Murder Begets Murder Read Online Free PDF Page B

up in any but exceptional circumstances. ‘During the meal you told us about Señor Heron, who was very ill, and Señorita Stevenage who lived with him.’
    ‘The poor señor,’ she said. ‘He’d suffered so much before he died.’
    ‘Matter of fact, I’m just back from Ca’n Ibore. The lease was up today and so the landlord, Jose Sanchez, was able to go inside. He found that something very awful had happened. The señorita had died in the kitchen.’
    ‘Mother of God!’ she exclaimed with horror. Then she looked disbelievingly at him. ‘How could she be dead when she was so alive the last time I saw her? How can she have died and no one know about it?’
    ‘I’m here to try and find out. Can you spare the next half-hour?’
    ‘I’m not going anywhere, Enrique. I haven’t been able to find work in the mornings since I left Ca’n Ibore: the foreigners say they haven’t the money they used to and when I ask for another ten pesetas an hour they tell me they can’t afford that much. But all the time the prices go up and up.’ She spoke with fatalistic acceptance.
    ‘Tell me now, then, how you first went there and what happened.’
    Carmen had come to her in December and said that there were some foreigners in Ca’n Ibore who wanted a maid in the mornings. So she had bicycled up to the finca to see them. The poor señor was ill, but no one could mistake him for anything but a gentleman, so kind and pleasant, so distinguished in his smart clothes, well-trimmed beard, and greying hair even if he wasn’t very old. And to think she hardly ever saw him again except in his bed of pain! But the señorita . . . How did an unmarried woman so degrade herself as to live with a man? Not so long ago she would have been called a whore . . .
    ‘You told us you thought she was having some sort of an affair with another man, didn’t you?’
    ‘Indeed I did! The poor señor, dying upstairs, and her downstairs telling another man how much she loved him! I have to say it after all, Enrique: she was a wicked, wicked woman. Look at the way she always tried to make out she cared so much for the señor. I’d offer to take him something to eat, she’d insist on carrying it up because he wanted to see her and he needed her. But there were no tears in her eyes when she spoke about him: her soul was not being squeezed. Yet when her little dog died — then there were tears! She cried as if her heart were broken. So I tell you, she loved her dog more than the señor. Imagine!’
    ‘The English are funny over their animals.’
    ‘The señor loved her. But she . . . she was glad when he died.’
    ‘After a long illness it can be a release for anyone.’
    ‘Maybe. But why didn’t she really do something for him? Make him see a specialist in Palma, make him enter a clinic, where they could perhaps have helped him? If it had been my man I’d have done everything possible for him.’
    ‘The doctor surely tried to get him to see a specialist or enter a clinic?’
    ‘Doctor Roldán? He worries about nothing except that his enormous bills are paid so that he can buy that French wife of his another frock.’
    ‘Tell me again what happened that evening you collected the pills from the chemist and decided to take them to the house right away instead of waiting until the morning.’
    ‘She said not to bother until the morning. How could anyone not bother when the señor was so very ill? You’ll understand, Enrique, that when I left the dirt track and was on the concrete I made no sound. So they could not have heard me, but when I drew level with the window I could hear her all right.’
    ‘Can you remember exactly what was said?’
    ‘Not every single word, but some of them I shan’t forget in a hurry. She wasn’t shouting, but her voice was very strong when she said: “I love you. Don’t you ever forget that.” Then she told him she wasn’t going to sit back and let him mess around with other women. He said something which I