Strangers in Company by Jane Aiken Hodge Page B

moved forward, took Hilton’s arm and guided him away after the pageboy with the bags.
    Stella had been totally silent on the drive down from Mycenae, hunched in her corner seat, biting her nails. Now she was standing on the other side of the lobby gazing out of a huge plate-glass window. At last, to Marian’s relief, she came slowly across to join her. “What gives?” she asked.
    â€œBusiness as usual, the professor thinks.”
    â€œYou mean pleasure.” Unconsciously, Stella echoed his word. “I supose it makes sense, in a horrible kind of way. After all, it was just a ghastly accident, wasn’t it?” She sounded oddly like the young Viola, wanting to be reassured in some child’s disaster.
    â€œWell, of course.” And, oddly Marian found herself remembering her own macabre thoughts up there on the cooling hillside, about the police and the ordeal by blood. It was a relief to hear Cairnthorpe call her name. “Shall I wait for you?” she asked Stella. Something about her apparent composure nagged at her.
    â€œDon’t bother. If you’re like me, you’re dying to get upstairs. All rooms with bath here, by the look of the place. See you in the bar?”
    â€œRight.” Marian turned to follow her pageboy. Upstairs, he accepted her apologetic handful of unknown coins with a beaming smile and said something rapid and incomprehensible in Greek.
    â€œ
Oriste
?” She had learned this useful all-purpose word from the professor.
    The boy smiled, closed the room door and went to open the other door on to the small balcony. Wind rushed into the room, and somewhere down the corridor, another door, banging violently, made his point He closed the balcony door carefully, then opened the one into the hall, beamed again and left. Investigating quickly, Marian found that Stella had been right. She had her own tiny, typically Greek bathroom, with square tub, shower, and slightly defective plumbing. She made sure the hall door was firmly shut, then opened the one onto the terrace again, wincing at the force of the wind. But it was cleansing, somehow, purifying after the grim ordeal of the afternoon, and so was the wide view of the sea, ruffled to whitecaps by the wind. She shivered, not altogether with cold. Poor, silly Mrs. Hilton and her high heels.… What an ill-omened start for the tour. And then, how monstrously selfish to think that. Selfish, too, to realise, now, that in the horrible excitement of the day’s events, she had quite forgotten her own horrors.
    Disliking herself, she remembered that Cairnthorpe had warned that their dinner would be early. With one last, clean breath of sea-tasting wind, she went inside to pull her most respectable dress out of her case and get herself into it as fast as possible. It was a dark, becoming shade of blue, and quickly combing her hair, she found herself wondering whether the gesture was in respect of poor Mrs. Hilton or for this obviously elegant hotel.
    As she let herself out of her room, doors were banging up and down the long corridor. Not everybody’s pageboy had taken the trouble hers had. “God, what a gale.” Mrs.Duncan emerged from the room opposite. “What kind of view have you got?”
    â€œMarvellous. The sea. What’s it like your side?”
    â€œMarvellous, too. Come and see. Only for God’s sake shut the door.”
    â€œThanks.” Marian obeyed, then moved over to the balcony door, which Mrs. Duncan had waited to open. “Oh, I say!” This side of the hotel looked down over tumbling red-tiled roofs to more sea, with an island, set, she thought, as carefully in the centre of the scene as an eighteenth century landscaper might have set his “folly.”
    â€œWe’re on a peninsula,” explained Mrs. Duncan. “No wonder if it’s a shade draughty.”
    â€œWhat’s the island? Do you know?”
    â€œYes. I read this place up in the