Murder Begets Murder (9 page)

Harry was not like Evan. And yet had Evan been like Evan before the marriage? It was a Catch 22 situation. Never marry a man until you can be certain what his character is: you can never be certain of a man’s character until you’ve married him.

She left her thoughts and returned to the present. The ski boat was pounding its way back across the bay, taking a broad sweep towards the headlands to keep clear of a large ketch. She saw that there was only one skier now, Harry, because the other man was a passenger in the boat. He was sweeping from side to side, riding over the wake with inclined body and at each turn sending up sheets of curling spray. He made it look like a ballet on water.

Close to the pier the boat slowed and turned and Waynton let go of the rope. He slowly, gracefully, subsided into the water.

He gave the boat owner a hand to secure and it was twenty minutes before he came up to where she sat. ‘Hi! I wish I’d known before that you were here — I’d have got Dick to give you a run on the skis.’

‘It’s just as well you didn’t. He and I are agreed that we heartily dislike each other.’

‘Why so?’

‘He’s a fool.’

He laughed. ‘Now tell me what’s got you extra sharp and scratchy ?’

‘I’ve a head.’

‘Then I can’t think of a more sensible way of dealing with that than sitting out in the blazing sunshine.’

She slid off the bollard and linked her arm with his. ‘It’s nice to discover you’re the sympathetic type. Harry, I’d like a coffee.’

‘I’ll pick up my clobber and we’ll go to the cafe further along.’

They walked past large houses, hedged in with palms for the shade and walls often ablaze with bougainvillaea, and came to a cafe which fronted the beach.

As soon as they were seated and he had ordered, he said: ‘Is something wrong?’

She didn’t immediately answer, but opened her handbag and brought out a slim gold cigarette case and offered it.

‘I hope if there is, it’s nothing serious?’ He struck a match for her.

‘There is trouble, but it’s nothing to do with me. It’s to do with you.’

‘As far as I know I’m as trouble-free as the wind.’

‘Do you know Avis Elliott ?’

‘By sight — which is as familiar as I want to get with her.’

‘She’s going round the place saying that Betty was murdered and probably you murdered her.’

He stared at her in amazement, then laughed.

‘Don’t be so bloody stupid,’ she snapped exasperatedly.

‘Me stupid? I’m obviously not in the same league as dear Avis.’

‘Why won’t you take anything seriously?’

‘Because most things don’t deserve to be. That woman is responsible for more nonsense talked than half”a dozen other females all put together. But let’s be charitable. If you’re married to a man like Gordon, you’ve got to find something to do to stop yourself going crazy.’

‘Haven’t you the wit to realize that a lot of people listen to what she says.’

‘All right. So there are a few simple souls who’ll give themselves a thrill by believing her. So what?’

She shook her head in a gesture of impatient annoyance. Before she could say anything, though, the waiter brought two cups of coffee to their table.

She slit open a small pack of sugar and poured half of this into her cup. As she stirred slowly, she looked at him and said: ‘Suppose Betty didn’t die accidentally?’

‘Why suppose any such thing? If Avis said she didn’t, it’s ten to one she did.’

‘But there hasn’t been a funeral yet because they’re carrying out a post-mortem.’

‘It’s probably the same here as at home — if a death’s sudden and unexpected, there’s a PM as a pure matter of course.’

‘But apparently there’s been a detective around, asking people a lot of questions.’

‘Right. He’s been to my place, asked his questions, and got his answers. It doesn’t signify anything.’

‘Of course it does. Detectives don’t go around asking people personal questions unless they’ve a reason to. Did he want to know if you were friendly with Betty and had visited her at her house?’

‘Yes.’

‘Harry, why d’you suppose this detective is asking those particular questions?’

‘I can only imagine that if there is a hint of something wrong they believe that maybe she’d been messing around with a bloke while Bill was confined to his bed.’

‘And who’s the only person known to have been at all friendly with her? You.’

‘Which by devious routes leads to today’s bad joke. Is that Avis’s line of reasoning? If so, she needs to fumigate her mind. I felt sorry for Betty, but as for bedding her while Bill was slowly pegging out upstairs . . .’

‘The gossips of the town are going to have a field day.’

‘Then the best of British imperial luck to them!’

The sunshine edged past the outermost branches of a pine tree to fall directly on her face and she opened her handbag and brought out a pair of dark spectacles. ‘Don’t take this lightly, Harry. Things could easily get unpleasant for you.’

‘Things’ll get more unpleasant for anyone who comes and accuses me.’

‘There won’t be any direct accusations. There’ll be whispers and then more whispers. It’s a tight little community here, so if it got bad life could become rather impossible for you.’ She fiddled with the cigarette, twisting it round between forefinger and thumb, then suddenly stubbing it out. Without looking up, she said: ‘You were talking about its being time to leave the island and return to the UK. Why not speed things up and go quickly? That way, you’d pull the rug from under their feet.’

He showed his amazement. ‘You’re suggesting I cut and run away with my tail between my legs because a tired old gossip is naming me as a candidate for a murder that almost certainly never was?’

‘You’re not running away as you’ve done nothing to run away from. You’d just be easing yourself out of an un pleasant situation that was none of your making. If only you could recognize such a thing, you’d know that that was common sense.’

He laughed. ‘Ten out of ten for semantic ingenuity, nought out of ten for logic.’

‘Damn you, I was only trying to help,’ she snapped.

He managed to sound chastened. ‘I’m terribly sorry and I humbly apologize.’

‘Liar.’

He reached across the table and put his hand on hers.

‘This is genuine. Thanks for your reasons . . . The real trouble is I was born stubborn and I’ve just gone on developing.’

‘So instead of being sensible and leaving, you’re going to stay and stick your solid head out for everyone to stamp on?’ She sat back, annoyed and exasperated . . . And yet also glad.

Alvarez sat under the shade of an olive tree whose massive, gnarled, twisted trunk seemed to speak of some past agony, and stared out across the fields. Tomatoes, peppers, aubergines, lettuces, beans, potatoes, groundnuts, plums, apricots, almonds, walnuts, pomegranates, figs, oranges, lemons . . . Man would never have lost his soul if only he had stayed close to the soil.

He sighed, reached over and picked up the last piece of bread which had been coated with olive oil and sprinkled with salt. The sun was dipping down towards the mountain tops, highlighting their crests. Time to return to the office. Soon, he thought miserably, the phone in the office was going to ring and Superior Chief Salas would impatiently be demanding to know what was happening in the case of the dead Englishwoman. Well, what was happening? She had died an unpleasant death: why? She had probably had a lover who had usurped her other, dying lover: who?

He ate the bread and lit a cigarette. The señorita had not eaten mussels for lunch on that last day, so why had there been mussel shells and a segment of lemon in the bucket under the sink? Had she eaten some mussels before sitting down at the table where she had eaten more? Why eat some in the kitchen and the rest at the table? . . . Had two people eaten mussels, had one been taken fatally ill, and had the other tried to hide all traces of his visit but in the stress of the moment had acted instinctively and before washing up his plates and cutlery swept the shells into the waste bucket under the sink?

The short, fat man who stood at the bar of the restaurant between Llueso and the Port tapped the side of his nose several times. ‘You mark my words, there’s something very funny about Betty’s death.’

The other man present momentarily looked up from his sixth gin and tonic. ‘Funny ha-ha or funny peculiar — makes a big difference, you know?’

‘Funny ve-rey peculiar. There’s been a detective going around asking questions.’

He finished his drink. ‘Bert,’ he shouted. ‘Hurry up. My throat’s like bloody sandpaper.’

‘Alex said this detective asked him how well he knew Betty and had he ever visited her house on the q.t.’

‘Had he?’

‘Apparently not.’

‘Pity.’

The bartender finally appeared through the doorway behind the bar.

‘Heard the latest, Bert? Mr Cochrane’s just told me that that young filly was murdered.’

‘You don’t say, sir!’

‘I didn’t say,’ snapped the short, fat man irritably. ‘But it does look as if her death can’t have been accidental.’

‘Can’t see the difference myself: too subtle. Trouble with the world today — it’s all become too subtle . . . Now am I going to get that drink?’

On the Friday, and for the first time in over two weeks, the sky was cloudy at daybreak. But by midday few clouds were left and these, drifting in front of a light westerly wind, cast no more than temporary shadows on the land below.

The restaurant was sited dramatically, poised a hundred and fifty metres above the rock-strewn sea with its balcony stretching out beyond the cliff edge. In the evening diners could watch the sun sink below the horizon, flooding sea and sky with an infinity of teds and oranges.

Compton ordered wine and the wine waiter left. ‘As I never tire of saying, this is one of the few restaurants on the island to know what service really means.’

‘Why the enthusiasm?’ asked Diana. ‘Because they call you “sir”?’

He smiled. ‘As needle sharp as ever and twice as piercing! It’s because the tables are laid with clean table­cloths and silver, the waiters know which is the correct side, and the food is served, not slapped down with a take-it or leave-it attitude.’

‘If the food’s good what’s it matter whether it’s served on your right or your wrong side?’

‘There are times when it makes a subtle difference to one’s enjoyment of it.’

‘Only if you’re being pompous.’

‘You’re not going to convince me that there aren’t moments when you of all people don’t prefer eating in style.’

‘If I want servility I don’t look for it on this island. The people aren’t servile, thank God!’

The waiter brought them their drinks: she had a Campari and sweet vermouth, he had a gin and tonic.

‘Cheers.’ He smiled. ‘Even if it’s now considered very LMC to say “cheers”.’

‘Christ, those labels!Where d’you live, what school did you go to, is it true your aunt’s cousin’s nephew is tided? Why can’t we English accept each other for what we actually are and not for our backgrounds?’

‘But what are we?’

‘Right now I expect you’d name me bitch and yourself long-suffering.’

‘I hope I’d be slightly more subtle than that.’

‘I’m sure you would be. Nothing too, too direct for Hugh Compton, noted democratic bon viveur.’

He laughed. ‘All right, that’s me tabbed and tabulated . . . By the way, I’ve just had a letter from a friend of mine who lives near Cannes. He’s got rather a nice place up in the hills.’

‘Would any friend of yours live in a hovel?’

‘To listen to them, some of them do . . . This house is an old one, recently modernized, and when it was being used as a farmhouse Renoir painted it. Jocelyn wanted to buy that painting — until it came up for sale and made as many thousands as he could have afforded tens.’

‘What’s supposed to be the moral of that story?’

‘No moral. Just a snippet of information which might have been received with interest but wasn’t.’

She smiled, for the first time that evening. ‘All right, in your ever-so-charming way you’ve indicated I’m not being good company.’

He studied her. ‘Obviously something’s worrying you?’ She nodded.

‘There’s a saying which no doubt you’d dismiss with scorn: a trouble shared is a trouble halved.’

‘Out here a trouble shared is a trouble published . . . There’s no secret. I’m worried about Harry. You must have heard what people are saying?’

He drank, replaced the glass on the table, and idly traced a pattern across the frosting with his forefinger.

‘You mean about Betty? I’ve heard one or two nonsenses, but I didn’t give them ear-room. No one will pay any attention to them.’

‘Some people are. Why can’t they see . . .’ She stopped.

‘See what?’

‘That because of the kind of person he is he’d never hurt a woman, whatever happened. As for doing any.. thing so filthy as poisoning her . . .’

‘Is it now certain, then, that she was poisoned?’

‘Nothing out here is ever certain.’

Compton traced another pattern on his glass. He said, somewhat hesitantly: ‘Do you know just how friendly he was with her?’

‘He was sorry for her and offered her a sympathetic ear and as no one else would do that she’d always make a beeline for him whenever she saw him. That’s all there was to the friendship . . . Which people are now trying to make out was red hot.’

‘Perhaps she thought there was more to it than he did?’

‘Of course she didn’t.’

‘Sometimes women do get fixations.’

‘Not nearly as often as men would like to think. He never went to the house.’

‘According to the rumours, though, someone must have done. She was heard there with a man and it was pretty obvious that they weren’t just good friends.’

‘These bloody rumours.’

‘This one may have a little more substance to it than usual. The maid who worked for Betty and Bill is said to have heard what was going on. There’d be no reason for her to make up gossip, would there?’

‘She probably didn’t hear a thing and the whole story is just a load of cod’s. In any case, what if Betty was messing around with another man?’