The Only Problem

by Muriel Spark

  ‘Things happen fast in your set.’

  ‘Well, I suppose the parting had been working up for a long time. Is there any point in all these questions?’

  ‘Not much. We want to check, you see, against the statements made in England by the people concerned. Did Ruth seem surprised when she heard that Effie was involved in the terrorist attacks?’

  What were these statements of Ruth, of Edward, of others? Harvey said firmly, even as he felt his way, ‘She was very much afraid of the police, coming into our lives as they did. It was quite unforeseen. She could no more blame her sister for it than she could blame her for an earthquake. I feel the same, myself.’

  ‘She did not defend her sister?’

  ‘She had no need to defend Effie to me. It isn’t I who accuse Effie of being a terrorist. I say there is a mistake.’

  ‘Now, Nathan Fox,’ said the officer, reaching for a new file. ‘What do you know about him?’

  ‘Not very much. He made himself useful to Ruth and Edward when they were living in London. He’s a graduate but can’t find a job. He came to my house, here, to visit Ruth and the baby for Christmas.’

  ‘He is a friend of your wife?’

  ‘Well, he knows her, of course.

  ‘He is a weak character?’

  ‘No, in fact I think it shows a certain strength of character in him to have turned his hand to domestic work since he can’t find anything else to do. He graduated at an English university, I have no idea which one.

  ‘What about his friends? Girls or boys?’

  ‘I know nothing about that.’

  ‘Why did he disappear from your house?’

  ‘I don’t know. He just left. Young people do.’

  ‘He had a telephone call and left overnight without saying good-bye.’

  ‘I believe so,’ said Harvey.

  ‘He said the telephone call was from London. It wasn’t.’

  ‘So I understand. I was working in my cottage that night. You must understand I’m very occupied, and all these questions of yours, and all these files, have nothing whatever to do with me. I’ve agreed to come here simply to help you to eliminate a suspect, my wife.’

  ‘But you have no idea why he should say he got a phone call from London, when he didn’t. It must have been an internal call.’

  ‘Perhaps some girl of his turned up in France; maybe in Paris, and called him. And he skipped.’

  ‘Some girl or some boy?’

  ‘Your question is beyond me. If I hear from him I’ll ask him to get in touch with you. Perhaps he’s come down with influenza.’

  Pomfret now spoke: ‘Why do you suggest that?’ He was decidedly less friendly in French.

  ‘Because people do come down with ‘flu. They stay in bed. This time of year is rather the time for colds. Perhaps he’s gone back to England to start a window-cleaning business. I believe I heard him speculating on the idea. There’s always a need for window-cleaners.’

  ‘Anything else?’ said Chatelain.

  ‘The possibilities of Nathan Fox’s whereabouts are such that I could go on all night and still not exhaust them.’

  ‘Would he go to join your wife if she asked him?’ Harvey considered. ‘That’s also a possibility; one among millions.’ ‘What are his political views?’

  ‘I don’t know. He never spoke of politics to me. ‘Did he ask you for money?’

  ‘After Christmas he asked me for his pay. I told him that Ruth had the housekeeping money, and kept the accounts.’

  ‘Then Mrs Jansen did give him money?’

  ‘I only suppose,’ said Harvey, ‘that she paid him for his help. I really don’t know.’

  ‘Do you think Ruth Jansen is a calculating woman? She left her husband, came to join you with the baby, induced you to buy the château —’

  ‘She wanted the château because of a tree outside the house with a certain bird — how do you say “woodpecker”?’ — Harvey put the word to Pomfret in English.

  Pomfret didn’t recognise the word.

  ‘It makes a sound like a typewriter. It pecks at the wood of the tree.’

  ‘Pic’, said Pomfret.

  ‘Well, she liked the sound of it,’ said Harvey.

  ‘Are you saying that is why you bought the château?’

  ‘I’d already thought of buying it. And now, with Ruth and the baby, it was convenient to me.

  ‘Ernest L. Howe,’ said Chatelain. ‘He came to see you, didn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, some time last autumn. He came to see his baby daughter. He wanted Ruth to go back to London with the baby and live with him. Which, in fact, she has now done. You see, he doesn’t think of what’s best for the child; he thinks of what’s most pleasant for himself. To console his hurt pride that Effie walked out on him— and I don’t blame her — he’s persuaded her sister to go and live with him, using the child as an excuse. It’s contemptible.’

  Harvey was aware that the two men were conscious of a change in his tone, that he was loosening up. Harvey didn’t care. He had nothing, Effie had nothing, to lose by his expressing himself freely on the subject of Ernie Howe. He was tired of being what was so often called civilised about his wife’s lover. He was tired of the questioning. He was tired, anyway, and wanted a night’s sleep. He deliberately gave himself and his questioners the luxury of his true opinion of Ernie.

  ‘Would you care for a drink?’ said Pomfret.

  ‘A double scotch,’ said Harvey, ‘with a glass of water on the side. I like to put in the water myself.’

  Chatelain said he would have the same. Pomfret disappeared to place the orders. Chatelain put a new tape in the recording machine while Harvey talked on about Ernie.

  ‘He sounds like a shit,’ said Chatelain. ‘Let me tell you in confidence that even from his statement which I have in front of me here, he sounds like a shit. He stated categorically that he wasn’t at all surprised that Effie was a terrorist, and further, he says that you know it.’

  ‘He’s furious that Effie left him,’ Harvey said. ‘He thought she would get a huge alimony from me to keep him in comfort for the rest of his life. I’m sure she came to realise what he was up to, and that’s why she left him.’

  Pomfret returned, followed by a policeman with a tray of drinks. It was quite a party. Harvey felt easier.

  ‘I’m convinced of it,’ he said, and for the benefit of Pomfret repeated his last remarks.

  ‘It’s altogether in keeping with the character of the man, but he was useful,’ said Chatelain. He said to Pomfret, ‘I have revealed to M. Gotham what Ernest Howe stated about Effie Gotham.’

  And what Chatelain claimed Ernie had said was evidently true, for Pomfret quite spontaneously confirmed it: ‘Yes, I’m afraid he was hardly gallant about her. He is convinced she’s a terrorist and that you know it.’

  ‘When did you get these statements?’ said Harvey.

  ‘Recently. Ernest Howe’s came through from Scotland Yard on Sunday.’

  ‘You’ve got Scotland Yard to help you?’

  ‘To a certain degree,’ said Chatelain, waving his right hand lightly, palm-upward.

  Was he softening up these men, Harvey wondered, or they him?

  ‘It would interest me,’ said Harvey, ‘to see the photograph of my wife that was taken of her by the police in Trieste, when she was arrested for shoplifting.’

  ‘You may see it, of course. But it isn’t being handed out to the newspapers. It has been useful for close identification purposes by eye-witnesses. You will see it looks too rigid — like all police photos —to be shown to the public as the girl we are actually looking for. She is quite different in terrorist action, as they all are.’ He turned to Pomfret. ‘Can you find the Trieste photograph?’

  Pomfret found it. The girl in the photo was looking straight ahead of her, head uplifted, eyes staring, against a plain light background. Her hair was darker than Effie’s in real life, but that might be an effect of the flash-photography. It looked like Effie
, under strain, rather frightened.

  ‘It looks like a young shop-lifter who’s been hauled in by the police,’ said Harvey.

  ‘Do you mean to say it isn’t your wife?’ said Pomfret. ‘She gave her name as Signora Effie Gotham. Isn’t it her?’

  ‘I think it is my wife. I don’t think it looks like the picture of a hardened killer.’

  ‘A lot can happen in a few months,’ said Chatelain. ‘A lot has happened to that young woman. Her battle-name isn’t Effie Gotham, naturally. It is Marion.’

  In the meantime Pomfret had extracted from his papers the photograph of Effie that the police had found in Harvey’s cottage. ‘You should have this back,’ said Pomfret. ‘It is yours.’

  ‘Thank you. You’ve made copies. I see this photo in every newspaper I open.’

  ‘It is the girl we are looking for. There is movement and life in that photograph.’

  ‘I think you should publish the police-photo from Trieste,’ said Harvey. ‘To be perfectly fair. They are both Effie. The public might not then be prejudiced.’

  ‘Oh, the public is not so subtle as to make these nice distinctions.’

  ‘Then why don’t you publish the Trieste photograph?’

  ‘It is the property of the Italian police. For them, the girl in their photograph is a kleptomaniac, and in need of treatment. They had put the treatment in hand, but she skipped off, as they all do.’

  ‘I thought she went to prison.’

  ‘She had a two weeks’ sentence. That is a different thing from imprisonment. It was not her first offence, but she was no more than three days in prison. She agreed to treatment. She was supposed to register with the police every day, but of course —’Look,’ said Harvey. ‘My wife is suffering from an illness, kleptomania. She needs treatment. You are hounding her down as a terrorist, which she isn’t. Effie couldn’t kill anyone.’

  ‘Why did you leave her on the motorway in Italy?’ said Pomfret. ‘Was it because she stole a bar of chocolate? If so, why didn’t you stand by her and see that she had treatment?’

  ‘She has probably told Ernie Howe that story, and he has told you.’

  ‘Correct,’ said Chatelain.

  ‘Well, if I’d given weight to a bar of chocolate, I would have stood by her. I didn’t leave her over a bar of chocolate. To be precise, it was two bars.’

  ‘Why did you leave her?’

  ‘Private reasons. Incompatibility, mounting up. A bar of chocolate isn’t a dead policeman.’

  ‘We know,’ said Chatelain. ‘We know that only too well. We are not such fools as to confuse a shop-lifter with a dangerous assassin.

  ‘But why,’ said Pomfret, ‘did you leave her? We think we know the answer. She isn’t a kleptomaniac at all. Not at all. She stole, made the easy gesture, on ideological grounds. They call it proletarian reappropriation. You must already have perceived the incipient terrorist in your wife; and on this silly occasion, suddenly, you couldn’t take it. Things often happen that way.’

  ‘Let me tell you something,’ said Harvey. ‘If I’d thought she was a terrorist in the making, I would not have left her. I would have tried to reason her out of it. I know Effie well. She isn’t a terrorist. She’s a simple shop-lifter. Many rich girls are.’

  ‘Is she rich?’

  ‘She was when she was with me.’

  ‘But afterwards?’

  ‘Look, if she needed money, she could have sold her jewellery. But she hasn’t. It’s still in the bank. My lawyer told me.’

  ‘Didn’t you say — I think you said —’ said Pomfret, ‘that you only discussed the recent English translations of the Bible with your lawyer?’

  ‘I said that was what we were discussing on Saturday morning, instead of listening to the news on the radio. I haven’t said that I discussed nothing else with him. You see, I, too, am anxious to trace the whereabouts of my wife. She isn’t your killer in Paris. She’s somewhere else.’

  ‘‘Now, let us consider,’ said Chatelain, ‘her relations with Ernest Howe. He has stated that he knows her character. She is the very person, according to him, who would take up with a terrorist group. The Irish terrorists had her sympathy. She was writing a treatise on child-labour in England in the nineteenth century. She often —’

  ‘Oh, I know all that,’ Harvey said. ‘The only difficulty is that none of her sympathies makes her a terrorist. She shares these sympathies with thousands of people, especially young people. The young are very generous. Effie is generous in spirit, I can say that.’

  ‘But she has been trying to get money out of you, a divorce settlement.’

  ‘That’s understandable. I’m rich. But quite honestly, I hoped she’d come back. That’s why I refused the money. She could have got it through the courts, but I thought she’d get tired of fighting for it.’

  ‘What do you mean, “come back”?’ said Pomfret. ‘It was you who left her.’

  ‘In cases of desertion in marriage, it is always difficult to say who is the deserter. There is a kind of constructional desertion, you know. Technically, yes, I left her. She also had left me. These things have to be understood.’

  ‘I understand,’ said Chatelain. ‘Yes, I understand your point.’

  Pomfret said, ‘But where is she getting the money from?’

  ‘I suppose that the girl who calls herself Marion has funds from the terrorist supporters,’ said Harvey. ‘They are never short of funds. It has nothing whatsoever to do with my wife, Effie.’

  ‘Well, let us get back to your visitors, M. Gotham.’ said Chatelain. ‘Has there been anyone else besides those we have mentioned?’

  ‘The police, and Anne-Marie. ‘‘No-one else?’

  ‘Clara,’ said Harvey. ‘Don’t you want to hear about Clara?’

  ‘Clara?’

  ‘Clara is the niece of my wife’s sister.’

  Chatelain was getting tired. He took a long moment to work out Harvey’s representation, and was still puzzling while Pomfret was smiling. ‘The niece?’ said Chatelain. ‘Whose daughter is she?’

  ‘My wife’s.’

  ‘You mean the infant?’

  ‘That’s right. Don’t you have a dossier on Clara?’ Harvey asked the security men.

  ‘M. Gotham, this is serious. A man has been fatally shot. More deaths may follow. We are looking for a political fanatic, not a bar of chocolate. Can you not give us an idea, a single clue, as to where your wife can be hiding? It might help us to eliminate her from the enquiry.

  ‘I wish I could find her, myself.’

  TEN

  ‘I brought you some English mustard,’ said Auntie Pet. ‘They say English mustard in France is a prohibitive price even compared to Canadian prices.’

  Harvey had slept badly after his late return from the session with the security police at Epinal. He hadn’t shaved.

  ‘You got home late,’ said Auntie Pet. Already, the château was her domain.

  ‘I was with the police,’ said Harvey.

  ‘What were you doing with them?’ she said.

  ‘Oh, talking and drinking.’

  ‘I shouldn’t hob-nob too close with them,’ she said, ‘if I were you. Keep them in their place. I must say those plain-clothes officers who escorted me here were very polite. They were useful with the suitcases, too. But I kept them in their place.’

  ‘I should imagine you would,’ Harvey said.

  They were having breakfast in the living room which the presence of Auntie Pet somehow caused to look very shabby. She was large-built, with a masculine, military face; grey eyes which generally conveyed a warning; heavy, black brows and a head of strong, wavy, grey hair. She was sewing a piece of stuff; some kind of embroidery.

  ‘When I arrived,’ she said, ‘there was a crowd of reporters and photographers on the road outside the house. But the police soon got rid of them with their cars and motor-cycles. No problem.’ Her eyes rose from her sewing. ‘Harvey, you have let your house go into a state of dilapidation.’

/>   ‘I haven’t had time to put it straight yet. Only moved in a few months ago. It takes time.’

  ‘I think it absurd that your maid brings her baby’s washing to do in your house every day. Hasn’t she got a house of her own? Why are you taking a glass of scotch with your breakfast?’

  ‘I need it after spending half the night with the police.’

  ‘They were all right to me. I was glad of the ride. The prohibitive price of fares,’ said his aunt, as one multimillionaire to another.

  ‘I can well believe they were civil to you. I should hope they would be. Why shouldn’t they be?’ He looked at her solid, irreproachable shape, her admonishing face; she appeared to be quite sane; he wondered if indeed the police had been half-afraid of her. Anne-Marie was already tip-toeing around in a decidedly subdued way. Harvey added, ‘You haven’t committed any offence.’

  ‘Have you?’ she said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, I should have said you have. It’s certainly an offence if you’re going to attack the Bible in a foreign country.’

  ‘The French police don’t care a damn about the Bible. It’s Effie. One of their policemen has been shot, killed, and they think she’s involved.’

  ‘Oh, no, not Effie,’ said Auntie Pet. ‘Effie is your wife. She is a Gotham as of now, unfortunately, whatever she was before. No Gotham would stoop to harm a policeman. The police have always respected and looked up to us. And you’re letting yourself go, Harvey. Just because your wife is not at home, there isn’t any reason to neglect to shave.’

  Harvey escaped to go and shave, leaving Auntie Pet to quarrel with Anne-Marie, and walk about the grounds giving orders to the plainclothes police, whom she took for gardeners and woodsmen, for the better upkeep of shrubs and flower-beds, for the cultivation of vegetables and the felling of over-shady trees. From his bathroom window Harvey saw her finding cigarette-ends on the gravel path, and chiding the men in full spate of Canadian French. Prompted by Anne-Marie, they took it fairly well; and it did actually seem to Harvey, as he found it did to Anne-Marie, that they were genuinely frightened of her, armed though they were to the full capacity of their leather jackets.

  When Harvey came down he found in the living room a batch of press-cuttings which he at first presumed to be about himself and Effie; Stewart Cowper had left them behind. But a glance at the top of the bundle showed him Edward’s face, now beardless. The cuttings were, in reality, all reviews of the play Edward had made such an amazing success in; they were apparently full of lavish praise of the new star, but Harvey put them aside for a more serene moment. Amongst some new mail, a letter from Edward was lying on the table. Edward’s name and address was written on the back of the envelope. Maybe the police hadn’t read it; maybe they had. Harvey left this aside, too, as Auntie Pet came back into the room.