The first time the bell rang, Linda was supervising the packing of the last of the crates. The front door of the flat was wedged open, so she was surprised that someone had bothered to ring at all. Spain, she thought, wiping her hands and heading along the corridor, they’re more formal here than at home. Their circumstances are different.
The man standing before her was sixtyish, sturdy and balding, with a wart the size of a marrowfat pea on the side of his nose. He wore a dark grey suit with a formal waistcoat and a watch-chain, and must have been boiling. He regarded her over the top of his half-moon glasses and did not smile.
“You are new,” he said in heavily accented English. He pointed accusingly at the door. “This is wrong.”
She looked at the wet paint in surprise. It was a warm brown, the colour you’d get if you mixed plums into chocolate.
“We just painted it,” she explained. “It’s the same as all the other doors in the building.”
He was taken aback by her English accent. “It is not like the others at all, Madam. It is the wrong colour. It must be repainted at once.” He managed to suggest that there would be dire consequences if it wasn’t.
“The painter assures me it will dry lighter,” she replied cheerfully.
“No, no, no.” He wagged a nicotine-stained finger at her. “It is not right. Did you check your lease for the correct colour reference?”
“I don’t think so.” Miguel had taken care of the rental agreement. She had not been shown the paperwork and knew there would be an argument if she asked to see it. The best thing with men, she found, was to give in and agree. It usually worked with Miguel.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I will have it repainted.”
He left without another word. Five minutes later, he returned to issue another statement. “Your removal van is blocking my car.”
“I’m sorry,” she said again.
He pinned her with a gimlet stare. “Two sorrys is two too many.” With that he turned and vanished into the gloom of the landing.
The stairwell was unlit. Already she had miscounted the steps and fallen both up and down them. The building was over a hundred years old. Even on the brightest summer day the flat was so dark that she had to put the lights on. The sun reached a peak of fierce intensity at 4:00 pm, when the shops were only just opening after their siestas and the breeze from the sea had burned away, leaving hot dead air behind.
There were no cooling ceiling fans because they were not needed; the building’s thick brick walls and lack of internal light kept it naturally cold. After the removal van had gone, she set about tidying up and putting away the crockery. Unwrapping her mother’s coffee cups with great care, she set them out along the kitchen dresser. She had hoped Miguel would help with the unpacking, but he regarded the home as a woman’s domain and avoided all forms of household maintenance, as if helping would somehow impugn his masculinity.
* * *
The days passed more slowly than they did in England, where the solstices offered fewer than five hours of daylight and five hours of darkness at their extremes. Here it was always summer. 4:00 pm was the hour for staying out of the searing sunlight and tackling household chores as slowly as possible. Miguel did not get home until 8:00 pm, which meant that the afternoons would become interminable if she failed to find a way of occupying the time.
When the bell rang she knew it was someone from within the building, because the inside door had an old-fashioned clockwork bell. There were twelve flats, but she had yet to meet anyone other than Carlos the janitor and Mr Two Sorrys.
She opened the repainted door to a slender young woman with cropped hair, a long thin neck and slightly protuberant eyes. At least this one knew how to smile, and what a smile! Its corners seemed to reach her ears. “I am Pippa and I am so sorry,” she began, darting forward to formally offer her hand. “It is my fault. The baby’s sock.”
Linda shook her hand. “Please, come in.”
Pippa checked the threshold as one might look before crossing a road, then took an exaggerated step inside. “Oh, this is nice, you have no walls. All this space! We have many more walls, for the children’s bedrooms. I have two boys and a baby girl. You must hear them at night. I hope they don’t disturb you too much.”
She headed straight for the open windows of the back bedroom. “The clothesline,” she explained, pointing out and down. Each flat had a rack of three clotheslines outside, attached to the wall with metal arms. A pulley allowed the clothes to be moved some ten feet along the side of the flat. Linda followed her neighbour’s pointing finger. “I live above you,” Pippa told her. “I go to peg the baby’s sock and poof—it fell down onto your line.”
A pink sock not much larger than a man’s thumb had landed on one of her towels. Pippa snapped it up and came back inside.
Linda had heard that this technique was used whenever someone needed an excuse to visit a new neighbour. “Would you like a coffee?” she asked.
Pippa threw up her hands in horror. “No, no, I do not want to make you work.”
“I’m having one.”
“All right then, just for a moment.” She seated herself swiftly enough and looked around. “It’s nice. You are married?”
“My husband Miguel is from here,” she explained. “We met in England. He came back to his old job. His company supplies military equipment.” She lit the hob, glad of the company. The building was grave-silent during the day. At night she sometimes heard dinners being prepared on other floors, and tantalising smells of fried fish, pork stews and albondigas drifted up from the courtyard.
“And you, you could just leave everything and come here?” Pippa asked.
“I had to give up my job, but yes, I’m afraid there’s no arguing with Miguel. He can be very forceful.” She laughed a little too gaily.
“Have you met the others?”
“No, only a rude man who complained about the colour of our door.”
“Ah yes, he is the prepotente, you know this word? He thinks he is the boss, yes? Because his brother is a friend of the Generalissimo. I am no friend of Franco. One day he will be gone and then we will speak of better times. But the others here, they have been here since la Guerra Civil, they love our great leader, so you must be careful what you say.”
“Oh, I am an outsider. I try not to get involved.” Linda liked her instantly. Pippa was open and honest, with an innocence that took risks by showing itself. “Who else should I know in the building?” she asked.
“Come, come.” Pippa rose and headed back to the window. The building formed a large U shape. The apartments opposite were no more than twenty feet away. Twelve racks of washing lines extended from the rear windows. Some bore bedsheets. Others had rows of shorts arranged in ascending sizes. Not all of the lines were used.
“You must always look at these.” Pippa pointed to the racks. “You may not see anyone on the stairs but you can tell who is in and what they are doing. Look, my two boys.” She pointed up at her own clothesline, upon which were strung two matching football shirts. “And over there.”
The washing line opposite was full up with stockings, two red blouses, some pairs of frilly knickers, a pretty lace brassiere and a flared white dress covered in blue and yellow irises. Half a dozen paper windmills, red, orange, gold and silver, turned in a flowerpot hooked to the railing.
“That is the apartment of Maria. She is a dancer at El Nacional. She is so pretty.” She shook out her fingers at the thought. “Muy bonita. But very poor. She needs to find a husband but the attractive ones are also poor, I think.”
After coffee, Linda thanked Pippa for coming down, and they agreed to meet again.
Miguel was nearly always late home. She had expected it would be like this at the start, but hoped they might settle into more regular hours. After the flat had been decorated there was little else to do, and the streets were too hot to walk through on summer afternoons, so she seated herself by the open bedroom windows. They were shaded by 4:00 pm, so she could sit and read without having to fan herself. She was trying to revise her Spanish from a schoolbook but the effort invariably made her sleepy.
She hardly ever saw anyone on the gloomy central staircase. A couple of times an old lady passed her without saying a word. Pippa came down for coffee once or twice a week. At night Linda heard the squeaking of the pulleys, and knew that her neighbours were hanging out their clothes. Each day she found herself checking the washing lines to see who was in and who had been out the night before.
* * *
One afternoon she sat in the shade with a translation of Cervantes’ Don Quixote in her lap, and her eyelids grew heavy. A squeak from the window directly opposite woke her. The floor-length glass was always heavily curtained and was never left open more than a few inches.
In place of the usual blouses and the iris dress was a long white cotton gown, a man’s formal shirt and a pair of black socks. Down in the courtyard she could see pink and yellow specks of confetti.
“Who is Maria seeing?” she asked Pippa on their next coffee afternoon.
“Didn’t I tell you?” Pippa dropped her jaw, appalled. “She has married El Prepotente.”
“Mr Two Sorrys? No!”
“Yes, very ugly but very powerful. His name is José Masvidal. He’s in the military division, the one I told you about with the brother who knows Franco. I don’t like him so I did not go to the wedding. Better to smile from a distance than lie close up.” Pippa pulled a face. She was full of peculiar sayings that probably had more impact in their original language. “Now Maria is married he will never let her go anywhere. She is much younger. She is my friend. I say to her, come dancing with me, and now she is too scared to go.”
“So she’s going to stay in all the time?” Linda asked.
“Oh yes, she will not be allowed out in the evenings. It is not respectful, it is vergonzoso. You know, shameful. Because she was a dancer and he is a good Catholic in the government.”
* * *
Summer turned to autumn. The shadows changed their angle but the temperature barely seemed to fall. She saw less of Pippa because her friend had taken a part-time job in the mercat, working in one of their grain stores.
Outside the building opposite, the washing on the line had changed.
Now there were always four large spotlessly white shirts, vests, an old man’s drawers, black socks, a shapeless black shift dress and what she’d assumed was underwear belonging to an elderly lady; an arrangement of baggy, beige cotton sacks. The paper windmills had been removed from the flowerpot and a heavy lead crucifix had appeared on the back wall. The woman who passed through the shadows moved with a supple, fluid grace. She’s so young, Linda thought. Don’t let that happen to me.
* * *
In the late afternoon the clock in the kitchen seemed to slow down. The sun took hours to set. It reached a low point in the reddening sky and just hung there without moving. When Miguel returned he asked her how her day had been and proceeded to tell her about his without waiting for her reply.
“The man opposite has stopped his new wife from going out,” she said one evening over dinner. “He’s making her wear old lady clothes because they’re more respectable.”
“A nightmare of a day today,” said her husband, looking around for his cigarettes. “Put the radio on, will you?”
* * *
The clothes on the line opposite changed from fancy to plain, from bright blue flowers to charcoal grey, from French scanties to beige drawers. How easy it was to dismantle a woman’s personality and replace it with something that smothered and suffocated. In all this time she hardly ever saw the woman behind the washing. She heard the pulley squeak a little before midnight twice a week and always went to look, but it was too dark to see, so she waited until the next morning to look at the line.
One morning she caught a glimpse of Maria in full sunshine, going to the mercat. She was slender-waisted and had tumbling auburn hair that shone in the fresh early light. She walked happily, bouncing slightly, swinging her basket, glad to be free.
Linda waited for her return. As Maria approached the building with her groceries she looked apprehensive, as if all her fears were held inside its dark stone walls.
* * *
“Your friend doesn’t dance anymore?” asked Linda casually over coffee.
Pippa stirred her cup thoughtfully. “I asked her to come with me but she won’t. Sometimes I go by her flat but she doesn’t invite me in now.” She lowered her voice as if worried that someone might overhear them. “It’s the husband. He doesn’t like me. He’s had the walls repainted and has changed the furniture. All of her lovely bright things have gone. He moved in his grandmother’s dresser and her armchairs. So dark and heavy. I saw them taking her lovely pink dressing table down the stairs. Such a waste.”
* * *
The rains came. Miguel had to travel on business. The trips could last up to a week. For the first time she wondered if she was like Maria, willing to clip her wings for the love of a man. Sometimes she watched Miguel dressing for work and wondered how well she really knew him.
When she went back to her seat by the window and looked across the courtyard on the next washday she was in for a surprise. Maria was at the window. She looked furtively behind her as if to make sure that she was alone, then hung out her old red panties and blouse, taking them in the second they were dry, which in the afternoon sun was only a matter of minutes. Linda wondered if she had taken to going out while her husband was away.
“I’ve met him a couple of times,” said Miguel over dinner one evening. “José moves in high circles. He is greatly respected.”
“José from across the courtyard?” she said, surprised, her fork halfway to her mouth.
“He married the local beauty. A bit fast, by all accounts. He had to rein her in a bit.”
“Perhaps it was her job to let him out,” she said defensively.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Miguel replied, placing his knife and fork together.
* * *
There was now a pattern, she noted. Whenever there were no white shirts and black socks to hang out, her old clothes reappeared. José Masvidal’s schedule was not unlike her husband’s. He had to travel most at the weekends.
Christmas came and the flat was closed up while they visited each other’s families. Pippa went home to see her mother. The building was mostly empty. In January the old pattern continued, but in the middle of February there was another change in the clothesline opposite. A man’s shirt with bright blue stripes was hung out to dry beside Maria’s sexiest items. José Masvidal would never wear such a shirt. As soon as the items were dry they were hurriedly taken indoors.
“It was a tiring journey,” said Miguel, settling into his armchair beside the radio. “Across to Zaragoza, and on to a military facility outside Teruel. José was there. We had quite a talk. He’s a very nice man.”
“How are things going with his ‘fast’ wife?” she asked, keen for news. It seemed as if the men sometimes found out more than the women.
“He never mentions her,” Miguel admitted vaguely. “José plays bowls and golf. He likes to tell me when he beats his rivals.”
“Does she go with him?”
“I can’t imagine she’d want to watch a group of middle-aged men playing games.” Miguel carefully refolded his copy of El País. “We’re visiting military posts over the next four weekends. Make sure you go to church on Sunday mornings.”
She studied his face to see if he was joking but found nothing.
* * *
All through March the brightly striped shirt appeared on the washing line. Sometimes it was accompanied by racy blue swimming trunks. One afternoon when Pippa came down, Linda asked her about the owner of the clothes.
Pippa’s eyes widened. “You mustn’t say!” she cried, shocked. “Do you know what would happen if he found out? Why, he would have her killed.”
It was Linda’s turn to be shocked. “You don’t actually mean—”
“Do you have any idea what goes on when those men go out together? They’re on military business.” Pippa pushed her coffee aside and leaned in closer. “The noisy ones in the towns they visit just disappear. I’m not saying they don’t bring it upon themselves, but they’re certainly sent away somewhere, and often they don’t come back. A man is always a danger, but like-minded men in a group—they can go too far.”
“Perhaps we should visit Maria to make sure she’s okay,” Linda suggested.
“Trust me,” said Pippa, “she’s fine.” She held her painted nails level to the table top. “So long as everything stays like this. No upsets. It’s best for everyone. And it’s best you don’t know any more.” She flattened her red lips and held a finger against them. “Yes? For all of us.” There was a bang on the ceiling and a slow rising wail. She listened for a moment, then shrugged. “Los niños. Always the boys. One day I swear they will kill each other.”
The flat was so silent at night that the sound of the key in the lock was enough to wake her. She turned on the bedside light and sat up. Miguel came in and set down his briefcase.
“You’re back early,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting you for two more days.”
“The trip was cut short.” He unbuttoned his jacket with great concentration and hung it on a chair.
“Oh? Why?”
“It’s complicated,” he said wearily. “Do you really want me to try and explain?”
“Did you come back with your friend José?”
“It’s because of him we came back.” He pulled off his shirt and threw it on the floor. “I need to get some sleep. I’m in early tomorrow.”
By the time she awoke he had already left. She picked up his shirt, washed it and hung it out. The other washing line was empty, and the glass doors remained closed all day.
* * *
Later she sat in her seat by the window and read a trashy thriller. When her attention drifted she raised her head and looked across the narrow courtyard. The line was still empty. If José had come back, where were his shirts? She waited by the window, fully expecting that at any moment the glass door opposite would open and the washing would appear, but there was nothing. Miguel called to say he would be later than usual, so she ate alone, the sound of her cutlery ringing in the empty flat.
Just as she was climbing into bed, she heard the squeak of the pulley. She waited until it had finished turning and the door had shut, then crept over to the window without putting on the lights. The white shirts were back, four of them, with four pairs of black socks. And so were the beige old lady drawers. Maria ironed everything first; the creases in the shirts had perfect sharp edges.
The bright striped shirt stopped appearing on Saturdays. The red blouses and lace underwear did not return. One afternoon the glass door was left open and she could see inside the apartment. It had been painted grey and was dominated by the lead crucifix on the back wall. Linda tried to imagine what had happened. Mr Masvidal had returned early and thrown out the lover. Now his flighty wife was being made to repent her ways. Maria never even went to the shops anymore. Twice a week a crate of groceries appeared outside the door of the Masvidal apartment.
* * *
Linda heard from her friends in England. “When are you coming back?” they asked, but she was unable to give them an answer. Miguel had been promoted and his prospects looked good. Her desire for a child returned, but the doctor had advised against trying again for the sake of her health, so she contented herself with looking after Pippa’s boys from time to time.
She missed her old job in England. She had only been cataloguing records in a provincial newspaper office, but she had lost herself in the stories they told. The local library here had a pitiful selection of books in English, so she relied on her sister to send the latest novels from London. She wondered if she could write something herself, perhaps about the dancer who had married the military bureaucrat, hoping for a better life. She bought a notepad and a fountain pen, and sat by the open windows plotting.
The day she started writing, a new dress appeared on the line. It had a little colour, pale primroses around the hem, but its main feature was its size. It was a maternity smock.
Linda could not wait to take coffee with Pippa. “How far gone is she?” she asked, setting out freshly made coca de forner in thick oily slices.
“Five months at least,” said Pippa excitedly. “Even I didn’t know. She’s so skinny that she’s only just started to put on weight. I thought, so, she’s eaten a few cakes, but no, she tells me just the other day.”
“You think this will bring her and José closer together?”
“How can a baby make that much difference? You know what they say: Lavar cerdos con jabón es perder tiempo y jabón. Washing pigs is a waste of time and soap.”
“I think it loses something in translation,” said Linda, pouring coffee.
* * *
Every Wednesday evening she attended a writing course run by the British Embassy, from one of the chambers in their amber stone wedding cake of a building behind the main plaza. There she learned about murders and motives and mysteries with a handful of bewildered elderly expats and a couple from Kenya who found sexual suggestion in every passing remark.
After her latest effort had been picked apart by a stern patrician from Henley-Upon-Thames who had never recovered from ending up here after failing to get his novel published in England, she went home and prepared dinner for Miguel. It seemed perverse to want to dash through the flat and check the back clotheslines for the latest update, but lately the washing had come to act as a lifeline to the world, a jungle telegraph that told her there were real emotions flailing behind closed curtains and shut windows. Tonight, there was nothing. The primrose maternity dress, which always made an appearance on Wednesday nights, failed to materialise.
* * *
“Terrible,” said Pippa, barely able to gasp in enough air with the shock of it all. She had brought their usual coffee hour forward to the morning, so desperate was she to share her news. “She has lost the baby. That pig—” She went to spit but remembered where she was just in time. “He kicked her. In here.” She waved a bony tanned hand over her own nonexistent stomach.
“Did Maria tell you that?” asked Linda, wide-eyed.
“No, of course not. She says she slipped on the stairs, but I know it was him. She told me the baby was not planned and he has three of his own, from his first wife. Did I never tell you that?” She waved the missed information aside. “So, she is in Our Lady of Grace, recovering. The most terrible bruises, right from here to here.”
“But if you think it was her husband, something must be done,” said Linda firmly. She looked around the sombre room, trying to imagine a course of action. “I can talk to my husband and ask him to find out the truth.”
“You must not do such a thing,” Pippa insisted. “If you tell him, then José will know it was me who told you. Promise me you will say nothing.”
Linda promised and the confidence was kept. But the windows opposite had taken on a sinister air that perversely drew her attention, because after Maria returned from the hospital, Linda noticed that something had changed.
Washdays still arrived twice a week and the shirts were pegged out as they always had been, but now they were badly ironed and no longer bleached to a fierce whiteness. The sleeves were grey and patchy, the collars washed without the studs being removed. Each one was hung with a single peg so that it creased badly as it dried. The maternity dress reappeared, but had been taken in so that it fitted tightly. Maria was not about to let her husband forget what had happened to their unborn child.
Summer arrived once more and the temperature soared back to its lethal intensity. The sky was so blue above the rooftops that it looked like the atmosphere was evaporating into space. Rectangles of light slid slowly across the drawing room’s polished floor and over the kitchen tiles, marking off the hours of the day.
One evening Miguel came home in a strangely sour mood. Whenever he was like this she knew it was better to keep away, but tonight there was something about his face that made her ask.
“They say he fell,” Miguel told her, half under his breath. “The man was as strong as an ox. Every morning he lifted weights, even when we were away attending conferences. I refuse to believe it.”
“Who?” It was so rare that she asked questions, she wondered if she could still be heard. Perhaps her voice had shrivelled to nothing without her noticing.
“José Masvidal,” he snapped back at her, striding about the room. “He was found at the bottom of the stairs with his head—” Miguel grimaced at the image that had formed inside his own head.
“You mean the marble stairs at the ministry?”
“No, our stairs—the stairs outside his own front door!” Miguel shouted.
Linda had experienced the treachery of the unlit staircase often enough, and had wondered if accidents had occurred in the past. She had not ventured up the opposite staircase but could tell it was the same.
“They should put lights on them,” she said. “The skylights need cleaning and hardly lets in anything. I’ve nearly fallen there myself. Who found him?”
“She did.” He could not bring himself to say her name. “She says he left for work and something made her go back to the front door. He was lying with his head down, what was left of it. He’d fallen from the top to the bottom. A man like that, as strong as an ox!”
* * *
She went down and crossed the vestibule of cracked black and white tiles, heading for the other side of the building. As she climbed the darkened stairs she heard a metallic thump and a slide. Carlos the janitor was working his way across the landing with a galvanised bucket and a mop. Water flooded across the tiles.
She looked at the patch he was cleaning. The sticky dark stain on the lowest step was, she noted, roughly the shape of Spain. Carlos was mute, and as a consequence his features were highly expressive. He shrugged at her, rolling his eyes at the door above. He had successfully scrubbed away the marks on the landing. Now he tipped soapy water across the last step, dissolving the Spanish map.
* * *
Pippa was next, of course. As Linda started the coffee she stood in the doorway looking up at the ceiling, listening. “They’re asleep, thank goodness,” she said, coming in. “I brought cake.” Her wide brown eyes spoke volumes. “I shall be sent to Hell for saying it, but the answers to prayers come in many disguises. He beat her all the time and she did nothing. That was why she could never go out. Her body was black and blue.”
“Have you talked to her?” Linda asked. “How is she? It must have been awful finding him there.”
“Yes, probably. She is at the police station.”
“Why?” Linda brought over cups and plates, setting them in their usual places. “Surely they don’t suspect her?”
“What, you think she bashed in his head and dragged him to the stairs? Where would she get such a weapon to do this?”
“You’ve thought it through, then,” Linda observed.
“She is at the police station because she must make a statement,” said Pippa, unwrapping the cake. “After all, she found his body. I myself think she is in a dangerous situation. Her husband was friends with the captain of police.” She raised a knife over the cake and cut it. “When Maria was younger and even prettier she was arrested. But the handsome young policemen did not press charges and let her come home.” She left the implication hanging in the air. “Your husband is also friendly with the police, no?”
“Miguel? He never told me that.”
“There are many things he doesn’t tell you, I think.”
“Is there anything we can do for Maria?” she asked, feeling as useless as all who merely observe. “Perhaps we should go down there and vouch for her character.”
“And how can you do that when you have not properly met her? No, we must pray for her,” said Pippa with finality. “That is all we can do. It is as my mother said: The men do the work and the women do the praying.”
An argument of such simplicity was hard to refute. They ate their slices of cake in silence and tried not to glance across at the washing line.
“At least she will be a rich widow,” said Pippa, munching. “We have a saying: The new wife comes before the old children.”
* * *
The next afternoon, as Linda sat in her chair by the windows and read, Maria’s glass door opened and sunlight suddenly fell into her room. The great lead crucifix had gone from the wall. There remained a single bare nail.
It was washday. She heard Maria singing “Bésame Mucho” as she hung out the washing. Linda tried to catch her eye but as usual the girl kept her head bowed modestly. The iris dress, white and blue, had reappeared. She hung it out and went back inside.
Linda wondered where the crucifix had gone.
The afternoon sank into a state of overheated enervation, but she found herself unable to settle. It felt as if a storm was breaking somewhere nearby. She read a few pages, then tried to plan the evening’s meal, but found herself pacing back and forth across the drawing room.
At 5:00 pm a car pulled up in the street outside and two policemen got out. One of them was carrying a large wooden box with a leather handle. They looked up at the building, then went to the entrance. Linda knew who they had come for and why they were there; they would question Maria and examine the scene of the death. The box contained forensic equipment.
* * *
When she went to her chair by the open windows she glanced across and saw that the iris dress had gone, although the pegs were still in place. Leaning over the edge, she looked down. The dress had slipped free of its line and had fallen into the centre of the little stone courtyard.
Latching the door, she ran downstairs, carefully counting the steps as she went. At the bottom a small back door opened onto the outside area. She quickly gathered up the light cotton dress and took it upstairs to her flat. When she examined it in bright sunlight she saw that it was no longer just blue and white but had several irregular pink patches, including one geometric shape that, to her mind, resembled the upper half of a crucifix.
Maria had scrubbed the dress, but not with the right detergent. At the hem were several carmine spots she had completely missed in her panic.
Linda poured a solution of soap and bleach into her sink, adding boiling water. While it was soaking she went to the windows and looked across once more. The men were pacing around Maria, asking her questions.
She acted quickly and without hesitation. Running back to the sink, Linda rinsed out the dress, noting with satisfaction that the fabric had been restored to its crisp white background. Even the hem was spotless. She squeezed out most of the water, but the dress was still damp and heavy. Laying it across her arms, she left the apartment and went across to Maria’s building.
On the way, she stopped in the courtyard and dropped the dress back onto the dirty stone floor. Then she picked it back up and climbed the stairs. Carlos had made a good job of the stonework. The steps had already dried. Approaching the partially opened door, she could hear the detective’s questions.
“One last thing, Mrs Masvidal. You were up and dressed when your husband left for work, yes? What were you wearing when you went to the front door and found he had fallen?”
She barged in, acting as though she had no idea that there was anyone else in the flat. She spoke loudly and confidently to cover her nervousness. “Maria, darling, your lovely dress fell off the washing line. I’m afraid it will need another rinse.”
The astonished Maria accepted the wet dress from her.
“She washes her clothes every Thursday,” Linda explained to the severe-looking gentlemen. “I see everything. I live in the flat directly opposite.” She turned her attention to Maria. “One of your pegs broke. Such a pretty dress. I saw it fall from the line.” She gave everyone a nice friendly smile. “Well, I can see you have friends over. Perhaps if you’d like to have coffee later?”
She smiled again and left them all standing there in the middle of the living room. When she reached her own flat, she put the coffee on. After a few minutes she heard the throaty ignition of a car engine and got to the front window in time to see the police drive off.
Linda unlatched her front door, then made the coffee and set out three cups. She unwrapped some chocolate cake she had been saving and cut three thick slices.
When she looked up, Maria and Pippa were standing in the open doorway, waiting to be invited in.