Deadly Petard (17 page)

‘Why was he in such danger that he had to murder a second time?’

Cullon briefly turned to look with tolerant amusement at Alvarez. ‘Because Gertrude Dean had threatened to recant on his alibi, of course.’

‘But why should she have done that, after standing by him all the time they were in England and even when she first came to live out here?’

‘We’ve been through this before. It all boils down to jealousy: jealousy and a determination not to let Rosalie Rassaud marry a man who she knew was a complete rotter, even if she never had the wit to see him for what he really was, a murdering bastard.’

‘I suppose so.’

‘I know so . . . And now, I guess, much as I’d rather not, I’d better think about returning home.’

‘Surely you will wait to do that until you have heard if England can tell you anything about Señorita Dean’s early life?’

‘That evidence can’t alter any of the essential facts. Doesn’t matter now if it turns out that she was eight-tenths dotty from the word go. Her mental state was only relevant when West had a chance of claiming that she committed suicide because she was mentally unstable.’

‘I suppose that is true.’

‘But you still sound doubtful?’

‘I was wondering . . . about that painting.’

‘Painting? What painting?’

‘The one on the easel in her studio that was not finished. The tree looked so . . . tortured that surely something very dramatic had happened to her?’

‘She’ll have seen the engagement in dramatic terms.’

‘And the broken cazuela in her bedroom. That had not been used for anything so why was it there?’

‘Because she dropped it, carrying it from somewhere to somewhere else.’

‘It was a large one, of the kind that is normally used only for cooking. Why should she have carried a cooking cazuela in her bedroom?’

‘God knows! But don’t forget, she was certainly mentally odd, even if she wasn’t outright dotty. I don’t reckon you can question her actions quite as you would the ordinary person’s.’

‘Then you don’t see the broken cazuela as being of any importance?’

Alvarez had spoken so seriously that Cullon subdued his instinct to answer facetiously. ‘I’m positive it isn’t.’

Seated behind the desk in his office, Alvarez put a hand over the mouthpiece of the telephone. He said to Cullon: ‘There is a seat on a flight late this afternoon or else one tomorrow morning.’

‘I’d like to hang on, but I really ought to get back as quickly as possible.’

Alvarez uncovered the mouthpiece, spoke in Spanish, and finally replaced the receiver. ‘I remembered that I have not yet taken you to Parelona Beach, so I have booked you on tomorrow’s plane. It is quite impossible to come to the island and not see the most beautiful beach in the world. Even your detective-inspector would understand that.’

‘Old Banger? You’ve got the wrong impression of how his mind works.’ Cullon laughed. ‘But I’ll tell him today’s planes were all booked out and I don’t suppose, suspicious bastard as he is, he’ll bother to check.’

‘Good. Then we will drive to Parelona after a short siesta. And in the meantime . . .’ He looked at his watch. ‘It is time for lunch,’ he said, with evident satisfaction.

Rifle rang the guardia post at five-thirty that afternoon, when Alvarez and Cullon were lying on the sun-drenched sands of Parelona. He tried to leave a message, but no one then at the post spoke any English.

Later, after they’d returned, sun-burned and salty, Alvarez and Cullon went to the post where they heard about the abortive telephone call. Cullon telephoned Petercross divisional HQ.

‘Damned if I could get anyone to understand honest-to-God plain English,’ complained Rifle. ‘What the hell’s the matter with ‘em? . . . And where the hell were you?’

‘Out tying up the last few threads of the case,’ replied Cullon easily.

‘Oh! Does that mean you’ve landed West?’

‘He’s sewn up tighter than a Victorian daughter’s drawers.’

‘It’s about time . . . In that case, what I have to say won’t be of much account, but you’d better listen all the same. We managed to turn up an old gossip who knew the Dean family from way back: she also remembers West and describes him as a nasty boy who couldn’t be trusted. Mrs Dean died very soon after Gertrude was born and her father was left to bring her up and they wandered all over the place until they settled in Wealdsham. He was arty, unsuccessful, and lived from hand to mouth. When Gertrude was still young, he boasted that he’d invented something that was going to make his fortune. Our informant has no idea what that something was, but is certain it involved using acids. Gertrude’s father had warned her never to go into his workroom which he kept locked, but one day when he was out of the house she got hold of the key and took West in there and accidentally spilled a bowl of acid over his face. That’s what scarred his cheek. Gertrude became quite hysterical at what she’d done and it seemed to affect her for years afterwards.

‘Later, when she was adult and her father had died, she moved from Wealdsham and that’s the last time our informant saw her or heard about her. She says that in her opinion Gertrude was never really normal, especially after the acid incident. She didn’t make friends, except for West, and this wasn’t for lack of other people trying to be friendly. She seemed just incapable of making them.’

‘Poor devil,’ said Cullon.

‘That’s it, then. By the way, what’s the temperature?’

‘It was thirty-five at midday, according to one bloke: that’s ninety-five on an honest scale. Must be nice on the beach, provided you don’t get sunburned.’

Rifle swore.

It was barely eight o’clock, yet already the morning sun was so strong that even with the windows of the car wound right down and the ventilators fully open, they were still hot. Cullon looked at the chain of mountains thrusting their crests up into the cloudless sky. ‘If ever I get half a chance, I’m going to bring Tina out here for a holiday.’

‘When you come, you must see us,’ said Alvarez.

Cullon wanted to say that in the short time they’d known each other he’d come to like Alvarez so much that it was impossible to imagine not looking him up as soon as possible, but being an Englishman he contented himself with: ‘That would be wonderful.’

They turned on to the Playa Nueva/Palma road. ‘When are you going to arrest West?’ Cullon asked.

‘I am not certain. But since he cannot leave the island, there is no hurry.’

‘Is there ever any hurry here?’

Alvarez smiled. ‘Not unless you come from Madrid. Perhaps that is why so many of us live to be old.’

‘I reckon the only people likely to live to be old are the ones who keep off the roads,’ said Cullon as, in the middle of the road, they breasted a rise to come face to face with a Renault also in the middle.

‘Some drivers do have a very poor road sense,’ agreed Alvarez, as he flicked the wheel to the right and the two cars just missed each other. He sighed, looked briefly at Cullon, sighed again. ‘Tim, I wonder, have you . . .’ He stopped.

‘Have I what?’

‘Thought about West’s alibi?’

‘What’s there to think about? He hasn’t got one.’

‘Why did he ask his fiancee to give him one?’

‘Well, no one else was going to, that’s for sure.’

‘But even he, as selfish as he is, must understand what kind of a woman she is.’

Cullon said lightly: ‘Something tells me we’re back to those soft, soulful eyes!’

‘She’s a warm, caring person and above all, honest. All the things he is not. Which must be why he is so attracted to her.’

‘You’re pinching the plot of half the stories in the hags’

mags. Rake attracted to virgin, hoping to be reformed by virtue. Life just doesn’t work that way. Either he drags her down to his level or she turns out to be frigid.’

‘What I really wish to say is this. Surely he must have realized that she would not be capable of lying convincingly?’

‘Hold it. You’re drawing some very wrong conclusions. When I was a bachelor, I met more than one young woman who was warm and caring and pure, for all I could ever discover, and they could all lie like troopers.’

‘But do you not understand? When the Señora understood he was suspected of murder, it had to be inevitable that she could no longer lie convincingly: probably that she would refuse to lie at all.’

‘You could be right, but if so it just goes to prove that a bloke who’s rotten to the core can make bad misjudgements about people who aren’t.’

‘But West is clever enough to realize and allow for that. So why did he made the bad misjudgement?’

Cullon shrugged his shoulders.

‘Was it not because he panicked?’

‘Possibly. He’d cause enough to panic with us breathing down his neck.’

‘But if he had carefully planned the murder, as he so carefully planned the murder of his wife, he would have foreseen right from the beginning that he would need an alibi. So the fact that he panicked surely must suggest that he did not plan?’

‘It means that he made a mistake—and if villains never did that, we’d hardly arrest one. How much more proof of the murder d’you need? The method was exactly the same, no one else had a motive but he had a hell of a one, his alibi’s busted wide, the suicide note was typed on his machine, there wasn’t a similar plastic bag in her house but there was one in his car, he’d recently had an almighty row with her . . . Even the stupidest juryman would convict without retiring.’

Alvarez said hesitantly: ‘But what about the broken cazuela in her bedroom?’

‘You know, I’d a feeling we might be working round to that again.’

‘Why did she have a clean cooking cazuela in her bedroom?’

Cullon didn’t try to answer. Alvarez concentrated on driving sufficiently fast to prevent the car behind from overtaking.

The train drew into Petercross station and Cullon picked up his overnight case, a small parcel, and his mackintosh, and climbed down on to the platform. It was drizzling and there was no overhead canopy at this point and he hurriedly pulled on his mackintosh. It was difficult to appreciate that little more than five and a half hours earlier he’d been sweating in blazing sunshine.

Together with the other passengers who’d disembarked, he climbed the concrete stairs up to the booking hall which straddled the lines. He handed in his ticket, turned to the right and saw Tina a second before she hugged him.

They crossed to the stairs leading down to the car park. ‘You’re as brown as a berry and looking all relaxed,’ she said. ‘The holiday’s obviously done you a power of good.’

‘Holiday? Do you mind? I’ve been having to work all the hours God made.’

‘Then how come you got so brown in the sun?’

He laughed. ‘Strictly between you and me, maybe I did manage a little time off . . . Tina, it’s a beautiful island. Forget all those stories about concrete jungles: if you know where to go, it’s fantastic! I’ve sworn a blood oath that you and I are going out there together just as soon as old Banger gives me the time off he promised.’

‘This is one oath I’m going to see you keep, come hell or high water . . . Tell me, how did the work go?’

‘I got the case sorted out in the end. And Enrique—he’s the local split I was working with—was a wonderful bloke, even if he didn’t have a clue about what he was supposed to be doing.’

‘He didn’t?’

‘Without a word of exaggeration, from beginning to end I had to lead him by the hand and show him what to do and how to do it.’

‘I hope you were tactful about it all?’

‘You know me.’

‘That’s why I’m asking.’

‘I was tact personified. He’d no idea I was gently prodding him along. And I left everything so he can claim all the credit. If he lives long enough.’

‘Why on earth d’you say that?’

‘Every time he gets behind the wheel of a car, the accident statistics come alive.’

At the foot of the stairs, they crossed a small lobby and then went out on to the pavement. The car park faced them. ‘The car’s right over on the other side,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid I couldn’t park any nearer than that.’

They walked through the drizzle to the car and she handed him the keys. He settled behind the wheel, yawned, then yawned again, even more heavily.

‘Are you worn right out with all that travelling?’ she asked solicitously.

‘It’s not really that. The thing is, the seats in the plane were squashed so closely together my knees were almost up to my chin and I just couldn’t get my usual siesta.’

She stared at him with wide-eyed amazement.

They sat in the second room, which acted as both dining-room and family sitting-room. From the kitchen came the sound of a clock striking the hour. ‘I suppose Tim must be back by now,’ said Alvarez.

Dolores was crocheting the first of two bedspreads which Isabel, in accordance with tradition, would take to her nuptial home. She briefly looked up. ‘I liked Tim a lot, but . . .’

‘But what?’

Her fingers plied crochet hook and yarn. ‘It’s just that he sometimes seemed . . . Well, I couldn’t help getting the impression that he was being condescending.’

‘Condescending about what? You don’t mean your cooking, do you? When he said he’d never eaten anything like it before, he was being really complimentary, not . . .’

‘I’m not talking about my cooking. He could have criticized that as much as he liked.’

He did not challenge that obvious lie.

‘Enrique, he was being condescending towards you in your job.’

‘D’you really reckon so? . . . I suppose, if you think about it, he’s entitled to be like that. After all, I haven’t had a tenth of his experience.’

‘That doesn’t matter. You’re every bit as clever as him and he’d no right to laugh at you.’

‘You’re imagining things.’

‘I am not. Was he so very clever?’ she asked challengingly.

He spoke thoughtfully. ‘He certainly was quick and efficient. But sometimes he wouldn’t allow himself enough time to sit down and think . . . And that’s why I reckon that in the end he was wrong.’

‘Did you tell him that?’

‘I tried to, but he couldn’t seem to understand what I was getting at.’