by Alec Waugh
“So you think you’ll be elected.”
“I know I shall.”
“From what I hear …”
“From what everybody hears. They’re volatile. They were so much against me a month ago, that they can’t help being all for me in three weeks’ time. I shall sweep the poll. You wait. See you at the hustings.”
He tightened his reins and pressed his knees against the saddle. His pony moved and he waved his hand. He wanted to spur his pony, to gallop it up the pathway to the hills, to exercise his problems by violent exercise; but he knew he mustn’t. It was close on noon. Sylvia was on the veranda; the nutmeg and the limes were waiting by the jug of ice. It was the hour of the morning punch. He must do nothing unexpected, nothing that would arouse suspicion: nothing, nothing. How long had this perpetual self-watching to continue. It would drive him mad if it did not stop.
3
Usually after lunch Maxwell took his siesta in his dressing room, but today he joined Sylvia in her room. He had never needed her so much. If only he could pour out his troubles to her. In one way they were so close; he could have talked now about himself as he could never have done before; any problem that had been his a month ago he could have talked about freely now—his difficulties with the estate and with his father, his diffidence and lack of confidence, his sense of grievance against the world, his feeling that life had cheated him, his jealousy of his brother. All those sources of irritation that he had bottled up, had concealed beneath a mask of arrogance, had ceased to be troubles in the light of this one all-shadowing trouble.
If only he could speak of it to Sylvia, now when he needed to be unburdened, now when he could have revealed to her any other secret, no matter how obscure and shaming. The need to speak heightening the knowledge that he could not speak, deepened his need of her. The knowledge that because of this shadow he could not yet give himself to her completely, gave him a new and intenser eloquence. As his arms went round her, his words struck a deeper note.
“You are the whole world to me,” he told her.
He meant it, and she knew he did. She was his sky, his ocean, his sun, his stars: he took reflection from her.
“Without you there is nothing, nothing.”
He had never needed her so desperately, so utterly, with his heart and spirit. Never had he felt such an overpowering need to give himself, to be encompassed by her. For the first time in his life, he crossed the boundaries of passion, and found love.
He slept with his head upon her shoulder. She stroked his cheek slowly, as she would a child’s. If only a child could be born out of this afternoon, she thought.
He slept till late afternoon, while she lay motionless, unsleeping.
That night, however, he lay awake, his mind beset by questions. Why had Whittingham instigated these inquiries? Why now, and not three weeks ago? Something new had happened. There must be some fresh development in connection with the discovery of the wallet. What had the wallet told him? What had it suggested? Why did Whittingham want these facts. Was this laborer who had found the wallet really in danger of his life. Would his own conscience allow him to go free when another man was suffering for his sake.
What was this wretched laborer thinking now? The man knew that he was innocent, but what comfort was that to him if the court thought him guilty. Was he undergoing mental torture at this very moment. What did Whittingham suspect? What had Whittingham had in mind?
Unless I have some inkling, I shall go mad, Maxwell told himself. He’d got to see Whittingham; find some excuse for seeing him; then lead the conversation round to the murder, to the investigation, the wallet, evoke some confidence: find out how the land lay. Unless he knew that he would go off his head.
4
Next morning Maxwell rang up Whittingham.
“It’s nothing important. But I’d like to have a word with you when next I’m in town. I’ll be in next week, which day would suit you best—Tuesday or Wednesday. Tuesday. Fine. I’ll be round about eleven.”
He found Whittingham as he had found him on the previous visit, his foot rested in the lower drawer of his desk.
“What can I do for you?”
“Not a subscription for the Belfontaine Committee.”
Whittingham gave a start.
“What do you know about the Belfontaine Committee?”
“Nothing in particular. I have heard it mentioned.”
“Who by?”
“I can’t remember. Someone in the club.”
“Indeed. You’re the last person I should have expected to have heard of it.”
Whittingham’s surprise was manifest. The Belfontaine Committee. How had he come to mention it? It had slipped out suddenly. Belfontaine Committee. What was it after all? Where had he heard of it? He pondered. Suddenly the scene came back. Carson’s house. The sneer on Carson’s face. Carson’s first question. “What can I do for you? Not a subscription for the Belfontaine Committee?”
“What can I do for you?” Whittingham had used the same words as Carson, and out of his subconsciousness an involuntary reaction, outside his control, had brought the identical response. That’s what the psychoanalyst did, asked you what certain words made you think of first.
Once again terror struck him. Had he given himself away? In this instance he did not see how he could have done, but the fact that the words Belfontaine Committee had automatically sprung to his lips was terrifying. What might not the subconscious self over which one had no control reveal another time?
But that lay in the future. He must hurry on now as though he had not said anything unusual.
“I’ve come to ask about my property during the elections. Do you think it’s safe. Ought I to take special precautions. You’ve always said that my parish was the most unsettled in the island.”
“It is.”
“Do we need special precautions then?”
“I’ve made arrangements with the local police officer that he can get help quickly if it’s needed.”
Whittingham explained what the help was and how quickly it could reach a given danger point.
“Everything’s under control,” the colonel said, “but I may be flattering myself. It’s like the dams that one erects to keep out a flood. One doesn’t realize till the flood comes, how strong they are.”
“What danger is there?”
“Your bet is as good as mine.”
They discussed the temper of the district. As always Whittingham was bland, talkative, congenial. With his pink cheeks, his white fringe of hair about his ears, his high damp forehead, he looked like a contented baby. It was a disarming manner. When you talked of a man having a poker face, you pictured him as thin, gaunt, long-chinned, with deepset eyes, but Whittingham with his cherubic face was the most redoubtable poker-player in the club. The only time Maxwell had caught him off his guard was this morning when he had spoken of the Belfontaine Committee. What was the Belfontaine Committee, hang it all. He’d have to find that out.
For a quarter of an hour they sat talking, then Maxwell picked up his hat. “I must be on my way,” he said. Then as though struck by an afterthought, he added. “I see you’ve found Carson’s wallet.”
“It’s been found.”
“I suppose that that was Carson’s wallet on your desk the last time I was in here.”
“Was it? I don’t know, it may have been. When were you here?”
“Thursday of the week before last.”
“What day would that have been?”
“The day of the G.H. dance. Next day I read about it in the paper.”
“Then it very likely was Carson’s wallet. What made you think it was?”
The moment that he had mentioned the wallet, Maxwell was afraid that he had made a mistake, but he had to go on with it now.
“You were holding a wallet in your hand when I came in. You put it on the top of the desk.”
“Did you recognize the wallet.”
“Of course not, how could I, I’d neve
r seen his wallet, or at least I’d never noticed it. But reading that article next day in the paper, I put two and two together.”
“Naturally. Of course.”
“I remember thinking it probably was his; after all it’s only a few of us who can afford pigskin wallets.”
“So you could recognize it as being pigskin.”
“I thought it was pigskin. It was pigskin wasn’t it?”
“I can’t remember. It was ruined by rain. It didn’t matter. I knew it was Carson’s because of the papers in it.”
“You’d have thought he’d have destroyed them.”
“Who?”
“The man who found it.”
“Yes, you would have thought so, wouldn’t you?”
“Isn’t the fact that he had the papers on him, a proof that the man who had the wallet couldn’t have done the murder.”
“Why do you say that?”
“The man who had done the murder would have surely destroyed everything that could connect him with the crime. He might have kept the money. Money’s anonymous after all, but a thing like a wallet or a watch.”
“A watch?”
“Or a ring or perhaps a fountain pen.”
Watch. Why did I say watch, Maxwell asked himself. There’d been no mention of a watch. Why should the watch have occurred to him: again that subconscious reflex. Had the colonel noticed? He had repeated the word watch, but he had not followed it up. That fat babyish smile had remained unruffled. What did he think behind that mask? Was he past thinking—a genial figurehead whose juniors covered up and did the work for him?
“Whichever way you look at it,” Maxwell said, “the man that you caught with the wallet was a stupid fellow.”
“Or else he was too clever.”
“How do you make that out?”
“People nowadays have seen so many detective films and spy films. They may not be able to read, but their wits are keen in what concerns themselves. They all know about the doublecross. Did you read that book Operation Cicero?”
“I saw the film.”
“Then you’ll understand the point I’m making. During the war each side indulged in deception campaigns, to mislead the other side as to their intentions. As you may remember, an actor, dressed up as Montgomery, was sent to Gibraltar on the eve of the Normandy landings. The Germans could not believe that an invasion was imminent in Northern France when the Commander-in-Chief was in Gibraltar. Sometimes the deceptions were so elaborate that we could best deceive the Germans by putting out the truth by a source that the Germans distrusted.”
“How do you mean?”
“Suppose we capture a wireless set by which a German spy is transmitting information to the Germans. The Germans don’t know we have captured it, so we continue to operate it, sending out the kind of information, most of it false, that is likely to deceive the Germans. Then the Germans find out that we have captured and are operating the set; they promptly discount all the news that comes through on it. We then find out that the Germans know about it but they don’t know that we know they know. What do we do? We start telling them the truth, because they’ll disbelieve it. You see how complicated it gets: particularly when the Germans find out that we know they know. Then we have to start telling lies again.”
“Where is all this leading to?”
“Operation Cicero. A German spy captured from a British diplomat the plans of the Normandy Invasion. The Germans refused to believe that the plans were genuine. They could not conceive that any British diplomat could be so stupid. If they had acted on that spy’s information, many thousands of allied lives would have been lost. The war might have gone on another year.”
“But how does this bear on the Carson case?”
“I’m wandering. I’m sorry. I get vague, I start digressing. That’s middle age. It starts in the middle forties: earlier sometimes in the tropics. Where did I begin? Operation Cicero, deception, yes that’s it: deception. Criminals practice deception too; they try and throw us off the scent by acting, on purpose, more stupidly than you could expect any sane man to. Have you seen The Voice today?”
“No.”
“Then you’ve not read our American friend’s latest article.”
“No.”
“Here it is, run your eye over it.”
It was the article that Bradshaw had sent to Baltimore three weeks ago. It began with a section about Obeah, exploiting the author’s knowledge and giving his reasons for disbelieving that Carson’s was an Obeah murder. It then mentioned the loss of the watch and wallet, and suggested that these might have been taken so as to make the crime look like the outcome of theft and violence. As he read, Maxwell was conscious of Whittingham watching him with his lazy, seemingly indifferent stare. It made him feel uncomfortable; he wanted to look up and meet that stare but he felt he shouldn’t.
“Finished?” the colonel asked.
Maxwell nodded.
“See what I mean about a thief being too clever. You hadn’t read that article before, you say.”
“How could I? I left before the paper came.”
“Of course, of course. It’s rather curious, you know.”
“What’s curious?”
“Doesn’t anything strike you as curious about that article?”
“No, what?”
“The watch. You mentioning a watch. No one outside this office knew that the watch was missing, until this morning.”
“Bradshaw must have known.”
“Of course. I told him. But I told him not to mention it. I didn’t want anyone but the actual murderer to know about its being missing.”
“Why was that?”
“There was always a chance of the murderer giving himself away.”
“How could he do that?”
“In several ways. There are so many ways in which he could slacken his vigilance. He could say for instance, ‘I wonder if they’ve found the wallet yet.’ How would he know there was a wallet missing?”
“Isn’t that a million to one chance?”
“Of course, but that’s what one relies on, throwing out as many million to one chances as one can. The meshes of the net, you know.”
“Did it serve any purpose?”
“No, I’m afraid it didn’t.”
He was smiling as blandly as ever: his face wore its habitual vacuous expression. Maxwell’s irritation mounted, with it a sense of fear; he felt that he was being encased by some vast, flabby substance, whose hold would gradually suffocate him in its warmth and thickness. It exasperated him into action.
“Why did you say that it was curious my mentioning the watch?”
“Because you couldn’t have known then that a watch was involved, yet you would know within two hours. Have you read Dunne’s Experiment with Time? You should. It’s very interesting. This case is a good example of it. Dunne’s theory, as far as I could get it, is that the future and the past both exist simultaneously, so that a man can find himself living in the future before it has, as far as the rest of the world knows, happened. In Dunne’s book, there’s the incident of a man dreaming of the eruption of Mont Pelée in Martinique three days before it took place. Now you apparently knew about this watch before you had read it in the paper.
“It may have been unconscious telepathy: as everyone in Jamestown knew, you may have picked it up subconsciously by telepathic wireless. Dunne’s theory is different. Not that I understand his theory. It’s very difficult, or it is to me. Priestley wrote some plays about it before the war. They were dramatic plays. But I could never see what he was trying to prove. He had some simile about life being one vast tapestry with the present moving over it like a spotlight. You only see that part of the tapestry on which the spotlight rests, but the rest of the tapestry—the past and future—hasn’t ceased to exist because it’s in darkness and you can’t see it. Priestley seemed to think this was a source of consolation. I couldn’t see that it was. If the spotlight is fixed on a dreary episode that happens to be yo
ur life at the moment, it’s no consolation to be told that the past where you enjoyed yourself still exists. After all…”
He enlarged his thesis. Maxwell could have thrown his hat upon the floor and stamped on it. This was driving him out of his mind. There were things he had to know, things he had come in to learn and here was this tiresome old fool blathering about Priestley and Dunne and time.
Steady, he warned himself, steady. How often had he issued that warning to himself in the last few days. How many more times would he have to issue it? How many more times would he have to say, “Patience now, patience. Don’t do anything that is not completely normal.”
Patience. Patience, he adjured himself. Yes, but was it normal for him to be patient, to sit here meekly while Whittingham prosed on? Wasn’t he by nature difficult, cantankerous, ill-tempered? Weren’t these imposed manners more likely to arouse suspicion than a breach of manners? Wasn’t he overplaying his role of deception in Operation Carson? He was in a fog. Whatever he did seemed wrong. Why had he mentioned the watch? And why was Whittingham taking it as a proof of Dunne’s theory of time? Shouldn’t he have felt suspicious?
“Priestley’s idea, as far as I can gather it…”
It was more than Maxwell could stand. No one expected such elaborate good manners from him. He waited for the next full stop, and although it came in the middle of an argument, he interrupted.
“Why did you tell so much to Bradshaw? Why did you trust him with facts that you didn’t want generally known?”
Whittingham started.
“I’m sorry, I was boring you. I keep digressing. That’s one of the troubles of middle age, that and repeating oneself and a faulty memory. You forget names and faces and you can’t remember whom you told what story to. And one digresses, as you’ve observed. I apologize, my dear boy. I’m very sorry. I can’t keep to the point any longer. Now what was it you were asking me?”
His apology embarrassed Maxwell. It made him feel in the wrong again.
“I asked why you told so much to Bradshaw if you didn’t want it known all over Jamestown.”