‘Are we going to have a chance of seeing your assistant, sir?’ asked McPhail, as he was taking Seymour back to the stores, after lunch.
‘Maybe. But she’s busy pursuing her own line of inquiries.’
‘That would be, I understand,’ said McPhail hesitantly, ‘in the way of Intelligence?’
‘Yes. She’s Intelligence, I’m policing. I think there’s a question of broadening the inquiry.’
‘Jesus!’ he heard Ferry say. ‘They’ve brought bloody Intelligence in as well?’
‘Here, I don’t like the sound of this. It sounds a bit bigger than we thought.’
‘What the hell’s Intelligence got to do with this?’ said Ferry’s worried voice. ‘Just how deep are they going?’
Not very deep, if Seymour’s own inquiries were anything to go by. He was never at his best on this kind of thing. His mind glazed over as he went from one section of the stores to another, and seized up completely when he was confronted with that mysterious thing, ‘the Books’.
‘He don’t look happy!’ he heard someone whisper to Ferry.
‘Jesus!’
Even McPhail was impressed.
‘Are you on to something, sir?’
‘Just a few questions in my mind, that’s all.’
Like, when could he decently stop for a drink?
‘You’ve got to remember, sir,’ said McPhail, already beginning to see a need to come to the defence of his men, ‘that the Navy is not quite the same as a shore establishment. We’ve got our own ways of doing things.’
‘Yes, I see that,’ said Seymour.
It was a neutral, fobbing-off remark, and he intended nothing by it; but it had a disconcerting effect in the stores generally.
‘You’re going to have to smarten up your act, Ferry,’ Seymour heard the midshipman say.
A little later Ferry approached Seymour.
‘Of course, things may not be quite shipshape, sir. The fact is, there’s a lot of pilfering when you’re on shore. These bloody natives!’
‘The Gibraltarese?’
‘That’s right. Bloody get their hands on anything. You’ve got to watch them like a hawk. And that, though I say it myself, sir, is what I do. Keep my eyes skinned all the time. Even come here after dark occasionally, when I’m not really on watch. Just to see nobody’s breaking in. Because that’s what they do, sir, all the time. Unless you’re keeping a good lookout.’
‘It’s just as well you do, Mr Ferry.’
‘Ah, it is, sir. It is. Things go missing.’
‘I’m sure they do.’
Again, he meant nothing by it. But it didn’t seem to assuage the petty officer’s uneasiness at all.
Midshipman McPhail’s thoughts, however, were turning, with the buoyancy of youth, away from the temporary tribulations of the store room and to more permanent interests.
‘I was wondering, sir,’ he said, as they walked away at the end of the afternoon, ‘whether your assistant would come to join us in the bar this evening?’
‘I’m sure she would like to. This evening, alas, she has an engagement already.’
‘A pity, sir. Perhaps some other time? We’re all rather eager to make her acquaintance, sir.’
I’ll bet you are, thought Seymour.
‘She is rather striking, sir.’
‘Yes, I think so, too.’
Perhaps it was time for a shot across the bows.
‘She is, of course, married.’
‘She is?’ said McPhail, downcast.
‘Or very nearly,’ a slightly optimistic definition of the truth compelled him to add.
‘Knot not yet tied?’ said McPhail, cheering up.
‘Practically,’ said Seymour.
‘Oh, well,’ said the midshipman, ‘it would be nice to see her at the bar anyway.’
He seemed, however, to be weighing something in his mind.
‘She’s — she’s not an accountant, is she?’ he said hesitantly.
‘Good Lord, no! Nothing like that! She’s quite normal.’
The next day was the King’s birthday: a fact which had somehow escaped Seymour’s notice. But the Royal Birthday, Hattersley assured him, played big in Gibraltar. The Navy would dress ships, fire salutes, supply a band, march in procession, and hold a tea party for His Majesty’s loyal subjects. Everyone, but everyone, said Hattersley firmly, would be there, and he clearly took it for granted that Seymour would be, too.
Seymour was not so sure. True it could give him an opportunity to talk to members of Gibraltar’s trading community — Leila Lockhart would be there, for instance — which he quite wanted to do. They would all have known Lockhart and might be able to give him some useful information. On the other hand, however, he had arranged to spend a further, last, day in the stores and thought that by the time he had finished that, the last thing he would want to do would be to attend what was clearly going to be a heavily Imperial Occasion. No, if the day was to be cut short, he could put it to far better use. He and Chantale could But then he received an official invitation from the Admiral at the bottom of which was a pencilled request that Seymour should join him for a drink afterwards, together with a further request, underlined, that he should bring his Assistant (Intelligence) with him.
A roped-off enclosure on an immaculate green lawn overlooking the sea; a gigantic, seven-foot-high hat striding around, which, on inspection, had the Governor under it; ladies in feathers and ensembles which had been the glory of the London Season several seasons ago; Naval uniforms heavy with golden braid; besuited gentlemen, some of them ruddy-faced from England, others darker and browner and from a variety of places around the Mediterranean; a few unquestionably Spanish but keeping quiet about it — this was what struck Seymour when he arrived at the tea party.
There were quite a few children: cleaned up for the occasion but already sticky from the sugared cakes unwisely left unguarded on a table. And rather fewer presentable women in their early twenties, thought Seymour, with the usual male eye; although quite a lot of less presentable women in the over-twenties. Among them was Chantale, not, in her view, satisfactorily dressed, but surrounded by a gaggle — or should it be goggle? — of Naval admirers.
Seymour moved among the suits.
‘Sam Lockhart? Knew him well. Bad business, that. But that’s what you get, mixing with the Spaniards.’
‘And the Arabs,’ put in his neighbour.
‘And the Arabs, of course,’ conceded the first businessman.
‘Of course, that’s where his business was,’ said the second.
‘And look where it got him!’
Not a lot there, thought Seymour, and moved on.
‘Problems with the Spanish Customs? Who hasn’t had problems with them? But Sam had it more worked out than most of us. A little bit of this, I fancy!’ — rubbing imaginary banknotes between the fingers.
A uniform to outshine even the Navy, which could only belong to a Spanish Customs official.
‘Senor Lockhart? We miss him. A reasonable man — and there are not, Senor, that many reasonable men in a place like this! Sympathies?’ A shrug. ‘We all have sympathies. But we learn to keep them quiet. Now Senor Lockhart never could do that. If it was not the anarchists it was the Arabs. Catalonians? There are no Catalonian Nationalists in Spain.’
His companion, also dripping with gilt:
‘Tragic Week? The name says it all. That’s what it was. A tragic week for Spain, not just for those unfortunates caught up in it. And why Senor Lockhart got caught up in it, I cannot think. But oh, yes, I can. He was a man, Senor, in whom feeling outran discretion. You know? He would see someone being robbed and then, instead of staying sensibly out of it, would rush to intervene. Killed? Frankly, Senor, I’m surprised he stayed alive so long! Especially in Barcelona. Especially in Tragic Week.’ The Customs official laid his finger alongside his nose. ‘You know, Senor. A week for paying off scores. Among so many, who would notice a few more? And that, maybe, was how it was with Senor Lockhart.’