Malone lay on his bed. He had taken off his shoes and every now and again he would wriggle his toes, easing the soreness of them. He was still stiff from last night’s bruising and the cut on his chin had begun to itch under its Band-aid. But he was hardly aware of any of his discomfort except as irritations on the periphery of his mind. He was no Stoic, nor had he ever been one to indulge himself in the contemplation of pain. He had discovered that it was best cured by being ignored; the system might not work with everyone but it did with him. And if the mind had its own pain, the body in any case was forgotten.
The curtains were open and the early evening sky outside the window was the colour of a kingfisher’s breast: a highflying jet pierced it like a tiny dart. There was a distant hum of traffic, the breathing, sighing, occasional shrieking of the city; but it was not disturbing. Dead silence would have been worse, would have made him more aware of the people in the house. One of whom had tried to open his brief-case in which was locked the file on Quentin and the warrant for his arrest
It had been a long day and not a good one. The conference, he knew, had gone badly again. He had become concerned for its success, a little to his own surprise. He was not a political nor like so many of his fellow countrymen, completely uninterested in what went on in the conference halls of the world. He knew that Australia, culturally and socially, was still isolated from the rest of the world; he had once helped arrest a drunken English actor who had described it as the arse-end of civilisation, and he had stood by while his fellow officer, cut to his patriotic quick, had dreamed up other charges to lay against the offending actor. The slur on his country had not worried him, because he was well aware of the fact that he was not himself culturally and socially minded. But he had never ignored the fact that, politically, Australia was no longer isolated. No matter what eleven million white Australians thought, their country was now part of Asia. And what went on in Viet Nam, Indonesia, China, in any country to the north of them, concerned them as much as the problems close at home, the traffic toll, the rising cost of living, the possible winner of the next Melbourne Cup. But while he had been back home in Australia, surrounded by an environment that looked upon an Asia-oriented foreign policy as some sort of treason, it had been easy to become one of the mob, one of those who buried their heads in the sand of Bondi beach and thought the price of beer more important than the price of freedom. He had been guilty of the same apathy.
But no longer. Now he was as concerned for the success of the conference as were Quentin, Larter and Edgar; he had become a silent, unacknowledged member of the delegation. He wanted the conference to succeed in its main purpose, to achieve some sort of peace, no matter how fragile, in Asia; he also wanted it to succeed for Quentin’s sake. The man would want to take something with him into the dark years ahead in gaol.
At the afternoon break in the discussions Quentin had come out of the big main room and along to where Malone had stood by himself on one of the balconies. Other delegates went by in pairs and threes, heads drawn together in the one net of earnest discussion. Malone saw the American who had come to the house this morning; he passed by with two other men and as he did so he looked at Quentin with hurt eyes. Quentin missed the glance and the American passed on, looking even more hurt.
“Thinking of buying the place, Scobie?” Quentin said.
Malone had been gazing admiringly at the staircase and the big hall below him. “I’m going to find it tough going back to my flat in King’s Cross. No marble walls and chandeliers there.”
“The marble is imitation. Like the attitudes of some of the delegates here today.”
Quentin sounded bitter and disappointed, but he managed a confident simile as a Malaysian delegate went by. Then he looked about the balconies, at the groups clustered together like salesmen in some gem market. That’s what they are, Malone thought: salesmen selling their influence. The thought disgusted him; some ember of youthful idealism flared again for a moment Then cynical realism prevailed. He was supposed, as a policeman, to be experienced in human nature. Everything today was based upon buying and selling: even love was a commodity and not just sold by prostitutes. Why should he expect men to make a gift of peace? Christ had tried it and they had nailed him to a cross for his pains.
Quentin said, “The man who designed this house also built the house where you were last night, Fothergill’s. He built Crockford’e, too. I wonder how he feels now? Three of his biggest commissions finishing up as gambling clubs.”
“Three?”
“Wouldn’t you call this a gambling club? The odds are longer here than at Crockford’s or Fothergill’s. Especially today.”
“Things are getting worse?”
Quentin nodded, then looked over Malone’s shoulder. “Mr. Chen, Mr. Pai. Enjoying yourselves?”
Malone was introduced to the two Chinese, one thin and young, the other fat and middle-aged. “Our stay has been enjoyable, but we are looking forward to going home,” said the young man, Chen. “We do not make very good observers. We prefer to work.”
“I thought you had been working all the time you were here.” The look of sour depression had gone from Quentin’s face; he smiled with frank good humour. “Winning friends and influencing people.”
“Dale Carnegie is required reading in Peking. And Norman Vincent Peale and Godfrey Winn.” Chen was not without a sense of humour; he had learned that outside China propaganda had to be more subtle than at home. “How else can we understand the West unless we read their philosophers?”
“You should not neglect Dorothy Dix.”
“Women have never made good philosophers,” said Chen, still smiling, and looked at the fat man. “We know that, don’t we?”
“Too emotional,” said Pai, taking off his glasses and polishing them with a handkerchief. He was a nervous man and Malone could imagine him taking off his glasses every few minutes, rubbing away at them till they splintered apart in his fingers. “We are fortunate there are no women here at the conference trying to influence decisions. Do you not think so, Mr. Quentin?”
Quentin looked at Malone, then back at the two Chinese. “Perhaps they are in the background. One never knows. Most of the delegates here are married men.”
“Wives are not the women to be wary of,” said Chen, still unmarried and still innocent. “Wives do not have ambitions for power, except perhaps over their husbands. At least I understand that it is like that in the West.”
“I must ask my wife what power she has over me,” said Quentin, still smiling.
“I did not mean to offend,” said Chen: the revolution had not killed all politeness.
“I know that. I was only joking. But what about Lady Wu–wouldn’t you say she had ambitions for power?”
“Lady Wu was a concubine, not a wife. Not as you Western men understand the term wife.”
“Who was Lady Wu?” Malone asked.
“She lived in the seventh century,” Quentin said. “She was about the most villainous bitch of all time. She made Catherine the Great and Lucrezia Borgia look like a couple of Girl Guides.”
“An absolute reactionary,” said Pai.
Quentin hid a smile, kept a straight face. “Yes, you could say she was that. She murdered hundreds of people, including some of her own sons. She lived to a ripe old age, ran a male harem till she was almost eighty. When she thed she left a will saying that she forgave all those people who had made her kill them. They don’t make women like her any more, do they, Mr. Chen?”
Chen shrugged. “One never knows. Perhaps the climate is not right any more. Could you see Lady Wu as a London hostess?”
“Perhaps not,” conceded Quentin. “Wholesale disposal of corpses in London is difficult.”
“You could stand them in queues at bus stops,” said Malone. “No one would know the difference.”
Chen and Pai looked at Malone as if seeing him for the first time. “Mr. Malone has a macabre sense of humour,” said Chen. “One does not expect that of Australians, only the decadent Europeans.”
“We’re full of surprises,” said Quentin.
Then Chen and Pai bowed their heads, excused themselves and went away. Quentin watched them moving round the balconies, their faces open in bland smiles, only closing up as they passed the American delegation and the Russian observers. The Americans and Russians had at last become allies of a sort: they had a common enemy.
“What do you make of those two?” Quentin said. “Do you think Madame Cholon would be working for them?”
“I doubt it. Those two blokes are real wowsers—” Malone used the Australian term for puritanical killjoys. “I only had about ten minutes with Madame Cholon, but she struck me as anything but a wowser. She’d be in every sort of sin going.”
“I wonder if she has ever read the story of Lady Wu?”
“If I knew what her ambitions were, maybe I could tell you.”
“It’s a pity your friend Jamaica won’t tell you what he seems to know about her. Have you seen him here today?”
Malone shook his head. “He seems to have blown through. Denzil is trying to find out what he can about him. I gather he’s up at the American Embassy now making a nuisance of himself.” Malone hesitated, then said, “Sergeant Coburn will see you home this evening.”
“Where are you going?”
“Up to Qantas to book our seats for Saturday. There’s a flight out at five-thirty in the afternoon. Shall I book Mrs. Quentin on it, too?”
Quentin drew a deep breath and his brows came down, as if he were trying to concentrate on a problem he had for the moment forgotten. He tugged at his moustache; Malone had begun to notice it was almost a reflex action when Quentin had to consider his other, real identity. He wondered how soon Quentin would shave off his moustache, would revert fully to being Corliss. Or would that ever be possible?
“Make it for the three of us. First class. I may as well have the comfort while I can. I’ll pay the extra.”
“There’s no need. They authorised first class for you and me. But I’m afraid you’ll have to pay for Mrs. Quentin.”
“How did you come over?”
“Economy class.”
Quentin grinned, with a little effort, and shook his head. “See how I make things so much better for you?”
“You don’t, you know,” said Malone; and was glad that at that moment Larter came up to say everyone was moving back into the conference room.
He had left Lancaster House late in the afternoon, when Coburn had come to relieve him, and gone up to the airline offices to book seats for Saturday’s flight. “Will it be crowded?”
“No, sir. So far there are only two other passengers in first class.”
He did not know why he wanted to continue the protection of Quentin right till they arrived back in Sydney; once they boarded the plane in London everything for Quentin was finished. The curiosity of fellow passengers who might recognise him would be nothing to what he would have to face as soon as they arrived in Sydney.
He handed the girl two ticket vouchers. “For yourself and Mr. Corliss, is that right? And the name of the third person?”
“Mrs. John Corliss.” The voucher for Quentin’s ticket had been made out in the name that was on his warrant for arrest. Malone wondered how Sheila Quentin would react to bearing the name of another woman, a woman now dead. Perhaps he had made a mistake in giving that name, but it was too late now: the girl was already writing it down.
“And the address in case we want to get in touch with you?”
He gave the number of the house in Belgrave Square; the girl did not seem to attach any significance to it. “That will be another three hundred and ninety pounds, sir.”
He took out his traveller’s cheques and the money he had won last night He laid down the notes and wrote out cheques for the balance. “What time will we reach Sydney?”
“Seven-twenty Monday morning. Rather early, I’m afraid.”
But not too early for the newsmen to be out there, their pencils sharpened for mayhem. He had always got on well with newspapermen, but now suddenly he hated them. They would only be doing their job, just as he was only doing his. But at seven-twenty Monday morning they would begin to drive the first nails into Quentin. It didn’t help to know that he was playing Pilate.
“Enjoy your trip,” said the girl, safe in the heart of Piccadilly.
Then he had come back to the house in Belgravia, come up to his room, taken off his jacket and shoes, picked up his brief-case and at once seen the scratches on the lock. Whoever had been in his room had not succeeded in opening the lock, but they had damaged it; it had taken him some time to open it and he had bent his key in the process. Now he lay on his bed wondering who had made the crude attempt to open the brief-case. Quentin himself? He had been home at kast half an hour before Malone had returned. Sheila? She would have had all day. Or Joseph? Or even Lisa? But why would either of the latter two want to know what he had locked in the case? It looked like Quentin or his wife.
He reached for the case again and took out the file. He had not looked at it since his arrival in London; but he knew that he could now read between some of the lines. Quentin, on acquaintance, had been opened up a little more; he was down now to the bones of the man. But not to the heart, not yet. How long did that take? A month, a year? Or as long as the tide took to reach the heart of a rock? Justice was going to claim Quentin, the man who right now, somewhere in this house, was worrying himself sick trying to salvage some peace for a world that, involuntarily or otherwise, had begun to devalue the human condition. Was justice interested in the heart of a man? What was justice? Malone had once looked it up in a dictionary and got no satisfactory answer. It had not been an expensive dictionary, but one should not have to pay a lot of money to learn what justice was. The quality of being just, the book had said; from the entry above he had learned that to be just was to be lawful, upright, exact, regular, and true. All the definitions had, in his mind, added up to smugness. There had been one other definition: retribution. Then, because he had been in doubt and doubt engendered cynicism, others had occurred to him: revenge, compensation to the victim. And, sometimes, a sense of guilt: society blaming itself for what had happened and sentencing the man in the dock, its own representative, to punishment. Society could not be blamed for what Quentin had done. But how would it feel when it came to sentence him, especially if he should somehow drag the conference back to a successful conclusion? If he owed a debt to society, what of society’s debt to him?
Malone’s head ached; it was not accustomed to the exercises of philosophy. He opened the file, began to read it again from the beginning, skipping some of those pages that held only the opinions of the researcher. It now read like another story; or at least the story of another man. . . .
“. . . Corliss kept very much to himself while working for the Water Board. He seems to have been incapable of communicating with other people. He had no friends there and belonged to none of the social clubs. He played golf at Moore Park, which is a public course, and even there had no friends; he played either alone or would join a pick-up foursome. None of his workmates had ever met his wife or been invited to his home. Their neighbours in Coogee remember him as a shy morose man who never did more than pass the time of day with them; the wife Freda was also shy but one or two women remember her as pleasant; she would not talk about her life before she came to Australia. . . .
“. . . Certain of Corliss’s workmates remember thinking of him as unhappy. He appeared to be a man without ambition or interest, living only from day to day. Then, roughly three to four months before he disappeared, those working closely with him in survey parties noticed a change in him. He still did not join them out of work hours in any social functions. But he was gayer, seemed to be enjoying life more. . . .”
Why? Malone asked himself. Had the relationship between Quentin (he could not bring himself to think of him as Corliss) and his wife Freda improved? But if so, why had he killed her so soon afterwards? Or had the killing, as Quentin had claimed, really been an accident?
“. . . Two weeks before the murder Corliss took his annual holidays. He went away for a week. He did not take his wife with him nor is it known where he went. He returned to work on Monday, December 8, 1941. His workmates noticed that he seemed troubled and unhappy again, but put it down to the news about Pearl Harbour. He was asked if he was going to enlist. He made one of his few confidences of his private life; he said he would have to see how his wife felt. Up till then, he said, she had been against his joining up; she had lost her parents to the Nazis and she did not want to lose her husband. But now the Japanese were in the war, he said, things might be different He left work early that afternoon . . .”
Where had Quentin gone for that week alone? Why had he not taken his wife? Had they had an argument on December 8 about his enlisting, an argument that had blown up into a fierce row, which had come to blows and in which she had been fatally stabbed?
“. . . There is another gap in Corliss’s movements. From leaving the head office of the Water Board at 3.30 p.m. on December 8, 1941, till he enlisted in the Royal Australian Navy at H.M.A.S. Leeuwin, the Navy depot in Perth, Western Australia, on May 12, 1942 . . .”
Where had he been for those five months? Had he been going through torture that was only to be assuaged when he met Sheila Redmond? Malone flipped through several more pages.
“. . . On July 10, 1942, he married Sheila, daughter of Leslie and Elizabeth Cousins Redmond, at the Registry Office, Perth. Nothing can be traced of Sheila Redmond’s history prior to her marriage. When Corliss (now Quentin) became Minister Without Portfolio, Mrs. Quentin was interviewed by several newspapers. But all the articles written about her are vague about her beginnings. All that emerges is that she grew up on a farm in northern Queensland . . .”
Malone sat up. Northern Queensland?
Then there was a knock at the door and Sheila Quentin said, “Mr. Malone? Would you care to join us for a drink before dinner? My husband has something he wants to discuss with you.”
II
“Sherry? Whisky? Beer?” Sheila was pouring the drinks. “I don’t know your taste, Mr. Malone.”
“He’s not a sherry man,” said Quentin and smiled at Malone. “That’s one thing we have in common. Give him whisky. But where’s Joseph?”
“It’s his afternoon off.” Sheila looked at Quentin, her eyes darkening with concern. “Have you lost track of the days? It’s Thursday.”
Quentin nodded his head sharply, as if annoyed with his own abstraction. “Of course. He’s lucky, having an afternoon off. Did he take that clock of mine to be mended?”
“He had it with him when he went out” Sheila handed Malone his drink. “How’s that?”
Malone tasted the drink and coughed. He looked up at her, thinking how beautiful she looked even through the tears in his eyes, wondering what she had hoped to achieve by finding out what was in his brief-case. “Are you trying to knock me out?”
She smiled. “Whisky is supposed to be medicinal. I thought it might help you forget your bruises.”
Which ones? he wanted to ask. The physical ones or the bruises to his trust He had trusted her husband, gone much further than he should have as a policeman, and Quentin had rewarded him with lies. He looked at Quentin and said, “You wanted to see me about something?”
“How much do I owe you for Mrs. Quentin’s air ticket? You got us on Saturday’s plane?”
Malone nodded. “You owe me seventy pounds.”
Both the Quentins looked at him curiously. “Seventy pounds for a first class air ticket to Sydney?” Quentin smiled. He was relaxed, enjoying this free moment at the end of the day. It was almost as if his personal fate no longer concerned him; when he left here Saturday he would only be going away for a long week-end. A life’s end, Malone thought; but Quentin was still smiling. “What is it, bargain week?”
“I already had three hundred and twenty pounds of your money.” He remembered the fiver he had given to the derelict; he must have been really light-headed last night. But that was going to be his last act of charity till he got back to Sydney. He had read somewhere that charity was the overflow of pity; you poured out your pity and experienced relief and a sort of sweet suffering. Well, he had suffered all right, but not sweetly.
“I told you that was your money!” Quentin had stopped smiling. His voice was sharp, irritable; he sounded like an ambassador speaking to a junior official with whom he was losing patience. Well, maybe that’s the way it should be, Malone thought. But I’m beginning to lose my own patience, too. And don’t forget it, mate: I’m the one with the real authority.
“Not any more,” said Malone stubbornly, cutting bonds deliberately and with a quiet savagery.
Quentin stared at him, all at once sensing an antagonism that hadn’t been in Malone before this. Something like hurt crossed his face, as if he had been betrayed. You shouldn’t trust anyone so much, Malone said silentiy, almost with malice; I trusted you and I know exactly how you feel, except that I’m not hurt. But he was and he knew it, hurt deeply. He suddenly resented Quentin’s look of having been betrayed.
“What’s the matter, Mr. Malone?” Sheila stood behind Quentin’s chair. She had turned round from the drink cabinet, naturally and without premeditation; but now it seemed to Malone that they were both arrayed against him, defenders drawn together against the enemy, him. “Something’s troubling you?”
He wanted to laugh at that, but he had never been able to manage the sound of sour humour: he knew he would only sound like a bad actor. He took another taste of his drink, coughed because he had drunk it too fast, then said, “Which one of you killed Freda?”
Then there was a knock at the door and Lisa opened it. “Superintendent Denzil and Sergeant Coburn are here, sir.”
Quentin had been staring at Malone. There was no expression at all on his face now, it had turned to grey lava. Behind him Sheila had put out a hand and clutched his shoulder; Malone could see the bone of her knuckles, like white abscesses. They both looked suddenly old; and just as suddenly Malone was stricken with pity again for them. He turned away from them, unable to go on looking at them, and said to Lisa, “Did the Superintendent want to see me or Mr. Quentin?”
Lisa hadn’t taken her eyes off the Quentins; the room held a triangle of fixed stares. Out in the hall Denzil coughed impatiently; he wasn’t accustomed to being kept waiting, not even by High Commissioners. Malone stood up and moved towards Lisa; there was much more that he wanted to ask the Quentins, but it would have to wait. He remembered the simplicity of other murder cases: the long questioning without interruption, the non-involvement, the feeling of authority that came from working in your own environment. “You’d better bring them in,” he said, and for the second time in this house sounded authoritative. The first time had also been with Lisa and she seemed to remember it. She looked at him with the beginning of resentment; then she smiled and nodded. She was still on his side, but he knew without doubt whose side she would be on when the truth came out. She was a woman; they were always prepared to excuse the betrayal of trust; they were used to it. She looked back once more at the stiff and silent Quentins, than she pushed the door wide open and looked into the hall.
“Would you come in, Superintendent?”
The first thing that Malone noticed was how tired Denzil looked. Most of the colour had faded from the red face and for the first time Malone remarked the scar above the sandy eyebrow. The thin lips were tensed and the beefy hands were pressed firmly into his jacket pockets, not casually but as if they were anchored there to prevent them from slashing nervously at the air. He took them out of his pockets as he said good evening to the Quentins, then shoved them back in again. Behind him Coburn, also tired, looked more quizzical than ever, as if he did not believe what Denzil was telling Malone and the others:
“We’ve found your Mr. Jamaica. His body was in a rented car outside the Chinese Government’s office in Portland Place. He’d been garrotted.” Denzil realised his mistake and looked at the two women. “Sorry, lathes. I didn’t mean to be so blunt.”
“I think my wife and Miss Pretorious should be excused.” Quentin had stood up when Denzil and Coburn had come into the room. He had regained his composure, had somehow even managed to force some colour back into his face; once again Malone was amazed at the man’s resilience. He ushered the two women towards the door, gently pushing Sheila who said nothing but was reluctant to go. As she went out of the door Sheila looked at Malone, but he turned his face away. Why the hell do I feel I’m in the wrong? he thought. Pity was a virus; it weakened you. Quentin stood in the doorway looking after Sheila; she was out of Malone’s sight, but he guessed that some glance of warning, despair, something, must have passed between them; he saw the reflection of it in Quentin’s face, even though the man was in profile to him. Then Quentin, once more the High Commissioner, turned back into the room.
“Do the Chinese know about this?”
“If they do, sir, they haven’t told us,” said Denzil. “We were very lucky – the body was found by a uniformed man on the beat there. Sergeant Coburn went up there and took the car and the body back to the Yard.”
“He kept falling into my lap every time I turned a corner,” Coburn said to Malone; then saw Denzil’s sharp look of disapproval. “Sorry, sir.”
“Do you think the Chinese did it?” Quentin asked.
“Hardly, sir. Not right outside their own place. No, he was planted there. And I think you can guess by whom. Why, I don’t know.” He was tired enough to admit some ignorance: “I don’t understand women too well at the best of times. I’m afraid the working of an Oriental woman’s mind is just beyond me.”
“You’re sure Madame Cholon’s responsible?” Malone said.
“Do you have any other nominations?” Denzil sounded weary, not sarcastic. Malone hesitated, then shook his head. Denzil went on, “We haven’t even been to see the Chinese yet, sir. I talked it over with the Assistant Commissioner, told him what you wanted, to keep everything out of the papers. He doesn’t feel we can go on covering up things for too long – especially in a case of plain murder like this. We’ve put a D notice on it for the time being.”
“What’s that?” Malone asked.
“Defence security notice for the benefit of any newspapers if they get on to the story. It will hold them for a while, but once they’re on to it they’ll start asking awkward questions. And we’ll have the Americans to consider. I suppose Jamaica was still an American citizen.”
“Are the papers likely to get on to it?” Quentin said.
“Not right away, unless someone gives them a tip. But they’ll be on to it in a day or two. We can’t just dump Jamaica in the river and forget all about him.” Denzil looked at the drink cabinet. “It would be nice if we could.”
Quentin had recovered almost completely, enough to catch Denzil’s hint. He looked at Malone, not telling him what to do but as if asking a favour. Malone poured two Scotches and handed them to Denzil and Coburn.
“We shouldn’t,” said Denzil, “but it’s been a long day. Your health, sir.”
“Thank you,” said Quentin, and avoided Malone’s eye. “Now, about the Chinese. If they don’t already know, do you have to tell them? I mean immediately?”
Denzil sipped his drink; he appreciated good whisky and the High Commissioner’s stuff was better than one got in some embassies. “Strictly speaking, no. The body was found in the street, not on their property. If we speak to them at all, it will only be out of courtesy or curiosity. I think we can contain ourselves on those two counts for the time being, sir. How long do you want?”
“I’d like a year.” Quentin smiled, a little embarrassedly, as if he had made a joke in bad taste. He was bankrupt of time, for himself and the cause of peace. “But twenty-four hours will do. The conference will be over to-morrow, Saturday morning at the latest.”
“How’s it going, sir?”
“Not too well, I’m afraid. But one keeps hoping—” But his voice was already that of a hopeless man: he was slowly turning blind to the future.
Denzil finished his drink, smacked his thin lips. “That is excellent whisky, sir.”
“Compliment my butler. He knows where to get all the best stuff.” Quentin had no illusions about Joseph’s love of the sybaritic life. “He tells me I’m the only non-Scot in London who gets that particular whisky.”
“Trust a Hungarian to have the best contacts,” said Denzil. “Well, sir, we can keep this other matter quiet till Saturday, if you wish it. It might give us more time to find out who Jamaica really was. I wonder if I might borrow Mr. Malone for a while?”
Malone could see his own surprise reflected in Quentin’s face, but he said nothing, left it to Quentin to reply: “Of course. I’m not going out to-night I’m expecting one or two delegates to drop in to see me.”
“Sergeant Coburn will stay here. Just in case.”
“You think there might be another attempt on my” – Quentin seemed to stammer – “ my life?”
“I think we have you pretty well sheltered now, sir. If you don’t go out other than going to the conference tomorrow, they’ll have to get into the house to get at you. And there’s no chance of that, short of them putting on a commando raid. You won’t mind if Sergeant Coburn looks over your visitors to-night? Discreetly, of course.” He looked at Coburn and managed a smile that though weary, had some warmth in it. “He doesn’t wear very discreet ties, but otherwise he’s very circumspect.”
Coburn fingered his purple tie and grinned. “I’ll tell my girl she’s subversive, sir.”
Denzil continued to smile; the two men seemed to have found a new relationship. “Just see no one subversive gets in here to-night.” He looked back at Quentin. “You’ll be safe enough, sir. If the conference finishes to-morrow, that should be the finish of all our troubles, too.”
Let’s go before you put your foot in it again, Malone thought. He led the way out of the room into the hall, wondering why Denzil wanted to take him out of the house to-night. He glanced up and saw a movement of yellow at the top of the stairs: Sheila had been wearing a yellow dress. But when he stopped and looked steadily up at the landing he saw nothing; he could feel Sheila Quentin watching him, but he could not see her. It disturbed him, suddenly reduced her to an ordinary criminal level. He turned back, saw that Coburn was standing alone as Denzil had a last word with Quentin. He moved towards the sergeant
“Keep an eye on Mrs. Quentin, too.” He kept his voice low. “See she doesn’t go out of the house. If she tries it, tell her you’re acting on my orders.”
Coburn was either tired or conditioned: he showed no surprise. “You think they might try getting at her?”
“They could. Everyone’s a target now.”
“What about the secretary?”
He might as well go the whole way with the interpretation Coburn had put on his words. “Yes, they might even try it with her. Keep ’em all in the house.”
“What if Quentin wants to go out?”
“Tell him the same. He can’t go out till I get back.”
Coburn looked doubtful, fumbled with his tie again. “I’m not used to giving orders to High Commissioners. But if you say so—” He shrugged. “You Aussies are bloody informal, aren’t you?”
“That’s us,” said Malone. “Jack’s as good as his master every time.”
“My name’s Fred. Whoever heard of a master named Fred?”
“What about Fred the Great?”
“A German. Freds never get anywhere in England.”
Malone had enjoyed the short nonsense with Coburn; he was smiling as he followed Denzil out of the house. There had been bloody little to smile at since he had arrived in London; any small joke now seemed to give double its value. A police car was parked by the kerb and the uniformed policeman from the beat was talking to the driver. Denzil stopped on the steps of the house and looked at Malone.
“I had to get you out of the house. Didn’t want to talk in front of Quentin. I’m afraid I had to spill your little secret to the Assistant Commissioner to-night. I mean why you’re really here.”
Malone stopped smiling. “What did he say?”
“Shocked, naturally. He’s a bit old-fashioned,” said Denzil, and Malone almost smiled again. “Said he wouldn’t have been surprised if it had been a foreigner, but not a Commonwealth ambassador.”
“I’m taking both of them, Quentin and his wife, out of here Saturday afternoon. We’ll be back in Sydney Monday morning. Can the Assistant Commissioner control his shock till then?”
“Don’t be rude about him, son,” said Denzil. “We’ve been leaning over backwards for you two Aussies all the week. Allow us a few old-fashioned reactions.” Malone apologised, and Denzil nodded, even raised a hand and patted Malone’s shoulder. “I know it’s been no easier for you. This is when I’m glad I haven’t got long to retirement.”
“You’re lucky,” said Malone, thinking for the first time ever of the pleasures of retirement. No responsibilities, no involvement, nothing; but all that was thirty years away. He brought himself back to the present. “What now?”
“I’m on my way up to the American Embassy. I may be barking up the wrong tree, but I think they may be able to help us about Jamaica. I thought you might be interested?”
He’s not a bad old bastard, Malone thought. “Thanks, sir. I’d like to come.” There were more questions he wanted to put to the Quentins, but suddenly he wanted more time. He wanted to be less abrupt, less the inquisitor: he wanted to know why, not what.
The uniformed policeman saluted as they got into the car.
“Anything been happening?” Denzil asked.
“Nothing, sir.” It was the young policeman who had been on duty two nights ago when the attempt to shoot Quentin had been made. He had caught a summer cold and it had accentuated his lisp. He sounds more like a Boy Scout than a copper, Malone thought. “Things are vewy quiet.”
“There’ll be some visitors to-night. Stay on this side of the square, check everyone who goes in. But be discreet.”
“One always has to be discweet a wound heah, thir. It isn’t an easy beat.”
Denzil nodded, got into the car after Malone and they started off. “I’ve never understood why so many educated Englishmen lisp. Even some of our generals do, and they sound like Boy Scouts.” Malone smiled in the darkness of the car. “That young fellow back there is one of the toughest forwards in the Police rugby team. You’d never think it to listen to him. Do you Scots ever lisp, Muir?”
“No, sir,” said the driver. “I come from Edinburgh. We speak the best English in the British Isles.”
Denzil looked at Malone. “Well, let’s see what sort of English this American speaks. He’s a new man, haven’t met him yet. Just hope he isn’t a Southerner. Can’t understand them at all.”
“Maybe he won’t want to talk at all. Presuming, of course, that he knows something about Jamaica.” Malone thought of the dark Southerner from Georgia who would never talk again. He felt nothing approaching sorrow or grief, but the old feeling was there again: death, even that of a Stranger, always chipped something out of him.
“That’s quite possible. That he won’t talk, I mean. I’m afraid the Americans still don’t trust anyone but themselves.”
Don’t let’s mention the word trust again to-night, Malone thought. Somehow it had become obscene.
The car drew up outside the huge embassy in Grosvenor Square. Malone got out of the car and looked up at the block-long face of the building. It reminded him of a fort, one built for Cinerama; the Americans were entrenched behind it, waiting to be besieged by the perfidious English. Across the road in the gardens the bronze Roosevelt stood serene, impervious to the treachery of the British, the dung of the pigeons and the spittle of visiting Republicans. Big American cars stood at almost every parking meter, tanks from Detroit. Grosvenor Square was now American territory.
“The only place in London where I feel a foreigner,” said Denzil. “Well, let’s try our luck.”
Most of the embassy staff had gone home, but the man Denzil wanted to see was still in his office. A porter checked them in, a Cockney as concerned for the security of the United States as for that of the Mile End Road; Denzil eyed him as if he were a traitor, but said nothing. A second porter led them through a maze of corridors till they came to a door that said: Investment Counsellor.
The man in the office was not a Southerner and spoke English that had only a faint transatlantic accent. “I’m Ed Royston,” he said, rising to meet them. He had that courteous charm that Malone found so unexpectedly in so many Americans; people thought of Americans as brash and loud, but some of them had the best manners in the world. Royston was one of them. “I got your phone message, Superintendent. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
Denzil came straight to the point. “I understand you are the new C.I.A. man here, Mr. Royston.”
Royston obviously thought that was not a very polite remark. He sat back in his chair, propping one leg up on the knee of the other. He was a man in his late thirties, with dark crew-cut hair, a nose that had been broken and eyes that could become as opaque as frosted glass. They were opaque now. “I’m afraid you’re in the wrong office, sir. All I do is advise Americans where and how to invest their money in Europe.”
“Is that still official government policy?” Denzil said, still sure of himself. “I thought President Johnson was trying to stop the dollar drain.” He looked around the office, at the charts on the walls, the leather-bound books on the shelves, the stacks of the Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times on a tilted reading bench against one wall. “You have a neat cover here. Your predecessor was a telecommunications engineer. I had a little trouble communicating with him, too.” He smiled and looked back at Royston. “Don’t let’s waste time, Mr. Royston. I’d like some information about a man named Jamaica, first name unknown.”
Royston shook his head. “I’m afraid I’ve never heard of him.”
“We have his body down at the morgue.” Denzil was matter-of-fact and patient. “We found it in a car parked outside the Chinese, the Red Chinese, offices in Portland Place.”
Royston stiffened only slightly, his bent knee flexing. He picked up a ball-point pen and began to doodle on the blotter on his desk. He looked at Malone. “May I ask who you are, Mr. Malone?”
“I’m from the New South Wales Police Force,” said Malone, inventing his own cover. “Attached to the Australian High Commissioner for special duty.”
“Why are you so interested in Jamaica?” Royston addressed the question to both of them; then sat silent while Denzil told him everything they knew about the dead man. At last he said, “He didn’t tell you much, did he?”
“Was he working for you?” Denzil asked.
Royston shook his head. He seemed no longer interested in keeping up the pretence of being an investment counsellor; his dark eyes took on some light. “We knew he was here, but he wasn’t under our control. The ambassador knew nothing about him and neither did the rest of the staff. That was why they told you they’d never heard of him when you checked on him last night. He was working direct with Washington.”
“He told you nothing?”
Royston hesitated, then threw down the pen and sat forward. “I can’t tell you much, Superintendent because I don’t have the authority. You’d have to get on to Washington for that. All I can tell you is what he told me about this Madame Cholon. He rang me this morning, made an appointment to see me to-night. That’s why I’m here now, waiting for him.” He sat back, glanced down at the doodling he had done on the blotter. He bit his lip, then moved a newspaper over the scratchings; but not before Malone had recognised them as rough drawings of what could have been tombstones. “How much do you know about this Cholon woman?”
“Nothing,” said Denzil.
“Well, he got on to her about three months ago. She used to be one of the favourites of Bay Vien – he had not proof that she was one of Bay’s mistresses, but she knew him pretty well.”
“Who was Bay Vien?” Malone asked.
Royston looked at him, his politeness dropping from him for a moment. “You Australians have never really been interested in South-East Asia, have you?”
“I only work for the government.” Malone’s own manners had a rough edge to them. “I don’t run it.”
Royston said nothing for a moment, as if considering suggesting that the Australian security agency should follow the C.I.A.’s example and be its own government. But he thought better of it. smiled politely and went on to inform the ignorant Australian: “Bay Vien ran the Binh Xuyen sect in Saigon during the time of Bao Dai, the last Emperor. The Binh Xuyen had everything wrapped up in Saigon – the brothels, the dope traffic, the gambling, the lot. Bay Vien ran the police and no one could do anything in Saigon without his okay.”
“How many were in the sect?”
“About half a million. But their influence spread much wider than that. Then Ngo Dinh Them became President and he got to work on them. Whatever else he was and forgetting all about his brother and Madame Nhu, Them was a moralist. He wasn’t interested in any rake-off from the brothels or anything else that the Binh luyen ran. He set his troops on them and wiped them out.”
“All half a million of them?”
Royston smiled without much humour and shook his head. “Not all of them. You can’t find and kill half a million people, especially when they are out of uniform and look just like everyone else. You have to be Jewish to have that happen to you.” For the first time Malone was aware that the broken nose might once have been slightly hooked. Royston was not a Jewish name, but somewhere in his background there was a Jew; the dark opaque eyes had a sadness about them that held inherited memories of pogroms. “There are still a lot of the Binh Xuyen people around. Including Madame Cholon.”
“There’s a man named Pallain, too. What about him?”
“He knew Cholon in Viet Nam, but Jamaica had no proof he was working for her.”
“What does Cholon want here in London?” Malone asked.
“Jamaica was only guessing, but he thought she wanted to revive all the old rackets in Saigon. There’s millions in it for anyone who could get them going again. But she couldn’t do it if there is ever a stable government put in power. Either one backed by us or,” he smiled, “by the Communists.”
“So if this conference reached a stalemate, was adjourned,” Denzil sucked his bottom lip, “she’d be in a position at least to get started.”
“Not on a big scale, but enough to be profitable. And if things are allowed to drift, get worse out there, she’d be sitting pretty. Especially if she could get one or two of the local generals on her pay-roll. They’re not all on our side, you know, even though we’re paying them now. Some of them are only interested in Number One. They’d make deals with anyone who raised the ante high enough·”
“What had Jamaica intended doing to stop Cholon?”
“I’m not sure, but I think he was going to turn her over to you when he knew exactly what she was up to. When he called this morning he said he had something important he wanted to talk about – maybe he’d finally got something on her. But he was very cagey with us here, told me a couple times not to interfere.” Again he smiled, the opacity now melting in his eyes. “You think we’re very jealous about co-operating with you fellers, Superintendent. But we have our own little jealousies, too, right in the outfit.”
Denzil nodded sympathetically. “You must come over to the Yard some time, Mr. Royston.” He stood up. “Did Jamaica tell you where the Cholon woman could be found?”
Royston rubbed the bridge of his broken nose; Malone could imagine him doing it all the time, like a man trying to rub away a deformity. “I’m sorry. Like I said, these little jealousies—” He spread his hands. “She’s in my territory. I really ought to have overridden him.”
“You’ll pardon me,” said Denzil, and somehow managed not to sound pompous, “Madame Cholon is in my territory.”
Royston admitted his error; he was not without grace. “Sorry. I’ve just spent three years on a desk in Washington. Your perspective gets a little blurred there.” He stood up, shook hands with both of them. “I’ll get on to Washington, find out if Jamaica had filed anything else on her.”
“Who was Jamaica?” Malone was curious. Despite their antagonism, the man had tried to help him. You should not bury a friend and ally without knowing something about him. “Where did he come from?”
“He was from some small town in Georgia. He got out of the army right after Korea finished, never went back to the States. I gather he was pretty bitter then about conditions for Negroes down South, said he never wanted to go home again to being kicked around.” Royston picked up the pen again, began to doodle. “He could have turned Communist, he had enough provocation, I guess. But he didn’t.”
“What happened?”
“He got this silk business going in Bangkok, did pretty well out of it. But though he didn’t want to go home, he never stopped being an American. We approached him about three years ago. He refused at first, then one day he came to our control out there and said he’d work for us. He became one of our best men.” He threw down the pen again. He had been drawing long conical shapes: they could have been Klan hoods. “His mother still lives in Georgia. I guess he’s going to go home after all.”
“Will you take care of his body?” Denzil said.
“Well attend to it. How was he killed?”
“Garrotted.”
“Better make it a heart attack. We’ll accept that if you will.”
“If we catch up with this Cholon woman, we might want to charge her with his murder.”
“Do you have any evidence?”
“None at all.” Denzil shrugged. He looked utterly weary, a fast bowler who had lost all his speed; he would have trouble to-night even remembering the day he had bowled Wally Hammond. “Righto, heart attach it is then. I’ll get’a death certificate for you and you can ship the body back to America as soon as you like. We’d appreciate it if you kept all this as quiet as possible.”
“That’s what we’re here for,” said Royston, and smiled again.
Outside on the embassy steps, watched through the big glass doors by the Indian scout from the Mile End Road, Denzil looked at Malone. “Well, now all we have to do is find her.”
“What then?”
“I’ll have her watched so closely she won’t be able to turn round without our knowing it.” They got into the waiting car and he flopped back against the seat. “Women! They’re always the worst of the lot.”
“I wouldn’t know,” said Malone, thinking not of Madame Cholon but of Sheila Quentin. “I’ve still got to find that out”
III
When Malone let himself into the house with the key he had been given, Edgar was standing in the hall examining his jowls in the big mirror. “I’m putting on weight. The harder I work and the more I worry, the fatter I get. What’s new on the security front?”
Malone didn’t feel in the mood for long expositions. “We’re progressing. Where’s Coburn?”
“In the library watching TV.” Edgar slapped his jowls and turned away from the mirror. “The boss told us about the dead Negro outside the Chinese office. He’s in there with some of the Yanks now.” He nodded towards the closed door of the drawing-room.
“Has he told them about Jamaica?”
“I don’t know. He’s got more on his mind right now than a dead Yank. He’s got three very hot-tempered live mes in there.” Malone could hear the sound of angry voices behind the door; someone swore in undiplomatic language. “I got out, left it to the boss and Phil Larter. Sometimes it pays to be the junior.”
“What’s it all about?” Malone looked at himself in the mirror behind the broad bulk of Edgar. He wasn’t putting on weight: work and worry were acting on him like thet pills. He wondered where Sheila Quentin was and hoped she had not gone to bed. He looked at his watch and was surprised to see it was only a quarter to eight. Then he remembered they had not yet had dinner and all at once he felt hungry.
Edgar cocked an ear to the voices, still sharp and awkward: then he looked at Malone and shrugged. “The Yanks – quite rightly, I think – are blowing their tops that everyone seems to know their business. They’ve been giving some of us inside information on what they’re planning and now some of it is getting back to them. They want to know where the leak is.”
“Where do you think it is?”
Edgar sat down on the narrow red plush settee beneath the mirror. The mirror reflected the back of his head, showed the white scalp beneath the thinning hair. Malone realised that, though Edgar was the junior man, he was probably at least ten years older than Larter. He would never make ambassador, would always be the man waiting in the hall outside. He sighed, put one arm along the back of the settee and let his belly relax. This is a night for everyone suddenly looking older, Malone thought; and looked at himself again in the mirror. If he did not look older, he certainly felt it.
“It could have been a dozen places. Someone from their own delegation got careless – though I doubt that. Someone from the British crowd – they’ve never trusted British security after the Burgess-Maclean business. It could be a leak in the South Vietnamese lot. There’s so much rivalry inside among those blokes, everyone wanting to be the next boss in Saigon, I wouldn’t lay any bets against a little bit of skulduggery there.”
There it was again: no one trusted the Vietnamese. So why are we fighting there? Malone asked. But he knew it was too simple a question, the sort asked when lazing on the beach at Bondi, the only barrage on the ears that of the rolling surf.
“Who else is on the list?” Malone sat down beside Edgar. His light brown socks showed beneath the dark blue trouser-leg, but Edgar did not seem to suffer from any aesthetic revulsion. The new shoes no longer hurt Malone’s feet and he wiggled his toes comfortably in them. But the jacket of Quentin’s suit was still a tight fit, not helped by the holster in Malone’s armpit. “Do they suspect anyone else?”
“Us.”
“Who’d give away any information in our delegation?” Malone realised it was an embarrassing question: he was talking to one of the delegation.
“Well, Phil Larter and I didn’t, for a start,” Edgar said with a grin. “And the boss is not the sort who makes unguarded remarks. We’ve had papers from the Yanks, but they’ve had top classification. Only the boss, Phil and myself, oh, and our military adviser – we’re the only ones who’ve seen them.”
“Where are they kept?”
“In a safe at Australia House. The boss probably brought them home to study, but he has a safe here that only he knows the combination to.”
“I’ve seen it”
“I’m sorry for the boss.” Edgar looked at the closed door of the drawing-room; he spoke with affection for the man in there. “He put a lot of faith in old-fashioned diplomacy with this one. Over the past couple of years there’s been too much of what I call market-place diplomacy. Everyone yelling their heads off in public, selling influence and compromise and all the rest of it as if we were conducting some sort of public auction. Too many so-called diplomats today forget or ignore the fact that the main object of diplomacy, it’s to get what you want without resorting to violence. That’s what diplomacy means – the art of negotiation.” Someone else has been looking up the dictionary, Malone thought But now other, newer definitions had been introduced that baffled Edgar. “There’s been too much diplomacy by television and press conference. So Quentin has been trying for trading behind closed doors.”
“Doesn’t sound as if there’s much trading going on behind that closed door.” The voices were harsh and unintelligible, like jungle cries.
Edgar nodded morosely, then stood up as the voices began to subside. “They shouldn’t be accusing him. He’s done more to keep this conference going than any half a dozen other men. And he’s not well, have you noticed that? In the past week – why, only since you arrived—” Malone waited to be accused himself; but Edgar was only naming when, not who and why. “He looks as if he’s aged ten years. He needs a rest. He was on the phone to the P.M. at lunch-time, I just caught the tail-end of the conversation as I went into his office. Sounded as if he wanted to go back home. Has he mentioned anything to you?”
Malone stood up as the door to the drawing-room opened. “Just casually, that’s all.”
Quentin and Larter came out with three men, one of them the thin balding man who had been there that morning. All five men were flushed; Quentin looked healthier than he had since Malone’s arrival. There were stiffly formal good nights and Edgar ushered the Americans to the front door. Quentin nodded at Malone and the latter took the hint; he said good night to Larter, who nodded at him cursorily, and walked along the hall to the library. He closed the door on the troubled voices behind him. He had enough troubles of his own without listening to international ones. Treachery between nations was another part of history; it was part of diplomacy, getting what you wanted without resorting to violence. But treachery between men: it was his profession to combat it, yet he would never grow accustomed to it.
Coburn rose from one of the leather arm-chairs and turned down the sound on the television set in one corner of the room. He looked at the gyrating long-haired figures on the grey screen, then at Malone. “Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? And there are some people campaigning to see hermaphrodites like that in colour! That bloke, I think he’s a bloke, he’s singing about wanting to be some bird’s man. A real cry from the crotch, but I think it’s biologically hopeless. When I was eighteen I wanted to look like Cary Grant or John Wayne. Now they all want to look like the Bride of Frankenstein.” He switched off the set and turned back to Malone. “Well, how did it go?”
Malone told him everything they had learned at the American Embassy. “Now all you blokes have to do is pick up Madame Cholon.”
“I wonder what she’s cooking up in the meantime?”
“I don’t think it matters if we can keep Quentin out of her way till Saturday morning. The conference should be over by then, maybe even to-morrow night.”
“When are you going back?”
“Saturday.”
“Is Quentin going with you? I heard his wife say to him that she would have to start packing.”
“Not that I know of,” Malone lied; he was instinctively still protecting Quentin. “Where is Mrs. Quentin?”
“Upstairs in her room.”
“Joseph back yet?” Coburn shook his head. “Lisa?”
“I gather she’s working late at Australia House.”
Good, Malone thought, I’m going to get that hour alone with the Quentins. He opened the library door and looked out; Larter and Edgar had gone and Quentin was slowly climbing the stairs. “Okay, I’ll take over now. You can go and have a word with your bird about purple ties.”
“She said last night she wished I was younger, so’s I could have a Beatle haircut. I just wish she wasn’t such a dish, I’d walk out on her. Well, hooroo, mate,” he said with an attempt at an Australian accent. He stopped at the front door and looked back. “She’s got a sister. You wouldn’t be interested in a double date before you go back?”
Malone shook his head, grinning. “I’ve got a wife and six kids back home. All with Beatle haircuts.”
“How do you tell the boys from the girls?”
“The ones that stand up to pee are the boys.”
Coburn looked around the elegant hall, then bade at Malone. “Watch it, mate. You’re making the old mansion sound like a vulgar music hall. Hooroo again. Have a nice restful night.”
He went out, closing the door after him, a young man whose only trouble in the world was a bird who was too much with it.
Malone stood for a moment listening to the quietness of the house about him. A car went by outside, its horn hooting derisively: someone thumbing his nose at one of the embassies. The house creaked, feeling its age. Malone began to climb the stairs, feeling his own age, all thirty-one years of it. Christ, he thought; and laughed at himself.
He knocked at the door of the Quentins’ bedroom, annoyed at himself for his tentativeness. He would rather have talked to them downstairs; but Lisa or Joseph might be home any minute. Deep in the bowels of the house he could hear a radio playing: that must be the cook. He hadn’t seen her in his three days in the house: she was like a pit pony, never allowed out into the light.
Quentin opened the door and said, “Come in, Scobie.”
He hesitated, then he stepped into the big room. Quentin closed the door and stood with his back to it for a moment; Malone felt trapped and looked back over his shoulder defensively. Then Quentin moved away from the door, sat down beside Sheila on the wide four-poster bed.
Malone stood awkwardly in the middle of the room. He wanted to turn, to fling open the door and demand that they follow him downstairs to the library: he would lock the door there against all interruptions. It still would not be neutral territory, but it would be more neutral than this. They had reduced him to the level of a private investigator; they sat facing him, holding each other’s hands, as if waiting for the flash of his camera. This was the room of their secrets and he should never have allowed himself to come this far. He moved back to the door, put his hand on the knob, but Quentin said, “Sit down, Sergeant. That’s what you want us to call you from now on, isn’t it? Sergeant.”
There was a chair beside the door covered in yellow Thai silk, a woman’s bedroom chair that seemed to float on a soufflé of ruffles. Malone sat down on it, felt the Thai silk with his rough palm, thought of the dead Jamaica. Then he looked across at the Quentins and made himself think of the dead Freda. “I’m repeating my question,” he said in his best formal policeman’s voice, “which of you killed Freda Corliss?”
The linked hands tightened on each other. “I don’t think we have to answer that,” Quentin said after a moment. “I have admitted causing the death of my first wife and you have a warrant for my arrest. That’s all there is to it. I’ll reserve my plea till we get back to Sydney and I’m charged in court.”
That should stop me dead, Malone thought. But he heard himself go on speaking, the Celtic tongue that never knew when enough was enough: “When I get up in court to give evidence against you, I’m going to have to tell everything that is in the file on you.”
“I don’t know what is in the file. But if there is anything that implicates my wife, they would have issued a warrant for her, too.”
Malone looked at Sheila. “You must have been afraid that there was something in it that implicated you. Otherwise why did you try to open my brief-case?”
She did not even attempt to deny it. Her face tightened, the jaw coming down, as Malone had seen women’s faces tighten in the moment just before they screamed; he tensed, ready to jump forward and slap her face as she went into hysteria. But again her control came back, just in time this time; she shuddered like an old woman with the ague, and Quentin raised an arm and put it about her trembling shoulders. He glared at Malone and almost shouted, “Leave us alone! Get out and leave us alone!”
Malone shook his head, not at Quentin but at himself: why the hell was he persisting, torturing himself as well as them? But he knew the answer and he could not understand why Quentin did not know it: “Christ Almighty, can’t you see I’m trying to help you!” His own voice was as anguished as Quentin’s had been.
“How can you help me, trying to bring Sheila into this?” He held her closer to him; her trembling communicated itself to him. “I tell you she had nothing to do with it! I killed Freda – it was an accident – but I killed her! You understand, it was me! Me!”
Malone stood up, began to walk about the room. He passed a dressing-table loaded with bottles: Arden, Rubinstein, Revlon could no longer offer much to disguise the crumbling face of the woman on the bed. He saw himself and the Quentins reflected in the mirror: they were watching him, like caged animals watching their keeper. He stopped, looked at the photograph on the dressing-table: Quentin with a beard and in naval uniform, Sheila in a dress that now looked ridiculously long and with the upswept hair of twenty-odd years ago. They looked happy, carefree; but that might have been only for the benefit of the photographer. But he knew that the camera could lie, or anyway could be tricked: it could never be used to authenticate the emotions it showed. He nodded at the photograph and said, “Were you really as happy as that?”
Quentin seemed to realise that Malone was not going to be dismissed. He slumped a little, still keeping his arm round Sheila. “There were occasional days. Sergeant—” He looked up, a note of pleading now in his voice. “What is in that file?”
Malone sat down on the dressing-table stool, his back to the mirror. “It’s not so much what’s in it, but what’s not in it. The omissions. What you can read between the lines, if you like.”
“That sort of evidence is never admitted in court,” Quentin said. “Juries aren’t expected to read between the lines.”
“A Crown Prosecutor is.”
“Nobody else seems to have read between them. Why did you?”
Malone looked at Sheila. “You weren’t careful enough, Mrs. Quentin. I wasn’t trying to trap you, I didn’t even suspect you. But you gave yourself away. You were the one who started me reading between the lines.”
Sheila spoke for the first time, her voice no more than a croaking whisper. “How?”
“You told me about the coolibah tree when you were a child. You tried to cover that up by saying your grandfather had brought it over from the eastern States. And I swallowed it – I guess there are some coolibahs in the West. But in the file on you they say you were brought up in northern Queensland. There are coolibahs there, at least as far north as Townsville.”
“None of that proves anything,” said Quentin. “What if my wife did come from Queensland instead of Western Australia?”
“Why tell lies about it? There was one other thing. This morning at breakfast, just before that man from the American Embassy was announced, Mrs. Quentin said something that didn’t register with me right then. She said, ‘We knew it couldn’t last.’ We. You told me the night I arrived here she knew nothing about it, that she didn’t even know about your first wife.” Suddenly his anger came back: “I trusted you! I’ve gone out of my way to help you, put myself out on a limb—”
“I didn’t ask it for myself,” Quentin said tonelessly. “I told you it was for the conference—”
“To hell with the conference! I was trying to help you—” He caught the trembling note in his voice just in time; he hated to sound querulous. He suddenly felt that his anger was artificial; what he really felt was sadness, a sense of loss. But what had he lost? A friend? There hadn’t been time for that. And yet perhaps there had been. He had felt admiration, respect, yes and pity, too; and pity, he sensed rather than knew, was a part of love, of friendship. Whatever it was, he had lost something; and Quentin had caused him to lose it. He said, quietly now, “We three will be on that plane for home on Saturday, and the conference and everything else that’s occupied you for the past twenty years will be behind you. You’re not going to be any hero when you get into the dock. All that’s going to help you is the truth.”
The Quentins sat in an attitude that could have been shock or despair: they were stiff, brittle: one felt they could have broken with a touch of the hand. Again Malone had the image that they were waiting for the divorce photographer’s flash globe. This was the bed where they had made love, whispered their secrets, waited in the well of the night for this dreaded moment that had finally come. Sheila was the first to move. She stood up, moved to the window and looked out. It was still light and the last of some homing pigeons scratched a silent scrawl on the sky.
“Are you prepared to listen to the truth, Sergeant?”
They are no longer calling me Scobie; slowly I am becoming lees and less involved. He warned her: “I’ll be listening officially. I’ve done enough of the other sort—” He looked at Quentin, who turned away with what could have been shame.
“You can take it all down if you like,” said Sheila. “And I’ll sign it.”
“No,” said Quentin, but there was no real argument in his voice. “You’ll sign nothing.”
“Please, darling. We had this argument all those years ago.” She looked back at Malone. “Do you want to take it all down?”
Malone hesitated, became involved again. “I’ll see. Tell me what you have to say first.”
Sheila sighed, then began to talk, calmly and with something like relief: “I killed Freda, but it was an accident. I had gone to see her that day to ask her to give John a divorce—”
Malone interrupted: “How long had you know each other before that?”
“Three months, perhaps a littie longer. I did come from Queensland, from Charters Towers. My parents were dead and I came down to Sydney to work. I worked for Manly Council as a typist and I met John one day when he came into the Town Hall on business. We started meeting each other secretly – I had no friends and neither did he, so there was no one to recognise us when we were together. There was only Freda.” She turned to Quentin. “Do you want me to tell him about her?”
Quentin, shoulders slumped, looked sideways at Malone. All his dignity was gone: dignity requires some hope, some belief that not everything is lost. “I was never in love with Freda nor she with me. I realised that a month after we were married. I was young and lonely, a boy from the bush. I’d just had my twenty-first birthday. She was a good-looking girl and, well, I suppose you could say she had the attraction of being foreign. Australians in those days didn’t meet many foreigners. And perhaps I was sorry for her, I don’t know. She didn’t love me, she told me that a couple of years after we were married. We didn’t sleep in the same room after that. I’m not blaming her for anything, trying to make out she was calculating or anything like that. She was just as lonely as I was, and more than that, she was scared. She’d come from Europe – well, I’ve told you all about that. Our marriage was some sort of haven for her. And she never wanted to leave it. When I told her about Sheila, she just didn’t want to know. She’d lock herself in her bedroom and not talk to me for days.”
He looked at Sheila and she nodded sympathetically. Then she took up the story again: “John and I went away for a week together. We decided we’d go away together for good. I’m not trying to excuse ourselves when I say we were truly in love, which John and Freda never were. I’m just giving it as the reason. When people are in love they do a lot of things without worrying too much about the consequences for others.”
“We did worry,” Quentin protested, but weakly.
She nodded. “I know we did, darling. That was why I went to see Freda that Monday afternoon. I’d never met her up till than,” she said to Malone. “That was the one and only time. If I hadn’t gone to see her, tried to be – well, decent, I suppose – she’d still be alive. John was at work, he didn’t know anything about my being there. Not till he came home and found—” She stopped, her mouth open in a half gasp; it was as if she had just opened a door on that scene of twenty-three years ago. Quentin moved to get off the bed, but she shook her head and he sat back. She swallowed and went on: “I pleaded with Freda to give John a divorce, but she wouldn’t listen. She called me names – and I don’t say I didn’t deserve them. But I got angry then, told her we were going away anyway. She had been sewing when I called on her – we were in the front room and she had a sewing basket on the couch beside her. When I got angry, so did she. She picked up the scissors, threatened me with them and told me to get out of the house, to leave John alone and not break up her marriage. I don’t even know if she intended hurting me with the scissors. She might even only have been trying to frighten me. All I know is that I grabbed them and we struggled and the next thing—”
Again there was the half gasp. This time Quentin came off the bed quickly, moved across the room and took her in his arms. She buried her face against his chest and sobbed quietly. He held her to him and looked over her head at Malone.
“She sat there with Freda till I came home a couple of hours later. We did nothing then for at least another couple of hours, perhaps longer. All I can remember was that it was dark. Both of us wanted to go to the police and each of us talked the other out of it. If we’d gone to them, told them the truth, do you think they’d have believed it? Australians are puritans about marriage – they are now and they were then. The wife could be a Gorgon or a–a Madame Cholon, but if the husband had a mistress, no matter how much he and the mistress might be in love, all the sympathy is going to be for the wife. Especially if she bad been killed by the mistress.”
“Don’t you think Freda deserved some sympathy?” Malone said.
Quentin shook his head in despair. “You don’t understand, do you? So how could we have expected” – he changed the tense – “expect a jury to understand? I felt more than just sympathy for Freda. I grieved for her – not just for her death but for her whole life—”
“He wept for her.” Sheila turned in her husband’s arms. “Because he didn’t love her and loved me instead, didn’t mean he had no feelings towards her. But maybe you wouldn’t understand that, Sergeant,” she added bitterly. “Policemen never have much time for charity, have they?”
Malone looked at Quentin, not defensively but sardonically. He was surprised when Quentin said, “Don’t say that, Sheila. Not about him.”
Malone gazed steadily at him, trying to hold up his own defences. But something began to crumble them: the roots of friendship? he wondered. He said with real regret, “There’s nothing I can do to help you now.”
“You can,” Quentin said quietly; he seemed to realise that all of Malone’s antagonism had now gone. “Just forget everything my wife has told you.”
“No!” Sheila pushed herself away from him. “We’ve got to tell them everything. It’s the only way, tell them the truth!”
“Darling.” Quentin’s voice was gentle, not bitter. “I’ve seen this past week how little the truth counts. People believe what they want to believe. They are only interested in the truth if it’s convenient.”
“Convenient to what?” She was past understanding compromise: now the truth had been told she wanted nothing less.
Quentin shrugged. “Their politics, their morals, anything. Scobie has said” – he was Scobie again, the friend – “he’s said no jury would believe it was an accident. Not after so long, not after we ran away. One of us has got to pay for it. And it’s not going to be you,” he said firmly. “The warrant is for me and that’s the way it’s going to remain.”
Sheila shook her head, but she was weeping now, beyond words. There was nothing left of the beautiful poised woman Malone had first met only three nights ago. Quentin took her in his arms again and looked at Malone.
“Would you leave us alone, please, Scobie?”
Malone went to the door, opened it He turned and said hesitatingly, “You won’t try anything foolish?”
“Suicide?” Quentin didn’t even sound shocked by the question. He shook his head. “No. I’ve been waiting twenty-three years to pay this debt. I’m not going to run away again.”
IV
Lisa said, “I got the cook to take tham up something on a tray. What’s going on, Scobie? Is there something wrong between them?”
“It’s personal, I think. They’ve had some bad news.” He was disgusted at his fluency: lying was becoming his second language. But he had committed himself again to the Quentins; no matter how he felt towards Lisa, be was not committed towards her. “He said something about going back to Australia on Saturday.”
They were dining alone in the big dining-room, sitting together at one end of the long table. Lisa, joking, had insisted that Malone take the head of the table. He had not argued, but he was acutely aware of the unconscious irony of the joke: he was now head of this house.
Lisa looked up from her plate, a forkful of food” stopped half-way to her mouth. “Back to Australia? Saturday?”
“Don’t broadcast it. He asked me to keep it quiet. He’ll tell you about it later.” Everyone would have to be told sooner or later; he wondered how she would react to the truth when she learned of it.
“But I’ll have to get them tickets – are they both going?”
He nodded. “He’s got the tickets. You don’t have to worry about those.” Quentin’s cheque was in his pocket. The envelope had been lying sealed on his bed when he had gone upstairs to wash his hands just before dinner. He was not going to argue about it any more. The money meant nothing to him right now, but it meant less to Quentin. And it would mean still less again in the future. “They’re on the five-thirty plane Saturday.”
She looked at him shrewdly. “And you too?” He nodded. She put down her fork, trying hard to contain her impatience with him. “Scobie, what is going on? You know more than you’re telling me.”
He didn’t reply at once, dodged behind a mouthful of food. He was hungry, but he had no taste; Lisa had told him he was eating Osso Bucco, but it could have been dog’s meat. At last he said, “I can’t tell you anything, Lisa. Not yet, anyway.”
“I know you’re a security man,” she said impatiently, “but what’s security got to do with their personal problems? They’re not going to sack him, are they?” The thought seemed to horrify her. She had her own idea of treason, a government betraying an individual.
“I don’t think so.” Quentin would resign before they sacked him. He turned the conversation. “If he does go back – for good, I mean, will you stay on here?”
She picked up her fork again, began to eat without relish. She had worked long enough in government to recognise censorship: Malone was going to tell her nothing. “Stay at Australia House or stay in London? I don’t think I’d want to work for any other High Commissioner, not after him. I might go back to Australia for a visit, see my parents. Why?”
“They’re in Melbourne, aren’t they? Would you come to Sydney?”
“Why Sydney? I thought you worked in Canberra.”
He was getting careless. “We have a branch office in Sydney. I work out of there most of the time.”
“Somehow I can’t see you as a spy.”
“I’m not a spy. I’m a security agent.” He was fluent again.
“It’s the same thing. You have to be deceitful to be successful at it. And you don’t seem the deceitful sort.”
“Only professionally,” he said, and hoped it was true.
“I was deceived once,” she said, remembering the physics lecturer. “I shouldn’t want it to happen again.”
He hoped she would understand when he explained to her why he had deceived her. He might even have to call Quentin as a witness for the defence.
“There’s the reception to-morrow night at Lancaster House,” she said. “Can we be partners again? If you’re going Saturday—”
“I was going to ask you.”
“I got in early.” She smiled. “How’s your Osso Bucco?”
“Great” His taste had suddenly come back. He grinned at her, picked up the bone and began to chew the meat from it. “I saw them do this in some Italian film. It’s the sensible way.”
“To hell with decorum.” She laughed and picked up the bone from her own plate. They were munching on the meat slobbering gravy down their chins, grinning with pleasure at each other, selfish in their forgetfulness of everyone but themselves, when they heard the front door open. Lisa put down her bone, wiped her chin and looked over her shoulder at the door that led into the hall. “Is that you, Joseph?”
The butler, in dark suit, his Homburg held in his hand, came to the door. His professional eye automatically checked the table; he pursed his lips when he saw the wine bottle without a napkin wrapped round it. He would speak to the cook in the morning. “You wanted something, miss?”
Lisa shook her head. “No, it’s all right, Joseph. Have a nice afternoon?”
“Yes, thank you.” It had been one of the worst afternoons of his life; nothing in Budapest had been worse. “Good night, miss. Good night, sir.”
Joseph withdrew and they heard him going down the lower stairs that led to his room in the basement. Lisa picked up her bone again, but Malone said, “What was the matter with him, I wonder?”
“What do you mean?”
“He looked ill. Or anyway unhappy.”
“Hungarians always look like that underneath. I’ve never believed all that propaganda about their being so gay and happy. They’re not all Zsa Zsa Gabors.” She looked at him soberly over the gravy-dripping bone. “He might have personal problems, too. Butlers do, I suppose.”