Free Troubled Deaths by Roderic Jeffries Page A

most English wouldn’t give a damn about what a Mallorquin maid thought. Juana-Maria had always been thinking about other people’s feelings.
    ‘We’d better go,’ said Mabel. ‘I only wanted to come . . .’ She stopped, clearly far too embarrassed, even ashamed, to continue.
    ‘Yes, of course.’ Caroline smiled at Matilde and Alvarez. ‘Goodbye, then. I do hope we didn’t disturb you too much.’ She turned and walked to the car and this had the effect of making Mabel do the same. A moment later, they drove off.
    ‘She’s a very silly woman,’ said Matilde scornfully.
    ‘What d’you mean?‘snapped Alvarez, before he realized he was in danger of making a fool of himself.
    Matilde stared at him in sudden apprehension.
    ‘I am very sorry, señora, I was talking to myself about something entirely different . . . Now, then, tell me why you think that woman is so silly.’
    She looked doubtfully at him, but was quickly reassured by his expression. ‘She was in love with the señor. A woman like her. He just laughed at her. Especially after what happened on Thursday when she saw him . . .’
    ‘Saw him what?’
    ‘I cannot say. But he had another woman here.’
    ‘The other señorita who was here just now?’
    ‘No. I have never seen her before.’
    He was furious with himself for daring to think such a thing could ever have been possible. ‘D’you know who this first woman was?’
    ‘No, señor. But when he said she was coming to lunch he called her Veronica and said she was on holiday and he wanted to show her what the island was really like. As if it wasn’t obvious what he really wanted! . . . He said to put out the cold meat then to keep out of the way. I am a decent woman, but even so I know what such orders mean. So I put out the meal and told him and returned to the kitchen. I heard a car arrive and it was the juice-less señorita who has just been. She went into the house and soon she began to shout at him and when she came out crying I knew what she must have seen.’
     

 
CHAPTER IX
    Alvarez stood at the bar and stared at the mirror. He saw a middle-aged man with lined, coarsely featured face, whose eyes were bloodshot and whose hair was beginning to thin. You simple fool, he said to his reflection. You, a failure, a peasant without a single cuarterada of land to call his own, old enough to be her father . . . But her golden image continued to dance in his mind.
    ‘Give me another,’ he said.
    The barman picked up his glass. ‘You look as if you’d lost a few thousand-peseta notes.’
    ‘There are worse things to lose than them.’
    ‘Don’t bother to tell me what they are . . . Do you really want another coñac?’
    ‘Didn’t I ask for one?’
    ‘All right, all right, keep your hair on.’
    When he had looked at her he had seen the quiet moon in the star-studded sky, the sparkling of still seas, the distant mountains framed against a sunset sky. And when she had looked at him, what had she seen? An ugly, time-scarred peasant . . .
    ‘Here you are, Enrique. Drink it up and for the love of God cheer up or you’ll frighten any other customers away.’
    He emptied the glass, but he didn’t cheer up.
    On Monday morning Alvarez drove to the small uniformed finca which lay beyond Ca’n Ritat. Here time had almost, if not quite, been defeated and the small-holding was pretty well self-sufficient. The family kept a mule for working the land, a cow for milk and calves, and pigs, sheep, goats, rabbits, chickens, guinea pigs, and pigeons, for eating. They fed the mule on straw, dried field beans, and grass, the cow on grass, straw, and ground algarrobas, the pig on dried figs and anything else that was left over, the sheep and goats were left to graze among the scrub land but were sometimes given some dried field beans, the chickens and pigeons had wheat, barley, or oat tailings, the guinea pigs and rabbits lived on grass. The family grew corn and handed much of it to the miller who gave