by John Lodwick
He pulled down the outer curtains. “Now,” he said, in the tone though without the manner of a man coming to a decision, “what is it that you want with me?”
“I want you to kill my child,” she said.
“Why?”
“Because in eleven years, when he is twenty-one, he will inherit all my money.”
“Is that a reason to kill him? How do you know he won’t make you an allowance?”
“Why should he? He’s never even seen me. Under the terms of his adoption, I’m not allowed to see him.”
“Where is he now, then?”
“Somewhere in Devonshire . . . with a family called Vivian. I can easily find out where. He’s taken their name. I don’t suppose he even knows his true one.”
“Yes . . . but they know, I suppose?” he said.
“Naturally. That’s what makes it a little awkward.”
“But,” interrupted Rumbold, “you can’t just go around killing children without suspicion being aroused. If a child is killed the police want to know why. They make enquiries. They find out who stands to benefit.”
“I didn’t suggest that you should shoot him,” she said contemptuously. “In the country people die in many curious ways. They fall into ponds. They break their necks tripping over stiles. They even get lost in woods.”
Rumbold grinned: “So you suggest that I lead him by his little hand into some deep, dark wood, do you? Believe me, you don’t know much about children. I should hardly have gone ten yards before he caught me with something from his catapult. You can’t kill a child as easily as a man. With a child you’ve got first to make acquaintance.”
“Get to know him, then. Your expenses will be paid.”
“And supposing I don’t want to kill him . . . supposing I say that I have a moral objection?”
“Why should you have any objection? You have killed men often enough. In fact, it’s the only profession you know.”
“It seems appropriate to point out,” said Rumbold, “that the men I killed were Germans. I was congratulated for doing so. I wouldn’t receive any congratulations for killing an innocent child. More likely I should be tracked and caught by the police.”
Fiona reached above her head and switched on the light. The light was uncomplimentary. It revealed her face; white, strained, the eyes brilliant. Rumbold understood. “Why should you wish to kill him?” he repeated. “He has done you no harm.”
“‘Done me no harm’ . . . ‘Innocent’ . . . Have you finished with your clichés yet or will you evoke the image of a curly head upon a pillow? The child stands in my way. He must be removed.”
“Right,” said Rumbold. “Since the sentimental approach is no use, look at the matter in terms of money. What is your income?”
“About three thousand a year.”
“Which you will enjoy for almost a dozen years to come?”
“What of it? After that, if the child remains alive, I won’t have a single penny.”
“Take it this way: if I killed him you would have to give me quite a considerable sum to keep my mouth shut . . . a very considerable sum, perhaps. You’re thirty-two now. Let’s assume that you die at the age of fifty. A lot of people do that. What would you have gained in that case . . . seven years perhaps with the weight of a crime on your conscience? Wouldn’t it be better to save money now, even if you have to live with a little less magnificence later on.”
She looked at him steadily. “You don’t want to do it, do you?” she said. “You’re afraid, and your nasty little bourgeois conscience troubles you at the very thought.”
“That’s enough about my conscience,” he said. “If I decide to do it, I’ll do it. What are your terms?”
“A thousand down in cash.”
“When it’s over?”
“No . . . half before, half afterwards.”
“It’s not enough.”
“Very well. I’ll open a joint account for you at my bank. You can draw up to five hundred from it each year for three years.”
“And if I use the joint account to draw out everything and skip?”
“You won’t be able to because I don’t control my capital. A certain amount comes in each year: that’s all. Oh, believe me, I’ve thought of everything.”
“You flatter yourself,” he said. “I wonder if you have a heart to touch. Are you so very certain that I am capable of doing this?”
“You’ll do it all right,” she said. “Not for the money so much but because now I’ve put the idea into your head, you’ve got to do it. In the same way, if I said that you couldn’t jump out of this train at thirty miles an hour you’d feel obliged to try.”
“You’re very penetrating,” he said. “How do you imagine that we are going to get on together with this hanging over our heads?”
“It needn’t hang for very long. When we get to England draw your cash . . . go off and do it.”
“But how?”
“I leave that to you.”
“And if I bungle it?”
“If you bungle it, you take the consequences. There will be nothing to connect you with me. The five hundred in your possession will have been paid in cash. For the joint account you will use another name. If you implicate me I shall deny everything except that I once met you here in Spain. They will set you down as some kind of a sexual maniac, and sentence you accordingly.”
“In other words I am to end my days in Broadmoor, while you, perhaps, take a world cruise? Oh no, my fine lady. Je ne marche pas.”
“I am only trying to put things in the least favourable light, so that you will appreciate the risks.”
“You want this to be a purely business arrangement, I take it,” he said.
Fiona regarded him in a curious fashion. “Oh no,” she said slowly. “For I need a husband, too.”
Rumbold stood up. The motion of the train caused him to sway. He flexed his knees against it. “A husband?” he said. “Well that’s an odd idea at your age and with your experience, isn’t it? And why me rather than another, please?”
“Why not you?” she said. “You please me.”
Rumbold sat down. The train had not stopped at Talavera, after all, but, with speed reduced, was passing through the suburbs of the town. Lights flecked the window curtains. A shunting engine passed, going in the opposite direction, with a hiss of ill-held steam.
“Either,” he said, “you are a monster, or else, quite simply, you are mad.”
“Neither,” she said. “On the contrary, I am logical, I see clearly. There is something I have long wanted done. I meet a man whose past history suggests that he can do it. Since there is a tariff in these affairs I offer him an adequate reward. And since I like him, I offer him also something more.”
“How do you think we could ever live together with that hanging over us?”
“Oh, you exaggerate! What does the removal of a small boy mean to two people who have never even seen him? To drop for a moment into your own kind of talk, the child needn’t even ‘suffer’. He can go straight to heaven.” She laughed, but he shivered. “There is a blind spot in me somewhere,” she said, “but also certain qualities of vision. You need me, Rumbold, as much as I need you, for you’re weak . . . very weak. Once upon a time you worked: you’d hate to have to work again.”
Rumbold poured out fresh coffee from the thermos. He added brandy to the mugs, and handed one mug to her. “Very well,” he said. “Proceed.”
Fiona took a small red notebook from her bag. She flicked the pages. “In Lisbon I’m staying at the Aviz, as you know,” she said. “You’d better stay somewhere else . . . the Americano might do. My seat is booked on a Constellation for London on the 28th. Again, it might be better if we were not seen together. You could follow in a day or two and contact me,
in London, at Brown’s.”
“And then?”
“You can go down to Devonshire. You’ll need a few days to get your bearings, to make enquiries. The thing could take place in the second week of the New Year. He will still be on his holidays.”
“And then?” Somewhere, thought Rumbold, a small boy was spending his last Christmas.
“By then I shall have taken a house somewhere . . . Sussex, perhaps, or even Scotland: it would be amusing to see Peterhead again. My sister could teach you knots and splices.”
“I can’t do it,” he said. “I can’t . . . I can’t. It’s just not in my nature.”
“Yet how you wish it were . . . isn’t that true?”
“Maybe.”
“You want me to play Lady Macbeth, don’t you . . . to push, and convince and advance you every kind of Jesuitical argument? I have too much respect for your intelligence. What does it matter? There’s no risk . . . you don’t fear the gallows, do you?”
“I fear them horribly,” he said. “I’m not the man I once was.” He bent his head, pressing the palm of his right hand against one eye. “And you,” he said. “How can I trust you? I do the work: you benefit.”
She hesitated. “Give me your penknife,” she said.
“Why?”
“Give me your penknife all the same.”
He handed it to her. Quickly she opened the blade and before he could resist, drew it sharply across his wrist and then her own. She pressed her hand to his. Their blood fell together to the floor.
“Where did you learn that schoolgirl trick?” he said.
“Blood,” she said. “Blood is what counts, and mine is calling to yours. In blood and in experience shared we will make a new life together.”
Rumbold withdrew his hand. “Let’s get some sleep,” he said roughly. He lay down, covering himself with his coat, but she sat long erect, watching the shadow of the lamp upon his forehead, his ruffled hair and his out-thrust feet.
The train continued its slow progress towards Portugal.
Eight
Rumbold began to fill in the form without which admission to the vast hinterland of the War Office was impossible. At the space devoted to the name of the person whom he wished to see, he hesitated. Observing this hesitation the attendant, who prided himself upon his ability to classify visitors, thought fit to prompt him:
“Room P. 56 perhaps?” he said.
“Exactly,” said Rumbold. The attendant then begged him to sit down, which Rumbold did, between a Brigadier clutching a brief-case and a Subaltern in the Irish Guards, whose well cut battle-dress and walking stick revealed a certain conflict in the young man’s mind between the laisser-aller of Montgomery and the correctitude of Alexander.
Presently, the Brigadier was called, his fingers twitching nervously, for he had ordered just one court-martial too many in Sumatra, and now faced an almost certain demotion. The Subaltern turned to Rumbold:
“Been in the Army?” he said.
“Oh yes,” said Rumbold. “You, too, I see.”
The Subaltern ignored the jest. “I couldn’t help hearing the number of the room you’re going to,” he said. “You’re one of those queer fellows, eh? What luck! It’s not much fun when your call-up age coincides with the end of a war.” He tapped with his stick in his embarrassment.
Rumbold was touched. “I shouldn’t worry,” he said. “Your chance will come.”
“Have to worry,” said the Subaltern. “No authority over the men. Yet know I’m as good as they are. Just haven’t had the chance, that’s all.”
“You’ll get it,” said Rumbold. “There must be a hundred thousand just like you. Men will always fight to find out what quota of guts they possess. That’s what makes it so easy for the Government.” He stopped, conscious of being sententious.
“Mr. Rumbold.” The attendant beckoned.
“Well . . . goodbye,” said Rumbold.
“Goodbye, old man,” said the Subaltern. “Shan’t meet again, I suppose. I’ve volunteered for Palestine. Seems to be the only place there’s something doing.”
Preceded by his guide, Rumbold embarked upon the gloomy, ill-lit maze. Clop-clop, the four feet, unsynchronised, sounded on the stone. They turned right, they turned left, they turned right again, but this time a mistake had been made, for they found themselves in a blind alley where workmen were removing sandbags, the battle post of full Colonels in 1940.
Eventually they discovered the true direction. The attendant tapped loudly upon the door. “Room P. 56, sir,” he said, impressively. Rumbold entered. A gas fire was lit. The floor was covered by an Aubusson. From behind a Remington, a young woman looked up.
“Rumbold?” she said. “Go in there, will you please.” She indicated an annexe, glass-panelled upon all sides. Rumbold went in, as ordered. He sat down and began to read an ancient copy of the Tatler. On one page, in the margin of some racing pictures, someone had scrawled a statement of accounts . . . “to three double whiskies . . . to taxi, Tottenham Court Road to Maida Vale . . . to four hours wait outside house, West Cromwell Road . . . to tips concerning enquiries. Left Luggage Office, Charing Cross.”
Cassell came in. “Well, Rumbold,” he said. “You’re back at last, I see.”
“Cut out the boniments,” said Rumbold. “You knew I was back the moment my plane touched down at Poole.”
Cassell was a small, bird-like man. His voice was high-pitched, chirpy, not unlike a flute. He was always most immaculately dressed: generally, as to-day, in civilian clothes. There was nothing immediately sinister about him except his extreme gentleness.
“Don’t be tough, Rumbold,” he said. “I know it’s part of your defensive mechanism but spare me the more purple passages.”
“I’ll spare you nothing,” said Rumbold. “You were the Country Section Officer. You took him on. You are responsible for the death of those nine men.”
Cassell sat down. He flicked the pages of the Tatler.
“Not nine,” he said. “Ninety-nine. Sluys is dead. He was shot at Hamburg last year. Nor, I’m afraid, did he die with courage. But now, Rumbold, we have to deal with you.”
“Deal then.”
“You are a deserter, Rumbold.”
“Splendid. All right . . . court-martial me. Even in a military trial a few facts will come to light.”
Cassell closed the Tatler. “I wish you wouldn’t rush bull-headed at it always, Rumbold,” he said. “A little deference, a certain sense of shame, and we might get on very well together . . . even now.”
“I have nothing to retract,” said Rumbold.
“Yet they tell me, Rumbold, that when you were in the Ardèche after that unfortunate affair, you refused to join the Resistance movement.”
“I don’t blow railway lines under the orders of incompetent peasants,” said Rumbold. “I blow them by myself.”
“And they tell me,” pursued Cassell, “that you made a considerable amount of cash on the black market in Marseilles. They even tell me that when you were in Madrid, you saw my friend Aranjuez.”
“What a lot of Government money must be wasted on following the activities of private individuals,” said Rumbold.
Cassell explored his teeth with a silver toothpick, a mannerism which he had developed less in the interests of hygiene than because he knew that the rasp of metal against ivory set the nerves of visitors on edge.
“Where is all that money now?” he said pleasantly.
“Well, I don’t ask you to believe me,” said Rumbold, “but as a matter of fact it’s in the heels of my shoes.”
“Show,” said Cassell.
Rumbold removed his shoes, and swung back the hinges. He had already secreted the gold and dollars in the chimney of his hotel bedroom, retaining only the pesetas, for wh
ich currency, exchange in England would be difficult.
“I must confiscate this,” said Cassell.
“That’s all right,” said Rumbold. “I daresay you can put it to good use.”
The two men stared at one another. “Rumbold,” said Cassell, “do you know that I could send you to Scotland to cut wood for ten years?”
“Hardly,” said Rumbold. “Remember that I’m not paid out of Army funds. The only contract you have with me is my signature on a piece of paper stating the penalties for infringement of the Official Secrets Act. You can’t get me there because you know I’ve kept my mouth shut. Then . . . not being quite a fool . . . I’ve made a few enquiries since I came to London. I know the organisation has been broken up, for example.”
“Not broken up but gone to ground,” said Cassell. He surveyed Rumbold amicably, smiling his thin smile. Above Rumbold’s head hung a view by Raoul Dufy of the garden in the Luxembourg. Cassell’s gaze transferred itself to this picture, which he had bought quite cheaply from a Belgian banker who had felt the urgent need to square his conscience.
“I like to see you sitting there, Rumbold,” he said. “It’s as if a ghost had returned. Do you remember Antelme and Abazarian? You’re one of the few of our early birds who have come through.”
“Ne cherchez pas à faire apitoyer,” said Rumbold. “I know quite well that they were hanged.”
Cassell grinned. “If you were as hard as you like to pretend,” he said, “I could cut you up for lighter flints, couldn’t I? But you’re not hard at all, are you, Rumbold . . . and you’re worried. I wonder what you’re worried about?”
“I should have thought it was pretty obvious,” said Rumbold. “I have no desire to be court-martialled at this stage of the Peace.”