Free A Dead Man in Malta by Michael Pearce Page B

go to bed at all. I’ve seen you wandering about in the hospital at all hours.’
    ‘I know my way around there,’ explained Dr Malia placatorily.
    ‘You certainly do. And it’s nice to see you. But I think you need to put your feet up occasionally.’
    ‘I’ve got such a lot to do.’
    ‘And your project could do with a rest, too,’ said Melinda.
    Dr Malia looked surprised.
    ‘Could it?’ he asked. ‘Could it? You know, I’ve never thought about that. But perhaps you’re right.’
    ‘Both of you,’ said Melinda firmly. ‘You and the project. Take a break.’
    ‘Bloody newspapers!’ said the Commander.
    ‘Very trying,’ Seymour agreed.
    ‘If it hadn’t been for them—and that bloody woman, too, of course—we could have sorted things out quietly. Cot deaths!’
    ‘Ridiculous!’
    ‘So bloody ridiculous we would have brushed it aside. But the newspapers were a different matter.’
    ‘But they did rather blurt it out, didn’t they? The three sailors. That bit about the snoring. And the pillow.’
    ‘They wouldn’t have done if they hadn’t had a drink or two first. And then been primed, I wouldn’t wonder, by a few more, and not bought by them!’
    ‘Shouldn’t wonder,’ agreed Seymour.
    ‘And it’s all a load of bollocks,’ said the Commander. ‘You get used to snores if you’re in the Navy. “Put a pillow over his head,”’ he mimicked. ‘I’d put a boot up their backsides!’
    ‘All the same, they might have seen something,’ said Seymour.
    ‘They didn’t see anything! They were so slewed they wouldn’t have seen anything if the whole hospital had gone down! No, they made it up. It was the beer talking. And then the newspapers blew it up, made more of it than they should have done. And once they’d shouted it out from the hilltops everyone got in on the act. And it was all unnecessary.’
    ‘Unnecessary.’
    ‘We would have looked into it. We were looking into it. Only quietly. We would have taken any action that was necessary. If any action was necessary. We’d have given the police the tip-off. If it was murder, which I doubt.
    ‘But it all got out of hand. And then that damned woman came along and made things worse. And in no time at all we had a Force Eight gale blowing up. And all the time they were missing the point.’
    ‘Missing the point?’
    ‘Yes. The Type XK 115.’
    ‘I’m sorry?’
    ‘The Type XK 115. The new destroyer. Just in from Portsmouth. First time out. That’s what they wanted to see.’
    ‘Sorry, who wanted to see?’
    ‘The Germans. That’s what was the point of it all. That’s what they were up there for. Those balloons. Getting a good shufti at our fleet. And especially the new Type XK 115.’
    ‘Spying?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Surely not all of them. I mean—’
    ‘No, no, not all of them. Just the German. And, do you know, the bugger was cheeky enough to come down right beside them. So that he could get a closer look! I’d have clapped him in irons, but, instead, they took him to the hospital. So that we couldn’t get our hands on him. Fortunately, somebody else did.’
    According to Inspector Lucca the place to go in Valletta on a Sunday was the Marsa racetrack.
    Not church?
    ‘Church, too, of course,’ said Inspector Lucca. ‘Mass in the morning, then a good lunch, and then, when it gets a bit cooler, the racetrack. I go every Sunday.’
    And so, evidently, did a lot of other people. When Seymour made a rough count, he reckoned that there were over four thousand people in the stadium, many of them in their Sunday best. There was a general air of festivity. Two bands were playing simultaneously, one on each side of the stadium.
    ‘Where’s the third?’ said Inspector Lucca, worried. ‘Ah!’ Pushing its way through the crowd was the missing band, brass—most Maltese bands were brass—instruments gleaming in the sun.
    ‘This is where there’s sometimes a bit of trouble,’ said the Inspector.
    Every Maltese band—and there