Murder Begets Murder (7 page)

‘Because I was so certain she was an unhappy woman, even though when I said that to her she shouted at me to mind my own business.’ She laughed. ‘One of the occupational hazards of being a busybody do-gooder.’

‘Why did you think she was unhappy?’

‘At first I naturally reckoned it was because Bill was so ill. I told her, make him go into a clinic in Palma: there are specialists there every bit as good as the ones in England.’

‘But I understand he refused to go?’

‘Men can be so stupidly stubborn if you don’t handle them properly. She never struck me as a woman of finesse.’

‘You said this was your first thought. What was your second thought, señora?’

She stopped massaging her cheek and stared challengingly at him. ‘Are you sure that any of this really matters?’

‘It may matter a great deal.’

‘Well, I suppose . . . I’ve more than half an idea that she was upset because she’d become mixed up with another man.’

‘You have a reason for thinking that?’

‘Yes, I have. I called at Ca’n Ibore one afternoon to see if there was any way in which I could help her. She didn’t know I was coming, of course, and obviously hadn’t been expecting any callers . . .’ She became silent.

‘Please continue, señora.’

‘I went into the house and called out. No one answered so I called again. I thought I heard whispering and then she came out of one of the downstairs bedrooms. Her dress was partly undone.’

‘Perhaps she had been having a siesta?’

‘You’re forgetting the whispering. In any case there were her eyes. A woman who has just woken up has sleepy eyes: a woman who has just made love has satiated eyes.’

‘And hers were satiated?’

‘Yes. And what made it all so awful was that Bill was far too ill to have been the man. Quite frankly, I was very upset.’ She paused, then said crisply : ‘You don’t seem at all surprised?’

‘I have already heard the same suggestion from someone else. . . Can you tell me who the man was?’

‘I’ve no idea. I saw no one, and apart from the whispering, heard no one.’

‘But perhaps other people have suggested a name?’

‘As far as I know, no one else has the slightest idea of what has possibly been happening. I am a busybody but not, I hope, a malicious gossip.’

‘Can you give me the names of men she was friendly with, even if there has been no suggestion of anything more than friendship?’

She did not answer.

‘Señora, please. . .’

‘I hate this.’

‘I also, but as it is my job I have to do it. I promise you that I will be most discreet.’

She said: ‘I’m sure you will. I often saw her with Harry Waynton. It seemed to me an unlikely relationship because they were so different in character, but then human relationships aren’t founded on logic, thank God.’

‘And was there anyone else?’

‘No one. Betty was the kind of person who would always be lonely, even in a crowd.’

‘Thank you for telling me all that you have, señora. You’ve been most kind.’

‘To whom?’

Down below the gardener’s son tried to do a somersault off the edge of the pool and created a minor tidal wave.

During the season, the beaches became crowded to the point of discomfort. But for the few who were lucky enough to know about them, there remained small, hidden coves which offered lonely, unspoiled beauty.

Cala Tellai lay in a valley at the end of a winding dirt track four kilometres long. The rocky hills, bearing some scrub grass and a few pine trees, stretched out to sea to form a cove in which the water was a deep, rich blue except very close to the pebbly shore where it was a greeny blue. There was no pollution here, except for the occasional piece of rubbish swept in from beyond the headland or the ubiquitous clags of oil: squid and octopus jetted through the water, fish flashed silver as they turned below the surface, our sins clung to rocks with malicious immobility, and above ravens and buzzards worked the thermals.

They sat a couple of hundred metres up on the side of the cove so that they looked down on the paper-smooth water.

They were under the shade of a pine, but all around them was the intense sunshine. The air shrilled to the calls of countless cicadas.

‘Like Naples,’ said Diana, who wore the briefest of bikinis, ‘this p ace is so beautiful that it’s a case of “See Cala Tellai and die.” ’

Waynton grinned. ‘But like the saint who sought chastity and continency, please not just yet.’

She laughed. ‘There’s too much realism in you for a real dreamer.’

‘I’ve never claimed to be that. If I had to, I’d call myself casually down-to-earth.’

‘There has to be some dreamer in you or you wouldn’t be out on this island.’

‘Speak to my late boss and he’ll tell you it’s madness, not dreaming.’

‘Good! I’m all for a bit of pleasant madness.’ She stretched out on the towel and her right foot moved into the sun: she automatically withdrew it. ‘Predictability is so terribly boring.’

‘You’re in luck then, since there’s not much predictability to living out here. The only predictable thing is that the unpredictable will happen.’

‘That’s being rose-tinted about things. So many people here are every bit as predictable as they would be in outer Wimbledon. Old Wally always tells his dirty little schoolboy jokes, Max’s hands forever wander, Piers is a walking calculator on how his stocks and shares have gone up or down.’

‘I wasn’t really thinking so specifically — much more generally. For instance, how will each person react to living here when before he came he was almost certainly convinced it was Arcadia ?’

‘Start becoming personal.’ She turned over on to her bronzed stomach and propped herself up on her elbows so that she could look at him through her dark glasses. ‘How have you reacted?’

‘Like so many English, I used to imagine that living on a Mediterranean island in the hot sun, drinking, and letting the world drift by, must be man’s nearest approach to the heaven of fables.’

‘Didn’t I say you were part dreamer?’

‘And didn’t I say I was casually practical? A dreamer would have gone on dreaming and staying in England so that he could never suffer disillusionment. I came out to discover how my dreams matched up to reality.’

‘You’re twisting things round. A dreamer pursues his dreams: the practical man doesn’t because he’s so certain they’re false.’ She relaxed, lay out at full length and closed her eyes as she rested her head on her arms. ‘So how has the dreamer — or the casual practicalist — made out?’

‘He’s discovered that nature abhors complete perfection. If a thing appears perfect, it contains within it the seeds of imperfection. Parts of this island are Arcadia: but because they are, they are dangerous and therefore much less than Arcadia.’

‘Is that very profound?’

‘It’s probably pretentious tripe, but blame the wine.’

She rolled on to her side. ‘What is it? Are you scared that you could be drawn too tightly to this island because it can seem so perfect?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then it’s you who is imperfect — you’ve admitted to a lack of self-control.’

‘Better to be a coward than fall a-over-t on the banana skin of over-confidence.’ He refilled their glasses with white wine, chilled from the bottle having been kept in a freezy-bag. ‘I’ve decided I’d better start thinking of when I’m going to go back to the UK.’

‘I’m sure you’re right there, Harry. It doesn’t matter what I’ve been saying, the truth is that this place isn’t any good for anyone who still has enough ambition to want to be a hundred per cent alive.’

He finished his wine. ‘Do you like living here?’

‘I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.’

‘Aren’t you worried about its effects on you?’

‘Not really, because it’s not the same for a woman. We can remain fully alive because we carry our interests around with us so much more than you men do. And in any case, when I get too fed up with meeting the same people who keep saying die same things at the same cocktail parties, I fly back to England and have a long, sybaritic wallow among the plays, concerts, operas, films, museums, art galleries — even the television there gets better and better the longer you have to watch other countries’.’

‘You’re lucky to be able to go back when you want.’

‘Evan has always been a very generous man.’

‘Is he your husband?’

‘My ex. The divorce was finalized a year ago.’

‘What is he like as a person?’

‘Kind, thoughtful, wealthy, and very generous.’

‘Then what went wrong?’

‘That’s a bloody silly question! Surely to God you’ve enough common sense not to think that all a husband needs to offer his wife to make her happy are kindliness and a limitless dress allowance? . . . The marriage was a mistake, just as much mine as his. I can’t live a lie so I told him how I felt. Being the man he is, he accepted my decision and told his lawyer — much against that desiccated man’s advice — to give me an irrevocable settlement in lieu of maintenance.’

‘So now you’re rich?’

‘I’ve more than I need, which I suppose meets most people’s idea of being rich.’ She suddenly sat up to face him. ‘But I’m rich only as long as I remain on my own. If ever I marry again I’m handing all that money back irrevocable or not, because if I kept it I would be back to living a lie.’

‘That leaves me free to tell you something you already know, I love you. Marry me, Diana. Your standard of living will take an almighty bump . . .’

‘Don’t step out of character and become all corny,’ she said sharply. Then she noticed his expression and she smiled. ‘Haven’t you realized I can be a real bitch without even trying? Look, what I was trying to say is this, I don’t ever want to be poor because it’s nicer being well off — love on the dole sounds hideous. But I don’t need to have wardrobes full of new clothes and a mock Tudor mansion in Bagshot to be happy. I just need to live with someone I both respect and love and who loves and respects me.’

‘I qualify for the last half: what about the first?’

‘I’m sorry, really sorry, Harry, but I’m not certain.’

‘Competition?’

‘For you — no. If I had to consider just you I’d know my feelings for sure, but I’ve also to worry about myself.’ She leaned forward and kissed him, briefly yet with tender passion. ‘You see I don’t want to make a second mistake. It would be so bloody painful for both of us.’ Her eyes remained rather sad as she said softly: ‘Just for once, give in to the sirens’ song. Let yourself drift. There’s no yesterday and no tomorrow, only today to be enjoyed without thought or consequence.’

Superior Chief Salas was an impatient man and scornful of anyone whose mind appeared to work less quickly than his own. ‘Don’t you understand? I want to know whether the señorita did or did not die from natural causes?’ Alvarez sighed as he held the telephone receiver a little away from his ear. ‘Señor, until the results of the postmortem . . .’

‘Surely you’ve conducted at least some sort of an investigation into the circumstances of her death?’

‘Indeed I have . . .’

‘Then with what results?’

‘I suppose to be accurate, señor, I should say that at the moment there aren’t any.’

‘Why not?’

‘It hasn’t been easy . . .’

‘I imagine you find considerable difficulty in most things.’

In many ways, that was true.

‘I want a full report on the present state of the investigations on my desk first thing tomorrow morning. Is that quite clear?’

‘Indeed, señor.’

Salas hardly bothered to say goodbye before ringing off.

Alvarez replaced the receiver, sighed, ran the palm of his hand over his forehead at the point where the hair was receding far too quickly for his peace of mind, and sighed again. He reached down to the bottom right-hand drawer of the desk and brought out a glass and a half-full bottle of brandy.

He poured himself out a large drink and lit a cigarette. Sudden and unexpected death always raised questions, but usually these were quickly answered: the English, though, forever ungraciously awkward, seemed unable to die straightforwardly. It seemed as if Señorita Stevenage had died from some form of natural food poisoning. But wouldn’t she have felt the symptoms become worse and worse, and even if she had initially ignored them have made every effort to summon help instead of remaining in the kitchen? True Ca’n Ibore was partially isolated and without a telephone, but still it was difficult to believe she could not have dragged herself to the next house . . . If she had been poisoned, surely the motive must concern her lover? Francisca had heard her tell a man that she loved him and ‘he wasn’t going to mess around with other women or she’d make trouble for him: Señora Browning had visited the house unexpectedly and had been met by a woman whose eyes betrayed the fact that she had just been making love. (It made a man uneasy to learn how far a woman’s eyes betrayed her to another woman.) After the death of Señor Heron, whom she had been betraying so callously, had she expected her lover to love her openly, perhaps marry her? And had he decided that his only way of escape was to murder her, either because he didn’t love her that much, or he was married and unable or unwilling to obtain a divorce. . . ?

Alvarez entered the block of flats and climbed the stairs and by the time he reached the third floor he was sweating profusely. He ate, smoked, and drank far too much: one day he would go on a diet, give up smoking, and limit himself to one drink a day.

Waynton opened the door of Flat 10. Alvarez saw a face which suggested its owner had been around, had taken and given a few hard knocks, and had learned to face the world with a wry sense of humour.

They went into the sitting-room which was also the dining-room, and sat.

‘Señor,’ said Alvarez, in his slow, tired-sounding voice, ‘you will know that Señorita Stevenage died and that her death was unfortunately not discovered until yesterday morning. I am now having to make certain enquiries. I understand you knew the señorita well?’

‘Without wishing to quibble, it depends what you mean by “well”. I saw her quite often, but only casually and it was merely a case of having a drink together or even just a chat.’