Unseemly End (An Inspector Alvarez Mystery Book 6)

by Roderic Jeffries

  He replaced the letters in the drawer. He hated violence, but for once it seemed to him that murder might have been justified. If only the motive had been an overwhelming sense of moral values rather than sordid gain …

  *

  The Institute of Forensic Anatomy telephoned Alvarez at seven-forty-five that evening.

  ‘Professor Fortunato,’ said a plummy-voiced woman, ‘has completed his post mortem. He has asked me to give you his findings verbally, although naturally I shall be sending you a typed copy of the report later on. Do you wish to take notes?’

  He was reminded of the elderly, buck-toothed woman who had once — and somewhat unavailingly — tried to teach him arithmetic. ‘I’m ready, señorita.’

  ‘The deceased died from asphyxia, occasioned by something soft, made of linen, being pressed over her mouth and nostrils: a pillow, perhaps. Particles containing linen were found in the air passages …’

  When she had finished, he asked: ‘Can you say how much she had drunk?’

  ‘Her blood/alcohol level was just under point three.’

  ‘Then she was as tight as a tick?’

  He should have realized that this was not the sort of expression of which she would approve. ‘The deceased was in a state of severe intoxication.’

  ‘And what about the sleeping pills: how many had she taken?’

  ‘Only the preliminary tests have been carried out. They suggest that the deceased had taken no form of sleeping drugs within the past twenty-four hours. It will be some considerable time before the final tests can be completed.’

  ‘These preliminary tests … How likely are they to turn out wrong?’

  ‘Most unlikely,’ she snapped, as if she personally had carried them out and therefore his question was insulting.

  He thanked her, received a frosty goodbye, and rang off. Where had the nineteen pills got to? If the señora had opened the bottle and in doing so had spilled them out, surely she would never have bothered to search for them and pick them up in the drunken state in which she’d been? Yet there’d not been one on the floor. If she hadn’t swallowed any, why had she ever opened the bottle? Were they wrong in assuming the bottle to have been a new one? Yet the presence of the container and the instructions pamphlet taken together with Victoriana’s evidence suggested that it must have been … If the señora had been stifled with a pillow, did it matter a solitary damn whether it was a new or an old bottle and whether none or all nineteen pills were unaccounted for?

  He looked at the telephone, knew what he had to do and funked doing it for several minutes, then dialled Palma and spoke to Salas’s secretary. She, at her most superior, said she would see if the superior chief were free. Alvarez waited, determined to forget the pills. Inevitably, he racked his brains to work out a logical way in which nineteen of them could vanish.

  ‘Yes?’ said Salas, already impatient.

  ‘Señor, I think I can now make a preliminary report …’

  ‘Can you or can’t you? If you can, do so: if you can’t, get off the line.’

  ‘The thing is that to date I’ve had only a preliminary report from the Institute of Forensic Anatomy …’

  ‘Was the señora murdered?’

  ‘That is now certain and …’

  ‘With sleeping pills?’

  ‘No, señor. In fact, she was suffocated, perhaps with a pillow. You see …’

  ‘Did you not previously report that she’d taken too many sleeping pills after drinking a large quantity of alcohol?’

  ‘It now seems she did not take any sleeping pills. I was mistaken.’

  ‘A distressingly common occurrence. Who murdered her?’

  ‘She had a young man living with her and she’s left all her money to him. Although he claims to have been in England on the night of her death, I feel it is very likely that he was the murderer.’

  ‘Have you arrested him?’

  ‘Not yet, señor. I still have to discuss his alibi with him …’

  ‘Good God! Are you now confessing you haven’t even had the initiative to do that as yet?’

  If he hadn’t phoned, Alvarez thought, he’d have been in trouble: because he had phoned, he was in trouble. He leaned over and reached down to the right-hand bottom drawer of the desk.

  CHAPTER 15

  Alvarez drove off the road on to the dirt track and stopped in front of the caseta on the left, situated roughly a hundred metres before the T-junction, the right-hand fork of which led on to Ca Na Nadana. He turned into the rough gateway.

  The scene was one to bring him warm pleasure. The stone caseta was old, small, and primitively simple: a kitchen, a living-room, and a bedroom. There was a patio which consisted of a cobbled floor, rough concrete pillars, and a criss-cross of rusty wire over which grew two vines which gave cool, dancing shade and the promise of a bountiful harvest of grapes. Beyond the patio was a well, surrounded by a rampart which a donkey or mule would endlessly circle as it turned a large wheel equipped with clay pots which lifted up the water and discharged it to flow into an estanque. The land was intensely cultivated: tomatoes, aubergines, sweet peppers, lettuces, peanuts, chick peas, beans and melons were growing in lush profusion. Contented grunts from a pig-sty identified a litter of pigs being fattened: hobbled sheep and chickens gleaned the stubble to the side of the vegetables: a tethered goat grazed on brambles. A man had begun to plough the stubble with a mule and a Roman plough: a woman was drawing irrigation channels with a mattock … Here was the real Mallorca.

  The woman reached the end of the row, stood upright, and stared at him: the man brought the mule to a halt and did the same. He walked past the estanque, by the side of which were rows of cut and washed lettuces ready for the market, and came up to the woman. ‘How are things, then?’

  She shaded her eyes with a calloused hand and studied him. ‘It’s Enrique. We’ve not seen you for many a moon.’ It was a flat statement of fact, expressing no emotion.

  ‘It must have been at Margarita’s wedding.’

  She nodded.

  Cardell, who’d tied the mule up to a fig tree, walked across with slow, deliberate strides. ‘It’s Enrique,’ he said, unknowingly echoing his wife’s words. They shook hands.

  They talked about the weather, the state of the crops, and in particular the low prices those crops were fetching. There was no bitterness in their voices: life had always been hard and unrewarding and the prosperity of the tourist boom had touched them only lightly. They asked him to take a glass of wine with them — since they would have been having a break anyway — and they all sat under the vines and drank rough wine which the couple had made the previous harvest.

  ‘You know the English señora up the road died last Saturday night?’ said Alvarez.

  They nodded. They had heard, but the information was of small interest: rich foreigners lived in a totally different world.

  ‘It’s possible she was murdered so I’ve got to try and find out who did it … Early Sunday morning, it was, about four. I was wondering if either of you was awake then?’

  They looked at each other and eventually Cardell said:

  ‘She had toothache.’ The woman nodded: she had had bad toothache, but it was not something one normally bothered to talk about because the whole of life was pain.

  ‘There’s nothing worse than toothache,’ said Alvarez commiseratingly. ‘Hope you’ve had it fixed up?’

  She made no answer.

  ‘Did it keep you awake?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘D’you hear anyone coming along the lane during the night and specially around four?’

  She thought for a long while and Cardell picked up the earthenware pitcher and refilled their glasses with wine.

  ‘Earlier on there were many cars,’ she finally said.

  They would have been the guests leaving Ca Na Nadana after the party was finished. ‘What about after them?’

  ‘Juan the butcher went by.’

  He did not ask how she could
be so certain of the driver’s identity: they would know the noises which certain cars made as they bumped along the uneven surface. ‘Was that late?’

  ‘Before twelve.’ At night time they could hear the striking of the clock in the church in the square in Llueso, unless the wind was from the north.

  ‘What about after twelve?’ he asked with the endless patience of a peasant.

  ‘There was a Mobylette.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Just after two.’

  ‘Who owns a Mobylette up this road?’ He knew that by Mobylette they meant any of the motorized bicycles.

  Between them, they mentioned three men and one woman.

  ‘Do they live up the track?’

  Cardell said that the four had fields in which they worked during the days, but they all lived in houses in the village.

  ‘Did you hear the Mobylette return?’

  ‘It came by just after the half-hour.’

  ‘What about after that?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘And you were awake around four?’

  She nodded.

  Alvarez finished his wine, talked once more about the crops, then thanked them and said he’d be moving on. They were glad: they never spent long resting.

  He drove slowly up to the T-junction, his thoughts confused. Erington would have been in a car, assuming he had made a brief, secret flight to Palma on the Saturday night. Yet Carolina Cardell had not heard any vehicle after the Mobylette at half past two. Of course, she might have slept much more than she imagined she had and the car might have passed in both directions as she did so. Again, the doctor had stressed how inaccurate the estimated time of death could be — but he had made his estimate only five hours after death and in such circumstances to be one and a half hours out seemed rather a lot …

  He drove past Ca Na Nadana to Ca’n Bispo. Rockford opened the door and he introduced himself and was immediately asked inside. Cynthia was in the sitting-room, seated in one of the armchairs, and she nodded at him with the imperious grace with which any well connected English lady greeted the unimportant and the poor.

  ‘Señora,’ he said, in answer to her nod, ‘I must sincerely apologize for bothering you at such a time of the evening.’

  She ignored him. ‘No bother at all,’ said Rockford heartily. ‘Sit down over there … What’ll you have to drink?’

  ‘I think nothing, thank you,’ he replied, as he settled on the settee. ‘I have just taken some homemade wine and I do not think much else will settle happily with it.’

  Rockford laughed. ‘I’ve had some of that in the past and I reckon you’re just about right! There was that bottle of plonk I bought in Aden — before it became independent, of course …’

  ‘Not again, surely?’ said Cynthia.

  Rockford said cheerfully: ‘I’m afraid my wife’s heard all my stories more than once. For her, it’s a case of twice told, pales.’

  ‘Señor?’ said Alvarez politely.

  ‘Well, you see, it should be twice told tales, but I … I’m sorry, but I don’t think it’s really going to be possible to explain. Plays on words are very difficult to explain translate, aren’t they?’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘I often think that that’s one of the reasons why countries end up fighting each other. A sense of humour is necessary for getting along even in everyday life, so when you get two nations trying to co-exist it’s infinitely more important. But the trouble is, what strikes an Englishman as rather punny merely seems very fou-lish to a Frenchman.’

  ‘My God!’ exclaimed Cynthia shrilly. ‘Haven’t I suffered enough?’ She slapped her book shut, stood, and left the sitting-room by turning right into the corridor which led to the two bedrooms.

  ‘I’m afraid she’s rather overwrought,’ said Rockford, now contrite. ‘It’s not that we were ever close friends of Dolly, but to have something like that happen next door … I suppose it is true that she was murdered?’

  ‘I am afraid that that was confirmed today, señor.’

  ‘It gets a woman all on edge, you know, even when you tell ’em that lightning never strikes twice. I’ve had to put new locks on all the doors and shut the windows at night even though it makes the rooms stuffier than a gunroom in the tropics. So you’ll have to excuse her …’

  ‘There is absolutely nothing to excuse.’

  ‘Kind of you … Don’t mind if I have a quick tot, do you? Matter of fact, I was just going to pour myself a brandy when you arrived. One thing about Spain, the inflation curve may have headed up into the heavens, but with the pound strong for once one can still afford to drink. Can’t back home, you know.’ He crossed to the wooden chest and opened this. ‘If I lived in England, I might be able to stretch to a pint of bitter at the weekend, but that would be my limit.’ He carried his glass through to the kitchen where he added soda and ice. He spoke through the open hatchway. ‘You said you wanted to ask us a few questions because I might be able to help you. Fire away.’

  Alvarez waited until Rockford had returned and was seated in an armchair and then he said: ‘Señor, as I told you, we now know that Señora Lund was murdered early on Sunday morning. What I need to discover is if anyone arrived in her house after the party was finished. I have spoken to the old couple who live near the road and because the wife was not well she was awake and heard a Mobylette go by. I want to find out how far up this track it came. Were either you or your wife awake during the night?’

  ‘I know I wasn’t. Put my head down and that was that — nothing like champagne to make me sleep soundly.’

  ‘And the señora?’

  He chuckled. ‘She didn’t drink as much as I did, as she made quite a point of telling me, but she was the same. Neither of us flashed an eyelid before nine.’

  ‘Then you cannot help me any further and I will thank you and leave and not bother you any more.’

  ‘You won’t change your mind about a quick noggin?’

  ‘Señor, I would enjoy it, but the wine would not.’

  ‘People who say that all wine’s safe to drink ought to try that plonk from Aden. Matured in old boots. But we drank it … When you’re young, you don’t worry, do you?’

  As he returned to his car, Alvarez sadly thought that when one was young one really didn’t worry about anything because the future was such a very long way away. When Rockford had married, had he worried about what his wife would be like in the years to come? Could he have foreseen a thin, icy woman as comfortable as a prickly pear cactus …?

  He sat behind the wheel and looked at his watch. It was becoming late, but Salas was an impatient man. So did he now start questioning the owners of the land which lay further up the track to discover whether it had been onc of them who had ridden a Mobylette at two in the morning on Sunday? But the men would probably be out at the bars and the women would be cooking and none of them would willingly answer his questions. So perhaps he’d better speak to Trent and try to discover whether there really was something odd about the señora’s will.

  CHAPTER 16

  Carol left the pavement and walked into the garage: she crossed to where Trent was working on the engine of a Citroen. ‘I thought it might interest you to be reminded that we once had a date for eight o’clock,’ she said, her tone waspish.

  He straightened up, wiped the perspiration from his forehead with the back of his hand, and looked at the wall clock which was just visible in the small office. ‘I didn’t realize it was this late.’

  ‘I quite understand. You weren’t worrying about me but were thinking only of the job.’

  ‘Look, Carol …’

  She allowed her exasperation full rein. ‘Why do you go on and on letting the beastly man exploit you like this?’ He answered wearily. ‘Because the only job I’m any good at is a mechanic and because none of the other garages or hire firms want to know me.’

  ‘Then move to somewhere where you can demand what you’re worth … For God’s sake, you’re not cut out to
be an underpaid mechanic. You’ve got drive, initiative …’

  ‘Will you write out my references?’

  ‘Sometimes I could kick you, very, very hard.’

  ‘Where it really hurts?’

  She stared at him and suddenly laughed. He finally smiled in sympathy.

  ‘That’s better: you’re beginning to look human.’

  As she finished speaking, Alvarez entered. He nodded politely at her, then spoke to Trent. ‘I have been told that an Englishman of the name of George Trent works here?’ ‘That’s right. Only if you’re looking for a car to hire, it’s too late. The boss has gone back to his mansion and I’m about to shut up shop and return to my garret. But if you’d like to call in tomorrow morning any time after eight …’