Settling Scores

by Martin Edwards

  “Do you check equally carefully those who go out?”

  Colonel Macaulay was momentarily disconcerted. “Why, no, I don’t suppose we do. I really don’t know. But anybody as distinctive-looking as Jimmy Clayton would certainly be noticed—in fact, I believe a lot of people were hanging around, waiting for him to come out.”

  Quarles nodded, looking like a very large and self-satisfied cat. “Well, gentlemen, I don’t think there’s much doubt about what happened. Jimmy Clayton—”

  But they were not destined to hear at this time Quarles’ ideas about what had happened to Jimmy Clayton. In the stillness outside came the sound of a car stopping. A voice called, “Hello there. Is anybody about?”

  They went outside to see two figures standing by a police car. One of them stepped forward, a grizzled man, square and chunky. “Colonel Macaulay? We were told we should find you here. My name’s Leeds, Inspector Leeds, C.I.D. Evening, Quarles.”

  “Good evening.” Quarles was staring at the man with Leeds, who still stood by the car. He went on staring as Inspector Leeds said that they would like to have a look round, and Colonel Macaulay told him that Mr. Quarles didn’t seem to take the affair very seriously.

  “Ah, Mr. Quarles has ideas of his own,” the Inspector said, like a man talking about his favourite nephew. “Very ingenious they are, too, sometimes—and very eccentric.”

  “I think I must have been wrong,” Quarles said. He addressed the man by the car directly. “What in the world are you doing here?”

  “This is my colleague Mervyn Briffitt,” Inspector Leeds said. “He is interested in the matter from another aspect.”

  Mervyn Briffitt was a small rosy man with fair curling hair which he wore rather longer than is fashionable, and a long, drooping, silky moustache. Quarles drew him aside as the others went on again to the dressing room. “Why are you here? What has a disappearing tennis player to do with one of the most important representatives of our counterespionage system?”

  Briffitt smiled and stroked his silky moustache. He had a pleasant but slightly affected voice. “You flatter me, Quarles. In itself, Clayton’s disappearance doesn’t interest me at all.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “Jimmy Clayton is engaged to a girl named Rita Foldes. Did you know that?”

  “Yes. Her family is in exile from—” And he named the particular Communist-ruled central European state from which the Foldeses had escaped.

  “And her father, Doctor Foldes, used to be Minister of State before the Communists took over and he got out. Did you know that?”

  “No. Why should I? What’s it got to do with Jimmy Clayton?”

  “Nothing perhaps.” Briffitt stroked his moustache again. “But Doctor Foldes disappeared yesterday evening—walked out of his flat and vanished. Today Jimmy Clayton, who’s engaged to marry his daughter, disappears too. Rather a coincidence, don’t you think?”

  Mervyn Briffitt said very little as they looked round the dressing room and bathroom yet again, but in some indefinable way the little rosy-faced man with the fair moustache took charge of proceedings.

  When they had finished, Inspector Leeds said, “I can handle the routine aspects of this, but I think it’s really your pigeon.”

  “I think so too. I’d like you all to keep quiet about it. And I’d like it kept out of the papers.”

  “But Jimmy’s playing in the doubles tomorrow,” Bobo Williams protested. “If he’s not here he’ll have to scratch.”

  “My dear Mr. Williams,” Briffitt said in his slightly affected voice. “I can assure you that I have more important things to worry about than whether this young man plays in a tennis match. Now, the night is young. I think it might be useful to have a little talk. Are you free, Quarles?”

  Quarles looked at his watch. The time was half-past eleven, and he had been up playing poker until four o’clock in the morning. “Of course.”

  “Good. You are Mr. Dobson, aren’t you?” Ronny Dobson started slightly, pulled at his flowered waistcoat, and admitted it. “Can you come along too? I’ve got a little flat just off Piccadilly and my man will make us a cup of coffee.”

  A little more than half an hour later the three of them were in the living room of Briffitt’s flat, drinking hot black coffee. It was the room of a man of taste, although the taste was slightly unusual. One wall of this room held Victorian conversation pieces, pictures of a kind that are just coming back into fashion; another held drawings and paintings, equally perverse, by Beardsley and Leonore Fini. Miro shared a third wall with some Japanese prints. With the coffee they drank cognac.

  “I have asked you to come here, Quarles, because within its limitations I respect your intelligence,” Briffitt said.

  “I am grateful for the compliment.” Quarles had sunk into a big armchair and his eyes were almost closed.

  “Besides, this is certainly not a case for ordinary police methods. There are possible diplomatic reactions. No doubt you came to a certain conclusion from what you saw in the dressing room.”

  “I did,” Quarles said doubtfully. “The position of this particular bathroom, the scratches, the hairs, the zipper bag—you know about the zipper bag?” Briffitt nodded. “They all seemed to lead to one conclusion. But I don’t understand Doctor Foldes’ disappearance, or any of the rest of it, so perhaps my ideas are wrong. Frankly, I don’t even understand why Mr. Dobson is here.”

  “Perhaps I can help,” Briffitt said with a faint smile. “Doctor Foldes is one of the most distinguished of his country’s exiles. He is chairman of the Committee for National Liberation—that is the exiles’ organisation through which they hope one day to regain power. Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Rumania—all these countries have their little groups of fanatical anti-Communist exiles. They talk and talk, scheme and plot, send emissaries home to make contacts and form cells—the usual kind of thing. It is part of my job to keep an eye on them.”

  “Where does Mr. Dobson come in?”

  “Mr. Dobson?” Briffitt looked down at his coffee. “He is also a member of the Committee for National Liberation. He came to this country eight years ago, and his name then was Dombos.”

  Ronny Dobson laughed. “I speak English pretty well, don’t I? I used to come over every year when I was a boy. My family was friendly with the Claytons and I often stayed with them. You are surprised, Mr. Quarles? But it sometimes pays to look a little foolish, and also to appear more English than the English.”

  Briffitt took a packet of black cigarettes out of his pocket, put one in a holder and lit it. “Recent happenings have caused splits in several of these committees. With the new line, the end of the cult of personality, the release of a good many prisoners, great pressure is being put onto some of the more distinguished exiles to go back. Foldes was one of them. He was visited last week—quite unofficially, of course—by somebody from his country’s legation. Probably he was offered a place in the government if he went back. My information is that he had not finally made up his mind.”

  “Where does your information come from?”

  Briffitt waved a hand. “Dobson here is a dedicated anti-Communist. He works with us from time to time, although I don’t publicly acknowledge acquaintance with him. Now, yesterday evening Foldes walked out of his flat. He has not been heard of since then.”

  “You think he has gone back?”

  “That is a possibility. There are certain things against it. His daughter Rita says that he would not have gone without telling her. He took no papers, packed no bag. But still, perhaps he has gone. Or perhaps he has been kidnapped by government agents over here. Or perhaps he has been killed by them. I should very much like to know which.”

  “And where does Jimmy Clayton come in?”

  “Ah ha.” Briffitt leaned back in his chair, pleased with his own subtlety. “Jimmy is engaged to Foldes’ daughter. Jimmy has a brother named Ralph, who is presumed to be dead. Jimmy disappears. Don’t those facts suggest anything to you, Quarles?”<
br />
  With his eyes closed, Quarles murmured, “Not very much.”

  “I am disappointed. Your mind is less flexible than I had hoped. It suggests to me that Ralph Clayton is still alive, that he is the go-between employed to persuade Foldes to return and that somehow he has employed Jimmy as his tool. Now, the fact that Jimmy Clayton has disappeared suggests further that Ralph Clayton has run into some trouble. That means Foldes is probably still in England. If he is,” Briffitt deliberately stubbed out his cigarette and put away the holder, “we’re going to find him.”

  Quarles said nothing. Ronny Dobson began to walk up and down the room. “It fits, you know, it fits. I’m pretty friendly with Jimmy even though he did take my girl away from me. Best man won, and all that. This morning he was very excited, told me he had some wonderful news, but couldn’t give me any details.”

  “You don’t think it was about tennis?” Briffitt asked.

  “I doubt it. He knew I wouldn’t be much interested in that. I’m sure it was something more personal.”

  “I gathered from Mrs. Clayton that Ralph’s death was well established,” Quarles said.

  Briffitt waved a hand. “Not finally. His body was supposed to have been seen, and the Chinese said he’d been killed in a bombing raid. But isn’t that exactly what they would have said if they intended to use him as an agent?”

  “Perhaps. I’m afraid you’re too subtle for me.” Briffitt looked sharply at him, but Quarles showed no sign of having spoken ironically. “We shall all feel a little foolish if Jimmy Clayton turns up in the morning, safe and sound. If he doesn’t, I’m prepared to concede that there may be something in your theory. Good night.”

  In the morning Jimmy Clayton had not returned, and his mother had no news of him. Quarles arrived at his office just after half-past nine and his secretary, pert Molly Player, said disapprovingly, “You’re late. Somebody here to see you. Her name’s Rita Foldes. Upset, but she’s a smasher.”

  “Thank you for all that information. Ask Miss Foldes to come in.”

  Looking at her across his big desk, Quarles on the whole agreed with his secretary. Rita Foldes’ eyes had shadows round them, but they were still remarkable eyes, dark and lustrous. Her brows were thick, her cheekbones high, and she had that darkly brooding look, rather like that of a bad English tragic actress, which in real life seems to belong exclusively to central and eastern Europeans.

  She was the sort of woman, Quarles reflected, capable of immense self-sacrifice, passionate love—and passionate hatred.

  She spoke now, abruptly. “Mr. Quarles, I talked to Ronny this morning and he told me you were going to try to find Jimmy. There is something I have to tell you.”

  She stared at him with painful intensity. The one flaw in her beauty, he thought, was that she might develop a moustache in later life.

  “It is something he said I was not to tell anybody.”

  “My dear Miss Foldes,” he said a little impatiently, “please make up your mind whether you are going to tell me this secret. If you are not going to tell me you are wasting my time, as well as your own.”

  She looked at him reproachfully. “Jimmy’s brother Ralph is still alive. Jimmy heard from him yesterday. Is that important?”

  “Very important. Tell me the details.”

  “Jimmy came in to see me yesterday morning. He was excited—oh, so excited. He said to me—I must try to remember the exact words—he said, ‘I have had a telephone call from Ralph, Rita. He is still alive. I am going to meet him.’”

  “You are sure of those words?”

  “I am quite sure, yes. Then he said that I must not tell anybody. He said, ‘Ralph says I am not to tell anyone at all, but that can’t mean you, Rita. But you promise to say nothing.’ I promised.” Her voice faltered.

  “I am sure he will forgive you. Now, Miss Foldes, you knew Ralph Clayton. What did you think of him?”

  She spoke hesitantly. “It is difficult. I have known them a long time—we used to come here for holidays when we were children. Then I did not think anything of Jimmy—he was just the younger brother, you understand.”

  “But Ralph?”

  “Ralph was very charming. He was attractive to women, you know. He was a good talker, played games well, made you feel that you were important to him. And yet—I do not know how to put this so that you understand it—there was always something strange in him, something detached.”

  “You were not surprised to learn that he had gone over to the Communists?”

  “I was shocked, yes. But surprised?” The shrug of her shoulders indicated resignation. “It is the world we live in. Then I came here with my father in 1948, and for a long time I did not meet Jimmy again. I was engaged to Ronny Dobson. But when I met Jimmy again—I knew there could be nobody else.”

  Quarles leaned forward, large hands stretched palm downward on the desk. “Now, Miss Foldes, I want you to answer this question, although you may think it a strange one. Suppose Jimmy had the choice of meeting you after a long period of absence, meeting his brother after a long period of absence, or playing in the semifinal at Wimbledon—which would he do?”

  A smile twitched at the corner of her mouth. “You are joking. It is your English sense of humour.”

  “Not at all. I was never more serious.”

  “Then I must be serious too.” She thought a moment, finger on chin. “It is ridiculous, of course. I shall never understand the English. But I think he would have played the tennis match.”

  Quarles sighed, whether from suppressed interest, fatigue, or boredom it would have been hard to say. From the outer office a noise could be heard, a scuffle, a chair overturning, Molly Player’s voice raised in protest. Then the door between Quarles’ office and his secretary’s room opened.

  A young man stood there, looking at them, head slightly down like a bull about to charge. He was dark-featured and strikingly handsome, and his resemblance to Rita Foldes was obvious. A revolver gleamed bluely in his hand. His voice was strongly accented. “What has she been telling you?”

  “My dear young man, you must put that revolver down.”

  “You have been telling him secrets, fool?” the young man said angrily.

  “Put that down,” Quarles said.

  The young man raised the gun slowly, and pointed it at Quarles. His lips were drawn up over his teeth in a sneering smile. What happened next was almost too quick for Rita’s eye to see. At one moment a heavy brass paperweight lay on Quarles’ desk; the next moment it had flown across the room and knocked the gun out of the young man’s hand.

  Quarles moved across the room with an agility surprising in so big a man and picked up gun and paperweight, while the young man cried out with pain and anger.

  “This,” Rita Foldes said calmly, “is my young brother Charles. He is, like my father, a member of our National Liberation Committee. He speaks loudly but performs little. You owe Mr. Quarles an apology, Charles.”

  “I am sorry,” Charles Foldes said. He added sulkily, “It was not loaded.”

  Quarles polished the brass paperweight on his sleeve and returned it to the desk. “Sit down. What secrets were you afraid your sister might tell?”

  “It is about their ridiculous committee,” she said. “Playing at being conspirators.”

  “It is very well to talk about playing.” Charles Foldes almost shouted the words. “For Andreas and Paul there was no play.”

  “What happened to Andreas and Paul?” Quarles asked.

  “They were sent back home as agents, picked up as soon as they arrived. We have a spy in our organisation, betraying our best men.”

  Quarles said softly, “And you think your father might have been this spy? That with his work done he might have gone back. Is that what worries you?”

  The young man did not answer. There was silence in the room for a moment, then the telephone rang. Quarles picked it up to hear the clipped, yet slightly languid tones of Mervyn Briffitt.

  “Look her
e, we’ve found a taxi-man who took Foldes down to the dock area on the night he disappeared. Says Foldes met someone there. Would you care to come along to my office while I talk to him?”

  Quarles said that he would, and told Briffitt that two members of the family were with him.

  “Bring them along by all means.”

  As they went out of the building, Quarles told them the news. “It looks as though your father may have gone back.”

  Rita Foldes shook her head in an insistent gesture of denial. And at that moment she slipped on the last step and fell heavily to the ground.

  When Quarles and her brother helped her up, her face was twisted with pain. With their help she hobbled to a taxi. “Have you sprained it?” Quarles asked.

  “It is nothing, it will be better soon. But I will not believe that my father went back of his own free will. I will never believe it, never, never.”

  This morning Mervyn Briffitt looked rosier and more cherubic than usual. He greeted Rita Foldes and her brother warmly. “Glad you could come along. It really does look as though we’re on the track of something. Now, here’s our taxi driver, Bill Savory. Just repeat that story you were telling me, Bill.”

  The taxi driver was a gnarled, hard-bitten little Cockney who showed some sign of regret that he had ever become mixed up in this affair. “I ought to get back on the beat, guv. I’m losing fares, see.”

  “That’s all right, my man,” Briffitt said in a lordly manner. “I’ll see you’re not the loser by it.”

  The taxi driver sighed, rested his hands on his knees, and gabbled away in a singsong voice. “I’m coasting along that Sunday evening just off Holland Road, see, in Belsiter Gardens, and this old gentleman comes out of a house.”

  “Number forty-four?” Rita Foldes said.

  The taxi driver regarded her with a look of patient pity. “I couldn’t say, miss, wasn’t looking at the numbers.”

  “But you recognise this photograph?” With a conjuror’s quickness Briffitt produced a photograph. Quarles, looking over his shoulder, saw the face of Doctor Foldes, vaguely familiar from newspaper photographs—the face of a European liberal, shrewd, tolerant, patient, a little sad, the hands clasped together in a gesture expressing resignation, the pince-nez adding an almost comic scholarly touch.