Troubled Deaths (19 page)

Anson’s expression became bitter. ‘You can’t stop hoping to prove I poisoned her, can you? Why have you got your knife into me? I suppose you hate the guts of all us foreigners?’

‘I have no special feeling for foreigners,’ said Alvarez, and he sounded pompous, ‘and I speak to them as I speak to any Mallorquin . . . Senor, you will tell me what happened that evening.’

Anson spoke sullenly. ‘I borrowed a cycle and went up to see her because Ramon was pressing me hard and I was a bloody fool and thought that on my own I could persuade her to lend me the money right away. I was prepared to offer her ten per cent interest on the money, more than she would have got from any of the local banks.’

‘And were you not also prepared to offer a vision?’

Anson stared at him for a second or two, then slowly shook his head. ‘I’m damned if I can begin to understand you. One moment you’re like someone prejudiced blind, the next you sound as if you can really understand.’

‘Please continue.’

‘There’s nothing to continue about. She obviously was spitting tacks in all directions, I was too thick to clear off and instead insisted on talking to her. Pretty soon, she got personal and told me she wouldn’t lend a peseta to a boat-bum like me.’

‘If I understand you, señor, you would not let her speak like that and say nothing yourself?’

‘I’ve told you I’m no good at turning the other cheek.’

‘So what exactly did you say to her?’

Anson became uneasy, even diffident. ‘Look . . . I was all on edge because everything depended on her lending me the money. And she started calling me a boat-bum, a good-for-nothing layabout who’d use any money she was fool enough to give me to booze. Spend it on booze? I’d become TT for ten years if that’d help to get the partnership.’

‘You still have not told me what you said to her?’

‘I told her she was a dried-up prune and she wasn’t shocked when she caught Geoffrey tupping some blonde, she was jealous . . . All right, that makes me a real shit. The poor old cow couldn’t help what she was like. But she’d cut pretty deep with her words and I wasn’t trying to be nice.’

‘And that was when she threw the paperweight?’

‘And she’d have chucked anything else handy if she hadn’t started to sneeze like she was about to blow up. So she stood there, sneezing, tears pouring down her cheeks and her nose streaming and I suddenly thought, You poor old cow, you never stood a chance, but you couldn’t realize it. Matter of fact, I’d got to feel so sorry for her I even asked if there was something I could do. Between sneezes she shouted at me that there was - I could drop dead. So I cleared out.’

‘You must have understood that now there was no chance for that loan?’

‘Of course. But my mouth had always been bigger than my brains.’

‘I wonder, señor, if you do not speak too poorly about your brains? After all, Señorita Cannon would not now lend you the money, but if she were dead and Señorita Durrel had all the money, then once more you could have the loan - even a gift, perhaps.’

‘How often do I have to spell it out? I didn’t know Carrie was going to get the money, I didn’t know anything about the twenty-five million. All I did that night was bike back to the Port and get stinking tight.’

For several moments Alvarez stared out through the window which looked on to the harbour arm, then he stood up.

‘Now what?’ demanded Anson.

‘I will leave you, señor, to finish your work.’

‘Then you . . . you believe me.’

‘I have carefully listened to all you have said.‘He left, ignoring a last question put to him, and walked through the shed, shouting goodbye to Mena on his way.

In his car, he sat behind the wheel, but did not immediately start the engine. It seemed to fit. Anson had needed the money quickly because Mena had set a deadline, but although this had been virtually promised, Mabel Cannon had become too mentally upset to give the loan. So Anson, who had learned about the tontine, had poisoned her . . . Yet Anson had appeared to be first genuinely astonished by the size of Mabel Cannon’s fortune, then horrified by it because he could never see himself marrying a rich woman. Astonishment and horror could be simulated by a good actor, but could anyone as direct and aggressive in character as Anson be that good an actor? And how could he have originally learned about Geoffrey Freeman’s passion for esclatasangs and have known he was going to eat them that first Thursday night? Or had Anson had nothing to do with Freeman’s death and had he believed Mabel Cannon owned only the house and a small income so that Caroline Durrel would be able to give him the million and a half, yet would not be a rich woman? . . . But then who had murdered Freeman . . .?

Dolores stared across the table at Alvarez. ‘The wind is pretty sharp again today. You really ought to wear a woollen vest.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Alvarez. He began to eat the hot soup.

‘And don’t forget to take your thicker coat.’

‘Sure.’

‘Enrique, what’s the matter with you this morning?’

she asked, her voice troubled.

He looked up. ‘Why should anything be?’

‘Most days I try to look after you and see you stay healthy and you - who are as stubborn as the one-eyed mule my father worked - laugh at me. Today, you’re just quietly agreeing with everything I say.’

‘The truth is, I’m worried.’

‘Ah! I knew there was trouble. What’s the matter? Are you feeling ill? I’ll make some tansy tea . . .’

‘I’m fine. No, it’s the case I’m working on. Every time I solve it, something happens to unsolve it. Superior Chief Salas is doing his nut.’ «

‘That popinjay! What does he know about anything? If he isn’t satisfied with the way things are done on this island, why doesn’t he go back to Madrid?’

He finished the soup and pushed the bowl to one side. ‘I’ll tell you, though, he’s got me wondering whether I’m not too old for the job.’ But not too old to make a complete fool of himself over a beautiful young lady.

After she’d left the room, he ate. He cleared up the plates and carried them through to the kitchen. When he said goodbye to Dolores she asked him if he’d put on his woollen vest and he said he had. She called him a poor liar, but kissed him on both cheeks and hugged him as if he were leaving for a round-the-world voyage.

On the desk in his office were four letters. One of them had printed on the outside of the envelope, ‘Institute of Forensic Anatomy’. He opened it and read the enclosed report. Señorita Mabel Gannon had died from a large dose of colchicine, distilled from colchicum seed. Colchicine was a cytotoxin, or cell poison, whose action was very similar to that of arsenic. It was sometimes, if mistakenly, called vegetable arsenic because it was the active principle of Autumn Crocus. 20 milligrams was considered a fatal dose (5 grams of colchicum seed).

He stared at the report and began to remember certain facts which could be correlated with other facts and as he did so he slowly began to suffer a bitter self-contempt.

After a while, he stood up. He sighed. God in His wisdom had made man weak, but why had He made him quite so weak?

He left and drove out to Casa Elba and after letting himself into the place and opening the shutters over the windows in the sitting-room, he crossed to the bookcase and picked out the book on vegetable poisons. Superior Chief Salas had been right to call him a fool. The important facts had been staring him in the face, yet he had allowed himself to be blinded by unimportant ones. A man of any intelligence would have distinguished between them right from the beginning.

He opened the book and searched the index for colchicine. He turned to page sixty-one and half-way down found the first pertinent reference. An attractive, colourful flower, Colchicum autumnale grew in profusion, sometimes carpeting a field. The poison was present in flowers, seeds, corm, and leaves, the last being visible only in the spring. Children often played with the seed pods. The toxic principle in the flower had long been known as a remedy, when used in therapeutic doses, for gout. . .

He turned the page. And there, bedded into the paper so that it did not fall even while he held the book at forty-five degrees, was a small, blackish seed. Very carefully, he put the book on a table and looked around for something into which to put the seed. Seeing nothing, he went down the passage and into the first of the two bathrooms and in a medicine cupboard there was an empty plastic medicine phial and some cotton wool. Back in the sitting-room, he carefully scooped the seed into the plastic phial and wedged it with cotton wool.

He resumed reading. Symptoms of poisoning appeared a few hours, or in rarer cases days, after taking the poison. Burning throat and mouth, acute thirst, explosive vomiting, agonizing colics, paralysis of the central nervous system, great difficulty in breathing, and death from respiratory paralysis unless there was an intervening circulatory collapse. There was one final comment. ‘The effects of this vegetable poison are so dramatic, so violent, so appalling, that they have to be witnessed before it can be fully appreciated what terrifying agonies can lie in plants which we so commonly know and, in the case of the Meadow Saffron, love for their attractive colours.’

He looked down at the phial and the seed which was just visible as a small black blob. Something that ordinary and insignificant could kill so hideously: it reduced a man to nearly nothing. He shut the book.

There was no cocktail cabinet, but there was a carved wooden chest against the wall. He went over to it and lifted the lid to find that it was indeed filled with bottles. He picked out a bottle of brandy, went through to the kitchen for a glass, and poured himself a very strong drink. God knows, he needed it! How could man believe in his eventual immortality when the seeds of a mere plant could crucify him in this life?

He had a second brandy. He should have remembered that if man was heir to nothing else, he was heir to his own emotions. When a peasant’s land was threatened, he knew scorching hatred, when his animals were dying, he knew freezing despair. At heart, Mabel Cannon had been a peasant. A tall, juiceless, frustrated peasant woman, aching to release the heat in her loins, yet forever denied the opportunity. She had loved Geoffrey Freeman sufficiently to commit theft at his behest, even though but for love she would not have stolen a peseta from a millionaire. He had bribed her with the promise of love and then, when the theft was accomplished, he had refused to pay the bribe with callous indifference to her suffering.

Women, especially those with unfulfilled passions, had an astonishing capacity for suffering: perhaps they were essentially masochistically inclined. Mabel Cannon had gone on loving even knowing her love was mocked and had gone on hoping even knowing there could be no hope. That was, until the day she walked in and saw Veronica and Freeman.

Had she known before what passion really meant? Had she just dreamed, or had she shamefacedly sought details from books, photographs, and films? When she saw flesh in heat, had she experienced exaltation or revulsion?

From that moment on she was no longer able to live within her own delusions and so love somersaulted into hate. He had seduced her honour while refusing to seduce her body, he had mocked her, and he had betrayed her . . . So he must be punished.

She knew he had a passion for esclatasangs, she knew where to find the llargsomi which grew with them. Had she meant to kill or only to make him ill? Surely, only to make him ill. Because then she would have the chance to help nurse him back to health and enjoy the self-sacrifice involved in nursing her betrayer. But she had failed to appreciate the warning implicit in the description of the llargsomi. Its degree of toxicity depended on the victim. Geoffrey Freeman had been unusually susceptible and so he had died in agony.

Now it was necessary to see the world as she had seen it. She had murdered him cruelly, caused him physical agonies beyond description. She experienced self-hatred, despair, and wild remorse. One evening, Edward Anson had come to her house. He was rough and wholly masculine and he had shouted at her that she was too dried-up for any man ever to want. Hatred and the pains of frustration bore down on her self-hatred, despair, and remorse and suddenly, in the turmoil of her emotions, she realized something that should have been obvious long before. If she died, suffering agonies as great as Freeman had endured, she might find atonement. If the flesh were to be sufficiently tortured, surely the soul was released . . .?

The facts had all been there, but he had overlooked them or else refused to acknowledge them from the moment he had learned about the money. He had believed the murderer must be pursuing a fortune whereas the murderer had been indifferent to the fortune. That money had been an irrelevance.

He poured himself another drink. Mabel Cannon had played a sad, thwarted, tragic part. But what part had he played? Had he truly believed money was the sole motive for the murder or had he merely needed self-justification for pursuing Edward Anson? Mabel Cannon had sinned, but in her madness her sins were forgivable. He had sinned but in his sanity his surely were not?

He finished his drink and then took his glass through to the kitchen, washed it, and put it on the rack to dry. He returned to the sitting-room and picked up the plastic phial and put it in his pocket, replaced the book of poisons in the bookcase, and left, locking the door after himself.

When he drove into Llueso he crossed the bridge and then bore right instead of going straight on and when he came to the following turning off to the left he braked to a halt. A car came up behind and hooted, but he ignored it and eventually it pulled out to pass. The driver shouted something at him which he failed to catch. He stared up the sloping road. Last time, he had promised himself never again.

He turned right and parked in front of the house with dark green shutters. As he climbed out, two boys, perhaps ten years old, pointed at him and laughed. Laugh now, he thought, but in seven or eight years’ time you’ll discover it’s no laughing matter.

He knocked on the door and it was opened by Beatriz. She was dressed modestly and had on only discreet makeup. ‘Enrique! . . . Come on in. It’s ages and ages since you’ve been to see me.’ She closed the door and kissed him chastely on both cheeks. ‘Why have you been deserting me? For weeks I’ve been saying to myself, where is Enrique, why doesn’t he come and see me any more?’