A Question of Motive (11 page)

‘What exactly is it you want to know?' she asked, after Parra had collected the empty cups, saucers, and glasses.

‘I'm afraid I have to learn what was your uncle's financial position. That means looking through his accounts, bank balances, and so on. I'll also need to read his will.'

‘You still think he might have committed suicide?'

‘I accept your judgement that that is impossible, but others won't until I can show it is too unlikely to be considered.'

‘How he'd hate . . .'

He waited.

‘Hate having anyone else look through all his papers. But I know you wouldn't unless you had to.'

‘Your uncle was a very secretive man?'

‘I don't know I'd call him that.' She stared into the past. ‘He didn't want people to know what he owned, what he did, or what he really thought, but that was more maintaining his own self rather than being secretive. As far as I was concerned, from the moment I arrived here, he treated me as his daughter and answered whatever I wanted to know. But because I understood there were questions he disliked, such as any about his late wife, there were those I never asked.'

‘Do you know the details of his will?'

‘No. But he did say after I'd been here a while that he was glad I liked the place as much as he did, because one day it would be mine. It may still be so. I'm sure he'll have granted legacies to the servants. Beyond that, I've no idea.'

‘There is a safe?'

‘Behind the bookcase over there.' She pointed. ‘Part of the bookcase is false.'

‘Do you know where he kept the keys?'

‘In one of the drawers of the desk.'

‘I am going to have to look through the contents of the safe. If you can trust me on my own then . . .'

‘Don't say that,' she said fiercely. ‘I trust you completely.'

‘Thank you. I was asking because it might be kinder for you not to be in here. Afterwards, I will show you anything you wish or need to see.'

She stood. ‘You're right. I would start remembering . . . Call me if you need help.' She left.

There were two keys in the top right-hand drawer of the desk. The fake books in the bookcase were realistic until one studied them closely, knowing they were somewhere along the shelves. The safe was English and a small brass plaque claimed it to be both burglar and fireproof. Safe makers had to be optimistic. The keys turned the locks, and the thick, heavy door swung open. There was one shelf halfway up and on this was a wallet, several different-sized velvet covered boxes, passports for Gill and Mary, the new single-sheet residencias for them both, and various papers; there were more papers and several folders on the bottom of the safe. The wallet contained seven hundred euros in fifty-euro notes. The boxes contained many pieces of jewellery which, as far as his knowledge allowed him to judge, were very valuable. He returned the jewellery and wallet to the shelf, brought out the contents, placed them on the desk.

Gill's paperwork had been left in good order. There were folders marked investments, credits, outgoings. There were statements from banks in Mallorca, England, and Liechtenstein, all showing healthy credits. There was an IOU, signed by Timothy Kiernan, for 10,000 pounds. Gill's will, in Spanish and English, was in one folder. His estate was left to Mary Farren, subject to payments of legacies. These were 1500 pounds to Parra, Luisa, and Santos, 1000 pounds to Eva, and 10,000 pounds to Miranda Pearson.

Using the calculator on the desk, he made a quick estimate of the worth of the estate. Roughly thirty thousand in the banks. The latest investment report totalled 1,876,000. The property? A million.

He leaned back and gazed into a life of millions of euros. A farm, around a hundred hectares. Considerably larger than usual in the area, but not impossible. A finca, to let to tourists, not to live in – there was not wealth sufficient to forgo Dolores' cooking. A large flock of red sheep, now not quite so close to extinction since the government had seen the wisdom of granting subsidies to promote their breeding. Many pigs. No animal was the equal of a pig in the kitchen. Chorizo, sobresada, botifarró; chops, legs, trotters, tongue; ham and hamon serano. Cows? Fresh milk was a different liquid from that which one bought in cartons and which was fortified, skimmed, pasteurized, and heaven knew what else. But cows had to be milked twice a day. Hire a cowman.

Regretfully, he returned to the world he lived in. He collected things together, returned them to the safe, locked that, swung the section of false bookcase back into position. In the last investment analysis, his account executive had written that markets had been volatile and Gill's holdings had inevitably suffered, but the losses had been less than those of the general market. The outlook was uncertain, but there was good reason to think that in relative terms, the investments would remain firm.

Gill, suffering from no fatal disease or mental problem, living in luxury, rich enough to survive a worldwide financial crisis, enjoying at least one loving mistress, was going to commit suicide? Even Salas would accept that he was not.

In the sitting room, Mary was knitting. She looked up, said ‘Damn!' and looked back down at the knitting, fiddled with the needles.

‘Lost a stitch?' he asked.

‘Two.'

He sat. ‘Do you do a lot of knitting?'

‘What else is there for an oldie to do but that and watch the telly?'

‘I'll never see a younger oldie.'

‘How do you manage always to say the right thing?'

He smiled.

‘Have I said something amusing?'

‘Many people would suggest I never manage to say the right thing.'

‘Then they don't know you.' She had regained the stitches and started another row. ‘I'm making a baby jacket for the wife where I get the Sunday papers and quite often a daily one. She told me what was very obvious and is worried because her husband isn't well and she has to be in the shop all day, every day, and there isn't the time to prepare for the coming baby. I said she should close in the afternoons and evenings, and she said she's not allowed to. Is that right?'

‘Newsagents have to be open all day, every day. That law was meant to encourage people to read.'

‘Surely, there isn't anyone now who doesn't? So why not relax the law?'

‘Politicians don't worry about the effects of the laws they promulgate unless they become involved in the consequences. And when you say everyone now is literate, that's almost true but, not so many years ago, some people had to give their fingerprint instead of a signature at a bank because they could not write.'

‘Then there's been real progress.'

‘I suppose so.'

‘Why the doubt?'

‘Years ago, the elderly were cared for by their children, drugs were virtually unknown, houses were affordable, every possible square metre of land was cultivated and did not grow thistles and brambles.'

‘You'd like the country to be back in those days?'

‘When there was hunger, when one could not afford a visit to a doctor, and when one endured toothache because there was no dentist within a mule ride? Sadly, it seems there can never be a world that is all light, there has to be a matching darkness . . . I am talking too much and boring you.'

‘That you are not. And you have to keep talking to tell me what you've learned.'

‘The señor's will provides several legacies, otherwise you inherit the estate. A large sum of money is involved and I advise you to speak to a top tax adviser in Palma in order to escape the shark jaws of the tax inspectors. Left unchallenged, they will strip a person of every last euro.'

‘Can you suggest someone?'

‘I will find out who can be most trusted to act for you, not the government. There is something more. You know there is considerable jewellery in the safe?'

‘It was Robin's wife's. She inherited some of it, Robin gave her the rest. He wanted me to have it, but if I wore such beautiful things . . .' She stopped abruptly.

She might have told him he said the right thing at the right time, but now he could think of nothing to say. To wear such glittering beauty would be to exacerbate the misfortune of her deformity; it would attract the unwanted attention of men. ‘I would judge the jewellery to be very valuable; at a quick glance, none of it appeared to be imitation.'

‘It isn't. Robin had a hatred of anything false which tried to make out it was genuine. The reproduction Hepplewhite presented as original. It was the same with people. If someone genuinely needed help, he would give it. If they did so just because he was wealthy, he would have no truck with them. He was like that with the Phillipses. I sometimes wondered if he'd been tricked by a so-called friend when young.'

‘Who are they?'

‘Live in one of the biggest houses, drive a Rolls and get stuck in the village corners, own a large motor yacht, frequently go on world cruises in one of the top suites. Quite a few people here live that kind of life, but most of them do so unostentatiously. Meet the Phillipses and within minutes you learn they're very wealthy, had noble ancestors who left them their seat in one of the shires, would be on every A-list of celebrities had they wished to be. At the same time, they are contemptuous of “little people”, by which they mean those who have small houses or live in a village, whose accent is often described as uneducated, who have to watch every euro. When a firm does badly, there are redundancies and people appear on television saying they don't know how they can manage with mortgages, credit card debts, and so on, Frank Phillips will say they should stop bleating and think themselves lucky they aren't thrown into a debtors' prison.'

‘Sympathetic!'

‘Robin disliked them within minutes of meeting them. Dislike became anger when they were so damned rude to friends. George and Lilly Carson are short of money and have to cut corners, but you never hear them complain. Phillips had asked them to one of their ostentatious parties. Lilly rang us to say Frank had just been in touch to tell them he'd invited too many people so they were not to come. The not-so-rich or the unimportant were being discarded.

‘Robin said no one with manners and education could act like that and they had to be fakes. He'd find out who they really were. I thought he was just talking until he spoke to Alec, a retired detective, and hired him to dig out the truth.

‘It took time, but in the end we learned her name was Gertrude, not Guinevere, none of their ancestors had ever owned a large estate, a small estate, or anything better than a back-to-back, and Frank had made his money from pornography.

‘Had the information just been sufficient to burst the bubble of falsity, Robin would probably have leaked it, but as things turned out, he decided it would be too unkind to release the truth. We would have our private laugh when the Phillipses boasted about the grand family estate they had inherited. However, the news escaped. That had to be through Alec who probably at some time had been at the receiving end of the Phillips' snobbery.'

‘Have they stayed on the island?'

‘Surprisingly. I suppose one should give them slight credit for facing all the jeering laughter behind their backs. Robin has a strange sense of humour . . .' She stopped. ‘Had,' she murmured. She looked away from him and it was a while before she continued speaking. ‘What started in fun, ended bitterly.'

‘As we say, if you don't know where the journey will end, don't saddle up.'

‘It's easy to be wise afterwards.'

‘I wasn't criticizing your uncle.'

She put knitting and needles into a wicker basket. ‘It sounded as if you were.'

‘Then I'm sorry.'

‘You think I'm being bitchy?'

‘No.'

‘It's just . . .'

He accepted she was ready to find insult and criticism when not intended because grief sometimes provoked that need. He hoped a return to other matters would calm her. ‘As you said, the keys to the safe were in a drawer in the desk. They're dangerously accessible and probably a desk drawer would be the first place where a thief would look. It would be a good idea to hide them very carefully, away from the library.'

‘You're worried someone might break in to the house?'

‘Yes. And there could be a closer worry.'

‘How d'you mean?' Her expression sharpened. ‘Are you suggesting the staff would steal?'

‘The jewellery is insured for tens of thousand of pounds.'

‘Pablo, Luisa, Eva, or Juanito wouldn't touch an uncounted pile of a hundred euro notes. You just can't understand loyalty. For you, everybody is a potential thief. I wonder who I am in that mind of yours?'

‘Someone who has had to suffer too much,' he answered quietly. He stood. ‘Thank you for your help.'

‘Enrique . . .'

He remained standing where he was.

‘I didn't mean that. But I couldn't bear your being suspicious of them when they've been so kind to me.'

‘I have no reason to suspect them, but I have met one or two people whose characters have been changed and ruined by money. If the keys are well hidden, your faith and my worries will be guarded.'

‘Very well. I'll do as you suggest, not that I think it can possibly be necessary, but because you want it.'

‘Peace is declared?'

‘Did I sound as if war had begun?'

‘Which I provoked . . . There is one more question.'

‘Yes?'

‘Do you know Miranda Pearson?'

‘No. Should I?'

‘She has been left ten thousand pounds.'

She said nothing.

He looked at his watch. ‘I really must leave, much as I'd like to stay.'

‘You've lost your nerve?'

‘In what way?'

‘You are having lunch here.' She laughed. ‘Now I know how a man looked when asked to dine with a de' Medici. But before anything else . . .'