Mrs. Pollifax on the China Station (25 page)

When Mr. Pi had completed his endless questioning Mr. Chang said courteously, in flawless English, “And what were the last words you heard spoken between Mr. Fox and Mr. Forbes before you—er—lost consciousness?”

This was clever—an attempt to catch her out—and she regarded him thoughtfully. “It’s hard for me to remember, of course, but—” Reaching for the most outrageous words that might close this line of inquiry she said, “I believe Mr. Forbes was shouting ‘bloody bastard’ at Peter Fox.”

“The quarrel was about Mrs. Iris Damson?”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Pollifax calmly. “Also about Peter being young, callow, exploitive, immoral, and taking advantage of a woman traveling alone.”

Mr. Chang took this in stride. He said, “You fainted then, but not when you discovered Mr. Forbes dead and Mr. Fox missing?”

She said with equal politeness, “I suppose I fainted at that particular moment from the shock of falling off a horse and breaking my wrist.”

“Ah yes, and thus missed everything that happened next,” he murmured, and she thought that he looked amused again. “I think you may go now, Mrs. Pollifax,
we shall continue our investigations.” He bowed courteously. “Thank you.”

Returned to the hotel Mrs. Pollifax found Iris looking drawn and tired. “Those damn raisins,” Iris cried indignantly. “The ones Jenny bought at the bazaar in Turfan and so generously shared? I found some and saoked them for a few hours in my bathroom sink and you wouldn’t
believe
the hay and dung that floated off them. No wonder everybody’s sick!”

“Mercifully they didn’t make you sick,” said Mrs. Pollifax. “Have you had any sleep at all?”

Iris gestured this aside impatiently. “Nothing makes me sick, I have an iron stomach, and no I haven’t slept, but never mind that. How did it go at security headquarters?”

Mrs. Pollifax said dryly, “Well, I’m still at liberty, as you can see.”

Iris grinned. “Mr. Li told me that Peter and Joe had a fight over me.” Their glances met and there was laughter in Iris’ eyes. “That makes me quite a
femme fatale
, doesn’t it?”

“Exactly what Mr. Pi said,” she told her. “Now give me a report on everyone if you will. After all, I’m group leader and trying to get us out of here.”

Iris nodded. “George is still pretty sick and he glares at me furiously and won’t speak but he let me change his bed sheets and wash his face with a wet towel.”

“Generous of him,” said Mrs. Pollifax tartly.

Iris considered a moment and grinned. “Malcolm is making sketches between trips to the bathroom, but so far he’s kept down two tablespoons of tea so it looks promising. He also tried to kiss me.”

“Shocking,” said Mrs. Pollifax, with a smile.

“But it’s Jenny who’s the problem,” Iris said, sobering. “She’s tuned out, I can’t get through to her. It’s been a
ghastly shock for her, of course, but she’s begun to act as if her own life’s ended. I wish you’d go and talk to her. As group leader,” she added with a faint smile.

Mrs. Pollifax nodded. “I’ll go right now. Which room?”

“At the end of the hall, last door. No point in knocking, she doesn’t want to see anyone, she’ll just say ‘go away.’ ”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Pollifax and walked down the hall, opened the door and went in.

Jenny, sitting up in bed, looked at her stony-eyed. “I want to be left alone,” she said angrily. “You didn’t even knock, you have no right to be here, I want to be left
alone
.” Her voice trembled on the verge of hysteria.

Mrs. Pollifax said coldly, “As group leader I have every right to find out how you are, so let’s have no more of that nonsense. Is your dysentery better now?” She walked to the window and pulled the curtains open, letting light and air into the room.

“Oh that,” said Jenny. “Yes, that’s gone.”

Mrs. Pollifax moved to Jenny’s bed and stood over it, looking down on her. “Then don’t you think it’s time you left your bed to help? Iris has had absolutely no sleep looking after you all and if you’re feeling stronger—”

“Iris again,” flung out Jenny. “God if I hear that woman’s name once more I’ll—I’ll—”

“You’ll what?” demanded Mrs. Pollifax.

“Kill her,” said Jenny furiously.

Mrs. Pollifax shook her head and said gently, “More deaths, Jenny?
More
deaths?”

“She took George away from me, and then she took—took Peter—and—oh damn,” she cried out, “everything ends. Everything! I can’t bear it.”

Mrs. Pollifax sat down on the bed and took Jenny into her arms. “Cry, Jenny, cry hard, get it all out. Try. It will help.”

“I don’t want to,” stormed Jenny.

“Try,” repeated Mrs. Pollifax, holding her close.

Jenny gave her one startled desperate glance and began to cry. Her whole body cried until she wrenched herself away from Mrs. Pollifax’s embrace and threw herself across the bed to beat her fists soundlessly, furiously against the pillows, her sobs engulfing and shaking her. Presently her sobs grew less passionate, the fist ceased its relentless fury and Jenny glanced at Mrs. Pollifax, gave one last sob and sat up. “Why?” she asked like a child. “Why both of them, and in a fight over
her?
”

Mrs. Pollifax looked at her helplessly; she had been so involved in proving this to Mr. Chang and to Mr. Pi that she’d forgotten it was an assumption with which the others must always live as well. “But you’re not crying for Peter or for Joe Forbes, are you?” she asked very gently. “Aren’t you crying for Jenny?”

The girl flushed. “I don’t see what’s wrong with wanting to be happy,” she said. “Peter liked me, I know he did. It could have had a happy ending, I know it could have. If he hadn’t been killed.”

Mrs. Pollifax thought of people passing each other like ships in the night, cherishing illusions, assumptions, and misunderstandings, so rarely
knowing
, and she sighed. She considered leaving Jenny to her illusion but quickly discarded the idea: ruthlessness, she decided, was sometimes the greater kindness: “Do you
really
believe that, Jenny?” she asked.

Jenny sat mutinously, “I don’t see why you ask. We were together a lot, you saw that. He liked me.”

“Many men will like you,” she pointed out.

“They don’t seem to have,” Jenny told her bitterly. “Everything ends for me. I was engaged to Bill for six months, we traveled together through Europe backpacking, we were going to be married and then he decided he was
in love with someone else. And now Peter … You must know, being older … why doesn’t
anything
end happily?”

“Because,” said Mrs. Pollifax slowly, “there
are
no happy endings, Jenny, there are only happy people.”

Jenny stared at her in astonishment. “Only happy—but without happy endings how—” She stopped, looking baffled.

“It has to happen inside,” Mrs. Pollifax told her. “Inside of
you
, Jenny, not from outside. Not from others but in yourself. You may hate Iris for her persistent cheerfulness, even for her joy in living, but you could learn something from her. You’ll find—if you talk to her—that she’s had three husbands who seem to have treated her quite abominably, she decided to go to college, against formidable odds, and earned her way as a go-go dancer.”

“Iris?” Jenny looked appalled. “But then how can she—I don’t get it.”

“No you don’t,” said Mrs. Pollifax quietly, “and that’s your problem. Stop feeling sorry for yourself; relationships aren’t business transactions. Get out of bed and
do
something. Some people never grow up but it’s worth a try, Jenny, and now if you’ll excuse me my wrist hurts and I think I’ll prop it up somewhere on a cushion for a while.”

Jenny flushed. “Oh, I forgot—your
wrist!
Mrs. Pollifax, what happened, was it broken? Does it hurt a great deal?”

Mrs. Pollifax only gave her a brief smile as she opened the door. “See you later, Jenny,” she said, and went out.

Malcolm, when she opened his door, looked up and said cheerfully. “The Sepos seem to have fallen in love with you, it seems forever since I’ve seen you. How’s your broken wing?”

“Tiresome,” she said.

He nodded. “Quite a change from that Heavenly Lake
we were supposed to be visiting today. If anyone asks, I’m ready to terminate the whole darn tour and fly home. After all,” he added with a smile, “I’ve progressed to three teaspoons of tea now, I’m practically well.”

George Westrum gave her a hostile glance when she stopped in to see him. “I’m ready to sue,” he told her angrily. “Sue the whole damn tour company for allowing this to happen. I’ve missed Heavenly Lake today, and tomorrow we’re off to Inner Mongolia, and if anyone suggests canceling the rest of this tour they’ll have a real fight on their hands. I paid good money to see China, and I’m damn well going to see China!”

“Yes, George,” said Mrs. Pollifax, and left him to his spleen and went back to endure two more interrogations that afternoon at security headquarters.

S
he was awakened at five o’clock the next morning by an anxious-looking Mr. Li. “You are to be taken to security headquarters now,” he told her. “The car is outside, they want you immediately. At once.”

“Before breakfast?” she said in alarm.
“Now?”

He nodded. “For this I am very sorry,” he said, and from the sympathy in his voice she had a sinking feeling that the interrogations were to accelerate now and that she might not be returned this time to the hotel.
They must have found Peter
, she thought.
There must be something changed, something terribly wrong
.

“I’ll be dressed in two minutes,” she told him, and this time chose a jacket with pockets into which she placed her last chocolate bar, a handful of peanuts from yesterday’s
breakfast, and snapshots of Cyrus and her grandchildren. She walked alone through the silent hall to the lobby, out to the driveway, and climbed into the waiting gray limousine. It was a misty morning, the sun not warm yet; she was again in the car with the cigarette hole in the seat beside her and she tried to remember whether her previous trips in this car had been fortunate or unfortunate. Above all, she wondered if somehow they had discovered that Peter wasn’t dead; it had been some forty hours now since she had said good-bye to him.

Once again she was escorted into the same spartan room at headquarters, but this time she was shaken to find only Mr. Chang waiting for her. He sat himself behind the table that had previously been occupied by Mr. Pi. A few papers lay spread out before him but his elbows rested on them and his chin was in his hands; he was staring into space but he glanced up at her arrival and spoke sharply to the guard, dismissing him. He watched her cross the room and sit down on the same plain wooden chair. He said curtly, “Good morning,” and shuffled the papers in front of him.

Mrs. Pollifax waited, practicing a calm that she didn’t feel.

He said at last, looking at her, “You have maintained—with remarkable consistency—that you were unconscious—in a deep faint—during very important moments, Mrs. Pollifax.” He paused, the very slightest hint of a smile passing across his face. “I would like to tell you now, Mrs. Pollifax, that I have been aware since the very first interrogation that you have been lying.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” she told him politely, thinking
no holds barred now, off we go
. “I can’t think why or how you’ve reached such a conclusion. Perhaps one might ask why?”

He smiled. “Certain nuances, shall we say? Certain techniques familiar to me?” He stopped, staring at her
with an expression not at all unpleasant, and then he startled her by leaning forward and saying, “There are no tapes recording our conversation this morning; there is the utmost privacy at this hour.”

“Oh?” she said, not believing him.

“Yes. You see,” he went on, “I consider myself—if I may be forgiven such immodesty—a long-time student of character, and in you I have found many of the attributes of my first wife, long since dead.”

She had not expected this diversion. Thoroughly startled she said, “Oh?”

“At the time of our Revolution,” he continued, “she was a most fervent and conscientious soldier. She underwent several interrogations—yes, and some torture—by the Nationalists. Two of the interrogations I witnessed myself, having been captured with her. She was a small woman, and very feminine, and she cultivated an innocence that was most deceptive, so deceptive, in fact, that it saved her life. She was like a rock that could not be moved.” He bowed slightly. “It has been uncanny for me to see in yourself this same quality, one might say technique? My wife sustained it even when tortured. I think you would, too.”

Mrs. Pollifax sat very still and held her breath; she had been right to know this man was dangerous.

“There has been, you see, an autopsy on Mr. Forbes’ body,” he told her casually. “He was not killed by the knife after all, as one might suppose from appearances, but by a sharp blow of a hand to his temple, a blow so expertly aimed as to cause instant death.” He said musingly, watching her, “A most vulnerable area … I would—myself—suspect that someone at that scene knew karate.”

“I see,” said Mrs. Pollifax, feeling a chill run up her spine.