A Fragment of Fear (14 page)

“People forget,” I said uneasily. “Time passes. People forget.”

“That lot wouldn’t forget. I told you, she kept in touch with them.”

“Perhaps they didn’t read about it—or didn’t know where to send a wreath.”

He clutched at the last possibility.

“That’s probably it—they didn’t know where to send a wreath. Otherwise I wouldn’t understand it, not after all she’d done for them.”

He sounded pathetically relieved by the thin excuse I had put forward.

“Why did you sign the card with the wreath as from the ‘Stepping Stones’?”

He walked across to the windows and looked out.

“Oh, that—the ‘Stepping Stones’—well, that was just a little name we invented. Stepping Stones to a fresh start, that sort of thing. Just a nickname for ourselves.”

“She died near some stepping-stones in Pompeii.”

“Did she? Odd coincidence. Were the police getting anywhere by the time you left?”

“I doubt it.”

I was wondering whether to tell him of the things which had happened to me. I heard him say, without looking round:

“If this damned young chap doesn’t come in the next half-hour I’ll be gone. I suppose I could leave the guns with the porter downstairs and put a note on the door. Young chaps these days seem to have no idea of punctuality.”

I decided not to do so. He was leaving in half-an-hour, leaving the country and, as I saw it, the danger in London which surrounded him.

I thought: let him go in peace, unworried and undisturbed. Let the old boy go and live in the sun in comfort and at ease, for his last years.

He turned and came back to the fireplace and knocked his pipe out in the grate, and immediately began to refill it from his worn pouch.

“You know,” he said thoughtfully, “that woman was a bit of a saint, in some ways.”

“Was she?” I said. “Was she indeed?”

“I’ll tell you why. You could use it, you could put it in your book or article or whatever you’re writing. She helped these types though it must have gone right against the grain.”

“Because of what she had suffered at the hands of crooks? She and her parents and her husband and so on?”

“You know about that?”

“They told me at the hotel.”

“She thought that nothing was too bad for the average criminal. You should have heard her sometimes—hang ’em, flog ’em, lock ’em up for life, all that. It was a bit extreme, really. I think she did this work as a sort of sop to her conscience. Psychological, you know,” he added solemnly. “That’s what it was, in some way or other, psychological—not that I believe much in that sort of damned nonsense.”

He was at his pipe again, clouds of smoke billowing round his face.

“God knows what I’ll have to smoke in Portugal,” he muttered.

Then, reverting, he said: “She was a great disciplinarian with herself, too, mind you. I believe she took up this work like some people have a cold bath in the morning—unpleasant, but good for the soul.”

“Do you have a cold bath in the morning?” I asked.

I wanted something to say, to keep the conversation going, to keep his mind off the time and the thought of last-minute things to do.

I was afraid he was going to look at his watch and say, well, would I excuse him, and I didn’t want to excuse him, because what might seem a simple theory to anybody reading about it afterwards was not at all simple to me at that time, and in that place; and edging up to it as I was, with a feeling of astonishment and excitement, it was not easy to sort out a number of questions which occurred to me. I heard him say:

“Do I take a cold bath in the morning. No, of course I don’t take a cold bath in the morning. Damned nonsense, if you ask me. Do you?”

“No, I don’t.”

“I should think not indeed.”

“These jobs she found for them,” I asked. “What sort of jobs were they, in what fields?”

Now, in fact, he did glance at his watch.

“In what fields? Oh, I forget now—engineering, chemicals, building, ship-repair firms—that sort of thing.”

“Catering?”

“Catering? Oh, yes, that, of course. Catering and the hotel business.”

“Could you give me any examples of how they have got on?”

“Oh, I couldn’t give you any names, anything which would enable you to identify them, that would be out of the question. And now, I’m afraid, if you’ll excuse me—”

“I’m not asking for names,” I said rapidly, “just sort of examples.”

He began to move slowly towards the drawing-room door.

“Well, I think I can tell you this, without being unethical—I know of one assistant manager of a big engineering firm who is, well, one of our boys, so to speak! And an English export manager in Switzerland, and a hotel manager in the south of France, and one in Italy, and one here—in England, itself—on the south coast, though she’s a manageress.”

He stopped by the door and looked at me knowingly.

“She always told me how they were getting on. There were no secrets of that sort between Lucy Dawson and me,” said this simple soldier.

I had to go now.

There were other questions I would have liked to put to him, but he wanted me off the premises. I followed him to the front door, listening to him muttering about his guns and unpunctuality.

Yet as we were about to say good-bye, and after I had thanked him, he unwittingly provided what seemed to me to be the main startling clue to the whole affair.

I remember he laughed heartily and said:

“It’s a good job we were all honest people, eh? Lucy Dawson and me and Caroline Gray!”

“Caroline Gray?”

“Lucy started it up alone, but afterwards a woman called Caroline Gray helped her. After she had retired, that is. She used to be Deputy Governor in one of the women’s prisons. Great judge of character! Helped Lucy a lot. Became great buddies. But as I say, good job we were honest! What a chance for blackmail, eh?”

I laughed, too. It was one of the most unamused laughs I have ever given.

So we parted, laughing mutually, and I wished him a happy and healthy life.

I walked slowly from Benton House and all the way to Kensington, thinking of how Lucy Dawson and her family had suffered at the hands of criminals and how she felt towards them.

Above all I thought of the revenge she had chosen.

It was frightening in its long-term cruelty, just because of the deceptive benevolence with which the trap was set.

I imagined her, tall, gracious, and gentle—and probably good-looking in those days—interviewing her victims with sympathy and understanding. Finding out by courteous probing what sort of work they were most fitted to do, in which spheres their personalities would blend most harmoniously, promising nothing at first, pointing out the difficulties, laying stress upon the need for future hard work, and above all integrity.

No doubt she would touch lightly but tactfully upon the risks to her own reputation, the dangers to her work, if her faith in the basic goodness of mankind were to be betrayed.

Then, over the years, came the periodic letters, the solicitous inquiries about what progress was being made. And Christmas cards of course, certainly Christmas cards.

Lucy Dawson—not the Lady with the Lamp, but the Lady with the Lifebelt. And attached to the Lifebelt was a Lifeline.

She never let go of it.

Attached to the lifebelt was a bill.

When you are floundering in deep waters and in peril of drowning you don’t think about bills. Above all you don’t think of Lucy Dawson’s kind of bill.

Lucy Dawson’s war of revenge against the criminal world was a long war, the more merciless because her victims were the ones who might have been salvaged, indeed were salvaged. But in her dark distorted mind there was no element of discrimination.

So, as I walked, I imagined her.

The long wait did not matter for her, for all the time she was, as it were, licking her chops before the meal. Anticipation can give as much if not more pleasure than realisation. When the fruit was ripe, she plucked it.

I wondered in what way the blackmail approach was made. Perhaps in a letter, at first, to prepare the ground:
“Being acquainted, as by experience you undoubtedly are, with the type of work in which I am interested, it has been suggested to me that you will probably be willing to subscribe to our funds. I would not, of course, approach you in this way if I did not think that you were sympathetic to our aims. Perhaps I might telephone you one day, or we might meet, in order to decide upon the amount which you will, I feel certain, wish to give annually to such a deserving cause.”

Nothing threatening.

Merely the implied certainty that there would be no refusal.

How much did she take? Five, ten, twenty per cent of their salaries? Was it all in cash, or was it in cash and kind? Did Bardoni pay her entire hotel bill, when she stayed there under the fiction that she liked to pay the manager direct? Did the others do likewise? What of Miss Brett and the Bower Hotel? Did she pay Miss Brett a certain sum, and order that unattractive woman to make up the difference?

What of Mrs. Gray? No distorted mind there. Just money. What was her cut?

The questions raced through my mind, and although I could not expect to find an answer to these particular ones, I was convinced that I was on the right track.

I thought I had the answer to the whole thing: Mrs. Dawson had been running a long-term blackmail racket, and somebody had revolted at last, and killed her at Pompeii.

I thought it was as simple as that.

By the time I had arrived back at the flat I was still sure I was right. As a small check, I telephoned the International Seamen’s Widows’ and Orphans’ Fund, on whose behalf she wrote so many letters, according to what Mrs. Dacey had told me at the Bower Hotel.

I was not surprised to learn they had never heard of her. She was too busy, I thought, writing to her victims, to bother about seamen’s widows and orphans.

But the centre core of the problem, the big, menacing question mark still remained unsolved.

I understood the minor obstructions I had encountered, the attempts to dissuade me from my investigations made by Bardoni. Poor old Bardoni, I thought, and almost softened towards him in spite of his eyes hacked out of chunks of oak. What crime had he committed in his youth? What toll did he pay to Mrs. Dawson, how long had it been going on? Had she known that Juliet was his daughter when Stanley and Elaine Bristow visited his hotel to carry out their warped experiment?

I could understand his fears all right. I could understand those of the unloveable Constance Brett, whose whole life was bound up in her job at the Bower Hotel.

Mrs. Gray was different. How much did she know of the victims, and was she planning to take over the racket?

It was at this point that my thinking faltered.

These people were tiddlers, swimming around fearful and wide-eyed, afraid of anything which might disturb the calm patch of water they had reached after much toil and trouble. I recalled the thoughts I had had in the taxi as I hastened to interview Colonel Pearson.

So who was the Big Cat, the powerful one, the one with power, riches and organisational ability, the one who was cool and cautious, who preferred to gain his ends by fear, if he could, rather than risk a killing, but who, nevertheless, had certainly killed poor Bunface?

I am sometimes a slow thinker; and then again, sometimes my thoughts can become so complicated and involved that I cannot see the obvious, even when it is almost crying out to be recognised.

But now, with a jolt, I saw that which should have been long since apparent to me.

Hitherto, I had linked the petty obstructions of Bardoni and Constance Brett with the campaign against me, regarding them as stemming from the same motives, lumping the Big Fish with the tiddlers.

Now I began to see the truth, or at least part of it.

The tiddlers were afraid for
themselves.

The Big Cat, the Great Predator, was afraid
for the organisation.

Lucy Dawson’s racket had been taken over. The motive for her murder was not that of a blackmail victim who had reached the end of his tether.

The motive was money.

A going concern.

Vast profit and no capital risks.

No risks of any kind, if the cards were played right.

A gangster take-over, possibly originating in Italy, possibly not. I wondered whether they had offered her a cut or a partnership.

But they had misjudged her. Knowing nothing of her sad past, having no inkling of the secret, dark corners of a tragic, inhibited, and unforgiving soul, they could not see that to take this thing from her would be like removing the mainspring from a clock.

The last rendezvous at Pompeii had been the final attempt.

I could imagine her saying, in effect, “Over my dead body.”

And so it was. So it was, indeed.