A Dangerous Place (22 page)

“That's when fate allowed him to photograph the German man—the man with the gray hair. He saw him in Spain, by chance, didn't he? And out on the boat with Carlos Grillo—using the binoculars—he thought he saw him being transferred to a German submarine. Then the man appeared again here in Gibraltar, and Sebastian wanted to photograph him and put his face in public—perhaps in a newspaper or even a pamphlet for the Ridge Hotel. And he asked Rosanna to help him.”

There was silence, as if both women were weighing up how much truth the table between them could bear.

“He loved her, but not as much as she loved him,” said Miriam. “She would have died for him. He asked her to dress as if she were a tourist—he took clothes . . .” She picked up a handful of the fabric in front of her and dropped it again. “Clothes that were here, waiting for me to mend and hem and add a tuck here and there. She dressed as a woman with money, to go to the party where he was taking photographs. I don't know how he knew the German would be there, but he did.”

“And then, coincidentally, he was murdered.”

Silence filled the space between Maisie and Miriam Babayoff, and this time Maisie made no attempt to take the woman's hand. It was as she had expected: the truth was being given voice. She had come close, when she had tackled Vallejo, but even then, her conclusions had taunted her, coming back time and again as if to ask, “Was it really so?”

“Who killed my brother, Miss Dobbs?” Miriam Babayoff looked away as she asked the question, unable to look at Maisie.

Maisie shook her head. “Sadly, after all this, I believe the police were correct. It was a refugee, possibly starving and rootless, perhaps himself haunted by what had come to pass in his country. Your brother paid the price.” She leaned forward, closer to Miriam. “But know this—you have his legacy. You have his photographs, and if you trust me with those photographs, I will do everything I can to put them in the hands of people who will buy and print them for many, many others to see. Keep the negatives, make more prints, but I will take the best of them.”

Miriam pressed her lips together to stem more tears. She spoke again, though her voice cracked. “A refugee, after all. You made all this effort, and only to find the police were right.”

“I found out about Arturo Kenyon, though. I suppose he had seen Sebastian's photographs, and it inspired him to break the law.”

“He is in Spain, you know, fighting in the International Brigades.”

Maisie nodded. “Yes, I suspected as much.” She pointed to the pile of clothing awaiting alteration on the table. “I must leave you to your work, Miss Babayoff—I have taken enough of your time. If you would like me to take some of Sebastian's photographs, get them ready for me as soon as you can. I'll come to see you again before I leave.” Maisie stood, and smiled at Miriam. “One last thing—and forgive me for speaking out of turn—but if you are in love with Mr. Solomon, you must marry him. Do not wait, Miss Babayoff. Time isn't always on our side.”

“But my sister, she's—”

Maisie reached for Miriam's hand. “Of course you cannot leave her, and of course you want her to be safe and cared for. But Mr. Solomon loves you, Miriam. And he would help you care for Chana too. Look how he was so gentle with her, on the day of the attempted break-in. I watched as he lifted her and carried her to her room. He did that for you, and he did that for her. Perhaps together you could get her out more, and she would be happier.”

“But I don't want to upset her, Miss Dobbs. She can be very difficult when she's upset. Just the mention of trying to walk sends her into a tantrum—even my father could not tolerate it. She would be very troublesome if she knew I had accepted Mr. Solomon.”

“I think she would get used to it—and probably used to the additional attention, too.” Maisie stood up to leave. “Consider
yourself
, Miriam. You have given so much—not only to Sebastian and to Chana, but to the cause your family supported. It's time to honor your own dreams—and I believe doing so will benefit Chana, too.”

Maisie bid Miriam farewell and left the Babayoff house, the sound of bolts being pushed home echoing as she turned away and started down the narrow street.

M
aisie was not quite sure what she would say to MacFarlane, but she knew something had to be said. He would expect her to confront him with what she considered to be the truth. He would do nothing, but at least he would know that she knew what had happened. She had put her conclusions to Vallejo before they were settled in her mind, but it was her discomfort with the scenario she'd described that had made her think, and think again. It was as if she had something under her skin, a tiny splinter that festered. The professor's apparent agreement—as well as that of the German—served only to make her reflect on every piece of information she had gathered, every movement she had witnessed, every conversation memorized. There were those who wanted her to accept her unfinished deduction as the truth—though she thought that perhaps MacFarlane expected her to see through the layers of subterfuge.

R
obert MacFarlane was sitting beneath the mural, sipping a cup of tea, when Maisie walked into the café. A glass with two fingers worth of single-malt whisky sat alongside his saucer, as if waiting for noon to strike. Maisie knew he generally did not drink in the morning, unless it was early morning, a continuation of the night before.

“So you're here again, Miss Maisie Dobbs.” MacFarlane stood as Maisie approached, and Mr. Salazar rushed to pull out a chair. “Will you join me in a wee dram? The sun is over—”

“The yardarm somewhere across the Empire,” said Maisie,
mimicking his accent. “Not for me, thank you.” She sat down and asked Mr. Salazar for a milky coffee.

“Very funny. So where have you been, your ladyship?”

Maisie shook her head. “Not now, MacFarlane. You know very well I do not use a title.”

“It serves you well when it comes to getting papers to cross the border, and the like.”

“Ah, I would be the first to admit one has to use the tools at one's disposal, but not every day.”

“What were you doing in Madrid?”

“You know. I'm sure you're aware of my every movement. My question is, Why are you interested?”

“You need to be kept safe, Maisie Dobbs.”

“What I really need, Robbie MacFarlane, is to know the truth.”

“Didn't you already go over that with Professor Vallejo?”

“Your agent? He is, isn't he? An agent for the British government? That wasn't easy to work out. His beliefs don't quite mirror the government's with regard to the Spanish war, but I would imagine he's very useful all the same. Getting to the bottom of the mysterious Mr. Wright was another thing. It took me a while, though—”

MacFarlane raised a finger from the table as Salazar approached.

“Your coffee, madam. And your favorite
japonesa
, on the house.”

“That's so kind,” said Maisie. “Thank you very much, Mr. Salazar.”

The proprietor gave a short bow and turned away to greet new customers.

“So what about the other man, Maisie? He's just a German fed up with Mr. Hitler and his big mouth, doing all he can to help the Republicans in Spain.”

Maisie shook her head. “It's more than that, isn't it? The British government isn't interested in the Republicans—their sympathies
are with the Nationalists. We've been through that. But Wright is a valuable man—he's moving between worlds. The Germans think he's working for them, the Republicans think he's on their side in Spain, and who's pulling the strings? From where I'm sitting, I would say it's him. But he's providing valuable information to the British government. He's a chameleon; he can hop from a German submarine to a cocktail party where some important people are sipping drinks and becoming a little loose-lipped, and then back to his bunker close to the trenches. He's a go-between, and he's very, very important to the government, though he also does not really exist. That is the world of the spy, the informer. The trouble was that Sebastian Babayoff, in his naïveté, thought he could reveal something and become important, perhaps by placing a photograph in a newspaper, or even an American weekly. He thought he'd bring our Mr. Wright out of the shadows and put him on center stage. So Babayoff had to go. But for someone like me, I believe it was a case of ‘Let her think she's found something, and she'll go away.' ”

MacFarlane sighed and looked at the clock above the door. He shook his head and picked up his malt whisky, downing it in one gulp.

“I'll not contradict you, Maisie. But I won't agree either. Babayoff was killed by a refugee. That's all that needs to be said.”

“Yes, I'm sure it is. And that's what I have told his sister.” Maisie paused. MacFarlane raised an eyebrow, and she continued. “But here's what else I have come to believe, amid all the lies and diversions—and I need to say it.” Another pause. “Yes, Babayoff had become a security risk at a time when people such as Wright could ill afford exposure regarding their true work. Wright, of course, comes to mind, but there's Vallejo too. I do not for one moment believe the story I was told, that Babayoff was killed by a Nationalist spy. I do, however, believe he was attacked by a penniless refugee, likely primed by one of Wright's
contacts, with a hint that a photographer with money in his pocket—cash payment for his work—was leaving the hotel.” She ran her fingers through her cropped hair. “It was the refugee who was killed, not Babayoff, who was taken from the scene and told he was being moved to Spain for his safety. In his panic, he believed the story. He left the ring behind on the little finger of the dead refugee—probably chosen for his similarity to Babayoff. And of course, he knew Miriam would retrieve the ring.

“Yet when he was first set upon, before another man entered the scene to finish off the refugee and take Babayoff from the path to safety, he had panicked and thrown his Leica camera into the bushes. But he left behind the Zeiss. A refugee wanting instant money would not have taken a distinctive camera; a fist holding cash has more heft, after all.” Maisie lifted her hand and rubbed it across her forehead. “I believe Babayoff was then taken into Spain, allowed to think it was for his own good—to document the war—and then conveniently killed in action. His sister, in her grief, recognized only the ring and the dark hair. She looked at the refugee's hands, but they were enough like Babayoff's so it did not alarm her. She buried her brother in the Jewish cemetery, and in the future she would have somewhere to go, a place of remembrance. But, knowing her brother's belief in the establishment of a republic for the people across the border, she wanted to continue his work. Thus she became acquainted with Arturo Kenyon, and of course, she knew Rosanna Grillo already. Now that she's done what she could—helping with a limited shipment of arms into Spain—such activities are behind her, though I believe part of her will never forgive her brother his reckless self-interest. She knew he upset people, and she was afraid for her own and Chana's personal security—the attempted break-in by one of Wright's people kept her in a state of fear. I do not believe either Miriam or Rosanna Grillo knew or had met
Wright before the day of the cocktail party and Sebastian's subsequent death, though they were acquainted with Vallejo.

“At the end of the day, it boils down to this: Sebastian Babayoff took chances without truly understanding the stakes, which in wartime are always high.”

There was a brief silence, and then MacFarlane smiled. “Good work, Maisie. Very good work. Now then, go home.”

“I'm not quite finished,” said Maisie. “One thing continues to bother me. If Babayoff's activities presented a problem, why not just kill him on the path, and shore up the story that it was the act of a desperate refugee? That would have done the trick. But I think I know why the plan became so convoluted—it was all to buy time, to find out exactly what Babayoff knew, what photographs he had, what he had witnessed and how dangerous he was. Then, once in Spain, Wright just had to give him enough rope to hang himself—only it wasn't rope, it was opportunity. Sebastian Babayoff went off to photograph war. But he forgot that the camera is a flimsy thing. It is not a wall between the photographer and a bullet.”

MacFarlane put down his empty glass. “You tell a good story, Maisie, I'll give you that.”

“You're not going to say anything else, are you?” She reached for her satchel. “Well, you'll be pleased to hear I've booked my passage—though I bet you knew that already.”

“I am pleased, and yes, I knew. You shouldn't be here. It's a dangerous place.”

“I remained for the sake of Sebastian Babayoff and his sisters.”

MacFarlane deflected her comment. “And I hear you're going up to stay among the rich people at the posh hotel for your last few days—I never thought you would do that, Maisie.”

“It just makes it a little easier. I'll not enjoy saying good-bye to
Mrs. Bishop. She's a good egg.” She paused again. “What happened to Arturo Kenyon?”

“Poor man was killed. A fine soldier, apparently.”

“No doubt the agent took care of outstanding matters.”

MacFarlane shrugged, then looked at Maisie. “This is how it is, Maisie. You know that very well. This is how people are kept safe—the sacrifice of others.”

“I think I've had enough for one day, MacFarlane. I've had enough of the sacrifice of others. My husband was one of those others.”

“I know that very well. And you've sacrificed enough, yourself.”

“That's as may be. I'll go now. I have to pack my belongings, and I've a few things to do before I leave Gibraltar.”

“I'll come to see you off. I'll be returning to the sunny skies of home soon myself.”