Murder Begets Murder (5 page)

‘Can you suggest any of their friends I can talk to?

Perhaps someone who you know has visited her more than once.’

After a while she said: ‘Señora Browning used to come quite often to see if she could help. But even so the señorita was always rude about her.’

‘Do you know where this señora lives?’

‘I’m sorry, Enrique, but I’ve no idea.’

‘No matter. I’ll find out.’ He put down the empty glass.

‘Thanks a lot for all your help. I suppose I’d better start moving on.’

‘Now-when it’s almost time for lunch? Stay and have a bite? I’ve made paella, because Miguel likes it so much, with some specially large prawns.’

When a man started putting his feet under the dining-table of a widow . . .

‘And for afterwards I’ve some tripe in the way my mother used to bake it.’

Tripe, when well cooked, was a food for the gods. He slowly settled back in the chair.

She smiled contentedly. ‘Give yourself another drink while I go through to the kitchen and carry on cooking.’ He poured himself another, and even larger, drink.

The Mobylette slowed right up as the slope steepened and Waynton finally jumped off it, walking beside it for the last hundred metres up to the turning into the small entrance courtyard of Ca Na Ailla. As he swung off the road he saw a white Seat 127 which he identified as Hugh Compton’s. He swore.

He pulled the Mobylette up on to its rest, crossed to the front door, and rang the bell. Diana opened the door.

‘Hullo, Harry. Come on in and join the party. Hugh dropped in a bit earlier.’

He was pretty certain there was a malicious smile lurking about her lips. From her point of view, why not? They went into the sitting-room which, because the house was built on the side of the mountain, had a magnificent view over the land to the mountain-ringed bay. Hugh Compton, who was sitting out on the terrace, sounded really pleased to see Waynton. ‘It’s good to meet you, Harry. I was saying only yesterday to Tom that I hadn’t seen you around for a bit, which was a pity because out here when an intelligent man goes missing he leaves a big gap.’

How to make all your acquaintances love you, thought Waynton. Then he laughed at himself for this uncharacteristic small-mindedness, knowing its cause was jealousy. Jealousy that Diana obviously liked Hugh, jealousy because the gods had been so kind to him. He was crisply smooth and ruggedly handsome. He had plenty of money: he could charter a yacht and take Diana out sailing,’ then dine at the fish restaurant in the Port without wincing when she said she’d rather like lobster. And most of all, he had a warmth of character which enabled him to make friends with almost everyone, even the dragon of a dowager duchess who came over to the island and lived in the Port whenever she was temporarily broke.

Diana indicated a trolley just inside the sitting-room.

‘Help yourself to what you’d like, Harry. There should be ice in the container: if it’s melted, there’s plenty more in the fridge.’

He poured himself out a gin and tonic and added lemon and three cubes of ice. He sat.

‘I went to Ray’s party last night,’ said Hugh Compton.

‘I do wish he’d stop putting sixty-peseta gin into old Gordon bottles and then serving it with a flourish. That sort of thing should only be done with discretion.’

‘When I first arrived out here,’ said Diana, ‘I was warned about him on two accounts. Never drink gin in, or express an interest in, his home.’

‘I know the consequences of drinking his gin. What happens if he gives you an escorted tour?’

‘If you’re a female it’s a hand round the waist in the dining-room, a loving nip on the bottom in the kitchen, and a free-for-all in the first bedroom.’

‘Never tell Norah that or she’ll rush to see all the other bedrooms as well.’

She laughed. ‘You’re very cruel about her.’

‘She loves suffering. It’s her Slavonic blood.’ He turned his wrist until he could see the face of his gold Rolex. ‘I suppose I’d better start shifting.’

‘Don’t rush. Stay and have another drink?’

‘I’d love to, but I made the grave mistake of saying I’d have a pre-lunch pick-me-up with Alice and Brian.’

He stood up, broad-shouldered, narrow-waisted, dressed in casual clothes which would never be mistaken for cheap. ‘So long, Harry. .Come and have a noggin the next time you’ve a spare moment. I promise to leave the sixty-peseta gin tightly corked up.’

After they’d left, Waynton stared out across at the bay and wondered what degree of friendship there was between Diana and Hugh. It always seemed light, but he remembered Diana telling him that Hugh’s thoughts, like Ray’s were constantly turned towards bed.

Diana returned through the sitting-room and came out on to the balcony. ‘I was so fed up with my own cooking that I’d decided to go out for lunch. Let’s go Dutch to Ca’n Mercer?’

‘Make it English style and you’ve got a date.’

‘I said Dutch. Take it or leave it.’

‘Knowing you, I suppose I’ll just have to take it.’

‘Right. Pour yourself another drink whilst I go and freshen up. And if you’d like an olive, there’s a tin of stuffed ones on the kitchen table which I was going to open but never got round to.’

He poured himself a second drink, then returned to his seat, not bothering about the olives. He admired an independence of spirit, but sometimes wished that she didn’t possess quite so much of it — or, at least, that she had learned to deploy it less challengingly. There were times when a man liked to feel that he was leading, even if he were too blinkered to see that in reality he was being led . . .

The front-door bell rang.

‘Harry, go and see who it is, will you? I’m not in a fit state to be seen in public.’

He went through to the front door.

‘Hullo, there,’ said Jerry Crutchley in his gobbling way of speaking which matched his turkey face and wattle chins. ‘We didn’t expect to see you here, did we, Vi?’ His small, very dark brown eyes were bright with enquiring interest.

His wife, a tired blonde, didn’t answer him: she seldom did.

‘We came because we wondered if Diana had heard the news,’ said Crutchley.

Waynton opened the door more fully. ‘Come on in and find out. She’ll be along in a second.’ One might as well try to keep the tide at bay as keep the Crutchleys out in the cold during drinking time.

They had nearly finished their drinks when Diana appeared. Her greeting, since she could rarely be bothered to dissemble her feelings, was cool. But the Crutchleys noticed nothing, perhaps because they were used to such a reception.

‘I said to Vi, didn’t I, Vi, I wonder if Diana’s heard the news?’

His wife stared down into her glass.

‘Basil told us about it.’

‘Then it’s bound to be true,’ said Diana.

He was impervious to sarcasm. ‘Betty Stevenage has been found dead in the house that she and Bill rented. She’d been dead a long time and was in a bit of a state,’ he added, with grisly pleasure. He drained his glass and then held it in a conspicuous position.

‘For Heaven’s sake!’ said Diana. ‘You’d believe the end of the world had happened if someone told you it had. Betty went back to England as soon as everything was cleared up after Bill’s death. It must be a month ago now.’

‘But that’s just the point, Diana, she didn’t leave. We all thought she did, but in fact she died very suddenly in the kitchen and has been lying there ever since. Just think of it — lying in the kitchen, dead!’

‘If this were true,’ said Waynton, ‘surely someone would have discovered her body long before now?’

‘That’s just what I thought. But apparently Bill and Betty had had nothing but rows with the landlord who’d never do any of the repairs that were needed and after Bill died Betty went and saw one of the solicitors in the village and left him the keys of the house and told him not to hand them over until the very last day of the lease. She’d obviously locked up for the night using a spare key, shutting all the shutters, and all that sort of thing, so no one could get into the place. The landlord hadn’t the slightest idea of what had happened.’

‘She must have made arrangements to stay somewhere in England or wherever she was going. They’d have started to worry when she didn’t turn up.’

‘Perhaps she’d only booked in at a hotel, so they’d just think it was a cancelled reservation. I hate to be beastly to anyone, but she really wasn’t the kind of person who could easily make friends, was she, so perhaps there’s no one in England who cared whether she returned, or not: or even knew she was meaning to.’

‘I suppose it’s possible. But then what’s she supposed to have died from?’

‘Basil didn’t know.’

‘He’s slipping,’ said Diana scornfully.

Crutchley smiled, a little uncertainly. ‘As I said to Vi­ — didn’t I, dear? — it really is too tragic for words. Bill dies after a long illness and then she dies so soon afterwards with no one knowing. Really tragic.’

‘Do stop rolling out the platitudes,’ snapped Diana.

‘There’s nothing more tragic about dying and lying around the place for a month than just dying. And a couple who die soon after each other are a damn sight luckier and less tragic than a survivor who goes on year after year, alone.’ Crutchley stared at her and seemed to be about to say something, but in the end he merely made a gobbling sound. Nonconformity, in thought or action, always disturbed him.

‘I’ll have to ask you to drink up,’ said Diana. ‘I’m sorry to rush things, but we’re just on our way out.’ He looked astonished. Not even one refill?

The heat of the afternoon had eased by the time Alvarez awoke. For a while he remained motionless, sprawled out in the chair, then with a grunt of resigned annoyance he opened his eyes. He stood up and crossed to the shutters to open them. When the harsh sunlight streamed in he had to blink rapidly to ease his eyes. He looked down at the street in which the only living thing at that moment was a dozing cat and he yawned, envying the cat.

He walked from the post to the square, where a large number of tourists were sitting out at the tables, and threaded his way through the narrow streets to the solicitor’s office. The receptionist said Señor Vives was out seeing a client, but would be back at any moment. Alvarez slumped down in a chair, which squeaked at the weight of his thickset body, and thought about nothing in particular.

When Vives arrived, looking very smart in a light-weight suit, he greeted Alvarez warmly, led him into his office, and pulled round a comfortable chair in front of his large desk which was covered with files, books, and · papers.

‘Now, then, Enrique, what’s brought you here? Some body not paying one of the new taxes the government keeps introducing?’ He laughed. The stupidity of men in far-off Madrid who seemed to think they could rule the lives of the fiercely independent islanders was a constant source of amusement.

‘I’m trying to check up on the Englishwoman who’s been found dead in Ca’n Ibore. Were you her solicitor?’ Vives’s very mobile face became solemn. ‘Poor Señorita Stevenage. Yes, I acted for her and Señor Heron, before he died.’

‘It seems she must have died about a month ago. How come she wasn’t discovered before now?’

‘It’s easily explained, Enrique.’ He spoke about the trouble there had been with the landlord, Sanchez. ‘She told him what she’d done with the keys and on the Wednesday afternoon after she was supposed to have left the island he was in here, pleading with me to let him have them — only so that he could go inside and see everything was all right: promised on the honour of his mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother, that he’d do no more than that.’ Vives chuckled. ‘If I’d given him the keys there would have been new tenants in the house just as soon as he could find them. And paying four times a reasonable rent.’

‘There’s a fool born every minute.’

‘When it comes to foreigners on this island, the birth rate’s obviously even higher than that. Listen to what happened this morning! An English señor comes in here in a terrible state, begging me to help him. He came to the island in Easter for a week’s holiday — remember how lovely Easter was?- and falls in love with everywhere. So he decides to buy a house down in the Port. An odd-job man says he knows a beautiful house for sale, a perfect bargain at only two and a half million. Does the English­man seek advice from a lawyer, as he would have done in his own country? No! He paid without asking a single question. And now he’s discovered that the land is owned by three brothers, one of whom lives in Argentina and refuses to sell, the house was put up by a builder who never bothered to buy the land, he mortgaged the house to a bank, then went bankrupt, and the bank is going to foreclose.’

‘So what happens to the Englishman?’

‘He has almost certainly lost two and a half million because there were blue skies at Easter. It can be a cruel world, Enrique.’

‘Getting back to the señorita — have you any idea how she intended to get from Ca’n Ibore to the airport?’

Vives pursed his lips. ‘I certainly can’t be certain, but I do seem to remember she said she was ordering a taxi.’

‘I’ll have to see if I can find the driver.’ Alvarez pulled himself out of the chair and stood. ‘There’s one last thing. I want a word with a Señora Browning. You wouldn’t know where she lives, would you?’

‘Ca Na Penoña,’ Vives answered immediately. ‘The house is in the entrance to the Festona Valley . . . Now if you’re talking about rich foreigners, you’re talking about her. Marry her and you’d not have to worry about where your next meal was coming from.’

‘I’d rather go hungry.’

Vives laughed. ‘A man of principles: expensive principles!’

Alvarez left and returned to the square, where he spoke to the drivers of the three taxis which were parked there.

The last driver said: ‘Yes, I remember her. She came and booked me to take her to the airport.’

‘Have you heard that she’s just been found dead in the house?’

‘Mother of God!’ exclaimed the driver, and crossed himself.

‘I want a word with you and this car’s like an oven.

Come on over to the club.’

‘But what if a fare turns up?’