The Christmas Egg

by Mary Kelly

  He held his breath and strained his ears, just discerning a piano accompaniment, a tinny oscillation well at the back of the vocal line. As usual, the voice had suffered less from the deficiencies of the infant science. It did not sound as if it were being squeezed out of the skylight of some physical attic, as is often the way with tenors. It was open, virile, even in tone, effortlessly smooth, and of an unforced power which indicated reserves on which the singer had never needed to draw. Yet strength was combined with taste and expressiveness. A tenor and a half, Brett thought.

  He had made no study of the Golden Age. Such records as he knew had been heard by chance, with the exception of an ancient Rigoletto quartet which Christina had picked up for a couple of marks and accordingly treasured, but which he privately thought sounded like four mice and a guitar. The names of a few tenors were familiar. He felt that he would recognize Caruso, and that this singer was not Caruso, nor, probably, Italian. The vocal timbre had something of the sweetness which is characteristic of certain Slavs; and Brett received the impression, although he could not be sure because of the wall, that the aria was sung, after all, in French. Jean de Reszke, he thought, with irony; and then, with a sensation of having turned a double somersault, Jean de Reszke.

  Guzmann and his passion for Golden Age plums. Kellett’s, next door to Majendie’s. Prince Sevastyan Karukhin, who had a flat in Paris, who was anxious to rival the collection of Count Vyestnitsky.

  He became conscious that an alien sound was imposed on the aria, the jerky pounding of female feet in high-heeled shoes, feet which were coming down the corridor toward him.

  He couldn’t wait to hear the putative Jean so much as finish his phrase. His toes barely touched the edges of the treads. The stairs debouched down the side of a small room with two cubicles at one end, washbasins, a mirror, and row of hooks hung with women’s coats.

  He realized in a kind of calm alarm that it must be the women staff’s cloakroom. He had no time to hesitate about going through the only door. To meet someone on its threshold or to be found inside by the high-heeled woman would be equally embarrassing. The heels were shaking the top stairs. He went through.

  He found himself in a narrow passage at the back of what he recognized as playing cubicles. When he came to the end of them, he could turn left and arrive at the desk, the conveyor belt, the front of the shop, and freedom. But if any of the salespeople upstairs had watched him go along the corridor and had seen him disappear down those stairs, they might have spread the word that a man was loitering in the women’s lavatories. It would be unseemly if he were detained on such a suspicion as he made his way out. He chose the alternative course of keeping straight on. There was a door ahead. He slipped past the end of the passage which flanked the cubicles. His ear caught a snatch of whooping Strauss horns, muted to elfland dimensions. He pulled swiftly at the door and entered. He was in the men’s cloakroom, and it was empty. This room, unlike the women’s, had a second door, which he approached with considerably less brio. He judged that he was by now in that part of the building which lay at right angles to the main shop and met the similar projection of Majendie’s across the back of the bomb site.

  Brett quietly opened the door and was confronted by a flap of green felt hanging from top to bottom of the frame. It was the sort of thing to rouse dormant childhood terrors, in spite of its obvious acoustic purpose. Cautiously he peeped around the edge of the curtain. It concealed nothing more frightening than a wide garage, rather untidily kept, clearly never free from the debris accumulated in such places. A door opening to the outside revealed the cobbled alley and let in daylight. Two trucks stood side by side in the garage. The gray-and-yellow stripes of the one farther from Brett were familiar, Kellett’s own. The other was smaller, plain, and as far as he could see in the dull light, dark blue. Between this truck and the felt curtain two men with their backs to him were sitting on upturned boxes. They were doing nothing; not smoking, naturally enough, in a garage, but not drinking tea, not even talking, just sitting. Brett neither reveled in statistics of workers’ idleness nor took it for granted, and he was puzzled. Such utter immobility and lack of communication was out of place. So was something else. Neither of the men was dressed suitably for greasy work among cars and crates; one wore a blue suit, the other a jacket and flannels. The definition of their attitude came to him. They were waiting.

  He studied the two backs carefully; neither was familiar to him. But that wasn’t to say he would be as much a stranger to the men. He decided to withdraw through the shop after all, and was just gently letting the felt curtain fall back when something made him pause.

  Three stone steps led down from his feet to the floor of the garage. In the corner, formed by their projection from the wall, on the side farther from the alley, was a pair of license plates.

  Brett couldn’t see more than the end figure. For a second or two he wondered if he could pick them up noiselessly and make off. He decided that he ought not to try, closed the felt, and, silently, the door. He let himself out of the lavatory, strode down the passage between the cubicles, and raised his wrapped record to the cashier, hoping she would be unobservant in nature or mood, and therefore not notice that a particular customer had earlier gone up the stairs and now reappeared on the ground floor without having come down them. He was in the front of the shop. No one challenged him; no one looked at him. He was out.

  Guzmann’s car still waited. He’s a nine thousand-pounder or I am a bounder, Brett thought, adapting the poet. He needed now to see whether Majendie’s garage offered anything of interest, but he didn’t want to show himself or any other detective in the back alley. He glanced at his watch and along the street toward Majendie’s.

  Two boys walked past him. Automatically he assigned them to the fifth form. Their school caps were navy blue with two white bands, and the badge, which Brett had not seen for some years, was a castle gate. He stared after the boys at first rather ruefully, then thoughtfully; then he fell in behind them.

  He allowed them to walk a good way along the street so that they were well out of sight of Kellett’s before he overtook them. They were engaged in an animated and unseasonal discussion of cricket.

  “Good morning,” he said.

  They returned the greeting with faultless alacrity. He introduced himself. The inevitable reaction of alarm was succeeded by a sharp interest, quickly subdued to polite proportions. One of the pair seemed to be suffering a certain doubt.

  “I’m afraid I can’t give you more than a private visiting card.” Brett produced it. “But you can ring—you know the number—to establish that I am who I claim to be. Only would you do that after you’ve done something for me?” The doubter looked from the card in his hand to Brett. “May I keep this, sir?” he asked.

  “Please do.” Brett enjoyed a moment’s vision of the card liberally dusted with fingerprint powder.

  “Thank you, sir.” The doubter put the card carefully in a rather new wallet. “What are we to do?”

  “You see the gap between the milliner’s and the art dealer’s a little way along the pavement? That leads through to an alley running parallel with the street. I want you to walk back along that alley talking just as you were, looking, perhaps, as if you were exploring London’s byways or some such thing. When you’ve gone about forty yards you’ll see a garage, doors open, in which there are two trucks, one gray-and-yellow, the other dark blue or green. Memorize the number of the dark one if you can, and if it’s visible. Then look at the very next garage. If it’s closed, well, that can’t be helped. If it’s open, see what vehicles, if any, are inside, and whether there are any men. Do this casually, while you’re walking by. No one will be on the lookout; no one will think anything of seeing you; but obviously you don’t want to peer. You’ll come to a second gap leading to the street. Go through and meet me at the telephone booth at the corner of Fitch Street and the Square. You’ve absolutely nothing to worry about. All right?”

  “Yes, sir. S
tarting now?”

  “Starting now.”

  Brett crossed the street and walked back on the other side of Fitch Street. Guzmann’s car was still outside Kellett’s. He reached the corner and went into the telephone booth.

  He found the number of a certain phonographic eminence and dialed. The eminence was at home. Brett, unwilling to cause alarm, presented himself not in his official capacity but as a record enthusiast connected with the North-West London Opera Group, two of whose productions the eminence had attended and had been heard to commend. The eminence was gracious. He assured Brett that apart from the unsatisfactory cylinders taken from the flies of the Metropolitan during a performance of L’Africaine, in which the singer was almost drowned by extraneous noise, no original records of the voice of Jean de Reszke were known certainly to exist. He confirmed that a privately made disk in good condition would command a good price from persons sufficiently interested and wealthy. Brett mentioned Anatole Guzmann. The eminence regretted, with marked distance, that he was unacquainted with either Mr. Guzmann’s list or his personal predilections. Brett thanked him and hung up.

  He looked out of the cell-like windows. The two boys were coming across the street at what could be called a brisk saunter.

  “Any luck?” he asked, pushing open the door as they appeared beside it.

  “Yes, sir,” said the erstwhile doubter, all eagerness. “There weren’t any men, but there was an estate car, a blue Morris Oxford, quite new.”

  “Did you get its number—and the other?”

  The second boy, who had not spoken since saying good morning, handed Brett a piece of paper.

  “Good Lord! You didn’t stand outside and take notes?”

  “No, sir, in the passage,” said the doubter with a look of indignant reproach.

  “And that’s all?”

  “There wasn’t much else to notice. It was just a garage.”

  “Tidier than the other,” put in the quiet boy.

  “All right,” said Brett. “That’s fine. What are your names?”

  The doubter hesitated. “Will what we did ever be made public?” he asked.

  “Not if you don’t wish it,” said Brett, “but I’d like to tell the head. One thing—I hardly need ask, I know, but I must—don’t speak about this, even to your families until I let you know that you may. I will, I promise. At least you can discuss it between yourselves, so you won’t quite burst! May I have those names?”

  They gave him their names, said good-bye, and walked away. Brett put his hand to the door of the telephone booth.

  “Sir!”

  He turned. The doubter had run back.

  “Sir, we didn’t tell you our addresses.”

  “I’ll do it through the school.”

  “Do you know the school, sir?”

  “I was there myself. All right?”

  The doubter nodded. “Oh, yes. Quite all right.”

  Brett made a call to the office, to the effect that someone should be sent to keep an eye on the two exits from the back alley, with instructions to report the appearance of either or both of the trucks he described. He gave the numbers with a qualification that they should not be relied on. Then he walked along to his car.

  He noticed suddenly how dark the sky had grown. It was a dirty yellowish-gray, like an old ill-laundered pillowcase swollen to bursting with feathers. He flicked on his sidelights. Soon there would be snow.

  Would Majendie, unless innocent, have gone to the absurd length of mentioning the Princess’ records? He must have thought it wise to cover everything he’d seen. And he had intended to give them—to give them—to Kellett’s. That was an admission which sailed near the wind. Brett remembered, as if it were an age past, a moment in which Kellett’s had seemed merely grubby, not overanxious to know whether the record had been honestly come by, knowing only that they could sell it for whatever they asked—of the right person. He had thought Guzmann was their choice because other collectors of as great reputation but of better repute would have wanted assurances, proof, the record’s provenance. But he had come to believe that Kellett’s were in no doubt at all of that. Majendie and Kellett’s—or someone in Kellett’s—worked together, and Geoffrey worked for them. The musical know-all cultivated Stephanie not with a view to seduction, though that might go with the job, but to discover whether from the bomb site one could hear sounds from the adjacent cellars, whether she had ever heard anything; further, to elicit from her artless conversation whether anything could be or ever had been observed at Majendie’s which might give rise to suspicion. Geoffrey didn’t have to come in this morning—because he was busy elsewhere?

  Majendie, stressing his dislike of Kellett’s, pulling a face so unnecessarily at their very name, fuming when they complained—warned—about Stephanie. Had he fumed for her sake? No, but because they had sent the message in so rudely; that was to say, with such deplorable lack of prudence, publicizing their interest in the bomb site. And why did Kellett’s, with their roomy shop, want the bomb site? So that they themselves, rather than some curious outsider, should cover their cellars.

  He would have to deal, he realized, with the person who was the mainspring of Kellett’s. No subordinate could have gotten away with it. With what? With using the cellars to store Nymphenburg figures and Fabergé cigarette cases? Those efficient robberies, that efficient shop! The conclusion that they matched, that they were products of the same organizing brain, was at once wild and feasible. But how Superior Wisdom would have received a request for a squad to raid the cellars of Kellett’s and Majendie’s, Brett shuddered to imagine. Perhaps it was as well that the moment for such action had passed. For the cellars, so near the time of the helicopter’s arrival, would be innocent enough, unless indeed there was something left for another occasion.

  The truck and the estate car were the things to keep in sight. He felt, very strongly, that they were waiting to set out for Richborough. Feeling was not the safest basis for action. But to write off the chance as too far-fetched to take was something he might afterward regret. Six-thirty. Unless they were to make wide precautionary detours, or were to call somewhere else on their way, the trucks need not set out so very soon. Yet the men had seemed ready, just waiting for the word to go. He frowned. Even if they were to start now, they were almost bound to take route A2 out of London; and, in any case, with someone covering the alley exits—they should be already in position—the numbers would be passed to the patrols. With the further assistance of Christmas traffic congestion, they should be picked up easily enough. And in the light of new circumstances, Beddoes should be one of those who did the picking.

  “Just what I like,” said Beddoes, “minicars with Rolls-Royce engines. Three! Boil me! Not sparing the money, are we. Why not ask for reliefs at Rochester, say, and Sittingbourne?”

  Brett’s application for the cars had already drawn from above some aphorisms on extravagance; he scalded Beddoes with a look he had bottled up before others. “Because the trucks may turn off A2. I don’t know why they’ve not started already. You can take over from each other as you please; fix a timetable before you start or use the radio, whichever you like.” He secretly hoped they would use the radio; having been reproached in advance with extravagance, he would be sorry not to fulfill expectations.

  “Don’t you think,” he said, “it would be absurdly clumsy to trail behind them with the same car from London to Canterbury? If you did that you’d be lucky to get as far as Chatham. Then they’d try twisting around or brazenly stop and make a phone call, thumbing their noses at you the while, or start speeding in a panic and crash into a wall. So by a message or by default of message or by failure to pass a checkpoint, they’d give warning to the others to melt away from Richborough. They mustn’t be stopped; they mustn’t be frightened.” He paused. “What about the weather?”

  “Two falls already at Manston,” said Beddoes gloomily. “And their weathercocks say there’s a real blizzard blowing in. Poor old Kent, sitting i
n a snow pack. What was that happened to Lord Bacon’s chicken?”

  “It happened to him, not the chicken, and he wasn’t Lord Bacon; he was Lord Verulam. Anything from the Division?”

  “They found Ivan’s doctor. Turned all starch and professional confidence. Not a pip. Pity he has his surgery in a rented room. Division slipped around the back and had a word with Mrs. Flannery, who has her eyeful of all the patients. Since the National Health Service started, Ivan’s propped up the wall once a week without fail. Drops for his nose and flannels for his chest and a few gallons a year of colored water. About a month ago he complained to the assembled sick of Islington that he was sleeping badly.”

  “Did they find out whether he has a regular druggist?”

  “No. They’ve started to look.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Quite obvious, isn’t it?”

  “Yes—phenobarb, one a night for a month, probably fifty at a time. Quite enough. By the way, Ivan also sounded out the doctor, or said he was going to, on the possibility of having Gran certified.”

  “When?”

  “Months and months ago. Nothing came of it apparently. I suppose you can’t shove people in already bursting institutions unless they’re raising Cain. One thing more. There’s a family called Endean living at number six. The daughter dropped in at the station this morning on her way to work, said she’d met the old woman from number thirteen on the evening of Saturday two weeks ago—and I wouldn’t have bothered you with it only I thought at the time it was odd, and now in the circumstances, etcetera.”

  “You don’t mean she met her in the street?”

  “Yes. The girl was on her way to a dance, which is how she can be sure it was Saturday. As she turned the corner from Bright’s into the High Street she all but knocked Olga down. She was coming into the Row.”

  “Ivan would be at the Oak Tree, I suppose. What about Mrs. Minelli? She didn’t mention that Mrs. Karukhina had ever been out.”