Deadly Petard (7 page)

When he returned, a glass of champagne in one hand, she was still standing. ‘There’s no extra charge for sitting, you know.’

‘Is it true?’ she demanded fiercely.

‘If anyone on this island said it, probably not.’

‘Are you engaged to Rosalie?’

His expression changed and sharpened. He smiled, raised his glass in conventional greeting, drank. He crossed to one of the luxurious armchairs and sat.

‘Well? Are you engaged to her?’

‘Gertie, why so concerned?’

‘You can’t.’

‘I can’t what?’

‘You can’t marry her.’

‘When you say “can’t”, what are you envisaging? That when the vicar asks if anyone knows of any just cause or impediment someone will pop up and shout “Yes”. I’ve always thought it would be great fun to be present when that happened, but I must confess I’d rather the wedding in question was not my own.’

‘She’s much too good for you.’

‘Now isn’t that becoming a little unkind to me?’

‘You can’t marry her after all that happened in England.’

‘Did something in particular happen in England?’

‘You know what I mean,’ she shouted. ‘Barbara’s suicide.’

‘That was very tragic. And it’s taken me a long, long time to get over it. But I’ve never believed one should allow any tragedy, however great, to blight the whole of the rest of one’s life. After all, were she in a position to do so, Barbara would be the first to tell me to remarry.’

‘You were out with another woman when she killed herself.’

‘Yes, I was. And have I thanked my lucky stars over that!’

Despite all the years she had known him, this still shocked her. ‘You . . . you rotten swine!’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘You sounded quite vicious then . . . Obviously, you’ve never stopped to realize that if I’d been in Middle Manor when Babs killed herself, I’d have had absolutely no alibi. Can you imagine what those knuckle-headed detectives would have thought then? . . . No, Sandra did me a good turn.’

‘If you don’t stop seeing Rosalie I’ll tell her what really happened and how you were out with that woman.’

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I can’t stop you, of course, but I do warn you that she won’t believe you.’

‘Yes, she will. It’s the truth.’

‘The truth so often sounds highly unbelievable . . . Perhaps I ought to add that it’s only a couple of days since we were talking about you and she was saying how she was becoming fed up with having you hang round her so much.’

She gasped. ‘Rosalie wouldn’t ever have said that about me.’

‘Naturally, I tried to explain. I said that when you were emotionally involved you tended not to see things straight and that’s why, although I’ve never given you the slightest cause—only a cad tells all—you were terribly jealous of her.’

‘You . . . you said that?’

‘So now I’m afraid that whatever you say will be disbelieved and put down to that little green-eyed goddess. Why goddess incidentally? I’d have thought daemon queen was far more apposite.’

She knew a bitter sense of humiliation.

His tone became mocking. ‘You really ought to learn not to move out of your class, Gertie . . . Now, sit down and let me get you a drink and we’ll declare all bygones to be bygones.’

She swallowed heavily. ‘I’ll tell the English police. I’ll tell those detectives that you weren’t in my house when Barbara died.’

He came to his feet.

‘I won’t see Rosalie’s life being ruined. If you don’t leave her alone, I’ll fly back and tell them what really happened. That you weren’t with me, you were out with Sandra. And that you were very close to Middle Manor.’

He came forward and as he did so he ran his fingertips around his scarred cheek. ‘You won’t tell them anything.’

‘You can’t keep me quiet like that.’

He suddenly hit her across the side of her face, knocking her backwards. She tripped over the arm of a chair and collapsed on to the seat. And then, shocked and frightened by the physical violence, her memory suddenly returned to the day when his cheek had become scarred. And for the first time since then she remembered everything. He’d jeered at her and, frightened he’d refuse to be friends any more, she’d got the key from the kitchen. She’d unlocked the door of the room and he’d pushed past her. He’d looked around and when he’d seen the almost bare table and shelves, covered in dust, he’d contemptuously told her that there was nothing there that was going to make her father’s fortune. Then he’d noticed an earthenware bowl on the top shelf and he’d demanded to know what was in it? She’d had no idea and had said that whatever it was, it was probably dangerous. He’d jeered at her again. And he had moved a chair and climbed on to it, he had picked up the earthenware bowl, he had tripped and in tripping had splashed his cheek with acid . . .

Now, mental pain was added to the physical pain of that blow. The lies had caused her agonies of guilt when young and he had deliberately, callously let her suffer. He was far, far more rotten than she had ever suspected. So rotten that he had made use of her whenever he needed help, scorned her when didn’t. Those months in her flat had not been spent with a man who, even if only temporarily, was in love with her: they had been spent with a man who had said he was in love but who had used her because he’d nowhere else to go . . .

His harsh voice interrupted her bitter thoughts. ‘I’ll kill you before you get the chance to do anything like that.’

The office was very hot, despite the fact that the window was wide open, the shutters were closed, and the fan on the desk was turned to its higher speed. Alvarez found such difficulty in keeping his eyelids open that in the end, and with a sigh of contentment, he no longer bothered as he slumped deeper into the chair. His thoughts drifted away into the inconsequential chaos which immediately preceded sleep.

The telephone rang. He slowly, reluctantly reached out for the receiver, swearing as he did so.

‘Is that Inspector Alvarez?’ asked the woman with a plum in her mouth.

‘Yes,’ he answered sadly.

‘I have Superior Chief Salas on the line for you.’

There was a pause. He closed his eyes once more: almost certainly, Salas was not held up on business, he was biding his time in order to underline his authority.

‘Are you there?’

The rasping words caused him to start heavily. ‘Indeed, sen or.’

‘Do you remember señorita Dean?’

He racked his brain, trying to place the person.

Tor God’s sake, man, you interviewed her in Caraitx.’

The mention of Caraitx identified her. ‘Yes, of course, señor. It was just that for a moment I . . .’

‘She’s been found dead, in circumstances which make it quite clear she committed suicide. Take charge of the matter.’

‘Señor, Caraitx is not within my area and although I did, of course, interview her in the past, this was only because Inspector Antignac was unusually busy at the time . . .’

‘He’s still extremely busy.’

‘I’ve also got an exceptional workload . . .’

‘I wouldn’t doubt for one moment that you should have,’ said Salas nastily. ‘However, in case you have forgotten, Inspector Antignac does not speak English and you do and so you will conduct the enquiry. Remember one thing. On no account are you to complicate the issue, as you have unfortunately done in the past.’

‘It’s never been me who’s complicated anything, but the facts . . .’ He stopped when he realized the connection had been cut. He sighed, replaced the receiver. ‘To the devil with the English!’ he said aloud. He leaned over, opened the bottom right-hand drawer of his desk, and brought out a bottle of brandy and a tumbler. He poured himself out a very generous drink. There were times when a man needed comforting.

The ancient, squeaking Seat 600 dragged itself up Calle Padre Vives, finally coming to a jerky halt in front of No. 15. Alvarez crossed the narrow pavement, found the front door unlocked, and stepped inside.

‘Who’s that?’ demanded a man.

‘The governor-general.’

A squat, ugly, cheerful policeman, dressed in the summer uniform of the municipal police—white shirt and dark blue trousers—came out of the kitchen to stand in the arched doorway. ‘Are you the inspector from Llueso they said was coming?’

They studied each other with instinctive reservation. It was a well-known fact in Llueso that everyone from Caraitx was a rogue: it was a well-known fact in Caraitx that everyone from Llueso was untrustworthy.

The policeman jerked his head towards the ceiling. ‘She’s upstairs, in the bedroom.’

‘D’you know who found her?’

‘The woman who comes and does here, a few mornings a week.’

‘Where’s she now?’

‘Gone back to her own place. Wasn’t any use her hanging on here, was it?’

‘Has the doctor been?’

‘Yeah. And he said to tell you that he couldn’t wait around. The best thing for you to do is have a word with him later on at his place: that is, if you want to.’

‘I expect I’ll want a word with both of ‘em.’

‘Suit yourself.’

The stairs, which had a half turn in the middle, led to a passage/landing off which were four doors. The only closed door gave access to the dead woman’s bedroom.

The shutters were closed, but the curtains were drawn and there was sufficient light entering between the louvres for him to see the bed in rough detail. Gertrude, wearing pyjamas, lay without any bedclothes over her. Her head was encased in a large plastic bag. He crossed himself. Death was the final mystery and whatever the state of one’s faith, it was only prudent to respect it.

As he went towards the window, his right foot kicked something small which skidded across the tiled floor. It was impossible to identify what that something was. He opened the shutters and clipped them back and the fierce sunlight shafted into the room. He turned and looked down to find out what he’d kicked and saw, in the middle of the floor, several pieces of what looked to have been an earthenware cazuela, or cooking pot: one of the pieces was now several feet from the rest.

He crossed to the bed. Her eyes were shut and there was a twist to her mouth, rather as if she’d been ironically amused about something just before she’d died. To the right of the bed was a small table with a single drawer, and on this were two paperbacks, a box of tissues, a half full medicine bottle and, propped up against the bottle, a typewritten note on a sheet of headed notepaper.

I’ve had the pain for a long time, but recently it’s been getting much worse. Pat’s sister wrote last week to say that Pat had died from cancer after months of agony because the doctors wouldn’t give her enough painkillers. I can’t face going through that. I’m just not brave enough.

He replaced the note. The wording suggested she hadn’t consulted a doctor, so it was possible that in fact she hadn’t been suffering from cancer after all. But her fears had grown and grown until they’d overwhelmed her . . .

Next to her bedroom was a studio. Three unframed canvases were leaning against a wall and a fourth one was on a large easel: paints, palettes, palette knives, bottles of unidentified liquids, brushes, stained rags, and paintboxes, were strewn haphazardly almost everywhere. He briefly studied the three canvases against the wall and found them conventionally attractive: the kind of paintings he wouldn’t have minded on the walls at home. He moved and looked at the fourth, and unfinished, one on the easel. A background of mountains, a distant finca with grey walls and roof of Roman tiles, a drystone wall, almond trees, and in the left foreground a gnarled, twisted olive tree whose trunk, largely hollow, was metres in circumference so that the branches growing from it seemed disproportionate . . . It was only as he left and was stepping into the passage that it occurred to him there’d been some quality to that unfinished painting which was disturbing.

The third room was a spare bedroom, the fourth and last a bathroom. He returned downstairs. ‘Who’s got the front-door key?’ ‘I have,’ replied the municipal policeman. ‘You can hang on to it, then. You’ll have to let the undertakers in. And in the meantime, you can show me where the doctor and the daily woman live.’

‘I’ve a mountain of work waiting at the station.’ ‘That’s just going to have to wait, isn’t it?’ Alvarez was pleased to be able to upset someone else’s morning.

Señora Garcia’s face was tanned and heavily lined, witness to all the hours spent out in the fields under the grilling sun when younger. She was garrulous and possessed a natural liking for histrionics.

‘I knew there was something wrong the moment I entered the house. I knew it.’

Alvarez, sitting at the kitchen table, nodded, his round, stolid face showing no signs of impatience.

She returned to chopping an onion. ‘You see, it was all so quiet. Like a tomb. Usually, the señorita had the radio or a record-player on. A great one for music, she was: and some of it was strange, I can tell you.’ She upended the knife and used the blunt edge to sweep the chopped onion into a cooking pot. ‘I shouted out, “señorita, it’s me. I’ve brought you an empanada.” She loved my empanadas . . .’ Quite suddenly, the tears were rolling down her cheeks. ‘She was so kind and nice. To think she could kill herself. Sweet Holy Mother!’ She dried her eyes with the edge of her apron, reached across for a couple of carrots, and peeled them. Life was full of sorrow, but there was never much time for grieving.

‘D’you think she’d been depressed recently?’

‘Something was wrong: I know that much. When she first came to the village, she was sad, but soon . . .” She stared down at the chopping-board as she tried to find the words to express what she wanted to say. ‘She smiled and talked to everyone and made friends. She came into our homes for merienda. But just recently, she’d not been smiling any more. I said to her, “señorita, are you ill? Has something terrible happened?” But she never told me what the trouble was.’

‘When did she first become depressed?’

She thought, her face screwed up in concentration, as she chopped the peeled carrots. ‘I suppose it was about when Ines started teething.’

‘And when did Ines start teething?’

‘Somewhere around the end of last month,’ she answered vaguely.