A dead man of Barcelona

Chapter Fourteen

'But — but he was a good chap!’ said Hattersley, bewildered. ‘I always got on very well with him.’

As if that was a sufficient guarantee of his innocence.

‘Well, there you are!’ said Seymour.

‘I must say, it comes as a surprise. I was sure all along that it was the Government. Or the Catalans. Or the anarchists. Or the Arabs.’

‘Well, it wouldn’t have been the Government, would it? I mean, why wait to get him in jail before killing him? When there were so many better opportunities during Tragic Week. I must say I agree with you about the Catalans, though. For a long time I thought they had a hand in it.’

‘You did?’

‘Oh, yes. But why should they kill the goose that was, from their point of view, laying the golden eggs? At one time I toyed with the idea that some of them might have thought he was going to betray them. There was a fisherman, you know, that was probably going to do that, and they killed him. But Lockhart? Who was out on the streets during Tragic Week trying to act as a safeguard for them? It didn’t make sense.

‘As for the anarchists, there obviously is a lot of anarchist activity in Spain and the police and the prison governor all assured me that it was the work of anarchists. But about the only anarchist I could find with whom Lockhart came in contact was his daughter, Nina. And she was a very isolated person. If there was an anarchist cell, she was about the only one in it.

‘Then there was the rumour about the wife of the high-up. Well, there was such a person and I talked to her. Like so many others, she had an affair with Lockhart. But, like so many others, it didn’t last. In the end, as you told me, he was always true to Leila. I thought maybe it was a case of jealousy. But she was a very high-handed lady and, although she might stoop to murder, she certainly wasn’t prepared to stoop to employing an Arab to do it.

‘That brought me back to the Arabs. And that brought me back to Lockhart’s wife, and her family, who were the Arabs that Lockhart was most in contact with. And here there was certainly motivation. Lockhart was betraying his wife all the time. She certainly resented it. Could she have been the one who set the killing in motion? Well, she could, but Leila herself was a complex person who had grown, and wished now to put a lot of things behind her, many of those things which she had brought from Algeria.

‘But, remember, although she had discarded them, others hadn’t. In particular, others in her family. Many in the family were still bound by tradition and in particular traditions of honour and dishonour and revenge. Try as she could, she couldn’t escape from these traditions. Even though she was now in another country. They sent over Abou, her brother, a man who knew only these traditions. An honourable man, in his way, who loved his sister and couldn’t bear to see her slighted and, as he saw it, dishonoured. She worked on him, however, and might have succeeded, but ran out of time.

‘So there you are. The difficult thing for me was to distance myself from everyone’s suggestions. Everybody thought they knew the answer and was eager to give it me. Before they had asked the questions.’

Of course, strictly speaking, Abou, and the prosecution of the charges against him, did not fall within the preserve of the Chief of Police, since Abou was in Gibraltar, and that, according to the British (but not the Spanish) was not Spain. For a few days it looked as if Abou might slip down the crack between them but the crime had definitely been committed in Spain and the Foreign Office, stiffened by the Admiral, was prepared to concede the practical, although not theoretical, point. By some legerdemain, the details of which remained obscure but which somehow involved a boat, the surprised Abou found himself in Barcelona, when he passed into the hands of the ever resourceful Chief of Police.

Not resourceful enough to satisfy his wife, however.

‘As a Chief of Police, Alonzo, you are a disgrace. It’s time you did something about it. Otherwise, we’re going to have to spend the rest of our lives in this dump, whereas, as I’ve made clear to you from the first day of our marriage, my mind has always been set on Madrid. That’s where I’ve always seen myself. I think I would feel at home there. But all through our married years I have seen the prospect of that dwindling over the horizon.

‘It’s time you pulled yourself together, Alonzo, and now you’ve got the chance. Mr Seymour has given it to you. He has solved the mystery of who killed Lockhart and given the solution back to you. Now all you’ve got to do is claim the credit for it. Oh, and now that you’ve got the murderer safely in prison, keep him there! Do you think you can do that?’

‘Of course, I can, Constanza!’ said the Chief reproachfully. ‘He’s in safe hands.’

‘Well, he wasn’t last time,’ said Constanza. ‘At least, Lockhart wasn’t. You let someone creep in and poison him. It could happen again. I might even do it myself. That bastard killed Lockhart and someone ought to get him. He extinguished the one light in my life.’

‘You say these things, Constanza, but-’

‘And I mean them. He was the only man, of many, that I’ve ever really cared about.’

The Chief felt compelled to tackle Constanza.

‘Constanza,’ he said, ‘there have been rumours about you.’

‘Only silly men listen to silly rumours,’ she said.

‘Nevertheless — ’ he began.

‘Of course I slept with Lockhart,’ she said impatiently. ‘And very enjoyable it was, too. Unlike with you, Alonzo!’

‘Constanza-’

‘ And with half of the male population of Barcelona,’ she said.

‘I know you don’t mean this, Constanza-’

‘And if I have any trouble with you, Alonzo, I shall sleep with the other half. And while we are on the subject, Alonzo, you’ve been drinking far too much lately. It has made your performance suffer. And I am not talking about your performance as Chief of Police. Cut out the drinking, Alonzo, and I, too, might be prepared to practise abstinence. Up to a point. Particularly if I saw a chance of getting to Madrid.’

Nina, despite reservations about the Spanish legal system, was pleased that the murderer of her father had got his deserts. Lockhart’s death, however, meant the end of his financing of the anarchist school, since Leila was not in the least interested in anarchism and disliked Nina, a sentiment reciprocated by Nina, who wouldn’t have accepted the money if it came from Leila anyway. The school closed, as anarchist schools usually do: but then, again as usually happens with anarchist schools, another took its place.

This one was Nina’s own and had a special character. This one was located in the Arab quarter and seemed to everyone, Arabs, Catalans and Spanish alike, about as Quixotic a venture, and as foolhardy, as any of those espoused by her father. It seemed, however, just the sort of thing you could expect from the Lockharts and, to everyone’s surprise, succeeded. Moderately. Nina had envisaged a school which would bring Spaniards and Arabs and Catalans together. That, many felt, was not very likely.

The Arabs near the docks, however, gave Nina their support, possibly, as Ibrahim claimed, out of traditional Arab sympathy for the afflicted, but possibly out of residual loyalty to Lockhart. After a while a few Catalans, mostly from the fishing community, appeared, muttering darkly. And then a few Spaniards, usually of an anarchist tendency. The Chief of Police kept a fatherly eye on it; on the school, that is, and not, as Constanza regularly claimed, on Nina. And, surprisingly, the school prospered, or at least, lasted. Indeed, when, after some time, the authorities threatened to close it, Catalans, Arabs and Spaniards united in its defence, so perhaps Nina achieved her aim after all.

The cabezudos were as usual cavorting around on Las Ramblas, and, as usual, as soon as they saw Chantale they made a bee-line for her.

They formed a circle around her. Chantale stood her ground.

‘Come and scratch my back, pretty lady!’ one of them pleaded.

‘When he says back, pretty lady, he means somewhere else!’ said another cabezudo.

‘No such luck!’ said Chantale firmly.

‘A ride? On my back?’

‘When he says on his back, he means on your back, pretty lady!’

‘No chance of that, either,’ said Chantale.

‘Will it be done soon, pretty lady?’

‘Will what be done?’

‘What you have come from Morocco to do.’

‘That is not something you should ask me,’ said Chantale. ‘You should ask my friend.’

The cabezudos broke up and took up a new formation.

‘We’re squaring the circle,’ they said.

‘So I see,’ said Chantale.

‘Are you going to square the circle, too?’

‘Which one?’ said Chantale.

‘The one that began with Lockhart.’

‘A circle finishes where it starts,’ observed another cabezudo.

‘With Lockhart?’ said Chantale.

‘Who else?’

‘But if you are going to square the circle, you will have to do it soon,’ said the first cabezudo.

‘Before next week,’ said the second cabezudo. ‘Because otherwise you’ll have to go out to Algeria to do it.’

‘For the first time since I have known you,’ said Seymour, ‘you are behind the times. The circle has already been squared.’

The cabezudos cantered away and then stopped and conferred. Then they came back.

‘Congratulations!’ they said, and bowed.

‘And now we are in another circle,’ said Chantale. ‘It is an old circle and a private one.’

‘And are you going to square it?’

Chantale looked at Seymour, and Seymour looked at Chantale.

‘We think so.’

‘Ah!’

The cabezudos danced away and then came back.

‘Congratulations!’ they said.