The Summer Snow

by Rebecca Pawel

  Tejada frowned at the thought of Alejandra. He would have to speak to her again before they left and explain to her that he would not allow her to throw away her future for the sake of some idiot desire to remain a true member of the lumpen proletariat. Perhaps, he thought dryly, he should simply let Alejandra try to become a maid for a few months and bear the pious injunctions of charitable ladies like Amparo Villalobos who concerned themselves with the morals of orphaned servant girls. It might make her more eager to return to school with the Sisters.

  The thought of a confrontation between Alejandra’s monumental sullenness and Amparo’s relentless sweetness made the lieutenant smile for a moment. He took another swallow of water, still smiling, and then choked suddenly. Did you arrest Amparo? Elena had asked. Why not? Tejada had assumed that Amparo had neither the skills nor the temperament for murder. But if she had been only the one giving the orders . . .

  He settled himself at the table and began to write out his suspicions in his notebook. They gained form and clarity as he scribbled. There was no proof, but for once proof would be easy enough to come by. He had covered half a page by the time Elena entered the room. “I was just talking to Carmen—,” she began.

  “Read this,” the lieutenant interrupted, handing her his notes.

  Elena glanced at her husband’s face, and read. “It’s weak.”

  “It makes more sense than anything else.”

  “It could as well be Felipe, by this logic.”

  “That’s ridiculous.” The lieutenant spoke sharply, although the unpleasant thought had occurred to him, too.

  Elena sighed. “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know.” Tejada grimaced. “Rivas said he had other work this afternoon. But he wants to pull in the servants tomorrow and question them. We may get something that way.”

  Elena never really forgave herself for what she said next. But the leaden unhappiness of Alejandra and the Encinas family were gnawing at her self-possession, and she knew that her husband would not focus his attention on their plight until he had finished the case, and that he would feel no compassion for them as long as he looked so drawn and miserable. She wanted desperately for him to finish the case successfully so that he could offer his help to the families of her student and friend. And perhaps even more than that, she wanted to go home and forget about their nightmarish time in Granada. An extra day loomed large in her mind, so she encouraged him to hurry. “Why don’t you go over this afternoon and see if you can find anything out? Rivas won’t mind.”

  Chapter 22

  Elena’s words might have had no effect if Tejada had not been restless also. He nodded. “After the siesta then.”

  The next few hours had the feeling of killing time. The lieutenant sat and doodled because he had nothing to write but was too tense to rest. Elena reread a book she had read before. The clock ticked, and Tejada longed for a cigarette. They spoke little, each hoping that the other was relaxing. Finally, at five, the lieutenant started up. “I’ll see you in a few hours,” he said, leaning over to kiss his wife on the cheek. “Wish me luck.”

  “Luck to whoever’s cause is best.” Elena gave him the ritual response she used in Potes, and he laughed, a brief snort of recognition of the formula rather than a genuine response to the joke.

  It was a cool, windy evening, and the low sun turned one side of the buildings gold, leaving the other side of the street in shadow as he left his parents’ house and headed toward the Casa Ordoñez. Fire-trimmed clouds scudded across the sky, and the air smelled incongruously of spring. Tejada glanced at the side-lit buildings and then frowned. He hated the shortened hours of light around All Saints’ Day.

  There was a pair of bored guardias on duty outside the Casa Ordoñez. They were standing on opposite sides of a door directly across the street, a few yards away from the doorway on either side. They were widely spaced enough to be inconspicuous, too widely spaced to chat easily with each other. Tejada mentally gave Sergeant Rivas credit for good discipline and training. The pair saluted when they saw him. “Can we help you, Lieutenant?” one of them asked.

  “I just wanted to interview the servants again. Are they in?” Tejada asked.

  “The women, sir. The cook went out a few minutes ago. Medina and Soler are tailing him.”

  “Fine.” Tejada thought for a moment. “Stay alert. I’ll call if I need backup.”

  “At your orders, sir.”

  The lieutenant crossed the street and knocked on the door. An elderly woman in a maid’s uniform opened it. “Can I help you, Señor Guardia?”

  Tejada inspected the woman in front of him and remembered the cobbler’s family on Recogidas. “María José García?” He watched her nod, her expression open and friendly, and wondered if she knew—or cared—that her husband was in prison. “I wanted to speak to Fulgencio and Luisa.”

  “Fulgencio went out to dinner with friends.” She stepped backward as she spoke, admitting him to the house. “But Luisa’s here, and he should be back soon. Is it about poor Doña Rosalia?”

  “Yes.” Tejada remembered that Rivas had said María José was genuinely grieved by her mistress’s death. “We hope to find her killer soon.”

  “God willing,” María José said. She led him across the courtyard into the kitchen without nervousness or deference. “You’re new to the post?” She spoke over her shoulder casually, as she would have spoken to an equal, and the lieutenant guessed that she did not know his surname.

  “A temporary transfer,” he said, simplifying.

  The kitchen was a cavernous, old-fashioned room. The huge sink in a corner was the only concession to modernity, and the single tap proclaimed the absence of hot water. Cabinets and cooking implements hung along the walls like the trophies and spears adorning a hunter’s great hall. There were no chairs around the long central table of much-nicked wood, but María José dragged a tall stool from the corner for the lieutenant. “Luisa’s probably up in her room,” the maid explained. “But I can go and get her if you’d like to see her now.”

  “Please.” Tejada sat quietly until the door swung shut behind María José and then stood up and roamed around the room. It was a space with many doors. One opened onto the courtyard and another onto the alley behind the house, which stank strongly of rotten vegetables. The third led into the interior of the house, via a dark winding hallway to the rooms more cherished by the Ordoñez family. He wandered into the pantry, a long narrow strip of space barely more than a closet, wondering if the poison that had killed the mistress of the house had been stored here, among the gleaming glass jars of spices. It seemed likely. He returned to the kitchen and scanned the wine racks below the cabinets on one wall. They were dusty and half empty. The sort of wine rack that would make Felipe—or Fernando, to whom they now belonged—wrinkle his nose in disgust.

  The squeaking of a door alerted Tejada, and he hurried back to his place on the stool as Luisa Cabrera entered the room. “You wanted to see me, sir?” She bobbed a little curtsy as she spoke.

  “Yes.” Tejada hesitated a moment, inspecting her. She was pretty, taller than average, soft haired, and copper skinned. Had she been lively or even self-assured, she would have been beautiful. But something in her soft voice and downcast eyes reminded the lieutenant of Alejandra. Perhaps it was the downward tilt of her lips, not a seductive pout but an unconscious gravity that sat oddly on such young features. He tried to think of a way to frame his question so that she would give him the answer he wanted. “I wonder if you could describe your duties here? When Doña Rosalia was alive?” He deliberately kept his voice gentle, speaking as he would have spoken to a daughter. She was only a few years older than Alejandra, after all.

  She nodded and spoke without looking up. “Mostly I was Fulgencio’s assistant. I would have liked to learn to cook really well. But I also cleaned the house and helped with the laundry. Whatever was necessary, really. I’ve only started helping Fulgencio lately.”

  “You did
n’t receive special training as a cook at the orphanage?”

  She looked up, startled, and blushed painfully. “No, sir. I was hired as a maid. It’s just that Fulgencio’s been very good to me. He says I might make a good cook.” Her blush deepened and spread across her neck as she added wistfully, “I studied chemistry in school once. I was good at it. Cooking’s like that.”

  For a moment, Tejada wished irrelevantly that Alejandra was present to hear the girl’s words. Then he returned to the matter at hand. Luisa’s tone when she spoke of Fulgencio had given him an idea. “You know we haven’t found the source of the poison that killed Doña Rosalia yet,” he said. “But it’s logical to suppose that it was in something she ate. Do you have any idea how the cook might have tampered with her food?”

  Her eyes went wide with fear. “Fulgencio wouldn’t do that! He’s a good man. Besides, I ate everything she did that night. She asked me to! I told the sergeant that! You can’t think Fulgencio would—”

  “What about what she drank?” Tejada interrupted.

  Luisa, brought up short, frowned slightly. “She drank wine. María José told me I could put it away after . . . after the sergeant told her it was all right.”

  Tejada nodded. “We’ve analyzed the bottle. There was nothing in it but wine.”

  “It can’t be that either then.” Luisa gave a little sigh of relief.

  “But you know, I started wondering this afternoon why we had assumed that the wine bottle we analyzed was the same as the bottle Doña Rosalia drank from. The room was cleaned up afterward. And nobody took an inventory for over a week after she died. It would have been perfectly simple for someone to open another bottle, dump half of it down the sink, and then replace the old bottle with it. No one would know. You see what I mean?”

  “I guess so.” The girl’s voice was barely above a whisper.

  “Can you remember what kind of wine Doña Rosalia was drinking that evening?” Tejada asked gently.

  “I-I don’t remember.” Luisa looked troubled. She waited for him to continue and then added, “I’m sorry, sir.”

  “It’s all right.” Tejada was soothing. “Perhaps Fulgencio will know. When he returns, I’ll ask him.” He waited a moment to allow the full import of the words to sink in and then said, “Tell me about the orphanage.”

  The girl forgot her shyness and stared at him. “The orphanage?” she repeated, in a tone that suggested he was insane.

  “How much time did you spend there?”

  “Just a year.”

  “Long enough to study chemistry, though?”

  “No.” The girl’s face went still. “That was . . . before. In another school. We just learned sewing and catechism in the orphanage.”

  “You must have been grateful to find a place here,” Tejada suggested.

  “Yes, sir,” she answered dully.

  Tejada took a deep breath. “And perhaps a few charitably inclined ladies helped you? Came and spoke to you before you went out into the world? Offered you comfort and advice? Congratulated you on your good luck, perhaps?”

  “Yes, sir.” There were tears in Luisa’s eyes, but she spoke like an automaton.

  Tejada saw her swallow convulsively, and there was nothing feigned about the pity in his voice. “God knows Doña Rosalia wasn’t the easiest woman to live with. And she probably threw her charity in your face whenever she felt like it, didn’t she? No one who knew her could blame you for feeling like killing her. And then Señorita Villalobos asked you to, didn’t she?”

  “No,” the girl whispered, but Tejada swept on, gentle and insistent.

  “You were fourteen when you came here, weren’t you? And Señorita Villalobos was only a few years older and practically a daughter of the house. And she’d been kind to you when you had nothing, and maybe she was still kind to you. Did she offer you a reward for helping to poison your mistress? Or promise to take you on as a servant afterward?”

  “No.” Luisa’s voice was steadier now, and she met the lieutenant’s eyes. “No. Señorita Villalobos never asked me to do anything.”

  “Don’t be a heroine,” Tejada said quietly. “It isn’t worth it.”

  “She never asked me to kill the señora.”

  “I don’t blame you, you know. And if you tell me exactly how she was involved I can protect you.” Tejada knew, to his grief, that the first statement was true and the second one false. If the servant girl had been the only one involved, he would have cheerfully let Doña Rosalia’s murder go unsolved. But she had been a pawn for Amparo Villalobos—or someone, Tejada amended, unwilling to name Felipe even as a possibility—and finding the true killer mattered to him. Unfortunately, there was no way one of the great ones of the city would fall without taking Luisa down as well. He could protect her from torture, but she would likely be garroted for her role in her mistress’s death, regardless of any intervention by the Guardia.

  “She wasn’t involved.” There was a suggestion of gritted teeth in Luisa’s stubborn reply.

  “Who then?”

  Silence.

  “They’re not worth your loyalty,” said the lieutenant sadly. “Last chance. Before we go back to the Calle Duquesa. So I ask you again. Who paid you off?”

  Luisa had quivered like a plucked string at the word “loyalty.”

  Now she practically spat the words, “No one paid me off! I don’t take bribes from any of you!”

  “You killed her on your own then?” Tejada asked, sarcastic.

  Luisa said nothing. The lieutenant sighed and moved forward to take her elbow. “Come on. I’m taking you back to the post. We’ll find out who put you up to it there.”

  The young woman stood like a statue as he approached, but when his hand closed around her arm she jerked free, suddenly furious. “No one put me up to it! She deserved it!”

  Tejada blinked. He had considered Luisa’s stubbornness the result of one of two possibilities: either she was both loyal and brave or else he had once more been completely wrong. Now it occurred to him that he might be asking the wrong question. He tried a simpler one. “Why?”

  “She lied to me.” Luisa faced him, shoulders straight, head raised, eyes blazing. “She let me think my mother was dead. For five years, she let me think that!”

  The lieutenant frowned. “You came here as an orphan.”

  “Fucking bullshit!” The words were little less than a scream. Tejada’s jaw dropped at the obscenity, and he wondered what had happened to the silent, demure maid who had entered the kitchen only a few minutes ago. Luisa continued before he could speak, “My mother’s alive! And maybe my brother, too! They couldn’t come and get me after the war because they were in prison, but they’re alive!”

  “Couldn’t come and get you?” Tejada asked, wishing he had done more research on Luisa’s apparently blank past.

  “When I came back. From Almuñécar.” Luisa saw his bewilderment and added, “It’s a town on the coast.”

  “I know where it is,” Tejada snapped, annoyed because he disliked feeling incompetent. “What does it have to do with you?”

  “There was a children’s camp there.” Luisa’s voice was as hard as his own. “Before the war. When charity was something the government did, instead of leaving it to ladies like Señorita Villalobos. The city sent eighty of us—workers’ children, from the Albaicín mostly—to the seashore for two weeks. You had to have good marks in school, and then it went by lottery. I won. And they sent us”— her voice melted around the edges—“to Almuñécar. On July 17, 1936.”

  Tejada felt a sudden nausea. The Movement had sounded the call to arms on July 17. A few days later, Granada had been in the hands of the Falange. He remembered Felipe’s story of being stuck in San Sebastián at the outbreak of the war. And San Sebastián had quickly joined the forces under General Franco. But the lands along the coast had remained Republican until the bitter end. And to move a child through a war zone . . . “How long were you trapped with the Reds?” he asked quietly. />
  “I wasn’t trapped!” Once again, Luisa spoke angrily. “The anarchists found foster homes for all of us, after a few months. Sancho and Aurelia are the best people I’ve ever known. They took care of me like their own daughter! Aurelia didn’t want to give me up, even after . . .” She swallowed, before continuing, her voice thick with tears. “They came and took Sancho away. A few days after Almuñécar surrendered. But then the Guardias came and took me away, too. They put me in a truck with a lot of others and drove us back to Granada because they said the city had negotiated for our release. They didn’t even let us say good-bye. And when we got back, the kids who didn’t have family members to pick them up were taken to the orphanage. They told us our parents had been killed by the bombing.”

  Unwillingly, Tejada remembered the end of the war and Alejandra as a young child screaming hysterically, “Mama! Mama!” Felipe Ordoñez’s injunction sounded in his ears: “Go take a look at the orphanage on the Cuesta del Chapiz.” He put his arm around Luisa’s shoulders, a gesture of comfort rather than detention. She ignored him, reliving a private nightmare. “I thought they’d all died when the Albaicín was shelled. I met someone at the orphanage who told me he’d seen my father killed in street fighting. I thought Mama and Currito must have been killed then, too. I didn’t mind too much. And then I got a job here, and it was all right, except I missed Sancho and Aurelia. But then . . .” She began to cry too hard for further speech.