110 erotic stories mouth. The bullet had passed through the doll’s head and the cask…

The farm-hands and everyone else who worked at the Convent came running as soon as they heard the shot; so, too, did others who lived further away and who had decided to spend the night there. When they saw the hole in the doll’s head they all declared:

‘That’s José Cravo’s work; he thought the doll was you, boss…’

Terrifying, horrible, that night seemed unending; I still can’t think back to it without terror. I didn’t go mad. On the other hand, I doubt anyone has the nerves to withstand more than one night like that. As it drew to an end, the first of my many grey hairs appeared.

It was not yet daybreak when the boys from the farm came to report that José Cravo had disappeared and that Marta was lying dead on a small patch of land half way between her house and the Convent. I did not have the courage to go and see her body, but Emília told me later that she seemed to be smiling. Probably when she saw José Cravo loading his gun she had got up from her bed and with nothing on but her nightdress and a shawl over her shoulders she had run to warn me. But her lover had followed and as soon as he had caught up with her, he killed her with a bullet in the heart, as was confirmed at her post mortem. Death was instantaneous…

The locals began to call the place where her body was found ‘Dead woman’s grove’. The strange thing is that a few days later the entire area was covered with those little purple lilies which they call ‘May flowers’ in the Algarve, and which are rarely seen in that region. Every year the same thing happens.

To this day, there has been no news of José Cravo.

Bougie, May 1934