terms, Senor . . .’
‘Not so many months ago you reported dead a man who was alive. Now you report dead a man who never existed. What will it be next time?’
‘Señor, it was your suggestion I should ask England for information. It is they, not me, who now say the Englishman never existed.’
‘A ridiculous argument. I’ve no doubt that what’s actually happened is that you’ve sent the wrong information.’
‘I gave them the details from his residencia and I have been back on to the office and they assure me that I got all the details right.’
‘Find out who he really was and try to decide once and for all whether he was murdered.’ Superior Chief Salas slammed down the receiver.
The English, thought Alvarez, were the world’s trouble-makers, even when dead. He stood up, yawned, looked at his watch to see how long it was before he could break off for lunch, sighed, and left the room. His car was parked in the square and he walked to it. He drove out on to the Puerto Llueso road and then, at the islands, went past the new football ground and up to the urbanizacion. He took the spur road down to Casa Elba.
Señorita Cannon interested him because he was certain she had no counterpart in Spain. There were ungainly women, ugly women, even, it was said, sexless women in Spain, but all of them would possess dignity and pride. Señorita Cannon could have neither dignity nor pride.
When she opened the front door, she said: ‘What do you want?’ in a tone of voice devoid of all welcoming hospitality.
‘Señorita, I would be most grateful if you would be so kind as to answer one or two questions for me.’
With obvious reluctance, she stepped to one side to let him enter. Lying about the sitting-room were papers and magazines, records in their jackets, two bottles in the grate which had not been cleared of ash, and a clothes-horse in front of the fireplace on which were several underclothes. Dolores, he thought, would have to be very seriously ill before she ever allowed her home to get in such a state.
‘What do you want to know, then?’ she demanded roughly. As she finished speaking, a telephone rang in one of the bedrooms along the corridor. Without bothering to apologize, she swung round and left to hurry down the corridor.
He crossed the room and looked at the records. They all seemed to be of old, romantic musicals in which everyone nice lived happily ever afterwards. Poor woman, he thought with sudden compassion. She could only know romance vicariously. He moved and looked at the books in the large bookcase, expecting them all to be romances. A few obviously were, but the rest of the titles showed that he’d been wrong in attributing to her such narrow intellectual and emotional interests. On the shelves were books on archaeology, history, travel, biographies, flora, fauna, and insects of Northern Europe and the Mediterranean . . . and a green bound book entitled Vegetable Poisons by P. J. Meegan.
It was not a very thick book. Each chapter was clearly headed: the poppy; hashish; cocaine; atropine, hyoscyamine, and scopolamine: curare; the double-faced strophantus and the two hemlocks: the death cap, the destroying angel, the fool’s mushroom, and the edible table top . . . The chapter on poisonous fungi had obviously been well read and two pages, facing, were quite dirty. Almost at the bottom of the first of these was a fresh paragraph which carried on to the second page:
There grows in the Balearics, and in particular on the largest of the islands, Majorca, an edible fungus known locally as esclatasang. (In Mallorquin, a dialect of Catalan, one of the four languages spoken in Spain, this means popping blood. The esclatasang exudes a red liquid.) These are held to be delicious and are highly priced - perhaps too highly priced for anyone who has eaten the field or oyster mushroom in northern Europe. The casual fungicologist, however, eager to sample the specialities of the islands, must be on his
‘Not so many months ago you reported dead a man who was alive. Now you report dead a man who never existed. What will it be next time?’
‘Señor, it was your suggestion I should ask England for information. It is they, not me, who now say the Englishman never existed.’
‘A ridiculous argument. I’ve no doubt that what’s actually happened is that you’ve sent the wrong information.’
‘I gave them the details from his residencia and I have been back on to the office and they assure me that I got all the details right.’
‘Find out who he really was and try to decide once and for all whether he was murdered.’ Superior Chief Salas slammed down the receiver.
The English, thought Alvarez, were the world’s trouble-makers, even when dead. He stood up, yawned, looked at his watch to see how long it was before he could break off for lunch, sighed, and left the room. His car was parked in the square and he walked to it. He drove out on to the Puerto Llueso road and then, at the islands, went past the new football ground and up to the urbanizacion. He took the spur road down to Casa Elba.
Señorita Cannon interested him because he was certain she had no counterpart in Spain. There were ungainly women, ugly women, even, it was said, sexless women in Spain, but all of them would possess dignity and pride. Señorita Cannon could have neither dignity nor pride.
When she opened the front door, she said: ‘What do you want?’ in a tone of voice devoid of all welcoming hospitality.
‘Señorita, I would be most grateful if you would be so kind as to answer one or two questions for me.’
With obvious reluctance, she stepped to one side to let him enter. Lying about the sitting-room were papers and magazines, records in their jackets, two bottles in the grate which had not been cleared of ash, and a clothes-horse in front of the fireplace on which were several underclothes. Dolores, he thought, would have to be very seriously ill before she ever allowed her home to get in such a state.
‘What do you want to know, then?’ she demanded roughly. As she finished speaking, a telephone rang in one of the bedrooms along the corridor. Without bothering to apologize, she swung round and left to hurry down the corridor.
He crossed the room and looked at the records. They all seemed to be of old, romantic musicals in which everyone nice lived happily ever afterwards. Poor woman, he thought with sudden compassion. She could only know romance vicariously. He moved and looked at the books in the large bookcase, expecting them all to be romances. A few obviously were, but the rest of the titles showed that he’d been wrong in attributing to her such narrow intellectual and emotional interests. On the shelves were books on archaeology, history, travel, biographies, flora, fauna, and insects of Northern Europe and the Mediterranean . . . and a green bound book entitled Vegetable Poisons by P. J. Meegan.
It was not a very thick book. Each chapter was clearly headed: the poppy; hashish; cocaine; atropine, hyoscyamine, and scopolamine: curare; the double-faced strophantus and the two hemlocks: the death cap, the destroying angel, the fool’s mushroom, and the edible table top . . . The chapter on poisonous fungi had obviously been well read and two pages, facing, were quite dirty. Almost at the bottom of the first of these was a fresh paragraph which carried on to the second page:
There grows in the Balearics, and in particular on the largest of the islands, Majorca, an edible fungus known locally as esclatasang. (In Mallorquin, a dialect of Catalan, one of the four languages spoken in Spain, this means popping blood. The esclatasang exudes a red liquid.) These are held to be delicious and are highly priced - perhaps too highly priced for anyone who has eaten the field or oyster mushroom in northern Europe. The casual fungicologist, however, eager to sample the specialities of the islands, must be on his
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