A Dead Man in Tangier

by Michael Pearce

  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, draw
n 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 parti
cular, 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.'