At that moment I heard a totally indescribable noise. Nevertheless I shall do my best. It was a sort of rhythmical combination of squelching and slapping, each beat ending with a brisk noise somewhere between a squeak and the noise of torn cloth. It happened about twelve times, then stopped.
Of course I was petrified. Fat people, and I am very fat, live in constant dread of the ridicule which is provoked by the situation I was then in. Nevertheless curiosity, and a loyal feeling too that Holmes should be aware of anything untoward that was going on in the house, prompted me presently to move in the direction from which the sounds had come. I passed through an open but bead-curtained doorway into a short narrow defile between white walls from which the sun’s glare was instantly blinding. I waited until I could see — of course I had not brought my shades with me — and followed it into a wide sort of patio. It was clearly used by the gardener as a marshalling yard for potted plants — there were rows and rows of them, mostly perlagoniums in all their wonderful variety ranging from the brilliant simple vermilion people call geranium red, to wonderful concoctions in purples and mauves that to all but the most over-educated tastes rival orchids for exotic beauty.
The floor was of polished terrazzo chips. Pools of water lay round the bases of the flower pots, which, in spite of the adjustable rattan roofing which shielded the plants from direct sunlight, steamed gently in the heat. So too did the strangely shaped splodges of water which tracked, arrow-shaped, pointing away from the door of what was obviously a potting shed, across the yard, and out on to a gravel walk, and finally a steep slope of dried grasses and immortelles that dropped beneath olives to the sea — and I mean the sea, not the bay, for the house was set on the headland between the two. Unable to make anything of this, I returned to my room and ate my bocadillo, little mouthful. A little duty-free Scotch with water helped it down faux du vin, and soon I felt able after all to have a zizz.
“I hope, Julia, you have brought your long spoon with you.”
“We are then, my dear Holmes, invited to sup with the Devil?”
“Precisely so. You know I do not readily indulge in hyperbole or other forms of linguistic excess: so you will heed me when I tell you the invitation came from one of the most evil men I have ever had to deal with.”
Generally speaking, Baz’s opinion of the male sex is low. We were then to dine with the lowest of the low. I was relived, however, to learn that dining was at least on the agenda.
“The Devil has a name?”
“Brian McClintock. And I imagine Frank Allison and Malcolm Clough will be in attendance.”
The bad news was that, Spanish style, dinner would not be served till ten. We were invited for drinks at half-nine.
I asked Baz if her shopping trip to Málaga had been successful.
“Indeed yes. And apart from the underwater equipment I bought one or two other odds and ends which will help us in our endeavours.” From her silk and wool shoulder bag, woven in Samarkand, she pulled a small black plastic bag. It was sealed with black plastic tape.
“This,” she said, “is a radio transmitter, part of an eavesdropping device of exceptional accuracy and power. While we are dining I shall attach the microphone and micro-transmitter to the underside of the dining-table. Later you will go to the ground-floor toilet which is in a vestibule off the main hall and close to the dining-room. I know all this, my dear Watson, because I also went to the agent who manages the villa our evil trip has rented. All I ask of you this evening is that you simply place this package in the cistern. The micro-transmitter will send its signal to the RT in the cistern, which will then relay whatever it picks up to the Guardia Civil Cuartel in Las Palomas.”
“What if they frisk us on the way in?”
“I don’t think they will. But if they offer to we shall plead our sex and go home. Not much will be lost, this is simply a back-up to my main strategy.”
“I think they will. In their position I would.”
“Ah, but what you do not understand is that they believe we are on their side. In fact they have already paid me a retainer.”
“My dear Holmes, this is too much!”
“Isn’t it just? But it will work out, you’ll see.”
The evil trio’s villa, on the other side of the bay, was perhaps one of the nastiest buildings I have ever been to. Built some ten years earlier, probably on the cheap, it was already showing marked signs of wear. The outside wall by the front door was streaked with orange stains, and the stucco rendering was coming away off the corners to expose ill-laid cheap brick. The door itself was made of pine stimulating oak, studded with nail-heads and with a cast-iron grill simulating a convent gate. The varnish was lifting. Fortunately we could not see much of the garden as the dusk was already upon us, but there was the inevitable bougainvillea clashing with a profuse variety of nicotiana.
We were welcomed into a hall, where black mould grew up the outside wall, by Frank Allison, a tall dark man once handsome and strong, now a ruin of himself. He offered us what must once have been a conman’s charm and was now the wheedling flattery of a conniving ex-con. The only good argument for the death penalty, and not one I would discount until the situation is reformed, is what long prison terms in our appealing prisons do to the inmates. I write as one who has been a Prison Visitor.
The interior he took us into had been furnished to appeal to the lowest common factor in taste and had sunk below even that. There were stained-glass lanterns over the lights, others were lacquered brass fittings from which the lacquer had peeled. The upholstered furniture was covered in grubby, ill-fitting loose covers of a wishy-washy design. The upright chairs were made from turned pine with stick-on mouldings, painted black. Cracked leatherette simulated leather. On a wall table a large bowl of opalescent glass in the shape of a stylised swan held English lilac which was no longer factory fresh. Worst of all was a painting of a gypsy girl, pretending to sell sardines but really it was her boobs that were on offer, heavily framed in a bright, shiny gilt above a false fireplace that the occupants had been using as an ashtray.
“Lovely, isn’t she?” said Brian McClintock, coming in behind us. He was a short, compact, tough-looking man, with a pale pock-marked face, and eyes the colour of year-old ice. He ran his fingers over the gypsy girl’s boobs. “Original, see? You can feel the impasto. Glad you could make it, Holmes. And your friend. I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure.”
I took the grey claw he proffered and repressed a shudder at its chill. No shudder though for the chill of the strong g-and-t, well-iced, that came after it, accompanied by canapés of anchovy on Ritz biscuits, cream cheese with tiny pearl onions. Really, one might as well have been in Balham, though I doubt the drinks there would have been served so strong.
Incidentally all what he called ‘the doings’ were handed round (and probably had been prepared) by the third of the evil trio — Malcolm Clough. He was fat and bald but with forearms and fists still solid and strong, the skin not gone loose, supported by muscle as well as fat. He affected a slightly camp style that went with the apron he was wearing. I got the impression that he supplied the muscle, Allison the mean, low cunning, but that McClintock was the leader — in terms of pure nastiness he had the edge on the others.