A Dead Man in Malta

by Michael Pearce

  How about on the night in question?

  Not that night, in fact. She had been out with friends. She would certainly have looked in but she had this previous engagement. She had asked the senior nurse to look in instead. She had done so and then reported that everything seemed all right. The duty nurse had actually mentioned Wilson, the injured sailor, to her. She had said that he seemed restless, asleep but lightly, and talking in his sleep. She wondered if she should administer a sedative but the senior nurse had advised not.

  And then had left?

  Yes, but no one had been remiss. The night nurse had made her rounds; and it was during one of these that she had found that the seaman had stopped breathing. She had immediately tried to resuscitate. It could have been, she thought, only a short time before that he had died.

  And had she been aware of any intruder?

  No, and there had better not be an intruder. Not even the sort that were usually smuggled in: young women. Macfarlane was fierce about this.

  ‘Even when they’re half dead, they think they can carry on as they normally do. But they can’t. “Do you want to die?” I ask. “It would be a good way to go!” they usually reply. And the girls are no better. So we have strict rules against anybody entering the ward at night.’

  While Seymour was wandering around the ward checking how they might have done, he noticed himself being observed by a patient close to the bed in which the seaman had died. He spoke to him but the man turned over on to his side without replying.

  ‘I wondered if he had understood me,’ he said to Macfarlane.

  ‘Oh, yes, he understood you, all right,’ she said.

  ‘Then ...?’

  ‘He’s like that. About the British especially.’

  ‘How does he manage when he’s on board?’

  ‘He’s not usually on board. He keeps a small shop. We take in some patients from the locality who are not Navy. This one thought he had trouble with his appendix. It’s not that, I’m afraid.’

  Seymour was about to walk on when he stopped. ‘Does it give him pain?’

  ‘He says it does.’

  ‘During the night?’

  ‘Occasionally, certainly.’

  ‘Keep him awake?’

  Macfarlane hesitated. Then she spoke to the man in Maltese.

  ‘All the time, he says. But he’s a bit of a grumbler.’

  ‘Ask him if he saw anything the night Wilson died.’

  Macfarlane addressed the man. He shook his head.

  ‘No,’ she said. She hesitated, however. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘although I speak Maltese, I do not speak it that well. I’d better get one of the nurses.’

  She went off and came back with a nurse Seymour recognized: Melinda.

  The man’s eyes lit up when he saw her. They talked together for a little while. Then Melinda turned to Seymour.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘He didn’t see anything.’

  ‘Oh, well, thanks - ’

  ‘And says he wouldn’t have told you if he had.’

  ‘Oh? Why?’

  ‘He doesn’t like there being English on the island.’

  Seymour shrugged.

  ‘Most Maltese like the Navy,’ said Melinda. ‘It brings money into the island. But some don’t. They don’t like the British running things, they think they should run them themselves.’

  ‘Good luck to them,’ said Seymour.

  ‘I rather think that way myself.’

  ‘Fancy yourself as a matron?’

  ‘I do, actually.’

  ‘I wish you luck. But, you know, there might not be a hospital on the island if the Navy went away.’

  ‘There would always be a hospital on the island. Although, I grant you, not so many.’

  She turned back to the man in the bed.

  They talked again. Then Melinda made a little gesture and turned away.

  The man smiled and made the gesture, too. Then he lay back on his pillow.

  Melinda led Seymour away.

  ‘He says he saw nothing,’ she said. ‘But I don’t think he’s telling the truth.’

  ‘I was watching him.’ said Seymour, ‘and I don’t think he was telling the truth, either.’

  ‘I don’t think he was lying,’ said Melinda, ‘but I don’t think he was telling the truth. Not all of it. He saw something. Or heard something. And he’s not saying what it was. It may have been little, whatever it was. But whatever it was, he’s not going to tell us.’

  Seymour looked back at the man. He was lying there watching them. As he saw Seymour looking at him he raised a hand in acknowledgement and smiled. A smile, thought Seymour, of triumph?

  She buttonholed him as he came out of the hospital.

  ‘Mr Seymour?’

  ‘Mrs Wynne-Gurr?’

  They shook hands.

  ‘My son tells me you are a policeman?’

  ‘That is correct.’

  ‘Out here to investigate the dreadful things that have been happening in the hospital?’

  ‘If dreadful things have been happening in the hospital.’

  ‘Are not three deaths dreadful enough?’

  ‘Deaths are always dreadful.’

  ‘But three, Mr Seymour. Three!’

  ‘Let us not jump to conclusions, Mrs Wynne-Gurr.’

  ‘And let us not evade the uncomfortable truth!’

  ‘I am not aware of evading any uncomfortable truth, Mrs Wynne-Gurr.’

  ‘Not you, perhaps.’ she conceded. ‘Yet. But has there not been slackness and a refusal to acknowledge facts?’

  ‘I don’t know. That remains to be seen.’

  ‘I hope you are not going to join the general cover-up, Mr Seymour?’

  ‘I am sure that if I did you would do your best to rip the cover off, Mrs Wynne-Gurr.’

  Unexpectedly she laughed.

  ‘I sometimes feel that I do give that impression,’ she admitted.

  When she smiled and lost some of her intensity she was not unattractive, Seymour thought.

  ‘I gather you are bringing a party here.’ he said.

  ‘Yes. And one of the things I must not let us do is get distracted from the main purpose of the visit.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘To look into the origins of our Association. The St John Ambulance, you know.’

  ‘Most interesting. But there is not exactly a direct line from the Knights to the present-day Association - ’

  ‘That is what my son says. “You’re not really anything to do with the original Knights, Mum,” he says. Almost accusingly. “Not quite directly,” I say. “But in spirit.’”

  She looked at Seymour. ‘And that is surely the point here, isn’t it, Mr Seymour? Three men have died. Someone had to speak up.’

  Seymour had some sympathy for her position: although he felt that it probably took a lot of living with on the part of her husband and son.

  Down by the water he could see the remains of the German’s balloon. It had been hauled on to the land and allowed to deflate. But now the police were reinflating it part by part and studying its surface. On the shore two men, probably Kiesewetter’s technicians, were watching glumly.

  ‘For Christ’s sake!’ one of them muttered. ‘Don’t you people know anything?’

  ‘Keep off!’ the other one shouted suddenly in anguish. ‘Watch your shoes!’

  The Inspector he had previously met came across to him smiling.

  ‘Already,’ he said, ‘we have discovered something.’

  He took Seymour over to the balloon and showed him a great rent in its surface.

  ‘This is what brought it down,’ he said. ‘The question is: tear or cut?’

  ‘Tear,’ said one of Kiesewetter’s technicians. ‘Probably after it hit the water. While you guys were mucking around with it.’

  ‘Cut.’ said the Inspector. ‘With a knife or razor. Before take-off.’

  ‘Ridiculous!’ said the other technician. ‘No one was allowed near it before ta
ke-off.’

  ‘And we went over it.’ said the other technician, ‘inch by inch.’

  ‘Do you think we would let anyone fly it if it was like this?’

  ‘It probably wasn’t like this,’ said the Inspector. ‘Not while it was on the ground. It was probably very small, perhaps just a little nick. Which enlarged during the flight.’

  ‘Little nicks are what we look out for,’ said one of the technicians.

  ‘There was no nick and no tear and no cut,’ said the other technician. ‘Not before take-off.’

  ‘How do you account for the hole, then?’ asked the Inspector.

  ‘Propeller blade on the dghajsa,’ suggested one of the technicians. ‘While it was towing it in.’

  ‘Ridiculous!’ snapped the Inspector.

  ‘Why do you think it came down?’ asked Seymour.

  The technician shrugged.

  ‘Couldn’t say.’ he said. ‘Not until we’ve gone over it.’

  ‘Could be the valve,’ said the other technician. ‘It came down slowly. I was watching it and it seemed all right at first. But then, when it got over the harbour, it began to drift lower.’

  ‘I could see something was wrong.’ said the other technician, ‘but it looked as if he could handle it.’

  ‘But then, at the end, it came down quite sharply,’ said the first technician. ‘So I reckon he was bringing it down. He knew he’d be all right on the water. One of the safest places to land.’

  ‘And he was all right, wasn’t he?’ said the other technician. ‘It was only afterwards that - ’

  ‘In the hospital.’ said the other technician.

  Seymour walked over to where the Inspector was standing looking down on the balloon. Half of it was in the water and half was on the land. The police were drawing it up inch by inch so that they could go over it minutely. They were, he thought, doing a thorough job.

  ‘You think there was an attack on his life before he got to the hospital,’ he said.

  ‘I do,’ said the Inspector.

  ‘Why?’

  The Inspector motioned down at the rent in the balloon’s surface.

  ‘This,’ he said. ‘I believe what they said, that they checked everything. They’re conscientious men. They wouldn’t have missed anything.’

  ‘But they did miss something. You think.’

  ‘I was there on the racetrack when the balloons were launched. Yes, they were keeping people away, but there were many balloons and lots of technicians. And just at that point they were running around like crazy. It would have been easy for a technician on another balloon to pick his moment, just as they were launching - and after they’d done the checks - and make a little cut. A little one would do. The pressure inside would do the rest.’

  ‘So you think it was sabotage on the part of a rival?’

  ‘I think it could be. These people are very competitive, you know.’

  ‘That competitive?’

  The Inspector shrugged. ‘I go to Marsa racetrack every weekend. My wife likes to see the horses. Everyone likes to see the horses. Half of Malta goes. And the races! Talk about rivalry! I tell you, I see more than this - ’ he gestured at the rent balloon - ’every Saturday!’

  ‘But he died in the hospital,’ said Seymour. ‘Are you saying that a rival followed him here?’

  The Inspector shrugged. ‘It seems unlikely, I know. But I’ve seen these sportsmen! And is it more unlikely than someone creeping into the hospital and ... I mean, without any apparent motive. I believe in motive. In my experience, when people kill, they do it for a reason. This at least suggests a reason.’

  ‘Two other men died.’ said Seymour.

  They died, yes.’ said the Inspector, ‘but were they killed? Whereas in the case of the German he looked down at the rent balloon - ’there is independent reason to suggest an attempt to kill.’

  When Chantale stepped off the boat in Valletta she was still under the spell of recovering the Mediterranean. The recovery had begun the moment the train had got south of the Loire and continued as it went south to Marseilles. The clouds suddenly cleared away, the sky became that marvellous blue that she had grown up under, the sun - The sun. She had forgotten about the sun and the difference it made: in your bones, in your heart, in your mind. Why had she ever left it? The past winter in London had been like living in a dark tunnel with no end to it. It cramped you, chilled you, stiffened you all over. And also inside. Chantale suddenly realized that she had been stiffened inside too. Why had she ever agreed to leave Tangier?

  She knew very well why she had left Tangier. Seymour. Well, she didn’t regret that. At least, not deep down. For the sake of their life together she would put up with the tunnel. But, oh, it was good to get out of it occasionally!

  When Seymour had told her he was being sent to the Mediterranean for a time, she had at once assumed that she would go with him. She had been unable to understand it when he had said that she couldn’t. There were the rules, yes; but surely rules were meant to be broken? Or at least, slid round. She had grown up in the Arab world and in a military world and had imbibed early the understanding that to live in those worlds, particularly if you were a woman, you had to show a certain agility.

  So when Seymour had told her about Mrs Wynne-Gurr and the projected visit of the St John Ambulance to Malta she had at once seen the possibilities. She hadn’t been too sure what the St John Ambulance was: something to do with ambulances, obviously. Well, she wasn’t against ambulances, she thought that on the whole they were a good thing, so if enthusiasm for ambulances would get her back to the sunshine of the Mediterranean enthusiastic she would be.

  She then learned that it wasn’t just ambulances, or even necessarily ambulances at all, but by then she had the bit between her teeth. How did you join forces with this St John Ambulance? Well, Seymour’s sister explained, you joined the local Association. Just around the corner? Perfect. Well, not so perfect, actually, because this branch of the Association was not going to Malta.

  The Association’s Headquarters, however, was in London and she went there. A possible recruit? Excellent! and from ... Tangier, was it? They had never had a recruit from Tangier. Might not this open up possibilities? Chantale cottoned on at once. What was in her mind, she said, was the possibility of opening a branch in Tangier.

  Even more excellent! But first she would like to see how a branch operated. Might she not visit - ? Most certainly! There was a very lively branch in Wigan -

  Wigan?

  Up in the north.

  That was not what Chantale had had in mind. Fortunately, there was a lady visiting Headquarters at the time who came from the sunnier climes of West Surrey. She was, in fact, a member of the West Surrey Branch, tying up a few last things, in Mrs Wynne-Gurr’s absence, Mrs Wynne-Gurr having gone ahead to prepare the way, to do with the scheduled visit to Malta. She and Chantale got talking.

  West Surrey seemed a much more suitable place for a visit than darkest Lancashire and this was confirmed in Chantale’s mind when the lady spoke glowingly of the lovely Surrey greensward.

  Sword?

  Obviously something to do with the Knights, although the lady had pronounced it in a slightly funny way. Dialect perhaps. Chantale spoke English well but would be the first to admit that she hadn’t properly attuned to all the dialect variations of that most exasperating of languages.

  But, clearly, she was on the trail. She asked the lady if she might attend the next branch meeting. Flattered, the lady invited her to come down on the following Wednesday. Among the matters discussed was the right sort of clothes to be worn for the visit. Here Chantale, with her experience of the Mediterranean, could be of great help. The thick uniform worried her, she had to admit. When she started her branch in Tangier they would have to look for something lighter -

  Branch in Tangier? The ladies were all of a flutter. Perhaps it might be possible to pull Tangier and Malta together in some unspecified way. Lessons would surely be learnt.

>   They surely could. But, alas, - Chantale sighed - she would not be going to Malta with them.

  But that was no problem! No problem at all. There was room for another one on the party. There might even be the possibility of a small grant towards expenses, given the possibilities Chantale’s attendance might open up for the advance of St John in North Africa, if that was where Tangier was.

  This was more than Chantale had dared to hope. She had only a very little money of her own and Seymour would go berserk if she exhausted their joint account on some unagreed private initiative.

  Fired with enthusiasm for things ambulatory - if that was the right word for an adjective derived from ‘Ambulance’ - she even considered the possibility of actually starting a branch in Tangier. It could certainly, on the basis of her experience, do with one.

  So Chantale joined the party and went with it by train across France and then by boat across to Malta.

  And there, of course, on disembarkation at Valletta, she had been struck by the Arabic language all around her. She felt that, in a way, she had come home.

  Chapter Four

  He caught sight of her when he returned to the hotel. She was standing in the middle of a group of sensibly dressed, middle-aged women who could only be Mrs Wynne-Gurr’s Ambulance Militant.

  He edged towards her; she edged away.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ he whispered.

  ‘Come to join you,’ she whispered back.

  ‘Yes. I can see that. But - ’

  ‘I thought you would like it.’

  ‘Well, I do. But - ’

  ‘I thought.’ said Chantale accusingly, ‘that it would be what you wanted.’

  ‘Well, it is, but - ’

  ‘Don’t you want me?’ said Chantale, putting him as usual on the wrong foot.