You Who Know

Also by Nicolas Freeling

The Seacoast of Bohemia

You Who Know

Flanders Sky

Those in Peril

Sand Castles

Not As Far As Velma

Lady Macbeth

Cold Iron

A City Solitary

No Part in Your Death

The Back of the North Wind

Wolfnight

One Damn Thing After Another

Castang’s City

The Widow

The Night Lords

Gadget

Lake Isle

What Are the Bugles Blowing For?

Dressing of Diamond

A Long Silence

Over the High Side

Tsing-Boum

This Is the Castle

Strike Out Where Not Applicable

The Dresden Green

The King of the Rainy Country

Criminal Conversation

Double Barrel

Valparaiso

Gun Before Butter

Because of The Cats

Love in Amsterdam

You Who Know

A Henri Castang Mystery

Nicolas Freeling

To Renée, and for our daughter ‘Nana’.

To put an end to indecent inquiry, neither is ‘Vera’.

Vera is every girl known to me.

The owl drew itself up, made itself small on Merlyn’s shoulder, shut its eyes and said,

There is no owl.

It’s only a boy, said Merlyn kindly.

‘There is no boy," said the owl.

Paraphrased from memory, with apologies, from The Sword in the Stone by TH WHITE

DUN LAOGHAIRE, IRELAND

Filled with delight Castang stared straight out in front of him. True, it was cold, for all the gaily-painted sunshine; a bright, watery, February sunshine that bounced on wavelets and stung the eyes; westering there in front, low over these hills. The wind reached inside his overcoat and scarf, tried to tip his hat up. He didn’t want to take his hands from his pockets, but he didn’t want the hat to blow overboard. He felt an instant’s guilt at not calling Vera to see this. She would be cross at missing it.

The old boat, which had lurched and wallowed for three boring hours, fast now and steady as an arrow, reached for this magnetising shoreline. Now and then, one is rewarded for hating planes. All that waiting about; those horrible girls shouting meaningless messages through loudspeakers; you’re sure it’s for you, and as sure it’s something nasty. The Irishman wedged in next to him, a noticeable smell of stout, sweat, and overcoat despite the wind, was helpful. They may hate it and probably do, but won’t miss the chance of a good pint of stout-frothed sentiment about the Old Sod.

Sure the Golden Gate is nothing to it.

Castang felt pretty sure the good man had never been closer to California than Limerick Junction, but neither had he.

Howth Head to your right. Bray Head there to the left. Above the harbour there it’s Killiney Hill and the monument on top is where Brian Boru defeated the Danes, and the Dubbalin Mountains there behind, glorious.

And where’s Dubbalin?

Ah, it’s buried down there on the right and you’d see it better in the night-time, so you would.

Forget Dublin. What we have is quite enough to be getting on with. It’s Italian, he thought. If it were Irish it would be raining, and perhaps prettier still.

He tore himself away, rushed to get Vera, was vexed to find her at last with a much better viewpoint up on the boat deck, red-nosed but exhilarated. They were close now and the boat was slowing. Terraces in sunlit ochrey-Italian colours perched on scraps of wooded cliff. Wind-twisted growths of pine and ilex masked houses with pillars and porticoes, spoiled by a large grey church in the middle, in the most vulgar of Victorian Gothic. English colonial architecture. There were even a few raggedy palm trees. Look, said Vera, Joyce’s Martello tower. She was being literary, but he had to be a Detective.

They had brought the car all the way to Holyhead, through England on the wrong side of the road, and all those goddam roundabouts, along switchback Welsh roads, pretty and hairraisingly narrow, and left the car: too expensive to bring and we don’t need it. A really awful old ferry, and the Irish lay about in squalid nests of beer-can and crisp-packet until a voice shouted Past the Kish lightship, boys, and they’d all tumble out to feel patriotic.

For what, all this? Vera was a tourist, and wanted to exercise her painter’s eye upon Wales, and please yes, a bit upon Ireland; both would be just as often beautiful as they were hideous and look, look, here is the proof. But he had another purpose. Horrid Lydia had cut out, and pinned on the door of the landing lavatory, an old James Thurber drawing of a bloodhound, very interested in a fly: its owner is saying, Oh, why can’t you go out and track something? Even now, Castang has police instincts, ingrained like dirt around a gardener’s fingernails, however hard and often he has scrubbed. He had a reason for coming here, though he had no reason for believing that it would do any good. A little, delightful train would take Vera in twenty minutes into Dublin, where she could be literary and artistic to heart’s content. He would go rummaging about here.

Here, at the moment, was the Royal Marine Hotel, also a highly colonial piece of architecture, and yet another delight. Vera was upstairs being female; all that changing and washing and unpacking. Himself just as he was, sat in a splendid great Lounge with the bar at the far end and big seaward-facing windows. He had a glass of wine; it wasn’t very nice and he asked for a pint of stout instead. What a good idea, said the barman hospitably. All his whiskers quivered, antennae waving away madly: here were his first clues.

Strange; a couple of unmistakable horsy-Irish were propped against the bar, but everywhere else around the tea-tables it was English. Elderly and most of it female. Harrody tweeds, Harvey Nichols hats and Liberty scarves, solid bridge-playing Kensington, high clear voices easy to overhear and eavesdrop upon. It was borne in upon him that this was a Darjeeling, a dear-old-Ooty, fifty years after the Raj and surely here eighty, but in this pleasant corner the natives were well out of sight, Dun Laoghaire had become again Kingstown (the garrulous man on the boat had been full of potted history) and the former colonists were quite at home and much at ease. Just like uh, Torquay or uh, Bournemouth. He had never been in either, but had much broadened his education since coming to live and work in the Community, in Brussels. This was one of the pleasant seaside places where the English came in retirement. No longer theirs, but a little detail like that isn’t going to worry them.

Vera appeared, packed with useful information like maps and timetables. Can you do that, here? slightly horror-struck at the enormous glass of stout. Can I have a small one?

And with evening coming on, and rain to reassure him that he was really in Ireland, a walk along the seafront to the point at Sandycove, Vera still going on about tedious-James-Joyce, but himself pointing the whiskers at all these tiny seaside villas. In one of these, perhaps, lived the gentleman he had come to see. There was not much to go on. A casual remark or two let fall. My father lives near Dublin. Maurice is a comic old bird—had these been important at the time? Castang could not remember. One of the odd things—afterwards—was that Eamonn had kept a few papers, and no personal letters. The details had been in an address book, a thing in itself slightly odd. Did one put one’s father’s name and address in an agenda along with useful people like the plumber? Wouldn’t one know it by heart? There hadn’t been a phone number, but rather formally Mr Maurice Devaney. Sandycove, Co. Dublin. There were a few other Irish addresses but all in the north. The name was different—well, there had been more odd things about Eamonn, and the manner of his death not the least of them.

They found a restaurant on the seafront and went back to it for dinner. It wasn’t bad at all and Castang ate a lot, and asked a lot of questions.

The seaside railway line ran in a cutting below the hotel, and the ornate tiny station was just across the road. Vera boarded saying back tonight, all aglow with anticipated delights, and he turned his collar up; the rain came in sharp windy gusts, blowing as it does on the streets of Brussels. Well, it would be the same rain, wouldn’t it, blown by the same west wind. Just a bit earlier, even on the small European scale Ireland is not far from Belgium. Only a matter of being an island. He could have taken a plane and been here in an hour. But he’d been right not to, he thought. The history is not the same. Whatever else it had been, Belgium had not been an English colony, as Eamonn had liked to point out, with emphasis.

These Brits, they still all talk about leading the world.

But you’re a Brit, aren’t you? said Castang teasingly. United Kingdom.

Rather a vexed subject, dear boy.

He rounded the point—when they came on the market these little houses would cost a packet. Most were very small, and looked both damp and dark. An English feel, at once prim and faintly raffish. Tiny, post-Georgian terraces, minute post-Regency cottages, grandly pillared porch and on either side one window, small and sorrowing as an Irishman’s eyes after four pints and a defeat at Lansdowne Road. The roofs hidden by a cornice, crowned with a pair of top-heavy urns or a plaster eagle—oh, grand stuff altogether. However minuscule, plenty of colonial self-confidence; however snug, a good dash of British braggadocio. Some were smartly painted, the rosebush cared for and the hydrangea pruned. Mr Devaney’s, when he found it, looked dilapidated. He could hear the bell ring, within, but nobody answered the door. Dingy curtains drawn. Hm. He did a bit of circling round. Chap had popped out perhaps, for bread or milk? Or did they get brought to the door, here?

An old man was coming, along the pavement with a dog on a leash; there was the simple answer. A good seventy—yes, that could be the father. Tall, thin, a retired military Brit look, with the tweed hat, the Burberry, the silver moustache and eyebrows, the bright blue eyes—those looked familiar.

Looking for me? amiably; the ringing English voice. Castang made conventional mumbles; um-colleague, er-friend, uh, your son. Happened to be in the neighbourhood, thought I’d-uh. The old boy seemed unsurprised.

Really? Better come in then, Mr Castang, hadn’t you? Spry enough; got his name right, straight off. Cottage bigger than it seemed outside. Dark low-ceilinged English living-room full of worn Persian rugs and dingy leather furniture. Smells of clean old man and damp dog, lots of junk and lots of dust. No trace of a woman’s presence. The old boy perched, cavalry twill knees sticking out; these chairs were too low. Snapped his fingers and the dog went to a basket; old, like him. Reached for a pipe.

Too early, for a whisky? There were several on offer, some very nice-looking Irish ones and some single malts, too, which weren’t Irish.

Not just yet, I think. Both the question and the answer were a bit wistful.

So; a colleague, mm, a friend. Of my son’s. Indeed. But you didn’t come all the way here just to offer condolences. If anything, rather too spry.

No. Well perhaps I won’t say no, to a shot.

Water? Just as it comes? Quite right. You see, Mr Castang, one is both Scotch and Irish. Either will do.

So I always understood, from Eamonn.

You did? And what else did you understand?

Oh, jokes, mostly. We got to be quite friends, there in Brussels—perhaps enough so that I didn’t feel happy with the way he died.

With, or about?

Super stuff, said Castang to the cut-glass tumbler. Both, really.

You’re a policeman, are you? It was direct enough to take him aback, and there was no point in shuffling.

I used to be, sadly. I suppose there’s some remnant of the manner left.

Something of the look. And something of the sound. So you must tell me now in what way I can be of service to you.

In the old days I could have said, would you answer to some interrogation? I have, of course, no official standing.

Just curious, is it? I was curious myself. Didn’t seem much I could do about it.

How did you hear?

That question like others went unanswered. Saying that the Irish were devious is like saying the French are pinchpenny; it may be a national cliché, but so often it’s true.

I don’t mind being interrogated. Rather like it. Gingers one up. Change from all the sleepy heads round here. Not much point though. Knew little of my son. Saw less. Exchanged Christmas cards. Why come to me?

He died a violent death. The police enquire, but the enquiry as they often do petered out. When gravelled like that they’re filed with a note, saying alive, but on the back burner. Unless there’s something new, nothing will be done. He was my friend, when all else is said.

Parallel police are you? Political?

Now why should he ask that? No, I’m the man who kept saying ‘I want to know’. A sediment of professional dissatisfaction.

Mr Castang, I’m an old man. People die. It affects me, since I’m human. But I’ve been a soldier all my life. I don’t ask why they die. Life continues for as long as it is given us.

"En effet." Castang was used, now, to speaking English, but still fell into French without noticing. A Brussels habit. In an unexplained death, one likes to look at family background. It could be something from the past. People lead complicated lives.

Really? I’ve led a very simple life. HM Forces, retired half-colonel. Small pension and small private means. I am as you see me.

Hickey was his mother’s name?

My dear sir, I’ve lost sight of her these thirty years. You could have asked the boy. He had some government position here. They’re all Catholics, you know, Republicans, I’m indifferent to them. Fill in my forms, pay my taxes. Ireland—England—Europe—at my time of life it’s all the same, isn’t it? Delighted to have met you, but desolated that I can be of no use to you.

He would try for a little more before being chucked out. He came to see you, now and again. He got a sharp look.

Now and then, yes. We were not sundered, if that’s what you’re getting at, by any bad blood. He’d have consultations with his officials here, briefings they call them. I don’t know and didn’t ask. He’d drop in to see how I was getting on. A whisky, a chat. I’m always here. Politeness, would you call it? I’ll miss that. Always glad to see him. Now, I get people like you, instead.

Has there been anyone else, asking?

No, no, I only meant, most interesting. But you’ll forgive me, dear man, if I have to see about my shopping. Not the day for my kind cleaning woman. Make do for ourselves, don’t we, Tinker old boy? The dog rapped with its tail and so did Castang.

But that old sod knows more than he’ll say.

Castang withdrew, to meditate upon the streets of Dalkey. Feeling energetic, he climbed the hill, and had some lunch in Killiney village. He didn’t think the obelisk had anything to do with King Brian Boru. People said things and they didn’t have to be true. Hm, the rich lived up here; nice for them. A lot of modern building had gone on, but one could still perceive, perfectly clearly, the old pattern. It was his job to look for the patterns in things. In the days of the Raj, down at the bottom lived the small people, the great army of clerks and mechanics who filled the minor posts of the empire. Distinguished from the natives by imperial symbols on or around even the tiniest of imperial dwellings. An engine driver was socially a long way above the Irish huddled here in the village. As one climbed the hill, status increased. Above what was now the bus route were the squares and terraces of middle management; the businessmen and bank officials, who would in England be nobodies but who here enjoyed status, as representing the occupiers, the power in the land. They had a word for it here—the Ascendancy. He giggled; it was a world he understood. Madame Chose, whose man was in the Secretariat, would scarcely deign acknowledge the salutations of la mère Machin, whose husband was only in the Public Works Department. And that all came to an end in 1921, and what had changed, since? Not, he dared bet, so very much. He remembered Eamonn giving him history lessons. The Republic had been very poor; free at last but economically backward. Only in recent years was there new money—you could see it around here, clear as day, speculators’ money, flashy money. People in big Mercedes whose parents had only had potatoes on the table. And the English lived on unperturbed, alongside.

Footsore at last—policemen’s feet were of a long-lost past—he got back to the hotel to await Vera. Teatime! A nice little Irish waitress (wearing very odd clothes but all smiles) brought a tray. Mm, in times gone by, and even outside his territory, he’d have run a discreet tape-measure over Lieutenant-Colonel (Retd) Maurice Devaney. Not, heaven-forbid, a neighbourhood enquiry—they’d all be gossiping like a flock of starlings, and within the hour the man would be feeling the pressure. But one had one’s ways and means.

Near him in the window embrasure there was an old memsahib, giving tea to a younger woman whom she hadn’t seen in some years, perhaps. The perfect type; tall, cool, aquiline, racée. The replies were low-pitched, inaudible, but the questions were all he needed.

Do you play bridge? No. Nor do I any more. Are you keeping up with your painting? And a little later Did you ride, when you were young? Only Americans talk about horseback riding … When the younger woman left she sat on, taking a packet of cigarettes from her bag, glancing at her watch; she plainly had time on her hands. Castang was tempted to play the benighted stranger. Do please forgive me, Madame, I’m a bit lost hereabouts. She would welcome the distraction, apart from the inbred courtesy and the being sorry for poor foreigners. But of course I know Maurice Devaney. This was a community which held together, in a solid front towards the natives. The golf club, the ritual changing of library books, the grocer who had Gentleman’s Relish and Cooper’s Oxford marmalade. Would it do him any good though? He felt unusually sure that what Mr Devaney did not want known would stay unknown: he had a perfect front to present to the world. A son who had gone native? Worked for the Irish government and called himself Hickey? But he had Eamonn’s word that things were not as crude here: he could remember the subject coming up over other glasses of whisky in Brussels. Amid roars of laughter.

No, no, you’re thinking of the curry colonels down on the Devon coast or in the Algarve. The Anglo-Irish aren’t like that; they’re genuinely Irish and being Protestant doesn’t alter things at all. A great many of them work for the Republic and are proud to. If they were English, no—Childers was never really trusted and got shot for it in the Civil War. Oh, they made honourable amends and his son ended up as President. But they couldn’t get over his being such a newcomer—whereas some of these families have been there hundreds of years. But you weren’t, thought Castang now. You’re Scotch import, and where does that leave you?

And now, here was Vera, rather travel-stained.

Rain pissed down all day in Dublin.

"Tiens? Cleared up quite soon, here."

But it was lovely! She was loaded, bursting to tell. All right, they’d go and have a shower, find somewhere to eat, and he would get another small step further forward in understanding. Now she had seen for herself, she too would remember bits of Eamonn’s conversation. Devious? Yes, but also very direct.

Good case to be made, his lovely voice with Scottish and Irish notes in it, as well as cavalry-English, for finding, say, 1880 to 1910 the best of times in Dublin. With of course an income within reasonable distance of expectations; one should always be a little poorer than one would wish. One would live perhaps in Mount Street, upper end, by the bridge—oh dear, you should see it now. The girls lived in hopes of seeing a lancer—splendidly mounted, the horse sliding a little on the cobbles—come to deliver an invitation to a vicereine’s ball … Medicine of course still exceedingly crude, but you mustn’t think in terms of today, dear boy, but in the context of the Crimean War. Remember the surgeon who said that chloroform was a disgrace and should instantly be banned because pain is the most powerful of all stimulants, I do so love that. Whereas Irish doctors were then the finest in Europe.

And Castang’s mind slipping off now to the other voice, the father’s so similar, softening after a shot of whisky.

Fact is, my boy, the English did everything that’s worth keeping. Made great nonsenses too, of course—patronage of the lower classes. The Peepuls’ Park, where nobody has ever set foot nor ever will. The Vicereine’s Home for Poor Children—you’ll find it to this day, up the hill on Tivoli Road. Dun Leary indeed, call it Kingstown if I want to, though nowadays Dun Roamin would be more to the point.

And yes, Vera’s delighted pilgrimage through Dublin had revived recollections.

"I passed Trinity College—oh there are still some fine things there in the centre, they haven’t quite dared knock down yet. Don’t you remember Eamonn setting us into fits