Sun, Sea and Murder

by Roderic Jeffries

  ‘Of what account is that to a man with a fortune?’

  ‘And you reckon it was the money that attracted the women?’

  ‘Do putas not work for money?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know.’

  ‘Have another biscuit and save your tongue from nonsense.’

  He was surprised she had spoken without aggression. Perhaps she held to the old standards. An unmarried woman had to be chaste. A young man needed to learn. He said, as he slid another biscuit out of the tin: ‘Julia told me the French woman’s Christian name was Sophie, but—’

  He was interrupted as Rosalía again expressed herself on the morals of that woman.

  Eventually, he was able to ask: ‘Do you know her surname?’

  ‘Douste.’

  ‘She lives locally?’

  ‘You think I wish to know?’

  ‘You might have heard her say something to suggest whether she does.’

  ‘She does not bother to speak to the likes of us. I remember . . .’ She became silent.

  ‘What?’

  ‘As if I was to blame when the electricity failed,’ she said bitterly. ‘When the oven was not working for a while, my cooking was ruined. I am an Andaluce and can cook the best Pato a la Sevillana in the land. But that . . . that putonga laughed as she wondered if the duck had died of old age. I had to serve as well as cook because Julia was ill, or so she said. Of course, Pablo would also have been away from work. Her lust makes a good woman cringe.’

  ‘The young of today have no standards.’

  ‘They have the standards of the debauched. When they are called, they will be rejected.’

  Along with very many others. ‘The Frenchwoman had the insolence to criticize your cooking when she should have commiserated with you? Unforgivable! Did she speak in French or Spanish?’

  ‘French when she didn’t want me to understand.’

  ‘Yet you understood her?’

  ‘Did I need to, when she had had only two mouthfuls before she put down her knife and fork and said something which made the señor furious and ask me if I was stupid enough to think they liked raw duck?’

  ‘She should have eaten, whatever she thought of the meal, in order not to insult you.’

  ‘What would a woman like her know about good manners?’

  ‘I wonder what kind of a man her husband is?’

  ‘He is not a man to let her come here. He has no cojones.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you’ve met him?’

  ‘Where do you think the puta and the señor met? Here, at one of the parties to show what a great man he was.’

  ‘Did you speak to the husband?’

  ‘A foreigner would not wish to speak to me when he knows I am a cook.’

  ‘In England, there are cooks who are said to be celebrities.’

  ‘Anything can happen in a country where young girls behave as they do when they come out here for a holiday.’

  ‘What kind of a man would you judge him to be?’

  ‘That is not obvious? I have not already said? He is weak and stupid to allow his wife to come here on her own.’

  ‘Perhaps he suspected what was going on, but didn’t do anything about it so that he could share in what she gained.’

  ‘Only a black mind could have such thoughts.’

  ‘I fear my job exposes me to many evils.’

  ‘Men expose themselves.’

  ‘I don’t think . . .’ He stopped; best not to point out the ambiguity. ‘Is he older than his wife?’

  ‘Much older. She sold her body for what money he had. She sold herself to the señor for more.’

  ‘I wonder if the señor has left her anything in his will?’

  ‘Such a thing is possible?’

  ‘I’ve known it happen.’

  ‘Then you meet much stupidity as well as debauchery.’

  ‘Has he heirs?’

  ‘I only know that he was once married.’

  ‘His ex-wife has been here?’

  ‘Men do not bother with women from their past.’

  ‘He could have children?’

  ‘He would never have acknowledged them.’

  ‘You are very critical,’ he said, before he realized the injudiciousness of his words.

  ‘No more critical than he deserves.’

  ‘I’ll need to find his will to discover if there are any heirs. I suppose there’s a safe in the house?’

  ‘I have been told it is in the library.’

  He had not seen evidence of one. ‘Do you know ­whereabouts?’

  ‘I do not concern myself with such matters.’

  ‘Perhaps you’ll help me try to find it now?’

  ‘Leave my cooking so that it is spoiled, as my Pato a la Sevillana was ruined?’

  He was surprised she should compare duck to chickpeas. ‘That was forgetful of me.’

  ‘Men find it easy to forget.’

  ‘Maybe Julia could help me.’

  ‘That would be unusual.’

  ‘Where is she now?’

  ‘She should be cleaning the breakfast room.’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘Next to the library.’

  Julia was vacuuming the traditionally patterned Sadhestan carpet which brought colour to the small room.

  She switched off the Dyson.

  ‘I’ve just had a word with Rosalía,’ he said.

  ‘Small wonder you don’t look happy. I suppose she moaned about what she thinks me and Pablo get up to?’

  ‘She didn’t mention either of you. I need to ask if you know where the safe is?’

  ‘Why me?’ She spoke defensively.

  ‘Because you might be able to tell me, since you clean everywhere.’

  ‘But why d’you think I know where it is?’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘What if I do?’

  He said quietly: ‘What’s bothering you?’

  She didn’t answer.

  ‘You’re worried I might think you’d been up to no good? You’re not that kind of a person. In any case, I’ll bet you don’t even know the combination or where the keys are?’

  ‘Of course I don’t.’

  ‘Then there’s as much chance of your opening a safe as of Rosalía finding a man.’

  She smiled uneasily.

  ‘So tell me, where is it?’

  She explained at length that she had not been intentionally snooping, She had been dusting the framed prints on the wall of the corridor, as she always did. The door into the library had been open – it needed to be pulled hard to catch the tongue of the lock or it responded to any sudden draught and slowly opened – and she had seen the señor moving a book and pressing something behind it. To her astonishment, a section of bookcase had swung back.

  ‘I cleaned in there ever since I started working, but I never thought there was something behind all the books.’

  ‘It’s a way of making a fairly secure hiding place. You can show me which section of shelves opens?’

  ‘Me go into the library? I can’t.’

  ‘Forget what you saw.’

  ‘All that blood on him. The terrible pain . . .’

  ‘He died so quickly, he cannot have felt any.’ Which was stupid talk. No one could know how death was met. Since life was painful, dying might be agonizingly more so, even when the transition, to an observer, seemed to be ­instantaneous.

  ‘I won’t go in.’

  ‘All you need to do is show me where to look.’

  ‘No!’

  He spoke softly, explained that the señor’s murder must be solved and that she might be helping him identify the murderer.

  Not aware of what she was doing, she took his hand as they left the breakfast room and walked along to the library; her hand gripped his more tightly as they stepped through the doorway.

  ‘Which part of the bookcase moved?’

  She pointed.

  ‘And roughly which book did he take out?’

  ‘On t
he second shelf . . . I must go. Rosalía said I had to clean the dining room because it was so dusty. It isn’t, but I must do that or she’ll be awful.’

  ‘You deserve a large coñac, so pour yourself one.’

  ‘I don’t drink.’

  Small wonder she was so nervous. As she hurried away, he crossed the library to that part of the bookcase she had indicated. The movable section had been made with ­considerable skill and it would have been easy to miss its presence. He lifted out books along the second shelf and behind the third leather-bound volume of Churchill’s The Second World War there was an electrical switch. He pressed it and the section of shelving swung open almost silently.

  The safe was not a combination one; on the door was a brass plaque on which was the name of a well-known maker. Top quality, burglar resistant and not just fire resistant. The simplest way of opening it to see what it held would be to ask Salas to authorize the employment of a professional locksmith. But Salas would demand to know if he had searched for the keys, hidden by Tyler. In a house of this size with rock walls, possible hiding places were endless and it might take hours to find the keys or claim the authority to say that forcible entry was necessary.

  It would soon be supper time.

  EIGHT

  ‘I have to go to Inca tomorrow morning,’ Dolores said, as she returned to sit at the dining-room table, having carried dirty plates and cutlery out to the kitchen. She reached across to the bowl of fruit and brought out an orange. ‘Someone can drive me there.’

  ‘Why?’ Jaime asked.

  She began to peel the orange, using a small steel knife. ‘Because the times of the busses do not suit me. Because – not that you would understand this – a good husband always does what his wife wishes.’

  ‘Half the time, she wishes so much he’d need four arms and four legs to cope.’

  ‘You are attempting to be humorous?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then you succeed by failing.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  She carefully separated segments of orange.

  ‘Half the time I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Jaime complained.

  She ate a piece of orange.

  ‘Why d’you want to go to Inca?’

  ‘Do I have to account for my every action?’

  ‘I’ve a right to know.’

  ‘You have no such right.’ She ate more orange. ‘But I will tell you. I am going to Inca to look at refrigerators.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I wish to buy one.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You have a very limited vocabulary.’

  ‘But we have one in the kitchen.’

  ‘Which is not working as it should.’

  ‘We can live with it until it packs up.’

  ‘At which point, it will no longer be keeping everything inside fresh. That does not concern you until you collapse from food poisoning and are rushed to hospital and have to admit your error?’

  ‘I can’t see why—’

  ‘Rosa has told me there is a large store in Inca which has a sale of refrigerators, and one can buy a new model for considerably less than here.’

  ‘That’ll all be nonsense. She gets everything wrong.’

  ‘Indeed. When she first knew you, she remarked what an interesting man you were.’

  ‘We can’t afford a new one.’

  ‘And why do you say that? You were late back. Because you spent even more time than usual at a bar?’

  ‘I didn’t go near one.’

  ‘That is possible when there are two in every street? That is likely when you again tripped over the front doormat as you tried to enter?’

  ‘The mat is in a silly place.’

  ‘Then I will move it so that when your legs no longer listen to your brain, you will come to no harm.’

  ‘God Almighty—’

  ‘How dare you blaspheme in this house!’ she said fiercely.

  Alvarez reflected that Jaime had still not understood that the way to content a wife was to agree with everything she said, accept with humility, guilt for every peccadillo she wrongly alleged.

  Jaime reached for the bottle of San Asensio.

  ‘You suffer the desire to drink even more?’ she said. ‘Then I suggest you do not move from here until the clouds have left your mind and you will be able to see the doormat.’

  He hesitated, finally poured himself a small measure of wine. Alvarez took the bottle from him and refilled his own glass.

  She held a segment of orange in front of her mouth. ‘Enrique, you are silent.’

  ‘I have had an emotionally exhausting morning.’

  ‘The bad luck to be told she wasn’t that kind of a girl?’ Jaime suggested.

  ‘You consider it bad luck to meet a virtuous woman?’ Dolores asked sharply.

  ‘It’s just . . . I mean . . . I was being humorous.’

  ‘Only in your own opinion.’ She turned to Alvarez. ‘What has been so exhausting?’

  ‘Persuading a woman to do what she was afraid of doing because—’

  ‘I wish to hear no more.’

  ‘I had to ask her to go with me into the library in which she had found a dead man the previous morning. Naturally, she was unwilling.’

  ‘They always are to begin with,’ Jaime observed.

  ‘As my mother so often had reason to say’ – Dolores’s words were coated in ice – ‘a man’s mind can only concentrate on one subject.’

  Jaime was at fault with his blundering responses, Alvarez thought. If they needed a new refrigerator, one must be bought. Long gone was the time when refrigerators were rare and kept in the entradas as social statements. He chose a peach, cut it in half, eased out the stone . . . Why should the word ‘refrigerator’ exercise his mind? The need to remember to pay his share of the purchase price? . . . Air conditioning! He had to find out how long it had been turned on in the library. For once there was reason to be grateful for Jaime’s manner, since it had saved him from forgetting to do what Salas was bound to ask if he had done.

  Saturday morning. The beginning of the weekend. Only he was faced with having to work.

  He drove to Es Teneres and as he turned in to the drive, saw a man working. He stopped, left the car, crossed the lawn – how much water was wasted to keep it green? – came to a stop by a flowerbed filled with colour – how much water was wasted on that? – spoke to the man who knelt, weeding by hand. ‘Are you Higuero?’

  Higuero slowly stood. He was short and stocky; although not young, his black hair was thick; his features suggested a bovine nature, but his blue eyes were sharp and contradicted that; his skin was tanned by sun, wind and rain; his clothes would not have been welcomed anywhere.

  ‘Are you asking?’

  ‘Didn’t it sound like that?’

  ‘Then you can say who your are.’

  Higuero’s manner would have annoyed most in authority, but Alvarez accepted it with amused tolerance. Contempt for authority had sustained the Mallorquins through invasions, poverty, oppression, civil war and the suppression of their language. Higuero’s speech marked him as being from Mestara. The distance between there and Pollensa had once been a considerable mule ride, not lightly taken, and this had resulted in different accents and slightly different vocabu­laries. The journey could now be made in twenty minutes by car, yet the difference remained, largely because of a sense of local pride. ‘Inspector Alvarez, Cuerpo.’

  ‘Wouldn’t have guessed it.’

  Higuero’s sharp eyes confirmed this was an insult. The butting goat must be expected to butt. ‘Do you work here?’

  ‘I look to be on holiday?’

  ‘What do you do?’

  ‘You’re as thick as you are short-sighted?’

  ‘I might have thought you were a gardener except the garden doesn’t look as if one’s employed.’

  Higuero hawked and spat. ‘There’s some can’t tell they’re standing in pig shit.’

  ‘A
nd there are some who can’t believe they aren’t.’

  ‘I suppose you’re going to tell me I shot the señor?’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘Never had the chance.’

  ‘Tell me about him.’

  Higuero spoke at some length, echoing much of what Alvarez had already learned. Tyler had lacked any manners as they were understood by a Mallorquin. He had never said good morning, shaken hands, had a pleasant chat. He had demanded rather than asked; believed that when he paid a man’s wages, the man should treat him with deference; had thought himself at least the equal to God.

  ‘I’ve been told he liked the women.’

  ‘And they liked his money.’

  ‘Seems more than one of them was married.’

  ‘Probable.’

  ‘There’ll be husbands with reason to hate him.’

  ‘Not if they’re English.’

  ‘Why d’you say that?’

  ‘Horses and dogs for them, not women. That’s why they all look constipated.’

  ‘Have you seen a husband lurking around the place, wanting to have words with the señor?’

  ‘How would I know what he was about?’

  ‘Then you have seen someone?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Have you noticed a Frenchwoman who’s said to be something special and has come here quite often?’

  ‘The one with real nice tits?’

  ‘Can’t be certain about that.’

  ‘Dresses like she costs a thousand euros and shows you a little of what you’ll be buying. Look at her and you aren’t thinking of anything else.’

  ‘Sounds like her. Have you seen her husband?’

  ‘The first time she was with a man. Older than her and looked exhausted just by thinking about it. She wouldn’t have been with the likes of him if he wasn’t paying all her bills. She needs a real man.’

  ‘Have you applied?’

  ‘On my wages? She’d just laugh.’

  ‘Then your poverty saves you from committing adultery.’

  ‘Who bloody well wants to be saved? Have you finished asking stupid questions?’

  ‘I’ve one or two more.’

  ‘Then they can wait until after.’

  ‘After what?’

  ‘Merienda.’

  ‘At a local bar?’

  ‘Rosalía makes coffee and something to eat.’

  ‘And to drink?’

  ‘What do you do with your coffee? Wash your feet in it?’