Operation Pax

by Michael Innes

  Appleby was putting on his jacket. ‘I am extremely grateful to you. And so should this fellow Routh be too. By the way, I think we’d better go and have a look at him.’

  ‘You are sure that you are quite all right?’

  Appleby smiled a trifle grimly. ‘I’ve had to recover from worse knocks before now – and a good deal more quickly. Moreover I shall feel a bit of an ass until I’ve caught up with this whole queer racket. It comes back to me now that, seconds before they caught me out, I was paying myself smug compliments on getting along very nicely.’

  ‘Like many of your countrymen, you surprise me, Sir John.’ Kolmak moved to the door. ‘In Germany – even in Austria – you would be a very strange policeman. I remember – Why, Tante Lise, was ist’s?’

  Frau Kolmak had entered the room in some precipitation. ‘Was ist’s?’ she repeated expressively. ‘But he is gone – the other one! Da liegt der Hund begraben.’

  Kurt Kolmak sat down on the bed and threw up his hands in despair. ‘That I should not have thought to keep watch! And here has been Sir John complimenting me as one deft in such matters!’

  ‘You mean that Routh has gone?’ Appleby spoke sharply. ‘They have got him?’

  Frau Kolmak shook her head. ‘He has gone – but freely. Nobody could have come to him. Our door was secured inside, and so was the house door below. He too, after his adventure, slept through the night. An hour ago I took him coffee. Then, only a little after, I heard sounds of a door closing. Leider, I did not think! It must have been this man stealing out.’

  ‘Then, for the moment, we have lost him.’ Appleby smiled. ‘He must have managed it uncommonly quietly to escape the conversation of the ladies below. Particularly after the excitements to which you introduced them last night. They must be all agog. Have you a telephone?’

  ‘It is a thing impossible to obtain. But the Misses Tinker–’

  ‘Then I think I will go down and beg the use of it. Your nephew was very wise to feel that we should avoid publicity. But this is now a matter for the local police, all the same. The fellow Routh must be found. So must that van. And one or two other things must be investigated as well. Then, Dr Kolmak, if I might borrow your bathroom and a razor–’

  Kolmak beamed. ‘But certainly! You will find the bathroom, for a household of this modest character, exceptionally well appointed.’

  Appleby hurried out. The aeolian harp was playing softly on the little landing. Through the open window it pointed at the Radcliffe Observatory on the skyline, as if its operation depended on perpetual cupfuls of air tossed to it by the whirling anemometer. Appleby gave the instrument a glance of some affection as he passed. Cairo was well enough. But it was satisfactory to be back in Oxford.

  4

  The Misses Tinker were below, crowned with mob caps and equipped with feather dusters. Appleby much doubted whether their discretion would long be proof against the charm of retailing to Lady Bronson and their other North Oxford acquaintances of the same kidney the sensational events that had lately transacted themselves beneath their roof. By the time that his telephone calls were made and his shaving in the Kolmak bathroom accomplished, Frau Kolmak had provided in her salotto a breakfast for one, impeccably presented after the most orthodox English fashion. Appleby sat down to it very willingly. ‘I got on to the Provost,’ he said to Kolmak, ‘and told him that I had domesticated myself here for the night. He remarked that my comfort could not be in better hands than those of your aunt.’

  ‘Kurt has a communication to make to you.’ Frau Kolmak spoke with a trace of nervousness, as if she could not be quite sure of her nephew’s communicativeness until he was launched upon it. ‘But I know that at breakfast the English have the custom of reading The Times. It is at your elbow, Sir John; and if we might perhaps leave you–’

  ‘Decidedly not.’ Appleby was emphatic. ‘Quite soon I must go out and see my sister, and get going on a number of other things as well. It is most desirable that we should have this talk at once.’

  ‘Then I will explain to you.’ Abruptly Kolmak sat down at the opposite side of the table. ‘My aunt has a daughter. Or rather –’ He hesitated. ‘How the English flies out when a little emotion, a little distress, come in! This daughter, this Anna, verstehen Sie, is ein angenommenes Kind–’

  ‘I understand. An adopted child.’

  ‘Also! Anna is a highly educated woman – an Ärztin, skilled in the treatment of children.’

  ‘A doctor – a children’s specialist.’

  ‘Ja doch! And she herself has a child – a fine boy of five.’

  ‘She is a widow?’

  Kolmak hesitated. ‘In fact and law, no. But, morally, yes. Anna’s husband has left her. He too is a doctor, and he long practised in Breslau – a city to which some ridiculous new name has lately been given. Now he is in Leningrad, directing some wichtig – some important – medical research. But his wife and child he would not take with him, although it would have been permitted. His motive I shall leave undiscussed. It was not reputable. Anna, with her child, was stranded. We strove that they might come here. But there were difficulties.’

  ‘Anna is legally this Russian doctor’s wife?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I see.’ Appleby had a long and saddened familiarity with tangles of this sort – the private aftermath of Europe’s public follies. ‘Then there might certainly be difficulties, as you say.’

  Kolmak nodded gloomily. ‘And then the matter was taken out of our hands. You must understand that Anna was very anxious indeed to come to England.’

  ‘She had some compelling reason?’

  ‘But naturally.’ It was Frau Kolmak who answered this, and in some haste. ‘I had brought her up. She wished that she and the child might be with me here.’

  Kolmak straightened himself in his chair. ‘There was a further reason. We are deeply in love.’

  ‘It seems a very good reason.’ Appleby looked gravely at the man sitting stiffly before him. ‘And then something decisive happened?’

  ‘Anna came.’

  ‘She managed to get to England in some irregular way?’

  ‘She did. She was impatient – and she is resolute and able.’

  ‘And the child?’

  ‘She brought the child too.’

  Appleby smiled. ‘I think,’ he said dryly, ‘that Anne must be decidedly able. And then?’

  ‘She was in London. We were much distressed. We hoped that permission might yet be gained, and that she could come to us here. But there seemed to be no way to begin. It was a Stillstand – an impasse.’

  ‘Matters certainly weren’t improved.’

  ‘It was decided that she must leave the country as she had come, and that we must begin again. But it would be yet some weeks before that could be arranged. Anna, who knows English well, decided to go into the country. There were difficulties, you understand, about remaining in one place. So she bought a bicycle, with a little seat for the child, and with a rucksack she set off. She passed through Oxford, going west, and almost every day we had a letter. But the letters stopped. For a time we were not alarmed. A week passed, and we worried. But I had no means of making inquiries. Then, one day, I received this.’

  Kolmak produced a pocketbook and from it drew something which he placed before Appleby. It was a plain postcard. On one side, written in a clear, foreign hand, was Kolmak’s name and address. On the other, in the same hand, was the message:

  Both unharmed. Do nothing. A

  For a moment Appleby studied this in silence. ‘When did it come?’ he asked at length.

  ‘Three weeks ago today. And it was dispatched, you will see from the postmark, in the little place called Milton Porcorum.’

  ‘And without a stamp.’

  ‘Yes, indeed. The Misses Tinker, who take in our mail, had to pay when it was delivered. That is one of the puzzling things.’

  ‘Does Anna usually write in English?’

  ‘No. But on a postcard she mu
st have thought that it would be less noticeable.’

  ‘Her English, you say, is good? It is good enough for her not to write “unharmed” when she meant, simply, “well”?’

  ‘Assuredly.’

  ‘When travelling, we sometimes send messages reading “Arrived safely”. So there is a shade of difference between “Both safe” and “Both unharmed”. She would be aware of that? You are aware of it?’

  ‘Certainly. You must understand that, although our conversation is imperfect, our understanding of English is fully literary. “Unharmed” seemed strange to me at once. It was the reason of my venturing to disobey Anna’s injunction. We were gravely concerned. Difficult as Anna’s position was, there was nevertheless something altogether strange in this message.’

  ‘You are quite sure that it is in her hand?’

  ‘Both my aunt and I are certain of it.’

  ‘How did you disobey this injunction? You didn’t go to the police?’

  ‘Certainly not. I was assuredly not entitled to do anything of the sort. But I went down to Milton Porcorum. It proved to be a small village with nothing remarkable about it. I felt that I must not so far disregard Anna’s message as to go about asking questions. So I learnt nothing. In the afternoon I sought for aerodromes nearby. The idea had come to me that Anna might have found at such a place a friend willing to fly her straight out of the country. But I was wasting my time, and I knew it. Anna’s message did not – did not cohere with such a thing.’

  Appleby nodded gravely. ‘I agree with you.’

  ‘So I returned to Oxford. Then evil thoughts came to me. It is painful to speak of them. Tante Lise, you must explain.’

  Frau Kolmak had been sitting quite still by her piano – the same, Appleby conjured, that had come in through the roof. But now she turned to the two men. ‘Kurt thought that Anna might be saying goodbye to us – that she might be shaking us off. He was ill with the strain of this anxiety, Sir John, and these ideas visited him. Some offer of security and affluence made by a powerful man – a protector, you understand? – had tempted her.’ Frau Kolmak smiled gently. ‘This was a most foolish notion, for my daughter is a very honest woman. It was a brief sickness of Kurt’s, however, which we must mention, since it serves to explain how he came to make his discovery.’

  ‘His discovery?’ Appleby swung round on Kolmak. ‘You know something?’

  ‘Indeed I do. With these certainly foolish thoughts in my head, I went back to this little village several times, and I endeavoured to explore the whole neighbourhood. I took field glasses. What I was interested in now was great houses – the homes of wealthy people of the kind to which might belong, I fancied, Anna’s seducer. These are horrible words to speak.’

  ‘But your discovery?’

  ‘For a time I was almost mad, and I went about with my field glasses like some unhappy man constrained to spy upon the privacy of others. And one house in particular tormented me, since it lies in the greatest seclusion. I came upon it, in the first instance, early in my search, since it is quite close to the village itself. It is, in fact, the historical manor house of both Milton Porcorum and Milton Canonicorum. There is a park surrounded by a high wall; and plantations and the lie of the ground make the house and all that lies near it virtually invisible from any public road. But my concentration was such that I found one spot – a small hillock to the west – from which I could just bring into focus the corner of a formal garden. I studied it intently for a long time – perhaps more than an hour – and saw no one moving in it. Then something caught my attention in that part of the park that lay nearest to it. The park, I should say, is in places oddly subdivided by high wire fences, as if the owner, perhaps, keeps several species of animal that he desires not to mingle. What I was looking at was a small field so enclosed – do you not call it a paddock? – and lying, I judged, quite close to the invisible mansion. There were small animals moving in it. They might have been rabbits or hares. And a child was feeding them. It was Anna’s child.’

  Appleby drew along breath. ‘You are sure of that?’

  ‘I am certain of it.’

  ‘Let me remind you that you were a good deal upset. For an hour or more you had been concentrating with your binoculars upon what was scarcely a rational scheme of observation.’

  ‘I know it. But there was no mistake.’

  ‘And the little boy cannot, in the circumstances you have outlined, be at all intimately known to you.’ Appleby was gently insistent. ‘Can you be so certain that this was not an aberration? May you not have thought you saw what you expected to see?’

  ‘I have asked myself these questions many times, Sir John. And, although the child vanished almost at once and did not reappear again, I am quite confident that it was Rudi.’

  ‘Did you take any action as a result of this discovery?’

  ‘First, I should say that I was for a time a little easier in my mind. Is not this a strange thing, now? The mere sight of the little boy through my field glasses destroyed at once the bad thoughts which I had been nursing about Anna. And they have not come back to me. But I was, of course, anxious still. It came to me that Anna might have left Rudi in this place – perhaps some sort of children’s home – the better to carry out some plan of her own. She is devoted to the child. But at the same time she is a woman of intellectual interests, deeply concerned by the world’s political and social problems. When this possibility came to me I made inquiries about Milton Manor. It is not for children but for adults – a large, private Kurort or Klinikum. I do not know the word–’

  ‘We used to say nursing home or sanatorium. But we have started saying clinic too. Did you find out anything more?’

  ‘Nothing. I still felt not at liberty to ask questions openly, or to pay a visit. And in secret it appears impossible to make any approach. There is this high wall; there are these fences. But the establishment is large and must employ many people. I have thought to disguise myself, perhaps, to seek an engagement–’

  Appleby smiled. ‘That is very resourceful. But perhaps the time has come for other measures.’

  ‘There are yet two matters of which Kurt has to tell.’ Frau Kolmak was sitting at her piano rather as if she proposed to provide a musical coda to these final revelations when they came. ‘First, there is his adventure with the guest who has just left us.’

  Appleby nodded and turned to Kurt Kolmak. ‘You are aware of some connexion of Routh’s with this place near Milton Porcorum?’

  ‘Wahrscheinlich! But it is only from yesterday that this small piece of knowledge dates. Early yesterday morning I set out again on a further Rekognoszierung – a further spying. I walked all round the park. The circuit was almost completed, and with nothing gained, when I saw the sogenannte Routh approaching down a lane. He was staggering slightly, as if drunk or ill. There appeared to be blood on his face. I was very wary. It was not my wish to be seen by anybody at all at this prowling and spying. There was still Anna’s injunction. Therefore I slipped behind a hedge and through my glasses studied this man. He turned along the road bounding this mysterious estate with which we are concerned. And then, as my glasses followed him, another figure came into view – one who had just appeared, it seemed, through a small door in the high wall of which I have spoken. I was excited. It was the first time that I had seen anybody appear from the place. And this figure – a man with high shoulders and of some presence – had an air of authority. His clothing was rural but elegant. He might have been the Landjunker.’

  ‘The Squire?’

  ‘Also! We ourselves employ the word. Nun! This man remained standing by his small door until Routh went by. No gesture, I believe, passed between them. But then he called Routh back. Routh appeared to hesitate, and then retraced his steps. The two engaged in conversation. It was my impression that there was some sort of dispute. And then I was interrupted. I had climbed a gate, you understand, and was in a field, crouched behind the hedge through which I was peering with my binocular
s. Suddenly there was a farm labourer in the field behind me, calling out to demand what I was doing. No doubt he suspected that I was a poacher or a thief or a deranged person, since my posture was not one that an innocent man would adopt.’

  Kolmak paused, slightly flushed, and clicked his fingers. ‘I see now my situation as comical. But at that moment I was humiliated and confused. I got up and ran away.’

  ‘Eine dumme Geschichte!’ Frau Kolmak laughed softly. ‘But there is more of it to tell.’

  Kurt Kolmak nodded. ‘I gave no further thought to what I had seen. And this was because, when I recovered from my confusion, a new thought had come to me. Perhaps Anna was willingly a patient in this clinic. Perhaps she had suffered a nervous illness. She was, after all, virtually a fugitive – and one with a child to care for. Such a situation must involve great strain. She might, then, have found this place, where Rudi also could be, and have determined not to communicate with us – apart, that is, from this single card, written, it might be, in a disturbed state. What, in that event, was my duty? I found it hard to decide, and I spent the rest of the day tramping that countryside and endeavouring to wrestle with the problem. It thus came about that I returned to Oxford by a circuitous route, changing buses eventually at Abingdon. Imagine my surprise when I saw getting off the same bus at Gloucester Green, the man whom I had last seen in conversation with the owner, as it might be, of Milton. There was, of course, no mistaking him. This was the man whose face had been bleeding; the scratches were still visible on his face. I determined to track him to his destination. If I knew where he lived, then I might be able to take thought and find some means of gaining valuable information from him.’

  ‘I see.’ Appleby, who had finished his breakfast, was listening intently to this recital. ‘You started to trail Routh. Did he seem scared?’

  ‘Assuredly he did.’