A Fragment of Fear (13 page)

We drove sadly towards her home, most of the way in silence.

“It’s probably all bluff,” I said, at one point, ill-advisedly.

“Two other people thought that,” she snapped.

“Might have been coincidence,” I muttered.

“Oh, my God, oh, dear God, don’t let’s go over it again, darling! You didn’t tell me what the police said.”

I pulled the car up outside her house.

“I couldn’t produce any evidence.”

“So what?”

“I think they thought I was suffering from a persecution complex or something. They kept talking about radio sets in people’s heads, and all that nonsense. The trouble was, I mentioned the car accident. That’s what set them off. After-effects of shock, and stuff like that. That’s why I got nowhere, really. Not that I’d have probably got anywhere anyway. They weren’t Kensington officers, they were Scotland Yard types,” I added.

“What difference does that make?”

“Not much, I suppose.”

“Well, why did you mention it?”

“I just did, I mentioned it in passing, that’s all. I just said they were from Scotland Yard, not the local station. What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing’s wrong with that.”

We sat in the car, staring straight ahead, aloof once again.

“You can see their point of view,” Juliet said quietly.

“You mean
you
can see their point of view.”

“Scotland Yard have got experience, darling, in all sorts of things.”

“Of course they have.”

Suddenly she turned to me and put her arms round my neck and kissed me. I felt the pent-up annoyance which had been in her melting away, and her lips, which had been cold and dry, became slowly warm and moist.

“I do love you,” she said. “And I’m sure everything is going to be all right. And don’t worry, my sweetheart. Above all, don’t worry. We’ll soon be married, and on our own, and I will look after you—so don’t do any more worrying. Promise?”

I nodded in the darkness of the car.

“Don’t worry about the woman in the train, or messages written on your typewriter, or telephone calls in the night—or anything. Try to forget them. Promise?”

I disengaged myself gently, and felt suddenly chilled and lonely.

Outside the car, the night sky was dark. It had clouded over suddenly. A few spots of rain were appearing on the windscreen. I licked my lips and said:

“Look, a few moments ago, it was you who was worrying.”

“I know, darling. I was silly. I’m better now.”

“Why?” I asked abruptly. “Why are you better? You can’t be worried sick one moment, and not the next—not without some reason.”

“I just think it will all peter out. After all, this is a civilised country, like you said, Jamie.”

“And the Lucy Dawson story?” I said as casually as I could. “What about the Lucy Dawson story?”

She didn’t answer for a few seconds. They were the sort of seconds which make a mockery of man-made methods of recording time. I stared out of the car window into the blackness of some gardens, waiting for the answer I dreaded. A gust of wind blew a wet leaf against the car window, splat, and I jerked my head back, thinking it was a moth. I hate moths.

In the end, she gave the answer I feared.

“I should go ahead with it, darling. But don’t work too hard. Promise?”

“I promise I won’t work too hard.”

I repeated her words automatically, staring at the wet leaf on the window.

“Why not chuck it for a bit, my love—come back to it with a fresh mind? Perhaps after our wedding, and after another holiday in the sun?”

“I have already told you I don’t know how to get in touch with them.”

I had spoken the words before I realised the futility of them, in view of what I knew she was thinking.

“They’ll get to know somehow,” she answered uneasily.

I turned the ignition key, preparatory to starting the engine.

“I know what you’re trying to tell me, Juliet.”

Across the road the door of her house suddenly opened. I saw in the light above the door the figure of old snuffly Stanley and two other men. One was the grey superintendent, and the other, shorter, I guessed to be the sergeant, though his back was turned to me.

“There they are,” I said. “There they are, the Scotland Yard types, who’ve got so much experience about so many things. Tidying up the loose ends, so to speak.”

I leant across her and opened the car door for her.

“Good night, darling. I should go and have a word with them. Compare notes about people who have nervous breakdowns, and think they’re being persecuted. You’ll have a lot to talk about, won’t you?”

I heard her sob as she got out of the car, without a backward glance. They were bitter and cruel words, and I regret them now.

I
returned to my flat, and went to sleep at about one-thirty in the morning, or possibly a little later.

Until that time I sat in an easy chair, the curtains drawn, looking at the empty grate, and finally lay in bed staring into the darkness.

Once, before I went to bed, I walked to the windows and drew the curtains aside and gazed down into the deserted street. Opposite, the dark windows of the houses stared back, disinterested, negative and lifeless.

I guessed that I had hardly moved from the windows before somebody was writing in a notebook:
At ten minutes past midnight subject came to the windows and looked out. At twenty minutes past midnight subject switched off the lights in the living-room, and appeared to have retired for the night.

Did he then, having scribbled his little notes, take a few minutes off, scuttle to a gas-ring and brew himself a cup of tea or instant coffee, before settling down to another long vigil? Or did some mate, fellow worker, joint-operator, or whatever he called himself, take over? Did they work four-hour shifts, or two-hour shifts, or what?

At one stage, I was tempted to leave the flat and go for a walk. What would happen? Would somebody attempt to follow me, unnoticed in the deserted streets? And if I challenged him what innocent story would he produce?

I guessed they would make no such attempt. They must know I would do nothing worth observing at that time of night. It was they, not I, who had need of concealment in the hours of darkness.

It was not the peasant who had need to lurk in the undergrowth.

Nevertheless, at one point I was tempted to put the matter to the test. It was after a moment of panic after I had gone to bed and put the lights out.

While I had the light on, I was sure of myself and of my facts, as I had been most of the time up to the present. But in the darkness one feels alone and unsure.

It was Juliet’s
volte-face
which made me now feel hot and frightened. I was not afraid of attempted assassination. It was the need to know if my mind was in all truth working normally.

In a situation of apparent unreality and confusion, you need one person to lean on, one person to say, “Other people are wrong, but I know that what you say is the truth; not merely the truth as it appears to you, but the real truth. These things have happened, and you have not imagined them. You are not suffering from nerve troubles, you are mentally sound.”

I had been, first, hurt and resentful, and then, as one does with those you love, I had begun to rationalise in her favour. I told myself that she was eager to take the police point of view, because although it conjured up temporary difficulties, at least it meant that my life was not in danger. She had jumped at the lesser of the two evils, and though, like the police, she had not patted me on the head, she had, in effect, said, “There, there, just take it easy, and when we are married mummy will look after you, and nobody’s going to hurt you.”

In the light, it was a consolation; in the darkness, with the blackness pressing in, and now and then the sound of rain beating against the windows, I realised how alone I now was in this matter.

“You are one,”
he had said on the ’phone, and he had proved his point. I could almost hear him, distantly, in the darkness, laugh like a green woodpecker, high, undulating, and mocking. And now, in a half-asleep condition, I began to wish for strange things to happen so that I could triumphantly come into physical touch with reality.

I imagined “Sergeant Matthews” calling again, on some pretext, and myself, ludicrously, tearing off a uniform button and retaining it as proof of his existence; or the same man handing back the message Bunface had given me, saying I could keep it as a souvenir; and there it would be, a proof for me, if for nobody else, that I had not been imagining things; indeed, I wished at one moment that even the telephone might ring in the darkness.

The telephone remained silent, but a board creaked somewhere. My first instinct was to reach for the bedside lamp, yet I hesitated.

If my mind was normal, and it was a man, then for better or for worse I could cope with him and be glad to do so. But if such were not the case, then what would I see? What heraldic animal, what figure from the past, what spirit from another world?

I lay for a few seconds, sweating, struggling back to full consciousness, before I pressed the light switch and saw that the room was empty.

It was at this moment that I was tempted to dress again, and go out into the wet streets, in the strange hope that after some minutes, glancing back, I would see a figure following at a distance.

I gave up the idea, because the experiment would prove nothing. If I could imagine other things, I could imagine that I was being followed; and if, lurking around a corner, I suddenly retraced my steps and tackled the man, he would deny that he was following me. It would be his word against mine. What was mine worth?

Nevertheless, one thing now was clear: if I could reason as logically as that, there was nothing wrong with my mind. The reasoning might have been faulty, but it satisfied me.

I switched off the light, and went to sleep without difficulty.

All that night I was left in peace.

It was almost as if, having inserted the yeast, they were leaving it to ferment the mixture. And in the morning, as I was having my breakfast, I saw an item in the newspaper which finally obliterated all doubts about my mental condition. It was a letter tucked away at the foot of the correspondence column and read:

I read the letter through twice with rising excitement.

Here, somewhere, might lie an obscure motive for her murder. I finished my breakfast quickly, grabbed a notebook, and took a taxi to Benton House, which lay behind Eaton Square. On the way, my mind revolved round theories of the psychological reaction of some people towards other people who have helped them including the old one about the desire to strike down the benevolent Father Figure, though in Lucy Dawson’s case it would be the Mother Figure.

I wondered whether Scotland Yard would note the letter, and send a copy to the Italian police, and interview the colonel. Perhaps the colonel could supply a list of names of people she had assisted in the past. Perhaps, somewhere on the list would be the name of one who was again in trouble, who had attempted to extort further assistance, or, if not assistance, then money.

I remembered the pencil marking on her map of Pompeii, and how her meeting with the killer must have been a planned one.

I had a feeling, as I read the letter, that if my well-being was in danger—and I was only on the fringe, so far—then what about the colonel’s? Perhaps that was why I was in such a hurry to see him.

I do not know about subconscious instincts, but I know that by the time my taxi had reached Sloane Street I was aware of a feeling of desperate urgency.

Somebody felt himself menaced by Mrs. Dawson’s past activities. Somebody with power, riches and organisational ability. Somebody who, as Juliet had pointed out during her period of anxiety, was sufficiently cautious to prefer to gain his means by fear rather than risk a killing, if this could be avoided. But somebody who would kill, if need be; who might consider, if he had read the letter, that there was no time to try psychological warfare as far as Colonel Pearson was concerned.

Benton House was a block of old-fashioned mansions turned into flats. I do not think I would have been surprised to find a couple of police cars and an ambulance outside, and a crowd of people being kept back by a constable, and although I saw that the little road was clear, I was still in doubt about what I would find when I reached his flat.

I glanced at the board showing the tenants’ names and saw that his flat was on the second floor. There was an old-fashioned lift, but the cage was in use somewhere at the top of the building, so I ran up the two flights of stairs, and rang the bell.

I was just in time, but not in the way I had imagined.

A small, dapper man in check tweeds, well-polished shoes, and wearing a regimental tie opened the door. He was thin, aged about seventy, with a good head of white hair clipped close round the ears, bright blue eyes and a weather-beaten face.

“Colonel Pearson?”

“Come in—they’re in the kitchen. Just give ’em a rub up,” he said.

I hesitated.

“What are in the kitchen?”

“Aren’t you Brigadier Robertson’s son?”

When I shook my head he smiled and said:

“Sorry—sold my guns to the Brigadier last week. He didn’t want to take ’em then. Said his son would pick ’em up this morning. I was getting worried. Just off in an hour or so.”

He beckoned me in and pointed to some piled luggage in the hall. There were two old-fashioned cabin trunks, a black tin trunk with his name and regiment painted on it in white, an old, battered suitcase, held together with a strap, two fishing rods, binoculars, an ash walking-stick, a mackintosh, and an overcoat. I said:

“Going away for a bit? You’re lucky, with the winter coming on.”

“Going away for good. Going to live in Portugal,” he said shortly. “Can’t afford to live in England. Been struggling to keep this flat going for the last ten years since my wife died. Can’t afford it, or anything else, as far as I can see.”

He looked at me with angry blue eyes.

“Serve your country—thirty years in the Army, and fifteen in the Prison Service, and your country sees to it you can’t afford to live in it. Bad show, you know, dam’ bad show. Still, there you are! What can I do for you?”

“I saw your letter in the paper this morning,” I said, and told what I had in mind. He nodded.

“Poor old Lucy Dawson—bad show. Don’t understand it, I don’t understand it. Come into the drawing room.”

I followed him in, and he stood in front of the empty fireplace, looking around him forlornly.

“Bit of a mess in here. Sold the contents of the flat, lock, stock, and barrel. Sorry to go, but there you are. Still a British colony in Portugal, I’m told. Hope to make a few friends in time. Miss the Hampshire trout—still, can’t be helped. Given up shooting anyway. Like to see ’em alive, rather than dead. Don’t mind eating ’em, though.”

He began to fill a Lovat Fraser–type pipe from an old-fashioned, black leather tobacco pouch.

“About Mrs. Dawson,” I said.

“Lucy Dawson—it’s simple enough. Got in touch with me when I was Governor of Parkway Prison, up in the Midlands. Asked me to keep an eye open for intelligent young first offenders who might do all right when they came out—given a chance. Not many, just ones I felt sure about—as far as you can ever feel sure of that type. Said she couldn’t handle many. Maybe one or two a year, not more. Think she was in touch with one or two other Governors, also with a women’s prison.”

He paused to put a match to his pipe, and sucked in and blew out big clouds of smoke, tamping the glowing tobacco down with his forefinger as though his finger was heat proof.

“How did she find them jobs, Colonel Pearson? Can you tell me?”

“That was the trouble. Always is. Especially with these types. She wanted special types who might really make their way in the world, given a chance. Field was limited. Couldn’t ask banks to take ’em on, could you? Nothing like that, if you see what I mean. But she succeeded all right. Wonderful woman.”

He shook his head admiringly.

“She just went around, you know—interviewing people who might help. Heads of firms. People like that. Nobody knew, except the Governor of the prison, and the head of the firm. She depended upon me, or whatever Governor she was dealing with. It was a tricky do, I can tell you. But it worked.”

“No failures?” I asked.

“None, as far as I know. And she kept in touch, you know. With them and with me. Had a card from her shortly before the tragedy. Sent a wreath, as a matter of fact, for old times’ sake.”

“You sent a wreath?” I repeated. “There was only one wreath.”

He took his pipe out of his mouth and stared at me in astonishment.

“Only one wreath? None from all those others?”

I shook my head.

“But that’s awful!”

The disillusion on his face touched me.