The Enigmatic Greek

Please contact me at the address and telephone numbers above when you get back. In all the excitement, I forgot to ask for yours, and I would so much like to see you again, Eleanor.

With my grateful thanks,

Talia.

Eleanor folded the letter very thoughtfully and turned her attention to the tray. She was hungry, and not even the thought of Alexei Drakos returning to play hell about an interview spoiled her enjoyment of orange juice, rolls warm from the oven and all the coffee in the pot. When Sofia returned she escorted Eleanor to the immaculate guest bedroom, where Eleanor’s clothes, including canvas deck shoes, were now dry and ready to wear.

Eleanor thanked the woman warmly, and asked when kyrie Alexei was returning.

Sofia looked puzzled. ‘He is not returning here from Crete, kyria. But you are to stay as long as you wish.’

Eleanor washed her bitter disappointment away in the shower. So there would be no interview with Alexei Drakos after all. Get over it, she told herself irritably. Comfortable again in her own clothes—other than the canvas flats, which seemed to have shrunk a size after their dunking—she made for the lift and took it down to ground level. Voices led her along the hall to a vast kitchen where Sofia was drinking coffee with two other women.

‘Kalimera,’ Eleanor said in general greeting, and received warm smiles in response. She was introduced to buxom Irene and thin Chloe, both of whom, as far as she could make out, praised her for her bravery of the night before.

‘You saved kyria Talia,’ stated Sofia, and scowled venomously. ‘The dog has gone with the police. Did he hurt you?’

Eleanor patted her ribs. ‘His foot,’ she explained, illustrating with a kick. ‘When he pushed me in the water.’

‘You could have died!’ exclaimed Irene with drama.

Eleanor shook her head. ‘Kyrie Drakos saved me.’ Not that it had been necessary. She could swim well enough. She smiled hopefully. ‘Could someone take me over to Karpyros now, please?’ If Alexei Drakos wasn’t coming back here was no point in hanging around. Besides, her belongings were back in the taverna, and she needed her laptop to get some work done.

‘Yannis will take you after you eat,’ Sofia said firmly. ‘I will bring lunch to the tower room.’

Taking this as her cue, Eleanor left the kitchen and went up in the lift to spend a long time gazing at the spectacularly beautiful view of vine-clad slopes rising from cobalt-blue sea before she settled down to make notes about the day before. She sighed in frustration as she wrote, wishing she could spice the account up with details of the bungled kidnap. But even without it the article on Kyrkiros would be the most interesting one of the series, partly because of the photographs she’d taken of the bull dance and partly because the island was owned by Alexei Drakos. He could hardly object if his