An Air of Murder

by Roderic Jeffries

  ‘Has something gone wrong?’ Dolores asked.

  ‘Not exactly, but I am bitterly disappointed.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘That was to tell me I have to fly to England to pursue investigations into the death of Señorita Coates.’

  Jaime, who had been about to drink, held the glass in front of his mouth. ‘You told me only yesterday you’d been suspended—’

  Alvarez hurriedly cut in. ‘That I was worried I would be. Thankfully, I was wrong.’

  ‘I’m sure you said . . .’

  ‘That Rios was being his usual unpleasant self.’

  Dolores stared at Jaime, then at Alvarez. ‘When do you have to fly to England?’

  ‘Monday morning.’

  ‘You have forgotten the Ortegas are coming here for a meal on Monday?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Then why did you not say it was impossible for you to go until Tuesday?’

  ‘I tried to get out of it – didn’t you hear me? But I can’t argue too hard with Salas and he was adamant I had to do as he said.’

  She stood, marched through to the kitchen.

  Jaime drank. ‘You did say you’d been suspended.’

  ‘Just forget it, will you?’

  Dolores pushed through the bead curtain, stood with arms crossed over her bosom. ‘It was not the usual woman who spoke to me.’

  ‘So you said,’ Alvarez replied.

  ‘It was a man.’

  ‘You mentioned that as well.’

  ‘He sounded as if he was trying not to laugh.’

  ‘Perhaps he’d just heard a good joke.’

  ‘Since it has always been that woman in the past, why did not another woman take over her job?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know. Anyway, it’s a time of sexual equality so where’s the difference?’

  ‘As if a man could ever be the equal of a woman!’ She stared suspiciously at him for several more seconds. ‘You have not been suspended from duty as Jaime understood you to have said?’

  ‘He got muddled up.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Jaime said hastily. ‘I misunderstood him.’

  ‘Or misunderstood what you were supposed to have heard?’

  Alvarez said. ‘If I had been suspended, they wouldn’t now be sending me to England, would they?’

  She returned to the kitchen. It had been a close-run thing, Alvarez thought, especially as she held that whenever a man had a ready answer to explain his actions, he was lying.

  Little provoked so much fear in Alvarez’s mind as flying. As an altophobe, he dreaded heights; as a logical man, he knew nothing heavier than air could fly unless it was covered in feathers. Only several brandies – the stewardess seemed to become increasingly reluctant to serve him – enabled him to survive the two hours waiting for the engines to fail, the wings to collapse, the tail to fracture, sudden decompression to suck him out on his last, featherless journey . . .

  As he left the plane, he was tempted to bend down and kiss the floor of the connecting rig, but that was too dirty, so once in the main airport hall, he bought himself a brandy. It was not the gesture of heartfelt gratitude he intended. He had forgotten how absurdly expensive a drink in England was.

  As the taxi drove along the narrow, winding lanes, through countryside so green the colour appeared false after the browns of Mallorca, the meter seemed to have gone into overdrive and Alvarez began to think he might be making this journey because he had panicked unnecessarily. It was the age of women’s domination, when the law supported them in every field they, chose, but it hadn’t yet demanded a man be forced to marry at a woman’s will rather than his own. Yet had he stayed on the island and not been present when the Ortegas were guests, Dolores might well have decided that endless meals would consist of boiled chickpeas with no rich sauce to disguise their flavour.

  ‘Nearly there,’ said the driver.

  In the field to the right, two magnificently coloured cock pheasants were sparring, their thoughts on the nearby hen pheasants, not the first of October. As they passed out of sight, Alvarez assured himself that it was ridiculous to worry about the cost of this taxi ride, or to balance that against his escaping Eva. The prime reason for this trip to England was an altruistic one. He was pursing the hundred-to-one chance he could uncover proof which would release Laura Gerrard from the fear which gripped her. Yet – as the meter ticked on – he could not stop himself wondering if it had ever been remotely possible he might prove Gerrard’s innocence by this visit? Where did he start a search for something he couldn’t identify or define?

  ‘Here you are, then, mate. Looks like open day.’

  He paid the excessive amount of money recorded on the meter and added a tip which he considered over-generous, but which made the driver’s lips curl. As the car drove away, he studied Stayforth House, some thousand yards from where he stood. Country Life would have termed it a smaller country house, but to him it was an English mansion. Brick-built, symmetrically proportioned, it had tall sash windows on the lower and upper floors and four dormer windows above these; in the centre of the tiled roof was a belvedere with arched windows and corners picked out in white stone. The grounds were extensive; the lawns looked to be of bowling-green smoothness, the flower beds were filled with colour, the yews clipped into the shape of animals were topiary art, and there were several female statues to add further interest. Beyond the ha-ha was rolling countryside and woods. Small wonder, he thought, that when the Gerrards had spoken about the estate, it had been with pride and regret. Had he been Charles Gerrard, time could never lessen his bitter sense of injustice that no part of this was his merely because he was the younger son.

  The main wrought-iron gates were closed; at the much smaller side gate, he was asked for five pounds entrance fee. His surprise must have shown, because the woman seated at the table tartly told him all entrance money was donated to charity, thanks to the generosity of Lady Gerrard.

  He walked around the gardens, marvelling at the work and cost involved in keeping them in such pristine condition. A notice outside the very large walled garden announced this was out of bounds to visitors. A man was working by the entrance and Alvarez engaged him in conversation and explained he was from Mallorca and how interesting it was to see what fruit and vegetables were grown in so cold and inhospitable a climate. He could project an easy warmth of character and soon was asked into the kitchen garden. Liberal praise for the quality of what he saw, frequent exclamations of surprise at the fruit on the espalier trees, soon had the gardener speaking freely; a deliberate misidentification of yellow tomatoes enabled him to refer to the Gerrards and mention what a pleasant couple they were.

  ‘Aye, Mr Charles and his missus are fine. And if they were here instead of her ladyship . . .’ He became silent.

  ‘Lady Gerrard seems a very ‘difficult sort of person.’

  ‘Met her, have you?’

  ‘She’s staying in her house on the island and I’ve had to talk to her once or twice.’

  ‘Been a problem, has there? I mean, what with you being a policeman.’

  ‘There has. And she’s caused trouble objecting to some of the things I had to say ,to her.’

  The gardener bent down and inspected a slug trap laced with beer. ‘She’s bloody good at objecting.’ He straightened up. ‘Comes and tells me all what’s wrong with the garden when she don’t know nothing about nowt. They say in the house that she’s a right royal . . . Don’t do to bite the hand what feeds you.’

  ‘But it can be very satisfying.’

  The gardener’s deeply lined face creased as he laughed. ‘That’s right enough! The gentry always complains, but they know how to do that, she don’t. To be frank, I never understood what made Sir Jerome marry her instead of one of his own kind. All right, she’d the looks and likely gave him his money’s worth in bed, but he could have had all that on the side, like most of ’em do. It wouldn’t surprise me if he’d asked himself more than once why he married her.
And if he ever suspected . . .’

  ‘Suspected what?’

  ‘Shouldn’t rightly say.’

  ‘A policeman is like a priest, his lips are sealed.’

  The gardener moved forward several paces, bent down to examine a line of lettuces and spoke while remaining bending. ‘Sir Jerome was away on a business trip, soon after they was married, and a man came visiting more often than Sir Jerome would have wished. A smooth bastard, being French.’

  ‘Are you suggesting they had an affair?’

  The gardener finally straightened up. ‘I ain’t said nothing.’ ‘I haven’t heard anything.’

  ‘Tell you what, it’s time for a coffee; care for some?’

  ‘I would indeed.’

  Whether what he drank in the wooden potting shed was coffee, Alvarez was not certain. He braved himself to finish what was in the cup, refused with thanks the offer of a refill, remarked he’d been hoping to look over the house because Señor Gerrard had spoken so enthusiastically about it, but he understood the house wasn’t open to the public.

  ‘They tried to get her to allow it because it could bring in more money, but she wasn’t having that. But there’s no problem, not with you knowing Mr Charles. I’ll have a word with Mrs Dobbs and she’ll show you around, then you can go back and tell Mr Charles how the place looks. Though maybe that’s not such a good idea. Won’t make him happy, thinking of her and that little snipe of a son living here.’ Mrs Dobbs was tall, thin, and angular, but possessed of a warmer character than her appearance suggested and she agreed to show Alvarez around the house. She asked him how Mr and Mrs Charles were and would he give them her regards when he next saw them. They went out of the kitchen and along a passage to a door lined with green beige. ‘The iron curtain,’ she said, with a laugh.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘The end of our world and the beginning of hers. I don’t suppose she’s come through once since she’s lived here. Never understood she could show an interest in what goes on without us trying to become familiar.’

  Beyond, there was for him a world from television. Large rooms with moulded ceilings, fireplaces with carved marble mantelpieces, extravagant curtains, magnificent carpets, antique furniture with glowing patina, display cabinets filled with gold, silver, ivory, and porcelain, paintings by old masters, a library with shelves filled with matching leather-bound volumes . . .

  This is the oldest bit of family history,’ she said in the blue room, as she came to a stop by a rosewood display table with splayed legs.

  He looked through the glass top at the black velvet-lined interior in which lay fourteen heart-shaped gold lockets, each with a diamond in the centre, its gold chain artistically arranged, and by its side a small tag on which was written a name and a Roman numeral or numerals.

  The first is from the seventeenth century when Sir Peter Gerrard was born, not that he was the first baronet then; the title wasn’t created until twenty-two years later. The story goes, he was a sickly child and likely to die and his mother was so distraught, she had the locket made and put his hair in it so that if he died she’d always have a little of him close to her heart. He lived to be seventy-nine and since then a similar locket has been made each time an heir is born. It’s become a family superstition – provided there’s a locket, the heir won’t die early. Sir Fergus, Sir Jerome’s young son, is the fifteenth baronet and it’s his locket at the bottom on the right.’

  The lockets seemed to have a familiar shape, yet unable to place why this should be, he dismissed the possibility as meaningless. Because his work had trained him to check everything where possible, he automatically and without conscious thought, counted the lockets. There are only fourteen.’

  ‘Not many notice that. Sir Jerome’s locket disappeared some years back.’ After a moment, she said: ‘George said as you’re a detective in Spain?’

  ‘I am, yes.’

  Then there can’t be no harm in saying. I wasn’t here at the time, but I’ve been told the talk was, it was stolen by an employee. Seems she was suspected, but Lady Gerrard wouldn’t have the police called in, said it wasn’t worth the fuss and bother. She couldn’t understand what the loss meant to Sir Jerome, of course, her not really being of the family. I’ve often thought, maybe it wasn’t an ordinary theft. Women get funny ideas sometimes. I mean, they become so sentimentally possessive of someone they’ve looked after, they begin to think they’ve a right to a memento of him. And when she left, she’d been working as nursemaid to Sir Fergus.’

  ‘What was her name?’

  ‘Dora. Don’t remember her surname.’

  ‘Coates?’

  ‘That’s right. But how did you guess?’

  ‘She visited Lady Gerrard just before she died.’

  ‘Well I never! And you say she’s dead?’

  ‘Drowned in Llueso Bay.’

  ‘Poor woman. But we all have to die, it’s just the way it happens that’s different.’

  Hardly comforting words, he thought, as he casually looked back at the lockets; and then, although he wasn’t trying to provoke his memory, it responded. He had found a similar one in Dora Coates’s hotel bedroom. He had come to Stayforth House in the hopes he would discover something important concerning the Gerrards, Dora Coates, and Colin Short; all he had learned was that Dora had stolen a locket when she had worked for the Gerrards. As any Mallorquin who had lived through the troubled years could have told him, ‘Hope never did fill an empty belly’.

  Twenty-Four

  ALVAREZ SAT AT THE KITCHEN TABLE AND MISERABLY ACCEPTED that very soon a superior chief and a colonel would sit in judgement of him. The more senior an officer, the stronger his sense of traditional values – one must believe a lady of rank, disbelieve a mere inspector. He would be dismissed the force. No pension, nothing to show for all his years of hard, faithful service; his life reduced to a minimum standard; a bottle of the cheapest wine, a purchase which had to be considered before it was made . . .

  His bitter ruminations were suddenly banished by a revelation from on high. Mrs Dobbs had planted in his mind the belief Dora Coates had taken the locket because she longed to have a memento of the child she’d helped to rear. But it was Sir Jerome’s locket which had been stolen, not his son’s. So the motive for the taking had been plain theft, the desire for a memento of the whole family rather than of the child, or a mistake – she had meant to take Fergus’s locket. The last might seem the least likely, remembering each locket had a name tag by it, but she might have been under such emotional stress – an honest woman knowing she was committing theft, but unable to resist the urge – that she had not had the wit to check what she was taking. As to which was the correct answer, he didn’t give a damn. He refilled his glass. There was one small glimmer of light amidst the darkness. Before he was ignominiously thrown out of the Cuerpo, he could make certain the locket found in Dora Coates’s handbag was returned to Stayforth House so that tradition was once more intact.

  Rios said: ‘I told you to report here in order to give you a message from the superior chief.’

  ‘It didn’t occur to you to phone me at home?’

  ‘The superior chief said I was to speak to you face to face so that there could be no chance of your suggesting you had misheard because of poor telephone lines. You are reminded you are to attend the hearing into your conduct and are to report to headquarters in Palma at twelve hundred hours. Is that understood?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m off now, to question Señor Gerrard.’

  ‘Again?’

  ‘However clever a man thinks himself, there is always a time when he forgets what he has previously said.’

  ‘But the interrogator remembers, because he is so much cleverer?’

  Rios left.

  Unaware of the irony of remaining in the office when he was suspended from duty and so free to leave and do what he wanted, Alvarez sat in the chair behind his desk. He stared at the unshuttered window. He was still convinced Lady
Gerrard was in some way connected with the deaths of Dora Coates and Jiminez – so that his questioning of her and his examination of her financial affairs had been justified – but if asked to provide a scintilla of proof of this conviction, he would have to stay silent. Would the two judges, could the two judges, understand that she had complained of his behaviour because she was a vindictive woman; that she exaggerated whenever it suited her to do so . . . But money and position dulled most men’s minds.

  The phone rang.

  ‘There’s a woman asking for you,’ the duty cabo said. ‘Leastwise, I think that’s her problem. She doesn’t speak anything but English, keeps saying your name.’

  ‘What’s hers?’

  ‘Gemma Hearn,’ the cabo answered, mispronouncing both words badly.

  ‘Never heard of her.’

  ‘She must be a recent contact since she doesn’t look very pregnant.’

  ‘Your sense of humour suggests considerable immaturity.’ He replaced the receiver. Then wondered why he hadn’t said that whatever the woman wanted, it wasn’t his pigeon since he was not longer actively working. He sighed. A sense of duty clung to one like fleas to a dying dog.

  When he saw Gemma by the duty desk, he accepted that he had met her, but couldn’t think when or where. ‘Good morning, Señorita.’

  ‘Thank God you’ve arrived! I was beginning to wonder if I’d ever make the policeman understand I wanted to speak to you.’

  ‘I’m afraid not everyone speaks English. How can I help you?’

  ‘Colin asked me to see you.’

  The name identified her and he wondered how he could have failed to do so before – perhaps it was because she was wearing clothes. ‘Let’s go along to an interview-room, where it will be much quieter.’ And the cabo wouldn’t be looking at her with lascivious interest.

  Once they were seated in the small, rather airless room, she said: ‘Before he left, Colin asked the people in the hotel for his aunt’s things they had in the safe, but they wouldn’t hand them over without your authorisation. He wants me to ask you to tell them it’s OK to give the things to me.’