Troubled Deaths (6 page)

‘Then how did this one happen?’

The doctor shrugged his shoulders.

‘Obviously, we’re going to have to make very careful enquiries. And perhaps we shall find that it isn’t all that simple to tell the difference between them. I will question the cook exhaustively.’

‘If I may suggest when you question her . . .’ began Alvarez.

‘You will accompany me.’

Alvarez gloomily stared at his shoes, which badly needed polishing.

The captain stood up and tugged a crease out of his uniform jacket. ‘We will go right away, since this is a matter of great urgency. Doctor, you will hold yourself in readiness for any further consultation.’

‘Naturally,’ snapped the doctor, freshly annoyed by this unnecessary order.

They left the building together and then parted, the doctor going to his new Seat 131, the captain and Alvarez to the former’s old Seat 124.

The captain drove with a careless disregard for other users of the road and Alvarez, always inclined to be nervous when being driven, closed his eyes and quietly asked St Christopher to look down with kindness on one poor sinner and protect him.

The captain lost his way, a fact which did not help his temper, and it was twenty minutes later before they drove through the gateway of Ca’n Ritat. The captain stopped with squealing brakes. ‘Not bad. Not bad at all,’ he said, as he stared at the house.

Alvarez looked at the soil and saw it was a rich dark brown and not very stony, so that it was not surprising that the garden was a mass of flowers and flowering shrubs. But soil that good ought to be growing vegetables, not flowers.

They had left the car and were walking towards the front door of the house, to the accompaniment of considerable barking from the dog, when Matilde stepped out of the kitchen into the courtyard. The captain turned into the courtyard. ‘Are you the cook?’ he asked curtly.

Disturbed because of his rank and frightened by his authoritative manner, she just nodded.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Matilde Blanco, señor.’

‘Right, I want a talk with you.’ He looked past her and at the kitchen door. ‘We’ll go in there,’ he said, striding forward.

Alvarez waited for Matilde and then he followed the other two inside. He looked around the kitchen and saw electric cooker, very large refrigerator, deep-freeze, washing-up machine, mixer, and rotisserie, and he wondered how much it had cost to equip this kitchen. His mother had used only a charcoal fire and yet she had been the finest cook in the world.

‘The English señor died this morning, almost certainly from eating a llargsomi,’ said the captain abruptly, as if addressing a subordinate.

She stared at him. Her face was white and her eyes, reddened from past weeping, again filled with tears. ‘It was terrible,’ she murmured. ‘Mother of God, he was in such pain.’

‘Yes, yes, all very sad, but it’s over and done with. What we have to discover now is how you came to cook him a llargsomi.’

‘How I . . . señor, I never cooked him a llargsomi.’

‘Don’t be silly about this. He died from eating a poisonous fungus and you cooked his supper.’

‘But I would never cook a llargsomi. And in any case. . .’

‘The facts are too obvious, señora, to admit of weak excuses. You must have made a mistake.’

‘Señor, I swear by all the holy saints . . .’

Alvarez interrupted her, speaking in an easy, friendly voice. ‘Senora, we have to try to find out how the Englishman came to eat a llargsomi. We understand the señor ate the esclatasangs on Thursday evening and so we naturally thought you must have cooked his meal?’

She shook her head.

‘Who did cook it, then?’ he asked, with endless patience.

‘He must have done, mustn’t he?’

‘Why?’ snapped the captain.

She looked at him with renewed nervousness, ‘But the esclatasangs were in the dish in the larder when I left the house on Thursday evening and they weren’t in it the next morning. And there were the dirty plates for one person from the night before.’

‘That’s certainly straightforward,’ said Alvarez. ‘Senora, is your husband here at the moment?’

‘No, señor, he is in Barcelona. His brother is very ill and perhaps is going to die so Luis had to go to him. You see, Antonio is younger and Luis had to look after him when his parents died during the war and so they are very close together.’

‘I very much hope, señora, that your husband finds his brother is not as seriously ill as you have heard. Doctors can be very pessimistic if it is to help their reputations.’

‘But when the señor died here . . . I thought, perhaps this is an omen.’

He firmly shook his head. ‘An Englishman would never let himself become an omen for a Mallorquin. It would be beneath his dignity.’

‘Enough wasting time,’ snapped the captain. He smacked the palm of his hand down on the side of his immaculately creased trousers. ‘There was a llargsomi amongst the esclatasangs.’

She shook her head.

‘Don’t be ridiculous, there must have been.’

‘There can’t have been, señor. Lopez brought them to me and . . .’

‘Who’s Lopez?’

She looked at him with fresh bewilderment.

He smacked his hands against his trousers again. ‘Who is this Lopez who brought you the esclatasangs?’

‘But everyone knows who he is, señor.’

‘The saints preserve me,‘said the captain. ‘Listen, everyone does not know who this Lopez is. ,’ do not know and I wish to know. Who is Lopez?’

She suddenly sat down, as if she could no longer stand.

‘Perhaps he is the gardener?‘suggested Alvarez, and he smiled at her encouragingly. She nodded.

‘So the gardener picked the esclatasangs and gave them to you - is that what happened?‘asked the captain.

‘Yes, señor.’

‘Why in the blazes couldn’t you have said so at the beginning? So, now we know a little more. Then where is this gardener now?’

‘But in the garden, señor.’

The captain had the sudden thought that she was trying to take the mickey out of him, but when he glared at her and saw the look of apprehension he was satisfied that she had not so dared. ‘We’ll go and speak to the gardener.‘He turned smartly and strode out of the kitchen into the courtyard. The dog began to bark, hoping for some attention, but he marched past it without stopping.

‘Don’t you go on worrying,‘said Alvarez to Matilde. ‘It doesn’t seem as if you’ve,anything to blame yourself for.’

She was reassured by his words and also by the friendly expression on his square, heavy-set, dark-complexioned face which suggested some of the love he felt for most living things. ‘I swear by the Holy Virgin, señor, that there was no Uargsomi in the esclatasangs. Always, always, I check, even though it is Lopez who brings them. The señor couldn’t have died from eating a Uargsomi.’

‘Maybe you’re right and we’ll discover it was really too much alcohol. The English like killing themselves off that way.’

He left the kitchen and went out into the courtyard. From his right he heard the sound of the captain’s shouting. He walked out of the courtyard, pausing to pat the dog on its head, and then down a loose gravel path which wound past roses, geraniums, and chrysanthemums, to a shallow pond in which a number of goldfish swam lazily around and under water-lilies. The captain, red in the face, was shouting at Orozco. Alvarez w r as amused to see how this squat, solidly and stolidly featured man who was leaning on the handle of a rake, was staring into some private distance as if he were totally unconcerned with what was going on about him.

‘I’m telling you, he died from eating a llargsomi,’ shouted the captain.

Orozco briefly returned from his private distance. ‘Impossible.’

‘Don’t bloody tell me it’s impossible when I’m telling you it happened. He ate a llargsomi and it killed him. You picked it, mistaking it for an esclatasang.’

‘Impossible.’

‘Goddamn it, haven’t I just said it happened?’ The captain fingered the belt around his waist and it was possible to imagine he was wishing he wore a revolver. He glared at Alvarez, said, ‘you talk to him and see if you can get any sense,’ and stamped off, disappearing behind a low palm tree.

Orozco hawked and spat. Alvarez said in Mallorquin: ‘He comes from San Sebastian. Up there, they all get like that. I suppose it’s the climate.’

‘Are you from this island?’

‘Don’t I sound like it?’

‘Yeah.’

There was a shout from behind the palm tree. Tm going back to the post.’

Alvarez jerked his thumb. ‘Always in a rush. As soon as he gets to one place, he wants to be up and off to another.’

‘Silly bugger,‘said Orozco contemptuously.

‘You’ve just about got him taped. He didn’t even know what an esclatasang was! And when he heard the English señor had probably died from eating a Uargsomi, he said we’d have to find every one on the island and root them up.’

Orozco guffawed.

‘Then he wanted to know how anyone ever dared eat an esclatasang.’

‘Why not give him a Uargsomi to taste?’

The captain shouted out: ‘Are you coming?’

‘I reckon I’ll stay on here a bit and walk back, señor,’ Alvarez replied.

They heard the slam of a car door. The engine started, the car backed, turned, and accelerated down the drive, scattering loose gravel behind it.

Alvarez undid the knot of his tie and unbuttoned the collar of his shirt. He brought a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. ‘D’you use these?’

Orozco took one and lit a match for them. ‘It’s good-looking soil you’ve got here,’ said Alvarez. ‘Must grow well?’

Orozco nodded.

‘It’s a pity you have to mess around with flowers and don’t grow any vegetables.’

‘Come,’ said Orozco. He led the way past the fish pool, along the side of the swimming pool, the surface of which was attractively patterned with cloud reflections, and beyond the old donkey well which had been restored.

Alvarez stared at the rows of lettuces, cauliflowers, potatoes, beans, artichokes, and cabbages. ‘I’m telling you, that’s the finest showing I’ve seen for many a long day. And look at these cauliflowers - how d’you manage to get ‘em this early?’

‘D’you like ‘em?’

‘Love ‘em.’

‘Then I’ll cut you one.’ Orozco took a penknife from his pocket and, with the slow measured steps of a true countryman, walked along between the two rows of cauliflowers as he searched for the largest one. He finally bent down and cut one half-way along the row.

When it was handed to him, Alvarez shook his head in admiration. ‘It’s a real beauty.’

‘He didn’t like ‘em.’ Orozco jerked his head in the direction of the house. ‘Said they was only fit for pigs.’

‘He’ll never know what he missed . . . Seems odd, doesn’t it, that he died from eating a Uargsomi? It’s a long time since the last death like that which I can remember. Being a foreigner, of course, he wouldn’t have known how to watch out. . . But I keep forgetting, you picked ‘em, not him.’

‘And what I picked was all esclatasangs.’

‘It looks like there must have been a Uargsomi among ‘em.’

‘I’m telling you, I picked all esclatasangs. D’you reckon I can’t tell one from t’other?’

‘But in that case, where could the Uargsomi have come from?’

They were silent. A thrush flew past and Alvarez watched it circle a castor bush. He hoped it wouldn’t be killed during the shooting season because he liked to see birds on the wing, not killed in the name of sport - not that he ever refused to eat a thrush if one, or preferably two, were offered to him. They were delicious. He heard a donkey bray and when that stopped there was the unmusical sound of a number of bells which were strung round the necks of either goats or sheep.

‘What kind of a bloke was the señor?’ asked Alvarez finally.

‘A loud-mouthed ram.’

‘Always after the women, was he?’

‘If I’ve seen one brought here, I’ve seen a hundred.’

‘Lucky man.’

‘Silly bitches,’ countered Orozco.

Caroline saw that Mabel’s car was parked outside Casa Elba so she paid the taxi-driver and added a small tip. The driver smiled his thanks and left.

She went along the side of the bungalow towards the front door. Only a narrow path through the maquis scrub had been cleared by the previous owner and Mabel had never bothered to have this enlarged or even kept trimmed so that now shrub branches reached out to worry passers-by. Mabel was as careless about the look of the outside of the bungalow as of the inside.

She opened the door. Her face was puffy and her eyes were reddened. Caroline did not have to ask if she had heard the news. ‘I’m terribly, terribly sorry, Mabel.’

Mabel said nothing but stepped to one side and Caroline went in. The small kitchen was to the right, the passage to the bedrooms to the left, and the very large sitting-room straight ahead. It could have been an attractive, warm, friendly house if only Mabel had taken the trouble to make it so. A fire had been burning in the open grate along the north wall, but the logs had rolled apart some time ago and now were smouldering, giving off little or no heat but plenty of smoke which kept billowing into the room. On one of the small occasional tables was an opened bottle of brandy and a glass.

‘Fenella told me what happened, Mabel, and she asked me to say how sorry she is. She’d have come to tell you herself, but didn’t want to upset you.’ That was a lie – Fenella had never suggested calling for fear she’d become involved. But Caroline was ready to lie if it would help someone else if she did so.

Mabel stood by the sideboard which was against the dividing wall of the kitchen and she fiddled with a brass ornament. ‘I. . . I never went to see him before he died.’

‘Don’t you think that’s as well? I know people often do go out of a sense of duty, but when it’s a really serious illness and you can’t help at all, surely it’s better to stay away and remember the person as you last saw him, fit and well?’

‘Don’t you know how I last saw him?’ she demanded wildly.

Caroline was shocked by the effect her words had had.

‘Hasn’t anyone told you? That’s a change for this place where that kind of news usually gets around in a flash because it’s all so hilarious.’