The Sun Chemist

by Lionel Davidson

  ‘It’s the small of my back that neels rubbing,’ she said drowsily.

  I rubbed it, for some time.

  ‘Why have you stopped?’

  ‘I thought you were asleep.’

  ‘Not yet. Beautifully soothing. Carry on till the first snore.’

  I carried on.

  ‘Nightie not in your way, is it?’ she said.

  There was no answer to this, so I silently raised it, and continued rubbing – evidently too beautifully.

  ‘Yes, well,’ she said, rather more alertly, ‘this thing will very likely strangle me in the night. Hang on.’ She wriggled away, and came back, without it.

  Oh, well.

  ‘You’re not roasting in that great uniform?’ she said.

  ‘They’re normal pajamas.’

  ‘My goodness, you’re buttoned up to the chin. Almost to the ears. You’re like a Red Guard,’ she said. ‘You’ll incinerate. Very unhealthy.’ She undid a button, and then another, and slipped her hand in.

  ‘That’s much better, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Of course it is.’ She snuggled herself back in place. ‘Well, it’s more or less totally delicious,’ she said. ‘Carry on, then.’

  The first snore seemed evidently now well at bay. After a while she said in my ear, ‘Beast subdued?’

  ‘Trying.’

  ‘Beasts have to be subdued.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Nature ordains.’

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘Wisely providing the means.’

  Well, people couldn’t be expected to keep their word about bed, and as Chaimchik had said, contests against determined forces had a predetermined end. But I was struck by her single-minded cunning, and she mistook the pause for dim-wittedness.

  ‘What I was thinking was that if that were a rightful object of the evening, the means of subjugation are close at hand, if you had another hand, and where the hell is it?’

  I produced the other hand.

  ‘Exactly. You gormless, half-witted, imbecilic – oh, God, darling.’

  The normal developments ensued, not too expertly at first but improving in the course of the evening’s objects, and satisfyingly enough, but I thought sadly I’d probably lost free and hoydenish Caroline, innocent swearing companion, and only gained a lover.

  3

  Saturday rolled on (in much the same rolling way as last Saturday, it occurred to me during the course of it) and so did Sunday. Monday brought Ettie and Hopcroft, the latter bushy and sparkling as ever. ‘Welcome homeland all well round at the old brain box, then?’ he said.

  ‘Fine. You look restored to manly vigor, Hopcroft.’

  ‘Oh, sure. Glad to get the papers and so on and so forth, were they?’

  ‘Very. It was nice of Olga to send them.’

  ‘I knew she would. She’s a good old horse. I rang her up over Christmas, incidentally. She’s still a bit cut up. Continuing ructions on the marital front. That old man of hers – mad as a hatter.’

  ‘What’s up with him?’

  ‘Bonkers. He rang her up Christmas Eve, raving that she’d wrecked the joint, out of spite. You know – Merry Christmas, you fiend.’

  ‘Wrecked the joint?’

  ‘Wimbledon. He’d had a break-in, apparently, and jumped to the conclusion she was behind it.’

  ‘I see,’ I said. ‘When was this?’

  ‘He wasn’t sure. He’d been away and popped back for something and found the place in this state of chaos, drawers out, papers everywhere. He rang her up, frothing.’

  ‘Was anything. taken?’

  ‘Well, he didn’t know what she had taken, you see. He thought she’d just gone on the rampage. Screaming that he was going to put the police on to her, and on to that driver of hers. All very upsetting for the poor old thing. I think it would be quite a nice idea if you went to see her, really. I mean, she has been jumping about rather for us.’

  ‘Yes, I was thinking that.’ I had been, but I now thought of it a good deal more seriously. The thick-ear, not to say cross-eye, aspects of the sweet-potato question had tended to recede over the past couple of days, and now came on again, very strongly. There was the question of what to tell Hopcroft, anyway. His yarning tendencies made particular disclosures unwise; on the other hand, with lab books to be pursued and eye-crossers still operating, nondisclosure was still less wise.

  ‘She’s not actually on top line yet, anyway,’ he said while I paused, ‘as Caroline might have told you. Oh, she won’t have blown in yet, will she? She’s in Hampshire.’

  She’d actually not long before blown out, to attend to her flat. ‘She mentioned on the phone that she’d found her a bit odd,’ I said.

  ‘Ah. Odd? Hmm. A touch fey, I would say. Not a jot of harm in her. Verochka was actually a relation of hers, you know.’

  ‘So I learned at Rehovot.’

  ‘I meant to tell you that day at the hospital. I knew there was something. Well, back to the old routine, I suppose.’ He was ruefully emptying a battered old briefcase.

  ‘I wouldn’t mind popping down to Swiss Cottage this morning,’ I said.

  ‘Ah, well, she isn’t there. At this friend’s, you see, at Frognal. I expect she’s gone back to work, anyway. Want me to give her a tinkle?’

  Hopcroft gave a couple of tinkles, to Frognal and to University College Hospital, the latter more extended and producing some exclamations.

  ‘Well, I’m blowed. Hang on just a tick, Olga … She’ll be home this afternoon about three,’ he said to me. ‘Like to go then?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Three is fine, Olga. Sure. I understand. What an absolute swine … Well, I never,’ he said, replacing the phone. ‘That chap is genuine nut-house material.’

  ‘Which chap?’

  ‘Her husband. Green. He’s gone and done her place. She got back last night and found it a shambles. What a damned shame. She’d just got it sorted out. Rotter.’

  ‘Is she sure he did it?’

  ‘Well, crikey! Papers like confetti everywhere. Paying her back, you see. She’s got the police coming round. They told her to leave everything as it was. She was apologizing for things being topsy-turvy again. Sweet old thing, really.’

  ‘Hmm.’ It seemed fortunate indeed that she’d got the papers off in time.

  ‘Do you want me to carry on as usual, or is there anything fresh to attend to?’

  ‘There might be,’ I said.

  ‘I expect you want to get sorted out a bit first.’

  ‘That’s it.’ It was a long shot, but it seemed as well to get Olga sorted out first.

  *

  We got there before three, and Hopcroft had a little yarn with the porter, proudly showing me the recess where he had received his boff and gone over whang. Olga was on the third floor, and a detective was just leaving as we arrived. He gave us rather a keen look, and Hopcroft said, ‘Quite all right. Friends of the family.’ He tried to start a conversation with the detective, but the man was not communicative and went; I was shaking hands with Olga. She was a large sloppy woman in a huge knitted costume and amber beads, no trace of the family connection with Verochka showing.

  ‘Well, it is a most malicious thing,’ she said, in some bewilderment. ‘To use a professional!’

  ‘He used a professional?’ Hopcroft said indignantly.

  ‘The detective said the door had been professionally forced. Oh, to think!’ There was a just discernible German accent, and the oddness showed up in a slight jerkiness, or perhaps mistiming, of gesture. She stared around at the confusion like a great tragic clown. The place certainly was a mess. Books had been tumbled off shelves, drawers hung open, papers scattered everywhere; the glass of some pictures was broken.

  ‘Well, if we just turn to,’ Hopcroft said, ‘we’ll have this lot back in a jiffy. It’s okay to do it now, is it?’

  ‘What can it matter? In the face of such malice,’ Olga said. ‘He knows how to hurt me – oh, yes
, he knows. The photo with my father!’ She had bent and was now clutching one, in a broken frame. I had a look at Vava with some interest. He was seated in a beach chair with a child of six or seven, presumably Olga, on his knee. The crowded background indicated a portion of the Baltic coast in the late 1920s. The child seemed to have been arrested in the act of picking her nose, and Vava in the act of restraining her. The photograph had been taken a moment too early.

  In persona, Vava seemed not unlike Ollie Hardy, the fat one of Laurel and Hardy – same little mustache, same plump chops and twinkling comicality. There was a look of the tenderest affection on his face as he strove to redirect finger from nose. I could see the charm of such a photo, but it was an odd one, surely, to frame and exhibit. Perhaps it was the only one of Vava, or perhaps in the very mistiming it had caught some essential quality of his, of them both, perceived and appreciated by Olga. There was certainly cause for celebration in her own unpredictable timing in the matter of the papers.

  Hopcroft had turned to meanwhile, and I gave him a hand; in a jiffy, as he’d said, the place was returning to rights, and Olga was inquiring if anyone would like soup. She had left the hospital without her lunch to meet the detective.

  ‘Always ready for a spot of soup,’ Hopcroft said, giving me a nudge. (‘Lonely old thing,’ he muttered in my ear.) We all had a spot.

  While having it, I thanked Olga for the letters and enlarged on their importance in the general picture of the thirties, which seemed to please her.

  ‘Is there any other correspondence, or lab books, that kind of thing?’ I said.

  ‘With Weizmann?’

  ‘With anybody. I was wondering if the name Pickles meant anything to you.’

  ‘Pickles. Should it?’

  ‘Your father might have mentioned him, or there might have been correspondence.’

  ‘Pickles. I don’t remember. I could get in touch with the oil companies he worked for. That I could certainly do,’ Olga said.

  ‘No, no, quite unnecessary! It wasn’t anything like that,’ I said, putting an immediate stopper on this one. ‘I simply wondered if you had anything.’

  But she hadn’t, and the long shot had been tried.

  ‘Who’s Pickles?’ Hopcroft said as we left.

  *

  I waited till he was on the seventh floor in Russell Square, with a glass in his hand, before I told him. He seemed stunned when I’d finished; particularly by the fate of the man in Terre Haute.

  ‘I mean, crikey!’ he said.

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘These chaps following me!’

  ‘Not the same ones, Hopcroft. Couldn’t be.’

  ‘But how could they have known what I was looking for, if I didn’t?’

  ‘Evidently from America. Have another drink.’

  He had one.

  ‘Olga’s flat not done by her husband,’ he said, bewildered, the parts slowly assembling in his mind.

  ‘Doubtful.’

  ‘And ditto Wimbledon. Not just burgled.’

  ‘It doesn’t look like it, does it?’

  ‘Oh, well, damn it. I mean, it makes you think.’

  ‘Still, all’s well now. The papers are safe.’

  ‘Yes, well, I just hope they know it. It gets dark a bit early now, doesn’t it?’ he said, peering out of the window.

  ‘It’s all over, Hopcroft. Cheer up.’

  ‘Yes, but do they know it’s over?’ His bushy little mustache was bristling and his eyes sparkling. The second drink had stirred him. ‘A chap is surely entitled to take thought if he has to creep about not knowing who is going to boff him next. I mean, I understand about Pickles and starving chaps and the fate of the world, et cetera, but how about things like police protection?’

  ‘You can’t have police following you about all over, Hopcroft. You wouldn’t even want it, would you?’

  ‘Well, there are certain obvious attractions if one is being followed at all, in knowing the chap in the rear is a policeman who is there to stop some other chap nipping in and giving one a boff. I mean, the thing is self-evident, isn’t it?’

  ‘Nobody’s going to do it, Hopcroft. There’s no reason, as I’ve tried to –’

  ‘Oh, quite. I don’t want to be awkward. But there was no reason before. I mean, in point of fact. I wasn’t carrying the papers. Only they didn’t know it,’ he said significantly. ‘Result, among other things, I couldn’t see straight for a week. If I make my point. I’ll have just one more, if I may. Small one.’

  I poured us both one. ‘Well, the reason for that was,’ I said, ‘that none of us knew what –’

  ‘Yes, well, with respect,’ he said, ‘I doubt if reason comes in it too much. As such. These were definitely not reasonable chaps. I mean, you couldn’t reason with them. I don’t want to labor the point, but it was a case of whang. Whoever set them on to me – you know, field of communications not strong. In fact, weak as arseholes. I mean, they might just get into the way of following me about and hitting me whenever they see me. They definitely need switching off, these chaps,’ he said urgently.

  ‘All right, fair enough.’

  ‘Exactly!’

  ‘You think we ought to hold off a bit?’ I said.

  ‘No question. Also the word passed, in no uncertain terms, that no further papers are available. Case absolutely beyond hope. No point.’

  ‘Well, I suppose I could ring up Israel.’

  ‘If that is the quickest way. You certainly could.’

  ‘All right.’ I went to the phone and dialed international.

  ‘What we want,’ I said, recapping, ‘is the information disseminated that Rehovot now has the papers.’

  ‘All of them. None more going. All got.’

  ‘To all interested parties in America.’

  ‘Every man jack. I mean, ideally I would like every sodding soul in America to know it,’ he said passionately. He was pouring himself another drink.

  I gave Meyer’s number, but this time there would be a delay of an hour. It didn’t look to me as if Hopcroft was going to get through the hour. He had become rather attached to my bottle, between peering out of the window. He was stretching his legs now, to peer more closely.

  ‘I’ll tell them all that, then,’ I said. ‘It’s been rather a trying day, Hopcroft. Why don’t you take a taxi home? At the old firm’s expense, of course.’

  ‘That’s very handsome. Streets still quite busy,’ he said, looking out.

  ‘Of course. It’s only six o’clock.’

  ‘Not quite as busy as normally, perhaps.’

  ‘I’ll come down with you, take a breath of fresh air,’ I said.

  We rode down in the lift and paced a little outside, waiting for a taxi. One came and Caroline stepped out.

  ‘Well, hello, there. How was everything?’ Hopcroft said amiably.

  Caroline sniffed. ‘It seems to have been fine,’ she said.

  ‘Jolly good. You won’t forget any of that?’ Hopcroft said, stepping in.

  ‘Rest assured.’

  ‘Right. Crikey!’ he said, subsiding inside.

  ‘What was that?’ Caroline said as the taxi took off.

  ‘Oh, well. Things happened today.’

  ‘Did they?’ she said. They’d happened to her, too. She had decided to go and see Willie. She’d told him what she had to tell him. She was giggling a bit in the lift, but crying when we got in the flat.

  4

  Hopcroft started work on Pickles without enthusiasm. He had been keeping what he described as a ‘low profile.’ There were certain difficulties with Pickles that there hadn’t been with Vava. With Vava there had been an exchange of correspondence at a time when Weizmann was famous and it was natural that correspondence should be preserved. Here there were only lab books, and probably not even in Weizmann’s writing, since in 1904 he couldn’t write English.

  Further, the experiments noted in the lab books had appeared to have so little practical importance that they had never be
en published. It was understandable that Pickles should keep them for a while – but for a lifetime? Even if he had, out of sentimental attachment, would his survivors have retained the same attachment? They were old notebooks, among perhaps dozens, scores of notebooks, now seventy years old. If it had been a long shot with Olga, this seemed an even longer one.

  But yet – and here it was a question of faith – Weizmann had said that Pickles had them. He had said so in 1952. He had known about Bradford, which seemed to argue some contact. If there had been contact, and with Weizmann the luminary in the world that he had become, might the family not have retained these mementos of an illustrious connection?

  It was all very iffy, but a lot of things were.

  We’d discussed all this, and Hopcroft had made somewhat gloomy preparations. He didn’t want any letters written off to Bradford in case we got one back with a firm’s name and address printed on it, and somebody else saw it. He had become preternaturally nervous about anyone knowing what he was doing. He’d looked up Bradford-on-Avon.

  ‘Population 7,800,’ he said.

  ‘That sounds a copeable small place.’

  ‘One extra would tend to show up in it, wouldn’t he?’ He carefully checked the area. Half an hour from Bath … Bath, population 84,900. Yes, well, I know where I shall be. No need to get in touch,’ he said on parting.

  He hadn’t been in touch himself, and he returned looking not much more cheerful.

  The Pickles family had hailed from Lancashire, and he hadn’t raised much in Wiltshire; still, he’d raised something. The family didn’t have the lab books, but there was a recollection of them. This was because Pickles had apparently many years before given them away, to a young student or a colleague, and at some subsequent time had tried to get them back, unsuccessfully, which had rankled.

  ‘Do we know who he gave them to?’

  ‘Absolutely not. Vanished into a limbo.’

  ‘But it must have been someone interested in the work. Or someone he was very fond of. He surely wouldn’t have given anyone else collector’s pieces after Weizmann became famous. When was it?’