Summer Snow (17 page)

Rivas exchanged glances with Guardia Girón. If Luisa confirmed what both Fulgencio and María José said about her acting as a taster, they could absolve the dinner. “What about what she drank?” he asked. “Was she as fussy about that?”

“No.” Fulgencio shook his head disapprovingly. “I’ve been in houses where the wine mattered more than the food. But Doña Rosalia never cared what she drank. Homemade
costa
with whitefish, albariño with steak. She just didn’t care. After her husband died—” He shut his mouth abruptly.

Rivas prompted, “After Señor Ordoñez died?”

“She just didn’t care.”

It was patently not what Fulgencio had started out to say. Rivas said, “She must have had something to drink that night. I responded after María José found her, and there was a wine stain on her desk.”

“I didn’t send up any wine.” Fulgencio looked worried now.

“Where did she get it then?”

The cook took a deep breath. “I . . . I think she got it out of her cabinet.”

Rivas remembered Guardia Soler’s find and felt a prickle of excitement. “How long had it been there?”

“I don’t know.” Fulgencio shifted in his chair. “A few days, maybe a week.”

“And what was it doing there?”

The cook sighed. “Look, Doña Rosalia was an old lady. She usually ate up there, and she spent a lot of time in that room, too. She didn’t like always calling for us, because we weren’t fast enough for her. She kept a bottle of wine and a couple of glasses in that cabinet so she could have a drink when she wanted one. She didn’t drink much at a time, so a bottle would last her for a while. And like I said, she didn’t care about the taste, so she could leave it open.”

Rivas leaned forward. “Who put the wine there?”

“It depended. Sometimes she would call for a new bottle to be bought when she needed one, and Luisa or María José would bring it. Sometimes one of the cleaning women might find the old one empty and they’d let me know and I’d give them one to replace it.”

“And who had access to that room?”

Fulgencio, who understood all too clearly the drift of the questions, opened and closed his mouth several times without answering. Finally he said cautiously, “That was Doña Rosalia’s private room. She didn’t like people going in and out of it whom she didn’t know.”

“Who did she know?”

The cook hesitated. “Look, just because someone had access to that room doesn’t mean—”

“I’ll be the judge of what it means,” Rivas interrupted.

“María José,” Fulgencio said unwillingly. “And Luisa. And the cleaning women. And maybe some of her visitors.”

“Who were her visitors?”

“Nobody much besides you, Sergeant. Her nephew came to see her every week or so, and sometimes one of her children would drop by.”

“So anyone who wanted to poison her would have had to suborn one of her servants?” Rivas said slowly. “Assuming someone from outside
did
want to poison her.”

“Hey, you don’t think that
we’d
do anything like that!” Fulgencio did not hide his alarm.

Rivas remembered his last question to María José. “What are you going to do now?” he asked, deliberately ignoring the cook’s protest.

Relief made Fulgencio voluble. “It depends on Don Fernando, I suppose. We haven’t heard anything from him, but the house must be his now. If he wants a cook I’ll gladly stay with him.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

Fulgencio shrugged. “I trained in Paris,” he said with some pride. “I’ve worked at the Hotel Alhambra Palace. I can find a job if I need to.”

Rivas thanked the cook and dismissed him. “Who’s next, sir?” said Girón after he had ushered out Fulgencio.

“Alberto Cordero, I think,” Rivas replied, following his plan to save Luisa for last. “I want to know if he had access to that wine bottle.”

The guardia obediently left to get Cordero. When he returned, the difference in atmosphere was obvious. Alberto opened the door himself and entered speaking over his shoulder to Girón. “. . . go up to the Sierra myself if I can’t find a decent contractor, and that’s the last thing I want to do in winter!” Alberto turned and nodded sociably as Girón entered. “Hello, Sergeant. Sorry to bother you again.”

The words were familiar. Alberto had used them at least half a dozen times at the post, ever since he had understood that Rivas did not take the threats against Doña Rosalia too seriously. Rivas looked at the man who had carried Doña Rosalia’s alarms to the Guardia, wondering if the corps had seriously misjudged him to be an innocuous messenger. “Not a false alarm this time,” he said dryly.

“No, sir.”

Alberto was more subdued than Fulgencio but he answered the sergeant’s questions readily, without María José’s emotional digressions. He confirmed what the sergeant already knew: that he had worked for the Ordoñez family for twenty years and had been Doña Rosalia’s caretaker, responsible for minor repairs in her house and for dealing with contractors in case of major repairs. He had acted as a secretary and helped her oversee her lands and investments. Interested by the man’s role as secretary, Rivas asked for details of who had visited Doña Rosalia in the days before her death.

“Besides you, you mean?” Alberto asked, with a faint smile. “Her nephew came the morning before she died. But he didn’t stay long. And before . . .” He wrinkled his nose in thought. “I think her youngest son, Felipe, came a few days earlier. He’s not around too often, so it made an impression. And, of course, Señorita Amparo.”

“Who’s she?” Rivas asked with interest.

“Señorita Amparo Villalobos de la Sierra,” Alberto explained. “She was engaged to marry Doña Rosalia’s grandson Jaime.”

“And why did she visit Doña Rosalia?” Rivas demanded.

“She always comes—always came—on Sunday afternoons.” Seeing that the sergeant looked puzzled, Alberto elaborated. “She’s worn mourning since ’38, as if she had been Señorito Jaime’s wife. She’s stayed very close to the family, especially Don Fernando’s wife. And since Doña Bernarda didn’t get along with her mother-in-law, Señorita Amparo used to come on Sundays to visit to do Doña Bernarda a favor.”

“A substitute daughter-in-law?” Rivas said, thinking that Jaime Ordoñez Tejada must have been a man of considerable charm to make his former fiancée devote her Sundays to his grandmother so many years after his death.

Alberto shrugged. “One of the ‘eternal brides,’ you know.”

Rivas nodded. Too many young women still wore mourning for the men they should have married. “Would you have the dates of Señorita Villalobos’s visits, and of Felipe Ordoñez’s?” he asked.

“I’m afraid not,” Alberto was apologetic. “Our lady didn’t keep a date book if it was just family. But Amparo Villalobos came every Sunday. And I’m nearly positive Señorito Felipe was here before that.”

“What about business dates?” Rivas said, without much hope.

“I can show you the book, but I can tell you now that I probably didn’t write anything in it,” Alberto said frankly.

After demanding the location of the book, Rivas sent Girón to get it. Alberto seemed embarrassed that the schedule was not more comprehensive. “Honestly, my job might have been better filled by two men,” he volunteered. “I wasn’t trained as a secretary. But the señora didn’t like new people, and after Señor Ordoñez died it fell to me.”

Rivas nodded and thought about that statement while he waited for Girón’s return. When the guardia entered, carrying a red leather date book, the sergeant said casually, “You must have a spent a lot of time with Doña Rosalia?”

Alberto shrugged. “A fair amount, I suppose.”

“In the room where she died?” Rivas raised his eyebrows.

The man nodded, apparently unsuspicious. “Yes. She spent most of her time there, you know.”

“You must have gotten to know that room very well.”

“What do you mean?”

Rivas leaned forward slightly. “You passed hours there with her, working. You both must have gotten tired. Maybe thirsty. Didn’t she ever offer you a drink?”

Alberto laughed. “Are you joking, Sergeant? The señora didn’t drink with her servants. She’d pour wine for herself. I could damn well wait.”

“Pour wine for herself?” Rivas desperately hoped his voice was neutral.

“Yes, she kept a bottle up there. It must have been vinegar half the time considering how slowly she went through it—” Alberto stopped abruptly and flushed scarlet, suddenly understanding that he had walked into a trap.

“Never shared any of it, did she?” Rivas said, satisfied. Alberto was silent. “And you could have walked in there any time, for some repair to the cabinet where it was kept, say, and moved the bottle—”

“But I didn’t!” Alberto interrupted. “I’d have no reason to, Sergeant!”

“You were practically her man of business,” Rivas purred. “She depended on you. Surely she made some provision for you in her will? A generous one, maybe?”

“No! That is, I don’t know! But I don’t think so. I never had anything to do with her will!” Alberto’s words tumbled over each other in his desperation to be believed. “Look, Sergeant, I had a good life here with Doña Rosalia. A decent salary and pretty light duties. The sorts of things an elderly lady needed a man to take care of. But Don Fernando has his own secretary, who does a lot of the things I did for his mother. He’ll likely pension me off. I’d be crazy to kill her!”

“If you’re innocent, you don’t have anything to worry about,” Rivas said, his tone of voice making the words less comforting than they might otherwise have been. “That’s all for now, but don’t leave here without permission.”

Alberto, who had already risen to his feet, froze unhappily. “You mean I have to stay in the city? But I can’t. I’m scheduled to look at one of Doña Rosalia’s properties in the Sierra. I was just telling Guardia Girón—”

“It will have to wait,” Rivas said and added with a faint smile, “or perhaps Don Fernando can designate someone to go in your place.”

“But I had a pass to go to my sister’s in Málaga afterward!” Alberto protested. “It’s been worked out for months.”

“It will have to wait,” Rivas repeated, wondering a little why Alberto was making foolish objections. He must know that they were useless. Exactly why did Alberto want to leave the city? “What’s so urgent?”

“Well, not the business exactly.” Alberto flushed. “But it’s hard to get permission to travel to other provinces, you know. And I haven’t seen Dulce in years. She’s asked me to stand godfather to her son.”

“Very touching,” Rivas said. “You’ll have to hope we finish the investigation quickly then.” He signaled to Girón, who held the door open and shepherded the reluctant Alberto through it.

When the door had closed behind Alberto, Rivas turned to his subordinate. “What do you think of Alberto’s story?”

Girón considered. “He knew about the wine. And taking care of the house like he did, he would have been able to lay hands on poison likely.”

“And he’s anxious to get out of the city,” Rivas agreed. “But it made sense what he said about being better off with the lady alive.”

Girón nodded. “Yes, sir. But that’s true for all the servants. Except, perhaps, that cook. But maybe they didn’t think ahead.”

Rivas was about to respond to this when the door opened again and Luisa entered, eyes on the ground, and hands twisting in front of her in her apron. “Good afternoon, Sergeant.”

Rivas smiled at her. “Sit down,” he said, doing his best to sound like a friendly elder brother. “We’re going to have to ask you some questions, but if you answer them truthfully nothing bad will happen to you.”

“Yes, sir.” Luisa sat on the edge of her chair, knees tightly pressed together, eyes still downcast.

Rivas, who had been secretly looking forward to the interview, was disappointed. The girl answered his questions, but she volunteered no information, and it was difficult for him to get her to look at anything other than her folded hands. She admitted that she had been responsible for taking Doña Rosalia all of her meals. In response to his gentle questioning, she confirmed what Rivas already knew: that she worked as a maid, cleaning the house, and also assisted Fulgencio in the kitchen. She confirmed that Doña Rosalia had frequently asked her to act as a food taster.

“Did she ask you the night she died?” Rivas asked casually.

Luisa frowned for a moment, remembering. “I think so. Yes, yes, she did. There was ham that evening, the same as the stock you’d tried earlier.”

Rivas, who was less than pleased by the thought that he had eaten at a table where poison had perhaps been prepared, spoke a little more harshly. “What about drinks? Did you taste the wine you brought up?”

“I didn’t bring up wine with the meal,” Luisa said.

“Oh, what did she drink?”

The girl hesitated. Then she said, “She kept an open wine bottle in the cabinet in her room, and drank from it when she wanted.”

“And who brought up those bottles?”

For a moment, Luisa’s eyes flickered to his face. Her voice shook a little as she said, “Usually, I took a freshly opened bottle of wine up to her with her lunch when she needed a new one. She would recork the bottle and leave it in the cabinet until it was empty, a few days later. Then she’d leave the bottle and the used glasses on a tray for me to take downstairs, and I’d bring up more wine with her next meal.”