Death in the Middle Watch (12 page)

“But that wasn't the end of it. He still tried to get Stick to go with him. ‘We dock in the morning,' he says, ‘so you'll have all day to do anything you want. I shall wait for you at Madame Fifi's at about nine o'clock in the evening,' he said, ‘because we have to be on board by eleven o'clock and sail at midnight and the town's some way from the docks,' he said. Stick said he had quite a job to tell him he wasn't coming and the sailor with the vulgar name was ever so disappointed. Can you beat that?”

Carolus could not, so he bade Mrs Stick goodnight. As he did so the little woman's face lit up.

“There she is!” she exclaimed. “Just come in now. The lady at the table where we sit. I'll bring Her over and you can see whether She tells the truth or no.”

Carolus agreed, and soon Mrs Grahame-Willows joined them. She was a somewhat gaunt lady with frilly clothes and a quantity of inexpensive jewellery.

“I've heard such a lot about you,” she told Carolus in a carefully refined voice.

Carolus would liked to have told her that it was nothing to the quantity he had heard about her, but desisted.

“It seems you're quite a detective,” went on Mrs Grahame-Willows. “Have you managed to clear up our mysteries on board this ship?”

“Pretty well, I think,” said Carolus.

Mrs Stick was anxious to show off her friend at her best.

“Tell him about the Assistant Purser,” she suggested.

“Oh, that's nothing,” said Mrs Grahame-Willows modestly. “It just seems that he's being turned off the ship after this voyage. Anyone could see that would happen as soon as we came on board, but I never thought it would come to murder with Mrs Darwin, did you?”

“
What
would come to murder?” asked Carolus.

“You must have seen,” Mrs Grahame-Willows told him. “I mean you couldn't help it, surely. That Dr Runwell and her. I don't know how you didn't spot it at once.”

“Perhaps it takes a trained eye,” suggested Carolus.

“Of course when it came to the schoolmaster who played Scrabble with her I could tell there was nothing in it. A little footy-footy under the table, that was all. But Dr Runwell…. Of course, they'd known each other before. It was all arranged before they came on board. They only had to pass a note to each other at the bar, saying he'd come to her cabin at such a time, and there was nothing more to it.”

“I see.” nodded Carolus. “It must have been a great shock to him to find her dead?”

“Of course it was. It was touch and go whether he would throw himself into the water or not.”

“I wonder how you know that,” said Carolus.

“This lady knows everything,” said Mrs Stick loyally. “There's nothing goes on She doesn't know about.”

“Very interesting,” said Carolus, who was growing a trifle tired of the lady at the table where we sit and wanted to go to bed.

“I tell Her She can see into the future. She could make a fortune at it when we get back to England, I tell Her,” said Mrs Stick. “That's if we ever get back,” she added rather mournfully.

“We may not
all
get back,” said Mrs Grahame-Willows. “But I see no danger for most of us.”

“That's good,” said Carolus briskly. “And goodnight.”

C
AROLUS TOOK A MINI-TAXI
from the docks into Tunis. Driving for several miles across the marshy wasteland and shallow waters that divide the city from the seaside groups of villas, with names that recalled old battles and human sacrifices, he felt there was something sinister about the whole region, something that recalled Salammbo and the cruel and vicious history of Carthage. The flocks of flamingoes glimpsed across the cheerless wasteland only emphasized the impression, and when he came into the pretentious boulevard of Tunis itself and saw the severe-looking Berber countenances, he wanted to return to the ship. But he had some work to do. If his theory was correct, it was here that he would discover the whole ugly truth.

He told the taxi driver, a bearded man with a hostile squint. to drop him off at the Café de Paris which he knew to be the principal meeting place of the town, and entering it he realized that a British naval ship was in port for
matelots
were scattered about the large room.

He found an empty table but was soon joined by a couple of his fellow-countrymen.

“Have you been here before?” asked Carolus.

They both said they had.

“Do you know a brothel called Madame Fifi's?”

After a break for loud guffaws, they told him that everyone knew it, the lousiest dump in the town, adding that if he wanted a whore-shop with a bit more class they could direct him to one. They looked astounded when Carolus explained that he had business at Madame Fifi's and that, much though he would like to have accepted their invitation, he had to refuse.

“You kinky or something?” one of them asked. “There's none of them there under fifty. They're not fit for human consumption, I can promise you.”

Carolus had to make some kind of explanation while they looked at him with blank incredulity.

“Hope you have a good time then,” they said as they left, obviously not meaning it.

Carolus remained sitting at his table, watching the glass doors which opened on to the pavements of the Avenue Bourguiba, and soon realized that he was not alone in knowing that this café was a general meeting place which even his fellow passengers could not miss.

The first to arrive was Susan Berry in a light summer frock and, to the surprise of Carolus, quite alone. Where, he wondered, was the Second Engineer? Surely Miss Berry had not again been left to come ashore alone? No, evidently not, for she was followed into the café by a sleek and dressy Tunisian with frizzy hair and a self-consciously smug manner.

Carolus changed his place at his table to become invisible to the girl, but not quite out of earshot, for bits of conversation between the two came across to him undrowned by the noise of coffee cups and conversation.

“Mohammed!” he heard Susan say, and again more feelingly, “Oh, Mohammed!”

The gigolo did most of the talking, but in a low voice, and Carolus could only catch the name that Miss Berry had adopted or which Mohammed had given her. “Suzanne. You are so
preety, Suzanne!” he began to whisper and it was several minutes before Carolus heard him say, “In my motor car … Only you and me … You are so preety!”

When Lady Spittals came in alone, Susan was unwise enough to use her name and title to Mohammed, who seemed to be mesmerized.

“Lady Spittals! Does that not mean the wife of a Lord?” he asked Susan quite loudly so that Carolus heard him distinctly.

“No,” said Susan sharply. “She's no one. Oh, come along, Mohammed. You're going to take me for a car ride. Never mind her!”

Rather regretfully, Carolus thought, the Tunisian rose and ushered Miss Berry from the café. He might have looked even more regretful had not Sir Charles come in to join his wife.

When Susan and her new friend had gone, Carolus moved to a place at the Spittals' table.

“What a town!” said Patty Spittals. “We can't get over it! I want to go to the Medina where all the souvenir shops are but he won't budge, of course. He says they're full of rubbish. I don't know how he can tell if he hasn't been. Did you see poor Susan? Got off with a guide, it looks like. We've seen several more from the ship, too. I was surprised to see Mr Ratchett in the Avenoo. You'd have thought he'd be busy on board ship at a time like this. And who do you think took Mrs Grahame-Willows ashore this morning? The doctor! I'd like to know where they were going, wouldn't you?”

“No,” said Carolus, but with a smile and, asking Sir Charles what he would drink, called the waiter.

“Of course I expected to see the West Indian ashore,” went on Patty Spittals.

“Why?” Carolus asked.

“Oh, I mean … well, he'll feel quite at home here, I should think. He has very nice manners, hasn't he?”

“Why not?”

“Oh, I don't know. You can't tell what to expect nowadays. I'm glad I persuaded Charles to come this time. I call it interesting. You wouldn't really think you were so near Europe. would you. It's more like what you read about in the
Arabian Nights
. Mind you, I shouldn't care to live here. Give me good old Surrey, any day. But this is what we've come for, isn't it? To see strange places, I mean. One young darkie wanted Charles to go with him to a Turkish Bath—I can't think why unless he was a pickpocket. Charles said ‘Another time!' He always says ‘another time' when anyone asks him to do anything. Well, we must be getting along. There's that young couple just come in. I'm glad they've got to know each other at last.”

“Which young couple?”

“The good-looking young man and the blonde. Gavin Ritchie I think he's called. Come along, Charles.”

“Where are we going?” asked the ex-Mayor.

“We'll take a taxi. It's not far to where all the shops are and they sell all sorts of things there. Leather work and all sorts.”

She managed to drag her husband out into the street, and through the windows Carolus saw her waving to a taxi.

At nearly nine o'clock Carolus went out of the café and called a taxi. This one was so small that he had to sit hunched at the back with his head almost between his knees.

The taxi driver was in no way surprised when Carolus told him to go to Madame Fifi's, but said in French that he couldn't drive right there, the street was closed to traffic, but he would leave him nearby.

Sitting in his cramped position, like a question mark, Carolus could not see which of the ways they took but was relieved at last when the midget taxi came to a halt and he could unwind himself and stand up.

He was in a narrow street with very little lighting. The taxi driver, after naming a generous fare, told Carolus that if he walked straight on he would find a lighted doorway to his right. That would be Madame Fifi's. Carolus saw dark figures moving in the direction pointed out by the taxi driver, but near him there was no one at all. He paid for his taxi and in a moment found himself alone.

From his knowledge of North Africa, Carolus did not feel actual fear in that dark and reeking side street between windowless houses, but when he was addressed from the darkness quite near at hand, he started.

“Want Madame Fifi's?” a deep voice enquired in the authentic English of the London suburbs.

Carolus admitted it.

“Shouldn't go there if I was you,” said the voice, and when the man became visible for a moment in the lights of a reversing car, Carolus perceived that he was a stringy-looking individual with a moulting moustache.

“So I have been told once this evening by two naval advocates for a different brothel, doubtless called Madame Mimi's.”

“No, it's not. It's called Madame Lucille's and it's much better than this. See, what happens here is that if the police find girls who are trying to work on their own, they run them in at once. They won't have freelancing in this town. They keep them in quad for a month or two, then they take them to one of the cathouses run officially and supervised by the police. ‘In you go' they say, and that's the last the girl sees the light of day. They say that whores have to work for the state, not pocket their earnings for themselves. Reasonable, isn't it?”

“No. What about this one? Madame Fifi's?”

“Just the same. Official, see? The Madame's a sort of manageress. It's her job not to let any of the girls get away.”

“So Madame Fifi is not her name?”

“Good lord, no. I've known three different Madame Fifis since I've been in Tunis and that's only about five years. But I shouldn't go in tonight, if I were you.”

“Why?”

“There was a bit of trouble when I called in a while ago. The police will be round any minute.”

“But you say it's quite legitimate?”

“So it is, but the police aren't so particular about anyone they find here when there's been a fight. I should go to Madame Lucille's if I were you. I'll show you the way.”

Carolus had suspected all along that the beachcombing Englishman would make this proposition.

“Sorry,” he said, “I've got business here,” and passing the man some Tunisian paper money, the value of which he would not have known even if he could see it, he walked on.

From the lighted doorway to his right a bulky woman waddled out.

“You a sailor?” she asked in bad but comprehensible French. Carolus thought it best to say yes.

“Come in then, please. There has been some trouble here with some of yours. Fighting one another. You see.”

Carolus did not want to see, unless he would thus find Leacock. He realized it was probably no good making enquiries for him. He would be in civilian clothes. and how was Madame Fifi, the present holder of the title, to know him? But he tried.

“Was a man here who comes regularly?” he asked. “Once every six weeks or so? A strong man. Drinks a lot. Likes fighting.”

“That's him. That's the man who made trouble this evening. He's a
marin de commerce
, what you call a merchant seaman. He came in here and chose a girl, the same one he always has. They go upstairs, when in comes another man, looking for
him. He was fairly drunk, but so was the other who had gone upstairs. So I say nothing. I don't want trouble here. But this second man he climbs the stairs and starts shouting the name. Li-Co, it sounded like. ‘Li-Co!' he shouts and the first man comes out and they start fighting. It is terrible. First one falls down, then the other and at last this Li-Co falls down insensible. So the other drags him towards the room where he was with the girl—she has run downstairs—and it sounds as though he drags him inside, and maybe looks in his pockets. I don't know. I know I never looked in any pockets. Then the second man runs downstairs and out into the street. He is gone. Quick. He'll never come back.