by Howard Fast
Finally Smith-Chandler prodded me. “Come, Breckner, you must have some notion.”
“Yes, I suppose I have,” I replied. “I am finished.”
“You mean you will not accept another assignment?”
“Yes that’s what I mean.”
“Well, that’s a bit of something, isn’t it, Gorivich?”
“It’s not very surprising,” Gorivich said.
“Still, one hates to lose a good man. I suppose you know what has happened to you, Breckner?”
“Since we all know,” I said abruptly, “it’s not anything I desire to discuss here.”
“Isn’t that our privilege, Breckner—I mean, a proper subject for discussion is ours to choose, not yours—wouldn’t you say?”
I shook my head hopelessly and said softly, “‘The world is a thing gone mad tonight.’”
“Well said,” Smith-Chandler agreed, smiling, “and do you remember that other line from the same piece, ‘Into this bitter world, oh Terrible Huntsman’? This is what is, Breckner, you know—and the delusion is love. The simple, awful beauty of the assassin is that he does not delude himself; he is the truth, the deep, basic fact of man’s existence on this earth. Love is the lie, the poor, cheap, pitiful, corroding lie that brings only hopelessness and confusion. You think you have found love, Breckner. No. Oh, no indeed. You have found only confusion and despair.”
“Then I must live with the confusion and despair.”
“Or die with it.”
“Or die with it,” I agreed.
“You are a simpler man than I expected, Breckner,” Smith-Chandler said now, “and less intelligent too, I am afraid. Look at those five splendid paintings”—he leaned back and let his extended arm drift around the room—“only part of Gorivich’s fine collection. Each is like an angel’s heart, if you will forgive the extravagant simile, and each is for sale. Gorivich lives among them and their worth and beauty are his. There is the whole story. Nothing can be added to it. Do you understand me, Breckner?”
“I understand you.”
“But you will not change your mind, will you?”
“Even if I did,” I said, “that would never convince you.”
“It might. We regard you as an honest man,” Gorivich put in. “That was my introduction of you to Smith-Chandler here. I said that Breckner is an honest man.”
“So he said,” Smith-Chandler agreed.
“God save us from that kind of honesty!”
“But He never does,” Gorivich sighed. “Ah, well—nothing is constant, not even love, as you will discover, Breckner.
“Is there anything more?” I asked.
“No. Unless you have something to suggest?”
“Then may I leave now?” I asked.
Smith-Chandler nodded. I rose, and Gorivich escorted me to the door of the shop, and as he opened it for me, he smiled and said, “God bless.”
I imagine that, under all, he admired the English immensely.
Chapter 14
LEAVING them, I walked over to Oxford Street, and then along Oxford Street in the direction of Park Lane. I felt suddenly tired and old and filled with the wet damp of the London night, and I found myself pausing to look behind me and up this little street and down that one. I told myself that this was a case of nerves, plain and simple. I knew enough of The Department’s style to know that no hasty, mindless order to kill had been fastened upon me. What would be would be, but in all good time. I wanted to live; even if it was only the instinct of my flesh to survive, I nevertheless desired to live; but there were things I had to do first.
I was tired, and I waved down a cab to take me back to the hotel. At the Albert Hotel the lobby was empty and deserted, the porters beginning to mop and sweep for the following day—no gunman or spy sitting and waiting. Up in my suite there was only the wet chill of night.
Taking off my jacket, I sprawled on the bed and stared at the ceiling and tried to think. But all my thoughts were tight circles, and presently I fell asleep. It was four o’clock in the morning when I awakened, dragged myself to the bathroom to urinate, and then forced myself alert. The few hours of sleep would do for me.
I sat down at the desk in the sitting room, and I began to write. I put it down as it had happened, with the nearness and newness of it to remind me of every detail. I did not shape it as a confession or as an apology or even as an explanation but simply as a record of what had happened. I judged neither myself nor others, nor did I moralize. The world is filled with judgments and moralizations and is no better for it.
I wrote without stopping until dawn came, and then I sent down for coffee and more paper. The same skinny, undersized lad brought the coffee, and I asked him whether he worked the clock around.
“Oh, no, guv’nor—not one bit of it. You see, it’s a sort of swing shift. I finish up last night at ten, and then I come on at seven A.M. and work through the lunch shift. Like about two, I’m off for a day.”
“What did they give you today to report on me?”
“Nothing today. But I collected another pound last night, guv’nor.”
“I’ll give you five pounds to run an errand for me when you go off—say about two o’clock. But it must be your own thing—no words about it to them or anyone else.”
He grinned and said, “For five quid, guv’nor, I’ll run you a bleeding atom bomb up the asshole of creation, and never tell my own mum about it.”
“Come back then,” I said.
He left, and I went back to my manuscript. It was almost one o’clock when I had finished.
Now it is done, and I sit here with an aching sense of emptiness, as if the little that remained from my own being were washed out. I am very tired and beyond thought—certainly beyond any rational conclusion to what I have written. What I have here simply starts at a point and stops at another point, but in that manner it is as telling and sensible as most of the lives of our time. I was once Richard Breckner, but if I ask myself who I am now, I find no answer. I look at myself and there is emptiness, and God help me, I have looked at myself. It is like looking into a mirror and seeing, not your own image, but the whole three and a half billion faces of mankind, and then when you look again, it is only empty—
Perhaps with a single, gossamer thread that ties me to another human being whose name is Patience Quigley.
But when you look again, that, too, is gone.
Chapter 15
SHORTLY after three o’clock on the same day, the waiter from the Albert Hotel brought Breckner’s manuscript to the American Embassy. He asked for Mrs. Quigley, nor would he be satisfied with anything else but to place the manuscript in her own hands—explaining that such were his instructions. He received a substantial tip from Mrs. Quigley and went off well satisfied.
Patience Quigley took the manuscript up to her own room. Though it bore no return address or name and though she had refrained from asking the messenger who sent it—since she had been in the presence of one of the staff—she was quite certain that it came from Breckner, and she also had a very strong feeling that it was in lieu of Breckner, whom she would not see again.
She locked her door, opened the manuscript, and began to read. The first time she read it hurriedly, racing from page to page, her heart pounding, prey to waves of horror, fear, and disbelief. During this time Helen Adams knocked at her door and asked whether she would join some dinner guests for cocktails. Patience begged to be excused, claiming a severe sick headache as her reason. By five o’clock she had finished her first reading, and she sat for a while, the handwritten pages on her lap, staring at the wall and perhaps at herself as well.
After a while she was able to regain her composure, to gather her own thoughts. Her heart had stopped racing, and being more the master of herself, she began a second and more careful reading. She read slowly, with some degree of objectivity, and it was during this time that one of the servants came to tell her that dinner would soon be served and was she well enough to join them? She re
plied that she was still indisposed and without any appetite, but she felt that she might join the company in the drawing room after dinner. However, she soon became entirely immersed in the manuscript—more deeply so than during her first reading. She forgot everything but the record that Breckner had written down, and she had finished it a second time when there was a knock at her door and the very tentative voice of Helen Adams. Both the knock and the voice were gentle.
“Patty—are you all right?”
“I suppose so. As much as I ever will be.”
“I guess this is no time to ask you what happened?”
“No.”
“You don’t get sick headaches.”
“No.”
“Well, if you are all right, there’s an inspector from Scotland Yard in Burt’s office, and he would very much like to talk to you. But Burt told me to make it plain to you that you are under no compulsion to talk with him, and if you want him to be on his way or come back tomorrow, why, just say so.”
“Oh, no. I am fine and I will see him.”
“Only if you wish.”
“Please, Helen, I do wish and I hate this talking through a door, but I look as wretched as I feel. Give me ten minutes—please.”
Then Patience Quigley hid the manuscript in a drawer of her wardrobe, washed her face, put on a new mouth, and went downstairs to Burton Adams’ office.
Inspector Ridgeway was a pleasant-looking, cheerful man of forty or so, dressed in well-cut Irish tweeds, who bounced to his feet as Patience entered and helped her into a chair. Adams introduced them, telling Patience in a rather fatherly and patronizing manner, “Now you know, Pat, you don’t have to answer any question—and indeed you can walk out of here whenever you wish.”
“Good heavens,” the inspector said, “I didn’t come here to arrest or annoy Mrs. Quigley. I thought I made that plain enough.”
“So you did,” Adams agreed coldly.
“It’s simply a matter of some information the Metropolitan Police have put together, and a plea from us that Mrs. Quigley will lend a helping hand. We understand her position completely, and the last thought we have is to harass her.”
“I am sure,” Patience said. “Please go ahead.”
“It starts rather badly. I am told that Richard Breckner was a friend of yours.”
“An acquaintance,” Adams said.
“Please, Burt—yes, a friend. You say was. Is he dead?”
“You don’t appear very surprised, Mrs. Quigley.”
“I asked you whether he is dead,” she said, a trifle more shrilly.
“Yes, he is. He was shot at five o’clock this afternoon. At Regent Street, near Piccadilly. We think he was going into the BOAC ticket office there.”
“Oh, my God,” Patience whispered.
Watching her carefully, Inspector Ridgeway continued, “A car drove up—five bullets from a silenced automatic, one of those nasty little Schmidts that they make in his country—he himself was unarmed. Can I help you?”
She had swayed forward in her chair. Adams found some brandy in his desk, and as she took it, he demanded of Ridgeway, “Isn’t that enough?”
“I’m afraid not,” the inspector replied mildly. “Unless Mrs. Quigley feels that the questions are too much for her.”
“No. I am all right,” Patience said.
“I understand he was here at a cocktail party yesterday?”
“You know what Embassy parties are.”
“But he came with your invitation?” the inspector asked Patience.
“Our invitation,” Adams put in.
“Oh, Burt,” she said, “what’s the use of this sort of thing? I’m sure the inspector is not going to broadcast whatever we tell him.”
“Quite to the contrary,” Ridgeway said. “I have nothing for the press.”
“But the press knows you’re here.”
“For my own reasons. They don’t know why I am here.”
“Breckner was a friend of mine. I invited him to the party,” Patience said. “Surely that is no crime.”
“Unwise, perhaps, but no crime. As you say. Where did you meet him, Mrs. Quigley?”
“On the plane from Kennedy. He had the seat next to me. We spoke to each other. If you want to put the worst face on it—well, he picked me up.”
“I can think of nothing more innocuous than to chat with a charming woman on a plane. I’ve done it myself,” the inspector said, smiling. “You could have recognized him from that film he made.”
“I did.”
“There you are. Quite an interesting man. I suppose I couldn’t persuade you to come to the morgue and confirm the identification for us?”
“Absolutely not!” Adams cried. “I think, Inspector, that this is going too far!”
“Please, Burt,” Patience said, rising and mollifying the ambassador. “You are such a good friend and a pillar of strength. But if the inspector would like me to—then I want to go. Don’t argue against me.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I know that. I want to go.”
“I’ll send someone with you.”
“She’s perfectly safe, Mr. Adams,” the inspector said. “I will take her there and I will bring her back myself, and I think you can trust me. I will not persuade her to anything.”
“I know that.” She turned to Adams. “Please, Burt, be a doll and let it be this way. I’ll be back later, and I’ll have a nightcap with you and Helen if there’s anything I can clear up. But now I prefer to go with the inspector.”
“As you wish.” Adams shrugged, sighing, and rolling the whole matter off his shoulders. Ridgeway helped Patience to her feet and led her out to where his car was waiting.
Seated with Ridgeway in the closed-off back of the big squad car, Patience felt a sense of relief that served to unite her with her grief and at the same time separate her from it. Everything had happened too quickly, yet within the crazy rush of time there was an eternity between her first meeting with Breckner and this moment in the car with Inspector Ridgeway, and in that eternity everything of meaning had happened to her. She had experienced all there was to experience—as it seemed to her—and she was more weary than bereaved. She had no desire to weep.
“Do you know why Mr. Breckner was killed?” she asked Ridgeway.
“Ah, well—his kind rarely die of old age, you know.”
“His kind?”
“Now I am not saying that he was not a gentleman in all his dealings with you, Mrs. Quigley, but he’s had a shady past. There’s little doubt that he was an agent, and there’s talk he was one of their killers. Now I don’t know about that, and as a policeman I resist the temptation to moralize. That is the policeman’s disease. He made a film once—”
“I know the film,” she said.
“Of course. We mentioned it. The talk was that he killed the black man, but Africa’s a long way off. I don’t suppose you’d know about that?”
“No.”
“Or about his current job here in London?”
“No.”
“So we are not to have any good communication between us. I had a sort of hope that if I got you away from the Embassy, there might be a thing or two you would want to tell me.”
“No.”
“You don’t trust me, do you, Mrs. Quigley?”
“What do you mean by that, Inspector? I really don’t see any question of trust here. I met a man on a plane three days ago, and we were together for some of that time. I found him a strange and interesting man, and if you desire so much to be my damned father confessor, I became involved with him. Now he is dead. I think that what people have been should die with them, don’t you?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Then we differ.”
“May I ask why you are coming along to the morgue with me?”
“To identify him. Isn’t that what you wanted of me?”
“Not really,” the inspector confessed. “I thought that if we were alone for a little whil
e, there might be something you would tell me.”
Patience saw no point in continuing the discussion, and on his part the inspector gave up. For the rest of the drive they sat silently, side by side, and then Ridgeway was very much the gentleman and very considerate as he led her into a cold, dreary room that smelled of death and formaldehyde. A sheeted figure was pulled out of a cubbyhole, and for a moment or two she looked at the leaden-white face that had been Richard Breckner’s.
She nodded, and then Ridgeway led her out of the place and upstairs, where he found some brandy in a bottle in the desk of a colleague, and she drank it and thanked him.
“Please take me back now,” she begged.
“Of course. You’re quite sure of the identification?”
“Yes, quite sure.”
Driving back to the Embassy with her, Ridgeway turned over in his mind a series of questions, reenforced with platitudes, that he might ask her, and as he formulated them he dismissed them; and finally he said, “You know, Mrs. Quigley, I have often reflected upon the reasons why people cooperate with the police. Most are afraid, some have a healthy desire for good citizenship and all that sort of thing, and I think that some get a feeling of importance out of it. And naturally a few are interested in justice.”
“Then perhaps those know what justice is, Inspector.”
“Don’t you, Mrs. Quigley?”
“No, not at all.”
Chapter 16
IT was obvious to Patience, when she returned to the Embassy, that the Burton Adams attitude would be forbearance and understanding. There was tea and little sandwiches and a fire in the grate against the wet British night, and an obviously firm agreement between the two of them not to ask embarrassing questions. This made the atmosphere so impossible that finally Patience said, “Would you please stop being understanding and tell me just how dreadful everything is?”
“Not at all. I mean not at all dreadful,” Burton Adams said.