The Devil's Brew

by Jack Treby

  ‘I don’t know anything about that.’

  ‘Oh, I think you do. Maybe not the murders themselves, but certainly the circumstances that led up to them. Particularly the comings and goings of Mr Giles Markham.’

  His eyes narrowed again. ‘Mr Markham?’

  ‘My predecessor. You knew him rather well, didn’t you?’

  The overseer shrugged. ‘I met him a couple of times.’

  ‘Don’t lie to me, Mr Langbroek. You knew him every bit as well as you knew Steven Catesby.’

  ‘Maybe.’ He glowered at me. ‘Why the bloody hell should I tell you anything?’

  I gazed down at his splint. ‘As I understand it, that leg of yours needs to be kept very still. Any undue pressure and you could be crippled for life.’

  Langbroek laughed humourlessly. ‘Don’t try to threaten me, you little bastard,’ he hissed. ‘You’re just a bloody pen-pusher. You haven’t got the guts to hurt anyone.’

  I lifted my shoe and placed it firmly on the edge of the coffee table. ‘I assure you, Mr Langbroek, appearances can be deceptive. After what you did to my man, it would give me the greatest pleasure to cause you pain.’ I met his eye and made sure he could see that I meant it. One swift kick and his leg would go flying.

  His eyes flicked nervously to my foot. ‘All right,’ he grunted. As I had thought, when it came down to it the man was a coward. ‘Just one question. Off the record.’

  ‘Off the record,’ I agreed. ‘Giles Markham. He was stealing money. Spiriting it away from my office.’

  ‘So what if he was?’

  ‘Between the visa receipts, the money in the safe and the outgoings, nearly two thousand pounds went missing.’

  ‘I’ll take your word for it.’

  ‘Now Markham wasn’t a fool. He was intending to purchase a patch of land with Steven Catesby. But he couldn’t have walked out of that office with nine thousand dollars in his pocket. He might have been in charge of the books but the discrepancy would have been noticed eventually. One of the secretaries was already starting to become suspicious. So how did he think he was going to get away with it? He must have had some plan. How was he going to cover himself?’

  A slow smile spread across Mr Langbroek’s face. ‘Piece of cake. Just between you and me,’ he said.

  ‘Of course.’

  The overseer chuckled. ‘I was going to blow the safe.’

  I blanched. ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Blow the safe in the office. Stage a robbery. Steal the money.’ He grinned again. ‘Except there wasn’t any money there.’

  ‘You were going to break into the office? The visa office?’

  ‘I just said so, didn’t I? Nip in there, mess things up a bit, leave the safe wide open. No-one would know the money had never been in there. They’d think I’d nicked it all.’

  ‘But the police...’

  Langbroek scoffed. ‘The police would do what they always do. They’d arrest some bloody idiot, fit him up and sling him in jail. Case closed. But the money would never be found. And Mr Markham could resign a few months later without any fuss.’

  ‘Good lord.’ So Markham had intended to quit his job and walk away. He had a lot of nerve, I thought, if that was really what he had been planning. A departure like that would have raised quite a few eyebrows in Whitehall, though in practical terms nobody would have been able to stop him.

  ‘It would have been perfect,’ Langbroek asserted. ‘If the bastard hadn’t topped himself. Bloody fool.’

  I nodded slowly. It was all starting to make sense. ‘Why did you leave it so long to retrieve the banker’s draft, after he died?’

  ‘You’re trying to trick me now. You’ve had your question.’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake. I’ve told you, I don’t care if you stole the draft. I just want to know the truth.’

  ‘All right, look. Mr Catesby was in a right state, for weeks afterwards. He was in love, the daft sod. Took him time to get his head together, didn’t it? And I thought it was better to hold off, anyway, to let things calm down a bit. It all worked out in my favour, in the end. In exchange for me breaking into Mr Markham’s flat, Mr Catesby offered me a half share of the farm. We were going to go in it together.’

  ‘So him dying like that...’

  ‘Was the last bloody thing I wanted, believe me.’ He met my eye firmly. ‘I didn’t kill Mr Catesby, no matter what you think. And I’d happily throttle the bastard who did.’

  I peered at the fellow curiously. Here was a man, if ever there was one, who seemed entirely capable of murder. But on the issue of Steven Catesby’s death, strangely, I believed him.

  A clunk behind me signalled the return of Doctor Rubio. The grey-haired man was carrying a jug of wine on a tray with a small serving of bread and cheese. I rose up to greet him as he entered the living room and, as I did so, I knocked the coffee table away from underneath Mr Langbroek’s leg. He let out a loud scream.

  ‘Oh, I’m terribly sorry. How clumsy of me!’

  ‘You BASTARD!!’ he yelled.

  I leaned in quickly to right his leg. ‘That was for my man Maurice,’ I hissed, as Doctor Rubio rushed across the room.

  The valet was silhouetted in the archway on the southern side of the courtyard, staring out onto the front terrace. I caught sight of him at once as I moved into the square. The sky was already beginning to darken above us. Night tends to fall rather quickly in the tropics. ‘Morris? What the devil are you doing?’

  ‘I thought I heard something, Monsieur.’

  I laughed. ‘That was Mr Langbroek screaming. His leg fell off the table.’

  ‘No, Monsieur, before that. I heard something out on the terrace.’

  I shuffled across and together we stepped out onto the front porch. It took us barely a second to establish the source of the noise. One of the policemen was sprawled out across the landing to our right. Someone had thumped him from behind. I moved closer and peered down at the fellow, who was lying at the foot of the exterior stairs. ‘He’s been belted pretty thoroughly,’ I observed, crouching beside him. I recognised the man. It was one of the two officers who had come up to the house that afternoon on horseback; the one who had sworn at me when Gonzales had blown his horn. He had been sent off by Tejada to search the labourers’ cottages; not a particularly time consuming task. It was no surprise that he had been the first to report back. And then a bottle had been smashed over his head. I reached out a hand. There was glass scattered everywhere and the wooden surface was damp beneath my feet; but there was no sign of an assailant. ‘He’s still breathing,’ I said. ‘No damage done that I can see.’ I looked back along the terrace. Apart from a couple of chairs and a hammock, the area was notably devoid of life. The body of Mrs Montana had been laid out respectfully to the right of the dining room windows, some distance away, but there was nothing else in view. I stood up and glanced at Maurice. ‘You’d better fetch Doctor Rubio, have him give the fellow the once over.’

  The valet hesitated, observing the unconscious body with a keener eye than me. ‘Monsieur, his revolver has been removed from its holster.’

  I looked down in alarm. ‘Lord, you’re right.’

  ‘Could Monsieur Green have done this?’

  ‘I doubt it.’ I had a horrible feeling I knew exactly who was responsible. I could already smell the whisky in the air. ‘Where’s Mr Montana?’ I wondered.

  The barrel of a gun clicked into place and a figure emerged from the gloom of the stairwell. ‘Right here,’ the American replied in a harsh drawl.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Before I had time to react, Arthur Montana stepped forward and struck Maurice a savage blow across the back of the neck. The valet let out a moan and crumpled to the ground, in front of the unconscious policeman. I cried out in surprise as the American raised the revolver and aimed it squarely at my head. He must have dipped out of sight underneath the stairs when he had heard the two of us coming; but now there was only him and me. His eyes were red and
his hands were trembling as he pointed the revolver.

  I raised my own hands warily. It was not the first time somebody had pointed a gun at me, but it was not an experience I would ever become used to. ‘Look, Mr Montana,’ I said, trying to keep my voice as calm as I could. ‘You’ve had a terrible shock. Your wife...I’m so sorry about what happened.’ I didn’t need to fake the regret in my voice. ‘But you mustn’t...you mustn’t do anything rash.’

  ‘Don’t you talk to me,’ he snapped back, his whole body shaking with rage. ‘Don’t you dare talk to me!’

  ‘I...I...’ My voice faded away. I was the one trembling now. I could see the fury in Montana’s eyes, the vicious, alcohol-fuelled determination. My God, I thought, he intends to kill me. I swallowed hard and did my best to keep my bowels under control.

  ‘Turn around,’ he barked.

  I did as I was instructed. All at once, I felt the man’s cold breath on the back of my neck. I could smell the whisky there. He grabbed my arm with his free hand and pulled it tightly behind my back. The other hand pressed the revolver against the nape of my neck. Abruptly, I found myself propelled past the stairs towards the entrance hall on the west side of the house. We moved through the door and along a dark corridor – no-one had been out with the lamps as yet – stumbling past the telephone and the WC. Where on earth was he taking me? I wondered. Out into the back garden? Or just away from the body of Mrs Montana?

  ‘I loved my wife,’ the American declared drunkenly. ‘Anita. We were childhood sweethearts. She was the most beautiful girl I ever saw. Everything I ever did, I did for her. And now she’s dead. You son of a bitch. She’s dead and you killed her.’

  I swallowed again. There was nothing I could say to that.

  ‘My beautiful, beautiful girl. We only came here for the weekend. Seeing old pals. A bit of business on the side. But you ruined that, Mr Buxton. Ruined the business. And killed the only woman in the world who ever meant a damn to me.’

  Again, I had nothing to say in reply. Everything seemed to be happening in such a whirl. We reached the far end of the hall and I found myself propelled sideways and through a far arch out onto the back terrace.

  ‘And now,’ Montana declared, ‘I’m going to kill you.’

  Before I could respond, I felt a hard shove from behind and staggered forward down the steps, out onto the muddy grass of the back lawn. I lost my footing on the wet earth and crashed to the ground. This is it, I thought. I am going to die here, in some god-forsaken backwater in the middle of nowhere. ‘You don’t have to do this!’ I called out desperately, scrabbling onto my knees and trying to turn around. ‘You’re a God fearing man. You know this is wrong!’

  Montana had clomped down the stairs behind me. ‘I am a God fearing man,’ he agreed with a sudden, chilling calm. ‘I read the bible every day. I know every syllable of that holy book. An eye for an eye, Mr Buxton. Exodus Chapter 21 Verse 24. An eye for an eye, it says, a tooth for a tooth. So make your peace with the world.’ He stepped forward and pressed the nub of the revolver firmly against my head.

  I closed my eyes and mumbled a desperate, half-forgotten prayer.

  And a single shot rang out across the lawn.

  I don’t know what I was expecting to happen next. A Holy Chorus, perhaps. The Archangel Gabriel beckoning me through the pearly gates; or more likely Old Nick dragging me down into the fires of Hell. What I got instead was a heavy thud, as Arthur Montana crashed forward, a dead weight collapsing on top of me. I had no time to move aside. I was knocked forward from the kneeling position, my legs buckling underneath me and my face abruptly colliding with a layer of soft mud. Winded and disorientated – with the sudden heavy bulk of an American pressing down on top of me – I was momentarily too stunned to move. Montana’s head flopped and I found myself staring at his face, which had come to rest barely eight inches away from me on the grass. The man’s eyes were glassy and unfocused. There was a neat red hole in the side of his head. I flinched at the sight of the blood dripping down from it. My own head was bloody too. I fumbled a hand to check the back of my neck and felt the stickiness there. I slid my fingers in front of my face and realised it was not blood at all. It was...my God, it was bits of Arthur Montana’s brain. I gagged. I could not help myself, throwing up over the grass to my left, some of the spittle splattering Mr Montana’s corpse. I had seen a lot of death in my time, but I had never been quite so thoroughly covered in it before.

  The shot that had rang out had caught the attention of the house and elicited cries of alarm from the hacienda. I could hear people scrabbling out onto the terrace. Footsteps were padding towards me across the lawn. My attention, however, was focused on those glassy eyes, resting so close to me. Arthur Montana shot dead at the exact moment he had intended to kill me. I should have felt relief, I should have felt joy at my own survival. But instead, all I felt was a gut wrenching terror; the horrible realisation of just how close I had come to death. Nausea swept through me and I retched a second time, on this occasion producing very little except a deeply uncomfortable sensation in my throat. And still the blood and brains continued to drip from the head opposite me and I continued to stare.

  A pair of boots thudded into view, coming to a halt just to the left of Arthur Montana’s body. Military boots. I tried to move, to get a better view of my unlikely saviour, but a flash of pain shot through my twisted legs. The lower half of Montana’s body was still pressing down on me and I was too disorientated to wriggle free. The boots were in a better place than I was. One of them prodded Montana’s shoulder, pushing his head to one side, to make sure he was really dead. I had managed to shift my head back a little bit. I slid a hand up to my mouth and wiped it awkwardly, making a concerted effort to get a grip on my senses. I followed the line of the boot up the uniformed leg, past the holster, the swagger stick and the tightly creased military shirt, to the rounded, dark face of General Julio Tejada. I stared up at the man, speechless. He was still holding the revolver in his right hand. With some difficulty, I managed to retrieve my legs from underneath the corpse and then flip over and raise myself up onto an elbow. Montana’s lower torso settled behind me and I regarded the policeman in understandable confusion. His thick eyebrows were creased together in an expression of absolute fury. ‘I said nobody was to leave the house!’ he barked, though whether at me or at the world in general I had no idea.

  I coughed the last remnants of lunch from my mouth. ‘You...you shot Mr Montana?’ I croaked, barely able to articulate the question. My throat felt as raw as a sand-blasted stone. Out of the corner of my eye, in the last of the twilight, I could see the other guests staring at me from the safety of the terrace. Mr and Mrs Gonzales huddled together with Gunther and Susan Weiman; Freddie Reeves and Emily Bunting to their right, observing the scene with open-mouthed astonishment.

  Tejada followed my gaze and growled at the spectators. ‘There’s nothing to see here!’ he snapped. He had no time for sight-seers. ‘Get back inside, all of you!’ He pointed his revolver skywards and the house guests rushed to do his bidding. Only when they were gone did he deign to drop his hand and glance down at me. He did not holster the weapon, however, and made no effort to help me up; but that was scarcely any reason to complain.

  ‘You...you saved my life,’ I breathed, in disbelief.

  Tejada shrugged. ‘I shot an armed fugitive. He assaulted one of my officers and stole his revolver.’ He gestured to the abandoned weapon, which had come to a rest close to the body of the deceased United Fruit executive. The policeman must have been heading back to the house just as Montana was dragging me off. ‘He had it coming to him.’

  I stared down sadly at the American. ‘I suppose there was no way to disarm him before...’

  ‘I would have shot him whatever he was doing,’ Tejada cut in bluntly. ‘He made his choice when he attacked my deputy.’

  I rose unsteadily onto my knees. ‘His wife had just died,’ I mumbled, finding myself in the bizarre position of defending a m
an who had just tried to kill me. ‘He was drunk. He didn’t know what he was doing.’

  The general regarded me coldly. ‘You would rather I had let him kill you?’

  ‘No. Lord, no.’ I swallowed again. ‘You did the right thing. Thank you. Thank you for saving my life.’ Tejada grunted and I took a moment to steady myself. I was covered in mud and blood and much else besides, some of which I tried to scrape off now as best I could, but at least I was alive. The policeman loomed over me, his back to the house. The daylight had evaporated, but a few lamps had now been lit in the dining room off to the left and there was just enough of a glow from them to make out his stern face. I hesitated, swaying on my knees, and looking back once again at the dead American. A sudden mad thought occurred to me. Montana’s demise could well be a blessing in disguise. My own brush with death had brought me a moment of sudden clarity. Why not blame the American for everything? I almost laughed at the thought. It was the perfect solution. Why not pretend Arthur Montana had killed Steven Catesby? Heaven knows, it might even be true. That would get Joseph Green off the hook and solve all our problems in a single stroke. And it wasn’t as if the American or his wife were in any position to object.

  I took a moment to collect my thoughts. I still had the taste of bile in my mouth. I coughed and brought a hand up to my face, giving myself an extra second or two to work the matter through. ‘It was him all along,’ I declared at last, gesturing to the corpse. ‘Arthur Montana. He killed George Talbot. He pushed him down the stairs.’

  General Tejada regarded me suspiciously.

  ‘That draft you confiscated. The banker’s draft. Mr Talbot took it from Steven Catesby’s bedroom.’ That much at least was true. ‘Talbot refused to allow the money to be handed over, funds that Catesby had promised to Mr Montana.’ Bizarrely, now that I was speaking the words, it did seem to make a kind of sense. ‘Talbot thought it was dirty money. They had an argument about it and then Talbot fell down the stairs. It probably wasn’t intentional. Just a shove at the wrong moment.’ I was making this up as I was going along, but it did sound vaguely plausible. ‘Catesby knew what Mr Montana had done and was going to tell the police about it when they arrived this morning. So Montana killed him too.’ I was babbling now, saying the first thing that came into my head, but with both the American and the Englishman dead I was not about to be sued for slander. If I could convince Tejada that Montana was his man, then Joseph Green might be saved from the gallows and everyone could live happily ever after. ‘Mr Montana confessed it all to me,’ I said, getting rather carried away with the lie. ‘Boasted about it, he did, when he was dragging me out here. So you see, he was behind everything. He’s your murderer, not Joseph Green.’ I stopped gabbling, looking up at the general, to see if my words were having any effect, but the man’s expression was unreadable. He had been regarding me impassively for some moments. Now he lifted up his cane and struck me hard across the face with it.