Troubled Deaths (14 page)

‘No. Not really. We were just going to see her.’

‘Are you sure you had not something of importance to discuss?’ It was like hitting a blind man, he thought angrily.

‘We . . .’ She fiddled with a corner of her sleeve. ‘It was just that we had an idea to talk over with her.’

‘Perhaps the idea was for your friend?’

After a while, she nodded.

‘And Senor Anson went back to speak to Señorita Cannon about this matter on Thursday?’

‘Of course he didn’t,‘she said urgently.

‘You are certain he did not speak to her in her house?’

‘Quite, quite certain.’

‘Will you tell me what was this matter you wished to discuss?’

‘Teddy has to buy his partnership in the boatyard and Mabel said she would lend him the money.’

‘But now? Do you know what will occur now, señorita?’

She shook her head. ‘It all seemed so wonderful until. . . Teddy’s always wanted to work in his own yard and this was the chance of a lifetime.’

‘But now he has again to find the money to pay Ramon Mena?’

She nodded.

He thought for a moment, then stood up. ‘I have disturbed you for long enough. Thank you for your kind help.’

‘He didn’t go back to see Mabel. I promise you he didn’t.’

‘I understand, señorita.’

He left and crossed the hall to the front door. Bertha came into the hall from a side room as he opened the door and he said goodbye to her. She merely nodded her head in curt acknowledgement.

He drove down to the Port and along the western arm of the harbour to the boatyard. Ramon Mena was in his office. He was short, no more than one and a half metres high, and his face was the colour of ancient, uncared-for mahogany, so creased it was as if he had suffered an endless succession of skin grafts. His eyes were dark brown and sharp and always on the move.

‘Enrique! It’s a long time since I saw you.’

‘I’ve been sweating my guts out, working.’

Mena laughed. ‘That’ll be the day.’

‘How’s the wife?’

‘Getting into a terrible state because Eulalia is to be married very soon.’

4 Your niece? But she’s no age.’

‘Ask my sister-in-law and she’ll tell you she’s more than ready for marriage. It’s you who’s forgotten all the years. You’re getting old.’

‘Great news! . . . Ramon, I want to hear about the Englishman, Edward Anson. What’s he like at working?’

‘Good. When he prepares a wooden deck, you could eat a meal off it. If he scrapes down the superstructure, you won’t find a millimetre of old varnish in any corner. Pride. That’s what he’s got. Pride in what he’s doing. Not like most of the youngsters today who only worry about how long to knocking-off time.’

‘Someone was telling me you’d offered him a partnership?’

‘That’s right. One and a half million in cash. Him and me could do great business together with the foreigners.’ Mena stared shrewdly at Alvarez. ‘Why should this interest you? Is it because of the death of the English?’

‘It’s just that I’m vaguely interested in Anson,’ said Alvarez.

Mena grinned. ‘Sure. Just vaguely.’

‘How are things going for him with the partnership?’

‘How should I know for certain until he arrives with the money?’

‘But you think he’ll be able to find that much?’

‘He keeps telling me so.’

‘You must have given him some sort of deadline?’

‘Naturally. I told him a few days ago I must expand next season and for that I need the money so unless he pays a million and a half within two weeks I’ll have to find someone else as a partner.’

‘How did he react to that?’

‘As always, he said he would find the money. I told him, I can’t go on and on with nothing but promises. Then on Friday he came and said he would definitely get the money but it would take a little longer. Wanted to know if I’d extend the fortnight I’d given him.’

‘Did you agree?’

‘I said if it was certain this time, I’d try and wait.’ As any Mallorquin would, Mena became bothered that it might seem to someone else as if he were getting the worst of the bargain. ‘Understand, Enrique, he is a clever man with the boats.’

A clever man who had been faced with a deadline, thought Alvarez.

Ambition, thought Alvarez, was like Janus, double-faced. He walked past a shop which had outside it baskets of beach sandals and beach balls and racks of snorkeling gear. Some men were exalted by ambition, some were destroyed.

Anson lived in a house along one of the small side streets which led off the Llueso road just before the limits of the Puerto. Here, the houses were terraced, yet each was different in design so that each possessed its own identity. Most had small courtyards where flowers grew the year round and even orange trees, despite the salt-laden air, were cosseted into bearing fruit.

He entered No. 7 and called out. An old woman, dressed in widow’s black, entered the hall and she told him the señor was in his room at the back of the house. She led Alvarez through the kitchen into a small, paved courtyard and waved an arthritically deformed hand at the small caseta which formed the far side of the courtyard.

The caseta had two small rooms and Anson was in the first one. When he saw Alvarez, his expression tightened.

‘Good afternoon, señor. I apologize for troubling you, but I wish to ask you some things.’ Alvarez approached the table and stared down at a nearly completed waterline blueprint of a ketch. ‘Are you going to build that?’

‘I wouldn’t know. It would probably bloody sink, anyway,’ said Anson roughly.

Apart from the chair in which Anson sat, and from which he had not bothered to rise, there was a rocking-chair in traditional Mallorquin style. Alvarez sat down on this. ‘I suppose you have heard about the unfortunate death of Señorita Gannon?’

‘Of course. The bush telegraph works best with deaths.’

‘It may be that she was poisoned. Have you heard that also?’

‘Yes.’

‘So it is my job to learn who maybe poisoned her.’

‘We’ve all got to earn a living somehow.’

‘You and Señorita Durrel were travelling to see her on Wednesday, were you not?’

‘That seems a fair bet since you met us outside her house.’

‘Was she a friend of yours?’

‘Caroline liked her.’

‘But I am asking how you found her?’

Anson jerked his head with an angry gesture. ‘She and I agreed to differ on anything we could find to talk about.’

‘Then I wonder why you were going to see her?’

‘Because Carrie had persuaded me to.’

‘If she had to persuade you, was it to be more than a social visit?’

‘What the hell business of yours is it?’ Anson looked belligerently at Alvarez and then saw a look in the detective’s eyes which disturbed him enough to answer the question. ‘I’d been offered a partnership in Mena’s boatyard and Carrie said Mabel would lend me the money I needed.’

‘And you were prepared to accept this money from someone you very much disliked?’

‘I’d take it from the devil, if he offered it.’

Alvarez knew a grudging admiration for Anson’s honesty. ‘When I met you, I told you that the señorita was very disturbed. I think you did not see her that evening?’

‘No.’

‘So you went to see her on the next day?’

Anson said forcefully: ‘I never went back there.’

‘You did not go and see her on Thursday and ask for the money you needed?’

‘That’s what I’ve just told you.’

‘Then I wonder who it was on a bicycle who arrived at the señorita’s house just before it became dark?’

‘All I know is, it wasn’t me.’

‘If you had gone, I wonder what she would have said?’

‘She could’ve said anything.’

‘You are certain you did not go to her house on Thursday?’

‘Of course I bloody am.’

‘If you did not speak with the señorita, how can you be so certain when you speak with Ramon that you will have the money?’

‘I wasn’t. But I wasn’t going to tell him that so that he offered the partnership to someone else.’

‘On Friday you said it was certain. The señorita died on Friday so how could it then be certain?’

‘I’ve just explained. Anyway, I didn’t know she was dead.’

‘You must have heard she was very ill?’

‘Ill, yes, dying, no. If I’d known she was dead I wouldn’t have been able to go on hoping I could buy that partnership, would I?’

‘That depends, perhaps, on how well you can read Spanish.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Do you read Spanish reasonably well?’

Anson hesitated. ‘I can read it a bit.’

‘Then if you had gone on your own to the señorita’s house on Thursday, you might have read something which would have convinced you you could be able to pay the million and a half.’

‘You’re talking double Dutch.’

Alvarez rocked the chair forward and stood up. ‘Señor, you will please make certain you do not leave the Port until I speak to say you may.’

‘You’ve no right. . .’

‘I have the right to do many things.’

‘Why are you leaning on me like this?’

‘I am investigating the deaths of Señorita Cannon and Señor Freeman. I think you can help me.’

Alvarez left. He walked through the main house, said goodbye to the old woman who was in the hall polishing a chair, and went out to his car. As he sat behind the wheel, he thought that ambition had smiled on Anson with both faces: first it had exalted, then it had destroyed.

Pablo Gamponet had a round, cheerful face and a smile a mile wide. He spoke and wrote Castilian, Catalan, English, French, and German fluently and could converse reasonably in Swedish and Dutch. He had read Shakespeare, Goethe, and Hugo, in the original and he played the ‘cello well enough for a visiting conductor of some note to try to get him to give up his job and take up music full time. His job was head waiter. He was always amused when foreigners, confident they could not be understood, referred to the ignorant locals.

After handing him the sheet of paper to read, Alvarez called a waiter over and ordered two brandies. When the waiter returned he put the glasses on the table and then, as he handed over the bill, winked. Alvarez was pleasantly surprised to discover that he had been charged a reasonable amount instead of the exorbitant sum he would have been had he been a tourist.

Camponet looked up. ‘How much of this have you managed to understand?’

‘Next to nothing, although I did make out it was to do with money.’

‘It’s a tontine.’

‘What’s that?’

‘The idea was devised by a bloke in France some time back in the 1650’s. Roughly speaking, several people paid the same amount of money into a fund which was put out at interest. The survivor drew the lot.’

Alvarez, who had been about to drink, whistled. ‘Translate for me word by word, will you, Pablo?’

He listened carefully. The sum of 2,173,542 Swiss francs had been deposited with the Banque de Foch. Each of the three partners would be nominally credited with a third of the capital and each could draw up to one-quarter of the total annual interest, but no further sum could be drawn without authority being given by all three in writing. Should any one partner die, his share of capital would be nominally divided between the remaining two, who could then each draw up to one-third of the annual interest. If there were only two partners, capital could be withdrawn on the signatures of both of them. On the death of the second partner, the capital and accumulated interest became the survivor’s absolutely.

Camponet put the paper down on the table. ‘I remember that there was one famous tontine in the eighteenth century, organized by an Italian adventurer called Viglianesi. He somehow persuaded eight sober, God-fearing, intelligent, rich men of Ferrara each to invest the modern-day equivalent of twelve million pesetas in an all-or-nothing tontine in which he was given a ninth share. Six of the eight died before anyone became curious and then it was only by mistake, so that really no one should ever have been alerted. They put Viglianesi to the question and in the end he admitted he’d been feeding his victims various poisons, including arsenic. The interesting thing about this tontine was that Viglianesi was known by the eight to be an adventurer, always on the look-out for a fast peseta, and yet they allowed him to persuade them to invest in the tontine and, when they started to die off, didn’t report their suspicions. Why? Obviously because each was hoping to be the last survivor of the eight whereupon he could denounce Viglianesi and scoop the pool. It makes an interesting commentary on the ethics of the rich. I’ve often wondered which of the two finally survived to inherit - history doesn’t relate. No doubt, he burned a candle or two for Viglianesi’s soul.’

‘You are a cynic.’

‘What waiter isn’t? You can’t watch men, women, and especially children, shovelling food and drink down themselves for day after day and still believe good of your fellow humans . . . Has anything happened to anyone in this tontine?’

‘I think that two of the members are now dead.’

‘Leaving the third the happy and enriched survivor. You are surely talking about the two English who have recently died, from poisoning so rumour has it? History repeats itself. I trust you will put the survivor to the question.’

‘First catch your tiger,’ muttered Alvarez, remembering the recipe for tiger soup. How to identify the third person when so far it had proved impossible to discover the true identity of either Freeman or Mabel Cannon? Would the Banque de Foch now break its code of silence and so help the murder investigation? Was Anson number three? If he wasn’t, then surely he must be innocent? Even if he had cycled to Casa Elba just as it was getting dark on Thursday . . .?

‘Enrique, you look like a man with problems.’

‘God’s truth, I feel like a cement-mixer is churning round in my head.’

‘Then you need another coñac’

‘I’d better not drink any more.’

‘That’s an admission of defeat.’ Camponet called out to the barman for two more brandies.

Tonight, Alvarez thought, he had to report to Superior Chief Salas. What did he report? That half an hour ago he had known everything, but that now he knew nothing?