The Summer Snow Read online

  Relief made Fulgencio voluble. “It depends on Don Fernando, I suppose. We haven’t heard anything from him, but the house must be his now. If he wants a cook I’ll gladly stay with him.”

  “And if he doesn’t?”

  Fulgencio shrugged. “I trained in Paris,” he said with some pride. “I’ve worked at the Hotel Alhambra Palace. I can find a job if I need to.”

  Rivas thanked the cook and dismissed him. “Who’s next, sir?” said Girón after he had ushered out Fulgencio.

  “Alberto Cordero, I think,” Rivas replied, following his plan to save Luisa for last. “I want to know if he had access to that wine bottle.”

  The guardia obediently left to get Cordero. When he returned, the difference in atmosphere was obvious. Alberto opened the door himself and entered speaking over his shoulder to Girón. “. . . go up to the Sierra myself if I can’t find a decent contractor, and that’s the last thing I want to do in winter!” Alberto turned and nodded sociably as Girón entered. “Hello, Sergeant. Sorry to bother you again.”

  The words were familiar. Alberto had used them at least half a dozen times at the post, ever since he had understood that Rivas did not take the threats against Doña Rosalia too seriously. Rivas looked at the man who had carried Doña Rosalia’s alarms to the Guardia, wondering if the corps had seriously misjudged him to be an innocuous messenger. “Not a false alarm this time,” he said dryly.

  “No, sir.”

  Alberto was more subdued than Fulgencio but he answered the sergeant’s questions readily, without María José’s emotional digressions. He confirmed what the sergeant already knew: that he had worked for the Ordoñez family for twenty years and had been Doña Rosalia’s caretaker, responsible for minor repairs in her house and for dealing with contractors in case of major repairs. He had acted as a secretary and helped her oversee her lands and investments. Interested by the man’s role as secretary, Rivas asked for details of who had visited Doña Rosalia in the days before her death.

  “Besides you, you mean?” Alberto asked, with a faint smile. “Her nephew came the morning before she died. But he didn’t stay long. And before . . .” He wrinkled his nose in thought. “I think her youngest son, Felipe, came a few days earlier. He’s not around too often, so it made an impression. And, of course, Señorita Amparo.”

  “Who’s she?” Rivas asked with interest.

  “Señorita Amparo Villalobos de la Sierra,” Alberto explained. “She was engaged to marry Doña Rosalia’s grandson Jaime.”

  “And why did she visit Doña Rosalia?” Rivas demanded.

  “She always comes—always came—on Sunday afternoons.” Seeing that the sergeant looked puzzled, Alberto elaborated. “She’s worn mourning since ’38, as if she had been Señorito Jaime’s wife. She’s stayed very close to the family, especially Don Fernando’s wife. And since Doña Bernarda didn’t get along with her mother-in-law, Señorita Amparo used to come on Sundays to visit to do Doña Bernarda a favor.”

  “A substitute daughter-in-law?” Rivas said, thinking that Jaime Ordoñez Tejada must have been a man of considerable charm to make his former fiancée devote her Sundays to his grandmother so many years after his death.

  Alberto shrugged. “One of the ‘eternal brides,’ you know.”

  Rivas nodded. Too many young women still wore mourning for the men they should have married. “Would you have the dates of Señorita Villalobos’s visits, and of Felipe Ordoñez’s?” he asked.

  “I’m afraid not,” Alberto was apologetic. “Our lady didn’t keep a date book if it was just family. But Amparo Villalobos came every Sunday. And I’m nearly positive Señorito Felipe was here before that.”

  “What about business dates?” Rivas said, without much hope.

  “I can show you the book, but I can tell you now that I probably didn’t write anything in it,” Alberto said frankly.

  After demanding the location of the book, Rivas sent Girón to get it. Alberto seemed embarrassed that the schedule was not more comprehensive. “Honestly, my job might have been better filled by two men,” he volunteered. “I wasn’t trained as a secretary. But the señora didn’t like new people, and after Señor Ordoñez died it fell to me.”

  Rivas nodded and thought about that statement while he waited for Girón’s return. When the guardia entered, carrying a red leather date book, the sergeant said casually, “You must have a spent a lot of time with Doña Rosalia?”

  Alberto shrugged. “A fair amount, I suppose.”

  “In the room where she died?” Rivas raised his eyebrows.

  The man nodded, apparently unsuspicious. “Yes. She spent most of her time there, you know.”

  “You must have gotten to know that room very well.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Rivas leaned forward slightly. “You passed hours there with her, working. You both must have gotten tired. Maybe thirsty. Didn’t she ever offer you a drink?”

  Alberto laughed. “Are you joking, Sergeant? The señora didn’t drink with her servants. She’d pour wine for herself. I could damn well wait.”

  “Pour wine for herself?” Rivas desperately hoped his voice was neutral.

  “Yes, she kept a bottle up there. It must have been vinegar half the time considering how slowly she went through it—” Alberto stopped abruptly and flushed scarlet, suddenly understanding that he had walked into a trap.

  “Never shared any of it, did she?” Rivas said, satisfied. Alberto was silent. “And you could have walked in there any time, for some repair to the cabinet where it was kept, say, and moved the bottle—”

  “But I didn’t!” Alberto interrupted. “I’d have no reason to, Sergeant!”

  “You were practically her man of business,” Rivas purred. “She depended on you. Surely she made some provision for you in her will? A generous one, maybe?”

  “No! That is, I don’t know! But I don’t think so. I never had anything to do with her will!” Alberto’s words tumbled over each other in his desperation to be believed. “Look, Sergeant, I had a good life here with Doña Rosalia. A decent salary and pretty light duties. The sorts of things an elderly lady needed a man to take care of. But Don Fernando has his own secretary, who does a lot of the things I did for his mother. He’ll likely pension me off. I’d be crazy to kill her!”

  “If you’re innocent, you don’t have anything to worry about,” Rivas said, his tone of voice making the words less comforting than they might otherwise have been. “That’s all for now, but don’t leave here without permission.”

  Alberto, who had already risen to his feet, froze unhappily. “You mean I have to stay in the city? But I can’t. I’m scheduled to look at one of Doña Rosalia’s properties in the Sierra. I was just telling Guardia Girón—”

  “It will have to wait,” Rivas said and added with a faint smile, “or perhaps Don Fernando can designate someone to go in your place.”

  “But I had a pass to go to my sister’s in Málaga afterward!” Alberto protested. “It’s been worked out for months.”

  “It will have to wait,” Rivas repeated, wondering a little why Alberto was making foolish objections. He must know that they were useless. Exactly why did Alberto want to leave the city? “What’s so urgent?”

  “Well, not the business exactly.” Alberto flushed. “But it’s hard to get permission to travel to other provinces, you know. And I haven’t seen Dulce in years. She’s asked me to stand godfather to her son.”

  “Very touching,” Rivas said. “You’ll have to hope we finish the investigation quickly then.” He signaled to Girón, who held the door open and shepherded the reluctant Alberto through it.

  When the door had closed behind Alberto, Rivas turned to his subordinate. “What do you think of Alberto’s story?”

  Girón considered. “He knew about the wine. And taking care of the house like he did, he would have been able to lay hands on poison likely.”

  “And he’s anxious to get out of the city,” Rivas agreed. “
But it made sense what he said about being better off with the lady alive.”

  Girón nodded. “Yes, sir. But that’s true for all the servants. Except, perhaps, that cook. But maybe they didn’t think ahead.”

  Rivas was about to respond to this when the door opened again and Luisa entered, eyes on the ground, and hands twisting in front of her in her apron. “Good afternoon, Sergeant.”

  Rivas smiled at her. “Sit down,” he said, doing his best to sound like a friendly elder brother. “We’re going to have to ask you some questions, but if you answer them truthfully nothing bad will happen to you.”

  “Yes, sir.” Luisa sat on the edge of her chair, knees tightly pressed together, eyes still downcast.

  Rivas, who had been secretly looking forward to the interview, was disappointed. The girl answered his questions, but she volunteered no information, and it was difficult for him to get her to look at anything other than her folded hands. She admitted that she had been responsible for taking Doña Rosalia all of her meals. In response to his gentle questioning, she confirmed what Rivas already knew: that she worked as a maid, cleaning the house, and also assisted Fulgencio in the kitchen. She confirmed that Doña Rosalia had frequently asked her to act as a food taster.

  “Did she ask you the night she died?” Rivas asked casually.

  Luisa frowned for a moment, remembering. “I think so. Yes, yes, she did. There was ham that evening, the same as the stock you’d tried earlier.”

  Rivas, who was less than pleased by the thought that he had eaten at a table where poison had perhaps been prepared, spoke a little more harshly. “What about drinks? Did you taste the wine you brought up?”

  “I didn’t bring up wine with the meal,” Luisa said.

  “Oh, what did she drink?”

  The girl hesitated. Then she said, “She kept an open wine bottle in the cabinet in her room, and drank from it when she wanted.”

  “And who brought up those bottles?”

  For a moment, Luisa’s eyes flickered to his face. Her voice shook a little as she said, “Usually, I took a freshly opened bottle of wine up to her with her lunch when she needed a new one. She would recork the bottle and leave it in the cabinet until it was empty, a few days later. Then she’d leave the bottle and the used glasses on a tray for me to take downstairs, and I’d bring up more wine with her next meal.”

  It has to be the wine! Rivas thought, triumphant. At least he would have one definite thing to report to the lieutenant that evening. His voice was once more gentle as he asked, “What will you do, now that Doña Rosalia is dead?”

  Luisa looked startled, and the sergeant guessed that she had not considered this question. “I don’t know,” she said, sounding rather forlorn. “Look for work, I guess. I haven’t thought.”

  “How long have you worked for Doña Rosalia?” the sergeant asked, aware that she had been there as long as he had visited the Casa Ordoñez, but unable to guess how many years she had previously spent in sevice there.

  “Five years now. Since I was fourteen.”

  It was more disinterested pity for a young girl cast adrift in the world than a professional interest in the answer that made Rivas ask. “Was this your first job?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And your family? Could they take you in now?”

  Luisa blushed. Then she said quietly, “I have no family. I was placed here by an orphanage.”

  “I’m sorry,” Rivas said honestly. “But I’m sure Don Fernando will give you a reference.”

  “Thank you, sir,” the girl whispered.

  Rivas asked a few more questions and then closed the interview with a friendly smile and an assurance that all would be well. Girón apparently felt sorry for the girl also. He put a comforting arm around her shoulders as he held the door for her. Rivas suppressed a flicker of envy.

  Chapter 11

  Tejada’s interview with Daniela Ordoñez and her husband was not very productive. Daniela confirmed that her mother had been in the habit of making and changing wills and added that she was unsure of the provisions or even the date of the latest one. Since, unlike her brother, the bulk of her inheritance depended on her mother’s whim, she was considerably more interested in the topic than he had been. She recounted the fluctuations of her inheritance with some bitterness of spirit and ended up by saying that she thought her mother’s mental state was close enough to unbalanced to provide grounds for a legal challenge to any will. Tejada, who was starting to wonder why anyone would bother to poison a woman who was apparently both elderly and insane, was depressed by Daniela’s stance. Then she went on, “And what is this nonsense about the Guardia keeping the will during the investigation? I could understand it if the property couldn’t be disbursed until the case was closed, but her heirs have a right to at least know what her last wishes were!”

  “I’ll speak to Sergeant Rivas about that this evening,” Tejada promised truthfully, thinking with a twinge of discomfort that he would probably have to speak to his own father about it first.

  He thanked his hosts for their time and cooperation and left the Carmen del Río. It was nearly lunchtime, and the day had warmed. He dawdled along the Paseo del Salón and heard the clock strike the half hour in the bell tower of San Basilio de Escolapios across the river. The bells were followed by an explosion of shouting boys from Escolapios. A few solitary ones, who were either hungry or eager to escape, ran across the bridge, book bags flying behind them, hurrying toward home and lunch. But most milled around outside the school, blocking the Paseo de los Escolapios, the older ones roughhousing or searching for friends and the younger ones being collected by mothers or nannies. Tejada was about to turn away from the paseo when he heard a shrill cry. “Carlos!”

  He turned toward the call instinctively and saw that one of the boys on the bridge had made a megaphone of his cupped hands and was yelling. “Carlos! I need that book back today!”

  A sandy-haired boy of about fourteen, who had just passed him, came to an abrupt stop. “I’ll bring it to Religion!” he yelled back.

  Tejada had the odd sensation of being caught in a landscape where the passage of time was a myth. The bells had always rung that way for dismissal of the morning session and always would. The first class of the afternoon session for the upper school had always been Religion, and at four o’clock, when the bells rang again, Father Diego, who taught the class, would forever look over his spectacles and make sure that Carlos and his classmates were in their seats and orderly. The lieutenant’s uniform and thirty-five years and the memory of his wife and child were a dream, and the only true thing was the automatic lift of his heart at being liberated from Escolapios and the knowledge that he was free for the brief walk between the school and his home. He watched the boys who ran across the bridge and disappeared into the streets, looking into their faces and half expecting to recognize them as his classmates.

  A soccer ball bounced in front of him, and its owner, racing to retrieve it, cut across Tejada’s path and nearly bumped into him. “Oh! Excuse me, sir! I’m so sorry!”

  The child’s timid politeness broke the spell. Tejada looked at the youngster and saw a boy nearer Toño’s age than his own, not a hauntingly almost familiar contemporary. “That’s all right. But be careful of cars on the way home.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Tejada turned away from the school and walked along the Acera del Darro, noting absently that it seemed to be a street like any other, with no hint of the river that had flowed there in his childhood or the massive construction site he remembered from his last visit to Granada. It was now a broad, straight avenue, as wide as the Gran Vía. The houses along it were modern apartments, with glass windows facing the streets, rather than elaborate villas hidden behind blank walls. It was the sort of street that looked right in a modern, forward-looking city. Tejada found it relaxing. It was comforting to know that he and his city had both definitively changed with the times.

  It was a few minutes before two
o’clock when he reached his parents’ house, and his precarious sense of contentment evaporated as he glanced at the clock in the hallway and confirmed that he was in time for lunch. Checking the clock was a familiar action (although he could have sworn that it was necessary to glance up at it), and its very familiarity brought back his nagging sense of dislocation. Lunch first, he thought. Then I’ll find out about the will. But there’s no need to spoil a family meal.

  Tejada went directly to the dining room. Elena met him on the threshold, looking relieved to see him. “Good, you’re back early. There’s a problem I wanted to ask you about.”

  “Can I at least get a welcome before someone dumps another problem in my lap?” Tejada snapped.

  “I’m sorry, darling. Welcome home.” Elena kissed him on the cheek.

  “Home,” the lieutenant said dryly, “is in Potes.”

  Elena kept one arm around him and lightly stroked his forehead. “What’s the matter?”

  “Everything.” Tejada leaned forward and kissed her on the lips, careless of who might come into the hall. “Everything is a royal mess, and thank God you’re here.”

  He was about to kiss her again when there were footsteps behind him and his father’s voice said cheerfully, “Carlos! I’m glad you’re back in good time today. Are you making any progress with the investigation?”

  Elena, who had one arm around her husband, felt him go still. She was frightened by his tone as he said quietly, “Yes. I’ve learned quite a lot today. I’ll tell you about it after lunch, if you like. But I’d like to eat first.”

  “Fair enough,” Andrés Tejada agreed.

  When they discussed it later, Elena claimed that the lunch that afternoon had been quite good. At the time, Tejada felt as if Doña Rosalia’s killer had laced the food with some slower-acting poison. Everything he ate tasted like sand, and there was a knot in the pit of his stomach that tightened into an outright cramp by the end of the meal. Neither the lieutenant nor his wife could ever recall anything about the conversation, although they were divided as to whether that was because everyone had been so quiet or because it had been such a supremely awful experience that they had suppressed all memories of it.