Deadly Petard

by Roderic Jeffries

  ‘Señor, I was in the house of the unfortunate señorita this morning and all the evidence suggests that she did tragically kill herself.’

  ‘Stuff the evidence . . . Here, let’s go on inside and find something to drink.’

  In the sitting-room, Alvarez sat on one of the decrepit armchairs, apprehensive that it might collapse under him. He stared at the paintings on the walls and wondered what, if anything, they were meant to represent.

  Liza came into the room with a battered papier-mache tray on which were glass tumblers, a bowl of ice cubes, and a bottle half full of brandy: she put the tray down on the wooden box that did duty as a table. Meade emptied the bottle into the tumblers and Liza added as many ice cubes as each glass would then hold.

  ‘Why are you so damned knuckle-headed as to think Gertie killed herself?’ Meade demanded, as he handed Alvarez one of the tumblers.

  ‘Apart from any other reason, señor, because she left a note in which she said she was going to commit suicide.’

  He looked surprised. ‘So did it say anything else: like why?’

  ‘She feared she had cancer and had just heard that a friend of hers in England had died from that disease after many months of pain. She could not face the future.’

  ‘I just don’t believe all that.’

  ‘I myself read the note . . .’

  ‘I’m saying I don’t believe she thought she had cancer. We used to talk about everything and if she’d thought that, she’d have told us.’

  ‘It is a subject people often do not like to discuss.’

  ‘If she’d been worried, she’d have told us.’ He turned to face Norah. ‘Isn’t that right?’

  ‘I think so,’ she replied. ‘After all, we were her friends.’ ‘Yeah.’ Meade looked back at Alvarez. ‘D’you know something? Before she came out here, she hardly knew anyone: to talk to as friends, I mean. So with us she talked all the time about anything. She’d have shared her fears if she had any.’

  ‘She’d have known we’d have done everything we could to help,’ agreed Liza.

  ‘Señor, I am sure that from your point of view what you say is correct, but how correct is your point of view?’ Alvarez thought for a few seconds. ‘Even from friends of many years, people keep secrets. If the señorita had told you her fears, would you not have insisted she see a doctor? And that might have been to confirm her very worst fears . . . Do you understand what I am trying to say?’

  ‘Of course. But it’s all a load of cod’s. One thing. Who is this friend who’s just died? Gertie told us often enough she hadn’t a single real friend back home.’

  ‘I know only that her name was Pat.’

  ‘She’s never mentioned anyone called Pat . . . And if she was all that frightened about herself, how come she was here on Sunday night, laughing her head off and planning an exhibition?’

  ‘This last Sunday?’

  ‘That’s what I just said.’

  ‘Did she perhaps not seem to be just a little upset over something?’

  ‘She was upset over nothing. She even had a few more drinks than usual and we bloody near had her doing “Knees Up, Mother Brown”.’

  ‘You mentioned an exhibition—was this to be of her paintings?’

  ‘Only a small one. And it was to be in Llueso because there’s a whole raft of painters live there: leastwise, that’s what the bloody ignoramuses call themselves. She only painted commercially, of course.’

  ‘Bruno paints,’ said Norah, with tremendous pride.

  ‘Artistically,’ said Liza, to make the point quite clear.

  Alvarez looked up at a couple of the paintings opposite where he sat and tried to seem intelligently appreciative.

  ‘Funny thing is, I reckon that if she’d learned to spit on the money, she could’ve become a proper painter.’ Meade sounded as if this were not an admission which came easily. ‘When I saw that last picture of hers, I told her straight, for me that’s not chocolate box, that’s art . . . D’you see it?’

  ‘There was an unfinished painting on the easel.’

  ‘What was the composition?’

  ‘An olive tree, an almond orchard, a finca, and mountains.’

  ‘Original,’ sneered Meade. Then his tone altered. ‘But the way she’d nailed that olive tree! You just knew it was a thousand years old, that it had stared, caring but impotent, at all the stupidities and tragedies of life . . .’

  Alvarez remembered how, after first seeing it, he had briefly sensed something chilling, even macabre about that painting. ‘Perhaps, señor, it was expressing the fears of a woman who believed she had a fatal cancer?’

  Meade was clearly surprised by a possibility which had not occurred to him. He drained his glass, fiddled with it to spin the half-melted cubes around the edge, then said:

  ‘Get another bottle, Liza.’

  ‘There’s nothing more of anything, not even vino,’ she answered.

  ‘Jeeze! Who goddamn well keeps drinking all the booze?’

  ‘Do you know when the señorita came to live on this island?’ Alvarez asked.

  Meade shrugged his shoulders, his mind troubled by the lack of alcohol.

  ‘Must be quite a long time now,’ said Norah vaguely.

  ‘And has she made many friends?’

  ‘Gertie got on well with almost all the villagers. But maybe you’re talking about the Brits? There was us, of course. And Rosalie. And Angus and Maude who live a couple of kilometres from here, but Angus can’t stop nipping bums and Gertie wasn’t very fond of that. And then there’s George and Joan . . .’

  ‘She couldn’t stand the sight of ‘em,’ said Meade roughly. ‘Which is hardly to be wondered at.’

  Norah giggled, ‘You don’t like George because he said your paintings reminded him of the ones that chimpanzee did.’

  ‘Ignorant old fool.’ Meade drank the melted ice in his glass, hoping it might contain a faint flavour of brandy.

  ‘You’ve forgotten Keir West,’ said Liz.

  ‘That bloody scripe? She’d too much taste to be friendly with him, even if she did know him back in England.’

  Alvarez drove up the tortuous streets of Caraitx and parked at the top end of Calle Padre Vives. Bruno Meade was a roistering, amoral braggart (to think of him in such terms might help to stifle envy of his life style) so how did this affect the value of his evidence? He was quite certain the señorita could not have committed suicide—yet the circumstances of her death were fully consistent with suicide. And if her death had not been suicide, then it must have been murder and not even he had been able to suggest the slightest motive for murder . . .

  Meade had made only two really valid points. In the past, the señorita had never once expressed the slightest fear about her health and on the Sunday she had been lively and cheerful and full of plans for a forthcoming exhibition. But wasn’t that brightness likely to have been the brittle nerve-stretched brightness of someone who knew that soon it would all be over . . .?

  He sighed. All too clearly, he was now going to have to make more enquiries before he could safely wrap up the case and forget it.

  He left the car and walked along the pavement to No. 14, stepped inside the doorway and called out. A woman in her early fifties, dressed in the black which until recently had been worn by all widows no matter how long their husbands had been dead, came into the entrance room which was also the formal sitting-room. He introduced himself. Initially, she was flustered, believing his visit must mean trouble, but he reassured her and explained that he merely wanted to ask a few questions concerning the señorita next door.

  ‘The poor woman,’ she said, once seated. ‘To think she was so frightened that she killed herself . . .’ She shook her head, unable to comprehend how anyone could be so devoid of faith as to be unable to face what lay ahead in life.

  He asked her how well she had known Gertrude.

  ‘She’d come in here quite often and have a bowl of soup or some cocoa with an ensaimada an we’d tal
k. I’d visit her house. We were good friends and neighbours.’

  ‘Would you describe her as a happy woman?’

  ‘Señor, what is a happy woman?’

  It was a simple question, but far too profound for him to try to answer. ‘Did she talk a lot about her health?’

  ‘Her health? I don’t think she ever mentioned it. Most of all, she wanted to know about the village and our customs: she’d ask why we did this or that and I wouldn’t know. As I said, it’s just what we’ve always done . . . And then sometimes she’d talk just a little about her painting and show me what she’d done. She was a really wonderful painter.’

  He nodded. ‘Did she have many foreign visitors?’

  ‘No, not many. A man with a beard, who always talks very loudly: he has two . . . friends. A woman who is very nice and she speaks French to me and I speak Mallorquin back and sometimes we manage to understand each other a little.’

  ‘Did anyone come to see her on Monday night?’

  ‘There was no one before I went to bed, but I went early as I so often do because I get tired at work and then come back and have to cook the evening meal and Emilio always likes a big one, even in the heat.’

  ‘What time d’you reckon it was when you went to bed?’

  ‘Perhaps about nine.’

  ‘And you wouldn’t know if anyone called next door after that?’

  ‘No, that I wouldn’t. But Emilio may have heard if anyone did because his room overlooks the road.’

  ‘I take it, he’s your son?

  She answered with great pride. Emilio was just like her beloved husband—who had died almost twelve years ago in an accident at the quarry—and now he was in his last year at the Institute, doing BUP, the next year he would go on to do COU, and after that, God willing, he would be at university, unless he did his military service first. And this would be a miracle because no member of the family had ever before been to a university except for her uncle who had once worked at Salamanca University as a porter.

  ‘Is he at home, señora, so I could have a word with him?’

  ‘He’s up in his room, working at his books.’

  Emilio was dressed in a T-shirt and jeans: across the front of the T-shirt was printed in English, ‘My two are bigger’.

  ‘This señor is from the police,’ his mother told him.

  He assumed an air of sullen innocence.

  ‘He wants to know about any visitors the English señorita had on Monday night. Your room looks on to the road, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Of course it does,’ he answered contemptuously.

  Alvarez said: ‘What time did you work up to on Monday?’

  ‘Ten, same as always.’

  ‘Did you hear anyone call next door?’

  T wasn’t listening, was I, if I was working.’

  ‘Did you hear any cars drive up the road?’

  ‘Cars are always coming up to turn.’

  ‘Did one stop outside the señorita’s house?’

  ‘Never heard one.’

  ‘Are you quite sure?’ asked his mother, nervously eager to help Alvarez.

  ‘Haven’t I said?’

  If it would not have distressed his mother too much, Alvarez would have taught him some manners.

  CHAPTER 12

  Juan stepped into Alvarez’s bedroom. ‘Mummy says to tell you that you’re late and if you don’t hurry up there’ll be no cocoa.’

  Alvarez opened his eyes. ‘No cocoa?’

  ‘Isabel and me will drink it all.’

  ‘Do that and I’ll clap you both in jail . . . Why aren’t you at school?’

  ‘Because it’s the fiesta of schools. I told you it was going to be, yesterday evening.’

  ‘I’m afraid I’d forgotten.’

  ‘You’re getting very old,’ said Juan, before he went out and closed the door behind him.

  Alvarez climbed out of bed, crossed to the small mirror on the dresser, and looked at himself. A little tired, perhaps—and small wonder, with his workload—but certainly not very old . . .

  Downstairs, in the kitchen, as bright-eyed as ever, Dolores was slicing carrots. ‘Sometimes I wonder you don’t take root in bed.’

  ‘Perhaps because I’m never given the chance,’ he answered lugubriously.

  She smiled. ‘Sit down and I’ll make you some cocoa. Juan’s been out to get you a croissant to go with it.’

  ‘In that case, I’ll forgive him.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For suggesting that I’m getting very old.’

  ‘To a youngster like him, we’re all as old as the hills.’

  He sat at the table. ‘D’you think being educated will change him?’

  ‘What nonsense is that?’

  He told her about Emilio.

  ‘It’s the mother’s fault,’ she said immediately.

  ‘A widow, an only son . . . It’s very difficult.’

  ‘Not if you teach them from the beginning how to behave.’

  It was never really that simple, he thought. Emilio’s mother, early left a widow, would have done everything possible for him. Yet her love had bred resentment instead of gratitude. He sighed heavily.

  ‘Now what’s the matter?’

  ‘I was thinking how unjust the world can be.’

  ‘If that’s all you’ve got to worry about, you’re lucky. And if you’ve nothing better to do, you might get the milk from the fridge.’

  He left the house half an hour later, sat behind the wheel of his car, and wondered whether to go to his office before driving on to Caraitx? The thought that urgent work might have come in and be awaiting his immediate attention decided him. He drove off in the direction of Caraitx.

  In No. 15, Calle Padre Vives, the body was no longer on the bed, but otherwise the main bedroom was exactly as he had last seen it. He studied the clothes she had worn on the last day and which when she had undressed had been carelessly thrown down on the seat of a chair and he went over and carefully folded them up. That done, he began to search the room. The bed had on it only two pillows, two sheets, and a bedspread. He stripped everything, examined the mattress, folded up the sheets and blankets and placed them on the mattress and covered them with the bedspread. He checked the things on top of the bedside table, opened the medicine bottle and rolled a couple of the capsules on to the palm of his left hand, after which he returned them and replaced the cap. He opened the single drawer in the table and looked through the clutter of personal items.

  A built-in cupboard ran the length of one wall and as he crossed towards this his right foot crunched down on one of the pieces of broken earthenware. He bent down and collected them all up: as far as it was possible to tell, the cazuela had been clean when it had broken. He put the pieces down on one end of the dressing-table.

  The cupboard was divided vertically into four compartments, two of which contained drawers or open shelving. In the left-hand compartment hung the few dresses, skirts, slacks, and coats, of a woman who could seldom be bothered with her appearance: in a rack on the floor were half a dozen pairs of shoes, all serviceable rather than fashionable. In the next compartment, shelved, were tights, belts, blouses, underclothes, and sweaters. The third compartment contained two drawers and open shelving and some of the shelves had been used to store papers, most of which were in obvious disorder. In the fourth and final compartment were several empty cardboard boxes, two heavily patched, paint-stained smocks, and a portable typewriter in its case. He returned to the papers. There were files, loose letters, letters still in their envelopes, bank statements, cheque-stubs, and handwritten notes. One file dealt with investments. It soon became clear that she had been reasonably well off, but not wealthy. In another file was her will in Spanish, an English translation of this, and some handwritten notes. He read the Spanish will, dated several months previously. In view of her long-standing debt, she left everything she owned to Keir West. He scratched the back of his neck. That was a name he’d surely met before . . . It
was the death of West’s wife which had led to the señorita being questioned: Meade had referred to West in scathing terms . . . He finished reading the will and turned to the notes. She had intended to alter her will and leave everything to Rosalie Rassaud—another name Meade had mentioned? Or had it been one of those beautiful, long-legged, proud-busted . . . It seemed as if no new will had ever been executed. There were chequebooks on the National Westminster in Petercross and the Banco de Credito Balear in Inca and several books of stubs for both those banks. The stubs suggested that the Mallorquin bank had been used to meet the day-to-day costs of living and the English bank only when it became necessary to pay into the Mallorquin bank a sterling cheque for immediate credit of pesetas. In a third folder there was a jumble of receipts which dated from recently to the day when she’d first moved into the house. He quickly flipped through them: Seat 600, various servicings and repairs to this, canvases, paints, and brushes, again and again, a large number of framings, an electric toaster some nine months previously, a record-player and a number of records a month after that, typewriter a fortnight before, a food mixer only four days previously . . . Sad mementoes of a life in a foreign land which had been built up slowly, destroyed abruptly. He fiddled with the receipt for the food mixer. Would a woman, contemplating suicide as she must have been four days ago, have bothered to buy a food mixer? After a while, he dismissed the question. A person contemplating suicide was in a state of mental confusion and could hardly be judged by logical standards.

  Overcoming his natural dislike of prying too deeply into someone else’s private life, he looked through the relatively few personal letters. These dated back through several months and without exception were couched in terms of acquaintanceship rather than friendship. He failed to find the letter from Pat’s sister which, according to the suicide note, had finally triggered off her suicide. Since she kept other letters, why had she not kept this one? Did its absence suggest there had never been such a letter? Much more likely that she had read it and then torn it up, impotently trying to dismiss the sad news—in the old days, the bearer of bad news was often executed.