Hartinger's Mouse (Commander Shaw Book 12)

by Philip McCutchan

  He giggled. Jagger was like that. I found him excessively wearing on the nerves. Anyway, I decided not to bother with the mouse since it was on its way to Porton Down. Wiltshire was a little off track for me; I intended to head north for Yorkshire, which was where Lesley Hartinger had already gone. Her late husband’s friends, some people named Welleston, lived in the village of Aysgarth, right in the middle of the Dales — in Wensleydale, where they make the cheese. I reckoned I could make it in five hours, or four with luck. I looked at my watch and said goodbye to Jagger, had a quick meal in a pub, and headed for the M1. At 1800 hours Radio Four came up with the BBC news. It nearly sent me over the central reservation. A Ministry of Health car, with two scientific officers and a physician aboard, escorted by two motor-cycle policemen, had been waved down by a motorized police patrol on the A4, just west of Marlborough and before the roundabout where the Devizes-Swindon road joined, and had been ordered to turn off to the right into a little-used minor road leading to Avebury. The car and its escort had been stopped again alongside the field of standing stones handed down from ancient Britain, and the scientific officers, the physician, the driver and the two motor-cycle policemen had been savagely mown down by bursts of fire from two submachine-guns. They had all died except one of the policemen, to whom the BBC was indebted for the description of the incident. This man had been knocked out by a glancing bullet and hadn’t seen the getaway, but a getaway there had certainly been, and a nice clear one, and there was so far no sign of the fake police or their vehicle. There was no mention, in that bulletin, of any mouse; the public was still to be lulled whenever possible. But in my mind there was no doubt about the fact that Hartinger’s mouse was not after all going to Porton Down!

  5

  I LIKE Yorkshire; I like the space and freedom and beauty of the Dales, the Pennine majesty and the white clouds sometimes piled behind the peaks. There is a splendid road that runs through Northallerton to Kendal in Westmorland, a road deserving a more poetic name than the A684. In the middle of this road is Aysgarth. I approached the village via the valley of the Wharfe, turning off the main road just beyond Ilkley, and I reached the Wellestons’ house, which was actually a little outside Aysgarth itself, at 2130 hours. I arrived unheralded, because frankly I wanted to catch Lesley Hartinger on the hop. Maybe it wasn’t nice, but it was necessary. A sudden confrontation has an impact all its own.

  She was not in.

  The door was opened to me by a middle-aged, good-looking woman whom I took, rightly, to be Mrs Welleston, and I identified myself and asked for Mrs Hartinger. I was told she had walked down to the Falls with Mrs Welleston’s husband. “She’s taking it dreadfully badly,” Mrs Welleston said. “I think she found she just couldn’t stay in the house.” She hesitated, giving me a critical looking over. “I hope you won’t mind my saying so, but isn’t it rather late for a call, Commander Shaw?”

  “I’m afraid it is, but it’s very important I should talk to Mrs Hartinger as soon as possible.”

  “Is this to do with — what happened?”

  “Indirectly, yes.”

  “You’re not the police?”

  I said, “No, not the police.”

  “I didn’t think you were. But in that case …”

  “I have official standing.”

  “Oh, I see,” she said. She didn’t probe any more and she asked me to come in.

  I asked, “How long will Mrs Hartinger be, do you think?”

  “I really don’t know. Not long, I imagine.”

  “You wouldn’t mind,” I said, “if I walked down to the Falls to find her myself?”

  “Good gracious, I don’t mind, but is there really all that hurry, Commander Shaw?”

  I said, “I’m afraid there is. I still have to find a bed for the night.” What I really meant was, Lesley Hartinger might find it easier to talk to me out in the open, rather than in a drawing-room. Running water is usually soothing. I added, “I know these parts, I can find my way.”

  Mrs Welleston looked slightly puzzled but she said no more and let me out of the house. I walked down into the village and turned along the road to the Falls, past the guest house on the corner and the gift shop with its souvenirs. I heard the rushing silvery sound of Aysgarth Falls ahead and as I came around the bend and down the hill I saw, in what was left of the light, a man and a woman leaning against the low stone wall looking down on the torrent that beat against the rocks. The man had a foot lifted on the wall, and was leaning towards the woman, talking to her earnestly. The water-sounds drowned his words. I came up behind them and let a stone roll ahead of me, and they turned, looking startled at my approach. The trees were dark and thick behind them, beyond the water. Feeling like Stanley in Darkest Africa, I said, “Mrs Hartinger, isn’t it?”

  She seemed to catch her breath. “Why yes —”

  The man, Welleston, put a hand on her arm and faced me like a dog protecting its mistress. “If you’re a reporter,” he blurted at me, “I’ll ask you to leave this lady alone. She —”

  “I’m not a reporter,” I said. “Far from it. Currently you can take it I’m representing the security side of the Ministry of Health. We think Mrs Hartinger may be able to help us uncover a few facts about her husband’s death. Not only that. You’ll both be aware of the outbreaks of a new skin disease. We have grounds for believing these two things may be linked. I’m sure I don’t need to underline the urgency of combating these outbreaks to you, Mr Welleston.”

  “No,” he said. “No, that’s true.” I knew I was on safe ground in talking to Welleston; I had familiarized myself with his background as soon as I had arrived in London off the jet from Houston. Birds of a feather, and all that — Welleston had been a long-standing friend of the Hartingers and was himself a doctor, not of medicine, but of science, his degree being an American one although he was British. He had had an honourable and distinguished career in his field, which was research into the stresses and strains on metals used in space exploration. He had done some work for NASA, and also for the British Ministry of Defence in aeronautical matters; he would have a very full awareness of the Official Secrets Act. So I gave Welleston my name and some further details and, with Aysgarth Falls for a novel background, I started a probe on Lesley Hartinger, conscious all the while that she had lost none of the beauty as pictured in the New Yorker years ago. And naturally enough, she was anxious to help. Back in Houston, Colonel Ingram had told me Hartinger’s object in coming to England had been to deliver his speech to the Royal College of Physicians, to renew some contacts, and to take a brief holiday in the Yorkshire Dales. I asked his widow what else there was behind his visit and I am sure her answer was entirely honest: she didn’t know and in fact doubted if there was any other reason.

  “He didn’t ever say anything about contacting, for instance, the Health Ministry or other authorities over here?”

  “Never.”

  “Did he ever mention my name?”

  “Why, no, he didn’t. Did he know you?”

  I said, “He didn’t know me, but he may have known of me, Mrs Hartinger. You see, I believe he may have been trying to make contact with me when he was shot. As a matter of fact, and this is strictly between ourselves, he’d followed me that night, all the way from London into Hampshire — where the shooting happened. Now, I don’t know why that was, but if I could find that out, it could be a very great help.”

  “In what way?”

  I shrugged. “I can’t say, until I know a little more. He may have had information he wanted to pass on — something for our Government.”

  “But surely, if he had anything like that in mind, he’d have passed it to Washington, wouldn’t he, not London?”

  “One would think so, but he may have had good reasons for not doing that — that is, for wanting to contact London direct. One of those reasons, indeed the reason, just could check with what’s going on over here now. I mean the skin-loss thing, Mrs Hartinger. It’s this country that’s being aff
ected, not the States. Dr Hartinger may have had some foreknowledge — which would explain why he had to be stopped, you see.” I paused; the sounds from the rushing torrent behind were very loud and clear, and the night air was crisp and fresh and sweet-smelling. “Can you think of anything that might help — any conversation that didn’t seem important or relevant to all this at the time, any visitors he may have had, places he went to — anything like that?”

  She shook her head, thinking back dutifully. I saw the sparkle of tears as memory was stirred. I hated having to force her thoughts in that direction. After a while she said, “No, Commander Shaw, I just can’t think of anything.” Then she frowned and bit her lip and said, “The only thing you might say was, well, kind of out of routine was a visit from a German professor — German by birth, but British by naturalization.”

  “He visited your home, Mrs Hartinger?”

  “Why, no, not our home. The laboratory. Ewart just happened to mention it because he was unusually late back. He lives in Britain, this professor — I guess I’ve forgotten his name now. I gathered his interests were the same as Ewart’s — studying the possibility of diseases being brought back from space probes —”

  Welleston broke in there. “Was this Fesse?” he asked. “Konrad Fesse?”

  “Why yes, it was,” she said. “That was the name. I remember now.”

  Welleston turned to me. “He’s very well-known. He’s a medical man, of course, basically. He’s on the research side. Quite a big reputation.”

  “Big enough to be invited to Houston, evidently,” I said. “What else did your husband say about him, Mrs Hartinger?”

  “Oh … just that he’d been given facilities to look around.”

  “I understand your husband was one of a team experimenting on some mice at the laboratory?”

  She said, “Do you? Well, he may have been, but I really can’t say.”

  “So you can’t tell me if Professor Fesse took a look at the experiments on those mice?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Ewart never did talk about his work, even to me. Not in any detail, I mean.”

  I nodded, and asked casually, “Do you remember which day it was that Fesse visited the laboratory?”

  “Yes,” she said, and again I saw tears. Her voice was a shade muffled when she went on, “It was my husband’s birthday, you see, so I do remember. It was July 2nd.”

  This happened to be two days after the astronauts had been discharged from quarantine — and very possibly after Flaherty had given his mice their injections. And, as I had seen for myself, one of those injected mice had failed to react. Just one. I found the thought intriguing. After that we all walked back to the house, where the Welles-tons kindly put me up for the night. The last question I asked Mrs Hartinger was whether her husband had intended contacting this Fesse while he was in England, but she had no idea, said he hadn’t spoken of it to her. After a very early breakfast next morning, I drove south and fetched up at Focal House, where I got a cable encoded and sent to our office in Washington asking for some further information from Houston. The reply came back inside four hours. Konrad Fesse had visited the experimental mice and his visit had indeed taken place after the injections had been given, from which it followed that the non-growth of one mouse had been noted after Fesse had been there. It wasn’t much to go on and my theories may have been very, very wide of the mark but I have often found that it does no harm to let the imagination run its course and see where it ends up. This time it went like this: Fesse, somehow or other — via Hartinger, perhaps? — knew in advance what Flaherty was experimenting on, and he had gone to Houston equipped with a plain ordinary mouse. When no-one was looking he had substituted this mouse for one of the injected ones, which he had concealed about his person. As a respected man of learning and achievement, Konrad Fesse, though naturally subject to all the usual security checks, would not be likely to be made to undergo a stolen mouse check and he would have got away with it easily and totally unsuspected.

  Fine. But the theory left too many questions in the air. What did Fesse want the mouse for? Experiments of his own, possibly, leading to a march stolen upon the Americans. There may have been honour among thieves, but I doubted if there was a hell of a lot among competing scientists, one way and another — at any rate, among those of differing nationalities. But where did Hartinger fit, and why had he been following me? Why had he brought the extra mouse? Maybe it was for Fesse, so he could have a fall-back one if the first died. Or maybe it was just that Fesse looked like me and Hartinger thought he was following Fesse, but in that case why … and so on, and so on. Blank. And the yellow dust still didn’t fit. But there would be no harm in having a discreet word with Fesse.

  It took me no time at all to find out the background details of Professor Fesse. He had an impressive record and seemed to be quite a brain. He had served as a temporary Medical Officer with the German Army during the war and some years after the victory he had come to Britain and, in due course, had taken out naturalization papers. He had no known political affiliations and seemed a safe enough bet securitywise. Currently he lived in Cambridgeshire. Horsted Cottage, Fenlavington was his address; Fenlavington being a village on the fringes of the Isle of Ely and, presumably, handy for Cambridge where Fesse held a university appointment. Because I felt I might need a witness, I asked Jagger if he would care to come along with me to Fenlavington. He said yes, he would very much.

  “The pressure’s coming on us too,” he told me.

  “In what way?”

  “The local authorities are getting worried — more than worried.” He pushed hair out of his eyes with an extravagant gesture. “They’re doing their collective nuts. It’s not my direct worry, of course,” he added, “but if I can help out — well, you know me, sailor.”

  I’d got more or less used to his calling me sailor by now, though it still grated. I said, “Yes, I know you all right, Jagger. Keep in with the brass and one day it’ll count in your favour.”

  He gave me an odd look. “It’s not so much that,” he said. “I have friends and relatives, you know. Ageing parents, and a sister with two kids.”

  I knew just what he meant and I apologized. “What’s the latest state?” I asked. “The true state — not what the papers are allowed to print.”

  “Bad, and getting worse.” There was no levity in his tone now. “You know about the girl who died in Pinner. That’s where my sister lives, as it happens, sailor. It’s spread fast … they’ve closed the schools there. That’ll be in the papers this evening, of course. After that, we’re going to have real trouble on our hands unless someone comes up with some answers pretty fast.”

  I said, “Maybe we’ll get something out of Fesse, so let’s go, Jagger.”

  He nodded, had a word with April Goodhart on his intercom, and we left the Home Office and got in my car. Jagger was unusually silent until, harking back to what I had said, he remarked that Fesse was unlikely to be much use, because if he’d been in a position to help, he would have come forward by this time.

  “Check,” I said. “I’m beginning to think he may not want to even if he has got the know-how.”

  “That’s a forthright statement. Have you any evidence to support it?”

  I shook my head. “Not a thing. I may be dead wrong. It’s just a hunch — just the way my suspicious mind works.”

  “I don’t see what he’d want to get out of it.”

  “Nor do I, yet.”

  After a few moments Jagger asked, “I suppose you’re heading for the A10?”

  “Right, I am.”

  “You wouldn’t care to deviate?”

  There was something odd in his voice and I looked sideways at him. I said cautiously, “Depends where to, Jagger.”

  “Pinner.”

  “It’s a big deviation.”

  “Yes, I know. Oh, don’t worry, sailor. Forget it.”

  He was all tensed up, which was most unusual. I felt sorry for him. I as
ked, “That sister of yours?”

  He nodded. “Her husband’s abroad — he’s one of these big shots in industry. Years older than her. She’s a bit out of contact … you know what I mean. And all this happening. Still, that’s not your worry.”

  I was already wondering where I could best head off for Pinner. I said, “Just don’t take too long, Jagger, that’s all,” and then I found my route and turned off west. Jagger was quite touched, and humbly grateful. He said he hadn’t had time to get over to his sister’s the last two or three days but he’d spoken to her on the phone and she hadn’t sounded too good one way and another. When we came into the Pinner area I didn’t like the feel of things. I’ve always been somewhat sensitive to atmosphere and this one was distinctly off. There were not many children around although the schools were closed, and you could see the fearful anxiety in the faces of the parents of those who were on the streets. Those kids were being clutched tight every time another one showed up, in case they should touch and pick up the disease. The fear of it was like some terrible miasma, reaching out even to us in the car, and I began to feel a curious uncleanliness. There always is something unclean and revolting about a skin disease, which one associates with a smell of dirt. The feeling intensified as we pulled in to Jagger’s sister’s short drive. There was another car there ahead of us, by the front door. It was a Rover and somehow it looked like a doctor’s car. I pulled in behind it and we got out and Jagger rang the bell. There was no answer for a couple of minutes and then a girl, looking very like Jagger, came out with a dark-suited man.

  She was desperately glad to see Jagger. “Jay!” she said, quite breathless. “Oh, Jay dear, am I pleased you’ve come! You don’t know Dr Evans — my brother Jason, Dr Evans.”

  They shook hands; I stood back. I couldn’t read the doctor’s expression. He didn’t linger; he’d be busy, I knew. We went inside and Jagger introduced me. “How’re the kids, Beth?” he asked.