‘Having read the report, I am well aware of that fact.’
Alvarez shrugged his shoulders. He lit a cigarette.
Further points. The deceased had lost an ear, ripped off without the kind of tearing to be expected: the injury bore signs of having occurred after death, but due to the general state of the head and the immersion for several days in sea-water, this could not be stated with absolute certainty: there were very extensive injuries to the top of her skull, but one segment of bone had survived relatively intact and this bore the marks of a blow from a blunt object about two centimetres in width.
‘Not from a piece of rock?’ queried Alvarez.
It couldn’t be stated that explicitly. Rock of a certain shape, for instance, with a crest to it, could just conceivably have caused this particular injury.
‘But also so could a stick of some sort?’
Quite so. But no certainty. Further points. Putrefaction had set in, with characteristic discoloration at root of the neck and on the face and the face was swollen — decomposition appeared to have taken place very rapidly in the five days between death and the post-mortem, but the temperature of the sea had been on the high side, at nearly seventeen degrees centigrade, and this probably explained the fact and in any case the degree of advance of decomposition was notoriously open to wide variations. The deceased had died some two hours after a light meal, mainly of bread, and there was no discernible alcohol in her blood which meant that if she’d experienced the normal rate of absorption — and there was no reason to suppose she hadn’t — she had not taken alcohol for at least nine hours. A chip of concrete, no bigger than half a centimetre by a quarter, had been embedded in her skull.
‘Concrete?’
Had his words not been explicitly clear? The professor would ring again should there be any more definite information to give and would the detective this time please be handy to take the call. The line went dead.
Alvarez flicked ash on to the floor. That report almost certainly confirmed murder. He sighed. Now, there was no avoiding fate. People would be down from Palma, poking their noses into everything, looking everywhere, questioning everyone, and his previous privacy would be shattered once and for all. The English, he thought miserably, would destroy Heaven if, by some grave oversight, any of them were ever allowed to enter.
*
Alvarez loathed heights with all the bowel-gripping terror of someone who had suffered from a fear of them since childhood. But he also had the kind of stubborn character which refused in the final event to give in to such fear because that would have been acknowledging a weakness he was not prepared to acknowledge.
He stood by the side of the Land-Rover parked near to the edge of the cliff at the point where Señora Woods had gone over, stared at the onlookers who were being kept back by two guards, and knew he’d have given his all to change places with any of them, even the English queer at the right.
‘Here’s your harness,’ said someone.
He fitted it over his shoulders and clipped it tight. Sweet Mary, he prayed, don’t let the webbing be rotted so that it parts. One of the three municipal policemen who’d arrived in the Land-Rover connected the wire from the front-mounted winch to his harness with a shackle. Sweet Jesus, he prayed, don’t let the shackle pin work loose or the wire fray and part.
‘You look like you were dressing up for your own funeral,’ said the policeman and laughed.
Lord, prayed Alvarez, if I do crash to my hideous death, send down a bolt of lightning to bum up this fool.
As he went over the edge, fear blanketed his mind and loosened his bladder so that he urinated very briefly. The cliff face was at first sheer, then it bulged out into a small shelf after which it became sheer once more. His feet landed on the bulge and he made the awful mistake of looking down. The world swayed and there was a roaring in his ears; he heard the harness begin to tear, the shackle pin to unwind, the steel wire to fray. Sweat rolled down his face and body. Death could be nothing but a thrice-welcome relief.
The point at which Señora Woods had struck the bulge was macabrely marked by her ear which was now shrivelled and beginning to decompose badly. With trembling hands, he collected it up into a plastic bag. He put the bag in his pocket and examined the bulge, trying as he did so not to look down again into the space beneath. Nowhere was there a clearly defined ridge about two centimetres in width, nor was there a single chip of concrete.
‘Haul me up,’ he shouted.
They hauled him up and as he scrambled over the rim and his feet touched solid ground, he could have wept with relief.
*
Back in his room in the station and two brandies later. Alvarez read the note on his desk. Señora Pino at the forensic laboratory in Palma would like him to ring her. He did so.
‘Do you know anything about inks?’ she asked him.
‘No, señora, nothing at all.’ She sounded warm and nice and cuddly: someone to curl up with after the most horrifying experience of one’s life.
‘They’re quite interesting in some respects and very infuriating in others.’ She launched enthusiastically into a learned dissertation on inks. The age of ink could seldom be determined with any degree of success, except when of the gallotannic type and even then no degree of accuracy could really be guaranteed. There were three main types of inks: gallotannic, chromic, and aniline. Each type was capable of innumerable compositions which could not probably be differentiated. All the marks in the book of plants with one exception had been made in a chromic ink. The exception, marks concerning Scutellaria balearica, had been made in a gallotannic ink only a very few days prior to examination. Despite many tests of various natures, no further information of any value had come to light.
He thanked her.
‘Just one final thing, señor. I was interested enough to have a word with a friend of mine who’s quite a good botanist. He says that no one with the slightest knowledge and experience of plants on this island would look for Scutellaria balearica up on the mountains between Llueso and Parelona. The local climate’s all wrong and the height is wrong.’
He thanked her again and rang off. Nothing definite … yet strong confirmation of a kind.
*
As Alvarez drew up alongside the garage at Ca’n Manin, Tatham came round from the front door of the house. Alvarez looked down at the small, battered plastic container on the front passenger seat, hesitated, then left it there. He climbed out. ‘I apologize for troubling you yet again, señor, but there are still one or two questions to ask you.’
Tatham could not hide his immediate sense of unease, even fear. ‘More questions still? I thought you’d come to tell me that I’d at last got permission to arrange the funeral?’
‘I’m afraid that on this island everything moves slowly.’
‘Except burials,’ he replied. ‘Aren’t they usually within twenty-four hours of death?’
‘Everything will surely be in order soon. May we sit down for a while? Out here, in the sun? I spend so much time in an office that it is nice to be out in the open.’
They sat at the garden table and the wind-rustled vine leaves sent dancing shadows over them.
Alvarez spoke quietly. ‘You and your aunt had a picnic on Friday, I believe?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did you eat?’
‘How on earth can that matter?’
‘Señor, if you knew the absurd details I have to file if a person so much as loses a camera …’ Alvarez shrugged his shoulders in a gesture of resigned hopelessness.
Tatham accepted the explanation he’d been given. ‘Chicken, ham, bread, cheese, tomatoes, a couple of yoghurts … The usual sort of food.’
‘But nothing to drink?’
‘You didn’t know my aunt!’ He spoke easily, his previous fears suppressed because this was a story rehearsed so many times. ‘She reckoned a meal without wine wasn’t a proper meal.’
‘So what did she have?’
‘I don’t re
member exactly, but it must have been a couple of vermouths and at least a couple of glasses of wine.’
‘And when you returned here from the picnic, she left immediately to search for that plant with a long Latin name?’
‘That’s right.’
‘She had no tea?’
Obviously some special significance held to the food and drink she’d consumed, but it was impossible to guess what. Therefore, he had to stick exactly with the story he’d previously given. ‘She wouldn’t even wait for a cup of coffee. When she was on the track of a new plant, she waited for nothing.’ He surreptitiously stared at the detective, but could make out nothing from the other’s somewhat gloomy expression.
Alvarez lit a cigarette. The dead woman had, according to the P.M., eaten a light meal without alcohol two hours before her death and had consumed no alcohol within nine hours of death. Tatham was lying about the picnic. ‘Señor,’ he said pleasantly, ‘are you quite certain you have told me exactly how everything happened on that Friday?’
The shock of knowing his story was obviously disbelieved scrambled Tatham’s mind so that for a time he could not even try to answer.
Alvarez stood up, pushing back the garden chair so that it scraped across the rough concrete with an irritating noise. ‘Would you object if I ask to examine the back of the Fiat in the garage?’
‘Do … do what?’ asked Tatham stupidly.
Alvarez repeated the question.
‘Why d’you want to do that?’
Alvarez’s tone of voice didn’t change. ‘To try to determine whether you have at any time carried the body of the señora in it.’
They stared at each other and Tatham belatedly realized that he was suspected of killing Elvina. ‘You don’t really think … But you can’t think I’d kill her.’
‘Señor, I know for certain nothing, but I have many things I must investigate. That is why I ask for your permission to examine your car.’ He was now taking great care to be courteous, a rare event and, had Tatham realized it, a very ominous one.
‘You’ll be wasting your time,’ said Tatham hoarsely.
‘Time is plentiful,’ replied Alvarez. He stood up, waited to see if Tatham was going to say anything more, then went over to his car and picked up from the front seat the battered suitcase which contained certain equipment which included that necessary for determining traces of blood.
He put the suitcase down behind the Fiat, lifted the tailgate. The dead woman had been small, but even so the back seat would have had to be folded flat in order to cany her. He went round and opened the passenger door, released the catch of the front seat and tilted it up, climbed into the back and lowered the back of the back seat. Tatham came and stood by the car, obviously nervous, obviously worried.
Before leaving the station, Alvarez had read through a text-book in his office and this had reminded him of facts, forgotten until now, once learned at the police college. Dried bloodstains were very frequently difficult to detect, especially since they often did not look like bloodstains on certain backgrounds. But, even in daytime, their discovery was made easier by the use of artificial light when they might appear as patches of glossy varnish.
He switched on a powerful torch and shone it across the loading platform, slowly moving it in an arc. For a long time he saw nothing, then there was a hint of something up by the right-hand wheel arch. He raised the torch and brought it nearer and now he could make out an irregular, glossy stain about two centimetres long.
He took from the suitcase a glass rod, two plastic tubes filled with liquid, and a filter paper. Tatham, he noticed, was now very disturbed. He soaked the filter paper with the reagent from the second bottle, took the glass rod and dipped it in the first bottle which contained distilled water, then pressed the rod against the near end of the stain for several seconds. He lifted the rod off and placed it on the filter paper. Almost immediately, a green stain appeared. He began to return the equipment to the suitcase. After a short while, he said: ‘Sefior, there are traces of blood in the rear of this car. Can you explain them?’
Tatham vividly recalled how he’d wrapped the body in the bedcover and put it in the car. Obviously, a small piece of frozen blood had broken off and then melted through to the vinyl-type covering. Yet traces of blood on their own could prove nothing …
‘I regret that this car must be taken to Palma to be examined by experts, who will determine whether the blood is human in origin.’ Alvarez lowered the tailgate.
‘What are you really saying?’ demanded Tatham, although nothing could be more obvious.
‘I am not satisfied that Señora Woods died in a fall at the point in the mountains where this car was found.’
‘But where else could she have …?’
‘Señor.’ Alvarez lit a cigarette. ‘It is no good arguing with me. Now, everything is handed over to Palma, where there are very much keener brains than mine.’ He drew on the cigarette, then said angrily: ‘And Palma will undoubtedly send out a team of experts who will come here and solve the many problems which I find unsolvable.’
‘What problems? What’s unsolvable?’
Alvarez sighed. Why must the Englishman go on and on when it must be obvious to him that it was all over? ‘Your aunt was small for an Englishwoman, was she not?’
‘I suppose she was, yes.’
‘You have told me that when you returned from the picnic she drove from here to look for a flower?’
‘Yes, that’s what happened.’
‘When I sat in the Fiat, up in the mountains, the driving seat was set so far back that I could not properly work the controls with my feet and I could not see clearly in the mirror, yet the señora was the same size as me. The last person to drive the Fiat was not the señora.’
That he could have been so incredibly stupid! thought Tatham, with sick despair.
‘You told me you had a picnic together, with chicken and ham and cheese, and so on, and plenty to drink. Yet the señora died two hours after a light meal, mainly of bread, and she had not drunk alcohol for many hours.’
‘I … She had a very quick tea …’ began Tatham desperately.
Alvarez shook his head. ‘You told me exactly. She would not stop long enough even to have some coffee. She had to find the flower.’
Tatham remembered how he’d stressed her desire to be off.
‘The señora, in addition to her other injuries, received a blow from something round and strong, about two centimetres in diameter. I examined the cliff face where she fell and there was no formation of rock which could have caused such an injury. Also, there was a small piece of cement wedged in her skull: nowhere on the cliff face could she have picked up that piece of cement. Her ear was torn off on a small bulge of rock. Expert evidence says the ear was removed after death, yet had she fallen alive over that cliff, she could not have been dead when she hit the bulge.’
And he’d been so confident there were no traces of what had really happened.
‘You told me the señora was looking for a particular plant. Yet an expert says that no one with any knowledge of the plants of this island would look for that in the mountains between Puerto Llueso and Parelona.’
What other incredibly stupid mistakes had he made?
‘It was you who bought the ticket for the flight to London, not the señora.’
He tried to fight on. ‘She asked me to get it.’
‘And did she give you the money to pay for it?’
‘She gave me the cash.’
‘Yet the señora had drawn no cash from her bank for many days, so many days that it is inconceivable she should have had eight thousand three hundred pesetas left. But you cashed travellers’ cheques for one hundred pounds before going to the travel agency.’
‘She … she said that she’d give me a cheque when I got back.’
‘What stopped her, for she gave you no such cheque? You returned and handed her the ticket, didn’t you? It was in her handbag.’
‘It so
mehow got forgotten.’
‘The señora was a rich woman, was she not?’
‘No. She had only a life interest in her money.’
‘But on the Friday morning a cable arrived to tell her her godfather had died and he was exceedingly wealthy and he left her his money.’
‘I … I believe so. I mean, yes, the cable came.’
‘And you were made heir to the señora’s estate by a new will?’
‘I don’t know. She didn’t discuss that with me. What is it? D’you think I killed her for her money? After she’d been so kind to me out here? Even though I liked her so much?’
‘Someone killed, or seriously injured, her by hitting her over the head with a blunt weapon. She was then carried in the Fiat up into the mountains and dropped over the edge to make her death seem accidental.’
‘You’ve got it hopelessly wrong.’
‘How else did the blood get into the back of the Fiat? How else did a small piece of yellow thread also get into the back, a thread which came off one of the bedcovers — all of which I shall take away — unless that was what she was wrapped up in?’
Tatham slumped down in a garden chair. He stared out at the orange trees bathed in the hot sunshine, and at the monastery perched on top of its conical hill. He’d left a trail a mile long. They’d plot it out exactly, but with one vital mistake: they’d nail him for the murder. A vast estate to provide motive, a fall over the cliff that could be proved to have been faked, a car in which there was the blood of the dead woman …
Alvarez sat down opposite him. When he spoke, his voice was soft and persuasive. ‘Señor, why not tell the truth and so ease your conscience? A man can’t escape his conscience, ever. Believe me, it will be so much easier for you.’
He could exonerate himself from everything but the offence of concealing Elvina’s death by confessing, yet to confess was to lose that farm … He had no choice. ‘Several months ago,’ he began slowly, ‘my fiancée was murdered because the law couldn’t protect her although it had promised to do so …’
CHAPTER XX
ALVAREZ DRANK some of the brandy recently poured out for him. He looked across the table and saw an expression of bleak, bitter resignation on Tatham’s face and that, as much as anything, convinced him he’d heard the truth.
Mistakenly in Mallorca (An Inspector Alvarez Mystery Book 1) Page 17