He left the car and crossed the pavement to the kiosk.
*
Rockford, telephone receiver to his ear, roared with laughter. ‘I’ve got to remember that one. Did I tell you about the man with a lisp trying to offer a box of matches to a beautiful young lady … Oh, I did … See you both on Sunday evening for the yardarm sherrymony, then. Thanks for ringing.’ He replaced the receiver. ‘That was Basil.’
Cynthia did not look up from the copy of Country Life she was reading.
‘How about this? Why did the pheasant cross the road?’
Her lips tightened.
‘Because it wanted to get to the other ride.’
‘I really don’t know how you can be quite so infantile.’
‘Retarded development,’ he admitted cheerfully. ‘By the way, Basil’s asked us to drinks on Sunday evening.’
She clipped her words, as she did when she was annoyed. ‘I am not going there next Sunday, or any other Sunday, to suffer that ghastly wife of his.’
‘I suppose she is a bit loud.’
‘The correct word is common.’
‘But she can be amusing fun.’
‘Certainly, if your conception of fun is a barmaid’s crudity.’
He ran his fingers through his hair. ‘Bit of a problem. Thing is, I’ve just told Basil we will go.’
‘Then you’ll have to ring back and tell him that irrespective of what you do, I certainly have no intention of going.’
He hesitated, then said: ‘Couldn’t you turn a blind eye to some of the things she says? She’s not really a bad sort, you know: quite the opposite, in fact. Done a lot for some people and hasn’t gone round the place shouting about it. There was that elderly English widow who fell off her bike and broke her leg and couldn’t afford any help in the house. Mabel went to her flat every day and cooked a midday meal for her …’
‘I have been told that people of Mabel’s background are very attached to a communal life … Next time you receive an invitation, perhaps you could take the trouble to consult me first before you accept?’
He crossed to the bookcase and picked up his pipe.
‘If you must smoke, Phillip, could you please not leave your things around to make a mess. There will be ash everywhere.’
He tamped down the half-burned tobacco with his forefinger, put the pipe in his mouth, struck a match, and lit the tobacco. He looked around for an ashtray and saw a brass one on an occasional table.
She said, as he walked to the table: ‘I polished that ashtray this morning, but I suppose you’d better use it if you must.’
He put the used match back in the box of matches.
‘Phillip, have you received a letter from your brother in the past couple of days?’
‘You know I haven’t.’
‘All I know is that you haven’t mentioned one.’
She was never going to forget that episode, he thought.
‘You ought to have heard from him by now.’
‘It’s still early days with the post between here and home taking even longer than usual. I reckon the mail’s being sent by no boat to China.’
‘Phillip! Will you please stop that.’
‘Sorry.’
‘You told him you must have the money back?’
‘Yes.’
‘Immediately?’
‘Yes.’
‘I still can’t begin to understand what possessed you to lend it to him.’
He drew on the pipe, to find it had gone out. He took the box of matches from his pocket, hesitated, then said: ‘I think I’ll go for a walk.’
‘In this heat?’
‘It’s not too bad, really. Not like Singapore that year …’
‘Must you go on and on, repeating the same stories?’
‘It’s old age.’
‘It’s thoughtlessness.’
He walked across to the very short passage to the front door.
‘Phillip, I’ve been going through the invitation list for our party. I’ve decided not to ask the Moores. His behaviour last year was quite disgraceful.’
‘As a matter of fact, old girl …’ He turned, filling the passage with his comfortable bulk.
‘There’s no point in trying to find excuses for him. A gentleman holds his liquor: if he doesn’t, he’s not a gentleman.’
‘What I was going to say was, I don’t think we ought to have a party.’
‘Not have our annual cocktail-party?’
‘It always comes to quite a bit, doesn’t it?’
‘Quite a bit of what?’
‘Money. I mean, we never buy any of the booze out of the barrel as lots of people do to cut the costs …’
‘I am not going to start treating my guests like a lot of peasants.’
‘The better stuff from the barrel is exactly the same as the bottled …’
‘I really am not interested, Phillip.’
He sighed, turned, and left the house to go for a walk along the meandering dirt tracks, to greet any Mallorquin he met in his execrable Spanish, to appreciate the beauty of the countryside which was both barren and lush, and to enjoy the satisfaction of knocking out his pipe against the heel of his shoe and not giving a damn where the wind scattered the ash.
CHAPTER 6
The days became hotter, the landscape, where there was no irrigation, more burned up. At dusk, the mountains would appear to shimmer as they began to release some of the heat which they had soaked up during the day and immediately above them the sky would purple before all colour disappeared.
‘It’s too hot,’ complained Dolly. ‘Turn up the air-conditioning. And do switch off the programme. I can’t stand it.’
Erington switched off the television which had been showing a video tape recording of the Edinburgh Tattoo. He then went over to the air-conditioning unit, set low on the wall, and moved the control dial to its maximum setting-
‘It sounds terribly noisy tonight. Did you remember to tell the service man it was noisy?’
‘I did. He checked it over and said nothing was wrong.’
‘He obviously didn’t know anything about it,’ she said fretfully.
‘Don’t you know the definition of a modern service engineer? He’s the man who says your machine’s in wonderful nick the day before it blows up.’ He noted that she didn’t smile. Softly, softly, he told himself. Something had got her into one of her bitchy moods …
There was a silence which she broke abruptly. ‘You were out in my car the other evening.’ It was ‘his’ car when things were sweet: ‘her’ car when they were sour.
Obviously, she had learned about his evening with Carol. Goddamn it, on this island you couldn’t blow your nose without half a dozen people ‘knowing’ you’d got a cold. Yet he’d chosen a restaurant deep in the mountains behind Palma where few foreigners ate …
‘Did you go to the casino?’
‘You know I did, Dolly.’
‘Who did you take?’
‘No one, of course.’
‘You took that woman you met in the square.’
‘What woman? … Oh, I suppose you mean Carol? As a matter of fact, I haven’t seen her from that day to this.’
‘Liar.’
‘Dolly, my love, would Markie ever lie to you?’
‘If you thought you’d get away with it.’
‘Knowing how smart you are, d’you think I’d even try?’
‘I know you took her. You were seen with her.’
‘At the casino? No way.’
‘In my car, driving back.’
He laughed. ‘The mystery’s suddenly resolved!’
‘Then you admit you were with her?’
‘I admit I drove back from Palma with a blonde.’
‘It was Carol,’ she said thickly.
‘I suppose that could have been her name.’ Expertly, he judged just how far he dare try her temper.
‘What d’you mean, might have been?’
He didn’t answer, b
ut said: ‘I don’t know about you, but I could really attack another drink.’
‘Answer me.’
He crossed to her side. ‘You do leap to the most terrible conclusions.’ He sat and reached for her left hand. She moved it. Smiling, he leaned over until he could imprison it. ‘I promise you there’s absolutely no need to get so upset. I went to the casino on my own, concentrated on my system for winning a fortune at roulette and ignored whatever feminine pulchritude there was around — easy enough, when I’m coming back to you, darling — and succeeded in losing all my money in just under two hours. So then I started back for here and was just leaving the outskirts of Palma when a blonde thumbed a lift. It was pretty late and I reckoned it was a bit dangerous for her to do that sort of thing because there’s no knowing who’d pick her up, so I stopped and asked her where she wanted to go.’
‘I’m not a fool. You picked her up because she was pretty.’
He chuckled. ‘If that was my real reason, I was well punished for my sins! She might have looked all right at a distance, but seen close to …’
‘Where did you take her?’
Dolly hadn’t said where Carol and he had been seen together. ‘Down to the Port.’
‘Why d’you go there?’
‘Because that was where she was staying. Surely you wouldn’t have wanted me to leave her at the side of the main road, having to thumb a lift down to the Port in the middle of the night?’
‘She wasn’t bothered earlier on.’
‘Now, now, sweetie, show a little charity. It was just that having once picked her up, stupidly I felt responsible for seeing she arrived back safely.’ He watched her face closely and finally became satisfied that he’d been believed. Bloody close, he thought. But there wasn’t a situation that a quick mind and a ready tongue couldn’t talk its way out of. ‘Now, how about that little drinkie?’ Fill her up with cognac and she’d forget the whole affair.
*
They slept in separate bedrooms. ‘I don’t want the staff to get the wrong idea.’ As a connoisseur of hypocrisy, he rated that very highly. But it was an arrangement which suited him because it meant that he had a room in which he could be on his own.
He switched off the air-conditioning: the room was quite cool enough and if the machine ran through the night he’d wake up with a sore throat and a painfully dry nose. He went through to the en suite bathroom: maroon-coloured tiles from floor to ceiling, rich gold-coloured tiles on the floor, egg-shaped, deep blue bath seven feet along its greater axis, gold-plated taps, marble surrounds, matching bidet, WC, and twin handbasins, recessed cabinets with interior strip lighting … A sharp contrast to the only bathroom in the house which he’d lived in until he left home.
He returned to the bedroom. It was twenty feet long and fifteen wide — who the hell could work out anything in metres? — and it could have slept a whole family in comfort. Built-in cupboards lined one wall. On the tiled floor were two matching Ladik prayer carpets with their stylized design of tulips. On the wall facing the bed, hanging between the two windows, was a painting of two horses, one a dark bay and the other a grey, by Stubbs. The bed was king size. The cover had been removed, carefully folded, and placed on one of the three needle-worked chairs. The lilac-coloured, hand-embroidered, Irish linen sheet — no blankets — had been turned down at one corner and his silk sulu — about which Victoriana had made more than one ribald comment — was on the top pillow. On one of the matching bedside tables there was a glass and an insulated flask containing iced water. Set in the wall was a bell-push. Summon the maid for whatever you wanted — within reason.
He undressed, wrapped the colourful sulu about his waist, pulled back the top sheet, lay down, and looked at his watch — a gold Piaget. It was nearly midnight.
He thought about Carol and how she’d unwittingly forced him to listen to his yearnings instead of his common sense. Who’d seen him with her and rushed to pass the news on to Dolly? Someone who felt personally aggrieved because the rewards for virtue were obviously so much less than those for vice? What if that someone had been able to make a definite identification so that Dolly would have known for certain his passenger had been Carol … ?
He was smart, so he’d never risk taking Carol out again. Yet even as he reached this decision, he remembered the strange, dream-drifting pleasure it had been to be with her, to listen to her laughter, to share in her warm acceptance of the world exactly as it was … Could he really forgo such pleasure? Was his decision really final? He swore. Surely there had to be some way of reconciling the irreconcilable? Couldn’t he continue to enjoy the life of luxury which Dolly provided, yet at the same time see Carol again because she offered him something else, something which until now he had not recognized how badly he wanted?
CHAPTER 7
They swam around an anchored schooner, with brilliant blue hull and a carved figurehead. Between them and the shore a ski-boat crossed, towing an expert skier: a windsurfer, ill at ease even though the wind was so light, failed to keep his balance and fell back into the sea: a small catamaran, her sail as many coloured as Joseph’s coat, ghosted along with a man at the helm and a woman, proudly topless, sitting against the mast.
‘Race you to the shore,’ said Carol.
‘What d’you want: twenty yards’ start?’ asked Trent.
‘Big head.’
‘OK. Scratch for both and loser buys ices.’
Her crawl was stylish, his was not, but the powerful strokes of his arms pulled him through the water at speed.
When within fifty yards of the beach he slowed down, only to discover that she had done the same.
She laughed. ‘I read your thoughts. Can’t have her buying me an ice-cream so I’ll pretend to lose … We’ll have to declare the race a dead heat or we’ll spend the rest of the afternoon trying to be last home.’
‘Very sensible. More especially as the ice-cream man’s moved too far away.’
They swam lazily to the shore and crossed the sand to their towels, on which they lay down. The heat of the sun induced a drifting weightlessness and she was half asleep when he said: ‘Did you have a meal with him?’
‘Who’s him?’
‘Who d’you think? Lover boy.’
‘Mark? We had dinner together, yes.’
‘At some five-star hotel?’
‘At a little restaurant up in the mountains near Gallilea. There was a balcony where after the meal one could sit out and have coffee and just see part of Palma bay. The moon was out and the sea was all speckled silver … It was so beautiful.’
‘He didn’t choose it because it was beautiful, but because he reckoned there wasn’t any chance of meeting the old bitch there.’
‘You could be so wrong.’
‘That’s possible, but I’d never bet on it.’
She moved and sat with her knees drawn up, her chin on her knees, and her arms about her legs. ‘He’s really a different person from what you seem to think he is.’
‘I’ve been too generous?’
‘Come on, relax. It’s your day off, there isn’t a cloud in the sky, and we’ve had a wonderful swim. Stop imitating a bear with a sore head.’
‘I can’t stand the man.’
‘I’d never have guessed that.’
‘How in the hell can you bear to have anything to do with him? A gigolo.’
‘Does it really matter what he is?’
‘Of course it damn well does.’
‘He makes Dolly happy. Surely that’s all that’s important?’
‘It all depends on your standards.’
‘What makes you so certain yours are the right ones?’
‘I know one thing for sure. A man stops being a man when he starts living off a woman.’
‘Suppose there are good reasons for what he’s doing?’
‘There couldn’t be any.’
‘George … Why do you always get so hot under the collar about him?’
‘I don’t like gigolos.’
/>
‘I can think of many far worse kinds of people.’
‘All right. So I don’t like them either.’
She laughed. ‘Some American once wrote a book on how to make friends. Would you like me to try and find you a copy?’
*
‘Steve,’ said Lettie Kenley, ‘you’ll just have to go and talk to her again.’ She was a small woman with an impish look to her face and when she smiled, which normally was often, there was a hint of ready mockery about her mouth.
Kenley muttered something, then he got up from the patio chair and crossed to the nearest flower-bed which was filled with gazanias.
‘Come on back here,’ she said, in the same tone in which she had admonished their son when he had been small.
‘Lots of weeds …’
‘Come and sit down so that we can talk things over.’ He straightened up and the harsh sunshine picked out the signs of strain in his face. He had suddenly begun to look old, she thought with a brief, sharp surge of panic.
He bent and pulled up a length of creeping grass, slowly returned to the shade and the chair with the grass still in his hand. He began to twist it round his thumb and forefinger. Tim had always done that when uneasy or embarrassed, she thought, this time with the sad regret of a mother whose son and family lived a thousand miles away.
From across the urbanizacion came the shouts of people in the communal swimming pool: pop music blared out from the next-door house which had been rented by a French family: just along the road a number of children were playing a game which seemed to consist of screaming as loudly and for as long as possible. ’Appy ’Ampstead, some of the British residents — who could afford to live in different surroundings — called it.
‘Originally, you quite definitely did not agree to pay her twenty per cent,’ she said.
He shook his head.
‘All you agreed was that the loan should be treated as a business deal. By that, you meant you’d acknowledge the debt in writing?’
Unseemly End (An Inspector Alvarez Mystery Book 6) Page 5