A Different Kind of Evil

by Andrew Wilson

  I tried to sleep, but was woken by a horrible dream about Rosalind and Blue Teddy. She had taken Raymond’s toy by mistake, and the boy had been so furious with her that he, in a fit of spiteful childish rage, had pushed my dear daughter off a cliff. I saw her falling through the air and then struggling in the waters, trying to swim before she drowned beneath the waves. I woke up in a cold sweat and it took me some minutes to steady my nerves. Even though I knew it to be quite irrational, I stole out of bed and quietly opened the double doors to check if Rosalind was safe. She was, of course she was, but as I fetched myself a glass of water, something still troubled me. I took one of my notebooks back to bed with me. Taking up a pen, I wrote a series of names that would have seemed nonsensical to anyone but me: “Gina Trevelyan. Blue Teddy. Rosalind and Raymond,” closely followed by a sentence: “If Gerard Grenville was not the man responsible for the deaths of Douglas Greene and Howard Winniatt, who was it?”

  33

  From a window in one of the corridors at the top of the hotel, I watched the parade of mourners leave the Taoro. At the front of the group was Daisy, her head shrouded in black lace; around her neck, where her precious pearls should have been, there was nothing. Among the group of mourners, I made out the somberly dressed figures of Professor Wilbor, Rupert Mabey, Mrs. Brendel, Guy Trevelyan, Helen Hart, Inspector Núñez, and at the very tail end, Gerard and Violet Grenville, who was pushing Edmund Ffosse in his wheeled chair.

  After arranging for Carlo to look after Rosalind and Raymond, I sent a note to Mme Giroux asking for her help. She was due to meet me on the terrace at ten o’clock. By the time I had taken my place at the table outside, the sun had clouded over and a mist had started to descend from the mountains. Although it was far from cold, the air felt a little damp, so I draped the shawl Flora Kurs had given me around my shoulders. I remembered that I had been wearing it that morning Gina Trevelyan had thrown herself off the Gelria. The memory of the young woman’s death made me shudder, but something else about what I had seen also bothered me. I pictured the girl standing at the very edge of the ship, her arms in the air as if she was going to fly. Just like Howard Winniatt standing on that bridge overlooking the dry riverbed.

  An idea formed in my mind, but I had to stop myself from rushing ahead. I had already made one serious mistake in assuming that Grenville was the killer. I couldn’t afford to make another dangerous supposition.

  What I needed was some sort of evidence. I wasn’t exactly sure what this would be, but I knew that Dr. Trenkel was hiding something. Mme Giroux was only too willing to help—after all, the plan did not put her in any danger whatsoever—and by the end of our talk she seemed to understand perfectly what I was asking her to do.

  After making an appointment to see the doctor later that morning, I walked with Mme Giroux towards the house that Professor Wilbor shared with his assistant, Rupert Mabey. The route took us through the terraced gardens and down towards the sea. Instead of veering right to La Paz, we turned left along the track that led down to an old fort. The professor had told me that his house was quite distinctive: it was painted pink and was situated on a hillock overlooking the bay. As we approached the sea, the mist began to clear a little and we saw the house in the distance, standing above a curve of black sand.

  As we walked closer, I realized that the house was in a state of disrepair. Weeds grew out of the paving slabs on the terrace, the paint on the outside walls was flaking off like great swaths of skin, and large patches of damp crept up from the ground towards the windows. I knocked on the front door a couple of times to make sure there was nobody at home—although it didn’t look like it, perhaps the men had a maid who helped with the cleaning—before I turned the handle. It was locked. The frame looked rotten, and I was certain that if I pushed my finger into it, the wood would turn to dust. However, I didn’t want to draw attention to the fact that we had been here. The inspector would no doubt realize that I had been one of the few people not to attend Winniatt’s funeral. If I broke into the professor’s house, then this would only give him more grounds to be suspicious of me. I walked around the house and peered through one of the grimy windows, while Mme Giroux waited by the front door.

  Although the light was dim, I could just make out the shape of a few objects: a pile of books on a table, a shelf displaying shards of unwashed pottery, and a sink full of dirty dishes. If nothing else, the two men were in desperate need of a woman’s touch. Part of me wanted to roll up my sleeves, get hold of a brush and some soap and hot water, and give the place a thorough cleaning.

  “There’s nobody in and no way of getting in,” I said to Mme Giroux when I arrived back at the front door. “So it’s back to the hotel. At least I’ll be in plenty of time for my appointment with the doctor.”

  “Could you slip in through a window?” asked Mme Giroux.

  “If I ever was able to slip in through a window, then I’m afraid those days are long gone,” I said.

  The comment made Mme Giroux smile, and her eyes sparkled for the first time since we had met. “You’ve probably guessed that since what happened with Albert, I haven’t had the most enjoyable of lives,” she said. “My existence has been one of duty and responsibility, looking after dear Raymond, soothing his brow after his bad dreams. I was so grateful to Mr. and Mrs. Murray that I couldn’t complain. I didn’t ask for anything more. But since arriving at the Taoro, since meeting you, I feel a certain joie de vivre returning. I know it’s probably wrong of me to enjoy this kind of work, stealing around houses, going into bars to talk to men.”

  As I told her of what I had planned next, a smile spread across her face. “You are a wicked lady, Mrs. Christie.” She laughed. “I haven’t read any of your books yet, but I’m looking forward to it. If the novels are anything like—well, like this, then I’m sure I will be entertained.”

  We walked back to the hotel slowly, taking the opportunity to stop at various points and catch our breath. We talked as we went, a leisurely conversation that covered Raymond and the death of his brother, the Murrays, the other guests staying at the Taoro, before finally, as we reached the hotel’s gardens, Mme Giroux stopped me and placed a gentle hand on my arm.

  “You do know that there are some unkind rumors going around about you?”

  “Oh, yes, this ridiculous idea that I’m some kind of jewel thief.”

  “I know you didn’t do it, although I wouldn’t care if you had,” she whispered as a couple of disapproving Germanic-looking women passed us on the terrace. “But I think you know who did take them, don’t you?”

  I hesitated for a moment before I said, “Your instincts are quite right, madame. I do know who stole Mrs. Winniatt’s jewels.”

  “Then why don’t you tell the inspector? Put a stop to all these silly stories about you?”

  “I have my reasons,” I said.

  “Which are?”

  “I’m not quite sure yet,” I replied truthfully as we sat down at a table on the terrace. “All I know is that the person who took them is not who you’d expect. They are not short of money, or at least they don’t seem to be. I can’t say any more just now, I’m sure you understand, madame.”

  “Of course,” she said. We passed the time of day quite pleasantly, and to fellow guests at the Taoro we would have seemed like two middle-aged ladies with very little to do, leisured types who spent their days gossiping, playing bridge, drinking endless cups of tea, and talking about the weather. I knew never to trust appearances. Having said that, I had to reprimand myself for the serious mistakes I had made with Grenville. I had assumed that because he was an occultist, because of his interest in poisons, because he was a far-from-pleasant man, because he inflicted a terrible suffering on his daughter, he must therefore be a murderer. Of course he could still be the one responsible for the deaths of Douglas Greene and Howard Winniatt, but I had my doubts. I must not let myself be blinkered again.

  “I suppose it must be almost eleven, nearly time for my appointment with t
he doctor.” I said. “How are you feeling? Weak?”

  “Now that you mention it, I am feeling a little dizzy,” she said, her hand rising theatrically to her head.

  “Good,” I said. “I’ll see you after . . . after you’ve made a full ‘recovery.’ ”

  I left Mme Giroux and made my way towards Trenkel’s office. I said good morning to the nurse and told her that I had an appointment at eleven o’clock. After a few moments, Trenkel came out and, with a fixed expression, ushered me into his office.

  “What can we do for you today, Mrs. Christie?” he said, not looking up from his desk.

  “It’s the same trouble, I’m afraid,” I said, forcing my fingers to work themselves into an anxious state. “I’m having trouble sleeping. I have the most terrible bad dreams. I can’t seem to forget about what I saw.” I took out a handkerchief from my handbag and started to dab away the tears that I had forced to form in my eyes. “I know you said take plenty of rest and exercise, and I have. I go to bed early, but I feel so restless, so nervy. I keep thinking about what kind of person did that to poor Mr. Winniatt and what he might do next. Every little sound makes me jump. You must have noticed that I could hardly touch my food at dinner.”

  Trenkel looked at me with suspicion. What was going through his mind? No doubt he would have heard, either from Núñez or from another guest at the Taoro, of my alleged involvement in the theft of Mrs. Winniatt’s pearls. A witness, most probably one of the hotel’s many chambermaids, had seen me slink out of the widow’s room. Was he wondering whether I had seen him take the jewels? Was he musing over the possibility of placing something in my room or on my person that would link me to the theft? Perhaps he was thinking that, if he played this right, it might work to his advantage.

  “Yes, I did notice that you seemed a little distracted,” he said. “Is there anything else worrying you at the moment? Anything you’ve done that is causing you anxiety?”

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  “There are some nervous conditions that lead to acts of irrationality. Some people, for example, sleepwalk and have no memory of doing so. Other people may behave quite oddly for no clear reason, do things they would never dream of doing normally. The unconscious, you see, is a very powerful force, one that is only just beginning to be recognized.”

  “Do you think that’s what might be wrong with me?”

  “It could be. But a study and diagnosis of such a thing can take many months, sometimes years. You may want to consult a doctor at home, in London. But it seems highly feasible that the discovery of Mr. Winniatt’s body could have dealt a terrible shock to your system. The sight may have stirred up old memories, difficult memories that you haven’t thought about since your childhood. It could indeed have forced you to do certain things, things of which you have no conscious memory today.”

  By planting this seed in my mind, Dr. Trenkel was laying the ground for his master plan: he wanted me to think that somehow I was guilty of the theft. No doubt he would place the pearls in my room and then suggest to Núñez that my suite be searched. Yes, he was clever all right. But not quite clever enough. I looked at the clock on the wall. It was time.

  34

  “Doctor! Doctor!” It was the nurse. “Please come! It’s an emergency!”

  “What?” shouted Trenkel as he pushed himself out of the chair and ran to the door. “What’s the problem?”

  “It’s a lady in the courtyard. She’s been taken ill.”

  Trenkel turned to me and paused. Just as he was about to open his mouth to say something, the nurse called for him again, with rising panic in her voice. “A guest says he thinks the woman might be having some kind of fit. Quick, Doctor. Quick!”

  “You’d better come with me, then,” he said to the nurse, grabbing his medical bag.

  As soon as he left the room, I closed the door behind him and locked it from the inside. I needed to work quickly. The first thing I wanted to find was the postmortem report on Howard Winniatt. But after looking through the papers in Trenkel’s filing cabinet and desk, I concluded that the doctor must have sent it on to Núñez. Although this was a disappointment, I still had some time, time that I could put to good use.

  I wasn’t quite sure what I should be searching for, but I had an idea that Trenkel’s office contained something that would help me make sense of the stolen pearls, and perhaps of the murders, too. If I found evidence of an outstanding debt, then perhaps I could understand why Trenkel had taken the necklace. Or was he a compulsive thief, a human magpie who could not resist taking the shiny baubles of his patients? Had there been other cases of theft at the hotel or was this the first one? I made a mental note to ask Gustavo about this later, not that the Taoro’s trusted employee would want to give anything away that might sully the hotel’s good reputation.

  I went back to the drawers in Trenkel’s desk and started sifting through receipts, old newspaper cuttings, a few medical journals written in German and English, but found nothing relating directly to the doctor’s finances. The more I searched, the more frustrated I became, as there was nothing that seemed to suggest he was anything but a respectable doctor. As I worked through papers, books, and records, I began to doubt myself.

  Perhaps it would be better if I told Davison that from now on, I would just concentrate on writing about crimes rather than trying to solve them. Despite what Davison had said, I was obviously not suited for this kind of professional intelligence work. As I started to compose a letter in my head to Davison, the image of Violet’s tortured face pressed underneath her father’s bulk flashed into my mind. This was soon followed by more horrific memories: the sight of the bloody mess on the rocks and the bird-of-paradise flower sticking out of Winniatt’s eye socket. I thought back to the cave by Martiánez beach where Greene’s body had been found and the sadness that emanated from Davison when he had told me about his friendship with the dead man. If I gave up now, what would I have accomplished? I would retire back to a comfortable life in England knowing that the murderer or murderers had escaped punishment. Justice would not have been done. Evil would have been allowed to triumph.

  I thought too of the looks of contempt that Daisy Winniatt and Inspector Núñez had given me. If I stopped now, then these two people would continue to believe that I had been involved in the theft of a widow’s jewels. There was always the possibility that—if, as I suspected, Trenkel went ahead with a plan to plant the jewels in my room—I might actually be arrested for the crime. Even though I would protest my innocence, the authorities would know about the very public scandal that had been reported in newspapers back in England. My doctors had issued the statement that I had been suffering from an attack of serious amnesia. This would be used in my defense—mitigating circumstances and all that—but it would also seal my fate. They would say that although the lady writer had no memory of the crime, in all probability the balance of her mind was still disturbed. I would return home in shame and Rosalind would be known as the daughter of a criminal.

  No, I could not allow that to happen.

  I looked at the clock. I did not know how much time I had left before Trenkel returned. I went back over to the filing cabinet where he kept the records of his patients. The system was an orderly one, with the names separated according to sections of the alphabet: A–G, H–N, O–T, U–Z. I looked for Mabey’s file, but there wasn’t one. Next I flicked through the papers hoping to find a record for Gerard and Violet Grenville, and again there was nothing. It would be in character for the occultist to treat himself, and when the poor girl was ill, she was no doubt prescribed a dose of her father’s “herbal essences.” The thought sent a shiver down my spine.

  My fingers traced their way over the top of the files before they came to rest on the fourth and last section. The image of a man with wild hair and gooseberry eyes came into my mind: Professor Wilbor. He seemed so nice and friendly, but I knew that an appearance of geniality often covered a multitude of sins. I took out the file a
nd, although it was difficult to read, I could make out certain words such as indigestion, corpulent form, high blood pressure, at risk of diabetes and a list of further details regarding the man’s treatment. But there was nothing of any real significance.

  Just as I was about to close the file and place it back in the cabinet I stopped and looked again. Not at the contents of the report, but at the way it was written. It was in a messy hand, the kind I normally associated with doctors. I pulled out another file at random, that of a middle-aged woman suffering from bronchitis. That too was composed of pages all written in an untidy hand. I selected another, that of a tubercular patient, and then another, belonging to an asthmatic, both of which had been written in the same scrawl. There was something wrong here, something very wrong indeed.

  At that moment I heard footsteps approaching and then the sound of voices.

  I knew what I had seen was important, but I needed to double-check. I quickly pulled Edmund Ffosse’s file out of the cabinet and stole a look inside. The handwriting was neat and legible, almost as if it had been written by someone else. Had Ffosse seen another doctor in the past, a man who had then had his report sent over to Trenkel? I turned the page, but there, sitting at the bottom of the manuscript, was Trenkel’s signature.

  “Yes, indeed,” I heard Trenkel say as he walked down the corridor. “It could have been very much worse. Thank you, nurse.”

  I shoved a few pages of these notes into my handbag, replaced the file, quickly unlocked the door, and just as the doctor came into the office, positioned myself on the chair where he had left me.