Troubled Deaths (5 page)

Friday was a dull day. Clouds came in on a westerly wind after dusk and by daybreak they covered the sky: they threatened rain, but this only fell up in the mountains. Llueso, which in sunshine was a place of timeless peace became forlorn and even a trifle shabby, to which a touch of melancholy was added by all the closed shutters. A fisherman, selling from a battered old Citroen van fish caught the previous night, blew a conch shell to attract the housewives’ attention. A knife-grinder blew a set of Pipes of Pan to advertise his trade. An umbrella-mender unhurriedly sought work, sitting down on the front step of a house when he found it.

On the west side of the square people were selling caged goldfinches, canaries, and zebra finches, and quail, guinea pigs, rabbits and chickens, the chickens that were ready for eating being hobbled and left sprawled out on the ground, from which undignified position they watched uncomplainingly. On the north-east side women sold lettuces, sweet potatoes, potatoes, cabbages, cauliflowers, and early oranges. On the south-east side the cafe had set out twenty tables and a number of these were occupied, some by tourists, others by foreign residents who studied the tourists with amused condescension.

Freeman signalled to a waiter, who came across to their table. ‘The same again,’ he ordered.

‘I really don’t think I ought to have another one,’ said Mary Pollard.

‘That’s right, you shouldn’t,’ agreed her husband.

‘I swore last night I’d be dry for a fortnight. Oh my God, did I have a head this morning when I woke up!’ she sighed.

‘You must have put too much soda in the brandy,’ said Freeman.

‘It was at Pete and Corinna’s and you know what they’re like - the cheapest plonk from the barrel put into a bottle. It’s a wonder no one’s died from the stuff they pour.’

‘If it’s that bad, why go there?’

‘One’s got to do something to make the time pass. And on top of their frightful booze, I had Chris talking to me all night. That man could bore a microphone silly.’

‘I always feel sorry for Madge,’ said Pollard, ‘having to put up with him every day.’

‘I hear she keeps some of her nights free, though,’ said Freeman.

‘You shouldn’t listen to malicious gossip,’ said Mary.

The waiter returned and put fresh glasses in front of them, took away the empty ones.

Mary drank. ‘That’s better. I’m beginning to feel I might live.’

Freeman raised his glass and then suffered a pain which sliced through his stomach with such intensity that he drew in his breath. Then it was gone.

Pollard looked curiously at him. ‘Is anything wrong, old man?’

‘It just felt as if something had gone off bang in my guts. I suppose a muscle suddenly kicked up. Or it’s old age galloping in.’

‘Who’s she supposed to be going around with?’ asked Mary.

‘Who’s who?’ asked Freeman.

‘For heaven’s sake, who were we talking about? Madge, of course.’

‘Didn’t you tell me not to listen to malicious gossip?’

‘Quite right. But once you’ve heard it, you’ve a duty to pass it on. Is it Bunny?’

‘I reckon he’s far too much of a rabbit to have an affair with her.’

‘Oh, God, Geoff, can’t you do better than that? . . . Was it Bunny? I wouldn’t be at all surprised. After all, if you’re Madge and you’ve got Chris as a husband you can’t afford to be over particular.’

Freeman opened his mouth to speak and the pain hit him again and this time lasted much longer. He grasped his stomach and sweat prickled his forehead.

‘Geoff,’ she said, ‘what is the matter with you?’

He spoke very slowly. ‘The pain’s come back . . .’ Miraculously, as he spoke it vanished.

‘D’you think it’s appendicitis? Exactly whereabouts is it hurting?’

‘Try to keep the conversation reasonably clean,’ said Pollard.

With sharp resentment, Freeman realized that they thought he was dramatizing the pain.

‘Would you like a brandy instead of that gin? I’ve always said that out here even the best local gin will burn holes in tablecloths.’

A third pain rocketed across his stomach, lunging out in all directions, and he knew he was going to be sick before long.

‘If it is appendicitis you’ll find the pain begins to concentrate on the right-hand side,’ said Mary. ‘Or is it the left? I never can remember. But even a local doctor should know that.’

He stood up very slowly, holding on to the table for support.

‘D’you think we ought to run you back home?’ she asked.

‘There’s no need for that.’ He noticed their looks of relief. He took two one-hundred-peseta notes from his pocket. ‘Will you pay the waiter for me?’

He left them. He walked to the steps, down them, and then the twenty feet to his parked Mercedes. He sat down behind the wheel, started the engine, backed out and turned.

He had to wait at the ‘Stop’ sign on the Palma road and here the fourth pain filled his belly with raging fire. He vomited with explosive force. A car had pulled up behind him and the driver of this, becoming increasingly impatient, began to toot the horn.

The doctor didn’t speak after leaving the bedroom until he was downstairs in the sitting-room. ‘Senora,’ he said to Matilde, ‘I must call in a specialist from Palma.’

‘Then the señor is very ill?’ she asked worriedly.

‘Ill enough,’ he answered grimly. ‘Now tell me exactly all that happened.’

She explained how Santiago, a relation on her mother’s side, had wanted to drive out on to the Palma road and how this huge foreign car had just remained in the way so that in the end he had got out of his car to tell the driver to move. He had found the señor doubled up and retching, so - like any Mallorquin ready to help in trouble - he had pushed the señor to one side and driven the señor’s car to the house so that the doctor could be called.

The doctor, deep in thought, stared out through one of the windows.

‘Is he . . . Is he going to live, señor?’ she asked.

‘Ask God, not me, señora, but right at this moment I think even His reply might well be slightly ambiguous.’ He turned. ‘Has he been out of the island recently? Perhaps to India?’

‘He has been nowhere for many months and then he went only to the Peninsula.’

‘I see. Well, the symptoms are very similar to those of cholera.’

‘Mother of God!’ she cried.

‘There’s no need to panic,’ he said testily. ‘If it is cholera, we may save him and in any case there’s no cause for you to think you’re next in line for the coffin. Is there a telephone in the house?’

‘Yes, señor.’

‘Then I’ll ring Palma . . . Is the señor a wealthy man?’

‘He has many, many millions of pesetas.’

‘Good. He is going to need some of them right now.’

Orozco hawked and spat. He rubbed the back of his earth-stained hand across his chin, which had not been shaved that morning. ‘There was cholera in Barcelona when I was there.’

‘And did the people die of it, Lopez?’ Matilde asked.

‘Like flies.’

‘Sweet Mary preserve us . . . What about Luis? Do I write and tell him?’

‘Wait and see,’ he answered, with a peasant’s stoic acceptance of whatever fortune fate had in store.

Freeman suffered dehydration, yet he could not quench his thirst because to drink was to vomit. He suffered sural spasms and intense abdominal pains. His face became pinched and his eyes sunken. He knew he was desperately ill and yet the initial panic of this knowledge gave way to a feeling of indifference.

After a while the symptoms miraculously vanished. In the place of indifference came a growing hope and then a belief that he would live. But just as his belief became certainty, the symptoms returned in ever more bitter form. He lost consciousness for increasing periods of time, his circulation began to fail, and he suffered convulsions.

Finally, he entered a coma and died, not long after the medical tests showed that he had not been suffering from cholera.

Inspector Alvarez awoke, but for a moment he did not open his eyes. The end of a siesta was a sad time, more especially when one had drunk and smoked a little too much beforehand and one’s mouth tasted like . . . It was better not to seek an adequate simile.

A fly buzzed above his head. Why? Why expend the energy when it could have settled upside down on the ceiling and slept? He opened his eyes and looked up and tried to see the fly, but because the shutters were closed the light was too poor. He checked the time and the hands said it was half past four. What had woken him so early?

The fly landed on his nose, which was broad enough to make a landing space for a squadron of flies. He blew upwards and the fly took off, to resume its ridiculous buzzing. He yawned, then stretched out his short, powerful arms. Tomorrow, he thought with deep pleasure, was Sunday and therefore he would not have to come to the Guardia post to work.

After a while he stood up, crossed to the window, and pushed open the shutters. He looked down at the narrow street and watched a young woman walk along and there was something about her lithe movements which he found erotic. Then it occured to him that these days most young women whether standing or walking struck him as erotic. He sighed. The tragedy of middle age was that a man still dreamed, but the volcano in his belly had died down to just a little camp fire.

The telephone rang. He ignored it. An elderly woman, stooping and dressed all in black, followed the sensuous young woman along the road. How many years had she been in black to mark her husband’s death? The old people still followed the traditions, but the younger ones scorned them and they’d be in very short, brightly coloured skirts before their poor husbands had had time to talk things over with St Peter. A man’s death was crowned with thorns, even if in life he had escaped a pair of horns.

The phone was still ringing so reluctantly he returned to the desk and picked up the receiver. ‘Yeah?’

‘Where have you been?’ demanded the captain. ‘Fast asleep, I suppose, snoring your head off?’

‘Señor,’ said Alvarez, with polite firmness, ‘I do not sleep when I am on duty.’

Then why didn’t you answer sooner? I’ve been ringing for over five minutes. I want you down here immediately.’ He cut the connection.

He yawned, did up the top button of his shirt and tightened his tie. Ties were the invention of the devil. But it wasn’t so easy to leave one off in winter as it was in summer when even dandies like the captain sometimes, in the privacy of their offices, went about open-necked.

He left and went down the back stairs and along the ill-lit corridor to the captain’s office. There was a second man in the room whom he knew. ‘Good afternoon, Doctor.’

The doctor stood up and shook hands.

Alvarez, his heavily-featured face looking rather sad, picked up a chair from the far wall and set this in front of the desk, next to the doctor’s. He sat, well aware that the captain felt he should have waited until asked to sit.

‘Doctor Palasi has come here to tell me that a wealthy Englishman died in La Huerta at eleven-fifteen this morning.’

They both stared at him as if they expected him to make some comment. But really he didn’t care if a hundred wealthy Englishmen had died.

‘Senor Freeman . . .’ began Palasi.

The captain interrupted: he had the lean, nervous, thin-lipped face of a constant interrupter. ‘At the beginning, the doctor thought it was cholera. But the tests showed that the cause of death was not cholera.’

They both stared at Alvarez again and this time he thought he ought to say something. ‘So what was it, Doctor?’

‘Only further tests will say for certain, but both the specialist and I became convinced that he died from the effects of a poison.’ He scratched the side of his nose. ‘What’s more, we reckon the poison was from a llargsomi.’

‘What’s that?’ asked the captain, who had not heard this part of the story before.

‘A fungus, very similar in appearance to an esclatasang.’

‘And what in the hell’s that?’ The captain was fast becoming annoyed because he was being made to appear ignorant.

The doctor showed his surprise. ‘An esclatasang? Absolutely delicious! A plateful of those are fit for any king.’

‘It’s the Mallorquin name for an edible fungus which grows wild,’ said Alvarez. ‘You find it amongst old leaves under bushes and trees and in places like that.’

‘Literally, it means popping blood in the sense that the pus in a boil pops out when you squeeze it,’ said the doctor, who was a didactic man. ‘The liquid in an esclatasang is red.’

‘What a way to call something you eat!’ said the captain, with disdainful scorn: like any Spaniard from beyond Catalonia, he had always regarded Mallorquin as a barbaric language and this merely confirmed his view.

‘And this other thing, is it very poisonous?’

‘Extremely. The main active principles are, of course, amanite and phalloidine, which are cytotoxins. As is common in fungi poisonings, if the symptoms show themselves within three hours the patient has a good chance of recovery; if they don’t, he hasn’t. Señor Freeman showed no symptoms for something like fourteen hours after eating on Thursday evening . . . I must, at this point, though, stress the fact that only the medical tests now being conducted will say for certain what the cause of death was.’

‘It’s good enough for me,’ said the captain. ‘We must findout whereabouts this llargsomi was picked and then search out and destroy all others there are.’

‘Señor,’ said Alvarez. ‘I’m afraid that will not really be practicable. One can find the occasional llargsomi wherever esclatasangs grow and they grow all over the island.’

‘If that’s the case, how is it half the population hasn’t been poisoned?’

‘Every islander is taught the difference between the two almost from the time he starts walking. When you break a llargsomi, the liquid exuded is colourless. Also, flies never settle on them.’

‘And so does everyone on this benighted island spend his time trying to see which fungi the flies avoid?’

‘No Mallorquin with his wits about him would make a mistake, even if they do look so similar to someone who’s ignorant of the difference,’ said the doctor testily, annoyed by the slighting reference to Mallorca. ‘There have been very few cases of poisoning by llargsomis in the past ten years.’