Doctor Frigo (11 page)

‘Or
mis
calculation.’

‘Certainly. It failed. But it failed because events took a turn that a petty intriguer like Apis could not have foreseen.’

‘Very upsetting.’

She ignored my feeble sarcasm. ‘According to Villegas, or so you tell me, that is what happened when your father was murdered. Events took an unforeseen turn. Instead of seizing their chance and exploiting the situation, the Left lost its nerve and let the junta decide the outcome. Your father’s party needed a Cavour, or perhaps a Trotsky. All they had were party hacks and young Senor Villegas far away in New York.’

‘All of which suggests that you’re mistaken, Elizabeth. The man, or group of men, with the ability and resources
to plan my father’s assassination must also have been prepared to exploit it. The junta was so prepared. There’s your answer.’

‘Answer? Nonsense! The junta? A lot of brass-braided geriatrics prepared for nothing but their pensions and the consolations of the Church. They took three days to act and only then because the landowners and their bullyboys were poking sharp sticks in their behinds.’

Her voice had risen and we were beginning to attract attention. I said: ‘There’s no need to shout.’

‘I’m not shouting. I am simply trying to point out that men able to plan assassination can’t necessarily plan at the same time for all the consequences of success. They are tacticians not strategists. By winning one battle, their privately conceived battle, they often lose the campaign. Next time you see Uncle Paco ask him what
he
was doing at the time of the assassination.’

‘I told you. I
know
what he was doing at the time. He was in the news photographs, standing on the steps of the hotel about four metres from my father when the shots were fired. He was carrying a large bouquet of flowers.’

She pounced. ‘What for? To distinguish him clearly for the marksmen across the street? To make sure they didn’t shoot by mistake the nice man paying them?’

‘The occasion,’ I said patiently, ‘had been a reception inaugurating a new cut-flower export co-operative. Several of the men with my father had kept their presentation bouquets. Two of them were wounded.’

‘But not Uncle Paco. What colour was his bouquet?’

‘I don’t know. The pictures were black and white.’

But I did know. I once saw a colour picture taken by the official party photographer. All the bouquets except Uncle Paco’s had been red, and mostly of arum lilies. His had been made out of orange strelitzia.

I went on quickly to smother the lie before she became suspicious. ‘Anyway, Commissaire Gillon isn’t peering through smokescreens,’ I said. ‘According to a secret report
made to the Quai d’Orsay at the time, there was no conclusive evidence implicating any member of the Democratic Socialist Party in the plot. He told me this officially.’

‘Pooh! Who made this secret report? S-dec?’

‘I didn’t ask.’

‘Why not?’ ‘Because it was made clear that I wouldn’t get an answer.’

‘You’re too timid.’

‘Possibly. Frankly, the less I see of Commissaire Gillon the better I like it.’ I told her then about the five o’clock meeting to which I had been summoned. ‘It can’t last long,’ I added. ‘I thought that I might reserve a table at Chez Lafcadio for dinner.’

Unexpectedly she poured the rest of the wine into her glass and drank it.

‘I’m sorry, Ernesto dear, but I can’t see you tonight. I hadn’t expected it but I’ll have to be here.’

‘Business?’

‘Of a sort. I have to dine with an emissary from my husband.’

‘A lawyer?’

‘Not exactly.’

I didn’t pursue the matter. I could have suggested our meeting later in the evening and she might have agreed; but I know by now that Elizabeth depressed prefers to be, and is better, left alone. Later that evening, after a conversation about her marriage, she would certainly be depressed, and probably quarrelsome too.

I walked with her back to the gallery in the hotel shopping arcade.

There was a man there peering through the window and trying the locked door. When he saw Elizabeth he straightened up and said: ‘Ah, Madame.’ Then he pointed at the door. ‘I wasn’t trying to break in. It says here that you open again at two-thirty.’

He spoke French easily but with an accent that I couldn’t place; not Yanqui, I thought, though that was the nationality
his height, clothes and general appearance suggested. He was about forty with plenty of straw-coloured hair and looked as if he played tennis or swam a lot to keep fit. The face intelligent, a certain air of authority. An upper-echelon executive of some sort was my first impression.

Elizabeth answered him in English as she took out her keys. ‘In this place, Mr Rosier, you can never believe notices like that. Most people take a siesta. Did you want to have another look around?’

‘Well, since you’re here, that was the idea. I thought I might browse a little if that’s all right with you.’ He looked enquiringly at both of us.

‘This is Dr Castillo,’ she said, ‘a friend who works at the hospital. Yes, by all means browse. I only came back to write some letters.’

‘Dr Castillo?’ We shook hands. ‘I’m Bob Rosier. You may not know it, Doctor, but you have a reputation with the help here. If a man’s just a
little
sick he takes aspirin or entero-vioform. If he needs help badly he takes a cab to the hospital and asks for Dr Castillo.’

That story could have come from only one source.

‘You’ve been talking to an old porter named Louis, Mr Rosier. As a young man he fell into the hold of a banana ship and suffered brain damage. He’s quite harmless but a little peculiar sometimes.’

‘I’ll bear that in mind. Lots of interesting work here, eh?’ He looked vacantly about him.

‘Yes.’ I turned to Elizabeth. ‘Shall we talk tomorrow morning?’

She had been sitting at her desk scribbling something on a pad. As I spoke she tore off the sheet on which she had been writing, folded it, and thrust it into my hand. ‘That’s the address you wanted,’ she said. ‘I’ll call you at the hospital.’

I started to look at the paper but she gripped my hand and smiled brightly up at me. ‘Thank you for lunch, Ernesto.’

In fact she had signed for it on the gallery account; but as I opened my mouth to say so she rolled her eyes and I knew I was being told to go.

Mr Rosier was gazing thoughtfully at one of the hibiscus canvases. However, as I opened the door he glanced round.

‘Nice meeting you, Doctor,’ he said. ‘Be seeing you around I hope.’

‘I hope so too.’

Elizabeth waved casually as I left. I waited until I was outside the hotel before I looked at the paper she had given me.

On it she had scrawled:
This one is a spy. Certainly not S-dec. Possibly CIA. Be careful.

Presumably she meant Rosier. There was a waste bucket in the hotel driveway. I thought of discarding the paper in that, then decided that perhaps messages about spies were not the sort of things one casually threw away. Spy fever is infectious. Before getting rid of it I tore the note into small pieces.

At the garage I heard more about the Simca, promised to think it over and at once forgot about it. My moto was running much better on the new plug. By the time I had done some weekend shopping, picked up my laundry and collected a registered package of contact prints from the PTT, it was getting late. I changed my shirt and walked to the Préfecture.

This time there was no waiting. I was shown straight in to Gillon’s office.

There was another man with him who rose as I entered. Gillon, I thought, seemed ill at ease as he introduced us.

‘Doctor, this is Commandant Delvert.’ He cleared his throat before adding: Commandant Delvert is from Paris.’

‘Though only just,’ said the Commandant cheerfully,
‘and somewhat overfed by Air France on the way. Enchanted to meet you, Doctor.’

He did not look in the least overfed.

Commandant Delvert is a tall, lean man, very handsome in an old-fashioned military sort of way. In uniform he would be an imposing figure. The bone structure of the face is quite pronounced with the skin stretched tightly over it. In his forties, brown hair greying and with a small clipped moustache. Not a kilo of superfluous fat anywhere. He reminds me of a photograph, once seen in a book, of General Weygand as a World War I Chief of Staff. I doubt though if Weygand had a particularly pleasant smile. Delvert has. However, it does not reassure me. In my experience unusually pleasant smiles have often been cultivated to conceal highly unpleasant dispositions. Besides, the Commandant is undoubtedly a senior official of S-dec, a ‘case officer’ or something of the sort I imagine, and if even a small fraction of what one has read and heard about that service is true – it appears that Elizabeth may well after all know what she is talking about – a pleasant disposition would not be among the qualifications normally required for the job.

There was an opened bottle of mineral water and a glass on Gillon’s desk. Delvert filled the glass and took it with him when he returned to his chair.

Gillon cleared his thoat again. ‘The Commandant is familiar with current developments in the Villegas matter,’ he said. ‘However, one or two questions have arisen which we would like you to answer as completely as you can, Doctor. This appointment you made for an X-ray examination which was later cancelled, was it in any sense a routine affair?’

‘No, Commissaire. It had a specific purpose.’

‘What purpose?’

‘From the patient’s description of his symptoms, though not, I should add, from any direct indications present when I examined him, it is possible that he may suffer from
diverticulosis which occasionally flares up into diverticulitis.’

‘And what, if you please, is that?’

I started to explain when Delvert interrupted.

‘Forgive me, Doctor – ’ the smile came into play – ‘but I think that this may be one of those occasions when a lay explanation can save time.’ He turned to Gillon. ‘I expect your car has tubeless tyres now, but when all tyres had inner tubes one sometimes saw examples of diverticulitis on the road. Through age and decay or damage, the walls of an outer cover would sometimes split and then the inner tube would bulge through forming bubbles. The same sort of thing can also happen to the human bowel. Most unpleasant I’m told.’

‘You mean that it could blow out, burst?’

He sounded so horrified that I decided to take over again.

‘Not often, Commissaire. The Commandant’s comparison is valid up to a point, but the pressures involved are rather different. What happens with the colon is that the cavities formed, those bubbles of inner tube he mentioned, sometimes become pockets of infection.’

‘Like a bad appendix.’

‘Something like, but …’

‘Is it serious?’

‘It used to be. At one time the length of intestine involved was often removed by surgery. Now the condition is usually treated quite easily with antibiotics. The patient is also given advice about diet.’

‘And Villegas has this condition?’

‘I think he may have. It often shows up in persons of his age. It’s quite a common disorder, in fact. It used to be diagnosed as a colic.’

‘All very interesting, Doctor – ’ this is was Delvert again – ‘but why do you say only that you
think
Villegas may have it? Can’t you tell without X-rays?’

‘Usually one can be pretty sure, yes. There is tenderness
and resistance over the infected bowel and abdominal spasm. It’s almost unmistakable.’

‘But not with Villegas?’

‘There were other factors to be considered.’ I told them about Doctor Massot and
constipado.

‘Would a powerful laxative have relieved an attack of this diverticulitis?’ Gillon wanted to know.

‘No. In fact it could well have made things worse. The point was that the symptoms he described were exactly those of diverticulitis.’

‘But your examination didn’t confirm it.’

‘The diverticula did not seem to be infected at the time. That wasn’t to say they weren’t there though. These attacks sometimes subside spontaneously. That’s why I ordered the X-rays.’

Delvert gave me the smile again. ‘Did it occur to you that Villegas might be lying?’

‘About his health, do you mean, or about other matters?’

They both gave me sharp looks.

Delvert said: ‘It’s his health we’re discussing at the moment.’

‘It crossed my mind later that he might not have been entirely truthful about his experience with Dr Massot.’

‘Why?’

‘It seemed unlikely, when I thought about it, that a man who had been used to having check-ups at the American British Hospital in Mexico City would not long ago have found out that constipation isn’t a cold in the head.’

‘Any conclusion?’

‘That Dr Massot’s attempts to speak Spanish had exasperated him, and that he had used the constipado blunder as an excuse to get rid of him.’

‘And have you appointed in Massot’s place?’

‘He couldn’t have counted on my appointment even if he’d wanted it. Uncle Paco told me that he personally had engineered that. According to him there was strong official opposition to it. I took that to mean opposition from the DST, the Commissaire here.’

Delvert glanced at Gillon. ‘Would you like to tell him what really happened, Commissaire?’

Gillon looked bland. ‘There was no official opposition at all,’ he said. ‘We asked one simple question. We asked Paco Segura if, in view of your family’s political connections, they would not prefer to receive you at Les Muettes as a friend rather than as our official representative. He said that they preferred to receive you in an official capacity. They did make one other request.’ He glanced questioningly at Delvert.

‘Let’s leave that for a moment.’ Delvert reached for a briefcase propped against the leg of his chair. ‘Let’s dispose of the medical items first.’ From the briefcase he took a thin folder and held it up. ‘This is a photocopy of Villegas’ medical history as it exists at the American British Hospital in Mexico City. I’ll trouble you not to enquire how it was obtained. However, it may interest you to know, Doctor, that your diagnosis of diverticulitis was quite correct. It was suspected and confirmed there by X-ray examination three years ago.’