Read Online A Question of Motive by Roderic Jeffries - Free Book Online Page B

me?’
    Juan stood. ‘One of uncle’s tarts.’
    â€˜You are making me very angry.’
    Juan, followed by Isabel, hurried upstairs.
    Jaime said: ‘Now I know why Enrique was working on the beach. She was very difficult to persuade.’
    â€˜You find it necessary to expose your crudity?’ Dolores asked.
    â€˜That was being amusing.’
    â€˜As my mother used to say, a man finds his amusement where a lady will not tread.’ She turned to Alvarez. ‘This woman is a foreigner?’
    â€˜English.’
    â€˜Younger than you?’
    â€˜By several years.’
    â€˜It appeals to your vanity that she should drink with you?’
    â€˜I wouldn’t say that.’
    â€˜You can think she sees you not as you are, but as you would like to be; she will not notice your hair is thinning . . .’
    â€˜It is not.’
    â€˜. . . that your skin is creased and your belly swells. You lie and believe yourself to be irresistible.’
    â€˜I believe I am irreplaceable.’
    â€˜Even my dear mother would not have thought a man could be so mistaken.’
    â€˜The young lady was the person I have mentioned before whose uncle has just died.’
    â€˜That is the truth?’
    â€˜The unvarnished truth.’
    â€˜Julia was trying to make fun of me?’
    â€˜It would seem like it.’
    â€˜She is a cow.’
    â€˜Didn’t you go for me a moment ago because . . .’ Jaime stopped as she glared at him.
    â€˜I might briefly seem irreplaceable to her,’ Alvarez continued, ‘because when she is overtaken with bitter sorrow, I help her a little when I take her down to the bay. And to make the situation perfectly clear, the final thing she said to me was “Just friends”.’
    â€˜Warning you off,’ Jaime said. ‘Now she must be rich, she reckons you could be thinking of doing some good for yourself.’
    â€˜Can there be another man as insensitive as you?’ she asked.
    â€˜Why say that?’
    â€˜Because you cannot understand the reason she spoke as she did was she did not want Enrique to be embarrassed by the thought that she might be beginning to regard him with affection.’
    â€˜How d’you know it’s not the other way round?’
    â€˜Aiyee! If women could look into the future, there would be very few marriages.’

EIGHT
    D olores’ call finally awoke Alvarez. He looked at his watch and was vaguely surprised to learn he was already half an hour late for his return to work. He would get up immediately, forgo coffee, and hurry to the office.
    â€˜I had to call you several times,’ Dolores said as he entered the kitchen fifteen minutes later.
    He was surprised she spoke without any hint of criticism. ‘I was so fast asleep, I didn’t hear you until the last call. I suppose that’s because it was such an emotionally exhausting morning.’
    â€˜I will make your coffee.’
    â€˜I think I’ll have to leave that and rush to the office . . .’
    â€˜You will drink coffee and eat a biscuit or two. A man needs a happy stomach before he works.’
    â€˜You sometimes say mine is too happy.’
    â€˜What nonsense is that? A man who does not eat well insults the cook. Sit down while I make coffee and bring some of those chocolate biscuits you like so much.’
    He pulled a chair from under the table and sat. He’d no idea why she was in so generous a mood, could only hope it would last.
    She placed a plate of chocolate digestives on the table, crossed to a working surface and prepared the coffee machine. ‘I phoned Julia earlier.’
    To find out if his companion on the beach had been a blonde in a monokini?
    â€˜I told her she had been very wrong. That annoyed her for a start. She cannot believe she is ever wrong.’ She switched on the coffee machine, went over to the refrigerator for a plastic carton of milk, then to one of the cupboards for