Alvarez accepted that almost certainly he would never be able to prove the truth. But he was now reasonably certain that he knew what that was. After Cooper had faked his suicide/murder, he had holed up in one of the small ‘assignation’ hotels or hostels where a ten-thousand-peseta note produced total amnesia amongst the staff. Then, as soon as he’d believed it safe to do so, he’d hired a small van and booked passage on the morning ferry, gambling on what he believed to be a certainty – he’d never doubted his own cleverness – that the police would be on the lookout for his murderer, not him. He had returned to Ca’n Oliver that Wednesday night to retrieve the two Poperens and brief Rachael. Which was when his plans had started to go wrong. She had not been there. Panicking, he’d telephoned Field for help. As soon as he’d understood the position, Field had responded to what most concerned him at this point – what was to happen re his paintings; Cooper would, wouldn’t he, continue whenever possible to do everything in his power to promote them? Cooper, terrified that all the time he was in the house he was at risk – probably crediting White with near-supernatural powers and therefore likely to turn up at any moment – had cut short Field’s queries and pleas by brutally telling him the truth. His work wasn’t good enough even to adorn the lid of a biscuit tin …
Hell hath no fury like an artist scorned. Yet Field had not just been scorned, he had seen himself betrayed and his ambition strangled – an ambition that was entwined with memories of, and homage to, his beloved wife. In his agonized fury, probably so great that he had not fully realized what he was doing, he’d stormed through to the bedroom in which the painting he’d given Cooper had been banished, wrenched it off the wall, returned and smashed it repeatedly down on Cooper’s head.
He had regained a measure of self-control. Faced with the fact that he had killed and, if nothing were done to conceal this, he must be convicted of murder, he had set out to false-fake the time of death in such a way as eventually to establish his innocence after initially pointing to his guilt, confident that there was every chance that sooner or later Gore’s evidence – he’d been at the house when the phone call had been made – would prove that Cooper had been alive at eleven. He had taken his shattered painting with him, driven off in the hired vehicle in which Cooper had arrived; he had abandoned it, knowing that this was a sufficiently common occurrence amongst the more inebriated foreigners that it would arouse no special comment. Once home, he’d burned the shattered frame, which had left the sliver of varnished wood in the dead man’s head, but not the canvas, because even if it had been torn and therefore bore witness to the savage assault, he could not consign his own work to the flames. (Fresh paint had replaced the bloodstains.) Later, he had offered the two Poperens to the museums, partially because by doing so he could, despite failure, find artistic success of a kind – his name as donor would be remembered …
Alvarez’s thoughts were interrupted.
‘Have you gone into a trance?’ Jaime demanded.
Alvarez drained his glass. ‘I was thinking.’
‘What about?’
He refilled his glass after Jaime had passed him the bottle. ‘The murder.’
‘The woman in the swimming pool? Not seen her in the nude, have you?’
‘I could have done.’
‘You’re a bloody liar!’
He dropped ice cubes into his glass. ‘On Saturday night, she asked me back to her place. She offered it on a plate.’
Jaime leaned forward. ‘So what was it like?’
‘I was so certain she was mixed up in the murder, I reckoned that on ethical grounds I had to refuse. But you know what? It’s turned out that she didn’t have anything to do with that so I could have gone right ahead. Ironic, isn’t it?’
Jaime described the incident in different terms.
About the Author
Roderic Jeffries was born in London in 1926 and was educated at Southampton’s School of Navigation. In 1943 he went to sea with the New Zealand Shipping Company and returned to England in 1949 where he was subsequently called to the Bar. He practiced law for a brief period before starting to write full time. His books have been published in many different countries and have been adapted for film, television, and radio. He and his wife live in Mallorca, and have two children. You can sign up for email updates here.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
AN ARCADIAN DEATH
DEATH TAKES TIME
MURDER CONFOUNDED
MURDER’S LONG MEMORY
A FATAL FLEECE
TOO CLEVER BY HALF
DEATH TRICK
RELATIVELY DANGEROUS
ALMOST MURDER
LAYERS OF DECEIT
THREE AND ONE MAKE FIVE
DEADLY PETARD
UNSEEMLY END
JUST DESERTS
MURDER BEGETS MURDER
TROUBLED DEATHS
TWO-FACED DEATH
MISTAKENLY IN MALLORCA
DEAD MAN’S BLUFF
A TRAITOR’S CRIME
A DEADLY MARRIAGE
DEATH IN THE COVERTS
DEAD AGAINST THE LAWYERS
AN EMBARRASSING DEATH
THE BENEFITS OF DEATH
EXHIBIT NO. THIRTEEN
EVIDENCE OF THE ACCUSED
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
About the Author
By the Same Author
Copyright
AN ARTISTIC WAY TO GO. Copyright © 1996 by Roderic Jeffries. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
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First published in Great Britain by Collins Crime, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
First U.S. Edition: June 1997
eISBN 9781250101815
First eBook edition: September 2015