‘She was on her own, the house hasn’t a telephone, and it’s a good way up the track from the next house. Perhaps she tried to ignore the symptoms at first and by the time she realized they were serious, she was in too bad a condition to leave the house to seek help.’
‘A sad way to die.’ He sighed. ‘Anyway, the post-mortem will tell us for certain.’ He was surprised that although Roldán had obviously initially been shocked by the news, he had shown little sympathy: a doctor should surely know sympathy for all his patients? ‘I need to find out what kind of a man Señor Heron was — you can tell me that, can’t you?’
Roldán adjusted the tooled leather blotter which was immediately in front of him on his large, ornately inlaid desk. ‘Why should I be able to answer you? I was his doctor, not his personal friend.’
‘You’ll have gained some sort of impression.’
‘Only as to his medical state. And as to his ridiculous stubbornness.’ He examined his nails, then opened the left-hand top drawer of his desk and took out a small pad and briefly polished the nails of his right hand with quick, precise movements. ‘He was a. very sick man who should never have come out to the island.’
‘What exactly was wrong with him?’
‘Put as simply as possible, mitral stenosis subsequent to a bad attack of rheumatic fever when young. This was quite serious, and then on top of that he contracted a bacterial endocarditis, which is the condition in which he was when I first treated him. Surgery would probably have relieved the primary complaint, but he said he had a horror of operations and had always refused to undergo one. Then the bacterial endocarditis made it impossible for an operation to be performed, even had he been willing. My immediate advice, put very strongly, was that he should consult a specialist in Palma, but he refused. I treated him with antibiotics, but although I kept changing them he raped to respond. I again said it was essential he went into a clinic for treatment, again he refused.’ Roldán replaced the nail pad in the drawer and shut this. ‘There are some patients, Inspector, for whom one can do very little, thanks to their characters.’
‘Did you speak to the señorita about persuading him to go into a clinic?’
‘I don’t see what any of this has to do with the death of the señorita?’
‘Please bear with me a bit longer.’
‘Very well. I told the señorita that the señor was a seriously ill man and it was more than ever essential he went into a clinic for treatment. She said she’d do what she could to persuade him, but she was no more successful than I had been.’
‘How did you find her — eager to help?’
‘Of course. Why shouldn’t she have been?’
‘There seems to have been a possibility that she was rather too friendly with another man. Did you ever get any suggestion of that?’
‘No. Furthermore, I am not in the habit of listening to poisonous gossip.’
‘Then there has been such gossip?’
‘I was not inferring that.’
‘Do you think that she looked after the señor as well as she could?’
‘I think your questions are becoming not only unnecessary, but offensive.’
‘I’m sorry, doctor. What finally finished off the señor?’
‘It is inaccurate to suggest that anything “finally” was responsible for his death, unless he developed a sudden allergy to the latest antibiotic I tried. The course of his illness, without there being surgery, had inevitably to lead to his death. It is possible, too, that his state of emotional excitability not long before his death played some part: I have always been of the opinion that a patient’s mental condition plays a far greater part in his physical condition than many fellow doctors will admit.’
‘What did he get emotionally excited about?’
‘The señorita told me he’d had a very heated argument over the telephone with the firm they hired their car from.’
‘Which firm was it?’
‘I’ve no idea . . . Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a number of patients I must visit.’
The surgery was in the doctor’s house and as Alvarez stepped out into the hall a woman entered from the road. In her early twenties, she had an oval face of unusual, striking beauty, framed by curly hair the colour of newly ripened corn, which suggested at one and the same time the contradictory characteristics of virginity and wantonness. Her eyes were cobalt blue and warmly emotional, yet there was also a hint of recklessness in them: her full lips were curved for smiling passion. Ye gods! he thought, if ever there’d been a woman to make any man feel that here was a citadel to be stormed for the rich rewards concealed within . . .
She studied him, accepted his obvious admiration with amusement, and walked past. He tried to persuade him self that he was far too mature to lust after a woman of her age, however exciting she might be, but he could not stop himself watching her walking towards a door and visualizing the honey-smooth, melon-sweet limbs momentarily and intriguingly outlined beneath the frock. She went through the doorway and shut the door. No wonder Francisca had been critical of her: she’d incur the resentful jealousy of every woman who saw her. Feeling suddenly old, he turned and crossed to the front door.
CHAPTER X
The manager of the car hire firm sat inside the very small office. He spread out his hands and on his wide, Mongolian face, there was an expression of surprise. ‘Sure Señor Heron phoned me. So what?’
‘So how was he?’ asked Alvarez. ‘Calm and collected?’
‘You’ve got to be joking. He was mad: quite mad.’ There was a clanging row as a mechanic who was working on a very battered Seat 600 knocked over something. Alvarez waited until there was relative quiet before he asked: ‘What had got into him?’
‘He was being unreasonable, like all the foreigners. Look, I hired the señorita a car. For months it runs OK, then it breaks down. Any car can break down: yours can, mine can. I get a fresh one to her and because I strain myself to try to do too much for the customers, that also breaks down.’ He gestured with his large, powerful hands.
‘Any car can break down . . .’
‘I got the message the first time. He bawled you out for lousy cars, eh ?’
The manager used a tooth-pick to work on his teeth. After a while he turned his head and spat on to the floor.
‘It was the petrol.’
‘What about the petrol?’
The manager sighed. ‘When I hire a car out, the tank is full. When the client brings the car back, I charge for the petrol used if the tank hasn’t been refilled. The señorita had told the señor the tank of the car was over three quarters full when it broke down.’
‘And you said it was only half full and charged accordingly.’
‘How d’you know that?’
‘I’ve been around a long time.’
‘Too bloody long.’
‘I take it he called you a liar?’
‘Foreigners have no manners. Why get excited over a few pesetas?’
‘Did you know that the señor died soon after having that row with you?’
‘No.’
‘The doctor thinks the row might have affected him.’
‘It wasn’t anything to do with me: he had the row, not me.’
Alvarez jerked himself upright. ‘Know something — if I were you, I’d buy some new petrol gauges. Then maybe you wouldn’t meet these embarrassing situations which can so upset people.’
‘I don’t get embarrassed.’
Alvarez left and drove down to the harbour. He parked along the western arm and walked slowly along, studying the yachts and motor cruisers. For him, as surely for most people, a yacht epitomized wealth. A yacht gave a man command, independence, the ability to escape from it all. He sighed. Snow would drift in the Sahara before he ever owned so much as a dinghy. In any case, a man should understand the priorities. Any one of the large yachts tied up must represent something over seventy thousand square metres of prime farming land. That or a yacht? Only a fool coul
d hesitate.
He drove back to Llueso, turning off on to the Festona Valley road, which twisted its way through small, intensely cultivated fields and past fincas, so often now in the hands of foreigners. Nearer to the mouth of the valley the road was bordered by a water channel which brought water down from a spring in the mountains to the estanquis on the farms below. The Romans had reputedly first built this aqueduct, to take the water right across to Playa Neuva, where they had maintained a garrison.
He turned left on to a very rough dirt track which made his ancient Seat creak alarmingly. The track sloped down to a ford, now dry, then climbed up through typical maquis scrub to end at wrought-iron gates. He climbed out of the car. The air was heady with the scent drawn out by the hot sun from the wild herb bushes which grew around here in such confusion.
A wide path curved round to his right, hugging the contours of the hill. The sloping land was thick with outcrops of rock and considerable imagination and labour had been used to turn the whole area into a very large rock garden, growing not only cacti and flowering bushes, but also mimosa, orange, and lemon trees. The path made a final sharp turn and then debauched on to a fiat, concreted area on which was built a large bungalow. Twenty feet below the patio of the bungalow was a wide terrace in which was a swimming pool and beyond that the land, again terraced, sloped downwards, leaving a view over a belt of scrubland to the bay. He stood and stared at the scene, marvelling that despite all the years he had lived in Llueso he’d had no idea that this place existed.
‘I spend a lot of my time sitting out here,’ said a woman.
‘It’s the most beautiful view I’ve ever seen.’
He swung round, surprised because he had not heard her approach.
‘My husband bought the land twenty years ago this month. We had nearly ten wonderful years together here before he died. He wanted to be buried up on the hillside, overlooking the garden, but although I tried very hard I couldn’t get permission. But I like to think that his shade sits up there on lovely days and looks out with me.’
He knew an immediate sympathy with this slim, elderly woman who clearly cared more for practicalities than fashion and who was dressed in a faded blouse and a pair of darned, puce jeans which were much too large for her.
‘If I were he, señora, I’d spend every day up there. Even when it does rain it can be so beautiful, but in a different way.’
‘How right you are! Yet so many of the people out here moan that when it rains this island becomes impossibly dreary. I tell ‘em, it’s their minds that are dreary, not the country . . . Well, now we know we think alike on at least one subject, tell me who you are and what you want. And we might as well sit while you’re doing it.’
They sat near the edge of the patio. A small boy in a swimming costume suddenly ran into view and dived into the pool, raising a fountain of spray. He swam to the far end with more enthusiasm than technique.
‘That’s the gardener’s son,’ she said, as if asked the question. ‘A limb of Satan, thank God. can’t stand little boys who behave themselves: it’s far too unnatural.’ She turned and studied Alvarez for a while, then said: ‘I’ve seen you about the town more than once.’
He introduced himself.
‘A detective! I suppose you’re here because of Betty Stevenage’s death?’
‘Yes, señora.’
‘So a rumour’s true, for once — she didn’t die a natural death?’
‘At the moment, nobody knows. So now I just try to find out how a woman could come to so sad an end on her own. I am told that you knew the señorita well. Is that so?’
‘It’s a typical exaggeration.’ She began to massage her cheeks, using the tips of her fingers and rubbing in a clockwise direction. ‘I’m a busybody: interested in everybody else’s business. And if I can help someone, I try to do so. I kept thinking I could help Betty.’
‘Why did you think that?’
‘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 a
bove 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.’
Murder Begets Murder Page 5