Three and One Make Five by Roderic Jeffries Page B

Spanish and I know little English, so we couldn’t really talk to each other.’
    ‘How long had he been here this visit?’
    She thought. ‘It must have been about ten days.’
    ‘D’you know where he’d come from?’
    She shook her head. As for so many of the islanders, the world beyond was, despite TV, virtually unknown and she had very little interest in it.
    ‘Did he ever talk about England?’
    ‘But I’ve just said, we couldn’t really understand each other.’
    ‘I wondered if perhaps you’d picked up something?’
    ‘No, nothing.’
    ‘Was he married?’
    ‘I’ve never seen a woman in the house.’
    ‘How often did he come out to the island?’
    ‘Maybe two or three times a year.’
    ‘Did you know that yesterday he was meeting a friend who was coming over from England?’
    ‘He did say something about it.’
    ‘Any idea what his friend’s name was?’
    ‘No. I’m sorry, Enrique, but . . .’ She shrugged her shoulders.
    ‘Don’t worry, you’re doing fine. Is there anything you can tell me about his friend? When did he arrive?’
    ‘I know nothing except the señor told me he had to be at the airport by a quarter past six in the evening . . . At least, I think that’s what he was saying. He used to get so annoyed when I couldn’t understand him.’
    ‘The friend wasn’t staying at Ca Na Rostra?’
    ‘I don’t think he can have been. I mean, the señor didn’t ask me to get one of the spare bedrooms ready, which I could have done easily as the house was as clean as a new pin from top to bottom. Sweet Mary! he had me dusting, wiping down, and washing, as if the Queen were coming to stay.’
    ‘Did he keep his papers anywhere about the house—business files, that sort of thing?’
    ‘I’ve never seen any around, but there’s a safe in the wall of one of the downstairs rooms so perhaps there are some there.’
    ‘Where’s the key of the safe?’
    ‘How would I know a thing like that?’
    ‘But you’ll have a key to the house?’
    ‘Yes, of course.’
    ‘Will you let me have it, please?’
    She left the room and when she returned she handed him two keys, one a Yale type and the other of regular pattern. ‘They’re both for the back door. You will take care of them, won’t you?’
    ‘Of course,’ he assured her.
    ‘What shall I do about cleaning the house tomorrow?’
    ‘I think that for the moment you’d better stay away. I’ll let you know what’s happening when I bring the keys back.’
    She hesitated, then said: ‘Some French people who’ve come to live in the village asked me to work for them, but I said I didn’t have the time. But with the señor gone, perhaps the next people to live in the house won’t want me . . . ?’
    ‘If you want my advice, go back to the French people and say you’re free after all.’
    She nodded.
    He pocketed the keys. He had, he thought, learned nothing of any consequence—which was to say, nothing which connected Short’s death with those of Clarke and Allen.
     

 
CHAPTER 11
    Alvarez unlocked the back door of Ca Na Rostra and went inside. The kitchen, an extension built on to the north side of the house, was large and very well equipped: washing-up machine, microwave oven as well as a split-level gas oven, two kinds of mixers, an American refrigerator with a crushed ice dispenser, a cabinet deepfreeze, and a water-softener. Money, and plenty of it.
    He passed through to the passage which gave access to a small room that was obviously a study, the dining-room and, beyond that, the sitting-room. He returned to the study. It was less than half the size of the kitchen and was made smaller by the large desk. To the right of the bookcase was a coloured print of a square-rigger under full sail and behind this was a safe. He checked the drawers of the desk but the key of the safe was not in any of them, then went over to the small glass-fronted cupboard, opposite the bookcase, but the key wasn’t in that. Yet so many people,