Troubled Deaths (8 page)

‘Perhaps He will. I was once told that the English God is very generous . . . Look, we’ve heard today that he definitely died from eating a Uargsomi and I’ve been ordered to find out how it happened. You must have thought about things a lot since yesterday. Are you quite sure you didn’t make a mistake and let a Uargsomi through?’ He motioned with his hand. ‘Don’t get anything wrong. No one’s going to clap you in jail because you made a mistake. It can happen anytime, to anyone.’

‘There was no Uargsomi among the esclatasangs,’ she said forcefully. ‘Señor, I am not a stupid fool. So every time Lopez picks and brings me esclatasangs, which the señor liked so much, I checked every one to make certain there was no Uargsomi, even though Lopez would never pick one by mistake.’ She leaned forward, her expression becoming still more earnest. ‘Señor, I am of this island even though I came from the other end. Could any islander handle esclatasangs and not check that there were no llargsomis among them?’

‘Perhaps there are times, though, when one is not quite so careful because one is in a great hurry, or has a very bad headache . . .’

‘I am not lazy, I did not hurry, I did not have a headache. I tell you, there was no Uargsomi.’

‘But if not, how did the señor come to eat one and die?’

‘I do not know. Perhaps God, to punish his wickedness, changed an esclatasang into a Uargsomi.’

It was a fascinating idea, but one which Alvarez regretfully thought unlikely. ‘I’ll have to find something definite to tell my superior chief, but so far all I’ve learned is that it couldn’t have happened.’ He stood up. ‘Is Orozco, the gardener, here today?’

‘He has all the Sundays off.’ She spoke shortly.

He smiled at her. ‘I believe you absolutely, señora. But my superior chief comes from Madrid and he will believe no one without complete proof, not even himself . . . Thanks for the coffee.’ He went out of the kitchen into the courtyard and she followed him. The dog which had been lying down in the sun in front of its kennel stood up, barked twice, and hopefully wagged its tail. ‘What’s his name?’ asked Alvarez.

‘Cheetah. He was abandoned and when Luis found him his ribs were almost out of the skin. Luis said he should be killed, but I said no, I would make him well. So now look at him! As fat as a pig that’s ready for a matanzas.’

Alvarez crossed the courtyard and patted the dog’s head and fondled his ears. A car came along the dirt track, turned into the drive and then braked to a stop in front of the courtyard. ‘It is the señorita,’ said Matilde in a low voice. ‘She came here on Thursday and saw the señor . . .’ She stopped.

He watched an ungainly woman, a plastic bag in her hand, climb out and come round the bonnet. ‘What did she see the señor doing?’

‘1 cannot say it.’

Caroline got out of the near side and as she stood upright Alvarez stared at her and he fell in love.

Mabel came forward, walking hesitantly. ‘Hullo, Matilde,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I’ve brought some scraps for Cheetah.’ The dog might have understood her because it began to pant and its tail wagged furiously. Mabel opened the bag and spilled the contents on to the flagstones and the dog ate with noisy gusto.

It wasn’t her looks, thought Alvarez with bewilderment, although she was as beautiful as an orange grove at blossom time. It wasn’t that she promised that ripe, earthy experience which twisted a man’s soul - she didn’t. It was because there was an air of simple goodness about her which reminded him with aching intensity of Juana-Maria.

‘When I saw those scraps were left. . .’ Mabel stopped, then resumed speaking very hurriedly. ‘It would have been such a shame to waste them . . . So I thought . . .’ She suddenly sneezed several times.

Caroline spoke lightly, trying to lessen the air of emotion which Mabel had introduced. ‘You’re quite right, Mabel, he really does eat like a vacuum cleaner.’

Matilde, who understood more English than she spoke, said: ‘I feed him good, señorita.’

‘I can see you look after him really well,’ said Caroline quickly. She smiled at Matilde. ‘He’s in wonderful condition. It’s just that some dogs always eat very quickly, even when they’ve only just had a meal. Cheetah is obvously one of those.’

She’d gone out of her way not to hurt Matilde’s feelings by making it clear that they didn’t believe that the dog wasn’t being fed properly, thought Alvarez, yet most English wouldn’t give a damn about what a Mallorquin maid thought. Juana-Maria had always been thinking about other people’s feelings.

‘We’d better go,’ said Mabel. ‘I only wanted to come . . .’ She stopped, clearly far too embarrassed, even ashamed, to continue.

‘Yes, of course.’ Caroline smiled at Matilde and Alvarez. ‘Goodbye, then. I do hope we didn’t disturb you too much.’ She turned and walked to the car and this had the effect of making Mabel do the same. A moment later, they drove off.

‘She’s a very silly woman,’ said Matilde scornfully.

‘What d’you mean?‘snapped Alvarez, before he realized he was in danger of making a fool of himself.

Matilde stared at him in sudden apprehension.

‘I am very sorry, señora, I was talking to myself about something entirely different . . . Now, then, tell me why you think that woman is so silly.’

She looked doubtfully at him, but was quickly reassured by his expression. ‘She was in love with the señor. A woman like her. He just laughed at her. Especially after what happened on Thursday when she saw him . . .’

‘Saw him what?’

‘I cannot say. But he had another woman here.’

‘The other señorita who was here just now?’

‘No. I have never seen her before.’

He was furious with himself for daring to think such a thing could ever have been possible. ‘D’you know who this first woman was?’

‘No, señor. But when he said she was coming to lunch he called her Veronica and said she was on holiday and he wanted to show her what the island was really like. As if it wasn’t obvious what he really wanted! . . . He said to put out the cold meat then to keep out of the way. I am a decent woman, but even so I know what such orders mean. So I put out the meal and told him and returned to the kitchen. I heard a car arrive and it was the juice-less señorita who has just been. She went into the house and soon she began to shout at him and when she came out crying I knew what she must have seen.’

Alvarez stood at the bar and stared at the mirror. He saw a middle-aged man with lined, coarsely featured face, whose eyes were bloodshot and whose hair was beginning to thin. You simple fool, he said to his reflection. You, a failure, a peasant without a single cuarterada of land to call his own, old enough to be her father . . . But her golden image continued to dance in his mind.

‘Give me another,’ he said.

The barman picked up his glass. ‘You look as if you’d lost a few thousand-peseta notes.’

‘There are worse things to lose than them.’

‘Don’t bother to tell me what they are . . . Do you really want another coñac?’

‘Didn’t I ask for one?’

‘All right, all right, keep your hair on.’

When he had looked at her he had seen the quiet moon in the star-studded sky, the sparkling of still seas, the distant mountains framed against a sunset sky. And when she had looked at him, what had she seen? An ugly, time-scarred peasant . . .

‘Here you are, Enrique. Drink it up and for the love of God cheer up or you’ll frighten any other customers away.’

He emptied the glass, but he didn’t cheer up.

On Monday morning Alvarez drove to the small uniformed finca which lay beyond Ca’n Ritat. Here time had almost, if not quite, been defeated and the small-holding was pretty well self-sufficient. The family kept a mule for working the land, a cow for milk and calves, and pigs, sheep, goats, rabbits, chickens, guinea pigs, and pigeons, for eating. They fed the mule on straw, dried field beans, and grass, the cow on grass, straw, and ground algarrobas, the pig on dried figs and anything else that was left over, the sheep and goats were left to graze among the scrub land but were sometimes given some dried field beans, the chickens and pigeons had wheat, barley, or oat tailings, the guinea pigs and rabbits lived on grass. The family grew corn and handed much of it to the miller who gave them tokens which they exchanged at the baker for loaves. They grew three crops each year and after the tomato harvest there were always long strings of air-dried tomatoes everywhere. They harvested the olives, with six-metre bamboos and had them pressed and the oil came green and pungent. They trod their own grapes and made a red wine that was filled with lees. They netted small migratory birds, or caught them with worm-baited snap-traps or on branches covered with bird-lime, and they ate these with a simple pleasure untroubled by any ecological thoughts.

The house was small and hunched-looking. Most windows had no glass, only solid wooden shutters. In heavy rain the roof leaked in several places. There was no bathroom, only a cold tap in the kitchen. The privy was outside the back door. But as if to prove that time must always gain at least a foothold, there was electricity and in the sitting-room a large, much chromed television set.

The couple looked old, but he guessed their ages at not much more than his own - life had been hard, though not without its compensations. On the battered desk in the sitting-room were photographs of two daughters, as babies, as girls at their first communion, and as brides.

‘A coñac, señor?’ said the man, obviously nervous about having a policeman in his home.

‘I could really do with one,‘he said.

They bustled about, getting in each other’s way as they searched for the bottle of brandy and a clean, unchipped glass. Finally, the man poured out nearly a tumblerful of brandy for Alvarez.

‘Your health,’ said Alvarez. ‘And may your crops strain tight the granary doors.’

They began to relax as they appreciated that he was of their kind. He talked to them about mules, the problems of maintaining the fertility of the soil when this was constantly being leached out, and the damage mole-crickets could do to a crop when the moon was in the first quarter. Finally, he led the conversation round to Ga’n Ritat.

‘He never used to talk to the likes of us,‘said the man and his wife nodded agreement. He did not say this deferentially or complainingly, merely as a statement of fact. He had a natural pride in himself, his family, and his work, and it would never have occurred to him that he might have considered himself socially inferior.

‘I’ve been told he was fond of entertaining the ladies?’

The man laughed with Rabelaisian gusto. ‘If I’d a ram as active as him, I’d have a flock a hundred strong. Where’d he get ‘em all from, that’s what I want to know. They weren’t around like that when I was a young ‘un.’

‘Not that you could have done anything about it,’ said the woman.

The man winked at Alvarez. ‘Here, is that right he ate a llargsomi? Couldn’t the silly bastard tell the difference from an esclatasang?’

‘It seems he couldn’t.’

‘Matilde says they was all esclatasangs,’ said the woman. ‘There weren’t no llargsomis among ‘em.’

They stared at Alvarez with sharp interest. He shrugged his shoulders as if it were a matter of no consequence. ‘He must have picked up one from somewhere . . . D’you see him at all on Thursday?’

They thought back. After a while, the man said: ‘Seems like it could be Thursday he turned up at the house after merienda with a woman. Skirt was so short there’s no knowing why she bothered to wear one.’

‘You shouldn’t have looked,’ said his wife.

He laughed shrilly. ‘If wild asparagus grows in the lane, d’you think I’m going to walk past it?’ He rubbed his unshaven chin. ‘What d’you say that big car of his cost?’

Alvarez had not seen Freeman’s car, but he guessed it was an expensive one because Freeman had obviously been a man who believed in show. ‘Maybe as much as a million.’

They thought about that, but it was really beyond their comprehension that anyone could be so wealthy that he could waste a million pesetas on a car.

‘Did you see him in the afternoon or the evening on Thursday?’

The man shook his head. The woman said: ‘The dog was barking and howling.’

‘It is always barking and howling,’ said the man. ‘The inspector’s not interested in that.’

‘But perhaps I am,’ said Alvarez, ‘because I need to know about everything unusual. What kind of time was this?’

‘It were dark,’ said the woman, as if that covered everything.

‘Soon after dark, or later on?’

The man spoke testily. ‘I tell you, that dog were always kicking up a row.’

‘Not like it was then,’ she corrected him. She spoke slyly. ‘Perhaps Lopez had kicked it.’

‘Belt up,’ he said, his voice angry.

It was obvious to Alvarez that the woman wanted to tell him something and yet either hadn’t the courage to come right out with it or else, like so many peasants, seldom approached a subject directly. ‘Lopez is the gardener, isn’t he? I’m surprised you think he might kick the dog: I’d have thought he was a different kind of a bloke to that. And come to that, are you certain he was around the place at that time? Did you see him?’

‘When it was dark?’ asked the man scornfully.

Alvarez looked a little put out, as if this was something he had overlooked. ‘You might have heard his voice and so known he was there.’

‘We heard him earlier on, that’s for sure,’ she said. Her husband glared at her, but she took care not to look in his direction.

With infinite patience, Alvarez discovered what it was she wanted to tell him. As far as they knew, Orozco had left before dark as he always did. But before he left, and while it was still fully light, she had been out picking beans and had heard Freeman having a row with Orozco. ‘The English señor was always shouting at Lopez,’ said the husband. With obvious reluctance she had to admit that this was so.

She still had something to tell him. ‘Was it,’ suggested Alvarez, ‘a worse row than usual?’

‘ ‘Course not,’ said her husband, interrupting what she had been going to say. ‘Anyway, Lopez don’t say nothing much but lets the señor go on and on.’