Murder on the Tropic

by Todd Downing

  “Quite all right, Mrs. Tolman.” Rennert held out a light. “It’s merely a lull, you know, before the rest of the storm.” He lit one for himself and said: “You were speaking of Mr. Flores.”

  “Yes,” she inhaled deeply and leaned back in her chair. “When he first came here he made things very difficult for me. I suppose it’s the Mexican attitude toward women but I wasn’t used to it. From the very first time I met him he seemed to take it for granted that I was ready to enter into an affair with him. Nothing that I could take offense at particularly. Just a way he had of looking at me and of addressing me. He would come to the room when he knew Steve wasn’t there and bring me presents—flowers and things. I tried to show him my indifference to him without hurting his feelings but it didn’t do any good. He kept persisting. One evening, just about dusk, while we were in the patio, he tried to kiss me. I just laughed at him.” Her eyes were frank. “I’ve found that’s the most effective way of getting out of such a situation. Much better than dramatics.”

  “And since?” Rennert asked when he saw that she seemed reluctant to continue.

  “He has never made another attempt to approach me. I don’t know whether it was my ridicule or whether someone—Mark or Steve—saw us and did something. The next day, however, Mark was morose and silent. Esteban stayed in his room all day. When I saw him next he had—well, he had a black eye. I suppose if I hadn’t had a sense of humor I would have gotten romantic and thought of myself as the fair lady for whom two men did battle. But since Miss Fahn, Maria, and I were the only women on the place it didn’t flatter my vanity to any extent. It just amused me. Now,” the lightness dropped from her manner and her eyes were troubled as they sought the window, “I don’t know. It may have been more serious than I thought.”

  Rennert was silent for a moment.

  “Have you seen since then any indications that Flores—to use a venerable expression—harbored a grudge against Arnhardt?”

  “I don’t know whether you’d call it that or not. It’s so hard to tell what Esteban is thinking. I’ve noticed, though, that he always takes an almost diabolical delight in making sport of Mark when someone else is present. Little innuendoes that for the most part go over Mark’s head. Mark knows that they are going over his head, though, and that makes him furious. Maybe I shouldn’t have told you all this but I thought you ought to know about everything. I haven’t any compunctions about keeping still when it’s a question of Steve’s safety. And whoever shot Mark last night must have seen us in the doorway. Must have seen him leave and shot him.” She got up. “I hope, Mr. Rennert, that you won’t think I’ve been posing as a femme fatale. I know my limitations, I assure you. But you will try to prove that Steve is innocent of all this?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Tolman.” Rennert too rose. “I shall do my best.”

  “Thank you.” She paused halfway to the door. “I wish that you would go and comfort Miss Fahn. I think you and I are the only ones here whom she really trusts.”

  “Very well. Again I’ll promise to do my best.”

  The patio was a place of wreckage. Torn petals and leaves were strewn about over the paths and paving-stones. Here and there they were heaped in little windrows, as if dropped suddenly by a hand. The rain had almost ceased but the lid of the sky seemed to have come closer under the weight of the heavy rolling clouds. The silence was unreal and sinister to ears accustomed for hours to the screaming of the wind.

  Rennert stopped by his room, then knocked at Miss Fahn’s door. He saw her peer furtively through the window. In a moment she opened the door and stood behind it as he entered. She closed it and locked and bolted it.

  “I just wanted to be sure, Mr. Rennert,” she said again.

  She was a part of the dimness of the room and of the pallid grayness that veiled the windows. She seemed to have aged incredibly during the night. Her face was like putty hanging in loose flaccid folds under her haggard old eyes and about her drawn lips.

  Rennert laid a package upon the table.

  “Here is your dissertation,” he said with a joviality which he was far from feeling. “Thank you very much.”

  “Oh, yes.” She seemed dazed, unable for a moment to center her attention on him. “Do you have a car, Mr. Rennert?”

  “Yes, Miss Fahn.”

  She came a step closer and he could hear her labored breathing. She clasped her hands together and nervously rubbed their palms.

  “Will you take me in to Victoria or some place? This morning. Right away. I must get away from this terrible place.”

  “I think it would be better to wait until later, Miss Fahn. The storm, you know, is not over yet.”

  “Not over?” She had to steady herself with a hand on the table. “But it is! The wind has stopped blowing.”

  “I don’t want to alarm you but I’m afraid it’s only a lull and that the wind will begin again soon, stronger than ever. We are perfectly safe within these walls but I shouldn’t like to venture out into the open in a car.”

  She sank onto the edge of the bed and stared out the window. Her hands were twitching.

  “Oh, Mr. Rennert, I’d rather be out in the storm. Any place but here. If only Mr. Flores’ plane were in order! Maybe he would take me away. I’m afraid! Afraid to eat or drink anything! Afraid to open the door! With a murderer loose—”

  Rennert felt pity surge through him. He thought: The terrible thing about excessive unrestrained fear is that it borders inevitably on the ludicrous.

  Then he heard it edging louder through the electrically charged stillness.

  The hum of an airplane.

  29

  The Stir of a Leaf

  The sky pressed close, smoothed now of some of its clouds. Those that remained, in the south, were darker, their gray edges tinged with saffron as they seethed in rolling, turbulent confusion, checked in their northward advance.

  The stillness persisted.

  Rennert walked out of the hacienda, his eyes searching the sky and the open ground.

  Flores’ plane stood as the day before, its wings a tarnished gray against a grayer backdrop. His conjecture when the drone of a plane had come to him in Miss Fahn’s room had been correct. Flores was in the house.

  He walked past the yucca tree.

  A faint “Hallo” came to his ears, echoing weirdly in the still air compounded by the cliffs. He turned to his left, in the direction of the sound. A man was coming around a rocky spur that sloped sharply onto the flat tableland on which the hacienda stood.

  It was Edward Solier.

  Rennert waved a hand and advanced to meet him. Solier came forward a few yards, slowly, then stopped and sat upon a rock that had fallen from the declivity above.

  As Rennert came closer, he got up and his voice rang out clearly: “Good morning, Mr. Rennert.”

  “Good morning. Glad to see you.”

  “I seem to have picked the worst morning possible for my trip.”

  “Yes.” Rennert stepped up and they shook hands.

  Solier wore whipcord breeches, a leather jacket and a flying-helmet. They served to dwarf his slight body. His face looked drawn and tired but his voice held an undercurrent of suppressed excitement and his eyes were feverishly bright.

  “If I’d waited a couple of hours the storm would have been over. I thought for a few minutes I wasn’t going to make it. The first time in my life I was really frightened. I landed the plane in a little open space between two ridges back there. A natural landing place I always use. It’s safer than coming too close to the house.” He gestured backward with his head. “Suppose we sit down here somewhere and talk a few minutes. We’ll have more privacy than at the house. I’d hoped I could get in touch with you before I put in an appearance there.”

  “All right.”

  They rounded the rocky projection and came onto a flat space bare of rocks and trees. The plane stood in the center, its nose pointed toward a wide gap in the cliffs. They sat down on a ledge and Solier removed the helmet
and jacket, laying them beside him.

  “Now,” he leaned back and crossed his legs, “tell me what the situation is here at the hacienda, Rennert.”

  Rennert held one foot propped against the stone. His right arm was about his knee as he regarded Solier through the smoke of the cigarette which he held in his left hand.

  “When I accepted your proposal in San Antonio,” he said slowly, “I didn’t expect that it would turn out to be as grim and unpleasant a business as it has. If I had I should have thought twice and refused it. The past sixteen hours have been hectic ones.”

  “So I judged from my conversation with you last night.” Solier held his head forward, his eyes moving quickly over Rennert’s face as if seeking to read there what he was about to say. “What’s happened since then?”

  Rennert was deliberate.

  “You will have to pardon me if I go at my narrative in what seems an odd way. There are so many different threads running through this case that it’s important to keep them separate.” He was formulating his own thoughts, as he spoke, separating these threads for his own benefit as much as Solier’s. “You asked me to do two things for you. First, to learn what was becoming of the water.”

  “Yes.” There was a note of impatience in Solier’s voice.

  “I have done that. It was the easiest part of the puzzle—”

  “Who was taking it?” Solier broke in.

  “Maria Montemayor. The natural love of flowers that one finds universally in Mexico was in her case intensified to what amounted to an all-absorbing passion, particularly after her only son died and was buried under them. When the springs in the mountains began to dry up she saw the flowers drying up and took a course that to her seemed perfectly justified. She took the drinking-water from the kitchen and gave it to the flowers. She was helped by the fact that Lee, who had charge of the kitchen, was away for a time. Twice that I know of, once before he left and again last night, she resorted to a device for keeping him from hearing her when she was getting the water. She left marihuana cigarettes in his room. He smoked them, got on a jag and was soon asleep for the rest of the night.”

  “Well!” it was a colorless interjection. Solier had been tapping his fingers restlessly upon the rock while Rennert was speaking. “Maria’s been on the place so long that I suppose she thinks she almost owns it. Go ahead,” he said, “the water’s not so important.”

  “I realize that, Mr. Solier. Remember that I’m merely getting rid of some of the aspects of the case that added to the complication of it. I think that you will I see when I am through that the more serious aspect is rather clear cut.”

  “You mean Miguel’s death?”

  “Mr. Falter has died too. Early this morning.”

  “He has?” Solier was silent, his lips indrawn.

  “I am referring also to George Stahl’s death,” Rennert said. “But you will remember that my mission down here had nothing to do with murder at the beginning. I have cleared up the matter of the water. Now, as to my other errand, here is Miss Fahn’s receipt for the money paid her for her shares and her release of them.” He brought the papers out of his pocket and passed them to Solier. The latter took them, gave them a cursory glance and thrust them inside his coat.

  “Fine.” He looked at Rennert expectantly.

  Rennert did not continue for a long time. There was a look of abstraction on his face as he stared past Solier’s sharp profile, past the receding vastnesses of the mountains, into the clouds restive in restraint on the southwestern horizon.

  “What’s the matter with you, Rennert?” Solier asked sharply. “You act as if you didn’t want to go ahead. All this talk about the water and Miss Fahn’s shares could have waited until later. You spoke over the radio as if you were certain that murder had been committed here. That’s why I came down. Are you still of that opinion or have I come on a wild-goose chase?”

  “I’m certain—without a shadow of a doubt. Deliberate planned murder.” Was he mistaken or had he seen a gentle stirring of a leaf in the petrified vegetation of that slope?

  “Do you know the identity of the murderer?”

  Solier’s features were transferred as if by other-dimensional means to a flaw in the rocks straight ahead of Rennert’s eyes. There was in the fractured stone a distinct resemblance to his aquiline nose, his pointed chin, his jutting eyebrows. The mobility which had marked them in that San Antonio office was mostly gone now and they had some of the hard insensitivity of the rock.

  “Yes,” Rennert said, “I know the identity of the murderer.”

  “Who is it? Mark Arnhardt?” Sharply, as no reply was forth-coming: “You don’t want to reveal it?”

  A grim smile stole over Rennert’s face. (His eyes must have been at fault. The blades of grass were motionless against the sky.)

  “No,” he said, “it’s not that. I promise to tell you the name before our conversation is over. But there are one or two things that must be cleared up first, in order to make the case complete against this person. I’m going to ask you a direct question. I hope that you will answer me frankly. What was your company’s real purpose in buying this hacienda?”

  Very distinct was the scraping of Solier’s nails on the surface of the rock as he suddenly contracted his fingers. As he stared at Rennert his face took on a rigidity that matched perfectly that of the stone beyond him. It was a full minute before he spoke.

  “What are your reasons for thinking the purpose wasn’t as I told you—to build a hotel?”

  “Several, Mr. Solier. I got a hint of it in our first conversation. From the amount you offered me to come down here I suspected that something more important than an abandoned plan for a hotel was at stake. Then there was the question of the amount you paid for this property. You stated that there was a great deal of land about here to be had almost for the asking. Yet you spoke of paying the Flores family a big price. When I pointed out this inconsistency, you may remember, you countered by saying that they had held you up because of their knowledge that the road was to come through here. I have learned since that it was not a large amount you paid. A very small one, in fact, when one considers the extent of this land. Is that correct?”

  “Yes.” Solier shrugged in defeat. “That’s right. I’m going to be frank with you, Rennert. You’re enough of a business man to realize how these things have to be managed. We paid the Flores family as little as we could. Ten thousand pesos. On our statement to the stockholders it appeared as,” he paused and cleared his throat, “slightly larger. When the plan for the hotel had to be given up we told the stockholders that we had spent a lot of capital and couldn’t pay them the full amount on their shares. We made a little profit out of it, yes, but it’s done every day in business like this.”

  “And your company retained possession of the hacienda with the exception of Miss Fahn’s shares?”

  “Yes.”

  “And when Miss Fahn could be persuaded to sell those you and Falter and Stahl—and later Arnhardt—would have entire control of this property away from direct contact with the world, yet near enough that automobiles from Monterrey and other cities in this section of Mexico could reach it easily—and in privacy?”

  “Yes,” Solier nodded, his eyes narrowing slightly.

  “My suspicion that there was more behind the deal than appeared on the surface was strengthened when I found that a power plant had been installed recently. Last night I saw the plans that Stephen Tolman drew for your so-called hotel. The hotel appearance on the first and second floors to divert suspicion. The large room on the third floor, glass-roofed, for gambling tables.”

  30

  Ordeal by Wind

  The silence between the two men lengthened while a faint rustling crept at them. No object on the landscape betrayed the source of the almost imperceptible sound yet there was everywhere a soft stir as of invisible things in the coarse grasses marching ant-like forward.

  Solier laughed brittlely.

  “All right,�
� he said resignedly, “you’ve got the dope on us. It was a gambling casino we had in mind from the beginning. A great opportunity, you’ll admit. Close to Monterrey and Brownsville and the Pan-American Highway. It would attract people from all the border cities, especially since this new administration has been closing down most of the places along the border. We rigged up this scheme among us—to form a company and sell shares for a hotel before it was known generally just where the highway would go.”

  “You knew yourselves of course?”

  “Oh, yes. Everything worked out as we had planned. As soon as the route of the highway was laid out we told our stockholders that the deal was off and that we had spent most of their money on the land. They all turned their shares in for whatever we gave them. Except Miss Fahn. If she had stayed in Austin we could have gone ahead anyway and built the casino. But what did the damned woman do but decide to come down here and study plants! We sized her up and figured that she’d screech to high heaven if she found out she was mixed up in a gambling scheme. The Mexican authorities would get wind of it and everything would go up in smoke. So it was necessary to get her shares before she suspected what was up. We were at a standstill, you see.”

  “I’m still wondering why you chose me for the errand.”

  Solier laughed drily.

  “Well, Rennert, to tell you the truth you fitted the bill perfectly. A pleasant middle-aged man who would inspire confidence in a maiden lady. Good manners, something she is a stickler for. An official position that would serve as a sort of voucher for you and offset in a way your temporary connection with Falter and me, whom she looked on a little askance. Your work,” he patted his pocket, “proves that I was right.”

  “So,” Rennert said, “we have the set-up at the time I came here. A large amount of money already invested at stake and a still larger amount in prospect for the person or persons who owned the place. A motive sufficient for murder.”