by Simon Raven
So Detterling shrugged his shoulders and walked home in the light blue dawn to his chambers in Albany, reflecting with some interest on what he had heard that night and on what might now be done to prevent Somerset Lloyd-James from using the new weapon which had come into his hand.
Although Alfie Schroeder had been prompt to respond to Tom’s telegram, he had pleaded commitments for the next few days. In the end they met, on the day after Westward Ho! had opened, in Bath, which seemed as good a base as any for the search. The trouble was that there was nothing to go on. Isobel and her companion had driven off, as Alfie had put it at the wedding, “in the rough direction of Bristol.” They might be anywhere in England by now. Tom’s only hope was that suggested by Sir Edwin’s briefing: he must put himself in Lewson’s place. But before anything else was begun, Alfie must be brought up to date. So Tom had explained, as he drove Alfie from the station, that the hit and run driver was identifiable, by the letter he had left, as Mark Lewson; he then told Alfie what Lewson had said in the letter, what little more he himself knew about the man, and finally the reasons which Sir Edwin alleged for protecting him.
“So what it comes to,” said Alfie, “is that you’ve to find Miss Isobel and bring her home to Daddy - having first swept this Lewson chappie safely under the mat.”
“That’s it.”
“And why have you called me in?” said Alfie sourly.
“In case something nasty turns up.”
“Something already has. A man’s dead, if you remember.”
“That’s just it. A man’s dead and my father-in-law is trying to protect the man that killed him. Why, Alfie?”
“Why ask me?” Alfie took off his enormous trilby and fanned himself. “Christ, this summer,” he moaned. And then, “Why drag me in? Suppose there is something smelly in the closet. Do you think I want to be there when you find it? I’m your friend; I don’t want to be the one to dish up the dirt about your father-in-law.”
“Someone may have to.”
The car stopped.
“Five star job, eh?” said Alfie, surveying the hotel. “You wouldn’t have stayed at a place like this when I first knew you.”
“I’ve come up in the world.”
“You could still start sinking.”
“Too true I could. For God’s sake have a drink and stop grouching.”
When Alfie had worked his way morosely through two large Tom Collinses, Tom began again.
Alfie .... You must help me. Patricia and I - we’ll have no peace, no honeymoon, nothing, till all this is cleared up. You remember what you said about your honeymoon,” Tom went on shamelessly, “how it was the one good thing that ever happened? I’m still waiting for mine to start, Alfie.”
Alfie sighed, almost sentimentally.
“Same again, laddie,” he said.
The drink came and Alfie fondled it thoughtfully.
“How are you supposed to start looking?” he said at last.
Tom told him.
“Jesus Christ,” Alfie said, “the ideas educated people get. Put yourself in the other chap’s place! That’s Dornford Yates, laddie, back in the nursery. Don’t people like Sir Edwin ever grow up?”
“If you’ll take time off from being so bloody superior, just what do you suggest?”
“Elementary. You say Lewson’s letter instructed Sir Edwin to put an ‘all is forgiven’ notice in The Times?”
“What of it?”
“Most people who read The Times have a regular order. Casual buyers in the provinces are rare and therefore conspicuous. And they are often disappointed, in which case they get irritated and make themselves even more conspicuous. When they have recovered themselves, they ask to be directed to other newspaper shops; by which time,” Alfie said, “they are positively memorable. Now then.” He opened a Racing Diary at a road map of the West Country. “Let us assume, as we must to have any hope, that they are still in this part of the world. Small towns and villages are our best bet. Where do you think we should start?”
“So if you’ll allow me to sum it all up,” said Captain Detterling, crisp and authoritative, “the position is as follows.”
They were all in Gregory Stern’s office - Stern, Morrison, Fielding Gray, and Detterling who had summoned the convention. Of those present, Stern and Fielding Gray were both in doubt as to why they should have been asked, but Detterling had undertaken to explain that later.
“If we are to believe Max de Freville,” Detterling said, “and I for one am prepared to, then we must conclude:
“One. Mark Lewson has got hold of a genuine document which incriminates Sir Edwin Turbot and other members of the Cabinet.
“Two. Lewson, in return for a sum of money, has passed the document to Somerset Lloyd-James. And three; both Lewson and Lloyd-James, as partners, are now using its existence to put pressure on Sir Edwin.
“Four. In Lloyd-James’s case, he requires Sir Edwin to persuade Rupert Percival that Lloyd-James rather than Peter here should be adopted as conservative candidate for Bishop’s Cross.
“And five. As for Lewson, he is the unknown man whom the police want for manslaughter and who eloped with Isobel Turbot. This is proved by the farewell letter which Isobel sent Max from Blandford. What Lewson wants from Sir Edwin is consent to a marriage and a comfortable dollop of cash to support it.”
There was a thoughtful silence.
“Any questions?” said Detterling in the approved military manner.
“Yes,” said Fielding. “Why are you telling me this?”
“And me?” said Stern.
“I was coming to that. Now, my object and Peter’s is to see that Peter gets back into Parliament this autumn. This means some kind of show-down about this letter. In the course of the show-down almost anything might happen, including the letter’s publication. This would bring total disgrace on Sir Edwin, cunning as he may be at finding ways out, and Tom Llewyllyn, as a member of his family, would be involved in this. So I wanted you, Fielding, and you, Gregory, to be here as friends of Tom’s and representatives of his interests.”
“You and Peter . . . you’re Tom’s friend too.”
“But we have other interests . . . which might well conflict with Tom’s.”
“I’m sure,” said Stern, “that Tom would be the last person to want anything covered up.”
“Think again,” said Detterling. “He might not care whether or not his father-in-law was exposed, but he’ll want to protect his new wife. The shock would half kill her.”
“She might be tougher than you think,” said Fielding.
“Anyway, a sense of public duty - ” Stern began.
“We’ll let Tom decide about his duty,” said Detterling. “You and Fielding are in on this to see he gets a proper chance.”
“How are we to do that?” snapped Stern.
“By acting as umpires?” hazarded Fielding.
“Right.”
“And by helping you,” Fielding persisted, “to reach the right choice.”
“Choice?” said Stern.
“Yes. The choice will be a very awkward one. Between destroying the letter for the sake of peace and making it public for the sake of purity.”
“Nicely put,” said Detterling.
“Is there not a third way?” said Peter Morrison, speaking for the first time.
Detterling gave him an odd, enquiring look.
“I mean . . . perhaps we ourselves might undertake ... to hold it in trust.”
“Why would we do that?” said Stern. The look in Peter’s face at once gave him his answer; Stern flushed scarlet with shame for the human race and squeezed his Old Etonian tie into a knot the size of a garden pea.
“You all seem to forget,” said Detterling, who was eyeing Peter with wary amusement, “that before we can choose what to do with the letter, we’ve got to get hold of it. That’s what we’re here to discuss.”
“You can count me out of that,” said Fielding. “I’ll willingly hold Tom’s
hand when the time comes, but meanwhile I’ve got my work.” He nodded at Stern, who nodded back. “Let me know when I’m wanted again,” he said, and rose to go.
“Sit down,” said Detterling, briskly but without heat. “You had the curiosity to come here, and now you can see it through.”
“My work -
“ - Can wait a day or two.” Detterling looked at him gravely. “ ‘Res unius, res omnium'. Remember?”
Fielding winced and sat down.
“Well then,” said Detterling blandly. “The letter. The document. We must and will possess it. How?”
“Lloyd-James has it, you say . . . according to de Freville’s account.”
“I’ve been to see Lloyd-James. He says not.”
Detterling allowed this to sink in.
“You believe him?” said Morrison at length.
“I don’t know. He says it’s been stolen.”
“Then we can forget it,” said Morrison. “If he no longer has it, he can’t use it.”
“Perhaps not. But is he telling the truth? And if he is, someone else may pop up with it at any minute and start making a nuisance of himself. It is essential, one might almost say for the national good, that the document be finally found and disposed of one way or the other. In any case,” Detterling went on, “according to Lloyd-James the thief must have been his partner, Lewson - because he was the only person who knew where it was hidden. Lloyd-James deposes that Lewson must have taken it before absconding with the wretched Isobel - he soon guessed that was Lewson’s work - as a handy weapon in case papa proved difficult. If this is true, then the letter is still held by the Lewson/Lloyd-James combine, and Lloyd-James is still to be reckoned with. It all leaves us just I where we were: we must find the letter.”
“Well,” said Stern, taking an analytical interest, “there are only two assumptions you can act on. Either Lewson’s got it or Lloyd-James is lying and still has it himself. If anyone else has it, you might just as well go home.”
“Precisely. Only two assumptions we can act on, so we shall act on both. Two parties - one player and one umpire, so to speak, in each. I know the West Country, so I thought Gregory and I might hunt for Lewson and see what he’s got to say for himself, while you, Peter - ”
“ - But how will you search? It’s hopeless,” Morrison said. “After all, the police have been looking, and if they’ve got nowhere - ”
“ - The police only know one of the people they’re looking for. We shall have a double target. Anyway, that’s our worry. You and Fielding will have your own job to concentrate on here - keeping an eye on Lloyd-James.”
“It doesn’t sound a very positive line of action,” Fielding said.
“No,” said Detterling. And then, with the faintest hint of contempt, “Peter doesn’t care for positive lines of action. In any case there’s none open. If Somerset has still got the letter, he’ll have hidden it far too carefully for you to find. We’d have to . . . coax it out of him later on.”
“And meanwhile?”
“Watch him, to see if he does anything out of the way. Like making strange contacts. Visiting unlikely places. Anything,” Detterling said, “that may give us a line on what cards he’s really holding in his hand.”
But Somerset Lloyd-James made no strange contacts. He visited no unlikely places. He was acutely conscious that he now held no card at all in his hand. The best that he could do was to pretend that the card was currently held by his partner, Lewson; for while people still thought this, they would probably regard him with some respect. In no case at all, even to a trusted ally, did he wish to disclose how he had fared with Jude Holbrook; for, quite apart from anything else, he was humiliated by the memory, not of the speed with which he had surrendered, but of the gross outrage offered to his person.
However, it now seemed only a matter of time before someone found Lewson. Once this was done, a number of things might happen, all of them to his disadvantage; because all alike must end in the arrival of someone or other on his doorstep to demand the original document, and in his own confession, which could not be avoided for long, that he did not have it. Whether he was compelled to make this confession to a policeman or to Detterling, it would amount to the same: the end of the power with which possession, or supposed possession, endowed him.
After much thought and some hours of prayer, Somerset went to see his loyal supporter, Carton Weir and for the first time made him privy to the summer’s secrets. Weir, as he had expected, was both pleased and amused by the tale of the des Moulins letter. But, Somerset went on, the letter had now been stolen; he did not know where it was; and for the time being he was only holding his own by giving out that it was with Lewson. This might be true, Somerset said, or it might not; either way it was essential, if Somerset was to be sure of Bishop’s Cross, that they should find Lewson before anybody else did. Since Weir desired Somerset’s election, since he had the ideal excuse (Westward Ho!) for taking time out of Parliament and visiting the West Country, and since Somerset himself was exceedingly busy with his editing, let Weir get on with the search - and the quicker the better.
When Weir opened his mouth to protest against being sent on this expedition, Somerset sharply reminded him to whom he owed his place on the Board of Strix. When Weir seemed unimpressed by this argument, Somerset efficiently recited a few choice facts from Weir’s private life which Weir had supposed to be secret, and the discussion closed.
So as June gave place to July and the grass in the Royal Parks of London turned slowly to dust, three different parties set out to hunt for Mark Lewson. Tom and Alfie, with a family mission to fulfil, much uneasy curiosity to quieten, and as yet ill-defined duties (to the nation? to the press?) beyond; Captain Detterling and Gregory Stern, searching, on behalf of a friend, for five sheets of paper which Lewson did not have; and the lone, reluctant Carton Weir, who was beginning to see that he had allowed Somerset to bluff him, and was now meditating a little scheme of his own.
9
THE CHASE
_____________________________________
FOR SOME DAYS Tom and Alfie had no joy at all. No one in Bath, Trowbridge, Frome, Shepton Mallet or Glastonbury had any recollection that anyone out of the ordinary had tried to buy The Times. Alfie began to be restive. As a long-established and trusted employee of the Billingsgate Press, he was allowed some latitude as to where and how he spent his time, provided he gave assurance that there might be a story at the end of it. On this occasion he had given the usual assurance (“Line on the Turbot girl”), but he had done so with considerable misgiving as he knew that his friendship for Tom might require him to be less than candid about whatever might transpire. He had left London under false pretences, in fact; and even if his mission had been wholly genuine, it would not excuse his indefinite absence. Four days after he had arrived in Bath, as they were driving through a faultless summer morning to pursue their enquiries round Bridgwater, he put the difficulty to Tom.
“If we don’t come up with something,” he said, ‘I must leave tonight.”
“Just two more days,” Tom begged: “today and two more.”
“Can’t be done, laddie. They’re already spitting down the ’phone.”
“Alfie .... I can’t manage this alone.”
In Bridgwater, Taunton and Longport they discovered nothing at all.
“That settles it,” Alfie said. “I’ll take the night train.”
“It’s your system that’s let us down,” said Tom petulantly.
“Granted. But could you think of a better?”
“Alfie . . . . Two more days. Please.”
“Sorry, son.”
“There must be something else you could report on round here. Something . . . anything ... to keep them happy in London.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t you understand, Alfie? I’m being played along . . . blackmailed in a sense ... by my own wife. I can’t cope and I need your help.”
“We’re all of us blackmaile
d by our wives.”
“You’ve had time to get used to it. I was only married last week, Alfie. That’s what makes it all so desperate.”
“God, I hate it when you whine,” said Alfie. “Stop the car.”
“What - ?”
“ - Just do as I say. Now.”
Tom stopped.
“Get out,” said Alfie.
He led the way to a small public house. There was a little river, Tom noticed, and a bridge. Flat meadows, marsh and bat-willow; and beyond them, in the east, low, black clouds. Perhaps the weather was going to break at last.
“Get me a whisky.”
Alfie went to a coin box in the comer of the bar. Tom bought two large whiskies and carried them over.
“. . . Just till tomorrow night,” Alfie was saying. “Yes, tomorrow. I don’t think anything’ll come of the Turbot business, but while I’m here there’s something else I want to look at . . . . This new Caravan Camp in the Quantocks. There was something not quite right about the opening .... Yes, I know it was on television, that’s what gave me the idea. There was something a bit fake . . . . Night train tomorrow. ’Bye.”
He put down the receiver and took his drink without thanks.
“One more day,” he said. “You know why? Because I can’t bear to go away and remember you whining. I'll need a day to wipe out the memory. So for God’s sake, when I go tomorrow, shout or foam at the mouth, but don’t whine.”
“All right. Do we really have to go to this caravan place?”
“Why not?” said Alfie. “It won’t take a moment and we may as well look at that part of the country as anywhere else.”
Captain Detterling was of sanguine disposition. Gregory Stern was not.
“A needle in a haystack,” he said, irritated into cliche by the expense of time and trouble now in prospect.
“Two needles,” Detterling remarked: “Sharp, bright needles at that. Bound to have pricked somebody’s consciousness by now.”
With this hope in mind, he carried Stern away to the west, where they would stay with his distant cousin, Lord Canteloupe, ostensibly in order to have a closer look, as potential publishers, at Canteloupe’s father’s memoirs.