The Confidential Agent (15 page)

Rose said, ‘Furt, you don't believe all this?' He could read doubt again in her exclamation.

‘Well,' Forbes said, ‘I don't know. It's very odd.'

But she was on again to the right fact, at the right moment: ‘If he's a fraud, why should anyone take the trouble to shoot at him?'

‘If they did.'

The secretary sat by the door with a polite air of not listening.

‘But I found the bullet myself, Furt.'

‘A bullet, I suppose, can be planted.'

‘I won't believe it.' She no longer said, D. noticed, that she didn't believe it. She turned back to him, ‘What else are they going to try now?'

Mr Forbes said, ‘You'd better go.'

‘Where?' she asked.

‘Home.'

She laughed – hysterically. Nobody else said a thing; they all just waited. Mr Forbes began to look at the pictures carefully, one after the other, as if they were important. Then the front-door bell rang. D. got to his feet. The secretary said, ‘Stay where you are. The officers will be coming through.' Two men entered; they looked like a shopkeeper and his assistant. The middle-aged one said, ‘Mr D.?'

‘Yes.'

‘Would you mind coming along to the station to answer a few questions?'

‘I can answer any you like here,' D. said.

‘As you please, sir.' He stood and waited silently for the others to go. D. said, ‘I have no objection to these people being present. If it's a case of wanting to know my movements, they'll be of use to you.'

Rose said, ‘How can he have done a thing? He can bring witnesses any moment of the day . . .'

The detective said with embarrassment, ‘This is a serious matter, sir. It would be better for all of us if you came to the station . . .'

‘Arrest me, then.'

‘I can't arrest you here, sir. Besides . . . we haven't got that far.'

‘Go on, then. Ask your questions.'

‘I believe, sir, you are acquainted with a Miss Crole?'

‘I have never even heard of her.'

‘Oh yes, you have. You are staying at the hotel where she worked.'

‘You don't mean Else?' He got up and advanced towards the officer with his hands out, imploring him. ‘They haven't done anything to her, have they?'

‘I don't know who “they” are, sir, but the girl's dead.'

He said, ‘O God, it's my fault.'

The officer went gently on, like a doctor with a patient. ‘I ought to warn you, sir, that anything you say . . .'

‘It was murder.'

‘Technically perhaps, sir.'

‘What do you mean? Technically?'

‘Never mind that now, sir. All that concerns us at the moment is – the girl seems to have jumped out of a top-floor window.' He remembered the look of the pavement far below, between the shreds of fog. He heard Rose saying, ‘You can't implicate him. He's been at my father's since noon.' He remembered how the news of his wife's death had come to him; he thought that news of that kind would never hurt him again. A man who has been burnt by fire doesn't heed a scald. But this was like the death of an only child. How scared she must have been before she dropped. Why, why, why?

‘Were you intimate with the girl, sir?'

‘No. Of course not. Why, she was a child.' They were all watching him closely; the police officer's mouth seemed to stiffen under the respectable shopkeeper's moustache. He said to Rose, ‘You had better go, ma'am. This isn't a case for lady's ears.'

She said, ‘You're all wrong. I know you're all wrong.' Mr Forbes took her arm and led her out. The detective said to the secretary, ‘If you would stay, sir. The gentleman may want to be represented by his Embassy.'

D, said, ‘This isn't my embassy. Obviously. Never mind that now. Go ahead.'

‘There is an Indian gentleman, a Mr Muckerji, staying in your hotel. He has made a statement that he saw the girl in your room this morning, undressing.'

‘It's absurd. How could he?'

‘He makes no bones about that, sir. He was peeping. He said he was getting evidence – I don't know what for. He said the girl was on your bed, taking down her stocking.'

‘Of course. I see now.'

‘Do you still deny intimacy?'

‘Yes.'

‘What was she doing, then?'

‘I had given her some valuable papers the night before to hide for me. She carried them in her instep under her stocking. You see, I had reason to suppose that my room might be searched or I might be attacked.'

‘What sort of papers, sir?'

‘Papers from my Government establishing my position as their agent, giving me power to conclude certain business.'

The detective said, ‘But this gentleman denies that you are – in fact – Mr D. He suggests that you are travelling with the passport of a dead man.'

D. said, ‘Oh yes, he has his reasons.' The toils were round him now all right; he was inextricably tied.

The detective said, ‘Could I see those papers?'

‘They were stolen from me.'

‘Where?'

‘In Lord Benditch's house.' It was, of course, an incredible story. He said, with a kind of horrified amusement at the whole wild tale, ‘By Lord Benditch's manservant.' There was a pause: nobody said anything: the detective didn't even trouble to make a note. His companion pursed his lips and stared mildly round as if he were no longer interested in the tales criminals told. The detective said, ‘Well, to come back to the girl.' He paused as if to give D. time to reconsider his story. He said, ‘Can you throw any light on this – suicide?'

‘It wasn't suicide.'

‘Was she unhappy?'

‘Not to-day.'

‘Had you threatened to leave her?'

‘I wasn't her lover, man. I don't pursue children.'

‘Had you, by any chance, suggested that you should both kill yourselves?' The cat was out of the bag now: a suicide pact: that was what the detective had meant by ‘technically murder'. They imagined he had brought her to that pitch and then climbed down himself: the worst kind of coward. What, in heaven's name, had put them on that track? He said wearily, ‘No.'

‘By the way,' the detective said, looking away at the bad pictures on the walls, ‘why were you staying at this hotel?'

‘I had my room booked before I came.'

‘So you knew the girl before?'

‘No, no, I haven't been in England for nearly eighteen years.'

‘You chose a curious hotel.'

‘My employers chose it.'

‘Yet you gave the Strand Palace as your address to the passport officer at Dover.'

He felt like giving up; everything he had done since he landed seemed to add a knot to the cord. He said stubbornly, ‘I thought that was a formality.'

‘Why?'

‘The officer winked at me.'

The detective sighed, uncontrollably, and seemed inclined to shut his notebook. He said, ‘Then you can throw no light on this – suicide?'

‘She was murdered – by the manageress and a man called K.'

‘What motive?'

‘I'm not sure yet.'

‘Then it would surprise you, I suppose, to hear that she left a statement?'

‘I do not believe it.'

The detective said, ‘It would make things easier for all of us if you would make a proper statement yourself.' He said with contempt, ‘These suicide pacts are not hanging matters. I only wish they were.'

‘Can I see the girl's statement?'

‘I don't mind reading you a few extracts – if it'll help you to make up your own mind.' He leant back in his chair and cleared his throat as if he were going to read a poem or an essay of his own composition. D. sat with his hands hanging down and his eyes on the secretary's face. Treachery darkened the whole world. He thought, this is the end. They can't kill a young child like that. He remembered the long drop to the cold pavement. How long did two seconds seem when you were helplessly falling? A dull rage stirred him. He had been pushed about like a lay figure long enough; it was time he began to act. If they wanted violence let them have violence. The secretary stirred uneasily under his gaze. He put his hand in his pocket where the revolver lay; presumably he had fetched it when he went out to speak to the Ambassador.

The detective read, ‘I can't stand this any longer. To-night he said we would both go away for ever.' He explained, ‘She kept a diary, you see. Very well written, too.' It wasn't: it was atrocious like the magazines she read, but D. could hear her tone of voice, the awkward phrases stumbling on the tongue. He swore hopelessly to himself: somebody has got to die. That was what he had sworn when his wife was shot, but nothing had come of it. ‘To-night,' the detective read, ‘I thought he loved another, but he said No. I do not think he is one of those men who flit from flower to flower. I have written to Clara to tell her of our plan. She will be sad, I think.' The detective said with emotion, ‘Wherever did she learn to write like that? It's as good as a novel.'

‘Clara,' D. said, ‘is a young prostitute. You ought to be able to find her easily enough. Presumably the letter will explain what all this means.'

‘It sounds clear enough what's written here.'

‘Our plan,' D. went on dully, ‘was simply this: I was going to take her away to-day from the hotel.'

‘Below the age of consent,' the detective said.

‘I am not a beast. I asked Miss Cullen to find her a job.'

The detective said, ‘Would it be right to say that you had got her to agree to go away with you, promising her employment?'

‘Of course it wouldn't.'

‘It's what you said. And what about this woman called Clara? Where does she come in?'

‘She had invited the child to come and be her maid. It didn't seem to me – suitable.'

The detective began to write: ‘She had been offered employment by a young woman, but it did not seem to me suitable, so I persuaded her to come away with me . . .'

D. said, ‘You don't write, do you, as well as she did.'

‘This isn't a joking matter.'

Rage grew in him slowly like a cancer. He began to remember phrases – ‘Most of the boarders like kippers', turns of the head, her fear at being left alone, the appalling immaturity of her devotion. ‘I'm not joking. I'm telling you there was no question of suicide. I charge the manageress and Mr K. with deliberate murder. She must have been pushed . . .'

The detective said, ‘It's up to us to do the charging. The manageress has been questioned – naturally. She was very upset. She admits she's been cross with the child, for slatternly ways. As for Mr K., I've never heard of him. There's no one of that name in the hotel.'

He said, ‘I'm warning you. If you don't do the job I will.'

‘That's enough now,' the detective said. ‘You won't be doing anything more in
this
country. It's time we moved.'

‘There's not enough evidence to arrest me.'

‘Not on this charge there isn't – yet. But the gentleman here says you are carrying a false passport . . .'

D. said slowly, ‘All right. I'll come with you.'

‘We've got a car outside.'

D. stood up. He said, ‘Do you put on handcuffs?' The detective mellowed a little. He said, ‘Oh, I don't think that will be necessary.'

‘Will you need me?' the secretary asked.

‘I'm afraid you'll be wanted down at the station, sir. You see, we haven't any right here – it's your country. In case there's questions asked by some of these politicians we'll need a statement that you called us in. I suppose there may be more charges to come. Peters,' he said, ‘go and see if the car's outside. We don't want to stand about in this fog.'

It was apparently the absolute end – not only the end of Else but of thousands at home . . . because there would be no coal now. Her death was only the first, and perhaps the most horrible because she was alone; the others would die in company in underground shelters. Rage slowly ate its way . . . he had been pushed around. . . . He watched Peters out of the room. He said to the detective, ‘That's my birthplace over there – that village under the mountains.' The detective turned and looked at it. He said, ‘It's very picturesque,' and D. struck – right on the secretary's Adam's apple just where the high white collar ended. He went down with a whistle of pain, scrabbling for his gun. That helped. D. had it in his hand before the detective moved. He said quickly, ‘Don't make the mistake of thinking I won't shoot. I'm on active service.'

‘Now,' the detective said, holding up his hand as coolly as if he were on point duty, ‘don't act wild – what we've got on you won't put you away for more than three months.'

D. said to the secretary, ‘Get over to that wall. I've had a gang of traitors after me ever since I came across. Now I'm going to do the shooting.'

‘Put away that gun,' the detective said in a gentle reasonable voice. ‘You've got overwrought. We'll look into your story when we get to the station.'

D. started to move backwards towards the door. ‘Peters,' the detective called sharply. D. had his hand on the handle: he began to turn it, but met resistance. Somebody outside wanted to get in. He dropped his hand and stood back against the wall with the gun covering the detective. The door swung open, hiding him. Peters said, ‘What is it, Sarge?'