Murder on the Tropic

by Todd Downing

  “There is no need now, señor. He knows that they are not yellow.”

  “And the claveles? He saw them again?”

  “Yes, he saw that they were white.”

  “He has fear of death no more then?”

  “No more, señor.”

  “He is still suffering?”

  She hesitated and the smile died slowly on her lips.

  “Yes, señor, he is suffering, but it will pass. It will pass,” she repeated with a note of passionate emphasis. “La Guadalupana will aid him. She will drive out—” She stopped and something seemed to close behind her eyes, leaving them as lifeless as obsidian flakes.

  “Los aires?” Rennert finished for her.

  The fingers of one hand plucked at the fringe of the rebozo.

  “Yes, señor.” It was almost inaudible. She half-turned and fumbled for the knob.

  “But where did they strike Miguel?” Rennert asked quickly, before the moment of confidence should be gone. “There is little water here.”

  Her face was averted so that he had to lean forward to catch her words: “I do not know, señor, I do not know.”

  Before he could continue she was gone and he faced a blank weathered door.

  He lit a cigarette and strolled back through the flowers. He knew now that he had interpreted rightly the woman’s suppressed fear of that afternoon, her wary glance at the jug of water. Los aires, “the airs,” are tiny little people, malignant and mischievous, who dwell about water, diving and swimming or merely lying on banks. One must take care to wear amulets of round stones and petrified deer-eyes or they will strike his body, causing illness. One must not mention them by name, either, or they will become angered. The white man accounts for the Empress Carlotta’s madness by saying that it was occasioned by grief and anxiety for her husband beleaguered in Querétaro. In Mexico they know better—but say nothing.

  He stopped under the archway, staring out over the patio. He was glad that he had no confidant for his thoughts then, for he was fighting off a feeling of un easiness, of vague, undefined foreboding in the face of some dimly sensed danger. In this damned country (he cursed it often yet knew that this feeling of disquiet which it inspired was, perversely, for him an invariable lodestone) one never felt stability. There was always a faint tremor under one’s feet, in the air one breathed. As if the volcanoes far to the south were stirring ominously in their sleep.

  He was puzzled by the whole affair, by the inexplicable manner in which the mention of yellowness was tingeing with the bizarre the lives of these commonplace people. That there was some link between Stahl’s death and Miguel’s illness he felt certain. For a moment his mind played with the idea of apparitions, staged by naturalistic means, for the benefit of the susceptible. He could conceive of a man being frightened to death, granted a weak heart and an active imagination. But the physical pain that accompanied this malady—and its prolongation. No, it wouldn’t do.

  The cigarette was a solace. The weather, he told himself, was doubtless responsible for his feeling. This dead utter stillness that had settled upon everythin.…

  He started at a faint insect-like touch upon the back of his neck, turned and saw a tendril, like a blind green worm, swaying toward him in the still air. Behind it, on the vine that coiled over the adobe, an orchid opened a swollen rust-brown mouth.

  Good God, he thought, I’ll be gibbering next!

  He stepped into the patio.

  A woman—tall, thin, impeccable in black bombazine—stood by the frangipani tree, pulling one of the lower branches toward her. As he watched she detached with deft fingers one of the white flowers, stared at it a moment through gold spectacles, buried her long straight nose in its softness. There was an odd flushed look on her face when she withdrew it that could be (Rennert thought, regarding her through the gathering dimness of evening) nothing but sensuality.

  She raised a hand, awkwardly, and fixed the flower in the steel-gray hair over her right ear with the determined movement of a woman thrusting in a hatpin.

  Rennert stepped forward.

  “Miss Fahn, I believe?”

  9

  Petals Tipped with Blood

  Her fingers fumbled with the stem of the flower while color mottled her face. Her hand fell to her side, leaving the flower caught in the weblike net that covered her hair. She drew a handkerchief from the side pocket of her dress and daubed at her face.

  “Yes?” (Rennert thought of the white-hot dagger-like flare of an acetylene torch.)

  “I’m Mr. Rennert, a guest here at the hacienda for a few days. Pardon the brusqueness of my introduction. I was wandering about, admiring the flowers. I saw you and thought I’d get acquainted. I have a package for you—some postcards.”

  “Oh, yes,” the flame flickered out, touching him with a vestige of warmth. “I heard that you were coming down. I’m very glad to know you.”

  There was an uneasy pause. Composure was sheathing the woman in austere flat planes above which the frangipani blossom, evidently forgotten, nodded grotesquely.

  “I’m so glad to get the postcards,” she said. “I was afraid that Mr. Solier was never going to send them. I don’t think he or Mr. Falter realized how important they were.”

  She seemed to recede for a moment into some private sphere of her own. When she emerged there was a nervous lightness about her manner and her voice was almost chatty: “I was just examining this tree. To my mind it has the most beautiful and the most fragrant flowers of any in Mexico. My profession, you know, allows me such few moments like this.”

  “I understood you were a botanist,” Rennert said. “I’ve often wondered if you scientists looked at plants and flowers merely as laboratory specimens or if you saw more in them—like we benighted laymen.”

  “Oh, no, we don’t look at them that way, Mr. Rennert. I assure you. We realize the important role they have played in history.” (She was shying away determinedly, Rennert knew, from the obvious meaning of his words.) “The diffusion of human culture in all its aspects has always been aided by that of domesticated plants. The civilization of the Mexican plateau, for instance, would not have spread as it did over native America if it hadn’t been for the fact that maize was first grown here.” She paused as if for breath and looked up at the white blossoms overhead. “And this tree here. Do you know, I almost expect to see blood on its petals every time I look at it. Silly, isn’t it?”

  Rennert’s eyes followed hers. The flowers loomed whitely out of the dark leaves. About them tiny insects buzzed ecstatically. (She is disturbed, he thought, by my presence and is trying to cover it up by this flow of words.)

  “I don’t believe I understand, Miss Fahn.”

  “Oh, of course you don’t,” she laughed. He saw that her long capable fingers were twisting at a corner of the handkerchief. “It’s known here in Mexico as the blood-flower of Montezuma. It’s just an old legend.”

  “I don’t believe that I have ever heard it.”

  “The frangipani tree—that’s what this is—comes from the West Indies originally. A specimen of it was brought to Montezuma’s brother, who was governor of the province of Yuquane, to the southeast of Mexico City. One of the flowers was taken to Montezuma. Its beauty and fragrance were greater than those of any of the flowers in the royal gardens. So he sent messengers to his brother, demanding the tree. The brother refused. Montezuma, who was used of course to having his own way, offered whole provinces in exchange for it. Still the brother refused. Then Montezuma sent an army into Yuquane, had his brother killed and the tree brought to his gardens. When it was replanted there the tips of the flowers turned red as blood. A symbol, you see, of Montezuma’s guilt.”

  Rennert had been observing her as she talked. He had seen the glow of perspiration on her face and the thin film of moisture that clouded the thick lenses of her spectacles.

  “Only in Mexico,” he said with what he thought to be appropriate sententiousness, “would one commit fratricide for a flower.”<
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  “Yes, flowers do seem to mean so much to the Mexicans, don’t they? Maria, the old Mexican woman here, practically lives for her flowers.”

  “For a botanist, this must be an interesting place.”

  “It is. I’ve gotten several ideas from Maria’s flowers—about the possibility of adapting varieties found here to the southern part of the United States.”

  “It must take a great deal of water to keep them in such a flourishing condition.”

  “Yes, I suppose so.”

  “Where does she get the water, do you know? I see that the fountain is dry.”

  “No, I don’t know,” her voice fell into that dead pause that comes when a person who has been talking with thoughts elsewhere reaches the end of verbal resources.

  The low tinkle of chimes echoed through the patio.

  An unguarded look of relief came over the woman’s face. She glanced at her wristwatch.

  “The first call,” she said as her fingers folded the handkerchief into a neat square. “Dinner will be served in ten minutes. You’ll pardon me? I want to,” a barely perceptible pause, “wash my hands.”

  10

  “In Danger’s Hour”

  Rennert opened the door of the wardrobe and took a coat from its hanger. Dinner at the hacienda, he had decided, would require it.

  As he did so his eyes were on a level with the shelf upon which rested the empty whisky bottle. It had been drained, he saw now, recently, for the sides were moist and a few drops remained in the curvature of the bottom. It was, he supposed, a relic of Arnhardt’s occupancy of the room.

  As he walked into the patio a radio blared forth, harsh with static, from the door to the left of the entrance. Remembering that it had been designated as the sala, he went toward it.

  It was a room similar to his own but larger and more pretentious. Large gilt-framed portraits of stiff-whiskered gentlemen adorned the blue-tinted walls. Between the two south windows a wooden image of the Virgin of the Remedies looked down sorrowfully upon two plaster nymphs in lascivious embrace on a round refectory table of polished mosaic inlay. In one of the corners stood a huge-bellied jar of blue-and-white Talavera majolica. There was a fragile-looking gilt-and-satin sofa and stiff straight chairs with graceful pipestem legs.

  An intruder in the midst of this antiquated elegance, a radio set stood against the west wall: a transmitter in a tall cabinet of baked wrinkled enamel and a receiver beside it on a low bench.

  Mark Arnhardt sat wide-legged on a stool before the receiver. He was hunched forward, twirling the dial, so that his broad shoulders strained at the seams of his coat. Thin strains of music filtered through the crackle of static.

  He looked around, saw Rennert, and got to his feet.

  “Hello, Mr. Rennert, come in and sit down.” The intent to inject hospitable heartiness into his voice was obvious.

  He glanced toward the other side of the room, where the young Mexican whom Rennert had seen that afternoon sat by the window, idly turning over the pages of an illustrated magazine.

  “Mr. Rennert, this is Mr. Flores.”

  The Mexican rose with alacrity, dropped the magazine and came forward with extended hand and a set smile on his dark olive face. He wore now a dark blue suit with a pinstripe of green, a light green shirt, and a maroon and orange tie.

  “Delighted, Mr. Rennert, I am sure.” His English was almost perfect, made noticeable only by a certain softness of intonation and a faint lingering on the vowels.

  His hand was soft and faintly moist, with a heavy signet ring, and Rennert’s sensitive nose caught the scent of pomade and perfume.

  “Will you not sit down?” Flores indicated a chair on the other side of the enraptured nymphs.

  Rennert sat down.

  Arnhardt stood for a moment, awkwardly, as if trying to think of something to say. He dropped onto the stool again and remarked over his shoulder: “The static’s fierce tonight. We must be in for a change of weather.”

  With a cambric handkerchief the Mexican delicately removed perspiration from his forehead.

  “It is the humidity,” he said, “that comes before a storm in this part of Mexico.” As if he had fulfilled a conversational duty by his acquiescence with Arnhardt’s statement he turned his head and regarded Rennert with open interest. “Mr. Falter told me that you were going to be with us for a time. You are from San Antonio, I believe?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ah, a beautiful city, San Antonio. I have spent much time there, on my way to and from the university.”

  “You’ve been attending school in the United States?”

  “Yes, at the Kansas Agricultural and Mechanical College.” He paused at the end of each sentence as if mentally jotting down a period before proceeding. “I am studying engineering. That is my plane out on the grounds. I was forced down while on my way back to Mexico City. I have had to wait for extra parts to be sent. Several of them I was unable to get in Mexico City and am waiting for them to be shipped from the United States.”

  “Unfortunate,” Rennert said.

  Flores smiled pleasantly, revealing white pearl-like teeth.

  “Not at all. I have enjoyed my stay here on the hacienda. Mr. Falter and Mr. Arnhardt have been most hospitable.” He paused and seemed to be arranging into words the next thought that he wanted to express. “You know, Mr. Rennert, that my most early childhood recollections are of this place. I was born here and lived here until the Revolution. We went then, my family and I, to the United States until it was over. You have looked over the hacienda?”

  “Not closely, no.”

  “If you will look at the walls on both sides of the door you will see the holes of bullets. They are from the time when the bandits captured the hacienda. My grandfather died then. He could have gone with us to safety but he did not wish to desert the family property.”

  He spoke in an unimpassioned voice but Rennert observed the gleam of pride in the dark deepset eyes and the lifting of the chin below the too-masculine mustache.

  “Good evening, everyone,” the words were an obbligato to a determined ripple of chimes.

  Miss Fahn came into the room. She walked on feet clad in low-heeled shoes that squeaked audibly and laced tightness held her body in uncompromising rigidity yet she managed to put into her entrance some of the effect that Rennert had always associated with the expression “sweeping into a room.” It was more, he decided, than the nicety with which she stopped, equidistant from the three of them, and the manner of an alert hostess with which she looked about her.

  “Have any of you,” she asked, “seen Mr. Falter?”

  “Not for an hour or so.” Rennert got to his feet.

  She looked down at her watch as if it were the arbiter in a momentous question which concerned them all.

  “It is time for dinner,” she said.

  “Is Mr. Falter not in his room?” Flores asked as he stood with an air of patient boredom.

  “He doesn’t seem to be. I knocked but he didn’t answer.”

  Arnhardt remained seated at the radio, the broad expanse of his back deliberately (Rennert felt) indifferent to the query.

  Static grated deafeningly into a string quartet’s rendition of “Cielito Lindo.”

  Arnhardt turned the dial again. There was abrupt cessation of noise and an announcer’s voice, weirdly clear, knife-sharp in the hot still air:

  “You are listening to station WARE, the voice of the Border, on the Rio Grande.”

  A long pause filled with a low humming as of a tautened wire in the wind.

  “We have just received word that the tropical hurricane which has been lashing the Gulf of Mexico has unexpectedly turned inland in the direction of Tampico. Storm warnings have been posted along the coast from Brownsville to Vera Cruz. During the next half hour station WARE will sign off, to clear the air for possible distress signals from coastwise shipping caught in the path of the hurricane.”

  Their eyes remained riveted on the lighted dia
l for a moment after the clear urgent voice had ceased. Despite their familiarity with the radio that voice, seeking them out in a hidden pocket of the mountains, had seemed so close that—aside from the disturbing implications of the message—it left a momentary hush upon the room.

  “How terrible!” Miss Fahn spoke into the silence. “Those poor people down in Tampico. How helpless they must feet, knowing that storm is coming toward them. And the people on ships—” There was a tightness about her lips that robbed her voice of its note of artificiality. “Shall we go in to dinner,” she said.

  As they walked into the patio Rennert found himself walking by her side as Arnhardt and Flores brought up the rear.

  She said as they made their way along the paving-stones: “It must be that storm which is causing the humidity in the air tonight.”

  “Yes. Tampico is less than two hundred miles away, you know.”

  She looked at him quickly.

  “You don’t suppose there’s any danger of the storm reaching here?”

  “Oh, no, I don’t think so.” Rennert put reassurance into his voice. “If it does its force will have been broken by the mountains.” (He thought: I’m not sure at all It would require more of a barrier than the range which lies between us and the coast to assure us of safety from the vagaries of a tropical hurricane.)

  “A storm,” Miss Fahn said, “always alarms me so. My brother died in one. His ship went down somewhere in the China Sea. I believe they call them typhoons there. I have never wanted to look at the ocean again.”

  They had come to the door of Falter’s apartment. She turned her head (Rennert felt that she was glad of the excuse to do so) and waited until Arnhardt and Flores came up.

  “You might go in and knock on his bedroom door, Mr. Arnhardt. He may have been asleep and not have heard me.”

  Arnhardt shrugged.

  “If he can’t keep track of the time let him miss out on a meal,” he said gruffly and stalked on.