Ibiza Surprise (16 page)

They were presumably for sale on less exalted occasions. One was of the float with the Madonna we’d just seen inside. The other was of the Saint Hubert.

‘Strewth,’ I said. ‘Madame Tussaud’s.’ In fact, Hubert, robed and bearded and mitred, looked rather a patsy, with one hand uplifted in classical blessing and the other parked on the head of a stag. The litter was huge, with lots of ormolu, candles, and frills and a sort of tree at each corner.

‘Saint Hubert,’ said Johnson. ‘You’ll see him tomorrow. Or are you going to Seville with Austin?’

‘We haven’t settled it yet,’ I said. I was thinking of something else. I said: ‘I’ve seen that collar somewhere before, do you know that?’

‘No, I don’t,’ said Johnson obligingly. ‘Where?’

The incense was making my head ache. I stood still and tried to think back. Then I remembered.

‘In the exhibition,’ I said. ‘In Austin Mandleberg’s exhibition. Or no, it wasn’t. It was in the basement downstairs. I sneaked off to look at the workshop, and I didn’t take more than a glance, because someone turned up. Jorge, the old boy who works there. But I’m sure the necklace lying on one of the benches was exactly the same shape as that. Rubies?’

‘Rubies,’ said Johnson with interest. ‘That’s it. They were red. I thought they were there for mending or cleaning.’

‘No. The Saint Hubert rubies,’ said Johnson thoughtfully, ‘are cleaned, they say, in Barcelona.’

‘Oh. Then I must have been wrong,’ I said.

‘Not necessarily,’ said Johnson. ‘Describe the room and the old man you saw in it.’

I did, and also Gregorio, the director. ‘He lives in the basement, I think. The rest of the staff seem to come in daily. Why do you want to know all this?’ I asked. It was rather exciting. ‘D’you think someone’s pinched them?’

‘Maybe. Or maybe even just made a copy. But it would be nice to know which. Do you think Mandleberg knows?’

‘I’m sure he doesn’t,’ I said. ‘Anyway, he’s been away for months and months, Janey checked when we were sleuthing. He really was in Paris when he said he was.’

‘Then the staff of the Mandleberg gallery may be indulging in a fiddle without him,’ said Johnson. ‘I wonder if Senor Gregorio believes in the power of prayer?’

‘Why?’ I said.

‘Because I’d like to pay him a visit, and I’d like it even more if he were safely in church,’ Johnson said. ‘But I’ll take you home first.’

I had nothing to lose, except a trip to Seville and Gibraltar. ‘I’ll come with you, if you’ll paint my picture on
Dolly,’
I said.

The black brows shot up. ‘Are you sure? I’m not wholesome at all.’

‘I don’t want to
eat
you,’ I said. ‘Just to get painted.’

He took my arm. ‘We may end up like your mother, phoning the Consul de S. M. Britanica, from jail.’

‘She phoned the Consulado del Estados Unidos,’ I said. ‘I’ll come. Will you paint me?’

We walked back through the church and out into the square. The moon was still there, and the leaves of the three little trees stirred in front of the lanterns, throwing flickering shade over the old, grey carved stone and worn steps and the tops of the trees in the small, dusty garden underneath. From the barracks unseen behind us, a faint beat of undistinguished pop music made itself heard, from some invisible transistor.

The view was fantastic. At our feet, the blocks of white houses stepped down into darkness. You could see the dim lights of the market and the few neon signs in the low town: a bank, a cinema, the red Philips shields. There was floodlighting near the harbour, and far out, the big aviation petrol installation blazed with blue flares. But elsewhere there was little. The new road to Talamanca, bridging the harbour, with its lights pooling the dust and the water. On the right, the dark spit of land dividing the bays, and the flashing beam of the lighthouse. On the left, the line of lights round the marina, ending in emerald green.

The country beyond was all dark with, here and there, the finest sprinkle of lights.

Johnson said: ‘I drive a harder bargain than you do. I’ll paint you if you promise not to go to Seville or Gibraltar. Or anywhere else where Clem can’t keep an eye on you.’

‘But Austin . . .’

The bifocals flashed in the lamplight.

‘Austin Mandleberg,’ said Johnson pointedly, ‘I have no doubt belongs to Rotary, is head of the Lodge and chairman of the local hospital fund, loves his old mother, and is kind to little children and animals. Other people are not quite so pure-minded. I still want you under surveillance.’

I was struck. ‘Was that why you drove all the way from
Dolly
to Casa Mimosa when Clem phoned you?’

‘Yes, it was,’ said Johnson. He was smiling, but his voice was perfectly level. ‘I wanted Clem with your mother. For if Coco was murdered, it was because of something he knew, which he might have passed on to your mother.’

‘But he didn’t,’ I said. ‘He was threatening us about it when Dilling took him away.’

‘So I am told,’ Johnson said. ‘I’m also told that several people now know that Mrs van Costa is Lady Forsey, your mother. Suppose then that your father was murdered also because of something inconvenient that he knew. Who is to know whether,’ said Johnson, ‘your father told Lady Forsey the night that he died? And whether she in turn has told you?’

‘She hasn’t,’ I said.

‘We’re talking about appearances, not what actually happened. Why did Derek come back?’ said Johnson, suddenly.

I smiled.

‘To see Janey,’ I said.

Johnson took my arm again and walked me slowly down the steep slope. ‘You’re a rotten-bad liar. I happened to be in the Telegrafos y Correos office the day you sent off your cable. What made you think Derek might have killed off his father? Surely he has made a life of his own by now in Holland? It isn’t likely, you know.’

‘You know,’ I said, ‘too bloody much.’

He stopped. ‘Sarah. I don’t want another murder. Yours or anyone else’s. You don’t want scandal. I don’t want to be mixed up in an international incident. If it can be solved quietly, let’s do it. But I can’t work in the dark.’

The lane was pebbly and steep, and you could almost touch the high, continuous buildings on each side with your two outspread hands. Even in the dark you could see they were fine houses, with crested stonework and heavy bossed doors and, lower, with deep sills filled with cactus and cages and flowers, and sometimes a high, rattan-roofed sunroom, with roses and creepers in round Moorish pots, spilling over in the glow from a lantern. Wire skeined the canyon below us, black against the near blue-black sky. The sound of a drumbeat, suddenly, just out of sight ̶ Tuck. Tr-r-uck. Tr-ruck, tuck tuck, and Johnson abruptly broke off.

We had turned off the main passage by then and were plunging down something much more dicey: a broken lane bordered with dank, peeling houses, where the light hardly reached, except to pick out a sunken, barred window, a swaying curtain of reeds, a double door rotting in all its planks. Above us, the houses on each side suddenly joined forces, two stories high, and we entered a tunnel, utterly lightless, Johnson’s dry, warm hand gripping mine hard. Then the blackness became dimness, and we turned right and passed down between steps and walls and big buildings, the cobbles firmer and broad to the foot until we reached a wide flight of steps to the left, tumbling down against a high wall to what seemed a small square. Johnson took one step down, and I said:
‘Look.’

They were passing through the small square far below: so silently that but for the drum I shouldn’t have seen them. They were roped together, in two long, thin lines, tall faceless men in long-sleeved black gowns sashed in purple, a crucifix glinting on each. Over each head was a long, slender cone sheathed in light purple which fell to the shoulders. Each nose was merely a cut triangle of cloth, each eyehole a circle of flesh. Drums glinted, with gold fringe and purple, and short bugles shone in the hand. But while we watched them, they were silent, picking their way up the difficult path, the tall spires swaying against the shadowed white walls, the shod feet and bare alike making no sound.

They passed.

‘The penitents,’ Johnson said. ‘They will have carried their image round the low town and are now delivering it back. Does penitence frighten you? No, I’m sure. As I’ve said before, you’re too young.’ He was leading me down the wide steps.

‘I’m frightened,’ I said. I hoped he’d forgotten.

He hadn’t. He stopped and said quietly: ‘So. Did Derek come to Ibiza before? Before your father died?’

I gave up. I needed help, and he was helping, more than anyone.

I said: ‘Yes. Janey saw him. He came to see Daddy, and he had a quarrel with him on the Friday. That’s all he told me.’

‘He didn’t tell you what the quarrel was about? Not your mother, he didn’t know evidently that she was here.’

‘No.’

‘What then? Not you: you go your own sweet way, or so the evidence tells me. Not money, he’s one of the technical salariat and doing very well, thank you. Some other aspect of his job? Was your father queering his pitch? Making a display of himself with people Derek thought mattered?’

He was quick.

‘It was because of his job,’ I said, my eyes on the square. ‘He had found out his employers regarded Daddy as a bad security risk. They thought he was an enemy agent.’

‘What?’
said Johnson. ‘Oh Christ, my dear girl,’ and he started laughing under his breath, so hard he had to take his bifocals off, and I looked at his eyes. I don’t know what colour they were because the surprise was somehow so great. His eyes were tired. He said, ‘And what did your father say?’ He had put the glasses back on.

‘Derek didn’t tell me,’ I said. ‘We sort of quarrelled ourselves, and I walked out. I haven’t seen him since till tonight.’

‘But Janey has,’ Johnson said. ‘Maybe Janey has had better luck. I should ask her, if I were you. If we’re not both in prison.’

Austin Mandleberg’s workshop was not all that hard to break into. It couldn’t have been, Johnson did it so easily. We didn’t go into the garden. We walked along the dirt lane running behind Gallery 7 and found a row of windows, covered with fine, blue-painted netting, which must belong to Austin’s own rooms. Below them was another window, with no nets but a balcony, not too far up from the ground. Johnson’s theory was that this would lead us to a room off the inside first landing. When I remembered the slope of the ground, I realised he was probably right.

I got up without any help on the balcony and crouched there, behind the pots of red-flowering cactus, while Johnson messed about with, he said, a hairpin. There was a click, and then he messed about a bit more with a knife. No-one came along the lane but a dog. It looked up at us and then trotted on. Then Johnson said: ‘How nice,’ with a rather satisfied sound in his voice.

‘What?’ I said.

‘The burglar alarm,’ Johnson said. ‘A good make. But not very well fitted. One of the hazards of living abroad. Are we clear?’

‘No-one’s coming,’ I said. I was still frightened, the smallest bit frightened. Of Johnson. Then he opened the window, and in a moment, we were both inside Austin’s house.

It was dark and stuffy, once the window was shut, and smelt of glue and fresh paint and carbonised metal and food. The room we were in appeared to be some kind of office. Producing a little torch from his pocket, Johnson swept it over the few elegant furnishings: a filing cabinet, a typist’s table and chair, a larger desk with a tape recorder and a telephone on its green leather surface.

The door was open, leading on to a lightless landing, devoid of all sound. Johnson closed it and, drawing both blinds on the windows, proceeded to kneel at the desk. I said: ‘Hey!’

The first drawer was open, and Johnson, very quietly, was ruffling at speed through the papers. I said: ‘Hey!’ again. He shut the drawer and opened another.

‘Don’t worry,’ he said. His voice was so low I could barely make the words out. He sounded mildly amused. ‘If I come across any love letters, I’ll tell you. I want to see the receipts for the production and sale of his jewellery. This is Gregorio’s desk.’

‘Oh,’ I said. He went through all the drawers in turn, looking at everything but taking nothing out. He didn’t speak again, and neither did I, until he had finished and relocked the lot. I said: ‘That wasn’t Gregorio’s desk.’

He grinned, a flash in the dark.

‘I know, dearie,’ he said. ‘But if he likes you enough to ask you to go to Seville, I feel we ought to view his credentials.’

‘And?’ I said crossly.

‘Clean as a whistle,’ said Johnson. ‘Now take me to this lair in the basement.’ And opening the door, we pussyfooted out on to the landing and then down the white marble stairs to the hall. Then we turned left, away from Austin Mandleberg’s ground-floor antique room, and opened the little green door.

I found the creaking stairs and went down making very little noise, and I noticed Johnson did the same. At the bottom, all the lights were switched off except one, at the end where Gregorio had his apartment. It was a very dim bulb, encased in a lantern framework hanging with dirt: American efficiency obviously hadn’t penetrated belowstairs to the native quarters. To my horror, signing me to stay out of sight, Johnson felt his way first away from the workshop and towards where the dim light was hanging, listening at doors as he went.

He saw the cat the moment I did, lying in the shadows by the far wall, curled inside its tail, fast asleep. He stopped, but the beast had sensed him. It raised its head, the end of its tail twitching, and then got up and let loose a meow like a train whistle. Then it stared at Johnson, stared at the last door of the corridor – the door farthest away from the stairs – and stalking towards it, meowed over again.

There was a line of light under that door. I saw Johnson wait for a moment. Then, very softly, he leaned forward, and with one gloved hand, he turned the knob of the door. He did it slowly, and in absolute silence, while the cat watched him, its ears pricked, its tail switching. Then, when the latch was just disengaged, he pushed the door gently open.