A Dead Man in Barcelona

by Michael Pearce

  They had met Hattersley on Las Ramblas.

  ‘Yes, he said, ‘I am switching a lot between the two just at the moment – between Gibraltar and Barcelona. I’m having a big argument with Spanish Customs, and British, too, but the Spanish are worse. They take up more time. But I’ll get there, I’ll get there.’

  He had suggested a coffee and taken them to a little place they had not discovered, where you sat outside and had a good view right along Las Ramblas. And it was there that Seymour had put it to him.

  ‘These two women,’ he had said, ‘have you any idea who they might be? The daughter, I think I might know; but the other?’

  ‘I couldn’t put a name to her,’ said Hattersley, ‘but I’ve heard the story. The wife of a high-up. On the judicial side, I think. But, you know, there are always these stories and, in fact, I have my doubts about this one.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Seymour.

  Hattersley hesitated.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘on the whole, in recent years at least, he’s not been that taken by Spanish women. By women, yes, but not Spanish women. Some people say it goes back to the one he had the child by. A difficult customer, apparently. Prickly, certainly. The trouble was, she was devout.’

  ‘I can see that might cause difficulties,’ said Seymour.

  ‘Well, yes. And why he got entangled with her in the first place! And she was married, too. Already, I mean. Well, of course, it didn’t make things easy for her and she certainly didn’t make things easy for him. Since I’ve known him, he’s tended to steer clear of Spanish women. I used to tease him about it. If you are going to have these affairs, I would say, why don’t you pick a beautiful Spanish woman? A Catalonian, for example, since you’re so fond of them. There are lots of lovely women in Catalonia.

  ‘“But they are all so virtuous!” he would say. “And religious!”

  ‘I think that came from his previous experience. “It just makes for a lot of trouble,” he said. Well, I don’t know much about it really. I’m a bit of a bachelor, confirmed, myself. But I’d noticed, you see, that although he was unfaithful to Leila, he always seemed to go for someone like her. That striking Arab look. A bit like you, yourself, if I may say so, Miss de Lissac. Lockhart would have fallen for you in the first five minutes.’

  ‘Well, thanks!’ said Chantale, laughing.

  ‘You may not think it, Miss de Lissac, but Leila Lockhart was quite like you when she was young. Shorter, yes, and smaller all round. But the face, the eyes, the dark hair, and something in the manner. Anyway,’ said Hattersley, becoming embarrassed, ‘he always used to fall for people like you. And Leila. He was faithful, you could say, in his own fashion.

  ‘I spoke to him about that, too. “Why do you always choose Arab women?” I asked him once. “Do I?” he said, surprised. “Yes, you do,” I said. He thought. And then he said, “Well –’ and I do not know whether he was serious or whether he was joking – “perhaps because it is piquantly transgressive.” “What?” I said. I was still a young man then and very innocent and I genuinely did not know what he meant. Of course, he knew that and I think he may well have been teasing me.

  ‘“Transgressive,” he said. “Crossing borders. Conventional ones, usually. Which pretend to be moral and are not. I think it is because I am an Englishman.”

  ‘Well, I knew then that he must be joking.

  ‘“No, no,” he said, “I’m not. My parents were very traditional and very strict and very English, even though my father came from Scotland. He was a soldier and had almost always been stationed abroad. In India, mostly. And there it was very bad form to take a native woman seriously. Sleep with them, yes, that was permissible. But marry one! No, no, quite out of the question. You would have been – what is the expression? Drummed out of the regiment.

  ‘“But it wasn’t out of the question for me,” Lockhart said. “In fact, it was very much in question. I was about fifteen at the time and all women seemed beautiful to me. Especially the Indian ones. I wanted them so badly, and once I almost fell in love with one. It was very serious. At least, it was for me. Perhaps not for her. But certainly for my father. He packed me off back to England and sent me to what he called a good school, which would bring me up to be like him. I’ve always had a thing about schools since. I’ve even started to put my money into one -one which would not bring children up to be like him. That’s Lockhart’s blow for humanity!

  ‘“You see, I didn’t want to be like him. I wanted to be different. I cut away as soon as I could and I went to Africa, to Arab Africa. Anything to get away from the stifling conventions my father wanted to confine me in. And there, of course, I fell in love again. With Leila. And decided to marry her.

  ‘“My father nearly went mad. Which, of course, made me even more determined. He threatened to cut me off. I said, ‘Thank God for that’ and stayed where I was and married her.

  ‘“So there you are. That’s the answer to your question. Why did I go for an Arab? To show, at least to show myself, that I had broken loose from my father and all he stood for. And just that act of doing something major that he didn’t approve of, that he had positively forbidden, gave me a great surge of freedom. Well, a surge of something or other. I thought it was freedom but it was probably sexual.

  ‘“So there you are: that is why I like my Leilas. And perhaps why, although I am at bottom faithful to her, I am always looking for new ones. Each time, it gives me that same thrill of energy. Of course, it doesn’t last, it never does. And then I go back to Leila.”

  ‘“You know, old man,” I said, “I find that a bit shocking.”

  ‘He laughed. “You know, I find it a bit shocking, too. Because if it is true, it means that my father has won after all. I can’t break loose. For, or against, I just can’t break free from his influence. The old bastard!”

  ‘Well, as I say, he was probably teasing me. And maybe he didn’t confine himself to Arab women as much as I have suggested. Come to think of it, that is certainly so. His favours were broadcast and not confined to women who looked like Leila. No, definitely not. So maybe I’m wrong to discount this story about the wife of the high-up. He would probably have enjoyed it. The higher up, the better.

  ‘But all the same there is something in what I said. He did have a strong preference for Leilas. So much so that we made a joke of it. Whenever we saw him with another one we would say, “Ah?, there’s a new Leila!”

  ‘And when we saw one without him, we would sometimes say, “Hello, where’s Lockhart?”

  Hattersley looked at Chantale.

  ‘So you see, Miss de Lissac, that could be what people who know Lockhart think when they see you. “Another Leila: where’s Lockhart?” Seeing you, they see him. That may be why they look at you in the way that you say they do. Where’s Lockhart? And perhaps they wonder, seeing you, if this is just another of his tricks. And if, perhaps, this is a signal that one day he will be coming back.’

  When Manuel had so suddenly backed off from making further inquiries, Seymour had thought that it might be because he had become afraid of where those inquiries might lead. Seymour had wondered for a moment if Manuel had been afraid that they must lead to Dolores.

  Could Dolores have been the woman who had talked to Enrico and persuaded him to take the food in to Lockhart? Seymour could certainly see her doing that. She had tried to get in to see him in the prison – she had, actually, succeeded in getting in to see him in the prison. She could be, he saw, despite her scattiness, a determined woman. When thwarted, she did not give up. And she might well have tried to get food in to him, in the same way as one takes fruit to someone in hospital. Yes, he could see her doing that, and working out who the relevant warder was, and finding out a way of intercepting him and working on him.

  But he could not see her wanting to poison him. Nothing that she had said to Seymour had made him think that she was anything other than genuinely in love with him.

  Could it be that she had been in love with him but tha
t something had happened to turn her against him? But, again, nothing that she had said had led him to think that. He went over in his mind all the conversations they had had and no, nothing in what she had said had even hinted at that. The reverse, if anything: poor, romantic Dolores seemed as stuck on Lockhart as she had ever been.

  But could she have given the warder something unknowingly? Not knowing that it was poisoned? Well, yes, she could. If she thought it was something which would help Lockhart, she would certainly have been ready with her services and she would certainly have carried it through.

  But equally certainly, probably even more certainly, if afterwards she had suspected what she had been used to do, he couldn’t see her letting it rest. He was convinced that her passion for Lockhart was genuine and, if she thought that she had been tricked into killing him, it would surely have come out. This was something on which she could not, would not, have remained silent.

  And, whatever else she might be, she did not seem to him stupid. She was intelligent enough to add two and two together. When she had known that Lockhart had been poisoned, she would, if she had had a role in it, have realized what she had done. No, she couldn’t have done it knowingly and, if she had done it unknowingly, she would not have been content to let it rest there. Dolores, he thought, could be ruled out.

  So if Manuel had backed off because he had been afraid of where his inquiries might lead, it was not on Dolores’ account. On someone else’s account, then? Manuel himself had said that the woman, whoever she was, had been merely a pawn, used by someone else. Who? Who else might Manuel have been shielding? Or, rather, the interests of what group of people might he have feared for?

  Chapter Nine

  When Seymour got back to the hotel, Chantale said, ‘Your friend has been here again.’

  ‘My friend?’

  ‘The Chief of Police.’

  ‘What did he want to see me about?’

  ‘He didn’t want to see you; he wanted to see Nina.’

  ‘Again?’

  ‘Can’t seem to keep away from her.’

  ‘Did he talk to her?’

  ‘Briefly. Very briefly. I think she sent him away with a flea in his ear.’

  Seymour looked out from the balcony. The school was winding up for the day.

  He went down.

  ‘You again!’ said Nina.

  ‘Me again,’ agreed Seymour.

  ‘I have nothing to say to you.’

  ‘Ah, but you have. About your father, for instance.’

  ‘My father?’ said Nina.

  ‘Lockhart was your father, of course.’

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘You visited him in the prison. As his daughter. The governor told me. And I had guessed it from other things.’

  ‘I begin to think,’ said Nina, ‘that it would be better to let my father rest in peace.’

  ‘I think other people are coming to that conclusion.’

  ‘Who?’ said Nina derisively. ‘The authorities?’

  ‘Leila.’

  ‘Leila?’ said Nina, surprised.

  ‘So I gather.’

  Nina needed to think about this.

  ‘If I were Leila,’ she said, after a moment, ‘I would never do that.’

  ‘I wonder if she thinks the same about you.’

  ‘Leila hates me,’ said Nina. ‘She would prefer me not to be here.’

  ‘Well, I can understand that.’

  ‘So can I, I suppose. She could not have a child, my mother could. My mother thinks we ought not to let her see us. It is too painful a reminder, she says. But I have to go there if I am to see my mother, and she doesn’t want to move from Gibraltar because her life has always been there: her house, her friends, such relatives as we have. She tries to keep out of Leila’s way.’

  ‘It is difficult, I can see that.’

  ‘My mother thought that Leila was afraid – afraid that my mother would one day take him back. Lockhart. Well, there is no chance of that now.’

  ‘Would you have wanted her to take your father back?’

  Nina needed to think again. She needed to think longer this time.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Half of me wanted him to be with us. But the other half of me said that he had never been with us, he had always lived apart. At the time that made me angry. I wanted a real father, like everyone else, not a father – at – a -distance. But it wouldn’t have worked. He wasn’t that kind of man. And perhaps my mother wasn’t really that kind of woman, she just liked to imagine that she was. And perhaps I am not that kind of daughter. I think, actually, I am certainly not that kind of daughter. I was always glad to see him, but we never got on for long.

  We would argue, quarrel. He thought I was too bitter. He thought I had been in Barcelona too long.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Seymour, ‘that was what I wanted to know more about.’

  ‘Me in Barcelona?’ said Nina incredulously.

  ‘You in Catalonia.’

  ‘Isn’t that the same thing?’

  ‘I think you could live in Barcelona for a long time and not be aware that you were also living in Catalonia.’

  ‘You would have to be blind!’

  ‘Aren’t many people blind?’

  ‘Why are you asking me about this?’ she demanded.

  ‘Because the first time I heard of you was when Hattersley told me about you and the coffins.’

  ‘Ah, the coffins!’ she said, laughing. ‘We wanted to make an impact.’

  ‘Well, you certainly made one. Not just on Hattersley but on the British Foreign Office. Not to mention the British Navy. And even the British police.’

  ‘Did we?’ said Nina, surprised. ‘In Barcelona we didn’t even make the newspapers. But then, we wouldn’t, would we?’

  ‘You were afraid that people would forget Tragic Week. The authorities were afraid that they would remember.’

  ‘Well, I’m glad,’ said Nina. ‘I’m glad that the ripples went so far.’

  ‘The thing is,’ said Seymour, ‘the people you were doing it with were Catalans.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Not anarchists.’

  ‘We were doing it for everybody that fell during Tragic Week. And plenty of those were anarchists, I can tell you!’

  ‘But the people you were doing it with were Catalans.’

  ‘It happened so, but –’

  Seymour shook his head. ‘I don’t think it was an accident that the people you were doing it with were Catalans. They were the ones who, in a way, it was all about. It was the conscription of Catalans for service in North Africa that sparked it off, that led, ultimately, to all the terrible things of Tragic Week. It was not such a central concern for the anarchists. They just jumped on the bandwagon. As did the Arabs in the docks, although they had the excuse that any crackdown by the authorities would almost certainly be aimed as well partly at them. No, in the end it was the Catalans who were behind it. And it was the Catalans that you were working with to see that it was remembered.’

  Nina shrugged.

  ‘So?’ she said.

  ‘Why was your father out on the streets during Tragic Week?’

  ‘To see that the Army didn’t get away with murder.’

  ‘The Arabs think he was out there to see that the Army did not pick on them.’

  ‘He was out there to see that they did not pick on anybody.’

  Seymour shook his head.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘I think that your father was out there for a particular purpose. And it was a Catalan purpose.’

  ‘Well?’ said Nina. ‘He was sympathetic to the Catalans.

  He admired the Catalans. He believed in the Catalans. As I do.’

  ‘Up to what point?’

  ‘I don’t understand you.’

  ‘How far was he prepared to go? What was he prepared to do for them?’

  Nina did not respond.

  ‘He was prepared to go pretty far,’ said Seymour. �
�He was prepared to go out on to the streets for them in Tragic Week. But was he prepared to go further?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ said Nina.

  ‘Was he prepared to supply them with arms, for instance?’

  Nina turned her back and started to walk away.

  ‘Was that what the Chief of Police was asking you?’ said Seymour.

  Seymour found the Chief of Police, as he had expected, sitting in the bar on Las Ramblas.

  ‘The reason why I spoke to her,’ said the Chief, ‘is that I worry about her. As I would about my own daughter. “She’s like a daughter to me,” I said to Constanza. That was probably a mistake. You see, God has not blessed us with children and Constanza is sensitive on that point. “Oh,” she said, “like a daughter, is she? Are you sure she’s not like someone else? A wife, for instance? Or a mistress?”

  ‘“Constanza,” I said, “how can you say a thing like that? You know I am faithful!” “I know you’re stupid,” she said, “and just the sort of man to fall for a chit of a girl when she makes eyes at you.”

  ‘“You are unjust to her,” I said. “No one in their right senses would say she’d make eyes at me. Rather the reverse.”

  ‘“Oh?” she said. “So you’ve been disappointed, have you?”

  ‘“No,” I said. “I’m just pointing out what anyone can tell you: that the only thing between us has been harsh words. Whenever I try to help her, all I get is rudeness.”

  ‘“Playing hard to get, is she?”

  ‘“Not at all,” I said. “She’s a child alone, without a father, and has a mother far away, in Gibraltar or some place, and as difficult, from what I hear, as she is.”

  ‘“And you want to step in,” she says, sneering, “and be a father to her, is that it?”

  ‘“She needs a father,” I say.

  ‘“Oh, yes!” she says. “Well, you’re a bigger fool even than I thought. You think she’s taken a fancy for your big moustaches, I suppose!”