Edward said in English, ‘I’m a friend of Godfrey Tilney, Señorita Salas. I would very much like to have a word with you about his death, if that were possible. I apologise for coming unannounced but Mr Griffiths-Jones said he thought you would be prepared to talk to me and my friends Miss Browne and Baroness Lengstrum.’
He thought he must put all his cards on the table from the very beginning. There was no point in pretending they were here for any other reason than to help David Griffiths-Jones. That, surely, would reassure Rosalía Salas that they were not political enemies.
‘Fuera! I cannot tell you anything,’ the woman said eventually, in heavily accented English. She did not open the door, which was obviously on a chain.
‘Please, Miss Salas,’ Edward pleaded. ‘We must talk to you. You see, we don’t believe Godfrey Tilney is dead and he may be in great danger. You would not want Mr Griffiths-Jones to die for a murder he has not committed, would you?’
There was a long silence and Edward was just about to turn away in despair when he heard the chain being taken off and the door opened.
‘You had better come in,’ said Rosalía Salas resignedly.
The woman who faced them was very striking. She was not tall, about five foot six, Edward guessed, sturdily built with broad shoulders and a strong-boned face. Large black eyes under bushy black eyebrows stared at him with undisguised curiosity. Her long, slightly hooked nose and square jaw suggested a woman of considerable character; a magnificent head of hair – black and shiny – completed the picture. This was a woman who once seen could never be forgotten. She led them through into a large drawing-room hung with old portraits of aristocratic-looking men and women. A massive sofa, at least a hundred years old, dominated the room. Around the walls, glass-fronted cabinets held china ornaments.
Seeing Edward’s surprise at the solemn splendour of the room, she said grudgingly, ‘This was the house of my grandparents but now I have only this floor, you understand?’ Her English was good but she seemed shy about using it.
Edward nodded gravely. ‘I am so sorry to bother you, Señorita Salas. I am Lord Edward Corinth and these are my friends, Miss Verity Browne and Baroness Lengstrum. We are all friends of David Griffiths-Jones and Mr Tilney and it is of the utmost importance that we find Mr Tilney in the next week. If we do not, David will die.’ He spoke formally, repeating their names to give her time to assess them and see that they were respectable and unfrightening because Rosalía Salas was certainly frightened.
‘Su amigo! You think so? Who told you they were friends?’
‘David Griffiths-Jones,’ said Edward, puzzled.
‘That man,’ she said scornfully. ‘I think he was Godfrey’s greatest enemy.’
‘Why do you say that?’ Verity broke in. ‘Please, tell us: is Godfrey still alive?’
Rosalía looked at the two women and seemed to approve of what she saw. ‘Sit down, please,’ she said pointing to the sofa.
‘Are we right?’ Verity repeated. ‘Is Godfrey still alive?’
‘Yes,’ said Rosalía simply.
‘But why has he hidden himself and not come forward? Doesn’t he know David may be . . . may be executed for . . .’
Verity could not continue and Rosalía, seeing her distress, wrung her hands in almost equal dismay. ‘Entiendo, I understand but what can I do? I can only go to him when I get the signal. I have been waiting for many days but it has not come.’
‘Do you think he doesn’t know David’s predicament?’ Edward asked.
‘Qué. . .?’
‘Su . . . apuro. . . .’ Verity translated.
‘Sí, when I last saw him . . .’
‘When was that?’ Verity broke in.
‘Ten days ago.’
‘But . . .’
‘Hold on, Verity, let Rosalía tell us what she knows.’
‘I took him up food – he likes English mermelada and meat . . . I take him meat.’
‘What else do you take him?’ asked Edward gently.
‘I take him los periódicos ingleses . . . the newspapers, and anything else he tells me.’
‘But you’ve had no message to go to him for ten days?’
‘He always send to me on the Saturday to go on the Sunday, but this time I had no message so I did not know what to do.’
‘You did not go and see if he was all right?’
‘No, I . . . I was going to go but . . . but I got . . . scared.’
‘You do not look as if you would be easily scared, Rosalía.’
‘The men he works for . . . the comunistas . . .’ she hissed, ‘they are not good men.’
‘How do the messages come? Who delivers them?’
‘Boys, or the messages are put tinder my door.’
‘Have you got one I could look at?’ Edward said.
‘No, I have orders to destroy them when I have read them.’
‘But David . . . he is Godfrey’s friend. How could he leave him in such danger?’ Verity said, biting her lip to hold back her emotions.
‘Amigos? Oh no, I tell you, they were not friends. Godfrey . . . he hated your David. They were great enemies.’
‘I don’t understand. They were working for the same cause.’
‘No, señorita, they hated each other. Política.’ She raised her hands up in an expressive gesture of disgust.
There was a silence while Verity and Edward considered this, then Edward continued: ‘But did Godfrey say that he was not going to tell anyone he was alive even if . . .?’
‘I do not know . . . I think so . . . but I do not know. He said there was one who knew him . . . who he did not want to see.’
Edward was puzzled. ‘Not David?’
‘No, one other . . . I think from . . . how do you say? . . . from the past, you understand?’
Edward thought about this and looked at Verity. Then, turning to Rosalía, he said, ‘Please, can you take us to him? Where is he? Up in the mountains?’
‘I do not know. He would not like it. It is a great secret where he is.’
‘Well, if you tell us how to find him, we can go without you,’ said Verity.
‘Yes, we will never say you told us.’
‘You would never find him,’ she said simply.
In the silence which followed, Edward went over in his mind all the arguments he might use to persuade her to help them find Tilney. He might threaten to tell the police that she had been withholding information; but then she would become their enemy and, if she denied that she had ever said Tilney was alive, the police would just think it was one last despairing fantasy of Verity’s. When Edward glanced up from his boots, which he had been studying hard in search of inspiration, he saw Rosalía was looking at Verity and his gaze followed hers. Great tears, of which he was certain she was unaware, were running down her cheeks and dropping on to her lap. These tears were more eloquent than any words.
‘Please,’ Rosalía said gently, ‘do not weep. You are too beautiful to weep. It is I who must weep. All the women of Spain should weep . . . I will take you to see him.’
Verity got up from the sofa and went over to Rosalía to embrace her. For a moment, the two women clung to each other. Edward, embarrassed by this un-English display of emotion, averted his eyes. Was this a new Verity who felt so much and showed so much? If Hester was right, David wasn’t even her lover. She had never been one for tears and he had supposed, now she was a journalist, she was even less likely to . . . to get emotional. He shook his head. He really did not understand women, but he did know that he ached to hold her in his arms. She was only a few feet away. Why could he not go over to her? He moved slightly but it was already too late. Verity was her old self once more. Smiling with relief and excitement, she was planning with Rosalía where to meet the following morning – it was too late to venture into the hills that afternoon. They agreed to meet at first light at the station and take the little train that ran up towards San Pedro. The women kissed each other and Edward, feeling a fool, thrust
out his hand to Rosalía. Before he knew it, she had gathered him into his arms and kissed him on both cheeks. Her hair brushed his lips and he smelt garlic, sweat and other scents he could not identify. He smiled, blushed and went out of the apartment feeling that he had made an ass of himself but that, in doing so, had tasted for the first time the real Spain.
8
They had left the path and were scrambling up the rocky bed of a stream. On either side, stunted pines and scrub scratched at the rock for anchorage. Edward had climbed some awkward mountains in his time – from the red kopjes of Damaraland to the Chamonix aiguilles – but never in such unsuitable clothes. Fenton, when he had packed his bag in London, had not envisaged his master scrambling up these cold, cruel slopes, the razor-sharp stones cutting his thin shoes to shreds, allowing the stream to reduce his toes to so many icicles. Verity was better equipped but even she was cursing in a most unladylike way. Hester, to her annoyance, had been left in Madrid. Edward looked at his wristwatch. It was ten twenty. They had been climbing for almost three hours. He was just about to suggest to Rosalía that there was little point in suffering frostbite for the sake of secrecy and perhaps they should find a recognisable road or track, when she left the stream and cut across the face of the rock.
Verity and Edward stumbled after her until they came to the edge of a precipice where she urged them with a wave of her hand to halt. They obeyed with relief, dropping the packs they carried on the ground beside them. Edward peered over Rosalía’s shoulder and sank back in some alarm. Surely they must have lost their way. They were right on the edge of the mountain. To go up, they would first have to go back the way they had come. Below, there was a sheer drop of at least a thousand feet. Edward saw at a glance that without proper equipment – ropes, boots and crampons – there was no way in which they could continue their ascent.
He tapped Rosalía on the back but she lifted her hand in an imperious gesture of denial. She lay face down on the rock seeming to be listening intently. She had transformed herself for the expedition into a peasant woman. Her glorious black hair was twisted into a bun and covered with a black bandanna. She wore rough trousers and a coarse sailcloth shirt over which she had slipped a smock. On her feet were strong, rope-soled sandals. She looked a typical, shapeless peasant of indeterminate age and sex.
At the station, in the darkness before dawn, Edward had not at first recognised her and she had had to speak to him before he realised who she was. She whispered to them that she would travel on her own in a different carriage. To be seen with foreigners – and Verity and Edward were very obviously that – was not so unusual; there were many Spanish guides prepared to take foreigners out to see the monasteries and fortresses that ringed Madrid. However, it was early in the year for tourists and Rosalía did not want to draw attention to herself in case Godfrey’s political enemies were keeping watch on her hoping she would lead them to his hideout. As far as Edward could see, they attracted no particular attention and he chatted to Verity about Madrid in English as if they were innocent tourists embarking on an outing in the hills to empty their lungs of city air.
They had been glad to say goodbye to the bus which had rattled and shaken them up the unmetalled road to San Martino. The bus, Rosalía had told them, was the pride of the locality and was now three years old but to Edward it already seemed at least as old as himself. From San Martino they had walked. As they drew close to San Pedro, dawn began to break over the hills and the view of the little village, dominated by its church spire, recalled to Edward the spiritually uplifting, crudely coloured pictures in his Sunday School book, over which he had dozed as a child. To heighten his feeling of peace, the bell for mass echoed across the silent landscape as it must have done for centuries.
Rosalía skirted the village along the route he supposed Tilney and Griffiths-Jones had taken on that fateful day six weeks before. They met nobody except a peasant on his donkey who ignored their greeting. Twenty minutes after putting San Pedro behind them the full glory of the rising sun broke over the hilltops, bathing the walkers in light and heat.
‘ “Full many a glorious morning have I seen flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye”,’ Edward quoted, pausing to wipe the sweat from his forehead.
‘Stop enjoying yourself,’ Verity reproved him. ‘We’re not on holiday.’
‘Oh, don’t be so severe, dearest,’ he said lightly, his spirits failing to be subdued. ‘ “To one who has been long in city pent, ’tis very sweet to look into the fair and open face of heaven.” ’
‘And don’t quote Shakespeare at me. You know it makes me feel inferior.’
‘Keats, child,’ Edward said, provocatively.
‘I said don’t patronise me.’
‘Verity, forgive me, but this is the first morning for months I have really felt alive. I’ve been stuck in cities – New York, London, Madrid – when I should have been out walking and breathing in this glorious country.’
‘Oh, do shut up, idiot. Looking at the state of your shoes, I imagine you will soon be singing another song.’
Rosalía had confidently taken them off the main track on to a little path, clearly not much used, and soon they were scrambling over rocks and small boulders until even that faint footway had become invisible. Apart from knowing they were going up, Edward was completely lost. He reckoned on having a good sense of direction but, if Rosalía vanished, he knew he would have no idea how to get back to civilisation. It crossed his mind that she might have taken them into the wilderness to kill them but he dismissed the thought immediately. Still, it was comforting to feel that, if anything did happen to them, Hester would know where to begin looking.
They sat for some minutes on the edge of the precipice in complete silence. They were out of the heat of the sun and their sweat began to dry. Verity, despite wearing a thick jumper, shivered. Edward’s feet grew numb and he crawled over beside Rosalía and muttered that, if they did not move on, they would get chilled.
‘No entiendo, there is always someone on guard here but not today. I fear there is something wrong.’
‘Well, let’s go and have a look,’ said Edward, ‘except I can’t see where we are going.’
‘Look over there,’ she said in a low voice.
Edward stared in the direction she was pointing. ‘I can’t see anything.’
‘Do you see that – how do you say? – that thorn bush?’
A little further up the slope, a belt of bramble and brush barred the way. ‘I see it,’ he said.
‘There is a cave hidden behind.’
No one could have guessed it and Edward suppressed a cry of astonishment. ‘And that’s where Tilney has his headquarters?’
‘Sí, pero no es . . . it is so . . . muy tranquilo. I make a mistake . . . I come without the signal.’
‘Well,’ said Verity who had joined them, ‘we’re here now so we had better go and see.’
‘You stay there,’ said Edward firmly. ‘I’ll creep round the side and see if I can spot anything.’
‘Not likely,’ Verity said indignantly. ‘You go, I go.’
In the end, they all three moved towards the cave together as though they were engaged in a sinister game of Grandmother’s Footsteps. Edward thought what a wonderful fortress Tilney had found for himself. The rocky track which, as they had so uncomfortably discovered, doubled as a stream, ended a hundred and fifty yards from the cave entrance. There was little or no cover between and a man with a firearm could defend the cave from all comers for as long as his food, water and ammunition held out. They had come by the only path, which was invisible except to someone who already knew where he was going. Behind the cave there was thick undergrowth and anyone approaching that way would make enough noise to wake the heaviest sleeper.
Abandoning caution at the cave entrance, Edward called Tilney’s name. There was no answer. Gingerly, he lifted part of the bramble and called again. Rosalía was now standing stock still, her hands against her cheeks, seemingly unable to m
ove. If there was anyone in the cave, they would have been aware by now that they had visitors so Edward, his heart beating fiercely, dragged away the brambles which parted quite easily, like a curtain. Crouching, he stared into a narrow aperture hardly wide enough to enter except on all fours. There was the cave but it was too dark to see anything. Verity had a torch in her pack and went back to find it. As Edward’s eyes became accustomed to the dark, he thought he could see something pale but the cave was obviously much deeper than he had imagined. He crawled inside. Immediately beyond the entrance, the cave widened and the roof rose to six feet so that he was able to stand. It was at least ten degrees colder here than outside and he shivered. He hesitated and sniffed. There was a noxious smell in the air which made his gorge rise. And then he became aware of an angry buzzing noise.
Verity returned with the torch and, not waiting for Edward, thrust past him further into the cave. Her scream brought Edward to her side. In the feeble orange light of the torch, which seemed unwilling to penetrate the gloom, they saw the figure of Godfrey Tilney. He was seated on a canvas chair, the sort one finds in front of bandstands. Death had clearly taken him unawares. He looked, at least at first glance, almost normal, as though at any moment he might rise from his chair to greet them, but there was a bullet hole in his forehead the size of a florin. The buzzing Edward had heard was made by the flies which swarmed in a black cloud above the dead man’s head like some devilish halo. Pulling himself together with an effort, Edward pressed the back of his hand against Tilney’s cheek. The flesh, even in that icebox of a cave, was still faintly warm. As Edward helped Verity out of the cave, he found he was very angry. Godfrey Tilney was dead because of his indiscretion. Without a doubt, it was he who had brought Tilney’s murderer to him. He must have been killed perhaps only an hour before. Verity, her hand to her mouth, had burst out of the evil-smelling cave and was clasping the Spanish girl to her bosom. A harsh keening wail filled the air. Rosalía was mourning her lover.
Edward was unable to dissuade her from entering the cave to see for herself that her Englishman was really dead. As Edward took her back outside into the clean mountain air, he could not doubt that one person at least had really loved Godfrey Tilney. Edward was anxious to leave the place as soon as possible. It now seemed to exude evil and he was very much aware that Tilney’s killer might be tempted to take a pot shot at them if they dallied. He said nothing of this to the two women, unwilling to alarm them further. At first, Rosalía could not be persuaded to leave the mouth of the cave unguarded and Verity announced that she considered it her duty to stay with her. Patiently, Edward pointed out that, if he went off without them, they would be in for a long vigil. It would take him at least two hours to get back to San Pedro and at least another two hours to get the police organised. It might be six or seven hours and almost nightfall before he returned. The police would almost certainly refuse to set out up the mountain until early the next day. The idea of spending a night by the cave made Verity shiver. They had brought some food – bread, salami, chocolate and biscuits – but no warm clothes, let alone camping equipment. There was nothing for it but for them all to return to San Pedro.
Bones of the Buried Page 11
