A Dead Man In Trieste

by Michael Pearce

  Surely not. And yet Lomax has evidently embraced it wholeheartedly. More than wholeheartedly: extravagantly. Forty-seven tickets! The man must have been completely hooked.

  Another not exactly normal thing to add to the apparently infinite list of Lomax’s eccentricities! But Seymour felt a little twinge of sadness. Was this all that Lomax’s stepping over the traces amounted to? Was going to the cinema the summit of the dolce vita? If it was, Seymour felt the need for a certain revisionism in his thinking.

  And yet it looked as if this mild, slightly ridiculous, excess had had a part to play in whatever it was that had happened to Lomax. For in going through the pockets of the suit that Lomax had been dressed in, in the presence of Seymour as consular representative, Kornbluth had found a grey, smudged, almost dissolved ticket, just one, but which Kornbluth, looking at it, had thought could be for a performance on the night that Lomax had died.

  ‘I can’t be sure,’ he said. ‘I’ll have to put it to my people. But I think it’s for the Edison, and they changed the tickets just about that time. This is one of the new ones.’

  There was nothing that Seymour himself could do with the tickets. It would have to await the verdict of Kornbluth’s people. He pushed the pile away and turned to making a list of Lomax’s effects. He would send it back to London and they, presumably, would forward it on to Lomax’s next of kin.

  The thought sent his mind back to the letter from Lomax’s ‘Auntie Vi’ which had also been found stuffed in the pocket of one of his suits. Seymour took it out and read it through.

  The big news it contained was that Lomax’s Uncle Sid had gone in to Manchester to have his teeth done. Seymour knew Manchester or, rather, of Manchester. It was another place where immigrants went. Some of the Jewish tailors he knew in the East End had relatives there. What they had told him of the poorer parts where they lived had not made him want to go there.

  And yet for Auntie Vi Manchester had seemed an El Dorado. While Uncle Sid had been having his teeth done she had gone to ‘the big shops’ and she listed their names and her purchases with starry-eyed breathlessness. Seymour wondered what Warrington could be like.

  Warrington, it appeared, was where Lomax had grown up too. The letter was full of ‘you will remember, of course’ and references to places and people’s names. Seymour wondered if Auntie Vi and Uncle Sid had been substitute parents. There was no mention of parents and the letter breathed a closeness which Seymour, used to family closeness, could recognize.

  But if it breathed closeness, it also breathed narrowness. Lomax had travelled a long way to get from Warrington to Trieste. Seymour had learned enough about the Foreign Office now to realize that there was a considerable difference between a consul and the lordly figures he had encountered in London. A consul, he had worked out, was the journeyman of the Diplomatic Service, the man who conducted much of the humdrum business of ports and trade. He operated at a different level from the ambassadors and secretaries and, given the kind of institution that the Foreign Office seemed to be, that meant that he was usually recruited from a different social level. Going by the letter, that certainly seemed to be true in Lomax’s case. Coming from such a background, Lomax had done well to get where he had done. Trieste, Seymour was beginning to see, was a more important place than he had thought.

  He read through the letter again and was struck by its warmth. The news of Lomax’s death would come as a shock. He hoped that the Foreign Office would break it gently. When he remembered the stiffness of the people he had encountered there, however, he didn’t think that was likely. Prompted by a sudden movement of sympathy, arising, perhaps, because the memory of Lomax lying there on the slab was so fresh in him, he wrote Auntie Vi a letter of condolence. He realized, of course, that it was not the sort of thing he should do: either as a policeman or as a member, if only temporary, of the Diplomatic Service.

  ‘If you or I disappear,’ Alfredo had said, ‘that is nothing. But if an official disappears . . .!’ And all the more so, apparently, if an official died in suspicious circumstances. Nobody had taken much notice of Lomax living; dead, he seemed to have become the centre of Trieste’s attention. A whole string of people came to the Consulate to express their condolences.

  Mostly they expressed them to a slightly surprised Seymour.

  ‘Well, they wouldn’t express them to me,’ said Koskash. ‘I am just a clerk.’

  ‘Yes, but I’m not even - I mean, I’m not a permanent person here.’

  ‘You don’t have to be permanent, you just have to be British,’ said Koskash. ‘And vaguely official. A uniform would, of course, help.’

  ‘Well, I can tell you - ’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Koskash kindly. ‘There just has to be some focus for symbolic diplomatic action. A donkey would do just as well.’

  Seymour wasn’t sure if this made him feel any better. Anyway, the doyen of the consular corps was waiting outside so he pulled himself to attention, put on a sombre face, and told Koskash he could show him in.

  Signor Caramelli was a distinguished-looking, grey-haired man who shook his hand sadly and then held on to it for longer than Seymour liked.

  ‘It is with deep regret. ... I speak for the whole consular corps ... So sad. Signor Lomax was a man much loved.’

  But not, perhaps, much known; certainly not by Signor Caramelli, who got his name wrong several times in the conversation that followed.

  Nor, perhaps, by Herr Stiickenmeier, who came in afterwards.

  ‘So sorry,’ he said. ‘Deepest regrets. That such a thing should happen to so popular a figure as Mr . . . Mr . . . Lamberg? . . . comes as a shock to all of us.’

  It was with some relief that Seymour heard an English voice in the office outside.

  Its owner announced himself.

  ‘Barton,’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘I’m the Peninsular man here. Sorry to hear about Lomax. I suppose that goes for all of us, although most of us didn’t know him very well. He never had much to do with the Club.’

  ‘Club?’

  ‘The English Club. For people who work here. Only English, of course. Nothing against the Triestians, it’s just that if you’re with them all day, sometimes you want to get away.’

  ‘But you say that Lomax . . .?’

  ‘Wasn’t like that.’ Barton seemed puzzled. ‘Spent all his time in the piazza. With Italians! Could never understand that. The man who was here before him - Shockley, his name was - was in the Club all the time.’

  ‘Well, I suppose it take all sorts - ’

  ‘Yes. I know. But a consul ought not to be spending all his time with locals. He ought to be a bit detached. That’s why it’s useful to have a place like the Club. You can get away from everybody, be with your own. I daresay you’ll find that.’

  ‘Actually, I’m only here temporarily - ‘

  ‘Just standing in? Well, at least they’ve got someone here quickly. And that’s important in a place like Trieste, where there are a lot of business interests. Look, you’re very welcome to make use of the Club while you’re here. Just sign yourself in. I’ll look after the sponsoring.’

  ‘Thank you. That’s very kind of you.’

  ‘Not at all,’

  Barton held out his hand.

  ‘I’ve got to push off, I’m afraid. Trouble at the docks again. Sorry about Lomax. Funny bloke. Can’t say I really got on with him. Could never make him out. All right at his job, I will say that. But you never knew where you were with him. Too much in with the locals. You began to wonder whose side he was on.’

  When the stream had subsided, Koskash came in.

  ‘Schneider wants to see you,’ he said.

  ‘Fine, show him in.’

  ‘No, no. You go to him, he doesn’t come to you.’

  ‘Well, all right, if that’s the way it is. Where do I go?’

  ‘The police station.’

  ‘Police station?’

  ‘There’s a special part. Behind the main build
ing.’

  ‘Well, all right. And I just ask for Schneider, do I? Will that be enough?’

  ‘Oh, yes. That will be enough.’

  ‘Look, who the hell is Schneider?’

  Koskash considered for a moment.

  ‘In Trieste,’ he then said carefully, ‘there are two sorts of police.’

  ‘Yes, yes, someone else has told me that.’

  ‘The ordinary sort - Kornbluth is one of those. And - well, a different sort. The special police. They deal mostly with political matters.’

  ‘Well, I’m like that. Mostly.’

  ‘You are?’ Koskash looked at him evenly. ‘Well, then, you and Schneider should get on.’

  Inside the room a man was sitting at a desk. He wore a general’s uniform and had close-cropped hair and a scar - a duelling scar? - on his cheek.

  ‘Herr Seymour? From the British Consulate?’

  He rose and shook hands.

  ‘I was very sorry to hear - we were all very sorry to hear. Please accept our profound regrets. You may assure London that we shall do everything we can to track down those responsible.’

  “Thank you.’

  Schneider looked at him curiously.

  ‘You are not, I think, a regular member of the Consulate?’

  ‘No. It happened that I was on my way here when - when the incident happened. I am a King’s Messenger.’

  ‘Ah, a King’s Messenger?’ He looked at Seymour’s wrist and smiled. ‘So it’s true, then,’ he said, ‘about the watches? You people always wear two?’

  ‘Not always,’ said Seymour.

  ‘And that one is always set at British time, the other at Continental time?’

  ‘When it is important.’

  Schneider laughed.

  ‘Do you know what that says? To me, at any rate. It says that British time is different from Continental time. That Britain is always out of step with Europe. That our interests are always, in the end, different.’

  ‘Why should our interests be different?’ asked Seymour.

  ‘Well,’ said Schneider - he seemed to be watching him, ‘take this matter of your Mr Lomax.’

  ‘Why should our interests be different there? The Austrian authorities are surely as anxious as we are to find out what happened to him?’

  ‘Yes, of course we have to find out. And if a crime has been committed, it must be solved. We can agree about that. But beyond that?’

  ‘Beyond that?’

  ‘There may, of course, be nothing beyond that. It may all be very simple. He goes out for the night with one of his drunken friends and gets knocked on the head down by the docks. The body is thrown in the water. A simple robbery: that is all. Anyway, London says, that is all there is to it and it ends there. But suppose Vienna says, well, no, we do not think that is all there is to it and we would like to know more. Well, then, you see, our interests may differ. British time is not the same as Vienna time,’

  ‘Why shouldn’t that be all there is to it?’

  ‘May I ask,’ said Schneider, ‘if you knew Lomax? Personally, I mean?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I did. And I found him . . . surprising. At first when you meet him you think he is insignificant. You think there is nothing there. The sort of man you can walk over. And at first, when you do business with him, you do walk over him. But then, just when you think it’s all over and done with, up he pops again, with that slightly inane smile of his, polite, deferential - deferring, always deferring. Everyone else’s opinion is always better than his. Even when he is a drunken layabout. He defers even to the port officials and they think: this is an easy touch. No problem here. So they try to trick him. And they think they’ve got away with it. But no, suddenly it is not so easy. There he is popping up again. And in the end it is they who give way. It is almost exasperating. You could say, perhaps, that he is just very good at his job . . .

  ‘But lately I have been wondering about your Mr Lomax. So ignorable, so overlookable, and yet so good at representing his country’s interests. I have been asking myself recently where those interests end. There have been things, you see . . .

  ‘And then one day he disappears. Consuls do not disappear. Just like that. Now I begin to wonder very hard. Is there something I have missed in this most missable of men? Something to do, perhaps, with those interests beyond the usual interests? Is this, perhaps, a point at which British time becomes different from Viennese time? And then he is found dead. And then . . .’ Schneider paused. . . a King’s Messenger comes.’ He was suddenly looking at Seymour very sharply. ‘A King’s Messenger?’

  Seymour had had his doubts about the King’s Messenger bit right from the first. It was always tricky to work covertly and to work covertly abroad even more tricky; especially when it was in a field completely new to you, as foreign, in all senses, as the diplomatic world. He had been able to see the argument for doing so in this case, however, and had allowed himself to be persuaded. What he had been more worried by, at the time, had been the difficulty of explaining it to his family.

  He had had enough difficulty, with their history of dissent from government in their original native lands and the normal immigrant suspicion of authority in their new land, in getting them to accept his original decision to become a policeman. Now this!

  It was his grandfather, surprisingly, who had recovered first. Although fiercely anti-royalist, he was disposed to make exceptions for the country of his adoption and found a perverse satisfaction in thinking now that his family had made it in England to the extent of his grandson becoming one of the King’s courtiers, that, at last, one of his family promised to be on the inside of the power game. How wrong, thought Seymour, he was!

  Seymour’s mother, who thought that to take on any post with a title was to stick your neck out, remained doubtful, and his sister, who was probably the only one with an idea of what a King’s Messenger actually was, was quietly dismissive.

  His father stayed, as usual, silent. If his son was going to start travelling at the government’s expense, why couldn’t he go to the Baltic, where he might be able to do a useful bit of timber business on the side?

  Now suddenly, almost as soon as he had got out to Trieste, to find himself under pressure on the covert side, was disconcerting. Schneider was sharp, no question about that. But what was he on about? He seemed to be hinting that Lomax might have played some other role in addition to that of consul. Just fancy, or was there something in it? Seymour was beginning to wonder if his briefing at the Foreign Office in London had been as full as it might have been.

  He answered, however, neutrally.

  ‘King’s Messenger, yes. I was on my way here when it happened. Pure accident, of course.’

  ‘Of course. I just hope that another accident doesn’t happen.’

  The artists, too, had heard the news and were in sombre mood at their table when he passed it that evening.

  ‘Your friend,’ said Lorenzo sorrowfully.

  ‘Our friend,’ said Luigi. ‘How can such things happen?’

  They invited him to join them but, slightly mindful of Barton’s words, Seymour politely declined. They did not press him, thinking that he might wish to be alone this evening. He found a table by himself further on down towards the sea front.

  Later on, however, he looked up to see Maddalena standing beside him.

  ‘I am sorry,’ she said.

  He half rose and offered the chair opposite him. She hesitated for a moment and then sat down.

  ‘I will not stay,’ she said. ‘You wish to be alone. I know.’

  ‘There’s a lot to think about,’ said Seymour.

  ‘Yes. He was your friend. I understand.’

  Seymour nodded, feeling rather fraudulent, however.

  ‘You will wish to find out who did it,’ said Maddalena suddenly.

  ‘Well . . .’ said Seymour, startled.

  Maddalena put her hand on his arm.

  ‘I understand. We are like that, too.’ />
  ‘Like . . .?’

  ‘Had he no family?’

  ‘Not much of one. Just an aunt. And an uncle. They had looked after him, I think, when he was a child.’

  Maddalena nodded.

  ‘They would be old, then, and not able to take it on themselves.’

  ‘Take it on themselves?’

  ‘The obligation. I understand. And so you, as a friend, must take it on.’

  ‘Take it on?’

  ‘It is a question of honour. You need say no more. I understand.’

  ‘Just a minute - ’

  Maddalena got up from the table.

  ‘I will leave you,’ she said. ‘You wish to be alone. I just wanted you to know that Lomax was my friend too. Perhaps more than a friend. And I wish to stand beside you. It is my obligation, too. We will work together.’

  ‘Yes, well, thank you, but -’

  But Maddalena had already gone.

  Later, on his way back to the hotel, he passed the artists again, and again they invited him to join them. Feeling that it would be churlish to refuse, he sat down.

  ‘Just a coffee, though,’ he stipulated.

  ‘You are welcome,’ said Alfredo.

  ‘Doubly welcome,’ said Lorenzo.

  ‘James has been arrested,’ said Luigi.

  ‘And we want you to get him out,’ said Maddalena.

  ‘Well, look, I don’t know that I - ’

  ‘Lomax would have done. He was always going down to the police station. Not just for James but for any of us.’

  ‘It is, actually, easier in the case of James than it would be for us,’ said Alfredo, ‘because James is a British national.’

  ‘Look, I am just a Messenger.’

  ‘A King’s Messenger,’ said Maddalena with emphasis.

  ‘That doesn’t mean a thing. It’s a very lowly position, really.’