The Inspector made his way down the train to make himself known to the pilgrims. There was a sudden cry from Powerscourt. ‘Listen to this,’ he said, ‘here’s another Delaney crime! This author doesn’t treat the subject chronologically, he treats it by industry. We’re in oil now. This must have happened twenty or thirty years ago. Delaney and two other people, Richard Jackson and Ralph Singer, buy up an oil concession in Ohio. Delaney runs it. He tells the other two after a year or so that it’s no good, the prospector teams haven’t found anything, they’re not going to get rich this time. So they all agree to sell out to a company called Michigan Oil. So far so good. Three months later Jackson and Singer discover that the owner of Michigan Oil is none other than Michael Delaney. And, surprise, surprise, the land in the concession is dripping with oil, it’s worth fortunes. Delaney has cheated them; God, he’s a bad man. I’ll have to ask Father Kennedy if he can be forgiven this many sins.’
‘What did the other two characters do, Francis?’ asked Johnny Fitzgerald. ‘Did they drink themselves to death like the other fellow in New York with the socially ambitious wife?’
Powerscourt held up his hand while he finished the chapter. ‘Jackson and Singer never recovered from this betrayal, the man says. Their business careers failed. One ended up working for the US Mail and the other one earns his daily bread as a clerk in a hardware shop. This is what the man says: ‘“Think of how their careers might have been different if they had not been defrauded by this wicked man. Think of the turn their lives and the lives of their families might have taken had they not been swindled out of what was rightfully theirs. Think of the sad end to their days, when the American Dream, for them, turned into the American Nightmare, the promise of a better future that is the birthright of all Americans turned to dust in the earth of Ohio. Think of yet another crime entered in Delaney’s ledger of wickedness, think of the misery his greed has brought on those who cross his path. Think of what his fate may be.”’
‘Children, Francis?’ asked Lady Lucy. ‘Any sons who could have lived on to take revenge?’
‘The book doesn’t say,’ said Powerscourt. ‘This is like all the other possible shades from Delaney’s past. Why wait so long? And why, if you want to do away with Delaney, do you kill all these others first? I don’t think it adds up,’ he said sadly, putting the book down on the table. ‘There is one thing about Michael Delaney, Robber Baron. It makes you look at the man in a totally different light.’
They were pulling away from the mountains now. The train stopped at a tiny station in the middle of nowhere and a message was handed over to Inspector Mendieta. He laughed as he rejoined the Powerscourt party at the back of the train.
‘The pilgrims are going to be happy on their night in Pamplona!’ he said with a smile. ‘The town jail is full, the police cells are full, so my boss has kicked a load of people out of one of the town’s finest hotels to put the pilgrims on the upper floors.’
‘Is there a crime wave in the town?’ asked Johnny Fitzgerald.
The Inspector laughed. ‘You could call it a crime wave, I suppose. Today is Tuesday, the tenth of July and Pamplona is in the middle of Fiesta, or Festival. People come from all over for the bullfights and the religious services and the parties and the bands and the excitement. And, I nearly forgot, for the running of the bulls. Fiesta is held at the same time every year, from the sixth to the fourteenth of July. Because all the thieves and pickpockets in southern France and northern Spain know these dates, they come too for their own festival of crime. Every year the jails are full at this time. The hotel will probably have its own share of bands and jugglers and other entertainers passing through this evening. Even though the pilgrims will not be allowed out, the fiesta will come to them. The patron saint of Fiesta is San Fermin. Among other things he is the patron saint of wineskins. They sell in the thousand at this time for people to refill at the little wine shops in the side streets. They say some people don’t go to bed at all for the entire duration of the festival.’
Their dinner later that day in Pamplona seemed to consist of tens of courses, served at irregular intervals. Johnny Fitzgerald maintained that the waiters popped out into the street for half an hour or so between courses. A brass band came through, some of the musicians swaying slightly as they blew. A team of jugglers danced their way through the tables, the lemons flying over the diners’ heads. A pair of troubadours serenaded them, the boy playing the guitar and the girl singing the sad song of her only true love, a matador who perished in the ring through thinking of her rather than concentrating on the bull which gored him to death. Throughout the proceedings, as dish followed dish and the rough local red flowed on, the Inspector’s men never left their posts, eyes fixed on the exits to the dining room, hands never far from the pistols in their belts. The Inspector himself was by the main door, sometimes conversing with the kitchen staff or the waiters, sometimes checking on a list of names in the dark blue notebook he brought out from time to time. The pilgrims were all named in his book and a series of little ticks by the side of each one showed that Inspector Mendieta had recorded their presence.
Shortly after five o’clock in the morning Powerscourt woke to an urgent tapping on his door. He grabbed his pistol from the drawer beside his bed and opened the door a fraction.
‘You must come at once!’ the Inspector whispered. ‘Some of the pilgrims have escaped! They are not in their rooms! My man has been bound and gagged and cannot remember for the present exactly what happened. Join me by the front desk in a moment.’
Powerscourt wondered if he should wake Lady Lucy. He left her a short note instead. ‘Some pilgrims escaped. Gone to look for them. Love, Francis.’
He collected Johnny Fitzgerald on the way, Johnny protesting about the early hour and wondering if any of those wine shops would be open yet. The Inspector told them the bad news. It seemed as if the younger ones had managed to escape. ‘Wee Jimmy Delaney’s gone, so has Charlie Flanagan and Waldo Mulligan and Christy Delaney and Jack O’Driscoll, five of them altogether, all the younger ones.’
‘Have they taken their things with them?’ asked Powerscourt. ‘Has all their stuff gone from their rooms?’
‘That’s a very good question, my lord, I didn’t think about it.’
‘Let me go and look,’ said Powerscourt, ‘I know what most of their packs look like.’ With that he sprinted up the stairs to the top floor. There were still revellers in the streets outside, maudlin songs floating through the open windows of the hotel. All the pilgrim packs were still there. That was a relief, he said to himself as he raced back down the stairs. Or was it?
‘Their belongings are all still there,’ he said. ‘In one sense that is good for they obviously intend to come back here at some stage. Perhaps they’ve just gone to join the party. But in another sense, Inspector, nothing could be worse. In every single murder on this journey the victim has been lured away by the killer, up a hill of volcanic rock, over to the side of a river, out to the back of a church, up to an upper room in a set of cloisters, and every time the killer strikes. All of those pilgrims bar one are in deadly peril, and that one is the murderer. Where easier to kill than in the streets of Pamplona in the hour before dawn when another body lying in the street will not arouse any interest? Even if there is blood flowing it will be taken for wine. We must search the whole town until we find them, Inspector. Pray God that the missing five come back alive!’