Mgwana posted himself on his balcony and took the first watch. Meanwhile I tried to get some sleep and probably got some. When I went down for lunch I stopped at the bar and was boldly accosted by a new guest whose trim buttocks suggested that her skirt was designed deliberately for an interminable succession of bar stools.
Her face was over-repaired, but intelligent. I might even have granted her an immortal soul, which goes to show what nonsense one can talk when there are no facts on which to base opinion. She had an entertaining line of patter which would have appeared very sophisticated if she had not assumed that because we were both English we were confederates against the world. I found myself compelled to offer her a drink—since I needed another myself—and she then decided, sliding off the bar stool and revealing for my benefit a jellied leg very well moulded, that we should take our glasses to a table.
‘Tell me,’ she asked, ‘has anything been happening here?’
‘Nothing more than some filthy weather. I hope it clears up for you.’
‘I don’t think I shall stay more than a night,’ she said.
I replied politely that it was a pity, and where was she going on to?
‘Back to Madrid. I live there. I’m the correspondent of two of our Sunday papers.’
‘Have you come up to see Leopold Mgwana?’
‘I might as well, now that I’m here. I’ll ask him what he thinks of Spanish women or something, though as a matter of fact’—she gave me an elegantly smutty glance—‘I expect he’s fully occupied.’
I was just about to deal with her as she deserved and leave her to pick up the pieces when I remembered what the experienced Mgwana had said: that ‘they’ would see we couldn’t keep it out of the news.
‘You mean Miss Manoli?’ I replied. ‘Of course one has to be broad-minded about these things, but …’
‘Do they seem a happy couple?’
‘I don’t know. I never noticed.’
‘Isn’t that like a man!’ she exclaimed gaily.
She asked how long I was staying, and when I said that I should be at the Hostal de las Olas another week she gave me her card and invited me to telephone her if I saw or was told anything out of the ordinary.
‘But what sort of out of the ordinary?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Anything to do with La Manoli can be News. I had a hot tip that I should drive up here at once if I wanted a scoop. It sounded like a society scandal.’
‘How do you clever girls get your information?’ I asked. ‘I mean, anybody could telephone and send you off on a wild-goose chase.’
‘They do, but not twice. This was just an anonymous telephone call to tell me that Mgwana was here with some society girl. I checked the information with a source in security police, and couldn’t make him say yes or no. But I had a hunch, and here I am.’
‘Why the police?’
‘Well, Mgwana is an important person, I supposed that if he was really here, he would have a guard.’
She certainly knew her way around. A secret police source would be most useful. And no doubt her source occasionally got his reward. He could always have a bath afterwards.
The implications of what she had just told me needed sorting out. If anyone at all was keeping an eye on the security of Mgwana he was pretty inefficient. Whatever little book of rules he had would surely include the checking of bathroom windows. And wouldn’t he make himself known to Mgwana?
I was prepared to bet that the police had not yet taken any action. Mgwana’s visit was unofficial. His inexperienced embassy in London might never have thought of dropping a note on the Spanish Embassy. As for Olura, who had arranged the holiday, it was not in her character to communicate with an undemocratic government to request the discreet services of its brutal secret agents. So it was possible that Madrid had known nothing of Mgwana’s arrival until a leisurely report was received from Frontier Control.
Another hypothesis was tenable: that a security guard had arrived soon after Mgwana, and that he had connived at last night’s atrocity. I ruled that out. The secret police might be a sinister lot when dealing with Basque or Asturian miners, but I knew them to be conscientious and hard-working from the point of view of the State. No agent would allow himself to be suborned by a pair of dubious foreigners, especially since he would have to explain how a murder took place under his nose.
‘Have you found out if the police have a man up here?’ I asked.
She had not. But she did have, she said, a contact in the hotel, a man called Araña. The name had been given to her by her anonymous informant. I offered to help her to find Araña and to act as an interpreter in case she did not speak Spanish.
‘I do,’ she claimed.
It was a fair conjecture that Araña would turn out to be the floor waiter who had been packing up that late supper, well posted to listen for sounds of alarm from Olura’s room. I took my little Sunday pornographer upstairs, and found the man in the pantry on Mgwana’s floor—which was surprising since there was never any room service during lunch. I had not looked at him closely during the night. Now that I did, I doubted if he was the type to take a bribe for anything plainly dishonourable. There were half a dozen young waiters sliding smoothly about the terrace with drinks, any one of whom would be a far more likely choice. This fellow was unshaven and looked as if he hadn’t washed or slept, but he was middle-aged, fatherly and reliable.
I turned her loose on him, and never in my life heard worse Spanish. She used a torrent of verbs in the infinitive and assumed a French accent—on the grounds, I suppose, that it ought to be more intelligible than an English one. But I must admit that this hideous jargon, when accompanied by a too understanding smile and a general air of comely flesh all a-twitter, did get results.
Even at his age he could not resist the synthetic charm which was squirted at him and did his best to understand her as she drivelled away about the excellence of Spanish hotels and how poorly paid the staff was. But when she asked him outright if anything of interest to a newspaper had happened to the English señorita during the night, he looked at me for permission to talk.
‘We have no secrets from the lady,’ I said.
‘Nothing happened,’ he told her, ‘nothing at all, except that this gentleman and the black Excellency came downstairs together and called on the lady about two o’clock with a bottle.’
I grinned at my dainty journalist. She shut the half-open bag which had been a hint that hundred-peseta notes were to be found in it, and looked at me with a set face in which was puzzlement as well as irritation. She got out of there as fast as dignity and her skirt allowed. She may have thought that I was Mgwana’s shadow and bodyguard.
‘By the way, friend,’ I asked when she had gone, ‘what’s your name?’
‘José Arizmendi.’
I switched at once to Euzkadi.
‘Who told you to hang about in the passage, Arizmendi?’
‘The manager.’
‘And what the devil does he want to know?’
‘He told me that it was on orders from Madrid. Somebody has to look after your black man until a trained guard arrives.’
I said that I was very glad to hear it, which I wasn’t. I could have extracted some useful information if the waiter had been employed or bribed by Vigny.
‘And the sooner he comes, the better,’ said Arizmendi. ‘By God, Ardower, I tell you I’m not cut out for the police!’
There are no ‘sirs’ in Euzkadi. We democratically use the surname, whatever the difference of status.
‘One can see that,’ I assured him.
‘Thank you. All the same, there are plenty of good fellows among them up here. I had a second cousin who was a sergeant in Vitoria. But what I was going to say to you is that my job would be easier if you and the Minister would tell me his intentions. Look! It’s not decent to stand outside a guest’s room, so I stay in the pantry. Last night I was on the floor below, for I knew this African uncle was in the lady’
s bedroom.’
He stated the fact without even an innuendo in his eye, for which I gave him full marks—though I suspect that his unconcern was due to the fact that he took the immorality of politicians for granted.
‘But then you and he come downstairs at two in the morning,’ he went on, ‘so he wasn’t there at all. Good! Now you are all three in the lady’s room, and a little later she comes out with your key to get something from your room. So you are still there, and at breakfast time I am still on duty in the pantry. And again you two come down from upstairs. It’s like a farce in the theatre!’
I said that we had moved very quietly so as not to wake up other guests, and he admitted very readily that he might have been dozing. I am sure that movement along the balconies never occurred to him; there was no conceivable reason for it.
I promised that in future the Prime Minister would make the job of his amateur security guard as easy as possible, and then I asked him if he knew anyone in the hotel called Araña.
‘Yes, the outside man,’ he replied. ‘He does the odd jobs and the garden. An Andalusian with all their gipsy tricks. He cuts little bunches of flowers and presents them to the old ladies. You should see him mimic them afterwards. He’s always good for a laugh and free with the drinks.’
Well, there was the man who had almost certainly provided Livetti with a ladder. No wonder he had been recommended as a rich source for any newshawk trying to fill in the details of a juicy scandal.
All this had taken the best part of an hour. I joined Mgwana on his balcony and told him what I had discovered.
‘I asked our people to let the Spanish Embassy know where I was going and when I should arrive,’ he said. ‘But they are too busy learning how to use fish-knives and leave the proper cards. I can’t blame them. Conventions aren’t as useless as they seem. Just a year ago the Ambassador was a schoolteacher and the First Secretary a bank clerk.’
God, how the man must have needed that week of rest which Olura had arranged for him!
She came up from lunch and asked why I had not been there. I explained that I had been busy pumping a female Livetti.
‘Yes, I saw her in the restaurant and spoke to her,’ she said. ‘She’s Mary Deighton-Flagg and was at school with me. She wasn’t a bad feature writer, but if she goes back to London she faces an action for slander. It isn’t her fault that the Law is four hundred years out of date.’
I replied emphatically that the conversation of Miss Deighton-Flagg made me thank heaven for Her Majesty’s judges.
‘So far as I can see,’ I added, ‘your Mary thinks that any woman of character and originality has to be a nymphomaniac.’
‘Meaning me? But I don’t care what she thinks, Philip, and I’m sorry for her.’
‘I hope you weren’t sorry enough to give her a story,’ I said, and refrained from pointing out that I admired her charity more than her taste.
Only twenty-four hours earlier I had been looking forward to a promising holiday from erudition, islanded in luxury with the lovely eccentricities of Olura and the exotic intelligence of her black man. But now, hard behind that curled-up puppet in the boot, came so much more humanity with alien purposes: the Deighton-Flagg woman, a specialist in poking round the bend of lavatories on the pretence of cleaning them; the puzzled Arizmendi; the unknown Araña; and now at last the security guard who might have been some use the night before but could be only an embarrassment in our present emergency.
That was my first meeting with Lieutenant Pedro Gonzalez. He had come from Zarauz where he had been keeping his police eyes on the children of some German prince whose matrimonial adventures with one millionairess and two fashionably deformed movie stars had left some doubt in the eyes of the Law whose bloody baby was whose and why. He spoke perfect French, which wasn’t much good to Mgwana who had only English, so I was called in to translate.
I liked Gonzalez at once. He was thin, wiry, and had a mobile face which he kept under control—sometimes with an effort. He wore a bow tie and a black summer suit, and could have passed as any bachelor enjoying a respectable holiday. Except for a twinkle in his eye and a bulge on his hip—so discreet that it would have been unnoticeable if not for the exactitude of Spanish tailoring—he might have been a clerk at a Consulate or the serious, young under-manager of a first-class hotel.
He wanted very little from Mgwana: merely that he should keep in sight when not in his room, and should allow himself to be accompanied when travelling by car. He had no reason to suppose that His Excellency’s holiday would be disturbed, but we must understand that Spain was a welcoming nation and could not avoid receiving people who might abuse such hospitality. He believed—with a bow to Olura and me—that we, too, with our great tradition of offering political asylum, found it had occasional disadvantages. I got the impression that Gonzalez’s chiefs had given him more precise information than he was giving to us, but all policemen like to surround themselves with an aura of mysterious importance.
Olura treated him distantly, seeing in him a member of Franco’s secret police with a habit of torturing honest working men on his day off. But he was nothing more than a citizen of excellent education who conceived it his pleasure and duty to keep the peace. He would have served Monarchy or Republic as loyally as the government of the Caudillo.
The evening passed without incident, one of us continually keeping an eye on the car. I was determined to dispose of Livetti alone. I could easily have been persuaded to take Mgwana along, but that was now impossible. As for Olura, I knew that her sensibilities would be outraged. However much I needed her company and such physical help as she could give, I felt that she would never want to see me again afterwards.
Yet she insisted, and nothing could shake her. She must have balanced her duty to the living individual against her guilt at desecrating the dead, and decided in my favour.
At half past seven I went to her room. It was pouring with rain again, and I wanted to start early in case we were held up by mud or flooding when we left the main roads. She was ready, and wearing the Red Riding Hood cloak. I exclaimed impulsively that it wouldn’t do.
She smiled and asked why not. I wondered myself why I had blurted out anything so silly, and then saw the answer. Because it was the essence of our first meeting. Because it should not be associated with this cold-blooded crime which, the night before, had seemed merely a desperate solution and now grew with every moment to be more disgusting, more immoral and more inevitable.
‘No, I’m wrong,’ I said. ‘The cloak will be quite black at night and hides you. But please promise to stay in the car when we come to the point.’
‘I won’t promise anything, Philip. Last night I came to you only for advice. But you didn’t give it and go back to bed.’
‘It didn’t seem an occasion for only advice.’
‘That’s what I feel now.’
We hesitated over the irrevocable step of leaving the room and going down to the car, not talking very much but at ease with each other.
‘He has a home,’ she said.
‘I suppose so. But anyway he is never going to return to it.’
‘I hate this!’
‘So do I. But don’t you believe Mgwana is worth it?’
She looked at me gratefully. Keeping Olura happy sometimes reminded me of arguing with a professor of ethics about the ultimate good.
She had just lifted the hood over that dark gold hair when Mgwana came in. His expression made us both sure that Livetti had been discovered.
‘You mustn’t go,’ he said. ‘Not yet! Will you watch the car from the window while I tell you what has happened?’
It was not, after all, the worst; nor was it wholly alarm which had given his face a patina of purple-grey. That dull darkness was a cloud of anger and humiliation.
He had just received a telephone call, he told us, in his native language. A white man had been speaking—not at all fluently except for his command of insult in vocabulary and inflection.
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br /> The voice, sure that it could not be monitored and understood, had challenged him with what he was concealing and where it was. Mgwana naturally assumed that our movements had been observed. In fact, as I now know, they had not. The accusation was an intelligent guess. After all, we could not possibly have hidden Livetti in the hotel to be discovered at any moment by the host of eager chambermaids.
‘You will leave the hotel, boy,’ the voice ordered, ‘taking the body with you and driven by your …’
Mgwana, translating for us, was hoarse with suppressed fury. The unknown speaker must have referred to Olura by some barbarously disgusting term for a whore, even coarser than ours.
‘… driven by Miss Manoli,’ Mgwana went on. ‘You will leave the hotel at 9 p.m. precisely, and we shall assist you both to dispose of the body. If you do not obey, the police will be informed and advised to open the boot.’
‘But how did the caller know you still had it?’ I asked.
‘I think now that he didn’t know,’ Mgwana replied, ‘and that he was fishing to find out. But I was so surprised and outraged that I gave it away.’
‘Then there was no mention of me and last night?’
‘No. I’m sure they do not realise that you come into it at all,’ he said.
Olura tried to be masculine and calm. She pointed out that the man behind the voice was a murderer and trying to force us to help him. He was in serious danger, whereas we had only questions to answer and scandal to face.
Mgwana considered that in a long silence and shook his head.
‘There was some proof that I did not kill Livetti so long as his body remained in the window,’ he said. ‘There is no proof at all now. The motive is just as weak or as strong as it was before, but the evidence of guilt has become overwhelming. I think I must obey.’
Looking back in cold blood, I believe that Mgwana ought to have confided in Gonzalez, and immediately opened up a line direct to the Minister of Justice and the Head of State. In that way it might have been possible to keep the whole affair secret during investigation. But he was new to the ways of the west. How far would his word be trusted? Wasn’t it likely that colour could count against him? Even if it didn’t, would they remember his early tribal youth, and forget Balliol, the London School of Economics and his influence at the United Nations? He was not yet sure enough that the diplomatic old-boy network applied to him.
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