Chapter 14
The Department is adamant that I must move into the residence immediately. Seoirse said it is something to do with concern expressed by the OPW about the safety of artworks and other items of value, in view of the current unrest. I didn't bother pointing out that the OPW never got round to sending artwork and - in response to requests from Colette who was anxious to assist emerging Irish artists by displaying their paintings - said that the instability of the region ( they were referring to earthquakes) - made them reluctant to deliver.
I have decided to occupy one of the guestrooms. If I am still here in three months' time, I will begin to make savings on rent. At present I am three months down since I forfeited my deposit by breaking the lease. The kitten is cowed by the wide-open spaces and is clinging to me. Pierre will leave soon. Walter has dealt very handsomely with him. Gül has been given notice that she will be employed for only two mornings a week. I shall have the whole place to myself.
I'm glad I rang you, just now. Of course you must go to the Legion of Mary socials. I would hate to think of you sitting at home, lonely. You are perfectly right when you say that I should not continue investigations into the Countess's death.
Last night was my first night in the residence. Pierre, Gül and I had supper at eight – consommé, a mousseline of potatoes and a red mullet en chemise, followed by crème brulée. I contributed a bottle of Kavaklidere. Don't be afraid that Pierre will poison me.
He knows you have my diary and that you will send it to Seoirse, should anything happen to me.I considered watching television. The Countess has arranged a corner of the upper balcony with easy chairs, a television and a record player. There was too much air and space around it for comfort. After watching the news, I retired. I couldn't sleep. You may think it superstitious of me, Millicent, but the idea possessed me that the Countess might have been haunted into killing herself. She once saw a vision in the house. I saw it too. In daytime I am sure that I was suffering from dehydration at the time.At night I'm not so sure. It prefigured her own end, as I saw in Orhan's drawing. Supposing the vision appeared to her again, just by the pool and confused her as to her own identity. You know the story of the witch in the wood – the shadowy figure that keeps pace with you, mimicking your movements until you are hypnotised into imitating hers. Then she trips and you trip too. If Colette had a gun, and this thing confused her and she tried to shoot at it but shot herself instead...I dozed off. A tap on the door awakened me. I sat up, switched on the light, said 'Come in', feeling a kind of horror that I have only experienced before in dreams.
'Sorry to waken you, Denis,' said Orhan.
He came in and looked around.
'You may dump my clothes on the floor if you are looking for a chair,' I said, proud of my swift recovery.
'Ayse says you want to talk to me. I need to talk to you.'
'You have come from Adana?'
'Adana? I never went to Adana. A friend drove the car there.'
'Don't tell me you have been hiding in this house all the time.'
'No. Too well policed.'
'I am disappointed in you. You let us down. You used the basement as a meeting place. You hid guns here. It was a breach of trust.'
'Killing Mrs. Brown isn't on your list?'
'I don't think you did that.'
'Good. I came to help you catch the person who did.'
'How could I trust you after your disgraceful misappropriation of the basement.'
'We were sitting tenants when you came. The Portuguese Ambassador sealed off the basement. I had command of the only entry point and saw the opportunity. I had a friend in danger.'
'You frightened the Portuguse Ambassador into a heart attack by playing ghost.'
'The ghost predated us.'
'You grew careless when the house was empty. You left newspapers in your room.'
'A mistake.'
'You let cats in and out.'
'One got in and I put it out. I protected you from a nasty chill when it frightened you and you fell downstairs. I rolled you up in a tablecloth. Were you not surprised to find that you had, even while unconscious, managed to make yourself comfortable?'
'Did you enjoy playing ghost?'
'It worked for a while. Gül kept the basement door locked so that, if anyone came ghost-hunting, we had time to retreat up my stairs.'
'How did the Countess find out what was going on?
'Late one night she reversed the usual procedure, came down my stairs and caught us. There were three of us. Hakkan had been beaten up by a rightist patrol and reached the residence before collapsing. We couldn't bring him to Casualty since the police watch the hospitals. Instead of turning us in, Colette examined Hakkan, bandaged him up and said he would survive. She prescribed brandy all around. She was an angel. Better than that, she was a socialist.'
'Come off it. What about the Château, the winery, the feudal system, the aristocratic élan, the disregard for ordinary rules of behaviour?'
'She worked for the cause. Barbellini was fascinated by her. He felt drawn to her blue blood, she said. He boasted to her about his work for law and order here in Ankara. She found it a dreadful bore until one day he told her, in confidence, that in just a few days the streets would be cleared of leftist riff-raff. She pretended to doubt it. He protested that he had had it from the camel's mouth, from Chief Inspector Eratalay. She continued to tease him and learned that Barbellini was in the confidence of the right wing of the security forces.
'If the information he gave her was correct, it could only mean a big swoop, perhaps a joint police and army exercise. The basement was full for the next few nights.It happened on the third night. The papers said it was a success. However the "most wanted" were safe downstairs. Colette saved several necks that night.'
'So that their owners could go on to break other necks.'
'Fortunes of war, Denis. I'm not in favour of violent means myself.'
'No? What about the guns then?'
'Necessity makes gunmen of us all. If you are a pacifist you might credit Colette with stopping a shipment of arms into Turkey; admittedly they were for the other side. She never yielded to Colonel Barbellini, but allowed him to hope. He escorted her to a thé dansante in the Imperial Hotel once a week.'
'What is a thé dansante?'
'Kemal Attatürk instituted the thé dansante in the Palace Hotel as a genteel form of social exercise. It has remained popular in Ankara. Everybody who is anybody eats canapés and waltzes at four in the afternoon at some stage of their lives. It used to be a patriotic duty. The thé dansante at the Imperial is not in the same class. It is attended mostly by visiting provincials. Barbellini and Colette would have been unlikely to encounter anyone they knew. The savoury knick-knacks are excellent and the music is reputed to be good.'
'She went dancing and sipping afternoon tea with Barbellini to get advance notice of police raids, for your benefit?'
'She found out that an arms purchase in Italy by an association of Turkish, right-wing army and police officers was being facilitated by Barbellini, who manoeuvred it past the regular checkpoints. We tipped off the moderates, who tipped off the Italian customs people who have just acted on the information received. I couldn't denounce Barbellini as a murderer, to you, until that was wound up.'
'What grounds have you for calling Barbellini a murderer?'
'We were, all of us, inexperienced in the counter-intelligence game. Colette was never cautious. Any attempt to trace the various leaks would lead back to her. He killed her in revenge. He found out that Colette had been playing him like a fish. He found out that she had wrecked his arms deal and was extracting information from him about police raids in order to provide a safe house in her basement. He remembered that he had boasted to her of his friends; in other words, given her a list of army and police officers, active on the right. Who else could have had such a motive?'
'I concede that he may have had motive. He hadn't oppor
tunity. On the Tuesday of her death you drove her to the Imperial at three and left her there?'
'Yes. Barbellini would have given her, afterwards, as usual, a lift to the street behind the residence. She would have pulled the long robe over her clothes in the car.'
'Why the charade? Couldn't you have collected her after her thé dansante and driven her home?
'The Colonel was always relaxed and talkative on the drive home.'
'An old lady, who spends her time looking out the window, saw the Countess leave a car, driven by Barbellini, and go down through the vacant lot that evening at about twenty past five.'
'Then, he followed her and killed her.'
'No. Barbellini drove away after smoking a cigarette. The old lady saw him leave. Our policemen saw him drive in home a few minutes later. Maria says he entered the house and spoke to her.'
'Then he slipped out again and came after her. Maria is not dependable.'
I was on the point of telling Orhan that M. d'Aubine, also, had witnessed the departure of Colonel Barbellini but I decided against doing so preferring to keep the château card to myself for the present.
'Ignore Barbellini for a moment. There are blanks in my account of what happened on Tuesday. When did you come to the residence to collect the Countess?'
'Six thirty, six thirty-five. The piece for the pool filter had arrived and I wanted to fit it. I also wanted to see if Colette had any information. The landlord's car was on the road outside, as I came in. I parked in the carport as usual. I crossed along the path in front of the house and went in the side door to my room to see if there were messages for me.'
'Was the side door locked?'
'No. Colette never locked a door. Gül, escorted by Pierre, does the lock-up at night.There are no burgulars in Ankara. The Ambassador did not concern himself. Anyway Gül always kept the door from the basement to the house locked. I watered the geraniums and then I went down to the pool. The lights were on below. I hurried down to see if Colette had news. She was in the pool. I pulled her out. I saw the head-wound and gun and presumed that a shot had killed her. Ayse has since told me that she drowned.'
'Was there evidence of a struggle?'
'There isn't anything on that side of the pool to overturn in a struggle. There was some blood towards the bottom of the steps and water on the surround. Her watch was stopped at twenty past seven when it was as yet only six forty. To me that meant that she was murdered and it showed who killed her. Colonel Barbellini would be at the reception at twenty past seven.'
'How could he be sure she wouldn't be found before seven thirty?'
'He was to give Walter a lift to the reception within minutes. He would know, as a neighbour, that Gül and Pierre don't lock up until ten.'
'Inspector Akin will say that she is more likely to have been met by a jealous husband than followed home by an angry lover.'
'The Ambassador was not energetic, nor did he care enough to be jealous.'
'Inspector Akin suspects Walter. One of the points he made is that it took Walter far too long to walk home from the office, that evening. It sounded to the Inspector as if he were minimising the amount of time he had at home.'
'Walter probably didn't go straight home. He is on a diet – low fat, low sugar so he often goes to the café across the road for coffee and baklave before going home, especially if there is no official dinner that night. Pierre took malicious pleasure in serving him green salad dressed with vinegar, ryebread, and a fruit for dessert.'
'Why didn't he tell Inspector Akin so?'
'Who wants to admit to eating pancakes before dinner.'
'It won't convince Akin, but it explains the anomaly to me. What did you do after finding the body? You were reticent in your letter to the police.'
'I can't tell them everything. I had to warn my friends, save the guns, delay pursuit and, if I could, point the finger at Alfredo Barbellini. I needed time. I remembered the rosebed. I wrapped her in sheets from the laundry. Everything got very wet. I fished the gun out of the pool with the pool-net and put it with her. I couldn't leave it where it was; the pearly bit shone. I was careful not to handle it. I pulled up the bushes and dug a trench. Then I carried her out. Afterwards I replaced the bushes. I made more of a mess than I'd expected. The clay got on to the grass; the bushes wouldn't settle back. I hadn't time to worry.
'The police obligingly found that the rosebed was in the vacant lot, not in Barbellini's garden.'
'Typical! Will you go after him?'
'I don't see how he can have done it, Orhan.'
'Easy. Your little old lady dozed off for a few minutes. Barbellini followed Colette down to the house. Afterwards he returned to the car. The sound of the door wakened your witness in time to see him drive off. He drove home, collected his wife and Walter and drove to the reception.'
'If Barbellini discovered that Colette had betrayed his confidences, he would retrieve the situation by feeding her false information, by tracking her, finding her protégés, claiming that this is what he had plotted all along. I'm not ruling out the possibility that he killed her, but it isn't certain.'
He shook his head.
'Consider the landlord Mr. Muftu, Orhan. He was in the residence at the crucial time.You saw his car. He had a workman with him but they weren't together all the time. The Countess was digging into his family history. She had you working on it too. What did she discover? What is the mystery of the landlord's mother?'
'No mystery at all,' he grinned.
'I don't see how you can say that. She is alive, officially – you checked the records office yourself – and dead according to the locals. That looks to me as if he might have killed her quietly and never registered her death. Everything went well for years. Then Colette started making enquiries.
'I don't see why you have to turn to spiritualism, Denis, when you have a perfectly good suspect next door. And it is nonsense to suspect the landlord.'
'How can you be sure?'
'Look up his mother's birth certificate, and you'll see.'
'You're not going to tell me she was never born?'
He refused to say any more on the subject.
'Perhaps it is time you returned to wherever you came from, Orhan. Leave me the keys. Your casual use of the Irish residence for nefarious purposes must stop. You should have given me notice that you intended to appear and I would have brought your papers with me. You can hardly expect to stay in our employment while you're on the run, suspected of murdering your employer's wife. Do you expect a reference?'
'Come down off your high horse, Denis. You wouldn't send me out starving into the night when there is a fridge full of good things in the kitchen. Pierre, unknown to himself, has been my cook since he arrived.'
'So Inspector Akin informed me.'
'Go and bring us both up a snack, Denis. Pierre will be proud of your appetite.'
What could I do, Millicent? I raided the fridge. Between us, we ate tomorrow's lunch. I told him that my choice suspect was Félix d'Aubine.
'Not Félix,' he said. 'He appreciated her.'
'I'll have to tell Inspector Akin about the peculiar role the Countess played with Barbellini,' I said as we finished our meal.
'You will admit to meeting me? A police officer, no matter how liberal, would expect you to try to capture the popular suspect. Should I give you a black eye so that you can be seen to have made an attempt. '
'No thanks, Orhan. I'll take my chance. Inspector Akin does not suspect you.'
Orhan left with the admonition 'Work on the Italian, Denis.' He turned in the doorway and said, 'Take care of Ayse. I'm fond of that girl.'
I fell asleep around three o'clock, wine, chicken and chocolate nice and warm in my insides. I washed one of the glasses, kept it in my bathroom and boldly brought the tray down with me at breakfast-time and put it, without comment, on the kitchen counter.
I'm afraid to think of the inroads that Pierre's cooking will make on my food budget before he leaves. I
'll have to pay for his food too. Possibly the State will give an allowance towards Gül's. I suppose I should count myself lucky that we are no longer feeding a flock of young communists in the cellar.
Inspector Akin greeted me in an absent-minded way as if he had dismissed our case and recalled it with difficulty.
'Ah yes,' he said, when I told him I had been to Cappadocia in search of M. d'Aubine.
He listened with mild interest to my case against d'Aubine and chuckled when I told of my detention in the Cappadocian underground.
'He isn't the murderer, you know,' he said, infuriatingly, when I had finished. 'I can check out this story of the expected Inspector of Vineyards for you. M. d'Aubine and his colleagues in Cappadocia have been under surveillance for some time for tax reasons. I'll ring the local officer.'
He lifted the phone and, holding it poised, turned to me again.
'Of course you know that if I make this phone call, the local man will know that someone in Ankara is keeping an eye on procedures. He will feel obliged to put in the boot. Left to his own devices, he will probably assist M. d'Aubine and the grape growers to come to a reasonable compromise, an element of give and take, a certain accommodation. Do you want me to make the phone call?'
'Yes .… No …. leave it for the moment.'
When it came to the crunch, Millicent, I didn't really want to be the one to send the Göreme Grape Growers Co-op to the wall.
'Good for you, Denis. I'll tell you, as a reward, that your theory that M. d'Aubine bleated, as a signal to Pierre, has no foundation.'
'There were no goats there on Tuesday night.'
'No, Denis, but there were nightingales. They nest in the trees behind the residence, you know, and they are excellent mimics.'
I told Akin about Orhan's visit. When I reported the Countess's role in extracting information from Barbellini and passing it on, he slapped the table and said 'Bravo!'
'You approve of her behaviour?'
'Of course not! But she did well all the same, with élan.'
I disagreed, my dear Millicent.
'I have been working on the gun, trying to trace the purchase, Denis.'
'How can you do that when there is no gun control in Turkey.'
'Only a foreigner would presume that. We have a very good informal control. The vendors need the goodwill of the police. They know that we will be upset if we want to trace a particular weapon, and their sales records are inadequate. I put one officer on the job. He found that only two gunsmiths in Istanbul and one in Ankara stock the kind of fancy weapon in question. He is working on it.'
I told him that I must spend the rest of the morning in the office but that, in the afternoon, I would go to the Imperial Hotel in Bilkent to see what I could find out about the meetings between Barbellini and the Countess.
He nodded benevolently.