‘Well,’ he said, ‘on the whole, in recent years at least, he’s not been that taken by Spanish women. By women, yes, but not Spanish women. Some people say it goes back to the one he had the child by. A difficult customer, apparently. Prickly, certainly. The trouble was, she was devout.’
‘I can see that might cause difficulties,’ said Seymour.
‘Well, yes. And why he got entangled with her in the first place! And she was married, too. Already, I mean. Well, of course, it didn’t make things easy for her and she certainly didn’t make things easy for him. Since I’ve known him, he’s tended to steer clear of Spanish women. I used to tease him about it. If you are going to have these affairs, I would say, why don’t you pick a beautiful Spanish woman? A Catalonian, for example, since you’re so fond of them. There are lots of lovely women in Catalonia.
‘ “But they are all so virtuous!” he would say. “And religious!”
‘I think that came from his previous experience. “It just makes for a lot of trouble,” he said. Well, I don’t know much about it really. I’m a bit of a bachelor, confirmed, myself. But I’d noticed, you see, that although he was unfaithful to Leila, he always seemed to go for someone like her. That striking Arab look. A bit like you, yourself, if I may say so, Miss de Lissac. Lockhart would have fallen for you in the first five minutes.’
‘Well, thanks!’ said Chantale, laughing.
‘You may not think it, Miss de Lissac, but Leila Lockhart was quite like you when she was young. Shorter, yes, and smaller all round. But the face, the eyes, the dark hair, and something in the manner. Anyway,’ said Hattersley, becoming embarrassed, ‘he always used to fall for people like you. And Leila. He was faithful, you could say, in his own fashion.
‘I spoke to him about that, too. “Why do you always choose Arab women?” I asked him once. “Do I?” he said, surprised. “Yes, you do,” I said. He thought. And then he said, “Well-” and I do not know whether he was serious or whether he was joking — “perhaps because it is piquantly transgressive.” “What?” I said. I was still a young man then and very innocent and I genuinely did not know what he meant. Of course, he knew that and I think he may well have been teasing me.
‘ “Transgressive,” he said. “Crossing borders. Conventional ones, usually. Which pretend to be moral and are not. I think it is because I am an Englishman.”
‘Well, I knew then that he must be joking.
‘ “No, no,” he said, “I’m not. My parents were very traditional and very strict and very English, even though my father came from Scotland. He was a soldier and had almost always been stationed abroad. In India, mostly. And there it was very bad form to take a native woman seriously. Sleep with them, yes, that was permissible. But marry one! No, no, quite out of the question. You would have been — what is the expression? Drummed out of the regiment.
‘ “But it wasn’t out of the question for me,” Lockhart said. “In fact, it was very much in question. I was about fifteen at the time and all women seemed beautiful to me. Especially the Indian ones. I wanted them so badly, and once I almost fell in love with one. It was very serious. At least, it was for me. Perhaps not for her. But certainly for my father. He packed me off back to England and sent me to what he called a good school, which would bring me up to be like him. I’ve always had a thing about schools since. I’ve even started to put my money into one — one which would not bring children up to be like him. That’s Lockhart’s blow for humanity!
‘ “You see, I didn’t want to be like him. I wanted to be different. I cut away as soon as I could and I went to Africa, to Arab Africa. Anything to get away from the stifling conventions my father wanted to confine me in. And there, of course, I fell in love again. With Leila. And decided to marry her.
‘ “My father nearly went mad. Which, of course, made me even more determined. He threatened to cut me off. I said, thank God for that, and stayed where I was and married her.
‘ “So there you are. That’s the answer to your question. Why did I go for an Arab? To show, at least to show myself, that I had broken loose from my father and all he stood for. And just that act of doing something major that he didn’t approve of, that he had positively forbidden, gave me a great surge of freedom. Well, a surge of something or other. I thought it was freedom but it was probably sexual.
‘ “So there you are: that is why I like my Leilas. And perhaps why, although I am at bottom faithful to her, I am always looking for new ones. Each time, it gives me that same thrill of energy. Of course, it doesn’t last, it never does. And then I go back to Leila.”
‘ “You know, old man,” I said, “I find that a bit shocking.”
‘He laughed. “You know, I find it a bit shocking, too. Because if it is true, it means that my father has won after all. I can’t break loose. For, or against, I just can’t break free from his influence. The old bastard!”
‘Well, as I say, he was probably teasing me. And maybe he didn’t confine himself to Arab women as much as I have suggested. Come to think of it, that is certainly so. His favours were broadcast and not confined to women who looked like Leila. No, definitely not. So maybe I’m wrong to discount this story about the wife of the high-up. He would probably have enjoyed it. The higher up, the better.
‘But all the same there is something in what I said. He did have a strong preference for Leilas. So much so that we made a joke of it. Whenever we saw him with another one we would say, “Ah, there’s a new Leila!”
‘And when we saw one without him, we would sometimes say, “Hello, where’s Lockhart?” ’
Hattersley looked at Chantale.
‘So you see, Miss de Lissac, that could be what people who know Lockhart think when they see you. “Another Leila: where’s Lockhart?” Seeing you, they see him. That may be why they look at you in the way that you say they do. Where’s Lockhart? And perhaps they wonder, seeing you, if this is just another of his tricks. And if, perhaps, this is a signal that one day he will be coming back.’
When Manuel had so suddenly backed off from making further inquiries, Seymour had thought that it might be because he had become afraid of where those inquiries might lead. Seymour had wondered for a moment if Manuel had been afraid that they must lead to Dolores.
Could Dolores have been the woman who had talked to Enrico and persuaded him to take the food in to Lockhart? Seymour could certainly see her doing that. She had tried to get in to see him in the prison — she had, actually, succeeded in getting in to see him in the prison. She could be, he saw, despite her scattiness, a determined woman. When thwarted, she did not give up. And she might well have tried to get food in to him, in the same way as one takes fruit to someone in hospital. Yes, he could see her doing that, and working out who the relevant warder was, and finding out a way of intercepting him and working on him.
But he could not see her wanting to poison him. Nothing that she had said to Seymour had made him think that she was anything other than genuinely in love with him.
Could it be that she had been in love with him but that something had happened to turn her against him? But, again, nothing that she had said had led him to think that. He went over in his mind all the conversations they had had and no, nothing in what she had said had even hinted at that. The reverse, if anything: poor, romantic Dolores seemed as stuck on Lockhart as she had ever been.
But could she have given the warder something unknowingly? Not knowing that it was poisoned? Well, yes, she could. If she thought it was something which would help Lockhart, she would certainly have been ready with her services and she would certainly have carried it through.
But equally certainly, probably even more certainly, if afterwards she had suspected what she had been used to do, he couldn’t see her letting it rest. He was convinced that her passion for Lockhart was genuine and, if she thought that she had been tricked into killing him, it would surely have come out. This was something on which she could not, would not, have remained silent.