by Jack Treby
Precocious. It was an odd word to choose. The gaunt-looking man I had met on Friday evening had not struck me as “precocious” at all. But then I had barely known him.
The photograph was hanging in pride of place just above the mantelpiece in the living room. Another picture in a gilt frame was propped up on the shelf below, a faded portrait of a genial elderly couple. Gunther Weiman’s parents, at a guess. They had something of a Germanic look to them.
The other house guests had scattered across the hacienda. I had passed Mrs Montana out in the courtyard, on my way to the living room. She was engrossed in that lurid novel of hers, seemingly unaffected by recent events. Her husband was drinking coffee and trying not to scowl.
Susan Weiman was staring at the mantelpiece as I arrived. I was somewhat peeved, having been called away in such haste, to find myself in an otherwise empty room. The police sergeant was sitting out on the front terrace, at a small metal table in full view of the windows, busily interrogating Mrs George Talbot. The nerve of the fellow, I thought. What was the point of him summoning me here with such urgency if he was going to question somebody else first? Susan Weiman would probably be next in line, which meant I might well be kept standing here for the next half an hour.
‘Poor Steven,’ she mumbled, looking away from the photograph. Her brown eyes were watery and speckled with grief.
‘Were you very close to him?’ I asked awkwardly. I have never been much good at dealing with other people’s grief.
‘When we were children. But we barely saw each other as adults. He married and moved away from the farm. That’s his father, there. Uncle Joe.’ She gestured once again to the picture on the wall. ‘He was a farm manager too, in Cuba. And then I met Gunther and we came out here. And living in different countries...’
‘Not easy to keep in touch,’ I said.
‘We wrote, of course. Exchanged Christmas cards. Then when his wife died a couple of years ago and he lost his job, well, it was the least we could do to offer him a home. A bit of shelter, somewhere to lick his wounds.’
‘So he came here and worked for you?’
‘Yes. It was never intended to be a permanent arrangement. He’d get back on his feet and find himself a new life. But he got caught up in the work here – as one does – and things kept getting put back. He should have moved on, of course, for his own sake. Found a new life for himself. He did have plans and my husband was doing his best to help him. But it’s too late now.’ She shuddered.
‘This has been a terrible shock for you.’
‘Not just him dying, but...but murder.’ She gulped. ‘Somebody creeping into the house in the dead of night.’ Her eyes flashed across to the windows. ‘You forget how vulnerable we are here, in a foreign country, in the middle of nowhere. We have no locked doors. No protection. Gunther doesn’t even allow guns in the house. But we’ve always got by. And we’ve never caused any harm to anybody.’
‘You think it was an intruder who came in and...and killed your cousin?’
‘It must have been,’ she said, shivering at the thought. ‘Somebody must have broken in. It wouldn’t be difficult.’
That sounded a rather dubious proposition to me. ‘Was anything stolen?’
‘No, not that I’m aware of. But I don’t think it was... Steven...’ She sighed. ‘He had a bit of a temper. He could be quite abrasive sometimes. Not with us, but with suppliers. Business associates. Some of the workers.’
‘And you think somebody like that might have...I don’t know, crept into the house; or hired somebody to...?’
‘I really don’t know. Cutting his throat with...with a razor. Such a horrible, vile thing to do. My god. I don’t know anyone who would...’ Her voice trailed away.
There was an embarrassed pause. ‘Well, I’m sure the general will get to the bottom of it,’ I suggested, for want of anything more helpful to say.
‘I do hope so. Gunther says he’s a man who gets results. But he has a reputation for...well, you hear stories. People being tortured. People disappearing.’ She shivered again.
‘That’s just local politics. It’s the way these countries are run.’ I waved a hand dismissively. ‘Secret police. Unexplained disappearances. It’s rather unpleasant, but it won’t affect a routine investigation like this.’
She nodded. ‘I’m sure you are right, Mr Buxton. Even so, it won’t bring Steven back.’
‘I’ve had quite enough of your impertinence!’ Jane Talbot exclaimed, from out on the terrace. Her chair had scraped back and the woman was glaring across at the policeman on the opposite side of the table. ‘I have told you everything you need to know and I will not sit here and listen to such base accusations!’ She rounded the table and stormed through the door into the living room. ‘That man is an animal!’ she declared, her nostrils flaring furiously. ‘He all but accused me of...’ She stopped. The two of us were regarding her in open-mouthed astonishment. ‘Where is General Tejada? I intend to have serious words with him.’
Mrs Weiman tried to dissuade her. ‘Jane, I don’t think...’
‘I will not be spoken to like that!’ I had never seen Mrs Talbot in such a temper. It was a magnificent sight. An English gentlewoman in full flow, venting her spleen.
‘I think he’s out the back,’ I said, gesturing to the far door. ‘With Mr Weiman, examining the generator.’
‘Thank you Mr Buxton.’ She took a brief moment to address her friend. ‘Don’t let that man intimidate you, Susan. Don’t tell him anything you don’t want to.’ And with that she stormed past us and out into the courtyard heading for the back of the house. It was all I could do not to break into applause.
Sergeant Velázquez had risen up from his chair and appeared at the far door of the living room. His boggle eyes were even more pronounced than usual, anger visible in his clenched fists and pressed lips. He pointed a bony finger at me. ‘You! Next!’ he snapped.
The seat was as uncomfortable as the bulging stare. The young policeman was doing his damnedest to make everybody feel ill at ease. The interview could just have easily have been conducted in the comfort of the living room, or over tea and crumpets in the courtyard, in the unlikely event that such things had been available to us. That’s the trouble with petty officials, especially the younger ones; they know they are wasting their lives and they take out their frustration on others. Well, I was damned if I was going to let him get under my skin. I would answer his foolish questions with a calm and studied deliberation. I would not let him rile me, even as I was assaulted with a barrage of inane questions.
What was my name? he demanded. What was my occupation?
His eyes lit up when I told him I was a passport control officer at the British legation in Guatemala City. ‘So you are a spy,’ he crowed. His voice was rather deep, despite his relative youth, and his accent was thicker than the marmalade at breakfast.
‘No, I’m a passport control officer.’
‘All diplomats are spies!’ he declared.
‘In your part of the world, maybe. But I assure you, Sergeant Velázquez, I am not a spy. In point of fact, I am not even a diplomat. I’m an administrator. I stamp passports. My job is to keep undesirable people...’ I met his eye and emphasised those last two words, ‘...out of my country.’
He snorted derisively. ‘And the woman. She is also a spy?’
‘If you mean Miss Bunting, no. She is my secretary.’
His eyes filmed over for a moment and his face cracked into a lopsided smile. ‘She is a very pretty girl. You are her boyfriend?’
‘Good lord! No, I am not. What the devil has that got to do with anything?’
‘She is not married.’ He grinned. ‘She come here alone?’
‘She come...she came here with Mr Reeves, if you must know. At his invitation.’ Good God, what sort of man was I dealing with here? He was meant to be taking statements, not eyeing up the women. ‘If you know what’s good for you, sergeant, you will leave her well alone.’
�
��I do not take orders from you!’ he snapped. ‘You know the Weiman family? You know Señor Catesby?’
‘Not before this weekend, no.’
‘So why are you here?’ He was getting combative now.
‘I was invited. Freddie – Mr Reeves – is a friend of the family. He suggested I come for the weekend. With Mr Weiman’s approval, of course.’
‘You know Señor Talbot?’
‘No, I didn’t know him. Not before this weekend.’
‘So why you push him down the stairs?’
‘Good god! I didn’t push him down the stairs, you idiot! I found the body. At the bottom of the stairs.’
‘You see who push him?’
‘No. Nobody pushed him. At least not so far as I’m aware. It was raining. He must have slipped on the top step.’
‘But you no see?’
‘No, I didn’t see. But I have no reason to suppose it was anything other than an accident.’ I did not feel inclined to confide any of my suspicions to a cretin like this.
‘And you also find Señor Catesby?’
‘Yes. Look, I went over all this with the general. I was asked to give him a knock for breakfast, and I found him in bed with his throat cut.’
‘You know he has a razor with him?’
‘No. Well, I mean, I hadn’t really thought about it. But he was clean shaven, so I suppose he was bound to have a razor somewhere.’
‘Como? What is “clean shaven”?’ We had reached the limits of the sergeant’s English. It had not taken long.
‘He didn’t have a beard, so obviously he would have had some kind of razor.’
‘Did you kill him?’
‘No, I didn’t kill him!’
‘Do you see who kill him?’
I raised my hands in exasperation. ‘How could I have seen him? He was killed in the middle of the night. I didn’t go anywhere near his bedroom until this morning.’
‘You touch nothing in the room?’
‘No. I touch nothing,’ I growled. I was beginning to understand why Mrs Talbot had lost her rag with the fellow. The man was a blithering idiot.
‘What the hell do you think you’re playing at!’ Arthur Montana declared, his booming American vowels reverberating the length of the hacienda. ‘Her husband’s just died, for Christ’s sake!’
An argument had been brewing for some time on the far side of the house. Jane Talbot had strode out into the back garden and confronted the general with her thoughts regarding the misbehaviour of his deputy. Having observed the man’s impertinence first hand, I could hardly blame her for doing so. I had been too absorbed in my own ridiculous interrogation to take much notice of the raised voices out on the lawn; but when I heard a thump and a sudden cry, my ears pricked up. The argument had moved back into the house and the real slanging match had begun.
‘What on earth...?’ I exclaimed, rising quickly to my feet at the sound of Arthur Montana’s voice.
‘You sit down!’ Velázquez snapped. ‘I no finish my questions.’
‘To hell with your questions.’ I muttered, brushing past the table and stepping through into the living room. Mrs Weiman was already at the far door, peering into the dining hall, where the argument was now taking place. I moved across to join her.
‘I do not have to answer to you!’ Julio Tejada snapped, responding angrily to Mr Montana. The general’s chubby face had turned a bright shade of puce and his eyes were glaring malevolently at the American beneath those bushy eyebrows.
The United Fruit man did not give any ground. ‘You have no right to strike a lady!’ he snarled. Jane Talbot was standing behind him, pale with shock. My jaw slackened as I took in the bright red mark across the side of her face. My god. Tejada had thumped her. Not with that stick of his, thank heavens, but he had still given her a solid whack across the face. At last, I understood the cause of the American’s anger. There is something particularly despicable about a man who strikes a woman. Any hopes the general had had of gaining our cooperation had vanished at that instant.
‘I have every right,’ Tejada declared. ‘She is trying to interfere with my investigation.’
‘I was lodging a complaint,’ Mrs Talbot asserted. She could no longer bring herself to meet the eye of the policeman, but neither was she going to bow down before him. What a woman, I thought, in admiration. Standing up to a bully like that, even after he had hit her.
The general was having none of it. He was shaking his swagger stick furiously, though Arthur Montana was standing firmly between him and Mrs Talbot. ‘You do not question the behaviour of my officers!’ he snarled.
‘My husband is dead! Does that not give me the right to some consideration?’
‘You have no rights! I am the legal authority here. I am sorry that your husband is dead, but his death was an accident and I am investigating a murder. You may think, because you are British or German or American, that you are entitled to special consideration, but you are not. This is my country and this is my investigation. If anyone else tries to interfere with me or my deputy during the course of our work, I will have them placed under arrest. If anyone attempts to resist arrest they will be shot. Do I make myself clear?’
Sergeant Velázquez took that moment to stride past me into the dining room. The guests shrank back as he joined the general on the far side of the table.
‘Do I make myself clear?’ Tejada repeated, his free hand now hovering over a leather holster hanging from his left hip.
There were reluctant mumbles of agreement.
‘Good. The interviews will be resumed and I will continue with my investigation.’ He lifted his hand and glanced at his wristwatch. ‘It is half past eleven. Señor Weiman.’ He pointed his stick. ‘You will provide lunch for me and my sergeant at twelve o’clock and the interviews will continue after that. I have other men on their way and they will arrive here shortly.’ The overseer had returned to the farm, having passed on the general’s demand for reinforcements. ‘No-one will leave the house until these men have arrived.’
Lord, I thought. That would make getting home a bit tricky. ‘We have a...’ I began, before I could stop myself.
Tejada glared at me. ‘Well?’
There was no point holding back. ‘Some of us have a train to catch, at four o’clock. We need to leave here by half past one if we’re to...’
‘Did I not make myself clear? No one leaves. Not until this matter has been fully investigated. No one at all.’
Across the room, Freddie caught my eye. There would be no journey home for us this afternoon. It looked like we were here for the duration.
The generator was a monstrous metal creation with two large wheels and a network of thin metal pipes. The frame was in good shape but a hefty branch had been shoved through one of the wheels, presumably while it was still rotating. It was that which had caused the mechanism to come to a shuddering halt. The branch had twisted and torn under the pressure and was now stuck fast between two points. The damage did not look irreparable – it was simply a matter of extricating the wood – but that in itself would take some effort; and with all the electrical equipment housed in this small outhouse, it was not a task I would have relished.
‘Someone took a hell of a risk, doing that,’ I observed, hovering warily in the frame of the door. Even with the light streaming in through the far window, the outhouse was depressingly gloomy. A single light bulb hung down from the roof on a cord but without the generator it could provide us with no illumination. ‘They might easily have been killed.’
‘It would have been better for everyone if they had been,’ Arthur Montana grunted. The American had joined me out in the garden for a cigarette; or a cigar, in his case. I had been keen to get him well away from the house while the general was eating. For all Montana’s unpleasant views on race relations, I had to acknowledge he had done the right thing, standing up for Mrs Talbot like that. But it had also become clear that confrontation was not the way to deal with a man like Tejada. Better f
or all of us to keep our distance, where we could, and let him get on with it. The sooner he got what he wanted, the sooner he would leave and the sooner we could all go home.
The general and his underling were currently being served a light lunch out in the courtyard.
It was Montana who had noticed that the door to the outhouse was unlocked. We had finished our smoke, grumbling together about the behaviour of the two policemen, and curiosity had got the better of us. I had told him about the raised voices I had heard coming from the shed when Mr Catesby and Mr Weiman had gone to investigate the power cut. Montana was not surprised, but I still found the argument difficult to make sense of. I would certainly have been angry, if I had discovered my generator had been sabotaged, but I wouldn’t have taken it out on one of my in-laws, a man who could not conceivably have been responsible for the damage.
The American had his own thoughts regarding the attack on the generator. ‘It has to be someone from outside the estate,’ he said, surveying the damaged equipment.
‘Not a member of the household?’ I raised an eyebrow. Montana had obviously been talking to Mrs Weiman.
‘Some vagrant,’ he concluded, ‘with some half-assed idea about robbing the house.’
‘That doesn’t sound very likely. I don’t think anything was stolen.’
‘Or somebody from the village with a grudge. One of those damned Indians.’ Montana was always keen to blame a local rather than one of his own. ‘Or a business associate. Steve rubbed a lot of people up the wrong way.’
‘But you think whoever did this...’ I gestured to the splintered branch. ‘They were the ones who killed Mr Catesby?’
‘Makes sense,’ the American thought. ‘Get all the lights out, then creep up into one of the bedrooms, looking for anything to steal. But Steve must have woken up and confronted him. The son of a bitch panicked and did him in.’
