Garment of Shadows (35 page)

Holmes stepped to the door and turned the key. Lyautey stood in the doorway with three armed guards at his back. He cinched his dressinggown, straightened his moustaches, and ran an eye over the room before cocking one eyebrow at Holmes. “Would you care to tell me what this means?”

“Here?” Holmes asked.

Lyautey tilted his head, taking in the number of people and the size of the room. “Perhaps the library,” he said.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-NINE

W
e formed a parade: Lyautey at the fore as a commanding officer must, followed by a guard, Mahmoud, Holmes, Dulac, me, and two more guards. Holmes and Mahmoud had their weapons taken, but the soldiers looked at me, and let me pass. Foolish men.

The sleep-befuddled household—guests, guards, and servants—stood in doorways and at railings to watch us go, along the balcony, down the steps, through the corridor, and across the
zellij
courtyard of Dar Mnehbi. We filed into the library at the far corner, where a stout door and the muffling effects of carpets and books meant that if we kept our voices low, the entire city might not know our business by sunset. One of the guards lit the lamps and stirred up the brazier, then Lyautey told him to shut the door and stand away. Reluctantly, the soldier left.

When the five of us were alone in the room, the Maréchal fixed us, one at a time, with that aristocratic glare. When he got to Mahmoud, the gaze sharpened as he saw beneath the dirt and beard. “You? What on earth are you doing here?”

Before any of us could respond, François Dulac raised his voice in complaint: that he had been sleeping in peace when some ruffians began to pound on his door, and when he would have escaped, that woman with her gun—Mahmoud kicked him, turning his tirade to a squeak, and I moved forward to separate them before Mahmoud’s hand could grow a blade.

Holmes addressed his cousin, the Resident General. “We have uncovered a problem in your security, Monsieur le Maréchal.”

Holmes clamped a hand on Dulac’s shoulder and manoeuvred him into a chair at the long table. Mahmoud pulled another chair a few feet away, that he might keep an eye on the prisoner’s every motion. Holmes took a seat across the table from Dulac, with Lyautey to his left at the table’s head. The Maréchal caught my eye, since I was the only one still on her feet.

“We need coffee. Would you please find Youssef and tell him—”

Holmes interrupted. “Youssef is … otherwise occupied. This shouldn’t take long. Monsieur Dulac, would you like to explain these items, which we found in your room?”

He laid the tightly furled tube of paper on the table, then set the bulging leather bag beside it. Lyautey picked that up first, stirring the coins with one long finger before he tugged the strings shut and reached for the paper.

It was a map, a copy of one that lay in the drawer of the table where we were seated, with the addition of neat pencilled annotations. Each of the French border posts on the original had numbers and letters beside them:
6/1/0/t; 9/4/2/nt; 5/3/1/t
.

Mahmoud got up long enough to tap this last annotation. “When I went by that post some days ago, I saw three machine guns, one piece of light artillery, and a telegraph line. It has, one would suppose, a permanent garrison of five?”

By way of answer, Lyautey lifted his gaze to his secretary.

“This is your writing, François.”

Dulac’s pleas and protests might have been the burble of water in the Dar Mnehbi fountain, for all the impact they had on his employer.

The Maréchal shook his head, slowly, left then right, a motion that carried both personal regret and military condemnation. “You have one very slim chance to save yourself from a firing squad. That is to tell me everything, now.”

And Dulac believed him. Like a lanced boil, corruption poured out: names and dates, money given and information passed on. At a gesture from Lyautey, Holmes pulled open the table’s drawer and took out a pad and pen, writing down key points.

It had started in a small way during Dulac’s third year in Morocco, 1916, when he moved the name of a Fasi builder to the top of a list of those being considered for renovations to Dar Mnehbi. That, after all, was how things were done here.

The secretary’s private income grew, as he made “recommendations” and provided inside information to everyone from village leaders to carpet-sellers. The building of Casablanca had proved especially lucrative. Business was good.

It became even better when the Germans arrived.

In 1921, the Rif Rebellion had swept across the iron mines leased to the Germans. Abd el-Krim’s forces—at that time merely fellow tribesmen of the Beni Urriaguel—destroyed every bit of equipment they could, and while the Rifi then withdrew, the mine owners dared not rebuild with the Revolt’s stolen artillery on the hills above.

By the following spring, it was clear to the Germans that Spain was not about to regain control over the leased area in the near-future. So long as the rebellion flourished, one of the world’s greatest iron deposits would simply sit there, the ravaged equipment rusting away. And the leaders of the rebellion proved strangely uninterested in receiving payment for a restoration of what was, by international treaty, German property. Abd el-Krim denounced their offer as a bribe and told the delegation that if they returned, he would permit his tribesmen to decorate the walls with some European heads.

So the Germans widened their scope, and one day a distinguished gentleman from Hamburg was seated across a restaurant table-cloth in Fez from François Dulac, suggesting a simple trade: the occasional gold coin, reassuringly stable compared to the post-War inflation of every currency under the sun, in exchange for any information that happened to come Dulac’s way concerning the leader of the Rif Revolt.

“How many of the assassination attempts against Abd el-Krim had these Germans of yours behind them?” I demanded.

“None of them,” Dulac protested, then undermined his indignation by adding, “that I know of.”

“A most convenient ignorance,” I said.

“You, a Frenchman, accepted money from Germans?” This from Mahmoud, motionless in his chair.

“They are merely businessmen, international businessmen who happen to be based in Germany. Their claim to the ore is absolutely legal—it is no fault of theirs that Spain is incapable of keeping the peace in their Protectorate. In any event, I didn’t sell them French secrets, only Rif ones.”

For the first time since his secretary had begun to talk, Lyautey lifted his gaze from the map. Under that icy glare, Dulac made a strangled noise, and said, “Er, only small French secrets, completely unimportant pieces of information, such as when you were meeting with the Sultan, and your thoughts on the rebellion. And, er, your health.”

“Monsieur le Maréchal,” Holmes asked, “how long has Monsieur Dulac been handling your correspondence?”

“For years, on and off. But more recently.”

“As you have become … unwell. Often away in France?”

“I suppose.”

“Yes. And during that time, your secretary grew cocky.

“You began, Monsieur Dulac, as a seller of information. You were happy to work both sides of the medina, as it were, gleaning facts and selling them to whoever might be interested. By the time the Germans showed up, you not only maintained, but had expanded ties with the local criminals to make quite an efficient criminal organisation of your own. You did not take sides—local villains or German industrialists, followers of Raisuli or supporters of the Revolt, it was all the same to you.

“I imagine that one day, a client required more than mere information. He needed a man to do a job. By this time you knew precisely where such men were to be found, on all sides of the political spectrum. You could indeed provide a man—for a price.

“And before you knew it, you were keeping all kinds of increasingly dangerous balls in the air: selling information both to and about Abd el-Krim; providing local assistance to Raisuli’s followers while at the same time selling their names to Raisuli’s enemies. You must surely have known how dangerous that could be, but once a man grasps a tiger’s tail, it is impossible to let go without encountering the other end of the beast.

“You knew in your bones that sooner or later, one of them would notice, and you would encounter a blade.

“Then I came to visit—a grey-haired foreigner, distant relation of the Resident General, no particular concern of yours. But at some point in the days that followed, after I left for the south on December eighth but before these two arrived in Fez ten days later, you overheard something that made you fear your crimes were coming to light. My name perhaps? In an overheard conversation between the Maréchal and Madame?”

Dulac’s sickly expression accompanied Lyautey’s sounds of impending eruption. “That time, no, not … not conversation. I saw it in … the Maréchal’s journal.”

“My private journal!”

Holmes asked his cousin, “Did you happen to mention my brother there as well?”

“Him? No, I certainly—”

Holmes cut him off, resuming his analysis of Dulac’s crimes. “After that, matters escalated. Sending fake soldiers to Nurse Taylor’s door was dangerous enough, but to provide a motorcar for the purposes of abduction—”

“Abduction?”
Lyautey exploded. “Who’s been abducted?”

“One moment,” Holmes told him. Pointing at Mahmoud, he asked Dulac, “Do you know this gentleman?”

“I don’t believe so,” the secretary replied.

“The Maréchal knows him as M. Hassan, a man who came to chat on Thursday last. Yes, I see you remember the name. You were away from Dar Mnehbi at the time?”

“I …”

“Speak!” Lyautey snarled.

“I was in the Ville Nouvelle, at a luncheon,” Dulac admitted.

“But you were back here by the time M. Hassan returned and left a message for your employer. Why did it alarm you so?”

“Of course it alarmed me. He wished to speak with the Maréchal about Abd el-Krim.”

Holmes turned a raised eyebrow at Mahmoud.

“I had little choice but to put it in writing,” Mahmoud explained. “The Maréchal had said he was leaving for Rabat that night. Using the Emir’s name ensured that he would make time to see me before he left.”

“Instead of which, M. Dulac intercepted the message and decided that you were working for me. Yes,” Holmes reflected, “it can be a problem, having a recognised name. Those three syllables, and all the world begins to examine their sins. It is not so much coincidence, M. Dulac, as consequence: My presence was a catalyst for your guilt.

“Taken separately, the visit of a famous detective and a stranger’s involvement with the Revolt would have meant nothing. Together, they convinced you that your treasonous acts were coming home to roost. That the great investigator Sherlock Holmes was onto you, and was busily insinuating his hirelings into your life.

“You had two options: to throw yourself on the mercy of Maréchal Lyautey, or to stamp us all out. We know what you decided. Tell me, your team of five: They were supporters of Sherif Raisuli, is that not so?”

“I … it is possible.”

“You provided them with French uniforms, lent them the Sultan’s motorcar, which the Resident General is given free leave to use, and sent them to capture ‘M. Hassan’ and any of his companions. Did you know what your men would do with their captives?”

“I … no.”

“You took care not to enquire. As you did not look too closely at how much they were using you for their own purposes, once your jobs were done. However, when your men only captured the one, you must have been furious. The following morning, you sent a pair to the
funduq
, where they threatened the owner—who described them as ‘rough men’—but missed the boy. Two others—fluent in French, wearing French uniforms, with French shaves and haircuts—were later dispatched to Nurse Taylor’s surgery in the medina, after you received news of an injured foreigner brought to her during the night.”

“A woman,” Dulac blurted out, still astonished.

“Who escaped you. Again.

“Then on Saturday, the Maréchal’s cousin returned, joined by another man, a woman, and a mute boy. These had to be the people you were seeking, yet you could hardly lay hands upon all four under the Maréchal’s very roof.

“I imagine you spent a tense couple of days, watching us come and go, until Russell and I virtually walked into your hands. Russell presented herself here Tuesday night, when the rest of the household was preparing for the party at Volubilis. You drugged her”—Lyautey made a noise—“stuffed her into a trunk”—Lyautey emitted a Gaulish oath—“and had her taken away. And finally, your men got wind of me and the boy in Moulay Idriss. Another journal entry?”

“A conversation. With Madame. They laughed, at the picture of you dressed as a
marabout
with—”

“Quite. At dusk last night, you gave them the Sultan’s motor again, and they took me.”

By this time, Lyautey was staring open-mouthed between his cousin and his secretary. “But
why
?” he said finally. “To what purpose could this be?”

“Money,” said Holmes in disgust. “Doesn’t it always begin with greed? You said yourself, the Mannesmann corporation would give anything to get the iron flowing again. A bag of gold coins is nothing compared to what those mines are worth.”

“Treason,” Lyautey said, in a voice like tolling doom.

“No!” Dulac cried. “I sold nothing to the German government—these were businessmen!”

“An interesting distinction, but ultimately meaningless,” Holmes said.

Mahmoud tugged at his beard. “And yet he is right. Men like the Mannesmanns put profit over patriotism. They would happily underwrite the death of Abd el-Krim if it returned power to the Spanish, but they would be equally quick to throw Spain into the sea if they thought France gave them a better chance at the ore.”

Something in the argument had gone astray. It was akin to the sensation of Profound Meaning that had plagued me early in my time here, but this was more like Profound Wrong. The facts refused to fall into tidy array. Like one piece of a jigsaw puzzle that did not quite fit.