Unseemly End (An Inspector Alvarez Mystery Book 6)

by Roderic Jeffries

  *

  The sun beat down on his back as he lay face downwards on a towel by the pool. By his side was a glassful of Campari, sweet vermouth, and crushed ice.

  What was it really like to kill someone? To know that one was playing at being God? Especially when the motive was gain not passion and therefore there could be no veil between the action and its effects.

  As far as he knew, capital punishment was still legal in Spain even though it was some years now since such a sentence had been carried out. What was it like to wake up and know that this was one’s last morning alive? To walk from one cell into another and to see (or to sense it, if one were blindfolded) the chair: to sit and to have the bonds secured: to feel the noose of the garrotte being adjusted over one’s neck just before it was tightened … He felt the sweat break out. His imagination had always been much too vivid.

  Yet that was to think in terms of failure. Think in terms of success. No one knew how many successful murders were committed in every country in every year because if they were successful the death was either never recorded or else recorded as accidental or natural. To murder successfully one needed to be clever, or lucky, or both. From the day he had left home he had been clever enough to know exactly what he wanted from life: he’d been lucky enough to get it.

  He reached out to the glass, picked it up, and drank, his movements awkward because he couldn’t be bothered to roll over and sit up. A clever man planned, but didn’t believe that his cleverness must ensure success: he accepted that his plans might fail and therefore made allowances for failure. If Dolly’s death appeared to be accidental, but through some mischance was identified as murder …

  Dreaming, he thought bitterly: in glorious technicolour with both feet on a banana skin.

  *

  He lay in bed, staring up into the darkness, listening to the barking of a dog tied up in some field to ‘guard’ it.

  It had been one hell of an evening. Dolly had returned from Palma in a temper because her hair hadn’t been done exactly as she liked it. He’d made the mistake of trying to calm her down before he’d filled her up with alcohol. There’d been a row — although technically didn’t it take two to have a row? — in which she’d reminded him that he owed her everything and if she chose to throw him out of the house he’d go naked because even the clothes he wore had been bought by her …

  What was the safest way of faking an accident? If her death was identified as murder, how could he possibly escape suspicion when by her will he inherited everything? He had reached the stage of sleepiness where images floated through his mind in inconsequential sequence but still possessed some logic when a sudden thought jerked him fully awake. Dolly, in her desire for social standing, had turned her daughter’s pathetic marriage into a happy and highly successful one. Why not use that lie to commit the perfect murder?

  CHAPTER 9

  Rockford walked into the post office and was surprised to find it empty. The man behind the counter checked through the mail, without first finding half a dozen other jobs to do, and handed him five letters. Less than thirty seconds from beginning to end, he estimated: if the staff weren’t careful, they’d be in danger of deservedly getting a name for efficiency.

  He went out into the street before checking through the letters, as he always did: service life had made him a man of habit, not that he ever allowed habit to become an end to itself. Four letters were for Cynthia. The fifth one was for him, from Garry. He slit open the envelope, took out the two typewritten pages, and read through them. When he’d finished he folded and replaced them in the envelope. He squared his shoulders. That was that. Torpedoed. But if the same sequence of events were to occur again, he would act exactly as he had before. A man’s first duty was to his family: nothing could override that duty.

  He walked through to the square and sat at one of the tables. He ordered a brandy and drank it, spoke to a couple of people he knew, continued through the village and along the winding lane and dirt track to Ca’n Bispo.

  Cynthia was on the phone. Yes, of course they’d been invited to Dolly’s party. But she really didn’t know if they’d go. The evening was bound to be in the worst possible taste …

  He took his pipe from his pocket and, very absent-mindedly, began to tap it out in the ashtray on an occasional table.

  ‘Phillip!’ she called out, one hand over the receiver.

  ‘I’ve just spent hours cleaning everything.’

  He picked up the ashtray, carried it through to the kitchen, and emptied it in the gash bucket. She couldn’t see what he was doing, so he polished the ashtray with the bottom of his shirt. Back in the sitting-room, he replaced it exactly where it had been before.

  Cynthia agreed over the phone that it was a pity so many of the new expatriates who had come to live in the area were NOCD, said goodbye, and replaced the receiver. ‘That was Erato.’

  Erato was the pencil-thin, middle-aged daughter of an aristocratic poetess. A bit of a mistake, he’d once called her: Cynthia had not been a-muse-d.

  ‘She wanted to know if we were going to the party tonight. I said I wasn’t certain.’

  He remembered the dress she had carefully ironed earlier, her complaints as she ironed that she’d worn it so often people would recognize it before they recognized her, and her cold fury when she’d discovered that the clasp of the necklace of cultured pearls had broken.

  ‘Was there any mail?’ she asked.

  ‘Four letters for you.’

  ‘Might I have them, then?’

  He took all the letters from his pocket: he passed the four unopened ones to her and kept the opened one in his right hand.

  She sat in one of the armchairs and read. After a while, she looked up. ‘Vera is coming to stay with us next month.’

  Bad luck always seemed to sail in convoy, he thought.

  ‘Phillip, did you hear what I said?’

  ‘That’s good,’ he answered lamely.

  ‘It means we simply have to have the spare bedroom redecorated: we can’t possibly ask her to sleep in there with the walls all stained with that beastly damp mould. If only you’d done as I originally suggested.’

  ‘Old girl, there’s something I’ve got to say.’

  She was astonished: she was unused to his interrupting her.

  ‘This letter …’ He held up his right hand. ‘It’s from Garry.’

  ‘Then I hope it’s to say he’s paid the money into our bank account?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why hasn’t he?’

  ‘Because I’m afraid things didn’t get better for him, they got worse. The business has gone for a burton.’

  ‘It’s what?’ she said, almost whispering.

  He went over to the window and looked out. It occurred to him that in moments of mental worry, the view of the land and the mountains somehow offered him quiet solace. ‘As a matter of fact, the receiver’s in.’

  ‘What about our money?’

  ‘Gone.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. He’s got to pay it back.’

  ‘He can’t. There’s not even enough for the secured creditors.’

  ‘D’you mean by that … You can’t have lent him the money without security: you just can’t.’

  ‘He is my brother.’

  ‘You’re … you’re senile.’

  He took his pipe and began to rub the bowl against the palm of his left hand. ‘I’ve been thinking … This place may not be a palace, but it is in the Huerta, with a bit of a garden and the telephone. People want to live here because it’s rural, yet within easy walking distance of the village. It’ll fetch a reasonable price. If we sell it …’ ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘And buy a flat down in the Port, I think the difference would just be enough to invest and restore our income.’

  ‘Live in a flat in the Port?’ she said wonderingly.

  ‘It’s been on the cards for some time now, actually. You see, with inflation roaring away as it has been, we’v
e been living closer and closer to the line.’

  ‘I am not moving to a flat in the Port.’

  ‘I’m sure we’ll be able to find one that’s not too bad, especially if we can hang on until the winter and the prices ease.’

  ‘I am not moving.’

  His expression was sad. ‘What I’m really trying to say, old fruit, is that we aren’t going to have any option in the matter.’

  Her face was strained. ‘Don’t you understand? I am not moving to a flat in the Port, as if I were some grocer’s wife from Surbiton.’

  If he were a grocer in Surbiton, he thought, they’d be moving from a flat into a villa. ‘Then you’d prefer to go back home?’

  ‘Go back?’ She visualized the kind of life they would be forced to lead there in their greatly reduced circumstances.

  ‘I’m sure we’ll find somewhere nice in the Port …’ He began. He stopped when he saw tears trickle down her cheeks. These were the first tears she had shed since the day his great friend and contemporary had gained promotion to flag rank and he had not. A man of compassion, he went to comfort her and put his hand on her shoulder. ‘We’ll get by. We’ve still each other which is the only thing that really matters.’

  She jerked her shoulder free and then hysterically called him a failure and a fool.

  *

  As she entered Ca Na Nadana, each woman was presented with a corsage by Ana: delivered from Palma that late afternoon, each corsage was made up from two orchids.

  Dolly received in the sitting-room. Her dress was unmistakably the very expensive product of a top couturier: just as unmistakably, it did not suit a woman of her age at a private party in the heat of the summer. She also wore so much jewellery that each piece was devalued by all the others.

  The garden was floodlit and the lighting had been installed by a retired electrical engineer who had worked in theatres. He was an artist. Colour had been used to melt shapes so that there was an infinity of space within which were shadowy recesses, each a small world on its own. Even the very large swimming pool had, with coloured underwater lights and prismatic reflectors, been turned into a shimmering rainbow.

  There was, of course, champagne to drink. But those without an educated palate were able to ask for whatever other drink they preferred. Smoked salmon and pâté-de-foie-gras appetizers were served initially with the drinks.

  A barbecue, set beyond two weeping pear trees, had been fashioned as a grotto and this was watched over by two hobgoblins. The chef, who normally worked in a restaurant in the Port and was in full uniform, cooked kebabs to order: guests could choose whatever combination they wanted from various meats, pineapple, and giant prawns. To the right of the grotto was a rose bower in which were served five different kinds of local sponge cakes, fruit salad and cream, ice-cream, rum babas, chocolate eclairs, and meringues. There was a very wide choice of liqueurs, ranging from cognac to Tia Maria.

  ‘Never in the field of social conflict,’ said one of the guests, after his sixth glass of champagne, ‘was so much offered by so few to so many.’

  *

  Had Erington been there, he would almost certainly have managed to prevent Dolly making quite such a fool of herself: he would have persuaded her not to drink so much, so quickly, and when she tried to boast he would tactfully have guided the conversation to fresh subjects.

  But he was in England, called there by a telegram from his younger brother which had told him that his mother was very seriously ill and calling for him. Dolly had demanded he get his priorities right and stay for the party, but he had insisted on leaving immediately, defying both her tears and her threats.

  By nine-forty-five, as night drifted in on a stillness so complete that not a leaf stirred, Dolly had drunk enough champagne to forget any need to dissemble her feelings. ‘I had heard John and Patty were in some sort of financial mess, yes. But, of course, really that’s been obvious for a long time: that terrible old car which looks just like a wreck and those pathetic parties. And even going around trying to do odd jobs to make a few pesetas. As I’ve always said, people shouldn’t be allowed to come out here unless they can afford to live decently. Apart from any other reason, it’s up to us to set a standard.’

  ‘Set a standard for whom?’

  She frowned slightly as she tried to focus her gaze and discover who, among the several people grouped loosely around her, had spoken. She noticed the look of supercilious disdain on Kim Covert’s face. ‘A standard for the locals, of course.’ She despised the Coverts. They were from an old county family who had lost their money, yet had never learned to hold their heads lower.

  ‘You think they would want to follow the standards some of the wealthier foreigners set?’

  Covert’s wife said in a low voice: ‘Shut up, Kim.’

  He refused to shut up. ‘On the principle, no doubt, of the shipwrecked seaman who finally reaches shore and sees a gibbet and says, “Thank God, civilization.”?’

  ‘I don’t know what on earth you’re talking about: shipwrecks, gibbets.’

  Victoriana walked into the middle of the group and held out the large silver salver on which were more than a dozen full glasses of champagne. Most of those present refused any more, but Dolly reached out and put down her empty glass with too much force. Victoriana was momentarily unable to keep the salver level and champagne spilled over the rims of some of the glasses. Dolly upbraided her for carelessness, picked up a glass, and drank eagerly. Covert, using unnecessary care, put his glass down on the tray. He picked up a full glass and thanked Victoriana with grave courtesy. He raised his glass. ‘I drink to all those who, by their actions, set such pointed examples for the locals.’

  His wife said, now really angry: ‘If you go on like this, I’ll kill you.’

  Dolly, between mouthfuls of champagne, returned to the subject they had previously been discussing. ‘I just can’t think how people can come out here when they can’t afford to live reasonably. Haven’t they any pride?’

  ‘Are you criticizing them for lack of pride or lack of money?’ Covert was nearly as drunk as Dolly, but this fact was obvious only to those who knew that when sober he was invariably, if at times chillingly, polite.

  ‘Both.’

  ‘So to be proudly honest but poor is not qualification enough: to be proudly dishonest and rich is?’

  ‘There’s no need for anyone to be poor.’

  ‘No? Have you, then, discovered some secret which we lesser — and poorer — mortals have been denied?’

  It finally occurred to Dolly that he was being rude. ‘It’s easy enough making money playing the markets,’ she answered, laughing to herself because Covert’s father had lost the family fortune on the stockmarket.

  ‘Markets in what? Scrap iron?’

  She did not know that her late husband was popularly supposed to have made his money as a scrap iron merchant. ‘Scrap iron? … Buying and selling shares and commodities, of course.’

  ‘I’ve always understood that that’s very tricky? For instance, I don’t suppose that you have ever actually managed to make a genuine profit doing that, have you?’

  She drained her glass. ‘I’ve made as much as anyone.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I made over forty thousand pounds seven months ago. How about that?’

  ‘I think I’d describe that as unbelievable.’

  ‘I knew gold was going to go up, so I bought when the price was under five hundred and sold at over six hundred. Forty thousand pounds and not a penny in tax. And d’you know what I did with the forty thousand?’

  ‘Invested it in Striker and Cabbot?’

  If he’d hoped to confuse her, he failed. ‘A firm about to go bankrupt?’ She tapped the largest and most ostentatious piece of jewellery she was wearing, a brooch made from a solitaire diamond set around with rubies. ‘I bought this.’

  ‘That really cost you forty thousand pounds? I am surprised. I’d no idea inflation had become so bad that costume jewellery was that
expensive.’

  It was a cheap, obvious remark and therefore untypical of him. His wife took his arm and, digging her nails into his bare flesh — he wore a short-sleeved linen shirt with a silk neckerchief — forced him to walk away. In a low voice she told him what she thought of his behaviour in terms normally restricted by the county to the hunting field and croquet.

  CHAPTER 10

  Alvarez awoke. He stared up at the pattern on the ceiling, formed by the light coming up through the shutters and a gap in the curtains, and knew he had some reason for feeling contented. Then he remembered. Today was Sunday and he did not have to go to the office.

  He was about to drift off to sleep again when his head began to ache and he awoke fully, first because of his sense of irritation, then because of the discomfort … He remembered how, when he and Jaime had insisted on finishing the bottle of brandy the previous night, Dolores had called them a couple of drunken Andalucian gypsies … Thank God he could stay in bed all morning …

  Downstairs, the telephone rang.

  It couldn’t be for him, he assured himself: not on a Sunday, not when he was rapidly beginning to feel that death could be only a merciful release.

  He heard Dolores shout at Jaime and Jaime shout at Dolores. Jaime, he thought with brief, perverse satisfaction would be feeling even worse than he: Jaime always did.

  The telephone was finally answered. Let it not be for me, he thought, and I promise on my sacred honour …

  ‘Enrique,’ Dolores shouted.

  He pulled himself into a sitting position and the room shivered and his stomach churned. Never again would he touch another drop of brandy …

  ‘Are you ever coming down?’

  He slowly swivelled round and stood. He put on a thin dressing-gown over his pyjama trousers, left the bedroom, and tottered downstairs.

  Dolores, her jet black hair glistening from prolonged brushing and swept back against the sides of her head and tied into a bun, brilliant brown eyes as freshly bright as a midsummer dawn, studied him. She put her hands on her hips. ‘You look terrible!’