Naturally, she was the first to be helped to her feet. She looked down at me and said, in Spanish which Holmes was good enough to translate for me later:
“Who the fuck is this great fat scrotum, and what the fuck does he think he’s doing?”
“We know,” she said, two hours or so later, “who did it. What Señora Basilia has to do is prove it. If,” and she waved a fork from which long strands of spaghetti still hung, “you can prove it so well that the police here will lock up McClintock, Clough, and Allison for ten years or more, then I shall pay you twenty million pesetas.”
Well, at that time, just before the British economy went into what will probably turn out to be terminal decline, that was one hundred thousand pounds.
We were all, and I mean all, about fifteen of us, in the big dining-room in Casa Hicks. This was a splendid room, the central feature of which was a big, heavy, well-polished Castilian oak table with matching chairs, up to twenty could be found, for the Hicks family entertained often and lavishly, in the old style. The ceiling was coffered cedar. Three walls were done out with tiles to waist height, the patterns reproduced from Alhambra. Above thee were alcoves filled with arum and Madonna lilies. Persian carpets hung between the niches, except on the wall opposite Doña María Pilar, at the far end of the long table, where the carpet space was filled with a full-length painting of Don Hicks done eight years earlier in the style of Patrick Proctor, possibly by Patrick himself. It portrayed him full length in a wet suit, with a harpoon gun in his right hand, while his left held a three-foot shark just above the tail so its nose rested on the floor. Hicks, done thus, was a striking figure, a very handsome, broad, tanned face set off by a leonine mop of silver hair, the suit concealing the no doubt well-padded shoulders, the swelling tum, and the varicose veins.
The remaining wall was glass on to a verandah with a view of the harbour, but on this occasion rattan blinds were drawn on the outside and looped over the wrought-iron balcony, probably to cut out the mid-afternoon sun and heat while allowing air to circulate, possibly also because none of those assembled were prepared to look down on the spot of oily water, still with some debris floating, where their lord and master had suffered his demise.
“I have already determined to do so,” said Baz, “and only required your permission before initiating my inquiries.”
There was a murmur of appreciation from all those round the table who were silently or not so silently weeping. It was not a household in which one could readily grasp the relationships unless or until one accepted the unacceptably obvious. María Pilar ruled a harem, or more properly I should say a seraglio. There were her own three children — Juan who had driven us from the airport, his younger brother Luis and Luis’s twin sister Encarnación. Then there were three, well, I’m sorry, but there’s only one word for it, concubines: Dolores (or Lola), Carmen, and Purificación (or Puri). Lola and Puri were curvaceous and very, very feminine, Lola with deep red hair, Puri’s black and gypsyish, both worn long. Carmen was tall, athletic, with natural dark-honey blonde hair worn short above green eyes. Between them all they had, I later gathered, six more children whose ages ranged from one to thirteen, though only the older three or four were with us from lunch.
What was even more scandalous was that Baz herself was apparently to some extent responsible for these arrangements. María Pilar had approached her fourteen years earlier with a problem: after the birth of her twins the doctors had told her more children would kill her. Since she was deeply Catholic this posed a problem: Don Hicks had not risked a lifetime in prison in order to end up a celibate on the outside. María Pilar’s pride was such that she could not accept his having clandestine affairs, nor would she tolerate the gossip and innuendoes that would arise if he did. Baz proposed the solution: concubines. María would remain in control and in charge, the locals would have nothing to be sly about because it would be all in the open, and so on. It had been difficult to begin with but once Lola’s first child arrived and Carmen moved in, it had worked beautifully — María Pilar finding great fulfilment in playing the role of super-mum to the whole household. As a sociologist I have to say I approve — since it works. As a strongly anti-Catholic feminist I’m not so sure...
“As soon as the shops reopen,” Baz continued, “I shall be grateful if Juan will be good enough to take me to the nearest reliable shop selling underwater equipment, I imagine the one his father used to use is reliable, and tomorrow, weather and the police permitting, I shall examine what is left of the wreck.”
“You will charge the expenses to Don’s account.”
Baz inclined her head in acceptance of this offer.
“Meanwhile,” she asked, “I need to know when McClintock, Clough, and Allison arrived here.”
Luis, an attractive lad, fairer than Juan, chipped in. “They were first seen only yesterday morning. But they went straight to one of the smaller villas on the other side of the bay. It had been booked and prepared for them in advance, so it is likely they have confederates already working in the area.”
“In any case,” said Baz, “twenty-four hours would have been ample (she pronounces the word ‘Ah-mpull’, an irritating affectation) for them to have put a bomb in place, or more probably a mine. What very few people are aware of is that Brian McClintock is a member of the IRA and no doubt learnt the technology that blew up your father from those who did much the same to poor dear Louis.”
The meal over, I declined a second opportunity to enjoy Juan’s driving skills and pronounced myself eager, as eager as one appropriately could be in a house suddenly plunged into mourning, for a siesta. I was shown to a room at the back of the house, which yet had good views of the distant sierra above the alive and almond groves, and which shared a bathroom with the room on the other side, which had been allocated to Baz. My luggage was there ahead of me, and unpacked — a service I always find mildly impertinent on the rare occasions it happens to me.
However, sleep did not come easily, the excitements of the day had been too intense, and presently I pulled on my Bermuda shorts with the passion flowers and plainer but comfortably loose orange top, and set off for a quiet and, I hoped, discreet exploration of the property. In truth I was hungry too. No doubt out of consideration for both the dead and bereaved, María Pilar had allowed lunch to consist only of the spaghetti, which normally would have been the first course merely, and fruit, and the so-called breakfast on the plane had been so relentlessly aimed at carnivores that I had not been able to take on board as much as I like to at the beginning of the day.
I padded down the corridors and stairs I had already climbed, into the spacious circular hall with a glass dome. For the most part the house was silent — the ghastly tragedy that had occurred may have stifled appetites for food, but not apparently for sleep. Though I was surprised at one point to hear two girls giggling behind a door, and then again sevillanas played quite loudly on Radio Málaga with castanets added in real. Servants, I supposed, less moved by their master’s death than they appeared to be in front of his family.
In the hall, also tiled and with alcoves filled with roses this time, there was no mistaking the door to the kitchens and similar offices: it was slightly ajar, lined with green baize, and the stone steps led down. I now entered a quiet and blissfully cool world of larders and pantries lit only by small grills near the ceilings. It was all very clean and neat too — one could imagine María Pilar’s influence was as strong in these partially subterranean halls as everywhere else. Presently I was in the kitchen — hung with whole sets of copper pans, with assorted knives in racks, and, precisely what I had hoped to find, a row of blackish-brown sheep cheeses, one of which had already been cut. The cheese was almost pure white, a sort of creamy marble, and crumbly — in short à point, or as the Spanish have it, al punto. It was with me the work of a moment to cut myself enough to fill half a barra. I wondered where the wine was kept. Such good cheese deserved a fruity red.