Secret Souls (4 page)

‘The chief is right. It’s the coast that faces Libya and there are easy voyages to be made to the Mediterranean coast of that country, Egypt, Algeria and Morocco. And Livakia – well, it’s a very special village even for Crete. There are always interesting people coming and going because there are a dozen or so enticing foreigners who live there in marvellous houses. It’s a paradise found, not lost,’ quipped the captain who was telling Chadwick more about Livakia and Manoussos than she had learned from her lover. But then she did have a vague idea what sort of people lived in Livakia: beautiful people, pleasure seekers. She had after all met Max, seen D’Arcy.

For the next half-hour the two men spoke about Livakia, some of the residents, and about a murder that had taken place, a crime of passion against one of the foreign male residents, Arnold Topper. Manoussos seemed reluctant to talk much about it and changed the subject rather abruptly. That suited Chadwick; she had no desire to come down from the heights of love to hear about murder and a crime of passion. It actually unnerved her for a moment. One look of admiration from Manoussos and she was back on an even keel again.

‘And I will be able to take you out on excursions to remote mountain villages. You will adore my Crete, I have no doubt about that,’ he told her and graciously kissed her hand.

‘When shall we weigh anchor? Will you be sailing with us, chief?’ asked the captain.

‘Alas, no. I should be in Livakia as we speak, but if I might make a call, I can fix that. I’ll hitch a ride in one of the surveillance ’copters for at least part of the way. If you make ready to leave here this afternoon, you should reach Livakia in time for lunch at the Kavouria tomorrow. I’ll arrange it. Twelve, fifteen hours’ hard sailing in a good wind should do it, shouldn’t it, Dimitri?’

‘I would say so, Chief.’

Turning back to Chadwick, Manoussos told her, ‘No matter what, I’ll be on the quay waiting for your arrival, you can be certain of that.’

Then taking her gently by the elbow he ushered her away from
the captain. Manoussos stroked her hair and caressed her cheek. ‘Don’t be unhappy. If I could sail with you, I would, but I have important work that must be done. If it were possible I would take you along with me and then to Livakia and let the
Black Narcissus
sail round to meet us. It just isn’t.’

Her smile eased his pain at having to leave her. But he could feel her anxiety about their separation. ‘It’s only twenty-four hours, Chadwick. Each of us has waited a lifetime for this to happen to us. What are you afraid of?’

‘When you see me again you might love me less.’

‘More, only more, my love,’ he told her, taking her once more in his arms to reassure her that was the way it was going to be. Her anxiety seemed to vanish as quickly as it had appeared. Once more she was the seductive, mysterious beauty, engaging and dangerous.

‘I think I’ll hold you to that for the rest of our lives,’ a now much more relaxed and smiling Chadwick told him. ‘Go make your call,’ she ordered.

On his return, they walked together from the boat down the long wooden dock to the iron gates, the taxi that would take Manoussos back into Iraklion slowly following behind them. For a long time after it and Manoussos had vanished down the dirt track away from her, Chadwick watched the dust settle. She stared into the most exquisite emptiness and allowed it to envelop her. She luxuriated in it. Here was the richest solitude she had ever known. How could it be that one man, the right man, could make everything poetry and beauty. The heart no longer a hunter, but a song.

Walking back to the
Black Narcissus,
Chadwick thrilled to the adventure awaiting her. She was entering Manoussos’s and Max’s and D’Arcy’s world, she was going to live her life on their terms, for fun and pleasure and in a freedom such as they had made for themselves. She had a handsome young, uncomplicated man who loved her and her sexuality. She would live with him in Livakia, make a life there with him, for him, for her. She might even write another book. They would do up a house together, sail, swim, take long adventurous holidays. Have a child, maybe
children, maybe not. It would all happen for them, evolve as it should. She was already one of the Livakian pleasure seekers, one of the beautiful people, and in love. It seemed so natural to her to be who she now was. Who she had been seemed suddenly unnatural.

She hadn’t meant what little she had told Manoussos about herself to be a lies, more evasions. When she had told him she had been born into a well-to-do family: conservative, strait-laced even, the youngest of three, a sister and a brother, all close in age and loving and caring for each other because their parents were dead, it had made sense to her, a sort of truth. She had had a childhood romance that led to marriage then the man died … not exactly fabrication. All partly true, none of it real lies, she told herself. And what did it matter anyway? Manoussos hadn’t questioned her. It had all been said casually in conversation; things that could, if necessary, be corrected at a later date. She liked the new identity she was creating for herself.

It didn’t occur to her that she was creating, at the same time, a life of denial for herself. Why kill the momentum of happiness, contentment as she had never known, by analysing her actions? Chadwick was brimming with too much pleasure for that. ‘Let’s live.’ D’Arcy’s words to Max were now her own sentiments.

Dimitri broke into Chadwick’s thoughts when she boarded the
Black Narcissus.
‘He’s a good man, the chief. I thought you might like to know that.’

‘I do know that, Captain.’

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to talk out of line.’

‘No, please, that’s all right. What I meant was, I agree with you even though I hardly know him.’

‘Too bad he couldn’t have sailed with us. He’s a good sailor. Almost as good as he is a policeman.’

‘I don’t understand. Why a policeman?’

‘Well, police chief – quite a high-profile one at that. They’re lucky to keep him here in Crete.’

Dimitri Cronos had astonished Chadwick, that was clear by the expression on her face. ‘You didn’t know? Now I’m the one who
doesn’t understand. Are you all, right? Have I spoken out of turn?’

Chadwick was nonplussed by this news. Was fate playing some ghastly trick on her, giving her a police chief for a lover, the man she hoped to make a life with? Too cruel, too cruel. It was impossible to blank this news out of her mind. She would have to deal with it, make it a part of her life. Now she would have to bury her secret deeper than ever; never must it come to light, not only her own but his happiness,
their
future, was at stake. Chadwick willed herself to calmness over this news and the colour returned to her face.

She smiled, exuded her dazzling charm, and answered Captain Dimitri. ‘I’m fine, and no, you certainly did not speak out of turn.’ She laughed, and her mirth brought a smile to the face of the captain of the
Black Narcissus.
‘No, I didn’t know Manoussos was a chief of police, not even when you called him “Chief”. I took that to mean something flattering to him, as if you were intimating he was in charge. Incredibly, I realise now we never bothered to ask much about each other.’

‘He’s a man of substance, well respected. Much more than just a chief of police. He’s a kind of folk hero here in Crete because he fights off and catches art smugglers and saves the island’s antiquities. He’s a handsome, quiet, unassuming man, as hard as he is soft, courageous and brave, all the things Cretan men are known for and the things women admire. He is also the definitive detective. It was he who within days found and trapped Melina, the killer of his friend Arnold Topper. It happened in Livakia. He found her, entrapped her into a confession and brought her to justice. Even that was not enough for Manoussos Stavrolakis. The girl was fifteen years old, there were mitigating circumstances, enough to raise Manoussos’s social conscience. He was here in Iraklion to visit her in prison and to arrange for her to get some sort of counselling and education so that when she gets out of prison she can begin a new and fresh life for herself. He’s a man who lives by the law, in that he is unbending, but he also has a forgiving and generous heart.’

Chadwick felt sick to her stomach. ‘He’s a man who lives by
the law, in that he is unbending.’ Those words kept ringing through her head, terrifying her. She fought to keep herself in check so Captain Dimitri would not feel her sense of despair. Quite calmly she enquired of him, ‘How do you know all that, about the murderer Melina, and his being at the prison today?’

‘They were talking about it in town. Even now the murder trial is much talked about because it took place in Iraklion and the victim was a foreigner. It was a crime of passion, a man and a woman, and her defence was that Cretan pride demanded she behave as she did. The old Cretan vendetta raised its head: Melina had one against Arnold Topper for an insult he gave her in public – he called her a thief. I assumed you knew all that?’

‘No, I didn’t, and would you mind if we changed the subject?’

‘Murder not your thing? Well, I can understand that.’

Chadwick wanted to walk away from him, at the very least shout at him for God’s sake to be quiet on the subject, but she could do neither. She was too fragmented by the past and pressured by the present, love and lustful desire. Fortunately it was Captain Dimitri who left her to instruct the crew to make ready to sail in an hour for the old port of Chania where they would replenish supplies. She was for the moment saved.

The conference room of Chambers, Lodge, Dewy & Coggs was like the inner sanctum-cum-library of a New England eighteenth-century banking house rather than that of a twentieth-century Fifth Avenue law firm acting for New York old money: the Roosevelts, Woodwards, Milikens, Vanderbilts, that sort of clientele, with arms that extended to the Boston Mayflower clans, and the Philadelphia main liners. Hannibal Chase’s financial empire and family affairs had for generations been handled by the firm. Hannibal, his children and his philanthropic trusts had always been favoured clients for they were not litigious, were conservative, honourable, and very nearly scandal free. That was up until the unexpected and strange death of sixty-seven-year-old Hannibal, when his wife Chadwick inherited his entire fortune.

Now the firm was involved with just the sort of law they
preferred not to deal with. Andrew Coggs Junior, who had gone to school with Warren Chase, the only son of Hannibal from his first marriage, was sitting opposite him and his sister, Diana Chase Ogden, Hannibal’s only daughter from that first marriage.

These were the two people at the hub of the problem concerning Hannibal’s estate. They were contesting their father’s last will and testament which had been drawn up by the firm only weeks before Hannibal’s death. The firm, and especially Andrew Coggs Senior, who was a life-long friend of Hannibal Chase, believed the will to be legal and binding and that there had been no skulduggery of any sort. Andrew further believed Hannibal’s widow Chadwick to be innocent of the accusations being made by Warren and Diana: that she had used undo influence over Hannibal to change his will in her favour.

Warren and Diana had been made wealthy long before Hannibal’s death. Hannibal had delighted in passing over his wealth and property to his children while he was alive. He enjoyed watching them invest their money and liked seeing the security and independence his generosity gave them. They were multi-millionaires and had been for most of their adult life, therefore there was more than just money involved in their contesting of the will. Warren and Diana had been extremely close to their father and step-mother, although she was much younger than either of them. Until their father’s death they had been a close-knit family. The will alienated them from sharing in Hannibal’s life-long work and his wealth. They could not bear that alienation. They saw it as an injustice inflicted upon them, something that Hannibal would never have done. Their father’s sudden death, and Chadwick’s behaviour since widowhood, not least their unshakable belief that the father who had loved them and remained close to them would never have willingly cut them out of his will and the last days of his life, prompted brother and sister to demand of the lawyers that a thorough private investigation into the matter take place. They wanted proof that Chadwick Chase did not manipulate her husband into changing his will; and further, that she did not murder her husband.

The fact of the matter was, as Hannibal had told Chadwick at
the time, that he simply felt that he had given his children enough during his lifetime. He was adamant that Chadwick should have everything after his death so that she would be financially secure and he wanted her to use the money in any way she saw fit. He insisted, however, that she was not to give the money to his children. Much as Chadwick loved Diana and Warren, she loved and respected Hannibal more, and therefore she was prepared to obey his request, as she had obeyed all his other wishes.

The meeting assembled here in the conference room library was taking place for the sole purpose of once and for all dealing with Diana’s and Warren’s accusations. Accusations that Chadwick was well aware of and had chosen to deny once and then ignore in order to get on with her life. The law firm had problems with this, a conflict of interest: they represented all the parties concerned. But for the moment a moratorium had been agreed.

The firm had agreed to instigate a private investigation into the allegations in general and to represent all the parties concerned by acting in an unbiased role. If and when something was proved to be other than legal and right, at that time they would withdraw from any litigation concerning Diana’s and Warren’s accusations and remain strictly as family and trust lawyers only to all the parties concerned. By taking that position they would therefore avoid any possibility of becoming embroiled in a full-blown conflict of interest. The Chase children agreed to that and, for the time being, to hold off taking any further legal action to contest the will.

Chadwick was unaware of this meeting or that a private investigative team was being recruited or of any other of Warren’s and Diana’s actions against her. She had given strict instructions to the law firm and in particular to Andrew Coggs Senior that she did not want to know anything, not the merest detail, of any measures her step-children were taking to substantiate their ridiculous allegations. Until they had proof and were actually taking legal action against her because they did in fact have a case, she refused to be put in a defensive position. She was convinced that by not embroiling herself further, a public scandal could be avoided and in time the problems would fade away, all
would be forgiven, and they would once more come together as friends and family.