Free Mortal Remains by Margaret Yorke Page B

not much vegetation. He was clambering about looking at lava formations in the rocks or something – it’s full of volcanic traces – and he fell.’
    ‘Did you see it happen?’
    ‘No. No one did. He’d wandered away from the group. Everyone else was bathing. It took ages to find him.’
    ‘How dreadful,’ said Patrick.
    ‘I heard about Dr Lomax. It was in the Athens News. That was terrible too,’ said Jeremy. ‘Rather the same sort of thing, in a way.’
    ‘Yes, I suppose it was,’ said Patrick.
    They began to walk slowly back along the path. Jeremy was very small and slight, with steel-framed spectacles through which a pair of blue eyes gazed out at the world with assumed severity. He looked youthful in the extreme. Patrick remembered him coxing the Mark’s Third Eight in a determined attempt to progress higher up the river. He had been, in those days, an admirable but much too serious young man, and seemed unaltered.
    ‘I thought of going to Mikronisos tomorrow. Is it easy to get there?’ Patrick asked.
    ‘Oh yes. You get a steamer from Piraeus. It calls at some other islands first. Takes just over two hours.’
    ‘Every day?’
    ‘I think so – in the season anyway. But don’t take my word for it. Better check it.’
    ‘Tell me about the island. What’s special about it?’
    ‘Nothing, really.’
    ‘Why did you go there?’
    ‘Well, it’s easy to reach, and it makes a change from the ordinary tourist run to Aegina and Hydra – we’d already done that. It’s been so hot that we ditched some of our prearranged excursions and added a few that weren’t so tiring. People were wilting all over the place. They’re quite elderly, most of them,’ said Jeremy.
    ‘Are you in charge?’
    ‘No. There’s a retired headmaster leading the party, called Gareth Hodgson. I’m helping. It makes a holiday for me,’ said the young man.
    ‘Where are you staying?’
    ‘At the Livingstone. It’s near Omonia Square.’
    ‘Oh yes. The Leicester Square of Athens,’ said Patrick.
    ‘I suppose it is. It’s less salubrious than the Constitution Square area, certainly,’ said Jeremy. ‘But it’s good value. The hotel’s comfortable and the food’s good. The trouble is it’s such a trek to get anywhere. Some of the old dears are exhausted before we begin. Handy for the Archaeological Museum, though. You’ve been there, of course.’
    ‘Indeed I have, and I’ll be going again,’ said Patrick.
    ‘First thing in the morning’s the best time. Before the hordes descend,’ said Jeremy, in avuncular tones.
    ‘I’ll remember.’
     
    They turned into the main path and walked on towards the gate. A gardener went past carrying a rake, and ahead a priest of the Orthodox Church, cassock billowing, strode along, his little bun of grey hair neat under the rim of his stovepipe hat.
    ‘They always look such fine fellows, Greek priests,’ said Jeremy wistfully. ‘All tall, with magnificent beards.’
    Patrick, over six feet tall himself, could think of no cheering reply to this. It was perfectly true, he could not remember seeing a small papa.
    ‘Tell me more about Mikronisos,’ he urged. ‘Is it inhabited?’
    ‘Yes, but not on any great scale. There’s a taverna by the jetty, and a few tourist shops, and a small church and some fishermen’s cottages. And a few villas on the west coast. We didn’t see them. You reach them by boat. There’s no road. The church is interesting. Bits of it are Byzantine. There are traces of mosaic on one wall. It was a thriving place once, some sort of trading post, but there aren’t any notable ruins.’
    ‘Maybe they need to be found,’ said Patrick. ‘I expect there are fragments under most of these places.’
    ‘Probably,’ agreed Jeremy.
    ‘How about dining with me tonight, Jeremy?’ Patrick suggested. He could pump him further about the island over a meal. Without realising it, Jeremy might have seen Yannis or Ilena or noticed some interesting feature of