Olura (18 page)

We decided to disappear, leaving car and baggage behind. Sometimes we did not come back from our own beaches up the estuary till even the Spaniards had nearly finished lunch, so neither Elena
nor anyone else would think it worthwhile to report our absence before the late afternoon. By that time we hoped to be at Deva where we could mix with tourists and take a taxi to the frontier.

The plan might have worked if only we had known each other better. The more Philip worried about whether I could walk fifteen miles across country, the more I insisted that I could. But I
couldn’t. I did not ever imagine what he meant by ‘across country’. It turned out to be practically mountaineering through virgin forest.

When we did at last reach the top of the hills where it was possible to walk, I still tried to play up to the gallant leadership of the sergeant-major. That was what he was like—brutal and
noble and full of obvious jokes. At last I didn’t see why I should stand any more of it; we were just as likely or unlikely to be stopped by police whatever we did. I knew he was
disappointed, and I felt lost and inadequate. And then, for no reason at all, when I was expecting still another exhortation, he was comforting me and caressing me and swearing that the whole thing
was futile and that we would do anything I wanted.

After that I cannot remember much of our roundabout journey. Philip led me, half asleep, from bus to bus, and bus to train, until we ended up in San Sebastian just before midnight.

It was too late to cross the frontier, but I felt positive that we could get out next day. In all that drifting crowd of French and Germans and English we were so much less noticeable than in
our dear, remote Maya. Quite illogically, I loved to be with Philip in the gaiety of a civilised town. I have never been fond of the vulgarities of night clubs, but that night I adored the cabaret
to which he took me—or rather to which I took him, for he was so deliciously disreputable that at first they wouldn’t let him in.

To be wanted by the police, and yet to feel more free than ever in my life! What a contradiction and how typical of a woman in love! But every day I spent with Philip took off me a whole weight
of duties and the still heavier weight of wondering what my duty was. There was so much laughter. If ever we have a life together, I hope that Philip does not teach me that nothing—except
scholarship, of course!—should be taken too seriously. He does not care enough for the future of humanity. But I must admit I can easily forgive it so long as he cares enough for me.

And then the sun of that terrible day came up over the Bidasoa which I had stopped us reaching. We thought we should be safe if we booked on a round tour to Biarritz. But even that dingy little
tourist agency must have been warned to look out for us. While we were waiting in a café for our coach, Gonzalez arrested us without charging us with anything at all and took me back here
and drove away with Philip without even letting us say good-bye.

I was forbidden to leave the village, and told that if I tried I would instantly be escorted back. To be confined to a little inn, always under the eyes of fellow guests who glance and look
away—can you imagine it? I lived like a ghost, flitting from my room at set times. I saw human beings on holiday and pretended I was alive. They saw me and talked to me and found me harmless.
They thought that after a fearful row I had been deserted by my lover. Elena probably started that rumour as being less embarrassing to all of us than the truth. She had already found out for me
that Philip had been taken to Madrid.

After two days of this agony Lieutenant Gonzalez called on me. I had him shown up to my room. I loathed him, but anyone who could tell me about Philip was a friend. So I controlled myself and
tried to treat him as if he had come with an unwanted bunch of flowers. I asked him to explain my position to me. Was I under arrest or wasn’t I?

‘At present, Mademoiselle, you are not being detained as a suspect, but as a key witness,’ he replied.

‘To what?’

‘To the attempted assassination of Mr Leopold Mgwana.’

I simply stared at him and said that it was nonsense, that I knew of no attempt to assassinate Leopold.

‘Then will you tell me why M. Ardower killed Livetti?’

The sincerity of my cry that Philip did not kill him must have impressed Gonzalez. He gave me a thin smile from that nasty, mobile slit of a mouth of his, and said that it was curious how each
of us told him in unmistakable good faith that the other did not kill Livetti. Both of us, therefore, knew who did.

‘But we don’t!’ I exclaimed.

‘Could it be,’ he asked, still smiling, ‘that it was Mr Mgwana? Before you answer, let me tell you that he has confessed.’

That kind of cheap police trickery made me really angry. I told Gonzalez that I realised that I had to submit to being questioned, but that I was not going to have straight lies thrown at
me.

‘Then of you three, the only suspect left is you, Mademoiselle,’ he said, still with his offensive smile.

I asked him if he would do me the honour to provide me with a motive.

‘Certainly!’ he replied. ‘It is typical of the uniformed branch and somewhat crude; but I invite your comments. You are reported to have been on intimate terms with Alberto
Livetti in Rome. When he appeared here, perhaps wishing to revive an old friendship which now repelled you, there was a quarrel and—shall we say?—an accident. And then, owing to the
exaggerated chivalry which Mademoiselle is able to inspire, you were assisted by your two devoted friends to dispose of the body.’

I could feel myself flushing all over. I could have killed myself. I don’t know whether he took it as proof of guilt or not. I suppose a man as accustomed as Gonzalez to torturing suspects
with words or worse would be a good enough psychologist to know that he had poked his fingers into shame, not necessarily guilt.

‘And the car which followed us?’ I asked.

‘They could have known.’

‘If they did and said nothing to the police, wouldn’t it be a crime?’

‘It would indeed, Mademoiselle,’ he said, ‘and when my superiors have been able to settle the first question of how Livetti died, we can all proceed to the second of who else
knew and why.’

I asked him what had happened to Philip, for I had no more fight left in me. He had been waiting for the question, and complacently drove the knife of his answer straight into me.

‘M. Ardower is in gaol on suspicion of murder. He has already undergone preliminary interrogation.’

I forgot everything but Philip. I forgot what Philip and Leopold knew very well: that we had no proof at all that we hadn’t killed Livetti, and that if ever we confessed to getting rid of
his body there was bound to be a strong presumption that we did kill him. I told the lieutenant the whole story exactly as it happened, every detail of it. He took a few notes, and let me talk. I
could tell from his face that some of it he did not believe. He merely said that he would ask his colleagues of the criminal investigation department to see how much of my story they could
confirm.

Then he very formally pronounced that if I wished to communicate with our Embassy or with the Consul at Bilbao, I might do so immediately. I did not want to. First Secretaries and
Consuls—what would they understand? I should be considered, as always, a nuisance to government servants. I could not bear to think of the smooth, wearied politeness with which they would
treat me, and what they would say about my gift for getting into trouble as soon as I was out of the room.

So I answered Gonzalez with just the remnants of pride which remained to me that it was the duty of the Spanish Police to prove my story true, not of diplomatists; and that all I asked was
permission for a member of my family to stay with me.

‘I am not some girl you have run in from a cabaret, Lieutenant,’ I said, ‘I am without reproach, alone, and at the mercy of the police. I have a right to demand that my honour
be protected.’

It worked; and if I had been capable of being amused by anything, I should have smiled at the utter ridiculousness of convention. There was I, suspected of being Livetti’s mistress and
possibly Mgwana’s too and proud to be known quite certainly as Philip’s, but still able to make a fuss about My Honour as if I never went down the street without a duenna. I suppose it
is just a matter of words. Society—at any rate Latin society—grants women a right to Our Taste and agrees that we may call it Our Honour.

Gonzalez felt sure that his superiors would agree. Oh, those superiors! I imagine them sitting round a table on high leather chairs dressed like the councillors of Philip II and each with a
typist on his knee. He allowed me to write out that urgent telegram to you. Even so it was altered, but it brought you.

Two more days went by without a word, and then Gonzalez came again. No magistrate. No detectives. Now do you see why I said they treated me as something very precious and very guilty? As always
he was polite and deadly. He said that I was not to think he was trying to trap me, that he would share with me the evidence exactly as a prosecuting judge would do and encourage me to explain
it.

He thanked me for informing the authorities that the murder took place in the Hostal de las Olas. I protested at once that I had said nothing of the kind, and I did not know where it took place.
He waved that aside, and told me that my story had to some extent been confirmed. The screws on my bathroom window and Philip’s had indeed been taken out and replaced; there were prints of
gloved fingers on both sills; the rough wood of the ladder had caught a few threads of Livetti’s jacket; at the iron ore chute the tracks of the barrow had been found.

‘Our only difficulty, Mademoiselle, is that you expect us to believe that Alberto Livetti climbed up the ladder when he was dead,’ he said.

I repeated that he had been put through my window dead, and explained the motive.

‘It is incredible,’ he insisted. ‘Nobody would risk murder simply to create a scandal.’

That was an echo. I remember Leopold saying the same thing. We were worse off than ever. Why did I dash into trying to save Philip by telling the truth?

‘You also ask me to believe, Mademoiselle, that it is mere coincidence that Livetti happened to know you.’

I tried to explain that it was not a coincidence at all, that Livetti was a natural choice for anyone trying to create a damaging news story. He couldn’t be kept out of anywhere. He had
been lowered on a rope to take photographs of newly-married celebrities through their bedroom window.

Gonzalez was shocked and incredulous. He knew of the beastliness of Italian press photographers from hearsay, but thought it exaggerated. In Spain, he said, there was police control on the
behaviour of photographers and censorship control on what they could publish. For the first time in my life I wondered if Freedom of the Press was so essential a part of democracy as I
believed.

He returned to his crazy theory of assassination, question after question leading nowhere. Why had the Prebendary and I not given notice to the police of Leopold’s arrival? Why was it
known to other interested parties? What were my politics? Hadn’t I been disillusioned after Mr Mgwana came to power?

When I had denied and denied that Cyril Flanders knew Livetti and that I had employed him, Gonzalez dropped his obsession with politics and went back to the facts.

‘This telephone call to Mr Mgwana by some person who knew you were concealing Livetti’s body—did you actually hear the conversation?’

I replied that from Leopold’s appearance and anxiety I had no doubt at all that it took place, and surely the call alone should be sufficient proof of Philip’s innocence.

‘The degree of homicide of which he is guilty will eventually be decided by the Law,’ he replied very coldly.

Then there was nothing else left for me to do. I confessed that I had hit Livetti hard with a bottle when I found him climbing in through my bathroom window.

I thought that must be the end of it, that they would take me away and let Philip go. But Gonzalez was simply vague and melancholy.

‘You did not believe me, Mademoiselle,’ he said, ‘when I told you that Mr Mgwana had admitted he killed Livetti in self defence. But it was true. And now you also confess. It
is a pleasure for us all to observe nobility, but I fear we cannot allow it to distract us from our duty.’

That is all. A day later you arrived, and I bless you for your love and trust.

That was the story as I first read it, what I ought to read into it was beyond conjecture. I was certain of only two facts: that Olura, though she might omit and exaggerate,
was not a liar, and that Mr Mgwana was to blame.

The discovery of Livetti’s corpse plainly threw him off balance; he was always well aware of his cherished Olura’s indiscretions, and his first reaction might indeed have been one of
wild alarm. To some extent it was justifiable. The Spanish censorship could not have acted in time to prevent Miss Deighton-Flagg and her like from telephoning such highly profitable news. I am
sure, however, that any responsible editor would have demanded the fullest confirmation before publishing the story, and thus given the Government time to suppress it.

When Mgwana should have gone straight to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or the Generalissimo and had the whole scandal stamped into oblivion, he did not; and when he should have been flexible
and invited someone like this Gonzalez to fly out immediately to Africa, he was off-hand, on his dignity and expecting his say-so to be accepted without investigation.

In effect he prohibited further enquiry; for an ambassador, while perfectly capable of suggesting to a Prime Minister, where affairs of state are concerned, that he is a liar and a bad one at
that, cannot do so when the statement is private, personal, voluntary and manifestly chivalrous.

My poor Olura was, as she writes, helpless as a ghost. I managed to comfort her by my certainty that the Government, out of respect for Mgwana, would never push the enquiry as far as a trial;
but in fact I felt no absolute certainty. Such a trial might be convenient for some over-riding reasons of state. Apparently there really was a political angle, though I could not imagine how the
devil it was possible. It seemed highly unlikely that Prebendary Flanders was as symbolic of evil to General Franco as General Franco was to Prebendary Flanders.