Dr. Wolfe laughed with genuine amusement.
“It was astonishing how quickly everyone, including myself, adopted my new persona. Good old Captain Andy. It helped that I’d done a bit of sailing and flying and was able to talk the jargon. My only fear was that one of my summer guests would come from Luton and start asking questions about my alleged business there. It didn’t arise, but I expect I could have ridden them off. Luton’s a large place.”
“Plenty of factories round Luton,” agreed Peter. One thing which was fascinating him was the way that Captain Andy, now that the masquerade was over, was turning back into Dr. Wolfe. Even his choice of words was changing. “A repulsive young person.” Captain Andy would have said “a frightful kid.”
“You’ve no idea what a status it gives you in the community when you become a rate payer and get on the roll of the Parochial Church Council. As you know, there was even a move to get me onto the Town Council. I had to stop that. Suppose they’d made me mayor! Picture in all the local papers.”
“What were you planning to do eventually?”
“I was going to announce that I’d given up my business in Luton and decided to retire here permanently. And then,” said Dr. Wolfe sadly, “you came along.”
“I know,” said Peter. “I’m very sorry. Really I am.”
“I never asked how you did it.”
“It was when I was in Mr. Highsmith’s office. He must just have completed the purchase of that house in the Chine for his partner. The Land Registry number happened to be written on the memo pad on his desk. He knew I was looking for you, and the very last thing he wanted was for me to be nosing round Cryde Bay, so he distracted my attention for a moment, tore that sheet off the pad, and threw it away. It was a natural precaution to take. But quite fatal. Of course, he couldn’t have known that I’ve got a photographically retentive memory.”
“I knew as soon as I met you that you were a remarkable young man,” said Dr. Wolfe. “What are you going to do next?”
“It depends on your plans.”
“I’m getting out. If I hadn’t had some rather complicate arrangements to make, I’d have been gone before now. I gathered from what I read in the newspapers that the two opposition factions had become embroiled with each other, and I thought that might give me a breathing space. But I can assure you it’s been an anxious two days. I’m a man of peace, but I’ve had a gun under my hand every hour of the day and night. I’m ready to go now. Next stop, Ireland. I’ve got good friends there. After that—”
“You’d better not tell me.”
“I was only going to say somewhere in the Mediterranean. After that, maybe the Pacific.”
The world his parish, thought Peter. He added, “If you would be prepared to give me a statement saying that you had no claim to the insurance money, I’d hold it up until you were safely away.”
Dr. Wolfe thought about it. He said, “Yes, I suppose that’s the least I can do. Lavinia doesn’t really need the money. She’s totally self-supporting. Any money she has got is spent on those dogs. All the same, I’ve had a better idea. You’re not married, are you?”
“No.”
“No one in mind?”
“No,” said Peter harshly. “No one at all.”
“Pity about that girl,” said Dr. Wolfe, replying to the thoughts rather than the words. “A very good-looking girl indeed. But hard as steel. Purified and refined in the fire. They are the new Joan of Arcs, twice as fierce and ten times as clever as that deluded peasant girl. What I was going to say was, why don’t you come with me?”
“Come with you? Now, tonight?”
“Why not? I’ll promise to post off a clearance to your company as soon as we’re away. You’re a free agent. When you get tired of travel, you can come back. Make your fortune by writing a book about it – My Travels with a Mad Geneticist.”
“Well—” said Peter.
“Don’t you sometimes get an urge to cut your painter and sail away? Like Ulysses, when he got bored with Ithaca? ‘The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks. The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep moans round with many voices.’ Do you know, I’ve heard just that sound when I’ve been alone on a boat. The sea begins to talk to you. It’s when you start talking back that you have to watch it. That’s when you need a friend along with you.”
For a minute Peter was tempted, but he knew that he was going to say no.
“To lead the life of Ulysses,” he said, “you’ve got to have the character and temperament of Ulysses. I’m not like that. I’m hopelessly unadventurous. I’ve got no stamina. I give up easily. I got so depressed once that I tried to kill myself. I don’t want to talk about that, but I really did try.”
“How right the ancients were,” said Dr. Wolfe, “when they accounted hopelessness as one of the seven deadly sins.” He took a piece of paper out of the desk drawer. “I’ll write you a full quittance. And I’ll send you a letter, from wherever I am, a fortnight from now. Hang on to the envelope, then you can tell your people this document came in it. That’ll cover you for not having produced it before.”
The idea of going away was working on Peter. To sail away, to see something of the wide world, beyond the western stars. The man he still thought of as Captain Andy would be an ideal companion for such a venture. After all, what had Peter got to keep him in England? He had almost made his mind up to say yes, but somehow the words would not come.
“I’ve a little more packing to do,” said Dr. Wolfe. “I plan to be away by midnight. Here’s your letter.”
As he said this, he had picked up his briefcase from the desk. Catching Peter’s eye, he smiled, opened the briefcase, and held it upside down. Nothing came out. Then he pointed to the open grate, where Peter could see a small pile of gray dust. Peter said, “You mean you’ve burnt them? All the microfilm records of your work? Six years’ work?”
“I did it last night. There are not more than three people in the world who would have understood them, but that was three too many. There’s a bottle of Scotch in that corner cupboard. Help yourself, and pour one out for me. I won’t be long.”
When Dr. Wolfe was ready, Peter helped him carry his luggage down to the boat. A kit bag, a suitcase, and a knapsack. As soon as they were stowed on board, Dr. Wolfe got ready to cast off. He went about the business with the neatness and speed of a man who knew exactly what he was doing.
Peter went back to the house and climbed the stairs to his bedroom. By the time he got there, the boat was moving. He saw the red port light as it swung around to clear the end of the jetty and set off down the Channel.
The boat was about a quarter of a mile from the shore when it happened. First a flash of white light, then the crumps of the explosion, then the shock waves which blew the curtains in at the open window where Peter was sitting. He could see the boat clearly in the moonlight. It was on fire at one end. As he jumped to his feet, the boat seemed to stand on its head. Then, quite slowly, it disappeared, and there was nothing to be seen but a cloud of white smoke or steam drifting across the smooth surface of the sea.
Peter sat down again. There was nothing he could do. He sat there while boats put out to the scene of the explosion and came back again. One of them was a police launch. He saw the men lean over the side and pull something into the boat, and thought for a moment that it was a body; but as the launch swung sideways, he saw that it was a piece of wreckage.
He thought, “If they identify the boat, they’ll come here and start asking questions. What am I going to say?” Perhaps he ought to remove himself out of the house and hide somewhere. His dulled brain refused to grapple with the problem. He sat still.
He heard two o’clock and then three o’clock strike from the church tower of St. Barnabas’, and it was while the chimes of three o’clock were still sounding that he heard another sound.
Someone had opened the side door of the house and was coming up the stairs.
The newcomer was walking softly, but with
an occasional drag and stumble which suggested tiredness. The footsteps passed his door and went on toward the end of the passage. Peter guessed the truth then, and called out. The footsteps stopped, then came back down the passage. The door opened and Anna came in.
The full moon, shining directly through the open window, lit her up as though she had made an entrance onto the stage. She was dressed as he had seen her before, in windbreaker and jeans, and she was soaking wet. Her drenched hair was lying in straight lines down the side of her face, which showed white in its dark frame.
She said, “I didn’t expect you to be here. I came to pick up some dry clothes and a few other things.”
Whenever she had spoken before, even in times of stress, her voice had had a lift and a lilt in it. Now it was as lifeless as the voice of a ventriloquist’s dummy.
He said, “Was it you—?”
“I was on board fixing it when I heard you and Dr. Wolfe coming down to the boat. I had to stay on board to finish the job. When I had done it, I swam ashore. I bungled the setting of the time fuse. It wasn’t meant to go off until the boat was much further from the shore.”
From the lack of emotion in her voice, she might have been apologising to her partner for bungling a short putt.
Peter said, “Why?” and then, when Anna said nothing, “Why you?”
“I did it because it had to be done. And because I was the only person left to do it. Yesterday morning, before it was light, Stefan and a friend swam out to our boat in Plymouth Sound and blew it to pieces with limpet mines. I was on shore, in the house of a friend. That was why I escaped. Four of our people were on the boat, sleeping, just above the point where one of the mines exploded. Three of them were killed. The fourth is in hospital. He will probably die.”
Peter could think of nothing to say.
Anna continued in the same flat voice. “Fortunately, some of our stores were on shore. Enough for what I had to do. The friend brought me here in his car this evening. He is waiting for me now.”
“And then?”
“Either Stefan will kill me or I will kill him. I think he will kill me. He is very clever.”
“And then your friend will kill Stefan, or Stefan will kill him.”
“It’s possible.”
“In God’s name,” said Peter, “is your life for nothing more than killing and being killed?”
“We do not throw our lives away.”
Peter could feel the anger inside him, bubbling up, overmastering all other emotions.
He said, “You’re children. Stupid, cruel, arrogant children. If the games you play weren’t so deadly, they’d be a joke. A bad, bloody, crimson joke. Have you any real idea what you’ve done? Just for a moment, can you stop seeing it as a move in a game and look at it as it really is? You’ve wiped out a man. Not only a great man, but a decent, kindly man. A man who was particularly kind to you.
“He had to die.”
Peter jumped to his feet, took two steps forward, grabbed the front of her windcheater, and shook her. She made no attempt to get away. After a minute the fury drained out of Peter and he let his hands drop. They were wet from the drenched material and he wiped them against his legs.
Anna said, “He was your friend, too. Do you plan to do something about it? Perhaps you would like to kill me? I don’t think you have the skill, but you could try.”
Peter sat down. He said, “I don’t want to kill you. I just don’t want to see you again.”
Anna said, “I’m sorry for you. You are feeble. You were prepared to throw your own life away for nothing, but you think it wrong to spend it in defence of what you believe in. I am sorry for your country, because it is made up of people like you. You have lost the spirit and the will to fight. It is sad because you had that spirit once, and taught it to other people. If you could see yourselves as the fighting nations of the world see you now, you would be ashamed.”
She went out softly and shut the door. He heard her moving about in the next room. Some time later he heard her going down the stairs; then the door shutting behind her. He sat there for a very long time.
When at last he stirred himself, it was to go across to the writing desk in the corner and switch on the table lamp which stood on it. He was stiff and cold. He lit the gas fire in the grate, and then sat down at the desk, opened his briefcase, and took the half-finished report out of the envelope which was already stamped and addressed to Messrs. Phelps, King and Troyte, Insurance Adjusters of St. Mary Axe. He wrote steadily, covering page after page.
The empty house was quiet. The street outside was quiet. Even the sea was quiet. As Peter wrote, the light grew and the sounds of day began to steal back. Away down the road a door slammed and footsteps clattered on the pavement. A boy came past on a bicycle, whistling. A car started up.
By the time he reached the last page of his report, the sun was over the horizon in the east. The first long, slanting rays were reflected off the sea and threw a pattern of dancing light onto the ceiling. He switched off the table lamp.
It was customary to end a long report with a summary of its conclusions. In this case, it presented no difficulty. Peter wrote: “Total certainty can only be achieved if the body is recovered and fingerprints and dental details are matched. But in view of the facts which have now come to light, there cannot be any further room for doubt that Dr. Wolfe is dead, and that one of the causes of his death was drowning. The sum secured by the policy will therefore have to be paid to his sister, Lavinia.”
A tiny piece salvaged from the wreckage.
He blotted the last page, shuffled all the pages together, inserted them in the envelope, and sealed it.
He noticed that the has fire was starting to pop and realised that another coin would have to go into the meter. He leaned back in his chair, flexed his fingers to get the cramp of writing out of them, and closed his eyes. To make any further decisions, even to move seemed an intolerable effort. Downstairs, in the hall, a telephone started ringing.
24
The three cars came quietly up the road and drew in to the side twenty yards short of the Seven Seas Guest House. Colonel Hay and Rupert climbed out of the leading car. Men got out of each of the other cars. Two of them went around to the back of the house. A third took up his post outside the front gate. The fourth accompanied the Colonel and Rupert up the front path. All this was done without any word being spoken.
The man with the Colonel had a look at the lock on the door, selected a bunch of keys from a haversack he was carrying, and set to work. It took him less than a minute to find the key he wanted. As the front door swung open, he stood to one side, and the Colonel walked in, with Rupert behind him.
The sun was well up by now. The light through the open door reflected from the barometer which hung in the hall beside a blown-up photograph of a boat under sail and a neatly framed notice which said, “Guests will oblige by not bringing too much sand into the house. Spades, buckets and prawning nets should be left in the porch at the side.”
The Colonel stood still for so long that he seemed to be reading the notice carefully. Then he sniffed. The smell was unmistakable.
His lips formed the words “Fried bacon.” Rupert nodded. They went down the hall, still walking quietly, and opened the kitchen door.
Peter had his back to them. He was holding a frying pan in one hand and a slice in the other. When he heard the door opening, he turned his head and said, “Good morning, Colonel. You’re just in time for breakfast.”
“I had breakfast,” said the Colonel. He made a sign to Rupert, who went out, shutting the door.
“You must have got up very early. Would you care for a cup of coffee?”
“I’ve been up all night,” said the Colonel. “Yes, I’d like some coffee. Perhaps you could manage a cup for Rupert as well. He’ll be down in a moment.”
“If he’s searching the house, I can save you the trouble. There’s no one here except me.”
“I didn’t expect there would
be,” said the colonel. “To tell you the truth, I’m surprised to find you here. You know what happened last night?”
“If you mean the destruction of Dr. Wolfe and his boat, yes. I saw it happen. You didn’t arrange that as well, did you?”
“You mustn’t credit me with supernatural powers. I suppose his records went down with him?”
“No. He burned them before he left. You’ll find the ashes in the grate.”
“Did the girl come back here afterwards?”
“Yes.”
“She’d have needed clothes and money. Not that they did her a lot of good. The car she was in was ambushed outside the town by Stefan and his friend. They killed the girl and the driver. Stefan’s friend was badly wounded. Stefan got away scot-free.”
Peter visualised the polite, controlled, athletic young man who had shown him around the dig – how long ago? He said, “He seems to be very lucky. A born escaper.”
“I could name another,” said the colonel, looking at Peter. “Do you realise that you are the only man, the only outsider, left alive who has any idea of what has been going on in the last two weeks?”
Rupert had come in quietly and closed the door. The Colonel looked at him, and he shook his head. Peter could see the two men in the garden outside. They seemed to be examining one of the fruit cages. He said, “Am I to understand from that remark that it would suit your book to finish me off and bury me in the back garden?”
“My dear chap!”
“After all, you did try to drown me.”
“All we planned for you was a cold night at sea. To cool your ardour a little. We never thought you’d be so clumsy as to turn the boat over. Right, Rupert?”
“Certainly not.”
“In fact, when we heard about it, our first idea was that you’d done it deliberately. After all, you did try to commit suicide once before.”
The Empty House Page 23