‘Ten cents clear.’
‘You made ten thousand Australian dollars?’ she said, her voice high from astonishment.
‘Yes, I did.’
‘Señor,’ said Alvarez, ‘how much would your holding be worth now?’
Wheeldon picked up his glass and drank quickly.
Muriel looked at Alvarez, then at Wheeldon. ‘How much, Archie?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What’s the name of the shares?’
‘I’ve forgotten.’
‘Yabra Consolidated,’ said Alvarez.
‘What? You bought Yabra Consolidated at five cents?’
‘Yes.’
‘And then sold them at ten? When they’re now worth over five dollars?’
‘How was I to know . . .?’
‘D’you realize how much you’ve lost?’
‘I haven’t lost anything. I told you, I’ve doubled my money.’
‘Christ! you’ve got a mind that walks one inch high. Your holding’s now worth a million dollars. But you sold it for ten thousand. You gave him practically a million!’
‘I didn’t give him anything. He bought them from me . . .’
‘You call it buying, when he knew they were worth fifty times what he was paying for them?’
‘Maybe he didn’t.’
‘You can really think he’d offer you a profit if he didn’t know they were worth five dollars? My late husband may have been many things, but he was nobody’s fool. He’d sized you up as God’s gift to a con-man from the moment he first met you. Don’t you have the wit to understand anything? When you bought those shares at five cents, they wouldn’t have been worth half that. Then they shot up and he must have been absolutely shocked to discover that for once in his worthless life he’d sold something that was increasing in value. So what did he do? Rushed out here to offer you twice as much as you’d paid, quite certain you’d jump at the chance of a hundred per cent profit and never have the nous to stand back and wonder why a man like him should willingly let you make money. You were so blind greedy, you threw a million dollars down the bloody drain.’
He was so angrily humiliated that he answered back. ‘And were you so very clever? What did you call me when I suggested you bought some of the shares? So naive I thought Carey Street was a good address? The shares were worthless and always would be? So how much did you throw down the bloody drain? You could have bought a million shares and they’d be worth fifty million dollars now. So you’ve lost fifty million compared to my million. So who’s the bigger fool?’
‘How . . . how can you be so cruel and vicious?’
He was immediately contrite. ‘I’m terribly sorry, Muriel, old girl. I was upset and didn’t realize what I was saying . . .’
Only a complete idiot, thought Alvarez, would have apologized after forcing her on the defensive.
‘If I had bought them,’ she said sharply, determined to salvage her pride, ‘I’d have known a damn sight better than to sell them back to him before I’d checked out why he wanted to buy.’
‘I . . . I suppose you would.’ Wheeldon stared down at his glass.
Alvarez said: ‘Señor, when did you next meet Señor Taylor?’
‘It was about three weeks ago.’
‘Why did he come and see you this time? Was it still in connection with the Yabra Consolidated shares?’
‘I don’t remember.’ He went over to the cocktail cabinet and poured himself a third pink gin.
She said: ‘You must remember.’ Her tone was sharp and clearly his earlier remarks had really hurt and now she was determined to gain revenge for his presumption. ‘So if you don’t want to talk about it, it must be embarrassing. I wonder what Steven said on his last visit that could so disturb you?’ She paused, as if thinking. ‘It surely can’t be . . .?’
He looked appealingly at her.
‘You know, Steven was always ridiculously proud of his ability to talk people into behaving like fools and the greater the challenge, the prouder he felt . . . Which means, of course, that originally he couldn’t gain much satisfaction out of conning you.’
‘Muriel, old girl . . .’
‘I think he returned because he knew that by then you would have discovered how he’d conned you out of a fortune and you’d be sick with anger. Now, to sell more shares to someone in that state would really be a challenge. Right?’
‘I was only trying . . .’
‘Your motto—always trying? What went on in your mind? Did you manage to see yourself as a financier, making and destroying financial empires with a brief nod of the head?’
‘Why won’t you understand?’
‘But I do, perfectly. I understand you just as thoroughly as I understood my late, but unlamented, husband.’
‘Señor,’ said Alvarez, ‘did you buy some more shares from him?’
He looked at Alvarez with astonishment, as if he had forgotten the detective was also present.
‘Well, did you?’ she said mockingly.
‘He . . . he said it was a red-hot tip which he was telling me about because in the circumstances he wanted to help me. Don’t you see how I . . .’
‘Help? What genius, to use that word after he’d swindled you out of a million dollars! But I don’t suppose that even now you’ve appreciated the full irony of it . . . How much did he take you for this time?’
‘I invested five hundred pounds.’
‘Invested. How words change their meanings . . . And you handed it over without a whimper; the sacrificial lamb, running to its slaughter. He must have laughed himself nearly sick.’
Alvarez knew pity, but also contempt, for Wheeldon; no man should allow himself to be the butt of such vicious contempt at the hands of a woman, however much he loved her. He stood.
She looked up. ‘Are you leaving? You’re probably right. It looks as if the entertainment’s over for the day.’
CHAPTER 17
Cala del Dia—which in this context could loosely be translated as ‘beach for the daytime—’ was now the name given to a large area which included the urbanizacion and the complex of shops, cafes, and restaurants which served it, but originally it had pertained only to a very narrow strip of land which ran along the edge of a cliff. The name adumbrated Mallorquin humour; there was no beach, since the cliff plunged into the sea, and at night time, lacking any form of guard, it had been all too easy for a walker to tumble over the edge, especially on a fiesta.
Alvarez reached the foot of the urbanizacion and began the steep, zigzagging drive upwards. It was odd, he mused, how much the foreigners were prepared to pay for a view. To build on a slope cost up to fifty per cent more than on the level, especially if one demanded a large patio with pool. Yet all over the island there were developments along the lower slopes of hills and mountains. He modified his thoughts. He should be applauding his countrymen’s business acumen rather than wondering at the gullibility of the foreigners. After all, such rocky slopes were otherwise valueless.
The road ended at Casa Resta, which stood on a fold of the mountain and therefore had views both to the east and the south; because of the steepness of the slope at this point, the outside of the foundations had had to be built up several metres. It was a large house, with a typically formless jumble of different roof levels; not much artistic talent would have been needed to make it far more visually appealing.
He rang the front-door bell. Rosa opened the door and told him that the señor was down in the village, but would almost certainly be coming back soon—did he want to wait? She took him through the house to the patio. ‘Feel like some coffee?’
‘Mallorquin style?’
‘What d’you think?’
As she went inside, he walked to the edge of the patio, just beyond the end of the swimming pool. At Ca’n Grande, one had the illusion of floating above the sea, here, the many houses in the urbanization below precluded any such fanciful thoughts; Ca’n Grande said there could be beauty in wealth, Casa Resta, only
vulgarity.
Rosa returned to the patio with a tray on which were two cups of coffee, milk, sugar, and one balloon glass well filled with brandy. She set everything out on the patio table, sat. ‘You can always hear him coming back.’
‘He’s the kind of man who wouldn’t like to find you here?’
‘Sometimes he’d laugh, sometimes he’d shout his head off. You just can’t tell where you are with him. But he’s a foreigner, so what d’you expect? Have anything to do with them?’
‘Too much. I live in Llueso and sometimes I think half the population’s foreign.’
‘You’re from Llueso? Then maybe you know my cousin from Playa Nueva?’ She said that her cousin was a very cunning man who had made a fortune building houses on what had been a swamp. Almost all the houses were damp and the buyers were forever complaining. Wasn’t it incredible that anyone could be so stupid as not to know that a house built on a swamp was going to be damp?
Alvarez returned the conversation to Reading-Smith. What kind of a man was he? A strange man. One minute he’d be friendly, the next he’d kick up hell. And if something refused to work, like the washing-machine or the toaster . . . She wondered if it was when he feared he was being made a fool of. But to think that of a machine! . . . There was, of course, something else which raised his temper. When he was getting fed up with whichever woman was living in the house. If he started shouting that the house was filthy and the housekeeping bills ridiculous, she knew that the current woman was on the way out. She often thought about the women. Had they no shame? Just because the señor was rich beyond the dreams of ordinary people, was that a reason for any woman to sell herself? But then, they were always foreigners. Mostly English. But there had been that Frenchwoman who’d walked around the house naked. Not naked in a bathing costume; naked naked . . .
They heard the growl of an approaching high-powered car, its engine note rising and falling as it took the sharp bends.
‘That’s him.’ She collected everything up.
‘What’s his woman situation at the moment?’
‘A new one who’ll be around for a while yet.’ She picked up the tray. ‘I remember our priest warning us that a special part of hell is reserved for fornicators. His place must have been booked a long time back.’
Soon after Rosa had returned into the house, Reading-Smith walked out on to the patio. There was no mistaking his essential toughness. It was in the cragginess of his face, the set of his mouth, the way he shook hands, and the tone of voice which made every statement a challenge.
‘You’re the police?’
‘Yes, señor.’
‘What d’you want?’
‘To ask some questions concerning Señor Thompson.’
‘Why?’
‘I am investigating his death.’
‘Does that mean it wasn’t an accident?’
‘Probably not.’
‘I can’t help you.’
‘I think that perhaps you may be able to.’
Reading-Smith hesitated a moment, as if deliberating whether to throw Alvarez out, then said: ‘It’s like a bloody oven out here. We’ll go inside.’
The sitting-room was air-conditioned and initially struck cold. Reading-Smith went over to an armchair, sat, hooked one leg over an arm. ‘All right, let’s hear how in the hell I’m supposed to be able to help.’
‘Did you know that the señor’s name was really Steven Taylor and his wife, Señora Muriel Taylor, lives in El Granero?’
‘He was the husband of that stupid bitch? . . . Hang on. Her husband died years ago, back in England.’
‘His death in England was faked.’
‘Really?’
‘Did you buy some shares from him?’
‘If I want shares, I get my stockbroker to buy ‘em, not a confidence trickster.’
‘Why do you call him that?’
‘If you’ve an ounce of intelligence, it stuck out a mile.’
‘And you have many ounces of intelligence?’
‘You’ve a quick tongue in your head, haven’t you?’
‘I don’t know; but I doubt it is as quick as yours or the señor’s. I’ve been told several times that his was very quick and very clever.’
‘So?’
‘I believe he persuaded you to buy four hundred thousand shares in an Australian mining company called Yabra Consolidated.’
‘Believe what you bloody like.’
‘You paid five cents when they were probably only worth two cents.’
‘I’d have had to act like a bloody fool to do that.’
‘Or to have listened too hard to his clever tongue . . . And when you’d realized what you’d done, your pride was very badly hurt. Which is why, when he returned and offered to buy back the shares at ten cents each, you immediately sold them without stopping to wonder at the reason for his making such an offer.’
Reading-Smith leaned forward and opened a silver cigarette case, helped himself to a cigarette, lit it.
‘Later, you learned that the shares had increased greatly in value and your holding would have been worth two million Australian dollars.’
‘So bloody what?’ he shouted. He came to his feet and stood square to Alvarez.
The far door opened and a woman, wearing a string bikini, jet black hair falling down to her shoulders, stepped inside.
Reading-Smith swung round. ‘What d’you bloody want?’
‘I thought you called me.’
‘I didn’t. So get lost.’
‘Bob, love, I really did think . . .’
He crossed the floor in five long strides, gripped her shoulders, swung her round, pushed her through the doorway, and slammed the door shut. He turned back. ‘Have you finished?’
Clearly, the interruption—and brief physical action— had enabled him to regain his self-control and there was no longer a chance of needling him into angrily blurting out something he would later regret. Alvarez said: ‘I’ve just one more question, señor.’
‘You sound like my lawyer.’ He returned to the chair.
‘What did Señor Taylor want when he came here for the last time, roughly three weeks ago?’
He stubbed out the cigarette.
‘Was it to sell you more shares?’ Alvarez had been expecting a bitter denial, since otherwise this would have been to admit to having been made a fool a second time, but instead Reading-Smith said softly: ‘That’s right. He talked me into buying another five hundred quids’ worth.’
Alvarez couldn’t make head or tail of so ready an admission. He said goodbye and left.
As he settled behind the wheel of his car, he reflected that Steven Taylor’s golden tongue and lack of any moral principles would surely have taken him right to the top in politics.
Alvarez braked the Seat to a stop on the hard shoulder, checked the dog-eared map of the island, and confirmed that although the straight line distance to Estruig was not very far, much of the journey was in the mountains and therefore would take at least an hour. From Estruig to Llueso, either by the shorter route over the mountains or the longer one returning to the plain, would take another hour which meant that if he visited Señora Swinnerton, he could not be expected to be home until well after eight . . . On the other hand, Comisario Borne was the kind of man who, if he discovered that one of his inspectors could have completed his work in one day, but hadn’t . . . Regretfully, he decided to drive to Estruig.
Although he would not have liked to live up in the mountains—one had to be born among them to want to do that—he loved them, not least because they had not been despoiled in the name of tourism. The address he had was too indeterminate to locate Ca Na Muña unaided, but luckily he came across a man driving a mule cart, who’d been working in one of the fields in the small valley, and was directed along a dirt track which wound its way up an ever increasing slope until it came to a stop in front of a house. He climbed out of the car. What or who had originally driven a man to built his home here, where even a su
bsistence level of life called for endless toil? How many generations had it taken to build the terrace walls and carry up enough soil from the valley? And what kind of foreigner had chosen to live here, virtually cut off from all other human contact?
He climbed stone steps to the narrow level in front of the house, knocked on the door. There was a shout from further up the mountain and when he crossed to the side of the house and looked up he saw a woman who, laboriously and with an ungainly action, was descending more stone steps.
She reached the level. ‘I’m sorry to keep you waiting like this,’ she said breathlessly. She suddenly flinched.
‘Is something wrong, señora?’
‘It’s just my leg. The beastly gout keeps plucking at me.’
He wondered why, if she suffered from gout, she had ever climbed up the terracing? He explained who he was.
‘Do come on in and have a drink; it’s such fun having someone to talk to! I’m afraid I’ve only wine, but at least there’s plenty of that. And in case you’re thinking that if I suffer from gout, I shouldn’t drink, I’m happy to say that that myth was exploded some time ago!’ She led the way to the front door. ‘Mind how you go because the doorways are all so low; although you obviously don’t have to be as careful as my husband did, but then he was tall and would walk around with his mind fixed on something else.’
The room they entered was both entrance hall and sitting-room. ‘Which do you prefer, red or white?’
‘I would like some red, please, señora.’
After she had gone through an arched doorway, he looked round the room. There was no missing the shabbiness. The covers of the two armchairs were frayed, the oblong carpet was faded and part threadbare, one of the two small wooden tables had a leg propped up by a wedge of newspaper, one curtain was missing, several floor tiles were cracked, and the walls and ceiling needed redecorating. Yet nowhere was there any sign of dirt or dust. It was the shabbiness of financial strain, not of sluttishness.
She returned with two glass tumblers and a litre bottle of wine. She filled the glasses and handed him one. ‘David used to say that the vino corriente here was death to educated palates, but it didn’t really matter because these days only expense-account businessmen and head waiters could afford to have one. I don’t know enough about it to have an opinion, but his tastes certainly changed. After we’d been living here for a couple of years, he bought himself a special birthday treat of a very expensive bottle of Chateau Latour. He didn’t enjoy it nearly as much as he’d expected and was quite happy to return to the usual Soldepenas . . . But I’m quite certain you haven’t come here to hear me go on and on rambling away, have you?’
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