She was at work at her Louis XVI bureau in the study when the butler knocked and entered. She looked up, momentarily annoyed that even after three years Miguel failed to understand that he should not knock before entering any of the public rooms.
‘The people with the flowers have arrived, my lady,’ he said in Spanish, except for the two words ‘my lady’ which she insisted he spoke in English. He pronounced them, ‘me laydi’.
‘Are they exactly what I ordered?’
‘Exactly as you …’
‘Have you personally checked them?’
He gesticulated with his hands. ‘Everything.’
‘Have the canapés arrived?’
‘I am waiting now for the airport to phone to say they have arrived, my lady.’
‘That won’t be of much use, will it? Surely you know your own country and countrymen?’
‘I am Spanish, my lady, not Mallorquin,’ he said lugubriously.
‘Good heavens, do you think I’ve time to be concerned about that sort of detail? Get on to the airport immediately, find out if the canapés have arrived, speak to the Customs and say the goods are not subject to tax whatever they think, and if they want to argue, refer them to Senor Cifre and demand to know why they haven’t notified us by phone as instructed to do so.’
There was a scratching on the door. ‘Let Fru-Fru in,’ she ordered.
Miguel opened the door and Fru-Fru, daughter of Show Champion Tso-Ch’iao and of Show Champion Hui Tying, a Shih Tzu of breeding even more impeccably pure than her mistress’s, padded into the room, jumped up on to her lap, and settled down. She stroked the dog’s ears. ‘Very well, that’s all,’ she said. ‘But you’re to ring the airport immediately.’
Miguel left. As he passed through the sitting-room he saw that the day remained cloudless and it seemed certain it would be fine for the evening reception and he felt a bewildered resentment that God should be so magnanimous towards heretics.
Lady Eastmore returned to her work, checking the household accounts to make certain the servants did not make more than a few pesetas’ commission from the shops at which they bought the food and drink. She was interrupted twenty minutes later when her husband came in. ‘It’s time for a drink, dear,’ he said. ‘What would you like?’
‘I’ll have my usual half bottle of champagne, please, Charles.’
‘And I think I’ll have a scotch.’ He picked up the internal phone on the desk and ordered the two drinks. He was a tall, well-built man, with the kind of battered handsome face which inspired confidence. He had grey hair, greying eyebrows, and a grey moustache. He possessed the same air of self-confident authority as his wife, but in his case this was mellowed by an obvious affability. He’d been a good governor in the far-flung colonies to which he’d been called and although his portrait in oils had, along with other portraits of other governors, often been taken down and burned in public demonstrations after independence, he was still remembered by some with respect and even affection.
She looked up. ‘I told you Norah is coming to stay with us very soon, didn’t I?’
‘Yes,’ he answered, as he sat down.
Her expression sharpened. ‘Norah is a very old friend of the family.’
‘Of course, dear.’
She decided not to pursue the matter. ‘I’ve also heard from Laura today that she doesn’t think she’ll be able to come out in late May.’
‘I’m very sorry to hear that,’ he said with genuine regret. ‘What’s the trouble?’
‘Her father’s been taken rather ill and it looks nasty.’
‘Poor old boy. And it’s only a little more than a year ago when he and I were shooting together at Donald’s. Damned good shot, he is. There was an old cock which came corkscrewing over …’
‘Quite. I think I shall write to Marion and see if she’s free to come instead.’
That was a pity, he thought, but made no comment. Their lives had long since fallen into a pattern which both recognized and usually respected — Norah tended to be an exception — without a word on the subject having been spoken. She invited whom she wished and he was polite to them: he invited whom he wished and she in turn was polite to them.
‘Angela is engaged to a boy in the Guards,’ she went on. ‘Marion says he’s a bit of a weed, but in this day and age one has to be thankful he’s at least doing something respectable. Did I tell you that Marion’s son, Basil, has been arrested and charged with smoking marijuana?’
‘Basil? Good God! It’s quite incredible.’ It was quite incredible to both of them. They had been brought up to observe strict rules of behaviour and had always done so. When she’d been told by specialists that she could never bear any children and so in consequence she had stopped all sex, having a keen sense of the ridiculous, he had accepted her decision with fortitude and without recriminations. His subsequent liaisons had always been conducted with the greatest discretion.
‘Of course, Marion has never had enough backbone where those children of hers are concerned. I can remember when Basil was having a sordid affair with some sort of model and all Marion could do was worry about whether he would catch a nasty disease.’
That always was a bit of a problem, he thought.
There was a knock on the door and Miguel came in with a silver salver on which were a whisky glass with a scotch on the rocks, a tulip-shaped champagne glass, and a half bottle of champagne in a silver bucket. Lady Eastmore thought about telling Miguel not to knock, then sighed: they should have imported a proper butler from England. Miguel opened the champagne and poured out a glassful, allowing it to foam too much, put the bucket by the side of her desk, and handed them both their drinks. He left, no word having been spoken.
‘By the way, Mary,’ said Lord Eastmore, as the door shut, ‘I’m off after lunch for a round of golf with Paddy.’
‘You won’t be late back, will you?’ She sipped her champagne.
He smiled, showing even, white teeth. ‘As if on today of all days I’d dare!’
She smiled back at him. They respected each other and enjoyed each other’s company, so could usually joke about their existing relationship. ‘By the way, Alice told me something about Paddy yesterday which I hope isn’t true.’
‘That Andrew’s gone to live with him? Paddy told me so himself the other day. I’m surprised it’s taken Alice so long to catch up with the news.’
‘It’s very blatant, isn’t it?’
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘It’s none of my business. And Paddy plays a damned good game of golf.’
‘In the old days, no one would have received him any more.’
‘If we stopped receiving anyone whose morals aren’t what they ought to be, we’d lead a lonely life out here.’
‘That’s being very cynical, Charles. Most people know how to behave.’ She pursed her lips. She and he never agreed over matters sexual. Not that, in this case, she was really complaining about the fact that Paddy was a homosexual — many of her friends in England were homosexuals. But it simply was not done to publish so blatantly one’s aberrations. ‘I do hope Paddy doesn’t bring Andrew with him tonight.’
‘I expect he will.’
She sighed. ‘They make life so difficult. As if we didn’t have enough trouble, with people like Elvina around.’
‘Don’t tell me she’s living with another woman?’
She had to laugh. ‘You’re quite impossible, Charles. You know very well what I meant. Elvina is one of those women who go out of their way to be impossibly difficult. I’m quite certain she’ll wear one of those awful old frocks of hers that looks as if she’s on her way to go charring. And why can’t she at least have her hair cut properly? It would make her look a shade less barbaric.’
‘Perhaps she won’t come.’
‘She’ll come simply because she knows how much her presence annoys me.’
‘Then why do you ask her?’
She didn’t reply. In any case, he knew the answer. Duty. These a
nnual receptions were the equivalent of the old governor’s parties they’d had to give. To them had been invited all manner of people who were not invited at any other time of the year — especially as independence had drawn near — in order to show the flag: it had been a service she’d undertaken because it had been her duty. And, of course, there’d always been someone like Elvina to let the side down. But by asking such people the act of service became that much more difficult, and the more difficult it was, the greater the duty one had nobly carried out. Even the Elvinas of the world had their uses.
‘I’ve heard something a bit disturbing,’ he said. ‘There’s some sort of official from the Bank of England over here at the moment, snooping around for illegal bank accounts, houses bought without the bank’s permission or the dollar premium being paid, capital illicitly brought out … All that sort of thing.’
‘He’ll be very busy, then.’
‘Quite so.’ Indeed, the man would be, if he learned even a tenth of what had gone on over the past years.
*
The square in Llueso, bounded by plane trees and, on three sides, by roads, was on a slope and so the south end had been built up in order to keep it level: at the south end, there was a small fountain and flower-beds. Here, the vegetable and fish markets were held every Sunday, fairs were pitched, fiestas began or ended, bonfires were lit, rockets were fired without regard to where the spent cases would land, the town band gave concerts, and important visitors were received by the mayor. To the north-west lay the church, tall and rather severe on the outside, opulent and colourful on the inside. To the south-east was the Llueso Club, theoretically open to women yet by tradition not so. Two banks overlooked the square, two cafés pitched tables and chairs on it. The offices of the Municipal Police were down a turning off it, while the post office, telephone exchange and telegraph office were all within two minutes’ walk of it. From it in one direction one could just see the top of the hill, Puig Llueso, on which was a small shrine and a figure of Christ on the Cross; in the other direction was visible the monastery on the top of its hill.
José Mayans sat at one of the tables in the bar of the Llueso Club, drinking a brandy and wondering how long before he must make a move and return to his wife’s shop in the Puerto and do some sort of work. Not very long. Marie watched the clock as if she were a factory inspector. And if he were too long, on his return she’d give him hell even if the shop were filled with tourists. She had a tongue like a Toledo blade. By tradition, the Mallorquin wife was subserviently obedient, but Marie was no traditionalist. It was, he thought morosely, all the tourists’ fault. Before tourism had so altered the island, even a woman like Marie would have known and kept her place.
A loud, boisterous voice disturbed his gloomy thoughts. ‘So what’s up with you? Received an invitation to your own funeral?’
He looked up. Jiménez, large, tubby, oozing bonhomie, grinned down at him.
‘Come on, man, if it’s that bad, cut your throat and leave the rest of us to have a laugh.’
‘What’s got you all excited?’ demanded Mayans in a disgruntled tone of voice.
‘I have just sold three thousand square metres of useless, rocky land to a Frenchman for a million. One million pesetas.’
‘If you’d waited, you’d have got two million.’
Jiménez sat down on a rocky wooden chair. He thumped the wooden table with his huge fist and Mayans’s glass jiggled and the brandy surged around it. ‘You’re sourer than an October orange. D’you know, if you won the lottery, I’ll swear you’d burst into tears. What’s the matter? Has Marie been giving you hell again?’ He roared with laughter.
If only, thought Mayans, he didn’t have the misfortune to be married to a wife who’d inherited fincas and land and who was so good a businesswoman she was making a fortune out of the curio and antique shop. It made her think she was smart. Smart enough to tell him she wasn’t keeping him and he ought to get a job.
‘You know something?’ Jiménez’s mouth expressed salacious enjoyment. ‘You should eat plenty of oysters and drink a lot of Binissalem wine and then perhaps your little palm tree would grow enough to give Marie a big belly to keep her busy with women’s work.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with me,’ he protested.
‘Then why no children? Me — I have five and any night now we start on the sixth.’ He roared with laughter, turned, and shouted to the waiter for two Fundadors. ‘Perhaps you drink too much cognac? Cognac is bad for it. Perhaps you smoke too much? Smoking is bad for it.’
‘All right. Everything’s bad for it.’
‘Not everything. Work is excellent for it. But maybe Marie still does all the work for the both of you.’ He slapped Mayans on the back and Mayans hit his stomach on the edge of the table.
The big fat Moorish bastard, thought Mayans, as he rubbed his stomach. ‘I’ve got to go.’
‘With drinks arriving? What are you? A Madrid tailor?’ The waiter brought the drinks. ‘Phone his wife,’ said Jiménez to the waiter, ‘and tell her he’s not feeling very well and can’t return until he’s had a lie-down.’
‘That’s the excuse I used last time,’ replied the waiter, ‘and she didn’t believe me then.’ He returned to the bar.
Jiménez raised his glass and drank the contents straight down. ‘That’s better. It doesn’t do a stomach good to be without food for very long.’ He leaned forward. ‘You haven’t said what’s troubling you? Has Marie missed a couple of mil notes from the till?’
‘D’you think she doesn’t watch the till closer than that?’ Mayans answered bitterly. ‘And if she’s not watching it, that girl she’s taken on is.’
‘So now you’ve a girl in the place? Maybe you’ve …?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Your Marie watches everything too closely, eh?’
Jiménez called for two more cognacs. ‘Tell me, José, how is business? I don’t mean the shop. We all know Marie makes a fortune there. I mean the real business, the property, the millionaire’s business?’ He rubbed forefinger and thumb together in a universally expressive gesture.
‘All right,’ replied Mayans sulkily.
‘When you told us a long time ago — longer than I care to remember because a man gets old quickly — that you were going to manage all Marie’s business for her, I said to Ernesto, there walks a man who is so clever he soon will be rich enough to buy the whole of this end of the island.’
Laugh your head off, thought Mayans sourly.
‘And wasn’t I right? Within a month, the big deal. You let a finca to a rich Englishwoman at a rent even a Palma robber would respect.’
‘I must go.’ Mayans stood up.
‘Sit down,’ said Jiménez, as he kicked the other’s feet from under him so that Mayans sat with a thump that jarred his spine. ‘In only a month, the very big deal. A month! No one but a great businessman could act that fast. But you were so modest about it all.’
The waiter arrived at the table with two more glasses of brandy.
‘D’you remember,’ said Jiménez to the waiter, ‘how modest José was about his incredible success at the property business?’
‘Sure,’ replied the waiter. ‘No boasting at all. Even confessed it might take him half a year to make enough to retire and buy a manor house and employ half a dozen servants.’ He put the glasses down on the table, picked up the empty ones, and left.
Jiménez drank his second brandy as quickly as his first. He wiped his mouth with the back of a hairy hand. ‘But Marie, she got jealous. Just like a woman. Can’t stand a man being a very big success. She didn’t want you any longer in the property business in case you did everything for her. Eh?’ Jiménez dug his elbow in Mayans’s side, causing Mayans to slop brandy over his clothes.
Jiménez was a child, torturing a poor joke to death, thought Mayans. And had Jiménez been so clever in his life? He didn’t own a manor house or, for that much, even a respectable finca. He hadn’t foreseen the incredible rise
in rents and house prices that was to come. So it had been a mistake to agree a lifelong rent for the unfurnished finca. But if it hadn’t been for the rise in all the prices, that rent would have been a clever one. And he wasn’t the only person in Llueso to have guessed wrongly.
‘I think, though, that perhaps the Englishwoman must also be clever?’ said Jiménez, his huge head tilted to one side, malicious amusement gleaming in his dark eyes. ‘Because perhaps in the end she had a little better bargain than you did?’
Mayans finished his brandy. ‘She’s made many improvements which she’s paid for, but which now belong to the house,’ he said weakly.
‘I knew it! You’ve been a genius all along, no matter what it’s looked like to ignorant people like myself. She doesn’t pay a full rent, but she turns your house into a palace for you. Has she put gold on the taps and lined the floors with Italian marble?’ He turned and shouted to the waiter. ‘Two more cognacs to celebrate.’
Mayans stood up and hastily stepped out of range.
‘So you have to rush to do more profitable business? Letting other houses at little rent so the rich foreigners rebuild them for you?’
Mayans left the building and his only consolation was that he hadn’t paid for any of the drinks, not even the couple before Jiménez had entered.
He walked down a small side street to his car, parked away from the club in case someone reported its presence there to Marie. He sat down behind the wheel and lit a cigarette. Just because an ugly old foreign woman had been lucky, he was laughed at by everyone and treated with contempt by his wife. One day, he’d show the lot of ’em.
CHAPTER VI
THE EASTMORES’ HOUSE was in La Huerta de Llueso. It was an attractive ranch-style bungalow, built on piles to avoid rising damp, large enough to be discreetly imposing, but not so large as to be vulgar. The garden was terraced, since it lay on the dying slopes of the mountain behind, and a full-time gardener kept it in perfect order and as near to a traditional English garden as one could get with bougainvillaea, poinsettias, palm trees, loquats, persimmons, oranges, prickly pear cacti, and century plants everywhere. The oval swimming pool, in the centre of a lawn of the local creeping grass which felt like corrugated cardboard to walk on, was on the same level as the house and to the right of it. Round the pool had been built a complex of bar, dining area, terrace, kitchen, barbecue pit, changing rooms, and lavatory. In each of the changing rooms was a discreet notice in English which said: ‘Please observe the proprieties before swimming.’ To the north of the house was a circular drive, closely modelled on the huge circular drive of the country home they had sold many years ago, and in the centre of this was a flower-bed always filled with annuals in flower.
Mistakenly in Mallorca (An Inspector Alvarez Mystery Book 1) Page 4
