A Maze of Murders (20 page)

A young woman stepped into the room, stood uneasily just inside the doorway. Round faced, brown-cheeked, the maid's uniform sitting uneasily on a solid frame, she lacked any stylish smartness. Country born and bred, was Alvarez's immediate judgement.

‘Shut the door,' said Curien impatiently.

‘Sit down and get comfortable,' said Alvarez. When she was seated, he continued: ‘I expect you know why we want a word with you – we're hoping you'll be able to tell us something about one of the guests.'

‘Madame Dewar?' Already, Alvarez's quiet, friendly manner, in sharp contrast to Curien's, had restored her confidence.

‘Can you remember her?'

She nodded.

‘Tell us about her.'

She spoke with considerable detail, much of it immaterial, and at one point Curien would have hurried her along but for a quick shake of Alvarez's head. She had reported for work at seven and had been preparing to serve breakfast when Jules had told her that Madeleine had reported sick and she must share Madeleine's duties with Denise. That had meant extra work, but since she'd be paid more, she hadn't minded; she sent as much money home as possible because her father was an invalid and the social allowance was far from generous. She had taken a breakfast of two croissants and coffee into room 41. Madame Dewar had been in bed. Unlike some guests, she'd been friendly and, even though her French had been difficult to understand, they'd chatted for quite a while; Madame Dewar had asked where in France she was from and she'd told her and how difficult things were for her father … Madame Dewar had been wearing a kind of a negligee over pyjamas …

‘What colour was her hair?'

‘Blonde. And it looked genuine because there was no darkening at the roots; leastwise, none I could see.'

‘Did you speak to her again?'

‘When I collected the breakfast tray. She'd dressed and was packing because she was leaving that morning.'

‘How was she dressed?'

‘Nice, but not smart, if you know what I mean. Not like the lady who was next in the room, with a husband who maybe wasn't her husband. When Madeleine came back to work, she said that that lady really had style, but where I come from, when someone dresses like her, we don't say she's smart, we say she's a … It's of no account.'

‘When you collected the tray, was that the last time you saw Madame Dewar?'

‘That's right. When I went in later to do the room, she'd gone.' She hesitated, then said: ‘I don't know why you're asking or what's wrong, monsieur, but she seemed a really nice lady.'

‘You don't think she might have been putting on an act?' Alvarez's voice was suddenly bitter.

‘I … I don't understand,' she said uneasily.

‘It's of no account.' He was annoyed with himself for letting his inner feelings briefly surface.

‘If she wasn't a really nice person, she wouldn't have left me the note.'

‘What note?'

‘Saying she was giving me the present to buy something for my father to cheer him up. There's mighty few like that, I can tell you!'

‘What was the present?'

‘Some money.'

‘How much?'

She shrugged her shoulders and her expression became blank.

‘Well, how much was it?' Curien demanded.

She did not answer.

‘You're meant to put all tips in the pot, I suppose?'

‘It's immaterial,' Alvarez said. ‘And if it was given to her specifically for her father, then it was not for sharing.' He turned. ‘Thank you, mademoiselle. And I hope the present gave your father much pleasure.'

She gave him a brief smile of gratitude for his understanding, left.

‘That's the last of the staff,' Curien said.

Alvarez nodded.

‘So was she Madame Dewar?'

‘Undoubtedly,' he answered sadly.

‘Then shall we arrange things for an evening at Le Nouveau Petit Chou?'

He thought it would be much more in keeping with his present mood to arrange to spend the night on a bed of thorns, but accepted that Curien's proposal was the more sensible.

CHAPTER 24

The stewardess brought him a second brandy and, as she handed him the glass, he was certain she was trying to judge whether he might cause trouble before the end of the flight. She need not have worried. If a man drank to forget, he remembered; if to overcome inner pain, the pain increased.

How did the saying go? A man in love was always betrayed, if not by his lover then by himself. He recalled how, worried by the duplicity, he had almost baulked at using Phoebe as an unwitting source of the truth. How she must secretly have been laughing at him … Of course, he'd been stupid long before she'd been introduced to the scene to make a complete fool of him. Once he'd identified blackmail as a likely motive, he should have realized what was at stake – any man of reasonable intelligence would have done …

Clough – personable, amusing, smart, an entrepreneur and exposing just that suggestion of amorality which intrigued, but did not warn – had successfully pursued both profit and women. But then, as had many others, he'd been caught out by changing financial conditions and had found himself in growing financial trouble. The banks, always eager to lift those who were on their way up and kick those who were on their way down, became ever more demanding and threatened to bankrupt his business. To be seen to fail would be almost as painful as the actual failure. He had followed a well-worn path and set out to marry a woman whose attraction was not physical or emotional, but wealth.

It had been a dull marriage and he'd continued to search for, and find, excitement with other women. For a time, Vera had not suspected because it was her nature to trust. He'd wanted to buy more land, convinced that this would enable him to climb out of his financial problems, and she had agreed to offer further surety. Then she'd learned that he had been messing about with another woman and had withdrawn her agreement, only to listen to his denials of adultery and reinstate it …

At this point, the course of events became uncertain. Had he been having an affair which had turned his thoughts to murder; or had he already been contemplating it, even if more as a daydream than a real possibility? Had he been having an affair with Fenella, so similar in looks yet so different in character, because she was Vera's sister and this afforded him perverse satisfaction; or, having decided on murder, had he evolved a plan that called on Fenella to play a major part in it and then pursued her, using every ounce of charm and cunning to persuade her to join him?

Not, of course, that Fenella would have needed all that much persuading. Life had turned very sour for her, while for her sister it had become ever sweeter (in her world, husbands were superfluous). Added to which, Vera was always seeking to help and little bred a more positive hatred than the sense of being beholden to someone of whom one was intensely jealous. So when Clough had proposed a move that would benefit both of them, she had not rejected the idea with horror, but had agreed to co-operate.

Clough had recognized the biggest problem of any murder – what to do with the body? Both its presence and its absence could become a voice from the grave. So what surer way of overcoming the problem than to make it appear there had been no murder? The two sisters were alike in looks, except for the colour of their hair, and very dissimilar in character; hair could be dyed and restyled, a false character could be assumed. No one would wonder what had happened to Fenella if she had made it known that she'd fallen in love with a Frenchman and was going to live with him in France. Of course, those who knew Vera even moderately well would not be fooled for long if face-to-face with Fenella, so Fenella and Clough would have to live abroad and contact with Vera's friends would be restricted to letters or phone calls on an ever-diminishing scale; should any of them propose a visit, good reasons would be found to postpone this until the person concerned accepted that Vera had found a new life and didn't wish to maintain contact with the old one. Her financial assets would be transferred to an offshore base and since the advisers would be dealing with Fenella from the word go, they would never have cause to question her authority.

Clearly, if the murder took place abroad, there was a better chance of consolidating the switch of identities. The house in Pellapuig was nigh perfect for the murder – it wasn't overlooked and the cliff was high enough to ensure that Vera must be killed on the rocks below … Perhaps it was only at this point of the planning that Clough had recognized a problem. There was little or no tide in the Mediterranean and few strong currents, so if Vera's body was left where it fell there had to be every chance it would be discovered before decomposition made identification virtually impossible. It must be taken out to sea, weighted, and sunk. He could do that, of course, but because fate so often made a mockery of certainty, he had to allow for the fact that it might become necessary for him to prove he was nowhere near his wife when she died to his great benefit. This raised a further problem. The hired accomplice might, after dumping the body, decide to try blackmail. In which case, he would have to be paid whilst plans were made for his murder …

Fenella had rented the house in Pellapuig. It had been planned that Clough, ever the loving husband, should join Vera there for a few days, but when he arrived it was to find that Vera had not. Whilst he and Fenella were on their own, he'd made the mistake of sharing her bed, probably at her insistence, never stopping to think that the maid might have sufficient intelligence to realize what was going on …

Fenella had received her sister with hypocritical affection. Vera would have been so gratified by this that it would not have occurred to her to wonder what had brought about Fenella's conversion on the road to Pellapuig. Her belief in the eventual triumph of goodness over evil made her a natural victim.

One evening after dark, Fenella had drugged the drink she had given Vera and very soon Vera had become comatose. Fenella must have found it very difficult to lift Vera out of the chair and drag her to the rails of the patio, then to tip her over. Had the physical effort helped her to blank her mind to the actuality of what she was doing? Or had hatred and jealousy long since strangled the last vestige of conscience? Lewis had been waiting, probably in an inflatable, and he had sailed out to sea, weighted the body, tipped it over the side.

As Clough had foreseen, Lewis had decided he'd been given a passport to an easy life. A traditionalist, when he'd demanded a million pesetas as the price of keeping his mouth shut, he would have promised this to be the first and last time. Clough would silently have agreed.

Lewis's death was to be an ‘accident'. This was made very much easier by his having extravagantly chartered a motor cruiser because it helped in the pursuit of women. Every year, people fell overboard and drowned, often when tight; such a death seldom aroused even the slightest suspicion. Clough had watched and waited. He'd seen Lewis and Sheard pick up Kirsty and Cara and settle in a café, had quickly boarded the
Aventura
and drugged the full bottle of whisky. When they'd sailed out of port, he'd followed them in his own boat and anchored close to where they'd anchored. Once all aboard the
Aventura
was quiet, he'd swum across and boarded, little suspecting that Kirsty was not completely unconscious. He'd exchanged the bottles and glasses, pushed Lewis over the stern, bruising him in doing so, then held him underwater until he'd drowned.

He had overlooked Sheard. There were Sheards in every Mediterranean tourist centre, cunning, amoral, doing as little real work as possible. Sheard had probably surprised himself when he'd befriended Lewis. If so, he'd have seen it as a just reward when Lewis suddenly had money to spend, because instinct, experience, and common sense all suggested this wealth had in some way to be illegal and therefore might be a source of profit for him as well. At some point, he'd learned that Lewis was in contact with Clough – perhaps when Kirsty had heard the reference to Larry – and, after Lewis's death, he'd set out to turn that knowledge into profit. Basically a very stupid man, he'd never foreseen that in doing this he might easily become the victim of another ‘accident'.

Guilt could make even the most self-confident man fear danger where, in fact, none existed; a casual remark could bear a meaning never intended by the speaker, a joke could become a threat, silence an accusation. As the inquiries into Lewis's death, and then Sheard's, continued, Clough had begun to fear that however incompetent the investigation, a corner of the truth might become lifted. So he had decided that the best way of averting such danger was to introduce someone who would, apparently guilelessly, confirm all he'd said …

Any man could lose his wits to wine and woman; the lucky one lost his only to wine. Phoebe had earned every peseta or pound she had been paid. With professional skill, she'd set out to capture his affections, thus ensuring that while he shamefacedly set out to question her without her suspecting, in truth she had fed him the lies that Clough had paid her to …

A jolting thump scattered his thoughts and jerked him back to the present to find they had landed, undercarriage, wings, and engines still attached. It seemed suitably ironic that his bitter thoughts should have saved him from the terrors of the landing.

CHAPTER 25

Dolores hugged Alvarez, then released him. ‘How are you?'

‘All right.'

Jaime, standing by her side in the front room, said: ‘She's done nothing but worry about you. Can't think why!'

‘Because you are incapable of thinking about anyone but yourself,' she snapped. She spoke once more to Alvarez. ‘I've cooked you Llom amb col for supper.'

‘That's great,' he answered dully. He picked up his suitcase. ‘I'll go up to my room and unpack.'