I returned to my flat, and went to sleep at about one-thirty in the morning, or possibly a little later.
Until that time I sat in an easy chair, the curtains drawn, looking at the empty grate, and finally lay in bed staring into the darkness.
Once, before I went to bed, I walked to the windows and drew the curtains aside and gazed down into the deserted street. Opposite, the dark windows of the houses stared back, disinterested, negative and lifeless.
I guessed that I had hardly moved from the windows before somebody was writing in a notebook: At ten minutes past midnight subject came to the windows and looked out. At twenty minutes past midnight subject switched off the lights in the living-room, and appeared to have retired for the night.
Did he then, having scribbled his little notes, take a few minutes off, scuttle to a gas-ring and brew himself a cup of tea or instant coffee, before settling down to another long vigil? Or did some mate, fellow worker, joint-operator, or whatever he called himself, take over? Did they work four-hour shifts, or two-hour shifts, or what?
At one stage, I was tempted to leave the flat and go for a walk. What would happen? Would somebody attempt to follow me, unnoticed in the deserted streets? And if I challenged him what innocent story would he produce?
I guessed they would make no such attempt. They must know I would do nothing worth observing at that time of night. It was they, not I, who had need of concealment in the hours of darkness.
It was not the peasant who had need to lurk in the undergrowth.
Nevertheless, at one point I was tempted to put the matter to the test. It was after a moment of panic after I had gone to bed and put the lights out.
While I had the light on, I was sure of myself and of my facts, as I had been most of the time up to the present. But in the darkness one feels alone and unsure.
It was Juliet’s volte-face which made me now feel hot and frightened. I was not afraid of attempted assassination. It was the need to know if my mind was in all truth working normally.
In a situation of apparent unreality and confusion, you need one person to lean on, one person to say, “Other people are wrong, but I know that what you say is the truth; not merely the truth as it appears to you, but the real truth. These things have happened, and you have not imagined them. You are not suffering from nerve troubles, you are mentally sound.”
I had been, first, hurt and resentful, and then, as one does with those you love, I had begun to rationalise in her favour. I told myself that she was eager to take the police point of view, because although it conjured up temporary difficulties, at least it meant that my life was not in danger. She had jumped at the lesser of the two evils, and though, like the police, she had not patted me on the head, she had, in effect, said, “There, there, just take it easy, and when we are married mummy will look after you, and nobody’s going to hurt you.”
In the light, it was a consolation; in the darkness, with the blackness pressing in, and now and then the sound of rain beating against the windows, I realised how alone I now was in this matter.
“You are one,” he had said on the ’phone, and he had proved his point. I could almost hear him, distantly, in the darkness, laugh like a green woodpecker, high, undulating, and mocking. And now, in a half-asleep condition, I began to wish for strange things to happen so that I could triumphantly come into physical touch with reality.
I imagined “Sergeant Matthews” calling again, on some pretext, and myself, ludicrously, tearing off a uniform button and retaining it as proof of his existence; or the same man handing back the message Bunface had given me, saying I could keep it as a souvenir; and there it would be, a proof for me, if for nobody else, that I had not been imagining things; indeed, I wished at one moment that even the telephone might ring in the darkness.
The telephone remained silent, but a board creaked somewhere. My first instinct was to reach for the bedside lamp, yet I hesitated.
If my mind was normal, and it was a man, then for better or for worse I could cope with him and be glad to do so. But if such were not the case, then what would I see? What heraldic animal, what figure from the past, what spirit from another world?
I lay for a few seconds, sweating, struggling back to full consciousness, before I pressed the light switch and saw that the room was empty.
It was at this moment that I was tempted to dress again, and go out into the wet streets, in the strange hope that after some minutes, glancing back, I would see a figure following at a distance.
I gave up the idea, because the experiment would prove nothing. If I could imagine other things, I could imagine that I was being followed; and if, lurking around a corner, I suddenly retraced my steps and tackled the man, he would deny that he was following me. It would be his word against mine. What was mine worth?
Nevertheless, one thing now was clear: if I could reason as logically as that, there was nothing wrong with my mind. The reasoning might have been faulty, but it satisfied me.
I switched off the light, and went to sleep without difficulty.
All that night I was left in peace.
It was almost as if, having inserted the yeast, they were leaving it to ferment the mixture. And in the morning, as I was having my breakfast, I saw an item in the newspaper which finally obliterated all doubts about my mental condition. It was a letter tucked away at the foot of the correspondence column and read:
THE PRISONERS’ FRIEND
Sir,
I have been awaiting the publication of some tribute to Mrs. Harold Dawson, Lucy Dawson to her friends, whose seemingly pointless murder at Pompeii must have shocked so many of her friends. As a Governor of one of H.M. prisons for many years, I came into contact with the wonderful work she carried out, unobtrusively, and indeed secretly, for the rehabilitation of released prisoners.
Hers was largely an individual effort, without the backing of any of the devoted organisations which now carry out this work. She had no office and she had no staff, yet there must be many former criminals who today owe their present happiness and honest prosperity to her tireless work on their behalf.
Let their gratitude be her memorial.
A. Pearson Lt. Col. (Ret.)
14 BENTON HOUSE,
LONDON, S.W.1.
I read the letter through twice with rising excitement.
Here, somewhere, might lie an obscure motive for her murder. I finished my breakfast quickly, grabbed a notebook, and took a taxi to Benton House, which lay behind Eaton Square. On the way, my mind revolved round theories of the psychological reaction of some people towards other people who have helped them including the old one about the desire to strike down the benevolent Father Figure, though in Lucy Dawson’s case it would be the Mother Figure.
I wondered whether Scotland Yard would note the letter, and send a copy to the Italian police, and interview the colonel. Perhaps the colonel could supply a list of names of people she had assisted in the past. Perhaps, somewhere on the list would be the name of one who was again in trouble, who had attempted to extort further assistance, or, if not assistance, then money.
I remembered the pencil marking on her map of Pompeii, and how her meeting with the killer must have been a planned one.
I had a feeling, as I read the letter, that if my well-being was in danger-and I was only on the fringe, so far-then what about the colonel’s? Perhaps that was why I was in such a hurry to see him.
I do not know about subconscious instincts, but I know that by the time my taxi had reached Sloane Street I was aware of a feeling of desperate urgency.
Somebody felt himself menaced by Mrs. Dawson’s past activities. Somebody with power, riches and organisational ability. Somebody who, as Juliet had pointed out during her period of anxiety, was sufficiently cautious to prefer to gain his means by fear rather than risk a killing, if this could be avoided. But somebody who would kill, if need be; who might consider, if he had read the letter, that there was no time to try psychological warfare as far as Colonel Pearson was concerned.
Benton House was a block of old-fashioned mansions turned into flats. I do not think I would have been surprised to find a couple of police cars and an ambulance outside, and a crowd of people being kept back by a constable, and although I saw that the little road was clear, I was still in doubt about what I would find when I reached his flat.
I glanced at the board showing the tenants’ names and saw that his flat was on the second floor. There was an old-fashioned lift, but the cage was in use somewhere at the top of the building, so I ran up the two flights of stairs, and rang the bell.
I was just in time, but not in the way I had imagined.
A small, dapper man in check tweeds, well-polished shoes, and wearing a regimental tie opened the door. He was thin, aged about seventy, with a good head of white hair clipped close round the ears, bright blue eyes and a weather-beaten face.
“Colonel Pearson?”
“Come in-they’re in the kitchen. Just give ’em a rub up,” he said.
I hesitated.
“What are in the kitchen?”
“Aren’t you Brigadier Robertson’s son?”
When I shook my head he smiled and said:
“Sorry-sold my guns to the Brigadier last week. He didn’t want to take ’em then. Said his son would pick ’em up this morning. I was getting worried. Just off in an hour or so.”
He beckoned me in and pointed to some piled luggage in the hall. There were two old-fashioned cabin trunks, a black tin trunk with his name and regiment painted on it in white, an old, battered suitcase, held together with a strap, two fishing rods, binoculars, an ash walking-stick, a mackintosh, and an overcoat. I said:
“Going away for a bit? You’re lucky, with the winter coming on.”
“Going away for good. Going to live in Portugal,” he said shortly. “Can’t afford to live in England. Been struggling to keep this flat going for the last ten years since my wife died. Can’t afford it, or anything else, as far as I can see.”
He looked at me with angry blue eyes.
“Serve your country-thirty years in the Army, and fifteen in the Prison Service, and your country sees to it you can’t afford to live in it. Bad show, you know, dam’ bad show. Still, there you are! What can I do for you?”
“I saw your letter in the paper this morning,” I said, and told what I had in mind. He nodded.
“Poor old Lucy Dawson-bad show. Don’t understand it, I don’t understand it. Come into the drawing room.”
I followed him in, and he stood in front of the empty fireplace, looking around him forlornly.
“Bit of a mess in here. Sold the contents of the flat, lock, stock, and barrel. Sorry to go, but there you are. Still a British colony in Portugal, I’m told. Hope to make a few friends in time. Miss the Hampshire trout-still, can’t be helped. Given up shooting anyway. Like to see ’em alive, rather than dead. Don’t mind eating ’em, though.”
He began to fill a Lovat Fraser-type pipe from an old-fashioned, black leather tobacco pouch.
“About Mrs. Dawson,” I said.
“Lucy Dawson-it’s simple enough. Got in touch with me when I was Governor of Parkway Prison, up in the Midlands. Asked me to keep an eye open for intelligent young first offenders who might do all right when they came out-given a chance. Not many, just ones I felt sure about-as far as you can ever feel sure of that type. Said she couldn’t handle many. Maybe one or two a year, not more. Think she was in touch with one or two other Governors, also with a women’s prison.”
He paused to put a match to his pipe, and sucked in and blew out big clouds of smoke, tamping the glowing tobacco down with his forefinger as though his finger was heat proof.
“How did she find them jobs, Colonel Pearson? Can you tell me?”
“That was the trouble. Always is. Especially with these types. She wanted special types who might really make their way in the world, given a chance. Field was limited. Couldn’t ask banks to take ’em on, could you? Nothing like that, if you see what I mean. But she succeeded all right. Wonderful woman.”
He shook his head admiringly.
“She just went around, you know-interviewing people who might help. Heads of firms. People like that. Nobody knew, except the Governor of the prison, and the head of the firm. She depended upon me, or whatever Governor she was dealing with. It was a tricky do, I can tell you. But it worked.”
“No failures?” I asked.
“None, as far as I know. And she kept in touch, you know. With them and with me. Had a card from her shortly before the tragedy. Sent a wreath, as a matter of fact, for old times’ sake.”
“You sent a wreath?” I repeated. “There was only one wreath.”
He took his pipe out of his mouth and stared at me in astonishment.
“Only one wreath? None from all those others?”
I shook my head.
“But that’s awful!”
The disillusion on his face touched me.
“People forget,” I said uneasily. “Time passes. People forget.”
“That lot wouldn’t forget. I told you, she kept in touch with them.”
“Perhaps they didn’t read about it-or didn’t know where to send a wreath.”
He clutched at the last possibility.
“That’s probably it-they didn’t know where to send a wreath. Otherwise I wouldn’t understand it, not after all she’d done for them.”
He sounded pathetically relieved by the thin excuse I had put forward.
“Why did you sign the card with the wreath as from the ‘Stepping Stones’?”
He walked across to the windows and looked out.
“Oh, that-the ‘Stepping Stones’-well, that was just a little name we invented. Stepping Stones to a fresh start, that sort of thing. Just a nickname for ourselves.”
“She died near some stepping-stones in Pompeii.”
“Did she? Odd coincidence. Were the police getting anywhere by the time you left?”
“I doubt it.”
I was wondering whether to tell him of the things which had happened to me. I heard him say, without looking round:
“If this damned young chap doesn’t come in the next half-hour I’ll be gone. I suppose I could leave the guns with the porter downstairs and put a note on the door. Young chaps these days seem to have no idea of punctuality.”
I decided not to do so. He was leaving in half-an-hour, leaving the country and, as I saw it, the danger in London which surrounded him.
I thought: let him go in peace, unworried and undisturbed. Let the old boy go and live in the sun in comfort and at ease, for his last years.
He turned and came back to the fireplace and knocked his pipe out in the grate, and immediately began to refill it from his worn pouch.
“You know,” he said thoughtfully, “that woman was a bit of a saint, in some ways.”
“Was she?” I said. “Was she indeed?”
“I’ll tell you why. You could use it, you could put it in your book or article or whatever you’re writing. She helped these types though it must have gone right against the grain.”
“Because of what she had suffered at the hands of crooks? She and her parents and her husband and so on?”
“You know about that?”
“They told me at the hotel.”
“She thought that nothing was too bad for the average criminal. You should have heard her sometimes-hang ’em, flog ’em, lock ’em up for life, all that. It was a bit extreme, really. I think she did this work as a sort of sop to her conscience. Psychological, you know,” he added solemnly. “That’s what it was, in some way or other, psychological-not that I believe much in that sort of damned nonsense.”
He was at his pipe again, clouds of smoke billowing round his face.
“God knows what I’ll have to smoke in Portugal,” he muttered.
Then, reverting, he said: “She was a great disciplinarian with herself, too, mind you. I believe she took up this work like some people have a cold bath in the morning-unpleasant, but good for the soul.”
“Do you have a cold bath in the morning?” I asked.
I wanted something to say, to keep the conversation going, to keep his mind off the time and the thought of last-minute things to do.
I was afraid he was going to look at his watch and say, well, would I excuse him, and I didn’t want to excuse him, because what might seem a simple theory to anybody reading about it afterwards was not at all simple to me at that time, and in that place; and edging up to it as I was, with a feeling of astonishment and excitement, it was not easy to sort out a number of questions which occurred to me. I heard him say:
“Do I take a cold bath in the morning. No, of course I don’t take a cold bath in the morning. Damned nonsense, if you ask me. Do you?”
“No, I don’t.”
“I should think not indeed.”
“These jobs she found for them,” I asked. “What sort of jobs were they, in what fields?”
Now, in fact, he did glance at his watch.
“In what fields? Oh, I forget now-engineering, chemicals, building, ship-repair firms-that sort of thing.”
“Catering?”
“Catering? Oh, yes, that, of course. Catering and the hotel business.”
“Could you give me any examples of how they have got on?”
“Oh, I couldn’t give you any names, anything which would enable you to identify them, that would be out of the question. And now, I’m afraid, if you’ll excuse me-”
“I’m not asking for names,” I said rapidly, “just sort of examples.”
He began to move slowly towards the drawing-room door.
“Well, I think I can tell you this, without being unethical-I know of one assistant manager of a big engineering firm who is, well, one of our boys, so to speak! And an English export manager in Switzerland, and a hotel manager in the south of France, and one in Italy, and one here-in England, itself-on the south coast, though she’s a manageress.”
He stopped by the door and looked at me knowingly.
“She always told me how they were getting on. There were no secrets of that sort between Lucy Dawson and me,” said this simple soldier.
I had to go now.
There were other questions I would have liked to put to him, but he wanted me off the premises. I followed him to the front door, listening to him muttering about his guns and unpunctuality.
Yet as we were about to say good-bye, and after I had thanked him, he unwittingly provided what seemed to me to be the main startling clue to the whole affair.
I remember he laughed heartily and said:
“It’s a good job we were all honest people, eh? Lucy Dawson and me and Caroline Gray!”
“Caroline Gray?”
“Lucy started it up alone, but afterwards a woman called Caroline Gray helped her. After she had retired, that is. She used to be Deputy Governor in one of the women’s prisons. Great judge of character! Helped Lucy a lot. Became great buddies. But as I say, good job we were honest! What a chance for blackmail, eh?”
I laughed, too. It was one of the most unamused laughs I have ever given.
So we parted, laughing mutually, and I wished him a happy and healthy life.
I walked slowly from Benton House and all the way to Kensington, thinking of how Lucy Dawson and her family had suffered at the hands of criminals and how she felt towards them.
Above all I thought of the revenge she had chosen.
It was frightening in its long-term cruelty, just because of the deceptive benevolence with which the trap was set.
I imagined her, tall, gracious, and gentle-and probably good-looking in those days-interviewing her victims with sympathy and understanding. Finding out by courteous probing what sort of work they were most fitted to do, in which spheres their personalities would blend most harmoniously, promising nothing at first, pointing out the difficulties, laying stress upon the need for future hard work, and above all integrity.
No doubt she would touch lightly but tactfully upon the risks to her own reputation, the dangers to her work, if her faith in the basic goodness of mankind were to be betrayed.
Then, over the years, came the periodic letters, the solicitous inquiries about what progress was being made. And Christmas cards of course, certainly Christmas cards.
Lucy Dawson-not the Lady with the Lamp, but the Lady with the Lifebelt. And attached to the Lifebelt was a Lifeline.
She never let go of it.
Attached to the lifebelt was a bill.
When you are floundering in deep waters and in peril of drowning you don’t think about bills. Above all you don’t think of Lucy Dawson’s kind of bill.
Lucy Dawson’s war of revenge against the criminal world was a long war, the more merciless because her victims were the ones who might have been salvaged, indeed were salvaged. But in her dark distorted mind there was no element of discrimination.
So, as I walked, I imagined her.
The long wait did not matter for her, for all the time she was, as it were, licking her chops before the meal. Anticipation can give as much if not more pleasure than realisation. When the fruit was ripe, she plucked it.
I wondered in what way the blackmail approach was made. Perhaps in a letter, at first, to prepare the ground: “Being acquainted, as by experience you undoubtedly are, with the type of work in which I am interested, it has been suggested to me that you will probably be willing to subscribe to our funds. I would not, of course, approach you in this way if I did not think that you were sympathetic to our aims. Perhaps I might telephone you one day, or we might meet, in order to decide upon the amount which you will, I feel certain, wish to give annually to such a deserving cause.”
Nothing threatening.
Merely the implied certainty that there would be no refusal.
How much did she take? Five, ten, twenty per cent of their salaries? Was it all in cash, or was it in cash and kind? Did Bardoni pay her entire hotel bill, when she stayed there under the fiction that she liked to pay the manager direct? Did the others do likewise? What of Miss Brett and the Bower Hotel? Did she pay Miss Brett a certain sum, and order that unattractive woman to make up the difference?
What of Mrs. Gray? No distorted mind there. Just money. What was her cut?
The questions raced through my mind, and although I could not expect to find an answer to these particular ones, I was convinced that I was on the right track.
I thought I had the answer to the whole thing: Mrs. Dawson had been running a long-term blackmail racket, and somebody had revolted at last, and killed her at Pompeii.
I thought it was as simple as that.
By the time I had arrived back at the flat I was still sure I was right. As a small check, I telephoned the International Seamen’s Widows’ and Orphans’ Fund, on whose behalf she wrote so many letters, according to what Mrs. Dacey had told me at the Bower Hotel.
I was not surprised to learn they had never heard of her. She was too busy, I thought, writing to her victims, to bother about seamen’s widows and orphans.
But the centre core of the problem, the big, menacing question mark still remained unsolved.
I understood the minor obstructions I had encountered, the attempts to dissuade me from my investigations made by Bardoni. Poor old Bardoni, I thought, and almost softened towards him in spite of his eyes hacked out of chunks of oak. What crime had he committed in his youth? What toll did he pay to Mrs. Dawson, how long had it been going on? Had she known that Juliet was his daughter when Stanley and Elaine Bristow visited his hotel to carry out their warped experiment?
I could understand his fears all right. I could understand those of the unloveable Constance Brett, whose whole life was bound up in her job at the Bower Hotel.
Mrs. Gray was different. How much did she know of the victims, and was she planning to take over the racket?
It was at this point that my thinking faltered.
These people were tiddlers, swimming around fearful and wide-eyed, afraid of anything which might disturb the calm patch of water they had reached after much toil and trouble. I recalled the thoughts I had had in the taxi as I hastened to interview Colonel Pearson.
So who was the Big Cat, the powerful one, the one with power, riches and organisational ability, the one who was cool and cautious, who preferred to gain his ends by fear, if he could, rather than risk a killing, but who, nevertheless, had certainly killed poor Bunface?
I am sometimes a slow thinker; and then again, sometimes my thoughts can become so complicated and involved that I cannot see the obvious, even when it is almost crying out to be recognised.
But now, with a jolt, I saw that which should have been long since apparent to me.
Hitherto, I had linked the petty obstructions of Bardoni and Constance Brett with the campaign against me, regarding them as stemming from the same motives, lumping the Big Fish with the tiddlers.
Now I began to see the truth, or at least part of it.
The tiddlers were afraid for themselves.
The Big Cat, the Great Predator, was afraid for the organisation.
Lucy Dawson’s racket had been taken over. The motive for her murder was not that of a blackmail victim who had reached the end of his tether.
The motive was money.
A going concern.
Vast profit and no capital risks.
No risks of any kind, if the cards were played right.
A gangster take-over, possibly originating in Italy, possibly not. I wondered whether they had offered her a cut or a partnership.
But they had misjudged her. Knowing nothing of her sad past, having no inkling of the secret, dark corners of a tragic, inhibited, and unforgiving soul, they could not see that to take this thing from her would be like removing the mainspring from a clock.
The last rendezvous at Pompeii had been the final attempt.
I could imagine her saying, in effect, “Over my dead body.”
And so it was. So it was, indeed.
I was very delighted and relieved by this theory, as I opened the street door leading to my flat. The dominating emotion was relief.
Some things, some tricks they had played, still baffled me, but I no longer had any lingering doubts at all about my mental stability. Nor, frankly, had I much fear. I was just faced with a bunch of crooks.
I could handle a bunch of crooks.
Thus I let myself in, overwhelmed by my own brilliance, dazzled by my own acumen, and infinitely glad that whatever anybody else thought I had discovered the key to the current problem.
There proved to be a grain of truth in my new theory. A very small grain.
Otherwise it was totally wrong, like all my thoughts and actions in this calamitous affair.
Still, there you are, as dapper Colonel Pearson would have said. You can only do your best.
You can only bumble along the jungle-skirted paths, and, if the crackle of twigs alarms you, you can say it is only a wild pig, not exactly harmless, but capable of being repulsed.
If you hear the slither of bodies, and the sound continues with you, then of course it is a different matter. But you can only hitch your spear forward and hope for the best. You can console yourself with the thought that more peasants get through than not.
It can, however, be fatal, even in this modern day and age, not to keep your eyes open and your spear ready, and to think that it is always the other peasant who is clawed down.
Mind you, it probably always will be the other peasant, until one day the other peasant is you.