Murder Begets Murder (2 page)

‘The señorita and another man.

‘No! You’re making it all up.’

‘I’m telling the truth, as God is my witness. They were in the downstairs bedroom. The shutters were shut, but the windows were open because it was a warm night and I could hear them. D’you know what she was saying? She loved him and so he wasn’t going to mess around with other women or there’d be real trouble. Just think of it! She was in the downstairs bedroom with a man, talking like that, and the señor was upstairs, so terribly ill.’

‘I must say, I thought she looked that kind of a woman,’ said Dolores, with the proud complacency of a virtuous woman.

‘It made me furious, I can tell you. I banged on the door and she came out of the bedroom looking as if she’d seen a ghost!

‘Had she got anything on?’ asked Jaime.

‘You would ask that, wouldn’t you?’ snapped Dolores. Jaime winked at Alvarez.

‘Just as if she’d seen a ghost,’ repeated Francisca, with satisfaction. ‘Then she kind of pulled herself together and shouted at me as if she were mad. She wanted to know what I was doing there. I told her straight, I was worried about the señor suffering, even if she wasn’t, so I’d brought the pills up instead of waiting until the next day. That stopped her, I can tell you. She calmed right down and even thanked me for being so kind.’

‘Did you see the man?’ asked Dolores.

‘Not likely. He was much too scared to come out. Men are always cowards.’

‘How did the señorita behave the next day?’

‘You’re not going to believe this, but she was as bold as brass about it. Told me how grateful she was for taking her the pills and what did she owe me, but never a word about the man. That morning I had to take a plate of soup up to the señor. When I saw him lying in bed, with the shutters drawn because sunshine bothers him so much now, his beard and hair needing trimming but nothing done for him because she’s too busy . . . I could’ve wept for him. For two pins I’d have told him just how the señorita was behaving.’

‘But you didn’t?’

Francisca shook her head.

‘There’s one thing, he sounds as if he’s too ill to worry about what’s going on,’ said Jaime.

‘So,’ said Dolores belligerently, ‘according to you, when a man is ill his woman’s honour means nothing more to him? Then next time you decide you must stay in bed because you sneezed twice and are dying from a cold, I may entertain who I like?’

‘You mess around with anyone else while I’m still alive and you’ll end up black, blue and purple.’

‘Men!’ she exclaimed scornfully, but she would have been happy with no other answer.

A man approached their table, carrying a large tray on which were pieces of the groom’s tie and several hundred pesetas in notes and silver — money which would go towards the cost of the honeymoon. ‘Come on, now, who’s buying?’

Alvarez brought out his wallet from his inside coat pocket and extracted a five-hundred-peseta note. He put the money on the tray and chose a piece of tie. Most people would give only a hundred pesetas, but he felt as if he were lucky enough to be in the position to buy the bridal pair a small piece of marital insurance.

Harry Waynton looked at his watch and saw that, even by Mallorquin standards, Diana was late. She so often was. He could never decide whether this was a declaration of independence or a simple inability to be anywhere on time.

A waiter came out of the cafe and crossed the square to a table where a woman had just joined the couple who had been sitting there. Waynton wondered whether to order another gin and tonic, but finally decided to wait until Diana arrived.

He leaned back in the chair, warmed by the sunshine which was not too hot because the plane trees which grew around the square provided some shade. An American in faded jeans but a startingly bright patterned shirt waved and started to come over to his table, but on the way he stopped to talk to a group at another table and before long he sat down with them. Life on the island was a casual affair, seldom working out as planned. Just right for people who thought life should be enjoyed, not endured.

He remembered how angry, tearfully angry, Gina had been when she sat up in bed in his flat and shouted : ‘I want to know what’s going to happen to the two of us? Why won’t you understand, I’ve got to know?’ He’d tried to explain that tomorrow was a whole world away so forget it, but she’d delivered an ultimatum, either they formed a partnership with a more permanent future planned, or she’d leave him. She was not a woman to back down so, having declared her position, she had had to leave him. He imagined she regretted this as much as he had.

Some men at some stage of their lives (‘You’re still growing up,’ Stephanie had told him, irritated, frustrated, bewildered, by his casual attitude) needed to drift, to let the wind blow them where it would. For them, life needed to be a plethora of different and unexpected incidents.

He’d had a job, at which he’d proved to be very good, working in the PR department of a car manufacturer.

Having a strong sense of humour, he’d begun by enjoying his task of trying to convince the great British public that they really should buy British-made cars on the grounds of reliability and quality. But eventually he’d become dismayed by the prospect of spending the rest of his working life dealing in farce.

He remembered Rita, who’d liked to walk naked round his flat because she thought it was so good for skin to ‘breathe’. ‘I wouldn’t,’ she’d shouted early one evening and for no reason he could readily discover, ‘marry you if you asked me.’

‘Why not?’ he’d asked, quite interested.

‘Because you’re so . . . so . . .’ She’d struggled to find the right words. ‘Irresponsibly casual.’ And having spoken her mind, she’d burst into tears and rushed to him to be consoled and he’d wondered about asking her to marry him because she was lovely and great fun, but he’d regretfully come to the conclusion that the world hadn’t yet offered him enough experiences for him to settle down.

When he’d handed in his notice, the head of the PR department, a very dependable man, had stared at him in exasperated astonishment. ‘Don’t you realize, Harry, you’re throwing in a job which could take you right up the ladder? And to a thumping good pension.’

How could anyone who was really alive and only twenty-seven worry about his pension?

As he’d wandered through Germany and France, he’d met a number of other people who were drifting before the winds, but most of them, he discovered, seemed to take themselves very seriously. They were, they claimed, searching for meaning. They seemed to view his motiveless drifting with contempt.

In Port Vendres, which he’d reached on a Tuesday when the sun had been shining and the Mediterranean had been a deep, deep blue, he’d discovered that a ferry sailed from there to Mallorca. He’d never been on a Mediterranean island, which was a perfectly good reason for buying a ticket and sailing to one.

He’d seen the concrete jungles, stretches of coast swamped by high rise hotels, apartment blocks, restaurants, tourist shops, and notices which read ‘Tea like Mum makes.’ He had seen the interior, where gaunt mountains reared up out of a moon-like terrain and black vultures and golden eagles rode the thermals. And he had seen Llueso, nestling on and among hills, not quite untouched by development, yet still master of it.

It wasn’t Shangri-la. Just as in anywhere else, there existed indifference, selfishness, hatred, cruelty . . . But it seemed to him as if here man had learned, in so far as he was ever going to, how to live for the greatest enjoyment.

A woman’s voice, pitched a trifle shrilly, with a touch of South Kensingtonitis, interrupted his memories and thoughts. ‘Hullo, Harry. I saw you sitting here so I thought you wouldn’t mind if I joined you for a bit.’

He stood and not for the first time thought what a pity it was that Betty didn’t have more taste. She could have been beautiful — an oval face with high cheekbones to hint at feminine mystery, blue eyes, a nose with a suggestion of a turned-up tip, a generous mouth, naturally curly ash blonde hair, and a slim figure — but she dressed ostentatiously and used far too much make-up. ‘Jolly nice to see you, Betty,’ he said and managed to sound as if he meant it. ‘Sit down and tell me what you’re going to drink.’

‘Can I have a sweet vermouth, please?’

A waiter had come over and Waynton gave the order, including another gin and tonic for himself. ‘How’s Bill today?’ he asked as the waiter left.

‘He seems to me to be a bit worse, but the doctor says he’s about the same. It can happen any moment.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. He’d never met Bill Heron, who’d been ill from the day he arrived on the island, and he saw it as hypocritical to express any more than formally condolatory words.

She said, very abruptly: ‘Are you waiting for someone?’

‘I’m meeting Diana here. Although since she’s now well over half an hour late I’m beginning to have grave doubts on that score.’

‘D’you think she’s forgotten and gone off with someone else?’

He shrugged his shoulders and smiled. ‘She’s over eighteen so who knows? If so, you’ve saved me from getting bored with my own company.’

The waiter brought them their drinks.

A couple came up the steps on to the level part of the square and looked across to the tables. He knew and liked them and waved and they waved back and seemed about to come over when they checked, then turned and crossed to one of the empty tables to the right. He was fairly certain they’d decided not to come because Betty was with him. He wasn’t sure whether people merely disliked her or whether they were reluctant to get close to tragedy: in the timeless, never-never land of Llueso, the stark reality of death was thrice unwelcome.

‘D’you think she’s gone out with Alex ?’ asked Betty suddenly.

‘Who?’ he asked, having forgotten what they’d been talking about.

‘Diana. Maybe she’s having lunch with him and that’s why she’s forgotten to come here.’

He laughed. ‘That’s one of the more unlikely combinations I can think up — at least from Diana’s point of view.’

‘He always tries to be so superior, yet he’s nothing to be superior about except he’s got money,’ she said, with sudden fierceness. ‘Keeps making out he’s from a big family. He hasn’t come from anywhere so why act like he was Lord Muck?’

‘D’you think he really does? I know he’s a bit pompous at times, but that can be rather amusing.’ He’d never understood the resentment which social caste, or the lack of it, or the false assumption of it, seemed to raise in some people’s minds.

She said bitterly: ‘You know what the trouble is, don’t you? People won’t have anything to do with me because I’m not married to Bill.’

‘Come off it. If not being married were a social stigma, half the couples on the island would be out in the cold.’

‘You just don’t understand. It’s so different for a man: you only think it’s amusing. But Bill was going to marry me and then he fell so ill . . .’ She finished her drink in three quick swallows. ‘God, I’ll be glad to get away from this place. Nothing works, the natives rob you every time you open your purse . . .’

‘Have another drink and forget it all.’

She might not have heard him. ‘The electricity failed a couple of weeks ago and I tried to tell the landlord. He pretended he couldn’t understand, so I made him get hold of his wife who speaks a bit of English and told her. It was five days before he came up to see what was wrong. Five bloody days!’ .

‘Time never means much out here. That’s surely one of the charms of the place? Except when the electricity doesn’t work, perhaps.’

‘Charms? God, I’ve another word to describe what it’s like.’

‘I’ll bet . . . Let’s have that other drink and forget all the troubles.’ He signalled to the waiter and ordered another round of drinks.

‘Bill said that if he died I ought to stay here because I’ve friends who’ll help me. Friends!’

He tried to conceal his irritation at her complaining self-pity.

‘I wouldn’t stay on here if you paid me to. The moment I’ve sorted everything out I’m off and I hope it’s the last time I ever have to talk to a stuffy, stuck-up expatriate or a sullen native who’s only interested in how often he can swindle me.’ She picked up her glass, realized it was empty, and replaced it. She was silent for a moment, then she said: ‘Maybe she’s out with Gordon.’ It had been a question, yet she didn’t wait for an answer. ‘She leads a very social life. Knows everyone. She’s lucky.’

If she could have thrown the chips off her shoulder, he thought, she could have started to be lucky. Anyone as attractive as she was needed no social passport.

The waiter brought the drinks and took away their empty glasses.

The clock of the church at the far end of the square struck the hour and as if alarmed by the sound several pigeons rose from the roof of one of the surrounding buildings and, with clattering wings, flew off in the direction of Puig Antonia.

‘I’d better get back,’ she said suddenly. ‘I don’t like leaving Bill for longer than I have to.’ She drank so quickly it was impossible ·she could have enjoyed the vermouth. She left in a flurry of movement, clumsily knocking into a chair at the next table.

Here on the island she was a fish out of water, he thought. Some people never could or would fit into a way of life that was very different from the one they had been brought up in, but he felt certain that even in England she had constantly found cause for discontent.

It was five minutes later, when he’d decided that Diana wasn’t coming, that he saw her emerge from the narrow road by the side of the church. She was a striking woman. She wasn’t beautiful in the classical sense, but her oval face, framed by jet black hair, was filled with character, suggesting in part her headstrong, sometimes wilful nature. She had a quick, easy smile, but if she were bored she often made no attempt to hide the fact and then her mouth had a disdainful curve to it. She was a person of moods, some of them inexplicable unless one understood that she was looking for something without really being certain what this was. She would accept a quiet, easy life for a time, then would suddenly demand movement and excitement. She could be intensely loyal in friendship, but also cynically critical. She professed a contempt for wealth at the same time as she enjoyed its trappings. The general feeling was that her marriage was bound to have broken up because of her character: but this was based on superficial judgement only.