Layers of Deceit (An Inspector Alvarez Mystery Book 9)

by Roderic Jeffries

  ‘But … but you shouldn’t have done that, should you?’

  ‘Of course I shouldn’t. But if I pass it on, he’ll be arrested. And that’ll break her.’

  Dear God, she thought, why had he chosen a job which was forever stretching his emotions? ‘What will happen if you continue not to tell the superior chief about this evidence? I mean, as far as you’re concerned?’

  ‘I suppose there’ll be no arrest. He’ll just think I’ve been my usual incompetent self.’

  ‘And what if somehow he learns you’ve kept it from him?’

  ‘I’ll be sacked.’

  ‘Enrique, you can’t risk so much for this woman.’ Logically, she was right; morally, she was right. But she had never looked into those dark blue eyes and seen their capacity for hurt …

  *

  He lay on his bed and for once he could not sleep.

  Had he missed something, somewhere? Yet since Steven Cullom had died before he executed the second English will, no one but Alan stood to gain financially from his death. Then, despite the fortune at stake, had the motive really been jealousy or revenge? Another woman seduced, abandoned? This was the only alternative. Never mind all the questions that such a solution raised. Assume he had been murdered for love, not money; then somewhere there had to be a woman who had planned and plotted … How to identify her? How to single out one woman from all those a man with money and an unbridled passion had seduced? Among his papers there was no diary, recording in salacious details his conquests … Amelia Hart, he thought suddenly. Often a man was unable to keep all his infamy to himself, needing to confess — often in the form of boasting; as he had boasted to her — as if by confessing he divested himself of some iniquity. She might know of another woman whose husband was of a far stronger character than Palmer …

  *

  Amelia and her husband were sitting out on the patio, under the shade of the overhead vines. Hart said: ‘Excellent timing! I’m just about to go inside and pour out the drinks.’

  ‘Then I am sorry to have arrived at such a moment, señor.’

  ‘You’re the first person out here I’ve ever heard apologize on that score! Come and sit down.’

  ‘How’s the world treating you?’ asked Amelia from her wheelchair as Alvarez sat.

  ‘Not very generously, señora.’

  ‘I must say, you look as if you’d all the cares of the world on your shoulders. Relax and forget them. When I was a child I had a nursemaid who was always telling me not to worry because nothing was ever quite as bad as it was imagined to be.’

  ‘Only true if you’re of small imagination,’ said Hart.

  ‘Will you please stop being cynical and find out what our guest would like to drink.’

  ‘A brandy, señora, please.’

  ‘With ice, but no soda … Isn’t that right?’

  ‘Exactly right.’

  ‘There you are, Pat!’ she exclaimed. ‘And you have the nerve to tell me I have a poor memory.’

  ‘Not poor, hopeless.’

  ‘Look who’s talking! Only yesterday I asked you to get me a bar of that gorgeous Côte d’Or chocolate and you didn’t.’

  ‘And you’re now forgetting that the doctor said you had to cut back on sugar.’

  ‘Are you admitting you didn’t forget, you deliberately didn’t buy it?’

  He smiled, then went inside the house.

  ‘Husbands! I’m sure a little chocolate would have done me far more good than harm, whatever that misery of a doctor said.’ She studied Alvarez, then spoke with her usual directness. ‘I suppose you’re here again because of Steven?’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘The local gossips are having a field day and saying that Alan killed him. I had a hell of a row with one yesterday and called her a couple of names no lady should even know … You realize it couldn’t possibly have been Alan, don’t you? He can be very difficult, especially when he’s in one of his moods, and there were plenty of rows between them, mainly because Steve thought so much of established values, but brothers so often carry on like that. And considering they were only half-brothers, they really got on very well together.’

  Hart returned with a tray on which were three glasses that were already frosting. He handed them around, sat. Amelia rested her glass on her lap. ‘The Inspector’s come to have a chat about Steven.’

  ‘Frankly, I didn’t imagine it was because he found us socially irresistible … So, Inspector, how’s the case going?’

  ‘It is very difficult, señor.’

  ‘I imagine it must be. Though not if you listen to local gossip.’

  ‘I’ve already told him the old hens are having a field day,’ said Amelia.

  ‘Nothing better to talk about and nothing to think with even if they had. How the hell can anyone with an ounce of understanding imagine for a second that Alan could murder his own brother?’

  Alvarez knew a quick moment of pleasure that there were at least two people with a sense of loyalty. ‘I must ask you some more questions, señora. I am very sorry if they upset you, or perhaps even offend you, but you once told me that Señor Steven Cullom used to confide in you?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And he mentioned his affairs with women?’

  ‘Some of them, at least.’ She sighed. ‘It was all rather pathetic. He went out of his way to tell me what a Don Juan he was, but I’m certain he never realized that essentially Don Juan was a figure of tragedy. Of course, all the boasting was probably concealing some character or physical defect in himself.’

  ‘What kind of defect?’

  ‘That’s anybody’s guess. But if you ask me, I’d say it was trying to compensate for the fact that quite a lot of people didn’t like him. But it could equally have been homosexual tendencies or trying to prove he was the world’s greatest lover because a woman had once told him he was hopeless in bed.’

  ‘I don’t think he was lying all that much,’ said Hart, ‘and I don’t go for arcane explanations. I reckon he was just plain randy. So with his money it’s quite possible he did have a whole succession of women.’

  ‘Spoken like a true male chauvinist pig! Convinced that all you need to do is offer any woman enough and she’ll lie down.’

  ‘My wife,’ Hart said, ‘has a low opinion of men and a high opinion of women.’

  ‘With good reason,’ she said. ‘But let’s not develop that theme or the Inspector will think I’m as sour as the wine we were given the other evening.’

  ‘I could never begin to think of you as sour,’ Alvarez said.

  ‘You really mean that? I told you, when we first met, that we are truly sympathetic towards each other.’

  ‘What is this?’ asked Hart, ‘a mutual admiration society?’

  ‘You, sir, are a cynical old man who can’t recognize sincerity when you meet it.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s so long ago when I last did that I’ve forgotten what it looks like.’

  ‘Thank you very much.’ She said to Alvarez: ‘I do hope you can understand the British sense of humour?’

  ‘No, señora, I cannot. But I can recognize it.’

  ‘I rather like that, especially the inference with which I thoroughly agree. It’s far too often too close to unkindness to be in the least bit genuinely amusing.’

  ‘Someone once said that all humour was based on misfortune,’ said Hart.

  ‘And that someone was pompous, self-satisfied, and totally wrong.’

  ‘So now we know.’

  ‘So now you know.’

  Alvarez said: ‘Señora, did he name the women he had met?’

  ‘Only by their Christian names and sometimes not even by them.’

  ‘Did he ever mention a woman who was married, apart from Señora Palmer?’

  ‘I don’t think so. A married woman entailed risk and that wasn’t to his liking. He once told me that package fortnight holidays were the greatest invention of the twentieth century. It gave the women one day to wa
rm up, twelve days of heat, and one day to cool down.’

  ‘Was he ever threatened because of an affair he’d had?’

  ‘He certainly never mentioned anything like that.’

  ‘But he could have been having an affair with a married woman and you wouldn’t have known about it?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Gloomily, Alvarez thought that despite the last answer there was now no room left for evasion; almost certainly there had not been an angry husband determined to avenge his wife’s adultery …

  ‘I’ve not been able to help you, have I?’ she asked.

  ‘No, señora, I’m afraid not.’

  ‘Does that mean that Alan … ’ She stopped.

  ‘Can you possibly tell us,’ asked Hart, ‘is there any truth in the suggestion that Alan is under suspicion?’

  ‘I think the only answer I can give you, señor, is that until I know more than I do now, everyone who is in any way directly connected with the dead man is under suspicion.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose they must be. But Alan … ’ He shook his head.

  She spoke with a sudden bitterness. ‘You know what it is, don’t you? It’s the curse, working its way through the family.’

  ‘For heaven’s sake!’

  ‘You can’t just sit there and say for heaven’s sake and blow it all away.’

  ‘There’s nothing to blow away.’ He turned to Alvarez. ‘Amelia’s normally the most realistic of people, but she’s been very upset by this business and for the first time since we married she’s become superstitious.’

  ‘You have to admit … ’

  ‘I admit that several unfortunate things have happened to the family over the past eighteen months. But they’re coincidences.’

  ‘They are not.’

  ‘Just as in the case of Tutankhamun’s tomb, which you quoted to me yesterday, if you take the trouble to study the evidence you’ll find there was no trail of connected tragedies bearing out the curse, they either didn’t happen as the myth tries to make out they did or they were isolated events which had no bearing on or relation to each other.’

  ‘How d’you know that what you say’s right? How can you say so categorically whether the events were isolated or connected?’

  ‘Because I don’t accept predestination. Apart from anything else, if you accept it you stop fighting … ’

  ‘Have I ever stopped fighting?’

  ‘No, of course you haven’t. Until now you’ve always had a logical outlook on life. But accept there’s a curse on the Culloms and you’re accepting predestination; accept that, and although you may consciously go on fighting, subconsciously … ’

  ‘There’s more drivel talked about the subconscious than anything else. Determine to fight and you’ll go on fighting. Accepting facts won’t alter that.’

  ‘Here, there are no facts to accept.’

  ‘But you know there are. Last year, Basil was killed in a car accident. In February, both of us could so easily have been killed when the brakes failed in the car. Steven’s been murdered. Alan is suspected … Out of four sets of cousins, three have met trouble. Can you really claim that’s just coincidence?’

  ‘I refuse to believe that some dark force has laid a curse on the Culloms. That’s against all reason, logic, and common sense.’

  She stared at him, her expression deeply worried. ‘I wish to God I possessed your certainty that the world is ruled by reason, logic, and common sense. But being confined to a wheelchair when nearly everyone else is walking about makes me believe that the world’s illogical and desperately unfair. And that’s why I can believe in a dark force, and a curse on a family … I’m sorry.’ she said to Alvarez. ‘It’s been awful, having to listen to all that. But sometimes I have a bad day and some of the black shadows come out of hiding … But you can understand, can’t you?’

  ‘I can understand,’ he answered.

  CHAPTER 21

  As Alvarez sat behind his desk, Amelia’s words kept running through his mind. The curse of the Culloms. Four sets of cousins, of which three had suffered tragedies or near-tragedies; five cousins, four of whom had been affected. Coincidence, as Hart had declared? Wasn’t that taking coincidence too far? A curse, as Amelia feared? In the last quarter of the twentieth century, could anyone really believe in the power of a curse?

  He lifted his feet and put them on the desk, his heels resting on the unopened mail which had arrived that morning. He believed in God, therefore he must believe in the devil; he believed in goodness, therefore he must believe in evil; he believed that some families enjoyed unusual fortune, therefore he must believe that some families must suffer unusual misfortune; but he simply could not believe that a curse could be laid on five cousins, perhaps because his faith was not sufficiently strong.

  If there were no curse and events were not to be explained by coincidence, what then? Especially remembering that there were eight hundred and twenty-five thousand pounds at stake …

  For the moment, accept that the murderer was not Alan Cullom. Then one had to postulate a murderer who had set out to make it appear initially that the death had been an accident, then that it would seem to be a murder and the two Bennassar brothers would be suspected. But certain carefully planted inconsistencies would gradually suggest that they had deliberately been drawn to the scene in order to conceal the fact that the murderer had really been Alan Cullom …

  That telephone call which Susan had heard — or had she? — in the middle of the night on which Steven Cullom had been killed. That must have been to lure him outside the house; perhaps the caller had said he’d evidence that the two brothers knew about Steven Cullom’s seduction of their sister and they had been looking for him … Alan couldn’t have made the call from the house because there were just the main phone and an extension and when one lifted the first, one could not call the second …

  Only two motives had come to light. Women and money. Why would an outraged husband seek his revenge in so roundabout and complicated a fashion? If Alan had been falsely inculpated, why — when only he stood to benefit financially to any extent from his brother’s death? …

  The telephone disturbed Alvarez’s laboured thoughts. Superior Chief Salas said: ‘I’ve had no report from you. What the devil’s going on?’

  ‘I’ve had a number of inquiries to make … ’

  ‘Have you made them?’

  ‘Yes, señor.’

  ‘With what result?’

  ‘To tell the truth, they seem only to confuse the issue.’

  ‘Was there, then, room for further confusion? … I understand you’ve received a report from Forensic?’

  ‘Yes, señor.’

  ‘I wonder if it will in any way disturb you to learn that I only became aware of this fact in the course of a conversation with someone from that department on other matters?’

  ‘I was just about to ring and inform you.’

  ‘Then I should feel grateful for that much. Have you arrested Alan Cullom?’

  ‘No, señor.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘There is some further evidence which I decided I must check out first.’

  ‘Then you do not consider that the evidence from the forensic laboratory is conclusive?’

  ‘Not really, no.’

  ‘What is this fresh evidence?’

  ‘The fact that there were five Cullom cousins and out of the five, two are dead and two others are, or have been, in trouble. I’m wondering about the curse of the Culloms… ’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘The curse of the Culloms, señor.’

  ‘Are you by any chance drunk?’

  ‘Certainly not. I was going to add that I don’t believe in that kind of a curse. But neither do I believe in extreme coincidences. That’s why I would like permission to travel to England.’

  ‘You’d like to go to England. Aren’t you just back from Menorca?’

  ‘Yes, but … ’

  ‘You don’t think that
maybe you are mistaking this office for that of a travel agency?’

  ‘Señor, the truth has to be somewhere and I think only England can explain to me exactly where. Perhaps I could telephone and speak to someone over there and ask him to find the answers to certain questions, but the subject is … well, not easily definable. He might not readily be able to understand what I’m after.’

  ‘I agree.’

  ‘But if I meet someone and we get to know each other, I can give him the full background to the case. Then he’ll understand why I need to know who, apart from Alan Cullom, could possibly stand to benefit from the murder of two Culloms and the harassment of others.’

  ‘Did you say the murder of two Culloms?’

  ‘Basil Cullom died last year.’

  ‘And it is established that he was murdered?’

  ‘Not established, no. After all, as yet I haven’t any details on his death. But he must have been murdered because everything points to that.’

  ‘Do you realize that you’ve joined certain events together, quite careless of the fact that there’s not the slightest evidence there’s any direct connection between them, and from this bastard union you’ve drawn a highly contentious conclusion? Now, you are trying to offer this conclusion as not only proof that the facts were rightly joined together in the first place, but also as proof of something which I can only describe as an extraordinary flight of the imagination.’

  Alvarez rubbed the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. Was that what he was doing?

  ‘Do you wish to reconsider all you’ve told me?’

  ‘Not really, señor. You see, I think I’m right.’

  ‘And, no doubt, you put forward such conviction as proof of the facts on which you’re relying?’

  ‘Señor, I’m certain the answer lies in England. That’s why I want to have your permission to go there.’

  ‘Unfortunately I am bound, since you are the investigating officer, to accede to any reasonable request. The fact that your definition of “reasonable” differs so greatly from mine is not allowed to bear the due weight it should. Regretfully, I have to agree to your going.’