Бретт Холлидей - Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 34, No. 3, February 1974

The Crop House at Puerto de Andraitx had a stairway blasted out of the rock. Scape went down the stairs. He’d stopped off at his hotel to get the form out of his attache case and to get his bags. He was very pleased with himself.

There was a tiny beach blasted out of the rock, too. Sand had been brought in to cover it. It was really just a ledge and the sea, beautiful blue water lapped at it.

The three of them were there. They were wearing the tiniest bathing suits Scape had ever seen. They looked as close to a nudist colony as Scape had ever been. They were bronzed and glittering in the sparkling suntan oil that covered them as almost their only covering.

Scape stood on the lowest step and waiting. He admired them.

Mike Randolf-Wilson was the one who looked up first. No shock, no surprise. Just: “Well, well, if it isn’t the great investigator.”

The two women lifted their heads from their sun worshipping and looked at Scape.

“Come to say good-by, Scape? I assure you it wasn’t necessary. You needn’t have inconvenienced yourself.”

“No inconvenience. I just came for Mrs. Crop’s autograph.”

She smiled. “For what?”

“You’re a gambler. Want to sign?”

“Sign what?”

“A quitclaim. Your agreement that without prejudice and not as an admission of anything you agree to the company paying you one dollar as full payment of your late husband’s policy.”

“That’s a stupid bluff, Scape,” Randolf-Wilson said.

“The policy, Mister Scape, was for one hundred and twenty thousand dollars,” Mrs. Crop said. “The terms state that as my husband was murdered you or your friends have to pay me twice that.”

“They use the garrote here,” Scape told her. “It’s an iron collar. But, if you’re lucky you might avoid that. I don’t think they’re all that big on capital punishment. But Spanish prisons are a little rough. The idea is punishment and they’re punishing.”

“Don’t be a fool, Scape,” Randolf-Wilson said. “You’re wasting your time and ours with this puerile bluff.”

“I’m not interested in your opinion, Mike. You’re beneath contempt. I don’t even know the dirty word for you,” Scape said. “Mrs. Crop, this is your last chance. Understand, we have no interest in justice, just money. You sign this and I walk away.”

“And if I don’t, Mister Scape?”

“You make a bad mistake. I have no idea which of you bashed his head in, but you did it and I can prove it.”

“You suspect all of us,” Stephanie asked.

“It doesn’t matter. Even if Mrs. Crop was ignorant of the murder she had motive and wants the money and she had the key. She gave the key to you and lied about it. We have her. And you two are lying about the body. It’s circumstantial but plenty.”

“What motive?” Randolf-Wilson asked.

“You? Money and Mrs. Crop.”

“He’s talking nonsense, Ewa. Go away, Scape.”

“Your very last chance, Mrs. Crop. Are you sure I can’t prove it?”

“What will you do, if you really do have a theory?”

“I’m in a hurry. I have a plane to the States to catch. It’s about forty-five minutes to the airport. I’ll phone Delgado from there. He’ll send the local police for you or come out himself to make the arrest. If I’m bluffing you’re in fine shape, if I’m not you’ll have time to run; but Interpol is effective. They’ll get you. So, absolutely last chance. Going once,” he said, “going twice,” he paused, “lost.” He tore up the form and dropped it and then turned and started up the steps.

Ewa Crop called to him just as he reached his car. He turned. She had followed him.

“I don’t understand you, Mister Scape. You’re a handsome man, an exciting one. Why do you feel so much antagonism toward me.”

“Murderers scare me. I’m not afraid of being done in, it’s just that stupid people are dangerous. You could have kept feeding him booze, he would have died sooner or later.”

“I didn’t kill my husband.”

“You’re a liar.”

She smiled. “I say I didn’t and there’s no way you could prove I did. Why don’t you just give up and come in for a drink. If you want money we could discuss that, or perhaps you want me.”

He looked at her, up her and down her. “I have another form, of course. You sure you don’t want to sign it?”

“You’re a fool,” she snapped, furious at him.

“Scape,” Randolf-Wilson said, just topping the stairs from the beach.

“Mike. What are you doing here?” Ewa Crop said. “Go back to the beach. I’ll take care of this.”

“No. Scape is trying to be agreeable, Ewa. Why shouldn’t we be? Of course we murdered the old drunk, Mister Scape.”

“Michael. That’s not so. You’re lying.”

“Don’t be stupid, Ewa. There’s no question we murdered him. At issue is only whether they can prove the three of us did it. Can you prove it, Scape? Can you prove it in a Spanish court?”

Scape nodded.

“And we understand you? You say your only interest is in the money? If Ewa would sign your paper this would no longer involve you, you’d have no reason to go to Delgado?”

“From the minute the paper’s signed, I’m out of it.”

“All right. Convince us. How did we kill him?”

“You caved his skull in with the crucifix.”

“How? We were at sea when he was killed.”

“No you weren’t. I kept trying to figure how you killed him before you left. I couldn’t because you didn’t kill him until the night you came back, the first of December. It was dumb luck that let you get away with it. I grew up in a badly built California bungalow. Delgado always lived in luxurious badly built apartments. The medical examiner is a city boy, from Madrid, and he never saw the Monasteria. Our problem was we couldn’t believe it.”

“What’s that have to do with anything?”

“I was in downtown Palma, where they have air-conditioners for sale, and I remembered that on the day you took me out to the house you’d gone to the trouble of getting the airconditioners put on out there. Servants don’t go into the Monasteria so it had to be one of you and that was strange. You didn’t want me to go out there. The house is never occupied. Why was it on, and why was it there?”

“Go ahead,” Randolf-Wilson said.

“The police photographs don’t show that piece of wall. I asked. The air-conditioning you have is new; it wasn’t there when Stanley was killed. At the same time I remembered how insistently you kept telling me how cold it was the day you claim you found Stanley. It kept pointing to before the cruise, but a body after seventeen days is a lot different than a body after a week.

“Anyway, that’s the primary confusion. The next point is the Monasteria itself. It’s magnificently built. The walls are thick, the doors and fittings are to almost perfect tolerance. As you said, they don’t build them that way anymore. It’s so unlike the shoddiness of any contemporary building that it’s hard to accept. And that brings us to my question about the second floor and your telling me there wasn’t one. Why? The space was there. There must have been some reason for it, some utility to it.

“I asked around and people told me that design is classic. The sealed air in that second floor that isn’t a second floor is supposed to act as insulation. In summer the sun bakes the roof, heating the air in that closed space. The heated air loses its heat very slowly so it warms the house in winter. The winter cold then cools the air and that cool air works to make the house more livable through a good part of the summer.”

“Your point?” Randolf-Wilson asked.

“The weather was cold the day Stanley was killed, but it had been a damned hot summer. The house had been sealed. The heat in the air of that air space must have been fierce — if we accept the house functions according to design and is as perfectly made as we think — and since the entire house had been closed up all summer the air in the living sections also must have been hot as hell. You put the air-conditioning in because you didn’t want anyone to be aware of how intensely hot that place must be at the end of summer, the beginning of winter.