A Dangerous Place

by Jacqueline Winspear

  “Did you ever know a fisherman named Carlos?” asked Maisie. “Or a photographer—Sebastian Babayoff?”

  “I knew Babayoff. He came in with his camera once, to take a photograph of the inside of my restaurant. Then he wanted to charge me—and I’d never even asked him for a picture.” He shrugged. “But I know he was a good fellow, though he tried to fool me. He was like anyone, just trying to get by.” He looked at Maisie with bloodshot eyes. “I understand that his life was taken—by a refugee, most likely.”

  “It would seem so,” said Maisie. “At least, that’s what I read in the newspaper.”

  Salazar nodded. “And I knew Carlos to buy fish from—but they keep to themselves, the fishermen. They speak the same language—fish. Are the fish biting? How many did you catch? Not much meat on them, eh? Fish, fish, fish. But I cook good fish here, if you want some.”

  Maisie raised a hand and shook her head. “Not today, thank you.”

  A bell chimed above the door. Salazar looked around as it opened and a customer entered. He lifted his cup and drained it. “Funny you should mention Carlos, though. He seemed troubled last time I saw him—only a day before he died. It must have been his heart bothering him even then—he kept rubbing his chest. He was a good friend to the man with the camera, by all accounts. They both liked the early morning—good light, and a good time to catch a fish.”

  Maisie looked out toward the street, where Kenyon waited.

  “Good morning, sir—please, sit wherever you want,” said Salazar to the new customer, a short man wearing a linen suit with an open-necked shirt and cravat. The man removed his Panama hat and nodded, moving toward a seat at the bar. “As long as it’s not on that good lady’s lap!” added Salazar as he turned back to Maisie, nodding toward the window and Kenyon. “You want my back way into the alley, miss?”

  “Thank you, Mr. Salazar. I think I’ll take you up on that.”

  Maisie made her way into the shadows to consult her map. She was looking for Catalan Bay, from which most of the fishing boats left Gibraltar each morning. She had stopped to ask a street vendor, a woman who looked down at Maisie’s sandals and then back into her eyes before raising her eyebrows and informing Maisie that it was a good two miles to the bay. Maisie thanked the woman and went on her way, having considered her footwear to be adequate for the hike. It would give her time to gather her thoughts, which—she conceded—were still thick, as if cotton wadding had been pressed into her skull.

  A good time to catch a fish. She allowed herself to linger on the café owner’s comment—not that she imagined Salazar to have knowledge he had failed to impart during their conversation, but people often made observations borne of an intuition they would never lay claim to, and would not even know existed within them. Sebastian Babayoff and Carlos the fisherman—what was his surname? she wondered—had returned early from a dawn sail into the waters around Gibraltar, and since that time both had died. Coincidence? Perhaps. A tragedy? Of course it was, though the older man had seen his three score years and ten. But what if something else had come to pass? An altercation with another fisherman? She knew from a past case that had taken her into the fishing community in Hastings that although the men were in fierce competition, they shared their knowledge and supported each other when help was needed. Though Mr. Solomon had been next on her list, she continued her walk toward the boats. The fishermen would be back now, for the most part, setting out their nets to dry and talking about their morning. She knew they were a closed people, but perhaps there was a shell she could pry open.

  She turned around. Arturo Kenyon was nowhere to be seen.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Upon first disembarking in Gibraltar, Maisie had struggled to understand the different dialects and cultures that made up the population. She’d asked Mrs. Bishop—who seemed less than British herself, despite her name—and was treated to an account of immigration to the Rock over the centuries. There were Jews from North Africa and Maltese traders. Most of the Spanish had left when the British took control of Gibraltar following the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, but there were Portuguese as well as fishermen from Genoa among the first settlers, and of course the British, with their own peppered history of immigration. “But we’re all Gibraltarians, my darling,” said Mrs. Bishop, as if assuming an intimacy. It was later that Maisie heard the word—pronounced “dahlen”—in certain quarters, and realized it was akin to adding “my dear” at the end of a sentence.

  Now she walked toward Catalan Bay, home to fisher families of Genoan descent, though the British had mistaken their land of origin for Catalonia—thus the given name of their village home. By the time she reached the fishing boats, her feet were a little swollen, though the walk had been good for her. Perhaps tonight she would sleep without the aid of any draught or pill. She pictured the leather case, locked, with straps drawn across and secured.

  She held her hand to her brow and squinted as she watched the men on their boats, some lifting baskets of fish, others pulling nets and laying them out on the sand. A few women in black—the uniform of the fisherman’s wife, a mark of anticipated losses at sea, of a collective widowhood—had gathered to one side, busy with long needles and sturdy thread. For a moment Maisie felt as if she could walk among them and be comforted, held by fleshy arms as she sank into soft folds of compassion. She took a handkerchief from her pocket and wiped her eyes, telling herself it was only sunlight and heat. She’d come out without her hat, after all.

  Approaching the women, she spoke in English, asking if anyone spoke her language. At first they looked at her and then at one another. She suspected they all understood her very well. A younger woman came to her feet, smiling.

  “Can I help you, miss?” she inquired.

  Maisie inclined her head. “My name is Maisie—Miss Maisie Dobbs. I wanted to know if anyone could tell me about Carlos. He was one of the fishermen here, and he died a little while ago. About four or five weeks, perhaps.”

  The younger woman nodded and looked around at the others, who were already talking among themselves. Yes, they know exactly what I’ve said, thought Maisie. The woman turned back to her.

  “I am Rosanna. You are asking for Carlos Grillo. He had a heart attack on his boat.”

  “Yes, that’s right,” said Maisie. She waved her hand in front of her face to cool her skin.

  Rosanna looked at Maisie, then back at the women, one of whom flapped her hand as if to chivvy them along. Rosanna nodded and invited Maisie to walk with her, away from the women and from the men and their boats.

  “Why do you want to know about Mr. Grillo?” asked the younger woman.

  “He died shortly before another man—only a couple of weeks separated their deaths. It’s that man I’m trying to find out more about, and I know he missed Carlos very much. He had known his—”

  “The Jew? Is that the man you speak of? The Jew whose father was a friend to Carlos Grillo?”

  Maisie turned to the girl. “Yes—his name was Sebastian Babayoff. You knew him?”

  Rosanna nodded, staring out across the water, almost as if she could see the men again. “Mmmm, yes. He came here to go out on the boat with Mr. Grillo. Before his father died, it was the three of them sometimes; then Mr. Grillo would take just the son out.”

  “Mr. Babayoff helped Carlos Grillo with his catch?”

  The girl laughed. “His catch! The Jew had not the arms for pulling in a net, but he brought his camera with him. And I suppose he helped—but that depended upon the haul.” She paused, as if unsure whether to say more.

  “What do you mean, Rosanna?”

  “Nothing.” She shook her head and looked at the other women, then back at Maisie. “I must return to my aunts—there is work to do.”

  Maisie did not move, but she touched the young woman on the arm. “Do you believe Carlos Grillo suffered a heart attack, Rosanna? You knew him.” She pointed to the men on boats, on the beach. “The fishermen here all seem very hearty fellows—strong, though
not all are young men.”

  “Not all men follow their fathers now.” She sighed, and shrugged. “His heart had broken when his sons left, so it surprised no one.”

  Maisie watched the girl as she folded her arms, rubbing her hands against the cloth of her blouse. Now she was protecting herself, putting up a wall against the temptation to say more. It occurred to Maisie that the girl had spoken with little governance over her thoughts, and had been given leave to do so by the women, who in their manner—working in a circle—were a tight group.

  “Rosanna, I have one more question for you, if you don’t mind.” Maisie did not wait for a response. “You have spoken quite freely, considering you do not know who I am and have been offered little explanation as to why I’ve come here. Perhaps there is something else bothering you, among the answers you’ve given.”

  The girl glanced seaward, curls of jet-black hair escaping from the ribbon she had tied at the nape of her neck. “We wish Carlos had not spent so much time with the Jew.”

  “I’ve heard he was a nice man, a good man,” said Maisie.

  “He was a Communist. Carlos was his donkey.” She looked back at Maisie. “I have to go now, back to my work.”

  “But wait,” said Maisie. “Tell me, why did you agree to talk to me?”

  The girl looked up along the path behind them. “You’re from the police, aren’t you? We do not refuse the police. And Carlos was my uncle.”

  Looking where the girl had set her gaze, Maisie caught sight of a man in the distance, watching. She could not be sure, as she narrowed her eyes, better to see against the afternoon light, but she thought it might be Arturo Kenyon. The man turned and walked away.

  “I am not with the police, Rosanna. But I had the misfortune to find Sebastian Babayoff’s body, and it has disturbed me enough to find out what happened to him.”

  “Then good luck to you, Miss Dobbs.” The girl bore an accusatory look as she nodded towards Maisie’s wedding ring, shrugged again, and walked away.

  Maisie held her left hand to her chest and massaged the ring—now on a chain around her neck—with the thumb and forefinger of her right hand. The gold did not exhibit the marks of long-worn jewelry, though she had never removed it from her hand when James was alive, not even to wash. She remembered her mother, when she was dying, refusing to let anyone remove her wedding ring from her swollen finger. “A woman should never take off her ring,” she said. “It’s binding, and it stays on my finger.” She was buried with her wedding ring in place, as she had lived.

  Maisie made one stop on her way back to her room at Mrs. Bishop’s guest house, to purchase a large sheet of paper and some colored pencils. She also bought a book about Gibraltar and a postcard. As she walked along the narrow path to the guest house, she was aware, without looking into doorways or along an alley here and a rough path there, that she was being watched. Was it Kenyon again? Or someone else? No matter. She would know soon enough. In the meantime, she’d learned something else about Babayoff: in one person’s estimation, at least, he was a Communist. If that were so, what were his feelings about the conflict across the border, so very close to home? He could hardly ignore it.

  She turned the key in the large, rusty lock and stepped into the cobblestone courtyard.

  In her room, Maisie poured herself a glass of water, drank it, and poured another. As she sipped the second glass, she kicked off her sandals and sat on the bed. Looking up at her reflection in the mirror, she could see she had caught the sun—her cheeks and nose were red, and her lips felt dry. She felt tired, but in a good way, the way she’d felt when, as a child, she’d been all the way to Covent Garden and back with her father. She closed her eyes, remembering the darkness as they came finally back to the small house in Lambeth, and how her mother would be in her chair alongside the stove. She would open her arms and Maisie would run to her and bury her head in the blankets. How would it be to feel enveloped by such love, so secure, once again? But had she felt safe, really? She went with her father to market so her mother might rest, so she could settle by the fire or in her bed and perhaps sleep. At once, Maisie realized something that had never occurred to her: that even then her mother must have been taking morphia, otherwise the pain would have been intolerable. Money they could ill afford had gone to doctors and medicines; Frankie had worked so hard to give his beloved wife a serene passing and a decent burial.

  Maisie shook her head as if to dislodge the memory, surprised that it had ambushed her now, when her mother’s death was so far in the past.

  Maisie moved a vase of paper flowers from the table, along with a lace doily which had left a stencil of dust across the wood—the surface had not seen a cloth for some days. She used the towel that hung next to the washbasin in the corner of the room to wipe the table clean. She set down the large sheet of paper, smoothing it with her hand, and drew up a chair. As she looked at the clean white paper before her, she smiled. Yes, this was what she needed. Work. Perhaps that was why she had taken the camera, why she had held on to the discovery of Sebastian Babayoff’s body as if it were a lifeline, involving herself in the investigation when most people would have been glad to have the police tell them that there were no more questions, and they were free to leave.

  With the red pencil, Maisie wrote “Sebastian Babayoff” at the center of the sheet of paper, then circled it twice. She drew lines from the circle, adding names: Miriam Babayoff, Carlos Grillo, and the other Babayoff sister—what was her name? Yes, Chana. There was the young woman, Rosanna, and of course, farther from the center, Mr. Salazar. Looking up from her work, she walked to one side of the window, where she moved the curtain just enough to see across the road. A small pinprick of light glowed as the man drew upon his cigarette. Would now be a good time? Perhaps. She would wait a little while, see if he was still there when she had finished with her case map.

  Again she smiled. Case map. She was at work again. There might not be a client, no person coming to her door with a request to find someone, or to investigate a loss dismissed by the police, but her curiosity would serve as her reward. How many cases had she solved that Scotland Yard had labeled open-and-shut? More than she could count on the fingers of both hands. Open-and-shut meant business for her, though this time it was something she was hanging on to. She’d been feeling as if all meaning in her life had perished when she discovered Babayoff’s body. Perhaps she would find the person she used to be, before tragedy struck her a second time, cutting deeper into her soul, a still-open wound more livid than anything left by the war. Now she was in business—and that responsibility to another would give her a reason to live.

  Maisie worked on her case map for another twenty minutes or so, adding questions to which she wanted answers. What did it mean to be a Communist here in Gibraltar? And to be Jewish and a Communist? It seemed people of different faiths and origins lived respectfully together here—but what about politics? And how had the refugees affected life on the Rock? As far as she could see, people were treated well, had been given food and shelter—the winter food kitchens, originally set up for children in the harsh cold months, had been extended to ensure that those crossing the border in search of refuge had a good meal inside them every day. Many had returned to Spain, but a good number remained, or were trying to move on to North Africa, to France, or even Britain. Was there really the kind of trouble that would have led to Babayoff’s death at the hands of a penniless robber refugee? She rolled the case map and placed it in the wardrobe. The leather case tempted her. She closed her eyes. No. Not tonight. She felt the familiar ache across her abdomen—perhaps from her long walk today, perhaps from sitting at the table, working—but she could bear it.

  Maisie stepped to the window again. The glow of the lighted cigarette was gone, though it did not prove Arturo Kenyon had ended his surveillance. Only that he might not be smoking. But Maisie no longer felt his presence. He had gone, she was sure—perhaps to Mr. Salazar’s for a late-evening drink. Perhaps home. She turned away, t
oward her bed. No matter: he would be back in the morning, of that she was sure.

  For the first time in months, Maisie slept well, and though dreams came to her, they were not of blood-soaked terror. Sometimes she was a girl again, in France during the war; in other dreams she was running with a kite on Box Hill with James. Then the kite would spiral and spiral, and she would try so hard to keep it aloft. And then the dream would change again, and she would be with her father, listening to him as he taught her to ride. Don’t worry, my little love, I won’t let you fall.

  I won’t let you fall. Don’t worry, I won’t let you fall. . . . Maisie woke to those words, as if her father had laid his hand with a light touch upon her shoulder. A needle of light pierced through the curtains; from the angle, she judged it to be about ten o’clock in the morning. She had slept for almost twelve hours.

  She remained in her bed, listening to the sounds of the street—a vegetable vendor calling out along the alley, children skipping along the cobblestones. Coffee. At once she craved coffee as Maurice used to make it—real coffee, delivered from an importer’s in Tunbridge Wells. She remembered how he would grind the coffee himself, in a small wooden box with a handle on top. It came from Dominica, he said—a place she could not imagine, nor imagine why he would have been there in the first place, but there were many such unanswered questions about Maurice Blanche. When the handle turned easily against the grounds, he would pull out a small drawer in the front of the box and tip the fragrant milled coffee into a pot. He’d lift a kettle just off the boil and pour hot water over the grounds, allowing it to sit for at least five minutes. Then he would fill her cup halfway, topping it off whisked hot milk. “Your café au lait, Maisie. Now we must work—there is no time to be lost.”

  Swinging her legs off the side of the bed, Maisie grabbed her dressing gown, opened the door onto the corridor and, assured that she would not run into any other guests, tiptoed along to the bathroom. She wanted to bathe away the sleep and step out into her day as soon as she could.