Olura

by Geoffrey Household

  My duty to resign would, however, be plain. Marriage to Olura, difficult in any case since I had only my professional achievement to set against her money, became absolutely impossible. There would be nothing for it, after serving my sentence, but to hunt for the compound nouns of primitive man among Mgwana’s mangrove swamps.

  After a couple of unpleasant weeks—which I could not resent for I was caged and nourished as good-naturedly as some rare acquisition in a zoo—I came up before the Police Magistrate for my third interrogation. It was at once clear that the worst had happened. So long as Livetti was believed to have been killed on the road or the beach and so long as there was no conclusive proof that Olura and I had disposed of the body, I was only No I suspect and far from convicted. But now they knew that Livetti, dead or alive, had been at the Hostal de las Olas. Obviously the police had hammered away at Olura’s relations with him, whatever the devil they were, and got a full confession out of her.

  In the light of the new evidence the magistrate questioned me for half an hour on London Anarchists, Prebendary Flanders and assassination theory. Had I met Mr Mgwana and Miss Manoli before this holiday? No, I hadn’t. Had I been employed by Mgwana or by any public or private security agency? No, I hadn’t. Then why did I interfere? Because a fellow-countrywoman in trouble appealed to me. If I did not kill Alberto Livetti, why did I get rid of his body? To oblige Mr Mgwana. At least I could answer that one without involving Olura. I pleaded a mistaken and irresponsible sense of public duty.

  My interrogator nodded to the guard who stood at the door. A tawny little Spaniard with Arab features and lank, black hair was led in and made to sit down opposite me. Asked if I knew him, I replied that I had a vague impression I had seen his face before but could not remember where or when; he might, for example, be a waiter or a hairdresser’s assistant.

  I felt sorry for him. Much as I love Spain I cannot deny that the treatment an offender receives from the police depends on his education and social class. This one looked helpless and guilty and the worse for wear. I could not distinguish any weals or bruises, but he faintly reminded me of a boxer efficiently patched up by his seconds. Also he walked clumsily, with his legs far apart.

  When he had mumbled sulkily that he recognised me, that I was someone they all called Don Felipe who spoke Basque and stayed in the Hostal, the magistrate told me that his name was Araña and asked what I knew of him.

  At last I could answer with relish. I explained how the Deighton-Flagg woman had been warned by an anonymous telephone call that News was likely to break in the Hostal, and that she should talk to Araña if she wanted inside information; and how I had thought that Arizmendi, the sympathetic old waiter employed on temporary security duties, might be Araña. Then Arizmendi had told me that he was a gardener and odd-job man.

  The magistrate looked through the file of depositions on his desk and nodded approvingly. I should think it was about the first time that somebody’s story had exactly confirmed somebody else’s. He turned ferociously on this poor little bastard who had unwittingly landed himself in a case of sinister importance by taking a bribe of a few hundred pesetas.

  ‘Araña, who paid you to unlock the shaft and put a ladder in it?’

  ‘I have told you,’ Araña whined. ‘A man in a café.’

  It was a professional whine which destroyed all confidence in his word. I should think he was at least half gipsy.

  ‘What excuse did he give you?’

  ‘The English lady’s lover wanted to visit her—the English lady who was staying with a black man.’

  ‘You said on another occasion that it was the English lady who gave you the money.’

  ‘What language did you speak?’ I interrupted.

  My impertinence seemed to be taken as fair comment. I remembered later that when witnesses are confronted with each other, the police magistrate is only too satisfied if they start a row.

  ‘Christian! Christian!’ he exclaimed.

  ‘The lady does not speak a word of what you call Christian,’ the magistrate said coldly.

  ‘I do not know what you want from me,’ Araña complained. ‘I will say whatever you like.’

  A man in a café. It is such an unsatisfactory answer from a policeman’s point of view. Every thief, crook and receiver must try it. Guv, it was a man in a café who gave me the crown jewels. I swear I’d never seen him before! Yet I suspected that this time it could well be the truth. If Vigny was the man who had brought Livetti and the ladder together, he certainly would not have approached Araña in person. He didn’t speak Christian either. And thought it a damned sight less!

  When Araña had been removed, the magistrate asked me in a much more friendly tone:

  ‘What is your own explanation of this murder?’

  ‘I am sure that Livetti came to the Hostal because he had been paid to blackmail or compromise Miss Manoli and Mr Mgwana, but by whom he was killed or why I do not know.’

  ‘Miss Manoli states that he had a camera slung round his neck. If he did, where is it?’

  ‘Under a stone to the right of the ford a hundred metres below the spring of Iturrioz. The Civil Guard at Matquiña will tell you where Iturrioz is.’

  So direct an answer seemed to take him aback. He was human enough to smile and then returned to business.

  ‘Miss Manoli never told you that she knew Livetti?’

  I admitted that she had not. I thought it wise not to lie, even if I deepened for a moment the cloud of suspicion around Olura. From my experience of her, I knew that once she had decided to tell the truth she would tell all of it.

  ‘Did she show any sign of recognition?’

  I said that we were all so revolted that I wouldn’t have noticed it if she had.

  ‘If you do not believe that Miss Manoli invited Livetti to the Hostal,’ he said, ‘you must admit that the fact that they knew each other is a most improbable coincidence.’

  ‘She did not invite him. She was not in any way responsible for his arrival,’ I answered. ‘I saw her surprise and horror, and it was genuine. I also reject coincidence. A possible theory is that Livetti’s death was directly due to the fact that the persons who tried to compromise Mr Mgwana found out too late that she would recognise him.’

  He did not reply to that, and changed the course of questioning to suspicions which I found far more satisfactory.

  ‘You knew two Frenchmen, named Vigny and des Aunes?’

  ‘As hotel acquaintances, yes.’

  ‘They left the Hostal the morning before Mr Mgwana arrived. Did they appear to you afraid?’

  They did not. But the more difficulties I could create for them, the better. So, remembering Vigny’s impatience about the lunch hour, I said they seemed nervous and on edge.

  ‘The rooms occupied by these two gentlemen also had bathroom windows opening on the central shaft?’

  I replied that I did not know the lay-out of the hotel well enough. They had two cheaper rooms which did not face the sea, but it was probable that the bathrooms were on the shaft.

  ‘Do you know anything of the past of M. des Aunes?’

  I saw no reason to give away Gonzalez who might well be censured for telling me as much as he did while he was still playing with the idea that I might be Mgwana’s bodyguard. So I said I knew nothing.

  ‘He is General Sauche.’

  ‘How lamentable!’ I exclaimed—which didn’t commit me to anything.

  ‘When you and Miss Manoli left the Hostal on the 22nd July with Mr Mgwana and Lieutenant Gonzalez, you believed that Vigny and another man deliberately followed you?’

  ‘I am sure they did. One of them had already telephoned Mr Mgwana to say he knew we had the body.’

  ‘That cannot be proved. If you are suggesting that these Frenchmen killed Livetti, what motive do you ascribe to them?’

  ‘I have told you. To compromise Mr Mgwana.’

  ‘But a dead man cannot take photographs.’

  It was no good saying th
at a corpse would be more compromising still. At once we came up against the good old argument that no one would risk murder for such a doubtful object.

  ‘You have stated,’ he went on, ‘that the admiration of Miss Manoli and her Group for Mr Mgwana was quite genuine.’

  I repeated that of course it was, and begged him not to bother Scotland Yard which was obviously prejudiced against such damned nuisances, but to ask anyone in the London Embassy who understood British politics.

  ‘Would you agree that General Sauche and any organisation of his would be bitterly opposed to the ideals of this Group?’

  ‘Yes, they would,’ I replied much too eagerly.

  ‘Then suppose we consider General Sauche, not Mr Mgwana, as Livetti’s objective?’

  ‘Sauche was no longer there.’

  ‘No. Because he had news of the plot and left in a hurry.’

  This was a nightmare. In my effort to head him off the supposed attempt on Mgwana I had nearly agreed that Mgwana might have been plotting the assassination of General Sauche, presumably with Olura’s complicity; and I could not help seeing that Sauche was a far more convincing objective.

  ‘Your Worship is pleased to ask my opinion,’ I said, ‘but in your trade as well as mine an opinion without evidence is worthless. What were Livetti’s movements? Who paid him to visit Spain? What was he doing here?’

  The Police Magistrate was easily frank about that. No mystery at all! Levetti had been shadowing—like Lieutenant Gonzalez—that newsworthy Teutonic princeling whose dubious divorces from equally newsworthy wives had confused the entries in the studbook. Who had kidnapped whose babies from which was more than I could sort out, though doubtless clear to every female reader of the popular press, avid for still more photographs of bikinis wet with maternal tears. No wonder Livetti was on the spot! And all this at Zarauz where Sauche had rented a villa and acquired enough friends for a party!

  ‘But the general could have known Livetti!’ I exclaimed.

  ‘He did, and was pleased to be recognised. The camera of even a Livetti is proof that one is not forgotten by the public.’

  ‘But then that is the end of it!’

  ‘Is it, Don Felipe? You think so?’ he replied, for the first time using the polite form of address. ‘I suggest to you that if Mr Mgwana wished to rid the French and himself of General Sauche, he would choose an assassin who was known to the general and had access to him at any time.’

  What I could do to retrieve the situation I did. I said that assuming Mgwana had killed Livetti because he knew too much I couldn’t see why he should put the body through Miss Manoli’s window. As for the complicity of her precious Group, I doubted if they had ever heard of the Alliance des Blancs, or the Alliance of them.

  That was not true, since I knew very well that at least Vigny did consider Olura and her influence important. It looked as if he and Sauche had been clever enough to drop a hint to their protectors in high quarters that it was alarm which made them leave the hotel when they did.

  ‘I have another suggestion for you,’ said the Police Magistrate. ‘Livetti was Miss Manoli’s lover. He climbed in through the bathroom window and in a fit of jealousy you killed him.’

  By this time I was exasperated. I retorted that if I killed Livetti it was not likely that Mr Mgwana would be my accomplice and swear he had done it himself, and I added that I was perfectly willing to confess to a crime of passion if that was what he wanted, since it would carry a shorter sentence than whatever the hell I was supposed to have done.

  To my utter astonishment he stood up, smiled, shook my hand and told me I would be released that evening on condition I left Spain immediately.

  I could only murmur idiotically that I hadn’t had a chance to pay my hotel bill.

  ‘That will be done for you. And you will be escorted to the North Express tonight.’

  He read me a lecture on the disastrous results of impulsive action, saying that I should not allow the Spanish ardour which I had so graciously assimilated to overcome my British phlegm. Since, however, I had in fact assisted in averting a scandal of unknown proportions, the authorities were not ungrateful. He hoped that my affection and respect for his country would be in no way affected by this unfortunate incident, and that I would for the time being preserve discretion.

  Discreetly, by a plain-clothes agent who looked like a high civil servant’s valet, I was put into a first-class sleeper on the North Express. Discreetly, next morning, August 19th, I got out at Bayonne. I do not consider my action chivalrous, praiseworthy or even impetuous. It was obviously Olura’s confession which had released me, and the Lord only knew what else she had said or how deeply she had incriminated herself. In England I could do nothing whatever for her; but on my own familiar ground of Vizcaya I could at least hover between sea and mountain, inhibited as a guardian angel, yet ready to influence events, possibly able to collect evidence.

  I could not know that you had flown out from London to be with her. Even if I had known, it would have made no difference. You were only a name implanted in Olura’s conversation. Her affection was clear; you as its object were not. Perhaps you should have been. But lovers are impatient when one or the other describes beings essential to a past which is not shared. The present is so much more important. If we are immortal, how bored we shall all be with each other’s reminiscences for the first few hundred years of eternity!

  I changed what remained of my travellers’ cheques and bought pesetas. I had also a reserve of cash which would be enough for weeks of simple living. I had wired for it as soon as Olura moved to Maya and I saw that of all times in my life this was the one when I should least repent extravagance. Fortunately the money arrived just before our attempted escape and my arrest.

  I bought a bottle of black hair dye, a cheap coat, a gaudy pullover and sturdy blue cotton trousers. My outfit was all too new and needed to be walked in and slept in for several days; but then I should look like any Basque peasant or working man on his way from one village to another. When I had changed, I left my baggage at Bayonne station and went off into my world—for, within reason, mine it was—with nothing but comb, razor, toothbrush, money and passport.

  Language offered no difficulty. I could pass as a Basque, who had taken some trouble with the purity of his speech. Imperfections in my French and Spanish could be explained, when I had to speak either language, by saying that I had come from the other side of the frontier.

  I took a train to St Jean Pied-de-Port, hoping that there I could get a line on how to cross the frontier illegally. I knew that the regular routes were farther east, over the main massif of the Pyrenees and down into Navarra or Aragon. But since I should have to walk—the Spanish habit of checking travellers’ papers made public transport dangerous—I did not want to hit Spain at a point so far from Vizcaya.

  I sat around in the cheap bistros and cafés, watching and waiting. A start had to be made somewhere, but I was fearful of approaching the wrong man. St Jean was a bad choice, too full of tourists and cars, too empty of the simple dishonesties. I wanted a village, yet not a village which was so close to the frontier that my presence could arouse suspicion.

  I walked out along the road to Lecumberry, attracted by a bridle path shown on my map; but I felt a fool. Where was a Spanish Basque walking to and why? And that I gave the impression of a Spanish Basque was far too certain. My boina—an old possession—was much more luxuriant than the French béret, and my clothes, as I began to realise, were more like those of a Vizcayan fisherman on his day off than of the evenly dressed bourgeois on the French side of the frontier.

  Giving up that bridle path and all sense of being a competent adventurer, I turned back towards St Jean. Obviously morale had to be restored, so I dropped into a dark roadside café for half a litre of whatever red poison they sold. Luck at last was with me. Arguing away in a corner—about the iniquity of mixing Algerian wine with good Béarn—were two middle-aged French Basques speaking Euzkadi. They seemed h
onest chaps, so I joined them. After confidence had been established, I told my story. I came from Eibar and had lost my passport. My mother was critically ill and I had to get home without delays and consuls and red tape.

  A lot of good that was! One of them offered to drive me straight to the frontier post at Arnéguy where there was a friendly sergeant on the Spanish side who was his brother-in-law. He might look the other way or he might not. But he would surely allow me to telephone Eibar and prove my identity.

  I thanked him warmly. At the same time I may have looked a little hesitant. The other man slapped his kind and guileless companion on the back and winked at me.

  ‘Don’t you cross here, friend!’ he said.

  He was a typical product of the borderlands—thick-set, bluff, a trifle in wine, and with the nose of an Assyrian king. He was not a man to be easily deceived and would have made an admirable conspirator if only he could have kept his voice lower.

  ‘Why not?’ I asked.

  He explained that over the frontier, in the province of Guipuzcoa, the people were a priest-ridden, Carlist lot of bastards. They would not betray a known and honest smuggler; but any stranger trying to cross into Spain was liable to be taken for a republican of the reddest, and would get no help at all.

  His tone gave me a line on his own politics; and he did not care, in this or any other echoing café of freedom-loving France, who knew them.

  ‘We’re going to Mauléon,’ he said. ‘You come with us! Friends can’t talk with the frontier on top of them.’

  The three of us got into his ancient Citroen. His name was Iragui, and I gathered that he owned a small garage on the outskirts of Mauléon. Zubieta, his older, discreeter and more trustful friend, grew artichokes.

  On our way Iragui cross-questioned me loudly on my politics. I gave him a mixture of three parts Olura well shaken up with one of Paris Red Belt and a dash of Basque separatism. Lord help the psychology of lovers! There was I, mischievously and deliberately exploiting Olura, and suddenly brought up by a catch in my voice because I had created her too vividly. It passed as the generous indignation of an emotional socialist.