A Fragment of Fear (18 page)

R
icketts, in the event, did not telephone till we had been back a week; until, in fact, the morning of the day when Stanley and Elaine Bristow were due back.

It was one of the longest weeks of my life. Just as, on holiday, the first days pass slowly, so that after three days it seems as though one had been away a week, so now, after our return, the days seemed to drag interminably.

On the one hand, I was watching the letter box and listening for a threatening voice on the telephone; on the other, I was waiting impatiently for Major Ricketts to get in touch with me.

Then, quite suddenly, he was on the ’phone, and arranging to meet me that same evening in the downstairs bar of the Ritz Hotel.

He was a tall, grey-haired man of about fifty, slim, with a good complexion, a straight nose, and a youthful smile. He wore a light tweed suit, a cream-coloured shirt, and a Gunners tie, and from time to time, as we talked, he made quick notes on the back of an envelope with an old-fashioned gold propelling pencil.

It is hard to describe the surge of relief I felt at being able to talk to somebody who took the matter seriously.

He began by saying that he had heard the rough outlines of my story, “indirectly from Mr. Bristow,” as he put it, and asked me to repeat it very briefly. He listened attentively, and when I had given him a condensed version, he nodded his head enthusiastically.

“You know, of course, that some foreign governments go in for blackmail for espionage purposes?”

I stared at him and said:

“You’re not suggesting that Mrs. Dawson, of the Bower Hotel, Burlington, was a spy, are you?”

“Rather the contrary.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning that I believe your theory about Mrs. Dawson.”

“You do?”

I was watching him closely, waiting for the qualification. After a few seconds it came:

“Up to a point,” he said.

“What point?” I asked, almost as soon as the words were out of his mouth.

“Up to the point where attempts were made to bribe, cajole, or threaten her into handing over the complete details of her blackmail victims—according to
my
theory, that is.”

“Go on,” I said.

“She had a warped mind, all right. Obsessed with the idea of hitting back at the criminal world. But when it came to hitting at her own country, the answer was, no. They made the wrong approach, I expect.”

“Wrong approach?”

“‘Help us destroy the class system which produced criminals and killed your husband’—that sort of thing. But it didn’t work, did it?”

“No, it didn’t work, assuming that was the line. That and money, I suppose?”

“They would have offered her compensation for loss of income, so to speak,” said Ricketts grimly. “They’re realistic, you know. Then came the final offer.”

“In Pompeii,” I muttered, and looked around at the luxurious decoration and thought of the dusty earth of Pompeii.

“In Pompeii,” Ricketts said, and signalled for another drink for us. I said:

“Why kill her?”

“My department thinks,” he began, and stopped.

“What is your department?” I asked.

“Does it matter?”

I shook my head, regretting my tactless question.

“My department thinks she was killed because somebody else came forward, offering the required information—for the same money.”

“Who?” I asked, as if I hadn’t guessed.

“Some intimate, personal assistant, who had access to her records, and who has probably now disappeared abroad.”

I gazed into my whisky and soda. Then I said:

“Is Mrs. Gray still at the Bower Hotel?”

“Mrs. Gray is not still at that hotel. She has left the country.”

“The muffin-faced old traitor,” I said.

“We have no proof,” said Ricketts primly.

“And me?”

“It’s anybody’s guess.”

“Well, go on—guess,” I pressed him.

“I guess your intervention came at a delicate, inconvenient juncture. A year, perhaps six months later, they might not have minded. I guess that all these threats had a purpose.”

“I’m glad of that. That makes my day,” I said bitterly, but he didn’t smile. He said:

“These incidents were laid on so that if you discovered anything awkward neither the police nor anybody else would take you seriously. Your reputation would be that of a mentally unstable person. Understand?”

I nodded. But I said:

“Why not crooks? Why not commercial blackmail, a going concern, profitable, ready-made?”

“No mere criminal organisation would go to this trouble or expense. They’d have killed you.”

“Why didn’t this lot?”

“This lot, as you call them, they don’t kill much, not if they can avoid it.” He hesitated. Then he added: “But they will if they must. That’s the view of my department.”

“Meaning?” I asked, unnecessarily.

“Meaning they’ve been patient with you. Meaning it’s as well we met.”

I took a deep slug of whisky.

“It’s as well we met,” I said.

“You have been, and are, up against a hostile Intelligence Service, you realise that?”

I nodded, but said that I couldn’t see either Miss Brett, or poor Bunface, or even chunky Bardoni gathering valuable secrets.

“Small fry,” said Ricketts. “Afraid of your investigations for their own personal reasons. Afraid of their past catching up.”

“Afraid of a desolate future,” I murmured, and he nodded.

“But here and there among Mrs. Dawson’s victims there must be others, equally afraid, but more importantly situated. She’d been at it a long time, Mr. Compton.”

“Why me?” I asked after a pause. “Why did they think I’d find out things the Italian and British police wouldn’t find out?”

Ricketts smiled.

“Divided police forces, divided responsibilities, divided access to information, I think that’s the answer, don’t you? The Italian police were in charge of investigations. They had no reason to know the cause and motive lay buried in her past, in England. Doubtless they sent a routine request for background information to Scotland Yard—and that’s probably just what they got, general background information and no more. The British police probably thought the motive and clues were to be found in Italy. Why shouldn’t they think so? Anyway, it wasn’t their case. Then you, bumbling along obstinately, began to creep up on things, and that wouldn’t do, would it?”

I watched him call for the bill.

“What do you want me to do?” I asked.

“Nothing,” said Ricketts gravely. “I think it’s a bit out of your league table. You don’t want the whole thing to start up again.”

Once again, and for the last time in this affair, I felt the old, old bloody-mindedness boiling up inside me.

“Oh, I’m not going to drop it now, not now that I’ve got some idea of what it’s all about. I’ll go on sniffing around a bit,” I muttered.

“I can’t stop you,” said Ricketts, and smiled again. “But if there’s any trouble let me know.”

“Too damn true, I will,” I said.

When we parted I had agreed to write down on paper every smallest detail of what I could remember of the affair, and deliver the document to his personal address the following morning. He thought it safer not to call at my house.

I took a taxi home, rejoicing that I had not succumbed to the temptation to put the red geranium in the front window.

Juliet was delighted, too, and we worked on the document until two o’clock in the morning.

At ten o’clock I drove round to Hurley Mews, of Belgrave Square, and found his number, 25, and saw it painted on the door.

At first I thought I had gone to the wrong house. The window panes were broken or missing. The interior looked gutted, the paper hanging in shreds on the walls.

When I had checked the number with the address he had written for me I thought I might as well ring the bell, but it didn’t work, of course, so I knocked. It was quiet in the mews, and very deserted, considering the time of day.

When there was no reply, I tried the door, and found it unlocked. I went in, not knowing quite what to do.

In the event, I didn’t have to do anything much, except gaze for a moment at the dusty, uncarpeted stairs, because inside, on the floor, was a buff-coloured envelope addressed to me.

It was typed on my own machine, of course, like the other notes, prepared in advance for just such a contingency. The message was quite short:

I stared at it, feeling suddenly sick. And then dizzy; and then neither sick nor dizzy but just numb, my brain refusing to function clearly.

Then my heart started beating very fast indeed. I did not tremble, but I heard my heart beats growing louder and louder in my ears.

After a while I tried to think.

I saw now the three lines of defence.

First, the self-generated attempts by the little fish to save themselves; then the partial truth, revealed by Col. Pearson; finally the full truth, told me to my face, blatantly, by the man calling himself Ricketts.

I stared down at the note again, re-reading it, while the fear pain, which is not exactly a pain, but more of a muscular contraction, caught me in the stomach.

Outside, a late autumn breeze blew gustily, the hanging, shredded wallpaper rustled. A little trickle of plaster detached by the wind dropped at my feet, as if it had fallen from the nest of some animal.

The peasant, even the humblest peasant, particularly the humblest peasant, thinks he is safe in his obscurity and comparative anonymity. Let me be, he says, let me till the soil and I will mind no other business but my own, but he never was, never is and never will be safe, I thought.

One innocent, unlucky step, even on the well-trodden paths, and he comes within the scrutiny of the eyes in the surrounding jungle, and if he is alert he can hear the faint crackle of twigs and the slither of the hidden bodies in the undergrowth. He does well to shift his spear forward, and make the sign of the Cross, or glance towards Mecca, or finger his sacred, pagan amulet.

Men must fight, and some will win and some will lose, as I had lost.

For the greater the cause, in the end, the greater the tyranny which it erects to defend itself. Before the noble and good concept of complete democracy a man might travel where he wished in the world, without much let or hindrance, whereas now he was boxed in by frontiers, passports, and visas and walls, and interdicts, and laws, and police, to preserve the liberty and freedom of the individual.

And under some monarchies it was permissible to cry, “Down with the monarchy!” and under some democracies it was forbidden to cry “Down with democracy!” and under dictatorships it was forbidden to cry “Down with dictatorships!” and it was all, all in the interests of the freedom of the individual.

So the peasant must be vigilant, taking care not to be pushed around, and if necessary the peasant must fight, as he always has done, even though his fight end in martyrdom, or is brief and un-heroic, as mine had been. It all helps.

Did I really think all this, as I read the note from the man calling himself Ricketts?

Certainly not.

It was thought out and disentangled afterwards. But at such moments there is an exploding germ, a chaotic, expanding universe of logic and emotion, which contains within itself the essentials for future dissection, and this I experienced.

This, too, I did think, in sadness and despair: the tribe is so busy protecting the tribe, that it has no time to protect the individual.

Then I felt upon my neck an increasing coolness, as the street door was opened more widely. But before I could turn round I was struck on the nape of the neck, not by an instrument, but by a hand which hurled me so violently forward that I staggered and fell at the foot of the stairs.

I looked up from the dust, still clutching the note in one hand, and in the other doorway I saw Ricketts, still wearing his Gunners tie, and the man who called himself Sergeant Matthews, with his good-natured, brown bovine eyes, and two other men, one in a knee-length leather jacket, whom I recognised.

Ricketts said:

“You haven’t been playing fair with us, have you?”

I made no reply.

It is tempting to put into my mouth, in retrospect, some telling riposte. But I said nothing, because I was too afraid. I would like to explain that feeling. It was partly a natural fear of death, but partly also because I had a vision of Juliet waiting for me, and the hours passing, and Juliet still waiting.

“We have been very patient—haven’t we?” said Ricketts, and kicked me in the ribs. “Well, haven’t we?” he asked again, and kicked me again.

I nodded. He said:

“I can slug you and gag you and tie you, and put you in a crate which is upstairs, or you can come voluntarily with us in the back of the van outside. Which do you want?”