Murder Begets Murder (15 page)

‘When we met we talked about nothing more intimate or exciting than the weather or the rate of exchange. Smile? She hardly ever smiled: she seemed too bitter and unhappy. Touching? We kept our hands to ourselves.’ Alvarez slumped deeper into the chair and sighed.

‘Señor, think very hard because if it was not you, there just has to have been another man.’

‘I can think from now until Christmas and I won’t come up with a name. Start looking at things the other way round. Why in the hell should I kill her? What possible motive could I have?’

‘She was very upset because she was in love with a man whom she believed was too friendly with another woman. You, señor, are friendly with Señora Carrington, aren’t you?’

‘Don’t start dragging her name into this filthy muddle.’

‘Sometimes I cannot avoid doing what I do not wish to do . . . Do you believe that in truth Señor Dunton or Señor Elliott also is friendly with Señora Carrington ?’

‘I’ve told you before, she can’t stand the sight of either of them.’

‘Yet Señorita Stevenage asked you if she were out with one of them. Why should she ask this if it were impossible?’

‘I don’t know now and I didn’t know the last time you asked me.’

‘It is a great pity that you cannot help me, señor.’

Waynton stared at the detective, whose face sometimes portrayed the dogged, bloody-minded stubbornness of a peasant. How did you convince such a man that his ideas were hopelessly wrong? How did you persuade him that in human nature there was no absolute? Obviously Betty had been able to have a lover and yet be separated from him, to look at him without their secret ceasing to be a secret, to defy and defeat the gossips . . .

How long ago was it since he and Diana had sat in this room, gay because the heavy shadows of suspicion which had covered him had been rolled back? Months? Or was it really less than a week?

The bungalow, raised a metre above the ground, was built in the shape of the letter U. Between the two arms was a swimming pool. Vives, his bronzed body tautly muscled, climbed the ladder at the deep end of the pool. When he crossed the tiled surround the water dripped off and dampened the tiles, but the heat was such that they W’!re soon once more dry.

He towelled himself. ‘Enrique, you should have a swim.

It would tone up your body, which is getting as fat as a matanzas pig.’

‘It’s much more likely to kill me,’ replied Alvarez, who stood within the shade of a brightly coloured beach umbrella.

A small girl crossed the patio to her father. She looked shyly at Alvarez, then tugged at her father’s leg and said something in a low voice. Vives bent down, listened, straightened up and said: ‘Matilde says, would you like some coffee?’

‘I certainly would.’

The small girl hurried away and returned indoors. The two men sat on patio chairs and Alvarez stared across the pool at the orange and lemon trees and the vines, thick with grapes, which were beyond it. Vives came from peasant stock and had never forgotten that fact. He had made a great deal of money, but had not lost his sense of values. The land around the house was fertile and so he had not wasted it by filling it with flowers, as a foreigner would, but, had planted fruit and vegetables.

They were silent for a time, content to be completely at peace. Then finally Alvarez said: ‘The dog belonging to Señorita Stevenage was killed by poison.’

‘So I have heard.’

‘The poison was aconite and the symptoms of this are very, very similar to those of mytilotoxin. When a body begins to decay the aconite is lost and then no one can be certain it was ever there. But I am certain. So again and again I have asked myself, why was she killed? I think of love because she had a lover, but she was a lonely woman and the only man who she is known to have been friendly with doesn’t seem to be the kind of man to murder her by poisoning. . . Though can anyone really be certain of that? Then I wonder, why else do people murder? One answer is money. Señor Heron’s wife, who died in Eng­ land, was a very rich woman. Was much of his money out here?’

‘Practically none at all. If there’s thirty thousand pesetas in his estate by the end of the day I’ll be surprised.’

‘Where is his money, then?’

‘Back in England, out in Switzerland, tucked away in the States. Where does a rich man put his money these days with inflation and devaluation?’

‘There must be a will to suggest where it is?’

‘I’m concerned only with Spain, you know that. And he didn’t bother to make a Spanish will because he had almost no capital here. The furnished house was rented, the car was rented. The bank account was in both their names and when he died the señorita did as I had suggested and withdrew everything but the last few hundred pesetas which she put into an account in her own name.’

‘And did she leave a will?’

‘She made none through me.’

‘So you can’t really tell me anything about his money?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Then I’ll have to check with his bank to see if they’ve any ideas. D’you know which one he used?’

‘Not off-hand, but I can let you know on Monday.’

They became silent once more. The sun beat down, roasting the land in such a heat that even the cicadas sounded drowsy.

When Vives’s wife came out with the coffee she found both of them were asleep.

Except on a Sunday, when it often became grossly overcrowded, Parelona beach was still beautiful, a boast which perhaps no other easily accessible beach on the island could make. There was the hotel, set in magnificent colour­ scrambled gardens: there were a few villas, but these were owned by the rich who, as always, took great care to shield themselves from the gaze of the common herd and thereby happily ensured that both they and their villas were largely concealed; and there was the ferry pier and cafe, but these were to the west and could be ignored. Otherwise it was a scene of mountains, pine trees, and cerulean sea. This might have been where Venus was born.

Diana and Waynton were in the centre of the crescent, seated in the shade of one of the straw-covered Tahiti umbrellas set out on the sand and well away from the pine trees and their fallen needles. Between them was a picnic lunch, spread out on a towel.

‘He was perfectly nice about it all,’ said Waynton, ‘but that didn’t make his message any pleasanter. It’s ten to one Betty was murdered, by a man with whom she was having an affair. Even in these permissive days a woman doesn’t usually have an affair with a man she doesn’t like, so who was she known to be friendly with? That’s the point at which I keep returning into the story.’

She picked up a ham roll.

‘Can you suggest a candidate other than me?’

‘Something has to be wrong in his reasoning,’ she said.

‘Sure. But what is it?’

‘How can I know, Harry?’

‘Are you certain you aren’t wondering if maybe nothing’s wrong after all?’

‘Don’t be a fool.’ But she knew that that tiny doubt had returned like a malignant worm burrowing deep into her mind. For her, all the colour seemed to have been stripped from the scene.

Alvarez walked into the bank and read the poster advising all the bank’s customers that if they paid money into their savings accounts within the next month they’d be given tickets for a draw, first prize a house. If he’d been born one of the world’s winners, he could have daydreamed about that house.

He spoke to one of the clerks, who was sitting in front of a computer input machine, and the clerk told him to go through to the manager’s office. The manager was a round-faced man with thinning hair, horn-rimmed glasses, and a rather severe mouth. He came round and shook hands, rearranged a chair in front of the desk for Alvarez, then returned to his own seat.

‘I’d like to know as much as possible about Señor Heron’s and Señorita Stevenage’s accounts: how much was in them, what kind of total they maintained, and how the money was paid in.’

‘Is it true what I’ve heard — that possibly she was murdered after all?’

‘It looks that way at the moment, yes.’

The manager pursed his mouth and shook his head. He stood up and left the room, returning within a minute with a folder. He sat, opened the folder and read, then looked up. ‘Señor Heron had a joint account with Señorita Stevenage. Once a month they paid into this account thirty thousand pesetas. When Señor Heron died, the señorita withdrew seventeen thousand pesetas to leave a balance of just over one thousand. This was paid into a new account, in her own name. When she died there was a balance of three thousand two hundred and fifty-three pesetas.’

‘This thirty thousand each month — how was that paid in?’

‘In cash.’

‘How d’you mean — in English notes?’

‘In pesetas.’

Alvarez thought about that. ‘Isn’t it a bit unusual that they paid in pesetas since neither of them had a job here?’

‘With all the currency regulations there are in force all over the world and with everyone trying to evade them, I always say that the unusual has become normal.’

‘But surely most foreign residents pay in foreign cheques or bank drafts?’

‘Yes, they do.’

‘Then can you think of any other foreigner who regularly pays pesetas into his account?’

‘Some clients have their main account with one bank and use ours just for day-to-day expenses so they pay peseta cheques in to us to give themselves a running credit. Although I can’t think of anyone who regularly pays in cash under the same principle, it’s obviously perfectly feasible.’

Alvarez sighed. ‘I suppose I’ll have to check every bank to find out whether they did have their main accounts somewhere else. But it still seems a bit screwy to move the money in cash instead of by cheque. Thirty thousand would be a hell of a lot to lose or have pinched.’

‘For some foreigners it would merely be like you or me losing a handful of small change.’

That was what being wealthy meant, thought Alvarez: you could lose a fortune and yet not think about committing suicide.

The calls from the last of the many banks on the island came through at seven thirty-four on Tuesday evening. Alvarez was in his office, dejectedly trying to complete some paperwork which had been due back at HQ a month before.

‘We’ve never held any account in either the name of William Heron or Elizabeth or Betty Stevenage,’ said a pleasant-sounding woman. ‘That goes for all our branches.’

‘I see. Well, thanks a lot.’

‘That’s all right. I hope it’s helped.’

Helped? he thought, as he replaced the receiver. He was damned if he knew whether it had or hadn’t. He’d made certain that the monthly sum of thirty thousand hadn’t come from any other form of deposit or savings account and now he knew it hadn’t come from a bank. So where in the hell had it come from?

Denise had been told by her mother, just after she’d met Rodriguez Roldán, that there had been Arab blood on her father’s side of the family. She hadn’t been certain whether this was a typically convoluted criticism of Roldán or a sign that her mother had been drinking more heavily than usual: she hadn’t even known whether it was true-her father had died when she was only twelve and he had never spoken to her about his family. But there were times when she liked to think it was true because for her it accounted for the intensity of her emotions. When she was asked to her first dance, she had been so excited she had been physically sick: the first time she had been kissed with passion, she’d heard a heavenly chorus: she could have killed the first man who made it very clear that all his words of love were meant to be no more than a prelude to action. Other women, she knew, were saddened by tragedy and excited by love, but always at a less intense level than she . . . They didn’t have Arab blood in them.

Shed saved for a year and managed to hide the money from her mother and then she and Jacqueline had gone on a package tour to Mallorca. Because, by chance, they’d chosen a hotel in Puerto Llueso, they’d arrived to find a beauty which had immediately captivated her as completely as the ugliness of one of the many concrete jungles on the island would have appalled her.

On the second evening, acqueline had met a man who looked and acted like a waiter off duty but who claimed to be a wealthy landowner. She hadn’t believed him, but she had fallen in love.

She was not a fool and so she could (thanks to her Arab blood) see him as her knight in shining armour, yet (thanks to her French blood) recognize that he was far from perfect. He was far too vain over his appearance. He valued the material things in life and had little time for the spiritual ones: he judged others more by their wealth than their characters. He was a doctor and therefore should have been dedicated to helping the sick irrespective of their background, yet if two people lay ill he would always choose to minister to the rich one first.

They had married less than a year after their first meeting and had gone to Portugal for their honeymoon.

During this fortnight, Roldán had at last begun to realize the quality of the woman he had married. And it was to his credit that he had from then on seen the marriage more in the light of a partnership than a dictatorship — an unusual attitude for a Mallorquin husband to adopt.

Because Denise was both emotional dreamer and yet practical, the marriage had become what she believed the majority of marriages were, a lasting experience of deep and complete love. There were rows, since they both had quick tempers, but these never lasted for long and in any case they were always eager for the sweet satisfaction of reconciliation.

She had always had good taste, although it could have been claimed with some justification that she was too impulsively adventurous at times, and so since her husband was earning a good income she had dressed well and had had their house decorated and furnished with some extravagance: an extravagance which had increased in the recent past as her love of antiques grew. The Mallorquins had never spent much on either themselves or their homes — either because there had been so little money around or because they refused to ‘waste’ it — so they had watched with contempt (and jealousy) the way in which Roldán and his foreign wife squandered their money. To her astonishment, Denise discovered that she had less contact with the islanders the longer she lived among them. When she thought about this it saddened her, but she didn’t think about it very often. She had a husband whom she loved beyond description and who loved her equally. Therefore, nothing else really mattered. Her Arabic ancestors had been very kind to her.