A Not So Perfect Crime

by Teresa Solana

  “What are you going to say to Merche about the fire?”

  “I don’t know. How about I was running a bath and lit one of the candles she gave me as a present ...” he said brazenly.

  “Don’t make her feel guilty into the bargain ...”

  “No need to worry on that count. Merche is no cherub.”

  Montse looked pleased to see us and, predictably, the small matter of the fire took up most of the conversation. We ate macaroni and pork escalope, and for dessert, a lemon cake that Borja had insisted on buying in order not to appear empty-handed. Lola wasn’t around and Montse took the opportunity to drop a few hints to my brother.

  “So your fiancée is skiing in the Alps ...” she dropped casually into the conversation.

  “What fiancée? You mean Merche?” he said, ignoring the thrust of the word “fiancée”. “We’re just friends ...”

  I bet Borja had got that response ready days ago.

  “Just good friends, you mean?”

  “By the way, Montse, as Lola’s not here now, I’d like to ask you something. How come such a fantastic woman like your sister is single? Why did she get divorced?” enquired Borja, as if he had a real interest in my sister-in-law’s amorous past.

  Montse wasn’t expecting such an outburst. Nor was I. But it meant Montse forgot all about Merche and rattled on to Borja about her sister’s virtues. Lola was sensitive, intelligent and self-confident, was besieged by a host of suitors and had a brilliant professional career. Listening to her, even I’d have fallen for her sister.

  “So how’s it going between you two?” asked Montse. “You’ve been seeing a lot of each other recently ...”

  “Well, I think we hit it off ... Heavens. Look at the time!” Borja glanced opportunely at his watch. “Eduard, I think we should be getting a move on ...”

  “Come on then!” I said, standing up. “We’ve got a meeting and people will be expecting you, you know?” I explained.

  The moment had come to scarper. Though it was true the MP was expecting us. Montse wrinkled her nose but said nothing. She was in a hurry too: it was anti-tobacco therapy day and she still had to shower and wash her hair to remove all trace of the smell of nicotine.

  Lluís Font ushered us into his drawing room. Someone had changed the layout: a glass-topped table with a vase of yellow roses and a new carpet now occupied the space where his wife’s body had once lain. The Christmas tree had disappeared and large, flowery cushions were scattered over the settees and armchairs. Various pots with tropical plants stood by the windows.

  We told him about our meeting with Masoliver and the information his friend had handed on, which was all the police had to go on. There was nothing new of any substance in it except perhaps for the presence of Mariona Castany’s name on the list of suspects. We asked him what motive Mariona might have to murder his wife, but he assured us he didn’t have a clue.

  “So I am the first on the list ...” he said shaking his head. “I expect that was inevitable.”

  “Well, someone has to be first. But that doesn’t mean they have any proof,” said my brother. “It’s normal for the husband to be the main suspect in a case like this.”

  “Particularly if he’s also the will’s main beneficiary ...” I added.

  “They can have no evidence because I didn’t kill my wife!” he shouted visibly angry. “And as for the money, I don’t need it. What do the police think? That I’m some upstart living on his wife’s income? Please, don’t make me laugh! ...”

  “If your wife had asked for a divorce, that would have changed your financial situation ...” I insisted.

  Borja glared at me and I gathered it was better not to pursue that line. On the other hand, the MP had barely reacted to my comment. I don’t know if he was refusing to condescend to answer or was at a loss for words.

  “We’d like to ask you something,” said Borja, changing the subject. “We’d like to speak to your daughter for a moment, if you’ll allow us. I’m not sure, but we thought she might know something ...”

  “Núria?” asked our client rather surprised. “I don’t think so ...”

  “The fact is that just before Mrs Font spoke to that man in the Zurich” – Borja preferred not to mention we’d also seem him on the day of the funeral – “they spent the afternoon together shopping. Perhaps she confided in her, told her something ... That’s if you want us to continue on the case, naturally,” my brother added.

  “Of course,” the MP replied hurriedly. “Núria is in her room. She’s still not got over it.”

  “Would you let us talk to her by herself for a few minutes?” Borja insisted.

  “I’m not sure ... If you think it’s important and she’s in the mood ... But I hope you will be tactful. I mean there are things my daughter doesn’t know and it’s better if it stays that way.”

  He was probably referring to her father’s affair with her aunt and the fact that her mother used to go around bribing all and sundry in order to get her own way.

  “Don’t worry. We only need to ask her about two very small matters. Whether your wife had mentioned she was afraid of anyone, and whether she was worried by anything ...” Borja continued.

  “Very well, I’ll tell Yanbin to inform her, although she’s probably asleep ... She’s been shutting herself up in her room of late.”

  Núria Vilalta soon appeared leaning on Yanbin’s arm. She was pale and wan. She wore flared jeans and a sky-blue T-shirt that exposed her navel and didn’t seem the most appropriate garment for this time of year. She was also very thin. A bag of bones, I mean.

  “Núria, these gentlemen want to speak to you for a few minutes. They are trying to find out what happened to Mummy.”

  “All right,” she replied.

  The girl and the maid whispered a few words to each other in a language I couldn’t identify but which I didn’t think was European. Then Yanbin kissed her on the cheek and stroked her hair like a loving mother before making a discreet exit.

  “If you like, you can use the time to make those calls ...” Borja suggested to Lluís Font.

  “Yes, of course. I’ll be back shortly.”

  Núria Font eyed us unenthusiastically and flopped on the settee. She looked pretty out of it.

  “You are the detectives Papa contracted,” she said.

  “More or less,” I answered.

  “And how can I help you?”

  “We want to know,” Borja took the initiative, “if your mother told you anything that might relate to what has happened. Whether she was afraid, or worried about anything ... Do you know if somebody wanted to hurt her?”

  “The police have already asked me all this,” she said forlornly. “I don’t know anything. Nobody ever tells me anything ...”

  She suddenly lost control and began to sob her heart out. I felt wretched making her suffer like that.

  “I can’t stand any more. I can’t stand any more ...” she muttered between sobs.

  “Don’t worry,” I said genuinely moved. “We won’t bother you now. Do you want us to call your father?”

  “You don’t understand ... Nobody does! ... I hated her! I wanted her to die! ...” she said shaking and crying. “And she did!”

  With two daughters around her age, I’m more used than Borja is to this kind of adolescent outburst and attack of rage and sincerity. I decided to take control of the situation before Yanbin appeared and chased us out with her broom.

  “All girls of your age hate their mothers and think like that,” I said, remembering the rows Montse and the twins used to have sometimes. “It’s normal,” I said trying to look like an understanding doctor. “You mustn’t feel guilty.”

  “I hated her ... And now I hate the fact she’s not here!” she confessed falteringly.

  It can’t have been easy being Lídia Font’s daughter, I thought to myself. That girl hadn’t inherited her mother’s natural charms or her personality. Though who knows what Lídia Font was like as a fifteen
-year old and before she’d passed through the operating theatre? She was probably as insecure and wilting as her daughter.

  “At least now I won’t have to study at Oxford,” she said, drying her tears.

  “Were you thinking of going to Oxford to do a summer English course?” Borja asked affably.

  “No ...”

  “You know in a few months this ... Of course now everything seems like a new mountain to climb, but in time ...” Borja insisted sympathetically.

  “Mama wanted me to study at Oxford University ... Three or four years.” And she added, “Literature or something similar ...”

  “Caramba, not everybody can get into Oxford ...” I said. “That’s really good.”

  The Fonts’ offspring looked at Borja and me as if we were two old fogeys from another galaxy. The generation gap is doubtless one of the most difficult to straddle, even more so if it goes with the social abyss between the classes that some reckon no longer exists.

  “It’s a load of shit!” she grimaced. “This Oxford business was all down to Mummy. Papa couldn’t care less ... She was the one who had set her heart on me studying there.” From her tone of voice it was obvious that going to Oxford appealed more to the mother than to her daughter. “I had to spend every day shut up at home studying in order to get high marks. They all hate me at school ...”

  “Bah, don’t take any notice! It’s not such a bad idea to get high marks, I can tell you,” I said thinking of our twins.

  “They hate me,” she said moving from grief to rage, “because Mummy spent her time bribing my teachers to give me high marks ... As if I didn’t know! Everybody knows about it at school, and everybody hates Mummy, and I do too, of course. It’s horrible. Horrible! I don’t want to set foot there ever again! ...” And she burst into tears yet again.

  A small light flashed at the back of our heads. Perhaps it had been a good idea to talk to the daughter of the deceased after all.

  “What do you mean exactly when you say she bribed your teachers?” asked Borja tactfully. “Do you mean she gave them money or presents? That she made generous donations?”

  “I don’t know how she did it. I expect she gave them money ... I don’t know. All I do know is that my marks were far too high. I’m not that clever ... but not that stupid either.”

  “I’m sure she only wanted the best for you,” I said trying to console her. “I don’t think she wanted to upset you. She wanted you to study in one of the best universities in the world. Lots of people would like to go there.”

  “You know,” she said rather woefully, “she liked all that business of gowns and ceremonies, and being able to put on those ridiculous hats ... She thought Oxford was full of aristocrats and dreamed I would land one and we’d go to live in a castle, with butlers and all that. I could just see her bowing and curtseying to that old bag” – I assumed she was referring to Elizabeth Regina. “And she was obsessed by my accent, which she said was awful. I hate English!”

  “Couldn’t agree more!” Borja confessed. “Between ourselves, it’s a language of savages. Wherever French exists ...”

  “Ugh, no way! I’d rather continue with English than have to study French,” she retorted. “At least it helps me understand my favourite song lyrics.”

  I thought of the brilliant students, children of less well off families, who’d give their right hand to study at a university like Oxford. What was a dream beyond the realms of possibility for some, was a nightmare that this young woman had just shaken off. You couldn’t reproach her in any way. Who’d brought up that skinny girl? I wondered. Her extremely busy, important parents or a set of foreign maids to whom they’d paid a pittance?

  “Do you know whether your mother had a really close friend? A woman she might have confided in?” asked Borja, returning to our concerns now Núria seemed to have calmed down.

  “Mummy had no women friends. Last year she befriended our philosophy teacher, but I think she screwed that up.”

  “Really?” I said encouraging her to continue.

  “She even came to spend a weekend with us in Cadaqués,” she explained, “but I don’t know what happened after that. Mummy must have bribed her. She gave me an A star for her course, but never liked me. My exam was a disaster ...”

  “And what’s that teacher’s name?”

  Perhaps we’d be lucky and her initials would match those on the file we’d still not identified.

  “Elisenda. Elisenda something or other ...” She paused, straining to remember. “That’s right, Rourell, I remember now! Elisenda Rourell. As far as we were concerned she was a complete slag.” And she added. “They reckon she’s had it off with every single teacher.”

  Our bad luck. The initials didn’t match, but if all that blackmailing and bribing was right and Lídia had bullied the teacher into passing her daughter with top honours, perhaps her victim had decided to take her revenge by sending her a box of poisoned chestnuts. The idea seemed, nonetheless, slightly over the top.

  “So, your mother was always around at school ...” I insisted.

  “She was always on my teachers’ backs. My tutor was fed up with her.”

  “What was her name?”

  “Vilardell. Assumpta Vilardell. We call her ...”

  “Yes, I can imagine what you call her,” interjected Borja, pre-empting the joke about that famous brand of suppositories.

  Lluís Font came in just then. We’d been talking to his daughter for twenty minutes and he must have considered that was time enough. Núria went back to her room with Yanbin and we told our client what her daughter had confessed to us.

  “Yes, Lídia had got it into her head that the girl should study for a degree there,” he confirmed, “and she may have put too much pressure on her about her studies. Some of our friends’ children are studying at Oxford ...”

  “If your wife put pressure on the teachers to give your daughter top marks ... there may be other things we don’t know.”

  Borja was referring to the fact that other files might exist.

  “Are you insinuating one of Núria’s teachers preferred to kill Lídia rather than accept an envelope and give my daughter a high mark?” He smiled, “You clearly don’t know what these teachers earn! ...”

  I did know, and also how most were too disillusioned to act heroically in the presence of all-powerful, fawning parents. The most likely scenario was that the teacher concerned accepted the bribe and thanked her.

  “Yes, if she had one backed into a corner ...” agreed Borja. “We still haven’t identified the mysterious man your wife met in the Zurich. And we must take into account that he didn’t seem like anyone belonging to your circle, judging by his appearance.”

  “Frankly I don’t know what to think,” our client said. “But as things stand, with me as suspect number one, it wouldn’t be a bad idea if you did identify this man and talk to him. I give you carte blanche.”

  “I’d just like to say that we’ve run up considerable expenses these last few days. You must understand we’ve had to put other cases to one side, and obviously ...”

  “I’d imagined as much.” He took an envelope from his pocket that, as ever, Borja put away unopened.

  “Thank you. Are you sure you can’t think of any reason to link Mariona Castany with your wife’s murder? She’s the only name on the list that doesn’t fit,” Borja insisted.

  “I really can’t. I have no idea at all. It’s very strange. Mariona is an old friend ...” And he added with a smile, “She’s a peculiar woman. Of course with the current account she enjoys she can allow herself the luxury of being whatever she feels like.”

  “That’s all right, then. We’d better be off,” said Borja bringing the conversation to an end. “We won’t take up any more of your time.”

  Once we were in the street, I asked Borja if he’d considered the likelihood that the girl was implicated in her mother’s murder. Perhaps she’d done something stupid because she couldn’t stand the idea of ha
ving to go to Oxford. There are adolescents who commit suicide over all sorts of things that appear ridiculous to adults, such as getting bad marks, a romantic upset or not having many friends. Behind that bereft exterior, perhaps Núria Font was one of those who chose to act rather than to suffer.

  “You can rule that out,” declared Borja confidently. “If this girl had been intelligent enough with the knowledge necessary to plan and carry out such a thing, her mother wouldn’t have had to bribe her teachers to give her top marks.”

  “I’d not thought of that,” I admitted. “Maybe we can discount that possibility then!”

  I couldn’t help feeling sorry for that unhappy, abandoned girl, and was pleased that my twins, for all their defects, didn’t resemble her in the slightest.

  21

  It was still early, so when we left the MP we decided to go straight to see Mariona Castany. We knew she would be in Barcelona until after the Day of the Kings, because she belongs to that tiny cluster of privileged beings who don’t have to wait for Christmas or August in order to go on holiday. She’d mentioned that, once the festivities were over, she intended to go to the Caribbean for a month, to one of those places that don’t appear in travel agencies’ bargain offers. Since we couldn’t think of any other way to clear up her possible involvement in the case, we decided to take the bull by the horns and tell her what we’d found in the police reports.

  “What a surprise! I wasn’t expecting to see you today!” she smiled when Marcelo announced we were paying her a visit.

  “Do forgive us for appearing like this, Mariona, but it’s urgent. Can you spare us a moment?” said Borja pretending to be very upset.

  “Martini or whisky?” asked Mariona. “Better a whisky at this time of day, I should say.”

  And before we could say no, she’d started to pour the drinks.