A Dead Man in Tangier (15 page)

‘Well . . . Well, that puts a different complexion on things.'

‘If I were you,’ said Seymour, ‘I’d pull back your men to the end of the street. Or even into the next street. Where they’d be ready if needed but not too conspicuous. So as not to be too provocative. It would be foolish at this stage to provoke an incident, wouldn’t it?'

‘It certainly would!’ said Renaud, much relieved. He went off to give the necessary orders.

‘What can I do?’ asked Suleiman Fazi.

‘Congratulate Awad on the sense of responsibility he’s shown and on his zeal to stand up for freedom. And then ask him if he’s coming home to share the Ramadan meal with you.'

‘I will,’ said the Vizier. ‘I will!’ and he walked forward to speak to the insurgents.

‘All right?’ Seymour asked Chantale, as she appeared round the corner.

‘All right,’ said Chantale. ‘Lambert said the army was not to be used for every little incident. Besides, he doesn’t like Renaud.'

‘Why did he let them get away with the raid on the hotel?’ asked Seymour.

Chantale looked at him, surprised.

‘He was new in the job,’ she said, ‘and hadn’t yet picked up the pieces.'

‘Did he know the hotel belonged to you?'

‘Of course. He’d been in the army here. They had gone to him when they found out . . . when they found out about us. It was Armand de Grassac’s doing. He’d been away and then he came back and found that – well, we weren’t doing too well. So he and the other officers talked to Lambert and money was found, somehow, I don’t know how, but the money actually came from the army coffers, to help us buy the hotel. The Lamberts had always been kind to us. They made it possible for me to go to a French school. But he had only just been made Resident-General Designate and hadn’t yet got everything in his hands.'

Seymour took Renaud by the arm and said: ‘
Coll`egue
, may I take a little walk with you?’

Renaud was still grumbling about Lambert.

‘If I were you,
cher coll`egue
,’ said Seymour, ‘I would give the army a wide berth for a while.’

‘Why so?'

‘Because they provided the money for Chantale and her mother to buy the hotel. And I think they may be about to find out who tipped Ali Khadr off that the time had come to wreck it.'

Renaud went still.

‘Perhaps even set the attack up. Who knows? But I think that if pressed Ali Khadr will tell them. There’s quite a strong network in the quarter, which embraces the mosque and other influential people, and word gets around, you know, and I think that if it were put to Ali Khadr himself, well, you know, I think he would come clean. And if he did,
cher coll`egue
, I don’t see how you could go on being Chief of Police in Tangier.’

Renaud remained mute.

‘Even with powerful friends,’ said Seymour.

‘They will look after me,’ muttered Renaud.

‘You reckon? You know, colleague, I think they’re the sort of people who would drop you in a flash if they thought it necessary. Despite everything you’ve done for them.'

‘I have done nothing –’

‘Oh? Well, let’s start with Bossu. He was the man behind the raid on the hotel, wasn’t he? And you were helping him, as you had always helped him. I suppose you were the first to find out that Chantale and her mother had bought the hotel and told him. And then he asked you to arrange a welcome party. Or perhaps he arranged it and merely asked you to tip off Ali Khadr when the time was ripe.'

‘You cannot prove this –’

‘No? Let us go on. With your knowledge of Bossu, Monsieur Renaud, perhaps you can tell me why his animosity towards the de Lissac family was such that he pursued Chantale and her mother, even after Captain de Lissac was dead? No? Well, let me tell you.

‘I take it that you know about the passion that Bossu had originally felt for Marie de Lissac. And about how he had asked her to marry him. And been turned down. And then turned down again when he had pursued her to Algiers. I don’t think he ever forgave that turning down. He was a man who always liked to win. And didn’t like losing. Certainly not to de Lissac.

‘It must have been a huge shock to him when de Lissac turned up in Casablanca. Especially when he began making himself a nuisance. But you were there, Monsieur Renaud, and would know. Would know, too, about how he then began to work systematically for de Lissac’s destruction. A popular pursuit in Casablanca at the time, and he soon had plenty of people egging him on. Was that when you first made their acquaintance,
cher coll`egue
, and began to have an eye for their interests? Such an eye that it led to you becoming Chief of Police in Tangier?

‘Well, there are other questions. Was it their interests that Bossu was following when he began taking money down to Moulay Hafiz and his supporters in the interior of Morocco? Opening up the interior. Building the railway line which would make possible the development of all that part of the country. Perhaps you don’t know much about all that. That was Bossu’s job, not yours.

‘But there is one thing that you
do
know about and perhaps you can help me on. You see, I know that you know about it. Because Juliette Bossu obligingly blurted it out. It is to do with the death of Chantale’s father, that long-standing enemy, as he saw it, of Bossu. Bossu persuaded him to drive a truck down to the south. A truck loaded with explosives to Moulay Hafiz. And on the way the truck exploded and Captain de Lissac was killed.’

‘An accident,’ muttered Monsieur Renaud.

‘Ah, no.'

‘It was investigated.'

‘By you?'

‘No, by – by the authorities.'

‘The authorities? Down there?'

He waited.

‘Does that mean Moulay Hafiz? Come on, Renaud, this is something I want to know.'

‘It – it may have been. But – but there were others . . . Captain de Grassac . . . An independent . . .'

‘Not a policeman, though, Renaud. Not a detective. Like you and me. I have investigated it, too. And I have found out things that Captain de Grassac didn’t. Including that it was not an accident.'

‘I – I don’t know anything about it. Bossu handled it. Entirely, I mean. He didn’t tell me anything. It is not the sort of thing that I would –’

‘No, you wouldn’t, Renaud. You’d leave that to others.'

When Seymour went into the hotel Chantale raised her head from her writing and said:

‘Are you doing anything this evening? My mother wonders if you would care to join us for the evening meal. It is, of course, a special one, for it marks the end of Ramadan.'

Seymour said he would be delighted, and at about nine went down to reception, where he found the desk occupied by a polite young man whom he had not seen before. He rose from the desk, tapped softly on the door which led to the family’s private quarters, and showed Seymour through.

Chantale came forward to greet him and led him out on to a small verandah where there was a low table spread for dinner with a white tablecloth. Around it were several large leather cushions. Chantale sat on one and invited him to sit next to her. Her mother appeared shortly after with a tray on which there were several small bowls, which she put on the table. They contained olives of various kinds, nuts and the usual salted cakes. She sat down opposite them.

Seymour had, of course, met her before but then it had been in the business part of the hotel, at reception. Now, in the soft darkness, she seemed completely different, her face more Arab, her eyes larger and darker, more Moroccan. She had partly uncovered her hair. In the hotel it had always been bound up in a kerchief. Now she had let it fall. It was dark and abundant and hung over her shoulders. Seymour sensed that this was significant. He knew that in Morocco a woman’s hair was normally something to be strictly concealed. Was this a gesture of independence, an assertion of difference, a suggestion of other affiliations beside the Moroccan one? Looking at her now he could see how attractive she must have been once, how she could have drawn such men as de Lissac and Bossu. And also how strikingly her daughter resembled her.

There was a difference in the way they sat. The mother sat straight-backed, graceful but firm and unyielding. Chantale reclined rather than sat. It was again very graceful, very easy, very natural: but it was not the way any Englishwoman would have sat. Seymour knew he shouldn’t be looking at her too much: but he was just about knocked out.

Initially Chantale’s mother did not speak much, leaving the conversation to her daughter and Seymour, but gradually she let herself be drawn in.

He asked her how she liked running a hotel. She said that at first she had found it difficult because when her husband had died she had withdrawn into herself and then when they had moved into the hotel she had had to force herself out again. The public-ness of hotel life had shocked her and the constant need to assert herself. However, now she rather enjoyed it. It gave her a chance to meet people, different people from those she would usually have met, men especially,
hommes civilis
é
es
, civilized men – a chance, she said, with a flash of her daughter’s rebelliousness, that Moroccan women did not usually get!

Seymour said that he imagined that was particularly important for Chantale. Madame de Lissac agreed that it was and said that she was very grateful to those who had made it possible. And yet . . .

She hesitated.

And yet it was equally important that Chantale did not allow herself to be cut off from ‘the other side’ because that was her inheritance, too. That was what she had had in mind in bringing Chantale back here. She had grown up in the quarter and people remembered her from when she was a child. That made it easier for them to accept her. Even though, of course, she would always be different.

‘You make me sound a freak,’ said Chantale.

‘Not a freak,’ said Chantale’s mother. ‘Just different. And you will have to live with that.'

‘I manage very well,’ said Chantale.

‘Yes, but what happens when you grow up?'

‘Mother! I
am
grown up.’

‘And need to find a husband?'

‘Mother!’ said Chantale, and got up hastily from the table, and took the bowls inside.

When her husband had died, she had said. Did she know how he had died, wondered Seymour? Did Chantale?

Seymour said that he could understand at least some of the difficulties, perhaps better than they might think. He told them about his own family: about the Polish grandfather who had served in the Tsarist army and been forced to leave Russia in a hurry because of his radical activities; about his grandfather on his mother’s side, who had died in an Austro-Hungarian prison – also for unwise political activity; about the mother from Vojvodina, and the father who had grown up in England and wanted none of this sort of thing, only to be a boring, unrevolutionary Englishman –

‘Were they all revolutionaries?’ asked Chantale, who had returned with some bowls of hot, spicy soup.

‘Yes. And I was the most revolutionary of the lot,’ said Seymour. ‘I joined the police.'

Madame de Lissac laughed.

‘That I cannot understand,’ said Chantale.

Seymour shrugged.

‘In my part of London,’ he said, ‘which is a poor part, there weren’t many jobs. I had tried an office and didn’t like it. And the police gave me a chance to use my languages.'

‘And they brought you to Tangier,’ said Chantale, smiling.

‘Can’t be all bad, can it?’ said Seymour.

They moved on to the main dish, which was couscous, made of semolina rolled into small, firm balls, steamed in saffron and spices, and served with a top layer of vegetables and meat.

Seymour asked Chantale’s mother what it had been like when she was a child growing up in the area.

‘It was very different then,’ she said. ‘That was under the old Sultan – not this one, but this one’s father. In those days the Parasol meant something. My father worked for the Mahzen and that was something that gave prestige. It also made us quite well off. We were able to afford private tutors and so, although we were girls, we were quite well educated. We mixed, too, a little in society.

‘But that had its dangers. We were seen, although we were always very discreet. I was seen, by a man, a Frenchman who did things for the Mahzen, and was very rich and ambitious. He wanted to marry me. I said no, and my father turned him down. But he pursued me. He just wouldn’t give up. In the end they had to send me away to relatives in Algeria.

‘Even there he pursued me. He just wouldn’t give up. I think now that he couldn’t bear to lose. Even when I told him that I had found someone else. I don’t think he could believe that – believe it was possible, that anyone could be thought better than him. I tell you this,’ she said, looking Seymour directly in the face, ‘so that you will understand. The man was Bossu.'

‘I know already,’ said Seymour.

She began to gather up the dishes. Chantale rose to help her but her mother signalled to her to sit down. She went off with the tray.

‘She said, “When my husband died,”’ said Seymour. ‘Does she know how he died?'

‘I think so,’ said Chantale. ‘We never speak of it but I think she has guessed.'

‘And you: do you know how your father died?'

‘Oh, yes,’ said Chantale.

‘Exactly how he died?'

Chantale looked at him.

‘Exactly,’ she said.

Chapter Fourteen

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 voil`a
,’ 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 pig-sticking. 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. ’