The Doors Open (8 page)

He thought of that occasion on which he and two other agents had sat in an upstairs room in a little house in Dijon and sweated at the sound of purposeful footsteps coming up the stairs; and the door had opened to admit a travelling life insurance agent, touting for custom.

By association, his thoughts turned to Major McCann.

Nap knew him in the vague way that one knew dozens of people in and out of the army. They were something more than acquaintances, something less than friends.

The circumstances of their first meeting had all the elements of drama. Nap and his friends had been leading a tip-and-run existence in one of the little backwaters round which the full tide of the German retreat was swirling. For days they had hoped against hope to see the leading allied troops. All had assumed, for some reason, that these would be Americans,

Then one morning an armoured car had driven quietly down the village street, the pennant of a famous Armoured Division fluttering on its radiator, and halted at the street crossing. A burly figure had leaned out and enquired the road for Belfort in the most atrocious French complicated by a Lowland burr.

Nap, who had been taking a badly needed bath in the mayor’s front parlour, had thrust his dripping top half out of the window and said politely, in English, “Straight on to the top of the hill and fork left.”

Later he had got to know McCann better.

Now, out of the blue, he had met him again. That was a fortnight ago. Then, after that evening, with its promise of future adventure, a complete hiatus – nothing at all. Indeed, he had had one short note, which he had assumed must be from McCann, since, though unsigned, it had the printed letterhead of The Leopard. It had stated, with bare simplicity – “See if you can find out from your friend Maria what sort of razor Brandison uses.” From the beer stains in the corner and the smear of tomato ketchup on the back, he deduced that the Major had written it over a hasty dinner.

Outside, it was blowing up for a wild night, but the little panelled sitting-room was secure and comfortable. Nap sank lower and lower in his chair. A coal fell from the hearth. The soft chimes from one of the City clocks announced eleven. He was very nearly asleep when the telephone bell clamoured urgently.

Lifting the receiver he was considerably surprised to recognize the voice of Paddy’s fiancée, the self-possessed Miss Burke.

“Why, Jenny–” he said.

“Nap! Thank God. Listen, the most terrible thing – ”

The note of panic came across the wire with startling clearness.

4

“Marriage,” said a plethoric Major, “is a state-sponsored swindle designed to relieve the authorities of their proper duty of looking after the womenfolk of this country. A Government which preaches Nationalization should have made it one of its first objects to nationalize the maintenance and upkeep of women.”

“Are you going to let the men off?” asked Paddy.

“We should have to contribute, of course. It would have been a form of indirect taxation – an imposition–”

“You’ve said it,” agreed Private Abrahams (the owner of a flourishing barrow business and one of the few real capitalists present). “Just as soon as the clergyman says, ‘Do you take this woman?’ and you pipe up, like the World’s Perishing Mug and say ‘I do’ – you can hear the old trap go click. Ever after that it’s ‘pay-pay-pay’ – and nothing off for good behaviour.”

“It isn’t
what
you say,” said the gloomy Corporal Botherwick, “it’s the way that you say it. You’ve gotter watch your step, see. First time I took Flo out, we went to a double feature at the local pallay. I’d had a long day on my trolleybus, and before I’d time to see whether we was watching Dorothy Lamour or Donald Duck, I’d shut my eyes and dropped clean orf. I must’ve kipped a long time, too, cos when I woke up the big picture was nearly over and him and her was going into the last big clinch. I turned to Flo and said ‘Gawd, ’ow I wish we was in bed’ – not meaning anything, see. But you know how it is once you put an idea into a girl’s head – yus, and we was married last month.”

“Girls are funny,” said a Sergeant from one of the other companies, who seemed to have attached himself to their party. “The other day I took two of ’em to watch a football match–”

One of Paddy’s late cooks here thrust more beer into his hand with the result that he lost the thread of this interesting discussion.

“Hear you’re getting hitched up,” said a Captain.

“That’s right,” said Paddy.

“Sad,” said the Captain, “sad. The outposts falling one by one.”

“Take my advice,” said the MO – now returned to a Harley Street practice. “If you must marry pick a good cook. Then you’ve got something to build on. A girl can learn almost anything else given time and patience, but cooks are born–”

‘Talking of greyhounds–” said an ex-CSM.

The time was latish in the evening and the occasion a reunion of that ancient and disreputable regiment of the line, the first Hyde Parks. It is sometimes difficult for the uninitiated to gather what pleasure the male sex does get from standing on its feet from six to ten in the evening in barrack-like apartments, filled to overflowing with tobacco smoke, heat, light and the confused noises of pipes being knocked out, beer being pulled and lines being shot; with no exercise beyond that occasioned by a steady lifting of the right elbow; and with a rapidly diminishing grasp of such matters as everyday life, reality and the tune of the Last Train Home.

However, by half past ten or thereabouts the crowd had begun to thin out. Paddy regretfully said his good nights, jotted down half a dozen names and addresses, collected his hat, and pushed forth into the winter’s night.

It would be a gross exaggeration to say that he was drunk. He found it very difficult to attain that blissful state on post-war beer; and anyway, in functions of this sort he did more talking than drinking.

As he turned into the street he saw the lanky figure of Corporal Botherwick ahead, and put on speed to catch up with him, at the same time giving him a cheerful hail.

To his surprise the Corporal, though he must have heard him, took not the slightest notice: but actually increased his pace and more than kept his distance.

“Odd,” thought Paddy. “What the hell’s wrong with him.”

The mystery was solved at the next corner where one of the infrequent street lamps shone for a moment on the face of the man ahead.

He was a complete stranger.

Paddy walked on thoughtfully. It was not the most cheerful place imaginable. The streets were still flanked by the uncleared jetsam of the blitz. He passed a cluster of doll’s-house prefabs, a row of gaunt, gutted shops, and then an open waste where a mountainous pile of rubble gleamed in the misty moonlight.

As a result of the company he had just left, or the last turn of the conversation, or more probably because it was a philosophical time of night, his mind was running on the mighty twin problems of Love and War. Did he really love Jenny enough? Enough for what? Enough to marry her, naturally. (Don’t be a cad, sir, of course you do. Dear little woman.) But wasn’t she sometimes a trifle – now what was the exact word? a trifle frivolous. Not quite womanly enough. (Tush, sir, do you want to marry an iceberg?)

Here, turning a corner rather fast, he nearly collided with a small man, whose face was obscured by a checked cap, pulled down over one eye.

This man said, “Look where yer goin’, carncher,” in such a nasty voice that War ousted Love immediately and Paddy meditated the advisability of giving him a clip over the ear, but before he could come to any decision the small man had disappeared into the surrounding dusk.

The journey home by Underground entailed a change at Leicester Square station, and it was in the Z-shaped, cream-tiled passage which connects the Northern and the Piccadilly routes that Paddy confirmed his earlier impression that he was being followed.

The passageway was almost deserted, for by that time of night the tide of traffic had ceased to run eastward. Ahead of him two women were turning the corner that leads down to the Piccadilly line platform. Behind came an elderly type in evening dress and two soldiers. (Gunners, he saw, from the red and blue arm flashes.)

He stopped to light a cigarette and allowed them all to pass. The short passage was now empty, but he reserved the obstinate impression that he had heard footsteps at the corner behind him, and that the footsteps had stopped when he did. He waited for a full minute and the silence became almost uncomfortable. It was broken by a distant grumbling above his head which he took to signify the arrival of another train on the Northern line, and sure enough in a few minutes the vanguard of a further contingent appeared. A party of three girls, escorted by a sheepish youth, a clergyman, and a man with a trombone.

“Nerves playing tricks,” thought Paddy. He moved on and joined the crowd on the east-bound platform. There had evidently been no train for some time and a fair number of people had collected.

Paddy made his way to the far end.

In the distance he heard the roar of an approaching train.

At that moment, away to the left, his eye was suddenly arrested by the sight of a checked cap. He had seen that piece of headgear before, and recently. Unless he was mistaken it belonged to a bad-tempered little man who had bumped into him in the darkened streets of South London.

Suddenly he felt caught. It was as though he was in the centre of an enormous, loosely woven net: a net whose cord had not yet been pulled, but which, if he moved off too far in any direction, would press him gently back towards the centre. Push him –

A rather natural association of ideas, not unconnected with the approach of the train, made him step back hastily from the edge of the platform.

He took a quick look round.

That end of the station was almost empty, and his nearest neighbours looked harmless enough. There were two or three women. Standing next to him was an undernourished little workman. Paddy guessed his trade as fitter or mechanic, from his greasy overalls tight-clipped at wrist and ankle. On the other side of him were an old lady and a couple of shop girls. A soldier stood further back.

He looked up the platform again. The check cap had disappeared. “I’m being a fool,” he thought. “Visions of death and destruction.” The thought was still in his head as he heard the train coming. The lights shone on the rails, the noise rose to a roar and a presaging draught of cold air drove down the platform. With a final crash the red and gold monster slid into view.

An idea flickered into his mind. Sawdust. Cheese. Coffee. Bacon. He had it! The whole thing was like a monstrous bacon slicer of the sort they used to keep on the grocer’s counter at the shop near his home. The red and gold machine, the gleaming steel rail, the irresistible weight and power driving a heavy body across a sharp –

Good God. The workman next to him. He was falling away from him. He put out his hand – or was it already out? – it was difficult to think. He was grasping, pulling.

A woman screamed. He caught a glimpse of the face of the train driver in his green and lighted cab, suddenly and sickeningly white.

Then the workman was on the line and the train had passed over him.

Paddy felt both his arms gripped. The two soldiers who had been standing behind him were shouting. He scarcely found himself able to understand what they were saying.

“You won’t get away with it, you bloody murderer.”

In the charge room at Great Marlborough Street Police Station the clock stood at midnight. The room was crowded. Inspector Hannibal, his voice proclaiming that he resented the unseasonable nature of the proceedings, said brusquely to the station sergeant, “Read over those three statements, please.”

“‘I am Gunner 1034968 Churchill, A R, Royal Artillery,’” intoned the Sergeant, “‘and I was proceeding from Waterloo to Liverpool Street via Leicester Square Underground station. At approximately 10.45 p.m., I was standing on the eastbound platform of the Central Line talking to Gunner 1035655 Roberts, P T, also of my regiment. We observed a man whom I now identify and whose name I now know to be Carter, in front of us, and close to the edge of the platform. Beside him was standing another man whose name I now understand to be Sims. On the approach of an Underground train I observed Carter raise his left arm and push Sims–’”

“That’s a lie,” said Paddy.

“Quiet, please,” said the Station-Inspector. “Go on, Sergeant.”

“‘–push Sims on to the line in front of the approaching train. I thereupon seized him by the arm and assisted to detain him until the arrival of the police.’”

“Thank you, Sergeant. Now, Gunner Churchill, have you got anything to add to that?”

“No, sir.”

“What you’ve just heard is a fair and true account of your recent statement?”

“That’s right, sir. Perhaps I ought to have said–”

“Yes?”

“The prisoner, sir – I mean Mr Carter. He seemed to be in a daze. He didn’t appear rightly to know what he was doing.”

“All right,” said the Inspector. “We’ll have that added before you sign it. Now read the next one, Sergeant.”

“‘I am Gunner 1035655 Roberts, P T–’”

As Paddy looked round the charge room a very strong feeling of unreality took hold of him. The thing was a dream. In a minute he would wake up. The scene would fade and the puppets of this nightmare would disappear. The little bird-like Inspector, the red-necked beefy constables, the two soldiers, the old lady in bedraggled black seated in the corner. Even Nap, more solid and less dreamlike than any of them, with his brief-case and lawyer’s black hat. Jenny was standing beside him, but a new Jenny looking scared and sick.

The sergeant embarked on his third statement, and this was plainly addressed to the elderly party in the corner, who had recently concluded an attack of hysteria and was fighting hard to control an aftermath of hiccoughs.

“‘I am Mrs Laura Jane Oliphant of Carmichael Crescent, Camberwell. I was proceeding – I saw Carter strike Sims in the back–’”

Paddy opened his mouth to protest again, and felt Nap’s hand on his arm. Quite right, better not make a scene. Not now, anyway. After all, it wasn’t as if he had
done
anything. This was England. It was the twentieth century. He was quite safe. He had only to sit tight and everything would sort itself out.

The sergeant had finished reading. The old lady signed her statement and retired again to her seat in the corner. There was a momentary pause, a sort of cessation of talk and movement as everyone present looked at Paddy,

The case of the King against Yeatman-Carter.

It was the little Inspector who broke the silence which had become uncomfortable.

“You may make a statement if you wish,” he said, and he contrived, as usual, to turn the words into something halfway between a concession and a threat.

“The thing’s absurd,” said Paddy again. “I never touched the man until – I mean, I had to try and save him. He was falling and I grabbed at him. If he’d been wearing ordinary sort of clothes I might have got hold of him – his coat-tails or his belt or something. But he was wearing a very tight sort of overalls – you saw them. There simply wasn’t anything to catch hold of.”

“I see, sir,” said the Inspector. Something in Paddy’s manner had plainly puzzled him. The honesty of the speech was patent. “You say, then, that Sims was actually falling
before
you put out your hand. Do you mean that he had started to throw himself in front of the train?”

“No, not really. It’s difficult to explain. If I had been asked I should have said that he might have fainted. It looked more like that. He didn’t exactly throw himself. His knees buckled under him and he fell forward. That’s the best description I can give.”

“And when you saw him going you put your hand out?”

“Naturally.”

“I see.” He turned to one of the gunners. “Be very careful about this, please,” he said. “Does that explanation you have just heard fit in with what you saw?”

“No, it doesn’t,” said Gunner Churchill obstinately. “I’m sorry, sir, but I was quite near – as close as I am to you now – and I can only say what I saw. This gentleman put out his arm – his left arm, it was – and gave a push. The other man was taken unaware, that I will swear. He tried to resist, like, but he was caught off his balance.”

“That’s right,” said the second Gunner.

The lady in the corner, feeling the eye of the Inspector upon her, gave a moan which could have been taken either for assent or dissent.

Nap felt that it was time for him to intervene. The Inspector was plainly undecided.

“As you know,” he said, “I am Major Carter’s solicitor, as well as a personal friend. I will undertake on his behalf that he appears in the morning to answer any charge arising out of this incident – by the way, Inspector, what
is
the charge?”

“No charge has yet been preferred,” said the Inspector cautiously. “Very fortunately Sims fell between the live rails into the safety trough. The train didn’t touch him. He’s in hospital suffering from shock.”

“Well, then,” said Nap, “I expect that if a charge is preferred it will be one of assault. In which case, as you know, you can release Major Carter on my undertaking.”

“Perhaps–” began the Inspector. He got no further, for at that moment the telephone rang. It was evident from the Inspector’s replies that some considerable authority was talking from the other end. The message, whatever it was, was brief.

At its conclusion the Inspector turned to Nap and said, “We shall have to keep Mr Carter here for tonight.”

“On what charge?” asked Nap bluntly.

“On a charge of attempting to inflict grievous bodily harm,” said the Inspector equally bluntly.

“I see.”

“The charge will be heard in the morning. It will be formal of course. We shall ask for a remand until Sims is fit to make a statement. You will be able to make the usual submission for bail–”

He contrived to imply that he thought it extremely unlikely that it would be granted.

“Yes,” said Nap. And to himself, “Damn it, I wish I knew what that phone call was about.”

It was one o’clock when they got out of the police station, and by a stroke of luck, found a homing taxi. Nap looked at Jenny, who was still white and quite silent and said, “I think I’d better see you home, old girl.”

“Thank you, Nap,” said Jenny.

In the taxi, a comfortable leather-smelling cave of darkness, they sat looking at each other and Jenny’s panic was hardly decreased by a feeling that Nap was almost as frightened as she was.

But when he spoke his voice sounded steady enough.

“Jenny,” he said, “We’re out of our depth. We’re clean out of our class. We’ve got to get help.”

“Yes,” said Jenny. The terror was plain enough, but there was something more. A note of reserve which had not been there before.

“Jenny,” he said.

“Yes, Nap.”

“Do you believe that Paddy did it. That he pushed that man under the train.”

There is nothing more brutal than truth. When Jenny at last looked up her face was tingling as if it had been slapped.

“No,” she said, “I don’t really. Not now. Not when you put it like that. But it did look funny. All those people, so honest and so certain.”

“What motive on earth could he have had to do such a thing?” said Nap. “It’s crazy. He’d be mad–” He broke off as the unfortunate implication of the words came to him. Then he shook his head. “We’re getting hysterical,” he went on. “I know what’s in your mind, and it’s in mine too. But honestly it isn’t so. It isn’t the truth. Paddy didn’t push anyone – this chap, or Mr Britten either. He’s chivalrous to a fault, and kind and gentle too. It just won’t work. He
couldn’t
do it. It’s mentally and physically impossible.”

“War strain,” suggested Jenny half-heartedly.

Nap laughed and some of the tension went from the atmosphere. “You’re losing your nerve,” he said. “Tell me, do you honestly think a chap like Paddy, a roaring raging extrovert like Paddy, found the war a strain? I don’t say he didn’t see some sticky fighting, but as for suggesting that he’s bomb-happy – well, you’re engaged to him, and I live with him. Between us we ought to have spotted it by now. It’s not a thing that you can keep entirely hidden.”

“You’re right, of course,” said Jenny. “I was just being silly. And here we are.”

Nevertheless, late though it was by this time, and tired though she was, she found it difficult to sleep. It was light before her eyes closed.

Nap, on the other hand, slept heavily. But before he got into bed he repeated to himself, with great conviction, something that he had said earlier in the evening.

“We have got to get help.”

2

Inland from Blackwall Point and above the Greenwich Marshes and over the railway there lie a few curious streets: streets which rest their eastern or lower extremities in the squalor of Charlton but run out at the western end into the social sunlight of Greenwich; not perhaps quite so aristocratic a district as it was when the houses were built ninety years ago, and the merchants drove their carriages to the City along the Old Kent road. The big, four-storeyed houses had suffered the indignity of subdivision into flats and flat-lets and even into single rooms. The yellow and cream French plaster was dropping from the walls, the bricks were long unpointed, the double window frames peeling, the unglazed fanlights looking out like blind eyes over cavernous doorways.

With one exception Goshawk Road was typical of such thoroughfares. Ninety-nine of its hundred houses were in the last degree of decayed gentility.

Number One, however, the most westerly of all, stood a little withdrawn at the junction of Goshawk Road with Maze Hill. It had, as it were, disassociated itself from its surroundings. Its bricks were freshly pointed, its woodwork soberly new, its upkeep immaculate, from the glass in the highest attic window to the shining brass of its dolphin door knocker.

What this aristocrat of brick and stone was doing among the demi-monde seems to demand an explanation (which will probably not be forthcoming: London possesses hundreds of such paradoxes).

Nap, climbing Maze Hill at nine o’clock on the following morning, thought, not for the first time, how clearly the character of a man might be read in his choice of habitation.

He walked up the short flagged path, mounted the two freshly holy-stoned steps, and jerked the massive iron pull.

Far away in the basement a bell clattered. Slow footsteps advanced along the hall and the door was opened by an ancient white-haired man.

“Good morning, Clutters,” said Nap cheerfully. “Is Uncle Alfred up yet?”

“His Lordship breakfasted at hate,” said Mr Cluttersley. Although he would never by any chance omit an aspirate he sometimes conscientiously inserted one. “He is now in the morning-room.”

Alfred Lord Cedarbrook, eldest son of the aged Marquis of Orso and Trusconnel, is by a long chalk too remarkable a man to be allowed to slip into this account unheralded.

The standard reference books will supply the facts.

Born in 1887, educated at Winchester and at Clare College, Cambridge. A Bachelor of Science, a Fellow of the Royal Society; an Associate of the Royal Geographical Society, etc., etc., etc. In America from 1911–1912 (operating on Wall Street, though the book does not say so). Polar exploration, 1912. Awarded the Arctic Medal, 1913. Served with the 12th Prince of Wales Own Lancers: 1914–1919 (starting as a Farrier-Sergeant’s assistant and finishing in command of the regiment). Persia, 1920–1923. Russia, 1923–1924. China 1925–1927. Russia again, 1927–1930, and periodically since. Unmarried.

Those were the bare bones. The living flesh that covered them was even more remarkable.

“The Last Corinthian,” old Lady Hevers had said. It was an apt description. For in addition to the taste and the elegance and the exquisite standards he also possessed the two most amiable characteristics of the type. Physical toughness, and the ability to get on with all classes. (Your true Corinthian, you will remember, was as easy in the society of lords and ladies as in the no less exacting company of postillions and bruisers.)

When the Russian position had clarified a little in 1940, both the Foreign Office and the War Office had shouted for Cedarbrook’s services.

For His Lordship was not only one of the greatest English experts on modern Russia, not only spoke the Russian language and understood the Russian mind as few Western Europeans have ever done; but in addition, as a legacy of long and active years spent in the country, knew personally a very large number of the surviving Russian statesmen and generals.

He had lived with them, drunk with them, argued with them, quarrelled with them and laughed both with and at them. He had on one never-to-be-forgotten occasion out-drunk in their native vodka five commissars (four male and one female – they went under the table in that order), and on another had lost the top of his left ear in a duel
à l’outrance
with sabres, his opponent being the notorious Russian journalist Ivan Petrov. An escapade for which he had been publicly censured (and privately thanked) by Comrade Stalin himself.

“Just our man,” said the Foreign Office.

“Find Cedarbrook,” commanded the War Office.

But alas for the vanity of human wishes, Alfred Lord Cedarbrook had disappeared. Enquiries in Goshawk Road had elicited from the imperturbable Cluttersley the information that His Lordship was “from home”. Further pressed, he had added that he “might be absent for the duration of the war. He was really unable to say. His Lordship accounted for his movements to no one.”