‘Is it all right to get moving?’ asked the driver of the small open van which had been hired to take the body over the mountains.
‘Yeah. And when you get to the morgue tell ’em I’ll be on to the next-of-kin to arrange with undertakers immediately.’
‘Sure.’
The law said a body must be buried within twenty-four hours of death — very necessary in high summer. A doctor must examine this body to conform with regulations, but as soon as that was done the funeral must be fixed up at once. Where did non-Catholics get planted? At the back of his mind was the memory of reading that there was a small cemetery in Palma for foreigners of bogus faiths.
He helped the driver load the body-wrapped up in canvas and infuriatingly difficult to handle — on to the back of the van. The driver, who’d climbed up, pulled the canvas towards the cab and by heaving it diagonally it was just possible to fit it in. ‘It’s a good job she wasn’t a large ’un,’ said the driver, ‘or we’d have had to leave her feet sticking up.’
She was small, though Alvarez: small enough to have been a Mallorquin. But that was odd … He saw the driver was just about to jump down. ‘Hang on up there for a moment.’
‘What the hell for?’
‘Because I tell you to.’
‘That’s great, but I’m in a hurry. It’s no fun driving this thing over the mountains in the dark.’ But the driver stayed where he was because only a fool got too far on the wrong side of the police.
‘How tall was she?’ asked Alvarez.
‘How the hell would I know?’ replied the driver sullenly.
‘Try guessing.’
The driver unwrapped the canvas and stared at the body. ‘One metre sixty, sixty-five maybe.’
In other words, thought Alvarez, within a couple of centimetres of his own height. Yet when he’d sat in the Fiat up in the mountains he’d found that the seat was too far back for him to work the pedals or look into the rear-view mirror.
‘Can I start?’ demanded the driver.
‘Get moving, but see she gets there safely.’ Alvarez dropped his cigarette stub on to the floor and stamped it out, then lit another. He stared at the onlookers without actually seeing them, and tried to assure himself that a mad Englishwoman might easily set the driving seat of her car so far back she couldn’t drive safely. But he couldn’t really accept the proposition. And someone at the club in Llueso had said she’d come into a packet of money … Forget it, he told himself. Ten to one the position of the driving seat didn’t mean a thing. If he settled for the obvious, there’d be one or two forms to fill in and then that would be that. But start asking questions and God knows where things would end. And it wasn’t as if it were important — no Spaniard or Mallorquin was involved.
As the van left, he returned to his car, a borrowed Seat 127-his Seat 600 would never have made the journey — and not very different from a Fiat 128. He slid the driving seat right back and this left his feet only just able to make contact with the pedals. He switched on the engine, engaged first gear, and released the clutch. His left foot slipped and the car went into a series of kangaroo hops which only ended when the engine stalled. A hippie-type couple in their early twenties laughed at him. Unwashed English, he thought furiously, since he prided himself on his ability as a driver.
CHAPTER XVI
TATHAM WAS READING through the previous day’s Daily Telegraph, bought that morning from the newsagent down in the Puerto, when he heard a car come up the dirt-track. He looked out through the window of the dining recess and saw a white Seat 600, and although there was nothing at that stage to give him a definite identification he was fairly certain it was the detective’s car.
He folded up the newspaper, went through to the hall, and opened the front door. The Seat didn’t stop until the bonnet was under the balcony. Alvarez climbed out.
Alvarez looked more crumpled and used-up than before, thought Tatham. Yet there was a suggestion in the lines about his heavy mouth which said he was a man who could quickly smarten up if ever he wanted to.
‘Good afternoon, Señor Tatham. I hope I find you well?’ He said he was fine as he relaxed slightly. This must be a formal visit or the detective could surely never be so courteous?
‘I fear I have some bad news for you, Señor. We have recovered a body which we believe to be the señora’s.’
Tatham fidgeted with the button of his shirt, trying to give the impression of a man who was suddenly faced with an event which he had been expecting yet had been hoping against hope would not arise. ‘I see.’ He even managed to speak hoarsely.
‘I have to ask you to come to identify the body.’
‘Must I?’ The revulsion in his voice was genuine.
Alvarez nodded. ‘And as you will be identifying her, Señor, I must have certain details for the records. May we go somewhere where I can write?’
He led the way inside into the dining recess where the table offered the best writing surface. ‘Would you like some coffee?’ he asked.
‘Nothing for me, thank you. But if I may see your passport, please, and do you have the name and address of the señora’s lawyers?’
‘You want the address of her lawyers?’
‘She has personal property here, a bank account no doubt, and the law has to know what to do with it all. In these unfortunate cases, we always have a word with the deceased’s legal advisers.’
‘Yes, of course. I just wasn’t thinking.’ He left, realizing how a perfectly ordinary request had nearly sent him into a mental flat spin. He had, he told himself, to be more careful. Because he knew the truth, he was suspecting hidden meanings where there weren’t any.
His passport was in the inside breast pocket of his coat which hung in the cupboard of his bedroom. He went into the solar and across to the desk and searched through the drawers, finding Elvina’s address book: under ‘Solicitors’ was the name of a firm in Rockton Cross.
Downstairs, Alvarez put on his heavy horn-rimmed glasses and noted down the address and name of the firm. He handed the address book back and examined the passport, looked up after a short while. ‘This says you are a farmer?’
‘That’s right. I am.’
‘How many hundreds of hectares do you farm?’ he asked, and could not keep the hostility from his voice.
‘None at all, right now,’ replied Tatham, puzzled by the other’s attitude.
‘But many hundreds before you sold and came out to this island?’
‘I rented seventy acres at an uneconomic rent. I had forty-five cows and sometimes couldn’t even get enough grass off the seventy acres to keep them in milk. The soil was thick yellow clay and the only time that’s any good is in a drought which doesn’t last too long, when the grass will keep growing where it dries up on lighter soils …’ He stopped, then said: ‘I’m sorry. Ask me one question on farming and I’m off.’
‘Off where?’
‘Off talking about it, twenty to the dozen.’
‘You sounded very enthusiastic?’
‘Well, of course. Wouldn’t you expect that?’
‘My parents were on the land,’ said Alvarez. Strange, for a moment the Englishman had sounded just like a peasant farmer who understood the feel of soil trickling through his fingers. A pose? He looked back at the passport. ‘I shall have to keep this for a short time. I do not suppose you are intending to return immediately to England?’
‘No, I’m not. There’ll be the funeral to arrange and probably several other things to cope with.’
‘Exactly. So I will take the passport and issue you a receipt for it. Should you need to leave the country unexpectedly, come to the station of the Guardia Civil in the village and ask for me.’ He wrote out a receipt, on a form ready stamped with the police seal, and handed this across. ‘Now, we unfortunately have the identification. Shall we proceed in your car?’
‘If you like,’ replied Tatham, wondering why this should be more convenient than each using his own car.
Whe
n they sat down in the Fiat, Alvarez noticed that the driving seat was considerably farther back than the passenger seat: a setting which obviously suited this long-legged Englishman. Judging visually, it was the same setting at which it had been when the car had been found up in the mountains.
They drove down the dirt-track, turned the corner and were slowly passing the fields on their right, occasional loose stones clunking on the underneath of the car, when Tatham stopped. ‘You can tell me something since you’ll know about the land. I’ve asked and no one else knows the answer.’ He pointed to the land on his right where crops were being grown underneath orange and lemon trees. ‘Why are there so many different clumps of the same crop? Three separate lots of tomatoes, artichokes there and there, chick peas going slantwise, one group of lettuces in a circle, another right over there, beans here and beans there. Why not put all the plants of one variety together? Wouldn’t that surely make for much easier cultivation?’
‘You think, probably, the peasant is a fool? He’s never had the intelligence to think of anything so advanced?’
‘On the contrary,’ retorted Tatham, annoyed by the other’s surliness. ‘It’s because no good farmer is a fool that I wonder why this chap doesn’t make things easier for himself — judging by the look of his crops, he’s a very good market-gardener.’
Alvarez lit a cigarette. ‘I don’t know why,’ he finally muttered.
Tatham didn’t believe him. He engaged first gear and drove on, stopping where the dirt-track met the road to let a car pass. ‘Which end of the town do we need to go to?’ ‘At the far end, so start along the Palma road.’ Alvarez relapsed into silence and smoked quickly, only speaking again to direct Tatham through the narrow streets of Llueso to the morgue. There were two rooms on the ground floor at the back of an undertaker’s: in one room were three wooden chairs, in the other a marble slab. Tatham was left in the first room for a few minutes, during which he smoked and stared at the damp stains at the base of the walls, then he was called into the second room. He took a deep breath, swallowed nervously, stood up, and went in. The reality was not as bad as imagination had suggested and he was in control of himself when he said: ‘Yes. She’s my great-aunt, Elvina Woods.’
The white sheet was drawn back over the body by the grim-faced man who was the town’s undertaker. Alvarez motioned Tatham to follow him out and back to the first room. ‘We can return to your house, now.’
‘Can you tell me what happens next?’
‘There are certain formalities to be followed.’
‘But what do I do about the funeral?’
‘I will tell you as soon as you should start arrangements. Then you may speak to the man we have just met. He is the only undertaker in Llueso.’
They returned to the Fiat and drove back towards Ca’n Manin and as they rattled along the dirt-track, past the field with the many patches of crops which had puzzled Tatham, Alvarez said, without any preamble and as if the question had just been put to him: ‘It is perhaps a question of water. Here, on this island, we have weeks and months without rain and crops have to be irrigated very often. The farmers are not rich and cannot afford automatic irrigation, so they cut channels through the soil and run water down the channels. The land is terraced, but each field does not always slope exactly and some parts can be well watered and some cannot. But as you know, each crop needs a different degree of water.’ The moment he’d spoken, he was annoyed he’d done so. Yet he wasn’t going to have this Englishman think him such a fool that he knew nothing about farming.
‘Of course!’ said Tatham. ‘I ought to have realized that.’ He tried to speak lightly. ‘But at home our problem in the summer is usually too much rain, not too little. Have you ever been to England?’
‘No,’ muttered Alvarez, and he made even that one word bad-tempered.
Like a politician, thought Tatham: changing attitudes almost as fast as he breathed.
When they reached Ca’n Manin, Alvarez refused a drink, said goodbye with curt briefness, and left. Tatham checked on the time, then returned to the car and drove the kilometre to Ca’n Xema. Judy was in. She greeted him with obvious pleasure.
‘They’ve found Elvina,’ he said abruptly.
‘Oh!’ She ran her hands through her long black hair and looked at him.
‘Her body was in the sea, somewhere near Cala Paraitx. I’ve just been along to a place in Llueso to identify her.’
‘How perfectly beastly for you. Come through and have a really stiff drink to help.’ She tucked her arm round his. ‘Shall we play some music to take you out of yourself or would you rather talk about it?’
‘I’ll settle for the music afterwards, but first off I must have your advice on what I’ve got to do, because the detective wasn’t very helpful.’
She led the way into the music-room and as he sat down she crossed to the glass-fronted cupboard in which a large number of records were stored in racks. ‘The funeral has to be held very quickly by law. Especially in this case, because …’ She didn’t finish.
‘He did tell me he’d let me know when I could speak to the undertaker.’
She showed her surprise. ‘Let you know? But didn’t he want you to make all arrangements immediately?’
‘No. Is that so very odd?’
She nibbled her lower lip for a few seconds. ‘Maybe after an accident like this it’s different …’
She looked at him with obvious perplexity and he realized that there was far more significance in what had happened than he had imagined. For the first time, he disturbingly began to realize that things weren’t going as smoothly as he had believed.
*
Death was the great democrat. Everybody died, even the Eastmores of the world, so everybody acknowledged it and there was no disgrace in dying. General respect was paid to everyone, even those who in their lifetime had been outside the Community and irrespective of how serious their past social solecisms.
‘Charles,’ said Lady Eastmore, as she sipped her cognac — Cognac, not Spanish brandy — ‘I hear that Elvina’s body has been found. It was in the sea.’
‘That means the funeral tomorrow.’ Lord Eastmore frowned. ‘I hope I have a black tie?’
‘Two new ones which I bought at Crampton’s for you. It’s all rather inconvenient, as a matter of fact: Norah and I were going into Palma tomorrow.’
The mountain was eating her way through a large plateful of French crystallized fruit. ‘Who’s the man we met at drinks who told me, Mary?’
‘Reggie. A reasonable man when he’s not tight.’
The mountain hesitated between a plum and half an apricot. She chose the apricot, popped it into her mouth, licked the traces of sugar off her thumb and forefinger, and began to chew. ‘He said he reckoned there was something very odd going on.’
‘What did he mean?’ asked Lady Eastmore, with interest.
‘It’s something to do with not allowing the funeral to take place yet.’ She swallowed, noisily cleared her teeth with her tongue, picked up the plum, and resumed chewing.
‘Charles,’ said Lady Eastmore, ‘isn’t that all very odd? The authorities usually insist on the funeral almost before the person’s properly dead.’
‘Quite so,’ he answered.
‘Trust Elvina to make an unfortunate spectacle even out of her own funeral!’
*
Mayans ran up the stairs to their flat. It was immediately obvious Marie was in the sitting-room and he went in there. She was at the table, counting money and checking figures with the help of a manually operated adding-machine.
‘They’ve found her,’ he said breathlessly.
Her hand was on the handle of the adding-machine and she automatically operated it before saying: ‘D’you mean Señora Woods?’
‘Floating off Paraitx and couldn’t be deader. Marie, the house is ours.’
‘It’s mine,’ she corrected sharply. She looked at him, then began to stack up the money.
He crossed to the
old Mallorquin sideboard he’d bought in the Palma flea market and picked up from it a two-and-a-half-litre bottle of 501 brandy. ‘Fifteen thousand a month, now the old bitch has popped it.’ He suddenly crossed himself. ‘And that crazy Dutchman will pay two and a …’ He stopped, aghast at what he’d been about to say. ‘Two million pesetas for the field.’
She finished stacking the money and with a sigh of relief Mayans realized she hadn’t divined what he’d almost said.
CHAPTER XVII
IT WAS ALWAYS a lottery as to whether a telephone call to Palma went through as clear as a bell or was strangled by interference so that barely every other word was audible. On Wednesday morning, it was perfectly clear.
‘Why do you recommend a post-mortem?’ asked Superior Chief Salas.
Alvarez leaned back in his chair and rested his feet on the desk. He sighed. ‘As I’ve just explained …’
Salas was not a man to allow anyone to explain anything unchecked. ‘You say this woman fell down the cliff at the viewing site on the Llueso/Parelona road? Don’t you find that good enough reason for death?’
‘I just want to check …’
‘Have you the slightest idea what a post-mortem costs?’
‘I know they’re expensive …’
‘Who is she? Only a foreigner.’
‘I know, Senor, but …’
‘If I go to the Institute of Forensic Anatomy and ask Professor Romero to conduct a post-mortem, I receive a bill for thousands of pesetas. No doubt you are unconcerned about spending pesetas, but I have to worry …’
Alvarez stared gloomily through the window. Sharp sunshine speared down into the narrow street and people were beginning to walk on the shady side. He was a fool. Even after all these years, he had not learned an ounce of common sense. All he’d had to do was get the doctor to agree the woman’s injuries were consistent with falling down the cliff face into the sea — and who was going to disagree with that? — and the case would have been all wrapped up. But he’d had to get clever. Like a man approaching his dotage, he’d …
Mistakenly in Mallorca (An Inspector Alvarez Mystery Book 1) Page 14
