The Messenger of Athens: A Novel Read Free Page A

no doubt. Cut and dried.”
    “Even if it were suicide,” said the fat man, playing with the ash in the ashtray with the burning end of his cigarette, “what could possibly be ‘cut and dried’ about a woman in a small,
close
community like this one committing suicide? What possible motive could she have had?”
    “It was a copycat suicide. She had the idea from the postman.”
    “What postman?”
    “The old postman who committed suicide.”
    “And what was his motive?”
    “Who knows? Wife unfaithful, money troubles…”
    “So was Mrs. Asimakopoulos’s husband unfaithful? Did she have money troubles?”
    The Chief of Police sat forward again.
    “Mrs. Asimakopoulos was herself an unfaithful wife,” he said.
    “Really? With whom was she unfaithful?”
    “I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to say.”
    The fat man looked at him for a long moment. “Do all supposedly unfaithful wives here jump off cliffs?”
    The Chief of Police laughed. “If they did, there’d be only us men left.”
    The fat man did not smile. “So why this one?”
    “She married a local man. She had relatives here who introduced her to her husband. But she wasn’t from here. She came from the mainland.”
    “And you think that was sufficient reason for her to kill herself?”
    “Possibly. Maybe she felt isolated. Homesick.”
    “How long had she lived here?”
    “I’ve no idea. One year or ten, what’s the difference? Harris!”
    The ponderous sergeant, interrupted as he clipped one of his cheap ballpoint pens into the breast pocket of his shirt, flinched.
    “I’ve no doubt you can enlighten us,” said the Chief of Police to the sergeant. “How long had Mrs. Asimakopoulos lived here?”
    The sergeant looked from the Chief of Police to the fat man, pushing out his lower lip as he considered.
    “Two years,” he said, at last. “I don’t believe it’s more.”
    “It’s three, at least,” interrupted the undersized constable. “My mother-in-law’s brother lived in that house before Asimakopoulos rented it, and he’s been dead a while now. Three years at least. Maybe even four.”
    The sergeant opened his slack, wet mouth to object, but the Chief of Police raised a hand to silence him and turned back to the fat man.
    “In answer to your question, she hadn’t been here long,” he said.
    “But certainly long enough to settle down and start a family?” suggested the fat man. “Did she have children?”
    “I don’t believe so.” He looked back to the sergeant, who slowly shook his head.
    “That’s quite unusual for this part of the world, wouldn’t you say—a young woman, quite recently married, and no offspring? If she was barren, that might be an important causal factor in depression. But you’ll have spoken to her doctor about her mental health, I’m sure; if there were physical problems, I’m sure he would have mentioned them, would he not?”
    The sergeant returned all his attention to his ballpoint pens, while the constable bent below his desk to retie his shoelaces.
    “Our doctor is a very busy man, as I’m sure you’ll appreciate,” said the Chief of Police, smoothly. “But Mr. Asimakopoulos was his wife’s senior by some years. Some would say he was a lucky man, to have a younger woman to keep him warm at night. But who knows? Perhaps he was lacking the…
potency
… of someone younger. A younger man might well have succeeded where he failed, the right man for the job…”
    His expression brightened with lascivious speculation, but when the fat man frowned he averted his eyes, and rubbed at an invented itch behind his ear.
    “How old was Mrs. Asimakopoulos,” asked the fat man, “exactly?”
    “Twenty-five, twenty-six, thereabouts. Maybe a little more, maybe a little less.” The Chief of Police smiled. “I don’t know
exactly
. In my experience, you can’t force corpses to answer questions about themselves just because there are forms to be filled in.”
    “You didn’t ask the