Chapter 17
Nobody was awake as I left for the office. My head banged against a ceiling of pain with every step. Later, after quantities of weak tea, I thought I might be well enough to meet Angelina Barbellini. Dublin had made several calls in the course of the morning and Ayse had taken messages of increasing urgency, but I did not want to talk to anyone in Dublin. I went to Barbellini's house. The Colonel was at home. I asked to speak to Angelina.
'My wife is in Rome. Perhaps I can help you.'
'When will she be back?'
'She intends to remain there indefinitely. Maria is with her. You may speak to me. Angelina and I have no secrets from each other.'
A man may well think that there are no secrets because they are secret from him.'I don't think I can talk freely to you, Colonel Barbellini, until I have spoken to your wife first. It is a serious matter.'
He led me into his study.
'The death of the Countess is indeed a serious matter. You believe my wife responsible for her death on the basis of information you picked up at the Imperial Hotel. The doorman, for a consideration, gave me your questions and his answers. You wish to ask my wife if she shot the Countess later that day.'
'I want to talk to her.'
'There is the telephone. Ring her. The number is in the notebook. First of all, however, I want you to ring your Ambassador. You hesitate. You are surprised by my request? Ambassador Brown and I are in each other's confidence. We discussed whether or not you would arrive at this point of discovery. We agreed that, if you did, we would have to let you in on our secret. You may verify the facts, as I tell them, with Ambassador Brown. Eventually, you may ask Angelina for confirmation, if you wish, though she is suffering from nervous prostration at present and is under medical care. Let us have a drink and I will see how I should begin. What will you have? I'm going to have a Martini.'
'Mineral water, please.'He stood with an elbow on the mantelpiece, as if on stage. I collapsed into an armchair.
'I have always been attracted to handsome women and have had the good fortune to be attractive to them. It is just a fact,' said the Colonel, with a toss of his head and a noble air.'
Angelina is of a jealous disposition and her nerves are fragile, so I am always discreet. I play by certain rules. I never allow myself to become seriously attached and I terminate the acquaintance if the lady shows signs of falling in love. I call these episodes flirtations rather than affairs. Only very occasionally have I been tempted to abandon my natural caution and enter into a full physical relationship. In the case of the Countess, I was not so tempted, nor I believe was she. We found adequate release in dancing. If you, Mr. O'Gorman, are a disciple of the dance, you will understand.'
'My ex-fiancée did not dance.'
'It was convenient to meet for afternoon tea in the Imperial.'
'Did you spend all your time dancing?'
'A crude question, which I disdain to answer. Check with the hotel reception if you must.'
'I mean, did you have time for conversation?'
'Oh, I see. Yes, at the break we used to take tea.'
'What did you talk about.'
'Two cultivated and alert minds, quickened by exercise and unfettered by convention, range widely. Unfortunately my wife misinterpreted the nature of the attachment. She began to spy on me. She knew my routine. I can only account for her behaviour by referring to her nervous condition. Perhaps her age had something to do with it. Women become insecure.'
He observed a moment's silence, possibly out of compassion for the female sex.
'On the day Colette died, Angelina followed me in a taxi to the Imperial. I was unaware that she had come. She has since told me about her intention to shoot both Colette and myself. As the hotel staff told you, they foiled the attempt. They did not connect the incident in the hotel with Colette's death. The newspapers told them she had been assassinated by terrorists. I drove Colette home, left her, as usual, on the road directly behind the residence. She always had some kind of black cover-up and scarf in her bag. She went home in high spirits. I sat in the car smoking for about ten minutes.'
'Why did you do that?'
He looked a little sheepish.
'I wanted to have just enough time to change and go out, not to have time for discussion, recriminations.'
He took a moment, perhaps to contemplate his fortitude in the face of domestic strife.
'I drove home. Angelina was not around. She would be sulking in her room until the last minute – or so I thought. I got ready. Then I called her. She was on her bed, curled up in a knot, in a terrible state. Maria was with her.'
'Maria lied to me. You bribed her?'
'Maria would do anything for me. We digress. My wife confessed that when she came back from the Imperial Hotel she took her gun and went through the hedge to your residence. She waited until Colette came down the back way, trailing her black robe, humming a dance tune. Colette went in the side door. Angelina followed her. Colette backed away from her down the steps when she saw the gun. Angelina followed.
Of course I didn't learn all this at once. All she could tell me at the time was that she had shot the Countess. However, for clarity's sake I am filling in now what I put together over the next few days. Colette made a grab for the gun. There was a struggle. The gun went off. Colette half-fell, half-staggered, down the steps. The gun had fallen. Angelina, mad with terror, ran back home and collapsed on the bed.
'Walter was to get a lift from us. I rang and told him I was coming over and asked him to let me in himself. He was at the door when I arrived, partly shaved. I told him that there had been a terrible accident and that we must go down to the basement at once. Angelina thought she had shot and seriously wounded Mrs. Brown. He led the way down, unlocking the door, which has all kinds of seals on it, as you know. I had hoped that Angelina exaggerated. She hadn't. Colette was in the pool in a little cloud of discoloured water. The gun was lying at the bottom of the stairs.
'We pulled Colette out of the pool. She scarcely seemed dead. Walter asked me if I knew how to do artificial respiration. I tried. It was a forlorn hope. "I'm afraid she's gone," Walter said, "but keep trying." He took out a handkerchief, wrapped it around the gun and brought it over.
' "I'm going to wipe off Angelina's fingerprints and put Colette's where they would be if she had shot herself. The wound is in a suitable place and the gun went off fairly close. If we are lucky, it will pass off as accident. Colette was rash. And generous.'
'He was very calm.'
'So was I. In a crisis one tends to be self possessed. It is afterwards that reaction sets in.'
'There was no life in her. Brown took Colette's right hand. He held it a moment. Then he fitted it around the gun. Then he threw the gun into the pool.'
'Why did he do that?'
'In case there might be traces of chlorine on it. He said to go back to Angelina immediately, to bring her to the reception, even if I had to carry her. I remembered a story I read once about a watch, broken in a fall, marking the time of death. Colette's watch had stopped. I suggested that we should put it forward a bit. He agreed and promised to do it. I was to get my wet jacket off and bring Angelina out to the car. Walter said he would be at the car before us and travel with us. He wanted to say goodbye, I think. He would have to put her back in the pool.
'I changed, gave Angelina a double dose of her pills and bundled her out, as she was, to the car. Walter sat in the back with her and talked to her soothingly all the way. The tranquillisers had taken effect by then. I kept her moving through the crowd. We didn't stay long, excusing ourselves on the grounds of a dinner engagement. We made up a small dinner party and went to a restaurant in Ulus in case there were questions about where Angelina was during the evening. The whole thing was a nightmare. Later that night I gave Walter the matching gun and case to put among Colette's belongings, and a letter, to show a motive for suicide.
'Walter told me to expect a phone call from him in the morni
ng. He was in the habit of swimming before breakfast. He would discover the body then and call the police. Later he would ring me to let me know what had happened.'
'Walter knew you were on terms of intimate friendship with his wife?'
'He knew I wasn't, that what we had between us was a magnificent flirtation.'
'Were you not worried about creating a scandal that might end your career?'
'I am not without influence. The matter would be treated with all possible delicacy once it was known that I was involved, though only in a minor role. We had covered every eventuality.So we believed. But when Walter went down for his swim in the morning, the pool was empty and all signs of what had happened the evening before had been removed. He rang me. We met in my garden. He thought I had interfered. I assured him I hadn't been near the place. We decided to do nothing, to wait and see. I was afraid he would crack up. He had been wonderful the previous evening. Now he was very distressed. Reaction, I suppose.
'Then it transpired that the driver had fled in the car. It was another shock to hear from the guard at the gate that Mrs. Brown had been a passenger in the car at eight the previous evening. You may imagine my feelings when the police came, tipped off by your driver, to dig among my rosebushes.
''How is Angelina?'
'Under medical supervision in Rome. In time, provided the thing blows over here, she will learn to treat it as an unfortunate accident. Have another drink.'
I declined. I returned to the café where I had sat, drinking syrupy coffee, the previous day before receiving Millicent's letter, before discovering M. d'Aubine's wine scam, before Colonel Barbellini turned inside out my ideas of what had happened on Tuesday night. I had more coffee and waited for my wits to stop reeling. Desperate, I took out my notebook and wrote Dear Diary at the top of the page.
What, if anything, should I do now? Walter's own actions make it clear where he stands on this issue. He is entitled to be chivalrous. Anyway, he has made himself an accessory after the fact. Orhan, however, is still, as far as the public is concerned, the terrorist-assassin. True, he is not in custody. True also that, in the event of being captured, he might feel it didn't matter if he hanged for a sheep or a lamb. I toyed with the idea that the Barbellinis and Walter might, together, write an account of the events of that night and deposit it in a safe place so that Orhan could produce it if ever he were brought to trial for the murder of Mrs. Brown.
I returned to the office. It was early afternoon. Ayse looked at me compassionately.
'Denis, there is a consignment of goods for the residence but the paperwork hasn't come through and the Customs won't clear it without documentation. The movers say they will have to put it in storage since they can't deliver and because it is artwork, storage will be expensive, and how much do you want to insure it for? There is also a bed. I rang Dublin. The papers are all inside the packing cases. The bed is to be kept for the Minister.'
'Good God, I forgot the Ministerial visit! Ring Dublin, Ayse. Get a list of the artwork and the estimated prices. Type out the list. I'll sign it. The Customs may be happy with that.'
'I found the birth certificate you wanted, Denis, the one for the landlord's mother. I went down to the Registry after you left.'
It was scarcely relevant. To please her, I looked at it. I could see nothing unusual about it for a moment. Then the date struck me. If the lady were still alive, she would be a hundred and ten. But our landlord could scarcely be more than forty-five. I put down the piece of paper, confused.'She can't have given birth at sixty-five, Ayse.'
Ayse smiled. 'The landlord is from a conservative family; you need only look at the house to know that. It is a real harem. You never asked Gül the question that I asked her an hour ago. How many wives had the landlord's father? He had three wives.'
'He was widowed? Divorced?'
'No. Married to all three together.'
'Polygamy is illegal in Turkey.'
'Of course it is. This is a modern secular state. But there can be religious marriages, not recognised by the state. Usually they happen in country places, where there is a question of land, or a need to survive. But sometimes very rich people, conservatively inclined, follow the old pattern. I rang Mr. Muftu and told him how devastated you were for love and how sympathetic your heart was and how you wanted to know about love in Ankara in the old days. He was understanding and said to tell you his story. His grandmother was the dominant person in the Muftu household. When there was no child of the first marriage, she insisted on another and yet another bride. Our Yusuf Muftu is the only child of the third wife. However, since the state would not recognise that marriage, or children of it, he is registered as the child of the first wife. That accounts for the age of his mother and the fact that there is confusion over whether his mother is alive or dead. The old lady, his official mother, is dead, but his biological mother is alive.'
Poor Mr Muftu! What an excess of mothers.
'It is something all his acquaintances would know about. He just would not want to talk about it to a foreigner, who might not understand.'
For the first time in two weeks I was able to smile.
'Do you dance, Ayse?'
'In my village we dance a lot.'
'I used to dance. When I was ten, I won the Leinster slip-jig championship for boys under twelve.'
I felt a giddy impulse to demonstrate a few steps, but controlled myself. I had left the residence in the morning without seeing Pierre or M. d'Aubine and was still undecided whether I should do something about the wine swindle, or do nothing and hope it would never come to light. I needed to return, to check that the basement was empty of wine, to lock up the basement, take the key, nail the door, making sure it would be impossible for anyone to use it, for nefarious purposes, ever again.
Pierre was reserved and silent and had one shoulder hunched against me. Gül wandered round yawning. M. d'Aubine had left. The basement was empty. I locked the door at the driver's side from the inside and put a wedge under it. Then I locked the inside door and pocketed the keys.
'Tripes à la mode de Cayenne,' announced Pierre.
He knows I can't stomach tripe.
He polished a glass, held it up against the light to check that it sparkled and set it in front of me. My lighthearted mood of an hour ago vanished. I thought of something so horrible that I sobbed and groaned. 'Le pauvre,' said Gül. 'He is suffering. Irish women, bah!'
'Tenez, tenez, mon vieux,' said Pierre patting me on the back, 'Women are the devil, even when they are angels.'
'Give me a glass of water, Pierre.'
I could have done the experiment discreetly in my room but I felt so lonely that I needed company.
I printed a thumb-mark neatly on the polished glass and then stuck the thumb into the water.
'Talk to me, Pierre. Tell me about France. Tell me about your fiancée. Talk.'
He decided to humour me. His voice droned on and I thought black thoughts and wiggled my thumb in the water.
'My fiancée Liliane,' said Pierre, ' if I stay away just a little longer, will become like your fiancée, Millicent, an ex-fiancée. A desirable situation. I have planned to go to Cappadocia for some time and supervise M. d'Aubine's interests there. The sale of Cappadocian Château Fontenoy wine in Turkey must stop. We see that. It is time to settle down and become totally legal. The vineyards of the disaffected villages could be bought by a person married to a Turkish national. If this person had money to invest, and connections.... We will see what can be done.'
Gül put a hand on his shoulder.
I reckoned that the Countess had been in the water for at least quarter of an hour before Colonel Barbellini and Walter pulled her out. I had kept my thumb in the water for ten minutes and could wait no longer.
'Could you get me some talcum powder, please, Pierre?'
He went off to get it. I gave my thumb a shake and dabbed it dry on the tablecloth. Then I planted it firmly on the glass beside the earlier one. No talc was needed to
see that the imprint was wrinkled and scarcely visible by comparison with the first one.
I checked my notebook. Inspector Akin said that excellent prints had been recovered from the Derringer. I remembered his little lecture on finger prints. ''Water of itself won't remove fingerprints A nice dry finger on a nice dry trigger will leave its mark.''
Pierre came in with the talc, but I blundered past him up to my room. I rang Walter straight away.
'Ambassador, Denis here. I have just found out something. A print made by a dry finger and a print made by a wet finger are not one and the same thing.'
After a moment's silence, he said 'Thank you, Denis. Don't do anything until tomorrow. I'll send you a letter in the bag for Orhan. Did you talk to Barbellini?'
'I did. I'm sorry....'
'So am I. But it is all right, Denis, honestly. Don't worry about it. Good luck.'
I hung up the phone and blew my nose very hard, went downstairs and ate a plate of tripe, penitentially.
Next day, at midday, Seoirse rang me. Ambassador Brown had killed himself. He had left a letter for the coroner, one for Orhan and one for me. He took an overdose of sleeping pills which had been prescribed for his wife. That he had brought them with him to Ireland, after her funeral, probably meant that he had contemplated using them, even then.
I hung up without saying anything. There was nothing to say. Pierre, M. d'Aubine, Gül and Ayse rallied round and tried to keep me busy, or overfed, or drunk, as they each thought fit.
Walter's letter came.
Dear Denis,
It was the impulse of a moment. Life with Colette was life on a roller-coaster and I was tired. It had been a bad week. She had just told me about a wine swindle in which she was involved, the sale of a local Turkish wine, in Turkey, under the Château Fontenoy label.
When I found out that she had deliberately faked the 'haunting' of the house, I set out to discover why and found that our basement was being used, at night, by a Communist cell led by our driver, with Colette's connivance.
Colonel Barbellini will have given you an account of what happened the night Colette died. He is not in possession of all the facts.
As I returned from the office that evening, walking, I heard what sounded like a fire-cracker as I turned in the gate. A few moments afterwards Angelina ran through the gap in the line of poplar trees between the houses, towards her own house. I knew that she resented the attentions her husband was paying to Colette. I also knew that she was of a tempestuous nature.
I investigated. The door to the basement was open. I went down and found Colette. Dead, I thought at first. Then I saw that, though shot in the head, she was still breathing.
I had been full of bitterness towards her, loathed her heartily as only two people, tied together, can loathe each other. The gun was beside her. It was the work of an instant to take it up in my handkerchief, rub it clean and fix her hand around it. I had noted that the wound was neatly placed on the right temple, the shot fired close. Then I shoved her into the water.
I didn't roll Colette into the pool. I rolled in trouble, frustration and miseries. No sooner was she in the water than I was wild with regret. I pulled her head clear of the water. She had stopped breathing. I let her slip back in. I had not really been thinking. I had seen opportunity and had acted instinctively.
I went back up the steps across the front of the house and in the front door and began to get ready to go out. Then the phone call came from the Colonel. He said he was coming over. I creaked the hall door when letting him in and Pierre, later, and mistakenly, told Akin that I returned at 5.33. because he heard the creak at that time.
Barbellini will have told you what happened subsequently. One thing he will have got wrong because I deceived him. I did not put prints on the gun at that stage, though I pretended to do so. I had done it already, with her dry fingers. A better job, I felt. I did not consider the discrepancy that led you to realise the truth.
I had steeled myself to 'find' her body in the morning. You may imagine my amazement when the body had disappeared.
I enclose a statement for Inspector Akin and a copy for Orhan and Angelina. It merely states that I killed my wife. It would be impossible to say more without creating problems for many people. I am glad to have reached the end of the road. Life without Colette is dull. Every night I pull her out of the pool many times and each time I realise all over again that I killed her.
Put these events behind you as quickly as you can.
Sincerely,
Walter Brown
The bed for the Minister was delivered to the residence. It was too big to fit in the guestroom. I left it temporarily on the first balcony. The artwork arrived too. Pierre has left for Cappadocia with Gül, who has a cousin, who has a friend who has a vineyard to sell.
Ayse came, after supper, to help me hang the pictures. I had to take them from the crates to check for damage and I felt that they would be safer on the walls than stacked somewhere. The first item to come out of its wrapping was a print in black and white, an abstract design entitled 'The Swimmer'. It was the shape Orhan had drawn, what I saw on my first day in the place. Ayse took one look at the print and shook her head.
'No, Denis, this must finish. We are not going to start the cycle all over again. You cannot live here.'
'I have to.'
'You cannot live here alone. What would you do? Sit on that balcony up there and feel yourself being spun down into the darkness? Wait every night for a splash downstairs?
'I put the print back into the crate.'
There is a small apartment in the block across from mine. The price is good. The landlady is a friend of my mother's. You could move in there straight away. Shall I ring her?'
'Ring her now. I can't wait to get out of this place. I'll go and pack my things.'
I kissed Ayse. It seemed the natural thing to do. To my surprise she kissed me back. From the basement there came a small crashing sound, followed by another and another. Then the basement door began to rattle. We knew that it was merely that pipes creaking and a draught shaking the doors. Still, we caught hands and ran out of the house, pausing only to scoop up the kitten. I would pack by daylight.
Inspector Akin looked up from the file on his desk rather impatiently.
'Well, Denis, have you been to Adana yet?'
He looked more closely at me and put down the file.
'I see, my friend, that you have arrived where you did not wish to arrive. Being honest, you have come to tell me.'
Ambassador Brown killed his wife and has now killed himself. I remembered what you said about fingerprints. I rang him. I will show you the letter he wrote to me.'
'Poor Denis! I told you at the very beginning that he killed his wife.'
'That was prejudice on your part, Inspector Kadri. You had no evidence to support the assertion at that time.'
He led me to a piece of equipment like a small television screen and fiddled with the knobs.
'Equipment, courtesy of the CIA. I am the reluctant ear of America in the moderate camp.'
'Sharon Pyx's moderate connection?'
'She is a real human being… underneath it all.'
I drew myself up stiffly, as Millicent's fiancé would have done. Then I laughed uncertainly.
Inspector Akin patted me on the back and kept a hand on my shoulder as he adjusted the focus. It was a photo of the door of the residence taken from the inside. The door was open a crack.
'The camera is triggered by door movement. Ireland has such a turbulent history that it was feared we might get an ambassador sympathetic to subversive elements. We kept tabs on visitors this way.'
'You should have rigged the office door.'
'Why do you think I told you to come to the coffee shop the other day?'I felt indignant. Then I saw the funny side of it.
'Did you rig the side door of the residence?'
'Unfortunately not – limited resources.'
'How could you stoop to spy on d
iplomats?'
'It is only counter-espionage. You know very well that diplomats are licensed spies, fair game. Your own military intelligence could tell you that.'
He clicked a button. The screen showed the door, opened a little more. There were fingers around the jamb. He zoomed in on them. They were discoloured. A sequence of pictures showed the door being opened enough to allow a figure to enter crab-fashion.
'The door creaks if you open it all the way,' I said involuntarily.
'I know.'
The next shot showed Walter, straightened up and seeming to look towards the camera. There was no mistaking the stains on his light summer coat. What caught my breath was the expression on his face. There was no regret there. Only resolution.
'It is when excitement dies down that conscience wakes up. said Akin. If you had yielded to Sharon, you would understand this.'
'Why didn't you confront him with this? Why didn't you accuse him there and then?'
'Reveal that moderates within the security forces are, like left and right, being aided by American technology? Impossible! Besides, my bosses were bent on another solution. I couldn't act directly. But indirectly….'
'Through me.'
'Once I accepted that you were honest, I knew that, guided by me, you must come to the correct conclusion, and act on it.'
'You appointed me agent and executioner,' I said sadly.
'Are you desperately unhappy?'
'No,' I said eventually.'
Invite me to your wedding.'
'I regret that it will not now take place.'
'Will it not?' said Inspector Akin with a smile.
I wondered for a moment what he meant. Then I smiled too. I expect to be, as Merita has foretold, blissfully happy.
* * *
Biddy Jenkinson, a gardener by profession, lives on a hill in Ireland with a dog, a cat and a flock of geese. She has a particular interest in the bumble bee and in the preservation of its habitat.
While prepared to encounter the gloomier aspects of reality in other areas, Jenkinson avoids novels that promise to horrify, terrify or otherwise discompose the reader. She will count this story a success if the reader laughs, at least once. This does not mean that she condones murder.
Full-bodied Wine is Jenkinson's first detective novel.
Full-Bodied Wine : A Vintage Murder Page 17