Troubled Deaths (18 page)

The bartender brought over the corporal’s coffee. Alvarez poured the rest of his brandy into his coffee. If Brent didn’t panic and fly - and why should he? - all that remained to be done now was to question him and close the case. And once it was closed, there would be no further occasion for meeting Caroline Durrel. What had Mena said? If a man gained his dreams, his life became worthless. Only an old and rather drunken cynic would ever talk such rubbish . . .

The corporal interrupted his thoughts. ‘You need a hearing aid. I’ve been speaking to you for the past few minutes and all you’ve done is stare into space. What’s up?’

‘I’m worrying about my soul.’ ‘For God’s sake, drink up and forget such trivia.’ Perhaps that was the only sensible advice he had heard in days.

Alvarez, at the desk in his office, read the message. Fingerprints showed Charles Brent was now known as Peter Shore and he lived at No. 5, Calle Resons, Cala San Pedro.

He telephoned Superior Chief Salas. ‘Señor, I have just received information that Charles Brent, now known as Peter Shore, is living in Cala San Pedro. That’s a small place . . .’

‘I know perfectly well where it is.’

‘Of course! Since he is the surviving member of the tontine, he needs to be closely questioned regarding his movements over the past few weeks. I would respectfully suggest that a request, which had better be in your name, be sent to the Guardia at Cala San Pedro . . .’

‘It will be much more satisfactory - I hope - if you fly over and interrogate him yourself.’

‘Me, Senor? But I . . .’

‘By the next plane.’ The line went dead.

Alvarez slowly replaced the receiver. He hadn’t left the island in years. He had never flown in his life . . .

‘Santa Antonia,’ he murmured, ‘am I then so great a sinner?’

Alvarez carefully watched the engine on the starboard wing, but after ten minutes it still had not burst into flames. He relaxed a little and might even have learned to suffer, if not enjoy, flying had he not in his newfound confidence asked the air stewardess for a brandy and been asked to pay fifty pesetas for a drink which hardly covered the bottom of the glass.

They landed in driving rain. A bus took them to the terminal building and, since he had no luggage other than one overnight case, he did not have to wait for the baggage to come through. Outside the arrival area a Guardia was waiting for him.

‘Inspector Alvarez? What a day you’ve chosen! It’s been like this since dawn. I suppose Mallorca’s in sunshine?’

It had been cloudy and threatening rain, but Alvarez answered loyally, ‘It was warm enough to have to carry my coat as well as my mackintosh.’

‘You blokes don’t know how lucky you are! . . . The commissaire said you’d want me to drive you to Cala San Pedro first of all?’

‘That’s right. I want to question the Englishman, Shore.’

‘He’s not the bloke in Calle Resons?’ ‘That’s right. You know him, then?’ ‘You’re a bit late. Inspector. He’s been dead over six months.’

Alvarez sat as close to the electric fire as he could get and gloomily listened to the commissaire.

‘If the original enquiry had been sent to us, Inspector – as one might have expected – we would have given you all the details. Instead, I gather it was put through the register of foreigners so inevitably their records were hopelessly out of date.’

‘They ought to have known, though. You say Brent – Shore – died back in March.’

The commissaire looked at Alvarez with impatient condescension. These provincial islanders clearly had no idea how official government departments worked. ‘What did you want to question him about?’

‘To tell the truth, I thought he was responsible for a couple of murders - but as these happened during the past three weeks, I obviously couldn’t be more wrong.’ He held out his hands to the fire which seemed to be giving less and less heat. ‘How did he die, Senor?’

The commissaire opened a folder with a quick flick of his fingers: he was a man of precise, flicking movements. ‘He owned a house in the urbanization to the east of the village. His maid went there in the morning as usual and found him crumpled up at the foot of the stairs, dead. There was an opened bottle of brandy in the sitting-room, together with a half-filled glass. The bathroom was upstairs so it was clear that he had been up to that and was returning downstairs when, because he had drunk so much, he tripped and fell, to land on his head.’

‘Was there a PM?’

‘Naturally. He died from severe head wounds. His blood alcohol level was point four so he was very close to passing out before he fell.’

‘That seems as if it was straightforward enough.’

‘It was straightforward,’ amended the commissaire.

‘What’s happened about his estate?’

‘He had made a Spanish will and in this he left everything he owned to a woman called . . .’ He looked down at the folder. ‘Hilda Guelden. Her address was given as the same as his, but at the time of his death no woman was living with him. Neighbours remember an attractive blonde whom they thought was Dutch, but no one had seen her for at least a month before his death and one of these witnesses mentioned a row between the woman and Shore. Enquiries are still going on trying to trace Hilda Guelden.’

‘Have you any idea how much the estate amounts to?’

‘There was roughly fifty thousand in his bank, the house, and a car.’

‘That’s all?’

‘It is.’

‘How did he get his income?’

‘He frequently paid into his bank fairly large sums.’

‘Where did they come from?’

‘We don’t know, nor have we regarded this point as being of any importance.’

The commissaire was right, thought Alvarez, but not for the reason he believed. It was not a matter of importance because the source was known - the tontine. And when Charles Brent had died, his share of the tontine had been halved between Freeman and Mabel Cannon. And when Freeman had died everything had become hers.

And when she had died . . .

The commissaire flicked the folder shut. ‘Of course, if you’d bothered to contact us in the first place, your journey today wouldn’t have been necessary.’

‘Ah well, señor, it won’t be the last time I waste my time . . . Now the business is over and done with, how about finding a bar and having a drink or two to keep out the cold?’

‘I do not drink alcohol.’

Was there a flight back to the island that night? wondered Alvarez.

It was five past five on Friday afternoon and there was a long silence over the telephone before Superior Chief Salas said: ‘I confess that it had seemed to me as if there could be no further room for you to be wrong in what was, originally, a straightforward case. I should have remembered that in some respects you are a man of great ingenuity.’

‘Senor, I . . .’

‘However, even your ingenuity must finally be exhausted. So I would be exceedingly grateful if you’d now be kind enough to arrest the murderer of those two unfortunate persons,’ said Superior Chief Salas, with insulting politeness. He rang off.

Alvarez slumped back in the chair. It was so very easy to be sarcastic and to point out that the identity of the murderer was obvious. Of course it was - now. If Charles Brent hadn’t murdered Freeman and Mabel Cannon, Anson had. Despite his appearance of being a man who was above all direct, clearly his mind was tortuously clever. He had learned about the tontine and the death of Brent and he had realized that only two deaths lay between Caroline and a fortune. So he had taken those two lives.

It was going to be difficult to convince Caroline because women knew blind loyalties once their emotions were involved. But convinced she would eventually have to be, once told all the facts. Of course, she would hate him for being the person who exposed Anson, but perhaps eventually she would come to realize that he had only been doing his job and therefore her hatred was unjust.

He sighed, then stood up and left. He went down to his car and drove to the Port and the western arm of the harbour. There was a keen east wind coming between the headlands and across the bay and in the first impact of its chill he remembered the cold rain of the previous night and the commissaire who had looked down his nose at a dumb peasant from Mallorca. Well, he had been pretty dumb in many ways.

Mena was in the main shed, working on a traditionally shaped fishing-boat and helping two other men to position one of the ribs. Alvarez stood just beyond the skeleton shape which, when it was completed, would be a boat that was clearly utilitarian yet which nevertheless would have a simple beauty of line. ‘Is the Englishman around?’

‘He’s out on the hard, trying to remove the screw of a pig of a French boat.’

‘I’ll go out and have a word with him . . ..How did the wedding go?’

‘Wonderful! The women wept all day, the men got tight, and the bridegroom fell and twisted his ankle.’

‘If that’s all he twisted, he’ll be all right.’

The two other men sniggered.

Mena turned and spoke scornfully to one of them. ‘You’ve no room to laugh. I’ve heard that when you got married, Carmen locked the bedroom door on you, you were so pickled.’

‘Right enough, but only after I was on the inside.’

Mena spoke to Alvarez. ‘Tell him if he still can’t get that screw off to hit the bloody thing with a five-kilo hammer and if anything breaks we’ll charge the Frenchman double for all the trouble . . . And come and have a drink when you’ve finished with him.’

‘I don’t think I will, thanks.’

‘Great God!’ exclaimed Mena.

Alvarez passed a power boat whose 120 h.p. Mercury outboard lay in a cradle and left the shed through one of the side doors.

Anson, sweating, his face and hands stained with dirty grease, wearing a pair of filthy overalls, had just succeeded in removing the screw from the shaft. He stared belligerently at Alvarez.

‘I want another word with you.’

‘What about?’

The wind gusted and a sheet of newspaper scurried along the ground to wrap itself about Alvarez’s feet. He shivered. ‘Where can we go that’s warmer than here?’

‘You’d find it warm enough if you were working.’ Anson waited, perplexed by the lack of any signs of irritation on the detective’s part. He shrugged his shoulders and led the way into the main shed and across to a small office.

The room was small, overcrowded with a variety of things which clearly could be found no other home, and it smelled of tar and paint. There was a little furniture: a desk, covered with boat equipment, two chairs, one with a small winch on it, and an old and battered bookcase filled with tattered-looking books. Anson picked up the winch and cleared a space for it on the desk.

‘Senor,’ said Alvarez, once seated, ‘as you know I an? investigating the deaths of Senor Freeman and Señorita Cannon. I have before asked you questions and now I have some more to ask.’

‘Go ahead. I can’t stop you wasting your time.’

‘Have you visited Cala San Pedro inside the last year?’

‘I don’t even know where it is.’

‘On the Peninsula, in Rosas Bay.’

‘I haven’t been off the island in eighteen months.’

‘Have you ever known a man called either Charles Brent or Peter Shore?’

‘No. And what can any of this have to do with the deaths?’

‘It has much to do with the señorita’s wealth. Because Señor Brent died and then Señor Freeman, Señorita Cannon became possessed of a great deal of money. Now she has died and in her will she names Señorita Durrel. Did you know Señorita Cannon was very wealthy?’

‘I’ve told you before - she obviously wasn’t starving or she wouldn’t have talked about lending me a million and a half, but more than that I’ve no idea.’

‘Then it will surprise you for me to say she has wealth of more than twenty-five million pesetas?’

Anson stared at him, his expression one of wide amazement. ‘Twenty-five million? Come off it! Someone’s taking you for a sucker.’

‘Let me assure you, she has more than that: how much more I do not yet know.’

‘But twenty-five million . . . Carrie’s going to have that much . . .’ He suddenly swore.

‘You seem worried, señor?’

‘Of course I bloody am. If it had been going to be three or four million, that was great. But twenty-five million . . .’

‘It becomes a very handsome dowry.’

‘Not for me, it doesn’t. You can guess what I’m worth. I’ve my hands and brains and a few years’ experience of kicking around the world and being kicked by it. So if I meet a girl with nothing, we’re level-pegging. If she’s got a bit, that’s fine, because it makes some things easier. But if she’s got a fortune . . . I’m no gigolo.’

‘A very proper sentiment,‘said Alvarez, jealously knowing that implied in Anson’s words had been a declaration of his love for Caroline.

‘Sneer your head off.’

‘Señor, I was not sneering. A man must be independent when he marries in order for his wife to respect him and a wife must respect or she becomes too sharp.’ If Anson had wanted to play the scene in the way most complimentary to himself, thought Alvarez, this was surely how he would have played it - building up the picture of the fiercely independent suitor who positively resented the news that the woman he loved was rich. ‘Señor, perhaps I can help you to feel less disturbed in this matter!’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘Although Señorita Cannon’s estate will be possessed of more than twenty-five million, it is probably not hers so that it will be lost.’

‘But you’ve just said . . .’

‘It is money which was stolen in England and therefore must soon be returned.’

‘You reckon she’d have anything to do with stolen money? You’re round the twist.’

‘It was like this. She was in love with Señor Freeman when they worked together in England and so Señor Freeman could persuade her to rob their firm. They stole almost a quarter of a million pounds. But as it is stolen money, it cannot remain. So Señorita Durrell will not be rich.’ He watched, searching Anson’s expression for the slightest hint of anger or despair, but saw only a puzzlement which appeared to be quite genuine. ‘Señor, I will ask you again about all that happened when you visited Señorita Cannon on the day she died.’