Murder on the Tropic

by Todd Downing

  Solier’s eyes were steel-hard; they darkened as he drew his eyebrows into a frown.

  “Correct!” His voice was crisp. “The motive. And now the murderer.”

  “I am ready now,” Rennert said, “to go back and begin a chronological account of my visit here. As I told you, I found when I arrived yesterday afternoon that Miguel Montemayor had been taken ill a few hours before. Soon after drinking whisky from a bottle in the wardrobe of the room to which Falter assigned me. That whisky was, I am sure, intended for me. It was expected that I would find it and, since only a small amount remained, drink all of it, leaving no evidence that it had been poisoned. The murderer, then, knew that I was to have that room.”

  (A leaf stirred, then another. It was in the trailing milk vetch that it was first visible. The silvery leaves were stirring and the racemes of deep purple flowers were moving gently to and fro in an effort to contort their heads northward.)

  “Soon after I arrived,” a quickening could have been discerned in Rennert’s voice, “Mr. Falter fell sick. He had been complaining of stomach trouble for some time, I knew. If it had not been for the coincidence of Miguel’s illness I might not have suspected the presence of poison. The symptoms were the same, however, particularly the yellow vision which I mentioned to you over the radio. In Miguel’s case it was associated with yellow flowers, the Mexican death symbol. I played for a time with the idea that the secret might lie somewhere in this association of these particular flowers and death. George Stahl, too, had died on the hacienda after a stroke in which he had fallen among yellow flowers and had talked incoherently about things being yellow. But when Falter fell prostrate at the dinner table after objects had become yellow for him I decided that I was doing as Miguel had done and was concentrating my attention on yellow flowers instead of the color yellow.”

  (It was unmistakable now—the air that washed his face in ever stronger flood and weaker ebb. His watch ticked excitedly, warningly.)

  “I next asked myself how the poison had been administered to Falter. Judging by the quickness with which it took effect in Miguel’s case I decided that it must have been given after or soon before my arrival. Upon questioning Falter I found that he had eaten or drunk nothing since lunch except some whisky and those tablets which you sent down to him by me. I had drunk out of the same whisky bottle. Therefore the poison must have been put into the tablets.” Rennert paused. “By the way, I notice that you didn’t bring a doctor with you.”

  “No.” Solier’s attention seemed to have wandered. “I couldn’t get one to come so far.”

  “Did you learn anything about what the poison may have been?”

  “No.”

  “I did.”

  “Yes? What was it?”

  “It was after my last conversation with you last night that I recalled a conversation I once had with a doctor. This identified the poison. Santonin. He had mentioned a case in which an overdose had been given as a vermifuge and the patient had died after showing symptoms of yellow vision. My first thought was that the murderer had obtained it in its natural state somewhere about here since it comes from a plant known as wormseed or Mexican tea. I found that I was on a cold trail, there, however. A son of Miguel and Maria died this spring of worms, I learned. The doctor who attended him left a quantity of medicine here. That medicine must have been santonin. The murderer must have learned of its use at that time since he used a portion of this santonin to poison George Stahl soon after.”

  Solier had sat up, holding himself very tense as he regarded Rennert.

  “So, Mr. Solier, I had the poison identified and the motive. They led me to the murderer. Now, if you will pardon my injection of business into this, I want to ask you this: have I or have I not fulfilled my mission here?”

  Solier frowned.

  “Why, yes, Rennert, you have,” he said hesitantly. “Why?”

  “Because I want to straighten out our business arrangement before I go any further. I should appreciate it if you would pay me now the amount you promised me for my services.”

  The frown deepened.

  “Well, if you say so,” there was definite coolness in the voice. “It’s a bit irregular, of course, but I have no objections.”

  “If you will then, Mr. Solier.”

  “Very well. I brought some cash down with me. I think there’s enough. Oh, I see I left my brief-case in the plane. Wait a minute and I’ll get it.” He rose and walked away.

  Rennert sat and watched him. He leaned back on the rock comfortably and let his arm rest on Solier’s jacket. The thick fleece lining was very soft on his moving fingers until they suddenly came to rest on a hard object.

  He felt terribly diminutive, terribly insignificant as he stared at the sky and thought: Have I the sublime egoism to assume the role which I am about to assume?

  When Solier returned he was in the same position. The introspective look which had clouded his eyes was gone, leaving them clear and unwavering.

  Solier handed him a roll of bills held together by a rubber band.

  “You think,” he said as he sat down, “that I might refuse to pay you if you told me the name of the murderer first?”

  “Thank you, Mr. Solier.” Rennert slipped the bills into a wallet. “That is exactly what I was afraid of.” He shifted his position slightly, turning to face Solier. His voice was no longer deliberate. “I was speaking a moment ago of the motive. You realize what it was, of course. Last night Mark Arnhardt was fired on and wounded. Regarding Miguel’s death as a miscarriage of the murderer’s plans, that leaves Stahl, Falter, and Arnhardt whom the murderer had undertaken to remove. All of them men who owned interests in this hacienda.”

  “I suspected as much. That’s the reason I was afraid to come down myself. I was afraid that I would be next.”

  Rennert’s eyes went to the sky, where banked clouds were piling in dangerous top-heaviness, then back to Solier’s face.

  “Wasn’t the real reason you sent me down here to provide yourself with an alibi, Mr. Solier? So that Mr. Falter would be poisoned while you sat in an office in San Antonio?”

  Solier leaned back on the jacket, his fingers plucking at the wool of its lining.

  “Go ahead, Mr. Rennert,” his voice was perfectly level.

  “It was you, Mr. Solier, who poisoned those tablets. But in San Antonio, not after they were brought here to the hacienda. It was you who left the poisoned whisky in the room which you occupied while here. The room which you left locked and which you instructed Falter to put me into. The plan must have been germinating in your mind for a long time. It was a very well-thought-out move. I would give Falter the tablets soon after my arrival since he was anxious to get them and would ask for them at once. He would take them, I would drink the whisky and both of us would fall ill and die. There would be nothing to connect you with our deaths. You would come down, bring the attention of the authorities to the matter and point out that of all the people present at the hacienda at the time of our deaths Arnhardt alone profited. You would probably have accounted for my death by saying that I had detected Arnhardt’s guilt and that he had to put me out of the way for safety. Wasn’t that it, Mr. Solier?”

  Still the even, emotionless voice: “Go ahead, Mr. Rennert. You’re interesting me very much.”

  Rennert went on: “I unintentionally forced your hand by telling you that Arnhardt suspected someone of poisoning his stepfather and that he had given me information as to this person’s guilt. You were afraid that you were the one he had in mind. You flew down here yesterday evening after our last radio conversation, while there was still light. You landed at a distance from the house and waited until dark. You entered the patio then and at the first opportunity shot Arnhardt. Your footsteps were heard by two people, by the way, when you ran back to your plane. This morning you rose from the ground, circled around and came down here, as if you had just arrived from San Antonio. You know you could not have flown south this morning directly in the face of th
at wind.”

  Solier moved again, propping himself on an elbow with one hand buried under the jacket. His face was wooden.

  “Really, Mr. Rennert, I didn’t credit you with so much imagination. I suppose you have thought about proof for this cock-and-bull theory of yours?”

  “Certainly. I realize that the evidence I have just pointed out is mostly circumstantial. The matter of the fingerprints wouldn’t be so easily explained away.”

  “Fingerprints?” Interest ruffled the surface of Solier’s voice.

  “Yes, when you put the santonin in those caramels of Stahl’s you left, unfortunately, a very clear impression of your fingerprints on one piece that Stahl did not eat. They are not those of any of the individuals on the hacienda. It will not require the services of an expert to prove that they are yours. Shall we go to the house now and make the test?” He made a motion as if to rise.

  Solier’s hand was steadied by his elbow on the stone and it held the muzzle of the pistol pointed straight at the pit of Rennert’s stomach.

  “You are not only imaginative, Rennert, but foolish as well. Do you realize that there’s nothing on earth to stop me from shooting you, getting in my plane and leaving? No one has witnessed our little meeting. By the time you are missed and your body found I shall be well on my way back to San Antonio. It will be just another mysterious death. Bandits, I suppose, will be blamed for it.”

  Rennert looked at the automatic.

  “A Colt forty-five, I believe?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “The same gun with which you shot Arnhardt last night?”

  “Since you want to know, yes.” There was no relaxation of the steadiness of the eyes and hand.

  “Since this is a moment for confidences, I worked out the case correctly, didn’t I?” Rennert started to put a hand into his pocket for cigarettes. Solier stopped him with a gesture.

  “Keep your hands where they are, Rennert, or I’ll send a bullet into your belly. If it will flatter your vanity to know it, you got everything correct.”

  “Well, then,” Rennert stood up, feeling wind slap his face, “you’d better get in your plane first, hadn’t you? You will want to get under way immediately in case the shot is heard at the house and someone takes a notion to investigate.”

  A puzzled look came into Solier’s eyes. He caught up his jacket and helmet with one hand and backed toward the plane, keeping Rennert covered with the automatic.

  “Come twist the propeller.” He spoke between set teeth.

  Rennert regarded him, smiling pleasantly. “Really, Mr. Solier, that’s a great favor to ask of a man whom you are going to kill in just a moment. Suppose I should refuse?”

  There was a vicious glint in Solier’s eyes.

  “I’d do this,” his voice was deadly soft. “I’d shoot you once or perhaps twice in spots that wouldn’t be fatal but that would be very painful. I’d turn the propeller myself then, leisurely. When I got ready to go I’d end your suffering.”

  Rennert shrugged.

  “You win. I’ve seen men with bullets in their stomachs. It’s not a pleasant sight. I’ll turn your propeller for you to the best of my ability.”

  “Then hurry up.”

  “It’s customary, I believe, here in Mexico to let a man die with a cigarette between his lips. I am an inveterate cigarette smoker. May I light one?”

  Solier hesitated, his eyes narrowing in suspicion.

  “Go ahead,” he said. “I noticed that you didn’t have a gun on you.”

  Rennert took cigarettes from his pocket, selected one and lit it without haste. He flipped the match away and said: “All right, thanks. Let’s go.”

  Solier moved cautiously toward the plane. Rennert followed him, inhaling smoke, and watched him get in. He walked toward the propeller then, twirled it and stood back. The whir of the blades mingled with a low distant rumble that wasn’t, he knew, that of any machine made by man.

  Solier did not seem to hear it. He leaned over the side of the plane, leveled the automatic directly at Rennert’s stomach and pulled the trigger.

  Rennert’s voice rose over the drone: “I forgot to tell you, Mr. Solier, that I removed the cartridges from that gun while you were getting that money from the plane.”

  Solier’s words were inaudible. The plane shot forward, passed with precision between the walls of rock and rose gracefully into the air. It circled and headed north.

  Rennert stood for a moment, watching it, then started to walk back to the hacienda. He felt himself pushed forward and heard the stampeding thunder of rain on the ground behind him. He quickened his steps, broke into a run. Before he had gained the shelter of the adobe walls the wind struck him, almost felling him with the violence of its impact. Water lashed and choked him.

  He reached the doorway, paused there gasping for breath then edged his way along the walls to the north side of the house. He stood, crouched in refuge from the wind and the sheets of wind-driven rain, and watched Solier’s plane.

  It was a blotch on the sky the size of a desert eagle, beginning to climb higher, when the wind hit it. He saw it waver, erratically renew its ascent, remain apparently motionless for a second or so, then dip to one side and spin toward the unbroken mountain tops.

  He was cold, as if the wind that shook the walls at his back were crested with ice.

  It wasn’t a pleasant way to send a man to his death.

  31

  Aftermath

  The rays of the sun were brittle-dear in the clean-washed air of morning. The sky was innocent and guileless, of soft blue silk dappled with white clouds that dazzled the eye. Vapors were beginning to rise like mirages from the wet ground, battered by the wind and rain that had persisted in undiminished fury for most of the previous day. By the middle of the afternoon the storm had begun to slacken and at sunset had ceased in exhaustion.

  Rennert stood with one foot on the running-board of his car and stared at the ramparts of rock to the north. He said to the elderly, inattentive Mexican officer who stood beside him, immaculate in uniform and gold braid: “I have given you as nearly as I can the location of the spot where the plane crashed. It will be very difficult to locate it in those mountains, I am afraid.”

  Captain Gaspar Flores y Montes waved this aside with a manicured hand.

  “Do not think of that, Mr. Rennert. I shall send a searching party today or tomorrow or, since that is a holiday in our state, the next day. They will try to find the plane. And if not?” He shrugged. “The mountains hold many secrets. They can hold one more.” The hand stayed in the air, including in its comprehensive sweep the adobe walls, the stone pillars of the gateway, the mountains even. “The duty which brought me here, Mr. Rennert, has become a pleasure. I am filled with happiness to see this hacienda again, to draw the odor of its soil into my lungs,” he breathed deeply if a bit asthmatically, “to be again with my young cousin in the place where our ancestors lived for so many generations. Perhaps some day the Flores family will come again into possession of this, its birthplace.” He let emotion simmer a moment then turned to Rennert. “This young countryman of yours, this Mr. Arnhardt, is now the sole owner of the hacienda, is he not?”

  “Yes, Captain Flores.”

  “And he should be willing to sell, should he not? After these regrettable experiences here.”

  “I could not say. You might approach him on the subject.”

  “I shall do it! I shall do it! I have a daughter. The father of Esteban has hinted at marriage. I shall buy this hacienda back into the family. It shall be my wedding present to the young couple. There will be a fiesta. Perhaps—”

  Rennert glanced at his watch.

  “With your permission, Captain,” he cleared his throat. “We must be starting soon. I wish to be in San Antonio by night, if possible.”

  “Ah, yes.”

  At the door Rennert met Miss Fahn.

  Her face was pallid beneath a rosetted black hat, dusty from disuse. She smoothed black glo
ves between nervous fingers.

  “Your grip is packed?”

  “Yes, it is in front of my door. If you will be so kind. But be sure to handle it very carefully. I have some valuable things in it. Not breakable exactly but—well, valuable.”

  “Your albums?”

  “Yes.”

  “I have been intending to tell you, Miss Fahn, about those dried flowers that you have pasted behind the postcards. What made you think they couldn’t be taken into the United States?”

  “Why, I always understood it was against the law to take plants into the country. They always ask you at the border if you have any plants or fruits, don’t they?”

  “Unless entry is prohibited by quarantine or restrictive order the importation as passenger luggage of dried herbarium specimens may be made without permit or other restriction.” Rennert smiled. “I was quoting from the regulations. Just show the inspectors that you have no live plants and there will be no difficulty. They aren’t by any means the ogres most people think they are.”

  Color came into her face.

  “Oh, thank you, Mr. Rennert, for telling me. I was so afraid to risk trying to smuggle them across but I did want to take them back for our museum. They will make a collection equaled by no other in our part of the United States. And, too,” her voice faltered and drifted away, “they are all that are left to me of the days I’ve spent here. I had such a happy time here at first. It was the first time, Mr. Rennert, that I had ever owned a place. You don’t know what it means—to live all your life on the earth and never own a bit of it. Do you understand, Mr. Rennert?”

  “I think I do, Miss Fahn.”

  Rennert’s eyes went past her to the ravaged patio strewn with the mangled fragments of yesterday’s flowers. He said: “Pardon me, Miss Fahn. I’ll get your luggage.”

  “Ready to go?” Stephen Tolman called across to him. He was tall and straight, in a blue serge suit, and was swinging two bags lightly back and forth.

  “Almost,” Rennert told him.

  He picked up Miss Fahn’s heavy bulging grip and started back.