The first thing that Seymour noticed when he left the hotel the next morning was that Mustapha and Idris had changed their clothes. They were in bright new jellabas, Mustapha in a particularly splendid robe of saffron.
‘What’s this?’ said Seymour.
‘It’s the end of Ramadan,’ said Idris. ‘Everyone puts on new clothes for the day.’
Seymour looked around. Yes, everyone was in new, or, at least, clean clothes; including Chantale, standing in the doorway beside him.
Seymour considered.
‘Perhaps…?’
‘Yes,’ said Chantale, ‘I think you should.’
He went back to his room and changed into his new suit, the one that Ali had made.
‘Just a minute!’ said Chantale and she stuck a large red handkerchief in his pocket.
‘That makes you look more suitably festive,’ she said.
He noticed that it matched the one draped round her shoulders.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it shows that you belong to me.’
They went together to the Kasbah. The space in front of the Kasbah was taken up by lots of carpet-sided enclosures with seats inside them, in which people were sitting in their Sunday — or perhaps it was Friday, this being a Muslim country — best. Among them were the Macfarlanes.
‘Come and sit beside me, Mr Seymour,’ said Mrs Macfarlane.
Mustapha and Idris sat down on the other side of the carpet wall.
‘You again!’ said Macfarlane, with his habitual disfavour.
‘A bodyguard!’ said Mrs Macfarlane. ‘How nice! I’ve always felt I should have one.’
She leaned over the carpet wall and chatted to Mustapha and Idris.
Chantale waved a hand and drifted off.
A procession began to pass in front of the enclosures. It consisted of splendidly fierce tribesmen on horseback, many of them sporting rows of medals, old men in white capes and often on donkeys, families in traditional draperies, well washed and much pressed, and French soldiers, who lined up at intervals along the front of the carpet boxes.
The Resident-General arrived, in a frock coat, top hat and high collar, and took up his position in one of the front boxes.
A small carriage appeared, drawn by four piebald ponies and escorted by French soldiers. Out of it climbed a little, much bewildered boy. He looked around, saw the Resident-General, and bowed to him. The Resident-General returned the bow. Then the little boy went into one of the boxes where a crowd of other small princes were sitting. He sat there stiffly for a moment or two and then, like them, turned round to have a good look at everyone.
Sheikh Musa appeared, bristling with medals and escorted by almost forty retainers, all on wonderful horses. He took up position to one side of the enclosures and looked balefully round.
There was a sudden stir at the Kasbah entrance and a lonely white figure rode out, sheltered by a great parasol. There was a murmur from the crowd.
‘The Imperial Parasol,’ whispered Mrs Macfarlane.
On foot and on either side of him walked venerable, bearded guards, gracefully wafting the flies away from the imperial face with sheets of white cloth. Behind them came the Imperial Guard — fifty huge Negroes in crimson uniforms, with black and white turbans, on pearl-grey horses.
And then — Seymour leaned forward. Everyone leaned forward.
‘ Le voila,’ said a man sitting on the other side of Macfarlane. ‘There it is! Le carosse de la Reine Victoria!’
Yes, there it was, all red and gold and rickety, wheels grating on the dusty street, empty, pulled by slaves and escorted by guards: the state chariot presented to the Sultan of a previous day by Queen Victoria.
The frail figure beneath the parasol passed in front of them. Caids and pashas, and then the crowd, bent low. The Europeans inclined their heads. Seymour caught a glimpse of a thin, drawn face. And then the figure passed out of sight and Musa and his men wheeled in behind him.
‘Will they keep it up?’ asked Mrs Macfarlane. ‘Next year?’
‘Probably,’ said Macfarlane. ‘Only it won’t be him next year. He’s abdicating this afternoon.’
After the Royal Ceremony to mark the end of Ramadan, the crowd, now in festive spirit, moved on to the pigsticking. It was the last one in the series and that on its own was enough to guarantee a splendid turn-out. The space all round the Tent was jammed with people in their finery and there seemed more riders than ever in the enclosure.
Musa’s chief outrider, Ahmet, was about to set off to run the pigs but Seymour managed to catch him in time to get him to identify the two men who had ridden outrider on the other side of the hunt on the day that Bossu had been killed, Ibrahim and Riyad. They could remember the occasion very well and recalled the rider coming up late, and, no, it certainly wasn’t a woman, it was a… And they could recall the horse exactly.
In no time at all the bugle sounded and the riders climbed on to their horses and prepared to move off.
‘Come on!’ said Idris impatiently.
‘I’m okay here.’
‘No, no, if we don’t get started, we’ll miss-’
‘That’s okay.’
Mustapha and Idris stared at him.
‘You mean-?’
‘I’m not going this time.’
‘But, but-’
‘I’ve seen what I wanted.’
‘You mean you’re not going to follow the hunt?’
‘That’s right.’
‘But-’
‘You can if you want to.’
‘But-’
‘It will be all right. Ali Khadr is going to the mosque. So Chantale’s mother tells me.’
Mustapha and Idris conferred.
‘We’ll just go part of the way.’
‘That’s all right.’
At the last moment Mustapha pulled out.
‘It’s a question of honour,’ he muttered.
‘I won’t go far,’ said Idris, weakening by the minute. He returned after a very short time.
‘It’s a question of honour,’ he said, depressed.
The riders disappeared in a cloud of dust. Beyond them some figures quietly browsing in the scrub looked up, startled, and then began to run for their lives.
The crowd shot off; but very soon people began to fall out. The horses, too, soon began to feel the pace and some of them dropped behind.
The many who had come out of the Tent to watch the start began to file back in. At one end of the long bar Seymour saw Juliette talking to a young officer with his arm in a sling, consoling him, no doubt, for being unable to take part in the chase.
Someone touched his arm. It was Monique.
‘Here again,’ she said, ‘as you see. Just can’t stop.’
‘Forget about him,’ said Seymour. ‘He wasn’t worth it.’
‘I know.’
‘Find someone else,’ said Seymour. ‘He did.’
‘I’ll keep trying,’ promised Monique, and slipped away.
Seymour could see Chantale on the other side of the Tent, working her way around groups of people as usual, getting material for her column, no doubt. But he didn’t go over to her.
Mrs Macfarlane appeared beside him.
‘You’re leaving us, I gather?’
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘I shall be sorry to see you go.’
‘And I to leave.’
She followed his eyes.
‘You know,’ she said, ‘it is going to be very difficult for Chantale.’
‘I know,’ he said.
‘And will become even more difficult,’ she said, ‘as time goes by. Unless she marries a Frenchman. She is too old, in Moroccan terms, to marry a Moroccan. And would she be content with the kind of life that would mean?’
‘She should marry a Frenchman,’ said Seymour.
‘She might not want to,’ said Mrs Macfarlane, and moved away.
The huntsmen were beginning to return. Sheikh Musa appeared in the door of the Tent. He saw Seymour and came across to him.
‘You’ve heard about the abdication?’
‘Yes.’
‘You know who’s going to be the next Sultan?’
‘Moulay Hafiz?’
‘That’s right.’
He smiled and took Seymour’s arm.
‘Advise me,’ he said. ‘Would it be a good idea to invite Moulay to the next pig-sticking?’
‘Would it be worth it?’ said Seymour. ‘They’d only get another one.’
Seymour went out into the enclosure.
Monsieur Ricard was being helped off his horse.
‘And this,’ hissed his daughter, ‘is the last time for you!’
‘I fell off,’ said Ricard, depressed.
‘He tried to get on again,’ said Millet. ‘But the horse wasn’t having any.’
‘At least the horse had some sense,’ said Suzanne.
The soldiers were coming in, lances bloodied.
‘You did pretty well today, Levret,’ one of them was saying.
‘I only got one,’ Levret said.
‘They weren’t easy today.’
‘I could have done better.’
De Grassac went past, leading his horse.
‘A good ride?’ asked Seymour.
‘A good ride,’ said de Grassac. ‘But no stick.’
‘Could I have a word with you?’
De Grassac handed the reins to a trooper.
‘At your service.’
Seymour took him aside.
‘I suppose it’s the army,’ he said, ‘that teaches you to think quickly in an emergency.’
‘Well, yes, it does. But-’
‘Such as when you couldn’t get the lance free again. You had stuck too well.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘After you had stuck Bossu. A good stick, a very good stick. But then you couldn’t get the lance out again. It had stuck in the earth. So there you were, with someone coming up, and the lance in your hand, and the point in Bossu’s back. Quick thinking required. And this is probably where the army helped you.’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘You left Bossu, with your lance still sticking in him, picked up his lance and rode off.’
‘Monsieur Seymour-’
‘And rejoined the hunt. Late, of course. You had to ride like the wind. That was what one observer said. With your headdress trailing out behind, like hair. But you came up in time to be in at the killing. And, of course, you had a lance. Bossu’s lance.’
This time de Grassac said nothing.
‘When the news came in about Bossu, you went back and recovered your own lance. Quite openly. And then when I asked you for the lance that had killed Bossu, you could give one to me. Bossu’s own. Incidentally, I took it to the shop you told me of. You were right, they couldn’t tell me who it belonged to. But it had been mended once and they thought the work might have been done for a Monsieur Bossu.
‘It was the lance,’ Seymour explained, ‘that had originally set me thinking. Because there was somebody else’s lance, still stuck in Bossu. But where was his own lance?’
‘Stolen,’ said de Grassac.
‘I remember you making much of the way things were stolen out here. But I spoke to someone who was on the scene immediately afterwards, immediately afterwards, and they couldn’t remember seeing another lance, lying by the body, say. It was one of the things that puzzled me. I thought that perhaps the killer had taken it. But why? Perhaps so that he could rejoin the hunt without anyone suspecting. He would need a lance, wouldn’t he?
‘There was some evidence that whoever had killed Bossu had ridden off in that direction. And further evidence, later, that whoever it was had been wearing a headdress — it got caught in the thorns. But my informant supposed that it belonged perhaps to one of Sheikh Musa’s men. I was able to check with Sheikh Musa’s men. In particular, with the two men who had been outriding on the south side. Of course, they didn’t see what happened when you rode in after Bossu. But they did see someone riding up hard afterwards and overtaking the field. They were able to tell me who it was. Going not so much by the person as by the horse. They are pretty good at recognizing horses. They described it to me, and I have just confirmed that the description matches yours. But, of course, we don’t need my identification. Theirs will do. But I can get them to confirm it, if necessary.’
‘Don’t bother,’ said Captain de Grassac.
‘I think I know why you killed him, too. When de Lissac was blown up in the truck, Chantale asked you to go down south and look into it. Because I think that even then she suspected that it was not an accident. You went down and looked into it. And then you told her that it was, indeed, an accident. Yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘Better for her not to know. I knew, and that was enough.’
‘Could I ask how you knew? I know, too, but that is because I have talked to eyewitnesses. But I don’t think you can have talked to them.’
‘No. It was the dancers, the Chleuh dancers. They circulate all over the south. They pick up things. And they picked up this. And then they talked to me.’
‘Why didn’t you report it? Tell the authorities?’
‘What authorities?’
‘Well-’
‘There aren’t any down there. There is only Moulay Hafiz. And the army. But what is the point of telling the army? Bossu wasn’t under its jurisdiction. And nor, by this time, was de Lissac.’
‘You thought you knew what to do?’
‘I did know what to do.’
A little to de Grassac’s surprise, Seymour left him and walked back into the Tent. There he found Chantale.
‘I have been expecting this,’ said Chantale.
‘Since when?’
‘Since I saw you talking to Armand de Grassac.’
‘Not before?’
‘Well, perhaps since you spoke to me last night.’
‘You knew that your father had been murdered.’
‘Yes.’
‘How? Did de Grassac tell you.’
‘No. Not directly. But I read him like an open book. He is a straightforward honest man, and hopeless at deceiving. However, I had worked it out before. I knew that Bossu had put my father up to the journey with the explosives. And I don’t think for one moment that he had done it out of the goodness of his heart. My father did. He was another like Armand de Grassac. Unable to believe that anyone could be so evil. But I knew. And when Armand came back, that confirmed it.’
‘So what did you do?’
‘Looked for revenge. Or justice, as I would prefer to call it.’
‘How?’
‘Through my writing. The article I planted in New Dawn was just the beginning. I thought that in the end I would get him through my writing. It would be slow, but that,’ she said, looking Seymour straight in the face, ‘would only make it sweeter.’
‘You didn’t go further?’
‘I would have, probably. Only Armand got there before me.’
‘Did you know what he was going to do? Did you talk about it? He, of course, won’t tell me. But perhaps you will.’
‘No, we didn’t talk. And no, I didn’t know. But if I had, I would have been with him all the way. I tell you this because I don’t want you to think Armand was alone. If he is to blame, so am I.’
She laid her hand on his arm.
‘You know, I think, what you mean to me. And I, I think, mean something to you. If that is so, can I take advantage of it to ask a favour? See that Armand is not treated too harshly.’
In the end he decided to consult Mrs Macfarlane.
‘Hmm.’
She thought for a moment.
‘This is, actually, as my husband would say, a ticklish legal problem. Under whose jurisdiction might this fall? This happened in Tangier. Tangier’s legal status is as yet undefined. An international zone? Maybe, but tomorrow. Today? Morocco? France? And in practice?’ She thought some more.
‘You know,’ she said, ‘I believe justice might best be served by going to Monsieur Lambert. The one thing certain in all this is that de Grassac is under military law. I don’t think that anyone is going to complain too much if this is left to the army to sort out.
‘Not the international powers, certainly, who won’t want to get involved. Nor the government in France, and not the settlers here, who would do well to keep quiet about Bossu. The Mahzen? Not just at the moment, with Moulay Hafiz taking over.
‘No, leave the army to sort out its own dirty washing. And for once, I suspect, they will sort it out very sensibly. You know, there is a custom in Morocco known as “God’s door”. You should always leave the door open. Being too cut-and-dried on anything is a mistake. I suspect the army in Morocco is well aware of this custom and if ever there was a case for its application, this is it.’
Mr Bahnini came to see him.
‘To say goodbye,’ he said.
‘You’re leaving?’
‘I’m going back to Casablanca. To set up as a bookkeeper. I think that when the Protectorate is established, there will be a lot of demand for my services.’
‘I think you could be right.’
They shook hands.
‘Macfarlane will miss you.’
‘Less than you might think. Sadiq will be replacing me.’
‘Really?’
Sadiq looked rather shame-faced.
‘He talked me into it,’ he said. ‘Macfarlane. He said that if I wished to stop the French from taking everything over, the way to do it was to get Tangier made into a free international zone: and that the best way for me to do that was to come and work for the committee.’
And Awad? Awad was going into politics.
‘Of which,’ said Mr Bahnini, ‘there is likely to be a lot in future.’
Mustapha and Idris embraced him and wept.
‘We’ve sort of got used to you,’ they said. ‘In fact, this doesn’t seem a bad line of business at all.’
Seymour left recommendations all over the place. However, he placed greater reliance on Chantale’s mother, who had promised to keep an eye on them.
On Chantale Seymour thought long and deep.
‘She will always be torn,’ he said to Madame de Lissac, ‘between the French side and the Moroccan side of her. The only way out that I can see is to add a moderating influence. Let’s call it the English side, and I will do my best to see that she remains as true to that as to the others.’