Michael Pearce - A dead man in Tangier

‘Did he know the hotel belonged to you?’

‘Of course. He’d been in the army here. They had gone to him when they found out… when they found out about us. It was Armand de Grassac’s doing. He’d been away and then he came back and found that — well, we weren’t doing too well. So he and the other officers talked to Lambert and money was found, somehow, I don’t know how, but the money actually came from the army coffers, to help us buy the hotel. The Lamberts had always been kind to us. They made it possible for me to go to a French school. But he had only just been made Resident-General Designate and hadn’t yet got everything in his hands.’

Seymour took Renaud by the arm and said: ‘ Collegue, may I take a little walk with you?’

Renaud was still grumbling about Lambert.

‘If I were you, cher collegue,’ said Seymour, ‘I would give the army a wide berth for a while.’

‘Why so?’

‘Because they provided the money for Chantale and her mother to buy the hotel. And I think they may be about to find out who tipped Ali Khadr off that the time had come to wreck it.’

Renaud went still.

‘Perhaps even set the attack up. Who knows? But I think that if pressed Ali Khadr will tell them. There’s quite a strong network in the quarter, which embraces the mosque and other influential people, and word gets around, you know, and I think that if it were put to Ali Khadr himself, well, you know, I think he would come clean. And if he did, cher collegue, I don’t see how you could go on being Chief of Police in Tangier.’

Renaud remained mute.

‘Even with powerful friends,’ said Seymour.

‘They will look after me,’ muttered Renaud.

‘You reckon? You know, colleague, I think they’re the sort of people who would drop you in a flash if they thought it necessary. Despite everything you’ve done for them.’

‘I have done nothing-’

‘Oh? Well, let’s start with Bossu. He was the man behind the raid on the hotel, wasn’t he? And you were helping him, as you had always helped him. I suppose you were the first to find out that Chantale and her mother had bought the hotel and told him. And then he asked you to arrange a welcome party. Or perhaps he arranged it and merely asked you to tip off Ali Khadr when the time was ripe.’

‘You cannot prove this-’

‘No? Let us go on. With your knowledge of Bossu, Monsieur Renaud, perhaps you can tell me why his animosity towards the de Lissac family was such that he pursued Chantale and her mother, even after Captain de Lissac was dead? No? Well, let me tell you.

‘I take it that you know about the passion that Bossu had originally felt for Marie de Lissac. And about how he had asked her to marry him. And been turned down. And then turned down again when he had pursued her to Algiers. I don’t think he ever forgave that turning down. He was a man who always liked to win. And didn’t like losing. Certainly not to de Lissac.

‘It must have been a huge shock to him when de Lissac turned up in Casablanca. Especially when he began making himself a nuisance. But you were there, Monsieur Renaud, and would know. Would know, too, about how he then began to work systematically for de Lissac’s destruction. A popular pursuit in Casablanca at the time, and he soon had plenty of people egging him on. Was that when you first made their acquaintance, cher collegue, and began to have an eye for their interests? Such an eye that it led to you becoming Chief of Police in Tangier?

‘Well, there are other questions. Was it their interests that Bossu was following when he began taking money down to Moulay Hafiz and his supporters in the interior of Morocco? Opening up the interior. Building the railway line which would make possible the development of all that part of the country. Perhaps you don’t know much about all that. That was Bossu’s job, not yours.

‘But there is one thing that you do know about and perhaps you can help me on. You see, I know that you know about it. Because Juliette Bossu obligingly blurted it out. It is to do with the death of Chantale’s father, that long-standing enemy, as he saw it, of Bossu. Bossu persuaded him to drive a truck down to the south. A truck loaded with explosives to Moulay Hafiz. And on the way the truck exploded and Captain de Lissac was killed.’

‘An accident,’ muttered Monsieur Renaud.

‘Ah, no.’

‘It was investigated.’

‘By you?’

‘No, by — by the authorities.’

‘The authorities? Down there?’

He waited.

‘Does that mean Moulay Hafiz? Come on, Renaud, this is something I want to know.’

‘It — it may have been. But — but there were others… Captain de Grassac… An independent…’

‘Not a policeman, though, Renaud. Not a detective. Like you and me. I have investigated it, too. And I have found out things that Captain de Grassac didn’t. Including that it was not an accident.’

‘I–I don’t know anything about it. Bossu handled it. Entirely, I mean. He didn’t tell me anything. It is not the sort of thing that I would-’

‘No, you wouldn’t, Renaud. You’d leave that to others.’

When Seymour went into the hotel Chantale raised her head from her writing and said:

‘Are you doing anything this evening? My mother wonders if you would care to join us for the evening meal. It is, of course, a special one, for it marks the end of Ramadan.’

Seymour said he would be delighted, and at about nine went down to reception, where he found the desk occupied by a polite young man whom he had not seen before. He rose from the desk, tapped softly on the door which led to the family’s private quarters, and showed Seymour through.

Chantale came forward to greet him and led him out on to a small verandah where there was a low table spread for dinner with a white tablecloth. Around it were several large leather cushions. Chantale sat on one and invited him to sit next to her. Her mother appeared shortly after with a tray on which there were several small bowls, which she put on the table. They contained olives of various kinds, nuts and the usual salted cakes. She sat down opposite them.

Seymour had, of course, met her before but then it had been in the business part of the hotel, at reception. Now, in the soft darkness, she seemed completely different, her face more Arab, her eyes larger and darker, more Moroccan. She had partly uncovered her hair. In the hotel it had always been bound up in a kerchief. Now she had let it fall. It was dark and abundant and hung over her shoulders. Seymour sensed that this was significant. He knew that in Morocco a woman’s hair was normally something to be strictly concealed. Was this a gesture of independence, an assertion of difference, a suggestion of other affiliations beside the Moroccan one? Looking at her now he could see how attractive she must have been once, how she could have drawn such men as de Lissac and Bossu. And also how strikingly her daughter resembled her.

There was a difference in the way they sat. The mother sat straight-backed, graceful but firm and unyielding. Chantale reclined rather than sat. It was again very graceful, very easy, very natural: but it was not the way any Englishwoman would have sat. Seymour knew he shouldn’t be looking at her too much: but he was just about knocked out.

Initially Chantale’s mother did not speak much, leaving the conversation to her daughter and Seymour, but gradually she let herself be drawn in.

He asked her how she liked running a hotel. She said that at first she had found it difficult because when her husband had died she had withdrawn into herself and then when they had moved into the hotel she had had to force herself out again. The publicness of hotel life had shocked her and the constant need to assert herself. However, now she rather enjoyed it. It gave her a chance to meet people, different people from those she would usually have met, men especially, hommes civilises, civilized men — a chance, she said, with a flash of her daughter’s rebelliousness, that Moroccan women did not usually get!