The Confidential Agent (26 page)

He was flung right across the passage and fell with the back of his head against a stone; glass flew like shrapnel. He had a sense that the whole wall above him was caving in to fall upon his face, and he screamed and screamed. He was aware of violence and not of noise – the noise was too great to be heard. You became conscious of it only when it was over, and there were only barking dogs and people shouting and the soft sifting of dust from a broken brick. He put his hands over his face to protect his eyes and screamed again: people ran along the street: not far away a harmonium began defiantly to play, but he didn't hear it, he was back in the foundations of a house with a dead cat's fur touching his lips.

A voice said, ‘That's him.' They were digging him out, but he couldn't move to avoid the edge of a spade or the point of a pick: he sweated with fear and called out in his own language. Somebody's hand was passing over him – and his mind went flick! flick! and he was back on the Dover Road and the chauffeur's large and brutal hands were touching him. He said fiercely, ‘Take your hands off.'

‘Has he got a gun?'

‘No.'

‘What's that in his right pocket?'

‘Well now, isn't that a funny thing? It's a piece of coconut.'

‘Hurt?'

‘I don't think so,' the voice said. ‘Just scared, I reckon.'

‘Better put on the cuffs.'

He came back down the long track which led from the dead cat to Benditch village by way of the Dover Road. He felt his hands gripped and his eyes were uncovered. The wall still stood above him and the thin rain came steadily down: there was no change. Violence had passed, leaving only a little broken glass. Two policemen stood over him and a small dismal crowd had collected at the entrance of the alley and watched avidly. A voice said, ‘The Scripture lesson is taken from . . .'

‘It's all right,' D. said. ‘I'm coming.' He got up painfully; the fall had strained his back. He said, ‘I'd be glad to sit down, if you don't mind.'

A policeman said, ‘You'll have plenty of time for that.'

One of them took his arm and led him out into the dingy street. A little way off stood a bus marked Woolhampton; a youth with a satchel slung across his shoulder watched him with poker face from the step.

He asked, ‘What are the charges?'

‘There'll be plenty,' the policeman said, ‘don't you worry.'

‘I think,' D. said, ‘I have the right . . .' looking at his cuffed hands.

‘Using words likely to lead to a breach of the peace . . . an' being on enclosed premises with the purpose of committing a felony. That'll be enough to get on with.'

D. laughed. He couldn't help it. He said, ‘Those are two fresh ones. They mount up, don't they?'

At the station they gave him a cup of cocoa and some bread and butter and locked him in a cell. He had not experienced such peace for a long time. He could hear them telephoning to Woolhampton about him, but he couldn't hear what was said beyond a few words. . . . Presently the younger policeman brought him a bowl of soup. He said, ‘You're quite a catch, aren't you?'

‘Am I?'

‘They want you up in London – and in a hurry, too.' He said with respect, ‘They want to question you . . .'

‘What about?'

‘I couldn't tell you, but you've seen the paper, I suppose. You've got to go up by the midnight train. With me. I won't mind taking a look at London, I can tell you.'

D. said, ‘Would you mind telling me – that explosion – was anybody hurt?'

The policeman said, ‘Some kids set the explosive shed off up at the mine. But nobody was hurt – for a wonder. Except old George Jarvis – what he was doing up there no one knows. He complains of shock, but it would need an earthquake to shock old George.'

‘Then the damage wasn't great?'

‘There wasn't any damage – if you don't count the shed and some windows broken.'

‘I see.'

So even the last shot had failed.

PART FOUR

The End

[1]

The magistrate had thin white hair and pince-nez and deep lines around the mouth – an expression of soured kindliness. He kept on tapping his blotter impatiently with his fountain pen. It was as if the endless circumlocutions of police witnesses were at last getting his nerves frayed beyond endurance. ‘We proceeded to so-and-so . . .' ‘On information received . . .' He said with irritation, ‘What you mean to say is, I suppose . . .'

They had allowed D. to sit down in the dock. Where he sat he could see nobody but a few solicitors and policemen, the clerk at a table under the magistrate's dais, all strangers. But as he had stood at the entrance of the court waiting for his name to be called all sorts of familiar faces had been visible – Mr Muckerji, old Dr Bellows, even Miss Carpenter was there. He had smiled painfully towards them as he climbed into the dock before he turned his back. How puzzled they must be – except, of course, Mr Muckerji, who was certain to have his theories. He felt inexpressibly tired.

It had been a long thirty-six hours. First the journey up to London with an excited police officer who kept him awake all night talking about a boxing match he might or might not get to at the Albert Hall. And then the questioning at Scotland Yard. At first he had been amused – it contrasted oddly with the sort of questioning he had had in prison at home with a club. Three men sat or strolled about the room; they were meticulously fair, and sometimes one of them would bring in tea and biscuits on a tray for him – very strong cheap tea and rather sweet biscuits. They also offered him cigarettes, and he had returned the compliment. They hadn't liked his black strong kind, but he noticed with secret amusement that they unobtrusively made a note of the name on the packet – in case it should come in useful later.

They were obviously trying to pin Mr K.'s death on him – he wondered what had happened to the other charges, the false passport and Else's so-called suicide – not to speak of the explosion at Benditch. ‘What did you do with the gun?' they asked. That was the nearest they came to the odd scene at the Embassy.

‘I dropped it in the Thames,' he said with amusement.

They pursued the point very seriously – they seemed quite prepared to employ divers, dredgers. . . .

He said, ‘Oh, one of your bridges . . . I don't know all their names.'

They had found out all about his visit to the Entrenationo soirée with Mr K. and a man had come forward who said that Mr K. had made a scene because he was being followed. A man called Hogpit. ‘He wasn't being followed by me,' D. said. ‘I left him outside the Entrenationo office.'

‘A witness called Fortescue saw you and a woman . . .'

‘I don't know anyone called Fortescue.'

The questioning had gone on for hours. Once there was a telephone call. A detective turned to D. with the receiver in his hand and said, ‘You do know, don't you, that this is all voluntary? You can refuse to answer any questions without your solicitor being present.'

‘I don't want a solicitor.'

‘He doesn't want a solicitor,' the detective said down the 'phone and rang off.

‘Who was that?' D. asked.

‘Search me,' the detective said. He poured D. out his fourth cup of tea and asked, ‘Two lumps? I always forget.'

‘No sugar.'

‘Sorry.'

Later in the day there had been an identification parade. It was rather disillusioning to a former lecturer in the Romance languages to see the choice of faces. This – it seemed to indicate – is what you're like to us. He looked with distress down a line of unshaven Soho types – they looked, most of them, like pimps or waiters in undesirable cafés. He was amused to find, however, that the police had been only too fair. Fortescue suddenly came through a door into the yard, carrying an umbrella in one hand and a bowler hat in the other. He walked down the seedy parade like a shy young politician inspecting a guard of honour and hesitated a long while before a blackguard on D.'s right – a man who looked as if he would kill you for a packet of cigarettes. ‘I think . . .' Fortescue said. ‘No . . . perhaps.' He turned pale earnest eyes towards the detective with him and said, ‘I'm very sorry, but, you know, I'm short-sighted, and everything here looks so different.'

‘Different?'

‘Different, I mean, to Emily's – I mean Miss Glover's flat.'

‘You aren't identifying furniture,' the officer said.

‘No. But then, the man I saw was wearing a plaster dressing . . . none of these . . .'

‘Can't you just imagine the dressing?'

‘Of course,' Fortescue said with his eye on D.'s cheek, ‘this one's got a scar . . . he might have been . . .'

But they were very fair. They wouldn't allow that. They had led him out and brought in a man in a big black hat whom D. vaguely remembered having seen . . . somewhere. ‘Now, sir,' the detective said, ‘can you see here the man you say was in the taxi?'

He said, ‘If your man had paid proper attention at the time instead of trying to arrest him for drunkenness . . .'

‘Yes, yes. It was a mistake.'

‘And a mistake, I suppose, hauling me into court for obstruction?'

The detective said, ‘After all, sir, we've apologised.'

‘All right, then. Bring out these men.'

‘They are here.'

‘Oh, these, yes.' He asked sharply, ‘Are they here willingly?'

‘Of course. They get paid . . . all except the prisoner.'

‘And which is he?'

‘Why, that's for you to say, sir.'

The man in the hat said, ‘Yes, yes, of course,' and strode rapidly down the line. He stopped in front of the same scoundrelly-looking fellow as Fortescue and said firmly, ‘That's your man.'

‘Are you quite sure, sir?'

‘Of course.'

‘Thank you very much.' They hadn't brought anybody else in after that. Perhaps they felt they had so many charges against him that they had plenty of time ahead to pin on to him the most serious charge of all. He felt complete apathy; he had failed, and he contented himself with denying everything. Let them prove what they wanted. At last they left him alone again in a cell and he slept fitfully. The old dreams were returning with a difference. He was arguing with a girl up and down a river bank – she was saying the Berne manuscript was of much later date than the Bodleian one. They were fiercely happy, walking up and down by the quiet stream. He said, ‘Rose . . .' There was a smell of spring, and over the river very far away the skyscrapers stood like tombs. A policeman was shaking him by the shoulders. ‘There's a solicitor to see you, sir.'

He hadn't really wanted to see the solicitor. It was too tiring. He said, ‘I don't think you understand. I haven't got any money. That is to say – to be accurate, I have a couple of pounds and a return ticket.'

The solicitor was a smart agile young man with a society manner. He said, ‘That's all right – that's being seen to. We're briefing Sir Terence Hillman. We feel that it's necessary, as it were, to show that you are not friendless, that you are a man of substance.'

‘If you call two pounds . . .'

‘Don't let's discuss the money now,' the solicitor said. ‘I assure you
we
are satisfied.'

‘But I must know, if I'm to consent . . .'

‘Mr Forbes is taking care of everything.'

‘Mr Forbes!'

‘And now,' the solicitor said, ‘to go into details. They certainly seem to have chalked up a good few charges against you. Anyway, we've disposed of one. The police are satisfied now that your passport is quite correct. It was lucky you remembered that presentation copy at the Museum.'

D. thought, with a slight awakening of interest: good girl, trust her to remember the right thing and to go for it. He said, ‘And that child's death . . . ?'

‘Oh, they never had any evidence there. And as it happens, the woman's confessed. She's mad, of course. She went off into hysterics. You see, an Indian living there had been going round among the neighbours asking questions. . . . No, we've got more serious things to guard against than that.'

‘When did all this happen?'

‘Saturday evening. It was in the last edition of the Sunday papers.' D. remembered how, driving across the Park, he had seen a poster – something about a sensation, a Bloomsbury sensation – a Bloomsbury tragedy sensation, the whole absurd phrase came back. If only he had bought a copy he might have let Mr K. alone and all this trouble would have been saved. An eye for an eye, but one didn't necessarily demand two eyes.

The solicitor said, ‘Of course, in a way our chance lies in the number of charges.'

‘Doesn't murder take precedence?'

‘I doubt if they can charge you with that yet.'

It all seemed to D. abysmally complicated and not very interesting. They had got him, and they could hardly fail to get their evidence. He hoped that Rose would be kept safely out of it: it was a good thing she hadn't visited him. He wondered whether it was safe to send a message by the solicitor, and then decided that she had a lot of sense, enough sense to stay away. He remembered her candid statement, ‘Don't think I'd love you if you were dead,' and he felt a slight unreasoning pain that you could depend on her now to do nothing rash.

She wasn't in court either. He was sure of that – one glance would have been enough to pick her out. Perhaps if she had been there he would have paid more attention to the proceedings. One tried to show off with quickness or bravado if one was in love, if he was in love.