101 Mystery Stories

36 Castle in Spain Julian Symons

San Avalo is a dot on the map of Spain some twenty miles from Corunna, in the northwest corner of Galicia. Don Easton went there because a friend said that it was the most beautiful village in Spain, and added contemptuously that no travel agent had ever heard of it.

Don’s tendency to wanderlust was aroused, and his pride as a travel agent was stung. Within a month he was on his way to Galicia, which the Spaniards used to call Finisterre, or world’s end.

Galicia may not be the world’s end, but it is certainly not easily accessible. The nearest big airport is at Lisbon, three hundred miles away, and the sea route to Vigo is used mostly by ships that lack tourist accommodation. Don took the train to the French-Spanish frontier and then changed to the bus, which is often the quickest way of getting about in Spain. He had already decided that if San Avalo was to figure on the Easitravel list it must be as part of a coach tour. Traveling by bus, he might well see other good stopping places.

He sat in the bus station at Bilbao, reading a day-old English paper. There was not much news in it — a mother had left her month-old baby on the steps of the Soviet Embassy with a note asking the Russians to take care of it, Mel Charles had been declared unfit to play for Arsenal, a financier named Richard Baker had jumped his bail on a fraud charge. He put down the paper with pleasure at the sound of English voices.

A tall dark young man and a short, fair girl came in. The young man carried a heavy suitcase, the girl a lighter one.

“Has the bus for Santader gone?” the young man asked an attendant in atrocious Spanish.

Don answered him. “I’m catching it myself. And here it is.” He took the case out of the girl’s hand and lifted it onto the bus. The label was old and tom. It bore the name Boyd, with an address scratched out but still visible: EL CASTILLO DE ORO, SAN AVALO.

“You know San Avalo?”

A quick look, of some indecipherable kind, passed between the two. Then the girl spoke.

“I don’t know it, but Roly does. He says it’s nice.”

“Rugged but beautiful. My uncle Justin lives out there, and I went out to see him once last July. He lives in a castle.”

“The golden castle,” Don said. “A nice name.”

“It looks golden, too, with the sun shining on the turrets. But my word, it’s cold and dank in the winter.”

“Are you out here on business?”

“Sort of a holiday,” the little woman said. She chirped like a bird. “March isn’t just the time you’d choose for a holiday on this coast, but Roly’s got a new job — he’s an engineer — and they gave him a few days before he started.”

“So you’re going to stay with your uncle?”

“You’d better ask Roly. He says we’re not. By the way, my name’s Jenny Boyd, and this is my husband.” She added demurely, “I’d love to see the castle.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying, darling.” Her husband shivered. He was perhaps in his early thirties, a hungry-looking man with a hard mouth but a ready smile. “Once was enough. Uncle Justin’s eccentric, and I mean eccentric. He lives in this great barracks, with some old crone of a housekeeper. Doesn’t smoke, doesn’t drink, never looks at an English newspaper. He’s no fun, let me tell you.”

“That’s enough about us,” Jenny said, adding with a curiosity so childlike that one couldn’t take offense at it, “What do you do, Mr. — ?”

“Easton.” Don told them what he did, and said that he was breaking his journey in several places, but would reach San Avalo eventually. Should he look up Uncle Justin?

Roly laughed. “Do, by all means, but I can’t vouch for your reception. He keeps a shotgun handy to discourage strangers if he’s feeling inhospitable.”

There was something odd about the conversation, but Don couldn’t think what it was. They parted in Santander, and within half an hour he had forgotten them.

He remembered again, and remembered the oddity, when he came down into the valley where San Avalo nestled, on a day rawly cold but beautifully sunny. The village was as pretty as a picture postcard, with its single street and three shady plazas, and the Hotel España, with a restaurant terrace overlooking the sea, and steps down to a private beach, was delightful. Don did some hard bargaining with the proprietor, Señor Mendoza, and made a block booking for July in the following year. Then he mentioned the castle.

“El Castillo de Oro,” Mendoza said. He took Don out to the terrace and waved a hand. The castle stood on a promontory above the village. At this moment, with the sunlight gleaming on its towers, the place really looked as though it were made of gold.

Don described the Boyds. Mendoza had not seen them, but he knew their uncle, the Englishman who was loco, an old man with a beard, who sometimes shut himself up for weeks in the castle.

“For weeks? What about food?”

What indeed, Mendoza said rhetorically. Certain it was that at these times neither he nor the housekeeper he had brought out from England came down to the village. At these times, the villagers believed, he was not merely loco, harmlessly mad, but dementi, maniaco, furioso. A demon no doubt possessed him. At such times the village girls who worked at the castle were told not to go there. More than this, there were ghosts in the castle.

“Ghosts? What sort of ghosts?”

That Mendoza could not say, but certain it was that Juanita, one of the village girls, had heard voices speaking in some of the rooms, young voices, not those of the mad Englishman.

Don brooded over this information, and over the oddity that had struck him, while he ate an excellent paella. He made a telephone call to Martin Bums, his assistant in London, partly to confirm that he had made the San Avalo booking, but chiefly to ask for some information. An hour later Martin rang him back. Don had been playing a hunch, and the hunch was right. He left the hotel, called at the office of the Guardia Civil, and walked up to the castle.

He took the main road out of the village, walked along it for a mile, and then turned onto a rough track. The castle loomed ahead of him. As he walked the sun died, the sky darkened. The castle’s color changed from gold to black. It looked less romantic than sinister as he walked past a big iron gate into a courtyard. Around him the place was still. He walked toward the big iron door.

“Stop.” The voice was rusty, like an unused key in a lock, but unmistakably English. “Stop, or I shoot.”

The voice came from above. Don looked up. A fierce old man with a long and dirty beard glared at him out of a narrow window. The rifle in his hand was steady. Don stopped.

“Who are you? What do you want?”

“My name is Easton. I met your nephew, and he suggested I should call on you.” It was not quite the truth, but it would serve.

“The worthless scoundrel has not even called on me,” the old man said, but he lowered the rifle.

“It is a long way from the village.”

“Wait.” Don stood in the courtyard until he heard a creak of bolts. The old man said, “Come in.”

The hall he entered was so dark that for a moment he could not distinguish more than the outlines of the figure who faced him. Then he saw the matted white hair, the intense stare of dark eyes. He followed down a corridor into a room where oil lamps and a meager wood fire gave a minimum of light and heat.

“I am a recluse, Mr. Easton, but I do not wish to appear inhospitable. Will you take a glass of wine?”

“Thank you.”

The old man went to the door. “Henrietta,” he suddenly bawled. “Wine.”

A little old woman entered the room, a black shawl over her head and black gloves on her hands, so bent that it was hard to see her face. She carried a silver tray with a decanter and glasses on it.

The old man poured the wine. “This is a friend of my nephew Roland. He came here last summer.”

She muttered something. Don said, “And you have seen nothing of him this time? Or of his wife?”

“Nothing. It was his only visit.” The eyes glared fiercely. “And what is the news of the world? We see nothing, hear nothing.”

“You haven’t a radio?” Don sipped the wine. It was strong and sweet.

“I abominate them. What do I read or hear but filth? Theft and adultery, display of the body, children deserted and given away to the godless—”

His voice died away. The old woman cackled. Don said quietly, “It’s not good. Give it up.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve made too many mistakes. I know who you are.”

The old man said in a high voice, “I am Justin Boyd.”

“Justin Boyd never existed, nor his housekeeper. Your name is Richard Baker, and you are wanted for fraud charges in England.”

There was a small pistol in the woman’s hand.

“It’s no good,” Don repeated. “I’ve talked to London on the telephone and got a description of you both. You’re his wife. And I told the Guardia Civil I was coming up here, and who you were. They’ll be coming to look for me.”

“There’ll be no violence,” the man said. He put his hand over the woman’s wrist, and twisted. She cried out and dropped the pistol. “I never really thought we could get away with it.”

The housekeeper straightened up and took off the shawl, revealing bright fair hair. She said in the chirping voice of Jenny Boyd, “Of course we could have got away with it if he hadn’t stuck his nose in. You should have fired that rifle.”

“It would have made no difference,” Don said. “It was an ingenious idea, to create a separate identity out here in Spain, ready for a getaway, so that Richard Baker and his wife turned into Justin Boyd and his housekeeper, but you made too many mistakes. First, leaving the label on the suitcase, then telling me that you’d only visited your uncle once, in July, and saying in the next breath that the castle was cold and dank in winter.”

The man stripped off the wig and pulled away the beard, to reveal the darkly handsome face of Roland Boyd. “That was a mistake.”

“When I came here and learned that the mad Englishman shut himself up for weeks at a time without seeing anybody, I had a hunch that at these times you might not be there at all. When I heard that there were ghosts speaking in different voices I guessed somebody might be masquerading as Uncle Justin. But the worst mistake of all was the one you made just now.”

“What was that?”

“When you mentioned the child given away to the godless. I read about the baby deposited on the steps of the Soviet Embassy two days ago. How could you know about it if you never saw a paper and had no radio?”

“All right,” Roland Boyd or Richard Baker said hopelessly. “All right.”

“But you were foolish from the start,” Don said. “Relying for your hideout on a castle in Spain.”