A Fragment of Fear (15 page)

I was very delighted and relieved by this theory, as I opened the street door leading to my flat. The dominating emotion was relief.

Some things, some tricks they had played, still baffled me, but I no longer had any lingering doubts at all about my mental stability. Nor, frankly, had I much fear. I was just faced with a bunch of crooks.

I could handle a bunch of crooks.

Thus I let myself in, overwhelmed by my own brilliance, dazzled by my own acumen, and infinitely glad that whatever anybody else thought I had discovered the key to the current problem.

There proved to be a grain of truth in my new theory. A very small grain.

Otherwise it was totally wrong, like all my thoughts and actions in this calamitous affair.

Still, there you are, as dapper Colonel Pearson would have said. You can only do your best.

You can only bumble along the jungle-skirted paths, and, if the crackle of twigs alarms you, you can say it is only a wild pig, not exactly harmless, but capable of being repulsed.

If you hear the slither of bodies, and the sound continues with you, then of course it is a different matter. But you can only hitch your spear forward and hope for the best. You can console yourself with the thought that more peasants get through than not.

It can, however, be fatal, even in this modern day and age, not to keep your eyes open and your spear ready, and to think that it is always the other peasant who is clawed down.

Mind you, it probably always will be the other peasant, until one day the other peasant is you.

S
o I let myself in, and on the mat inside the door was another buff envelope, which for a second I thought was a bill from my garage; but it was the middle of the month, not the beginning, and I suppose I realised as I stooped down to pick it up that it was another note. I opened it there and then.

The message, civil enough, was couched in the same intolerably pompous language as its predecessor:

The note was dated that day. It had been typed upon my machine, using my typing paper and enclosed in one of my envelopes. But on leaving the flat I had taken certain precautions.

I went upstairs and examined the mortice lock. The thin wafer of tissue paper was still in place, and when I let myself in the faint dusting of salt just inside the door was undisturbed.

I sat down and read the note again.

For the second time within a few hours, I realised how alone one can feel when there is no police force to whom one can effectively appeal for support. The last time I had called on them I could not even produce the note. This time I would have a note.

“Look,” I could say, “I’ve had another note. Here it is! It’s getting serious! You’ll have to do something.”

“Oh, yes, sir?” they’d say, kindly and avuncular. “What’s the trouble this time? Let’s have a look at it, shall we?”

So I would give it to them, and they’d say:

“And was this one typed on your machine, Mr. Compton—like the last one?”

“Yes, it was,” I’d say.

“So somebody’s been in your flat again, have they, sir?”

“No, they haven’t. That’s the point. Between the time I left the flat this morning, and my return to find this note, nobody had been inside. I put a piece of tissue paper in the mortice lock, and sprinkled some salt just inside the front door, and they were undisturbed. So nobody’s been inside, see?”

“You sprinkled salt all over your own carpet and stuck a bit of bumph in the lock?”

“Yes, I did.”

“And what do you want us to do, sir? Come and sweep up the salt?”

In the end I would lose my temper, and that would confirm their views of me. I couldn’t face it.

But I knew now a little more, a fraction more, of what I was up against, and it was not reassuring. This campaign was planned by somebody who had acquired a knowledge of my character. It had been planned step by step in advance. Whoever had gone into my flat, and typed the first note, had at the same time typed the second.

They knew my first instinct would be to resist.

They guessed they would need the second note.

Maybe they had typed a third at the same time, even more peremptory, a very final warning, but I didn’t think so. They wouldn’t keep it up indefinitely, not the pressure at its present intensity, with its cost in money and time.

The crunch was bound to come soon.

One of us was going to take decisive action.

Looking back, I can see the matter depended upon three national characteristics in my make-up: Irish bloody-mindedness, Boer tenacity, English coolness and instinct for compromise.

The make-up was two to one in favour of a fight.

I wonder if they knew it. They had assessed the character presented to the world: the happy-go-lucky Irish streak, the good-natured Dutch streak, the clinically cool English streak and on the surface the assessment looked promising. But I wondered if they had examined deeply, individually and separately, the underlying implications of the three separate blood streams.

If so, they should have known that if you push your luck too far, with either the Irish or the Dutch, you’ll get an explosion of unreasoning and unexpected violence. The English react in the same way, but it takes longer because they are more calculating.

I thought of the threat to Juliet, but I dismissed it as bluff.

They must have known that if they killed Juliet nothing would ever stop me.

Suddenly I felt the explosion building up inside me.

I was fed up with the whole damned boiling. I wasn’t going to be pushed around by a crowd of bloody gangsters engaged in a take-over bid.

I would see them to hell before I knuckled under. If it was to be one man against the organisation, well, then, so be it. They could go and jump in the bloody Thames. Ah, me—brave words.

The anger swirled round and round in my stomach. I could feel the pulses in my forehead beating rapidly. Imaginary dialogue between me and them flashed through my mind, and still the fury churned up inside me, and there were more brave words.

I got up out of my chair and walked to the windows which looked out upon Stratford Road, and opened one of the windows and stood by it, and tore the latest note into pieces, and crumpled the pieces together, and tossed them down into the street, thereby, incidentally, risking a Summons for littering the highway.

Next, the furious defiance still upon me, I went into the kitchen.

The red geranium stood on a coarse cast blue-green saucer I had bought in the south of France. I snatched the plant from the saucer, and went to the kitchen waste bin. It had a lid which you raised by pressing a knob with your foot, and this I did.

I lifted my arm to hurl the plant into the bin, but I didn’t do so.

It was the English streak, the practical, dispassionate, despicable, cool, god-damned-awful, reasonable, cautious, sensible, calculating, unloveable trait which conquered an Empire and yielded it without much fuss when the time was ripe, which now held me back, whispering insidiously that there was no point in destroying a good plant.

What harm to keep it in the kitchen?

I replaced it upon its horrid saucer, and so it stood, invisible from the street, but still in being, a green and red testimony to an inherited Anglo-Saxon reluctance to burn any boats in the rear.

I went round for supper at the Bristows’ that evening.

I
have purposely refrained from describing the preparations for the wedding, now only three days distant, because for those who are not involved nothing could be more boring. If it comes to that, nothing is more boring for the bridegroom. All he is anxious to do is to marry as quickly and neatly as possible, and get off on his honeymoon, leaving all the flap behind for other people to clear up, and, incidentally, pay for.

Stanley Bristow had naturally been in his element, organising, amending, and confirming every detail, such as the hire of cars, the time of their arrival at the house, the estimated time of arrival at the church, the estimated time of departure from the church after the ceremony, the invitations, the music, the printing, the photographers, the champagne, the catering, and the flowers.

This, one felt, was his finest hour.

In so far as the atmosphere was concerned when I went round that evening, I can say that it was determinedly cheerful.

I recalled the little group I had seen on the doorstep the previous night—Stanley, the Inspector, and the sergeant—tying up the loose ends, checking my statement as far as they could, eliminating me from the list of people who could conceivably have killed poor Bunface.

To put it brutally, it seemed that Stanley and Elaine Bristow were now reconciled to the fact that Juliet was going to marry a man who was still suffering from the after-effects of a car crash, but had doubtless come to the conclusion that to postpone the wedding would be inconvenient and embarrassing.

I believed, and still believe, that Juliet’s feelings were different. She thought she was marrying a mentally sick man, but one whom she loved and could nurse back to mental health. Poor old Juliet.

I noticed this bright atmosphere at the start. There was the exaggerated enthusiasm about the wedding presents which had arrived, the optimistic prognostications about the weather, the certainty that the bridesmaids would appreciate their ghastly, tawdry presents, which, according to Elaine Bristow, looked as though they had cost twice as much as they had done, though privately I didn’t agree.

All three chattered incessantly about everything except that which was uppermost in their minds. I prayed along with them until after dinner. Then I said:

“I had another threatening note today. Like the other one.”

Juliet was not in the sitting-room. Elaine Bristow was, but she muttered something and left me alone with Stanley.

Stanley was drinking a glass of brandy. He put his glass down on a small table by his chair.

“Let’s have a look at it, old boy,” he said, in his eager, snuffly tone. “I think you ought to take it to the police, old boy, I really do. Practical jokes are practical jokes, but this is getting a bit thick, old boy, it really is.”

He gazed at me with his exophthalmic goitre eyes and held out his hand. I suppose he thought I was going to fish about in my pocket and slap it into his outstretched palm.

“I tore it up,” I said.

“Tore it up?”

“You know as well as I do, by now, that it was no good taking it to the police. You know what they think, don’t you?”

“I don’t know what the police think, old boy,” he muttered evasively. “How should I know what they think?”

I felt the anger begin to churn around in my stomach again; not as intensely as before, but enough to be going on with.

“They were here last night, weren’t they? Checking?”

“They called here, yes.”

“Checking my movements?”

“They asked a few questions, yes, they did, they asked a few questions, old boy. Just routine stuff. Nothing to worry about.”

“Nothing for whom to worry about? Nothing for them to worry about? Nothing for you to worry about? Is that it? Good old them, good old you!”

I was sitting on a settee on the left side of the fireplace, and watched him get up and walk to the grate, and stand with his back to it, tall, and droopy, and ineffectual, staring down awkwardly at me.

The door opened and Juliet came in.

“I was just saying that I had had another note, Juliet, like the other one.”

“But he tore it up,” murmured Stanley Bristow. “He tore it up, for some reason, so he can’t show it to us.”

“Never mind,” said Juliet cheerfully, and went out carrying an early morning tea-set given me by a cousin. It was egg yellow, and the cups and tea-pot were square. This cousin and I never liked each other.

She gave me a smile as she closed the door. It was a sort of open, understanding, maternal smile. It didn’t suit her.

I preferred her slow, discreet smiles which made you want to ask what the hell she was laughing at, and the secretive sidelong looks, and the withdrawn manner. I preferred the Italian streak, even if it did come from old Bardoni, rather than the open Anglo-Saxon stuff. But I was glad of the smile, and glad of the way she had received me. She had forgotten, or pretended to have forgotten, the bitterness of my parting words the previous night.

Stanley and I sat and looked at each other in silence for a few seconds, then he cleared his throat and said:

“Elaine and I have been thinking, old boy—”

“I know what you’ve been thinking, all right. So has Juliet,” I said. “In some ways I don’t blame you. I can’t produce any proof. I would if I could, but I can’t, but I think I’m beginning to see the answer.”

“Beginning to see the answer?”

“Vaguely. Possibly.”

I told him about the letter in the newspaper, and my visit to old Colonel Pearson, and the theory I had built up as a result of his casual, parting remark.

Stanley listened attentively, sometimes sipping his brandy and saying: “Ah, crooks,” or “Blackmail, eh?” or “Gangsters, what?”

Just as I finished, the door opened and Juliet came back with Elaine Bristow.

Stanley said:

“James says he now knows the answer to all this nonsense. It’s a blackmail racket, he says. This old woman, Mrs. Dawson, she helped crooks to get jobs and then later in life she blackmailed them. And now she’s been bumped off by gangsters who’ve taken over the racket. James has got the whole story from a colonel who was a prison governor, and used to supply names to Mrs. Dawson. How’s that, Elaine? What about that, Juliet? That explains it, doesn’t it? Damned serious matter, eh?”

I would have been deceived, I would have thought his enthusiasm was genuine, if I hadn’t glanced at his eyes and seen they were lacking in all lustre. He was forcing himself to smile eagerly, and forcing tones of interest into his voice, but his protruding eyes were like those of a dead fish.

“What’s James got to do with it?” asked Elaine patiently.

“How does James come into it?” asked Juliet.

Stanley looked at them without blinking.

“James says they’re afraid of what he’ll discover. The gangsters want him to lay off, that’s how James comes into it.”

“This man, this colonel, must go to the police and tell them what he knows,” said Elaine Bristow in a tired voice. “You must get him along to the police, Stanley, get him along tomorrow, this is important.”

“I will, and James can come with me. This might clear the whole matter up. I’ll go along and see him tomorrow, and James’ll come with me, won’t you.”

I couldn’t understand this suggestion.

“It’s not as simple as that,” I said hopelessly. “You’ve jumped to conclusions. I didn’t say this was what
had
happened. I didn’t say that at all, all I said was that this was what might have happened. And even that was based on a joking remark by Colonel Pearson. Anyway, it’s too late. You can’t see him, he’s gone.”

“Gone?” said Juliet.

“What do you mean, he’s gone?” asked Stanley.

“He’s emigrated. Gone to Portugal. He left this morning.”

“Gone? Suddenly? Just sort of flittered away? Like that?”

I saw this fool’s eyes come to life. He was back to square one. You get to a point where the jangled nerves won’t stand any more.

“You bloody well think I’m nuts, don’t you?” I suddenly shouted. “You think the whole thing is a creation of my mind? Just because I can’t produce a snapshot of the man calling himself Sergeant Matthews, or the messages, or a recording of the man on the ’phone, you think I’m just a bit barmy—well, don’t you? Just because this is something which you’ve never come across in your safe humdrum life, you think it can’t exist. You make me sick, and I don’t mean mentally sick, though it may come to that, by God!”

I saw Elaine Bristow suddenly swell and turn pink. She said:

“Stanley was only trying to help, James! Stanley was going to make a suggestion, as a matter of fact.”

“Oh, indeed? What sort of suggestion?” I asked acidly.

“Even before this last—well, your last outburst, he was going to suggest that, well—” She began to falter.

“I know a man,” said Stanley Bristow unexpectedly loudly. “I know a damned good man in Harley Street.”

I looked at him and saw that he had gone as pink as Elaine.

“How nice for you.”

“Listen, old boy,” he went on, snuffling the words out rapidly, almost incoherently, “there’s nothing to be worried about, nothing at all, and nothing to be ashamed of, and we’re not suggesting anything for the moment, but later, perhaps after the wedding and the honeymoon, we thought, Elaine and I, that is, we thought that perhaps if you had—what shall we say?—a good overhaul by this chap, it would do no harm. See what I mean? Not psycho-analysis, or any nonsense like that. Knew him in the Army, splendid chap, full of common sense. Not now. Later. And anyway, perhaps when you and Juliet get back from the south of France, we can think again. Perhaps these—these gangsters—perhaps they’ll have stopped persecuting you by then, see what I mean?”

He stopped. The mumbling contradictions in his speech didn’t occur to him. Elaine looked at him almost admiringly. She seemed to think he had put it over rather well.

Then they both looked at me, and Juliet, who had been pretending to read an evening paper, gave me one of her sidelong glances without raising her head from the paper.

I got up and walked over to Stanley with my glass.

“Can I have another brandy?”

“Of course you can, old boy,” he said, though not very willingly. He was probably thinking that hot, sweet tea is better for cases of shock. He poured out one of the smallest tots I’ve seen. I raised my glass.

“Here’s to the Doctor, and I hope he can swim, because as far as I’m concerned he can go and jump in the river. Thanks all the same.”

There was another awkward silence.

“I’m sorry you take it like that, old boy.”

“Stanley was only trying to help,” said Elaine.

“I know,” I said, and sighed. “Oh, God, don’t I know it! But Elaine, this Colonel Pearson exists—there’s his letter in the paper! And I saw him this morning.”

“I’m sure you did, dear,” said Elaine.

“It’s a pity he’s gone,” muttered Stanley. “That’s all.”

“Why? Why is it a pity? All he did was to spark off the blackmail idea in my mind.”

“He’s right, Elaine.” He glanced quickly at her. “All the Colonel did was to spark off this blackmail idea. Just as a joke. He wouldn’t have believed it, see what I mean? Anyway, we can’t see him. So it’s no good crying over spilt milk.”

“What spilt milk? What good would it have done you to see him?” I said angrily. As I spoke I banged my glass of brandy down on the marble chimney piece. The thin goblet shattered and the remains of the brandy lay in a small pool on the marble.

“I’m sorry,” I murmured, “I’m sorry I broke your glass.”

“It’s all right, old boy,” said Stanley. He watched Elaine grab a shovel and hearth brush and sweep up the mess.

Suddenly, from the settee, Juliet said:

“I want to have a word with Jamie. We’ll go out for a stroll.”

But Elaine said, over her shoulder, “Don’t bother, darling, Stanley and I are going to bed anyway.”

“Bed?” said Stanley. “It’s a bit early, isn’t it? Anyway, old boy, what was in this last message you say you had?”

“It’s not a question of a message I
said
I had, it’s a message I
did
have.”

“Yes, well, all right, old boy—what did it say?”

“Much the same as before,” I said sulkily. “Except that it said that if I agreed to their demands I should place a red geranium on my window sill.”

“A red geranium?”

“Yes, a red geranium.”

“Have you got a red geranium?”

“Of course I’ve got a bloody red geranium,” I flared up. “It’s in my damned kitchen! As they well know.”

Juliet got up from the settee. Stanley took the hint, and moved to the door. Elaine followed him. At the door Stanley stopped and said:

“Well, there you are, old boy! Stick the geranium on your window sill—and then they’ll all go away, won’t they?—they’ll disappear, all these gangsters that are after you.”

He went out, followed by his over-ripe, shoddy wife. I think I can be permitted to describe her like that, even in print, in view of what happened later, just as I have been frank about Stanley.