The Only Problem (17 page)

‘Anything
else?’ said Chatelain.

‘The
possibilities of Nathan Fox’s whereabouts are such that I could go on all night
and still not exhaust them.’

‘Would
he go to join your wife if she asked him?’ Harvey considered. ‘That’s also a
possibility; one among millions.’ ‘What are his political views?’

‘I don’t
know. He never spoke of politics to me. ‘Did he ask you for money?’

‘After
Christmas he asked me for his pay. I told him that Ruth had the housekeeping
money, and kept the accounts.’

‘Then
Mrs Jansen did give him money?’

‘I only
suppose,’ said Harvey, ‘that she paid him for his help. I really don’t know.’

‘Do you
think Ruth Jansen is a calculating woman? She left her husband, came to join
you with the baby, induced you to buy the château —’

‘She
wanted the château because of a tree outside the house with a certain bird —
how do you say “woodpecker”?’ — Harvey put the word to Pomfret in English.

Pomfret
didn’t recognise the word.

‘It
makes a sound like a typewriter. It pecks at the wood of the tree.’

‘Pic’,
said Pomfret.

‘Well,
she liked the sound of it,’ said Harvey.

‘Are
you saying that is why you bought the château?’

‘I’d
already thought of buying it. And now, with Ruth and the baby, it was
convenient to me.

‘Ernest
L. Howe,’ said Chatelain. ‘He came to see you, didn’t he?’

‘Yes,
some time last autumn. He came to see his baby daughter. He wanted Ruth to go
back to London with the baby and live with him. Which, in fact, she has now
done. You see, he doesn’t think of what’s best for the child; he thinks of what’s
most pleasant for himself. To console his hurt pride that Effie walked out on
him— and I don’t blame her — he’s persuaded her sister to go and live with him,
using the child as an excuse. It’s contemptible.’

Harvey
was aware that the two men were conscious of a change in his tone, that he was
loosening up. Harvey didn’t care. He had nothing, Effie had nothing, to lose by
his expressing himself freely on the subject of Ernie Howe. He was tired of
being what was so often called civilised about his wife’s lover. He was tired
of the questioning. He was tired, anyway, and wanted a night’s sleep. He
deliberately gave himself and his questioners the luxury of his true opinion of
Ernie.

‘Would
you care for a drink?’ said Pomfret.

‘A
double scotch,’ said Harvey, ‘with a glass of water on the side. I like to put
in the water myself.’

Chatelain
said he would have the same. Pomfret disappeared to place the orders. Chatelain
put a new tape in the recording machine while Harvey talked on about Ernie.

‘He
sounds like a shit,’ said Chatelain. ‘Let me tell you in confidence that even
from his statement which I have in front of me here, he sounds like a shit. He
stated categorically that he wasn’t at all surprised that Effie was a
terrorist, and further, he says that you know it.’

‘He’s
furious that Effie left him,’ Harvey said. ‘He thought she would get a huge alimony
from me to keep him in comfort for the rest of his life. I’m sure she came to
realise what he was up to, and that’s why she left him.’

Pomfret
returned, followed by a policeman with a tray of drinks. It was quite a party.
Harvey felt easier.

‘I’m convinced
of it,’ he said, and for the benefit of Pomfret repeated his last remarks.

‘It’s
altogether in keeping with the character of the man, but he was useful,’ said Chatelain.
He said to Pomfret, ‘I have revealed to M. Gotham what Ernest Howe stated about
Effie Gotham.’

And
what Chatelain claimed Ernie had said was evidently true, for Pomfret quite
spontaneously confirmed it: ‘Yes, I’m afraid he was hardly gallant about her.
He is convinced she’s a terrorist and that you know it.’

‘When
did you get these statements?’ said Harvey.

‘Recently.
Ernest Howe’s came through from Scotland Yard on Sunday.’

‘You’ve
got Scotland Yard to help you?’

‘To a
certain degree,’ said Chatelain, waving his right hand lightly, palm-upward.

Was he
softening up these men, Harvey wondered, or they him?

‘It
would interest me,’ said Harvey, ‘to see the photograph of my wife that was
taken of her by the police in Trieste, when she was arrested for shoplifting.’

‘You
may see it, of course. But it isn’t being handed out to the newspapers. It has
been useful for close identification purposes by eye-witnesses. You will see it
looks too rigid — like all police photos —to be shown to the public as the girl
we are actually looking for. She is quite different in terrorist action, as
they all are.’ He turned to Pomfret. ‘Can you find the Trieste photograph?’

Pomfret
found it. The girl in the photo was looking straight ahead of her, head
uplifted, eyes staring, against a plain light background. Her hair was darker
than Effie’s in real life, but that might be an effect of the
flash-photography. It looked like Effie, under strain, rather frightened.

‘It
looks like a young shop-lifter who’s been hauled in by the police,’ said
Harvey.

‘Do you
mean to say it isn’t your wife?’ said Pomfret. ‘She gave her name as Signora
Effie Gotham. Isn’t it her?’

‘I
think it is my wife. I don’t think it looks like the picture of a hardened
killer.’

‘A lot
can happen in a few months,’ said Chatelain. ‘A lot has happened to that young
woman. Her battle-name isn’t Effie Gotham, naturally. It is Marion.’

In the
meantime Pomfret had extracted from his papers the photograph of Effie that the
police had found in Harvey’s cottage. ‘You should have this back,’ said Pomfret.
‘It is yours.’

‘Thank
you. You’ve made copies. I see this photo in every newspaper I open.’

‘It is
the girl we are looking for. There is movement and life in that photograph.’

‘I
think you should publish the police-photo from Trieste,’ said Harvey. ‘To be
perfectly fair. They are both Effie. The public might not then be prejudiced.’

‘Oh,
the public is not so subtle as to make these nice distinctions.’

‘Then
why don’t you publish the Trieste photograph?’

‘It is
the property of the Italian police. For them, the girl in their photograph is a
kleptomaniac, and in need of treatment. They had put the treatment in hand, but
she skipped off, as they all do.’

‘I
thought she went to prison.’

‘She
had a two weeks’ sentence. That is a different thing from imprisonment. It was
not her first offence, but she was no more than three days in prison. She
agreed to treatment. She was supposed to register with the police every day,
but of course —’Look,’ said Harvey. ‘My wife is suffering from an illness,
kleptomania. She needs treatment. You are hounding her down as a terrorist, which
she isn’t. Effie couldn’t kill anyone.’

‘Why
did you leave her on the motorway in Italy?’ said Pomfret. ‘Was it because she
stole a bar of chocolate? If so, why didn’t you stand by her and see that she
had treatment?’

‘She
has probably told Ernie Howe that story, and he has told you.’

‘Correct,’
said Chatelain.

‘Well,
if I’d given weight to a bar of chocolate, I would have stood by her. I didn’t
leave her over a bar of chocolate. To be precise, it was two bars.’

‘Why
did you leave her?’

‘Private
reasons. Incompatibility, mounting up. A bar of chocolate isn’t a dead
policeman.’

‘We
know,’ said Chatelain. ‘We know that only too well. We are not such fools as to
confuse a shop-lifter with a dangerous assassin.

‘But
why,’ said Pomfret, ‘did you leave her? We think we know the answer. She isn’t
a kleptomaniac at all. Not at all. She stole, made the easy gesture, on
ideological grounds. They call it proletarian reappropriation. You must
already have perceived the incipient terrorist in your wife; and on this silly
occasion, suddenly, you couldn’t take it. Things often happen that way.’

‘Let me
tell you something,’ said Harvey. ‘If I’d thought she was a terrorist in the
making, I would not have left her. I would have tried to reason her out of it.
I know Effie well. She isn’t a terrorist. She’s a simple shop-lifter. Many rich
girls are.’

‘Is she
rich?’

‘She
was when she was with me.’

‘But
afterwards?’

‘Look,
if she needed money, she could have sold her jewellery. But she hasn’t. It’s
still in the bank. My lawyer told me.’

‘Didn’t
you say — I think you said —’ said Pomfret, ‘that you only discussed the recent
English translations of the Bible with your lawyer?’

‘I said
that was what we were discussing on Saturday morning, instead of listening to
the news on the radio. I haven’t said that I discussed nothing else with him.
You see, I, too, am anxious to trace the whereabouts of my wife. She isn’t your
killer in Paris. She’s somewhere else.’

‘‘Now,
let us consider,’ said Chatelain, ‘her relations with Ernest Howe. He has
stated that he knows her character. She is the very person, according to him,
who would take up with a terrorist group. The Irish terrorists had her
sympathy. She was writing a treatise on child-labour in England in the
nineteenth century. She often —’

‘Oh, I
know all that,’ Harvey said. ‘The only difficulty is that none of her
sympathies makes her a terrorist. She shares these sympathies with thousands of
people, especially young people. The young are very generous. Effie is generous
in spirit, I can say that.’

‘But
she has been trying to get money out of you, a divorce settlement.’

‘That’s
understandable. I’m rich. But quite honestly, I hoped she’d come back. That’s
why I refused the money. She could have got it through the courts, but I
thought she’d get tired of fighting for it.’

‘What
do you mean, “come back”?’ said Pomfret. ‘It was you who left her.’

‘In
cases of desertion in marriage, it is always difficult to say who is the
deserter. There is a kind of constructional desertion, you know. Technically,
yes, I left her. She also had left me. These things have to be understood.’

‘I
understand,’ said Chatelain. ‘Yes, I understand your point.’

Pomfret
said, ‘But where is she getting the money from?’

‘I
suppose that the girl who calls herself Marion has funds from the terrorist
supporters,’ said Harvey. ‘They are never short of funds. It has nothing
whatsoever to do with my wife, Effie.’

‘Well,
let us get back to your visitors, M. Gotham.’ said Chatelain. ‘Has there been
anyone else besides those we have mentioned?’

‘The police,
and Anne-Marie. ‘‘No-one else?’

‘Clara,’
said Harvey. ‘Don’t you want to hear about Clara?’

‘Clara?’

‘Clara
is the niece of my wife’s sister.’

Chatelain
was getting tired. He took a long moment to work out Harvey’s representation, and
was still puzzling while Pomfret was smiling. ‘The niece?’ said Chatelain. ‘Whose
daughter is she?’

‘My
wife’s.’

‘You
mean the infant?’

‘That’s
right. Don’t you have a dossier on Clara?’ Harvey asked the security men.

‘M. Gotham,
this is serious. A man has been fatally shot. More deaths may follow. We are
looking for a political fanatic, not a bar of chocolate. Can you not give us an
idea, a single clue, as to where your wife can be hiding? It might help us to
eliminate her from the enquiry.

‘I wish
I could find her, myself.’

TEN

‘I brought you some
English mustard,’ said Auntie Pet. ‘They say English mustard in France is a
prohibitive price even compared to Canadian prices.’

Harvey
had slept badly after his late return from the session with the security police
at Epinal. He hadn’t shaved.

‘You
got home late,’ said Auntie Pet. Already, the château was her domain.

‘I was
with the police,’ said Harvey.

‘What
were you doing with them?’ she said.

‘Oh,
talking and drinking.’

‘I
shouldn’t hob-nob too close with them,’ she said, ‘if I were you. Keep them in
their place. I must say those plain-clothes officers who escorted me here were
very polite. They were useful with the suitcases, too. But I kept them in their
place.’

‘I
should imagine you would,’ Harvey said.

They
were having breakfast in the living room which the presence of Auntie Pet
somehow caused to look very shabby. She was large-built, with a masculine,
military face; grey eyes which generally conveyed a warning; heavy, black brows
and a head of strong, wavy, grey hair. She was sewing a piece of stuff; some
kind of embroidery.