Three and One Make Five

by Roderic Jeffries

  ‘I hadn’t thought about that . . . Can you come in each day until I can find out exactly what’s what? Can’t say I’d like the idea of trying to cope with it.’

  ‘He’s all right if he knows you.’

  ‘That’s just as well or from the looks of him you wouldn’t have got very far past the gates this morning.’

  ‘There’d have been no trouble. He was still chained up. The sen or must have forgotten to turn him loose. Wasn’t thinking straight, knowing what he was going to do.’

  What thoughts did go through a man’s mind when he knew he was going to kill himself? Alvarez wondered.

  Alvarez telephoned Palma at 9.17 that evening.

  ‘Have you checked the garden?’ demanded Salas.

  ‘Yes, señor. We used a metal detector and had several responses, but none of them proved significant. The gardener says it would be impossible for anything of any size to be buried anywhere in the garden without his knowing.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you’ve thought to check with the banks if he’s deposited the stuff in one of their strong-rooms?’

  ‘Indeed, yes.’

  ‘You have!’

  ‘He hasn’t made such a deposit.’

  ‘Then it has to be hidden somewhere about the house or the outbuildings and you’ve failed to find it.’

  ‘I’ve had five men searching every nook and cranny. I’ll swear it’s not anywhere around.’

  ‘Then that just leaves somewhere abroad.’

  ‘Yes, señor. I think that originally they took everything abroad so there could never be the possibility of their recovery of the fortune coming to light by accident. Since then, they’ve just been encashing what they immediately needed.’

  ‘Then it’ll be deposited somewhere totally secure, probably a bank’s strong-room. Among Massier’s papers there must be a receipt for the deposit.’

  ‘There isn’t.’

  ‘Check again, more thoroughly.’

  ‘I assure you, señor, if there were such a receipt, I would have found it. And if you remember, we’ve not come across such a receipt with any of the other dead men.’

  ‘Then exactly how d’you propose to locate the jewellery and gold?’

  ‘At the moment,’ he confessed, ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘You do realize, do you, that until they are returned to the daughter of the Marques de Orlocas, the case cannot be considered closed?’

  ‘I suppose it can’t.’

  ‘There’s no suppose about it. You’d better start thinking and find out where it is.’

  Alvarez sighed. Just for once, Salas might have been generous enough to have credited him with successfully solving a case.

  CHAPTER 22

  The next morning Alvarez left the guardia post at 12.47 and drove home, taking a short cut up a one-way street, travelling the wrong way. His mind was fixed on the question which had been exercising it so bitterly. The jewellery and gold plate were not hidden in Massier’s house, outbuildings, or garden, and they hadn’t been deposited in any bank in Spain. So they must be hidden abroad. Where abroad? There were no leads left to follow and the last man who’d known the truth had shot himself. . .

  Parked outside his house was a newly registered Seat. Probably one of Dolores’s friends, he thought, who’d just bought a new car and was showing it off. He crossed the pavement and entered the house. The transition from harsh sunlight to dim interior was so great that although he was immediately aware someone was in the front room, it took him a second to identify her. ‘Tracey!’ he said thickly.

  Her expression was uneasy.

  ‘I knew you’d come back, my darling.’ He took a step forward, his arms held out.

  ‘No,’ she said sharply. ‘Oh God, Enrique, why do you have to make it even more difficult for me?’

  He dropped his arms to his side. ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘I discovered I couldn’t leave without saying goodbye to you.’

  ‘Leave?’

  ‘I’m flying to England tomorrow morning and on home to New Zealand/

  ‘Then why come here?’ he demanded, his voice filled with aching pain.

  ‘I’ve just said: I had to say goodbye . . . I was going to leave, just like that, but I was in my hotel room in Palma and suddenly knew I had to come here and say goodbye. We’ve got to part friends.’

  ‘Friends? After all that’s happened, you speak just in terms of friendship?’

  ‘Please try to understand.’

  ‘Why? So that you can have a peaceful conscience?’

  ‘That’s a horrid thing to say . . . Why won’t you try to understand?’

  ‘Because I love you.’

  ‘And I loved you.’

  ‘Loved. Not love.’

  ‘It could never have lasted.’

  ‘Why couldn’t it?’

  ‘Because . . .’ She desperately searched for words. ‘I told you, right at the beginning, I’m selfish. I’m not like Marion, who never stops thinking of other people. I’m totally selfish. I can’t help it. But I was honest about it, wasn’t I?’

  ‘Then when we first made love and for me the world had turned into light, you were thinking of how soon you’d go away and leave me in darkness?’

  ‘It wasn’t like that at all.’

  ‘But you knew even then that you’d end it?’

  ‘I . . . I didn’t think that way.’

  ‘Then you must have believed it would last. What changed your mind? Did you suddenly realize I’m so much older than you?’

  ‘That’s nothing to do with it. You’re twisting what I say.’

  ‘How can I twist words I don’t understand?’

  ‘You won’t understand. Your pride’s hurt and you’re trying to get your own back on me.’

  ‘Can you really think I would be like that?’

  She slowly shook her head. ‘No, not you. Oh, Christ, I hate myselfl But can’t you see, it’s because it was so wonderful that I had to come here now and be honest for . . .’ She stopped.

  ‘Were you going to say, for once?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then don’t you see, you love me more than you’ve ever loved anyone else? Let’s start again. We’ll picnic on Barrats Hill. We’ll explore all the beautiful, hidden parts of the island. I’ll take you to—‘

  ‘Stop it. I’m leaving tomorrow.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because . . . because . . . I shouldn’t have come here,’ she said wildly. ‘Goodbye, Enrique. If only . . .’ She came forward and seemed to be going to kiss him, but then just rested her fingers on his cheek for a second. She turned, crossed to the door, and went out.

  After a moment, he ran across and followed her into the blinding sunshine. She was behind the wheel of the car and through the open window he could see her curly, copper-coloured hair that had tickled his face, her generous lips which had pressed so warm and moist on his . . .

  She drove away, without once looking back. He returned into the house.

  Supper, which might have been a sad meal, was enlivened by the excited chatter of Juan and Isabel. Had the adults heard? The sports centre, with gymnasium, indoor basketball pitch, and swimming pool, proposed for so many years it had become a joke, was actually going to be built! Three men had been seen surveying the site. One of them had said that by next summer it would be possible to go and swim . . .

  ‘Here, have some more wine,’ said Jaime, and he pushed the bottle across the table.

  Alvarez refilled his glass. He drank. The alcohol was beginning to build a layer between him and the world and for that he was grateful. He even found his thoughts returning to the case. So typical of Salas to refuse to credit him with solving the case just because he couldn’t do the impossible and recover the treasure . . . Funny, but something Tracey had said earlier seemed to be of some significance . . . But that was impossible because she’d been trying to make him understand something that it was impossible for him to understand . . . More impossibilitie
s . . .

  ‘Enrique, are you feeling all right?’ Dolores asked, her tone very worried.

  ‘Uncle’s drunk too much,’ said Juan.

  ‘How dare you!’ snapped Dolores as she brought her right arm round and boxed him on his ear. He’d been threatened with corporal punishment often enough, but so seldom had he actually been hit that it was several seconds before he overcame the shock sufficiently to start bawling. The moment he did so, Dolores became frightened she’d hit him far harder than she’d intended . . .

  ‘Sometimes,’ said Jaime, as Dorlores, Juan, and Isabel, consoling each other, left the dining-room, ‘I wonder what they mean by the joys of a family . . . Here, now we’ve got some peace, let’s have a coñac?’

  ‘I don’t think I’d better drink any more.’

  ‘Why not? You’re not going anywhere, are you?’ Immediately he’d spoken, Jaime realized that this was perhaps not the most tactful remark he could have made and he hastily stood and crossed to the sideboard where he poured out two large brandies.

  As Alvarez drank, the confusion in his mind grew, but then, as abruptly as if a curtain had been drawn, he remembered Tracey saying: ‘I’m selfish. I’m not like Marion, who never stops thinking of other people.’ She’d never mentioned a Marion before. Could this be the same Marion who’d been with Massier up until a few days before his suicide? But Josephina had said that one day Marion had appeared to love Massier as much as ever, the next he’d told her she’d left him. That was the action of a selfish woman. Yet if the two Marions were one and the same person, Tracey had implied that she was the very opposite to selfish . . .’

  ‘. . . so what d’you think, Enrique?’

  ‘I think I’ve got to move,’ he answered thickly.

  ‘Going to be sick?’

  ‘Got to make a telephone call.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Is she selfish? I’ve got to know.’

  Poor old sod, thought Jaime. But that’s what happened when you were middle-aged and fell for a young bit of skirt. Not that he mightn’t have done the same, judging from Dolores’s description of the woman. All sex and nothing more. But what more did any man want?

  By concentrating very carefully, Alvarez managed to reach the telephone. He tried to remember the number of the guardia post, but all he could recall was one which, after due deliberation, he decided was his own. He picked up the book in which frequently used numbers were entered, but had great difficulty in working out under what letter the guardia post was listed . . .

  ‘What on earth are you doing?’ Dolores asked.

  ‘Try . . . trying to . . . to phone the post.’

  ‘If you’ve any sense left you’ll wait until tomorrow.’

  He shook his head. ‘Must . . . must phone now.’

  ‘Then give me the book.’ She read the number, dialled it, then handed the receiver across.

  The call was answered.

  ‘I want . . . I want . . .’ began Alvarez.

  ‘Who the hell’s that?’

  ‘Inspector Alvarez . . .’

  ‘Pissed as usual, from the sound of it.’

  ‘Ring Palma and tell ‘em . . . tell ‘em . . .’

  ‘All right, tell ‘em what?’

  He took a deep breath and concentrated very hard. ‘They must . . . find out which hotel señorita Tracey Newcombe is staying . . . Very urgent . . . Flying away in the morning. Going away.’

  ‘But not as far gone as you are!’

  He tried to put the receiver down, but missed. Dolores took it from him. ‘Go up to bed,’ she said softly.

  He staggered up to his room and collapsed on the bed. The world spun away into darkness.

  He awakened by the ringing of the telephone. A moment later, Dolores called up: ‘Enrique, are you awake?’

  He groaned.

  There was a sharp knock on the door of the bedroom. ‘Are you up?’ The door opened and she looked in. ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Terrible.’

  ‘Then you’d better stay where you are. That was the post ringing to say Palma has discovered which hotel the woman is staying in.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter right now. By far the best thing for you is to stay in bed . . .’

  ‘What’s the name of the hotel?’

  She wanted to tell him to forget the woman once and for all, but experience had taught her that it would be no good. ‘The Alicante. I’ve made a note of the number.’

  ‘What’s the time now?’

  ‘It’s nine-fifteen.’

  He sat up abruptly, then groaned as his head throbbed more violently. ‘I must talk before she goes.’

  As she left, she sent a brief prayer skywards that by the time he phoned, the woman would already have boarded the plane and flown out.

  He dressed, then went downstairs and along to the telephone. He dialled the number which Dolores had written on the pad. When the connection was made, he asked to speak to señorita Newcombe.

  After a moment, Tracey said: ‘Yes?’

  ‘It’s Enrique.’

  ‘Why have you phoned? Why couldn’t you have left it? I told you . . .’

  ‘Who’s Marion?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yesterday you said you weren’t like Marion. Who is she?’

  ‘Are you ringing about her?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I thought . . .’ She stopped.

  ‘Who is Marion?’

  ‘I met her in Puerto Llueso one day: she’s a fellow New Zealander.’

  ‘Who lived with a Frenchman called Raymond Massier?’

  ‘Yes. Why d’you want to know?’

  ‘When you said to me you weren’t like her, what exactly were you implying?’

  ‘Just . . . just that we’re very different kinds of people.’

  ‘Does that mean that she was happy to go on living with a man a lot older than herself?’

  ‘Enrique, please don’t go on like this.’

  ‘Is that what you meant?’

  ‘I . . . perhaps,’ she said, in little more than a whisper.

  ‘D’you know why she left Massier?’

  ‘I didn’t know she had . . . Though I do remember she said she might have to.’

  ‘Why was she going to have to?’

  ‘Because he said she would.’

  ‘Because he was afraid for her or for himself?’

  ‘I don’t know. I wasn’t interested. It’s just that she was in a state one day and wanted to talk to someone. And because we came from the same country, she talked to me.’

  ‘Did she say anything else?’

  ‘Only that if she did have to go he’d give her enough money to make certain she could wait for him.’

  ‘Where is she now?’

  ‘But I can’t know that . . . Enrique, I swear it wasn’t just the difference in our ages. The way of life’s so different out here. And I became homesick . . .’

  He interrupted her. ‘Goodbye, Tracey, and good luck.’

  ‘Please tell me you understand . . .’

  He put the receiver down and stared unseeingly at the far wall. Massier had been frightened that something would happen either to Marion or himself. Why?

  CHAPTER 23

  As Alvarez sat on his bed, he heard the distant chime of one of the church clocks striking the half-hour. There were only two reasons why Massier would have been frightened. First, because he feared the police were hot on his heels. But until the visit on Monday, he could not have had the slightest idea that the police had connected together the deaths of the four men, let alone that they had decided that those deaths had been murder and that he, as the surviving member, was obviously the murderer. Second, that he was in fear of his own life. But why should he have been unless the murderer was after him? And, by definition, that was ridiculous since he was the murderer . . .

  But the dog had been chained up when Josephina arrived on the morning of Massier’s death, when normally it had bee
n left loose all night to guard the house. The obvious explanation for this was that when a man intended to commit suicide he didn’t concern himself with routine or worry about his house being broken into. But it was worth remembering that it was easy to divert even a well-trained guard dog if one had a bitch on heat . . . Marion hadn’t wanted to leave Massier: he hadn’t wanted her to go. Yet he had sent her away. The fact that Massier’s telephone number had been jotted down in Marsh’s notebook meant they’d been in communication. Just before Marion had left, had Massier telephoned Marsh, to learn that he’d died in an ‘accident’? And did Massier then connect this with Allen’s ‘accidental’ drowning, a report of which had been in the paper? . . . There’d been a one-franc piece in the car in which Clarke had crashed; an empty bottle of French cognac at the point from which Llobera had ‘fallen’ down the cliff; a French Lebel automatic had killed Massier. Meaningless coincidences? Or subtle clues, designed to lead the police on to believing, should they ever suspect murder, that the murderer had been French . . . ?

  Yet to suppose that Massier had not committed suicide but had been murdered was to spit at logic. If the murders were connected, and they were, then there had to be a motive common to all of them: this was the jewellery and gold which had been salvaged from the wreck of the Marques de Orlocas’s boat. Since no word that this had been recovered had ever leaked out, it was safe to say that no one but those who’d taken part in the salvage knew what had happened. So only one of the five could have had a motive for killing the other four. Yet if Massier had been murdered, all five had been murdered by a sixth person. But there was no sixth person . . .

  Massier’s death had to be suicide. But that was to return to the questions, of whom had he been frightened, why was the dog chained up, and was a man clever enough to make four murders appear to be accidents likely to be stupid enough to leave behind obvious clues which pointed directly at himself?

  ‘Alvarez,’ said Salas over the telephone, ‘do you think you’re completely sane?’

  ‘I think so, señor,’ he replied.

  ‘Then how do you explain this call? You’ve very carefully and at great length detailed all the reasons why Massier must have committed suicide, only to carry on and tell me you believe he may have been murdered.’