Mistakenly in Mallorca (An Inspector Alvarez Mystery Book 1) Page 9

  CHAPTER X

  THURSDAY’S weather was once more hot and sunny and when Tatham awoke, after a surprisingly good sleep, the sunshine was streaming round the edges of the curtain of the east-facing window. He got out of bed and pulled back the curtain. Beyond the roof of the washroom, made from the same variegated brown and fawn tiles as the roof of the house, was the scrubland in which he had dumped the food the previous night: under the roof was the deep-freeze and in it was Elvina’s body. It was truly almost incredible.

  He went into the upstairs bathroom and began to run a bath. After a long while the water heated up — the delay was to be expected since the bare hot pipes ran part of their course outside the house — but almost at once it turned cold again, which probably meant that the gas cylinder had run out. He went downstairs and into the back garden and changed the gas cylinder of the water-heater. When he tried to re-light the pilot light, it wouldn’t work. He lifted the coupling off the gas cylinder, replaced it, tried the pilot light again and this time it worked. So many things on the island were like that: working or not working arbitrarily. But the deception of Elvina’s death had to work.

  He had a bath, only just warm enough despite the new gas, dressed, and went downstairs. Over breakfast, he mentally weighed up whether it would be better for him to be in or out, in either case ostensibly with Elvina, for the day: he decided to be out. His mind moved on. Under what conditions should the body finally be found? That must surely depend on how long it would take to unfreeze? If any part of the body remained frozen when it was found, the deception would be over.

  He washed up his supper and breakfast china and cutlery — Elvina disliked either to be left lying around — dried them, and put them away in the larder. What next? He suddenly remembered that, strangely in one so tidy about the house, Elvina never bothered to make her bed during the week but left that to Catalina to do in the afternoon. He went up to her bedroom, pulled back the cover, the two blankets, and a sheet, lay on the bottom sheet to crumple it, looked for the pair of pyjamas she had been wearing and found these under the single pillow and left them lying across the bed. What about dirty clothes? She wore old and shapeless frocks, but he felt certain these and her underclothes were always clean so they would be frequently changed. Mostly, she put them in the washing-machine herself. He would do the same and hang the wet clothes out on the line that was strung across the back garden. Food. He must buy enough for the two of them. Bread, meat, butter, milk, etc., could be stored in larder or refrigerator and be used up at a regular rate. Always remembering Elvina had been a surprisingly good trencherwoman. He must buy wine at the usual shop because she never ate a meal without a considerable quantity of wine … The complications suddenly became endless whereas the previous night the only real problems had seemed to be to get the body into the deep-freeze and repair the balcony rails. To continue. Suppose mail arrived and by its nature had to be answered virtually by return? Would it be better to invent an illness? But an illness severe enough to keep a person out of sight and unable to write a letter must surely be severe enough to call in the doctor? Money. She drew money at irregular intervals from her bank. If the deception had to be kept going for many days, the failure to draw money might attract attention. Could he sign a cheque in her name? A ridiculous suggestion. Then perhaps it should after all be an illness that prevented her going to the bank? But there would be one or two people who, hearing she was ill, would want to know how she was. Other people would want to be seen to be doing the right thing …

  He suddenly needed to check that the deep-freeze lid was locked and he hurried out into the washroom to do this, even though he could clearly remember locking it the previous night. The motor was working, as was to be expected. Until the body was reduced to just below zero, it would work continuously.

  Back in the kitchen, he organized a picnic for two. Freezy-bag, with the two cold packs taken from the frozen compartment of the refrigerator, butter, the rest of the sliced ham from the previous day, cheese, tomatoes, mustard, jam — she had the North-Country habit of eating jam with cheese — two knives, two glasses, jar of red wine, bottle of white Cinzano for her, red Cinzano for him, two paper napkins because she hated having greasy fingers …

  He carried the freezy-bag out to the Fiat and put it in the back. Then, even whilst he knew this was ridiculous, he suddenly wondered if the deep-freeze lid was locked. He felt the key in his trousers pocket, but still went back to the washroom to check. Was there a second key? Catalina might know where it was kept. He searched the washroom, but found no key hidden on any ledge.

  Elvina’s handbag was in the sitting-room and he only noticed it by chance. Yet she would never have gone out for the day without it. He picked it up. For some reason, it reminded him that the cover of the downstairs front bed had not been replaced. He suddenly felt panicky, as if disaster were already sitting on his shoulders. So he stood still, lit a cigarette, and smoked. It was an old trick of his. When things on the farm had gone wrong — the vacuum on the milking plant was too low, but nothing would apparently rectify it-he’d forced himself to take a break, no matter what the pressures, to smoke, and to think out the problem. A moment’s calm thought was usually worth an hour’s frenzied rushing about. As he smoked, he decided the problems weren’t as bad as he’d begun to imagine. Elvina was extremely tidy so the house was never in a mess, but beyond that she was so unpredictable that any departure from normal would raise little curiosity. Acts of omission would surely be put down to her ‘peculiarity’.

  He found a spare bedcover and put it in the downstairs front bedroom. He left the house, locked the front door, and hung the key on the back of one of the outer wooden doors for Catalina. He climbed into the car, started it, backed out, and drove down the dirt-track. How long would Geoffrey Maitland live, he wondered, as the car bounced into and out of potholes.

  *

  He returned to Ca’n Manin at six-thirty.

  The house bore all the usual signs of Catalina’s having been there during the afternoon. Chairs were moved back into the positions in which she reckoned they should be, as opposed to those where Elvina wanted them, fresh flowers — picked from the garden despite repeated requests to leave them growing — were on the wrought-iron and marble table in the sitting-room, all the tiled floors still showed odd pockets of damp from being washed down.

  He put the freezy-bag and the jar of wine on the kitchen floor and hurried out to the wash-room. The lid of the deep-freeze was locked and the motor was still working. Was the engine, he wondered, in one of its regular cycles or had it not yet stopped because the temperature was still not low enough? One was usually directed not to put in more than fifteen pounds of produce to be frozen at any one time … Suppose it did break down? Where did one get hold of the service engineer? How to prevent the engineer from lifting the lid to test the temperature …? To hell with all that. There had to be an end to the contingencies against which he planned.

  Back in the kitchen, he poured some of the red wine down the sink. Elvina would have had at least three more glassfuls than had been taken out. Should Catalina for some reason see the jar tomorrow, the right amount must have apparently been drunk.

  He was about to flush the sink with water when he heard a car approach and then the slam of a door. The next moment, there was a call: ‘Anyone at home?’ He recognized Judy’s voice.

  He went through to the hall. She stood just inside, one hand on the front door. She was dressed in grey slacks and woollen sweater and her hair was in a tangle as if blown about by the wind: the only apparent make-up she wore was lipstick.

  ‘Hallo, John. I was beginning to think no one was in.’

  ‘I was through in the kitchen. We’ve just been on a picnic and I was clearing up.’

  ‘I’ve called in to talk about cabbages and kings. D’you mind?’

  ‘How d’you mean?’ he asked sharply.

  She looked at him, then away, and a sulky expression formed round her mouth. ‘You
obviously don’t remember your Carroll. But you’re busy, so I’ll push on.’ She moved to leave.

  ‘Hang on,’ he said, trying to sound welcoming.

  She stepped into the doorway. ‘There’s no need to put yourself out. If you’d rather be on your own, for God’s sake say so.’

  ‘All this because I didn’t remember my Lewis Carroll? What gives, that you take umbrage quicker than a bloke can breathe?’

  ‘I have the unfortunate faculty of knowing when I’m not wanted.’

  ‘Anyone as snappy as you is surely never not wanted?’

  She hesitated, then finally smiled. ‘You reckon?’

  He grinned back at her. ‘Feel in a right bitchy mood and want to bitch? Come in and do so to your heart’s content, but over a drink.’

  She studied his face. ‘You’re inviting me in for a drink?’

  ‘Yes. Would you like it in writing?’

  She finally stepped inside and shut the door.

  ‘Was something the matter?’ she asked. ‘I mean when I first saw you? You looked … almost hostile?’

  ‘Indigestion,’ he replied. ‘And if we’re trading impressions, you look slightly less than your usual self.’

  ‘I’m not exactly feeling like jumping over the moon,’ she admitted. ‘Larry’s been in one of his moods and that puts me off life altogether. There’s a German who should have been in touch with him and hasn’t been … I wish sometimes that Larry would …’ She stopped.

  ‘Would what?’

  ‘Would persuade me to mind my own business,’ she answered, crudely turning aside his question.

  He looked inquiringly at her for a time, then led the way into the sitting-room. He asked her what she’d like to drink.

  ‘What I’d really enjoy is a whisky, if that’s not being too greedy? I like it so much, even if it is imported and costs the earth.’

  ‘It isn’t being greedy and I’ll make it a Spanish double to try and cheer you up. How do you like it? On the rocks? With water or soda?’

  ‘I’ve some not too distant Scottish ancestry so I’ll have it with plain water, please.’ She sniffed the air. ‘This room smells of wine. Have you had a catastrophe and broken a bottle?’

  He accepted the explanation she’d given him. ‘A total catastrophe. I dropped a bottle of red and had just finished clearing up the mess when you arrived.’ He went into the kitchen, picked up the jar of wine and returned it to the larder, poured out their drinks and carried them through.

  ‘Where’s Elvina?’ she asked casually, as he handed her her drink.

  ‘She felt rather tired when we got back so she decided to go up to bed for a lie-down. She may be down later.’

  ‘I’d like to wait, but I can’t be away too long. Larry will want his meal: he doesn’t like it as late as the locals have it. Now we haven’t got a full-time maid, I have to turn to and do some work for a change.’ She spoke in a self-contemptuous manner.

  ‘Why only for a change?’

  She played with the glass, twisting it round in her fingers. ‘Because I’ve spent a lot of my life avoiding work. I didn’t do anything at school or university, yet somehow managed to scrape a degree, which surprised my tutor not a little. I was going to train to do something useful, but I met a Greek who was very handsome and who suggested we see the world together. My mother said he was a rotter, and for once she was right. When I crept back to my mother she’d married again and I lived with her because my new stepfather was really wealthy, but he seemed to think my bed should be his as well as my mother’s. So I moved in with Larry, whom I’d always liked except when in one of his moods. And he’s always lived as if he were wealthy, so I still haven’t had a regular job.’ She looked straight at him. ‘Have I shocked you with the sordid family saga?’

  ‘No,’ he answered. ‘Were you trying to?’

  She didn’t immediately answer him, but asked for a cigarette. After smoking for a short while, she said: ‘You’re strange and part of your charm is I can’t really make you out. Most of the time you talk and act like the sobersides farmer you claim to be, but then occasionally I get a different impression. I reckon you can be pretty reckless and unconformist …’ She stopped.

  He drank. ‘Reckless’ went some of the way to describing his present actions. ‘I’ll be conformist and blame my split personality on my parents. My father dreams and paints pictures which usually don’t sell very well and my mother is so practical she keeps the home going on the money he doesn’t earn.’

  ‘That explains everything except how on earth you became a farmer.’

  ‘Why not? It’s one of the most rewarding and exciting jobs one can do.’

  ‘Exciting? You’ve got to be joking.’

  So he told her about tilling the soil and making it yield, the intense satisfaction of harvesting, the endless search for the unattainable — the perfect cow — the thrill when the dipstick of the bulk tank showed an increase in milk against all the odds since drought was burning up the grass and therefore the increase could only be due to expert stockmanship …

  ‘You damn near make me want to grab a hoe and start hoeing,’ she said, clearly surprised by the depth of his enthusiasm.

  He grinned. ‘Curb the desire — it’s hell on the back. You should have stopped me becoming a bore. Elvina says I sound like an overlong wartime exhortation to dig for victory.’

  ‘Never mind what it sounds like: it’s constructive instead of destructive, like so much out here.’

  ‘Why don’t you go back to England?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘To what? And as what? I’m not trained to do anything — I told you that just now. So can you see me as a nine-to-five secretary, ready to uncross my legs every time the boss goes by because he might give me a free dinner and so save my having to eat in some grotty café?’

  ‘No, I can’t see you like that. But there must be many jobs where really fluent Spanish will be worth a lot. What I was thinking of was Elvina’s description of this place — a lotus island, dangerous to anyone young enough to have an intelligent ambition.’

  ‘Maybe I don’t have and don’t want an intelligent ambition.’

  ‘Then force yourself to go out and find one.’

  ‘Too late. I’ve already eaten of the enchanted mushroom, or whatever it was.’ She finished her drink. ‘I must be moving.’

  ‘Surely you’ll have the other half?’

  ‘No, thanks. In the name of health, I never get tight before a meal and you gave me such an enormous first half.’ She stood up. ‘Sorry to have inflicted myself.’

  He smiled at her. ‘Is this a case of an intelligent assessment or are you seeking an instant and complimentary rebuttal?’

  ‘Swine,’ she answered. ‘Four-legged, snorting, large black saddlebag swine.’

  He roared with laughter. ‘Saddleback, and very good pigs they are.’

  ‘I’ll take your word for it … Drop in and see me, John. We’re only a short walk away and although you’re obviously a swine of some sort, you do cheer me up.’

  He accompanied her to her car and saw her off, then returned back into the house. She’d given him confidence. Clearly, she’d found not the slightest reason to doubt his story that Elvina was upstairs, lying down. So why should anyone else become at all suspicious?

  The days passed and yet the cable announcing Maitland’s death did not arrive. He began to panic. Surely, he couldn’t keep Elvina ‘alive’ much longer? Yet here, he recognized, her past character and the character of the English Community helped him. Elvina had been forthright, to the point of rudeness at times, and too obviously amused by all the self-conscious, unwritten rules of etiquette. For their part, the English Community were both contemptuous of, and scared of, independence and nonconformity so there had been little real contact between them and, lacking anyone she saw very regularly, her absence was not remarked. No one came to Ca’n Manin to ask what had happened to her and was she ill? If she’d been lying at the foot of the stairs with a br
oken back, dying from dehydration and starvation, no one would have known. His only real problem was to make Elvina’s continued absence reasonable to Catalina. And here the weather helped him. It remained sunny and the temperature kept rising so that it was perfectly reasonable to go out on a constant succession of picnics.

  CHAPTER XI

  THE CABLE, Lady Eastmore, and José Mayans, arrived within half an hour of each other on Friday morning, nine days after Elvina had died.

  A young man on a noisy motor-bike came up the dirt-track at speed, imagining himself a trials champion. Tatham, in the hall when he first heard the noise, stepped out to meet him. He came to a clunking halt and the motor cut out. He reached into the satchel slung round his side, brought out half-a-dozen envelopes and found the one he wanted, asked Tatham to sign the tear-off strip and tore this off. He started the bike’s engine, revved wildly, and left, scattering a hail of loose stones as soon as he crossed from the concrete to the dirt-track.

  Tatham opened the envelope and read the telegram, which was dated the previous day: GEOFFREY DIED THIS MORNING STOP FUNERAL ON SATURDAY AT THREE PM MADGE

  He continued staring at the cable after he’d read it. Elvina had said she’d go to the funeral and Madge most probably knew this. So arrangements must be made to book a flight ticket. Then tonight her ‘death’ must be arranged — and over the past few days he’d worked out as certainly as possible how to ensure her body was entirely defrosted before it was discovered.

  His thoughts were interrupted by the sounds of an approaching car. After the total quiet of the past days, now everyone seemed to be visiting. A Daimler on English plates came round the comer and up the dirt-track and as it passed the estanque he identified the driver as Lady Eastmore. There was someone in the passenger seat.