by Mathew Carr
“Today.”
Smither frowned. “That could be a little awkward. They’re still repairing the railway lines.”
“Then perhaps His Majesty’s Government would be good enough to put me on a ship,” said Lawton. “Because I’m sure you’ll understand that I don’t want to have any more conversations with Barcelona policemen.”
“Of course.” Smither glanced sadly at his tennis racket and picked up the telephone. “Good-o. The exchange is working again. Let’s see what I can do.”
Within an hour, Smither had booked a ticket to Marseille on a steamer that evening. Lawton remained at the consulate for the rest of the day. In the evening Smither escorted him to the port. Even as Lawton looked around the harbor where Bonnecarrère had nearly been killed the night before, he still found it difficult to believe that he had survived, and he half expected Ugarte or Bravo Portillo to come after him once again.
“Well, Harry,” Smither said. “I wish you luck. This has been a strange affair.”
“It has.” Lawton shook his hand. “And perhaps you could speak to Mata’s wife when she returns and tell her what happened? Tell her she can write to me if she needs to. Tell her her husband was a brave man.”
“I will.”
Lawton thanked him, and watched his white trousers disappear into the dusk. It was not until the ship had pulled away from the harbor, and he watched the faint wisps of smoke rising up against the purple sky, that he began to relax. Behind him the seagulls followed the ship’s white trail as he looked back at the statue of Christopher Columbus with his pointing arm, at the gloomy silhouette of the Montjuïc fortress, at the streetlamps that had come back on again. It was a beautiful city, but he would not mind if he never saw it again. The next morning he arrived in Marseille and took the train to Paris, and the following day he took the train to Boulogne, and caught the ferry to Dover. Soon the white cliffs appeared out of the mist once again that he had seen in so many pictures and postcards. Before leaving for Spain he had never actually seen them with his own eyes, and now he found something reassuringly permanent about them. They marked the entrance to the only place that laid any claim to be his home, the sceptered isle that Mata had described, a country of restraint and moderation, of wise, sensible governments that did not do stupid or mad things.
It was true that it was the country of Randolph Foulkes, but England had rejected Foulkes’s schemes, and inadvertently forced him into his depraved exile. All that was over now, and he looked forward to collecting his payment from Foulkes’s widow and, more surprisingly, to seeing Lotte Friedman once again. Even as the ship pulled into the dock and he came down the gangway, he saw the two men standing in long coats and derby hats waiting on the pier. He was not certain whether they were detectives, Special Branch, or something else entirely, but he knew they were waiting for him, and as they sauntered along the pier toward him, he realized that Smither had found a way of sending a telegram after all.
* * *
On the first Monday morning after the strike Esperanza Claramunt got up to go to work as usual. Her mother said that she still looked unwell, but she was already tired of sitting in bed, listening to news of the world from the neighbors and comrades who came to wish her well. Rosa Tosets had told her not to talk about what had happened at the Arenales estate. Even her own mother knew only that she had been held prisoner with the Irishman in a place she did not know, and that the Invincibles had rescued her.
From these visits she learned of the street battles she had not been involved in, and the names of some of those who been killed or wounded. She learned that Arnau Busquets had been found floating in the harbor with a bullet in his head; that Ruben Montero had vanished and no one knew where he was. She also heard the political news. The state of emergency remained in place and the Regionalist League—Mata’s own political party—had called on the government to extend it. The Archbishop of Barcelona had called on all the people of Barcelona to reject the forces of godlessness and anarchy. The Radical Party had denied any responsibility for the church burnings and blamed them on the anarchists.
On Sunday afternoon Flor Tosets came with her mother and her two young children to see her. Señora Tosets said that the number of dead and wounded was much higher than the figures in the newspapers. Some bodies had been taken away by the army, she said, and no one knew where they were buried. Already the movement had begun to demand the authorities release the names of the dead and called for an amnesty for the prisoners who had been arrested during and after the Tragic Week. Señora Tosets also said that the police were searching for Ferrer as one of the organizers of the strike.
Esperanza asked Señora Tosets about Lawton. No one had seen him, she said, or the Frenchman, but three foreigners had been found dead in Montseny, only a few miles from Sant Celoni. The authorities claimed that bandits were responsible, and even though the bodies had not yet been identified, all of them had been driving in a red Delaunay-Belleville.
“The Irishman did well,” Señora Tosets said.
Esperanza was relieved that Lawton had survived, but she was disappointed that she had not been able to thank him and say goodbye. Later that night, she dreamed that she was trapped in a chair in total darkness, in a room filling up with blood, and she woke up shouting to find Eduardo braying in sympathy. Her mother came in and calmed them down. For the rest of the night she had slept with a candle burning, and her brother in the same bed, and she took as much comfort from him as he did from her.
Now she felt the weight of the world once again as she walked out onto the Mayor de Gràcia to take the streetcar downtown. Everything was working again. The wrecked trams had been taken away, the barricades were mostly cleared, the army had returned to its barracks, and the trams and carriages moved back and forth along the Passeig de Gràcia as though nothing had happened. She could still smell smoke and ashes, and the sight of the passersby going about their daily business made her wonder once again what had been the point of it all.
She got off the tram at the top of the Ramblas and walked along Pintor Fortuny before turning down toward her school. The children were already beginning to arrive, and they were talking excitedly to each other as if they had all been through a great adventure. They fell silent at the sight of Director Vargas, who stood gloomily by the main entrance.
“Miss Claramunt,” he said. “I’m surprised to see you.”
“Why?” she replied. “Is the school still closed?”
“Come with me.”
Esperanza followed the director into his office, where he shut the door behind him.
“Miss Claramunt, I regret to inform you that your employment here is terminated with immediate effect. You will receive a week’s salary. But you must leave the school immediately.”
Esperanza stared at him coldly. “May I ask why?”
“We have received information from the authorities, about your… activities,” Vargas replied.
“From Lieutenant Ugarte?”
“The source is not important. You understand after the events of the last week that things cannot go on as before. Rational education is one thing, sedition is quite another. As you may know, there is a warrant out for Don Francesc’s arrest. If our school is to stay open we must disassociate ourselves from—”
“Ferrer had nothing to do with the strike,” Esperanza said. “And Lieutenant Ugarte is a murderer. Teaching children to think for themselves is not sedition.”
“Well, that is your opinion, of course.”
“You are a coward,” Esperanza said. “In a country of cowards. And this country will never change until people like you no longer decide what happens in it.”
Vargas nodded, as if had expected something like this. He unlocked a drawer in his desk and handed Esperanza an envelope. “You may leave now, Miss Claramunt. Perhaps you would do better to stay out of politics if you have any concern for your mother and your brother.”
Esperanza was tempted to refuse the envelope, but the thought
of her mother and Eduardo stopped her. “Can I say goodbye to the children?” she asked.
“No you may not.”
Vargas opened the door and ushered her out into the corridor. He continued to escort her past her own classroom. It was not until she reached the entrance that she stopped and looked back at the faces of her students pressed against the classroom window. She raised her hand to wave at them and then clenched it into a fist. Vargas was still staring at her as the children let out a cheer. She would have liked to tell them that one day they would grow up in a republic—not the Republic of Lerroux and the Radicals—but a republic of justice, where the rich no longer ruled, and cardinals and bishops no longer sent the poor to fight. But now Vargas shooed them away from the window, and she wiped her eyes and walked back home through the streets of her conquered city.
* * *
Even before his return to England, Lawton had wondered what he was going to say to Mrs Foulkes. He had intended to see her as soon as he arrived, but his initial interrogation by the Special Branch officers in Dover proved to be only the first of many. For the next two weeks he was ordered to remain in London. Almost every other day he was summoned to Scotland Yard or Whitehall for interviews with officials from the Ministry of War, the Foreign Office, the Directorate of Military Intelligence, and other ministries that were not even named.
All of them wanted to ask him about Barcelona and Randolph Foulkes. Some of them questioned him about Bonnecarrère and the French secret service, others asked about Weygrand, Klarsfeld, and Foulkes’s German connections. He was also questioned by two army doctors, who asked him detailed questions about the experiments that Foulkes and Weygrand had conducted, while another army officer took copious notes. How had they extracted blood? What instruments had they used to perform transfusions? What equipment had they used for storage? What anticoagulants had they used? What were their experiments intended to achieve?
One of the doctors asked him to draw pictures of bottles and tubes, and was clearly disappointed that he had given the order to destroy Foulkes’s laboratory. Both doctors were incredulous when he described the yellow substance that had been extracted from Esperanza Claramunt’s blood, and asked him repeatedly how this had been done and how long it had taken to achieve the transformation. Lawton answered these questions as well as he could, but by the end of the interview he sensed that the two doctors did not entirely believe him.
At times Lawton sensed that he was under suspicion himself. On the morning of his third day back in the country he emerged from Lotte Friedman’s café and realized that he was being followed by a plainclothes official, who made no attempt to conceal himself. Maitland said the authorities were nervous about German spies, and that it was only natural that Lawton would come under scrutiny for a while after what had happened in Barcelona. Maitland was as astounded as everyone else by what Lawton told him, and said he deserved an OBE or some other medal for what he had done, but what Lawton wanted more than anything else was payment.
On the second Friday in August he was summoned to Whitehall once again, where an official he had not seen before explained that his debriefing was over. The official also said that any attempt to disseminate or even mention the transfusion and storage procedures that he had observed in Barcelona would be considered a breach of the Official Secrets Act, and Lawton was instructed to sign a document to that effect there and then. Nor was he allowed to mention Randolph Foulkes in any public forum. There was no mention of an OBE or any other award.
The official did not say whether these instructions applied to Foulkes’s wife. That same afternoon Lawton called Mrs. Foulkes on the number that Maitland had given him. Her voice sounded flat and slightly slurred, as though she was under medication. She criticized him for not having called her before in a tone that made him feel suddenly anxious about his payment. The next day he caught the same train that he had taken with Maitland the previous month. As the train moved slowly through the hedgerows and meadows, the oast-houses and coalmines, he thought of Barcelona and its burning skies once again. Even in August, England was greener than Catalonia, and the countryside exuded a sense of timeless order and serenity.
Since his return he had read that nearly two thousand people had been arrested on charges of rebellion during the July riots. He had also read little snippets of news on Spanish military operations in Morocco; of sniper attacks from Moorish tribesmen or Spanish artillery bombardments of Moorish positions.
There was no mention of Randolph Foulkes, and now as he looked out at the neatly ordered fields, he wondered how he was going to tell Mrs. Foulkes that her husband was a murderer and a traitor who had drained human blood in order to help the German army win the next war. Would he be breaching the Official Secrets Act? And would she even believe what he told her? On arrival at Hastings he caught a cab to Graveling once again. Soon the redbrick house appeared in front of him, and he braced himself and told the driver to wait for him. The maid ushered him inside, and he was not surprised to hear that her mistress was abed.
He followed the maid upstairs to the bedroom, and waited while she knocked lightly on the door. Mrs. Foulkes called them in testily. She was leaning up in a dressing gown with the curtains half drawn. A newspaper was lying on the bed next to her, but she looked drained and her face was creased, as though she had just woken up from a nap. She gave him a sour look and gestured languidly toward the chair by the window.
“We’ll have tea, Amelia,” she said. The maid nodded and left the room. “I’m glad to see you back safely, Mr. Lawton.”
She did not look glad at all. Lawton wanted to smoke, but sensed that it would not be appropriate.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t come before, ma’am,” he said. “I was obliged to leave Barcelona in a hurry. Because of the riots. I wanted to contact you earlier but there were certain details that needed clarification.”
“Well I would also like some clarification. Especially after this.” She handed him the newspaper and Lawton looked at the headline: ENGLISH SCIENTIST KILLED IN SPAIN. The article reported that the scientist, explorer, and author Randolph Foulkes had been killed in a terrorist bomb in Barcelona, and went on to list his achievements. Lawton was still reading it when the maid returned and poured two cups of tea.
“You haven’t seen this?” Mrs. Foulkes asked, as the maid left the room.
“I don’t read the Times ma’am.”
“A lackey from the foreign office brought Randolph’s ashes home last week,” she said. “He confirmed what you said—that Randolph was killed in a terrorist outrage. But until yesterday I’d heard nothing from you. Regarding our other matter.”
Lawton did not know whether the ashes really did belong to Foulkes or the tramp who had taken his place, but the Foreign Office had clearly made its own decision about what Foulkes’s widow was allowed to know.
“As I told you in my telegram, your husband was killed in the Luna Bar bombing,” he said. “But I have since discovered that it was not an accident. Your husband was deceived by two confidence tricksters in Vernet-les-Bains, a mesmerist named Dr. Weygrand and a woman named Zorka—who went under the pseudonym Marie Babineaux. They hypnotized your husband and got him to make out the payment that you mentioned. They then staged a terrorist outrage in order to kill him, and killed the perpetrator in order to keep him quiet.”
“Good God. Have they been caught?”
“The perpetrators are both dead, ma’am. Chief Inspector Maitland has made a formal request to the Bank of Sababell to have your money returned to you. I believe it will be.”
Mrs. Foulkes nodded. “This Weygrand was German, you say?”
“Austrian, ma’am.”
“Same difference. Poor Randolph. That wasn’t how he expected to die. The Foreign Office also brought his possessions with the ashes. But there was no manuscript there—he always took his writings with him. Did you see it?”
“I didn’t, ma’am.”
“Pity. His publisher called me today and
said that he would be interested in posthumous publication. A pioneer, he called him. A great man. Do you think my husband was a great man Mr. Lawton?”
She no longer seemed drowsy now, and her face bore just a trace of irony that he had not seen in her before.
“I couldn’t say,” Lawton said awkwardly. “I never met him.”
“He wasn’t much of a husband,” she said. “He wasn’t kind.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Not to people. But he loved animals. We had a dog once. A red setter. It lived for fourteen years. Randolph showed more tenderness toward that animal than he ever showed to me. When the animal died he actually shed a tear. Only one. But that was the only time I ever saw him do that.”
Lawton could not think of anything to say to this, and he hurriedly sipped at his tea.
“I sometimes felt there was… a darkness in him,” she went on. “Something I couldn’t see. Couldn’t reach. I’m sorry. I’m rambling. I thank you for your diligence and professionalism, Mr. Lawton. Chief Inspector Maitland was right. I underestimated you.” She put down her cup of tea. “I’m tired now. I’ve not been well.”
She handed him a check with a thin, bony hand, and Lawton glanced at it just long enough to see that it was nearly double what he had been promised.
“Thank you, ma’am. That is most generous.”
Mrs. Foulkes leaned back with her eyes half-closed. She looked as though a heavy weight had just descended upon her, and it was obvious that the conversation was over. Lawton placed the empty cup on the bedside table and stood up to leave. He glanced out of the window and saw the maid standing by some rabbit hutches at the end of the yard. One of the hutches was empty and a large white rabbit was sitting on the grass on its hind legs staring back at him, as if it recognized him. For a moment he stared back, and then he turned back to Foulkes’s widow to say goodbye. Her eyes were closed now, and he left her lying in the gloom and shut the door softly behind him.