‘It’s the climate,’ I said. ‘The brain goes soft with the heat.’
‘The little cottage back along the road, mon ami, is not empty. Peter Brown is there, and he reports anything that passes by telephone to the villa. Ça vous explique tous?’
‘We all make our mistakes. But just tell me, is Wilkins up there with Dawson?’
He nodded and grinned. ‘She is. She has been a lot of trouble. Quelle femme! In our organization we could have made a great operator of her—once her brain had been washed clear of moral scruples.’
At the window Duchêne said, ‘Get out, and behave yourself.’
I did as I was told. They marched me back through the trees to the cottage. The black saloon was there. It was a Mercedes. Peter Brown, in blue canvas trousers, a white shirt and silk scarf at his neck, opened the back door for me.
‘Mr Carver. Nice to see you again.’
‘I wish you hadn’t.’
‘I’m sure you do.’
Duchêne said nothing. He got in alongside of me and Paulet drove. Within five minutes or so we were at the villa.
The front was covered with plumbago and bougainvillaea and there were large red earthenware urns full of geraniums and petunias, flourishing in a way that would have delighted my sister. I was greeted by Saraband Two. She stood on the low patio by the front door, wearing gardening gloves and holding a watering can. She had a wide-brimmed straw hat, a bit like the jobs they used to put on horses, a floppy blue dress and rope-soled alpagatas. Her pleasant aunty face warmed at the sight of me and she didn’t look as though she had a worry in the world except greenfly and drought.
‘Mr Carver,’ she said, ‘how nice. We thought you were dead.’
‘That was the official bulletin.’
‘It just proves,’ she said, standing aside for me to pass, ‘that you can’t believe everything you read in newspapers. But I mean the second time.’
‘Your girl Gloriana made a mess of it.’
‘Indeed.’
I couldn’t tell whether she was surprised or not.
They took me through a cool, stone-flagged passage into a wide, long room with a wooden floor and a wooden ceiling. Clearly it had been an old farmhouse. The furniture was mostly cane stuff for coolness and there were gay green, gold and red tiles let into the walls. Through the window, between a clump of cactus, I could see the beginning of the rise to the headland. I flopped into a chair. Duchêne shut the door. Paulet went to a sideboard and said, ‘Beer?’
I nodded.
Aunt Saraband took off her gloves and her hat, patted her neat greyish hair tidy and then brought a cigarette box and offered it to me. I lit up and said nothing.
Paulet brought me a glass of beer. It was all very friendly and controlled and I wondered how the real business would be.
Aunt Saraband, who clearly outranked Duchêne, opened the proceedings.
‘Would you like to tell the story freely or do we have to be unpleasant, Mr Carver?’
She said it with her back to me, as she fussed at a vase of some short-stemmed lily flowers on a table.
‘I hate unpleasantness.’
‘Good.’
‘Monsieur Carvay is always reasonable,’ said Paulet. Trust him to put in a good word for me.
Aunt Saraband turned and smiled. I was being a good nephew.
‘I suppose it started with the beer bottles?’
‘Yes.’ I’d decided to stick to truth as far as I could. They could be told a lot of things which were no longer important.
She sat down, crossed her legs and pulled her dress down. There was no need, it was already only a foot from the ground. ‘Your Miss Wilkins is a very fine and determined character. Too much so.’
‘She’s an excellent secretary too—and is very much missed at the office.’
‘We shall miss her too. She has kept everyone on their toes here. She has twice tried to escape. That was after we found out about the beer bottles.’
‘When I gave her exercise one day,’ said Paulet, without rancour, ‘she hit me with a large stone and ran. You know she is a fast runner. Mon Dieu, we had trouble with her. Since then she has no exercise.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Aunt Saraband, ‘we should let Mr Carver get on with his story, step by step.’
Looking at the table with the flower vase, I said, ‘Those are new to me, those flowers.’
‘Sand lilies,’ said Aunt Saraband. ‘And don’t change the subject. I presume you received the letter from José Bonifaz?’
‘There’s a lad who should go far. Show him a peseta—’
Paulet moved, with that swiftness some big men have, and the flat of his hand slammed across my face. I blinked and my eyes watered.
‘Of course, there’s nothing personal in that,’ I said.
‘No, mon ami/ he said, as he stood over me, and he slammed me again.
‘Enough, Francois,’ said Aunt Saraband. He went back to his chair. She looked speculatively at me for a moment or two and then said, ‘Mr Carver, we haven’t much time to bother about you or Miss Wilkins. I am sure you realize that we are not staying here. In fact we leave at six o’clock tomorrow morning. You, of course, and Miss Wilkins, will be left behind.’
‘In no state to talk,’ said Duchêne with his prim, irritable voice.
‘I don’t feel like talking now,’ I said. ‘But perhaps if you gave me a whisky—’ I looked at my watch, it was half past six—‘I might open up a bit.’
To my surprise Aunt Saraband nodded at Paulet and he got up to do the necessary. I saw the bottle. It was a cheap Spanish whisky fake. Surprisingly it didn’t taste too bad, if you didn’t think of it as whisky.
‘What happened to Mimo?’ asked Duchêne.
‘José gave me his flat address. I walked in on a pretty tableau. Mimo standing over two dead bodies. He tried to make mine the third. I had to shoot him.’
Not on any of the three faces watching me was there a flicker of doubt, surprise or