by Andrew Garve
My shuba would have been dangerously hampering, so I changed it for a polo-neck sweater and a woollen scarf. Then I went out again to size up the job. It ought to be pretty straightforward, I decided, provided I could keep my mind concentrated and forget the space beneath. The iron railings which surrounded the two balconies were hip-high and smooth along the top, and it would be simple to put a leg over. On the outside of the railings there was a rather crumbly two-inch cement coping on which it should be possible to get a toe-hold. After that, it would be merely a question of stepping across. My nerve almost failed at the thought of that moment, and I decided that the sooner I got moving the better.
On the street corner opposite, the inevitable loudspeaker was blaring away, and down the hill from Lubianka Square a squad of Red Army girls were approaching, their uniformed bosoms out-thrust and their shrill voices raised in excruciating martial song. I let them go by, and then took a firm grip of the rail. It was so cold that it almost burned me, but gloves would have weakened my hold. A spot of moisture dripped from my nose and froze solid on my upper lip. I must be quick!
The crossing proved much less terrifying in fact than in imagination, and a few seconds later I stood on Tanya’s – now Kira’s – balcony, breathing rather hard. I bent to the snow and shone the torch, and as I’d expected, the track continued. I followed it silently to Kira’s french doors, and there it stopped. Beyond, the snow was virgin. There could be no possible doubt now. A transit had been made from Tanya’s room to Mullett’s room across the gap, and the marks of the passage had been deliberately obliterated. I remembered the wet newspaper that I’d discovered in Mullet’s basket. Folded, that would have been just the thing.
I was over-confident on the way back and nearly came to grief. As I swung across and put my weight on the corner of the ancient coping a triangle of cement cracked clean off. Just in time I tightened my grip on the rail and scrabbled wildly for a new foothold. The broken piece fell with a smack into the area below and I pressed myself to the rail and prayed that no one had been passing underneath just then. I waited a second or two, my heart pounding, but there was no alarm. A moment later I was safe back in my room, and I must say I’d never been more thankful to see it. I went downstairs to borrow the sticky paper from Potts and stayed to have a drink with him. When I got back it took me fifteen minutes to make a satisfactory job of the resealing, and then I dropped into a chair and lit my pipe.
The events of the previous night looked very different now in the light of this new discovery. It still wasn’t possible to be sure what had happened in Mullett’s room, but it was possible to have a theory that fitted a lot more of the known facts. For instance, the resealing of Mullett’s doors could now be explained. The murderer had presumably entered the room via the balconies while Mullett was still away broadcasting, and must have sealed the doors before his return. To do that, he must have carried the paste with him – and the wet tin in the waste-paper basket might well have been the container. Then he had lain in wait for Mullett, with the bottle in his hand – why he had failed to arm himself with a more reliable weapon was still a mystery. Anyway, he had struck his victim down and slipped out by way of the corridor.
I saw now why he had left the door ajar instead of shutting it. Having broken in by way of the balcony, he would naturally seek to give the impression that the murderer had entered by the door. He was obviously no fool.
He? – or she? Reluctantly I forced myself to face the facts, and whichever way I looked at them they were so unpleasant that I didn’t know how I’d begin to tell Jeff. Indeed, after a few minutes’ reflection I had almost begun to wish that I hadn’t poked my nose into the business at all. Jeff’s relationship with Tanya might not be very deep – he was much too sensible to get deeply involved with a Russian girl – and in the ordinary course of events he’d have left her with no more than a pang of sentimental regret. All the same, in his warm-hearted way he was fond of her, and his anxiety about her that afternoon had been very real. I awaited his return from the Legation party with misgiving.
He came swinging along the corridor at about eleven, and he sounded very cheerful. He stopped by the watchdog, and I heard him say, ‘It’s good to be alive – you ought to try it some time,’ with a chuckle and a complete disregard of the fact that the man didn’t know what he was talking about. It seemed a shame to damp those spirits, and if he’d gone to his room I’d have turned in and left the revelations till morning. He didn’t, though – he came and banged on my door.
‘What, all alone, you old misanthrope!’ he exclaimed. He slipped off his outdoor things and dropped into a chair. ‘Look what I’ve just collected.’ He handed me a slip of paper. ‘I guess you were right, George.’
It was a telegram from Simferopol, in English, and it said SORRY I RUSHED OFF WITHOUT SAYING GOOD-BYE AM FEELING BETTER ALREADY ALL LOVE TANYA. It had been dispatched at noon, and presumably had crossed Jeff’s own wire.
I read it through twice, very puzzled. ‘Well, that’s fine,’ I said. Things were getting extraordinarily complicated.
Jeff looked at me in surprise. ‘You sure sound delighted, bud. What’s on your mind?’
‘A hell of a lot,’ I said. ‘I’ve been making discoveries.’ I went on to tell him about the two lots of balcony doors that had been forced and resealed, and the track in the snow, and the newspaper and the tin. I didn’t make any direct reference to Tanya. I just waited, and let the facts sink in.
A look of bewilderment settled on his face, and there was a short silence. He fumbled for a cigarette and lit it and blew smoke across the room. ‘Well, I guess that’s pretty conclusive,’ he said at last. ‘Mighty smart of you to find out. Some guy obviously got into Tanya’s room when she wasn’t there and used her doors.’ He was mentally stalling, and he knew it, and I knew it.
‘They don’t hand out room keys to any Tom, Dick or Harry,’ I said. ‘Besides, Tanya was in her room all the evening, working.’
‘She may have slipped out.’
‘She may, yes.’
He suddenly looked truculent, and I thought for a second of the night we’d scrapped about the two Wills’s. ‘Are you suggesting that Tanya bumped off Mullett? – because it darned well sounds like it.’
‘If I’m raising the possibility, I’m not doing it for pleasure. Look, Jeff, what do you say we drop the whole thing? We’ll be up to our necks before we know where we are.’
‘Drop it, hell! We’re going to get it straight now we’ve started. I reckon you must be as screwy as the Russians. Tanya’s not the bottle-bashing type – look at the size of her, for one thing. She’d have had to stand on a chair to hit Mullett, and then he wouldn’t have felt it. It’s fantastic.’
I puffed unhappily at my pipe. ‘Perhaps so – but Mullett’s skull was thin, and if she’s tough enough for mountaineering I’d say she was tough enough for anything. I know it sounds damned unlikely, but that evidence takes a bit of getting round.’
Jeff gave an exclamation of impatience. For Pete’s sake! – what would she have against Mullett?’
‘Nothing that I know of. She must have met him when he was out here during the war, of course. She must have met everybody. I suppose there could have been something between them – though I confess I never heard that Mullett was interested in women.’
‘And I never heard that Tanya was interested in Mullett! What could he have given her that other people couldn’t? I just don’t believe it. Anyway, look how she behaved. A woman who’d just cracked a man’s skull with a bottle wouldn’t fall in a faint when she saw the corpse a second time.’
‘She might pretend to.’
‘Look, bud, I brought her round. She was out – clean out. I’d stake my last nickel that the first she knew of Mullett’s murder was when she saw him stretched on the floor.’ He pulled savagely on his cigarette. ‘There’s another thing too – she wouldn’t have had time to do it. Why, I was with her myself until somewhere around quarter after nine. Mullett
was probably dead by then. Anyway, we know he was dead ten minutes later, and if there’s one thing certain it’s that Tanya couldn’t have gone to his room and killed him and sealed up his doors all inside ten minutes. You’re sure backing a loser.’
I suddenly felt immensely relieved. It was true – she couldn’t have done it. That last point of his clinched it, and I’d been slow not to see it before.
‘Stupid of me,’ I said. ‘Sorry Jeff! I had to raise the thing – it was on my mind – but don’t misunderstand me. I couldn’t see her in the part, either.’
He brightened. ‘Well, thank God for that. Let’s have a drink.’
I said, ‘I’m afraid it doesn’t let her out, though.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The murderer reached Mullett’s room through her room – through her french doors. Who sealed up her doors after him?’
He sat very still, groping for an answer as I had done. ‘Well,’ he said at last, ‘I guess the guy who unsealed them must have got in again, somehow, and sealed them up. There was such a schemozzle last night, anything could have happened.’
‘What about the time in between? You might as well face it, Jeff – Tanya must have known. It’s inconceivable that she could have sat in her room and not noticed what had happened. For one thing, there’d have been a hell of a draught.’
‘There wasn’t a draught when I took that drink in to her.’
‘Exactly. That was because she’d already resealed the doors.’
He clutched his hair. ‘Christ!’ he said, ‘this is horrible.’ He sat for a while, plunged in thought. ‘Okay,’ he said at last, ‘maybe she did know, but there must be some explanation. I can see Tanya as a lot of things, but not as a murderer’s accomplice. And we’re back where we were – why did she faint?’
I shrugged. ‘It’s one thing to know a murder’s going to be done, and another to see the results before your eyes.’
‘I don’t believe it,’ he said stoutly. ‘I don’t bloody well believe it.’
There was a long, gloomy silence while we both sought afresh for some chink in the evidence. There wasn’t one, though – that resealing of Tanya’s doors was damning. She must have been in it up to the neck.
Presently Jeff gave up groping and started off on a new track. ‘What beats me,’ he said, ‘is how the police came to miss this balcony business.’
‘I suppose they were concentrating on the corridor angle and didn’t bother to look any further.’
Jeff grunted. ‘If a man’s found murdered in a room, you don’t just accept the obvious. Even if it did seem likely that the murderer had come from the corridor, I’d have thought they’d have had a look round to make sure. Hell, they were in there long enough.’ He gave me an odd look. ‘Anyway, why did they bother to take the tin and the newspaper away with them?’
I didn’t get it. ‘I suppose they thought they might be clues.’
‘What, an old tin and an old newspaper? Those things, bud, were only clues in relation to the balcony doors.’
I stared at him, and a creepy feeling ran slowly up my spine. ‘Good Lord!’ I said softly, ‘you mean perhaps they did find out about the balcony!’ I thought about it, and suddenly all doubt disappeared. ‘Why, of course they did – what a fool I am! That’s why they wanted to look in my room – the explanation they gave seemed phony at the time. They’d discovered that Mullett’s doors had been forced from the outside and as I shared a balcony with him they wanted to find out if mine had. Don’t you see?’
‘I’m ahead of you,’ Jeff said grimly. ‘They’d discovered that your seals were intact. Then they’d do what you did – they’d realise that someone must have climbed from one balcony to the other. They’d examine the marks in the snow. They’d go to Tanya’s room and they discover that her doors had been resealed that evening.’ With a set face he took the telegram from his pocket and read it again. Then he screwed it up and flung it into a corner. ‘She’s gone to no health resort. I guess they could easily have arranged to have that sent. Oh, God!’
I couldn’t contradict him.
‘All the same,’ he said, frowning, ‘I don’t get it. She’d have told them everything. She’d have told them who the guy was who went through her room – she’d have had to. They must know who the real murderer is, and they’ve arrested an innocent man instead. That’s a swell set-up. What the hell do they think they’re playing at?’
‘It sounds to me,’ I said, ‘like “Murder Through the Looking-Glass.”
Chapter Ten
Once it became clear that the Russians were covering up for the murderer, anything seemed possible. Jeff said: ‘Maybe the M. V. D killed Mullett themselves. They could easily have fixed it.’
I thought about that, and of course he was right. If they’d wanted to get rid of Mullett they could have sent a man through Tanya’s room, and instructed her to seal up behind him, and rushed her off afterwards to some place where she’d be safe from curious questions until the affair had blown over. Tanya might simply have been the obedient young Soviet citizen, carrying out orders. In that case, though, surely they’d have removed her from the hotel before the murder was discovered? And anyway…
‘Why would they have wanted to bump off Mullett?’ I asked. ‘That really would have been killing the goose that laid the golden eggs.’
‘It seems that way, I agree,’ Jeff said slowly. But then what do we really know of Mullett, except that he was a pain in the neck to everybody? A lot of queer things happen to people with Soviet connections. You were suggesting just now that he might have got mixed up with Tanya – well, he might have got mixed up with the Russians. I know it sounds pretty cuckoo, but suppose he was a British agent, and the Russians found out. That pro-Soviet line of his could have been an act. Maybe he’s been spying all this time.’
‘You’ve more faith in the British Intelligence Service than I have, chum,’ I said. ‘I don’t believe that people who were dumb enough to let that atom man Fuchs get by would be smart enough to plant a man like Mullett. Besides, that stuff he talked had the ring of conviction. If he was putting it on all that time, he was a genius.’
‘Okay – it was just an idea.’ Jeff probed around for further possibilities. ‘Suppose he was a Russian agent, and for some reason they’d come to the conclusion that he wasn’t reliable any more. Plenty of guys have been bumped off for that. Maybe they asked him over here with the deliberate intention of killing him.’
I could sympathise with Jeff’s eagerness to exculpate Tanya, but I thought he was being a bit fanciful. ‘They’re capable of it, of course,’ I said, ‘but there’s not a shred of evidence. Frankly, I don’t believe the authorities had a hand in it – not in the actual killing. That bottle business was too crude for an official job. It smacks of the amateur to me.’ ‘Then why are they covering up?’
I shrugged. ‘Search me. They must feel they’ve got something at stake. I suppose if some important Russian had done it, someone they couldn’t bring to trial because he was too useful, they’d have covered up for him.’
‘Would they have covered up for a delegate?’
I felt a sudden stir of excitement. ‘That’s a thought! You know, I believe they might have done.’
‘It sure would have wrecked their campaign if they’d had to arrest Bolting or Schofield or Tranter on a murder rap. Hell, though, it’s still only surmise. This whole theory is only surmise. How do we prove it? What are we going to do?’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘we could try to break Kira down and get some confirmation from her – she must know a lot more than she’s admitted. Or we could follow up the address on that envelope I found – you never know, it might have something to do with the case. Or, of course, we could pipe down and forget the whole thing – that’s obviously what they’d like us to do.’
‘And let them get away with murder? Not bloody likely! I reckon Kira’s the best bet.’
‘I think so, too. We’d better not both see her togethe
r – she’ll think it’s a hold-up. Shall I talk to her?’
‘I guess you might as well – I didn’t get much change out of her. Anyway, you British have a smooth line in talk when you want something.’
‘There’s just one other thing,’ I said, as I got up. ‘How’s it going to affect Tanya if we ask a lot of questions?’
‘I figure it can’t make things any worse for her,’ he said glumly, ‘and there’s just a chance it might make them better – if we can get at the truth. You see, I still don’t think she’d help in a murder. Maybe I’m just a sap, but that’s the way it is.’ He picked up his coat. ‘So long, George.’
As soon as he’d gone I turned in, but it was some time before I slept. I had to decide what would be the best approach to Kira, and it was a bit tricky. I didn’t know how much she’d been told, or how tough she was, or what sort of strain she was under. I thought I’d go easy to start with and see how she shaped.
It was a few minutes after nine on the following morning when I knocked on her door. This time she was fully dressed, and all set for a day with the delegation. If she was surprised to see me she didn’t show it, but there was still a hint of reserve about her manner. I had a feeling that she must have been specially warned against newspaper-men. She was trying hard to be natural but not quite succeeding. I told her there was something particular I wanted to talk to her about and that it wouldn’t take long, and she threw a glance over at the watchdog and let me in. ‘I’m afraid I’ve finished all the coffee,’ she said.
‘Thanks – I’ve just had some.’ I came straight to the point. ‘Kira – Jeff’s still worried about Tanya.’
She smiled, showing pretty teeth. ‘I know,’ she said. He’s very foolish to do so. I told him yesterday that there was nothing to worry about.’