Mistakenly in Mallorca (An Inspector Alvarez Mystery Book 1) Page 3

  Jennifer — and faced by the moonlit scene of peace he could think of her with regret yet with a growing resignation — would have loved the place. She’d always loved islands and the suggestion of a simpler life led on them.

  He turned and went inside, shut the french windows, trod carefully and as little as possible on the carpets, and crossed to the back bedroom.

  The weather, changing with the rapidity with which it so often did on a fairly mountainous island in the early part of the year, became sunny with not a cloud in the sky.

  Tatham carried coffee, bread and marmalade on a tray out on to the patio. He ate beyond the balcony, where concrete pillars supported a grid of wire along which two vines, now shooting, were trained. Six feet below the patio — all the ground was sloping away from the mountain behind so that it was terraced-was the small garden in which was a ragged lawn, a circular, narrow fishpond with a tangerine tree growing in the centre, a surrounding bed of geraniums, two orange, one walnut and one pomegranate tree. Beyond and below the garden was an orange grove, almost a hectare in size. It was all very different from the garden at Sadacre Farm. Then he remembered the farm was no longer his. He wondered how the new tenant was making out and whether the lay in the four-acre field had taken well.

  A car rounded the wall at the far corner of the next-door property — belonging to a wealthy American woman who, Elvina said, had become so Spanish she’d even changed her name to a Spanish one and refused to entertain either Americans or English, but whose proselytization had stopped short at shifting her capital out of the States. The car bounced up the dirt track, turned at the estanque, and parked next to the garage. A short man, with an egg-shaped, smiling face, a jaw heavily stubbled, and wearing rough clothes, climbed out and came up to the table where Tatham sat. He spoke rapidly in Spanish.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Tatham replied, ‘but I don’t understand a word.’

  This made the man speak even more quickly.

  Elvina leaned out of the window of her bedroom. ‘Who is it …? Oh, it’s the landlord, José! What the hell’s he doing here so early?’

  José Mayans Bravo — like all Spaniards, he used his wife’s maiden name as well as his own — looked up and smiled more broadly than ever and wished her a good morning. She replied forcefully and his smile became less. She then spoke to Tatham. ‘Blast the man! I’d better come down and sort him out. Just can’t take a hint.’ She withdrew.

  Any hint she’d given, thought Tatham, had been driven home with a verbal sledgehammer.

  When she came out on to the patio, she was dressed in frayed dressing-gown, a pair of pyjamas, and a battered pair of slippers. ‘Is there any coffee?’

  He stood up. ‘I’ll go and make some fresh.’ He carried the tray through to the kitchen and there refilled the Espresso machine and put it on the stove. The coffee made quickly and he took it out, together with cup, saucer, milk, and sugar. Elvina was sitting down on one of the metal garden chairs and was waving a forefinger at Mayans, who was looking sheepish.

  ‘The bloody rogue: they’re all rogues,’ she said, in tones of affection. ‘Put one within scenting distance of a peseta and he’d knife his own grandmother to get it. This is the third time in the past six months he’s tried to get me to pay more rent. Says he’s now having to support half a dozen relatives and is desperate for money. He knows perfectly well that I know he doesn’t support anyone, not even his own wife.’

  ‘Can he force you to pay more?’

  ‘No!’ She helped herself to milk and sugar, sipped the coffee, then added a little more sugar. ‘When I came out here, this rascal offered me the place on a lifelong lease at a rent he thought was exorbitant and when I signed up he reckoned he’d made a hell of a good bargain. But I could see what was going to happen to prices and rents and I knew that in a year or two I’d be laughing. I am, now.’ Mayans looked from one to the other of them, then spoke to her in a soft, pleading voice.

  Elvina finished her coffee and replaced the cup on the saucer with a bang. ‘“Just a thousand a month more. It won’t hurt the Señora and it’ll save me from starving.” As if one can’t see that he’s got a long, long way to go before he starves.’

  ‘The poor man doesn’t realize who he’s up against.’ Elvina laughed, to the evident annoyance of Mayans who spoke indignantly.

  ‘Now he’s getting on his high horse. Great chaps for dignity, out here. Says I won’t treat him seriously. Of course I won’t treat his cries of poverty seriously when he spends most of his spare time at the Llueso Club drinking brandy. It’s easy to guess what’s really irking him. They’re all so sharp at business that they can’t stand a despised foreigner getting the better of them … Still, I suppose we ought to take pity on him. Go and get the brandy, will you, please. We’ll pour a couple of large tots down him and maybe he’ll feel more cheerful.’

  Brandy for breakfast, thought Tatham, as he walked into the house, was undoubtedly a great recipe for calming down an irate landlord.

  CHAPTER IV

  JUDY TOYNBEE said to her stepfather, ‘I’ll be off, then, Larry. See you some time this evening, if you’re still up.’

  ‘Sure,’ Ingham replied.

  ‘And don’t forget to order some whisky: we’re down to the last bottle.’

  He watched her leave, a tall, slim woman, direct in manner, too direct, many said, with an attractive if petulant face which was slightly off-set so that her two profiles were distinctly dissimilar. She was spending the day with Will Brown. Will was a small-time crook, he thought patronizingly, dealing in cheap property illegally — under Spanish law he needed qualifications he did not possess — swindling his English clients in any one, or more, of several time-honoured ways. But Judy must know what kind of a man he was — all the residents did. She was quite possibly going out with him simply because of his reputation.

  He crossed the very large sitting-room and stared out at the distant bay through the right-hand large picture window. Will Brown was lucky, he suddenly thought irrationally. He’d kept his feet on the ground and stayed with the small property market and so when things went wrong his losses didn’t cripple him. But he, Lawrence Ingham, had had visions of grandeur and had started his own urbanization and had built also the house he now lived in, Ca’n Xema, to millionaires’ standards. So when things went wrong, they went really wrong.

  It was basically all the fault of the Spanish government. They’d been talking about levying rates and taxes for years, but no one had ever really expected them to implement their threats. But they had, including a thumping tax on undeveloped building sites. How many undeveloped building sites did he have on his urbanization? And then the Spanish government hadn’t devalued the peseta when the pound and the dollar dropped to the floor and so prospective buyers of luxury houses became rarer than capitalists in China.

  If he joined all his unpaid bills together, they’d stretch from where to where? Too bloody far.

  The future wasn’t as bleak as the present. It couldn’t be. The pound and the dollar would appreciate against the peseta, money would return, the more expensive houses would sell. But how long before then and would he be around to see the change? The most conservative of estimates said that if he didn’t soon find five million pesetas, he was finished.

  It wasn’t the first time he’d been short of money. Two of his three marriages had been undertaken as a result of financial difficulties. But that solution was probably no longer open to him. Every time he looked in a mirror he seemed to see deeper and more lines of dissipation, more grey hairs, and now he’d need a lot of luck to grab a wealthy widow: or else she’d be so old that he couldn’t go through with it.

  He lit a cigarette: American, smuggled. He never did anything cheaply, not even when he hardly dared step into any one of the three banks he dealt with. All his houses were built of the best materials, despite the attempts of the local builders to substitute the cheapest. He drove a Mercedes shooting-brake on French plates (which meant he paid no
tax on it). His suits were made in London and now cost over two hundred guineas each. If Judy needed a new frock, he gave her a cheque for ten or fifteen thousand pesetas and told her to buy a small French number in Palma.

  He was in trouble because he needed five million pesetas. Not so long ago, before he’d become ambitious, he could have found five million with little trouble. But he’d become big business and so, ironically, the availability of cash had become very much less. If he sold up everything that was easily and readily saleable, he couldn’t realize more than two and a half million. And he daren’t try to make more by selling cheaply, because people would know he was in trouble and they’d be snapping all around him like an army of sharks.

  He turned away from the window. The sitting-room, he thought, was the most attractive room he’d ever designed. The proportions were exactly right. The ceiling was high and beamed, the marble fireplace baronial but not exaggerated, the high-quality reproduction furniture went perfectly with the hand-painted tiles, the two tapestries were genuine if minor Gobelin (smuggled across the border in his car), the built-in bookcase was filled with matched leather-bound books that could improve any man’s mind, even a rich man’s. Beyond were dining-room, music-room, breakfast-room, study, five principal bedrooms and bathrooms all en suite and all with doors carved to traditional Spanish patterns, an upstairs sitting-room, together with very full domestic quarters, to use the professional jargon, servants’ quarters, and even two further bedrooms for the poor relations. A home for a millionaire … or Herr Naupert. He crossed to the middle of three doors and opened it to show a small but well-stocked bar. He poured himself out a Campari, vermouth, and soda.

  Naupert was a hard bastard, he thought with irritated admiration. No wonder he was reputedly one of the richest industrialists in Germany. He’d first lined up Naupert a year ago. Very rich, an art collector and amateur art critic of standing, looking for a place in the sun because this had become the thing for a rich German businessman to have even if he was too busy making money ever to use it. A natural mark for an ambitious property seller. He’d travelled to Germany and made casual contact — that had cost him a fistful of marks — and after spending a lot more money on entertaining Naupert had casually let it be known he had a beautiful house in the most beautiful part of Mallorca which he might be persuaded to sell to someone he really liked who appreciated it. Naupert had said, with brutal directness, that now one question was answered because he’d been wondering from the beginning what Herr Ingham was selling. That night, Ingham had for the first time thought he might be getting a bit old for the racket.

  However, Naupert had finally agreed he did want to buy a house in Mallorca. Ingham flew him and his wife out to the island, first class, VIP treatment all the way, and showed him the house — Ca’n Xema had not then been quite completed. The Nauperts had looked over it and after a further six expensive days at the Hotel Parelona — Ingham paying — had said no, it wasn’t quite what they wanted and in any case it was priced at a million and a half pesetas too much. Ingham still didn’t know which of the many English bastards in Llueso had betrayed him and leaked to the Nauperts the reasonable price for the house.

  He’d crossed the Nauperts off his list because you couldn’t do profitable business with people who refused to let their wallets be dictated to by their hearts. But then the money shortage had become very bad and it was essential to sell Ca’n Xema and the Nauperts were the only people he could think of who were likely to be able to afford such a place.

  Why hadn’t they bought the first house? If he could find the answer to this, he might be able to sell them Ca’n Xema. The million and a half pesetas couldn’t be the reason. A hard-headed bastard of a German businessman would have been delighted to bargain away this extra. No, they just hadn’t liked the house (it was difficult to judge what influence his wife had had on his decision because she hardly ever spoke). Why hadn’t they liked it? And the only answer he had come to, reluctantly because he could so easily be wrong, was that it just hadn’t been expensive enough. Naupert might appear the very epitome of rock-hard sensibility, but he could be subject to ordinary human emotions, including that of wanting it to be clear, without making it clear, that he didn’t keep up with the Joneses, he was the de Hartville-Smiths. The first house had been very attractive, in a beautiful position, and expensive, but it was possible to name three other houses in the area as good. Owning that house, the Nauperts would have been remarked, but not remarkable. But Ca’n Xema was unique. On a perfect site, its only disadvantage being close to the mountain so that the sun was lost by four in the afternoon, it was built with drystone walls which alone marked it out amongst all others. Then the overall design had all the pleasing warmth of classical simplicity, unspoilt by any hint of baroque extravagance — in contrast to too many of the larger houses which looked as though they’d been designed by left-handed, fumble-fisted plumbers with delusions of grandeur — and the landscaped, terraced garden couldn’t be matched by anyone other than the Eastmores. The owner of Ca’n Xema must unmistakably be very rich and very successful. Which was why the Nauperts would buy it, if they ever did.

  Just showing them the house and quoting a price wasn’t going to be enough. Forget the wife. Naupert suffered from pride, but he was also a very keen businessman and when it came to buying this house those two factors were going to join battle. Ca’n Xema would bolster his pride, but empty his pocket. So which way would he jump? Reluctantly, Ingham had previously decided that the businessman would win through and that, failing anything else, Naupert would not buy Ca’n Xema. Which was why, three months ago, he’d telephoned Antonio Galan in Ibiza, arranged a meeting in Palma at the Hotel Obispo, and there commissioned Galan to paint a Renoir which he was going to present to Naupert as a poor fake.

  CHAPTER V

  THE ENGLISH COMMUNITY at Llueso and Puerto Llueso numbered about four hundred and the English Community about two hundred. The subtle difference between the two was a source of much pride, heart-burning, and jealousy amongst the English and mystification amongst the foreigners — particularly the Americans who really did believe that one man was as good as another if each was worth the same number of dollars.

  The English Community prided itself on upholding old-fashioned — and none the worse for that — standards. Breeding and manners were clearly far more important than mere wealth although, of course, sufficient wealth did help a person to overcome his or her background provided he or she was not a pop star, married to a native (in this sense, a Mallorquin or a Spaniard without aristocratic ancestry), engaged in trade on the island (here, the classifications became far too obscure for any foreigner to follow), or a writer who hadn’t won a Nobel prize.

  Breeding was a matter of record and manners were self-evident, but wealth could only be proved in the most subtle manner: to be nouveau riche was automatically to be Non-C (Non-Community). To be clever was almost as fatal.

  In order to maintain its ethos and to meet every member’s need for a Queen-like figure, a cross between a friendly white Protestant God and Emily Post, it was necessary to have a leader. Their leader was Lady Mary Eastmore.

  A Frenchman would have described her, if forced to do so, as formidable. She was approaching sixty, though not too quickly, and her skin had the dried-up, used look, despite all the care lavished on it, which came from many years spent in the tropics. Her face was long with a square and decided chin, her mouth was on the firm side, and her eyes were light blue and icy. Her hair was nut-brown, turning grey. Her body was on the thin side and her breasts were satisfactorily small — she disliked breasts. Her voice was in keeping — high-pitched, loud, drawlingly accented, and at times infuriating. The natives in one of the colonies where she’d been the governor’s wife had christened her ‘The macaw with a twisted tongue’. She was always correct and polite, especially to those to whom it was not strictly necessary, and she never lost her temper.

  She believed it to be the divine right of certain f
ew people to be the leaders and of the rest to be the led, and in the monarchy. On the Queen’s birthdays, actual and official, she personally hoisted the Union Jack to the top of the flagpole in the centre of the lawn.

  She possessed breeding and untainted wealth. Her husband’s title went all the way back to Charles the Second and a rather unrefined mistress and his wealth came largely from the middle of the nineteenth century (sweated labour in factories) which was far enough back to remove the slightest taint of trade.

  An American who’d been subjected to a lecture on the disastrous effect on the world of the antagonistic American ignorance of enlightened colonial rule had called her a stupid old bitch. Bitch she might be, stupid she was not. She had read Don Quijote de la Mancha in the original and not many Spaniards ever kept going to the end of that endless book. She knew some of Miguel Llobera’s poems by heart, which few Mallorquins did. She had corrected the visiting Anglican bishop on his rendering of Proverbs XXIII 31, pointing out that no matter what the revised edition of the Bible stated, the noted Jewish scholar, Shlomo Washftig, had recently cast doubts — which seemed to have good grounds — on the generally accepted translation. She knew the rules of precedence backwards and could, without a second’s thought, correctly seat at the dinner table the Iranian foreign minister, a minor prince of one of the Gulf sheikdoms, an Australian mining millionaire unconnected with Poseidon, the cousin of one of the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting, the elder son of an earl who’d renounced his title, and a prebendary who was a pederast.