Tour de Force

by Christianna Brand

  And afterwards, they lay in a long line under the sun-shed, drawn together by their common situation, and talked and talked and talked. Cockie, coming back from his paddle with ankles pink and puckered from their long immersion, stopped and looked down at them. Miss Trapp and Mr Fernando lay side by side, muttering together, he a vast, quaking, reddy-brown sea anemone, naked and anything but ashamed, she wrapped in striped towelling like an angel on horseback, a very thin prune in a very large rasher of streaky bacon. Mr Cecil lay on his back, his front still sore from yesterday’s sunbathing: as Louli had said, you could see, literally, a line of demarcation where the pink ended and the white began – could see too the little daubs of suntan make-up in the wrinkles round his eyes, and the false tint of the yellow hair that flopped away from his head on to shoulders as white as a girl’s – as white as Louvaine’s own white shoulders, lying next to him with her red head on her forearm, scratching ‘I love you’ in the sand for Leo Rodd to see and, seeing, smooth over with a warning frown. Helen Rodd was at the end of the row, lying with eyes closed behind round yellow sun-glasses, Dutch doll legs and arms spread-eagled, half in, half out, of the sun. And one of them thought Inspector Cockrill – a murderer. For there was no escape now – no easy talk of servants, of intruders bent upon plunder or rape, no nonsense about suicide. The book had been on the table, the book that had held their names and against their names, some of their names at least, details of secrets known to the murdered woman. No Spaniard, no Italian, no San Juanese could have known what the book contained, or, knowing, need have troubled to hide it away. The Gerente had found it, tucked under the lining of a drawer of the wardrobe; he had told his blood brother so much, but refused any glimpse of the contents, marching off proudly with his booty back to his gaol. ‘He says he will come again,’ Fernando had translated; and doubtless he would. Doubtless he would come again. And meanwhile one of them – one of these six people lying chitter-chattering like a row of starlings, under the sun-shed – arguing, guessing, confiding, playing half-seriously at being anxious and terrified but not nearly as anxious and terrified as they had every right to be – one of them was, in fact, a murderer. But he did not know which; and since it did not then occur to him that by just glancing once more at them, with a little more attention, he should have been able to tell, he left them to it and went back up to the hotel.

  Chapter Seven

  IT was midday. The voices of returning tourists roused Cockie from his deck-chair, loud with their triumphs in the smugglers’ boats whence they had returned laden with spoils stealthily slipped into their hands by the sailors (by order of their captains, who took forty per cent) and which they could have bought for half the price in the Barrequitas shops and half that again anywhere outside San Juan el Pirata. Grim was still being grim, Gruff was torn between loyalty and love, Mrs Sick had been sick and so, though they made less parade of it, had nearly everyone else; one of the more obscure Jollies had been assaulted by one of the sailors in a Nasty Way and the rest of the women were treating her as Untouchable and wishing like anything that it had happened to themselves. Inspector Cockrill decided to go for a walk.

  He had forgotten about the guards at the hotel gate but the word had gone round and they fell back with respectful cries of Scotalanda Yarrda and seemed not even to expect a bribe. He strolled down to the quay and watched while the last bales of illicit tobacco, the last sacks of illicit coffee were hauled ashore under the supervision of the Gerente, who had absented himself from his labours on the murder case, until this imperative duty should be completed. The Gerente was delighted to see him. He took a couple of watches out of his pocket and offered him either at a very low figure, finally pressing both upon him for the price of one. Scotalanda Yarda proving adamant, he flung his arm about the shoulders of his brother and with a windmill of gesture begged him to come back for a glass of arguardiente. Cockie, who had pictured Carmen or Isabelita dispensing little glasses among the geraniums in a white-walled patio at El Gerente’s home, discovered himself, too late, at the prison gates.

  The prison had been built by San Juan himself in his less regenerate days and had undergone little improvement since. El Gerente’s apartments, however, in contrast with the rest, were tremendously cosy, with ingenious gutters of cockled-up tin to catch the moisture which dripped down the six-foot walls, and a window in each room which would positively have let in light and air, had not storks for some generations built their nests, undisturbed, just inside. There was a splendid smell of illicit coffee and a jug of it was brewing on an open fire – the smoke escaped through a hole in the ceiling or at any rate enough of it to have produced a chronic and unattractive cough in the inhabitant of the room above; and Jose had disobeyed orders, for a prematurely born baby goat was curled up on a bundle of rags in a corner. The Gerente lifted a ponderous key from a nail in the wall and, after great exertions, succeeded in opening the safe. From it, pushing aside sundry packages of noxious drugs, he produced a bottle of arguardiente and, pouring out liberal glassfuls, proceeded to toast his guest with such warmth that Cockie expected at any moment to have his veins opened for a ceremonial mingling of blood.

  Intelligent conversation, however, was difficult. The Gerente gave it up at last and sent for an interpreter. The interpreter proved to be a light-hearted brunette who leaned against the Gerente’s knee and tickled his ears in the intervals of her work. Her first duty was to warn the blood brother that now he and El Gerente were friends and he must not tell El Gerente’s Pepita what an attractive interpreter he was obliged to employ. Inspector Cockrill felt fairly safe in undertaking silence upon this point. Since they were so chummy together, however, he felt that the moment was ripe to put in a word for the Helpless Ones.

  The Gerente was delighted with the theory of suicide, translated – amid gales of inexplicable laughter – by Lollita. But it would not do. He produced the morocco-covered book. Nor was Cockie the only person who had appreciated that point about the non-English-speaking. It was very clear, translated Lollita in transports of merriment, that the senorita had had some hold over one or other of the present short-list of suspects, and that that person had, naturally enough, seized the opportunity to make away with her. She added without prompting that there were many killings in San Juan and the Gerente always caught someone in the end. It obviously did not very much matter whom.

  Cockie had thought it all out carefully during his paddling hours that morning and – allowing for the increasing effects of the raw eau-de-vie – he had it off pat. He got to work with paper and pencil. The senorita had last been seen at four-thirty, going up this little path here (he stubbed with a nicotined forefinger at a rough plan of the hotel and gardens whose perspective grew progressively wilder as its details and the glasses of arguardiente multiplied). At that time all the – very well, suspects – were gathered or were gathering together on the beach. And from that time to the time when, two and a half hours later, the body was discovered, they had all remained together on the beach: first bathing in the sea, then sunbathing on the sand. He, Inspector Cockrill, had sat during the entire two and a half hours, on the lower terrace – here – and, after thinking it very carefully over, he was prepared to say that not for one single moment had any of them been out of his sight. Mr and Mrs Rodd had lain under the sun-shed, Miss Trapp over here at the foot of the diving rock, Mr Fernando on the raft several yards out to sea, Mr Cecil in a rubber boat further inshore, and Miss Barker on the terrace by the side of his own deck-chair. No, he had not slept – not a wink. Others had slept, perhaps. Miss Barker had slept. Mr Cecil said he had slept: Mr Fernando too, spreadeagled on the raft. But Inspector Cockrill had not slept, insisted Cockie with a vague, arguardiente-hazy idea that to have done so would in some way have let down the honour of Scotalanda Yarda. And he could assure the Gerente that all the six people concerned had been, throughout the entire afternoon, on the beach. ‘I saw them,’ said Cockie simply, ‘I know.’

  The Gerente looked somewhat p
ut about by this reverse. He humped the brunette off his knee and told her crossly to get a chair for herself. She returned with something apparently left over from the Middle Ages and sat down meekly at a corner of the desk. The Gerente spoke sharply, all trace of gaiety suddenly gone and she sharply interpreted. ‘Gerente says – you see all?’

  ‘All,’ said Cockie firmly.

  ‘All time?’

  ‘All time. I mean, yes, the whole time.’

  ‘You no sleep?’

  ‘No sleep. I was reading a book.’

  ‘Ah, ha!’ said the Gerente.

  ‘Gerente says, Ah ha!’

  ‘What does he mean, Ah ha?’

  ‘Then your eyes were on the book!’

  ‘I do not read a book for two and a half hours without lifting my eyes. The murderer would have had to leave the beach, pass up the central steps quite close to me, or cross the beach to the little path up the corner of the rock; he would have been gone at least – at the very least, three-quarters of an hour. I could not possibly have failed to miss him – even if I did not see him go or return.’

  The Gerente was silent. Deep in thought, he sat staring at the desk before him, putting out an automatic hand to refill the arguardiente glasses and pass them round, dirty fingers bunched over the tiny rims. He downed his own at one gulp and leaned back in his wooden chair, holding the morocco-covered book open, before his face. He put the book down, still open, on the desk and spoke to the girl. She translated: ‘Gerente say – they could not then have killed?’

  ‘No,’ said Cockie.

  ‘Gerente say – because you could see them all?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Cockie.

  ‘Gerente say,’ said the girl, and now there were no giggles, no more meaningless laughter, ‘Gerente say, very well then – but who could see you?’

  Inspector Cockrill sat stock-still. The fumes of the brandy, heavy and hot, clung about his brain, he was like a man treading in treacle who cannot shake himself free; but he forced himself violently back, at last, to cold sanity: and discovered sanity to be cold indeed. Once again, through the farcical trappings, the ugly truth stood bare and his very bowels felt sick and chill within him. He said, sharply: ‘I could see them: they could see me.’

  ‘Gerente say no: you were above, you could see down. They were below. They might not see you.’

  ‘Miss Barker was lying there close beside me.’

  ‘He say, yes – asleep.’

  ‘As soon as I stood up, anyone from the beach must have seen me. I would have had to walk to the higher terrace, up these central steps, here.’

  ‘He say you can move along terrace to the jasmine tunnel here, and go within the tunnel to the upper terrace.’

  ‘What was I supposed to do if Miss Barker woke up?’

  The Gerente shrugged, Lollita interpreted the shrug. ‘There is no reason why a gentleman should not get up and go.’

  ‘On all fours along the terrace? Well, never mind, let that pass, said Cockie. ‘Suppose she had woken while I was away or while I was coming back: after the thing was done?’

  ‘Gerente say – dead senorita knew bad secrets about Senorita Barrker. Senorita Barrker would be content to – have slept.’

  It never did, it never did, to underrate people. ‘Tell the Gerente – tell him that I had nothing against this senorita. There is nothing against me in the book. Why should I kill her? Why should he think I might have?’

  The Gerente kept his eyes on Cockrill’s face. He stood up, reached for a piece of writing paper, placed it in the centre of the desk; lifted his glass of arguardiente and with a swift movement shot out the dregs across the paper. The drops fell in longish splashes, tapering away from their source He glanced down at them with satisfaction, his eyes returned to Cockrill’s face, he pushed aside the paper and slowly replaced it with the morocco bound book. It was open at the page headed with Cockrill’s own name. Not thinking what he did, Cockie also rose and stood looking down at the book.

  The bloodstains, spattered across the written page, were like a little school of tadpoles: scuttling …

  With a second swift movement, El Gerente turned the book. Cockie could read his own name now, Vanda Lane’s comments about him, the figure she had ringed at the bottom of the page. And the tadpoles were scuttling – away from him.

  Away from him.

  But on the small wooden table, the stains had run the other way. The book had been turned on the table.

  She sits at the table. The blackmail book is lying there before her and the Toledo steel knife. The knife is there by chance; not so the book.

  Somebody comes in and stands facing her across the table. She opens the book – she or the intruder; the book is turned on the table so that the intruder can read. The intruder reads – and snatches up the knife.

  Whoever had lunged across that little table and thrust the knife into Vanda Lane’s heart – had stood looking down at the blackmail book opened at the page which bore Inspector Cockrill’s name.

  He stood there, staring down at the blood-spattered page and, for the first time for many, many years, knew what it was to be afraid: uncertain and afraid. He opened his mouth to speak: and shut it again. One wrong word, one false move.… And yet one could not stand, speechless and motionless, and let the trap close. For, once this trap closed, he knew that the helpless victim might struggle till death: unheard, unseen, only too soon unremembered. England no doubt would clamour for her own; but who in San Juan el Pirata cared about England? They were within their rights. A murder had been committed, a culprit had been – selected; the requirements of justice had been satisfied; and El Exaltida and El Magistrato and El Gerente de Politio must ask to be excused now, for the smuggling fleet would soon be going out or soon be coming in and there was important work for them to do. Indeed, if all this agitation was going to continue, it might be expedient, come Holy Week, to string the prisoner up with as little fuss as possible and so put a final end to the argument.

  He looked up and into the Gerente’s eyes. The Gerente smiled uncertainly and lifted winged arms in a tremendous shrug; really, it was the blood brother’s own silly fault, said the shrug. He glanced at the clock; the clock said, probably untruthfully, that it was after two o’clock and he made a wry face – evidently two was his dinner hour and Pepita was going to be cross. Two guards came into the room in response to a fist banged on the table. Cockie said, panic-stricken: ‘What does this mean?’

  Lollita asked the Gerente and the Gerente openly meditated what answer would soonest placate the prisoner and finally replied that the politio wished to offer the Gerente Inglese some lunch. It was a pressing invitation; for they were one each side of him, gripping him tightly by the upper arms. The Gerente gave him an apologetic smile and went off to face Pepita. Detective Inspector Cockrill of Scotlanda Yarda went down to a cell in the bowels of the Barrequitas gaol.

  In contrast with the blazing sun outside, it was very dark down there; dark and dank and very chill. There were no cockled tin gutters here to catch the moisture trickling down the walls, the floor was green and slimy with two hundred years of it. There was a rotting wooden bench along one wall, what little space was left was taken up by great sacks of what appeared to be coffee beans; there was a strong smell, and several other signs, of goat. The guards went away with a tremendous banging of door and turning of key: ten minutes later one of them returned with a bowl of savoury rice and a two-horned glass drinking bottle of raw red vino corrienie, from the few poor straggling grapes on the further side of the island; and went away again, yawning and with rather less noise. Inspector Cockrill ignored the rice but he drank half a carafe of the wine. The sacks of beans were drier than the bench and he sat down on one of them, to think.

  An hour later he was still sitting there. His mind was frozen, he could not think at all, could not plan, could not decide, could not look forward, could not look back. El Gerente would not appear again at the hotel. By the next morning, perhaps, Fernando
would institute some enquiry. The Politio would reply that all was now settled, Odyssey Tours was free to proceed upon its way. Fernando would argue a bit, no doubt, would ask for explanations, would protest; but his own troubles were not so far behind him that he would be likely to dare a great deal, and he would eventually shrug his broad shoulders, report back to his company in England, and proceed as his duty was, with his party, all only too thankful to scuttle away leaving behind a hostage, they would argue comfortingly among themselves, well placed and well able, to look after himself. Meanwhile.… Meanwhile, numbed with despair and dread, one simply sat; as one had sat inept and stupid, since last the door had slammed and the key had turned …

  The key had turned …?

  So very much noise, the first time. So very much less, the second time. He got up quietly and went across to the great, wooden, iron-hinged door.

  San Juan el Pirata was running true to form. The guard had gone off, late for his afternoon siesta, and forgotten to lock the door.

  He went out quietly into the shivery corridor, up the dank, twisting, slimy shallow stone steps, through the cool, dim hall where the politio peacefully slept, their heads pillowed on their folded arms; out into the clean, bright, glorious light of the day; and walked through the little town as though all the hounds of hell had been after him; and so to the Bellomare Hotel.

  The Gerente got there at five o’clock. The Inspector was sitting with Fernando on the terrace, and leapt to his feet, all hypocritical smiles. Through Fernando he thanked the Gerente unreservedly for the charming hospitality of the politio; he had enjoyed his luncheon immensely – but then, feeling drowsy, had strolled back to the hotel for his siesta without waiting for his friend – the Inspector felt sure El Gerente would understand? El Gerente understood perfectly; but it was he himself who had instituted the idea that it was all a jolly luncheon party; and nothing had been said about the Inspector remaining under guard. He really must have a word with Pedro about leaving that door open: Pedro was a good man, one of his best men – in a rough sea, under dangerous conditions, perhaps the best; but really, a fellow must keep his mind on his jobs. Meanwhile …