Suspects All !

by Helen Mulgray

  My eyes shot open. The cavern lights had come on again. Eyes stared into my own. Green eyes, green hair, definitely Zara. She gave a grunt of satisfaction and smiling, sat back on her heels.

  I coughed and spluttered, only dimly aware of the ring of shocked faces staring down at me.

  A voice, Zara’s, saying, ‘I don’t often get the chance to practise the kiss, the kiss of life, I mean.’

  The guide’s face was close to mine. ‘You have had the accident, senhora. Help is coming.’

  No accident. There had been a carefully planned attempt on my life: the lights going out, hands seizing me, the rush of water into my mouth as I tried to scream.

  ‘Senhora? How did accident happen, senhora?’

  It had been no accident, but I didn’t intend to enlighten her. I looked past the guide’s head at the circle of concerned faces. Among them were my attackers.

  I rubbed a hand across my eyes. ‘All I remember is the lights going out … somebody bumped into me … must have fallen…’ My eyes wandered round the ring of faces again.

  Zara moved into my line of vision, eyes gleaming with excitement. ‘Gosh, Debs! We all freaked out when the lights came on and we saw you with your head in the lake. You could have heard the screams all the way to Funchal! Somebody grabbed you by the hair and you were heaved out all limp and floppy.’

  The guide draped her jacket over me. ‘This young senhora, she runs forward and says she knows the way to make breathe the drowned person.’

  I reached out and touched Zara’s hand. ‘Thanks.’

  Faces smiled, hands applauded.

  She blushed and muttered, ‘Any time, Debs.’

  The arrival of two men with a stretcher saved her from any further embarrassment. Wrapped in a blanket, I was carried through the tunnels. As the dark lava walls slid past my eyes, I pondered the narrowness of my escape. If those lights had come on a couple of minutes later …

  When the guide insisted that I wait at the first aid station until the doctor arrived, I didn’t argue. The adrenaline rush of relief at being alive had died away, leaving me feeling decidedly weak and wobbly. The coach driver would have to decide whether to continue to the north coast without me, or cut the excursion short and return to Funchal. All I wanted to do was lie down and sleep. I watched the coach driving out of the car-park, too tired to care whether or not the excursion had been curtailed.

  To replace my wet shirt and jacket, the guide raided the souvenir shop and triumphantly produced a sweatshirt emblazoned with The Caves of São Vicente. A Visit to Remember.

  ‘I’m really quite all right,’ I lied to the doctor when he arrived. ‘All I need is to get home and go to bed. Please just phone for a taxi.’

  He pursed his lips. ‘You are not fit to travel alone, senhora.’ He opened the door to the outer office. ‘I will get one of the guides to telephone for an ambulance. All your party has gone and, without someone to accompany you, I cannot give permission for you to go home by taxi.’

  Resigned to losing the argument, I slumped back.

  The guide, busy at her desk filling in the accident report, looked up. ‘One of the senhora’s party is still here. She is waiting for a bus, but I think she has long, long time to wait.’ She pointed through the open door.

  On the other side of the car-park a green-haired figure was leaning somewhat disconsolately against the bus stop. Zara was destined to come to the rescue again.

  As the taxi sped back along the Via Rápida, I said, ‘I’m afraid all that must have spoiled the excursion for you, Zara.’

  ‘Oh no, Debs!’ She leant forward, eyes shining. ‘That was a wow of a trip. And not boring at all! The last time I got such a buzz was in a nightclub when I caught a guy spiking my drink. I tell you, Debs, he didn’t know what hit him!’ She hooted with laughter. ‘It was the toe of my Manolo Blahnik!’ She hooted with laughter again.

  Spiked drink. I sank back against the seat closing my eyes, not in weakness, but in shock, as a memory of yesterday in Porto Santo returned: Dorothy and Celia staring at me across the café table … as if looking for something. And now I knew what that had been: a sign that the drug they had administered was taking effect.

  After Zara had helped me into bed, I slept a sleep too deep for nightmares and might have slept longer, if an insistent paw hadn’t tap-tapped, tap-tapped, tap-tapped my shoulder till I opened my eyes. The newly risen sun was slanting through the half-open shutters, lighting up the room with a pinkish glow. I turned over slowly to see a furry face looking enquiringly into mine.

  ‘You’re asking me how I’m feeling, G?’ I thought it over and decided the answer was, ‘Fragile but in pretty good shape, all things considered.’ And definitely, most definitely, hungry.

  G was an expert mind reader, particularly where food was concerned. She leapt lightly from the bed and stalked to the door, looking back, tip of tail twitching with impatience. ‘What are you waiting for? I’m starving’ was unmistakable.

  ‘You can’t possibly be as hungry as I am. What about that large bowl of food Zara put out for you yesterday afternoon?’ I sat up and saw the alarm clock: 8 a.m. With a shock I realized that eighteen hours had passed. ‘I take that back, G,’ I said, swinging my legs out of bed. ‘Both of us are starving. Breakfast in ten minutes.’

  But it was more than ten minutes before G and I tucked into our respective breakfasts, for pinned to the kitchen table with the point of my favourite vegetable knife were several sheets torn from the notepad I kept by the telephone.

  Hi there, Debs! Didn’t want to worry you seeing that you were so bushed, so I didn’t say anything on the way back in the taxi. That was no accident in the caves, I just know it!!!!!!! First that mugging near the toboggan place, then that hit and run with the car when Chas bought it, now THIS!!!!!! You should be WARNED that I think one of your clients is out to get you!!!!! But don’t you worry. You can count on me to suss out who it is. No point in trying to talk me out of it. I’m going to start with that old bat Winterton. She gives me the creeps. Z

  Don’t worry! I hurriedly pulled out a kitchen chair and collapsed onto it. That was all I needed. Zara blundering about. If Winterton or Haxby were indeed behind those attacks on me … I put my head in my hands and groaned. Too late now to stop her. And she’d had nearly a day to wreak havoc. I reached for the telephone and tried her room at the hotel, but if she was there, she wasn’t answering. I left a message with the receptionist for her to call me, stressing that it was urgent. For the moment there was nothing more I could do.

  A heavy paw trod on my bare foot and remained there, reminding me that there were other priorities – at least, as far as G was concerned.

  ‘OK, G,’ I sighed. ‘We’ll both feel better when we’ve eaten.’

  After a leisurely breakfast I did indeed feel much restored, but not enough to call in at Police HQ to report the incident at the caves. Tomorrow would be time enough. My attackers were long gone and would probably never be traced. It might be worthwhile, though, to have a search made of the subterranean lake and the nearby rocks. To be able to deal with me so quickly and efficiently in that pitch dark cave would have necessitated the use of night-vision goggles. They’d have whipped them off and thrown them away before the lights came on, but after that there’d have been no opportunity to retrieve the goggles without being noticed.

  My office hour at the Massaroco Hotel was looming and I didn’t really feel up to going there either. Fortunately I’d had the foresight to ask Zara to put a message on the Agençia noticeboard: Due to unforeseen circumstances Thursday office hour is cancelled.

  She’d doubled up with mirth. ‘Just wait till those old bags, Haxby and Winterton, see this! They were moaning enough about today’s cancellation, though they bloody well weren’t going to come to your office hour anyway. Said they were going off to the Nun’s Valley again. I don’t know what they see in the place. Once was enough for me.’

  A day of leisure stretched ahead. I sat in the garden
with Gorgonzola on my lap and, trying to keep my mind off what Zara might be up to, pondered the evidence against Winterton and Haxby. They’d spiked my coffee on Porto Santo, I was sure of it. I’d had all the telltale symptoms: confusion, slurred speech, dizziness, loss of memory. Those visits of theirs to the Nun’s Valley might have significance. Or again, might not.

  The warmth of the sun on my face and the rhythmic purr purr of a contented cat were highly conducive to dozing off … It was the ringing of the telephone in the kitchen that woke me. As I rose to my feet, G leapt indignantly off my lap and went off to sulk in the shade of the nearest bush.

  I picked up the receiver. ‘Olá?’

  There was a long pause. Then a flustered voice said tentatively, ‘Oh, er, have I got the right number? I was wanting to speak to Deborah Smith.’

  ‘Yes, speaking,’ I said.

  ‘It’s me, Victoria Knight, dear. I was wondering when you might be able to come over. I’m so looking forward to having one of our little chats again.’

  ‘Love to.’ It might be the only chance to see her before I was deported back to London. ‘As it happens, I’ve got the day off. How about today?’

  ‘Come as soon as you can, dear. I can’t wait to ask your advice about something.’

  The Quinta Jacaranda was an impressive nineteenth-century stuccoed building set in extensive grounds surrounded by a high stone wall smothered by creepers and assorted ferns.

  I’d just reached the top of the wide stone steps to the front door when it was flung open. Today Victoria was wearing an unstylish but comfortable green caftan, from behind the folds of which peered an apprehensive Blackie, ready to flee at the first glimpse of the dreaded Ginger Monster.

  ‘Lovely to see you.’ She gave me a motherly embrace. ‘You’re looking tired, dear.’ She scooped up the cat. ‘Blackie’s come to meet his new friend. But where is—? Not still under the weather, is she?’

  I embroidered the truth a little. ‘Oh no, fully recovered. She didn’t come when I called. You know how it is with cats. Minds of their own.’

  She kissed the top of Blackie’s head. ‘They have, haven’t they?’ She ushered me into a glass-enclosed veranda, its tiled floor scattered with wicker chairs and glass-topped low tables. Through open double doors I could see dark wood floors and a red-carpeted staircase with brass stair rods.

  Over coffee I caught up with all her news over the past year. ‘… and before I left for this little holiday in Madeira, I decided I would replace every painting in my new house with something I’d chosen myself. That’s what I need advice about.’ She delved into the pile of magazines under the table and produced the lavishly illustrated catalogue of a well-known London art gallery. ‘I’ve put a bookmark at the ones that took my fancy. Have a look and tell me what you think, while I get us a bit of lunch.’ She handed me the catalogue and in a swirl of green disappeared in the direction of the kitchen. Blackie stared at me with alarmed eyes and scuttled after her, obviously fearful that this hench-woman of the dreaded Gorgonzola would carry him off to an awful fate.

  I studied the pictures Victoria had marked. The first three were landscapes, and I’d definitely put all of them on my walls – if I could have afforded them. While dishes clinked in the kitchen, I flicked idly through the rest of the catalogue towards the last bookmark. After the Landscapes section came Portraits, followed by Abstracts. The colours of some of the abstracts were quite pleasing; others were muddy, drab, and just plain dull, or a ghastly splodge and smear of clashing colours. The sort of thing, in fact, that Celia Haxby churned out. People were obviously prepared to pay through the nose for that sort of thing.

  It was in the last section, Still Life, that I made the breakthrough – in the shape of Still life with Kipper by John Byrne. A week ago when Gorgonzola and I had snooped in Celia Haxby’s room at the Massaroco, a picture of that selfsame giant pink teacup looming over a slab of fish had been leaning against her wall. I stared at the page. A painting offered for sale by a prestigious art gallery would not be stored against the wall of room 316 in the Massaroco Hotel.

  If the pink teacup painting was a copy of a famous painting, perhaps the muddy landscape, the English-type landscape of muddy green and grey hills, was a copy too? At the time it had struck me as being so out of place, so foreign to any place Haxby could have seen on one of her Madeiran excursions. There was nothing illegal in copying a work of art, of course, but passing off the copy as a valuable original most certainly would be.

  I opened the catalogue at the Landscape section again, on the lookout for green and muddy landscapes. A few fell into that category, particularly one by Sir William Gillies selling at more than £25,000. Had Celia Haxby copied it with express intention of passing it off as a genuine Gillies? A forgery scam would certainly explain all those pictures in room 316. From the beginning, I’d had a feeling that there was something suspect about Haxby and her paintings. Could I manage to get into her room again, photograph them and get an art expert’s opinion?

  ‘Did you find anything else of interest, Deborah?’

  I looked up as Victoria placed a laden tray on the coffee table. I certainly had.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The following morning I still had heard nothing from Zara. I’d make a point of seeking her out, but first I had that scheduled meeting with the comandante.

  In the public entrance hall of Police Headquarters I caught sight of Raimundo beckoning me from behind the desk.

  ‘Bom dia, senhora. I, Raimundo Ribeiro, have the interesting information for you.’ With the air of a conjuror producing a rabbit out of a hat, he whipped a video tape from a drawer.

  ‘Tourist video, is it?’ I asked unenthusiastically, my mind on the forthcoming interview. How would she receive my account of what happened at the São Vicente Caves? Would she accept that it had been a serious attempt on my life, or dismiss it contemptuously as yet another example of that incompetent Sshmit’s clumsiness? So I replied, ‘Thanks, Raimundo, but I’ve seen them all.’

  The moustache bristled, the dark eyes gleamed. ‘But this one, I promise, you have not seen.’ A tobacco-stained finger tapped the side of his nose.

  I reeled back in mock shock-horror. ‘You wouldn’t be offering me, an unmarried lady, a sex film, would you?’

  He slapped his hand on the desk and roared with laughter. ‘You make fine joke, senhora. This I must tell everyone.’ He turned and yelled to his colleagues, ‘The senhora make fine joke. She says …’

  And I had to stand there in acute embarrassment as my words were gathered up by the fine acoustics of the domed entrance hall and broadcast to police and public alike. Loud guffaws, amused smiles, scandalized looks – all of this I could have done without. I could only stand there smiling weakly, pretending I was enjoying the joke.

  At last he recovered enough to splutter out, ‘No, no, senhora. This is CCTV tape.’ He lifted the desk flap and motioned me to follow him into the inner office. ‘It is tape from the Massaroco Hotel. Every week I have the job to look, to see if any suspicious peoples creep around. This I do this morning, and I see….’ He paused dramatically. ‘I see … this.’ He slid the tape into a video machine.

  The camera’s field of view was a secluded area of the Massaroco’s garden, near the outer wall. The date was yesterday, the time 7.45 a.m. In the early morning light a man was standing half-obscured by the drooping branches of a bottlebrush tree. He turned his head and looked at something off to the right, then moved forward as another figure came into view.

  Raimundo pressed a button and the picture paused and zoomed in, magnifying the man’s face. ‘We have here bad character. His name is Silvestre Gonçalves and he is arrested many times for the drug dealing.’ He pressed another button and the tape resumed.

  At first little could be seen of the other figure. Back to the camera, he or she was wearing one of the Massaroco’s distinctive monogrammed towelling bathrobes with the hood pulled up. Then the camera pulled back for a wide shot,
and from the legs and sandals I could tell that the figure was a woman.

  From under his jacket the man produced four small packages and handed them to the woman who slipped them into the pockets of the robe. After a few moments of what seemed to be amicable conversation, the woman turned away and walked back in the direction of the hotel. For a few fleeting seconds her face came into shot, then she moved out of camera range.

  Raimundo stopped the tape. ‘Well, senhora, we know the man, but who is the woman? Perhaps you are able to tell us?’

  I hitched myself forward to peer at the screen. ‘I’ll give it a try. Can you rewind to where she comes into shot, then zoom in, and advance it frame by frame?’

  Frame followed frame, but the shadow cast by the bathrobe’s hood and the flatness of the early morning light blurred the face, even in close-up.

  After the third run-through I gave up and sat back with a sigh. ‘I’m sorry. It’s no use – she could be anybody.’

  With a sigh of disappointment, Raimundo switched off the machine and ejected the tape.

  He looked so downcast that I hastened to add, ‘But that was good work, Raimundo. She is obviously a guest at the hotel. That gives me and the cat something to work on.’

  I dearly wanted it to be Dorothy Winterton, but the bulky robe had concealed all physical characteristics apart from the legs and feet. Though there’d been a glimmer of refracted light, hinting at spectacles, this would count for nothing as far as proof of identity was concerned.

  It was as I was walking along the corridor towards the comandante’s office that I remembered I’d seen packages like those in the garden of the Massaroco Hotel two weeks ago when Dorothy Winterton had rummaged in her handbag with its unusual security lock. That would be something to report to the comandante, something to mollify her, for I was going to be in for a hard time of it when I confessed that I had fallen victim to yet another attack. I knocked on the door and went in.