A Different Kind of Evil Page 3

  “I take it this is not your first visit?”

  “No, I went in September of last year to see a friend—well, the friend of a friend who has a house there. The climate, as you know, is especially good for invalids, those suffering from tuberculosis, asthma, lung disorders, and the like. There is quite an English community in the Orotava Valley. In many respects, it’s like a warmer, more tropical version of Bournemouth, or Torquay.”

  “With the added benefit, if you can call it that, of having a volcano,” I said, smiling. I remembered seeing the snow-topped magnificence of Mount Teide as I sailed to South Africa out on the RMS Kildonan Castle five years ago. That had been a voyage of discovery, a voyage of happiness, one I had made with Archie. I had played quoits, played bridge, took part in the daily sweep—I recalled the childish thrill I had felt when my number came up!—and danced with my husband. But even though it was tempting to do so, one could not live in the past: that way madness lay. “And do you have any suspects?” I said, getting back to the main point of the conversation. “For Greene’s murder?”

  “As a matter of fact, we do,” said Davison, taking a deep breath. For a moment I thought he had lost the power of speech.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Forgive me, I’m just trying to think how best to express what I have to say.”

  Davison’s intelligent gray eyes flickered. He pursed his lips. He started a sentence, hesitated, tried again, and then gave up.

  “Please, Davison. You should know me well enough by now. I’m the least shockable person you’re ever likely to meet.”

  “Yes, and that is one of the reasons why you are so eminently suited to this kind of work. However, there’s something that you need to know that—well, that is more than a little delicate.”

  “Don’t hold anything back from me, please. I can assure you that while my physical constitution may be a little shaken at the moment due to the movement of the ocean, my mental facilities have not been affected.”

  “It concerns one of the permanent inhabitants of Orotava, a gentleman by the name of Gerard Grenville. Have you heard of him?”

  “No, should I have done?”

  “Not necessarily. It’s just that he has a certain reputation in some quarters. You see, he is an occultist.”

  “Like that unscrupulous fellow Mr. Crowley?”

  “Yes, indeed,” said Davison.

  “Is that all?” I said, laughing. “I believe my mother had psychic abilities—her instincts about people and places were quite uncanny—and I’ve always been interested in that side of things myself.” I thought of some of the supernatural short stories I had written for The Grand Magazine.

  “But Grenville is, I am afraid, of an altogether darker strain of character.”

  “Go on.”

  “We’ve had our eye on him for quite some time. It seems he was attracted to the island of Tenerife because he wants to set up some kind of base for people of his ilk, occultists and those interested in the black arts. He is intent in creating a community of like-minded souls. I got hold of some of his pamphlets a while back, and it makes for rather uncomfortable reading, to say the least. For instance, there are some magical rites that involve certain . . . acts,” he said, coughing.

  “I see, but isn’t that all part and parcel of the charade? Don’t they just use the pretense of magic as an excuse to indulge in particular practices that are considered immoral? And what has that got to do with Greene’s murder?”

  “I was about to come to that,” said Davison, blushing slightly. “Before Greene died, he wrote a lengthy report about Grenville. He had a source inside Grenville’s house, a young Spanish man, José, who informed him that the occultist’s ultimate aim was to try and release the spirit of evil from Mount Teide.”

  “The evil in Mount Teide? What on earth did he mean?”

  “Well, it seems the Guanches, the aboriginal people, worshiped an evil spirit, Guayota. According to local legend, this Guayota was locked up inside Teide for various misdeeds, including the kidnapping of the sun god figure, Magec.”

  “But as you say, that’s the stuff of legend, of mythology.”

  “Yes, but according to testimony provided by José, and related to us by Greene, Grenville intends to try to free Guayota from Teide. We don’t know how, but there was some suggestion that the ritual might involve, well, a human sacrifice.”

  The horror of it all began to make sense. “So you think Greene was killed as part of some kind of ritual? Grenville needed his blood?”

  “Exactly. Every last drop had been drained from his system.”

  “But it seems so unreal. Surely it can’t be possible?”

  “That’s what we thought at first when we got Greene’s report. Thought the poor chap was suffering from too much sun to the head. But then the discovery of his body—and the condition of his corpse—made us think again.”

  “How utterly horrible,” I said. “I don’t think I’ve heard anything like it. But what do you want me to do?”

  As Davison hesitated, I felt an uneasiness rising inside. The wave of nausea was nothing to do with the motion of the boat or the swell of the sea.

  “We want you to try to find out more about Grenville and his plans.”

  “And how do you expect me to do that?” I asked.

  “He has a daughter, Violet, who lives with him. She must be twenty-three or twenty-four years of age now. Her mother died giving birth to her. See if you can get close to her. Perhaps she will open up to you, tell you things. See if you can find any evidence that links Grenville to the crime.”

  “If you think I’m going to become an out-and-out devil worshiper, you can think again,” I said with an air of mock seriousness.

  “Don’t worry—even we have our limits,” said Davison dryly.

  “I know it’s no laughing matter, but it does sound absurd, you must admit,” I said.

  “I wish it was,” he said sourly. “A man from our service has died and his body has been defiled in a most unpardonable manner. Whoever did this needs to be brought to justice. Who knows, perhaps Grenville’s unholy wish has been granted—it seems that evil has already been released from the mountain.”

  3

  A shadow lay over the superficial sparkle of the dining table, with its dazzling display of fine cut glass, glittering silverware, and hothouse flowers. The shadow that darkened the private dining room was the one cast by Gina Trevelyan’s suicide. Each of the six people around the table was thinking of the death, but understandably no one wanted to bring up the subject.

  The conversation had been awkward and stilted until Mrs. Brendel, a friend of Guy Trevelyan’s mother, started to talk about how she had survived the sinking of the Titanic. With her liver-spotted skin and mane of gray hair I estimated her to be in her late sixties, and I felt a little insulted to think that Trevelyan had invited her as my companion for the evening. Surely I wasn’t an old maid quite yet, I thought to myself as Trevelyan gestured to me to sit by her.

  The storm had reminded Mrs. Brendel of the disaster, and although that ship had gone down fifteen years previously, she said the motion of the sea and the groaning noises emitted by our ocean liner had brought it all back to her.

  “My trunks of beautiful gowns—and oh, my jewels, my pretty jewels—all at the bottom of the sea,” she said, her bony hand rising to her throat. Her fingers played with a long string of pearls draped around her wizened neck as if to reassure her that at least she had some of her finery left. “To think of them there, the playthings of fish and stingrays and suchlike. My diamonds used to light up the best salons in Paris. And now they are covered in slime.”

  The table fell silent as the diners turned to Mrs. Brendel to hear more. As she spoke, the elderly lady’s face lit up with a kind of theatrical glow, and I suspected that the stories she began to relate had been told many times before.

  “It must have been a truly awful experience,” said Daisy Winniatt, the young wife of the bespectacled writer Howard Winniatt, who sat on the other side of her. “I can’t imagine it.”

  “Dreadful. Absolutely dreadful.” Mrs. Brendel was in her element. “I was bringing back samples of the very best fabrics and gowns from Paris. I had twenty or so trunks stuffed with chiffons and silks, all from the top couturiers, you understand. I tried to make a claim, a substantial claim, oh, yes, the document ran to something like twenty or so pages, but the White Star Line simply would not pay up.”

  “ ‘Those are pearls that were his eyes,’ ” murmured Mr. Winniatt as he scribbled into a notebook by his side.

  “Are you talking about your wife’s pearls?” asked Mrs. Brendel. “Those are very beautiful, my dear.”

  “Thank you,” said Daisy, her fingers gliding over a strand of what looked like extremely precious jewels.

  “No, it’s a line from The Tempest,” said Mr. Winniatt.

  “Of course,” replied Mrs. Brendel. “I once saw a tremendous Tempest directed by Herbert Beerbohm Tree at Her Majesty’s. Did you know he used to live in the theater? He built a banqueting hall for himself beneath the magnificent dome. Oh, yes, his Tempest was terribly exciting. There was a battered old ship on the stage, very realistic. One could almost feel like one had been shipwrecked on a desert island. In fact, that’s exactly how I felt when the storm started to lash the ship yesterday. I couldn’t believe that it was going to be the Titanic all over again. I couldn’t bear to lose my jewels—no, not again. Oh, those waves and that dreadful sea . . .”

  As she twittered on and on, Mr. Winniatt continued to scribble into his journal, an act that finally drew her attention.

  “What’s that you’re writing?” Her question did not elicit a response. “Mr. Winniatt, may I ask what you are doing?”

  “I’m sorry, I should have made myself clear,” said the small, thin man, pushing his wire-framed glasses farther up the bridge of his nose. “I’m a writer.”

  “Like Mrs. Christie here,” she said, turning her head towards me.

  “Really?” Mr. Winniatt looked over to me. “What kind of books do you write?”

  “Oh, detective stories, thrillers, and suchlike,” I said, smiling.

  “Would I have heard of any of them?”

  “My most recent was The Murder of Roger Ackroyd,” I said.

  His face remained expressionless. “It’s extraordinary what is written nowadays,” said Mr. Winniatt, addressing the whole table. “And also the kind of people who are published never ceases to amaze me.”

  It took me a moment before I realized that the insult had been leveled in my direction. As I did so, I felt the smile melt from my face and a flush come to my cheek. I didn’t know quite what to say. Luckily, Mrs. Brendel continued with her chatter.

  “Soon Puerto Orotava will welcome us,” she said. “It is so very good for the constitution, I hear. I felt so awful yesterday, I just couldn’t get out of bed. But despite that dreadful storm, I’m so pleased I decided to come—oh, yes, it was all done on the spur of the moment, at the very last minute. When Mary Trevelyan told me that her son was sailing for the Canaries, I thought what a wonderful idea. And you don’t mind that I’m here, do you?” Mr. Trevelyan gave something of a strained smile. “I promise to make myself scarce when we get to the island. Imagine how they must be suffering from the cold back in dreary old England. Winter for another few months. But the prospect of Tenerife with its sunshine and those flowers! I’m so looking forward to seeing the more exotic specimens I’ve only ever seen in botanic gardens—the hibiscus, the bird-of-paradise.” As she paused to take a breath, she saw Mr. Winniatt scribbling in his notebook. “But why do you have to write at the table?” she asked him. “Can’t you wait until—I don’t know, until you are at your desk or in a comfortable chair on deck? Or is it a case of writing when inspiration strikes?”

  “Oh, no,” said Mr. Winniatt, “I don’t believe in that sort of nonsense. I believe in trying to capture the moment. I’m writing a new kind of book, one that is free from the artificial constraints of narrative.”

  I found Mr. Winniatt’s pronouncements more than a little pompous and self-regarding, but I kept my views to myself.

  “I don’t quite understand,” said Mrs. Brendel, spooning some turtle soup into her mouth.

  “I’m working on an epic oral history, a mass of detail gathered from real life. I want to reproduce life in all its light and shade. I want to capture truth, what people say and how they say it. It’s experience, but experience that is vivid and bright and real, experience unmediated by the author, experience free from the contaminants of the story.”

  Mrs. Brendel blinked. “So correct me if I am wrong. What you were writing down were the words that I had just spoken?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Howard has already amassed a book that is approaching something like two hundred thousand words,” added Mrs. Winniatt. “And it’s really rather interesting. Other people’s lives make for the most fascinating reading. He never goes anywhere without his notebook, do you, Howard?”

  “I see,” said Mrs. Brendel, ignoring her. “How clever you are, Mr. Winniatt. I’ve always wanted to write a book. A memoir of my experiences on that fateful ship, but I’ve never found the right person to help me with the task. That is, perhaps, until this evening.” Her eyes began to mist over, and as she began to relate more details of the sinking, her voice took on the distinctive timbre of melodrama.

  Although she might believe that in Mr. Winniatt and his notebook she had found the perfect repository, I feared for Mrs. Brendel’s portrayal in the resulting publication. In fact, I doubted the whole premise of the project, but again continued to play the part of the quiet observer, nodding my head when appropriate, adding the occasional “Yes, indeed,” and “That is most interesting,” when necessary. But of course Mrs. Brendel needed little prompting.

  “One thousand five hundred souls perished that night, and I’m sure their spirits must haunt the spot where the ship went down,” she said. “How could they not? Energy does not simply disappear.”

  “Do you believe in the spirit world, Mrs. Brendel?” asked Helen.

  “Oh, yes. I’ve been to a number of séances, and I have no doubt that there are things that exist which we can barely comprehend.”

  “My mother certainly thought so,” I interjected. I explained about my mother’s sensitivity, her uncanny ability to foresee certain events, her talent for reading people and situations.

  “And I believe you’ve inherited your mother’s gift,” said Mrs. Brendel, taking my hand.

  “I’m not so sure,” I said, thinking to myself how I had not predicted the calamitous events that had hit me the previous year.

  “But then you must meet Gerard Grenville,” said Miss Hart. “He has a house on the island and lives there with his daughter, Violet.”

  I stopped myself from showing too much curiosity, instead letting Mrs. Brendel take the lead. “Surely you don’t mean—?” Her voice broke. “But I’ve heard such awful things about him. Apparently, as a boy he killed one of the family’s kittens after he devised nine horrible ways for it to die in order to test whether a cat really did have nine lives.”

  “Perhaps you shouldn’t believe everything you hear,” said Guy.

  “But who could do such a wicked thing?” she asked.

  Mrs. Brendel’s eyes widened as she contemplated the reputation of the sinister Mr. Grenville. “And what’s he doing in Puerto Orotava? Is he really a devil worshiper, as they say? Does he really eat cake made out of the blood of chickens?”

  Mr. Winniatt did not let Guy Trevelyan answer, but interrupted with his own observations. “I read that he believes ordinary morality is only for ordinary people. I must say, I have a certain amount of sympathy with him on that score, on a purely intellectual level, of course.”

  “Did he not once perform a magic rite inside the Great Pyramid of Cairo?” asked Mrs. Brendel.

  “I believe he’s conducted various experiments at several places around the world,” answered Guy. “You know of his reputation as one of our best mountaineers. I think Teide is what drew him first to Tenerife.”

  “Oh, let’s not talk anymore about him,” said Mrs. Brendel. “The very idea of him sends shivers down my spine. And I must say, I have no desire, no desire at all, to meet him. And if I were you, Guy, I would avoid any further contact with him. Of course, there were certain people on the Titanic who one felt were omens of ill fortune. I remember one man . . .”

  The dinner continued—we enjoyed a fillet of brill, a sirloin of beef, and a delicious apple charlotte accompanied by great dollops of cream—with Mrs. Brendel’s monologue dominating the table until Helen began to tire of the subject. As I looked across at her, I noticed a spark of devilment in her eyes that unsettled me.

  “Mrs. Brendel,” she said, interrupting the elderly lady, “it does sound quite dreadful. You were one of the fortunate ones in being rescued, but so many people died. I believe the majority didn’t drown, but died from the effects of the freezing water.”

  “Yes, poor souls. As I sat there in the lifeboat, I could hear their unholy cries. It sounded just like—”

  “And I suppose some passengers must have decided to jump off the boat before the very end.”

  “Some people were driven to desperate measures, yes.”

  “Just like poor Gina,” said Helen. The words sent an icy chill over the table. “I can’t stop thinking about her. Down there, in the sea.”

  “Helen, you’re upset, I know,” said Guy, gently, placing a hand on hers, “but really it’s not the time or the place for this.”

  She turned to him, her arctic blue eyes shining wildly. “But when would be the best time? The inquest? How can there be a proper inquest when there’s no body? She’s down there now, in the sea, bait for every passing—”

  “Helen,” hissed Guy, “please do try and control yourself.”

  “I suppose that’s what you used to say to Gina, is it? ‘Darling, do try and pull yourself together now,’ she said, imitating his voice. “And look what it did for her, the poor wretch.”