Olura (29 page)

So far as my trial for murder was concerned, all this got us nowhere. I could not prove there had ever been any shot. The bullet, fired more up than down, might have gone anywhere. And I had not
the faintest notion where I was when I buried the sjambok and untied from my ankles the two halves of the hobble which would show how the rope was severed.

‘You keep fussing about evidence, my darling,’ she repeated. ‘It’s Vigny we must think of. Suppose your body was found, where’s his story then? And who took the gun
out of Duyker’s hand?’

It wasn’t worth arguing. Unless my body was found—and at the moment I found it far too pleasant a possession to part with—her fantasies contained nothing but vague
possibilities of playing on the nerves of the military. I pointed out that if I could not show a motive for assassinating me, Vigny’s story was as good as mine. What would really shake him
was evidence proving he had planted Livetti in the hotel—which he hadn’t.

‘Oh, that!’ she said as if it were just a minor inconvenience. ‘We could have that.’

‘Where from?’

‘Mary Deighton-Flagg.’

I rolled over indignantly and sat on a sea thistle. It added to the force with which I expressed my opinion of Mary Deighton-Flagg’s character and reliability.

‘It’s never worth while being rude to people, Philip,’ she said primly. ‘All that is quite true. But in her way she likes me and she badly needs money.’

‘But, Olura,’ I protested, ‘I can’t understand you. If it was a policeman who proposed to fabricate false evidence, you’d be the first to say nothing could justify
it.’

She answered that I should not be stupid, that she was not a policeman but a woman very much in love, and why were we wasting precious hours in talk?

She insisted that I should stay for the time being on the Ermita, where I was safe. She would try to swim out again on the first calm night. Meanwhile we could even see each other. Kneeling
behind a rock and holding my arm as if I were likely to be inattentive, she pointed out where there were specks of red on the terrace and where there were not.

She could persuade herself that I was near her and camping out on an unconventional summer holiday. Sky was blue and water silky. I do not think she realised the hostility of the place when
wisps of cloud squirmed over it and the spouting of the sea was orderless, without even the tranquilliser of rhythm. She was even glad for my sake of the ruined walls and crazy roof of that
home-made cell which nothing on earth would induce me to enter.

At dusk I made her leave, for I disliked the look of the weather. So did Allarte. I could tell that. We watched the
María de Urquijo
nose her heaving, fendered bows right up to
the land rock while Allarte flung ashore three packets. He could have no idea that there might be two to be fed; so extra food meant that he foresaw a period when the island would be
unapproachable.

I saw the last of Olura with every miserable kind of forboding, though there was no reason to be afraid for her. When she put on her swim-suit and frog feet, dived clean from the landing rock
and rose to wave good-bye, the sea was calm enough and the lights of Maya clear. An hour and a half later I saw the signal of safe arrival which she had promised to give: a light flicking on and
off in her bedroom window.

Next morning the wind carried spurts of drizzle and the sea was getting up. With no handy cave, no fire and no tool but a small pocket-knife I was in a worse state than palaeolithic man, when
the coast was nearer to the continental shelf and the Ermita a pleasant knoll in temperate forest. All I could do for shelter was to choose an overhanging rock and build up on the open side a
tight-packed hedge of heather and brush.

For two days the weather closed down, and Maya was simply a grey horizon where even the red of roof tiles was hardly distinguishable. The next two—of sun and high wind—were
endurable, for I could at least feel dry and clearly see from time to time the dot on the terrace which was Olura.

On the fifth and sixth days she was no longer there, and I tortured myself with the thought that she might have been mad enough to steal a dinghy and try to row to the Ermita. I knew very well
that she would not attempt to swim. No doubt my morbid imagination was partly inspired by hunger. Nothing remained of Allarte’s food parcels but a few stale, damp rolls. I was down to trying
raw mussels, limpets and shrimps—all of them equally revolting.

The whole scheme of hiding began to seem to me mere cowardly procrastination. With increasing melancholy I saw that I must make my way at once to England. They could extradite me if they had a
case, and to hell with it! But first I must see Olura again. I gave myself all of a fifty-fifty chance of spending a few hours at the villa undetected. The police must long since have grown tired
of waiting through wet and windy nights for their predictable criminal.

At nightfall the rain came in again from the Atlantic, gentle but reinforcing my decision to get out. The surf was still formidable. On the western side of the Ermita the landing rock was
curtained by spray, and the whale-back where I had found Olura certain death for ship or man. But under the lee of the island there was nothing much wrong with the sea if I could reach it. The
fissure where we had come ashore was a vile maelstrom of leaping foam and driftwood. So there was nothing for it but to go in from a ledge of the cliff—a much higher dive than I had ever
taken before. I was, I can see, so damnably depressed that I did not much care whether I lived or drowned. An exaggeration, perhaps. But life meant life with Olura, and I had persuaded myself
through too many lonely days and nights that it was out of the question.

With the wind behind me I swam for the beach, not the estuary. The breakers got me, but only once; and when they couldn’t smash they helped. I landed fairly close to the Hostal, shaken and
dazed but able to stagger out of the surf. When I had rested and coughed up the water, I walked along the sands—Leander’s old journey to daily paradise—towards the estuary.

There was light behind the curtains of the living-room. Evidently you were at home. I could neither see nor hear any police by the edge of the water. They would not have needed a mounted man to
catch me. Allarte’s launch was rocking at anchor in the driving rain, and Maya beach was empty.

It was slack water at the top of the tide. I walked a little upstream, putting your promontory between myself and the village, swam down to the rocks below the terrace and dragged myself up. I
waited some time with my head over the wall until I was sure there was no one about. The lamp behind the curtain beckoned. I crawled to the french window, for it seemed to be the easiest way of
progressing. Anyway I did not want to be seen against the light. When I tapped, you opened; and the sad thing from the sea crawled over the threshold to be told that Olura had been arrested and
removed.

I had sat through the long evening in a mood of sullen anger, directed as furiously against Ardower as the persecutors of Olura. Pity did not immediately overcome it. This
down-and-out derelict who writhed across the threshold was Olura’s lover. The culmination of all the Utopian delusions of her short life was to give her heart to a half-drowned, exhausted
murderer on the run. Humiliation was complete.

He was unamenable to any suggestion for his comfort until I had answered his questions. I informed him shortly that Olura had been arrested the previous day on a charge of concealing a felony,
and that I personally was surprised that the authorities had held their hand as long as they did.

Refusing my recommendations of brandy and a hot bath, Ardower mentioned that he was very hungry. Perhaps I would be so good as to lend him a razor? Steadying himself by a grip on the table and
with his ironical eyes holding mine, he explained this obscure addition to the menu by announcing that he preferred to shave before dinner. I did not appreciate this veiled insolence.

I escorted him upstairs. He needed my arm. To support a much younger man creates a greater intimacy than being supported by him. That too I resented. While he shaved and rubbed himself down, I
impatiently collected such provisions as were in the house and laid them out in my bedroom. With so many idle Spanish police about, one’s privacy downstairs was always uncertain.

He ate and drank enormously, becoming slightly intoxicated. Though too tired to give me more than a bare outline of the facts, he would not rest until he had confirmed Olura’s story. When
he became incoherent in his determination to explain himself, I led him to her room and expressed my hope that he would accept her hospitality. He appeared unduly moved, so I left him.

I must now append some account of the machinations of my dear and unaccountable goddaughter which indirectly led to her arrest.

On August 19th Lieutenant Gonzalez called at our villa and informed us that our movements and communications were now free of all restraint, but that Olura must remain in Spain as an essential
witness. The authorities regretted that her passport could not yet be returned; they would, however, make all necessary arrangements if she wished to leave for some resort with more opportunities
for society and entertainment. She refused to make any move whatever until she had news of her Philip.

Gonzalez, who had developed a soul in duplicate, one for use as a security man and the other for private life, pleaded ignorance. He said that the Livetti case was now in the hands of civil
police, where it ought to have been all along, and that the political branch was no longer in the picture. It is possible that liaison between the two organisations was limited and cumbrous and
that Gonzalez had shown no curiosity after handing over his prisoner; it is also possible that he did not tell us of Ardower’s release because it would deprive him of a further opportunity to
call.

My next move was to obtain information as from one reasonable man to another. As Madrid had proved difficult, I approached the Provincial Government of Vizcaya after telephoning London and Paris
for the necessary introductions. Among the projects which interested our consortium was the modernisation of the Spanish steel industry. I was therefore
persona grata
.

A small wine was held in my honour, at which I had arranged that the Chief of Police should be present. With these officials and others I normally spoke French. If they found it an effort, I had
recourse to the sixteenth-century language—after all, the Spanish of Cervantes—which my family has always preserved as a proud tradition of the home, though abandoning, rather than
changing, its religion.

When I was alone with the Provincial Governor and his Chief of Police, I mentioned that Olura appeared to have become involved, as rich young women on holiday will, with a certain Philip Ardower
and that I was much exercised at learning that he had been under suspicion of violence to a press photographer. Would it be too much to ask what had happened to him?

To my surprise the question aroused a note of mischievous geniality. Dr Ardower, they said, was a serious scholar of Basque language and literature. He had, it was true, hidden the body of this
photographer, but he had no more politics than a monkey. His motive was clear, even chivalrous; and in fact he had saved Mr Mgwana and my goddaughter from a scandal which the Government would have
been the first to deprecate.

Preliminary examination having established his innocence, he had been temporarily expelled from Spain—this in view of the delicacy of the investigation and its possible repercussions. He
had left an impression of audacity which might be termed impertinence if not redeemed by a gracious courtesy and the fact that he showed no resentment. They regretted that he preferred the society
of the lower classes to that of more influential people who would have been charmed to entertain so distinguished a scholar.

I could see faintly appearing the character which Olura had drawn for me. But then the faces around me became sterner. Ardower had secretly returned. Nobody knew how or when, and they were all
most uneasy about the why. The motor-cycle of a Civil Guard had been—for a mere matter of ten minutes—impudently stolen. Without much hope it had been examined for fingerprints. The
department had expected, if any, those of an enterprising and badly wanted agitator who had been illicitly organising the port workers. Instead, it found Ardower’s. Apparently he was
unfamiliar with motor-cycles and had not lifted the machine off its stand by the carrier, but by the tank—on the underside of which was a complete set of prints of his right hand.

Affronting the Civil Guard, they said, was a most serious offence. If my goddaughter or I knew where Dr Ardower was to be found, would we please advise him to get back over the frontier the way
he had come and thus allow them to forget about the case?

The effect of this news upon Olura was a most difficult mood compounded of joy and restlessness. She treated me, with the best will in the world, as an encumbrance like the table which got in
the way of her stride and the meals which annoyingly had to be eaten at expected times. Her conversation—or that small part of it which deserved the name—largely consisted of impossible
schemes for letting Ardower know that she was not in danger and would join him in France. She was also in that sensitive mood when, if a man makes a general remark of some intelligence, the woman
takes it as a personal remark of none. Both sexes, if intelligent, passionate and in love, are sufficiently insane to be shut up like cats. In the case of Philip Ardower I should also block the
chimney.

This tension was abruptly dispelled by Lieutenant Gonzalez when he called on us a week later with the news that a South African named Piet Duyker had been brutally done to death not far from
Deva and that Ardower was wanted for the murder. He had been deputed, I suppose, to confirm that Olura knew nothing. After a few formal questions to which she quietly replied, he sensibly left her
alone.

Over his usual sherry-and-bittters he gave me such details as he knew. It seemed very possible that the impulsive Ardower had committed this act of utter folly, believing the South African to be
responsible for the unpleasant episode in the hotel. We both assumed that there had been a violent quarrel, though reserving judgment as to why either of them should have been so unwise as to
accompany the other into remote fastnesses of the mountains.