A Dangerous Place

by Jacqueline Winspear

  Looking up, she knew she appeared as if she were any other interested tourist, marveling at an example of modern architecture. Gibraltar was a place of memorials, it occurred to her; a military town where so many who left its shores had been lost. Here women waited for a widowhood that came too soon, and black was the color of both fisherfolk and garrison families. It was a place where men had been brought from the bloody fighting in Gallipoli, to recover or die from their wounds. Yes, it was a place of memorials—that very fact alone might have been at the heart of her desire to stay; perhaps there was a comfort in belonging here. Perhaps someone who felt the depth of scars across her heart every day could be at home in a place with so many reminders of war, with war still so close, across the border.

  Hearing steps behind her, she turned to see Arturo Kenyon, holding a cigarette as if to inquire whether she had a match to light it. She shook her head, and he smiled and began to speak. A couple walked past, arm in arm, so he asked Maisie if she were enjoying her stay. She pulled a map from her bag and leaned toward Kenyon, unfolding the paper and pointing. He nodded and motioned to a bench underneath the wall alongside the steps. Resting the map on her lap, she turned to him.

  “You said you had something to tell me,” she said.

  He nodded. “There is a man here, from London—his name is MacFarlane.”

  “Yes, I know that—he’s been looking for me. But surely he’s not here because a photographer was murdered. That’s not his bailiwick. I can’t see why Babayoff would interest him.”

  Kenyon raised his eyebrows—his default countenance when surprised, it seemed. “You have seen him?”

  “I know a man who fits his description has been asking after me,” she said. “But I cannot imagine what he might be doing here. MacFarlane is with Special Branch.”

  “That’s not what I’ve heard. He might be with special something, but no more with the Special Branch. He’s been transferred, and is now the linchpin between the police—all branches, but admittedly mainly Special Branch—and the Secret Service. Their work overlaps, and apparently he’s done this before on a case-by-case basis, but now it’s official—but hush-hush.”

  Maisie smiled, giving a half-laugh.

  “What is it?” asked Kenyon.

  “You saying ‘hush-hush.’ Even though you don’t have an accent, it’s amusing. I’m sorry.”

  “I was told you never laughed, that you had no sense of humor.”

  “Really? Well, I haven’t had much to laugh about recently, but I’m quite able to see the funny side of things.” She sighed. “I suppose I also take murder seriously—it’s a death, after all, which means that usually someone, somewhere, is grieving. Someone is feeling their heart ripped out with the ache of loss. So no, you don’t usually get me laughing about that.”

  Kenyon apologized.

  “That’s all right. Now then, do you know what MacFarlane is doing here?”

  “The official story is that he’s here to look at how the flow of refugees from Gibraltar to England might be stemmed, and where the others might be going, and how it affects Britain’s security. But many have gone home, and the fighting is not so close to Gibraltar now. A good number have gone across to North Africa, to Morocco. It’s about that, mainly.”

  Maisie looked at Kenyon. “I see. And is that it? Do you have anything more about Mr. Babayoff?”

  Kenyon shook his head. “Not yet, but I do have some news about Carlos Grillo.”

  “Yes?”

  “I’ve heard he left letters for both his sons, as if he knew he was going to die.”

  “If he was ill, that would not be unusual, would it? A note to sons who never come to visit? A last word in case he never sees them again? That doesn’t surprise me, Mr. Kenyon.”

  “But what if he were afraid, if he knew his days were numbered?”

  Maisie nodded, folded the map, which had remained open on her lap, and stood up. “I should be on my way, Mr. Kenyon. Yes, you’re right—the letters are somewhat suspicious.” She paused, looking up at the monument to collaboration. “The note you poked under my door was a good idea—you should have been a cat burglar. Let me know if you have anything else I might be interested in.”

  “Where will you go now?”

  Maisie looked at Kenyon and smiled. “Well, I’ll tell you this—I may have an opportunity to see Robert MacFarlane today, though I may also decide I don’t want to see him. I doubt he’ll be calling himself ‘Chief Superintendent’ or any other title at the present time—not if he doesn’t want anyone to know who he is.” She sighed. “I suspect he won’t be able to wait any longer before he approaches me, so I may have to be nimble on my feet if I decide to avoid him.”

  Kenyon nodded. Maisie saw his feigned nonchalance. She slipped her hand into her bag and touched a bank note, folding her fingers around it until it was firm in her palm. Withdrawing her hand from the bag, she held it out toward Arturo Kenyon. He took the note with the handshake.

  “Thank you for helping me with the directions, sir. So I go this way, if I want a taxicab?” asked Maisie, her voice raised.

  “Of course, madam. Just along there.”

  She took a step as if to take her leave, and Kenyon began to walk in the opposite direction. She turned and watched him for a moment, then continued on her way on foot.

  Now the game would begin. Kenyon would give her information fed to him by the Secret Service, and she would rattle their cage when he gave them an account of his meetings with her. But at least Kenyon was out in the open now, and she could get on with her job. Her job? Yes, it was her job. She wanted it to consume her as it had in the past, when she had first worked for Maurice and struggled to forget the war. She didn’t want to lie in bed until late morning anymore, nor to linger over the straps and lock of a leather case, drawn by the promise of half-consciousness held within. She wanted to work until she felt herself raw from thinking, weary from trying to answer questions that could hardly be framed. Work. Investigating the death of a Jewish photographer was her sword, and at that moment, it was the only way she knew to slay the dragon of memory.

  Lace curtains twitched a half moment after Maisie rapped her knuckles on the door of the Babayoff house. She leaned closer, her lips almost touching the wood.

  “It’s Miss Dobbs, Miriam. I’m alone, and there’s nothing to fear.” Her voice was loud enough to be heard by the woman on the other side of the door, but low enough not to be discerned by neighbors.

  She heard the bolts slide back, and the door opened.

  “Come in, please—quickly.”

  Maisie felt the woman’s nerves taut, pulled to the extreme, as she closed the door and pushed home the bolts, then turned a key in the lock for good measure. It was as if a coil inside her wound tighter with every noise from outside, every footfall on the flagstones or voice heard on the street, and then released just a little as the source was revealed, and deemed safe.

  “You’ve come again. Is there news?” Miriam Babayoff pulled out a chair for Maisie. She folded a dress that had been spread across the kitchen table and pushed it to one side, along with her needlework box. She nodded toward the now-neat pile. “I take in mending too.” She shrugged. “Clothing repairs and alterations. I’m very quick, and I charge a good price, so word gets around.” She began to tap her finger on the table. She still wore her thimble, so the rhythmic sharpness of the sound seemed to exaggerate her tension.

  “There is no news from the official sources,” said Maisie. “Nothing from the police, and I don’t think they’d be telling me anyway. But I have talked to a few people, and I have some more questions for you—if that’s all right, Miriam?”

  The woman rubbed a hand across her forehead, the thimble leaving a mark in its wake, as if another worry line had formed in an instant. “So many questions, and so few answers about my brother.”

  “I understand, Miriam. Truly I do. But questions are a means of discovery—they may take us down a deceiving path or two, but they�
�re like stepping stones, a way to break down the wall to find a door, perhaps.”

  Miriam nodded. “What do you want to know?”

  “I’ve been told that Sebastian was a Communist, Miriam. Was he? Did he have political beliefs that might have upset someone?”

  Miriam shook her head. “This is a British colony. The British want everyone to stay in their station, never to—how does the saying go? They don’t want anyone to upset the apple cart. You should know that, Miss Dobbs.”

  Maisie nodded. “That doesn’t answer my question, though I agree with your summation, to a point. Was your brother a Communist?”

  “My brother believed in equality—we all do. Our father and mother believed too. Go to the big new hotel—see the people there, high above the rest of us. The rich always like to live on the top of the mountain, don’t they? Perhaps they think they are God, able to look down on their earth.” She began tapping her thimble on the table again. Tap, tap, tap, tap.

  Maisie touched her right temple with her fingertips. “But Sebastian made money out of those people. He photographed them at the hotel. They paid him.”

  “Hmmph.” Miriam turned away, then back to Maisie. “Yes, my brother had the political beliefs of a Communist—we all do—but he would take work where he could. I will work my fingers to the bone until I die, caring for my sister.” She looked up at the ceiling, as if the woman were floating above her. “No man will look at me—I will never marry, never have children—because I am here with a burden. I have no money to speak of, and I have my station—I cannot rise, even with the help of my neighbors. And we are strong together, we look after each other.”

  “I understand, Miriam.”

  The woman made a show of looking at Maisie’s shoes, at her clothing. She leaned forward and took the hem of Maisie’s skirt between thumb and finger, as if to measure the quality of the fabric. She let it go and leaned back.

  “Yes, I am sure you do.” Her words had the edge of spite.

  Maisie held Miriam’s gaze. “Miriam, I wonder if you wouldn’t mind showing me Sebastian’s darkroom. It’s down in the cellar, I believe.”

  “Why do you want to go there?”

  “I’m interested in seeing his work—and he must have spent a lot of time down there.”

  “It was not my place to go to his cellar, Miss Dobbs. It was his private room where he worked. I haven’t been down there since he died.”

  “Did the police ask to see the darkroom?”

  Miriam shook her head. “They probably didn’t even think to ask. Not all the houses have cellars, only a few.”

  “Didn’t they ask where he developed the film?”

  “No.” Miriam Babayoff paused. “I wondered about that, to tell you the truth. I mean, I wasn’t going to tell them, but I wondered where they thought he had the film developed. Or maybe it didn’t occur to them, especially as they thought he was murdered by a desperate refugee.”

  “Perhaps.” Maisie nodded toward a narrow door to the right of the stove. “May we?”

  Miriam Babayoff pushed back her chair, the feet screeching against tile. She took a key from the mantelpiece above the stove, and opened the door. Maisie followed her onto a small landing. Directly in front of them a staircase led to the upper floor, where Maisie imagined there were two rooms, and perhaps another smaller set of stairs to the roof. One room would have been occupied by the sisters, and one by Sebastian. Did Miriam still sleep in the same room and even the same bed as Chana? Or would she have moved into Sebastian’s room? Maisie made a mental note to ask later, another time, perhaps.

  To her left a stone staircase led down into a barely visible chasm. Carrying a lantern, Miriam led the way. Selecting another key on the ring, she opened an unpainted wooden door and stepped into the cellar.

  It took a second or two for Maisie’s eyes to become accustomed to the lack of light before Miriam flicked a switch, and an electric bulb in the ceiling came on. Maisie blinked.

  The walls were of rough stone, though wooden shelving had been set against the far wall. The shelves held demijohns of various liquids, which she assumed were used in the development of photographs. Maisie also noticed a shade set to one side, made of a transparent dark red material, which she suspected might be used to change the light in the room when Babayoff was processing his film. There was another light fixture close to the wall, where Maisie could imagine the photographer holding up negatives to choose which he would print. It was a simple, unsophisticated studio; Maisie imagined Babayoff had furnished it over the years as his income afforded new equipment and materials. Though it was more cramped, this photographic lair reminded Maisie of another similarly converted cellar at a house in London. She had been investigating the death of an American soldier in the war, a mapmaker who had joined the British army because his father was born in England. Her visit to that studio had resulted in her identification of the man’s murderer. She shivered and moved toward a set of narrow drawers, on top of which were stacked wooden boxes that she suspected held photographic equipment. She opened the top drawer, stopping for a moment to look around toward Miriam, who was still holding the lantern, watching her.

  “Do you mind, Miriam?”

  The woman shook her head, tears forming in the corners of her eyes. “I’ll go back upstairs. Bang on the ceiling when you’re ready to leave, Miss Dobbs, and I will come with the lantern.” She pointed to a broom leaning against the wall in the corner. “I am the only one who ever used a broom for sweeping in this house, after my mother died. My brother used it to summon me to help him, and Chana bangs on the floor with a broom handle by her bed.”

  After Miriam left the cellar, Maisie stood for a moment, listening to the woman’s footfall ascend the stone staircase, as if each step were a mark of her bitterness. It was the resigned march of the put-upon, to a theme of one deep sigh. Maisie turned back to the chest of drawers. One drawer was filled with negatives, one with processed prints, and others with film that had yet to be developed, each dated. It was clear that Sebastian Babayoff had needed to be parsimonious with chemicals, so he was selective about the films he chose to develop. Maisie went through one pile of prints, mainly portraits, each with a scrap of paper folded around it, bearing a name and the amount of money still outstanding, after the deposit was paid before the sitting. The print would only be handed over when he received the balance owed.

  Based upon the number of prints ready for collection, the photographer was owed a pretty penny. Maisie wondered how she could help facilitate their final sale to the advantage of Miriam and her sister.

  Another collection was possibly taken in the company of Carlos Grillo while out on the fishing boat. Maisie squinted at these images, then moved closer to the light to better view them. The Rock of Gibraltar—the northernmost of the two Pillars of Hercules guarding the entrance to the Straits of Gibraltar—loomed large in several photographs; others showed ships coming into port. Another half dozen, taken on ship, were of men and women in evening dress. Since the war ended, travel had boomed by road, rail, sea, and air, and Gibraltar had seen more visitors as a result. Decommissioned naval vessels had been bought on the cheap, reconditioned, and sent on their way with cruise passengers, who enjoyed visiting a little piece of England that was at the same time so very foreign, and relished the sunshine. Oh, how the younger set had yearned for sunshine, especially those who had suffered the bitter cold mud of Flanders. Maisie suspected that Babayoff earned a tidy sum from photographing the new breed of traveler. He had just enough time to go on board when the ship docked, take orders for photographs and then deliver prints before the ship sailed again. He probably took hundreds of images in this manner—if a dozen or so didn’t sell, it was probably not a huge loss.

  There were photographs of fishing boats and, surprisingly, a few of Carlos Grillo’s niece, hidden in an envelope at the back of the drawer. Instead of the black clothes she’d been wearing at Catalan Bay, in these photographs Rosanna wore a flounced skirt and a r
uffled white blouse that was slipping down from her right shoulder, its bareness concealed only by her hair, which, instead of being tied back at the nape of her neck, was carefully styled to cascade to one side, brushing her neck in a suggestive manner. The photograph had been taken outside, possibly on a secluded stretch of rocky beach. Maisie replaced the photographs in the envelope, committing the images to memory, though she was not sure of their significance at this point.

  Rummaging toward the back of the drawer, she drew out another envelope, this time thicker. More photographs taken at sea. Maisie looked at each in turn—there were about half a dozen—and then again at the ones she’d studied first. There was a difference. The previous batch were taken looking out to shore from on board a vessel—she assumed Carlos Grillo’s fishing boat; in fact, in one photograph, Carlos was smiling directly into the camera, having looked up while hauling in a full net. But which shore? It was not Gibraltar; the Rock would have been evident, even from a distance. Was this the shoreline of Morocco? Or somewhere along the Spanish coast? How far would the boat need to go before her skipper received a warning from the Spanish that she was in their territorial waters? Or another patrol boat, instructing them to leave the area? She looked at the second set of coastal photographs, squinting. There was another fishing vessel close by, and in the distance something else, though she could not quite ascertain what it was. Land? An illusion caused by waves? Or the coast? She went through the photographs, sighing in frustration. She needed a magnifying glass.

  Maisie searched the drawers, ran her fingers across the dusty shelves, and then looked around the room.

  “Oh, there it is,” she said out loud. She stepped across to the chest of drawers and reached along the side, where a magnifying glass was hanging on a hook from a piece of string looped around its handle. As if to Sebastian Babayoff’s ghost, she said, “Well, I can see why you’d hang it there—if you put it down, you’d never find it again!”

  Maisie held the magnifying glass above the photographs, leaning to one side under the light to better view the images.