The Ministry of Fear (7 page)

‘How do you know,' Miss Hilfe said, still speaking only to Rowe, ‘that even if there is something behind it, it isn't just – theft, drugs, things like that?'

‘I don't know,' Rowe said, ‘and I don't care. I'm angry, that's all.'

‘What is your theory, though?' Hilfe asked. ‘About the cake?'

‘It might have contained a message, mightn't it?'

Both the Hilfes were silent for a moment as though that were an idea which had to be absorbed. Then Hilfe said, ‘I'll go with you to Mrs Bellairs.'

‘You can't leave the office, Willi,' Miss Hilfe said. ‘I'll go with Mr Rowe. You have an appointment.'

‘Oh, only with Trench. You can handle Trench for me, Anna.' He said with glee, ‘This is important. There may be trouble.'

‘We could take Mr Rowe's detective.'

‘And warn the lady? He sticks out a yard. No,' Hilfe said, ‘we must very gently drop him. I'm used to dropping spies. It's a thing one has learned since 1933.'

‘But I don't know what you want to say to Mr Trench.'

‘Just stave him off. Say we'll settle at the beginning of the month. You'll forgive us talking business, Mr Rowe.'

‘Why not let Mr Rowe go alone?'

Perhaps, Rowe thought, she does after all believe there's something in it; perhaps she fears for her brother. She was saying, ‘You don't both of you want to make fools of yourselves, Willi.'

Hilfe ignored his sister completely. He said to Rowe, ‘Just a moment while I write a note for Trench,' and disappeared behind the screen.

When they left the office together it was by another door; dropping Jones was as simple as that, for he had no reason to suppose that his employer would try to evade him. Hilfe called a taxi, and as they drove down the street, Rowe was able to see how the shabby figure kept his vigil, lighting yet another cigarette with his eyes obliquely on the great ornate entrance, like a faithful hound who will stay interminably outside his master's door. Rowe said, ‘I wish we had let him know.'

‘Better not,' Hilfe said. ‘We can pick him up afterwards. We shan't be long,' and the figure slanted out of sight as the taxi wheeled away; he was lost amongst the buses and bicycles, absorbed among all the other loitering seedy London figures, never to be seen again by anyone who knew him.

Chapter 4

AN EVENING WITH MRS BELLAIRS

Mrs Bellairs' house was a house of character; that is to say it was old and unrenovated, standing behind its little patch of dry and weedy garden among the To Let boards on the slope of Campden Hill. A piece of statuary lay back in a thin thorny hedge like a large block of pumice stone, chipped and grey with neglect, and when you rang the bell under the early Victorian portico, you seemed to hear the sound pursuing the human inhabitants into back rooms as though what was left of life had ebbed up the passages.

The snowy-white cuffs and the snowy-white apron of the maid who opened the door came as a surprise. She was keeping up appearances as the house wasn't, though she looked nearly as old. Her face was talcumed and wrinkled and austere like a nun's. Hilfe said, ‘Is Mrs Bellairs at home?'

The old maid watched them with the kind of shrewdness people learn in convents. She said, ‘Have you an appointment?'

‘Why no,' Hilfe said, ‘we were just calling. I'm a friend of Canon Topling's.'

‘You see,' the maid explained, ‘this is one of her evenings.'

‘Yes?'

‘If you are not one of the group . . .'

An elderly man with a face of extraordinary nobility and thick white hair came up the path. ‘Good evening, sir,' the maid said. ‘Will you come right in?' He was obviously one of the group, for she showed him into a room on the right and they heard her announce, ‘Dr Forester.' Then she came back to guard the door.

Hilfe said, ‘Perhaps if you would take my name to Mrs Bellairs, we might join the group. Hilfe – a friend of Canon Topling's.'

‘I'll
ask
her,' the maid said dubiously.

But the result was after all favourable. Mrs Bellairs herself swam into the little jumbled hall. She wore a Liberty dress of shot silk and a toque and she held out both hands as though to welcome them simultaneously. ‘Any friend of Canon Topling . . .' she said.

‘My name is Hilfe. Of the Free Mothers Fund. And this is Mr Rowe.'

Rowe watched for a sign of recognition, but there was none. Her broad white face seemed to live in worlds beyond them.

‘If you'd join our group,' she said, ‘we welcome newcomers. So long as there's no settled hostility.'

‘Oh, none, none,' Hilfe said.

She swayed in front of them like a figure-head into a drawing-room all orange curtain and blue cushion, as though it had been furnished once and for all in the twenties. Blue blackout globes made the room dim like an Oriental café. There were indications among the trays and occasional tables that it was Mrs Beliairs who had supplied the fête with some of its Benares work.

Half a dozen people were in the room, and one of them immediately attracted Rowe's attention – a tall, broad, black-haired man; he couldn't think why, until he realized that it was his normality which stood out. ‘Mr Cost,' Mrs Bellairs was saying, ‘this is . . .'

‘Mr Rowe.' Hilfe supplied the name, and the introductions went round with a prim formality. One wondered why Cost was here, in the company of Dr Forester with his weak mouth and his nobility; Miss Pantil, a dark young-middle-aged woman with blackheads and a hungry eye; Mr Newey – ‘Mr Frederick Newey' – Mrs Bellairs made a point of the first name – who wore sandals and no socks and had a grey shock of hair; Mr Maude, a short-sighted young man who kept as close as he could to Mr Newey and fed him devotedly with thin bread and butter, and Collier, who obviously belonged to a different class and had worked himself in with some skill. He was patronized, but at the same time he was admired. He was a breath of the larger life and they were interested. He had been a hotel waiter and a tramp and a stoker, and he had published a book – so Mrs Bellairs whispered to Rowe – of the most fascinating poetry, rough but spiritual. ‘He uses words,' Mrs Bellairs said, ‘that have never been used in poetry before.' There seemed to be some antagonism between him and Mr Newey.

All this scene became clear to Rowe over the cups of very weak China tea which were brought round by the austere parlourmaid.

‘And what,' Mrs Bellairs asked, ‘do you do, Mr Rowe?' She had been explaining Collier in an undertone – calling him plain Collier because he was a Player and not a Gentleman.

‘Oh,' Rowe said, watching her over his tea-cup, trying to make out the meaning of her group, trying in vain to see her in a dangerous rôle, ‘I sit and think.'

It seemed to be the right as well as the truthful answer. He was encircled by Mrs Bellairs' enthusiasm as though by a warm arm. ‘I shall call you our philosopher,' she said. ‘We have our poet, our critic . . .'

‘What is Mr Cost?'

‘He is Big Business,' Mrs Bellairs said. ‘He works in the City. I call him our mystery man. I sometimes feel he is a hostile influence.'

‘And Miss Pantil?'

‘She has quite extraordinary powers of painting the inner world. She sees it as colours and circles, rhythmical arrangements, and sometimes oblongs.'

It was fantastic to believe that Mrs Bellairs could have anything to do with crime – or any of her group. He would have made some excuse and gone if it had not been for Hilfe. These people – whatever Hilfe might say – did not belong under the stone with him.

He asked vaguely, ‘You meet here every week?'

‘Always on Wednesdays. Of course we have very little time because of the raids. Mr Newey's wife likes him to be back at Welwyn before the raids start. And perhaps that's why the results are bad. They can't be driven, you know.' She smiled. ‘We can't promise a stranger anything.'

He couldn't make out what it was all about. Hilfe seemed to have left the room with Cost. Mrs Bellairs said, ‘Ah, the conspirators. Mr Cost is always thinking up a test.'

Rowe tried out a question tentatively. ‘And the results are sometimes bad?'

‘So bad I could cry . . . if I knew at the time. But there are other times – oh, you'd be surprised how good they are.'

A telephone was ringing in another room. Mrs Bellairs said, ‘Who can that naughty person be? All my friends know they mustn't ring me on Wednesdays.'

The old parlourmaid had entered. She said with distaste, ‘Somebody is calling Mr Rowe.'

Rowe said, ‘But I can't understand it. Nobody knows . . .'

‘Would you mind,' Mrs Bellairs said, ‘being very quick?'

Hilfe was in the hall talking earnestly to Cost. He asked, ‘For you?' He too was discomposed. Rowe left a track of censorious silence behind him: they watched him following the maid. He felt as though he had made a scene in church and was now being conducted away. He could hear behind him nothing but the tinkle of tea-cups being laid away.

He thought: perhaps it's Mr Rennit, but how can he have found me? or Jones? He leant across Mrs Bellairs' desk in a small packed dining-room. He said, ‘Hullo,' and wondered again how he could have been traced. ‘Hullo.'

But it wasn't Mr Rennit. At first he didn't recognize the voice – a woman's. ‘Mr Rowe?'

‘Yes.'

‘Are you alone?'

‘Yes.'

The voice was blurred; it was as if a handkerchief had been stretched across the mouthpiece. She couldn't know, he thought, that there were no other women's voices to confuse with hers.

‘Please will you leave the house as soon as you can?'

‘It's Miss Hilfe, isn't it?'

The voice said impatiently, ‘Yes. Yes. All right. It is.'

‘Do you want to speak to your brother?'

‘Please do not tell him. And leave. Leave quickly.'

He was for a moment amused. The idea of any danger in Mrs Bellairs' company was absurd. He realized how nearly he had been converted to Mr Rennit's way of thinking. Then he remembered that Miss Hilfe had shared those views. Something had converted her – the opposite way. He said, ‘What about your brother?'

‘If you go away, he'll go too.'

The dimmed urgent voice fretted at his nerves. He found himself edging round the desk so that he could face the door, and then he moved again, because his back was to a window. ‘Why don't you tell this to your brother?'

‘He would want to stay all the more.' That was true. He wondered how thin the walls were. The room was uncomfortably crowded with trashy furniture: one wanted space to move about – the voice was disturbingly convincing – to manoeuvre in. He said, ‘Is Jones still outside – the detective?'

There was a long pause: presumably she had gone to the window. Then the voice sprang at him unexpectedly loud – she had taken away the handkerchief. ‘There's nobody there.'

‘Are you sure?'

‘Nobody.'

He felt deserted and indignant. What business had Jones to leave his watch? Somebody was approaching down the passage. He said, ‘I must ring off.'

‘They'll try to get you in the dark,' the voice said, and then the door opened. It was Hilfe.

He said, ‘Come along. They are all waiting. Who was it?'

Rowe said, ‘When you were writing your note I left a message with Mrs Dermody, in case anyone wanted me urgently.'

‘And somebody did?'

‘It was Jones – the detective.'

‘Jones?' Hilfe said.

‘Yes.'

‘And Jones had important news?'

‘Not exactly. He was worried at losing me. But Mr Rennit wants me at his office.'

‘The faithful Rennit. We'll go straight there – afterwards.'

‘After what?'

Hilfe's eyes expressed excitement and malice. ‘Something we can't miss – “at any price”.' He added in a lower voice, ‘I begin to believe we were wrong. It's lots of fun, but it's not – dangerous.'

He laid a confiding hand in Rowe's arm and gently urged him ‘Keep a straight face, Mr Rowe, if you can. You mustn't laugh. She
is
a friend of Canon Topling.'

The room when they came back was obviously arranged for something. A rough circle had been formed with the chairs, and everyone had an air of impatience politely subdued. ‘Just sit down, Mr Rowe, next Mr Cost,' said Mrs Bellairs, ‘and then we'll turn out the lights.'

In nightmares one knows the cupboard door will open: one knows that what will emerge is horrible: one doesn't know what it is . . .

Mrs Bellairs said again, ‘If you'll just sit down, so that we can turn out the lights.'

He said, ‘I'm sorry. I've got to go.'

‘Oh, you can't go now,' Mrs Bellairs cried. ‘Can he, Mr Hilfe?'

Rowe looked at Hilfe, but the pale blue eyes sparkled back at him without understanding. ‘Of course, he mustn't go,' Hilfe said. ‘We'll both wait. What did we come for?' An eyelid momentarily flickered as Mrs Bellairs with a gesture of appalling coyness locked the door and dropped the key down her blouse and shook her fingers at them. ‘We always lock the door,' she said, ‘to satisfy Mr Cost.'

In a dream you cannot escape: the feet are leaden-weighted: you cannot stir from before the ominous door which almost imperceptibly moves. It is the same in life; sometimes it is more difficult to make a scene than to die. A memory came back to him of someone else who wasn't certain, wouldn't make a scene, gave herself sadly up and took the milk . . . He moved through the circle and sat down on Cost's left like a criminal taking his place in an identity parade. On his own left side was Miss Pantil. Dr Forester was on one side of Mrs Bellairs and Hilfe on the other. He hadn't time to see how the others were distributed before the light went out. ‘Now,' Mrs Bellairs said, ‘we'll all hold hands.'