A Dead Man in Barcelona

by Michael Pearce

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘I was hoping you might be able to tell me that.’

  The Señora did not reply for quite a long time. Then she said, ‘I don’t know that I can tell you that. Or would want to. These things are, as you say, private. And perhaps it is best if they remain so.’

  ‘I have no wish to pry. But if they are at all to do with his death, is it not right that they should be told?’

  ‘I do not know. Is there to be no end to the damage?’

  She was silent again for a moment and then she said, ‘You spoke of rightness, and you think of truth and of justice. But you think of it in a cold English way. No, I am not fair. I do not know you, nor the way you think. And ’Attersley – well, whatever ’Attersley may be, he is not cold. He is hot that justice should be done to my husband. But there are different sorts of justice. There is the cold, English sort but there is also a justice to feeling, and I do not know what, in the end, is the sort of justice my husband would have wanted. He was English, of course: but he was also –’ she smiled secretly to herself – ‘a man of feeling. “Why,” I said to him once, “you are almost an Arab!” “I am, I am,” he said. “And that is why you married me.”

  ‘And it was true. When I first knew him he seemed to me so cold, so stiff, so English. Always calculating. That was how he struck me. Always in control of himself so that he could control others. So unfeeling. But then, suddenly, the feeling would break out, quite unexpectedly, over all sorts of things, trifles, even, and sweep you away. and I loved him for it. Do you understand me, Mademoiselle?’ she appealed to Chantale.

  ‘I think I do.’

  ‘An Arab woman is passionate and responds to passion. Is that not so?’

  Chantale laughed. ‘I think it is. But perhaps it is so of all women. But I am sure you are right that we do not always read our men. Sometimes we expect passion and it is not there.’

  Seymour was not entirely happy about this.

  ‘And sometimes we don’t expect it but then it suddenly erupts and we are bowled over by it!’

  ‘Exactly so!’ said Señora Lockhart, delighted. ‘“Bowled over”. That is a good way of putting it. He would have liked that. But that, you see, was how he was. About all sorts of things. The Catalonians! The Algerians! The Moroccans – to make war on them seemed a terrible thing to him, and to use the Catalonians to do it –’

  ‘Señora,’ said Seymour, ‘forgive me, but you are slipping away. These things are public, but were there not private things, too, that engaged his feelings?’

  She gave him a long, appraising look, as if he needed to be weighed up before she would tell him anything.

  ‘He was a man of feeling, as I have told you. He felt strongly, yes. And sometimes he felt strongly about people.’

  ‘Particular people?’

  ‘People are always particular.’

  ‘You are trying to slip away again, Señora.’

  She laughed.

  ‘Perhaps I am,’ she admitted. ‘But, you see, sometimes with his strong, erratic feelings he hurt people. Unjustly. And why should I add to that injustice? There is, as I said before, a justice to feeling as there is to fact.’

  ‘Can you help me a little more with that justice to feeling?’

  ‘I don’t think I can. This is not something that can be approached in a cold, objective, English way. It is, I think, something you have to be an Arab to understand.’

  As they were going down the steps into the courtyard, they met a man coming up.

  ‘Why, Abou!’ cried Señora Lockhart. ‘Where have you been? I expected you an hour ago! This is my brother,’ she said to Seymour and Chantale, ‘and he is always late.’

  ‘I am sorry, I am sorry. They caught me just as I was leaving the office and said that something had come through about that spoiled cargo.’

  ‘Abou has been helping me on the business side,’ said Señora Lockhart, ‘ever since –’

  ‘You don’t need help, really,’ said Abou.

  ‘Not now, perhaps,’ said Señora Lockhart, ‘but at first –’ ‘I couldn’t leave you on your own,’ said Abou. ‘It wouldn’t be right. What is a brother for?’

  ‘He had come over from Algiers just before,’ said Señora Lockhart. ‘Just for a short visit. But then he decided to stay.’

  ‘I couldn’t do anything else, could I? Not with you left alone.’

  ‘Ah, family, family!’ said Señora Lockhart. She put her hand on her brother’s arm. ‘But I am glad you did stay,’ she said softly.

  ‘And now she wants to get rid of me!’

  ‘No, no!’ laughed Señora Lockhart.

  ‘Send me back to Algiers.’

  ‘You are needed there, too. And, anyway, you suggested it. We agreed to divide the management,’ she said to Seymour. ‘He would look after the marine side while I concentrated on the financial side.’

  ‘It is better like that,’ Abou said. ‘It is harder to accept a woman in Algeria than it is in Spain.’

  ‘This is Señor Seymour,’ said Señora Lockhart. ‘He is a policeman. And he has come out from London to look into Lockhart’s death.’

  ‘Really?’ said Abou, surprised. ‘From England?’ Then he laughed. ‘England doesn’t think the Spanish police are up to it?’

  ‘No, no –’

  ‘Nor do I,’ he said drily. ‘Well, I hope you get somewhere. It hangs over us, it hangs over us. Among my people these things cannot be left. They have to be resolved, one way or another. I wish you success.’

  He shook hands and started off up the stairs. As he did so he appeared to register, for the first time, Chantale’s presence.

  ‘Señora! I beg your pardon.’

  He gave her a little, quick, formal, Spanish bow.

  ‘Mademoiselle de Lissac,’ said Señora Lockhart.

  ‘A thousand pardons, Mademoiselle.’

  He seemed to see her properly for the first time. And then there was the start back that Seymour had become used to.

  ‘Mademoiselle . . .’ he said, slightly puzzled, looking at his sister.

  ‘Mademoiselle de Lissac is from Tangier,’ she said.

  ‘Ah! You are, perhaps,’ he said hesitantly, ‘a friend of Señor Lockhart’s?’

  ‘No,’ said Señora Lockhart firmly.

  Chapter Six

  To his surprise, that afternoon he saw someone he recognized at the Pension Francia. It was Nina, the anarchist schoolteacher. At first he thought he must be mistaken. Wasn’t this term-time and wouldn’t Nina have been at her school on the other side of Spain? But, no, it definitely was her, and Chantale confirmed it.

  She was with an older lady and they were standing at the other end of the corridor. A moment later they disappeared into a room.

  He hesitated, and then went along the corridor. The door of the room was open and he looked inside. It led into a small sitting room, one reserved for the use of guests. He hesitated again and then went in.

  Nina and the older lady were sitting together on a sofa. They obviously knew each other well: but there was clearly a tension between them. It was almost as if Nina was glowering at the other woman. Certainly the relationship seemed prickly, but then, thought Seymour, that could well have been true of most of Nina’s relationships with people.

  She looked up in surprise when he and Chantale came in and gave them, if not, perhaps, a welcoming smile, at least an indication of recognition.

  ‘Señor –’

  ‘Señorita!’

  ‘And Señora!’ said Nina, looking at Chantale. Wrongly, because Chantale was still a señorita; unless being slightly older than Nina entitled her to extra respect.

  She turned to the woman sitting beside her. ‘These are friends who came to the school.’

  ‘Ah, yes?’ said the lady.

  ‘And this is my mother.’

  ‘Your mother?’ said Seymour, slightly surprised; slightly surprised, in fact, that Nina had a mother, or was prepared to acknowledge one. But if she wa
s her mother that probably accounted for the tension.

  ‘Si. I am visiting her.’

  ‘I expect you don’t often get a chance to see your daughter, Señora, with her living in Barcelona.’

  ‘Once or twice a year,’ said the woman. ‘Which is not nearly enough.’

  Nina gave a sort of petulant shrug.

  ‘And you, Señor?’ said the mother. ‘You are not from Spain, I think?’

  ‘From England,’ said Nina. ‘He is a policeman. He has come out to investigate Lockhart’s death.’

  Her mother seemed to flinch.

  ‘My mother knew Lockhart,’ said Nina.

  ‘Did you, Señora?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, unwillingly. ‘Yes. I have known him for a long time. Ever since he came over to Spain, in fact. From when he first came to Gibraltar.’

  ‘He was very good to my mother when my father died,’ said Nina.

  ‘Yes,’ said her mother; again, almost reluctantly.

  ‘My father was in the Spanish Customs Office. Here in Gibraltar. And Lockhart and he were great friends.’

  ‘Yes,’ said her mother.

  ‘It was hard for her when my father died. Especially at first, before the pension came through. He paid the rent, and other things.’

  ‘Yes,’ said her mother. ‘He was always generous in that way.’

  ‘And took an interest in me as I grew up. He was a sort of – godfather? Is that the right word?’

  ‘Yes, I think so,’ said Seymour.

  ‘He was the only one who was kind to me at the convent.’

  ‘Nina!’ protested her mother. ‘That is not true!’

  ‘It is!’ said Nina fiercely. ‘The nuns were horrible old women, and I hated them!’

  ‘Nina –’

  ‘Well, it’s true!’ Nina insisted. ‘They used to beat me.’

  ‘Nina –’

  ‘They liked it, I think.’

  ‘Nina, that is not true. They may have seemed hard, been a little hard to you, but you were unruly and perhaps sometimes you deserved it.’

  ‘I always said that when I grew up, I would fight them,’ said Nina. ‘And I have.’

  Her mother gave a little, despairing shrug. ‘It is wrong to bear hatred in your heart, Nina.’

  ‘It is better to bear hatred than to let them do what they want with you!’

  Her mother shrugged again, but looked sad. This was probably familiar ground to her.

  ‘And, perhaps your school, as opposed to their school, was a way of fighting back?’ suggested Seymour.

  Nina beamed.

  ‘That is precisely so!’ she said.

  ‘And was that why Lockhart helped the school? Gave money to start it and support it?’

  ‘Yes, for me, yes. And because he wanted children to be free.’

  ‘He should have wanted them to be good,’ said her mother.

  ‘Good, yes, perhaps,’ said Nina. ‘But free first!’

  ‘Anyway, it was right that he came to see you at the convent,’ said her mother.

  ‘It was, yes. Otherwise I think I might have died.’

  ‘Nina –’

  ‘Killed myself.’

  ‘Nina, Nina! That would be a sin!’

  ‘I wanted to sometimes. There was no escape. Either from them or from the place. I felt suffocated. For years I seemed to live in endless darkness.’

  ‘It was, perhaps, a mistake to send you to that one,’ her mother admitted. ‘I should have chosen another. Where it was less harsh. But at the time –’

  Nina put her hand on her mother’s arm.

  ‘I understand that,’ she said, with awkward tenderness, ‘but –’

  ‘I am glad that at any rate he came to see you.’

  ‘He was a candle in the darkness,’ said Nina. ‘The only ray of light!’

  Her mother shook her head.

  ‘It was very good of him,’ she said. ‘But sometimes I wish he had not.’

  Seymour went out early the next morning to sniff the sea. The smell was a different one from that of the murky waters of the East End docks; he never felt inclined to go down in the morning and sniff those! They were dirty and oily and acidic, the tang so strong some days as to make you retch. That was when the fog lay heavily over London, when the smells of the docks were reinforced by the fumes rising from the old, closed courts of the east, the working, end of the city, where small workshops fed smoke into the thick, choking air that he had known from childhood.

  Gibraltar was not like that. It opened out at once into the blue, glittering wide of the bay and the air came in straight from the open sea. In front of him the long arm of the Old Mole curled round with just a few small boats this side of it. Behind him were the tall, thin buildings of the Old Town, with its narrow streets rising up the hill to the crenellations of the ancient Moorish castle. And, over to the side, stretching away into the far distance, were the peaks and crests of the mountains of Andalusia.

  Everywhere there was warmth and light. The sun, only just becoming hot on his face, was burning the last early morning mists off the sea. The air, which later would become hot, and possibly unpleasantly so, still felt fresh in his face. He breathed deep.

  Chantale would like this, he thought. He must bring her here tomorrow morning. She would enjoy the continuation of freshness and warmth, which would remind her of Tangier, and respond to the feeling of openness which came from the great bay opening up with the sea and escaping from the hills closing in behind.

  And then a second thought struck him, the old, nagging doubt: could he ask her to exchange this – the sun and warmth and light – for the constricted, choking darkness of London’s dockland? Was it fair? Was it right?

  Seymour had come down to the sea front so early because he was reckoning to spend the whole day making his nominal inspection of the stores. With luck that would be enough to establish a reason for his being in Spain and divert attention from the real purpose of his inquiries.

  He met McPhail, still the Duty Officer, at the guardroom and walked over with him to the stores.

  ‘Are you finding the Francia to your taste, sir?’ the midshipman said, with a knowing smile.

  The reason for the knowing smile was soon apparent. Word had got round that Seymour had Chantale with him. As he went into the stores he heard the petty officer’s voice at the far end. For a moment he was obscured by the shelving and Ferry did not see him.

  ‘And he’s brought his bird with him!’

  ‘Well, what’s wrong with that?’ asked another voice. ‘Wouldn’t you do the same?’

  ‘Yes, but he’s on duty, like. How did he manage that? Fly bastard, isn’t he? I wonder who’s paying?’

  ‘Not him, I don’t suppose. What’s she like?’

  ‘A bit of all right. I wouldn’t mind having a quiet evening walk along the Mole with her myself!’

  ‘What would Bella say to that?’

  ‘Bella would never know!’

  ‘How do you know he’s brought his bird with him?’ challenged another voice.

  ‘I saw them at the Francia.’

  ‘Well, that’s the place to stay, isn’t it, if you’re like that.’

  ‘Your fame precedes you, sir,’ murmured McPhail.

  ‘Just as it should!’ said the Admiral, over a drink at lunch in the wardroom. He gave Seymour one of the knowing looks. ‘Got your girlfriend with you, I gather?’

  It didn’t take long for the news to get around, thought Seymour. He began to wonder if it had, after all, been such a good idea to bring Chantale over. Suppose word got back to London?

  ‘Ah, I think you’re thinking of Mademoiselle de Lissac,’ he said. ‘She’s assisting me at this end.’

  ‘Good-looker, I hear. You obviously know how to pick them.’

  ‘Purely for their Intelligence skills,’ said Seymour, hoping that that would get around, too.

  ‘Are we going to have a chance of seeing your assistant, sir?’ asked McPhail, as he was taking
Seymour back to the stores, after lunch.

  ‘Maybe. But she’s busy pursuing her own line of inquiries.’

  ‘That would be, I understand,’ said McPhail hesitantly, ‘in the way of Intelligence?’

  ‘Yes. She’s Intelligence, I’m policing. I think there’s a question of broadening the inquiry.’

  * * *

  ‘Jesus!’ he heard Ferry say. ‘They’ve brought bloody Intelligence in as well?’

  ‘Here, I don’t like the sound of this. It sounds a bit bigger than we thought.’

  ‘What the hell’s Intelligence got to do with this?’ said Ferry’s worried voice. ‘Just how deep are they going?’

  Not very deep, if Seymour’s own inquiries were anything to go by. He was never at his best on this kind of thing. His mind glazed over as he went from one section of the stores to another, and seized up completely when he was confronted with that mysterious thing, ‘the Books’.

  ‘He don’t look happy!’ he heard someone whisper to Ferry.

  ‘Jesus!’

  Even McPhail was impressed.

  ‘Are you on to something, sir?’

  ‘Just a few questions in my mind, that’s all.’

  Like, when could he decently stop for a drink?

  ‘You’ve got to remember, sir,’ said McPhail, already beginning to see a need to come to the defence of his men, ‘that the Navy is not quite the same as a shore establishment. We’ve got our own ways of doing things.’

  ‘Yes, I see that,’ said Seymour.

  It was a neutral, fobbing-off remark, and he intended nothing by it; but it had a disconcerting effect in the stores generally.

  ‘You’re going to have to smarten up your act, Ferry,’ Seymour heard the midshipman say.

  A little later Ferry approached Seymour.

  ‘Of course, things may not be quite shipshape, sir. The fact is, there’s a lot of pilfering when you’re on shore. These bloody natives!’

  ‘The Gibraltarese?’

  ‘That’s right. Bloody get their hands on anything. You’ve got to watch them like a hawk. And that, though I say it myself, sir, is what I do. Keep my eyes skinned all the time. Even come here after dark occasionally, when I’m not really on watch. Just to see nobody’s breaking in. Because that’s what they do, sir, all the time. Unless you’re keeping a good lookout.’