Meeting in Madrid

by Jean S. MacLeod

  Lucia turned her dark gaze full upon him.

  ‘I do not misplace things so easily,’ she said in an amazingly calm voice. ‘Especially when it is my most precious possession. Your brother gave it to me when we married and I have treasured it ever since. I wear it constantly.’

  Catherine caught a glimpse of Teresa’s face. It was ashen.

  ‘It’ll turn up,’ Ramon said. ‘It is bound to turn up. You could have dropped it somewhere—in the garden, perhaps.’

  Lucia dismissed his suggestion with a withering smile.

  ‘I do not go around dropping priceless rubies all over the place,’ she said. ‘No, this has been stolen. There is a thief in our midst.’

  She did not look at Catherine, but a swift, bright colour stained her cheeks and Catherine knew that she was being accused.

  Jaime made a swift movement towards her.

  ‘Sit down, Lucia,’ he commanded. ‘We must examine the facts.’

  She would not obey him, standing dramatically in the doorway still clutching the lace at her throat.

  ‘When you came in last night did you still have it?’ he asked, pouring her a glass of wine which she accepted automatically. ‘Think carefully.’

  ‘I wore it all day and I put it away in my jewel-case when I went to my room.’

  ‘And the case?’ he asked. ‘What did you do with that?’

  ‘What I always do. I left it in the drawer of my dressing- table.’

  ‘Locked?’

  ‘No, I never lock it. Up till now it has not been necessary to lock things away.’ She glanced pointedly at Catherine this time. ‘Jaime, someone has stolen my ruby and you must discover who it is! I have already questioned the servants.’

  His face darkened.

  ‘I would rather you had left that to me,’ he said. ‘What did you discover?’

  ‘Nothing. I believe they are innocent. Most of them have worked in this house for many years and are to be trusted. I do not think any of them would take what did not belong to them.’

  He put down his glass of wine.

  ‘Leave this to me,’ he said. ‘If you are sure you have looked everywhere in the house we must search the garden.’

  ‘We can’t do that till the morning, and I know I haven’t made a mistake!’ Lucia cried. ‘You must believe me when I tell you that I put it safely away last night. I seldom wear it through the day, unless on a very special occasion like our trip to Orotava, but you know I am never without it in the evening. It is the one thing I cherish,’ she repeated. ‘The memory I have of my husband’s generosity. Jaime, you must see that I am devastated by its loss!’

  ‘Of course I understand,’ he said, managing to lead her to a chair, at last. ‘I will do everything I can to get the ruby back. You can be assured of that.’

  ‘You will do nothing tonight?’

  ‘We will search. Teresa will go with you to your room and empty all the drawers. We must make absolutely certain that it has gone.’

  Lucia sipped her wine, a wine as red and full of fire as the ruby she had lost, and Teresa went to stand beside her.

  ‘If you are sure you put it carefully away,’ she said, her voice curiously unsteady, ‘there isn’t much point in searching.’

  ‘I have already said so.’ Lucia’s hand was trembling so much that she spilled some of her wine on the table as she lifted her glass to her lips. ‘I wonder why no one wishes to believe me.’

  She looked from Ramon to her stepdaughter and then at Catherine, getting unsteadily to her feet.

  ‘She took it!’ she exclaimed, pointing an accusing finger. ‘I know she did. No one else would dare!’

  ‘Lucia!’ Jaime was by her side in an instant. ‘You are hysterical. Catherine wouldn’t do such a thing. You are so upset about this you don’t really know what you are saying.’

  ‘She does not protest her innocence,’ Lucia cried. ‘She has nothing to say!’

  ‘Because I can’t find any words to answer you,’ Catherine said slowly. ‘I didn’t take your ruby. I’m not a thief, but I can understand how badly you feel. All the same,’ she rushed on, ‘I must protect myself. Please search my room, someone—’

  For the first time she looked at Jaime.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘that will not be necessary. We must look elsewhere for our thief, if there is one. Lucia, please go to your room in the meantime. I will ring for Eugenie.’

  ‘I do not need her attentions,’ Lucia said proudly, ‘but in the morning I think you will search to no avail.’

  Having regained her dignity, she swept from the patio, leaving them to relax, if they could.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Jaime, coming to stand beside Catherine. ‘Can I ask you to forget such an unworthy outburst?’

  Catherine was trembling from head to foot.

  ‘I can’t believe it!’ she cried. ‘I never thought anyone would accuse me of theft, especially here, at Soria.’

  ‘Soria isn’t accusing you,’ Ramon said, coming to put a comforting arm about her. ‘Only Lucia. There’s a difference.’

  The evening meal was a difficult one. Lucia did not come down for it, preferring to eat alone in her room, while Jaime and Ramon did their best to avoid the topic of the ruby as the servants hovered around the table. When they had gone at last, Ramon was first to break the silence.

  ‘Have you thought about Manuel?’ he asked his brother.

  ‘Manuel?’ Teresa objected. ‘Why would he steal from Lucia, of all people? He was her devoted slave.’

  ‘He has disappeared,’ Ramon pointed out.

  ‘But he was here last night. He rode in ahead of us,’ Teresa remembered. ‘No one could fail to recognise him in that ridiculous sombrero he wears when he wants to be aggressively Spanish.’

  Jaime looked up for the first time.

  ‘You’re certain about this?’ he asked.

  ‘Absolutely. He turned towards the stables while we came straight to the house.’

  ‘But no one spoke to him?’

  ‘No, not even Lucia,’ Teresa answered cynically. ‘But she could have sent him away this morning. She was up earlier than any of us and I heard her going round for her horse. I didn’t actually see her, but Lucia always rides out early.’

  ‘I can’t see the point,’ Ramon observed. ‘What on earth would Manuel do with a ruby?’

  ‘Sell it,’ Teresa suggested promptly. ‘It must be worth a lot of money.’

  ‘A small fortune, I shouldn’t wonder,’ Ramon reflected, ‘but how would he get rid of it? He couldn’t possibly go in to Santa Cruz and say: “Look, I’ve got this excellent ruby I want to sell. How much will you give me for it?” He is too well known, and so are we.’

  ‘There are other places, apart from Santa Cruz,’ Teresa reminded him, ‘but I don’t think Manuel has it.’

  ‘He’s the obvious suspect at the moment,’ Ramon decided.

  Jaime had remained silent. It was obvious that their suppositions did not interest him very much, perhaps because he already had a theory of his own.

  ‘We’re tilting at windmills,’ he said. ‘We must not condemn anyone—not even Manuel—before we are quite sure that the ruby has gone.’

  ‘I can’t imagine Lucia not knowing where she put it,’ Ramon mused, pouring their coffee. ‘She guards it like a hawk and it’s quite true that she wears it most of the time. That’s why I think she is telling the truth when she says it has not been misplaced.’

  The first flash of lightning lit up the room as the storm centred on Teide and swept down over the mountains. Catherine jumped to her feet.

  ‘If you don’t mind I’ll go up to my room,’ she said. ‘I’m rather tired.’

  Jaime escorted her to the foot of the staircase, covering the hand she placed on the carved wooden newel-post with his strong fingers.

  ‘Don’t worry too much about this, Cathy,’ he said. ‘We’ll find a solution in the morning. Go to sleep, if you can.’

  The kindness in his voice almost
unnerved her.

  ‘The storm?’ she asked. ‘Will it last very long?’

  ‘Not too long. It will be over before morning. I will send Teresa up to you,’ he offered.

  ‘No,’ she protested, ‘she mustn’t come if she would rather be with you.’

  ‘Ramon and I will go out later on,’ he said. ‘We must be sure about the dam. If the water floods over or breaks through a wall it could prove ruinous.’

  She stood looking at him for a moment, wanting to say so much, and then she fled up the stairs without saying any of it.

  The storm lasted for over an hour, thunder and lightning flashing and rolling round El Teide as if all the furies of the underworld had suddenly been released to spend their wrath on a defenceless world. Each lightning flash seemed brighter than the last, illuminating the garden beneath her for a second to plunge it into even greater darkness when it had passed, and the ensuing thunderclaps came relentlessly nearer until they were just above her head.

  ‘I can’t sleep,’ said Teresa, coming to stand beside her. ‘I hate a storm!’

  ‘Are they always as bad as this?’

  ‘More or less. The blessing is they don’t last long. I used to watch them when I was younger and wonder why El Teide was so angry, because it seemed that all the noise and clatter was coming from up there, and then, in the morning, when the sun came up and it was all over, I wondered why I had been so afraid. That old mountain looked so benign in the sunshine, washed clean of his rage. Or, at least, I thought so. Are you very angry with Lucia?’ she asked abruptly.

  ‘Angry is hardly the word I would use,’ said Catherine. ‘I feel—condemned.’

  ‘Because you will be sent away if we can’t find the ruby?’ ‘Because I’ve been branded as a thief.’

  ‘I know you didn’t take it.’ said Teresa.

  Catherine clenched her fists.

  ‘How can you be so sure?’ she demanded. ‘You have no proof of my innocence. Neither has Jaime.’

  ‘He would not accuse you unless he had absolute proof,’ Teresa declared. ‘He’s not at all like that. He is very fair. He will sift all the evidence and he will find the ruby in the end. Then we will know who the thief really is and he will punish them. You know, of course, that the ruby really belongs to me.’

  Catherine looked up at her.

  ‘It was my mother’s, so Lucia had no right to wear it!’

  An awful suspicion dawned in Catherine’s mind.

  ‘You would never have stolen it,’ she said.

  Teresa’s laugh was scornful.

  ‘I could have taken it long ago if I had wanted to,’ she declared. ‘Lucia is not so careful as she thinks. Anyone could have gone into her bedroom and taken her jewel-case, which she does not always bother to lock, but you see, Lucia believes that they would not dare. Personally, I think Manuel took it, although why I cannot tell you.’

  ‘To get back at Lucia? She prized the ruby very much.’

  ‘Only because it was something she had always coveted,’ Teresa flashed. ‘It was Soria, as far as she was concerned. But you may be right about Manuel. He might have wanted to punish her by taking the thing she loved most of all. Do you remember how she used to touch the ruby, holding it close to her throat? It was the one thing she was sure about and she was obsessed by it.’

  ‘Which means that she must be terribly distressed by its loss,’ Catherine said quietly.

  ‘We all are,’ Teresa decided. ‘Jaime, too, will be upset. It was something of a family heirloom.’

  To be brought back into the family when he finally married Luria? Catherine pushed the hair back from her forehead, feeling very tired.

  ‘The storm is almost over,’ she said, parting the curtains to look out. ‘The thunder is rolling away.’

  Rain was still falling in a steady downpour, but the night sky above El Teide was full of stars, making the whole world beneath them bright.

  ‘All these stars,’ said Teresa. ‘They must be a good omen. We will find the ruby in the morning!’

  CHAPTER SIX

  Lucia did not come down to breakfast. She had decided to stay in her room and allow them to search the garden unhindered for the gem she declared they would not find.

  Catherine, who had slept very little after the storm had subsided and Teresa had gone to her own room, came downstairs to find Ramon seated at the table in the patio with his feet up on an adjacent chair.

  ‘I’ve been up since dawn,’ he complained to justify the enormous breakfast he had obviously consumed. ‘We’ve searched everywhere for that confounded ruby. Do you know what I think?’

  ‘No.’ Catherine sat down at the table beside him.

  ‘I think Lucia lost it somewhere during the fiesta. If so, it will probably be found by some honest peon who will not know the real value and he will hand it to the police.’

  ‘But Lucia was quite sure she had it when she got home from Orotava,’ Catherine protested. ‘Surely she couldn’t be mistaken.’

  ‘She might be trying to cover up for her own misfortune. Losing a valuable family heirloom is far more serious than misplacing a cheap trinket, don’t you think?’

  ‘She took such care of it. There was a little safety-chain to pin it to her dress.’ Catherine poured herself a cup of coffee from the half-empty pot. ‘It couldn’t possibly have fallen while she was dancing.’

  Ramon got to his feet.

  ‘No, I suppose not, come to think of it,’ he said slowly. ‘It does look as if it was deliberately taken.’

  ‘Ramon.’ She looked across the table at him. ‘Do you think I stole the ruby?’ she asked.

  ‘Goodness, no!’ he exclaimed emphatically. ‘I’m sure you didn’t. So is Jaime, although we haven’t really discussed it.’

  ‘Then—how do you know what he feels about me being seriously involved?’

  ‘How do I know?’ he repeated, coming to stand beside her. ‘It’s something I can’t explain, but you can call it instinct if you like. Jaime is a very fair person. He would not accuse you until he was absolutely sure, so you have nothing to worry about. Nothing at all.’ He put a kindly hand on her shoulder. ‘Cheer up, querida! It will not be long before we know the truth.’

  ‘Have the police been called in?’ Catherine asked nervously.

  ‘Not yet.’ Ramon went out into the sunshine. ‘That will be a last resort, because Jaime has never been known to involve the family name in a scandal of any sort. He is very proud in that respect. Of course, if the ruby has been stolen he will go all the way in order to recover it.’

  Catherine cut into an avocado pear. She had no appetite for her breakfast while the black cloud of Lucia’s passionate accusation still hung over her. Although Teresa and now Ramon had assured her of their trust in her, there was still Jaime and, of course, Lucia herself.

  ‘Is there anywhere else we could search?’ she asked without much hope.

  ‘Not around here,’ said Ramon, ‘but Jaime is trying to find Manuel. He has disappeared again, although Eugenie says he was here last night to sleep in his own quarters above the stables. Evidently he did not stay there very long, because he had gone when she went to call him this morning.’

  Catherine could only think of Manuel with pity, for, if he had taken the ruby, Jaime would punish him.

  ‘Do you think he has gone for good?’ she asked.

  Ramon shrugged.

  ‘We cannot be sure. He has never known anywhere else but Soria. He was born here; he has always worked for us and Jaime takes his loyalty for granted. Manuel was a happy person till Lucia came on the scene,’ he mused, ‘but when he fell in love with her he became her slave. No doubt one day he will see how foolish he is.’ He looked down at his mud-encrusted boots. ‘Ah, well, back to the search! Jaime phoned Alex Bonnington, by the way, just to make sure that Lucia hadn’t lost the ruby while she was there, but he got no reply. Perhaps you would try again, later on?’

  Catherine nodded abstractedly, wondering what Alex would sa
y when she heard of Lucia’s irreplaceable loss.

  She hadn’t to wait very long for an answer. When she telephoned the bungalow there was still no reply and because Soria now seemed to be full of conflict she walked up through the garden to think more clearly.

  Even here in the bright sunlight with the scent of frangipani heavy in the air and the flamboyant spears of a flame tree thrusting against the background green to make a brilliant splash of colour above her head, she could not think beyond Lucia’s ugly accusation of the day before. She had meant every word she had said.

  Coming eventually to the heavy oak door in the outer wall, Catherine hesitated. It was no use searching for the ruby beyond the door, but suddenly it seemed the only way to comparative peace of mind. Pulling it open, she found herself looking through the windscreen of Alex Bonnington’s little white two-seater.

  ‘Oh, Alex, you’ve no idea how glad I am to see you!’ she exclaimed.

  Alex took one look at her distressed face and the smile faded from her own.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked. ‘Is it Lucia?’

  ‘In a kind of way.’

  Alex opened the car door.

  ‘Get in!’ she commanded.

  When Catherine was settled in the seat beside her she reversed the car on to the main road.

  ‘We’ll drive a little way,’ she suggested. ‘You can tell me all about it.’