The Only Problem (16 page)

‘One
thing that the
Book of Job
teaches us,’ Harvey said, ‘is the futility of
friendship in times of trouble. That is perhaps not a reflection on friends but
on friendship. Friends mean well, or make as if they do. But friendship itself
is made for happiness, not trouble.’

‘Is
your aunt a friend?’

‘My
Aunt Pet, who you tell me has arrived at the château? — I suppose she thinks of
herself as a friend. She’s a bore, coming at this moment. At any moment. — You
don’t suppose this is anything but an interrogation, do you? Any more
questions?’

‘Would
you like some cheese?’

Harvey
couldn’t help liking the young man, within his reservation that the police had,
no doubt, sent him precisely to be liked. Soften me up as much as you please,
Harvey thought, but it doesn’t help you; it only serves to release my own love,
my nostalgia, for Effie. And he opened his mouth and spoke in praise of Effie,
almost to his own surprise describing how she was merry at parties, explaining
that she danced well and was fun to talk to. ‘She’s an interesting woman,
Effie.’

‘Intellectual?’

‘We are
all more intellectual than we know. She doesn’t think of herself as an
intellectual type. But under a certain stimulus, she is.’

They
were walking back to the commissariat. Harvey had half a mind to go home and
let them come for him with an official summons, if they wanted. But it was only
half a mind; the other half, mesmerised and now worked up about Effie,
propelled him on to the police station with his companion.

‘She
tried some drugs, I suppose,’ said Pomfret.

‘You
shouldn’t suppose so,’ said Harvey. ‘Effie is entirely antidrug. It would be
extraordinary if she’s taken to drugs in the last two years.

‘You
must recognise,’ said Pomfret, ‘that she is lively and vital enough to be a
member of a terrorist gang.’

‘Lively
and vital,’ said Harvey, ‘lively and vital — one of those words is redundant.’

Pomfret
laughed.

‘However,’
said Harvey, ‘it’s out of the question that she could be a terrorist.’ He had a
suspicion that Pomfret was now genuinely fascinated by the images of Effie that
Harvey was able to produce, Effie at a party, Effie an interesting talker, a
rich man’s wife; his imagination was involved, beyond his investigator’s role,
in the rich man’s mechanism, his free intellectual will, his casual purchase of
the château; Pomfret was fascinated by both Effie and Harvey.

‘A
terrorist,’ said Pomfret. ‘She obviously has an idealistic motive. Why did you
leave her?’

The
thought that Effie was a member of a terrorist band now excited Harvey
sexually.

‘Terrorist
is out of the question,’ he said. ‘I left her because she seemed to want to go
her own way. The marriage broke up, that’s all. Marriages do.’

‘But on
a hypothesis, how would you feel if you knew she was a terrorist?’

Harvey
thought, I would feel I had failed her in action. Which I have. He said, ‘I can’t
imagine.’

At the
police station Pomfret left him in a waiting-room. Patiently sitting there was
a lean-faced man with a dark skin gone to a muddy grey, bright small eyes and
fine features. He seemed to be a Balkan. What was he doing there? It was after
nine in the evening. Surely it was in the morning that he would come about his
papers. Perhaps he had been picked up without papers? What sort of work was he
doing in Epinal? He wore a black suit, shiny with wear; a very white shirt open
at the neck; brown, very pointed shoes; and he had with him a brown cardboard
brief-case with tinny locks, materials such as Harvey had only seen before in
the form of a suitcase on a train in a remote part of Sicily. The object in
Sicily had been old and battered, but his present companion’s brief-case had a
new-bought look. It was not the first time Harvey had noticed that poor people
from Eastern Europe resembled, not only in their possessions and clothes, but
in their build and expression, the poor of Western Europe years ago. Who he
was, where he came from and why, Harvey was never to know, for he was just
about to say something when the door opened and a policeman in uniform beckoned
the man away. He followed with nervous alacrity and the door closed again on
Harvey. Patience, pallor and deep anxiety: there goes suffering, Harvey
reflected. And I found him interesting. Is it only by recognising how flat
would be the world without the sufferings of others that we know how
desperately becalmed our own lives would be without suffering? Do I suffer on
Effie’s account? Yes, and perhaps I can live by that experience. We all need
something to suffer about. But
Job,
my work on
Job,
all
interrupted and neglected, probed into and interfered with: that is experience,
too; real experience, not vicarious, as is often assumed. To study, to think,
is to live and suffer painfully.

Did
Effie really kill or help to kill the policeman in Paris whose wife was
shopping in the suburbs at the time? Since he had left the police station on
Saturday night he had recurrently put himself to imagine the scene. An
irruption at a department store. The police arrive. Shots fired. Effie and her
men friends fighting their way back to their waiting car (with Nathan at the
wheel?). Effie, lithe and long-legged, a most desirable girl, and quick-witted,
unmoved, aiming her gun with a good aim. She pulls the trigger and is away all
in one moment. Yes, he could imagine Effie in the scene; she was capable of
that, capable of anything.

‘Will
you come this way, please, Mr Gotham?’

There
was a stack of files on Chatelain’s desk.

The
rest of that night Harvey remembered as a sort of roll-call of his visitors
over the past months; it seemed to him like the effect of an old-fashioned
village policeman going his rounds, shining his torch on name-plates and
door-knobs; one by one, each name surrounded by a nimbus of agitated suspicion
as his friends’ simple actions, their ordinary comings and goings came up for
questioning. It was strange how guilty everything looked under the policeman’s
torch, how it sounded here in the police headquarters. Chatelain asked Harvey
if he would object to the conversation being tape-recorded.

‘No, it’s
a good thing. I was going to suggest it. Then you won’t have to waste time
asking me the same questions over and over again.’

Chatelain
smiled sadly. ‘We have to check.’ Then he selected one of the files and placed
it before him.

‘Edward
Jansen,’ he said, ‘came to visit you.

‘Yes,
he’s the husband of my wife’s sister, Ruth, now separated. He came to see me last
April.’

Chatelain
gave a weak smile and said, ‘Your neighbours seem to remember a
suspicious-looking character who visited you last spring.’

‘Yes, I
daresay that was Edward Jansen. He has red hair down to his shoulders. Or had.
He’s an actor and he’s now famous. He is my brother-in-law through his marriage
to my wife’s sister, but he’s now separated from his wife. A lot can happen in
less than a year.

‘He
asked you why there were baby clothes on the line?’

‘I don’t
remember if he actually asked, but he made some remark about them because I
answered, as you know, “The police won’t shoot if there’s a baby in the house.”‘

‘Why
did you say that?’

‘I can’t
answer precisely. I didn’t foresee any involvement with the police, or I wouldn’t
have said it.’

‘It was
a joke?’

‘That
sort of thing.’

‘Do you
still hear from Edward Jansen?’ Chatelain opened one of the files.

‘I
haven’t heard for some time.’

Chatelain
flicked through the file.    ‘

‘There’s
a letter from him waiting for you at your house.’

‘Thanks.
I expect you can tell me the contents.       ‘

‘No, we
can’t.’

‘That
could be taken in two senses,’ Harvey said.

‘Well,
you can take it in one sense: we haven’t opened it. The name and address of the
sender is on the outside of the envelope. As it happens, we know quite a lot
about Mr Jansen, and he doesn’t interest us at the moment. He’s also been
questioned.’ Chatelain closed the file, evidently Edward’s dossier; it was
rather thin compared with some of the others. Chatelain took up another and
opened it, as if starting on a new subject. Then, ‘What did you discuss with
Edward Jansen last April?’

‘I can’t
recall. I know his wife, Ruth, was anxious for me to make a settlement on her
sister and facilitate a divorce. I am sure we didn’t discuss that very much,
for I had no intention of co-operating with my wife to that end. I know we
discussed the
Book of Job.’

‘And
about Ruth Jansen. Did you invite her to stay?’

‘No,
she came unexpectedly with her sister’s baby, about the end of August.’

‘Why
did she do that?’

‘August
is a very boring month for everybody.’

‘You
really must be serious, Mr Gotham.’

‘It’s
as good a reason as any. I can’t analyse the motives of a woman who probably
can’t analyse them herself.’

Chatelain
tapped the file. ‘She says here that she brought the baby, hoping to win you
over to her view that the child would benefit if you made over a substantial
sum of money to its mother, that is, to your wife Effie.’

‘If
that’s what Ruth says, I suppose it is so.’

‘She
greatly resembles your wife.’

‘Yes,
feature by feature. But of course, to anyone who knows them they are very
different. Effie is more beautiful, really. Less practical than Ruth.’

Pomfret
came in and sat down. He was less free of manner in the presence of the other
officer. He peered at the tape-recording machine as if to make sure everything
was all right with it.

‘So you
had a relation with Mrs Jansen.’

‘Yes.’

‘Your
sister-in-law and wife of your friend.’

‘Yes, I
grew fond of Ruth. I was particularly taken by the baby. Of course, by this
time Ruth and Edward had parted.’

‘Things
happen fast in your set.’

‘Well,
I suppose the parting had been working up for a long time. Is there any point
in all these questions?’

‘Not
much. We want to check, you see, against the statements made in England by the
people concerned. Did Ruth seem surprised when she heard that Effie was
involved in the terrorist attacks?’

What
were these statements of Ruth, of Edward, of others? Harvey said firmly, even
as he felt his way, ‘She was very much afraid of the police, coming into our
lives as they did. It was quite unforeseen. She could no more blame her sister
for it than she could blame her for an earthquake. I feel the same, myself.’

‘She
did not defend her sister?’

‘She
had no need to defend Effie to me. It isn’t I who accuse Effie of being a
terrorist. I say there is a mistake.’

‘Now,
Nathan Fox,’ said the officer, reaching for a new file. ‘What do you know about
him?’

‘Not
very much. He made himself useful to Ruth and Edward when they were living in
London. He’s a graduate but can’t find a job. He came to my house, here, to
visit Ruth and the baby for Christmas.’

‘He is
a friend of your wife?’

‘Well,
he knows her, of course.

‘He is
a weak character?’

‘No, in
fact I think it shows a certain strength of character in him to have turned his
hand to domestic work since he can’t find anything else to do. He graduated at
an English university, I have no idea which one.

‘What
about his friends? Girls or boys?’

‘I know
nothing about that.’

‘Why
did he disappear from your house?’

‘I don’t
know. He just left. Young people do.’

‘He had
a telephone call and left overnight without saying good-bye.’

‘I
believe so,’ said Harvey.

‘He
said the telephone call was from London. It wasn’t.’

‘So I
understand. I was working in my cottage that night. You must understand I’m very
occupied, and all these questions of yours, and all these files, have nothing
whatever to do with me. I’ve agreed to come here simply to help you to
eliminate a suspect, my wife.’

‘But
you have no idea why he should say he got a phone call from London, when he
didn’t. It must have been an internal call.’

‘Perhaps
some girl of his turned up in France; maybe in Paris, and called him. And he
skipped.’

‘Some
girl or some boy?’

‘Your
question is beyond me. If I hear from him I’ll ask him to get in touch with
you. Perhaps he’s come down with influenza.’

Pomfret
now spoke: ‘Why do you suggest that?’ He was decidedly less friendly in French.

‘Because
people do come down with ‘flu. They stay in bed. This time of year is rather
the time for colds. Perhaps he’s gone back to England to start a
window-cleaning business. I believe I heard him speculating on the idea. There’s
always a need for window-cleaners.’