Troubled Deaths

by Roderic Jeffries

  ‘You’ve never even kissed me, you damn fool.’

  ‘I . . . I’ve been too scared to.’

  ‘You, scared? I don’t believe you’re scared of anything or anyone.’

  ‘I’m scared of myself.’

  ‘Well, I’m not. So come here.’

  He went.

  The report from the forensic laboratory arrived in the afternoon, having been brought from Palma on the bus. The seed was identified as the seed of Colchicum autumnale, or Meadow Saffron. All such seed contained the poison colchicine.

  Alvarez leaned back in his chair and wondered, yet again, what the señorita had thought as she swallowed the poison? And had she found redemption in the agony, or had that been so great that before she died she couldn’t understand her own madness?

  He was going to have to telephone Superior Chief Salas now and explain that all his previous reports on the case were incorrect.

  There were days when the winter weather was as fine as travel agents would have it always and Saturday was one such. The sun was hot, the sky was cloudless, the air was sparkling, and it could have been early May.

  Alvarez walked into the Club Llueso and entered the bar.

  ‘Hullo, stranger,‘said the barman. ‘Haven’t seen you in here for so long I thought you must have been posted.’

  ‘I’ve been hells bells busy.’

  ‘You want to watch it, you know - too much work is bad for the liver. What’ll it be, then? The usual?’

  ‘Make it a large one.‘He yawned. ‘Thank God tomorrow’s Sunday and I can rest.’

  ‘Some people are born lucky. Me? I’ll be working here.’

  ‘My heart bleeds for you, so have a drink with me?’

  ‘Are you paying for it?’

  ‘I suppose. I’m just too soft-hearted.’

  The barman poured out two brandies. As he pushed one glass across the bar, he looked past Alvarez and saw a priest enter. ‘Hullo, it looks as if you’re wanted, Enrique,’ he said in a low voice.

  Alvarez turned. Father Farras was a five-foot button of a man, with a face which looked old and simple, who had the strength of a giant when he was wrestling with Satan.

  ‘Enrique,’ said Father Farras, his voice expressing a certain annoyance, ‘when I saw you crossing the square I shouted and shouted, but you never stopped.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Father. I was in a bit of a hurry.’

  ‘Quite so!’ Father Farras looked at the glass in Alvarez’s hand.

  ‘It’s my first today. Or very nearly, anyway. Would you like one?’

  ‘I normally never indulge, as you know, but since I’m actually in a bar . . .’ Father Farras leaned forward to speak to the barman. ‘A small, a very small, coñac, please.’

  The barman poured out a large brandy and passed the glass across. Father Farras drank with evident pleasure and when he’d emptied his glass, which he did slightly before Alvarez emptied his, he said: ‘Enrique, I want to have a word with you, so we can walk back together.’

  ‘I’m afraid I’m very busy . . .’

  ‘But certainly not too busy to give me just a few of your very valuable minutes of time.’

  Alvarez sighed, but accepted that there was no way of escape. He paid for the drinks and followed Father Farras out of the club.

  Father Farras, to compensate for his lack of height, walked with hurried steps and so anyone accompanying him had to hurry to keep pace: upon which, as if the sight of someone hurrying galvanized him to even greater efforts, he would increase his own pace. A walk with him usually ended up as a race.

  Alvarez automatically half-turned to make for the steps leading up to the raised part of the square.

  ‘No, Enrique, we will go right round because I wish to ask you about certain matters.‘He nodded and smiled at a man who was passing, acknowledged a woman with a baby, and waved at two young children who were roller-skating. He seldom did only one thing at a time. He turned and spoke over his left shoulder. ‘I have known you for a great number of years, have I not?’

  ‘I suppose it is rather a long time,’ replied Alvarez, already beginning to be short of breath.

  ‘I remember that at your first communion you giggled rather a lot, probably because you failed to understand the true meaning of the ceremony.’

  ‘When one’s young . . .’ began Alvarez.

  ‘Since then I have watched you grow up and I have tried, not always successfully, to guide you through the shocks of life and to help you in times of trouble. That is so, is it not?’

  Alvarez felt sweat break out on his forehead.

  Father Farras swept across the road, immediately in front of a car which had to brake sharply. He increased his rate of walking as Alvarez drew level with him. ‘Until now I have therefore felt that between us is a spiritual bond. Do I make myself clear?’ He skipped to one side to avoid hitting a pram, stopped abruptly to cluck the baby under the chin, then charged forward to surge past Alvarez who had come to a halt. ‘Do you understand me?’ he demanded loudly, not bothering to turn his head.

  ‘The devil I do,’ muttered Alvarez, as he began to breathe through opened mouth.

  ‘I want you to understand one thing. In no way do I speak from a sense of ingratitude. There is no place for ingratitude, or gratitude, between a priest and his flock. No, what lies within me is a feeling of. . .’ He stopped to stare at a display of girlie magazines in the window of a small newsagent. He opened the door and put his head inside. ‘Juana, the window is no place for magazines such as you’ve put there. If you have to stock such abominations, keep them inside and out of sight and so force men to question their consciences as well as you before they can buy them.’ He did not wait for any comment, but skipped away. ‘I speak from a sense of bewilderment. Where have I failed?’

  Tailed what?’ gasped Alvarez.

  Father Farras stopped. He stared critically up at Alvarez. ‘You’re in very bad physical shape. You must eat less and drink a very great deal less.’

  Alvarez took a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his face.

  ‘Body and soul are entwined,’ said Father Farras, rushing forward. ‘Neglect one and inevitably the other suffers.’ He turned left and bolted past the main entrance to the church.

  It was all very well to talk about cutting down on food and drink, thought Alvarez, but it would surely have been more to the point to slow down the rate of progress.

  ‘Come on . . . Where have I failed you, Enrique? How have I inadvertently failed to maintain that spiritual bond?’

  ‘But I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘You puff along there, man and giggling boy, and tell me you don’t know? Did you, or did you not, attend a church on Sunday?’

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  ‘And there you made confession?’

  ‘Well, yes. You see . . .’

  ‘Since your first communion, you have confessed in my church. And I have struggled to help you in your times of need - which have occurred rather frequently. Yet now you attend another church! How do you imagine that reflects on me?’ He stopped and looked up, his head tilted on one side and his eyes sharply bright.

  Alvarez tried to regain his breath.

  ‘Not that it is from any sense of hurt pride that I speak out. I am concerned solely with your soul. After all, can anyone doubt that a pastor to a soul for many, many years is more likely to be able to bring comfort to such a soul than someone who meets it for the first time?’

  ‘I just happened to be up in the mountains last Sunday and . . .’

  ‘You always were a bad liar,’ said Father Farras sadly.

  Alvarez mopped the sweat from his face again as he tried, and failed, to appear less like a small boy caught scrumping apples. He had been a fool to think for one moment that he could confess in another church on the island without Father Farras getting to hear about it. And having heard, Father Farras had every right to be annoyed. How would a farmer feel who had sold cabbages to his neig
hbour for forty years only to have them refused as inedible in the forty-first? ‘I was too ashamed to confess my sins to someone who knew me personally,’ he mumbled.

  Father Farras stared critically at him. ‘Enrique, can you be quite certain you are free from the sin of boastful pride? I can remember that when you were a giggling boy you were rather inclined to exaggerate for effect.’ He bounded forward and rushed up the rising road, past the creepered wall of the church. ‘I must not now, of course, enquire into the nature of your sins . . .’ He was silent for half a dozen paces. When Alvarez said nothing, he frowned briefly. ‘But I feel constrained to point out that the orthodoxy of the Monastery of Laraix has always been suspect. . . Well, that’s that, then.’ He came to a halt. ‘We’ll say no more about it and forget the matter, once and for all. How is your cousin and her family?’

  ‘They’re all fine. Isabel is doing well at school - she got two excellents . . .’

  ‘I do not remember having seen either her or Juan recently amongst the congregation . . . But then you, of course, have not been free to bring them since you have been treading the paths of unorthodoxy.’

  ‘It’s not that. I’ve been working flat out, trying to solve the deaths of the two English.’

  ‘Ah, yes! Terrible, terrible, for the señor to die in an unfortunate faith. And do you now know who killed them?’

  ‘The first death was accidental in that the woman meant only to hurt, not to kill. The second death was suicide.’

  ‘Señorita Cannon committed suicide?’

  ‘That’s right. She was so overwhelmed by the horror of what she’d done she felt she could only expiate her sin by committing suicide and suffering as much as she had made him suffer.’

  ‘Ha!’ exclaimed Father Farras. ‘Perhaps you know everything about detection, but you know nothing about the souls of people. Suicide! Balderdash! Some months ago the señorita came to me for spiritual advice. Though of our faith, she had not visited my church because of something which had happened in England. Desperate in her misery, she came to me for help and I led her to understand something which she should clearly have remembered - none of us (remember this in your pride) is beyond redemption if there is true repentance. She rejoiced when she understood. Yet you stand there, panting and sweating because you drink and eat too much, and you try to tell me that she would have damned her soul by committing suicide? . . . Stick to your last and leave others to interpret the soul.‘He waved both hands in the air to emphasize his words. Then he saw someone he knew and wanted to speak to and he darted off, his short legs working like pistons.

  CHAPTER XXII

  Alvarez lay in bed and stared up at the ceiling, faintly picked out by the light which came through the closed shutters. What a night! Dream had followed dream and if he’d woken once, he’d woken half a dozen times. His mind had been on a monstrous roundabout which nothing would slow down.

  No man was infallible. Not even an elderly, autocratic village priest who knew everything about everybody. So he could be wrong about Mabel Cannon. Her despair might have been so great that the future of her soul became of no consequence to herself. And yet. . . And yet, busybody that he was, fifty years of priesthood must have given him an insight into people’s souls which almost bordered on the sublime. So if he maintained that Mabel Cannon would never have committed suicide, then the proposition had to be considered with very great seriousness.

  But if she had not committed suicide, she had been murdered and who but Edward Anson would and could have murdered her?

  He swore bitterly. To have to return to questioning Anson would be to have to return along paths he had hoped to leave forever behind himself. How would Caroline then look at him . . .?

  He could just make out the bedside table and he reached over and picked up a cigarette, which he lit. Murder by poisoning presupposed a strong motive. Here, there had been two motives for killing Freeman, only one for killing Mabel Cannon. Had Anson poisoned her for her money, forgetting that the source of the tontine must almost inevitably come to light in the wake of the investigations so that the money would be lost to Caroline? Yet hadn’t his uneasiness on learning about the extent of Caroline’s apparent inheritance been genuine? Then he hadn’t killed her for her money.

  Father Farras had to be wrong. And having finally decided that, he once more tried to work out where he had gone wrong if Father Farras was right. And eventually he saw that he had not allowed for the impossible.

  There was now no owner living in Ca’n Ritat to see that they did their job properly, yet Luis and Matilde Blanco continued to work as thoroughly as they had ever done. Beds not slept in were remade, rooms were dusted, carpets vacuumed, chairs polished, tiled floors washed. . .

  Matilde was washing down the north wall of the kitchen when Alvarez arrived on the Tuesday morning.

  ‘Hullo,’ he said.

  ‘Good morning, señor.’

  ‘I’ve come here to ask you something.’

  Immediately she was worried. ‘I’ve told you all I know. I swear that I have . . .’

  ‘There’s no need to flap. All I want to find out is whether Senor Freeman said anything to you about lunch on Friday, the twenty-third of October, and did he have an appointments book or a calendar on which he noted down invitations?’

  She looked perplexedly at him.

  £ Tell you what, how about starting off with a cup of coffee? Is that possible, even if the stuff does cost more than gold now?’

  ‘Of course I can make coffee, señor. And maybe you would like a coñac in it?’

  ‘Spoken like a true Christian.’ He sat down at the table and watched her spoon coffee into an electrically operated espresso machine. ‘D’you remember the day the señor had a friend called Veronica Milton here and Señorita Cannon arrived and walked into the house instead of waiting to see if it was safe to do so?’

  She nodded and blushed.

  ‘I’m interested in the next day. Can you think back to it? Did he tell you that Señorita Cannon was coming to lunch on the Friday and what kind of a meal he wanted?’

  ‘No, señor.’

  ‘Can you be quite sure of that?’

  ‘Indeed. You see, the señorita did not like any rich food, but the señor did. He would have asked for two different dishes and I would certainly remember.’

  A simple answer to a simple question, but what a complicated difference it made! ‘I’m sure you remember exactly, señora, but in my job we have to check up on everything. Did the señor keep an appointments book?’

  She filled a jug with milk so that the machine would warm it. ‘He used to write things down on the calendar by the telephone, but they were in English so I didn’t really understand them although some clearly were appointments.’ Her tone of voice had suddenly become sharply disapproving.

  ‘Where is the telephone?’

  ‘In the hall.’

  He stood up and went through into the hall. The telephone was on a small corner cupboard and by its side was a calendar and when he saw this he understood why she’d been so disapproving - there was half a month to a page and a pin-up to each half-month. All the previous pages had been retained and in the interests of a thorough investigation he went back to January i and studied each page. The second half of October was adorned by a redhead, noticeable for consistency. There were luncheon or drink appointments for every day but the twenty-second and the twenty-third. At the beginning those blanks would have had no special meaning for him, now he knew they held the answer to the riddle of the two deaths.

  He returned to the kitchen.

  ‘Did you find it?’ she asked.

  ‘I did, thanks. And checked right through it.’

  She blushed as she smiled.

  Blanco, dressed in overalls that were splattered with damp patches, came into the kitchen. ‘I’ve been cleaning the pool,’ he said after greeting Alvarez. ‘And before that I washed the big car down. She’s a beauty. If I had a million, I’d buy it.’

&
nbsp; ‘And have all the luxury taxes to pay?’

  ‘If I could afford a million for a car, why should luxury taxes bother me?’ He undid the buttons and began to strip off the overalls.

  ‘You’ve a point there. It must be strange to be rich and so not have to worry about where the next ten thousand pesetas are coming from.’

  ‘If rich means being like him, I’d rather stay poor,’ said Matilde.

  ‘You’ve an even better point there,’ agreed Alvarez.

  The machine hissed as the coffee made. Matilde poured out three cupfuls, added milk to each and a liberal tot of brandy to two, then passed the cups round.

  Blanco, who’d thrown his overalls on to the floor by the the side of the outside door, sat down at the table. He spooned sugar into his coffee. ‘So you’re still looking round the place?’

  ‘Still looking,’ agreed Alvarez.

  ‘Then it’s wrong what I was told - that you’d found out all what happened?’

  ‘I’m afraid it was wrong - until now.’

  ‘And now you know? So what did happen?’

  Alvarez sipped the coffee. ‘Señorita Cannon was so shocked and upset by what she saw here when she found him with Veronica that she put a llargsomi in with the esclatasangs he was going to eat that night. There’s no proof of this, but I’m certain all she meant to do was to make him ill. She overdid things, though, and killed him.’

  ‘And then she committed suicide?’

  ‘No. She was murdered.’

  ‘Who killed her?’

  ‘Señor Freeman,’ replied Alvarez. He picked up the cup and finished the coffee.

  CHAPTER XXIII

  He should, of course, have divined the truth almost from the beginning - but then although he had a certain peasant sharpness in some matters, he had never made the mistake of thinking of himself as intelligent.

  He leaned over and opened the bottom drawer of his desk and brought out the bottle of brandy and poured himself a generous drink.

  Looking at things back to front, and it was that sort of a case, it was easy to see that his greatest mistake had been to accept the logic of the sequence of events. Freeman had died before Mabel Cannon and therefore logically there were only three possibilities: Mabel Cannon had killed Freeman and then committed suicide; she had killed him and in turn been killed by a third person; or a third person had killed both of them. Yet seen back to front there was a fourth possibility. Mabel Cannon had poisoned him and he had poisoned her - after he was dead.