They walked, aware of the interest which followed them, to where Mrs McKay was talking to one of the maids. The maid left as they approached. ‘I’m afraid we must be on our way,’ said Diana.
‘Must you?’ she answered, her round, pleasant face giving little hint of the keen brain behind it. ‘Stay on and have a quick bite first — the food’s all ready inside.’
‘Thanks, but we really must go.’
Waynton saw Diana into her car and helped her to back out of the field being used as a temporary car-park, then returned to his Mobylette.
The journey was a short one, but for him not quick because it was largely uphill: by the time he had walked the bike up the last stretch where the road was too steep for riding, Diana had parked her car in the garage and had gone indoors.
When she opened the front door for him she handed him a glass. ‘Things never seem quite so serious after an extra glass of champagne.’
‘I had two glassfuls at the McKays and . . .
‘Third time lucky.’
He stepped inside. ‘D’you know what? Despite all you’d said, I was still certain that except for one or two of the stupider types, people tonight would go out of their way to be friendly to me to show what they thought of the crazy rumours.’
She said, as she led the way into the sitting-room: ‘You’ve never lived in a tiny community before, have you? I tried to tell you that everything gets blown up out of all proportion and rumours become facts even before they’ve had time to be distorted.’
‘I still think we ought to have stayed on.’
She sat on the settee. ‘It always has to be direct confrontation with you men, doesn’t it? I’m bigger and stronger than you are. Why is it cowardly to avoid an unpleasantness if it can be avoided without trouble? Look, you must be able to imagine what kind of stories are going the rounds about you and Betty. Horrible, hateful stories, thought up because people out here haven’t anything to do and all day to do it in. If you insist on continually facing them, they’ll go on gossiping. If you cool it and don’t stick your neck out, they’ll soon shut up because they can’t concentrate on anything for long without a reason.’
He paced the floor. ‘What really gets me is how they can be so bloody silly as to think I’d have an affair with Betty.’
‘She was quite attractive.’
‘That’s the only essential criterion?’
‘It’s a reasonably common one.’
‘And they think I’m the kind of bloke who’d tumble her when Bill was upstairs . . .’ He stopped and swung round.
‘Do you?’
‘Do you have to ask?’
‘No,’ he said, his voice suddenly calm. ‘Of course I don’t.’ She knew fresh fear. If only he weren’t quite so certain.
If only someone else was known to have been friendly with Betty . . .
CHAPTER XVII
On the Sunday Alvarez had identified Cifret and by noon on Monday the lawyers had reluctantly declared themselves satisfied over the proposed application for extradition. Soon, he thought, he would be free to return to the sun, colour, and life.
From a sense of duty, he had invited Fletcher to lunch at the hotel. He wanted to like the man, yet no matter how hard he tried he found himself unable to do so. There was a coldness of spirit about the D.I. which seemed to freeze all points of emotional contact. For Alvarez, he was the epitome of all the heroes of the British wartime films which were often shown on television on Saturday nights. Captain, captain, the rear gunner’s shot and is dying, the tailplane’s gone, the hull’s on fire amidships, and another night fighter’s about to attack: it’s terrible. Just calm down and make your report correctly, Smithers. There’s no call to get excited.
‘I’ve arranged this afternoon for us to go over HQ,’ said Fletcher. There was a trace of patronage in his voice when he added: ‘I thought it would give you the chance to see a really modem set-up.’
‘That would be most interesting,’ replied Alvarez politely.
‘You won’t have had the chance to see the latest computer techniques in police work.’
‘As a matter of fact, in Palma we . . .’
‘Now take the question of time correlation, statement time-check, and statement and information cross-check charts. You draw these up for every major crime and that takes a lot of time, doesn’t it? But we just feed the information into the computer and dial the machine for the answers we want.’
Alvarez accepted it would save a lot of time, even when one knew what all these things were.
‘We’ll leave here at three so that you’ll have plenty of time to look around the place.’
‘Three o’clock this afternoon, señor?’
‘That’s right. Why?’
‘But surely you will be having a little siesta?’ Fletcher looked at him in amazement.
They stood in the centre of a room over forty feet long and thirty wide, which with the exception of a small control room was filled from floor to ceiling with shelves which were packed with files. Fletcher spoke with the enthusiasm of the dedicated statistician. ‘We’ve over twenty-three thousand five hundred of our own files here. They cover current crime, all cleared-up crime and all cases put on ice over the past ten years, all investigations undertaken over the past five years whether conclusive or not, and details of all major national crimes over the past two years. The contents of the files aren’t on tapes, but a precis of the facts are and so cross-references are available at the press of a button.
‘The benefits are obvious. Instead of men spending hours wading through the files and the index of cross references, becoming bored and careless, now a few buttons are pressed, file numbers are given, and all relevant information is immediately available. How about a practical example? Tell me, what was the last case of sudden and unexplained death you’ve experienced on your island ?’
Alvarez, who’d allowed his thoughts to wander and had been thinking wistfully of the bed back in his bedroom at the hotel, hurriedly said: ‘Just recently, señor, a woman died from what appeared to be some form of poisoning. The circumstances suggested there was a strong motive for murder. But then the post-mortem told us that she’d died from mytilotoxin which is a poison which comes from mussels.’
‘That’s not at all bad because there won’t have been many poisonings by mussels and to pick up a reference to a previous case could take a long time. Now — shall we time ourselves?’
‘By all means,’ agreed Alvarez politely.
‘Fifteen hundred and forty-five hours, thirty seconds. Go!’ He walked quickly across to the control room and went inside. ‘First, the index. P for poisoning and then the sub-heading of mussels.’ With smooth, economical movements he picked out a large book from among six others, placed this on a small table, and opened it: it seemed fitting that he should have opened it only one page away from the one he sought. ‘Three-six-four-one-five.’ He crossed to a typewriter-like computer input machine, switched it on, and typed out the numbers. There was a brief pause and then the golf-ball head typed out a reference number. ‘ATX stroke one-four-six stroke G stroke six-three-two-seven-one,’ he read out.
He left the control room at a very brisk rate. ‘ATX is down here,’ he said over his shoulder, as he made his way between two rows of shelving on the left-hand side of the room. ‘The heading signifies cases opened and then closed because there proved to be no cause for further investigation . . . One-four-six — first section. G, third shelf up. Six-three-two-seven-one, file number. And here it is.’ He pulled out a file. ‘Time now fifteen hundred and forty-seven hours, forty-one seconds. Time from initiation to execution, two minutes and eleven seconds.’
‘Wonderful!’ exclaimed Alvarez. He began to yawn and hurriedly tried to smother it.
‘Let’s see what we’ve pulled out., Fletcher opened the file and quickly read through the summary on the title page. ‘Fairly typical of the kind of case where the facts prove there’s no case for a full investigation. A rich wife a
nd a husband who was willed everything. Wife died from a violent illness. Doctor reported matters to the coroner who ordered a PM. Cause of death, mytilotoxin from eating contaminated mussels. Case closed.’ He handed the folder to Alvarez.
Alvarez read the name Mrs Monica Heron.
CHAPTER XVIII
They were in Fletcher’s office and now Detective Chief Inspector Udell was seated behind his desk. Alvarez, on a chair between the desks, felt rather like a shuttlecock.
‘Coincidences do happen,’ said Udell, who was a serious, even ponderous man.
‘Indeed, señor. But . . .’
‘Coincidences happen every day of the week,’ said Fletcher, with tired patience.
‘Of course, but from the beginning I have had a feeling about this case that I have told you about. Something is very wrong with things as they appear.’
‘A feeling for a case is not really all that reliable an indication, you know,’ said Fletcher.
‘How can I explain it? All the facts say one thing, yet all the time there is a small part of my brain which says something else.’
‘And what does this . . . this small part of your brain say?’
Alvarez shrugged his shoulders. ‘But I do not know,’ he said, almost despairingly. ‘Señor Heron’s wife dies from eating mussels. Then he comes to Mallorca to live and with him is an attractive woman. He becomes seriously ill and dies after a long illness. His friend, Señorita Stevenage, dies from eating mussels. Does that not make you think?’
‘It makes me think I’d rather not eat mussels,’ said Fletcher.
‘Señor, we must look at this carefully. You said Señora Heron was rich?’
‘Her will was probated at two hundred and fifty-three thousand four hundred and sixteen pounds, fifty-three p.’ Alvarez struggled with the task of mentally translating that sum into pesetas. ‘That is about thirty-six million pesetas. It is a very great sum. And Señor Heron inherited everything?’
‘There were one or two small bequests, but otherwise he inherited the entire estate. There were no children of the marriage.’
‘And no death duties since the bequest was from wife to husband,’ said Udell.
Alvarez spoke slowly, striving not to be, by inference, critical of their past actions. ‘Señors, you must have thought to yourselves, here we have a rich woman who dies and a husband who inherits, so we must investigate very closely?’
‘Of course. That is why there is a file on the case.’
‘And you investigated and it seemed the death was natural. But now that I have told you about Señorita Stevenage, do you not perhaps wonder whether maybe you missed something?’
Fletcher spoke coldly: ‘We missed nothing. Mrs Monica Heron died from mytilotoxin poisoning. The facts of the case are incontrovertible. Both the wife and the husband were taken ill, she more seriously than he. He managed to call their doctor who had them both rushed to hospital. She died and he survived. There was an autopsy and the cause of death was found to be mytilotoxin poisoning. There was thus no further cause for us to investigate further.’
‘Did the police question Señor Heron?’
‘Of course, since he recovered sufficiently to be questioned before the results of the autopsy were to hand. He could tell us no more than that he’d bought some mussels and cooked them for his wife and himself because mussels were one of her favourite dishes. Soon after eating they both began to feel unwell and started vomiting. He thought at first that after they’d been sick they’d recover, but instead they became worse and so he called the doctor.’ Fletcher leaned back in his chair. ‘As a matter of interest, the mussels came from Spain.’
Had the positions been reversed, thought Alvarez, no Spaniard would have been so ill-mannered as to point out where the mussels had come from. ‘Do you know what kind of a person Señora Heron was?’
‘There’s no indication of that in the file, except as regards physical description. She was five feet seven tall and weighed seventeen stone.’
‘Can you tell me what that weight would be in kilos?’
‘I suppose it’s here somewhere — we’re supposed to be going metric.’ It was clear that Fletcher was no lover of the metric system. He opened the folder and looked through the pages inside, soon finding the figure. ‘Near enough one hundred and eight kilos.’
‘Then she was a large woman! Were she and her husband happy together? Did he have any lady friends while she was still alive? Did he have a job, or did he live on her money?’
‘I’m sorry, but as I’ve just said, the report doesn’t list those facts since they proved to be irrelevant.’
‘Señor, as a very great favour might I speak to someone who can tell me these things?’
‘I really can’t see there’s any point . . .’
‘Tom, you can surely lay that on for Mr Alvarez,’ said Udell.
Fletcher’s mouth tightened.
Alvarez, in the larger of the two hotel bars, was mournfully thinking about how much a very small brandy had just cost him when a man came up .and said: ‘Are you Mr Alvarez from Mallorca? I’m Detective-Sergeant Inchcape, from Menton Cross.’
Alvarez shook hands. ‘Would you like a drink, señor?’
‘A half-and-half would slide down a treat! Realizing that Alvarez had not understood the order, he gave it direct to the barman. ‘I’ve been told to come here and give you all the gen on the Heron case. I gather you think things may not be quite as straightforward as they seemed?’ Alvarez studied the detective-sergeant and judged him to be a man with a strong sense of humour and the ability to accept the possibility of having made a mistake. ‘I will tell you the exact truth. I just do not know. All there is is this feeling . . .’ He shrugged his shoulders.
‘I know what you mean. Something stinks, but you don’t know what.’
Not quite the expression he would have used in this case, thought Alvarez. The barman pushed a tumbler of beer across and he paid for this, then suggested they went over to one of the tables.
As soon as they were seated, Inchcape raised his glass.
‘Here’s to everyone.’ He drank. ‘That’s better! . . . Now, what can I do for you?’
‘Please, you can tell me everything you know about the case.’
‘OK. And I’ll give you the facts as I finally knew them, not in the order in which I learned them. She was nearly ten years older than he was and had inherited a fortune from her father: he had worked in an insurance office before they married, but never reached much of a position. They met at a party and it’s pretty obvious he decided he’d nab her if he could. She was known as a rather dull woman, without looks, who’d messed up her life by staying at home to look after her father. Heron was a bachelor with a reputation for chasing the skirt and very sure of his own charm. Three months after the party they became engaged, three months after that they were married. People thought she was being a fool, but she was more than old enough to know what she wanted to do.
‘It’s difficult to be certain now — people seldom accurately remember their past judgements — but it does seem as if the marriage was happy for the first four to five years. Then something happened. No one seems to know what, but I’d give you ten to one that she discovered he was two timing her. There were rows, reconciliations, and more rows. She became unusually firm and threatened to chuck him out of the house, then lacked the courage actually to do so — probably because she was still in love with him.
She suddenly began to eat like crazy. Her GP became worried and persuaded her to see a psychiatrist and he diagnosed something he called compensatory hunger: to you or me that means she was desperately unhappy because her husband was fooling around and so by way of compensation she ate and ate. Seems a damn funny way of going about life, but apparently it happens quite often. So in next to no time she was a barrel and had lost any looks she’d had — and because she’d become a barrel, he lost whatever small interest he still had in her.
‘He had been reasonably circumspect
with his women until now, but once she’d become fat he no longer seemed to give a damn what she found out about him. He was seen all over the place with one particular woman and the tongues in the neighbourhood wagged themselves silly. There was a tremendous row with his wife, she told him she wasn’t going to stand it any longer and he took fright and swore to mend his ways. And in order to prove that despite everything he did still love her, he became all affectionate and cooked her all the meals she specially liked — I suppose he reckoned the way to her money-bags was now through her stomach. And that’s how he came to cook the mussels in a sauce of garlic and tomato. Sounds horrible to me, but then I’m a fish and chips man. They hadn’t eaten long when she said she wasn’t feeling at all well and as he was also beginning to be a bit queer he decided they ought to take something to settle their stomachs. He gave her some stomach pills they’d got — innocuous, they were checked — but they didn’t do any good and she got worse and suddenly he became pretty ill as well. He managed to phone their GP and then collapsed. They were both rushed to hospital where she died and he survived.
‘In her will she’d left everything to him, barring a few small legacies. A month after the funeral he put the house up for sale and managed to catch the market on the upswing so he sold it for a pretty high price. He left the neighbourhood and none of his friends or acquaintances saw him after that. In fact, it’s a safe bet they didn’t even know he’d gone to Mallorca until they saw the notice in the papers — always assuming there was one.’
Alvarez spoke urgently. ‘Señor, nothing could more suggest murder than a rich wife who is no longer attractive and a husband who is running after other women.’
‘Check!It had me all inquisitive, I can tell you. But in this country any death which seems at all suspicious or where the doctor hasn’t been in attendance very recently is referred to the coroner who can order a post-mortem. There was a post-mortem on Mrs Heron and that found that she died from mussel poisoning.’
Murder Begets Murder Page 9
