Wheatley engaged a Mr Hugo Meyer in Queen Street, Westminster. Meyer was short and squarely built, with a “bulldog face, iron grey hair … and an old briar pipe which he continually puffed as he meditated.”
Wheatley was in a difficult position. Even the fact that Meyer struck him as “extremely intelligent” was a mixed blessing; “I made up my mind to go very carefully in what I told him.” He had to conceal Eric’s criminal dealings, and he had to be careful what he said about Dyer, since he and Eric were associates. He had to keep Beatrice out of the picture as much as possible, as well as Dolly: “she might learn of Beatrice’s existence or worse Beatrice of hers, a thing that Eric would not take pleasantly, secondly for my own sake” (with Nancy).
If Eric had been murdered, and it came out, then there would be “a very nasty case”. This wouldn’t bring Eric back, but it would cause “needless suffering” elsewhere. So, Wheatley reasoned, it was actually his duty to keep quiet about Dolly, “not only for her own sake but also because she was the only person who knew of the Orgies in which Eric and I had participated, and if she were dragged in she might disclose much that while serving no useful purpose would damage me considerably.”
Wheatley was worried about his forthcoming marriage, and he was in a difficult position. “If any one who reads this” – Wheatley’s private account of the disappearance – “will glance back and endeavour to tell the story of Eric’s disappearance, excluding the four vital facts” (i.e. Eric’s criminality, Dyer’s criminality, Eric’s relationship with Beatrice, and Eric’s relationship with Dolly and Wheatley), “they will realise that it is hard, but I can assure them that it is very much harder indeed when you are sitting opposite an intelligent man … with sharp eyes which probe you all the while”.
It was a tough half hour. Meyer knew Wheatley was lying, Wheatley knew he knew, and Meyer knew that too.
What was Mr Gordon Tombe’s business? asked Meyer.
He has no business.
Has he private means?
Yes, to a certain extent.
And he supplements this by occasional deals as you call it, associated with Mr Dyer.
Yes.
Do you consider any of these to be transactions of a questionable nature?
No.
But you believe Mr Dyer to be of doubtful honesty?
Yes – but I believe Gordon Tombe is perfectly straight.
Has he never told you anything of the nature of these transactions?
No.
Don’t you consider that strange, since you have known him for a long time intimately?
Not necessarily – he knows that I am a wine merchant, but I never discuss my business with him.
Where does he live?
Hotels, principally.
No fixed abode?
No.
What hotel was he living in before he disappeared?
The Hyde Park Gate.
Was he living alone?
(“dangerous ground” thought Wheatley) – No, with his married Sister, it is on her behalf as well as my own …
What about Women, Mr Wheatley, do you know anybody in whom he was particularly interested? I understand he is a single man.
No, I don’t know of anybody particular.
But you know someone?
I know nobody who could have had the slightest connection with his disappearance.
Wheatley felt Meyer was extremely capable, and if he could only tell him the truth he might solve the case, but there was so much he had to suppress, “on my own behalf and on others”. What would happen if he revealed Eric’s dealings and Eric turned up again?
Wheatley went to 131 Jermyn Street on the chance that there might be a letter for him. Then he visited Yeoman House, where Sims told him a woman had been in and collected some letters that had arrived since Thursday: Wheatley recognised this as Beatrice, collecting her own letters to Eric: “I thanked God that Eric was so particular to keep his affairs in separate watertight compartments, otherwise she might come across some compromising epistles.”
Wheatley slunk back in to the wine merchants by the side door. Shortly afterwards a Doctor Atkinson called to see him, “a tall slim boyish man of thirty … beautifully dressed and in morning coat and topper, a very typical handsome Englishman of the upper classes.” This was Eric’s doctor, who had become a friend. It was typical, Wheatley thought: “Atkinson the doctor, Simpson the bank manager, the people at the hotel, even Walter, his tailor, and Sims of Yeoman House, had all fallen under the spell of his charm and declared themselves his friends … tho actually not one of them except perhaps the discreet Sims knew anything about him at all.”
Dr Atkinson was now attending Beatrice. She had told him the story and he had offered his help, which Wheatley was glad of: “I felt that he was an eminently honest straightforward Englishman,” yet still Wheatley tried to conceal from him things he didn’t want Beatrice to know.
Atkinson wasn’t having it. “Now look here, Wheatley,” he said, “what about the other woman?” Atkinson knew more about Tombe than Wheatley realised, because while he was treating him they had had “some rather interesting conversations on morality and sexual relations.”
Atkinson’s theory was that Tombe had gone off with another woman. Wheatley was sure this was not the case, but once again he couldn’t explain why: to acknowledge Beatrice as Eric’s financial mainstay “would have been to acknowledge that Eric was a financial adventurer.”
They agreed Dyer knew more than he was telling, but Atkinson couldn’t believe Wheatley’s “penny novelette theory” could take place in reality. He was so sure Eric had gone off with another woman, and that Dyer knew about it, that even Wheatley began to wonder.
The only other woman Wheatley could think of was Dolly, “since he had recently given me such glowing accounts of her … it was barely possible that he might have decided to take her on the south sea tour of happiness which he had once planned with Desirée”; the woman Wheatley had feared might take a murderous revenge on Eric.
Wheatley left the office and went to a call box. He wanted to check whether Dolly was still in her flat. She was, and she confirmed that Eric had left her to go to Purley on Thursday. Then on the following Saturday Dyer had arrived bearing the telegram, packed Eric’s clothes and paid the bill. Wheatley reassured Dolly nothing was wrong, but he noticed that Dyer’s story of going over to Haymarket on Friday didn’t match hers.
Atkinson, Dyer, Beatrice and Wheatley met at the Hyde Park Gate Hotel that evening. Dyer had brought the telegram as promised. It looked in order to Wheatley, but unknown to him, or at least unmentioned in his memoir, Beatrice had become convinced the telegram was a fake: she was sure Tombe would never have used the word “overseas.”
*
Wheatley’s account of Tombe’s disappearance is as vivid – perhaps more so – than his fiction, and the next chunk deserves to be preserved whole.
We were in the single room that Eric had engaged for himself – Beatrice came in with the keys of his trunks – a large travelling Innovation and a leather hat box – she handed them to me.
“Dennis I thought we might find a clue in them,” she said pointing to them, “but I waited until you were here to open them, I thought it best.”
I took the keys and unlocked the hat box – two grey Homburgs were all that it contained – the Innovation did not contain much, a mackintosh, some dirty dress shirts and socks, a number of books among which were two or three of mine, and a newspaper cutting.
The latter was an account of the burning of the Welcomes, it was curious that he should leave such a thing to show his interest in the affair if he had gone off on his own. I handed it to Bill – [or rather] I secreted it at once not wanting Atkinson to see its contents and later handed it to Bill – suggesting that it was best to destroy it. He agreed and I burnt it.
Only one item of interest did we find among the luggage, that was a very ordinary shilling cloth edition of Oscar Wilde’s Selected Prose – actually its value a few pence only, since it had been much used – but psychologically to me it was of great interest.
Ever since I had renewed my acquaintance with Eric after the war he had had that little book – it accompanied him everywhere – it had been with him in America, in Austria, Paris, Italy, Sicily, the Scilly Isles and Totland Bay – always it was in his bedroom upon the chest of drawers or dressing table, and in odd moments he would pick it up and delight in the music of the words – he considered Wilde ‘The Great Master’ – if it could speak that little book could tell of passionate nights indeed, – it knew all his mistresses and his friends – the occupant of his bed might change often but his little friend the shilling book never – that was typical of Eric’s mentality.
That he should have gone leaving it behind seemed almost incredible – Beatrice noticed it at once and mentioned its significance, even Bill who took no interest in books admitted that he recognised it.
Yet I had to admit, that had Eric really gone off of his own free will it was just what he would have done to have left it. In my mind I could see his close lipped smile as he had placed it in the trunk with the others, – reckoning upon us finding it and delighting in our saying to each other “Certainly, he is dead, – he’s met with some accident and we shall never see him again, he would never have left behind this little book.” It was just such strokes of genius which gave him greatest pleasure.
*
At the same time, most of Eric’s “splendid wardrobe” seemed to be missing. Wheatley remembered the dinner jacket, the evening overcoat, the black pearl dress studs, the silk underwear, the white trousers, the silk shirts, the Chinese dressing gown … where had it all gone? Its disappearance seemed another point in favour of the theory that Eric had gone somewhere of his own free will.
Nancy arrived to have dinner with Wheatley and Beatrice, but the evening was far from happy. Beatrice tried to show an interest in the wedding preparations, but she also poured out her troubles, to which Nancy was not particularly sympathetic. She was quiet, “because she did not like to disclose her true feelings, yet she evidently did not care to go so far as to act a sympathy and interest she did not feel.”
On the way home, Nancy urged Wheatley to leave the affair alone. Wheatley was always tied up with business when she wanted him to see furniture, but here he was “flying all over the place” to help Beatrice. And then there was his father: Wheatley was always saying it was necessary to keep him happy, and yet here he was getting involved with something particularly prone to annoy him, given his intense dislike of “Gordon Tombe and all his works.”
Nancy was implacable. Wheatley should forget about Tombe, and consider all previous ties cancelled by their engagement. Her wishes should come first; had she not given up all her friends for Wheatley? This wasn’t quite a fair argument, Wheatley thought, since all her previous friends seemed to be men, but he said nothing.
*
Returning to Streatham, Wheatley was alone with his thoughts. If Eric was really in trouble he had to help him. At the same time, he could see Nancy’s point of view. And yet he owed Eric almost everything: “an enormous debt of gratitude.”
Had not my whole nature expanded under his careful tuition? Did not I owe to him everything, which went to make me no longer a suburban youth? – even indirectly Nancy herself, since she would never have taken any interest in me, had I not had the culture that was the gift of Gordon Tombe? – It was not too much in my mind to say that to him I owed a second and a greater life, for under his tuition I had indeed been born again, certainly in the Biblical sense of “in the spirit”.
Up in his bedroom, Wheatley continued to think over the facts of the case, “twisting and turning them in my brain, ever evolving new combinations, new speculations, suspecting everyone in turn, piecing out theories endlessly, until the grate was scattered everywhere with cigarette ends.” If Eric had really left, how could he have abandoned Beatrice, and why had he not told Wheatley, “his friend, whom he knew would think no worse of him whatever he did.”
*
Next morning the seven days mentioned in the telegram were up, and Wheatley hoped Eric might have reappeared. He rang Beatrice, who had been hoping the same thing, but no; “every time the lift had come up she had thrilled with hope,” until she watched the dawn coming up over the trees of Hyde Park.
Wheatley had another appointment with Hugo Meyer, “if possible a more unpleasant half hour than before, under his penetrating gaze”. Meyer stressed that their conversations were strictly confidential (“Oh of course, quite,” said Wheatley; “quite so.”) Meyer didn’t think Wheatley had been entirely frank with him on certain points, and this was impeding the very investigation Wheatley wanted done. “Nobody knew that better than I,” writes Wheatley.
Wheatley had told Meyer that Tombe was living at the Hyde Park Gate Hotel, had he not? Yes, agreed Wheatley. But in fact, continued Meyer, Tombe hadn’t been there for over a month. “Oh!” said Wheatley, as if surprised.
And so it went on. “Bitterly I resented having come to see Mr Meyer,” writes Wheatley, since Meyer was only being paid to discover things Wheatley knew already, and which he didn’t want aired. Wheatley was no longer ‘on side’ with his own inquiry: “As far as the Haymarket went, I felt pretty safe Mr Meyer had absolutely no clue pointing in that direction …”
As for Dyer, Meyer had found he was a gambler, short of money, and regarded by the police as suspicious. He had also been in prison, which Wheatley hadn’t known. Wheatley was relieved that Meyer hadn’t found anything suspicious about Tombe, but Meyer pressed on: did Wheatley know that the Welcomes had been burnt to the ground under mysterious circumstances? Wheatley knew of a fire, he said, “but I didn’t know there was anything mysterious about it.”
The interview ended inconclusively. Meyer thought that Tombe, who was after all a man of forty (or so Wheatley had told him) had gone away for reasons of his own. He was “a mysterious individual. He has no business or profession, no permanent place of residence, it is quite on the cards that he has affairs of which you know nothing.”
Wheatley left the office, “very glad once again to be out of the sight of this intelligent gentleman.”
*
Beatrice was now convinced Eric was dead: she had accused Dyer of murder, and talked of putting the affair in the hands of Scotland Yard. Dyer didn’t want this to happen, as he explained to Wheatley: “Once Scotland Yard get put on to a thing, they sift it and sift, and Lord knows what won’t come out and where it will end.”
Wheatley agreed Scotland Yard should be kept out. Dyer then opened up a second line of argument: expressing his deepest sorrow and sympathy for Beatrice, he said they shouldn’t allow her to “sacrifice herself” for Eric. If she went to Scotland Yard, it would come out that she was not Eric’s sister, and her husband would divorce her. They shouldn’t allow her to ruin her life, and her children’s – and she probably wouldn’t if she knew about Dolly and the others.
“This was nasty,” thought Wheatley, who felt it was his duty to Eric to shield Beatrice from this knowledge. If Dyer thought he was Eric’s friend, said Wheatley, “there was no better way that he could prove it than to never give Beatrice the slightest hint that Eric had ever been unfaithful to her”.
But it was a hundred to one against Eric reappearing, said Dyer, and they could save a good deal of needless suffering to a woman who had been a friend to both of them. Wheatley took the opposite line: “to tell her would be extremely cruel, it would deprive her for ever of the belief that whatever had happened to him, while he was with her he had loved her truly and faithfully. – to snatch away that consoling belief was to my mind the unkindest thing we could finally do.”
It was being cruel to be kind, said Dyer, and later she would be thankful that she had not wrecked her life for a man who was unworthy of her.
Wheatley felt his first duty was to Eric, and for this reason he was against telling Beatrice, just as he was against going to Scotland Yard. If he changed his mind about the latter, however, he realised Dyer had him in a “polite blackmail”; in effect, “You go to Scotland Yard and I will tell her everything that you do not want her to know about Eric.”
*
Wheatley lunched with Beatrice and Dr Atkinson at the hotel, where Beatrice was in a worse state than ever: “He’s dead Dennis, he’s dead,” she said, “I know it, I know it as surely as if I could see him, – he was alive yesterday but now he’s dead, that murderer has killed him!”
Atkinson then took Wheatley aside. “I think we ought to tell her about the other woman, she says that she’s going to Scotland Yard this afternoon, and it’s not fair to let her run the risk of spoiling her whole life unless she knows the truth about the sort of man she is exposing herself for.” Dyer had won him over with his argument.
This was difficult, but Wheatley persuaded him not to tell her anything for the time being. He then had to persuade Beatrice not to go to Scotland Yard. Beatrice was not easily put off. Eric was dead, and nothing could hurt him now; “she was the only one who would suffer by an enquiry therefore she had the right to say, and she would cheerfully suffer anything for the sake of seeing justice done on behalf of the man who had been everything for her.”
“It was pitiful,” thought Wheatley, “to witness the desolation of her grief, and I admired tremendously her unhesitating courage in being so ready to ruin everything.”
Wheatley had one last card to play. He was going down to see the original telegram message that afternoon, and they would then know if it was sent by Eric or by Dyer. If it was Eric, then they had no right to interfere. But if the telegram did turn out to have been written by Dyer, then and only then it would be time to involve the police. “I made her promise that she would do absolutely nothing until my return.”
*
Wheatley was going to see the original telegram with one of Mr. Meyer’s subordinates, and at 2.30 he was in Meyer’s office. The subordinate was not there, allowing Meyer to give Wheatley “a further twenty minutes inquisition”.
At the Post Office he was presented with various forms to fill in, but no one cared about his power of attorney. It seemed only the sender or recipient could exhume a lettergram, so he had to forge either Dyer’s name or Eric’s. He decided on Eric’s, knowing he was getting himself in deeper. “Unless I was frightfully careful I might be involved in a very nasty mess, – first there was Eric and his crimson nights, in which I had participated,”
next I might be accused of being an accessory after the fact to the affair of the burning of the Welcomes, and further, and by no means the least disagreeable, be called as the principle witness in Hundreds divorce petition against Beatrice, or worse, if he got really nasty, be cited as co-respondent, since I had virtually taken over her protection since Eric’s disappearance and been seen with her as such, – added to all these delightful possibilities, I did not want a little private affair on my own of false representation and forgery with the Post Office authorities.
They then asked him which office he had sent the telegram from, and to his embarrassment he didn’t know. Was Wheatley sure he had handed his telegram over a counter? Was he sure he hadn’t just phoned it into the main office? He said he was, now hating the whole business. Guessing what had probably happened, he took his chance to leave and “withdrew cursing.”
It seemed likely that telegram had been phoned, and there was no hand draft. “I felt sure that was what had happened – if either Bill or Eric had wanted to mislead us they would have been sure to have done it that way.”
Meyer’s subordinate was indignant at Wheatley’s impersonation (“it was a most serious matter to falsely represent oneself at the GPO”), and Wheatley gave him money to keep quiet.
*
Wheatley rushed back to the wine merchants: he had been watching the clock with horror (“how the devil was I to explain this lengthy absence to my father?”) and expected to find his father raging. Instead he found Beatrice, Atkinson and Dyer in his private office, and a row in progress. Beatrice turned to him:
“Dennis! Oh thank God you’re here at last! Now tell me it’s not true about the other woman, it’s not true is it?”.
The balloon had gone up.
“What other woman?” said Wheatley.
“Oh it’s no use lying,” said Beatrice, “– I know everything, everything, all about Yeoman House, how I’ve been lied to and tricked …”
Atkinson, Dyer’s unwitting collaborator, explained what had happened. Beatrice was going to Scotland Yard, he said, so “we thought it our duty to tell her the truth about Gordon Tombe.”
“I considered the possibility of sticking to my guns and lying black was white,” says Wheatley, but it was useless. Then came what Wheatley remembered as a terrible scene:
She accused me of the basest ingratitude – had I not so often said I was her friend? had I been fair with her? I had accepted her hospitality while I aided Eric in his treachery – I had come like a thief in the night – lied to her while I smiled in friendship – hadn’t I sworn time and again during the last few days that there was no other woman? hadn’t I played the hypocrite even to manufacturing a speech of Eric’s when I last saw him about how glad he would be when she returned? how he looked forward to her return? while all the while he was living with another woman …
Silently, Wheatley “faced the storm, letting her wear herself out – I thought she would never have done”. It wasn’t the abuse that troubled him, in fact “I felt that I was paying a little of the debt I owed to Eric, by bearing the brunt of her wrath on his part”. It was only when she began to cry and asked him what she had ever done to him, to treat her like this, and reminded him how happy she had always been to have him around with her and Eric; that was when it began to hurt.
And it was true. Wheatley hadn’t behaved well. For two and a half years Beatrice had been in his daily life, “always with pleasant thoughts and a thousand little kindnesses … always so thoughtful for my comfort.” In fact, in his early life, “no other woman ever held the place in my affections which Beatrice did.” She was, in a Platonic way, Wheatley’s type: “The element of sex did not enter into our relations, she was to me as an older sister.”
But as Beatrice exhausted her misery, so Wheatley was gathering his powers. When Beatrice had quietened down, Wheatley asked for silence, and spoke in Eric’s defence. He could, he began, honestly say he knew Eric better than anyone else, and he could understand Eric’s actions towards Beatrice. “His,” said Wheatley, “was a peculiar nature”,
one full of affection and a love of placid comfort surrounded by the people of whom he was fond. None knew that better than she and her children. That he loved both her, and them, very deeply I was perfectly certain in my own mind – in fact, it was the one really good and deep affection of his life: time and again he had spoken to me with joy of the prospects in the future, and how when she was free he had hoped to settle down. But at the same time, now and again there came over him an immense craving for excitement – he could not help it, he did not love them less – but this enormous craving took possession of him completely and upon her periodic visits to the north, he gave vent to this feeling with other women. There was no woman, I insisted upon that, it was different women at different times, as soon as the craving for excitement was appeased he was utterly indifferent to them and hating his unfaithfulness he came back upon her return rejoicing. – it was a case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, a thing entirely mental – an aberration perhaps, for Eric was not entirely normal – yet much as he regretted his inconstancy to her, and though I had pleaded with him again and again, pointing out that sooner or later she were bound to come to know, he said that he could not give it up, it was totally necessary to his existence – when one of these fits was upon him, and if you were not going north for another month or six weeks, he said he used to become depressed and irritable, a burden to himself and a distress to you – he had tried many times to suppress his cravings but it was hopeless, he knew that if he did not give his brain the relief it needed at least twice a year by one of these wild fortnights – he and you would quarrel miserably, and separate for good before the year were out. So – he regarded these deceptions as absolutely necessary to your happiness as to his own. That is the whole truth. – you must not think he loved you less because of it – he did not – often he has told me that after each bout of his excitement, he returns loving you more.
Wheatley was wasted in the wine trade; he should have been a barrister.
Wheatley then called Dr Atkinson for the defence, and asked him to recall his conversations about morality with Eric. It was true, Atkinson admitted, Tombe had told him “he considered that it was not wrong to deceive a woman if it were for her happiness, and strange as such a doctrine may seem, in Eric’s case it was the truth.” Furthermore, he admitted that when Tombe told him this, he was suffering from arthritis, and had appealed to him “for some speedy remedy since “his sister” was going away and he was about to enter upon one of his periods of wild excitement.”
Beatrice was now more collected. She said she understood – “in a way she understood” – and she forgave Eric. “Of course, should he now return things could never be as they had been, but she would always love him, and nothing could induce her to give up the search for him.”
*
The room was calm. Wheatley had succeeded. He hadn’t removed Beatrice’s love for Eric, and yet he had restored the situation.
I had shifted the blame of Eric’s infidelities from his own shoulders, onto some mysterious exterior power which seized upon him stronger than himself, – I had made of him a kind of martyr – and created a subtle difference in the view which Beatrice took of the facts which we could not deny.
Wheatley’s writing and spelling make it look as if the word is “monster”, although “martyr” makes more sense. In any case, this picture of Tombe is martyr and monster both: not a reasonable and integrated being, but a man possessed by almost demonic forces.
*
And at this point, a little demon seems to start smiling and cackling inside Wheatley himself.
It was all very well for her to say that things could never be as they had been before but let Eric return and we should see. I had made the bridge over which he could walk, and I had terrific confidence in his power to walk over it if he liked – he would return like the prodigal son, nobody could plead so eloquently as he, I could see him at it in my own mind – there would be tears, protestations, – he would tell her all about his horrible bouts of neurasthenia – depict the sufferings he had undergone to allay his cravings and finally she would forgive him, he would undergo a special course of psychoanalytical treatment with some big specialist to exorcise the devil – then come to me and laugh like Hell about it – wire to Dolly the first time Beatrice went away, and the domain of Eric would be “in status quo”.
*
Now, with one battle half won, Wheatley conceded another. He finally agreed to go to Scotland Yard.