Michael Pearce - A dead man in Tangier

‘And the two men found the body?’

‘Lying face down. With a lance stuck between his shoulders. It was still there, apparently. Standing straight up, the men said. Like a flagpole.’

He smiled wryly.

‘A good stick, I think pig-stickers would say.’

'I suppose,’ said the Consul, after they had taken tea, ‘that you would like to visit the scene of the crime? Isn’t that what you fellows usually do?’

Seymour allowed that it was: and they took one of the little fly-blown cabs waiting beneath the palm trees and headed out of town. Their way took them first along a wide boulevard fringed with vivid clumps of bougainvillea and then, leaving behind them the white, crowded streets of the Old City, they entered a completely different area. Rising up a slope to their right were rows of low European-style villas, each in a patch of green with bright bursts of oleander and bougainvillea.

‘The European quarter,’ said Macfarlane. ‘Bossu had a house here, where he lived with Mrs Bossu. And an apartment in town where he lived with someone who wasn’t Mrs Bossu.’

Beyond the villas were cultivated fields and small farms, which gave way to stony desert scattered with thin, thorny scrub; and then, rising incongruously out of the scrub, was a large black and white marquee which reminded Seymour of an English County Show which he had once mistakenly visited.

‘The Tent,’ said Macfarlane, with pride.

In front of the marquee were wagons and blue-gowned figures unloading barrels, which they were taking inside. As each barrel was carried through the entrance it was ticked off on a list by a harassed-looking Frenchman.

‘Monsieur L’Espinasse,’ said Macfarlane. ‘Our Secretary.’

He came across to greet them.

‘Monsieur L’Espinasse, Monsieur Seymour.’ Macfarlane spoke in French. ‘Seymour has just arrived from England. He’s come to look into the Bossu business.’

A shade of discomfort crossed the Secretary’s face.

‘Ah, Bossu!’ He looked at Macfarlane. ‘Some people have suggested we ought to cancel,’ he said. ‘As a mark of respect. But others have said that they didn’t feel much respect for Bossu and that it ought to go ahead.’

‘You can’t cancel for every little thing,’ said the Consul.

‘My thought exactly,’ said the Secretary, relieved. ‘Are you coming tomorrow?’ he said to Seymour. ‘You’d be very welcome. Come as my guest.’

‘There’s a pig-sticking tomorrow?’

‘Yes. Most Saturdays during the season.’

‘I would very much like to.’

Out of the corner of his eye Seymour saw Idris and Mustapha detach themselves from the rear of the cab, where they had been riding on the axle.

‘De Grassac here?’ asked Macfarlane.

‘Out the back,’ said the Secretary.

They went round to the back of the marquee, where they found a group of men who had just been practising. Their lances were stuck in the ground beside their horses, which were still breathing heavily. The men were in military overalls and seemed to be soldiers. Instead of a cap or a helmet they wore a kind of Bedouin headdress.

‘Ah, de Grassac! Captain de Grassac,’ he said to Seymour, ‘was the man who was sent out to see to the body when word came in.’

De Grassac nodded. He was a tall, fiercely moustached man with a deeply suntanned, open face and sharp blue eyes.

‘This is Monsieur Seymour. He’s come out to look into this Bossu business. I wonder if you would mind showing him the spot?’

‘Not at all,’ said de Grassac. ‘Shall we go now?’

He hesitated.

‘Do you ride? No? Then you’d better come up behind me.’

As they rode away Seymour saw Idris and Mustapha standing nearby and looking, for the moment, distinctly perplexed.

De Grassac threaded his way confidently through the thorn. At first the sand was heavily scuffed up where the main hunt had passed, but then he turned away and went off through patches of thick scrub where they soon lost sight of the main track.

And where, presumably the people on the main track would have lost sight of them. Seymour began to understand how it was that no one appeared to have seen Bossu.

The ground rose and fell in little hillocks and valleys and in the hollows, although the scrub was usually only shoulder height, it would be easy to lose sight of a man, even a horseman.

De Grassac came to a stop and jumped down. For a moment he walked his horse round scrutinizing the ground. Then he pointed. Looking closely, Seymour fancied that the sand was slightly discoloured.

He slid unskilfully from the horse’s back.

There ought to be some signs. If he had been a Boy Scout perhaps he would have detected them. But Seymour was not a Boy Scout and so far in his career in the East End of London he had not been called on to display any of those skills at tracking and reading spoor that that madman, Baden Powell, who still regularly occupied the newspapers, seemed so keen on. Today, however, he could have done with them.

‘How was he lying?’

The Captain spread his arms.

‘Face down?’

De Grassac nodded.

‘And with the lance in his back,’ he said.

‘Pinning him?’

‘It had gone right through and the point was embedded in the ground. I had difficulty in pulling it out. I had to pull it out so that they could move him.’

‘That suggests considerable force.’

De Grassac nodded.

‘It’s the way you’re taught to stick,’ he said. ‘Thrust hard and thrust down.’

‘You think he was killed by someone in the hunt?’

‘It was a huntsman’s lance, wasn’t it?’

Seymour tried to visualize it. It was not the kind of thing that he was used to visualizing.

‘You are assuming, then, that he was already lying on the ground when he was stabbed?’

‘It’s not easy to stick someone on a horse,’ said de Grassac. ‘I know. I’ve tried it.’

‘As a soldier?’

‘As a soldier, yes. We sometimes use lances against the tribesmen.’

‘But it’s not easy?’

‘The tribesmen are usually on foot. But I have tried it against horsemen. No, it’s not easy. The target is moving all the time. So are the pigs, of course. But the thing is, with a pig you can strike down. If a man’s on a horse, you have to strike parallel with the ground and get your lance to steady. And the ground’s going up and down, and the horse in front is, too. And, besides, there’s the question of force. It’s difficult to strike hard enough if you’re striking forward. Whereas when you’re striking down-’

‘So you think he was already on the ground?’

‘Yes.’

‘He must have fallen, then.’

De Grassac spread his hands.

‘Something in the bushes,’ he said. ‘A snake, perhaps.’

‘Or a man?’

‘Or a man.’

‘You’re the expert on this. Might he have been stabbed by a man on the ground?’

‘No,’ said de Grassac shortly.

If he had fallen there ought to be some signs of this. A Boy Scout would have picked them out. Seymour, however, could see nothing at all.

This kind of thing was not for him. He felt like a fish out of water. Sand, scrub, space… He was used to the tight little confines of built-up, urban London. Out here, with the huge sky, sand going on for ever, not a building or a person in sight, nor a sound, only the wind oozing thin through the thorn bushes, he was entirely out of his natural element.

‘What happened to the lance?’ he asked.

‘I’ve got it,’ said de Grassac, surprisingly.

‘You’ve got it?’

‘Lances cost money. You don’t leave them lying around. You do not, perhaps, understand how things are here, Monsieur. You have to watch over things or else they will be taken. Anything. They would have stripped the body. In fact, I was surprised when I got here to find that they hadn’t done that already. Of course, Musa had sent back two of his men as soon as it became clear that Bossu hadn’t come in, and after that one of them had always stayed with the body. But that all took time, and, as I say, I was surprised that the body had not already been stripped. This is not England, Monsieur.’