Death Trick Read Online Free PDF

her arms.
    ‘I’m sorry to disturb you, señora.’
    ‘It’s nothing,’ she answered, with the weary acceptance of someone whose every waking hour, and many of her sleeping ones, were disturbed.
    ‘I’m looking for Señor Oakley.’
    ‘He lives over there.’ She pointed in the direction of Ca’n Tardich.
    ‘I’ve just been there, but the house is locked. I wondered if you’d any idea where he might be?’
    She shook her head. ‘We don’t really say anything but good-morning to each other.’
    ‘Have you seen him today?’
    She thought. ‘I’ve not seen him for a day or two, but then I’ve been tied up with the baby who’s teething . . .’ As if to underline her words, the baby began to cry loudly; she rocked him in her arms.
    He scratched his chin and his fingers rasped across stubble, reminding him that he’d forgotten to shave that morning. ‘D’you know anyone who might be able to tell me where I could find him?’
    ‘There’s Beatriz—she looks after the house.’
    ‘Where does she live?’
    ‘In the village, in Calle General Ayer, but I don’t know the number.’
    ‘I’ll soon find that out. Thanks, señora, and I hope the baby’s teeth will soon calm down.’
    ‘You can’t hope that any more than I do!’
    He drove on to the main road and then round to the west side of Llueso, often referred to as the new part although the houses were, on average, well over fifty years old. At the start of Calle General Ayer, a boy on a skateboard—the craze had not yet entirely disappeared—said that Beatriz, who worked for foreigners, lived at No. 21. He continued on to a house halfway along the street on the left-hand side. Like all the others, it appeared drab from the outside despite the brightly painted shutters and window-boxes filled with flowers; but inside it was considerably more spacious than might have been expected and was spotlessly clean; beyond the second downstairs room there was visible a small patio in which grew an orange tree.
    Beatriz was in her middle forties, small of body, but clearly sharp of mind, and never still; she reminded him of a sparrow at nesting time. ‘Why d’you want to know about the señor?’
    He explained.
    ‘Then . . .’ She stopped.
    ‘Then what, señora?’
    ‘Then something really has happened to him.’
    ‘Why d’you say that?’
    She did not answer him directly. ‘I wondered whether I ought to tell someone. Then I thought that maybe that was being stupid. I mean, a man doesn’t always act the same as ever, does he?’
    ‘Has he been acting strangely?’
    She gestured with her hands. ‘He’s never before gone off without telling me. And the señora came to see what was wrong because he’d been meant to have a meal with her but never turned up.’
    ‘Suppose you tell me what’s been happening?’
    She nodded, but went into the next room to return with some knitting; she knitted quickly as she spoke. She worked for Oakley and two other persons down in the port. She went to Ca’n Tardich in the mornings on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. It wasn’t the señor’s house, but he rented it from another Englishman who had obtained it on a life lease—which included a clause permitting sub-letting— and had reformed it. He’d first lived there about . . . Must be two years back. He wasn’t there all the time; just came and went, never staying very long.
    He always told her when he was going away and wrote or telephoned to say when he was returning. Yet last Wednesday she had arrived at the house and although he’d not been there, the house had been unlocked. At first, she’d thought nothing of that. He’d gone out shopping or visiting and had forgotten to lock up—not that he’d ever done so before. But he didn’t turn up by the time she left and that was even more unusual, because she was due to be paid and he’d never before forgotten to pay her; if he was not going to be in when she finished, he left the money in the kitchen