Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 98, No. 4 & 5. Whole No. 588 & 589, October 1991

A Branch of the Service by Graham Greene

At the door the man said goodbye to her. She said, “We haven’t spoken at all of Education Sentimentale. If you could manage another meeting—”

“I’ll certainly do my best,” he said. “It has been a great pleasure meeting you.” When she had left, he turned away toward the lavatory, still carrying his cigarette.

An original story from the recent Graham Greene collection, The Last Word and Other Stories, published by Reinhardt Books in association with Viking...

I have been forced reluctantly to retire from a profession which I found of great interest and on a few occasions even dangerous because I have lost my appetite for food. Nowadays I can eat only in order to drink a little — before my meal a glass or two of vodka, and then a half bottle of wine: I find it quite impossible to face a menu, leave alone the heavy three- or even four-course meals in restaurants which my profession demanded.

I owed it to my father that I got the job I am now leaving, though he died before I was, as we call it, recruited. My earliest memories are the smells of a kitchen — they are happy memories even though I now find it a burden to eat. The kitchen was not one in my home: it was, as it were, an abstract kitchen which represented all the kitchens in which my father cooked — kitchens in England, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, and once I believe for a short while in Russia. He was a great chef — but he was never officially recognized. He moved from country to country. He was never out of a job, but he never kept a job long because he always knew better than his employer when it was time for him to leave.

Of my mother I remember nothing — I think she must always have been left behind on our travels. How I enjoyed eating in those days, yet I never learnt how to cook. That was my father’s pride and secret. What I learnt were languages — never very well but a smattering of many. I could understand better than I spoke. The man who later recruited me understood that. I remember him saying, “To understand is the only important thing. We don’t want you to talk.”

You may wonder why it was necessary for me to eat large meals in order to keep my job. Even in a good restaurant one does not feel bound to eat more than two courses and one may always linger a long time over the wine. Yes, but I was supposed to be judging the food not the wine, even awarding stars to the food in the fashion of Michelin, but of course stars differently designed. I even had to inspect the lavatories.

In my father’s eyes I would never have made a first-class cook, and he didn’t wish me to spend my life as a kitchen help. Through an admirer of his English cooking in a little restaurant in St. Albans where he worked for a year before quarreling with his employer, he introduced me to a new organization which called itself International Reliable Restaurants Association, but before I had finished my first six months’ training they changed the name. IRRA was a little putting off because of the Irish difficulties, and so they became instead the International Guide to Good Restaurants, or the IGGR.

Their advertisements and their reputation rose together — at any rate for English customers, for they soon outbid Michelin. Michelin was too nationalist. Michelin awarded to Paris in those days five stars to eight restaurants, while to London they gave no five stars and only two four stars. The IGGR was far more generous, and that proved an advantage.

I had been an inspector for the IGGR for two years before I was recruited for special duties.

As I learnt during my training in these so-called duties, we were not really interested in the number of stars or even in the cleanness of the lavatories. The people with whom we were concerned were unlikely to be found in very expensive restaurants, for costly eating can make the eater conspicuous.

“Rich eaters are not the main interest of this section,” my instructor told me, “here we look out for an ordinary customer. Especially those who are more than usually ordinary — they are the likely ones.”

I found his lessons at first a little obscure, until he told me a story which explained one of my puzzling memories of Paris. He said, “Of course, in this section we are not concerned with police work, but all the same we have taken a hint from the French police. Do you remember the lottery sellers who used to come into the bistros and the small restaurants in France?”

“Yes. You never see them now.”

“And yet lottery selling is not illegal. They are gone because they had outlived their usefulness.”

“What was their usefulness?”

“The police showed them the photographs of wanted men — small fry, thieves, and the like — and they would go from table to table looking at the faces. This gave us an idea for a rather more important work, a work which involves our ears more than our eyes.”

He made a long pause; he meant, I think, to arouse our curiosity, and curious we certainly were at having been taken away from tasting food and inspecting lavatories. But we were wrong. There was a gleam of amusement in our speaker’s eyes. “The lavatories are of particular importance,” he said.

“From the point of view of cleanness, of course?” a novice (not me) asked.

I still had no idea what our instructor was talking about. “No, no,” he said. “Cleanness isn’t our concern, but the lavatory is a private place if you want to exchange a word or a packet with a friend. Unless, of course, your friend is a woman, but we’ll come to that possibility later.”

A lot of other possibilities came later.

“There are phrases in conversation that you hear in a restaurant which are worth attention. Pas de problème is less interesting in France where it is in such common use, but if one of your neighbors in a small unfashionable restaurant in Manchester (a restaurant which hasn’t got even one star) says, ‘There’s no problem,’ it’s worth paying attention.”

I think that he felt among the novices a certain skepticism. He went on, “A hundred chances to one, of course, nothing of interest — of obvious interest — will follow — but make a note. There remains the one chance. The lavatory, too — though perhaps the chances there are a little greater. For example, two men peeing beside each other and talking. Our organization fills a gap — an important gap in security. A house is watched — but that again is not our job. The telephone is tapped. Not our job. Even street meetings are in other hands. But restaurants — we are doing a great service to the state.”

A question came to my mind. “But when once we have given a star to a restaurant we have no excuse to go on eating there?”

“You are wrong. Two stars might be gained for the next edition — or a star could be lost. A certain blackmail is sometimes necessary. You will always be welcome and given the best food.”

The best food — yes, that was my problem. A career of eating. Of course, it didn’t worry me at the beginning, and what attracted me was not so much being of service to the state as the hint of mystery about the whole affair. The phrase “no problem” stayed like a tune in my ears.

Of course, when first sent on duty one made serious mistakes, but unlike other professions one was excused — even sometimes praised — for a mistake because it might have added a little to one’s experience.

My first bad mistake — which in any other profession would have ruined my career — happened to be concerned with a lavatory. But I would prefer to speak of my first lucky success, which far outweighed my lavatory error, although that success, too, concerned a lavatory. The occasion took place in a three-starred restaurant, a smart one, but not too smart, like the Ritz. In my first three years, I was only told to take a watch in the Ritz once — the expense was too great and the chances too small. Waiters there were apt to notice strangers. I had been shown a photograph, but a very bad one, of a suspect who apparently had been seen at this restaurant more than once and was believed to be a foreigner. In his case, they had already paid three experienced watchers — one a day — and they were almost ready to give up. His companion at table was always different.

Quite by chance — in our profession nearly everything is a chance — I happened to be sitting at the next table to a solitary man. Some instinct had made me choose the table next to him for I could see little resemblance to photographs I had been shown. However, there was a foreign look about him, and perhaps (I might have imagined it) a look of impatience or anxiety, and his table was laid for two. He had ordered a glass of port (not a usual aperitif for an Englishman) and he lingered over it. I lingered, too, over my very dry Martini, trying to outlinger him.

At last the friend he was awaiting arrived — a woman. I write “friend,” but the greeting which he gave her struck me as very odd — “Pleased to meet you,” that very antiquated English phrase, was spoken in a distinctly foreign accent.

For the rest of my meal, there could no longer be any malingering. In my training I had been taught that I must always finish my meal and pay my bill while those whom I had chosen to watch were still eating. Of course, I could spend quite a lot of time, after paying, with a coffee, but I must be prepared to leave my table a little before those I watched or a very little after. I had to keep in touch, at all costs, but avoid the suspicion of keeping them under observation.

This early experience of mine in the Royalty restaurant was a physically very painful one, for the pair whom I had chosen to watch had a large meal and I have always, as I have said, had a very small appetite. First they chose a mixed salad, then roast beef, then cheese, and then, to my horror, they ordered a dessert — this, too, was a foreign touch, for in England we finish with cheese. It confirmed for me that the two were of different nationalities and that “pleased to meet you” had been an agreed signal. A momentary disagreement over cheese before dessert confirmed me in thinking that the man was French and the woman English.

Their conversation was mainly on the subject of Flaubert, about whom the woman was writing a book. Of course it occurred to me that Flaubert might be the pseudonym of a third agent and Madame Bovary of yet another. They made no attempt to lower their voices.

“It’s very good of you to see me,” the woman told him. “I have used your great work on Flaubert a good deal and it’s very kind of you to allow me to quote from it.”

I knew little of Flaubert’s life, but I began to learn quite a lot, and there really seemed nothing wrong with the couple.

“I’d have liked to see you once again and show you my text before it goes to the publisher, but I know how busy you are,” the woman said.

“Yes, I would like to see it, but I’m afraid I’m off by an early plane tomorrow. At nine-thirty.”

I made a mental note to check the time and destination, but I had really lost all suspicion and I would have called it a wasted day if it had not been for the cigarettes. After the meat course, when they were waiting for the cheese trolley, she offered him a cigarette.

He hesitated, and I thought he glanced at me.

“A Benson and Hedges Extra Mild,” she told him.

“Yes, I do like one of those, but do you mind — I only smoke one after I have finished eating. It’s a habit.” However, she took a cigarette and laid it by his plate.

“You don’t mind if I smoke?” she asked.

“Of course not.”

He lit her cigarette and the cheese trolley arrived. She chose a Stilton and he chose a Brie. I chose the smallest bit of Gruyere that I could persuade the waiter to cut and shuddered at the thought of the dessert which was yet to come. I took an ice, and after the apple tarts which they picked the woman took a coffee. I did the same. He seemed to have forgotten her cigarette, for he left it still unlit beside his plate. Perhaps a Benson and Hedges, I thought, was too mild for his taste. They continued to talk about Flaubert, but what they said was quite beyond me. At last the man asked for his bill and I quickly did the same, but theirs came first and I had no time to wait for it before I followed them from the restaurant. The man still carried his cigarette. Perhaps he had no intention of smoking it but didn’t wish to offend his companion by throwing it away.

At the door he said goodbye to her. She said, “We haven’t spoken at all of Education Sentimentale. If you could manage another meeting—”

“I’ll certainly do my best,” he said. “It has been a great pleasure meeting you.” When she had left, he turned away toward the lavatory, still carrying his cigarette. A tidy man, I thought, he’s going to throw it into the toilet. But all the same a reasonless curiosity had settled in my brain. There was another reason, too. I wanted to practice my new profession. A good cook progresses through his errors. A short pause and then I followed him, walking as quietly as I could.

He was washing his hands when I entered and he had laid the cigarette to one side out of the way of the water — that eternal unsmoked cigarette. I snatched it, and before he had time to turn I was out of the lavatory. There was no shout from behind me — only the sound of pursuing feet. At the hotel entrance, I pushed the porter to one side and ran into the street. Luck was with me. A taxi had just deposited a customer. As I drove away, I saw the customer rushing after me into the street, followed by the waiter, who was waving my unpaid bill. Poor man. I paid it later indirectly with interest by recommending the restaurant for a fourth star, which it certainly did not deserve.

In the taxi, I looked more closely at the cigarette. There was an odd feeling in the center — a kind of hardening of the tobacco, and at one end a kind of roughening in the packing of the cigarette. I was careful not to finger it more. It had already passed through three hands and was a little damp from its lavatory lodging — there seemed reason enough for all this. All the same, I had learnt in my training to hand over any object however trivial belonging to a suspect, and this I did as soon as I reached the office of the International Guide to Good Restaurants. Then I sat down to write my report, and my instinct made me enclose with it the untidy cigarette.

I hadn’t given in my report long when the telephone sounded. “Scramble,” my chief’s voice said, and I touched the button which would make our conversation unintelligible to anyone who might be tapping our line.

“The woman I feel pretty sure was English and the man French, I think, but they spoke to each other in English although they were both experts on Flaubert.”

“I think they wanted you to listen. They were proving, you might say, their innocence.”

“But are they guilty?”

“Guilty as hell. You’ve done a first-rate job. Come along in an hour and see me.”

When I went to him, the cigarette lay torn in half on his desk in a small litter of flakes. “Benson and Hedges Special Mild,” he said with a smile of satisfaction. “Low in tar content, but certainly not low in valuable information.” He showed a little bit of wrinkled paper. “A good way to conceal it,” he said, “in the middle of a cigarette.”

“What’s on it?” I asked.

“We’ll soon know. Microdots and a code, of course. You’ve done a good job. It was very acute of you to take the cigarette.”

Such a good job indeed that they forgave me several months later for a very bad mistake which also involved a lavatory.

The cigarette had led us to a new suspect for our file, a doctor who had connections with the chemical industry. He was now placed under continuous surveillance; a whole team of us was employed night and day. His open practice was in a small country town not far from the factory which used him as a consultant when one of the employees went sick.

He had been very thoroughly vetted by MI5, but our relations were closer to MI6 and there was a good deal of rivalry and even jealousy between the two establishments. The foundation of the international food guide was regarded by MI5 as an intrusion into their territory, and it was true that we had not passed onto them the information contained in the cigarette. Counter-espionage abroad certainly belonged to MI6, but our food guide was international and it would be inefficient to split the English section from the foreign. No watcher was employed more than once in two weeks and always at different mealtimes in order that the suspect would never become aware of a familiar face. Unfortunately for me, the doctor was a man of inordinate appetite, and after two months my turn came at the hour of dinner — the hour when his appetite was greatest. Unfortunately, too, I had suffered from a succession of heavy meals earlier. To award a star even to breakfasts had to be considered, and it was extraordinary how many people still preserved a pre-war appetite for what is still called an English breakfast as distinct from a continental one — eggs and bacon, or, even worse, sausages and bacon, sometimes even preceded by a helping of haddock.

I took over from his watcher outside a quite simple inn which was called the Star and Garter only half a mile from his own house. We were the only diners and I sat down at a table well away from his. I noticed he looked quite often at his watch, but he was obviously not expecting a friend for he had already chosen his meal. To my horror when I looked at the menu, I found a set menu at a very reasonable price and he had ordered the first course, which was an onion soup, and my stomach cannot abide onions. If I left out the soup, I would find myself well in advance of him and I would be out of touch with him when I finished the last course.

Another watcher was stationed in sight of the door who would take over when he left, but I had to remain till then in sight of the doctor in case he was contacted during his meal. A doctor was always, of course, liable to a phone call when he was away from home, but the Star and Garter telephone would have been tapped as soon as we knew where he was in the habit of dining.

I allowed myself a glance at him every now and then when he lowered his eyes to the obnoxious soup. To me, he looked a thoroughly honest man. Why would an honest man be mixed up with the man of the cigarette? Then I remembered he was a doctor. A doctor doesn’t judge his patients. If he had attended the deathbed of a murderer, that wouldn’t have made him a murderer. If a priest appeared on our microdot file, would he be reasonably a guilty man? The doctor finished his soup and ordered roast beef. Reluctantly, I did the same. I had to keep in step, though I could already feel the effect of the onion soup. He was a slow eater and read a newspaper between bites. I was glad that he showed no interest in me. It confirmed my impression of his honesty. It was a cold night and I felt sorry for the watcher outside keeping his unnecessary vigil.

To my distress, the doctor ordered an apple tart to follow. The only alternative on the little restaurant’s menu was an ice cream, but an ice cream needs to be eaten with some speed before it melts, so I was forced to order the tart. My trouble was I suffer from acidity, and when the doctor followed the tart with a piece of cheese I had to leave the table, for I felt the approach of diarrhoea. The lavatory was upstairs, and as I left I ordered my bill so as to be ready to leave on my return if the doctor didn’t wait for coffee. If I found him with coffee, I could spin out the time with a little difficulty over change and when he left my colleague would take over. And see him safely home to bed, I thought with irritation at this unnecessary routine watch.

I won’t go into the unsavory details of my diarrhoea — it was a severe one and more than five minutes had passed before I went downstairs to the restaurant. I found that the doctor had gone, and I thought with relief, My job is over. I would take something to ease my stomach when I got home.

As I paid my bill, I remarked to the waiter, an elderly man who, I found, was also the landlord, “Not much custom tonight.”

“At night,” he told me, “the bar trade’s better. And we do more at lunchtime — passing motorists. But the doctor’s a good regular and he likes simple food.”

I felt it my duty to inquire a little more about our suspect.

“Doesn’t he ever dine at home?”

“No, he’s a single man.”

“Not much custom for a doctor in a place this size?”

“There’s always the flu. And babies. But, of course, his main work is up at the chemical factory. Two hundred men. Plenty of patients there. I hope you enjoyed your food, sir, and that we’ll see you again. It’s a small place but my own, and I keep a sharp eye on the kitchen.”

“I can tell that. Here is my card.”

“International Good Food Guide! My goodness! I never expected to see one of your fellows in my little place. So that’s why you went to the lavatory?”

“Yes. We always inspect those. And I looked in on the kitchen on my way,” I lied. “I could tell at a glance—”

“What?”

“Clean. Which I already knew from the food it would be.”

“It’s very kind of you, sir. I do hope you’ll come again.”

“Not for a year. In the meanwhile, we’ll give you a mention in the guide.”

“I’m very honored, sir. Perhaps some of the big shots from the factory will read it.”

“What I advise you in the meantime is to have at least two menus. Perhaps then we could promote you to a star.”

“Never did I dream! When I tell the missus—”

“By the way, what do they do in the factory?”

“All sorts of medicines, sir. Even cures for the hiccups, they say. Me, I’m content with a bit of Eno’s. It serves most purposes.”

I bade him a warm goodbye and gave him a copy of the guide in which his restaurant would appear in the next edition. I was glad to be off because my stomach was still queasy and I had no further duties that day. I would go home and perhaps, as the man had reminded me, take a glass of Eno’s.

I went outside and to my astonishment saw my fellow watcher pretending interest in a shop window across the road. He turned and saw me with equal astonishment.

“What the hell have you come out for?”

“What are you doing here?”

“Waiting for the doctor, of course.”

“But the doctor’s gone.”

“He hasn’t passed that door.”

“Oh, the hell. There must be a back door.”

“But why didn’t you signal me as soon as you lost touch?”

“I had to go to the loo. I was gone only a few minutes and he wasn’t there when I came down. He came in this way and I thought he’d gone out the same way and you’d be following him.”

“He must have had suspicions.”

“I took him for an honest man, whatever the damned microdots said.”

“We’ve certainly messed things up this time.”

That was exactly what my boss said when I reported to him. “You’ve badly messed things. You should never have left the restaurant before him. Even for a minute.”

“It was the onion soup and the tomatoes.”

“Onion soup and tomatoes! Is that what I have to tell the big chief?”

“I had diarrhoea. I couldn’t stay and shit in my trousers.”

“You know I would have sacked you like a shot, if you hadn’t made that splendid coup with the cigarette.”

“You needn’t sack me. I resign. But I’d swear — microdot or not — that man was honest. He was no traitor.”

“Traitor is a silly word that journalists use. A traitor can be as honest as you or me. That chemical factory has connection with chemical warfare. A man can feel that chemical warfare is a betrayal of the world we have to live in. He could be fighting for something greater than his country. An honest spy is the most dangerous. He is not spying for money, he’s spying for a cause. Look, that cigarette is more important than this mistake. One learns from mistakes, and you are a good learner. You have given me a good idea of how to use your mistake. He may have been suspicious of you. Or it may have been his regular drill. To go in by the front and go out by the back.”

I said, “I can’t go on. I’m sorry. I can’t go on.”

“But why? This mistake of yours will be forgiven and forgotten.”

“But the onion soup. Tomatoes. And all the meat I have to eat. Garlic with the lamb. Cheese as well as dessert. Why do all these suspects have such a good appetite?”

“Perhaps it gives them time to observe the people around them.”

“But they never seem to get diarrhoea.”

“About your diarrhoea. I have no idea.” He paused and played with his pencil. “Suppose we gave you a week’s holiday?”

“I don’t need a holiday except from onion soup, and tomatoes, etc.”

“But I see a way of using them. Suppose you stayed a week at that little hotel and had all your meals there. The doctor would begin to accept you as a regular. You would consult him about your stomach. He might give you a treatment. Of course you would take nothing he gave you, for if he remained suspicious he might try to poison you. Any prescription he gave you would send on to us and we would have it examined. If there was anything dangerous about it, our suspicions would be confirmed and we would close in on him.”

“And if they weren’t?”

“We’d give him more time. He would need to have his suspicions confirmed, too, if he’s a man with scruples. We would think of some way. A warning from somewhere would reach him. Or one of your own reports, perhaps. We would watch his reactions very closely. All you would need to do is—”

“To eat,” I said. “No. I’ve made up my mind. I can’t make a career out of eating. No more onion soup, no more tomatoes, no more garlic. I resign.”

So it was that I abandoned the International Guide to Good Restaurants. Sometimes from curiosity, I buy a copy of the latest number. At least I have done one good deed in my life. The little country restaurant remains as a “mention” in the guide, though it has never received a star.