The Ministry of Fear (26 page)

Mr Prentice muttered and woke. He told the driver the address of a small hotel near Hyde Park Corner – ‘if it's still there,' and insisted punctiliously on arranging Rowe's room with the manager. It was only after he had waved his hand from the car – ‘I'll ring you later, dear fellow' – that Rowe realized his courtesy, of course, had an object. He had been lodged where they could reach him; he had been thrust securely into the right pigeon-hole, and would presently, when they required him, be pulled out again. If he tried to leave it would be reported at once. Mr Prentice had even lent him five pounds – you couldn't go far on five pounds.

Rowe had a small early breakfast. The gas-main apparently had been hit, and the gas wouldn't light properly. It wasn't hardly more than a smell, the waitress told him – not enough to boil a kettle or make toast. But there was milk and post-toasties and bread and marmalade – quite an Arcadian meal, and afterwards he walked across the Park in the cool early sun and noticed, looking back over the long empty plain, that he was not followed. He began to whistle the only tune he knew; he felt a kind of serene excitement and well-being, for he was not a murderer. The forgotten years hardly troubled him more than they had done in the first weeks at Dr Forester's home. How good it was, he thought, to play an adult part in life again, and veered with his boy's secret into Bayswater towards a telephone-box.

He had collected at the hotel a store of pennies. He was filled with exhilaration, pressing in the first pair and dialling. A voice said briskly, ‘The Hygienic Baking Company at your service,' and he rang off. It was only then he began to realize the difficulties ahead: he couldn't expect to know Cost's customer by a sixth sense. He dialled again and an old voice said, ‘Hullo.' He said, ‘Excuse me. Who is that, please?'

‘Who do you want?' the voice said obstinately – it was so old that it had lost sexual character and you couldn't tell whether it was a man's or a woman's.

‘This is Exchange,' Rowe said; the idea came to him at the moment of perplexity, as though his brain had kept it in readiness all the while. ‘We are checking up on all subscribers since last night's raid.'

‘Why?'

‘The automatic system has been disarranged. A bomb on the district exchange. Is that Mr Isaacs of Prince of Wales Road?'

‘No, it isn't. This is Wilson.'

‘Ah, you see, according to our dialling you should be Mr Isaacs.'

He rang off again; he wasn't any the wiser; after all, even a Hygienic Bakery might conceal Mr Cost's customer – it was even possible that his conversation had been a genuine one. But no, that he did not believe, hearing again the sad stoical voice of the tailor, ‘Personally I have no hope. No hope at all.' Personally – the emphasis had lain there. He had conveyed as clearly as he dared that it was for him alone the battle was over.

He went on pressing in his pennies; reason told him that it was useless, that the only course was to let Mr Prentice into his secret – and yet he couldn't believe that somehow over the wire some sense would not be conveyed to him, the vocal impression of a will and violence sufficient to cause so many deaths – poor Stone asphyxiated in the sick bay, Forester and Poole shot down upon the stairs, Cost with the shears through his neck, Jones . . . The cause was surely too vast to come up the wire only as a commonplace voice saying, ‘Westminster Bank speaking.'

Suddenly he remembered that Mr Cost had not asked for any individual. He had simply dialled a number and had begun to speak as soon as he heard a voice reply. That meant he could not be speaking to a business address – where some employee would have to be brought to the phone.

‘Hullo.'

A voice took any possible question out of his mouth. ‘Oh, Ernest,' a torrential voice said, ‘I knew you'd ring. You dear sympathetic thing. I suppose David's told you Minny's gone. Last night in the raid, it was awful. We heard her voice calling to us from outside, but, of course there was nothing we could do. We couldn't leave our shelter. And then a land-mine dropped – it must have been a land-mine. Three houses went, a huge hole. And this morning not a sign of Minny. David still hopes of course, but I knew at the time, Ernest, there was something elegiac in her mew . . .'

It was fascinating, but he had work to do. He rang off.

The telephone-box was getting stiflingly hot. He had already used up a shillingsworth of coppers; surely among these last four numbers a voice would speak and he would know. ‘Police Station, Mafeking Road.' Back on to the rest with the receiver. Three numbers left. Against all reason he was convinced that one of these days three . . . His face was damp with sweat. He wiped it dry, and immediately the beads formed again. He felt suddenly an apprehension; the dryness of his throat, his heavily beating heart warned him that this voice might present too terrible an issue. There had been five deaths already . . . His head swam with relief when a voice said ‘Gas Light and Coke Company.' He could still walk out and leave it to Mr Prentice. After all, how did he know that the voice he was seeking was not that of the operator at the Hygienic Baking Company – or even Ernest's friend?

But if he went to Mr Prentice he would find it hard to explain his silence all these invaluable hours. He was not, after all, a boy: he was a middle-aged man. He had started something and he must go on. And yet he still hesitated while the sweat got into his eyes. Two numbers left: a fifty per cent chance. He would try one, and if that number conveyed nothing at all, he would walk out of the box and wash his hands of the whole business. Perhaps his eyes and his wits had deceived him in Mr Cost's shop. His finger went reluctantly through the familiar acts: BAT 271: which number now? He put his sleeve against his face and wiped, then dialled.

The Whole Man

Chapter 1

JOURNEY'S END

1

T
HE
telephone rang and rang; he could imagine the empty rooms spreading round the small vexed instrument. Perhaps the rooms of a girl who went to business in the city, or a tradesman who was now at his shop: of a man who left early to read at the British Museum: innocent rooms. He held the welcome sound of an unanswered bell to his ear. He had done his best. Let it ring.

Or were the rooms perhaps guilty rooms? The rooms of a man who had disposed in a few hours of so many human existences. What would a guilty room be like? A room, like a dog, takes on some of the characteristics of its master. A room is trained for certain ends – comfort, beauty, convenience. This room would surely be trained to anonymity. It would be a room which would reveal no secrets if the police should ever call; there would be no Tolstoys with pencilled lines imperfectly erased, no personal touches; the common mean of taste would furnish it – a wireless set, a few detective novels, a reproduction of Van Gogh's sunflower. He imagined it all quite happily while the bell rang and rang. There would be nothing significant in the cupboards: no love-letters concealed below the handkerchiefs, no cheque-book in a drawer: would the linen be marked? There would be no presents from anyone at all – a lonely room: everything in it had been bought at a standard store.

Suddenly a voice he knew said a little breathlessly, ‘Hullo. Who's that?' If only, he thought, putting the receiver down, she had been quite out of hearing when the bell rang, at the bottom of the stairs, or in the street. If only he hadn't let his fancy play so long, he need never have known that this was Anna Hilfe's number.

He came blindly out into Bayswater; he had three choices – the sensible and the honest choice was to tell the police. The second was to say nothing. The third was to see for himself. He had no doubt at all that this was the number Cost had rung; he remembered how she had known his real name all along, how she had said – it was a curious phrase – that it was her ‘job' to visit him at the home. And yet he didn't doubt that there was an answer, an answer he couldn't trust the police to find. He went back to his hotel and up to his room, carrying the telephone directory with him from the lounge – he had a long job to do. In fact, it was several hours before he reached the number. His eyes were swimming and he nearly missed it. 16, Prince Consort Mansions, Battersea – a name which meant nothing at all. He thought wryly: of course, a guilty room would be taken furnished. He lay down on his bed and closed his eyes.

It was past five o'clock in the afternoon before he could bring himself to act, and then he acted mechanically. He wouldn't think any more: what was the good of thinking before he heard her speak? A 19 bus took him to the top of Oakley Street, and a 49 to Albert Bridge. He walked across the bridge, not thinking. It was low tide and the mud lay up under the warehouses. Somebody on the Embankment was feeding the gulls; the sight obscurely distressed him and he hurried on, not thinking. The waning sunlight lay in a wash of rose over the ugly bricks, and a solitary dog went nosing and brooding into the park. A voice said, ‘Why, Arthur,' and he stopped. A man wearing a beret on untidy grey hair and warden's dungarees stood at the entrance to a block of flats. He said doubtfully, ‘It is Arthur, isn't it?'

Since Rowe's return to London many memories had slipped into place – this church and that shop, the way Piccadilly ran into Knightsbridge. He hardly noticed when they took up their places as part of the knowledge of a lifetime. But there were other memories which had to fight painfully for admission; somewhere in his mind they had an enemy who wished to keep them out and often succeeded. Cafés and street corners and shops would turn on him a suddenly familiar face, and he would look away and hurry on as though they were the scenes of a road accident. The man who spoke to him belonged to these, but you can't hurry away from a human being as you can hurry away from a shop.

‘The last time you hadn't got the beard. You are Arthur, aren't you?'

‘Yes. Arthur Rowe.'

The man looked puzzled and hurt. He said, ‘It was good of you to call that time.'

‘I don't remember.'

The look of pain darkened like a bruise. ‘The day of the funeral.'

Rowe said, ‘I'm sorry. I had an accident: my memory went. It's only beginning to come back in parts. Who are you?'

‘I'm Henry – Henry Wilcox.'

‘And I came here – to a funeral?'

‘My wife got killed. I expect you read about it in the papers. They gave her a medal. I was a bit worried afterwards because you'd wanted me to cash a cheque for you and I forgot. You know how it is at a funeral: so many things to think about. I expect I was upset too.'

‘Why did I bother you then?'

‘Oh, it must have been important. It went right out of my head – and then I thought, I'll see him afterwards. But I never saw you.'

Rowe looked up at the flats above them. ‘Was it here?'

‘Yes.'

He looked across the road to the gate of the park: a man feeding gulls: an office worker carrying a suitcase; the road reeled a little under his feet. He said, ‘Was there a procession?'

‘The post turned out. And the police and the rescue party.'

Rowe said, ‘Yes. I couldn't go to the bank to cash the cheque. I thought the police thought I was a murderer. But I had to find money if I was going to get away. So I came here. I didn't know about the funeral. I thought all the time about this murder.'

‘You brood too much,' Henry said. ‘A thing that's done is done,' and he looked quite brightly up the road the procession had taken.

‘But this was never done, you see. I know that now. I'm not a murderer,' he explained.

‘Of course you aren't, Arthur. No friend of yours – no proper friend – ever believed you were.'

‘Was there so much talk?'

‘Well, naturally . . .'

‘I didn't know.' He turned his mind into another track: along the Embankment wall – the sense of misery and then the little man feeding birds, the suitcase . . . he lost the thread until he remembered the face of the hotel clerk, and then he was walking down interminable corridors, a door opened and Anna was there. They shared the danger – he clung to that idea. There was always an explanation. He remembered how she had told him he had saved her life. He said stiffly, ‘Well, good-bye. I must be getting on.'

‘It's no use mourning someone all your life,' Henry said. ‘That's morbid.'

‘Yes. Good-bye.'

‘Good-bye.'

2

The flat was on the third floor. He wished the stairs would never end, and when he rang the bell he hoped the flat would be deserted. An empty milk bottle stood outside the door on the small dark landing; there was a note stuck in it; he picked it out and read it – ‘Only half a pint to-morrow, please.' The door opened while he still held it in his hand, and Anna said hopelessly, ‘It's you.'

‘Yes, me.'

‘Every time the bell rang, I've been afraid it would be you.'

‘How did you think I'd find you?'

She said, ‘There's always the police. They are watching the office now.' He followed her in.

It wasn't the way he had at one time – under the sway of the strange adventure – imagined that he would meet her again. There was a heavy constraint between them. When the door closed they didn't feel alone. It was as if all sorts of people they both knew were with them. They spoke in low voices so as not to intrude. He said, ‘I got your address by watching Cost's fingers on the dial – he telephoned you just before he killed himself.'

‘It's so horrible,' she said. ‘I didn't know you were there.'