Free Deadly Petard by Roderic Jeffries Page B

tumblers, a bowl of ice cubes, and a bottle half full of brandy: she put the tray down on the wooden box that did duty as a table. Meade emptied the bottle into the tumblers and Liza added as many ice cubes as each glass would then hold.
    ‘Why are you so damned knuckle-headed as to think Gertie killed herself?’ Meade demanded, as he handed Alvarez one of the tumblers.
    ‘Apart from any other reason, señor, because she left a note in which she said she was going to commit suicide.’
    He looked surprised. ‘So did it say anything else: like why?’
    ‘She feared she had cancer and had just heard that a friend of hers in England had died from that disease after many months of pain. She could not face the future.’
    ‘I just don’t believe all that.’
    ‘I myself read the note . . .’
    ‘I’m saying I don’t believe she thought she had cancer. We used to talk about everything and if she’d thought that, she’d have told us.’
    ‘It is a subject people often do not like to discuss.’
    ‘If she’d been worried, she’d have told us.’ He turned to face Norah. ‘Isn’t that right?’
    ‘I think so,’ she replied. ‘After all, we were her friends.’ ‘Yeah.’ Meade looked back at Alvarez. ‘D’you know something? Before she came out here, she hardly knew anyone: to talk to as friends, I mean. So with us she talked all the time about anything. She’d have shared her fears if she had any.’
    ‘She’d have known we’d have done everything we could to help,’ agreed Liza.
    ‘Señor, I am sure that from your point of view what you say is correct, but how correct is your point of view?’ Alvarez thought for a few seconds. ‘Even from friends of many years, people keep secrets. If the señorita had told you her fears, would you not have insisted she see a doctor? And that might have been to confirm her very worst fears . . . Do you understand what I am trying to say?’
    ‘Of course. But it’s all a load of cod’s. One thing. Who is this friend who’s just died? Gertie told us often enough she hadn’t a single real friend back home.’
    ‘I know only that her name was Pat.’
    ‘She’s never mentioned anyone called Pat . . . And if she was all that frightened about herself, how come she was here on Sunday night, laughing her head off and planning an exhibition?’
    ‘This last Sunday?’
    ‘That’s what I just said.’
    ‘Did she perhaps not seem to be just a little upset over something?’
    ‘She was upset over nothing. She even had a few more drinks than usual and we bloody near had her doing “Knees Up, Mother Brown”.’
    ‘You mentioned an exhibition—was this to be of her paintings?’
    ‘Only a small one. And it was to be in Llueso because there’s a whole raft of painters live there: leastwise, that’s what the bloody ignoramuses call themselves. She only painted commercially, of course.’
    ‘Bruno paints,’ said Norah, with tremendous pride.
    ‘Artistically,’ said Liza, to make the point quite clear.
    Alvarez looked up at a couple of the paintings opposite where he sat and tried to seem intelligently appreciative.
    ‘Funny thing is, I reckon that if she’d learned to spit on the money, she could’ve become a proper painter.’ Meade sounded as if this were not an admission which came easily. ‘When I saw that last picture of hers, I told her straight, for me that’s not chocolate box, that’s art . . . D’you see it?’
    ‘There was an unfinished painting on the easel.’
    ‘What was the composition?’
    ‘An olive tree, an almond orchard, a finca, and mountains.’
    ‘Original,’ sneered Meade. Then his tone altered. ‘But the way she’d nailed that olive tree! You just knew it was a thousand years old, that it had stared, caring but impotent, at all the stupidities and tragedies of life . . .’
    Alvarez remembered how, after first seeing it, he had briefly sensed something chilling, even macabre about that painting. ‘Perhaps, señor, it was