Unseemly End (An Inspector Alvarez Mystery Book 6)

by Roderic Jeffries

  Alvarez crossed to the car and briefly introduced himself.

  ‘A … a detective.’ Erington looked past him at the house. ‘What the hell’s going on? Victoriana sounded as if she’d lost her wits. Where’s Dolly … Señora Lund?’

  ‘Señor, I fear I have some bad news for you.’

  ‘Bad news?’

  ‘Señora Lund died last night.’ He watched Erington’s face.

  Erington looked shocked, then disbelieving. ‘Impossible.’

  ‘I assure you, señor, that regrettably it is true.’

  ‘Dolly … Dolly’s dead?’

  He nodded. Perhaps Erington had mistaken his vocation and should have gone in for acting?

  ‘But … but what did she die from?’

  ‘Shall we go inside and then I will tell you.’

  Erington, seemingly bewildered, picked up his suitcase out of the boot and followed Alvarez into the house. ‘I’ll just take my case up to my room.’

  Alvarez made no objection and Erington went upstairs. When he returned he said abruptly, as he entered the sitting-room: ‘Her room’s locked.’

  ‘Indeed, señor.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I have locked it.’

  ‘What makes you think you’ve any right to do that?’

  ‘Perhaps you will understand when I tell you that it is possible the señora was murdered.’

  ‘What? … That’s ridiculous. She can’t have been.’

  ‘No one can know for certain until medical tests have been completed, but in the meantime I have unfortunately to assume that she was.’

  ‘Why? Simply because she swallowed a whole load of sleeping pills …’ He stopped abruptly.

  ‘Señor, I have mentioned nothing about why she died so how did you know that she had taken sleeping pills?’

  He spoke hoarsely. ‘I didn’t. I just assumed it.’

  ‘Then why should you have made such an assumption?’

  ‘Because she would keep taking them though I went on and on about the danger of doing that after she’d been drinking. Look, you’ve got to understand that when I arrived here just now I didn’t have the slightest idea she’d died, far less that anyone suspected she’d been murdered. But I did know that when she gives a party she always drinks too much and when she goes to bed she falls asleep immediately, but invariably wakes up during the night and then can’t get back to sleep. So she takes sleeping pills even though the doctor and I have both warned her how terribly dangerous that can be … I didn’t know anything, but after what you’d said I could guess. D’you see that?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘God, I need a drink! Hell of a shock … What about you?’

  ‘I think not, thank you.’

  Erington went over to the mobile cocktail cabinet and poured himself out a whisky and soda. ‘I want some ice and Victoriana hasn’t put any out yet …’ He looked at Alvarez, then left the room. When he returned, his glass was already half empty. ‘You said that maybe Dolly was murdered. But who on earth could possibly want to kill her?’

  ‘Señor, if necessary it will become my job to find out.’

  He drank. The whisky began to restore some of his confidence and he spoke much more easily. ‘I’m afraid it’s true she wasn’t all that popular with some people. She … Well, to tell the truth, she couldn’t be bothered to make the effort to be pleasant to people she didn’t particularly like. But for God’s sake, you don’t kill someone just because you dislike her, do you? So what possible motive could there be?’

  ‘I suppose that the señora was a very rich person?’

  ‘I imagine so.’

  ‘You do not know for sure?’

  ‘Dolly could be very secretive at times.’

  ‘You are saying that she did not speak to you about money?’

  ‘Never. That is, except …’ He squared his shoulders. ‘You’ll probably have already learned that I live here but Dolly pays … paid … all the bills?’

  Alvarez said nothing.

  ‘So there were just a few occasions when we did discuss money. But it was never generally: always specifically. I’ve no idea of how rich she was.’

  ‘Can you say who will inherit the señora’s fortune?’

  ‘It’ll almost certainly be Samantha, her daughter. There’s been quite a row between them, but Dolly’s not the kind of person to forget the ties of blood.’

  ‘There has been a row?’

  ‘Samantha is very independent: Dolly was inclined to be possessive. I suppose it’s a fairly common cause for friction.’

  ‘Have you met the señora’s daughter?’

  There was a brief pause. ‘Yes. She married a man whom Dolly really disliked and that caused a breach. Unfortunately, Dolly turned out to be right and the man was a rotter who’d thought that by marrying Samantha he’d be marrying Dolly’s money. When he discovered that wasn’t so, he left her. Dolly was naturally upset and after a time she asked me to find out how Samantha was — she was too proud to ask me to try to heal the breach between them, but that’s what she wanted.’

  ‘Señor, I am a little puzzled. I was told by Victoriana that the daughter was married to a very successful businessman?’

  ‘Yes, I imagine you were.’ He hesitated, then said: ‘I suppose with Dolly dead the truth’s going to have to come out. But I’d hate to be the one responsible for the local bitches learning about it after all her kindness … Will you promise to keep as much as possible of what I tell you confidential?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Dolly was wealthy — it doesn’t matter exactly how wealthy: as I’ve said, I can’t answer that. Being wealthy one would have thought she’d have been completely self-assured, but in fact she suffered from an inferiority complex because of her social background — it was very different from the social background of many of the people who live here. The English didn’t invent snobbery, but they elevated it to a fine art and that sort of attitude still lingers on here. Dolly was frightened that she’d suffer a social black eye if people learned that her daughter was married to a fortune-seeker who’d left her, so she invented a socially desirable and very successful husband.’ Alvarez rubbed his chin. It was all very odd! ‘When you saw the señora’s daughter, was she ready to be friendly with her mother once more?’

  ‘She was still resentful, of course, but underneath that resentment there was a longing to bury the hatchet. If this hadn’t happened now …’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘But it’s happened. Nobody can turn the clock back.’

  ‘Thank you for your help, senor.’

  ‘That’s all right … Look, I wonder if you can help me.’ His manner became slightly embarrassed.

  ‘If I can.’

  ‘It’s a question of where I stand. I mean, with Dolly dead can I go on living here until I’ve made a few arrangements or ought I to leave immediately?’

  ‘I think that is a question which you must put to the señora’s solicitor, Señor Vives.’

  ‘You mean Señor Borobia.’

  ‘Senor Vives, who practises in the village.’

  ‘But …’ He stared at Alvarez, frowning.

  Alvarez said goodbye and walked towards the door. He stopped, turned. ‘Señor, how is your mother?’

  ‘My mother …?’ For a moment the question seemed to puzzle him, then he said hurriedly: ‘It wasn’t nearly as serious as the telegram suggested, thank God. If I’d rung through to find out exactly how things were before I did anything else, I’d probably have stayed on for the party. I suppose … I suppose if I’d been here Saturday night that would have saved Dolly from being murdered. It doesn’t make an easy thought to live with.’

  CHAPTER 14

  Alvarez returned to Ca Na Nadana and parked next to the open Seat, which had been left outside the garage. He rang the front-door bell and as he waited he turned round and stared at the field beyond the drive in which a crop of barley, grown under fig and almond trees, had very recently been harvested. Fifty y
ears ago, he thought, all suitable land had been used to grow food and people had been poor and hungry: today, much of the best land had either been buried under concrete or turned into gardens and yet few people were poor and none needed to be hungry. How could any man understand life when it presented such a paradox?

  The door was opened by Ana. His first emotion on seeing her was one of quiet compassion: Ana was so very plain when compared to Victoriana. But there was a ring on her engagement finger. Victoriana, beautiful and vivacious, longed for what she probably would never have: Ana, plain, dull, was happily content with the little she had. Another paradox?

  She told him the señor was outside and showed him through to the pool patio. Erington lay sunbathing by the side of the pool and when he heard them he came to his feet. ‘Thanks a lot for coming here so promptly. Thing was, I reckoned you must be told as soon as possible: matter of fact, that old shark, Vives, thought the same … You’ll have a drink this time, won’t you?’ He walked round to the west-facing house patio and pressed the bell push by the side of the telephone extension socket. ‘We might as well sit down here, in the shade. When the sun gets this hot, I have to admit that even I can get too much of it.’

  They sat at the glass-topped bamboo table. Erington produced a thin gold cigarette case which contained cigarettes with different coloured paper. ‘They’re all the same tobacco — just a bit of nonsense, really, but it’s quite amusing.’

  Alvarez took a green cigarette. Ana came out, followed by Lulu, and Erington asked her to wheel out the drinks. As she returned inside, Lulu sniffed Alvarez’s trousers and after a thoughtful pause wagged her tail because she realized she knew him. He bent down and patted her: the moment he stopped, she waddled under the table to Erington, who lifted her on to his lap.

  ‘I saw Vives, as I mentioned over the phone,’ said Erington. ‘He told me … I still can’t believe it. But you must know something about the terms of the will or you wouldn’t have been so hot on my going to see him … She’s left everything to me. It’s … I just can’t get used to the fact.’

  ‘You had no idea, señor?’

  ‘Of course I didn’t,’ he answered sharply. ‘How could I have?’

  ‘There is a copy of the señora’s will in this house.’

  ‘There is? … How d’you find that out?’

  ‘It is in the desk in the study.’

  ‘In Dolly’s desk. Good God!’

  ‘Do you not have spare keys to her desk?’

  ‘I do not. That study was Dolly’s sanctum sanctorum and no one else was allowed near it except to dust … D’you mind telling me how you managed to open the desk?’

  ‘With the keys which were kept in the toes of a shoe in a cupboard in the señora’s bedroom.’

  Ana wheeled out the cocktail cabinet and told Erington that the ice beaker was full, she’d emptied a tin of olives into a dish which was on the top shelf, and there was a sliced lemon on a plate.

  Erington poured out a brandy and soda for Alvarez and a Cinzano and soda for himself. He raised his glass in salute, drank. ‘I don’t want to make too much of it, but I do wonder if you had the right to search for those keys and, having found them, to open the desk and read the papers inside?’

  ‘Señor, the police in Spain have many rights.’

  ‘I don’t think that really answers my question.’ He waited, then said: ‘Did you look through all the papers in the desk?’

  ‘I have not as yet, but I will be doing so.’

  ‘But I’m sure those are all her personal papers.’

  ‘If the señora was killed I am afraid nothing of hers can be held to be private until the murderer is identified.’

  ‘It’s a rotten business,’ he said with sudden passion. ‘How she’d hate knowing that all her secrets are in danger of becoming public knowledge. It makes the whole business seem even more ghastly and sordid than it already is.’

  ‘Indeed,’ agreed Alvarez somberly. ‘Now, señor, you have something to tell me?’

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘You suggested over the telephone that I came here to speak to you.’

  ‘Yes, because of the will. I was sure you’d want to know what the terms are … But since then I’ve realized you must already know them … I’m afraid I’ve not been thinking very straight.’

  ‘When a man has been shocked, it is often very difficult for him to think correctly.’

  Erington was afraid that the words had been spoken ironically, but Alvarez’s expression remained bland, even a little vacant.

  Alvarez finished his drink. ‘Señor, may I now have permission to examine all the doors of the house?’

  Erington answered with some bitterness. ‘From what you said earlier, it doesn’t seem to matter whether or not I give my permission.’

  ‘Yet it is far more satisfactory to us both if you do.’

  ‘Typically Spanish — the sting is in the tail … Look wherever you want.’

  ‘You are very kind.’

  ‘But in return, just tell me one thing. What in the devil are you looking for?’

  ‘The signs of a forced entry. If there are such signs, we know how and where an intruder broke in: if there are none, we have to ask ourselves, why not?’

  He had brought with him a lock probe — a tiny tube with a minute bulb and a mirror, attached to a battery — which enabled an observer to look into the heart of a lock to check whether there were any traces in the oil or grease in those parts of the lock which had not been made shiny by the use of the key. With the probe in his right hand, and the battery in his left, he inspected the lock of the top drawer of the kneehole desk in the study. There were numerous scratches to show that the lock had been forced, either very clumsily once or fairly expertly on many occasions. It was the same with the lock of the top left-hand narrow drawer, to the side of the kneehole.

  He left the study and walked round the outside of the house, visually inspecting the locks of all the doors. None of them showed the slightest sign of ever having been forced. He went upstairs and checked the two doors which gave access to the small upstairs patios, one at either end of the house: they had not been touched either. So, assuming that Victoriana had fastened all the shutters and locked all the doors on Saturday night before she went to bed, as she claimed to have done, the only way now left of forcibly breaking into the house was via the top, open floor.

  He unlocked the door of the master bedroom, crossed to the nearest window, opened the shutters — with the airconditioning off, the windows had been left open — and leaned out, but not very far since he was a lifelong sufferer from altophobia, and judged distances. It would require a ladder of at least six and a half metres to reach the top floor … While it couldn’t positively be ruled out that such a ladder had been brought and used, it did not seem likely.

  He thankfully withdrew into the room and as he did so his attention was caught by a scratch on the glass of the left-hand window which had been swung back. When he looked more closely, he realized there were two scratches, roughly parallel, a couple of centimetres apart, half a metre long. Had there, then, been an attempt to break in through this window? Yet the shutters had been closed and fastened and a careful examination now confirmed that no attempt had ever been made to force them … Fool, he suddenly thought, meaning himself. If he had had more than half his wits about him, he’d have realized from the beginning that the scratches were on the inside of the glass, not the outside!

  He looked round the bedroom once more, sighed because he had learned nothing fresh, closed the shutters to return the room to a soft twilight, and then left. After locking the door, he went downstairs to the study.

  He sat in front of the desk, unlocked the top, long drawer, and sorted through the scramble of papers. There were bank statements and lists of investments which made him wonder if extra noughts had been slipped in by mistake: there were a few bills which could have meant nothing in the face of such riches: there were respectful letters fr
om banks, stock and commodity brokers, real estate agents: there were half a dozen letters from Samantha.

  When he read these half-dozen letters, he had consciously to overcome his reluctance to intrude into the privacy of the two women: and to begin with he briefly examined them with nervous speed, as if he were scared of being caught indulging in a degraded curiosity. Each of the letters was without an address. The envelopes of two of them were badly creased although the sheets of paper inside were not. He imagined the mother, scornfully crumpling up the envelope and meaning to do the same with the letter inside, but then being emotionally caught and held by the contents and keeping both. The postmarks didn’t correspond with the letters inside in three cases: he could see Samantha, having written the letter, hesitating for days to send it because her pride still battled with her despair even though it was doomed to lose …

  The first letter, dated some eighteen months before, was challenging in tone: yes, it was quite true, Paul had gone to Bristol, but that was simply because friends had said there was a job for him there: as soon as he was settled, she was going to join him … The second and third letters, written at intervals of three months, were no longer challenging but filled with a growing self-pity. Paul hadn’t written or even rung up: every time she tried to get in touch with him, he seemed to be out: she left messages which he surely must have received, yet he’d not answered one of them. She’d been told Paul was seeing rather a lot of a redhead. There couldn’t be anything in that, but it was rotten of him to spend time with a redhead and not bother to get in touch with her … The fourth and fifth letters had been written within two weeks of each other. Paul had left her for the redhead and the one time she’d managed to have a word with him, begging him to return home, he’d brutally told her to get lost. She’d become ill with worry and despair. She’d had to give up her work because she couldn’t cope. The national health doctor couldn’t, or wouldn’t, do anything more than put her on tranquillizers, which were utterly useless. She owed money on the rent of the flat and the landlord was trying to throw her out, in spite of the legal protection all tenants were supposed to have. She couldn’t pay the grocery bills. She’d heard of a psychiatrist who did wonders for people who’d reached the state she was in, but he only worked privately and was expensive. She and Dolly had had their rows, especially over Paul and how she wished she’d listened to Dolly’s advice! Dolly had been quite right — he was just a working-class rotter. Please, please could Dolly let her have a little money to help her out of her troubles? If only she could afford to see the psychiatrist … Attached to the sixth letter was a torn sheet of paper on which was writing that Alvarez recognized as the senora’s. He read and knew a sharp, bitter anger. That any woman could dream of writing thus to her own daughter. ‘Hardly any money’ … When her bank statements and lists of investments were so heavy that the paper they were printed on was strained. ‘You’ve made your bed and now must lie on it’ … As her mother, she had helped to make that bed … This last letter from Samantha was tragic. Why had Dolly become so cruel? She knew she’d married Paul against her mother’s wishes, but that was in the past and couldn’t it now be forgotten? All she’d asked for was just enough money to help her pull herself together … The cheap paper on which the letter was written was still slightly corrugated in two places, marking the fall of tears.