amateur and I take it a beginner, it’s not at all bad.” Martha even managed a rather strained smile. “I wish I had your freshness, Fizzy.”

“Fresh Fizzy, fresh perspective—fresh! That’s me all over. Thank you, Martha. Thank you very much. And to show you I mean it I promise I’ll never come and paint near your cottage again, in spite of the glorious view, not even if you beg me. I won’t come near it, not even if you start calling out for help in your lonely cottage in the middle of the night.”

But Martha merely lit a cigarette—she was the only guest who smoked and made up for it by smoking quite a lot—and moved away. After a while she sat down in the basket chair slightly apart from the others, which commanded the best view, at least from the terrace. The branches of an olive tree, one of the many from which the villa took its name, framed the exit to the pathway which wound down to the beach; the blue, blue sea lay beyond. Pots of plumbago with its bright green leaves and profuse pale blue flowers flanked the exit. Everything at the villa, from cushions to flowers, had some kind of blue theme; chosen perhaps for repose or perhaps to remind you of the ever-present sea below and stretching out to the horizon.

“My favourite colour—blue,” Alice Garland had announced on Jemima’s arrival.

“A cold colour, too many blues make a house heartless,” Jemima’s chic decorator friend Daisy had once said: but of course that warning judgment could not be true in Greece, on the edge of the sea.

“Talking of crying out in the night,” said the fourth guest, Mrs. Vascoe, conversationally, “did anyone else hear that owl or cat or dog or whatever it was howling again last night? Down by the beach.” Betsy Vascoe, being the sort of apologetic person who always chose the least comfortable chair in the worst position, Jemima noted, spoke from a basket chair which was rammed up against the lunch table. In her staid summer clothes—she was the only one of them who habitually wore blouses and skirts in the daytime—she had altogether an old-fashioned air. When she said things like “all you young things” nobody, not even Martha, sought to contradict her. “Alice running this place with all her wonderful youthful efficiency”—That was Betsy Vascoe’s frequently heard paean of admiration.

Now there was a crash of glass as something fell heavily on the marble-flagged terrace. Jemima looked sharply in the direction of Martha. But Martha, still with her back to the company, smoking and looking out to sea, had not moved.

“I’m so sorry!” exclaimed Mrs. Vascoe, jumping up as if personally responsible for the accident and beginning to dab away at the pool of white wine on the floor with her white shirt-tails. But it was Sarah Halliwell’s glass which had crashed, not hers. At the noise of the crash, Irini, the Greek cook, came springing out of the kitchen and, moving lightly despite her formidable bulk, quickly and expertly cleared it up.

Alice Garland appeared at the same moment. She had the air of being about to go shooting: she had a basket over her arm and wore a big Greek straw hat which shadowed her face.

“Hey, Alice,” cried Fizzy, “is there some kind of ghost here which hoots or howls? Betsy heard it last night. Some of us heard it the other night. Bright idea coming up, maybe it’s the ghost of our various pasts trying to stop us making a fresh start. Howling at us.” Fizzy shivered in an exaggerated manner and looked around, as if for applause.

“Anyone else hear this howling last night?” asked Alice pleasantly. “Jemima? Fizzy? Sarah?”

Sarah shook her head. “Not last night.” Nobody else said anything.

“Martha?”

“I heard nothing last night,” replied Martha James without looking round.

“So it seems you were the only one disturbed, Betsy,” concluded Alice. “But then, your cottage is closest to the sea. As a matter of fact it’s a bird, you know. A local bird. But to the imaginative”—she smiled in Mrs. Vascoe’s direction—“I suppose it could sound like a woman, an unhappy woman at that.”

“Oh, Alice, I wasn’t complaining,” said Mrs. Vascoe hastily, “I’m probably quite wrong about the whole thing.”

A fresh start for Betsy Vascoe should certainly include learning how to stand up for herself, thought Jemima. She understood that Mrs. Vascoe was recently widowed; Jemima guessed her late husband to have been a man of strong character. Betsy Vascoe, otherwise, spent a lot of time studying guide books to Corfu and was the only member of the party who actually ventured to the museum in the town.

Then Jemima forgot Mrs. Vascoe as she concentrated on wondering why Martha James—so preoccupied with the “wailing” at breakfast—had suddenly denied it at lunch. Besides, Alice Garland was wrong: the closest cottage to the sea was not Mrs. Vascoe’s, it was Martha’s.

Before Alice could say anything more, reassuring or otherwise, to Betsy, Irini, now laying the table for their usual cold lunch of stuffed vine leaves, taramasalata and salad, said something raucous in Greek.

Alice frowned.

“What did she say?” asked Fizzy, and when Alice still frowned, “Sarah?”

Sarah Halliwell glanced carefully at Irini, who laughed back at her. “She says we are too many women here. We are needing a man. So someone here is calling out for a man in the middle of the night.” Irini nodded vigorously and added something else. “She says she needs a man too.” Irini roared with laughter. So far as could be ascertained, Irini like Mrs. Vascoe was a widow: there was no sign of a husband, and a son, Nikos, helped her with the work of the villa which could not be done by the maid Maria: he also operated the boat. Actually Nikos, despite his youth, was altogether a much less imposing figure than the substantial Irini with her fine strong features and mass of greying black hair.

“You need a man, Irini my love, you got a man.” The voice—male—was so unexpected, coming as it were out of one of the rosemary bushes on the path, that it seemed to Jemima that all the women on the terrace jumped. Afterwards she would come to revise that opinion: all the women had jumped except one.

A minute later the head of a man appeared coming up the path from the sea, and a minute after that the man himself. He was tall, almost burly, dressed incongruously in dark grey trousers and a dark grey jacket. His white shirt was, however, open at the neck; there were signs of a tie hanging out of his pocket, its end trailing. His hair was golden brown, very curly, rather long; his complexion was ruddy rather than brown, however, or perhaps that was the effect of sun on his particular kind of rather florid good looks. For he was good-looking, even if at the same time he gave the impression of having gone to seed.

The man before them was not carrying a suitcase or indeed any kind of bag, but his shoes, leather brogues rather scuffed, were in his hand. He had evidently come off a boat on to the beach below. It was perfectly possible to arrive at the villa like this: in fact it was easier than using the precipitous narrow path down from the village winding its way through olive groves, the journey taking about thirty minutes altogether. Luggage and other supplies were as a result generally brought in by Nikos’s boat from the next-door bay.

“I suppose Nikos is really the power behind the throne in this place,” Sarah Halliwell had observed thoughtfully on the subject of the handsome silent Greek youth. “Being in charge of the boat and all that; he’s the only one who can come and go as he likes, night and day.”

“Then Irini is actually on the throne!” answered Alice with a light laugh.

“Oh, no, Alice, you’re on the throne.” That was Fizzy. Really, thought Jemima, she went too far sometimes.

Elia Beach itself was not of course private—all beaches in Greece being public by law. But since access to it was in effect only by boat (you would have to know the area well to discover the entrance to the village path) tourists only congregated there in the middle of the day. Very occasionally an intrepid couple slept over amid the pebbles and were noticed by Jemima if she had a pre-breakfast swim.

At the moment the happy cries of the said tourists could be heard as a background to the strange scene of arrival on the terrace. How different were sounds heard in the bright, shadowless sunlight of the day! Could the cry-by-night have been merely an ecstatic nocturnal tourist? There were some ecstatic ones, and some loud-mouthed ones too (a horde of Italians doing gym on the shore at midday two days previously came to mind). There were some ecstatic sun-bathers too: topless ones, some brown and shapely, pagan nymphs fitting into the Greek landscape; some it had to be said (like Fizzy, who alone of the party sometimes went topless) neither brown nor shapely, who should not have risked the exposure …

“Kirie William! So you do come,” cried Irini with much enthusiasm, launching herself on the stranger and embracing him with fervour.

At roughly the same time Alice said, “William!” in a voice which contained not even the pretence of welcome. “What are you doing here?”

“Like the rest of you, my dear Alice, making a fresh start. And with quite as much reason, I think you’ll agree.” He bowed. “William Gearhart—at all your services.”

“William”—Alice paused—“William is my husband.”

In contrast to her chilly tone, William Gearhart’s was positively ebullient. “Do I get some lunch, Irini? No, wait a minute, what I really want is a drink. Don’t worry, I can pay my whack, or rather my whackette. What’s she charging you these days?” he enquired at large, as he pulled at his pocket, producing the rest of the tie and a lot of soggy-looking drachmas in rather small denominations. As Irini hastily brought forward bottle and glass, Jemima realized that what William Gearhart’s flushed look really signified was not the beginning of a tan but the end of a drinking bout. Drinks at the airport? In the aeroplane? In the town? In the village? It was not difficult to get a drink in hospitable Corfu.

It was tempting to regard the arrival of William Gearhart at the Fresh Perspectives “house party” as being annoyingly disruptive: people united in a desire for a quiet life found themselves unwillingly plunged into a more lively situation. But had there not been strains all along, beneath the surface of the party, Jemima wondered. The mysterious cry-by-night—as Fizzy would have it, “our pasts calling out to us”—did that carry with it a warning?

As she reflected, William was busy greeting Martha James with a special flourish. “Martha James! The famous painter I do believe!” Martha nodded in William’s direction. “The once and future famous painter! A fresh start for Martha James! No more naughty—whoops!” William Gearhart clapped a hand over his mouth.

“William!” Alice’s rigid self-control sounded as if it might be slipping.

“It’s all right, it’s all right, I’ve said nothing, now have I? Are you painting anything hereabouts, Martha? I should be most interested to see your latest work. Or are there any old paintings to be seen?” He gave Martha a look which was almost a leer.

It was with the helpful air of one smoothing over a difficult situation that Fizzy said rather breathlessly, “I guess I’m the only working artist around here, and I’d just love to get some fresh perspective on that—”

“Good afternoon, Mr. Gearhart, we’ve met before, as you may remember. Sarah Halliwell from the Graeco-Roman Institute.” Except that she had virtually interrupted Fizzy, Sarah sounded not only gentle as ever but absolutely composed.

“The beautiful and brilliant Miss Halliwell! How could I forget you, or anything about you? Now why I wonder are you here? But I mustn’t be a tease. She won’t like it. My dear wife. My good wife Alice. Alice Garland as we must call her.” He sat down rather heavily and gazed with some surprise at the glass before him, now empty.

“Can I stay?” he asked, rather pleadingly. “I have to talk to you, Alice. About business matters. You know what I mean.” He counted the guests. “There must be an empty cottage if you don’t want me in the house.”

“You can stay.” But Jemima got the distinct impression that Alice was agreeing more to stop her husband talking further than for any more hospitable reason. Her pretty face had certainly formed into a formidable frown at the mention of the word “business.”

“Thanks,” William said. “Actually I don’t want any lunch. And I don’t want any dinner either. Just sleep. And later maybe a swim. I’ll see you all tomorrow morning. And I’ll be very, very good.”

After William Gearhart had lumbered away—to the cottage next to Jemima’s—Alice took a deep breath and faced them. The smile she wore had the air of being etched upon her features.

“How can I explain? And you were supposed to be having peace. William was, is my husband, that is we’re separated not divorced. I took the name Garland instead of Gearhart—for business purposes. Yes, William does need a fresh perspective. You see he once owned a gallery for selling antiquities. There was some trouble. I won’t go into it. Some of them weren’t quite what they seemed to be. Fakes in short. Some of them turned out to have reached England, unlawfully, by a rather odd route. I won’t go into that either. There was a case. William was acquitted. But of course his reputation! And at the same time our marriage broke up. It didn’t—how can I put it? It didn’t survive the strain of something like that. The gallery had to close. He’s had a hard time.” She paused. “And so in a way have I. I’ve tried very hard to build up Fresh Perspectives in some ways as a kind of therapy—but I’m not asking for your pity.”

Unexpectedly Mrs. Vascoe was the first to speak after Alice finished.

“Thank you for being so frank, my dear. You know how much we all admire what you’re doing here. And I’m sure we can all sympathize with someone who has gone through a hard time. In our different ways, so have we.”

“How true,” murmured Sarah. She touched her brow with her handkerchief. “It is hot, isn’t it? I don’t think I want any lunch after all. I’ll go back to my cottage and lie down for a while.”

As she departed, Fizzy gazed after the gracefully swaying figure vanishing among the rosemary bushes. “So she knew him.” Fizzy sounded puzzled, ruminative, as though working something out. Only Martha said nothing at all about Alice Garland’s form of personal statement. But the haggard look, the look of fear so striking on her face at breakfast time, had returned.

In bed in her cottage, Jemima could not easily get to sleep. A light breeze generally sprang up with the darkness to alleviate the close heat of the day, and there was always the ceaseless noise of the cicadas to soothe her. Tonight the cicadas sounded almost too loud for sleep; dropping off for a brief moment, she decided they were trying to tell her something, but awake once more, she knew that to be mere fancy. All the same, even her favourite lullaby of the sea pounding the shore below was more disturbing than restful tonight.

Somewhere—one of the other cottages or was it up at the house?—a shutter banged heavily. They were all supposed to fasten their shutters at night to prevent this very thing happening. Someone had forgotten. More banging, was that what was disturbing her? Jemima decided to ignore it and pulled the pillow firmly over her head.

Dinner had been a subdued affair for all Irini’s delicious lamb roasted in the Greek manner—no William Gearhart and no Sarah either for that matter; the latter, like William, had remained secluded since the pre-lunch scene on the terrace. Jemima thought again about William Gearhart’s arrival and Fizzy’s remark, gazing after Sarah’s retreating back: “So she knew him.” She thought about Martha James: “I heard the woman wailing.” A local bird? A bird called cry-by-night? She began to drift once more towards sleep.

Either the banging shutter or some other noise woke Jemima; this time she knew from her clock that she had been asleep for some time. Feeling that she had awoken at the end of the noise, whatever it was, Jemima jumped up and looked out of her bedroom window in the direction of the sea. Her view of the shore, either from her bedroom or from her small sitting-room, was obscured by some of the olive trees.

Was that someone down there on the shore or merely the shadow of a rock? It was impossible to be certain at this distance. The beach was predominantly pebbled, but the headlands on either side had left a deposit of fallen rocks and stones, some of them quite large. A flickering light or the flashing of fishing lights out to sea? (Irini told them that Nikos regularly went night fishing, like the other men living round about.) Was that a boat? But from inside her cottage Jemima could not see the little stone pier running into the sea where Nikos usually kept his boat fastened.

Rather gingerly, she stepped out on to her little terrace. Someone wailing below, a cat, a dog, a bird—or sheer imagination in the shadowy, post-midnight world, the so-called dead hour of the night?

The soft, warm darkness was quite opaque. The stars over their heads at dinner had been brilliant and numerous in the lofty black bowl of the sky. Mrs. Vascoe—her shyness was rapidly evaporating—had given them a lesson in how to name them: “Follow the line of the Plough, it’s quite easy after that.” Now the stars were all gone. The promising half-moon which Jemima had observed behind racing clouds was also no longer to be seen. Only the cicadas kept up their ceaseless chatter, and far below the sea rushed relentlessly to and fro on the beach.

Up at the house, Jemima was surprised to notice that the terrace light—generally left burning—had been switched off. Equally surprising, the lights of Fizzy’s cottage were burning, not just the bedroom light but the light of the small sitting-room as well.

And the banging, yes, the banging was coming from the direction of Fizzy’s cottage.

After a moment, surprise gave way to a reluctant but undeniable feeling of alarm. Jemima took a look round towards the other cottages, William Gearhart’s was quite dark; she expected that; she had seen no lights there at any point during the evening, either when it began to get dark before dinner or later on her return. A fresh start meant sleeping it off: yes indeed! As far as Jemima was aware, Gearhart had been comatose since he lumbered away before lunch.

The small light over Sarah Halliwell’s terrace was still burning but the rest of the cottage was plunged in darkness; that too was to be expected; Sarah always slept with the terrace light burning, unlike Jemima who feared for the insect life the light might attract.

“There are other things to fear beyond insects,” Sarah had murmured. “As a matter of fact, I don’t like the dark very much, if you want to know. Childish, I dare say.”

Jemima could only glimpse the roof of Mrs. Vascoe’s cottage, or where she imagined it to be; no pool of light there, however. Martha James’s cottage in its isolated position could not be seen at all.

Fizzy’s words came back to her: “If you cry out for help in the middle of the night …” It was an uncomfortable realization under the circumstances that Martha’s cries for help would not indeed be heard. By the rest of the guests, that is, if they were safely installed in their own cottages. Why was she thinking about Martha? It was Fizzy’s cottage which should be occupying her thoughts.

Was she to investigate? The correct answer was: yes. Otherwise the restlessness might continue till dawn, with the addition of a faint, nagging guilt, not that she seriously thought anything was wrong, all the same … Yes, she would investigate. Once the decision had been reached, the taking along of a torch seemed a good practical plan, unfanciful and thus reassuring. She hardly wanted to cause her own incident by falling off one of the steep paths into the shrubby bushes, let alone down a cliff. Jemima located her torch, remembered that the battery was low and that she had forgotten to do anything about it, put on her flip-flops, pulled her cotton robe closely round her and set off.

Halfway down the path to Fizzy’s cottage, the torch petered out. Jemima sighed. On the one hand she could return (but she had still not switched on her own terrace light because of the insects). On the other hand the lights of Fizzy’s cottage beckoned—even if she would not quite have put it like that. She decided to go on.

There was no more wailing from the beach, no other sound but the occasional bang of the vagabond shutter ahead and the persistent susurration of the cicadas. Her strongest sensation at this point was in fact of smell: the rich scent of rosemary, oregano and sage as she brushed through the Mediterranean night.

Jemima reached Fizzy’s cottage and peered through the open French windows. The little sitting-room with its simple blue and white furnishings was demonstrably empty. No one could have hidden behind that white cane chair or sofa, let alone beneath the spartan white cane tables, two or three of them, all smothered in Fizzy’s books.

Should she go further? The shutter banged again; she realized that the sound was at the back and that it must be a bedroom shutter. That decided her. Jemima, useless torch still in hand, advanced. The bedroom, like a sitting-room (and like Jemima’s own cottage), was virtually bare; certainly no one was hiding in there. Jemima saw twin beds, both empty, one with its blue cotton cover rumpled, the other untouched. She saw—

At that moment, the door behind slammed and all the lights in the cottage went out. Fumbling desperately in the darkness for the switch, Jemima found to her horror that she was grasping flesh, wet, clammy flesh, somewhere directly behind her. She screamed.

The light was switched on as suddenly as it had been extinguished. She was not touching flesh exactly, or not flesh unattached. What she was touching was a human hand.

“Why, Jemima Shore, I do declare!” exclaimed Fizzy in a palpable exaggeration of her usual drawl. “What the heck are you doing here?” She continued more briskly. “I saw someone going in. I guess I thought—I didn’t know—”

“Where were you?” Fear and surprise had made Jemima angry; unreasonably so. Fizzy after all had a perfect right to come and go as she pleased in her own cottage. She added more politely by way of an explanation, “Your shutter was making rather a racket.”

“Gee, I’m sorry.” Fizzy looked down at herself. She was wearing a towelling robe, damp, and as it appeared not much else. “I’ve been treating myself to a late swim. I love to do that.” She looked round the cottage. “I have some coffee in that thermos. Irini let me have it, she knows I’m a nocturnal animal. And I’ve an idea for a moonlight water-colour. Now how does one get to do that, do you suppose? Any ideas? Maybe Martha will advise. In the meantime, coffee?”

Jemima hesitated. “No, no, I’ve been enough trouble. Besides which, coffee keeps me awake. I won’t stay.” It was a decision she was to regret. Even at the time, she felt a pang at seeing how dashed Fizzy looked at the rejection of her offer.

Fizzy muttered something: “I’m not lonesome exactly but I do like to talk, nights. Have done ever since I was a kid.” She was visibly disconsolate; Jemima had a touching vision of the kind of little girl Fizzy must have been, liking to “talk, nights” and maybe not getting all that many takers even then.

All the same, Jemima turned to go. Fizzy’s last words reached her when her back was already set to the cottage. “And there’s something special I’d like to talk to you about. But I guess the morning will do.” It was too late to return: Jemima contented herself with a friendly wave of the defunct torch. Her last sight of the American girl was as she sketched a friendly salute back, still in her towelling robe, standing on her own terrace.

It was only after Jemima reached her own cottage that she realized she had not questioned Fizzy about the wailing on the beach. Had she heard it? She must have heard it if she had indeed been swimming. And if the wailing had existed in the first place.

Ah well, Jemima would make an opportunity to ask Fizzy about it first thing in the morning.

But Jemima never did make an opportunity to ask Fizzy about the subject in the morning. Because next morning at breakfast the whole scene was dominated by the discovery of the body; the sodden body lying on the beach at the edge of the water like a piece of abandoned wreckage, moving slowly from time to time with the sway of the sea, a dark and melancholy shape in the pristine sunshine of the bright new day.

The body, turning in the water at the edge of the sea, was first discovered by Irini’s son Nikos, returning from one of his mysterious night-fishing expeditions.

Thank heaven, thought Jemima Shore, he had been there to do so. Otherwise one of the guests at the Villa Elia, taking an early-morning swim, might have happened upon it. For that respite at least they should all be devoutly thankful. It was illogical, the fact of death being as terrible and tragic whoever first stumbled upon the pathetic water-logged corpse. But in the circumstances Jemima was still grateful that it had not been anyone actually staying at the villa. They all needed to remain as calm and rational as possible if any sense was to be made of the whole horrifying business. To say nothing of when the local police arrived …

Quite early, Nikos had been heard calling from the beach to his mother up at the villa. It was a sound that for an instant gave Jemima a curious flash of recognition. Cry-by-night? Could that be the odd wailing noise which had disturbed Martha James and maybe awakened her too in the hours of darkness? Then the appalled expression of Sarah Halliwell swept these thoughts temporarily aside.

Sarah, who alone among the guests understood modern Greek, was listening to the shouts from the shore.

“He’s saying—it’s a body! Someone’s in the water! He’s saying—Kiria? No, I don’t believe it!” Sarah swayed slightly and gripped one of the big terracotta pots at the edge of the terrace for support.

“Alice! He’s telling his mother that it’s Alice lying down there. There are injuries—her head. Something about the rocks!”

But it was the weeping, the terrible weeping and the stream of passionate but incomprehensible Greek lamentation from Irini, that brought it home to them all that Alice Garland was actually dead.

Irini raised her fists and looked up at the sky: the unclouded blue, the famous blue sky of Corfu, blue, Alice Garland’s favourite colour, the theme of the Villa Elia, seemed to mock her. Too much blue in a house making for a heartless atmosphere, as Jemima’s decorator friend Daisy had told her. Jemima had seen Alice herself as ruthless maybe in business, heartless perhaps in her private life (although she had greeted her disgraced husband’s unexpected arrival with some generosity, pleading for his temporary acceptance in her little speech). Now Alice Garland was no longer in a position to be either ruthless or forgiving; only in a certain literal sense was she also heartless, for at some point in the small hours of the night, her heart had stopped beating.

“Little Alice!” began Fizzy in a voice of almost childish bewilderment; her heavy features crumpled and Jemima had the impression she was about to cry. “Why, no, you’ve gotta be joking.” The words were in themselves ludicrous; yet at the same time what was happening, the macabre scene on the shore below them, was still so incredible to them all that it did cross Jemima’s mind that maybe some hideous kind of practical joke was being played.

The arrival of William Gearhart on the terrace at this moment brought her back to a sense of reality—unwelcome reality. Irini, cries temporarily abandoned, was heading towards the path, apron askew, arms still outstretched. So far as Jemima knew, none of them had seen William since lunchtime the day before. Certainly she had not, and as for the others, that was something that could be checked, if not at the present moment.

William looked urbane and rested. The face was still rather flushed, perhaps, but the impression given this morning was of the flush of health, not the unhealthily ruddy hue of too much drink too often consumed. William was wearing a clean white tennis shirt and dark blue swimming trunks, despite the fact that he had arrived with no luggage: the shirt was slightly strained over his broad chest. Stock supplies at the villa? His own clothes left over from happier (and slimmer) times?

“Good morning, all.” He not only looked, he sounded urbane. “I’m all ready for a fresh start this morning, a very fresh start except for the heat. My God, I’d forgotten the sheer delicious aroma of all those shrubs we planted—sage? I’m hopeless about names—as you make your way up the path. Fresh coffee now requested for a fresh start. Irini–” He stopped. “What’s going on here? Irini, that’s a hell of a racket. You all look as if someone had just died.” The words faltered as he took in the shocked expression on Sarah’s face.

Irini halted in mid-flight and grabbed William’s hand.

“Kirie”–and she jabbered at him in Greek with gestures towards the shore. Someone had joined Nikos down there, another man, presumably Greek. Together they were lifting the body from the pebbles where Nikos had originally laid it and were heading, slowly, for the villa path.

“You poor thing!” said Mrs. Vascoe swiftly, before anyone else could interrupt. “I’m afraid this is going to be a terrible shock to you. But you see, we think there’s been some kind of accident. Your wife—”

“Alice! No, I don’t believe it.” They were the words which Sarah Halliwell had spoken only a short while before. But William Gearhart, unlike Sarah, did not sway and needed no terracotta pot to support him. Nor was his voice low and gentle.

He began to shout, or perhaps rave might have been a better word. In his own way, William was almost as incomprehensible as Irini had been, or at least for the first few rapid sentences which he shouted at them. Then the words, to his appalled hearers—Fizzy, Sarah, Mrs. Vascoe and Jemima—did begin to make a certain grisly sense.

“Martha James!” was his recurrent theme. “Martha, Martha James! Why did you come here? Why didn’t you leave her alone? Fatal Martha James! Fatal, fatal, fatal!” he shouted, his face getting redder by the minute; gone was the urbane new-that-morning-man entirely. “Unlucky to me. Unlucky to her. Martha James, where are you? Where are you lurking—? I know you, Martha James, fatal woman, where are you? Come out of your cottage.” And on and on and on in a terrible stream of invective which on grounds of loudness alone could have been heard surely on the other side of the bay.

All the time the sombre little procession, body now wrapped round with some kind of dark towel or blanket or tarpaulin, could be seen winding its way up the path to the villa.

It was, oddly enough, William’s mention of the word cottage, rather than his repeated vituperative evocation of her name, which called to everyone’s attention the fact that Martha James was not actually present.

“She always came late for breakfast, she’s always the last to come,” said Sarah Halliwell when it was evident that for the time being William had worn himself to silence. She only put into words what the company as a whole was thinking.

“Then Martha doesn’t know!” exclaimed Fizzy. “Maybe I should go and tell her. I’d love to do something to help,” she muttered pathetically. “This is gonna be such a shock: this terrible accident.”

“Accident! Was it an accident?” To the general horror, William began to shout once more.

“Of course it was, dear Mr. Garland, Mr. Gearhart, rather.” Mrs. Vascoe interposed her calming little voice. “A tragic accident, if your poor wife is indeed dead. As, alas, seems all too likely. What else could it be”—she quivered for a moment—“but an accident?”

“We shall see, I suppose.” But William was subsiding once more; he spoke sombrely rather than with his previous rage.

“I’ll get Martha then,” put in Fizzy swiftly.

It was not necessary. Before Fizzy could move, Martha appeared on the terrace. Jemima noted that she was holding a lighted cigarette in her hand although she did not generally smoke before breakfast. One moment later, Nikos and his companion with their shrouded burden reached the crest of the path.

They all realized at once from the look of her that there was no need to tell Martha anything. She must have watched the procession coming up the path. Her face, like Irini’s, was already streaked with tears. Before the mesmerized eyes of the assembled company—even William still mercifully silent—Martha sank on her knees beside Alice’s body where it had been laid, and bowed her fair head down upon it. Even more shocking was the way she burrowed in the dark covering to produce one white moist hand and some strands of long wet hair.

Martha James proceeded to kiss the hand of the dead girl with passionate abandonment as the tears flowed freely down her cheeks. “My Alice! Little Alice!” After a while she stayed silent and simply bowed herself once more over the corpse.

“Did she mean that to you too?” Fizzy spoke with a sort of awe. “But I guess we all loved her,” she added generously.

Then Jemima looked at Martha, looked at her again with new eyes: saw the straight, fairish hair hanging down her back, framing the curiously wizened face with its unexpected crop of lines fanning out beneath the deepening tan; Martha’s girlish hair-style and Martha’s girlish slimness. Girlish from a distance, that is. Yes. But Martha James was not the girl, that was Alice Garland. Jemima looked away from Martha down to Alice’s prostrate form, the pale wet mermaid hair now falling free from its covering in strands; she imagined the pale face beneath.

Martha and Alice: “My Alice! Little Alice!” She thought of William’s uncontrolled railing against Martha, as yet imperfectly understood. Might that hatred have its true origin in the most primitive kind of jealousy and dislike?

Jemima stepped forward and touched Martha on the shoulder.

“I think I understand,” was all she said. Then, putting her arm protectively round Martha’s shoulder, Jemima helped her to her feet and away from the body of the dead girl. She decided to say nothing further for the time being.

“Well, I don’t understand.” Fizzy’s voice was loud, indignant, her expression, again childlike, a mixture of misery and crossness. “I don’t understand at all. We’re talking about an accident, aren’t we? Of course we are. But how did she die? I want to know that. Are we getting the doctor? I’ve got a lot of questions to ask.” She glared about her; her lip trembled.

“My dear Fizzy.” Mrs. Vascoe spoke gently. “We all know what you mean, I’m sure. We’ve all got a lot of questions to ask. And for that matter, I expect one or two questions will be asked of us. In the meantime, surely we must all be as cooperative and self-controlled as possible.” Mrs. Vascoe put an unmistakable emphasis on the last words.

Sarah nodded strongly. So did William. It was clear that he did not consider the words could possibly apply to him.

There was no telephone at the Villa Elia. Telephones were hard to get in Corfu it seemed (and precarious when they were installed). Jemima remembered with a pang how Alice had spoken merrily on the subject: “One of the many good points of the villa. When you come to film it, you’ll find it so peaceful without a telephone. Not really very awkward once you adjust to it. For urgent calls, you just go up to the village and chance your luck. Now that really is a time-wasting experience. Most people decide to make their fresh start without the benefit of the telephone.”

You might have thought, however, that a telephone would be sadly missed in the present unhappy circumstances. But Irini’s force of character and organizational abilities, with Nikos as her aide, and Nikos’s friend as his aide, proved able to cope with, under the circumstances, surprising dispatch. Alice’s body was taken to a small room on the ground floor, a bare, cell-like little place, but that seemed right enough. Irini had ceased her keening now that she had something—in fact a great deal—to do.

A doctor arrived, Greek but English-speaking, accompanied by a man who appeared to be the local policeman.

From the doctor it was learned what they perfectly well knew already, but he insisted on pronouncing the news officially—that Alice Garland was dead. But they also learned—the assembled company was once more on the terrace—that Alice had died not from drowning, but from a blow or blows on the side of the head. From a stone? A rock? How many blows? The doctor, having given them this news, was not inclined to elaborate upon it.

In short, and this was the key-point of his announcement: Alice Garland had been dead before she entered the water.

“She fell? Yes, maybe she has fallen. Maybe a big rock has fallen on her. The rocks do fall in this bay. They are loose a bit, do you know. Then she fell in the water. But I think she was dead, then. Already dead, I do not think she did drown. We shall know more.” He paused diplomatically. He means, Jemima supposed, after the autopsy; but he is too delicate to conjure up such a distressing image in our minds.

The policeman spoke limited English, and so that the tenor of his remarks could be clearly understood Sarah Halliwell translated them. The message, although given at some length, causing Sarah to pause once or twice and hesitate for the right official word, was in essence a simple one.

None of the guests was free to leave the villa until further formalities—further questioning was another way of putting it—had taken place.

“He wants our passports, I think: to look at them,” murmured Sarah with a shade of embarrassment. “And he also wants to know the answer to two questions immediately. I’m not sure—I’d better just pass them on.”

“Go on, for God’s sake! Tell us what he’s saying! Don’t start holding things back at this stage.” William Gearhart had been trying to follow the conversation with obvious impatience. It was clear that unlike Alice (who had spoken excellent modern Greek) William knew very little of the language.

“First of all,” said Sarah in a stronger voice, sounding defiant, “he wants to know who is now in charge of this party at the Villa Elia.”

There was a silence which nobody seemed inclined to break.

“And the second question?” inquired William harshly.

“He wants to know who is the next of kin of the unfortunate lady. As he describes her, Alice.”

“I can answer both of those questions. Together.” William exuded a deep breath. “I am, was, am, Alice’s lawful husband. She had not so far as I know changed her will, in spite of our—separation. So I inherit the villa. The same goes for her next of kin. I’m still her husband. Legally, which is what counts. So, QED, I’m still her next of kin.”

“Nonsense,” rapped out Martha James sharply. “That’s absolute nonsense, William. Alice had changed her will. I know that for a fact. You won’t inherit the villa, and Alice, as you know, had at the moment of her death nothing much else to leave.”

“And I suppose you will inherit it? Is that what you’re trying to say?” William’s tone was sarcastic rather than serious.

“Exactly.” Martha dragged on her cigarette. “Quite appropriate, don’t you think? In view of everything.”

“But how could that be?” cried Fizzy in great agitation. “You? You meant nothing to her. You were just her business partner. You were handling those antiques with her. I know all about it. Nikos was shipping them out for her, with the help of some other friends. She wanted to build it up. She lost a lot of money when you”—she looked angrily at William—“let her down. People were always letting her down. But she was into helping people—like Nikos for example!” Fizzy turned back to Martha. “You were just an old friend, down on your luck, she was helping you to make a fresh start.”

“An old friend!” Martha bent her sardonic gaze on the American girl; Fizzy, alone of them all, had attempted some kind of adjustment of her dress to indicate grief or at least mourning: she had wrapped a scrubby black scarf round her head; the effect was to recall the seventies’ protests against the Vietnam War rather than bereavement in the eighties. All the same, Jemima thought that it revealed a tenderness in Fizzy which so far no one else, not William, the self-styled bereaved husband, nor Martha, had attempted to exhibit.

“An old friend!” repeated Martha. “Yes, you could put it like that.”

“I don’t want to speak out of turn,” Mrs. Vascoe began with the habitual note of apology in her voice and ended more briskly. “This is all very distasteful under the circumstances. But perhaps you should know now, as you don’t seem to be aware—in short, poor Alice and I were partners. We’d gone into partnership over Fresh Perspectives. The villa, the whole business. I’d been thinking about doing something useful since Harry died; he would have wanted me to do something useful, I know he would. Alice and I discussed it. She needed the capital. You know about that, Mr. Gearhart. That was my fresh start, it is my fresh start.” She gazed firmly round. “If anyone is in control here now, and I don’t want to obtrude too much of course, but I really think, Martha, Mr. Gearhart, it must be”—she paused as if struggling against the apology trying to return to her voice—“well, me.”

“This is not distasteful, as you put it, it’s horrible!” burst out Fizzy. “Poor little Alice, hardly cold yet.” She shuddered. “We don’t even know how she died, and we’re quarrelling over business. Didn’t you care for her at all?”

“It must be obvious even to you, Fizzy, that some of us cared for her a great deal,” Martha countered.

It was suddenly unbearably hot and the happy cries from the far side of the bay—the tourists had come with the noonday sun—were increasingly obtrusive to the tense group on the terrace above.

“How like Alice! Even now we’re all quarrelling over her. I told you it was a mistake.” Surprisingly this bitter exclamation came from Sarah Halliwell. What was more, it was to William Gearhart that she turned as she said it.

“You mean: I shouldn’t have come? I had to come. You know that I had to see you.”

“Hey! Are you guys serious? Is this some kind of love scene you’re gonna play out?” Fizzy was now more truculent than bewildered. Jemima, feeling herself to be the outsider in this increasingly murky discussion, judged it the moment to intervene.

“Shouldn’t we all step back from this a little?” she queried in her most reasonable voice, the one she kept in reserve for battling interviewees in her investigative television series. “We’ve all had a shock, a number of shocks as a matter of fact. Obviously this wasn’t just a normal Fresh Perspective house party, to put it mildly. You two, Sarah and William, obviously know each other; Martha was a close and old friend”—she emphasized the word deliberately without looking at the painter—“of Alice. Fizzy, you were a new, newish friend?”

Fizzy nodded strongly.

“Mrs. Vascoe, you were her partner, new, newish partner?”

Mrs. Vascoe inclined her head.

“What is quite obvious to me,” went on Jemima, “if rather too late in the day, is that Alice Garland wasn’t content for me to make up my own mind about the value or otherwise of Fresh Perspectives. She was sufficiently keen on my using some film of it for television to ensure that my visit was in a sense rigged. Mrs. Vascoe, you would talk about your late husband.” Jemima smiled nicely in her direction. “Fizzy, you would talk about your bad marriage.” Another smile, polite, not quite so nice. “Sarah, I’m not sure about you. You mentioned a personal betrayal, perhaps you really were here getting a fresh perspective on things. Yet you clearly know Alice’s estranged husband well.”

But Sarah Halliwell chose neither to confirm nor to deny what Jemima had said.

It was William Gearhart who burst out, with something of a return to his original intemperate manner, “Of course we know each other. And there was a betrayal, a highly personal betrayal But the betrayer was Alice, not me. I’d like to make that absolutely clear. Alice used her knowledge in the gallery, quoted her, got her name involved. When I went up the spout, Sarah lost her job.”

“William,” broke in Sarah, “do we have to have all this out again? And in public? It’s nothing to do with poor Alice’s death. She offered me the trip to make up, I suppose. She was generous, she could be generous. And yes, Jemima, you’re right. Alice did ask us all along to make up a convincing party for you, even though our reasons for a fresh start were, speaking of myself, perfectly genuine ones.”

“Nothing to do with Alice’s death?” hissed Fizzy. “That’s for the police to say, I think. How do we know it was an accident? You were out and about last night, Sarah Halliwell. I saw you all right when I took my dip. I saw the light in your cottage, saw it come on, you were there moving about. Who’s to say you didn’t go up to the house, lure poor little Alice down to the shore …” She broke off, even Fizzy aware that she might, just might, be going too far.

“I have no intention of denying that I left my cottage last night.” Sarah spoke proudly. “As a matter of fact, I visited William’s cottage. I reasoned with him. I tried to persuade him to leave in the morning. There was nothing to be gained from being here. The past was the past: there was nothing more either of us could do about it. Right, William?”

“Perfectly right. Why not add that we spent the night together? That we made love, if you prefer to put it that way. So unless Fizzy is going to accuse us both of lying, and both of murdering Alice, I think this delightful young woman must really accept—”

“Are you patronizing me? I don’t buy that,” Fizzy threatened him. But the word “murder,” mentioned for the first time, cast a new and frightful shadow on all of them.

It was the re-emergence of Irini, weeping once more now that there was temporarily no need for her executive qualities and expostulating in Greek—the word Nikos could be heard repeatedly—which put an end to the whole distressing scene.

“Poor Irini, and still more poor Nikos,” sighed Sarah at the end of it all. “Nikos is wondering what is going to happen to him, or rather what is going to happen to the business.”

Mrs. Vascoe smiled eagerly. “Oh, please, do assure them, Sarah, I wish I knew some Greek, I’ve been boning up, but I don’t know enough yet to say something as important as this. So you must assure them on my behalf that of course the business will go on, of course Irini won’t lose her job! Hardly. She’s the mainstay. As for Nikos, I’m not quite clear exactly what he does, but whatever arrangement Alice had made with him, I’ll surely honour that. Harry taught me to have everything very clear from the start, and I certainly mean to get everything clear from now on—”

Sarah was looking at her with some embarrassment; then she silently raised an eyebrow in William’s direction. He nodded.

“Mrs. Vascoe, this is going to be quite embarrassing, I fear. But the business which Irini is worrying about, Nikos’s business with Alice, is the one Fizzy mentioned to you. Rather too blithely, I’m afraid, under the circumstances. We have reason to believe that Alice was shipping out certain antiquities—vases—using Nikos.” She stopped.

“Now you listen here”—Fizzy, belligerent once more. “Alice may no longer be here to protect herself, but that’s no reason why the whole of this should be dumped on her. What about you, Martha? It was your idea: Alice told me that. There were some odd things going on up at your cottage, I know it. Some restoring, painting up. I took a look one day. Jemima, I wanted to talk to you about that, last night. You went away.”

Irini said something very fierce in Greek to Sarah and threw her hands up in the air once more. Then she stalked off the terrace back in the direction of the kitchen.

“What did she say, Sarah?” asked Mrs. Vascoe. “I don’t know what to think. What would Harry think? Is it true?”

“She says she wishes Kiria Alice had never tried to make the Villa Elia into a business, never involved Nikos in business; she says Kiria Alice and Kirie William were happy once together when they built the villa.”

“I was happy. Alice was never really happy. She could never leave anything or anyone alone. No sooner did we build that villa than she saw how it could be used. The gallery too, that could be used.”

On that sad little speech, spoken at last with resignation rather than rage, William Gearhart turned away. His slumped figure could be seen wandering back in the direction of his cottage. After a moment Sarah shrugged her shoulders and followed him. It was a signal for the rest of the party to disperse, Fizzy allowing herself one Parthian shot: “When the police start to ask the real questions, there’ll be some explaining to do.”

A long swim must be in order, thought Jemima, in the late afternoon. There was no sign of the doctor, nor the local policeman, no kind of official had come near them since the last incursion. Were they all to spend another night together then? Under the general unhappy umbrella of the stricken villa? That seemed to be the general plan, or rather, in the general lack of plan (no outside touring office to assist them: Alice had been the office), there did not appear to be any alternative. To remove oneself to a hotel—always supposing one was to be found empty in the high tourist season—might be tactless under the circumstances.

In the afternoon a grim-faced Irini did reappear: she visited Jemima’s cottage and was on her way to the others. Nikos had been, she learnt, up at the police station, but was now back. There was nothing sinister about his presence there, Jemima understood. So far. She did not know what the ramifications of Alice’s death would be for Nikos—his friends—and their presumably illegal smuggling business. The message Irini brought to her, written in careful English, was that officialdom would return to the Villa Elia tomorrow.

Another night together! Not dinner together, surely? That would be too much. But no, Irini was going up to the village: there was nothing for her to do here but mourn; Irini mimed sorrow. Another note, written in much less good but still comprehensible English, indicated that Irini’s sister would prepare a cold supper and leave it for them all as usual on the terrace. After that it was up to the individuals concerned to eat it there, or carry it away to their separate cottages.

A long swim was definitely in order. Picking her way carefully along the pretty but stony beach, Jemima avoided the spot where Alice’s body had been found. It was marked—by Nikos? by Nikos at Irini’s orders? by the police? by Fizzy?—by a little cairn of stones.

Once she was in the sea, Jemima floated out easily into the bay. The water grew deep within a few yards of the shore; the swell was gentle but commanding, the water almost chilly. (Even in high summer the Corfu water, unlike that of the rest of Greece, remained coolish and thus invigorating.) Jemima turned on her back and looked back at the villa itself, the cliffs and headlands, the extensive olive-spattered territories of the Villa Elia. The little cairn remained a marker and a monument which she had to admit could not be ignored.

How peaceful and clean everything looked now, washed in the late afternoon sun! Yet it was this very shore which on the night of Alice’s death—without any knowledge of what was occurring—had seemed to Jemima so abruptly menacing, cries heard, lights perhaps flickering, a boat maybe seen. Had it been her instinct that something evil was afoot? A fatal accident: that was after all a far more likely explanation. Why had William, and Fizzy too, seemed to jump to the conclusion that there was something unnatural, as well as tragic, about what had happened?

Fresh starts, fresh perspectives. Lapped by the water, gazing up at the villa itself (blue shutters now firmly closed against sun—or tragedy), Jemima began to meditate anew on the so-called theme of the Villa Elia holidays.

Supposing Alice had been killed? Presumably they would know for sure in the morning. Had she been killed to prevent her making a fresh start? Or in revenge by those incapable of making one? Fizzy might come into the first category, or even Martha, locked in their jealousy of each other; William and Sarah in the second. Mrs. Vascoe, on the other hand, if as innocent as she seemed about Alice’s secret smuggling ventures, had no motive to wish the dead woman ill. But if Mrs. Vascoe was a somewhat deeper character than she appeared—not altogether improbable, since she had surprised them all with her news of the partnership—then she might have got hold of some inkling of Alice’s business-within-a-business. And she might not have liked what she found out, the misuse of her money, the misuse of the late Harry’s money … Under these circumstances, even meek little Betsy Vascoe might find it in her nature to behave less like an apologetic mouse and more like an enraged rat.

Jemima watched as a figure, a woman, walked along the shore and paused by the small cairn, her head bowed. From her figure, so much more substantial than that of the rest of the female guests, Jemima guessed she was looking at Fizzy. She saw the black scarf fluttering round her head. At this distance, Fizzy looked both fine and dignified.

Fizzy? No, Fizzy could not have desired Alice’s death. Fizzy had manifestly hero-worshipped Alice. Jemima remembered the embarrassing spectacle of some of Fizzy’s enthusiasms; how graceful Alice Garland had dealt with them, used them as it now seemed. Surely Fizzy could never have wished for any harm to come to Alice, her model of all a woman should be, practical, helpful, businesslike … Jemima recalled Fizzy’s frequent outbursts of praise.

Martha, then? How could Martha have desired Alice’s death? Other words rang in Jemima’s ears: Martha’s words. “My Alice.” And then Fizzy’s further exclamation: “All our pasts are crying out to haunt us.” The figure of Fizzy, head still bowed, had by now walked away from the cairn, and vanished among the olive trees.

A fresh perspective … wait. Jemima saw suddenly how you might look at the whole matter from another angle; she began instinctively to swim back for the shore with a practised crawl that was very different from the reflective way she had been floating, and looking up at the villa. Then she realized that there was in fact no hurry for what she had to do. She swam more slowly, floating again. Night would fall and with it the gentle cloak of warm darkness which would cover all things and make them, at least for the time being, acceptable.

A confession. Jemima thought that there had been enough pain already, and enough shame; more pain, if not more shame, might be avoided if certain things were known, confessed, before the officials came in the morning.

“You did care for her,” she said much later that night, sitting on the terrace of the other person’s cottage; “I know that. You cared for her most of all. And so you killed her.”

“Would you believe me if I told you it was an accident?” The person spoke in a low voice. Both of them looked out to sea. The cottage was in darkness. There were no lights on the terrace. Both had preferred it that way.

“In a way it was an accident. I wanted her to let me go. Why couldn’t she let me make a fresh start?”

“But you never could,” Jemima spoke gently. “You were the one person who could never make a fresh start while Alice Garland was alive. And perhaps not now, now that she’s dead.”

“When did you guess?”

“The one bond that can’t be broken, ignored, forgotten. That’s it, isn’t it? That’s what kept you as her slave?”

“The bond was—”

“Motherhood. That was it, wasn’t it?” Silence fell. “Alice Garland was your daughter, wasn’t she? That was the hold she had over you. The hold that meant she would never let you go.”

Martha James’s cigarette glowed in the darkness. Jemima could see a little white heap of stubs in the pottery ashtray—blue like everything else—at her feet.

“I knew when you knelt by her body. You looked so alike. Even at that moment.”

“No fresh start for me,” said Martha James. “Not while Alice was alive. You’re right. I realized that at last. I realized it in fact last night.”

“I think you must have fought with her,” continued Jemima. “You must have suffered so much: being involved yet again in one of her crooked businesses. She used you: you had to be loyal to her. She’d used you, I imagine, over the gallery business, as she’d used William and Sarah Halliwell. As she was now using Fizzy, poor, hapless, devoted creature, and Mrs. Vascoe. Your reputation had already suffered. Now she was going to use you all over again, restoring, painting up, as Fizzy euphemistically put it. Finally, I suppose”—she hesitated—“I suppose your loyalty came to an end.”

“I did fight with her,” admitted Martha. “I was haunted by those cries: at first I did think it was some kind of a ghost, a woman wailing, the woman I had been, if you like, an expression of my conscience. But that night, last night, for God’s sake, I began to understand a little more of how she operated. Nikos and the boat, devoted Nikos, so eager to work up his own little business, trusting her that she would not get him into trouble. Loyalty—where was her loyalty? Those cries were Nikos’s signal. For the loading, I imagine.

“I heard the cries. I went out. Nikos was leaving the boat. No wailing woman, but plenty of bad conscience; she had me looking at the vases, restoring all day. Now the results were being shipped off. I should never have indulged her, spoiled her, helped her. William knew that; hence his outburst. Justified in a sort of ghastly way, I suppose. I was unlucky to her. Alice always wanted something more, you know. With her little angel’s face, she could wheedle anyone. Beginning with her mother.”

“Beginning: but not ending.”

“Not ending. No. Last night I hit her. I’d never done that before, not even when she was a little girl. I didn’t believe in it: ironic, isn’t it? But last night she laughed at me; said the only value of my work was to make a little money for her. Laughed at me for thinking the world had lost anything with the failure of Martha James, artist. ‘You can’t escape me, ever, you’re my mother, you’re not a painter, you’re my mother.’ That was when my loyalty ended, if you like. Or my control. Listening to her laughter. ‘You’re not a painter, you’re my mother.’ Her last words. I went towards her: I slapped her, hard, she fell, she stumbled, we were on the little path, on the edge of the cliff, she fell.

“I ran down,” went on Martha. “She had fallen, fallen all the way. She was dead. No pulse, nothing. There must be—injuries. The doctor will tell you about that. Her head had hit a rock. I never meant to kill her.”

“You were quite sure she was dead?”

“Of course,” replied Martha in her cool, spare manner; the emotion had drained from her voice; they might have been discussing, once more, the fishing boats, the stars or the night breeze. “She was dead. And so I floated her body out to sea. Mad: I was mad. I had killed the person I loved, and so I let her float away in the water. The cleansing water.”

“But Alice floated back.” Jemima kept her voice equally lacking in emotion.

“She came back to me. Yet again. There was to be no escape, as she had told me, no fresh start for me. I’ll tell them all this in the morning, of course. The others will know too. They’ll recover. Fizzy will find someone else to hero-worship. William and Sarah have each other. Mrs. Vascoe: she’ll find something more truly useful to do. But for me”—Martha James stared out in the darkness as though she could still see her daughter’s body floating on the edge of the sea—“there isn’t any escape from her, from Alice, ever.”

Jemima put out her hand and gently touched the older woman’s thin brown arm. She thought that what Martha had said was probably true: for this particular mother there could never be a real escape.

Aloud, all she said was, “You didn’t really want that, Martha, did you? Up to the end, you wanted to protect her: she was your little girl.”