I had to face it. It was up to me to try and solve this—this puzzle. No, it was too complex, too evil for that. I didn’t even have a word for it. However, I knew that if I didn’t dig out its dark heart I could hardly begin to imagine the terrible things that might happen next.
32
The bird-of-paradise flower skewered through Winniatt’s eyeball haunted my every waking moment. A simple snuffing out of a life was not enough for this killer. This theatrical touch was a sign, I was sure, of the murderer’s desire to punish the writer for something he had seen. And I still needed to establish a motive for the murder.
Over the course of the next day or so, I started to ask questions relating to Winniatt’s time on the island in order to build up a picture of exactly what he had witnessed and whom he had spoken to at any given hour. I tried to approach these encounters not as formal interviews, but something more gentle and leisurely. I chatted with Gustavo, some of the porters, a chambermaid who could speak only a little English, a waiter, and the tennis instructor. I transcribed all the details—what time Winniatt had woken up, what he had eaten for breakfast, whom he had talked to and when—into my notebook. I went on to speak to Mrs. Brendel, Helen Hart and Guy Trevelyan, Professor Wilbor, and even the cold and distant Rupert Mabey, but none of them mentioned Winniatt in relation to Grenville, and as a result, nothing they told me seemed especially relevant. Of course I could no longer approach Daisy, which was unfortunate. I thought of the way she had looked at her bedside drawer when I had asked her about whether the police had taken all of her husband’s notebooks. Núñez already suspected me of taking Daisy’s pearls, and I knew trying to gain entry into her room to search through her possessions would be too risky.
Just as I was thinking that I needed to put Winniatt’s murder aside for the time being and get back to my initial inquiries relating to the death of Douglas Greene, whose uneasy spirit I felt guilty of neglecting, I received a visit from Mme Giroux. She had successfully located Consuela living in a house down by the harbor and had made an appointment for me to see the woman at two o’clock the next day. Apparently the servant, or criada, had the day off, as Grenville and his daughter had made plans to visit some friends up in a village in the hills. When I heard this, part of me was tempted to break into Grenville’s house, but I realized that by now, aware that I was on his trail, he would have destroyed any evidence that linked him to the deaths. Or perhaps he had just told Consuela that he and Violet would not be at home in the hope that I might try and search Mal País. The story could be a trap to lure me to his home. I could just imagine the look of sadistic pleasure that would spread across his ugly face when he saw me step into the courtyard.
As I walked down the hill from the Taoro towards the cluster of white houses by the harbor, I was conscious that I needed to prepare for my talk with Consuela, so I asked Mme Giroux about the basics of traditional cooking in Tenerife. Of course, since arriving in Orotava I had sampled some of the “delights” of the island, but she took me through a typical Canarian menu containing such dishes as papas arrugadas con mojo (the wrinkled potatoes with red and green spicy sauces that I had tried at Grenville’s house), pimientos de Padrón, croquetas caseras, escaldón de gofio (an unappetizing-sounding casserole made from toasted grain flour and fish stock that had been apparently eaten by the Guanches), queso asado, and carne fiesta.
The whitewashed house was a traditional fisherman’s cottage perched right on the edge of a promontory overlooking the sea. Mme Giroux knocked on the door, and a moment later Consuela appeared, a smile lighting up her weather-beaten, careworn face. She looked at me with warm recognition and gestured for us to step inside. A smell of cooking fish lingered in the air, an aroma that no doubt had been absorbed into the walls over the generations. Although it was obvious that this was not a well-off household, Consuela kept her home clean and tidy.
I asked Mme Giroux to thank Consuela for her kindness and for the delicious dishes I had tasted at Mr. Grenville’s. When Mme Giroux spoke the words, Consuela’s tired eyes brightened with joy. She had always thought her cooking was nothing special. Señor Grenville never complained, but all she was doing, she said, was serving up hearty dishes, ones that her mother and grandmother had prepared before her. She was astounded that anyone would be interested in them. We talked of the importance of good ingredients, her husband’s huerta, or vegetable patch, the rich resources of land and sea. Standing by the open fire in her kitchen, over which she cooked her family’s food, Consuela told me of her own secret recipes, ones of which she was most proud. From this, I turned the conversation to families in general, how I missed my late mother and how I adored my small daughter.
“I too have my joys and my sorrows,” she said. “But I can’t complain.”
“Often those we love the most are the ones who can cause us the most pain,” I said.
The old woman’s arms, dark-skinned and wrinkled, twisted about her waist as she began to speak of José. “My son has given me many worries.” She sighed. “Each of these lines on my face is because of him. Each week, another girl. Always getting into fights. Never staying for very long in any job. Too much drinking. I worry so about him, but my husband says I am being foolish, as this is the nature of boys.”
“Mr. Grenville mentioned that José used to work for him at Mal País.”
Consuela’s eyes clouded, and she turned away from us. “Yes, that is true. But that’s all in the past now. He’s got a job as a waiter at the bar on the seafront.”
“Are you happy at Mal País? Working for Mr. Grenville?” I asked.
“I have a job, that’s enough for me,” she said, now looking with suspicion at both Mme Giroux and me. “And what’s this got to do with cooking?”
“Sorry, I’m too curious, one of my character faults,” I said, smiling.
By necessity I asked a dozen more questions about the many varieties of fish; the uses of olive oil, coriander, and garlic; and the technique of making a batter for frying squid. Then I finally brought the interview to an end. I thanked her graciously and promised that I would send her the article from the magazine, care of Mr. Grenville.
“Thank you for translating for me,” I said to Mme Giroux as we walked along the promenade. “And I certainly know what to cook if a Spanish family ever came to visit me in England. At least I now know where José works.” I fell silent as I considered how best to approach the young man. The various scenarios playing through my mind were scattered by the sudden sound of violent shouting, soon followed by the expulsion of a dark-haired man from a bar.
“De puta madre!” he screamed, his black eyes full of hatred as he fell to the ground.
“What is he saying?” I whispered to Madame Giroux.
“It’s best if you don’t know. Let’s just say he’s not happy.”
An older, more muscular man, with a mouth missing several teeth and a scar down the side of his left cheek, came to stand over the younger fellow. A tirade of guttural Spanish words spewed from his lips, along with a good deal of spittle, as well as the name José. It seemed as though Consuela’s son had just lost another job. The older man was about to land a punch on José’s head when he became aware of our eyes on him. With an emphatic nod of the head and a final kick at the younger man, he retreated back inside the bar.
“Can I help you?” asked Mme Giroux in Spanish as she approached the man on the ground. Although he was handsome, I noticed that he had dark shadows under his eyes. “Are you all right?”
“Estoy bien, no pasa nada,” José said in reply.
I didn’t understand the exact meaning of the interchange between them, but after a few minutes Mme Giroux said something to make José smile. She helped him to his feet and proceeded to introduce me. I apologized, through her, for not being able to converse in Spanish. She then said something to him that included the words Señor Grenville, and his face darkened.
“He wants to know how you know Grenville?” asked Mme Giroux.
&nbs
p; “What have you said to him already?”
“Just that you are aware that he used to work for him and that you are keen to ask him some questions.”
I knew there was no love lost between José and Grenville. “Let’s tell him the truth,” I said. “Say to him that I suspect Grenville first of the murder of Douglas Greene and now the death of Howard Winniatt.”
The revelation produced an immediate, almost physical reaction. As José started to shake his head violently, his voice became louder and more rambling and his eyes looked wild and full of panic. Mme Giroux repeatedly tried to make him slow down, and finally, through snippets of her translation, I began to understand.
“It started out as nothing but a silly rumor,” José told Mme Giroux. “I had lost my job, I was in a foul mood. My head was full of stupid thoughts. Violet was not being friendly. And so I began to talk to people in the bars around town of the things that went on up at Mal País.”
“What kind of things?”
“It started as a joke. To begin with I told the truth, more or less. About Grenville and his interest in the Guanches and the occult. Then I started to exaggerate a little. I wanted my revenge, I suppose. The old fool! I had tried to be nice to his daughter, show her a little attention. She was starved of male company, what with that cripple—what’s his name, Edmund?—what could he ever do for her? How could he ever please her? No wonder Grenville did not want his daughter to marry him!”
“And what about Greene? What did you say to him?”
“One night in a bar I got talking to Douglas Greene. I knew of him from when I was a boy, although he was a little older than me. He went away to school, I think back to England, and then returned to the island, but his Spanish was perfect. He was a bastard, you know—sorry, illegitimate. Anyway, he started to ask me what I had been doing and I told him that I had been working at Mal País. He seemed keen for me to tell him all the things that Grenville did, and so I told him all I knew and more—about how Grenville wanted to release the evil spirit of Guayota from Teide. He promised me that there were people in his country, England, who wanted to stop men like Grenville from practicing their dark arts. He promised he would give me some money. He wrote some things down. I thought I was doing something to help. I didn’t expect anything bad to happen. I felt sick when I heard that Greene had died. And in that cave, in that state. I started to drink more to try to forget about it. And now there is another man dead! I promise I will never touch another drink. I’ll never say another bad word. Do you think I might be next? Oh, God.”
By this point José was nearly wild with fear and Mme Giroux had to order a brandy from the bar to help calm him down. When she returned and gave him the glass, José quickly knocked back the dark brown liquid, immediately reneging on his promise never to touch another drop of alcohol.
“José, it’s very important that you are telling the truth,” I said, looking him straight in the eyes. “It’s too dangerous to have any more falsehoods.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, whimpering like a small boy. “It’s lies, all lies.”
When I had recovered from the impact of what José had said—the revelation left me almost physically winded—I questioned him again and again to establish the truth. José’s stories had started out as a slight exaggeration but, after repeated retellings and the ingestion of an excess of alcohol, had ended up as a complete fabrication. Grenville had never said any of those things about wanting to release the spirit of evil from Teide.
The implications of José’s statement rippled through my mind, sweeping away certain aspects of the case that I had constructed—my preconceptions, theories, and what I had regarded as facts—in a great swell of dirty floodwater. Everything I had assumed to be true had to be dismissed. I had to start to build up the case again from scratch.
I knew, from the evidence of my own eyes, that Grenville was an evil man. But was he the man behind the murders of Douglas Greene and Howard Winniatt? Surely he had to be, I told myself. Who else was there on the island who possessed that kind of degenerate mind? Grenville had the disposition—I knew him to be immoral or amoral, the difference did not matter to me—as well as the knowledge and the means to kill. Even if he did not intend to go through with his ridiculous plan to release the devil from the volcano, or whatever superstitious nonsense it was, in reality, that is what he had already achieved. What else were those two deaths but a concrete manifestation of evil? And yet . . . there was something not right about this. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the a shadow, an enigmatic figure. The more I willed it to come into view, the more it seemed to fade out of focus and step back into the darkness. I was sure there that was something I had seen or heard that would make sense of all of this. What was it? Scenes from the recent past flashed through my brain, snippets of dinner-party conversation and seemingly insignificant asides. But it was too chaotic—the memories and the conversations blurred together into meaningless noise.
* * *
After leaving José, I returned with Mme Giroux to the hotel, too distracted to talk. She tried to help, but I had no choice but to carry the heavy burden of information on my shoulders. I would have to work this out for myself. On our arrival at the Taoro, I thanked her once more and returned to my room, where I took out my notebook and looked through the pages relating to the murders of Greene and Winniatt. At the desk I worked with a kind of fury, reconstructing the crimes from the bare facts. And although it was difficult, I tried to reimagine how they had been committed without Grenville as the main suspect. If someone had heard the rumors spread by José about Grenville, then that person could have taken advantage of these slurs to commit the crimes, knowing that the occultist would be the most likely suspect. Had I fallen into a trap? If so, who had laid this for me? Had someone deliberately set out to deceive me? From now on, I realized, I would have to keep an open mind both about the deaths and those responsible for them.
I thought back to my encounters with Grenville, reassessing his pronouncements and judgments. At the time I had interpreted his words through my belief that he was a murderer. What if he was only—only!—a pervert, a man who submitted his daughter to the worst kind of suffering? Had he really been innocent of any intention to harm me? Was that herbal draught nothing more than a harmless essence of plant extracts and not, as I believed, a poison designed to kill me? Had I got all of that wrong? I thought back to my behavior, when I had been prepared to throw that glass of ammonia into his eyes. No wonder he had looked at me with astonishment and surprise and, as I remembered it now, a degree of hurt and betrayal. I had been the one ready to commit a crime. The thought of what I had been tempted to do turned my stomach, a feeling of nausea that lingered and made me late in getting ready for dinner.
* * *
As I sat down for supper that night, I smiled at my companions already assembled around the table: Professor Wilbor and Rupert Mabey, who had decided to eat at the hotel again; Mrs. Brendel and Dr. Trenkel; and Helen Hart and Guy Trevelyan, who were regaling us with their plans for the dinner and party on Valentine’s Day. But behind my seemingly gay smile lay something darker: shame, suspicion, and raw fear. Talk turned to the funeral of Howard Winniatt the next day and inquiries as to who was attending. Everyone nodded their heads in agreement—they would all be going, apart from Dr. Trenkel, who had a number of appointments he could not change.
I tried to eat but the food—creamy croquettes full of cheese sauce, an onion soup, beautifully steamed white fish, a rich meaty stew, a cold rice pudding—lay mostly untouched; the few mouthfuls I managed to force into my mouth tasted foul. From the occasional sidelong glance, I could tell that some people had heard the rumor about my possible involvement in the theft of Daisy Winniatt’s pearls. I could almost hear the thought worming its way through their minds: although she looks like a nice enough woman, there is no smoke without fire. Halfway through dinner, as Dr. Trenkel stepped away from the table for a moment, I excused myself, too.
“Dr. Tren
kel, I wonder if you have discovered anything more—about Mr. Winniatt?”
The doctor looked embarrassed and coughed into his hand. “I’m afraid I’ve already said too much about that,” he said, increasing the speed with which he walked across the dining room.
“What do you mean?”
“Mrs. Christie, you know I shouldn’t have said anything to you regarding Mr. Winniatt. Inspector Núñez feels that it’s only right and proper we keep the findings within a small group of people.” He tapped a finger against his nose. “Discretion and all that. I’m sure you understand.”
“I see,” I said, trying not to blurt out what I knew of him. “Of course, quite right.”
When I took my place back at the table, I ran through each of the diners in turn, rehearsing possible criminal motives and murderous scenarios. When I found myself trying to invent reasons why poor Mrs. Brendel might be involved in the murder of Howard Winniatt, I put my napkin on the table and told everyone that I was feeling off-color and was retiring to bed for the night. If this had been one of my books, one of my detective figures would have had all the suspects lined up in his head. He would have access to information such as alibis, the exact time of death, and a wide range of witness statements. He would be able to conclude who had committed the murders through the precise sifting of evidence and the application of logic. For my part, I had no such inside information: Davison, who might be able to help me in certain matters, could not be contacted; Inspector Núñez suspected me of a crime I had not committed; Dr. Trenkel was no longer willing to share his findings about the postmortem, and one of the most important witnesses, Daisy Winniatt, would no longer speak to me.
In my suite all was quiet. Carlo and Rosalind were already asleep in the room behind the connecting doors. I walked over to the window and gazed out at the moon, which cast its soft glow onto the slopes of Mount Teide. The following day Howard Winniatt would be buried in the English Cemetery down by the sea. Daisy had made her wishes plain: I was not invited to the service, nor presumably to the small reception at the hotel afterwards. However, there was a way I might be able to use this to my advantage.
A Different Kind of Evil Page 20