Agatha Raisin and the Terrible Tourist

the analysis-paralysis and look at the footwork. She could not possibly imagine that a man who had any feeling for her at all could leave her in such peril.
    Charles came out of the hotel, carrying two expensive suitcases which he put in the boot.
    He slid in behind the steering wheel.
    ‘You’re very kind,’ volunteered Agatha.
    ‘Think nothing of it,’ said Charles. ‘You’re saving me a hotel bill.’
    The rest of the evening went by like a bad dream. Pamir came at eight o’clock to grill both of them again. His anger seemed to have mounted. Outside, the press waited eagerly. The murder on the Greek side was old hat.
    At last Pamir left.
    ‘We can’t go out anywhere without being plagued by the press,’ said Charles. ‘They will keep banging on the door. There they go again.’
    But a voice shouted, ‘British High Commission here.’
    Charles went to let a small, dapper man in, blinking in the sudden blast of flashes from press cameras.
    He introduced himself as Mr Urquhart and advised them, unnecessarily, as Charles acidly pointed out, to co-operate with the police. Then he began to question Agatha closely about James Lacey. Where was he? Turkey? Was she sure? He could still be on the island.
    ‘If he were,’ said Agatha, ‘then he certainly would not be at Salamis, murdering poor old Harry Tembleton.’
    ‘This is all most unfortunate,’ said Mr Urquhart. ‘The police were about to release Mrs Wilcox’s body and let you all go home, but in the light of this latest murder they are certainly not going to let any of you go.’
    He then questioned Agatha about James again, but Agatha would only repeat that James had said he was going to Turkey. She did not mention anything about his investigations into Mustafa.
    At last Mr Urquhart departed the villa in a fusillade of flashes. From outside the villa came the nasal voice of a television reporter talking to a camera.
    ‘Do you want to go to bed?’ asked Charles. ‘Or shall we eat first?’
    ‘There’s nothing much left in the house,’ said Agatha. ‘And I don’t feel like the picnic stuff. The phone’s ringing again. Maybe I should answer it. It might be James.’
    ‘And pigs might fly. I’m hungry. Those few little kebabs at lunchtime didn’t go very far. Tell you what. If we go out the back and shin over the garden wall, we’ll find ourselves in the fish restaurant car park. I fancy some of those nice little red fish like mullet.’
    ‘The press will see us.’
    ‘They can’t, surely.’ He opened the back door, which was next to a small laundry room. ‘Come here, Aggie. All we need to do is sneak round the corner of the building and over the wall. They’ll never see us. That great hedge of mimosa screens us.’
    The idea of being with other people in a crowded restaurant appealed to Agatha.
    They went out, gently closing the door behind them, and climbed over the low wall which separated the villa garden from the car park.
    ‘Now let’s just hope none of the press decide to come in for dinner,’ said Charles. ‘But I think they’ll stand outside the villa for a bit and then go back to the Dome to join the others who are trying to talk to Olivia and George. Who knows? Olivia may give another press conference.’
    ‘What we haven’t thought about is who on earth would want to bump off Harry.’ Charles was deboning a small fish with neat and surgical precision.
    ‘Harry must have found out who did it,’ said Agatha. ‘I suppose it will turn out he was murdered in the same way as Rose.’
    ‘Probably. And someone must have been desperate. If it was any of the remaining four, then one of them must have been frightened enough to bump off Harry, knowing that now they really would be suspected and hopes of some mad stray Turk losing his head, as in the murder of Rose, just wouldn’t be considered any more. I’ve been thinking about George Debenham. Why should he flirt with Rose? He doesn’t look the type.’
    ‘In the information on them I took down from Bill Wong, it turns out that George suffered heavy losses on the stock exchange. Did I tell you that? And Rose had money.’
    ‘But they had just met. I mean, Rose would hardly say, “Look, I’m rich. Stick with me and I’ll see you all right.”’
    ‘She might not have been blunt like that,’ said Agatha slowly. ‘But she might have made some jokey reference to being loaded. No, I think Trevor’s jealousy and rage are the cause of these murders. You said