Deadly Petard (18 page)

‘Then you let him go away from here certain he’s so much cleverer than you, when he just isn’t?’

‘I couldn’t tell him straight out he was wrong, could I? After all, he was our guest.’

She did not pursue the matter. Even in her most imperious mood, she would never dream of flouting the laws of hospitality.

There was a silence, which he broke. ‘I suppose I’d better make a move.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘Out,’ he answered vaguely.

Once seated in his car, he did not immediately start the engine. He’d said to Cullon that he didn’t really understand the meaning of justice. Cullon had clearly never suffered such a problem: for him, justice was the identification, arrest, conviction, and punishment, of the guilty. But how could one always be certain what was guilt? Guilt was fashioned by the current sense of morality and defined by man-made laws: morals altered not only throughout the ages, but also according to one’s own viewpoint, and man could legislate wisely or stupidly . . . Who could ever convincingly answer the question, Did the starving man who took a crust of bread commit theft?

He sighed. If only Cullon had been less certain, they could have talked over the problem: but Cullon had been unable ever to see that there might be a problem.

He finally started the engine and drove away, to leave the village over the torrente. At the cross-roads he went straight over, to continue on to Ca’n Absel and as he approached the house, West stepped out on to the patio. Was West guilty or innocent of Gertrude Dean’s death? It all depended on how you defined guilt.

West’s face was drawn and, despite the suntan, there were dark bags under his eyes, suggesting worry and a sleepless night: the scarring on his right cheek was unusually pronounced. ‘Where’s the other bloke?’

‘Señor Cullon? He has returned to England: I drove him to the airport earlier on.’

‘I call that good riddance.’

Alvarez brought a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped the sweat from his face. ‘Could we move into the shade before I ask a few questions?’

‘More? Christ, d’you get paid by the score? Why don’t you start asking intelligent questions, like what really happened when Gertie died?’

‘As to that, I believe I now know.’

West, his expression strained, stared at him for several seconds, then abruptly he turned and led the way across to the patio chairs. He slammed his clenched fist down on the table. ‘Well? What d’you know?’

Alvarez sat, then said gravely: ‘Why did you tell Señora Rassaud you were going out on the Monday night the señorita died, when you knew you were to stay in your house?’

‘Isn’t it obvious? I didn’t want Rosalie here.’

‘Why not?’

West finally sat. ‘Do I have to spell everything out? It was because Gertie had said she was coming to see me here . . . And then she never bloody well turned up.’

‘You still have not explained why you did not wish the two ladies to meet? After all, they were friends.’

‘Not by then.’

‘According to señor Meade they were still friends, if not as friendly as they had once been.’

‘Forget what he says. When he’s sober he’s a liar, when he’s drunk he’ll swear blind he’s got four heads.’

‘The Señora has herself said she was still friendly with the señorita.’

‘We’re just not on the same wavelength, are we? To begin with, they liked each other right enough, but Gertie was the possessive kind: if she was friendly with you, you mustn’t become as friendly with anyone else. When Rosalie and I got engaged, Gertie became ridiculously jealous and kept creating scenes.’

‘Was not your real reason for keeping them apart the fact that you did not want the señora to hear the señorita say that you had murdered your wife?’

‘I didn’t murder Babs. How many more times do I have to goddamn well say that?’

‘When you were young, you lived in the same town as the señorita. You were with her when your face became scarred. Which of you suggested going into the locked room?’

‘She did.’

‘This time, the truth.’

West hesitated. ‘I can’t remember. It’s a hell of a long time ago.’

‘It surely was you who made the suggestion?’

‘I . . . Well, maybe I could have done.’

‘Who picked up the bowl of acid?’

‘She did.’

‘Why can you still not understand? The time for lying is over, unless you wish to be convicted of the señorita’s murder . . . It was you who picked up the bowl, was it not?’

West said sullenly: ‘What if it was?’

‘You spilled the acid over yourself. Yet you told everyone it was her fault.’

‘That was a joke.’

‘You can call it a joke?’

‘I didn’t know she was going to take it so seriously.’

‘Just how seriously did she take it?’

‘What are you getting at now?’

‘I am trying to understand how she felt, because if I can understand that I think I shall know what really happened when she died . . . Did she feel guilty for the injuries she believed she had caused you? So guilty that she was convinced she owed you a debt which could never be repaid?’

West didn’t answer.

‘And when she grew old enough to realize that she could not be held responsible by anyone, least of all herself, for what she thought she had done when young, what happened then?’

‘Nothing.’

‘What happened?’ demanded Alvarez angrily.

‘She . . . she just used to hang around.’

‘Because her sense of guilt had become a need to serve, which in turn had become love?’

‘Goddamn it, I wouldn’t know.’

‘A man like you would always know. And take advantage of his knowledge . . . You left the neighbourhood. When did you next see her?’

West shrugged his shoulders.

‘I have told you, I believe the truth will help you—but I cannot know the truth about señorita Dean’s death until I know the truth about her life. When did you next see her?’

‘I can’t give you chapter and verse,’ he said sullenly. ‘It was when she’d begun to paint for a living.’

‘Where was she living at that time?’

‘In a flat on the outskirts of Wealdsham.’

‘And you began to live with her?’

‘What if I did? She was over the age of consent.’

‘But not beyond the age of dreams. She had loved you and now she believed that you must love her because you were living with her. So what do you imagine she believed when you left her?’

‘I’ve . . . I’ve no idea.’

‘You have a very good idea. Did you see her again before you married?’

‘No.’

‘Did you tell her you were married. Or did you leave her to learn this from someone else?’

‘I suppose she must have heard it from someone else.’

‘Did the news upset her?’

‘I wasn’t there, so I can’t tell, can I?’

‘Perhaps, since she could be certain you had not married for love, she was not as upset as she might have been.’

West flushed.

‘What was the acid in?’

For a moment, he was confused by the reference to what they had been discussing earlier. Then he said: ‘That all happened nearly thirty years back. I haven’t the faintest idea.’

‘Was it in an earthenware dish?’

‘In case you weren’t listening, I’ve just said, I can’t remember.’

T think it must have been . . . When did she learn that it was not she who was responsible for scarring you and giving you such pain? It was yourself.’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘It was very shortly before she died, was it not? And that was when for the very first time, she could see you as the person you really are: someone incapable of being concerned with anyone but himself. And the moment she could understand that, she could also understand that you must have murdered your wife and then tricked her into giving you the alibi which enabled you to escape arrest.’

‘I didn’t kill Babs,’ West shouted. He again slammed a clenched fist down on the table.

‘The señorita came to live on the island to escape from life and from you. And by all accounts, miraculously she succeeded. And among her friends was señora Rassaud with whom her friendship reached an intensity that could be called, depending on your way of looking at things, either unusually intense or abnormal . . . It is not difficult to understand why, after so many years of emotional starvation.

‘The news of your engagement must have shocked her, partly because of her former feelings towards you. but mainly because she was in a position to judge that the señora was far too good a person for you. That shock was magnified beyond bearing when she understood the truth—that your wife had been murdered by you. Now. her greatest friend was to be married to a murderer . . . She threatened you. trying to make you give up the marriage, didn’t she ; What was that threat: to tell the English police the truth?’

“She was hysterical, nothing more. I said I was going to marry Rosalie and there was absolutely nothing she could do about it.”

‘So she proved you wrong. There was just one way in which she could prevent the marriage and at the same time punish you for all the terrible harm you’d caused to others—and, ironically, it was you who’d shown her how to do this. You had disguised a murder as suicide. She would disguise her own suicide as murder.’

There was a silence, broken only by the shrilling of cicadas.

‘She . . . she did commit suicide after all?’ demanded West.

Yes.’

‘Christ!’ His voice rose. If she committed suicide, you can’t touch me:’

‘Provided it can be proved, no.’

‘Then pull your finger out and prove it.’

‘Some of the proof is already to hand. The señorita made one or two mistakes. She used a proposed change in her will to suggest a motive for her murder, just as your wife’s will had suggested the motive, but who can seriously believe that you. now a very wealthy man. would have murdered the señorita for the relatively small amount of money she had? She committed suicide in exactly the same way in which your wife was supposed to have done because that in itself would arouse suspicion:

but she even went so far as to choose the same time and surely you would not have done that because if suspicion were once aroused, such a coincidence would reinforce this.

‘She bought a typewriter a few days before she died—but why should she suddenly buy a typewriter when she had such little correspondence? And since you had not seen her after the beginning of the month, how could you know, if you were the murderer, that now you could type out the suicide note on your own machine and make it look genuine, provided only that an expert did not closely study it?

‘She was careful to spend part of the last Sunday with señor Meade and to be so gay and cheerful that he would immediately claim she could not have committed suicide. But it is clear that she was unnaturally cheerful. Why, unless there were good reason?

‘But if she made mistakes, she still planned very carefully and this makes it difficult to prove the truth. She was careful to use a plastic bag of a different size from any in the house. She typed out the suicide note on your machine.’ Alvarez was silent for a moment, then he said: ‘When, in the past three weeks, did she come to this house?’

‘I’ve told you, I didn’t see her because she didn’t turn up.’

‘Of course not. That arrangement—which you were bound to honour because you were scared—was to make certain you had no alibi. Nevertheless, there was a time, wasn’t there, when she did visit this house and you were not here?’

At first, West’s expression remained blank, then it suddenly became excited. ‘Goddamn it, she was here roughly a fortnight ago! Francisca told me about it the next day.’

‘Where were you?’

‘Out on my yacht, with Rosalie . . . That’s when she used my typewriter to make the suicide note!’

Alvarez thought about the receipt for the new typewriter which had been among Gertrude’s papers. Yet the laboratory report on the suicide note had referred to worn lettering. A man of sharper intelligence would have begun to understand the truth then . . . ‘Which car did you drive down to the port?’

‘The Seat, because I don’t like leaving the Mercedes unattended for too long these days . . . By God, that’s how she planted the plastic bag in the Merc!’

Alvarez nodded.

West smacked his right fist into the palm of his left hand. ‘It’s taken you a goddamn age to uncover the truth.’

‘I am afraid that for a long time I could not appreciate the meaning of some things, especially the unfinished painting and the cazuela.’

‘What are you on about now?’

‘The olive tree in the painting was full of torment. Why? Because she had been forced to realize that the man she had once loved had in reality always despised her and was responsible for twisting her life out of shape: that the only way in which to save Señora Rassaud was to kill herself and make it look like murder.’

‘She was twice round the bloody twist.’

‘And then there was the cazuela. Just before she lay down on her bed to kill herself, she smashed the earthenware cazuela on the floor of the bedroom.’

‘Where was that supposed to get her?’

Alvarez looked at him. ‘It was a symbolic gesture: a way of gaining her freedom.’

‘I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.’

‘Then nothing I can say will ever manage to explain it to you.’

West showed his baffled anger. ‘All right, so she tried hard. But it didn’t bloody work. I’m as free as the breeze. So now we’re going to have a bit of a celebration. Champagne all right?’

‘Nothing for me.’

He shrugged his shoulders, stood, went into the house. When he returned, he carried two glasses and a frosting bottle of champagne. He set one of the glasses in front of Alvarez. ‘I reckon you’ll change your mind quickly enough when the stuff’s in front of you.’

‘Please understand, I do not wish to have a drink with you.’

‘Suit yourself. Suddenly become very choosey? Drunk enough of my booze before now. What’s eating you? Furious because you were hoping to run me in?’ He opened the bottle and filled his glass, careless when the bubbling champagne overflowed on to the table. ‘It’s just your bad luck if thinking about it gives you ulcers. I didn’t kill Gertie and there’s not a thing you can do about it.’