Unseemly End (An Inspector Alvarez Mystery Book 6)

by Roderic Jeffries

  An hour later, he laid the pen down. He’d noted all the salient points of the case in chronological order, detailed the course of his investigations, summarized witness’s statements, etc., etc. Now he was ready to start typing …

  He suddenly started. Typing! Sweet Mary, but he’d clean forgotten to send the suicide letter to Palma, together with comparison typing from each typewriter in Ca Na Nadana, for tests to be made. Not difficult to imagine what Superior Chief Salas would have thought of such crass carelessness!

  He looked at his watch. It was true that there was probably just time to go to Ca Na Nadana, but there might be a small hitch and Dolores did become so upset if he were late for a meal. He’d go in the afternoon.

  *

  It was ten past five when he stepped out of his car, crossed to the front door of Ca Na Nadana, and rang the bell. He heard Lulu begin to yap.

  Ana opened the door. ‘Good afternoon, señorita. I just need to check up on something else.’

  She stepped to one side and he entered. Lulu’s rate of yapping increased until he was inside the hall and then, eyes bulging alarmingly, she stared up at him. It finally occurred to her that she might have met him before. She came forward and smelled his shoes, wagged her tail. He bent down and stroked her head. ‘Have you any idea how many typewriters there are in this house?’ he asked, as he straightened up.

  ‘There’s just one,’ she answered immediately.

  ‘That’s in the study, here?’

  She nodded.

  ‘The señor didn’t have one?’

  ‘Not that I know of, but naturally I’ve never been through everything in his room.’

  ‘Then to make certain I’ll go up and check. And after that I’ll be doing some typing on the machine down here so don’t think it’s a ghost.’

  ‘I don’t believe in ghosts,’ she replied, very seriously.

  He went upstairs to Erington’s room where he opened the shutters before searching the built-in cupboards. There was no typewriter in any of them, nor — though this was obviously extremely unlikely — was there a small portable in either of the bottom drawers of the dressing-table.

  He looked down at the suicide note which still lay on the top of the dressing-table. Remembering what kind of a man Salas was, and in view of the evidence which had to be negated, it was perhaps sensible even at this late stage to ask that both envelope and letter be checked for fingerprints to verify that Erington had handled them. He picked up the envelope by its corners, aware that previously he had handled it without thought, and carried it down to the study.

  The typewriter, a portable Olympia, was on a small typing table which had two shallow drawers below the working surface. There was headed notepaper in the top one and he wound a sheet of this into the machine. Carefully, he extracted the letter, unfolded it, and laid it by the side of the typewriter. He typed: ‘I can’t face any more. I killed Dolly because I wanted her money.’ As he struck a wrong key, and swore, it again occurred to him that the message was very curt when surely one would have expected a man of Erington’s stamp to try to justify the murder, however ridiculous such justification must seem to someone else? He shrugged his shoulders. Who could judge how any man was likely to write just before he blew his brains out? He withdrew the sheet of notepaper, read through the typing, then initialled the page and added the date for reference purposes: everything according to the book. He visually compared the two examples of type — only an expert could say for sure, but he was satisfied the same machine had typed both.

  There was one last thing to do before he left — check that there was not a second typewriter in the master bedroom, or any of the other bedrooms. He returned upstairs, went into the master bedroom, automatically closing the door behind himself. Almost immediately there was a scratching and he let Lulu in. She waddled over to the bed and if one had imagination one could see her desperate hope wither as she discovered, by scent, that the bed was still empty and her mistress had not returned. What was her future? In just eleven days her pampered world had been shattered forever. Eleven days ago, Erington had come into this room as Dolly Lund lay drunkenly asleep and murdered her with a pillow. Lulu, not realizing the significance of what was happening, had probably assumed — assuming that dogs could assume — that this was just one more bout of love-making …

  The question raced through his mind. Then why had she barked?

  He tried to dismiss the question. Perhaps she hadn’t. Victoriana could easily have made a mistake: being half woken by some other noise — she’d have sampled the champagne — she had heard the bark of one of the dogs chained to the entrance of a field to ‘guard’ it and in her half waking, half sleeping state had falsely identified it as Lulu’s barking. But all the ‘guard’ dogs were quite big and their barks were deep-toned: Lulu’s yap was high-pitched …

  If one accepted that it had been Lulu who had barked (or yapped), surely one had to go on to accept that it was very unlikely she’d have barked at Erington. So one had to postulate a third person who’d been present at the death of Dolly Lund. This at once made it probable that Erington had been murdered and had not committed suicide: the motive almost certainly being that Erington was in imminent danger of being arrested and if he were he’d tell the truth.

  He sat down on the edge of the bed and Lulu came up to him and worried his trousers until he picked her up and put her down on his lap. She settled and he fondled her ears as she looked up, eyes filled with gratitude. He recalled certain facts, noted at the time but dismissed as being of no consequence. Now, examined in the light of the assumption he had just been forced to make, it became obvious that in dismissing them he might have made a bad mistake.

  By the side of the bed had been a newly opened bottle of sleeping pills from which nineteen pills had been missing. Had there been five or less missing it would almost certainly have been assumed that she had swallowed these and, because of the quantity of alcohol she had drunk, they had killed her. Had she been awakened sufficiently to be persuaded to swallow up to five — and a drunken person could often be aroused sufficiently to do something even when not aware of what she was doing — the evidence of having taken them would have been found in the analysis of the contents of her stomach. True, if there had been a post mortem, the assumption that the sleeping pills, aggravated by the effect of the alcohol, had killed her would have been shown not to be true: but wouldn’t that assumption merely have been replaced by another? That she had rolled on to her face and suffocated, rolling back in the final paroxysm of death when it was too late? So here was a murder which could have been cleverly concealed, yet had been revealed by the most elementary of mistakes … Criminals often made mistakes, else they would not be caught, but would Erington, who had so carefully and cleverly manufactured an alibi for himself, have made so ridiculously elementary a mistake as not to find out how many pills could be taken without the antagonistic substance, ITC, working?

  Erington had been both clever and cunning, but he had also been very weak. Clever, cunning men could plot murders, but when it came actually to committing them they could discover that they lacked the necessary courage …

  On the morning of the murder of Dolly Lund, her bedroom had been very tidy: her underclothes folded on a chair, her frock hanging in the cupboard, her jewels in the jewel-box. Yet she was a very untidy woman who always relied on others to clear up the mess she left behind her. Erington must have realized that to tidy up her room, after it was known she had retired to bed so drunk it was probable she’d be even untidier than usual, could be to arouse suspicion …

  Erington had almost certainly arrived at the house at two and left half an hour later. Dr Rosselló had put Dolly Lund’s death at four, but because the estimated time of death must never be accepted as accurate, it had been assumed that here there had been a mistake of between one and a half and two hours. But suppose that estimate had been reasonably accurate. Then Erington had ridden away at half past two and someone else had press
ed the pillow over the sleeping woman’s face much later …

  When Erington had returned from England on the Monday, he had apparently been shocked by the news of Dolly’s death. Then, before he had learned what was the cause of death, he had suggested she must have taken some sleeping pills after drinking over-heavily at her party. At the time, because he was already suspect, his shock had been presumed false and his reference to the sleeping pills a clumsy attempt to reinforce the suggestion that death had been accidental. But if he had not known she was dead, then his shock would have been genuine and his remark about the sleeping pills a natural one to make — more especially if he had known that there had been a new bottle of sleeping pills by her bedside. After all, alcohol often had the effect of inducing immediate sleep, but then waking the drinker up later and leaving him or her unable to return to sleep. In her hazy state, what more natural than that she should have taken some pills …

  The Mobylette had returned down the dirt track at two-thirty. After that, Carolina Cardell, suffering from toothache, had heard no vehicle pass her house …

  To turn to the murder of Erington, which had to be directly connected with the murder of Dolly Lund. The automatic was a Walther with a very short barrel and it had been produced for the Gestapo in the first part of the war. Erington appeared to have used it to commit suicide, but its rarity made it that much more difficult for him ever to have obtained it …

  The suicide note, curt yet to the point, had contained not one word of self-justification …

  He looked down at Lulu. If only you hadn’t yapped, he thought with bitter regret.

  CHAPTER 25

  Alvarez left Ca Na Nadana and walked up the dirt track to Ca’n Bispo. In the late sunlight, the garden was a dusty place of tired plants and harsh shadows. He knocked on the front door.

  Rockford opened the door. ‘Hullo, therel You’re becoming a regular visitor: come on in.’

  They entered the sitting-room.

  ‘More questions, I suppose? But there’s time for a noggin first. What’ll it be?’

  ‘Nothing, thank you, señor.’

  ‘Nothing? But …’ He stared at Alvarez’s face and what he saw there made him square his shoulders. ‘I see.’ He crossed to the mantelpiece, picked up his pipe and tobacco pouch, stood with his back to the fireplace, legs wide apart, and began slowly and methodically to pack the bowl of the pipe with tobacco.

  ‘Señor, I need to speak to the señora as well as to yourself.’

  ‘Can’t do that, I’m afraid. She’s still got that beastly head that’s been worrying her for days.’

  ‘Nevertheless …’

  ‘No,’ said Rockford forcefully.

  Alvarez crossed to one of the armchairs. He sat, stared at the worn carpet for several seconds, then looked up. ‘Señor, it has taken me a long time, but now at last I know who. But I still do not know why.’

  ‘What’s it matter?’

  ‘It could be very important.’

  Rockford took a box of matches from his pocket and struck one to light his pipe. When the pipe was drawing well he blew the match out and was about to throw it into the fireplace when he suddenly checked himself and looked round for an ashtray. He found one on an occasional table and dropped the spent match on to it.

  ‘Señor, why was the señora killed?’

  Rockford returned to the fireplace. He drew on the pipe, causing it to smoke furiously, and made no attempt to answer for nearly half a minute. Then he took the pipe from his mouth and held it in his right hand. ‘I don’t suppose you’ll be able to understand. Matter of fact, I don’t think I do myself …’

  He smoked, then continued speaking. ‘You’ve got to remember that my wife was the daughter of a very successful naval officer, Admiral Sir Hugh Hobson. Another thing, her mother had a private income for her life from a trust. The family lived really well: you could in those days, you know, with plenty of servants to run the big house and no need to worry about the cost of entertaining … A person gets used to living well and then it’s not easy to change. Wasn’t it Tennyson who said something like, “’Tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all”? I’ve never gone along with that. Better never to taste champagne than to taste it and get to like it and then not be able to afford any. Know what I mean?’

  He puffed at the pipe again, to find it had gone out. He put it on the mantelpiece and a little ash spilled out. Very carefully, he scooped the ash into the palm of his hand and carried it over to the ashtray. ‘I hadn’t any sort of a private income: matter of fact, with my background it was quite something to get into the Navy in those days. So when I married Cynthia, things weren’t easy for her. Not that she complained, of course.

  ‘Promotion came much more quickly during the war and I gained my own command. Last ship was a destroyer, beautiful, smart as a tea clipper, and left all the other ships in the flotilla to pitch in her wake. Matter of fact, I managed to buy her bell when she was broken up fifteen years back, but Cynthia doesn’t like that sort of thing about the place … Didn’t make flag rank, though. Thought I might at one time, but there were too many better men and after the war so many ships were scrapped or mothballed …

  ‘Neither of us fancied living in England after I’d retired. Been abroad a lot, you know, and got used to decent weather. Another thing, don’t understand the young these days, with all their demonstrations and contempt for the law. Not nice when a country ceases to be proud of itself …

  ‘Had a bit of a job finding the money to buy this house and still have enough to live on, but we managed. Been very happy here: lovely weather, nice people, time to sit back and realize we’re lucky to be alive … Then my brother had some trouble with his business and needed money and asked me if I could help. One’s got to help family, of course …’ He became silent.

  ‘Did it save his business, señor?’

  ‘What’s that? … No. Wasn’t enough, I suppose. Anyway, lost the lot. That sort of thing happens and there’s nothing to be done about it. Trouble was … Trouble was, Cynthia couldn’t look at it quite like that.’ He spoke reluctantly, hating to be seen to criticize his wife. ‘She thought I shouldn’t have lent the money to my brother, but when it’s family … Left us in a nasty financial hole. Inflation’s been making things more and more difficult and when this happened we were in considerable trouble. Entirely my fault: never made enough to give us a comfortable old age. Meant we now need to sell this house and move to a flat in the Port or else return to England. Upset Cynthia no end, poor old fruit.’

  He went over to the window and stared out at Ca Na Nadana. ‘Don’t suppose you ever met Dolly Lund? Not alive, that is. Too much money. It’s a funny thing, but women can’t handle a lot of money: always seems to confuse ’em. Though if I said something like that back home now, I’d be in trouble: no right of free speech left there. But it’s fact. Dolly was always trying to impress and didn’t care how unsubtle she was. Used to upset Cynthia because she’d been brought up so differently. And it came even harder on her, seeing money thrown around while we were faced with selling this place and moving into a flat because we’d run out of money …

  ‘Went to the party that Saturday. Too much of everything right from the start. And then Dolly, well above the Plimsoll line in champers, began to boast about how smart she was in business and how in the past few months she’d made forty thousand pounds and bought the brooch she was wearing: chap said it looked like costume jewellery. Don’t hold with being rude myself, but I must admit I had a quick chuckle over that.’

  He turned, walked over to the second armchair and sat. He was suddenly looking quite old and his face was very drawn. ‘By the time we got back here, Cynthia had had rather a lot of champagne: in a funny way which I don’t pretend to be able to understand, she’d been showing her contempt by drinking …’ He became silent. He looked around for his pipe, remembered it was on the mantelpiece, relaxed back in the chair. He ran his hand over his hair. ‘She started
talking about the party and what it must have cost and how Dolly had spent forty thousand on a brooch when she’d already so much jewellery it was vulgar while we had so little money we were going to have to move into a flat … Cutting a long story short, we went to bed and, as always, I fell asleep right away. But I’d had a solid measure of drink, like everyone else, and it woke me up during the night and it was a quick trip along the corridor to pump ship. Then I couldn’t get back to sleep. In the end, I went for a walk: only thing to do. Halfway along to Ca Na Nadana and one of those midget motorized bikes came up from the road and turned into the drive and I thought I recognized the rider. But according to Dolly, who’d been furious about it, Mark was in England because his mother was ill. I started wondering if something funny was up so I went to the house. The front door wasn’t locked. Shouldn’t have gone inside, of course: wouldn’t have done but for all that champagne. Everything was a bit blurred …’ Alvarez finally interrupted him. ‘Señor, I know that it was not you who went into Ca Na Nadana, it was your wife.’

  ‘No!’

  He said sadly: ‘Would you ever have bothered to tidy the clothes which had been thrown on the floor? Did it matter at all to you if the señora had spent forty thousand pounds on a brooch?’

  ‘I swear it wasn’t Cynthia.’

  ‘When I came here I knew it was your wife who had killed Señora Dolly Lund. What I did not know was why. Now, I think I begin to understand.’

  Rockford clenched his fists so tightly that the knuckles whitened: his face worked as if he were in pain. ‘Then you’re a damn sight cleverer than I am. I … I don’t begin to understand though I’ve tried and tried.’