‘The señorita came to live on the island to escape from life and from you. And by all accounts, miraculously she succeeded. And among her friends was señora Rassaud with whom her friendship reached an intensity that could be called, depending on your way of looking at things, either unusually intense or abnormal . . . It is not difficult to understand why, after so many years of emotional starvation.
‘The news of your engagement must have shocked her, partly because of her former feelings towards you. but mainly because she was in a position to judge that the señora was far too good a person for you. That shock was magnified beyond bearing when she understood the truth—that your wife had been murdered by you. Now. her greatest friend was to be married to a murderer . . . She threatened you. trying to make you give up the marriage, didn’t she ; What was that threat: to tell the English police the truth?’
“She was hysterical, nothing more. I said I was going to marry Rosalie and there was absolutely nothing she could do about it.”
‘So she proved you wrong. There was just one way in which she could prevent the marriage and at the same time punish you for all the terrible harm you’d caused to others—and, ironically, it was you who’d shown her how to do this. You had disguised a murder as suicide. She would disguise her own suicide as murder.’
There was a silence, broken only by the shrilling of cicadas.
‘She . . . she did commit suicide after all?’ demanded West.
Yes.’
‘Christ!’ His voice rose. If she committed suicide, you can’t touch me:’
‘Provided it can be proved, no.’
‘Then pull your finger out and prove it.’
‘Some of the proof is already to hand. The señorita made one or two mistakes. She used a proposed change in her will to suggest a motive for her murder, just as your wife’s will had suggested the motive, but who can seriously believe that you. now a very wealthy man. would have murdered the señorita for the relatively small amount of money she had? She committed suicide in exactly the same way in which your wife was supposed to have done because that in itself would arouse suspicion:
but she even went so far as to choose the same time and surely you would not have done that because if suspicion were once aroused, such a coincidence would reinforce this.
‘She bought a typewriter a few days before she died—but why should she suddenly buy a typewriter when she had such little correspondence? And since you had not seen her after the beginning of the month, how could you know, if you were the murderer, that now you could type out the suicide note on your own machine and make it look genuine, provided only that an expert did not closely study it?
‘She was careful to spend part of the last Sunday with señor Meade and to be so gay and cheerful that he would immediately claim she could not have committed suicide. But it is clear that she was unnaturally cheerful. Why, unless there were good reason?
‘But if she made mistakes, she still planned very carefully and this makes it difficult to prove the truth. She was careful to use a plastic bag of a different size from any in the house. She typed out the suicide note on your machine.’ Alvarez was silent for a moment, then he said: ‘When, in the past three weeks, did she come to this house?’
‘I’ve told you, I didn’t see her because she didn’t turn up.’
‘Of course not. That arrangement—which you were bound to honour because you were scared—was to make certain you had no alibi. Nevertheless, there was a time, wasn’t there, when she did visit this house and you were not here?’
At first, West’s expression remained blank, then it suddenly became excited. ‘Goddamn it, she was here roughly a fortnight ago! Francisca told me about it the next day.’
‘Where were you?’
‘Out on my yacht, with Rosalie . . . That’s when she used my typewriter to make the suicide note!’
Alvarez thought about the receipt for the new typewriter which had been among Gertrude’s papers. Yet the laboratory report on the suicide note had referred to worn lettering. A man of sharper intelligence would have begun to understand the truth then . . . ‘Which car did you drive down to the port?’
‘The Seat, because I don’t like leaving the Mercedes unattended for too long these days . . . By God, that’s how she planted the plastic bag in the Merc!’
Alvarez nodded.
West smacked his right fist into the palm of his left hand. ‘It’s taken you a goddamn age to uncover the truth.’
‘I am afraid that for a long time I could not appreciate the meaning of some things, especially the unfinished painting and the cazuela.’
‘What are you on about now?’
‘The olive tree in the painting was full of torment. Why? Because she had been forced to realize that the man she had once loved had in reality always despised her and was responsible for twisting her life out of shape: that the only way in which to save Señora Rassaud was to kill herself and make it look like murder.’
‘She was twice round the bloody twist.’
‘And then there was the cazuela. Just before she lay down on her bed to kill herself, she smashed the earthenware cazuela on the floor of the bedroom.’
‘Where was that supposed to get her?’
Alvarez looked at him. ‘It was a symbolic gesture: a way of gaining her freedom.’
‘I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.’
‘Then nothing I can say will ever manage to explain it to you.’
West showed his baffled anger. ‘All right, so she tried hard. But it didn’t bloody work. I’m as free as the breeze. So now we’re going to have a bit of a celebration. Champagne all right?’
‘Nothing for me.’
He shrugged his shoulders, stood, went into the house. When he returned, he carried two glasses and a frosting bottle of champagne. He set one of the glasses in front of Alvarez. ‘I reckon you’ll change your mind quickly enough when the stuff’s in front of you.’
‘Please understand, I do not wish to have a drink with you.’
‘Suit yourself. Suddenly become very choosey? Drunk enough of my booze before now. What’s eating you? Furious because you were hoping to run me in?’ He opened the bottle and filled his glass, careless when the bubbling champagne overflowed on to the table. ‘It’s just your bad luck if thinking about it gives you ulcers. I didn’t kill Gertie and there’s not a thing you can do about it.’
‘You may be correct, but if so it will be only after it is quite certain there is sufficient proof of your innocence.’
‘Come off it! You’ve already had to admit there is.’
‘I have explained that I know the truth, because where I can’t be certain of something, I have assumed what the truth most probably is. But in a court of law, things are different—as you know, having taken advantage of this fact to escape the consequences of murdering your wife. There, nothing may be assumed, everything must be proved. And the facts surrounding the señorita’s death seem to prove she was murdered by someone who tried to disguise her murder as suicide. It is only when one understands the whole of the señorita’s life and her relationship with you that one is able to understand that she had sufficient motive to commit suicide and try to make it appear that you had murdered her.’
‘So?’ he demanded carelessly. He drank.
‘You will not legally be able to establish your innocence unless you are ready to admit to all of the truth, in particular to the fact that the señorita gave you a false alibi on the night on which your wife was murdered.’
Slowly, West lowered his glass. Admit that and he would be extradited to England, to be tried and found guilty of the murder of Babs. Refuse to admit it and he would be tried on the island for the murder of Gertrude and, because she had learned so well the lesson he had taught her, be found guilty . . .
THE END
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Deadly Petard Page 15
