At about six-thirty in the morning I was awakened by the sound of a car changing gear noisily and accelerating. An electric trolley hummed past, bottles clinking, to start a milk round. I did not think I would fall asleep again. I was out of routine.
It was light in the living-room but not in the kitchen. I switched the kitchen light on, made a pot of tea, carried it over to my desk and lit a cigarette.
When the ’phone rang at six-fifty, I realised it was early morning in Washington, about one-fifty by Juliet’s time. I felt sure it was Juliet ringing on her return from some farewell party.
The day was grey. I was eager to hear her voice. But as I moved to the telephone a depressing thought occurred to me. She would be due to leave soon. Would she be telephoning unless it was to say that her return had been delayed? I lifted the receiver.
“Mr. James Compton?”
I thought it was a personal call. So it was, in a way.
“Speaking.”
“I take it you got the note last night?”
It was a man’s voice: cultured, low pitched, rather pleasant.
“What note?”
I wanted time to think. I felt mentally numb.
“A note delivered by hand to you.”
“Oh, that,” I said.
“Yes, that. You’re up early. I saw your light go on.”
“Look,” I shouted, “I don’t give a bloody damn who you are, or what the idea is, but you can stop your bloody silly tricks!”
You could say that the numbness was wearing off.
“Listen to me.”
“I’ve no intention of listening to you.”
“I should, if I were you.”
“I’m not you,” I said, and regretted the schoolboy retort. Stratford Road is narrow, and outside I could hear two lorry drivers calling to each other.
“Hello?” I said, after some seconds.
“Don’t worry, I’m still here,” he said.
“I don’t give a damn if you’re there or not.”
“Then why are you hanging on the line?”
I slammed the receiver down, stared at it for a few seconds, and walked over to the tea tray. I swallowed some tea.
When the ’phone rang again, I put the cup down and went over and lifted the receiver. I was quite calm now.
“We got cut off,” he said, in his rich, imperturbable voice.
“Yes, I cut us off,” I said.
“I thought it was the operator. The service is so bad these days.”
“The service isn’t so bad. And it wasn’t the operator.”
I suppose he didn’t expect a counter-attack. I think he was accustomed to dealing with people who crumpled quickly. After a few moments he said:
“Hello? Mr. Compton?”
“Don’t worry. I’m still here,” I said, repeating his phrase.
“I don’t care if you are or not,” he said.
“Then why are you ringing again?”
“I think we ought to get down to brass tacks,” he said.
“Yes, do-do so now. I’m bored.”
“You’re not.”
“Let’s stop it,” I said. “Let’s assume you’ve been successful in this psychological warfare nonsense.”
“I have been successful,” he said.
“Good old you! Now what?”
“Now nothing.”
“Nothing?” I said. “What do you mean, nothing?”
“Nothing in regard to Lucy Dawson. From you or by you. That’s all.”
In an odd way I was enjoying the exchanges. I felt keyed up, alert, and this was at least a human contact, with whom I could get to grips.
“Are you a crook?” I asked pleasantly. “Are you a crook by any chance?”
“Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Like most of the citizenry. Are you God? Why hasten the Day of Resurrection? Mrs. Dawson needs no flesh and blood from your hands.”
“You’re the fourth person who has been on at me about this. Fifth, if you count that miserable woman in the train.”
“What woman in what train?”
“The one who gave me the note.”
“I thought it arrived by carrier pigeon.”
He gave a whinnying laugh. It sounded like a green woodpecker and contrasted with his well-modulated voice.
“That’s not funny,” I said. “It’s corny.”
“Not funny. Not corny. Evasive.”
“Mrs. Dawson can’t betray you,” I said. “She’s dumb for ever. What’s the matter with you? What are you afraid of? Who are you? Not that you’ll tell me, not that I expect you to tell me, I’m just keeping the social chit-chat going, Buster.”
“My name’s not Buster.”
“Surprise, surprise. Who are you? Not that I’ll believe you.”
“I am seven, like the devils in the Bible-seventeen or seventy-or seven hundred. Anything you choose, really.”
“Good luck to you all.”
“And you are one,” he murmured. “How much do you hope to make out of the story? Five hundred pounds? A thousand?”
“That’s not on,” I said.
“Used one-pound notes?”
“We aren’t speaking the same language.”
There was silence. After about five seconds he asked:
“What language are you speaking? How much?”
“I might have got fed up with the case,” I said, “if you hadn’t been so silly, all seven hundred of you. Now it’s a matter of principles.”
I heard a groan come over the ’phone.
“Dear God, dear God! A matter of principles! Poor, poor old hackneyed phrase! Last refuge of the obstinate who’ve run out of arguments, final defence of the dull witted, end of the line of reason. When our flanks crumble and our centre caves in, and the trumpets sound Retreat, what do we do but fall back on that last massive, mossy, hoary old citadel?”
“Well delivered, but too many similes and analogies. Any other prepared speech by you?”
He reverted to ordinary conversational tones:
“Well, it’s been nice talking to you.”
I heard a click and guessed he had replaced the receiver.
“Hello?” I said. “Hello?”
“Did you think I’d hung up?” He gave another of his green woodpecker laughs. “I was just pretending, like when one’s a dear little child. A d-e-e little, innocent little child. Did you used to play ‘Let’s pretend’ when you were a dee little, innocent little child? I bet you did, Jamie, boy. I bet you’re still a dee innocent little child at heart. Let’s pretend now.”
“You’re barmy. Mad,” I said, and meant it.
“Not barmy. Not mad. Cool, clear brain.”
“They all say that.”
“We all say that,” he agreed cheerfully. “My friends and I, we all say that. Cool, clear brains, we say. So let’s pretend.”
I had had enough. I wanted to be clear of him. There was nothing to be got out of this nonsense. He was a voice, only a voice, and would remain a voice.
“I’m going to report it to the police,” I said.
“Report what to the police?” he asked sadly.
“That message, typed on my typewriter, and my paper. And this ’phone call.”
“Oh, that. Yes, of course you will. Who wouldn’t? So let’s pretend.”
When I switched the telephone receiver from one hand to another I saw that it was glistening, and yet I didn’t replace the receiver on its cradle. I guessed that if I did the telephone bell would ring again soon, and if it didn’t ring, I would wish that it had done. One part of my mind tried to tell me he was unbalanced. But I knew he wasn’t, at heart I knew he wasn’t.
“Pretend what?”
“Pretend that you agree to drop the Lucy Dawson story.”
“I have no intention of dropping it.”
“I said, let’s pretend. So you drop the idea-as from now. So what happens? You’re in the clear. You’re happy and free to go ahead with your wedding and live happily ever after. Comparatively prosperous, and comparatively respected by all who know you. Right?”
“Not right,” I muttered. “Not respected by all who know me.”
“Who wouldn’t respect you?”
“I wouldn’t respect me.”
“Final?”
“Final,” I said, “unless you explain things more.”
There was another click, and this time I knew it meant the end of the conversation. I replaced the receiver and sat staring at the window. I keep a small bowl of water there for pigeons. I like all birds, even pigeons, which are supposed to be so destructive. A pigeon landed, bedraggled and dirty white, and strutted towards the bowl, flicking its head from side to side, looking for danger, knowing danger was around, but not knowing where.
I didn’t like the silence in the flat. I wished the telephone conversation was still going on. While I could hear the voice, even with its sneers, I knew I could cope, because I was in touch with whatever was afoot; intangibly, even negatively, but at least in touch.
Now there was only the interior quietness of the flat.
Somebody knew my movements, almost from hour to hour. He knew the train I would catch from Burlington, and had seen the light go on in my kitchen, when I got up to make tea.
We are seven, he had said, or seventeen, or seventy, or seven hundred, and you are one. I walked over to the window, and the white bedraggled pigeon flew off and settled on a roof guttering on the opposite side of the street.
I looked down into the street. Nobody was noticeably hanging around in doorways, but then they wouldn’t be. Not noticeably. Across the street it was different. Across the street there were a couple of dozen windows with curtains of different kinds, varying from heavy velvet curtains to light net curtains. All equally effective, from the point of view of concealed eyes.
It is a strange feeling standing by the window, openly, knowing that somebody is certainly watching you, not with personal interest, as a neighbour might, but with meticulous, business-like attention. Heartlessly, as the pigeon was doing.
I looked at the pigeon, and the pigeon looked at me. It was waiting for me to move away from the window before landing on the sill for a drink.
I turned and went to the bathroom and shaved and had a long bath. After I had dressed I looked at myself in the mirror as I tied my tie, and I did not much care for what I saw.
I was strongly built, admittedly, but on the short side, about five feet eight inches. Round, bullet head, due to a mixture of English, Irish and Boer blood. Crew-cut brown hair, and brown eyes. Complexion still suntanned from Italy but turning fawn. Face round, rather heavy, obstinate jaw and lower lip. Poor old Juliet, I thought.
I wasn’t proud of being obstinate. Far from it. I just knew that in some matters I never had the slightest intention of deviating one iota from my intentions. One such matter was Lucy Dawson. That was the streak of Boer blood in me. The trait that got the Boers through the Great Trek, and also into a lot of grave difficulties since.
Still, it was a great trek while it lasted.
I jumped like a scalded cat when the ’phone rang again. That’s my trouble, I look phlegmatic, but I’m not, I jump like that well known scalded cat sometimes. I strode over to the telephone and lifted the receiver and said loudly:
“Well, what do you want now?”
It was Stanley Bristow, my future father-in-law, ringing to confirm or amend previous engagements for that evening. He was like that, everything had to be checked at least twice.
“What’s up with you, old boy?” said Stanley Bristow’s snuffly little voice.
“Sorry, I thought you were somebody else.”
“Who? Your bookmaker, old boy? Being dunned? Can’t you pay, old boy? You can always plead the Gaming Act, old boy!”
“No, just somebody else. I’ll tell you sometime. It’s a long story.”
“Good. And I’ve got a story for you, when I see you, old boy. About a coloured American soldier, and three chorus girls, one Irish, one Scotch, and one English. Remind me to tell you.”
“I’ll remind you. If you forget, I’ll remind you,” I said.
“Just a minute. The wife’s gone out of the room. I can probably tell you now, if you like.”
“Well, there’s somebody downstairs at the door,” I lied.
Some dirty jokes are funny, but not Stanley’s. Never Stanley’s.
“All right. I just wanted to say that I’ve had another thought about tonight. I don’t think we’d better go by car.”
“You don’t?”
“No, I’ve booked a table at that little place in Charlotte Street. Impossible to park round there, old boy. Taxi’s the only thing.”
“Taxi,” I repeated.
“Taxi, old boy. So you could drop Juliet here at five-thirty, after you’ve picked her up at the airport, then drive back to your place and change, and then either drive up here and leave your car here, or come up on foot.”
“Drive up or come up on foot,” I said patiently.
“It’s not far to walk, as you know.”
“No, it’s not far to walk. I must go now.”
“See you this evening, old boy.”
The thought of seeing him regularly through the years was appalling. Yet one had to be gentle with him. It seemed to me that there was no malice in the man. In fact, despite the irritation he aroused in me, I felt sorry for him.
He had recently retired from the post of general manager in a small, but long established firm, which over the decades had slowly evolved from making tin and wooden children’s toys to plastic ones. Stanley said that they might be old-fashioned, but they moved with the times. It was the sort of remark one might expect him to make. He also said they combined the tradition of the past with the spirit of the future. Dear me.
He had married Elaine Bristow late in life, by which time he had somehow managed to save a good deal of money, and Elaine had a little of her own. What with a small inheritance from a brother, and his pension, and his savings, and Elaine’s money, they were able to live at a reasonable standard in a ground floor flat between Kensington Church Street, and Camden Hill, which is not a cheap area.
He should have been happy, but I wondered if he was.
Since his retirement, he had spent most of his time going alone to race meetings, and interesting himself in various Service benevolent organisations, which entailed visiting people and eating and drinking for charity.
It seemed to be doubtful if he was particularly interested in racing or horses or charity. He was certainly interested in getting out of the house, not that Elaine Bristow actively nagged him. She just treated him with a faint, amused contempt.
“It is, of course, difficult to make really worthwhile money these days, if one is honest like Stanley,” she would say, or, “Personally, I would like to have had more than one child, but there, it was not to be.”
Stanley affected to take no notice of these remarks, with their snide reflections on his financial acumen and his virility. She was a tall, over-blown woman, and she was always pleasant enough to me. I played her along on her own terms, the same as I did her husband.
Sometimes I wondered how this superficial couple could ever have given birth to somebody like Juliet, with her intriguing, withdrawn manner, and her thoughtful, secretive glances. Both Stanley and Elaine were fair. Both had tall, substantial figures, though not actually stout. Stanley’s hair was sparsely distributed over his rectangular Anglo-Saxon skull, and was grey except for a few streaks here and there which remained tow-coloured.
Elaine Bristow’s hair was fair all over, and people were allowed to draw their own conclusions about it. Both had grey eyes. Both in their different ways were seemingly extrovert types.
Out of this physically consistent nordic blending had come Juliet-of only medium height, dark-haired, pale, slim, brown-eyed, and quiet.
The thing which I noted most of all, in the beginning, was her watchfulness. She would be thumbing through a magazine, or eating her meal, saying little, while her parents and I talked. Now and then, without moving her head, she would glance towards us, and if I glanced back she would drop her eyes. She wasn’t consciously flirting, she was discreetly observing.
It was difficult to know whether she was secretive or shy, and I didn’t care. I just knew that almost from the first moment I met her at a cocktail party I found her enchanting and wanted to marry her. I was thirty-two, no bleating lamb turned loose on the world, but Juliet was the only one who had ever aroused in me a feeling which justified the words “blind passion.”
Passion it was, entirely physical at first; and blind, because although men of mature age will usually regard the physical side of love as a big incentive, they will seek for some other ingredients before proposing marriage, such as gaiety, wit, a sense of humour; even kindliness, though this ranks lower in the scale; nor do I think that money counts for much with men, though women think it does.
When I met Juliet, I knew I would seek for none of these things. So it was blind passion. For better or for worse. I was aware of the gamble I was taking, but I wanted the woman and, all things being equal, I was going to have her, whether I regretted it later or whether I didn’t.
She wore glasses, not all the time, not at parties, or when she wished to look her best, as she thought; but when she was at the cinema or theatre, or reading, or driving a car.
Women with glasses attract me, as they attract many other men. Perhaps the greatest untruth ever spoken by a talented woman were the words of Dorothy Parker, “Men don’t make passes at girls with glasses.”
Men do. Hordes of them.
It’s not a question of a fetish, or sex deviation. Psychologically, it’s simple. Glasses indicate a physical weakness. Weakness arouses the protective instinct. Most men are suckers about being protective. It’s as clean and simple as that.
Juliet, glasses or no glasses, didn’t arouse any particular protective instinct in me when I met her. Her shy-sly withdrawn manner, and soft voice, and soft hands, and soft shoulder blades when we danced, they didn’t arouse any Sir Galahad feelings in me, I assure you, and what feelings they did arouse don’t need to be spelt out in this day and age.
I don’t believe that it was Helen’s face that launched a thousand ships and led to the sack of Troy. No woman’s face is worth the effort. But if you said that a thousand ships were launched because Helen had a shy-sly manner, a secretive, thoughtful way of glancing up at a man, and then away again, a supple, yielding body, and a skin like a magnolia leaf, then I would believe you, whether her face was beautiful, or, like Juliet’s, oval and classically undistinguished.
Let’s face it. Lust caused me to gamble on Juliet.
Good fortune alone decreed that she had those other ingredients which men hope for and sometimes get and sometimes don’t. So I was lucky. But I would have proposed to her anyway.
The frame of her horn-rimmed glasses was black, and perhaps too heavy for the delicacy of her face. Not that it matters at all.
It was her father’s ’phone call which set me off thinking about her, in fact, all three of them, as I dressed and boiled an egg and made some toast, and prepared to call at the police station.
I never made that visit because the door bell rang just after eight-thirty. I went to the door thinking it might be a parcels delivery or even a cable from Juliet in New York saying her time of arrival had been changed. But it was a police sergeant who had apparently cycled round from Kensington Police Station. He still wore his trouser clips.
I was surprised and pleased to see him, thinking that something suspicious might have been reported by a neighbour in my absence.
He was a middle-aged man, rather short as London policemen go, and when he took his helmet off I saw that he was bald on top, with grizzled hair above the ears.
He asked me if I was Mr. James Martin Compton, and I said I was, and asked him if he would like a cup of tea. He said, no, he had just had a cup. I asked him to sit down, but he said, no, he wouldn’t be very long, and he’d just as soon stand. I said:
“I am glad you called.”
To which he replied:
“Then I take it you were not altogether surprised, sir?”
“Well, yes and no,” I said. “The fact is I’ve been away for a few days, and I think-indeed, I’m sure-that somebody has been into this flat in my absence. I was going to call round at the Station and mention it. I thought they might as well know about it. Not that they can do anything about it.”
He had taken a sheet of paper from his pocket while I was speaking, and when I had finished he looked up from it, and around the living-room, moving his head slowly, his big, brown, good-natured eyes seemingly searching for some intruder who might still be there.
He looked at me for a couple of seconds, and then down again at the piece of paper in his hand, and cleared his throat. He said:
“Well, we can come to that later, sir. Whatever has happened here, or has not happened here, is not the reason for my visit, sir.”
I had the impression he was ill at ease.
“Meaning what?” I asked.
“Did you travel on the eight-twenty-five train last night from Burlington via Brighton to Victoria Station, sir?”
I had brought the breakfast tray into the living-room, with some tea, and toast, and the egg and the butter and marmalade. I was pouring out a cup of tea when he asked his question. I went on pouring, having no idea what was coming.
“Yes, I did.”
“Did you have in your compartment a female, possibly between the age of forty-five and fifty, dressed in a white mackintosh, and wearing a head-covering, attached beneath the chin?”
I added the milk to the tea, and nodded, and carefully replaced the little milk jug on the tray. I didn’t feel sick, but I felt a surge of dull pain in the stomach.
“Yes, I remember her,” I said, and remembered the tears welling out of the naive eyes, and although I also thought of the note she had given me, it was the thought of the grief I had witnessed which was uppermost in my mind.
The note, and its message, was a minor thing at that moment, a trivial, stupid little mystery compared to the major issues of the black night of the soul, of death by suicide, of my slap-happy remark about putting one’s head in a gas oven, and my tongue-tied inadequacy in the face of her distraught pleas for reassurance.
I saw the significance of her longing for an assurance about life after death and about whether she would see her friend again. Inadvertently, I had taken the wrong line.
By assuring her that she and her friend would survive the grave, and that she would see her friend again, I had given her the arguments she needed, the confidence which had been in the balance, about what would happen if she took her own life. If I had told her there was no life after death, she would have fought on, struggling to maintain the Awareness, which is life, against the Dreamless Sleep, which the atheists consider to be death.
It is surprising how fast such thoughts can pass through the mind. They flash between the time it takes to lift a milk jug and pour some drops into a cup; or during the time it takes to add two lumps of sugar. One moment you are happy, or if not happy, you are at least stabilised in the general turmoil of life, and the next you are sick with guilt and with a hopeless feeling of your own inadequacy to lead and inspire.
I felt sure, and still feel sure, and always will feel sure, that her emotions were genuine, even though the sergeant now said:
“At about eleven-thirty last night, a person of the above description called at Kensington Police Station and laid a complaint against a person of your name, sir, of this address, alleging that you had made improper and indecent suggestions. She declined to give her own name and address, sir, or to make a formal statement.”
He was reading from his piece of paper, so as to get the exact wording right.
“I have to inform you, sir, that in the circumstances, and failing further evidence, it is not the intention of the police to take further action. It is felt that you should nevertheless be informed of this matter, and should you wish to make any statement I am authorised to take it down.”
He folded up his sheet of paper and replaced it in his tunic pocket. I could almost hear him sigh with relief. We looked at each other awkwardly, in silence.
“We get this sort of thing now and again, sir,” he said, in a soothing, matter of fact tone. “I take it you completely deny the allegation, and do not consider it necessary to make a formal statement in rebuttal?”
Short of nudging me in the ribs or kicking me on the shin, he could hardly have given a broader hint. But I couldn’t take the opening.
I kept thinking of the two sides of her, the shapeless bundle which was her body, the red chapped hand dabbing at the tears with a grubby handkerchief, the childish apology for her whimpers; and on the other hand, the instructions she had been given and carried out. I doubted if they meant anything to her, or if she even knew what was in the envelope, or what was going on at all, except that she was wallowing in misery.
“I had a description of her from the desk sergeant, sir. They get hallucinations at certain times of life. Dentists suffer from the same sort of accusation sometimes, sir, when they give anaesthetics. That sort of thing. Well, I’ll report back now, unless you have something to say.”
He picked up his helmet from a chair.
“You don’t wish to make any statement, I take it, sir? Except an oral denial?”
I shook my head, but he misunderstood me, and began to put on his helmet. He thought his job was finished.
“Yes, I do want to make a statement,” I said.
He looked at me and shook his head.
“You don’t need to, sir, in my view of present police intentions, of which I have informed you.”
I got up and walked to the window, and said:
“It’s not as simple as that. This woman you called about, this woman who made a complaint about me, there’s something odd going on, and I don’t understand it.”
He nodded in an understanding way.
“You don’t need to worry, sir, like I more or less said, we get these cases now and again. If she pesters you, sir, and if she goes on pestering you, and becomes a real nuisance, you want to get a Court injunction against her. It usually works. Frightens some sense into ’em, as it were.”
He began to move towards the door again.
“It’s not as simple as that,” I said again. “It’s difficult to explain. I travelled down with her and listened to a lot of emotional trouble, and she talked of suicide.”
“A bit unstable mentally, I suppose, like they thought down at the police station, between you and me. I mean, she wasn’t no beauty, I’m told, and directly I saw you, and this flat, if I may say so, I thought ‘Well, if he wanted to start any nonsense like that he would choose something a bit different from her.’ Not that you can always tell, of course.”
He had reached the door and had his hand on the door knob. He had a fixed idea of how things were, and he wasn’t interested, and I felt I had to talk rapidly to detain him.
“She gave me a note in a buff envelope. Just before we parted in Victoria Station. I want to show it to you. There’s a very odd thing about it.”
I picked up the note on my desk, and he came over reluctantly.
“You don’t want to give your name and address to odd people you meet on trains, if I may say so, sir, not if they seem a bit cranky. It always leads to trouble of some sort. I suppose you felt sorry for her.”
I handed him the note, and said:
“I didn’t give her my name and address-that’s another point I might mention. But read that, and then I’ll tell you about it.”
He stood by the window, holding the note a long way from his face, as long-sighted middle-aged people do when they can’t be bothered to get out their spectacles, and when the telephone rang I left him frowning down at it.
It was Juliet’s father, again, confirming that I was going to meet her at the airport at four-thirty that afternoon, and not at the air terminal. I listened to the man’s snuffly voice droning on about the evening’s arrangements.
“So you’ll be back here about six o’clock, old man?”
“That’s right, squire,” I said.
“Then we’ll go straight out to dinner, after a drink, old boy?”
“Splendid.”
“Look forward to seeing you, old boy.”
“Me too,” I said.
He always called me “old boy.” He tagged it on at the end of almost every sentence he spoke to me.
“That was my future father-in-law,” I said, as I put the receiver down. “He doesn’t like leaving things to chance. He’s a great organiser. He’ll tell you so himself, if you ask him, or even if you don’t ask him.”
I didn’t think the remark witty, but I thought it merited a polite smile. However, he didn’t smile.
“This note you’ve shown me,” he said. I could detect the awakened interest in his voice. “This note you said she gave you, sir. I’ve been looking at the type and I happened to glance at the type of this bit of writing you’ve left in your typewriter, and at the typing paper.”
I nodded eagerly.
“That’s right. It’s the same. So is the typing paper, and so is the envelope. That’s what I wanted to tell you.”
“What did you want to tell me, sir?”
“That the note she gave me was typed on my machine, and on my typing paper, and put into one of my envelopes.”
He looked at me, puzzled, trying to sort out the implications.
“That’s what’s so odd,” I added.
“This message you typed,” he began, but I cut him short.
“I don’t think you quite understand what I’m getting at. I didn’t type it.”
“You didn’t say that when you gave it to me to read, sir.”
“I was going to but the ’phone rang.”
He picked up the piece of paper again, and glanced at my typewriter again, because I think he felt he ought to do something. He said gloomily:
“Well, I don’t know what you’re getting at, sir. Are you suggesting that this lady who complained about you somehow got into this flat, got hold of your name and address, typed this stuff out, took it all the way down to the seaside, came up in the train with you, then gave it to you at Victoria Station, and then came and complained about you at the police station? Is that what you’re trying to say?”
“Well, not necessarily.”
“What do you mean, not necessarily, sir?”
“What I say, not necessarily. Maybe she did get into this flat and maybe she didn’t. Personally, I don’t think she did.”
“Then who are you suggesting did, sir?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“No, I don’t know-that’s the point.”
The thing was beginning to resemble a bad cross-talk act.
I was getting irritated, and he saw it, and that is bad when you are dealing with the police. He passed his tongue over his lips and said:
“There’s no need to get annoyed, sir. You raised this matter, I didn’t.”
“I’m not getting annoyed.”
“We were quite content to take your word in this other matter against hers-failing independent evidence, and in view of other circumstances. There was no call to show me this piece of paper.”
In effect, he was telling me that he thought I had faked the whole thing in order, in some obscure way, to discredit the woman.
“Of course there was a reason to show you the paper!” I insisted loudly. “It shows that some unauthorised person has been into this flat. If that’s not a matter for the police, perhaps you’ll tell me what is?”
He stiffened, but to do him credit he kept his temper. Police get accustomed to dealing with excited citizens.
“Anything stolen, sir?” he asked mildly.
“Nothing.”
“Anything disturbed-contents of drawers on the floor, cupboard doors open, anything like that, sir?”
I shook my head.
“Any signs of a forcible entry by the door or windows?”
“No.”
“Anybody have a key of the flat apart from yourself, sir?”
“Only the woman who cleans the flat-and she wouldn’t write that pompous sort of stuff, why should she? And my fiancee, she’s got a key, but if you want an alibi for her, she’s been in America for a month.”
“This Mrs. Dawson mentioned in the note, was she known to your daily woman or to your fiancee?”
“Of course she wasn’t.”
“I was only asking, sir.”
“Yes, well, she wasn’t.”
“That’s all right then,” he said in the patient tone of one who was not only keeping his temper but wanted you to realise it. “Who is this Mrs. Dawson, anyway?”
“She was murdered in Italy recently.”
“Murdered, was she?”
“It was in the papers at the time.”
“I don’t read the newspapers much-except the football pages. Was she a friend of yours?”
“No, she wasn’t. But I’m preparing something about the case. I write crime articles and crime novels. I’ve been trying to find out something about her background, and it’s been hard work. I’ve had the idea that people have been trying to obstruct me, but it was just an idea. Now comes this note. So I was right.”
“Who would try to obstruct you, sir, as you call it?”
“I don’t know. That’s the point, I don’t know who-or why. And another thing-somebody unknown to me rang me up early this morning and asked if I’d got that note, and then tried to badger me along the same lines.”
“I see, sir.”
He looked down at his blue helmet, and began to polish the badge with his right thumb. Then he said:
“You write what you call crime novels-thrillers, as it were, mystery stories?”
“Yes, I do.”
I saw what was in his mind. He had changed his ground, or at least extended it. He was now fumbling towards some theory that I might have typed the note myself and created some mystery for some obscure reason connected with a thriller story. But he was too punctilious to say so. He just nodded his head thoughtfully and said, “Ah.” Then he straightened himself up.
“Well, sir, in regard to the other matter, I will report that you categorically deny the accusation. In regard to the matter we have just discussed, I take it you wish me formally to report your own complaint? Or do you wish to reconsider it?”
He was offering me a let out.
I replied obstinately.
“I would like you to report it. I realise that little can be done, but I would like it reported.”
“Very well, sir. I’ll take this message you say was typed by some unknown intruder, and I will formally report the matter, as you wish.”
He folded the paper up neatly and placed it in his notebook. He didn’t sigh resignedly, but it was the loudest non-sigh I’ve ever heard.
“Good day, sir.”
“What’s your name, Sergeant?”
“Matthews, sir, Sergeant Matthews, but you don’t need to worry about me not reporting what you want. That’s what we’re paid for, sir.”
“I wasn’t worrying.”
“That’s all right then, isn’t it, sir?”
He put on his helmet and let himself out without turning round. I felt he considered me to be a disappointment, a man towards whom the Force had adopted a tolerant attitude, towards whom he, in particular, had assumed a kindly, avuncular role; a man who had invented a silly story, and persisted in it, despite a chance to retract with good grace.
I heard the street door close downstairs, and walked to the window, and saw him cycling off towards the police station.
The pigeon, which I had nicknamed Tommy the Hen, because I did not know its sex, was back on the roof guttering opposite, staring across with beady eyes.
I guessed that Tommy the Hen was not the only one observing me, but I felt some relief because I had reported matters to Sergeant Matthews. He had taken my story with about a pound of salt, but at least I had lodged it with him.
As to the sad sack in the train, whom I now thought of as Bunface, the reason for her actions completely eluded me.
Quite clearly the police were wrong in their estimate of her.
Her thoughts, conscious and subconscious, were concerned with death and self-destruction and the hereafter, not with men and sex fantasies and wishful imaginings.
She was not neurotic in the way they thought. Her grief was genuine. Therefore she had lodged a complaint because she had been ordered to do so. And yet I could swear she had liked me and had been grateful to me for listening to her woes.
I imagined her checking my name and address from some scruffy piece of paper she had been given, dragging it out of her shabby handbag, holding it with her coarse, red hands in the light of a lamp standard near the police station, peering myopically at the writing.
Then, reluctantly, and because she had to, she would have gone in, well knowing what the station sergeant would think.
Poor embarrassed Bunface, I thought, poor pathetic victim.
But whose victim?
I spent part of the day trying to work, and part of it trying to puzzle out another problem. Whoever had instructed Bunface must have known that the police would take no action. Was the complaint therefore in the nature of a feint, a vicious, probing dab in the air, such as a tiger will sometimes make with its paw?
I now thought it was. But there was more to it than that.
After a couple of gins and tonic and a sandwich for lunch I felt better, for luckily I have a sectionalised mind, and my thoughts were now on Juliet and her arrival. Indeed, I was cheerful and excited as I drove to London Airport.
But I forgot that as a secretary to the Minister she might be carrying a spare briefcase or two, and travelling with him, all the way, right back to the Ministry, with the rest of the cohort of civil servants who have to accompany Ministers when they move around these days.
So my trip to the airport was wasted. All I could do was wave, and follow in my car at a discreet distance. However, I picked her up in Whitehall in the end, and although she was deadly tired, the evening proceeded inexorably to its conclusion, as planned in all its details by Stanley Bristow.
For the first part of the evening my heart bled for poor little Juliet. Her father plied her with questions in his snuffly voice, and her mother posed supplementary questions in the energetic, bustling tones of a television interviewer. If she had answered them all, the entire confidential secrets of the Washington conferences would have been round the London clubs, and many other places, too, within forty-eight hours. But they were no match for her, tired though she was.
In the end, Stanley Bristow snuffled his way to a halt, with a plaintive protest that she never told them anything. By that time, I don’t think Juliet was even listening properly. She was picking at her fish in the murky candle light of the Charlotte Street restaurant. Once or twice she looked up and caught my eye, and gave one of her secretive little half-smiles, and then looked down again.
Stanley had bought champagne to celebrate her return. He was never mean with drinks. By the middle of the meal she looked a little better. So far, I had said nothing about the woman in the train from Brighton, the message, the police visit, or the telephone call.
Now I thought I might as well do so. I was banking on a lighthearted reaction from Stanley, mellow with drink. Lighthearted it certainly was. I hoped it would set the tone for the women. He gave one of the muffled guffaws which served him for a laugh.
“Somebody’s pulling your leg, old boy.”
“Probably.”
“Of course they are, old boy!”
“Why?”
“Why? I don’t know why, old boy. Why does anybody play a practical joke. Damn silly, if you ask me, old boy.”
I nodded.
“You’re probably right. It’s a bit elaborate, it’s spread over a wide area, and I don’t see the point of it, but-”
“There never is much point in a practical joke, old boy.”
I felt that at any moment he was going to tell me stories of practical jokers who had dug up holes in main thoroughfares, of undergraduates who had dressed up as visiting Indian potentates and inspected guards of honour, and other tales from the hoary old repertoire of practical jokers.
“There’s no end to some people’s childishness,” said Elaine Bristow brightly. “Even Stanley, when we were first married, used to tinker about with people’s cars when they came to dinner, and remove some bit of the engine, and then while they were ringing up for help he used to sneak out and put it back again, didn’t you Stanley?”
“I expect you’re both right,” I said quickly. “I expect it’s something like that.”
I felt instinctively that I had to tell them about it, in case it went on. I suppose I knew instinctively that it would go on. Now I had told them. Now I could change the subject.
“What’s going to win the November Handicap?” I asked.
He looked pleased. He began to tell me, at some length, going through the merits of the main equine contenders one by one, almost leg by leg. I lit a cigarette and settled back, nodding from time to time. His wife sat back, too, bored but resigned.
Juliet was fiddling about with her coffee cup. Her skin and dark hair looked paler and more exciting, in the subdued lighting of even that mediocre Soho restaurant. She wasn’t wearing her glasses.
Once or twice she looked at me without moving her head, moving her eyes only, using the shy secretive glance which hitherto had always excited me. Tonight her glance didn’t excite me. Her eyes were worried. She had caught my true mood.
Juliet said she would go straight to bed when we got back to her parents’ flat. The fatigue caused by the work of the Washington conference and the Atlantic flight had finally caught up with her. I would have been content to take the taxi on, back to my own flat, but Stanley insisted that I should come in for a final drink and paid off the driver.
One of Juliet’s two pieces of luggage still stood in the hall, and I followed her along the passage, carrying it for her. In her bedroom, I put it down, and saw she was staggering with exhaustion and although we had hardly had a moment to ourselves since her return, I just murmured a few words and kissed her, and gave her a warm hug, and said I would see her at lunchtime next day, and made for the bedroom door.
But as I drew away from her, she caught hold of me and I turned round. I thought she wanted me to kiss her again, and was rather touched, and I did, and she didn’t object, but it wasn’t why she had detained me. After I had kissed her again, she looked at me, and then away, in the withdrawn manner peculiar to her, and said quietly:
“You are worried. I mean, you really are a bit, aren’t you?”
“No, not really. No, I’m not worried. It’s a bit bewildering, and it’s all rather childish and melodramatic, and I don’t understand why they don’t want me to go on with this story, whoever they are. But I’m not worried, because I don’t see what there is to be worried about.”
“Isn’t that a reason to be worried?”
I laughed and said:
“Now don’t you try and scare me, darling.”
“I’m not trying to scare you.”
“Good.”
“It’s just that-these times we live in.”
“What about these times?”
“One feels there’s so much evil around one. So much hidden danger. You know? Bits and pieces appear in the papers. Killings and kidnappings, and inexplicable scandals, and treachery, and cold, cold hate, and those are only the bits you see, you never know where it’s going to erupt next, or why it happens.”
“There always have been these things.”
Suddenly she started to cry. I put my arm round her. I had never seen her cry before and I didn’t like it.
“Come along, darling, pop into bed, and forget these things.”
“How can I forget them, when they may be touching you and me? Clawing at what may be our only chance of happiness in this life, threatening our marriage.”
She dabbed her eyes with the handkerchief I offered her.
“Why not drop it, darling?” she said.
“Drop what?”
“Drop the story of Lucy Dawson.”
I stared at her, feeling the obstinacy which has done me so much good and harm in life almost literally congealing my mind.
“Good God, whose side are you on?” I muttered.
She began to sob in earnest now.
“Whose side are you on?” I said again.
“Yours, darling. Ours,” she whispered. “I just want to be happy, that’s all.”
“If I knew the reason why they want me to drop it, I might-or I might not. But I don’t. So I won’t.”
She turned away and murmured, “Men, men.”
From down the passage Stanley’s snuffly voice called me. He said something about, come on you two lovebirds, it’s time Juliet was in bed. Something nauseating, anyway.
I kissed her again. She did her best to respond, but her heart was not in it. I went along to the sitting room, and found Stanley alone. He said Elaine had gone to bed. I wanted to go to bed, too, but he was standing by the drinks tray, fiddling about with his cutglass whisky decanter, and tumblers, and soda syphon. I thought he was going to say, “Well, what about a nightcap, old boy?” but he didn’t. He said, “What about one for the road, old boy?” To make it worse, he said, “If you drink, don’t drive-if you drive, don’t drink. Well, you aren’t driving, old boy.”
“That’s right,” I said. “I’m walking back. I’ll have a small one.”
I lit a cigarette and sighed. He handed me a whisky.
“Tired, old boy?”
“No, not really.”
I wasn’t feeling particularly tired. I was just dismayed, once again, at the prospect of endless periodic drinks with Stanley, of being pinned in corners by him, of looking up at him and into his protruding watery grey eyes with their touch of ex-ophthalmic goitre, while he smoothed his sparse hair with one hand, held a glass in the other, and told me yet another feeble, smutty story.
“Well, drink up, old boy-all the best!”
I drank half the tumbler of whisky and soda without a pause.
The sooner it was finished, the sooner I could go. He was standing by the mantelpiece, his back to me, and without looking round he said:
“Look, old boy, there’s something I think you should know.”
His voice was as snuffly as ever, but lacked the normal lighthearted overtones.
“It’s about Juliet, old boy.”