On the evening of October 10th, I caught the 8.25 p.m. train back to London. It was cold, it had been bitterly cold all day. Suddenly, unexpectedly, the first touch of winter had descended, and with it a thick mist.
Either the heating on the train had gone wrong, or they had forgotten to switch it on, and I sat huddled in a corner of the carriage, sometimes thinking, sometimes trying to doze, waiting for the train to gather speed, which it never did.
Opposite me a woman sat, large and ungainly, her figure shrouded in a thick jersey and a short coat, topped off with a white mackintosh. She looked about fifty, and had a round face encased in a layer of wool, a cross between a skiing hat and a blue child’s bonnet, which tied under the chin. Myopic, naive eyes looked through large horn-rimmed spectacles; mostly at the mist-covered night, sometimes at me.
I guessed she wanted to talk, and took no notice. I dislike talking on trains. And I was thinking about the Bower Hotel.
The visit had not been an entire success, but at least I had seen the place where Lucy Dawson had lived. I could write:
Old Mrs. Dawson, who was murdered in Pompeii, was a woman in her late seventies. A tall, thin, frail woman, she lived most of the year at the Bower Hotel, Burlington-on-Sea, a good class residential hotel. She liked to spend a few weeks on the continent each year.
For the rest of the time, her life appeared to be uneventful, mostly whiling away the days in the manner usual in such hotels, though she took some interest in a seamen’s charity.
Tragedy, however, was already known in her family. Apart from the fact that her father lost most of his money as a result of a business transaction with crooks, her husband had been murdered after only two years of marriage when he disturbed a burglar; and now she herself was destined to die a tragic death behind the sunbaked walls of an ancient Roman city.
I leaned my head against the train upholstery, eyes closed, forming the dull, uninspired sentences in my mind as the train ground its way through the mist.
As a background picture it was terribly thin, but it was the best I could do at the moment.
As to the Stepping Stones, who had sent a wreath, I was beginning to lose interest in them. The wording, “In memory of happier times,” was old fashioned and pedantic. They were possibly some amateur entertainment group with whom Lucy Dawson had once been associated, two or three of whom still survived in London or some provincial town. Perhaps they even met from time to time to play a piano and entertain each other in reedy voices with songs from their youth.
I was beginning to paint a sentimental picture of them, when suddenly, to my annoyance, the woman opposite me spoke.
“The fog service is always much worse on Sundays.”
“Yes,” I said, hating her, and opened my eyes, and closed them again.
“Still,” the voice went on, “I’m well wrapped up and I quite enjoyed a day in the country.”
The word “quite” sounded a sad little word, indicating that the speaker had not enjoyed her day in the country as much as she had expected. I sighed.
“Hardly a day to plod round the woods,” I said, since what had to be had to be. “It’s not exactly primrose weather.”
“No,” she said solemnly, “it’s not the right time of year for primroses. I missed Mass, too.”
“You are a Catholic, I suppose.”
“Yes, are you?” she asked eagerly.
I am not a Catholic, but Juliet is, and I know a good deal about the subject. Suddenly, I saw myself engaged in some ghastly Protestant v. Catholic argument, of the kind which invariably leads nowhere at all. This I could not contemplate.
“Yes,” I said, to forestall it.
“And I suppose you practise?”
“Oh, yes,” I said, in case she should start giving me a tolerant lecture about overcoming the Weaknesses of the Flesh. I need not have worried.
There was a pause. Then she said:
“I was brought up by the nuns. I would like to have gone to Mass today, but I couldn’t find a church. I remember when I made my first Communion. I wore a white veil and lilies of the valley.”
She seemed to droop. A dreadful feeling of nostalgia, as damp as the fog, emanated from her and I gave a mental groan. I was not in the mood for childhood reminiscences, and I didn’t want to feel sorry for her. There is a glutinous monotony about youthful innocence lost.
I said nothing.
She took a grubby handkerchief from her pocket and blew her nose, and looked like a female counterpart of a schoolmaster who had taught me chemistry, and to whom we boys had been very cruel. I hoped, too, that the conversation was at an end, and to help its closure I shut my eyes again.
After a while I half opened them cautiously.
Her own eyes were swimming with tears, and she was wiping them with a grubby handkerchief.
I am a sucker for adult tears, because although they embarrass me they expose the helplessness and childishness which does not lie so very deep in people. She said:
“I’m terribly sorry, but I can’t stop crying.”
“Well, never mind,” I said, which must rank among the top, winning lines for fatuity. She began to sob now.
“I’ve lost a very great friend. Do you believe in life after death, do you think we survive?”
“Of course I believe in it,” I said stoutly.
“I don’t want the obvious answers,” she said, but with no echo of reproof. “I mean, do you believe it?”
“Yes, I do. If one doesn’t believe that, there is no point to life. You might as well put your head in a gas oven,” I added, and regretted the words as soon as I had spoken them.
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” she said flatly.
There is a horrid quiet grimness at suddenly looking at a human soul when it has reached the pit of darkness. You grope around tongue-tied. There’s the wind on the heath, brother, and grief passes in the end, and all the other hackneyed stuff, but you know it won’t do. She sat looking at me like a dog in an anti-vivisection advertisement.
The seconds passed.
“Despair is a terrible thing,” I said. God Almighty, one had to say something.
She began to wipe her eyes again.
“You should try not to give way,” I added hopelessly.
We went through a tunnel, and the lights, for some obscure reason known only to British Railways, promptly went out.
In the damp darkness I could hear muffled sniffs, and small movements like a rabbit in a hutch. When the train rattled its way out of the tunnel the lights came on, and I saw she had struggled out of her mackintosh and taken off her head covering. She wore a man’s collar and tie, and her grizzled hair was cut rather close to her head. She blinked and said:
“Of course, I do realise it’s partly my fault, but it’s terrible when you have two people in love with you.”
I gazed at the fantastic plainness of her face, noting a certain bun-faced honesty, and wished angrily that she had looked evil. She said:
“My friend who died was older than me, and the friend who is living with me is young. The young are hard. They don’t understand. I can’t even cry, except in the toilet.”
“Why won’t she let you cry?”
“She’s an atheist, she doesn’t want me to take up God again. She says it’s weak-minded. She won’t have a lot of mumbo-jumbo, she says. But it’s terribly hard, terribly hard.”
The tears began to drip from her eyes once more, but she did not mop at them. Her body did not move. She just apologised again.
“What about your work?” I muttered. “I suppose you do work?”
“Yes, I work for an Adoption society.”
I sighed with relief, glad of any straw to help me out of a feeling of utter inadequacy, and said:
“Well, there you are-there’s your scope for the future-helping to provide a happy future for-”
But she wouldn’t let me finish.
“I know all that, I was enthusiastic at one time, but some of those people are so cynical. Do you know what one of them said to me last week, rubbing her hands together? ‘Christmas will soon be here,’ she said, ‘they’ll all be having a drink or two too many, and then by September we shall have a good many new babies to place.’ I think it’s disgusting. I mean they’re not replacements, they’re people, small people, anyway,” she concluded awkwardly.
“That’s right,” I said, and glanced at my watch. “We’ll be in at Victoria Station in a few minutes,” I added, but it wasn’t any good.
“She was very good to me, my friend who died. I’d like to see her again. It would be nice to explain.”
“You’ll see her again,” I said dully.
People often think that explanations can change things, can soften the blow of adultery, smooth over the loss of love, pour oil on the surface of life; and the seas will abate, and all will be as it should be. It’s bunk.
“She was much older than me, I told you that. We still went on being friends after. She wasn’t bitter. I’m sure she understood.”
I nodded. There was nothing I could say which was worth saying.
“She said she’d leave me?100 in Premium Bonds. That shows she still cared, don’t you think? Do you think I ought to practise my religion again?”
“It’s something you’ve got to decide for yourself,” I replied, and knew she wanted me to go through the motion of deciding for her.
“I suppose so.” Her voice was grief stricken. “Do you know, her family didn’t even invite me to the funeral. You’d think they’d have had the decency to do that, wouldn’t you? Some people! They said it was because I was a Catholic.”
Her eyes took on an expression of stubborn indignation.
“That was just an excuse. They knew perfectly well I hadn’t been to church for years. What harm would it have done letting me go to church to pay my last respects? Still, I went, just to spite them. What is more I walked the way to the cemetery afterwards, carrying my wreath. I owed it to her. So it was all right in the end, wasn’t it?”
“You did the right thing,” I said, and my voice sounded like an echo of futility itself.
“That’s what I thought. It helps when you know you’ve done the right thing.”
“Oh, yes it does.”
The train was slowing down in Victoria Station. I could hardly wait for it to stop. She was heaving herself into her silly white mackintosh, adjusting her ludicrous head covering. I heard her murmur something about catching a No. 52 bus, and saw her open a big shabby handbag, and take out a buff-coloured envelope. Suddenly, impulsively, I blurted out:
“Don’t do anything foolish. Suicide is no solution.”
The train had almost stopped. She said:
“You may be right. But it’s hard to go on.”
“Try.”
She nodded. Then she swallowed, and sought the same old assurance.
“I shall see her again?”
“Of course, of course you will,” I said, and reached thankfully for the door handle as the train stopped.
We walked a little way along the station platform together.
“She left me a barometer, too. I do hope I get it. But the family are making a fuss.”
I indicated a side entrance, and said I’d have to take a taxi as I was late. I wasn’t. I had nothing to be late for, but I wanted to get back to normality and away from sadness. I felt I couldn’t stand it any longer. I could have given her a lift part of the way, but I couldn’t stand it, not any longer.
Yet at the last moment she detained me with a red, square, hand laid on my arm, and said:
“It’s been such a help talking to you. It’s not often you find somebody who understands. These days everyone is so hard. They don’t seem to understand the nice things in life.”
I felt ashamed by her simplicity, and appalled by the memory of my inability to offer real comfort. I shook my head and began to mutter something, but she interrupted me and said:
“Because you’ve been a help to me, here is something which may help you. I do hope it will. I really do. But don’t read it till you’re back home.”
She thrust into my hands the buff-coloured envelope she had taken from her handbag, and left me, and her squat figure hurried on in the direction of the main station entrance.
I have described the incident at some length because I believe that despite the hold which certain people had on her, her sorrow and grief were sincere.
I believe she thought the small role she played to be innocuous, as indeed it was. Whether she had performed less innocuous acts in the past must be a matter for speculation. On this occasion I am certain she was not play-acting, because it would have been pointless to go to such lengths.
Actually, I thought the buff envelope probably contained some extract from the Bible or something, and I put it in my pocket, had a couple of drinks at the Devonshire Arms near my flat and forgot all about it till I was undressing.
When I opened it, it contained an ordinary quarto sheet of white paper, on which was typed the following:
Investigations into the background and death of Mrs. Dawson at Pompeii are a matter for the Italian police and nobody else. Investigation by other persons can only be regarded as unwarranted intrusions.
It is hoped and believed that you will appreciate this point, particularly since it is understood that you contemplate marriage in a month’s time.
There was no signature.
Feelings merge, and blend, and overlap, and it is hard to sort them afterwards, but I think I can truthfully say that the thing which first impressed me, as much as the cumbersome threat, was the appalling heaviness of the phraseology, the awful resemblance to the style used by lawyers and civil servants.
Then I read it through again, and noted how the capital letter “I” was defective, and reproduced itself with the lower part missing, and how the “e” and the “o” were blurred and clogged, and I glanced at my own typewriter on the desk by the window, and remembered that for some time it had required overhaul, and cleaning, and repairs to the letter “I”; and when I held the paper up to the light and saw the watermark, “64 MILL BOND EXTRA STRONG,” I hardly needed to look at the watermark on my own paper on the desk, or at the buff envelopes I keep in the letter rack.
It is all very fine to see these things on the films or television, but when they happen to you personally you experience the feeling you get when you completely mislay something you have seen only a few minutes ago. You wonder if you are going mad, or are in a dream, or even dead.
I stood still with a singing sound in my head, and this was mingled with the thumping noise of my heart, and with vague distant sounds of people laughing and talking loudly, and the sound of cars starting, which showed that the tavern down the road had shut.
After about two minutes, I heard the faint creak of a floor board from the spare bedroom which Juliet and I were turning into a dining-room. The door was closed.
I went into the hall and fetched a knobkerrie given me by an uncle. For those who do not know, in these post-Imperial times, a knobkerrie is a wooden stick with a large heavy knob, formerly much used by African natives. It could be flung through the air, or used as a club in battle, or for polishing off wounded warriors after battle. Its modern uses are limited.
It gives a psychological reassurance when faced with a closed door, but that is about all. I opened the door a couple of inches, groped, switched on the light, flung the door wide, and felt a fool.
There was nobody in the flat. Nothing had been disturbed. More particularly, when I examined the front door, there were no scratches round the Yale-type lock or round the paintwork on the door or windows.
I went to bed, tense, worried, and listening.
The attempts in Italy and England to dissuade me from probing into the case had till now seemed isolated incidents, reasonably civilised, and explainable on one pretext or another.
Tonight’s affair was different.
Although I had not the slightest intention of abandoning my plans, I was, I admit, getting jumpy. If somebody had been in my flat once, they could come into it again.
I record that I lay in bed in a very uneasy mood, thinking of Bardoni, Miss Brett, Mrs. Gray, that thick-set, muffin-faced old Tartar, and the sad, sad woman in the train and the message she had given me.
I had spoken to Mrs. Gray of senseless obstruction. There was obstruction all right, no longer negative but positive, and it could not be senseless. But what was behind it was as unclear as ever, and why they had gone to the trouble of entering my flat illegally and using my typewriter and paper baffled me.
At first I thought it was an attempt to gain their ends by melodrama, but I abandoned that line. It now seemed part of a detailed operation planned to overcome any stubbornness on my part. I noted that now, for the first time, I was thinking in terms of They and Them.
For the first time, too, the peasant realised he had caught a clear sight of green eyes, heard the sound of feline bodies, and the cracking of twigs, and become properly conscious of jungle peril.
It was unpleasant but it was not yet terrifying.
At one-thirty in the morning I was still awake. I got up, warmed some milk, poured an enormous slug of whisky into it, took two aspirins, and went back to bed. In fifteen minutes I was sound asleep, which is not surprising. Anyway, peasants usually sleep well.
I decided I would call in at the police station first thing in the morning, and fell asleep trying to think what I would say.
I need not have worried. I had a call myself, first thing in the morning.