Palmer rubbed his arms energetically as if washing them. Larrea deduced he meant it was a bathroom.
“Close to the bedroom?”
The butler silently pressed his two hands together. Next to it, he seemed to be indicating.
“Is there a connecting door?”
The response was a nod of the head.
“Open or closed?”
“Closed.”
Damned bad luck, he was on the point of saying. But before he could, the butler had taken from his belt a hoop from which hung more than a dozen jangling keys. He unhooked one of them and handed it to Larrea. Hardly even glancing at him, the miner stuffed it in his pocket.
He looked up for places that offered handholds. A windowsill, a cornice, a protruding edge: anything he could grab hold of. “Here, take this,” he said, untying his cravat. There was no time to lose: the skies were still leaden, and night was drawing nigh. It might well rain, which would make things even worse.
As Mauro removed his frock coat and waistcoat he quickly made a plan of action, just as he had so often done in the past when he was drilling the ground in search of seams of silver in its bowels. Except that now he was aboveground, heading vertically with almost nothing to support him. “This is what I’m going to do,” he explained as he removed his stiff collar and cuff links. In fact, he was not particularly concerned whether or not the butler knew what he was intending to do, but saying it out loud seemed to him to make more plausible the procedure he was unable to draw on paper. “I’m going to climb up here. Then, if I can, I’ll aim over there,” he said, busily rolling up his sleeves. “After that, I’ll try to reach that part up on the far side.” As he spoke, he pointed to the wall. Palmer agreed without a word. In some distant corner of Mauro’s brain, his agent Andrade moved his lips as if he were trying desperately to shout something at him, but his words did not reach the miner.
After he removed all his unnecessary clothing, the two essentials he had taken before running to the Claydon house were revealed: his Colt Walker revolver and his Mexican knife with its bone hilt; he had carried them with him through half a lifetime, and this wasn’t the moment to leave them behind.
“Son of milord not good for family. But be careful, sir,” muttered the butler when he saw these weapons. Despite his apparently phlegmatic appearance, his words betrayed an undercurrent of concern.
Mauro almost fell three times. The first would probably only have led to a cracked rib without any great repercussions; the second could have snapped a leg. And the third, the result of a miscalculation some fifteen feet up in the air in the encroaching darkness, would have bashed his head in. He managed to avoid all three accidents by a whisker. In between these three near misses, and despite his strong, supple efforts, he scraped the skin off his hands, stabbed himself in the thigh on a projecting iron bar, and grazed his back on an overhanging gutter. Nonetheless, he made it. Once he reached the window, he smashed the glass with his fist, stuck in his hand to turn the handle, squeezed through the frame, and wriggled in.
He glanced quickly around the room: a large bathtub of veined marble, a porcelain toilet, and two or three towels folded on a chair. Nothing else: no mirrors, no cosmetics or toiletries. An austere, excessively bare room. Almost hospital-like. A single door on the right-hand side: locked, as the butler had foreseen. Mauro would gladly have looked for some water to refresh his throat and clean off the dirt and blood on his hands. But, realizing that time was not on his side, he contented himself with rubbing his torn and bruised hands on his trouser legs.
He had not the faintest idea of the scene that might confront him, but he preferred not to lose a second: the smashing glass could have been heard on the other side of the partition. Without any further delay, he slipped the key into the lock, turned it, and kicked the door wide open.
The room was illuminated only by the dying light of day seeping in through the open curtains. No candles, no oil lamps. But even in this semidarkness he could make out the room and its occupants.
Soledad was standing up. She was wearing the same attire he had seen her in that morning, but her hair was bedraggled, and the sleeves and collar were unbuttoned. Since she did not have the proper clothes to protect her from the evening chill, she was wearing a man’s mohair scarf around her shoulders.
Mauro’s rapid inspection also revealed a man with a pale skin and straw-colored hair. Around mid- to late thirties, with a blond beard and prominent sideburns, jacketless, and with an undone cravat. He gave the impression of having been lounging on a divan around which were strewn dozens of sheets of paper. When he heard the door suddenly burst open he had obviously leapt up to confront this intruder with torn clothing, bloody hands, and the look of someone not wishing to treat him in any kindly fashion.
“Who the hell are you?” he roared in English.
The miner had no need of a translator to understand.
“Mauro . . .” whispered Soledad.
The third man, husband and father respectively, was nowhere to be seen, but his presence could be sensed behind a wide wooden screen that created a parallel space of which Mauro Larrea could see only the foot of a bed as he heard a stream of incomprehensible words.
By now on his feet, Claydon’s son seemed to hesitate whether to challenge him or not. He was tall and stocky but not muscular. Mauro had imagined him much younger, perhaps the same age as Nicolás, but his adulthood fitted his father’s age. His astonished face reflected a mixture of rage and incredulity.
“Who the hell is he?” he shouted, this time to his stepmother.
Before she could decide whether to reply or not, Mauro Larrea asked her, “Does he speak Spanish?”
“Hardly at all.”
“Does he have a weapon?”
As he asked her these questions, he kept his eyes on her stepson. Soledad was tense, on the alert.
“He has a cane with an ivory top close at hand.”
“Tell him to throw it on the floor near me.”
When she transmitted this message in English, his response was a nervous laugh. Seeing his reluctance to obey, the miner decided to take action. Four strides and he was standing before the man. With a fifth step, he grasped him by the collar and pushed him against the wall.
“How is your husband?”
“Relatively calm. And fortunately he has no idea what is going on.”
“And what does this scoundrel want?”
He stared fixedly into the man’s bemused face and continued to press against his chest.
“He doesn’t seem to know that someone replaced Luisito, but now he is after all the rest: everything in our daughters’ names as well as what I have deposited in a safe place he does not know of. He is also trying to disqualify his father and have me sidelined.”
Mauro had still not looked at her but continued holding the Englishman, who was growing redder and redder. From his mouth came phrases Mauro couldn’t understand and had no wish to.
“Is that what all those documents are for?” asked Mauro, jerking his chin in the direction of the papers strewn at the foot of the divan.
“He was demanding I sign them before he let me out.”
“Did he succeed?”
“Not one bit.”
In spite of the dramatic scene, he almost smiled. Soledad Montalvo was tough. Tough as teak.
“Let’s get this over with, then. What do you want me to do with him?”
“Wait.”
A few moments later he could feel Sol’s body practically pressed up against him. Her hands were at his waist, her fingers feeling for something. He held his breath as she explored the leather sheath on his left side, sensing her fingers on his body. He swallowed hard and let her carry on.
“Do you know how Angustias skins rabbits, Mauro?”
He took her sudden question as an instruction: he swiftly pulled her st
epson away from the wall and stepped behind him. He grabbed his arms and pushed his chest toward Sol. Claydon tried to wriggle free but was being held so firmly, he almost dislocated a shoulder. Howling with pain, he finally seemed to realize what was going on and decided it would be best not to move.
The Mexican knife that Soledad had taken from Mauro’s sheath was now threatening his crotch. Then slowly, very slowly, she began to run it up his body.
“First she ties their hind legs and hangs them from an iron hook. Then she slits their skin. From top to bottom, like this.”
Claydon broke out in a sweat. The blade slid smoothly over his clothes. Inch by inch. Over his genitals. His groin. His belly. Calmly, without haste. His muscles straining, the miner watched silently as she wielded the knife.
“When we were little, we used to take turns helping her,” she said hoarsely. “It was disgusting and fascinating at the same time.”
She still had strands of hair dangling loose; the sleeves of her dress were unbuttoned from the elbow; her shawl had fallen to the floor, and her eyes glinted in the semidarkness. By now the blade was traveling slowly upward over her stepson’s stomach, reaching the sternum and then his unprotected throat, pressing against the pale white flesh.
“He never accepted me at his father’s side; I was always a hindrance.”
Pinioned and still sweating profusely, the Englishman closed his eyes. The steel tip seemed to pierce his Adam’s apple.
“And as my girls were born, I was increasingly in the way.”
The knife explored his jawbone. Left to right, right to left, like a barber giving someone a crazy shave. Then Soledad spoke harshly.
“This cretin doesn’t deserve any better treatment than a rabbit, but to avoid any further problems we had best let him go.”
She underscored her words by drawing the blade lightly over his cheek, just above his beard. Like someone running their nail over a sheet of paper. A trace of blood appeared.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure,” she said, holding the weapon out to Mauro. She did this daintily, as though rather than a hunting knife she were handing him a malachite letter opener. The Englishman was still struggling for breath.
Soledad gave her daughters’ half brother one last scornful look. Then spat in his face. Fear and astonishment prevented him from reacting: her saliva made it hard for him to see out of his right eye. It mixed in his fair beard with his own sweat and the trickle of blood from his cut cheek. His befuddled brain tried to come to terms with all that had happened in the last five minutes in a room where he had been in complete control for more than five hours. Who was this wild animal who had kicked the door down and then almost broken his arms, and why was his father’s wife on such good terms with him?
At that instant the sound of someone treading on the broken glass in the adjoining bathroom could be heard.
“Come in, Santos: you’ve arrived just in time,” said Mauro, raising his voice even before he could see him. He pushed the Englishman away from him like someone disposing of an evil-smelling bundle. Claydon stumbled against a small table, almost knocking it over, and fell over it. He had difficulty regaining his balance and began to furiously rub his aching wrists.
Santos Huesos stepped in the room, ready for his orders.
“Keep him in here and be ready to take him out any minute,” Mauro instructed him. He picked up the Englishman’s cane and threw it to his servant. “I’m going down to see to his friends.”
By this time Soledad had gone over to the screen separating her husband from the rest of the room. Behind it, she checked that the row did not appear to have caused him any upset: a monotonous, unintelligible stream of words was still issuing from the mouth of someone who must once have been a good-looking, lively, and energetic man.
“Fortunately, before this scoundrel locked us in, I was able to give him three times the usual dose of his medicine,” she said without turning around. “I always carry it with me; I inject him through a hollow needle. It’s the only way to keep him calm. And then only sometimes.”
Mauro watched her from the doorway in the darkness, wiping the sweat from his face with a sleeve.
She went on: “The wretch took everything from his father, and more. With the advance on his inheritance he set himself up in the Cape Colony and started his own wine business. It always had its ups and downs, which we helped him over with our own money. Until the day he ruined it once and for all and then, hearing of Edward’s condition, decided to quit Africa and return to England to rob us of what his father and then I had managed to build up over the years.”
With one hand still on the edge of the screen, Sol turned to face them.
“The specialists seem never to agree on a diagnosis. Some of them call it a psychic disorder, others a collapse of his faculties, still others moral dementia . . .”
“And what do you call it?”
“Madness, pure and simple. A mind lost in the mists of unreason.”
CHAPTER FORTY
Half an hour later, an English carriage crossed the streets of Jerez, heading south toward the Bay of Cádiz and the Gibraltar countryside, flanked by a man on horseback. When they had climbed La Alcubilla hill and the last lights of the town had disappeared, the rider galloped in front of the carriage, forcing the driver to stop. Without dismounting, he opened the left-hand door and heard his servant’s voice from inside.
“All’s well here, patrón.”
Santos Huesos handed him back the pistol he had used to keep the passengers quiet during their journey. From the saddle of the Claydons’ chestnut mare, Mauro Larrea bent down so that the three men in the carriage could see his face. The two companions had turned out to be a skinny English friend and a man from Gibraltar with an impenetrable accent. Tired of waiting for hours, both of them had drunk more than their fair share of the house owner’s liquor, and were half-intoxicated and clumsy in their movements. They had not put up the slightest objection when the miner had ordered them to leave the house and wait in the carriage. Doubtless they were relieved to see an end to the tedious family business in which they had been so unnecessarily involved.
The stepson, however, proved a different matter. Having recovered from his initial shock at the confrontation in the bedroom, he had become defiant again. Now, recognizing in the darkness the features of this strange intruder who had ruined all his plans, he challenged him directly.
Mauro could not comprehend a word of it, but the man was obviously outraged and fuming, shouting at the top of his voice.
“Damn and blast it, Santos, can you understand anything this rogue is saying?”
“Not a word.”
“What are we waiting for, then? Let’s shut him up!”
The two men sprang into action as one. Mauro Larrea cocked his revolver and pressed it against the Englishman’s pale temple. Santos Huesos grabbed him by the hand. Fearful of what might happen, the other two held their breath.
First came the sound of a bone breaking, then the howl of pain.
“The other one as well, don’t you think?”
“I guess so. We don’t want him to go on cursing us, do we?”
There was a second snapping sound, and the stepson howled again. When his cry died away, there was no further show of bravado or defiant gestures, only a quiet moaning like that of a stuck pig gradually running out of breath.
The revolver was returned to its owner’s waist, and Santos Huesos climbed up behind his master on the back of the horse. Mauro Larrea gave the carriage driver a signal to resume the journey, though he realized this might not be the end of the matter. Two broken thumbs were a powerful reason not to try anything again, but he knew that someone like Alan Claydon, either in person or through others, would always be back.
Mauro made a stop at Calle Francos to make sure everything was as it should be and to drop off Sa
ntos Huesos. The doctor had not yet returned from Cádiz, Carola Gorostiza had been calm the whole evening, and the maid Sagrario was beating eggs in the kitchen with Trinidad’s help. It took Mauro no time at all to reach the Claydon house on Plaza del Cabildo Viejo.
Soledad was seated in the study, wearing the same crumpled dress, the sleeves unbuttoned and the neckline awry, her hair still tousled. She was staring into the fire when Palmer led him into a room he had not entered before. There were no embroidery frames or easels on which to paint charming dawn landscapes; there were few feminine touches or ornaments in a room dominated by ledgers, binders, and piles of documents tied with red ribbons. Inkpots, pens, and blotters took the place that any other lady of her social position would have filled with porcelain cupids or shepherds. Sheets of paper and boxes of correspondence were piled up rather than romantic novels or old issues of fashion magazines. Four oval portraits of beautiful young girls with similar features to their mother were practically the only concession to everyday reality.
“Thank you,” she sighed.
Don’t mention it; it was nothing. No effort at all. He could have uttered any of these clichés but preferred not to be so hypocritical. Yes, of course it had taken a great effort. And there had been a cost. Not simply the rash climb that had almost ended in him breaking his neck, or the unpleasant confrontation with such a despicable creature. Not even the fact that he had been obliged to threaten that villain at gunpoint, or for giving Santos Huesos such a cruel order without his voice trembling. What had most perturbed him—what was like a dagger being driven into him—was something else less immediate and obvious but far more wounding: the unshakable solidity of the relationship between Soledad and Edward Claydon; the certainty that, whatever the circumstances, there existed between them a titanic and invulnerable alliance.
Without waiting to be invited, filthy and disheveled as he was, he removed the stopper from a bottle on a nearby tray, served himself a large glass, and went to sit in a chair like hers. He then referred to what, judging from this particular room in which she was receiving him, he guessed she wished to convey to him.