by Andrew Garve
During the next few days, my work at the office was scarcely more than a diversion from the serious business of getting in touch with Smiths. I ducked jobs shamelessly in order to have more time free. I needed all the time I could get because I often had to ring numbers more than once and sometimes, when I couldn’t get a reply at all, there was nothing for it but to visit the house and check with the neighbors. It was a long job, but I plugged away and by the end of a week or so I’d finished the first list of entries.
Then, willy nilly, I had to break off the search. The I. R.A. had suddenly become very active in Ulster, attacking police stations and blowing up buildings, and in the middle of June I was sent off to Ireland to cover the story. It was a satisfying assignment, the more so because the Post decided to go into the situation in a big way and asked for a lot of background material. I was in Eire and Northern Ireland through the rest of June and most of July, buried for much of the time in the wilds of the lovely border country.
I’d stopped looking at Mary’s picture by now. I’d looked at all the snaps so often they no longer lived for me. I preferred to imagine her as I’d known her, during those few unbelievably carefree days in Jersey. Everything about her was as vividly fresh in my memory as the day we’d parted. I still had an almost unbearable ache for her. I still worried about her. I often wondered what she was doing, what she was thinking. It was hard to believe I wasn’t sometimes in her thoughts. I still found the whole business quite incredible. The unsolved mystery nagged at me constantly. She’d left a mark on me that would never fade. I knew that. I tried not to dwell morbidly, but it wasn’t easy.
It was late in July when I got back to London. I searched eagerly through my accumulated mail, for I hadn’t entirely lost the hope that Mary herself would one day try to get in touch with me again. But there was nothing. The lists of telephone numbers were still on my desk at the flat, with 210 numbers still unrung. I flung them into a wastebasket and went to the office. The news front was dead and there was absolutely nothing doing. I thought about Mary all day. When I got home I retrieved the lists and next day I started telephoning again.
It was the intermediate list, now—143 entries. I did a stint each morning. I was rarely on duty at the Post before two in the afternoon and often much later so that gave me time to drive out to places like Stanmore and Lee Green and Streatham to check on “no replies,’’ which were much more frequent now because it was the holiday season. By the beginning of August I’d nearly worked through the second batch. Then, suddenly, I picked up a scent.
I’d driven out to a place at Richmond that I’d telephoned on two successive mornings and three successive evenings without getting a reply. The name in the book was M. R. Smith, and the address 14B Weedon Court. By now these visits had become a completely routine affair, and as I turned into an extremely lush block of flats near the river I couldn’t have felt less expectant. A uniformed commissionaire was sitting behind a table in the lobby, reading a newspaper. I said I understood there was an M. R. Smith living at 14B and did he happen to know if it was a Miss Mary Smith. He said there wasn’t anyone named Smith living there now but there had been a Miss Mary Smith. I whisked out my snapshots and he took one look and said, “That’s right, that’s her.’’
I could have fallen on his neck. Eagerly I begged him to tell me more. He said that Miss Smith had given up the flat about three months ago. I asked him if he knew where she’d moved to and he said he didn’t. I said what about her mail and he said she’d come back twice to collect it and after that there hadn’t been any. I said I understood she’d shared her flat with a girl friend and he said, yes, but the girl friend, a Miss Bronson, had got married and he thought that was why Miss Smith had left, because the flats were expensive for a single woman on her own. I asked him if he knew where Miss Bronson had gone and he said, yes, she’d gone to Canada. He didn’t know either her married name or her address.
The promising trail seemed to have run into the sand, but I wasn’t too worried. The telephone people, I thought, would be able to give me the number that M. R. Smith of Weedon Court had transferred to and that would be all I needed. I found a call box and talked to “Inquiries’’ and after a short delay they told me they’d no record of a transfer to an M. R. Smith in recent months.
Frustrated, I returned to the commissionaire. I crackled a pound note between my fingers and asked him if there’d been any letters from Miss Smith after she’d left the flat, perhaps returning a key or settling a last bill. He said all correspondence of that sort would be at the head office and anyway he didn’t think it was likely because all settling up was done beforehand. I asked him if by any chance he knew where she’d worked and he said all he knew was that she’d been someone’s secretary and had often gone off in the mornings to the House of Commons.
The House of Commons! Of course! Now that I’d been told I could have kicked myself for not thinking of it before. It fitted Mary perfectly. The knowledge of affairs, the sophistication, the discretion, even the reading of the Times—it all added up to the political secretary. Excitement rose in me again. I thrust the pound note into the commissionaire’s hand and rushed out to the car and drove at top speed to Westminster. One of the policemen on duty at the House would be sure to know Mary if she was a regular visitor—it was their job to remember every face. The House was in recess, but work must be going on still and I’d probably be able to find someone who could tell me about her. I parked the car near the main entrance and went across to the policeman at the door. I produced my snapshots and explained rather breathlessly that they were of a Miss Mary Smith, whom I believed to be a secretary at the House, and asked him if he could tell me whose secretary she was. I was a bit pressing, especially when I saw from his expression that he’d recognized Mary, and he looked at me suspiciously. Instead of telling me right away he became maddeningly slow and official and asked me who I was and why I was interested and I had to show my press card and go into a lot of personal explanations before he was willing to talk. Then he became quite friendly. He said the lady in the picture had worked for Sir Horace Dimmock, who’d been the Secretary of State for the Colonies, but after Sir Horace had resigned his post and his seat a few months back on account of ill health, Miss Smith hadn’t been to the House any more and he’d no idea what had happened to her.
I thanked him and made for a phone box and looked up Dimmock’s number. It wasn’t in the book. Either he had an ex-directory number or he lived in the country, or both. I drove to the office to see if the library could help. There was an envelope full of Dimmock’s cuttings and about the first thing I came across was a reference to his constituency—South Hampshire. That, I remembered, was where Mary had stopped on her way to Southampton by car. Another piece had fallen into place. The next cutting was a gossip paragraph dated about a week after Easter saying that Sir Horace Dimmock, whose surprise resignation from the government had been announced the previous day, was planning to give up his Surrey home and settle in Jersey. I continued to riffle through the papers and presently found another paragraph, dated June, saying that Sir Horace had bought a house in Jersey on the outskirts of St. Helier and that he and Lady Dimmock would be moving in at once.
I could probably have got hold of his telephone number in Jersey but I didn’t think he’d be likely to give information about his secretary to a stranger over the phone. That evening I wrote him a letter, introducing myself and saying there was something I wanted to ask him that concerned me personally and that I was coming to Jersey in a day or two and would be most grateful if he could see me for a few minutes. Then I booked a seat on a plane for my first free day, a Saturday, and a couple of mornings later I flew to Jersey again. It was about noon when I reached the Dimmocks’ house, a pleasant villa overlooking the sea not very far from the Silver Bay. A maid opened the door and I asked her to give Sir Horace my name. She said Sir Horace was ill but she’d tell Lady Dimmock. A moment later I was asked in.
Lady Dimmock was whi
te-haired, gentle and charming. When I told her who I was she remembered my letter. She said she was sorry her husband wasn’t well enough to see me and was there anything she could do? I said I thought perhaps there was and told her that I’d met a Mary Smith in Jersey at Easter who I understood had been Sir Horace’s secretary. She nodded and said, yes, Mary had been one of her husband’s secretaries and if I’d met her at Easter that would have been when they’d got her to come to Jersey and take a preliminary look at a house for them, because they themselves had been in the south of France when the agent‘s particulars had arrived. I said, oh, was that it?—I’d wondered what Mary had been doing in Jersey, because although we’d got on very well together she’d been most secretive about the reason for her trip. Lady Dimmock smiled and said she could understand that, because if it had become known that the Colonial Secretary was planning to settle in Jersey, it would have been as good as announcing his resignation from the government and no secretary would have wanted to do that. I said of course not and moved on to my personal problem. I explained that I’d hoped to meet Mary again but that she’d left Jersey without giving me her address and although I’d made some progress in tracing her to her old address it now appeared that she’d moved, and did Lady Dimmock by any chance know her new one? It was a trivial thing to trouble her about, I said, but it was rather important to me. She smiled again and said she’d go and look—she thought Mary had written once from a new address, enclosing some papers which she’d overlooked when she’d left Sir Horace rather suddenly after Easter. She went and looked and after a few moments she came back with a letter. She said she’d found the address, but she wasn’t absolutely sure she ought to give it to me without Mary’s permission. I pretty well went down on my knees to her then. I said I’d fallen in love with Mary and wanted to marry her, but that a misunderstanding had arisen between us which I could hope to clear up only if I saw her again, and if her permission was asked she might not be willing to see me and then I might never get the chance to set things right. Lady Dimmock looked at me appraisingly for a moment and then said that in the circumstances she thought perhaps no harm would be done, and gave me the address. It was Flat 2, Oaklands, Ham Green Road, Kew.
I flew back to London that afternoon with pretty mixed feelings. It was true I’d got all the information I’d come for, and more. It was true that many things which had been a mystery before had been very simply explained. I knew just what Mary had been up to and why she hadn’t wanted to tell me whose secretary she was or identify herself too closely to a newspaperman. But the explanation had thrown no new light on her abrupt departure. She had not, it now appeared, been caught up in any dangerous tangle or melodramatic situation which might have accounted for her sudden decision. Perhaps, after all, the most obvious answer was the right one—that she’d simply changed her mind about me and ruthlessly written me off. Perhaps I should have had less belief in her and more humility. Anyway, there wasn’t much point in starting to speculate again at this stage. Soon, I’d know. And if I didn’t like the explanation, at least the long, distracting search would be over.
Once back in London, I wasted no time. I picked up my car and drove straight off to Kew. I got there just before nine. Ham Green Road was an avenue of large, old-fashioned, three-story houses, very different from Weedon Court, but tree-lined and pleasant enough in the summer dusk. I soon found Oaklands. There were three flats, and three bells, and Mary’s name was over the middle one. I rang it twice and waited tensely. After a moment I heard footsteps on the stairs. Then the door opened and Mary was standing there.
Chapter Three
For a second or two she just stood there, holding the door and looking at me, her eyes enormous with surprise. Then, in a scarcely audible voice, she said, “Peter!’’ There was alarm in her tone as well as surprise—and yet, it seemed to me a kind of relief, too.
It must have been a difficult moment for her. It was certainly difficult for me. I’d worked for this reunion, if you could call it that, for four long months, and now it had come I was suddenly at a loss for words. There was so much to ask and to say, I didn’t know where to begin. And anyway, I could scarcely breathe I was so moved. I said, “Hullo, Mary …’’ and stopped.
For a moment she didn’t seem to know what to do. Then she said, “You’d better come up, I suppose,’’ and she turned and led the way up a dimly lit flight of stairs to a little sitting room. The light was better there and I was able to take a closer look at her. She was thinner, and she looked as though she’d been missing a lot of sleep, but somehow it suited her. She seemed to have an added distinction.
She stood away from me, strained and guarded. “So you found me,’’ she said.
“Yes—I found you.’’
“How did you manage it?’’
“Perseverance,’’ I said. “‘Never say die’—remember? It would take me a week to tell you all the moves.’’
“You shouldn’t have done it, Peter. You don’t imagine I went off like that without a very good reason?’’
“I don’t know why you went off—but I certainly hope you’ll tell me. I used to be an interested party!’’
“I would so much rather not.’’
“Now that I’m here you haven’t much choice, have you?’’
“It would be much better if you just went away again. Honestly, Peter. For your sake and mine.’’
“Not a hope,’’ I said, and sat down.
She reached for a cigarette and lit it. Her hand was shaking. “I suppose it hasn’t occurred to you,’’ she said, “that I might find you—intrusive?’’
“Naturally it’s occurred to me. If that’s how it turns out I’ll push off right away—don’t worry. But it’s taken me four months to find you and I’m certainly not going to leave now without an explanation. Don’t you think I’m entitled to one?’’
“It’s not a question of being entitled. When you know the truth you’ll wish you hadn’t heard it.’’
I’ll take a chance on that.’’
She gave a little shrug. “Well, you’ve asked for it,’’ she said in a flat voice, “so here it is. It’s really very simple.… When I went back to the Paragon that last afternoon I picked up a paper in the lobby—and I read that my father had been arrested for murder.’’
I stared at her incredulously.
“So naturally I left at once.… The trial came on a month ago. My father was found guilty and condemned to death.’’
“Mary!’’
“He was reprieved last week—but only because they’re not hanging people now. He’ll probably be in prison for the rest of his life. And that’s all.’’
I was utterly appalled. Questions jostled in my mind, but I was so overcome with the horror of her situation that for a moment I couldn’t even speak.
“You must have read about it,’’ Mary went on. “Daddy’s real name is Francis Smith, but you’ll have known of him as John Galloway, the writer.’’
“Galloway …! Your father’s John Galloway?’’
“Yes,’’ she said.
“Oh, my God …!’’
I remembered the case only too well—the outlines of it, at least—for it had been a sensational one. Galloway, a famous and highly paid author of crime and adventure stories, had filched a plot in a most contemptible way from some wretched little amateur who’d fancied himself as a writer. The man had made trouble, and Galloway had murdered him. That was the gist of it. I was hazy about the details because I’d been in Eire when the case had been hitting the headlines, and since I’d got back I’d been too busy chasing Smiths of every description to catch up with old stuff. But I knew enough.
I said, “God, Mary, I’m so sorry.’’
“Thank you.’’
“You must have had a hell of a time.’’
“That’s an understatement,’’ she said wanly.
Silence fell between us like a curtain. In my wildest imaginings I’d never imagined anything as bad as this.
My mind was in a ferment and I groped in vain for adequate words. I remembered how warmly she’d always spoken of her father and my heart ached for her. I wanted terribly to do something for her, but I didn’t know what.
At last I said, “I can understand now your rushing off as you did—but why on earth didn’t you let me know afterward?’’
She gave a wry little smile. “Put yourself in my place for a moment. Would you have?’’
I thought about it, and I knew I wouldn’t. I’d have done exactly as she’d done.
I said, “What are you doing about yourself, anyway—are you living here alone?’’
“Yes.’’
“Is that a good idea?’’
“I prefer it that way.’’
“It’s a bit of a change from Weedon Court.’’
“Oh, you went there, did you? Yes, it is, but it’s much cheaper. That’s why I came, of course. Daddy used to subsidize me, but that’s finished now—the defense was very expensive, and there are some big debts. Not mine—I’m all right.’’
“Do you have a job?’’
“Not at the moment, but I’ll have to start looking for one soon.’’
“What about your friends?’’
“Oh, they’ve all been very kind. Most sympathetic!’’
“Do you see them?’’
“Not often … I’ll probably make some new ones in time.’’
“I suppose you see your father?’’
“Yes, I see him—after a fashion. There’s always a partition between us. Part of it’s glass, part of it’s a grille. I can either see him or hear him, but not both at once. It’s not exactly cozy.’’