Murder Begets Murder (18 page)

He wondered whether she saw herself as a different kind of a person.

‘They resented his success. They couldn’t understand why he didn’t hoard his money under a loose floorboard, but spent it all on enjoying himself: they couldn’t under­ stand why he was always ready to accept new ideas, instead of rejecting them out of hand. He once said to me . . .’ She stopped.

‘Yes, señorita?’

She shook her head, as if marvelling over something.

‘He once said to me, “When I started practising medicine, I saw myself setting out on a crusade. But now I know I’ve just been engaged in muddy trench warfare.” ’

‘Did you understand what he meant by that?’

‘Of course. He became a doctor in order to help his own people live better and happier lives. But they were too traditional and stupid to let him. If he wanted to make more than one visit or prescribe more than a couple of aspirins, they said he was just trying to make money out of them.’

‘He was once an idealist?’

‘He was always an idealist — which is why it’s disgustingly absurd to suggest he would have sold anyone poison.’

‘If he was an idealist, he was one who liked the good things in life ?’

‘Who says an idealist has to starve in a garret?’

‘I gather that if the poor peasants were suspicious of him, Which foreigners weren’t?’

Her manner became less certain, as if this was a point which in the past had troubled her. ‘If the locals were so stupid and suspicious, why shouldn’t he tend the foreigners? And why shouldn’t they pay for his being a really good doctor? But don’t you forget the rest of the story. If someone not very well off wanted him, but their insurance didn’t have him on their list, he charged them nothing. And if the medicines were very expensive, he’d pay for them out of his own pocket. That’s the kind of man he really was.’

Hadn’t someone once said that no man was a hero to his valet? Perhaps no doctor was a villain to his receptionist. And yet although it would be absurd to accept as gospel everything she said — wasn’t there too stark a contradiction between the idealist and the doctor who preferred to attend the wealthy foreigner? — he felt that there was some truth in her words. Yet if that were so, surely Roldán would not have given or sold poison to another person, knowing it could be used for only one purpose? And if he had not, why had he been murdered? Yet if he had not been murdered, what had happened to the badly injured Englishwoman . . . ?

‘Is there any aconite among the medical supplies at the doctor’s house?’ he asked.

‘No,’ she replied immediately.

‘How can you be quite so certain?’

‘The doctor would never keep any poison in the house.’

‘Used in very small doses it has therapeutic qualities: I believe it’s good for gout.’

‘He refused to keep any poison at all because he was scared of there being a dreadful accident. He said it was a chemist’s job to keep that sort of thing.’

‘I’m sure you’re right, but we’d better go along and check his stocks.’

‘I am not a liar,’ she said with haughty anger.

They drove in his car to Roldán’s house. The door was opened by the daily woman who tried to make conversation, but she was brusquely cut short by Carolina: it was obvious that the two women disliked each other.

Carolina led the way into her office and pointed to a large cupboard. ‘All the medicines in the house are in there, except for anything which has to be kept refrigerated.’ She opened her handbag and brought out a key.

‘There you are.’ She all but flung it at him.

The search did not take long because the cupboard was only half-full. There was no aconite, either in extract or in liniment form.

‘Do you keep a book listing all medicines in and out?’ he asked.

‘Of course,’ she snapped. She made no move to get this book until he specifically asked her for it.

With her help when this was necessary, very grudgingly given, he checked through all the entries over the past year. No aconite in any form had been purchased during that time.

Alvarez went into the chemist in the Calle Aragon and spoke to the young woman behind the counter and said he’d like a word with the señora. She walked between two of the stock shelves to the rear of the shop, where there were stairs, and shouted: ‘Rosalía.’

A woman carrying a small baby in her arms came down the stairs. When she saw Alvarez, she smiled a welcome. He asked how the baby was and it was almost five minutes later before he was able to say: ‘D’you remember being questioned about the sale of aconite?’

‘Yes, indeed. Not very long ago, was it?’

‘No, it wasn’t. Well we’ve been on to every wholesale and retail chemist on the island and everyone’s given us the same answer — no aconite. But now something’s turned up which suggests there must have been. Now, tell me right off the record. Suppose a doctor you knew personally came in and asked for some poison, only a very little, would you always bother to make a record of that sale? After all, he’s entitled to buy whatever he needs and lots of poisons are used in medicine.’

‘We’d bother, whoever it was, for our own sake just as much as for the rules. If there’s any trouble over a poison, every single milligram has to be accounted for or we can be in big trouble.’

He rubbed his heavy chin. ‘If Doctor Roldán had come in and bought a very small amount of aconite from you, then that purchase would have been entered in the book?’

‘It most certainly would.’

‘D’you remember his ever coming in and asking about buying some aconite?’

She looked curiously at him. ‘No. He’s never done that.’

He thanked her and left the shop. Once seated in his car, he lit a cigarette. Almost certainly all the other local chemists would give the same answers as Rosalía had just given him — and as for chemists further afield, Roldán would probably not have been personally known to them so that the regulations would have been strictly complied with and the purchase recorded. So as he had not left the island in the past year, what other source for the poison could he have drawn on? Extracting it from the roots of monkshood? But this was a fairly complicated process apparently, and could he manage to do the work in total secrecy, in a town where everybody’s business was every­ body else’s? Perhaps. But he could not forget Carolina’s contemptuous dismissal of the possibility that Roldán could ever have had a hand in poisoning someone.

Alvarez looked through the window of the showroom at the white Seat 132.

‘You can have it for a third down and three years’ HP,’ said a voice from his left.

He turned to face Largo, dressed for once not in grease­ stained overalls but in an open-necked shirt and well pressed trousers. ‘Would anybody be fool enough to give credit to a mere inspector in the Cuerpo General de Policia?’

Largo chuckled. ‘Probably not. Maybe we’d both better forget the deal after all.’

‘Have you checked over that crashed car yet?’

‘We’ve done the best we can, Enrique, but it’s mostly like I said it would be. When a car gets really crumpled up, you can’t tell much.’

‘You sound as if you might have found something, though?’

‘There was what seems to have been a loose union on one of the brake lines. If it was loose, that couldn’t have happened in the crash.’

‘So was at least one of the systems definitely inoperative?’

‘Can’t say. It all depends how bad the leak had been-if there was a leak.’

‘That’s nothing but ifs.’

Largo shrugged his shoulders.

‘If that had been a developing fault and all the fluid had drained away, there’d still be braking power left on the other circuit?’

‘That’s right.’

‘On opposite wheels, front and back. So if he’d panic-­braked there would have been rubber on the road?’

‘Almost certainly.’

‘If you knew what you were doing, how long would it take you to immobilize both brake lines?’

‘Say half a minute, unless you were going to do it crudely. Then ten seconds would be enough.’

Alvarez visualized the scene on the night of the crash.

He ‘saw’ the doctor climb out of his car and walk down the sloping path to the front door swearing because the chain had prevented his driving all the way down. A shadowy figure came round the bend immediately above the house. As the doctor hammered on the door, wonder­ ing why the frantic husband didn’t let him in, the man immobilized both brake lines, then returned to the cover of the bend. The doctor, furious and frustrated, drove off at a rate of knots . . . ‘Thanks for all your help,’ he said.

‘Not much we could do for you, I’m afraid. But there it is.’

There was sick, bitter anger etched in Denise Roldán’s face. As she sat in the red velvet chair in the sitting-room, which so dramatically set off her black dress, Alvarez could guess what thoughts poured through her mind. Why him? What had he ever done to be singled out by a malign fate? Alvarez remembered the days after the death of Juana-Maria, when his grief had seemed a physical pain and he had resented, instead of welcomed, comforting words. ‘Señora, I am very, very sorry to have to return to bother you. But I need to look through the doctor’s papers and his bank statements. If this weren’t absolutely necessary . . . ’

‘He couldn’t ever have sold poison to anyone. It’s a filthy thing to suggest.’ Her voice rose. ‘He loved his work. When he came home and told me he’d helped to save a life, had brought relief from pain, or even when all he’d done was to give an innoculation which would maybe prevent a child becoming fatally ill one day, he used to say that he felt he was helping God. He was a religious man. Can’t you see what that meant? His work of helping the sick was part of his religion. So how can you believe he would have sold poison that killed?’

Perhaps a man could believe he might serve both God and mammon, despite all the strictures to the contrary. Perhaps Dr Roldán had seen his healing in divine terms, but its rewards in commercial ones. If so, she was right, he could never have sold or given poison to anyone. ‘Señora, I can only say again, I am ashamed to have to ask to see his papers, but because of my work must.’

Her expression became cruelly contemptuous.

‘Where did he keep all his papers?’

‘In his office.’

‘And where is that?’

‘Next to the surgery.’

Has anything been removed from his office?’

‘No one has been in it since the night he. . . he . . .God, I hope one day it happens to you,’ she said wildly.

‘Señora,’ he answered sombrely, ‘many years ago just such a tragedy happened to me.’

She put her clenched hand to her mouth and began to cry. In between sobs, she whispered: ‘Sweet Mary, I’m sorry.’

He went over to her and held her against his side for a moment. ‘Señora, words are useless, or I would use a thousand. But gradually help will come through time.’

‘I loved him so completely. Perhaps that’s why it happened. We loved too much.’

After a while, when her crying had died away, he left. She was right. There was room in the world for every degree of envy, hatred, and brutality, but there was no room for very great love. God was a jealous god.

The office was an oblong room in which were a glass fronted bookcase, a metal filing cabinet looking incongruous next to a beautifully inlaid roll-top desk, a flat, leather-topped desk with drawers on either side of the well, a leather, adjustable chair, a carpet which he took to be Persian and which was filled with colour, and two paintings on the wall.

Dr Roldán had kept meticulous financial records: there were separate account books for his work and his domestic expenses and cheque stubs and bank statements covering the past five years.

After a while, a pattern became clear. Roldán had enjoyed a considerable income throughout the past five years and for most of that time his expenditure had equalled his income. But suddenly, in March of the present year, he had begun to make purchases, often expensive ones, without either drawing a cheque or the necessary cash. Alvarez added up such amounts and they totalled over two hundred thousand pesetas.

He leaned back in the chair. Two hundred thousand pesetas which were unaccounted for. He remember d Francisca at the wedding of Damian and Teresa telling them how Dr Roldán and his wife had begun to spend money as if it were going out of fashion.

He bundled up the relevant records and put them into half a dozen very large envelopes. He left. She was still in the sitting-room, in the same chair. He sat opposite her.

‘In these envelopes I’ve some papers, bank statements, and cheque stubs, which I must take away with me. I will, of course, give you a receipt for them.’ She was indifferent to what he said.

‘Señora, when it came to financial matters, did you work with your husband? Did you both check through accounts?’

‘He did all that sort of thing,’ she answered dully.

‘Were you given a certain amount of money for house-keeping each week?’

‘He gave me as much as I needed.’

‘In cash?’

‘Yes.’

‘And when you bought furniture for the house, like that beautiful roll-top desk in the office, how did you pay for it?’

‘I can’t remember.’

‘I know your husband banked at the Llueso branch of the Caja de Ahorros y Monte de Piedad de Las Baleares, but did he bank anywhere else as well?’

‘No.’

‘Have you a safe in this house?’

She shook her head.

He stood up. ‘Thank you for being so kind.’

She looked up. ‘D’you understand now? He couldn’t have sold poison to anyone.’

Alvarez spoke to the bank manager in his office. ‘I want to know if Dr Roldán kept any valuables deposited with you?’

‘I’ll have to check up on that for you.’

The manager was gone from his room for less than a minute and he brought back with him a large ledger. ‘Yes, he did. Deposited a briefcase with us on March 16. He’s had it out a few times since, always re-depositing it.’

‘D’you know what’s in it?’

‘I’ve no idea. We never ask a customer what he de­ posits, just make it clear that the deposit is made entirely at his own risk.’