by Mathew Carr
“Let’s just say he’s not the kind of person His Majesty’s Government touches with a bargepole.”
“Well I’d like to speak to him.”
“That’s your prerogative, of course.” Smither sipped at his tea. “Ferrer lives on a farm in Montgat. It’s a village about seven miles outside Barcelona. You can get there by train from the Estación de Francia.”
“I’ll go there now. Nothing else to do.”
“Well it would be a turn-up for the books if Ferrer was connected to this.” Smither looked faintly amused by this possibility. “Because I can tell you that a lot of people in this country would be very happy to see him hang.”
* * *
By the time Lawton returned to the street the soldiers had gone, but he found them once again down at the docks, milling around in front of the waiting troopships. He walked around the edge of the port toward the Estación de Francia and bought a ticket on the next train to Montgat. An hour later the train crawled into a tiny village, which consisted of a few white buildings tumbling down the rocky hillside on one side, and a sandy beach to his right. The sun was at its fullest now, and Lawton took off his jacket and walked out of the station into a dusty little square, where a little man in a shabby suit and hat was sitting outside a bar with a sour, suspicious expression, watching the few passengers disperse. He looked even more suspicious when Lawton asked him for Francesc Ferrer’s address.
“Walk up out of the village. Turn left at the first track.”
Lawton walked along the dirt road through a landscape of mottled white rocks, olive and pine trees, and spiky tropical vegetation, with the sea down to his right. On reaching the track he walked up the hill to a large two-storey farmhouse overlooking the sea to find a long-faced man with a white beard kneeling in a garden plot outside the main entrance, picking weeds.
“Señor Ferrer?” Lawton asked.
“Which one?”
“Francesc.”
“I’m José. Francesc is my brother.” José Ferrer stood up and reached out a tanned arm. “He’s around the corner. You’re English?”
“Irish. I live in London.”
“Good on yer mate!” Ferrer spoke in English now and laughed at Lawton’s obvious surprise. “I spent ten years in Australia.”
“Good to see that you learned Australian.”
“Just a liddle mate!”
José laughed again. He had the dark, leathery skin of a man who had been working outside most of his life, Lawton thought, as he followed him around the side of the building. Immediately behind the house a short, stoutly built man was dozing in a deck chair under the shade of a plane tree. He was barefoot and wearing a floppy straw hat and there was a book lying on his lap.
“A visitor for you Francesc,” José said. “All the way from London.”
Ferrer lifted back the hat and stood up to shake Lawton’s hand. If José Ferrer looked like a peasant, his brother looked more like a landowner or well-to-do farmer, Lawton thought. “London, eh? A fine city. I was there only a few months ago.”
“I know. That’s partly why I’m here. I want to ask you some questions about Randolph Foulkes.”
“Oh?” Ferrer looked surprised and pointed toward the deck chair on the other side of the table. “José, bring out some lemonade for our visitor.”
José nodded and walked away, while Lawton took his hat off and offered Ferrer a cigarette. Ferrer shook his head and looked at him curiously as Lawton lit one up for himself.
“Are you a policeman?” Ferrer asked. “Because if you are, you’ve come a long way to talk to me about someone I hardly know.”
“I’m an investigator. I’m working for his wife.”
“Really? And what are you investigating?”
“Dr. Foulkes has disappeared. He was last seen in Barcelona. His wife is concerned something may have happened to him.”
Lawton had deliberately not mentioned Foulkes’s death to see the reaction, and Ferrer looked genuinely shocked. “Good God. I saw him at the opera less than a month ago. It would have been—”
“June 13,” Lawton said. “The Magic Flute.”
“You have been busy,” Ferrer said. “I hope they aren’t trying to pin this on me.”
“They?”
“You saw my little policeman at the station? He’s there to see who visits me. He’d love nothing better than to see me taken up to the castle in chains.”
“And what do you think they might be trying to pin on you?” Lawton asked.
“Please don’t try to be clever, Mr. Lawton. I’m referring to Dr. Foulkes. Something bad must have happened to him or you wouldn’t have come all this way.”
“So you’ve no idea what happened to him?”
“None at all,” Ferrer replied emphatically.
“I understand you met Dr. Foulkes when you were in England.”
“Yes I met him. I went to his house to speak to Mrs. Foulkes about publishing one of her books, for use in my schools. Of course I knew of her husband by reputation, through his work on heredity. He’s not someone I had any special interest in, but curiously, he was interested in me. He invited me into his study and asked me lots of questions.”
Just then José came back out carrying a tray with a carafe of iced lemonade and two glasses. Ferrer filled them up and passed one to Lawton, as his brother returned to his garden.
“What kind of questions?” Lawton asked.
“Mostly about Spain and Barcelona. About my schools. He struck me as intellectually curious but thoroughly reactionary. He told me my work was pointless. There was no point in trying to improve society through political programs or education, he said. The problem with society was biological not political. The lower classes were poor because of the kind of people they were. All this sort of thing. He said education couldn’t do anything about that. He said he wasn’t a Catholic but he thought the Catholic Church was good for Spain because it taught the population good morals. We had very little in common, except for one thing—we both believed that physical exercise was good for children.”
“Did you know he was coming to Barcelona?”
Ferrer shook his head. “He didn’t say anything about that. He did mention that he was going to Vernet-les-Bains to write a book, but I was surprised to see him at the opera. I think he was surprised to see me, too. I don’t think he believed anarchists went to the opera except to throw bombs at the audience.”
“And he had company,” Lawton said.
“He did. A Dr. Weygrand and his companion—a woman named Zorka. An unusual couple.”
“In what way?”
“When I asked Weygrand what he was doing in Barcelona, he said he’d come to perform miracles. I asked him what kind of miracles. He invited me to come and see his show at the Edén Concert. He said he might surprise me.”
“Did you go?”
“Christ, no. I don’t have time to waste on nonsense like that.”
“What did this woman look like?”
“Very attractive.” Ferrer smiled at the thought. “The kind of woman you’d expect to find in the more tawdry romantic novels. Dewy green eyes. Dark hair. High cheekbones. A bit dreamy. I thought she might be a little crazy. To be honest with you, she was the only reason why I might have been tempted to see their show. You can see it too if you want.”
“They’re still here?” Lawton asked.
Ferrer nodded. “Every Thursday till the end of the month, according to the posters.”
Just then they heard voices, and Lawton looked up to see four men coming toward them from the direction of the yard. Ferrer looked suddenly uncomfortable.
“Do you have any other questions?” he asked, as the four visitors took off their hats and stood at a respectful distance.
“No, that’s all,” Lawton said.
“Just a minute.” Ferrer disappeared into the house, leaving Lawton and his four visitors staring at each other awkwardly. Finally Ferrer returned and showed Lawton a slim book. “Foulkes
gave me this in London. It’s the book he wrote for your Ministry of Education.”
Lawton flicked through the drawings and photographs of children performing calisthenics and physical exercises.
“Every year a quarter of a million children die in Spain,” Ferrer said. “Our schools have no air. No space to play. No freedom. So you see why this program could be useful. But look at this.” He opened the book and Lawton read the handwritten message: “To Don Francesc Ferrer—‘Wake therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour.’ Matthew 25:13. Best wishes, Randolph Foulkes.”
“I think it was meant as a joke,” Ferrer said. “A Biblical quotation for the anarchist who doesn’t believe in God. But now it no longer seems so amusing. He was right, of course. None of us knows the day nor the hour. I hope his hasn’t arrived yet.”
Lawton thanked him, and walked back down the dirt track toward the sea. The news of Foulkes’s companions was a potentially useful lead, and he should have felt excited by it, but whether it was his medication or the heat, he felt suddenly listless and sluggish. In South Africa he had sometimes marched for twenty miles a day. Now even this mild excursion had left him drained. He looked down toward the beach, where some adults and children were playing in the sparkling water.
A long time ago he had run through a rougher, colder sea in Donegal with the same careless pleasure. Until two years ago he had thought he might retire there one day after the long and illustrious career at the Yard that seemed to open up before him. Now that future was gone, along with every dream and ambition he had ever had, and nothing lay ahead of him but disintegration and decline. Like Mrs. Foulkes, he was wasting away and there was nothing he could do to prevent it. All he could do was slow it down and try to live with it. Once he would have relished the sight of the flawless blue sky, the sea and the sand, the palm trees, and the whitewashed buildings. Now they only reminded him of pleasures that were no longer available to him.
He tried to distract himself from these dismal reflections and thought back on what Ferrer had told him. The conversation had not revealed much, except that the woman in the opera house had dark hair, whereas Foulkes’s companion was blond. Still there was something about Ferrer’s description that chimed with the waiter’s description, and as he walked back to the square past Ferrer’s sour-faced copper, he resolved to do his exercises when he returned to his hotel room, and he promised himself that he would be attending Dr. Weygrand’s next performance.
* * *
“The best crème brulée in Barcelona.” Ferran Quintana laid down his dessert spoon and wiped his mouth with a napkin. “And now perhaps you could explain what I’ve done to deserve it?”
Mata looked hurt. “Can’t old friends have lunch together?”
“They can. But they can do it more cheaply.”
Mata laughed. The Maison Dorée was one of the most expensive restaurants in the city, and it was filled with men and women whose presence was evidence of its elevated status. A few tables away he could see the civil governor Ossorio y Gallardo chatting to some of his officials. Other customers included the Marquis of Comillas, the poet Joan Maragall, who was talking to Cambó and Prat de la Riba from the Lliga. In the far corner he saw Emiliano Iglesias, the editor of the Radical Party paper El Progreso. With Lerroux still in exile, Iglesias was acting as party leader, and Mata was not at all surprised to find him sharing his table with two high-ranking army officers.
Lerroux had often eaten at the Maison before his exile, in equally exalted company, and Mata had often wondered what his followers from the Raval slums would have said if they had seen the Emperor of the Parallel dining out with such men. No doubt Lerroux would have come up with some silver-tongued excuse, as he usually did for almost everything. Mata knew that most of La Maison’s clientele was wealthier than he was, but he liked to come here at lunchtime when prices were cheaper. It was amusing to see the leaders of political factions that normally loathed each other united by a common taste for fine French cooking, and he knew how much Quintana liked it, too.
They had spent most of the lunch talking about politics and exchanging literary gossip. Quintana was an occasional contributor to his journal and wrote surprisingly good poems, which tended to revolve around the same themes of mortality, human frailty, and the decay of the flesh.
“I was hoping to pick your brains,” Mata admitted. “So I thought I’d combine business with pleasure.”
“What business?” Quintana asked.
“The Raval Monster.”
“Thank you for waiting till dessert was over. Very well. But I don’t want to be quoted or have my name mentioned in La Veu.”
“It’s an informal conversation,” Mata reassured him as the waiter came over to take their plates. Mata ordered two coffees with brandy and cream and waited till he had gone. “Bravo Portillo thinks these murders were committed by a lunatic,” he said. “Do you?”
“No sane person would murder people like that. It’s not just the bites. It’s the lack of blood. In the first case, the body might have bled out, lying in the water so long. But not the second. His blood was taken. I mean there was almost nothing left.”
“Surely you don’t think it was some kind of vampire or werewolf?” Mata asked incredulously.
“Hardly,” Quintana replied. “Not in the supernatural sense, anyway. But there are human monsters, too. There was a case in France a few years ago at the end of the century—a vagabond named Vacher who killed people at random and mutilated their bodies. It was one of Lacassagne’s early cases. Vacher mostly killed shepherds—girls and boys. He raped them and he also bit them and drank their blood.”
“Charming.”
“There was another maniac in France in the time of the revolution. A cannibal in the Pyrenees who also killed shepherds. He used to eat parts of his victims. But that isn’t what’s happened here. The teeth-marks on these bodies show large incisors. The kind you might find on a dog or a wolf. Except that dogs and wolves don’t tie up their victims. And the second one—the anarchist Tosets—smelled of chloroform.”
The waiter returned carrying their coffees and they fell silent as he laid them on the table. Mata remembered what Esperanza Claramunt had told him about Pau Tosets’s lack of resistance during his kidnapping. “So he was subdued first?” he asked.
“Probably. And maybe the other one, too. But he’d been in the water too long to tell.”
Mata skimmed off the cream with his teaspoon. “A beast that drinks the blood of anarchists and uses chloroform to subdue them? That’s an unusual combination.”
“It is,” Quintana agreed. “And frankly, I don’t think our police can deal with it.”
“Who can?” Mata asked. “Mr. Arrow?”
Quintana shook his head. “El Mister just wants to pick up his final payment and go home. But there is someone who might be able to help. An Irish detective. I watched him examine one of the bodies from the Bar la Luna—the foreigner. Very thorough and professional.”
“Why would an Irish detective be interested in a bombing in Barcelona?”
“The foreigner was an Englishman. His widow sent the Irishman to identify the body. I had the feeling he was here for some other reason, but he didn’t say what it was. The question is why are you so interested in two murdered anarchists?”
Mata did not feel inclined to reveal his suspicions of state collusion in the two murders, and he was no longer sure how to reconcile this possibility with what Quintana had just told him. “It’s a curious case. And the Monster does sell papers.”
“Maybe so. But leave me out of it—at least for now.”
Mata agreed. He was just about to pay the bill when Emiliano Iglesias came over to their table.
“Good afternoon Mata!” he said. “I couldn’t help noticing Señor Quintana. Can I draw any conclusions from your presence?”
“None,” Quintana said. “But that probably won’t stop you from trying.”
“It won’t.” Iglesias grinned. Mata w
ondered how long it took him to maintain his wavy black mane of hair and the points of his mustache that reached upward as though they were held up by invisible strings. “It’s just that you wouldn’t talk to my man last week and yet here you are having lunch with La Veu.”
“I’m having lunch with my friend—as you are with yours,” Quintana nodded in the direction of the two army officers, who were standing near the door.
Iglesias’s smile looked slightly frozen. “Two murders in a fortnight, Mata. And now a defenceless cretin has disappeared from the streets. I would have thought it’s in the interests of the whole city to find out the truth about this Monster, wouldn’t you?”
“You seem to have already made up your mind about him,” Mata replied. “It was your newspaper that called him the Monster. And that cartoon—the vampire with the dog collar—is that ‘the truth?’ ”
“There are rumors…”
“Rumors are not my concern,” Mata said. “And they shouldn’t be the concern of any serious journalist.”
Iglesias was not smiling now, and he gave a little bow and returned to his army friends.
“I don’t think he appreciated the lecture,” Quintana said.
“And I don’t appreciate him,” Mata said. “He’s as bad as Lerroux.”
“Who may be returning from exile soon, from what I hear. Argentina didn’t suit him.”
“I didn’t think it would,” Mata said. “There aren’t enough people to worship him in the Pampas. He must be lonely.”
* * *
Mata paid the bill and the two of them walked out into the Plaza Catalunya. On the other side of the square Mata saw the line of soldiers from the Third Mixed Brigade streaming down the Calle Pelayo and onto the Ramblas. It was the third day since the mobilization for Morocco, and the latest contingent of soldiers was the largest yet. Already it seemed to stretch the entire length of the Ramblas, and once again the soldiers were accompanied by members of their own families, despite the efforts of their officers to shoo them away. Mata knew his father-in-law would be pleased, but he felt only desolation and foreboding at the sight of Catalans marching off to fight another Spanish war that Spain was bound to lose.
