Authors: Alistair MacLean
"But he is in trouble? Police trouble?" She was quick and clever, had seized at once on the almost imperceptible inflection in my voice.
" I'm afraid he may be. How and when did you first meet him, Madame Halle?"
"Two or three months before the war ended—the European war, I mean.
Colonel MacDonald, as he was then, was sent to examine ammunitions and chemical factory that had been run by the Germans for years at St.
Denis. I was working in the research division of the same factory—not from choice, I assure you. I did not know then that Colonel MacDonald was himself a brilliant chemist. I took it upon myself to explain to him the various chemical processes and production lines and it wasn't until I'd finished the tour of the factory that I found out that he knew far more about it than I did." She smiled. " I think the gallant colonel had rather taken a fancy to me. And I to him." I nodded. Judging from the highly combustible tone of her letters she was considerably understating the case.
"He remained for several months in the Paris area," she continued. " I don't quite know what his duties were, but they were mostly of a technical nature. Every free moment we had we spent together." She shrugged. " It's all so long ago, it seems another world. He returned to England for demobilization and was back inside a week. He tried to find employment in Paris, but it was impossible. I think he eventually got some sort of research job with the British Government."
" Did you ever know or hear or suspect anything shady or reprehensible about Colonel MacDonald?" I asked bluntly.
" Never. If I had I would not have associated with him." The conviction of the words, the dignity of manner, made it impossible not to believe her. I had the sudden hollow feeling that perhaps the General had been right after all and that I was just wasting valuable time—if, on bitter reflection, my time could be called valuable—on a wild-goose chase. Cavell returning home with his tail between his legs.
" Nothing?" I persisted. " Not the slightest thing you can think of?"
" You wish to insult me, perhaps?" Her voice was quiet.
" I'm sorry." I changed my approach. " May I ask if you were in love with him?"
" I take it Dr. MacDonald didn't send you here," she said calmly. "You must have learnt of me through my letters. You know the answer to your question."
"Was he in love with you?"
" I know he was. At least he asked me to marry him. Ten times at least.
That should show, no?"
" But you didn't marry," I said. " You lost touch with him. And if you were both in love and he asked you to marry him, may I ask why you refused? For you must have refused."
" I refused for the same reason that our friendship ended. Partly, I'm afraid because, in spite of his protestations of love, he was an incurable philanderer, but mainly because there were profound differences between us and we were neither of us old enough or experienced enough to let our heads rule our hearts."
" Differences? May I ask what differences, Madame Halle?"
"You are persistent, aren't you? Does it matter?" She sighed. " I suppose it does to you. You'll just keep on until you get the answer.
There's no secret about it and it's all very unimportant and rather silly."
" I'd still like to hear it."
" No doubt. France, you will remember, was in a most confused state politically after the war. We had parties whose views could not have been more divergent, from the extreme right to the very furthest left. I am a good Catholic and I was of the Catholic party of the Right." She smiled deprecatingly. " What you could call a true-blue Tory. Well, I'm afraid that Dr. MacDonald disagreed so violently with my political opinions that our friendship eventually became quite impossible. Those things happen, you know. When one is young, politics become so terribly important."
" Dr. MacDonald didn't share your Conservative viewpoint?"
"Conservative!" She laughed in genuine amusement. "Conservative, you say! Whether or not Alex was a genuine Scottish Nationalist I cannot say, but this much I can say with complete certainty: outside the walls of the Kremlin there never existed a more implacable and dedicated Communist. He was formidable."
One hour and ten minutes later I walked into the lounge of the Waggoner's Rest in Alfringham.
CHAPTER TEN
I'd had a phone call put through from Stanton airfield and both the General and Superintendent Hardanger were in the lounge waiting for me. Although it was still early evening the General had on the table before him the remains of what appeared to have been a pretty considerable whisky. I'd never before known him to have his first drink of the day before nine o'clock at night. His face was pale, set and strained and for the first tune ever he was beginning to look his age, nothing I could put my finger on, just the slight sag of the shoulders, the indefinable air of weariness. There was something curiously pathetic about him, the pathos of a man with a broad and upright back who had suddenly, finally felt the burden of the weight he was carrying to be too much.
Hardanger didn't look a great deal better either.
I greeted them both, collected a whisky from old shirtsleeves, who was safely out of hearing range, and gladly took the weight off my feet. I said, " Where's Mary?"
"Out visiting Stella Chessingham and her mother," Hardanger said. "
More broken wings for her to mend. Your surly friend behind the bar is just back from driving her there She wanted to give them what sympathy and encouragement she could. I agreed with her that they must both be feeling pretty grim after young Chessingham's arrest, but said I didn't think it either necessary or wise. This was before the General came down. She wouldn't listen to me. You know what your wife is like, Cavell. And your daughter, sir."
"She's wasting her time," I said. "On this occasion. Young Chessingham is as innocent as the day he was born. I told his mother so at eight o'clock this morning—I had to. she's a sick woman and the shock might have killed her— and she'd have told her daughter as soon as the van called for Chessingham. They don't need either sympathy or consolation."
"What!" Hardanger leant far forward in his seat, face dark with rising anger, his big hand threatening to crush the glass clasped inside it.
"What the devil are you saying, Cavell? Innocent? Damn it all, there's enough circumstantial evidence-----"
" The only evidence against him is the fact that he very understandably told a lie about his driving and that the real murderer has been sending him money under a false name. To throw suspicion on him. To buy time.
Always to buy time. I don't know why it is but it is essential for this murderer to buy time. He buys time every time he throws suspicion on everyone else, and he's so outstandingly clever that he's managed to throw suspicion on practically everyone: he tried to buy time when he kidnapped me this morning. The thing is, he knew months before the crime—money was first paid into Chessingham's account at the beginning of July —that it was going to be necessary to buy time. Why? Why buy time?"
"You fooled me, damn you," Hardanger said harshly. " You trumped up this story-----"
" I told you the facts as I had them." I was in no mood to placate Hardanger. " If I'd said he was innocent, would you have arrested him?
You know perfectly well you wouldn't. But you did, and that has bought us time, because the murderer or murderers will read their evening papers and be convinced that we're on the wrong track."
" You'll be saying next that Hartnell and his wife are being framed, too,"
he said gratingly.
" As regards the hammer, pliers and mud on the scooter, of course they are. You know that. For the rest, Hartnell and wife are guilty as charged.
But no court's ever going to convict. A man's blackmailed into having his wife shout and wave at a truck. Damn all criminal about that. All he'll get is a couple of years on the entirely unrelated charge of embezzlement—
if the Army choose to press the charge, which I doubt. But again his arrest is buying us time: the murderer's planting of hammer and pliers were another method of buying them time. They don't know we haven't bought that one. Another point in our favor."
Hardanger turned to the General. " Were you aware that Cavell was working behind my back, sir?"
The General frowned. "That's pitching it a bit strongly, isn't it, Superintendent? As for my being aware—damn it all, man, it was you who talked me into bringing Cavell into this." Very adroit indeed. " I must admit he works in a highly unorthodox fashion. Which reminds me, Cavell.
Dig up anything interesting about MacDonald in Paris?"
I didn't answer for a moment. There was something offhand, strangely indifferent in his manner, as if his mind was on other and more important things. I answered in kind. " All depends what you call interesting, sir. I can give you with certainty the name of one of the men behind it all. Dr.
Alexander MacDonald. And beyond all doubt he's been a top-flight Communist espionage agent for the past fifteen years. If not more."
That got them. They were the last two men on earth ever to go in for goggling, but they went in for it all the same. Just for a second. Then they stared at each other, then back at me. I told them in a minute flat what had happened. Hardanger said, " Oh, dear Godl" very quietly and left to call a police car.
The General said, " You saw the police radio van outside?" I nodded.
" We're in constant touch with the Government and Scotland Yard." He fished in an inside pocket and brought out two typewritten notes. " The first of those came in about two hours ago, the second only ten minutes ago." I looked at them quickly and for the first time in my life realized that the phrase about blood running cold might have some basis in physical experience. I felt unaccountably cold, icy, even, and was glad to see Hardanger, back from ordering his car, bring three more whiskies from the bar. I knew now why both the General and Hardanger had looked so ill, so close to desperation, when I'd come in. I knew now and could understand why my trip to Paris had been a matter of relative indifference to them.
The first message had been delivered at almost the same time to Reuter's and A.P. and was very brief. The florid style was unmistakable.
It read: " The walls of the home of the anti-Christ still stand. My orders have been ignored. The responsibility is yours. I have taped a virus ampoule to a simple explosive device which will be detonated at 3.45 this afternoon in Lower Hampton, Norfolk. The wind is W.S.W. If the demolition of Mordon has not commenced by midnight to-night I shall be compelled to break another ampoule tomorrow. In the heart of the City of London. The carnage will be such as the world has never seen. Yours is the choice."
" Lower Hampton is a hamlet of about 150 people four miles from the sea," the General said. " The reference to the wind means that the virus would cover only four miles of land and then be blown out over the sea.
Unless the wind changed. The message was received at 2.45 this afternoon. Nearest police cars were rushed to the area and all people in the village and as many as could be reached in the area between the village and the sea were evacuated to the west." He broke off and stared at the table. " But that's rich farming land. There are many farms and few cars. It was not possible to reach them all in time, I'm afraid. A hurried search was made in Lower Hampton for the bomb, but it was worse than the needle in the haystack. At 3.45 precisely a sergeant and two constables heard a small explosion and saw fire and smoke coming from the thatch of a disused cottage. They ran for their car and you can just imagine how they took off."
My mouth felt as dry as ashes. I washed some of the ashes away by draining half a large whisky in one gulp.
The General went on: "At 4.20 an R.A.F. bomber, a photo-reconnaissance plane, took off from a base hi East Anglia and flew over the area. The pilot was warned not to fly below 10,000 feet, but it's a clear evening up there and with the kind of cameras they have in the Air Force to-day there was no trouble in making a close reconnaissance. The entire area was photographed—from two miles up it doesn't take long to photograph a few square miles of territory—and the bomber landed half an hour after take off. The pictures were developed within minutes and examined by an expert. That second paper shows his findings."
It was even briefer than the first. It read: " Over a wedge-shaped area, with its point at the village of Little Hampton and its base two and a half miles of sea-coast there are no discoverable signs of life, either around houses and farm buildings or in the fields. Dead cattle in fields estimated between three and four hundred. Three flocks of sheep, also apparently lifeless. At least seven human bodies identified.
Characteristic postures of both men and cattle suggest death in contorted agony. Detailed analysis following."
I finished the second half of my whisky in a second gulp. I might as well have been drinking soda pop for all the taste or the effect it had. I said,
" What's the Government going to do?"
"I don't know," the General said tonelessly. "Neither do they. They will make a decision by ten o'clock to-night— and now they'll decide even faster when they hear your news. It completely alters everything. We thought we were dealing with some raving crackpot, however brilliant that crackpot: it seems instead, that we're dealing with a Communist plot to destroy the most powerful weapon that Britain —or any other country for that matter—has ever had. Maybe it's the beginnings of a plot to destroy Britain itself, I don't know, damn it all I've just come to the thought and I haven't had time to think about it. Could it be that the Communist world is planning a showdown with the West, that they're convinced that they can strike so hard and so savagely that there'll be no possibility of retaliation? Not, that is, once Mordon and its viruses are out of the way. God only knows. I think I'd rather be dealing with a crackpot any day. Besides, Cavell, we don't know that your information is correct."
" There's only one way to find out, sir." I rose to my feet. " I see the police driver is there. Shall we have a chat with MacDonald?"