‘All I can tell you is that Steve once said to me that it couldn’t stand Alan.’
Alvarez stood. ‘Señor, may I trouble you a little more? Will you come to the guardia post in Llueso and sign a statement, detailing what you have just told me?’
‘Of course.’ Hart came to his feet. ‘It was Maurice, then?’
‘It couldn’t have been either of them,’ said Amelia angrily.
Hart put a hand on her arm as it rested on the chair. ‘You’re right, of course … I won’t be long. But I will just nip down to the port afterwards and see if I can buy a newspaper.’
They drove away in two cars. They parked beyond the bus station and then walked, for the most part in silence, to the guardia post.
In his office, Alvarez opened the shutters to let the sunshine stream in. He set a chair before the desk and they both sat.
‘If you could prepare the statement for me to sign?’ said Hart. ‘We had thought of going out for a picnic. It does Amelia a world of good to get away from the house.’
Alvarez said in Spanish: ‘To which part of the island will you go for your picnic?’
Hart said in English: ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t know what you’re on about. My Spanish is limited to “red wine, please” and I always hope the waiter doesn’t bring the tomato ketchup.’
‘Then you are not certain what the Spanish for child is?’
‘I’m not, no. But I don’t suppose that’s important and if I’m to get a newspaper first I am a bit pressed … ’
‘On the contrary, it matters a great deal that you don’t immediately know that the word niño has a tilde. Just as it matters a great deal that you have an alibi for the evening of the second of this month and Maurice Ackroyd does not. It makes it certain that it is you who murdered Steven Cullom.’
‘I what? For Christ’s sake! If I’ve got an alibi, it means I couldn’t have done.’
‘If the alibi could be checked in every detail, of course. But on your own admission, it can’t. You could have bought the ticket to the theatre and a programme and yet never have attended the performance. You admit that no one at the hotel can vouch for you … Only the murderer knew that he might need an alibi and therefore set out to provide himself with as good a one as he could.’
‘This is bloody nonsense.’
‘Sadly, it is the truth.’
‘I don’t have to stay here and listen … ’
‘You do,’ said Alvarez, and his voice was now thick with contempt. ‘For a time I could not understand why the dog’s throat had been cut. Then I saw that this barbarism might have been committed by someone with a special reason to hate the dog and who, in a perverted sense, was thus getting his own back. Alan Cullom had tried to be friendly with it, but his brother had egged on the dog to dislike him. So Alan could have had reason to hate it. But he didn’t; he went on trying to make friends. Yet someone who had never seen him with the dog and who had only heard about the relationship from a third person might well believe that he did hate it and would have reason to vent his hatred.
‘Steven Cullom told your wife that the dog hated Alan and, I imagine, that this infuriated Alan. She told you this. Just as she told you about Beatriz. Señor Ackroyd could only have known about Beatriz if your wife had also told him, but she is a woman who never gossips even to a cousin; a husband, naturally, is different.’
‘You’re crazy! Are you forgetting that in February we damn near crashed and you suggested the brakes had deliberately been tampered with. If someone was trying … ’ ‘It was you who tampered with the brakes, relying on your skill as a driver to avoid an accident when the brakes failed.’
‘I’d have to be mad to take that sort of a risk.’
‘Or very sane and clever. There were five cousins, in four families. Their parents had hated each other and in only one case were those hates not passed on. Whatever your feelings were as the husband of the one cousin who didn’t hate, when you were made redundant by a firm for which you’d worked for years, and when you saw Steven Cullom, whom you’d always despised, inherit a fortune and become rich almost beyond imagination, you grew so jealous and so bitter that his weakness should be rewarded while your strength had been penalized, you learned to hate him as your wife could not.
‘Then Steven Cullom, who liked your wife, invited you both out here for the first time, two years ago. He lent you a house and a car, he paid the wages of the part-time staff. Sometimes, there is nothing that so exacerbates a hatred as generosity. That was the time when you worked out how to murder him and benefit from the murder. And because you were intelligent, you schooled yourself to move slowly and to wait to carry out each step until the circumstances were wholly in your favour.
‘Because Steven was so fond of your wife, he talked freely to her and she came to know many things about him. She told them to you. She didn’t understand that you were noting everything and waiting for the right moment to murder him so that you, through her, would inherit part of his fortune.
‘You set the murder to look as if a bungled attempt had been made to present the death as an accident. You made certain that the Bennassar brothers would come under suspicion. But you went on to arrange things so that it would become clear that they had not killed him out of revenge, he had been murdered by someone else from greed. And who would kill him except his brother who, under the existing will, inherited virtually everything? And if he were found guilty, the estate would be distributed among the cousins.
‘Why did you not murder Maurice as well as Basil? Because you were sufficiently intelligent to realize that your plan, however cleverly worked out, might just go wrong and it might become clear that Alan had not been the murderer. So you added yet another layer of deceit. If the finger of suspicion was ever pointed not at Alan, but at a cousin, it must settle on Maurice — which is why he was invited here when you were in England.’
‘That’s all balls.’
‘Those are the facts.’
‘If Steve was murdered for his money, Alan murdered him, never expecting to lose the inheritance through being found guilty.’
‘There is no proof of that.’
‘There goddamn well is. Only you’re so incompetent you haven’t found it.’
‘Then tell me what it is and compensate for my incompetence.’
Hart, about to answer heatedly, stopped himself. Just in time he remembered that if Alvarez didn’t know there was a letter in the Santa Victoria post office, addressed to Alan Ernest, containing the missing draft will, then it was impossible to acquaint him of the fact without admitting to being the murderer … Equally, to draw attention to the yachting plimsolls, carefully impressed with soil from around the body …
Alvarez came to his feet, went round the desk and over to the window. He stared out at the sun-sodden street. ‘Life is so often sad and cruel. Sad because once something is done, it cannot be undone; cruel because a guilty person can seldom be made to suffer without also hurting an innocent one. That is why punishment can seldom be just.
‘Basil Cullom is dead and nothing can bring him back to life; your conviction for his murder cannot restore the tears to his widow. Steven Cullom is dead; he deserved to die, but not to be murdered. Not because that was too brutal; but because murder can never be committed in isolation.’
Alvarez turned round. ‘If you are charged with murder, you will be found guilty. When found guilty, you will be imprisoned. But then your wife will suffer still further: surely she has already suffered more than enough? And she is innocent of anything but too much love and trust. Two lives destroyed when only one should be forfeit.
‘Yet if you are not imprisoned, will you escape all penalties for two murders and for destroying the happiness of Edith Cullom?’ He slowly shook his head. ‘We all can carry hell around inside us. You will find your hell knowing that because of what you did, Alan is rich while you remain poor.’
*
‘What’s that?’ Salas demanded over the telephone.
‘Señor,’ replied Alvarez, ‘I am now convinced that unless fresh evidence ever comes to light, it will be impossible to finally decide who killed Steven Cullom.’
‘What about those shoes?’
‘Although they are Alan Cullom’s, there can be no proof that he was wearing them when the earth was gathered up.’
‘Surely you learned something from your trip to England?’
‘Only, señor, that, as I’ve just said, lacking any vital and exclusive piece of evidence, it is impossible to name the murderer.’
‘Are you confessing that you’ve buggered up this case the same as all the others?’
‘Yes, señor.’
‘At least you’re consistent, aren’t you?’
*
Alvarez parked in front of Ca’n Cullom and crossed to the front door, rang the bell. María answered the call and led him through to the pool patio where both Susan and Alan Cullom were sunbathing.
‘I’ve been making further investigations and thought you should know the results,’ he said.
‘Well?’ Alan Cullom’s face reflected the strain under which he’d been living.
‘It will be held that your brother was killed by person or persons unknown.’
‘But … Are you saying … You told me that letter in the post office made it obvious I was guilty,’ said Alan Cullom.
‘I don’t think I said more than that it appeared to make it obvious.’
‘But you were wrong?’
‘Not really. It’s just that I forgot to mention it to my superior. He knows nothing about it.’
Alan Cullom stared at him, bewildered.
‘Why haven’t you told him?’ asked Susan.
He wanted to answer that originally it had been because of a pair of deep blue eyes in which a man could drown even before he realized he was in danger; but he said, ‘Señorita, I am not clever and so there are very many things I do not understand. Why should the innocent suffer as well as the guilty, why should happiness be taken away from someone who has already lost so much?’
‘Does that mean you’re not ever going to tell anyone about the letter?’
‘I am not, no. And in return I would ask two small favours.’
‘Two small favours?’ repeated Alan slowly. His voice sharpened. ‘You know what this is, Susan, don’t you? A shakedown.’
‘How can you be so stupidly blind?’ she cried in exasperation. ‘Can’t you begin to understand people? If the inspector truly thought you were guilty, you could offer him the world and he’d refuse it.’
‘Maybe. Maybe not.’ He said to Alvarez: ‘So just what are the two “small favours”?’
‘If you are not found guilty of the murder of your brother, you will be a rich man.’
‘So it hasn’t taken long to get round to money after all.’
‘Señor, many people have been hurt by your brother, but I only know of two who can be compensated. One was hurt because he lived, one because he died. Beatriz will be having his baby. She has a job now, but soon she will have to leave it. Her family are not well off and it would be nice for her not to have to worry about extra expenses.
‘Lady Molton had a dream. When your brother was killed, her dream also died. You could restore that dream to her. Lend her enough money to continue with her horses.’
Susan stood and crossed to where he sat. She took hold of his right hand in both of hers. ‘I wish … How I wish you had a dream we could give you.’
He stared out at the land and marvelled at the unthinking cruelty of youth.
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Layers of Deceit (An Inspector Alvarez Mystery Book 9) Page 18
