Aiding and Abetting

by Muriel Spark

  Lucan remembered vividly the horror of his botched murderous attacks. In his frantic telephone calls on that night in 1974 he had reportedly muttered incoherent phrases among which the words “mess” and “blood” were distinguished. He now decreed to himself that there should be no blood, no mess, in the disposal of Walker.

  In the meantime, having lost heavily at Longchamp, he thought he might as well call on Jean-Pierre Roget, lover of Hildegard Wolf the ex-stigmatic of Nuremberg, to see if there was any news of her, and maybe something to collect in exchange for his dangerous knowledge.

  Jean-Pierre was completing a new intricate inlay job on a chest of drawers for a museum of antique furniture, when the door of his workshop opened and in walked a good-looking dark-haired woman of about thirty-five who seemed obviously, to Jean-Pierre’s sharp mind, one of Hildegard’s patients. He was right.

  “I’m Mrs. Maisie Round, and I’ve come to dialogue with you,” she declared.

  “Oh, I thought you said you were going to sue for damages, Mrs. Round. Has your lawyer advised against?”

  “My guru suggests eyeball to eyeball, M. Roget. She’s usually right.”

  “You know,” said Jean-Pierre, “I’m not in touch with Hildegard.”

  “I have to dialogue. I have come to this venue to address the problem that Dr. Wolf has left me traumatically in midair. At the end of the day, instead of being cured I’m a worse wreck than before. I missed out on a marriage proposal. I want to stipulate that if this situation perpetuates I will need to have recourse to help in a private assisted living facility.”

  “Can’t your guru assist you in this—”

  A tall man had entered the shop. That melon-shaped head . . . Walker?—No, Lucky Lucan. He had entered before he could see Maisie Round standing behind Jean-Pierre at his workbench.

  “Lord Lucan,” said Jean-Pierre, “may I present Mrs. Maisie Round, another of Dr. Wolf’s patients?”

  “Lord Lucan!” she said.

  Lord Lucan had turned and walked swiftly out of the workshop. He could be seen hailing a taxi at the end of the street.

  “He’ll be back,” said Jean-Pierre. “He’s looking for money.”

  “Am I crazy or is that the Lucan who murdered the nanny years ago?”

  “You are right on both counts. Now I have to close shop, I’m afraid. I am late for a lunch date, hence the confusion.”

  Walker was crossing Paris in a taxi. He had seemed to spend a great deal of his life crossing cities in taxis. Lima, Rio, Boston, Glasgow, London, not to speak of Bulawayo, Lagos, Nairobi. All to get from one point to another in aid of Lucan. Now it was Paris, northeast to south, from a Banque Suisse to a Credit Lyonnais, and this time with no hope whatsoever in his heart. The account in the first bank had been closed, all the assets withdrawn in two operations, one day following the other, and this was, again, a day after a large deposit had been made in the name of Walker. Lucan must have returned to Paris, he must have gone to some gambling place (or, let’s think, yes, the last week of Longchamp) and cleaned out the Scottish connection loot. Now, if there was nothing deposited in the Lyonnais, Walker was practically penniless, alone in a rented apartment, the rent of which had been owing for eight weeks. Shortly, he would be homeless.

  And shortly, having discovered that his account in the French bank was also empty, he was on his way, in the Metro, to Jean-Pierre’s workshop.

  “No,” said Jean-Pierre, when Walker made directly plain his need for “a loan.” “Walker,” said Jean-Pierre, “you are Lucan, in which case you are wanted for murder and attempted murder, or you are Lucan’s double, guilty of the offense of aiding and abetting a criminal in his longterm evasion of the law; in other words you are a couple of criminals and you can kindly step out of my workshop.”

  “The story of Beate Pappenheim is not very pretty. The old warrant for her arrest has not been lifted.”

  “Don’t waste my time. It works both ways.”

  “We are more elusive than Hildegard.”

  A man came in, and got Jean-Pierre’s immediate attention. Walker said, “I’ll be back later,” and left. The man was looking for an antique fire guard, two of which Jean-Pierre was able to produce. There was a good deal of discussion and measuring. Finally the customer chose one, paid, and carried it away under his arm. As he left the shop another man stood in the doorway. The new arrival now entered. He was the African, Dr. Jacobs.

  “Do you have news?” said Dr. Jacobs.

  “I do. I’ve tracked her down to a hotel in London, where she’s booked in under her own name, Dr. Wolf. She doesn’t know it, but I’m leaving tonight for London, where I’ll join her.”

  “Tell her I’ve been anxious. I want to resume our sessions.”

  “If you really want Hildegard back, you can help me to rid her of a couple of nuisances. Two old men. They are making her life a hell, and she’s on the run from them, only from them.”

  “How can I help?”

  “Africa,” said Jean-Pierre. “They have been in Africa before, and to Africa they should return.” Jean-Pierre had poured wine for them both and he now pulled round a second chair from the other side of his workbench. They sat talking for two hours, at the end of which Jean-Pierre said, “Karl Jacobs, you are a true friend.”

  “Yes, I think so, Jean-Pierre Roget. I think, always, that I have that talent, to be a true friend.”

  When Jean-Pierre entered the lobby of the hotel at Queen’s Gate where Hildegard was staying, there was only a young studentlike man sitting in a chair reading the Evening Standard, and a blonde woman in a black-and-white suit at the desk. By the door were some small pieces of luggage. It was nearly nine-thirty. Jean-Pierre went over to the desk to ask for Hildegard. The woman had paid her bill and now folded it away in her bag. She started towards the door.

  “Hildegard!” He was so astonished to see her with her newly fair head of hair that he didn’t know quite what to say. He said, “Will you marry me?”

  “What should I do that for?” she said, not knowing, either, exactly what to say.

  “Your convalescent widower, Hertz, wants to marry you.”

  “I’ll have to consult my assistant, Dominique. She’s been married twice. What brings you here?”

  “You,” he said.

  “Well, we’re going right back. I’m the pursuer now, and I have the address of a couple of people who are on Lucan’s trail in Paris. They’ve seen him, he keeps evading them but they’ve seen him.”

  17

  Tall Walker, having obtained a temporary job as a Père Nöel in a Paris department store, could count on a modest pay for a few weeks ahead. He rather liked the job and fancied he suited it well.

  But Walker was weary. The furnished flat comprised two rooms, a kitchen and a bathroom. Lucky normally occupied the bedroom, while Walker slept on a divan in the sitting room. The place had been decorated by someone with a mania for stripes, pale stripes on the wallpaper, louder ones on the upholstery throughout the apartment. The bathroom tiles formed red stripes punctuated by little bunches of cherries and rosebuds. The towels were striped. The stripes in the sitting room were green and white. The wall-to-wall stuff on the floor, discernible as a yellowish green by origin, was now a matted and stained old brown. A tap in the bathroom dripped incessantly but Walker didn’t feel like approaching the concierge about it; there was the question of the overdue rent which the husband of the concierge ferociously wanted.

  Now Walker was idly practicing his part before a mirror above the mantelpiece; it seemed to him that he had been attitudinizing most of his life. He had been the perfect English butler in Mexico, he had been Lucky Lucan for over ten years in Central Africa, and recently in Paris; and now Father Christmas at the Bon Marché.

  A key in the lock of the front door. Lucky Lucan walked in, not a hair out of place. He held a white carrier bag from which he extracted a bottle of whisky. He put it down on a side table with a thud.

  “Where have you been?”


  Lucan, on his return from the kitchen with a corkscrew, two glasses, a bowl of ice, said, “Where have I been and what have I done with the money? I might just as well have stayed with my wife. Well, I’ve had a run of bad luck.”

  “I know we’re absolutely broke.”

  “No,” said Lucan, “I’ve just come back from Roget’s junk shop. I didn’t expect him to let me in, but do you know, he did willingly. I had a long talk with him. We’re in business again, we have to go back to Africa.”

  “Oh, God! Impossible!”

  “Can’t be helped. It’s inevitable. It’s a question of one of these tribal chiefs wanting an English tutor for his children. Two English tutors would be even more acceptable. The utmost discretion about us. His nephew is a Dr. Karl Jacobs—here’s his card—lives in Paris. There are three sons. No further questions asked. He wants them to grow up like English lords. That’s where I fit the bill.”

  “Do you trust Jacobs?”

  “I shouldn’t think so. I haven’t met him. But we’ve nothing much to lose. We’ve no option, in fact.”

  “And Roget?”

  “I don’t trust him. He’s a swine, besides. He makes it a condition that we take this job in Africa. A condition. Otherwise he’ll expose us.”

  “But Hildegard . . .”

  “He tells me Hildegard is well protected. She has the means to defend herself, we don’t. And that’s maybe the truth. Roget tried to follow me here in a taxi. Some hope! He failed.”

  “How much did you get in Scotland?”

  “Mind your own business.”

  “Haven’t you any other old friends?”

  “Plenty. One of them has a daughter who wants to get at me. She wants an interview. Writing a book. She’s going around with an old gambling friend of mine, Joe Murray. Her mother was Maria Twickenham. They even got on the same plane to Paris as I did. It was touch and go. They half recognized me and half didn’t, and then, it was too late, you know how it is.”

  “I can get a job as a butler again, anytime, Lucky. You can count me out of Africa.”

  “Oh no I can’t. I can make trouble for you and you know it.”

  “Not so much as I could make for you.”

  “Try it, then.”

  It occurred to Walker that much the same conversation had been repeated between them for years; for years on end. He would go to Africa because Lucky Lucan said so.

  “I hope,” he said, “that it will be a comfortable job.”

  “Very comfortable. Every comfort,” said Lucan.

  “What part exactly?”

  “It’s a small independent tribal state, north of the Congo, called Kanzia.”

  “I’ve heard of it. A small diamond mine, but extra large diamonds,” said Walker.

  “That’s it. And some copper. They do well. They import most things, including equipment for their very decent-sized army.”

  “Too hot,” said Walker.

  “The Chief’s residence has air conditioning.”

  “The Chief?”

  “His name’s Kanzia, like the place. He calls himself the Paramount Chief. He has a jacuzzi bath,” Lucan said.

  “I could swear,” said Lacey, “that I even saw him dressed as Santa Claus in a department store. Something about his shape, and very tall, no kidding.”

  This gave rise to another explosion of laughter all round. There were Lacey, Joe, Jean-Pierre, Hildegard, Dominique, Paul and Dick, with the help of Olivia, all dining together in Hildegard’s flat. It was a remarkably happy evening. Lacey, now due home for her children’s holidays, had decided to give up her quest. She was recounting with much merriment the number of occasions in which they had missed Lucan by a hair’s breadth, and the other occasions in which Joe was either too late or completely mistaken.

  “We did really see him on the plane. At Longchamp almost surely. But then Joe had a sighting at a lecture at the British Council. Now, if there is one place Lucan would not be, it would be a lecture at the British Council. A lecture on Ford Madox Ford.”

  “And then, you say he was Father Christmas . . .” said Hildegard.

  “That takes the biscuit,” said Joe.

  “Well, we’ve had a good time, Joe and I,” said Lacey. “It’s a pity we never caught up with him after all this effort.”

  “He would never have let you interview him.”

  “You think not? Even for old friends like Joe and my mother?”

  “I don’t know,” said Hildegard. They had not been told about Lucan’s double. It would be too much for them to take in with all these breaths of happiness they were experiencing. Even a simple manhunt had been so peripheral to their love affair that they had let him slip time and again, and enjoyed it.

  “I daresay he’ll go back to Africa,” said Jean-Pierre. “That’s where he always feels most secure, I imagine.”

  “Oh, surely,” said Hildegard.

  “I’m looking forward to getting back to normal, actually,” said Lacey.

  “Me, too,” said Hildegard. “I’m opening my office again next week.”

  18

  Kanzia was a thickly forested territory of about thirty square kilometers, within which was a clearing on a rocky plateau of about five square kilometers. It was bounded by a wide, reedy swamp in the north, a tributary river in the east, a lake in the south and an enemy in the west. That hostile neighbor kept the considerable armed forces of Kanzia constantly on the alert, and was generally useful when the Chief, old Delihu Kanzia, wanted to pick a fight to divert his people’s cravings for such indigestible ideas as democracy. As the Chief’s grandson, Karl Jacobs, had told Jean-Pierre, the tiny state was renowned for its having extracted over the years an exceptional number of extra-large diamond lumps, from a mine that as yet showed no signs of petering out.

  The Chief was supremely happy when his grandson, Karl, in Paris, sent him word by fax that a couple of English earls had been engaged to tutor his three sons, aged thirteen, fifteen and eighteen. He had other small children, but they could benefit from the prestigious village school of Kanzia in the meantime.

  For the last lap of their journey Lucky and Walker were borne each on a slung couch attached to four poles. They had left the jeep at the edge of the forest; the rest of the way was a footpath.

  “Flies, flies again,” said Lucan. “People who don’t know Africa don’t know how thick with flies the air is everywhere. Nobody writes about the flies. Flies, mosquitoes, flying ants, there’s no end to them.” He flourished a fly swat that one of his bearers had handed to him. They passed a woman with a child on her back, its eyes and mouth black with crawling flies. In Africa there was nothing to be done, ever, about the flies.

  Lucan’s four men sweated under their burden. They talked loudly all the way, shouting back also to Walker’s bearers.

  The Chief was impatient for their arrival. “What are two English earls doing here in these parts? They have committed crimes?” the wily fellow had asked one of his henchmen.

  “Well one of them is a nanny basher.”

  “What is a nanny?”

  “I think it’s some kind of an enemy.”

  “Then he’s a brave man, no?”

  “These are Christians. They might bring us a holy scripture and a string of beads. Take no notice.”

  “Oh Christians worship the Lamb, unlike the Hindus who worship the Cow. They wash in the blood of a lamb.”

  “I don’t know about that. I should think it was a sticky way to be washed.”

  “They say it makes them white, the blood of the lamb.”

  “They’re inscrutable, these people, but Karl says they are noblemen.”

  Delihu had sent his strongest bearers with their litters and arranged for a long strip of red carpet to be spread down the front steps of his large dwelling.

  19

  Hildegard’s business flourished over the following months. She disposed of most of the patients she had left behind when she went to London, for she did not believe
in longterm therapy. New patients abounded; she seemed to have the healing touch. She now also returned to her domestic life with Jean-Pierre, untroubled and unmarried as always.

  One day in the cold early spring of the following year, Dominique rang through to Hildegard while she was with a patient; this was an unusual procedure.

  “Dr. Karl Jacobs is here to see you personally.”

  “Good. Tell him to wait.”

  When his turn came round she greeted him warmly. “We’re in your debt, Dr. Jacobs. It’s wonderful in Paris these days without the Lucan menace. I hope . . .”

  “I bring you information.”

  “About them?”

  Karl Jacobs began his story:

  “You know, my grandfather believed they were both English earls. No matter, let him believe. The three sons did very well under their tuition. They learned to jump their horses over fences, they learned to cheat at poker and so on, in the best tradition of a gentleman. The only difficulty was between the two lords. Lord Lucan was hearing voices, and Lord Walker was also assailed by unaccountable fears which I can assure you are peculiar to white people in central Africa.

  “My grandfather Delihu was convinced Walker was bewitched, which is always possible in that land. Walker complained that the sun went down too quickly and the long starry nights chilled his soul. Lucan wanted to poison Walker; his voices recommended it. But Chief Delihu Kanzia objected. If you poison a man, you see, Dr. Wolf, you can’t eat him. My grandfather thought it over, and was advised by the good people of our medicinal miracles that the boys would benefit by consuming an earl; they would become, in effect, Earl Walkers if they should eat Walker. Which is logical—no?”

  “Yes,” said Hildegard. “That’s very logical. We become in some measure what we eat, not to mention what we see, hear and smell. The only difficulty is, as you know, Walker is not an earl. Lucan is the earl.”