Unseemly End
Roderic Jeffries
© Roderic Jeffries 1981
Roderic Jeffries has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published in 1981 by St. Martin’s Press New York.
This edition published in 2017 by Endeavour Press Ltd.
Table of Contents
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 1
Mark Erington heard the vacuum-cleaner switched on in the dining-room and he stood. It would take Victoriana at least ten minutes to clean the floor, after which she’d probably dust down the furniture: ten minutes, anyway, was time enough. He crossed to the French windows and looked beyond the patio to see whereabouts Matas was working in the garden. Matas was leaning on a mattock handle under the shade of an almond tree beyond the wide sweep of lawn and hedge. He smiled. Matas was a rogue, which created a slight bond between them. Matas would idle away the time until the car returned and then he’d start working. No need to fear that he would be prying.
Lulu — a chihuahua, even uglier than the breed standards demanded — plodded from the hall into the sitting-room and collapsed in the middle of the Rinnan carpet and panted. Normally, he hated small, snuffly dogs, but he went over, leaned down, and stroked her. She had become his lucky mascot ever since he would have been caught red-handed had she not brought up her lunch of chicken breasts on the pink, blue, and white carnations and roses of the Kirman carpet. Dolly, who’d not been due back for at least another hour but who had that moment stepped into the hall from outside, had shrieked that her beloved was dying and had rushed into the sitting-room where she’d called hysterically for help. He’d managed to creep unseen out of the study and then appear as a ministering angel, shocked but not unnerved by the narrow margin by which he had escaped disaster.
He passed through the arched doorway into the hall. The house possessed a plenitude of archways, both inside and outside, together with a third floor that was one vast open space, and he’d once jokingly compared it to a Persian brothel, but that had been a very bad mistake because Dolly had not been in the least amused. She loved the house, not because of its eccentricities, but because it was the largest within several kilometres of Llueso.
Two paintings hung on opposite walls in the hall. Original Montague Dawsons. A visiting British art dealer had valued them at over a million pesetas each. Regrettably, he’d never been able to find reproductions good enough to substitute for the originals.
The study, with its arched doorway, was on the north side of the hall. It was large and high-ceilinged and it contained as well as much more pedestrian pieces, some furniture of remarkable quality which included two matching mahogany secretaire bookcases whose shelves, behind astragal doors, were filled with leather-bound books whose subjects ranged from the classics to modern biographies and novels. Originally, he’d believed these were kept merely to create an impression, but then he’d learned that Dolly had read all of them and could discuss any of them with intelligence and he’d immediately revised his opinion of her: she was not nearly as stupid as her manner normally suggested.
The kneehole desk, attributed to Thomas Hardy the Elder, in walnut and yew, had one long drawer and then, on either side of the kneehole, three narrow drawers of unequal depths. The long drawer and the top left-hand narrow drawer were always kept locked. He took from his trouser pocket a skeleton key which looked rather like a double-ended dentist’s pick and used one end to force the lock of the long drawer. He pulled the drawer open.
Dolly was as untidy, though not careless, in her financial affairs as she was in all others, but since the letter from the Swiss bank had arrived the previous morning it was on top of the tangled mass of correspondence and papers. He opened the cartridge paper envelope and brought out the letter and folded statement it contained. The letter was subservient in form, yet in tone it was larded with Swiss banking astringency. Herr Strauss was delighted to send to the bank’s esteemed client the statement of account which she had requested in her letter of the 18th. Should there be anything more she desired, in particular the purchase of any investments, the bank would be honoured to act to her orders … He unfolded the statement, read the final figure, and whistled. When one remembered that she also had accounts in England, Jersey, America, and locally … He replaced the letter and statement in the envelope, dropped the envelope back on top of the pile, shut the drawer and relocked it. He unlocked the top left-hand narrow drawer. In this, she kept her reserve of Spanish money — afraid of having her handbag stolen, she never carried in it more than five thousand pesetas in cash. In the drawer was a jumble of five-thousand, one-thousand, and five-hundred-peseta notes. He helped himself to one five-thousand, three one-thousand, and two five-hundred notes. He could have taken more without her suspecting anything, but a wise man knew just how far to go. He relocked the drawer. He stepped out into the hall and the vacuum-cleaner was still working. He smiled with satisfaction. Almost certainly, Victoriana would not have thought anything of seeing him walk out of the study, but no man ever got himself hanged by being too careful.
He walked through the sitting-room, pausing to pat Lulu on her domed head, and out to the covered patio. He stood by one of the chairs and ran his fingers through his tight, curly black hair as he stared out at the garden. Large lawn, which would soon cost a fortune to keep watered in the scorching heat because the well would run dry and the water would have to be bought by the lorry load, flower-beds filled with colour, a centuries old, gnarled, deformed olive tree which had been transplanted three years before, jacaranda, mimosa, and acacia trees, now all past blooming but still attractive with their feathery or trailing leaves, hibiscus bushes with trumpet flowers up to eleven inches in diameter and, to his left, the very large kidney-shaped swimming pool … Money. Scorned by philosophers, which only showed what fools wise men could be … If there were times when he knew something approaching self-contempt, he had only to come and look at the garden to regain his sense of values.
He went over to the wall of the house and pushed the bell-push, set next to the telephone extension socket. Then he sat down, stretched out his legs, and thought that after he’d had a couple of drinks, he’d have a swim: and after a swim, he’d have a couple of drinks. He patted his right-hand trouser pocket. Nine thousand pesetas. He could take Carol to any of the restaurants in the Port and come away with change, even if she ordered lobster: not that she was the kind of person to do that. As yet, he hadn’t decided how best to break free of Dolly for the night, but it shouldn’t be too difficult …
Victoriana walked out on to the patio.
‘I’m dying of thirst,’ he said, in his heavily accented but fluent Spanish. ‘Wheel out the drinks, will you, and make certain there’s lots of ice. It’s hot enough now to fry an egg in the shade.’
‘My grandfather says it’s going to be a really long summer. The well is already very low and it’s still only the middle of June.
’
What if the well did dry up earlier than usual? Dolly would merely need to buy even more water than normal. With her money, she could afford to buy Niagara Falls.
Victoriana went indoors. When she returned, she was wheeling a large cocktail cabinet which ran on castors and she positioned this close to his chair. ‘I’ve filled the ice bucket. There ought to be enough in there to keep even you cool.’ Her sly grin gave her words a double meaning.
‘Then it’s safe for you to sit down and have a drink with me, isn’t it?’
‘I wouldn’t go that far.’
‘How far would you go?’
She tossed her head. ‘I’ve too much work to do to think of sitting down.’
‘Come on, relax.’
‘Can’t. The señora telephoned half an hour ago, when you were out, to say she’s having some friends in to dinner. So I’ve got to do the house and then start getting the grub ready.’
His voice lost its bantering tone: he spoke bad-temperedly. ‘D’you mean dinner tonight?’
‘’Course I mean tonight.’
He swore, in English.
‘What’s that mean?’
‘I’m glad.’
She giggled.
‘Who’s coming?’
‘The señora just said it was two people.’
Dolly would never let him go out for the evening now. She’d want him to be there to do all the entertaining if she became bored, to flatter her, to prompt her if she felt like telling one of her stories, to fuss round her … Hell, he thought, why bother to go on? Tonight, then, there’d be no dinner à deux with Carol. But Dolly’s nine thousand pesetas would still be there for another time …
‘I suppose I’d better get back to work,’ said Victoriana, speaking as if reluctant to do so and forgetting that only a minute before she had said she was in a rush. She waited, but when he made no comment she went into the house.
Mallorquin women, he thought, ripened early, bloomed but briefly, aged prematurely. Victoriana still bloomed. Her features were attractive in a bold, obvious manner, made still more obvious by her use of make-up: her mouth was large, her lips full and moist. Her figure was genuinely shapely. A rose eager to be plucked … Yet to mess around with her while living under Dolly’s roof would be the act of an idiot: Dolly kept her eyes very wide open.
He stood and pondered what to drink, finally chose a sweet vermouth and soda. And as he poured out the drink, he reflected sadly that it was unfortunate, but true, that in this life one couldn’t have everything.
CHAPTER 2
Cynthia Rockford stubbed her toe on a loose stone. ‘Blast!’
‘What’s the matter?’ her husband asked.
‘I’ve just hurt my toe because you will insist on shining the torch in the wrong direction.’
‘Sorry about that,’ he said, with unfailing good humour, as he redirected the torch to point directly in front of her.
‘Why on earth couldn’t we use the car?’
‘It’s such a short way …’
‘It’s not very short when I all but break a toe.’
They continued along the dirt track, some four metres wide, which was bordered on one side by weed grass, already parched brown, brambles, and a stone wall a metre high, and on the other by the dip down to the field beyond. Overhead, the sky was cloudless and the stars diamond bright. Rockford looked up and inadvertently altered the aim of the torch.
‘Do you think,’ she asked, with strained patience, ‘that you could manage to concentrate on what you’re doing just until we get home?’
‘As a matter of fact, old girl, I glanced up and saw Arcturus and remembered the time in the North Sea …’
‘I know the story off by heart.’
‘Really? … But it was a bit odd, you know.’
‘I’ve never been able to see the slightest thing odd about it.’
He was not surprised. Cynthia had her feet planted firmly on the ground: the mysteries of life annoyed rather than intrigued her.
They reached their bungalow and turned into the garden. The edge of the torch beam picked out parched earth and a few tired-looking plants and shrubs, chosen for their ability to resist drought. He unlocked the front door, reached in and switched on the light in the very small passage, which was also the hall, then stepped aside. She went in and past the tiny kitchen on the right to the sitting-room beyond, where she switched on all the five lights in the overhead cluster in the centre of the ceiling. He followed her, after shutting the front door, and without thinking about what he was doing switched off three of the lights.
‘Can’t we now even afford to see what we’re doing?’ she asked sharply.
He shrugged his broad shoulders and switched the three lights back on again. Unless they were going to read, they didn’t need all five lights on, using up quite a lot of electricity, but it was no good trying to reason with her: not after an evening spent at Ca Na Nadana.
She sat in one of the very well worn armchairs. ‘That woman is quite impossible.’
‘Dolly is a bit of a character,’ he said. He noticed that her angular face was set in lines of bitterness. She wore an attractive, hand-embroidered blouse and a long, flared skirt in a warm shade of rust brown, but at the beginning of the evening she had sharply reminded him that the blouse was seven and the skirt five years old … It hadn’t helped, of course, to find Dolly dressed in a new frock which had obviously cost a great deal of money.
He knew — and was fairly certain that she did not — that among the local expatriates she was often referred to as the Ice Maiden. He didn’t think there was a double meaning to the word ‘maiden’, but if there were, then people were surprisingly well informed about certain details of his married life. She had long since brought an end to ‘all that nonsense’ …
‘It was in the worst possible taste to go on and on telling us how her son-in-law is making so much money and what a big house he and Samantha have bought.’
‘I suppose she is rather proud of them.’
‘Proud of how wealthy they are.’
Since it was difficult to deny that, he didn’t try.
‘It was appallingly ostentatious to have so much silver on the table.’
‘D’you really think so? I rather care for a few bits of silver about the place …’
‘A few bits of silver! Really, Phillip! That épergne would only not have been out of place in the Guildhall. And it needed a table twice as long to take two of those candelabra, let alone all four. And I never have been able to stand queen’s pattern: quite vulgar. The whole thing was done just to impress us.’
He chuckled. ‘I was impressed.’
Her mouth tightened a fraction more. ‘And it was for precisely the same reason that she served Veuve Clicquot, which costs ten times as much as one of the best Spanish sparkling wines and isn’t any better.’
‘I thought you always said there wasn’t any comparison?’
‘I have never said anything of the sort.’
He looked across at the carved wooden chest in which they kept their drinks. A nightcap would be doubly welcome.
‘As for that creature, Mark … It’s an insult to ask us when he’s there.’
‘But he’s there all the time so how can she do anything else?’
‘It’s quite disgusting for a woman to live with a man half her age.’
‘I don’t see that. They’re happy and they don’t disturb anyone else, so where’s the harm?’
‘I can certainly rely on you to make excuses for that sort of behaviour.’
‘Don’t forget, old girl, this isn’t Cheltenham.’
‘What a ridiculous thing to say.’
‘What I mean is, on this island things are a bit different. Life’s more free and easy than at home.’
‘Which is, no doubt, why you insisted on moving out here.’
He walked over to the wooden chest and raised the lid.
‘What are you doing, Phillip?’
; ‘Getting us both a nightcap.’
‘I don’t want one. And you’ve had quite enough already.’
‘D’you remember old Archie? “Enough’s enough, but quite enough’s not quite enough.” Always used to quote that just before he passed out. There was that party in Cape Town …’
‘He was an alcoholic.’
‘Come off it, Cyn! It’s just that he liked a good party. You know as well as I do that he never touched the stuff at sea and even went dry the night before sailing so that he’d be on the top line right from the start. I can remember …’
‘Haven’t I suffered enough of your reminiscences for one night?’
He leaned over and reached down for the bottle of Soberano, carried this through to the kitchen. He poured himself out a large tot, added soda and ice, and returned to the sitting-room. He replaced the brandy in the chest: Cynthia did not like to find any bottles left around the place.
‘How that woman can go on and on behaving as she does without realizing how ridiculous she makes herself … The trouble is, of course, the nouveau riche never has known how to behave.’
He lifted his glass and was about to drink when he suddenly chuckled. ‘In her case, it’s surely the nouvache riche?’
‘What on earth are you talking about?’
‘At her age, she’s more vache than veau.’
She said, in bitter tones of exasperation: ‘For God’s sake, try to think of other people for once. Surely even you can understand that I’ve already had more than enough to put up with tonight?’
He had enjoyed puns ever since he had been young. At the age of twelve, when at a West Country preparatory school, he had, in an exam, translated pas de tout as ‘Thy Father’. Despite the fact that it was the end of term the headmaster had administered a beating, not because of the weakness of the pun, when it would have been justified, but because he — a very earnest man — thought he detected blasphemy. During their engagement, Cynthia had persuaded Rockford to forgo so juvenile a vice, but within two years of their marriage he had returned to it. The truth was, though this was never even hinted at, that although he tried so hard in every other respect to accede to her wishes, in the resumption of this vice he allowed himself his one cri de coeur (a dog’s appeal) against the unhappier aspects of the marriage which, it had turned out, offered none of the warm tenderness a man of his caring nature needed.
Unseemly End (An Inspector Alvarez Mystery Book 6) Page 1