The Only Problem

‘It was the boils that worried Job.’

‘Pardon? The boils?’

‘Boils. Skin-sores. He was covered with them.’

‘Ah, yes, that is correct. Don’t you, like Job, feel the need of friends to talk to in your present troubles?’

‘One thing that the Book of Job teaches us,’ Harvey said, ‘is the futility of friendship in times of trouble. That is perhaps not a reflection on friends but on friendship. Friends mean well, or make as if they do. But friendship itself is made for happiness, not trouble.’

‘Is your aunt a friend?’

‘My Aunt Pet, who you tell me has arrived at the château? — I suppose she thinks of herself as a friend. She’s a bore, coming at this moment. At any moment. — You don’t suppose this is anything but an interrogation, do you? Any more questions?’

‘Would you like some cheese?’

Harvey couldn’t help liking the young man, within his reservation that the police had, no doubt, sent him precisely to be liked. Soften me up as much as you please, Harvey thought, but it doesn’t help you; it only serves to release my own love, my nostalgia, for Effie. And he opened his mouth and spoke in praise of Effie, almost to his own surprise describing how she was merry at parties, explaining that she danced well and was fun to talk to. ‘She’s an interesting woman, Effie.’

‘Intellectual?’

‘We are all more intellectual than we know. She doesn’t think of herself as an intellectual type. But under a certain stimulus, she is.’

They were walking back to the commissariat. Harvey had half a mind to go home and let them come for him with an official summons, if they wanted. But it was only half a mind; the other half, mesmerised and now worked up about Effie, propelled him on to the police station with his companion.

‘She tried some drugs, I suppose,’ said Pomfret.

‘You shouldn’t suppose so,’ said Harvey. ‘Effie is entirely antidrug. It would be extraordinary if she’s taken to drugs in the last two years.

‘You must recognise,’ said Pomfret, ‘that she is lively and vital enough to be a member of a terrorist gang.’

‘Lively and vital,’ said Harvey, ‘lively and vital — one of those words is redundant.’

Pomfret laughed.

‘However,’ said Harvey, ‘it’s out of the question that she could be a terrorist.’ He had a suspicion that Pomfret was now genuinely fascinated by the images of Effie that Harvey was able to produce, Effie at a party, Effie an interesting talker, a rich man’s wife; his imagination was involved, beyond his investigator’s role, in the rich man’s mechanism, his free intellectual will, his casual purchase of the château; Pomfret was fascinated by both Effie and Harvey.

‘A terrorist,’ said Pomfret. ‘She obviously has an idealistic motive. Why did you leave her?’

The thought that Effie was a member of a terrorist band now excited Harvey sexually.

‘Terrorist is out of the question,’ he said. ‘I left her because she seemed to want to go her own way. The marriage broke up, that’s all. Marriages do.’

‘But on a hypothesis, how would you feel if you knew she was a terrorist?’

Harvey thought, I would feel I had failed her in action. Which I have. He said, ‘I can’t imagine.’

At the police station Pomfret left him in a waiting-room. Patiently sitting there was a lean-faced man with a dark skin gone to a muddy grey, bright small eyes and fine features. He seemed to be a Balkan. What was he doing there? It was after nine in the evening. Surely it was in the morning that he would come about his papers. Perhaps he had been picked up without papers? What sort of work was he doing in Epinal? He wore a black suit, shiny with wear; a very white shirt open at the neck; brown, very pointed shoes; and he had with him a brown cardboard brief-case with tinny locks, materials such as Harvey had only seen before in the form of a suitcase on a train in a remote part of Sicily. The object in Sicily had been old and battered, but his present companion’s brief-case had a new-bought look. It was not the first time Harvey had noticed that poor people from Eastern Europe resembled, not only in their possessions and clothes, but in their build and expression, the poor of Western Europe years ago. Who he was, where he came from and why, Harvey was never to know, for he was just about to say something when the door opened and a policeman in uniform beckoned the man away. He followed with nervous alacrity and the door closed again on Harvey. Patience, pallor and deep anxiety: there goes suffering, Harvey reflected. And I found him interesting. Is it only by recognising how flat would be the world without the sufferings of others that we know how desperately becalmed our own lives would be without suffering? Do I suffer on Effie’s account? Yes, and perhaps I can live by that experience. We all need something to suffer about. But Job, my work on Job, all interrupted and neglected, probed into and interfered with: that is experience, too; real experience, not vicarious, as is often assumed. To study, to think, is to live and suffer painfully.

Did Effie really kill or help to kill the policeman in Paris whose wife was shopping in the suburbs at the time? Since he had left the police station on Saturday night he had recurrently put himself to imagine the scene. An irruption at a department store. The police arrive. Shots fired. Effie and her men friends fighting their way back to their waiting car (with Nathan at the wheel?). Effie, lithe and long-legged, a most desirable girl, and quick-witted, unmoved, aiming her gun with a good aim. She pulls the trigger and is away all in one moment. Yes, he could imagine Effie in the scene; she was capable of that, capable of anything.

‘Will you come this way, please, Mr Gotham?’

There was a stack of files on Chatelain’s desk.

The rest of that night Harvey remembered as a sort of roll-call of his visitors over the past months; it seemed to him like the effect of an old-fashioned village policeman going his rounds, shining his torch on name-plates and door-knobs; one by one, each name surrounded by a nimbus of agitated suspicion as his friends’ simple actions, their ordinary comings and goings came up for questioning. It was strange how guilty everything looked under the policeman’s torch, how it sounded here in the police headquarters. Chatelain asked Harvey if he would object to the conversation being tape-recorded.

‘No, it’s a good thing. I was going to suggest it. Then you won’t have to waste time asking me the same questions over and over again.’

Chatelain smiled sadly. ‘We have to check.’ Then he selected one of the files and placed it before him.

‘Edward Jansen,’ he said, ‘came to visit you.

‘Yes, he’s the husband of my wife’s sister, Ruth, now separated. He came to see me last April.’

Chatelain gave a weak smile and said, ‘Your neighbours seem to remember a suspicious-looking character who visited you last spring.’

‘Yes, I daresay that was Edward Jansen. He has red hair down to his shoulders. Or had. He’s an actor and he’s now famous. He is my brother-in-law through his marriage to my wife’s sister, but he’s now separated from his wife. A lot can happen in less than a year.

‘He asked you why there were baby clothes on the line?’

‘I don’t remember if he actually asked, but he made some remark about them because I answered, as you know, “The police won’t shoot if there’s a baby in the house.”‘

‘Why did you say that?’

‘I can’t answer precisely. I didn’t foresee any involvement with the police, or I wouldn’t have said it.’

‘It was a joke?’

‘That sort of thing.’

‘Do you still hear from Edward Jansen?’ Chatelain opened one of the files.

‘I haven’t heard for some time.’

Chatelain flicked through the file. ‘

‘There’s a letter from him waiting for you at your house.’

‘Thanks. I expect you can tell me the contents. ‘

‘No, we can’t.’

‘That could be taken in two senses,’ Harvey said.

‘Well, you can take it in one sense: we haven’t opened it. The name and address of the sender is on the outside of the envelope. As it happens, we know quite a lot about Mr Jansen, and he doesn’t interest us at the moment. He’s also been questioned.’ Chatelain closed the file, evidently Edward’s dossier; it was rather thin compared with some of the others. Chatelain took up another and opened it, as if starting on a new subject. Then, ‘What did you discuss with Edward Jansen last April?’

‘I can’t recall. I know his wife, Ruth, was anxious for me to make a settlement on her sister and facilitate a divorce. I am sure we didn’t discuss that very much, for I had no intention of co-operating with my wife to that end. I know we discussed the Book of Job.’

‘And about Ruth Jansen. Did you invite her to stay?’

‘No, she came unexpectedly with her sister’s baby, about the end of August.’

‘Why did she do that?’

‘August is a very boring month for everybody.’

‘You really must be serious, Mr Gotham.’

‘It’s as good a reason as any. I can’t analyse the motives of a woman who probably can’t analyse them herself.’

Chatelain tapped the file. ‘She says here that she brought the baby, hoping to win you over to her view that the child would benefit if you made over a substantial sum of money to its mother, that is, to your wife Effie.’

‘If that’s what Ruth says, I suppose it is so.’

‘She greatly resembles your wife.’

‘Yes, feature by feature. But of course, to anyone who knows them they are very different. Effie is more beautiful, really. Less practical than Ruth.’

Pomfret came in and sat down. He was less free of manner in the presence of the other officer. He peered at the tape-recording machine as if to make sure everything was all right with it.

‘So you had a relation with Mrs Jansen.’

‘Yes.’

‘Your sister-in-law and wife of your friend.’

‘Yes, I grew fond of Ruth. I was particularly taken by the baby. Of course, by this time Ruth and Edward had parted.’

‘Things happen fast in your set.’

‘Well, I suppose the parting had been working up for a long time. Is there any point in all these questions?’

‘Not much. We want to check, you see, against the statements made in England by the people concerned. Did Ruth seem surprised when she heard that Effie was involved in the terrorist attacks?’

What were these statements of Ruth, of Edward, of others? Harvey said firmly, even as he felt his way, ‘She was very much afraid of the police, coming into our lives as they did. It was quite unforeseen. She could no more blame her sister for it than she could blame her for an earthquake. I feel the same, myself.’

‘She did not defend her sister?’

‘She had no need to defend Effie to me. It isn’t I who accuse Effie of being a terrorist. I say there is a mistake.’

‘Now, Nathan Fox,’ said the officer, reaching for a new file. ‘What do you know about him?’

‘Not very much. He made himself useful to Ruth and Edward when they were living in London. He’s a graduate but can’t find a job. He came to my house, here, to visit Ruth and the baby for Christmas.’

‘He is a friend of your wife?’

‘Well, he knows her, of course.

‘He is a weak character?’

‘No, in fact I think it shows a certain strength of character in him to have turned his hand to domestic work since he can’t find anything else to do. He graduated at an English university, I have no idea which one.

‘What about his friends? Girls or boys?’

‘I know nothing about that.’

‘Why did he disappear from your house?’

‘I don’t know. He just left. Young people do.’

‘He had a telephone call and left overnight without saying good-bye.’

‘I believe so,’ said Harvey.

‘He said the telephone call was from London. It wasn’t.’

‘So I understand. I was working in my cottage that night. You must understand I’m very occupied, and all these questions of yours, and all these files, have nothing whatever to do with me. I’ve agreed to come here simply to help you to eliminate a suspect, my wife.’

‘But you have no idea why he should say he got a phone call from London, when he didn’t. It must have been an internal call.’

‘Perhaps some girl of his turned up in France; maybe in Paris, and called him. And he skipped.’

‘Some girl or some boy?’

‘Your question is beyond me. If I hear from him I’ll ask him to get in touch with you. Perhaps he’s come down with influenza.’

Pomfret now spoke: ‘Why do you suggest that?’ He was decidedly less friendly in French.

‘Because people do come down with ‘flu. They stay in bed. This time of year is rather the time for colds. Perhaps he’s gone back to England to start a window-cleaning business. I believe I heard him speculating on the idea. There’s always a need for window-cleaners.’

‘Anything else?’ said Chatelain.

‘The possibilities of Nathan Fox’s whereabouts are such that I could go on all night and still not exhaust them.’

‘Would he go to join your wife if she asked him?’ Harvey considered. ‘That’s also a possibility; one among millions.’ ‘What are his political views?’

‘I don’t know. He never spoke of politics to me. ‘Did he ask you for money?’

‘After Christmas he asked me for his pay. I told him that Ruth had the housekeeping money, and kept the accounts.’

‘Then Mrs Jansen did give him money?’

‘I only suppose,’ said Harvey, ‘that she paid him for his help. I really don’t know.’

‘Do you think Ruth Jansen is a calculating woman? She left her husband, came to join you with the baby, induced you to buy the château —’

‘She wanted the château because of a tree outside the house with a certain bird — how do you say “woodpecker”?’ — Harvey put the word to Pomfret in English.

Pomfret didn’t recognise the word.

‘It makes a sound like a typewriter. It pecks at the wood of the tree.’

‘Pic’, said Pomfret.

‘Well, she liked the sound of it,’ said Harvey.

‘Are you saying that is why you bought the château?’

‘I’d already thought of buying it. And now, with Ruth and the baby, it was convenient to me.

‘Ernest L. Howe,’ said Chatelain. ‘He came to see you, didn’t he?’

‘Yes, some time last autumn. He came to see his baby daughter. He wanted Ruth to go back to London with the baby and live with him. Which, in fact, she has now done. You see, he doesn’t think of what’s best for the child; he thinks of what’s most pleasant for himself. To console his hurt pride that Effie walked out on him— and I don’t blame her — he’s persuaded her sister to go and live with him, using the child as an excuse. It’s contemptible.’

Harvey was aware that the two men were conscious of a change in his tone, that he was loosening up. Harvey didn’t care. He had nothing, Effie had nothing, to lose by his expressing himself freely on the subject of Ernie Howe. He was tired of being what was so often called civilised about his wife’s lover. He was tired of the questioning. He was tired, anyway, and wanted a night’s sleep. He deliberately gave himself and his questioners the luxury of his true opinion of Ernie.

‘Would you care for a drink?’ said Pomfret.

‘A double scotch,’ said Harvey, ‘with a glass of water on the side. I like to put in the water myself.’

Chatelain said he would have the same. Pomfret disappeared to place the orders. Chatelain put a new tape in the recording machine while Harvey talked on about Ernie.

‘He sounds like a shit,’ said Chatelain. ‘Let me tell you in confidence that even from his statement which I have in front of me here, he sounds like a shit. He stated categorically that he wasn’t at all surprised that Effie was a terrorist, and further, he says that you know it.’

‘He’s furious that Effie left him,’ Harvey said. ‘He thought she would get a huge alimony from me to keep him in comfort for the rest of his life. I’m sure she came to realise what he was up to, and that’s why she left him.’

Pomfret returned, followed by a policeman with a tray of drinks. It was quite a party. Harvey felt easier.

‘I’m convinced of it,’ he said, and for the benefit of Pomfret repeated his last remarks.

‘It’s altogether in keeping with the character of the man, but he was useful,’ said Chatelain. He said to Pomfret, ‘I have revealed to M. Gotham what Ernest Howe stated about Effie Gotham.’

And what Chatelain claimed Ernie had said was evidently true, for Pomfret quite spontaneously confirmed it: ‘Yes, I’m afraid he was hardly gallant about her. He is convinced she’s a terrorist and that you know it.’

‘When did you get these statements?’ said Harvey.

‘Recently. Ernest Howe’s came through from Scotland Yard on Sunday.’

‘You’ve got Scotland Yard to help you?’

‘To a certain degree,’ said Chatelain, waving his right hand lightly, palm-upward.

Was he softening up these men, Harvey wondered, or they him?

‘It would interest me,’ said Harvey, ‘to see the photograph of my wife that was taken of her by the police in Trieste, when she was arrested for shoplifting.’

‘You may see it, of course. But it isn’t being handed out to the newspapers. It has been useful for close identification purposes by eye-witnesses. You will see it looks too rigid — like all police photos —to be shown to the public as the girl we are actually looking for. She is quite different in terrorist action, as they all are.’ He turned to Pomfret. ‘Can you find the Trieste photograph?’

Pomfret found it. The girl in the photo was looking straight ahead of her, head uplifted, eyes staring, against a plain light background. Her hair was darker than Effie’s in real life, but that might be an effect of the flash-photography. It looked like Effie, under strain, rather frightened.

‘It looks like a young shop-lifter who’s been hauled in by the police,’ said Harvey.

‘Do you mean to say it isn’t your wife?’ said Pomfret. ‘She gave her name as Signora Effie Gotham. Isn’t it her?’

‘I think it is my wife. I don’t think it looks like the picture of a hardened killer.’

‘A lot can happen in a few months,’ said Chatelain. ‘A lot has happened to that young woman. Her battle-name isn’t Effie Gotham, naturally. It is Marion.’

In the meantime Pomfret had extracted from his papers the photograph of Effie that the police had found in Harvey’s cottage. ‘You should have this back,’ said Pomfret. ‘It is yours.’

‘Thank you. You’ve made copies. I see this photo in every newspaper I open.’

‘It is the girl we are looking for. There is movement and life in that photograph.’

‘I think you should publish the police-photo from Trieste,’ said Harvey. ‘To be perfectly fair. They are both Effie. The public might not then be prejudiced.’

‘Oh, the public is not so subtle as to make these nice distinctions.’

‘Then why don’t you publish the Trieste photograph?’

‘It is the property of the Italian police. For them, the girl in their photograph is a kleptomaniac, and in need of treatment. They had put the treatment in hand, but she skipped off, as they all do.’

‘I thought she went to prison.’

‘She had a two weeks’ sentence. That is a different thing from imprisonment. It was not her first offence, but she was no more than three days in prison. She agreed to treatment. She was supposed to register with the police every day, but of course —’Look,’ said Harvey. ‘My wife is suffering from an illness, kleptomania. She needs treatment. You are hounding her down as a terrorist, which she isn’t. Effie couldn’t kill anyone.’

‘Why did you leave her on the motorway in Italy?’ said Pomfret. ‘Was it because she stole a bar of chocolate? If so, why didn’t you stand by her and see that she had treatment?’

‘She has probably told Ernie Howe that story, and he has told you.’

‘Correct,’ said Chatelain.

‘Well, if I’d given weight to a bar of chocolate, I would have stood by her. I didn’t leave her over a bar of chocolate. To be precise, it was two bars.’

‘Why did you leave her?’

‘Private reasons. Incompatibility, mounting up. A bar of chocolate isn’t a dead policeman.’

‘We know,’ said Chatelain. ‘We know that only too well. We are not such fools as to confuse a shop-lifter with a dangerous assassin.

‘But why,’ said Pomfret, ‘did you leave her? We think we know the answer. She isn’t a kleptomaniac at all. Not at all. She stole, made the easy gesture, on ideological grounds. They call it proletarian reappropriation. You must already have perceived the incipient terrorist in your wife; and on this silly occasion, suddenly, you couldn’t take it. Things often happen that way.’

‘Let me tell you something,’ said Harvey. ‘If I’d thought she was a terrorist in the making, I would not have left her. I would have tried to reason her out of it. I know Effie well. She isn’t a terrorist. She’s a simple shop-lifter. Many rich girls are.’

‘Is she rich?’

‘She was when she was with me.’

‘But afterwards?’

‘Look, if she needed money, she could have sold her jewellery. But she hasn’t. It’s still in the bank. My lawyer told me.’

‘Didn’t you say — I think you said —’ said Pomfret, ‘that you only discussed the recent English translations of the Bible with your lawyer?’

‘I said that was what we were discussing on Saturday morning, instead of listening to the news on the radio. I haven’t said that I discussed nothing else with him. You see, I, too, am anxious to trace the whereabouts of my wife. She isn’t your killer in Paris. She’s somewhere else.’

‘‘Now, let us consider,’ said Chatelain, ‘her relations with Ernest Howe. He has stated that he knows her character. She is the very person, according to him, who would take up with a terrorist group. The Irish terrorists had her sympathy. She was writing a treatise on child-labour in England in the nineteenth century. She often —’

‘Oh, I know all that,’ Harvey said. ‘The only difficulty is that none of her sympathies makes her a terrorist. She shares these sympathies with thousands of people, especially young people. The young are very generous. Effie is generous in spirit, I can say that.’

‘But she has been trying to get money out of you, a divorce settlement.’

‘That’s understandable. I’m rich. But quite honestly, I hoped she’d come back. That’s why I refused the money. She could have got it through the courts, but I thought she’d get tired of fighting for it.’

‘What do you mean, “come back”?’ said Pomfret. ‘It was you who left her.’

‘In cases of desertion in marriage, it is always difficult to say who is the deserter. There is a kind of constructional desertion, you know. Technically, yes, I left her. She also had left me. These things have to be understood.’

‘I understand,’ said Chatelain. ‘Yes, I understand your point.’

Pomfret said, ‘But where is she getting the money from?’

‘I suppose that the girl who calls herself Marion has funds from the terrorist supporters,’ said Harvey. ‘They are never short of funds. It has nothing whatsoever to do with my wife, Effie.’

‘Well, let us get back to your visitors, M. Gotham.’ said Chatelain. ‘Has there been anyone else besides those we have mentioned?’

‘The police, and Anne-Marie. ‘‘No-one else?’

‘Clara,’ said Harvey. ‘Don’t you want to hear about Clara?’

‘Clara?’

‘Clara is the niece of my wife’s sister.’

Chatelain was getting tired. He took a long moment to work out Harvey’s representation, and was still puzzling while Pomfret was smiling. ‘The niece?’ said Chatelain. ‘Whose daughter is she?’

‘My wife’s.’

‘You mean the infant?’

‘That’s right. Don’t you have a dossier on Clara?’ Harvey asked the security men.

‘M. Gotham, this is serious. A man has been fatally shot. More deaths may follow. We are looking for a political fanatic, not a bar of chocolate. Can you not give us an idea, a single clue, as to where your wife can be hiding? It might help us to eliminate her from the enquiry.

‘I wish I could find her, myself.’

TEN

‘I brought you some English mustard,’ said Auntie Pet. ‘They say English mustard in France is a prohibitive price even compared to Canadian prices.’

Harvey had slept badly after his late return from the session with the security police at Epinal. He hadn’t shaved.

‘You got home late,’ said Auntie Pet. Already, the château was her domain.

‘I was with the police,’ said Harvey.

‘What were you doing with them?’ she said.

‘Oh, talking and drinking.’

‘I shouldn’t hob-nob too close with them,’ she said, ‘if I were you. Keep them in their place. I must say those plain-clothes officers who escorted me here were very polite. They were useful with the suitcases, too. But I kept them in their place.’

‘I should imagine you would,’ Harvey said.

They were having breakfast in the living room which the presence of Auntie Pet somehow caused to look very shabby. She was large-built, with a masculine, military face; grey eyes which generally conveyed a warning; heavy, black brows and a head of strong, wavy, grey hair. She was sewing a piece of stuff; some kind of embroidery.

‘When I arrived,’ she said, ‘there was a crowd of reporters and photographers on the road outside the house. But the police soon got rid of them with their cars and motor-cycles. No problem.’ Her eyes rose from her sewing. ‘Harvey, you have let your house go into a state of dilapidation.’

‘I haven’t had time to put it straight yet. Only moved in a few months ago. It takes time.’

‘I think it absurd that your maid brings her baby’s washing to do in your house every day. Hasn’t she got a house of her own? Why are you taking a glass of scotch with your breakfast?’

‘I need it after spending half the night with the police.’

‘They were all right to me. I was glad of the ride. The prohibitive price of fares,’ said his aunt, as one multimillionaire to another.

‘I can well believe they were civil to you. I should hope they would be. Why shouldn’t they be?’ He looked at her solid, irreproachable shape, her admonishing face; she appeared to be quite sane; he wondered if indeed the police had been half-afraid of her. Anne-Marie was already tip-toeing around in a decidedly subdued way. Harvey added, ‘You haven’t committed any offence.’

‘Have you?’ she said.

‘No.’

‘Well, I should have said you have. It’s certainly an offence if you’re going to attack the Bible in a foreign country.’

‘The French police don’t care a damn about the Bible. It’s Effie. One of their policemen has been shot, killed, and they think she’s involved.’

‘Oh, no, not Effie,’ said Auntie Pet. ‘Effie is your wife. She is a Gotham as of now, unfortunately, whatever she was before. No Gotham would stoop to harm a policeman. The police have always respected and looked up to us. And you’re letting yourself go, Harvey. Just because your wife is not at home, there isn’t any reason to neglect to shave.’

Harvey escaped to go and shave, leaving Auntie Pet to quarrel with Anne-Marie, and walk about the grounds giving orders to the plainclothes police, whom she took for gardeners and woodsmen, for the better upkeep of shrubs and flower-beds, for the cultivation of vegetables and the felling of over-shady trees. From his bathroom window Harvey saw her finding cigarette-ends on the gravel path, and chiding the men in full spate of Canadian French. Prompted by Anne-Marie, they took it fairly well; and it did actually seem to Harvey, as he found it did to Anne-Marie, that they were genuinely frightened of her, armed though they were to the full capacity of their leather jackets.

When Harvey came down he found in the living room a batch of press-cuttings which he at first presumed to be about himself and Effie; Stewart Cowper had left them behind. But a glance at the top of the bundle showed him Edward’s face, now beardless. The cuttings were, in reality, all reviews of the play Edward had made such an amazing success in; they were apparently full of lavish praise of the new star, but Harvey put them aside for a more serene moment. Amongst some new mail, a letter from Edward was lying on the table. Edward’s name and address was written on the back of the envelope. Maybe the police hadn’t read it; maybe they had. Harvey left this aside, too, as Auntie Pet came back into the room.

‘I have something to tell you,’ she said. ‘I have come all the way from Toronto to say it. I know it is going to hurt you considerably. After all, you are a Gotham, and must feel things of a personal nature, a question of your honour. But say it I had to. Not on the telephone. Not through the mail. But face to face. Your wife, Effie, is consorting with a young man in a commune, as they call it, in the mountains of California, east of Santa Barbara if I recall rightly. I saw her myself on the television in a documentary news-supplement about communes. They live by Nature and they have a sort of religion. They sleep in bags. They —’

‘When did you see this?’

‘Last week.’

‘Was it an old film — was it live?’

‘I guess it was live. As I say, it was a news item, about a drug-investigation by the police, and they had taken this commune by surprise at dawn. The young people were all scrambling out of their bags and into their clothes. And I am truly sorry to tell you this, Harvey, but I hope you’ll take it like a man: Effie was sleeping in a double bag, a double sleeping-bag, do you understand; there was a young man right in there with her, and they got out of that bag sheer, stark naked.’

‘Are you sure it was Effie? Are you sure?’

‘I remember her well from the time she came when you were engaged, and then from the wedding, and I have the wedding-photo of you both on my piano, right there in the sitting room where I go every day. I ought to recognise Effie when I see her. She was naked, with her hair hanging down her shoulders, and laughing, and then pulling her consort after her out of the extramarital bag, without shame; I am truly sorry, Harvey, to be the bearer of this news. To a Gotham. Better she killed a policeman. It’s a question of honour. Mind you; I always suspected she was unvirtuous.’

‘You always suspected?’

‘Yes, I did. All along I feared the worst.’

‘Are you sure,’ said Harvey, very carefully, ‘that perhaps your suspicions have not disposed you to imagine that the girl you saw on the television was Effie, when in fact it was someone who resembled her?’

‘Effie is not like anybody else,’ said Auntie Pet.

‘She resembles her sister,’ said Harvey.

‘How could it be Ruth? Ruth is not missing, is she?’

‘No. I don’t say it could have been Ruth. I only say that there is one case where Effie looks like somebody else. I know of another.’

‘Who is that?’

‘Job’s wife, in a painting.’

‘Job’s wife it could not be. She was a foolish woman but she never committed adultery in a sack. You should read your Bible, Harvey, before you presume to criticise it.’

Harvey poured himself a drink.

‘Don’t get over-excited,’ said Auntie Pet. ‘I know this is a blow.’

‘Look, Auntie Pet, I must know the details, every detail. I have to know if you’re absolutely sure, if you’re right. Would you mind describing the man to me?’

‘I hope you’re not going to cite him as co-respondent, Harvey. You would have to re-play that news item in court. It would bring ridicule on our heads. You’ve had enough publicity.’

‘Just describe the young man she was with, please.’

‘Well, this seems like an interrogation. The young man looked like a Latin-Mediterranean type, maybe Spanish, young, thin. I didn’t look closely, I was looking at Effie. She had nothing on.

Auntie Pet had not improved with the years. Harvey had never known her so awful. He thought, She is mistaken but at least, sincere. He said, ‘I must tell the police.’

‘Why?’ said Auntie Pet.

‘For many reasons. Not the least of which is that, if Effie and her friend are in California and decide to leave, — they might come here, for instance, here to France, or here to see me; if they do that, they could be shot at sight.’

‘That’s out of the question. Effie wouldn’t dare come to your house, now. But if you tell the police how I saw them, the story will go round the world. And the television picture, too. Think of your name.

Harvey got through to the commissariat. ‘My wife has been seen in California within the last few days.’

‘Who saw her?’ ‘My aunt.’

‘Ah, the aunt,’ said the police inspector.

‘She says she saw her in a youth-documentary on the television.’ ‘We had better come and talk to your aunt.’

‘It isn’t necessary.

‘Do you believe your aunt?’

‘She’s truthful. But she might be mistaken. That’s all I have to say.

‘I would like to have a word with her.’

‘All right,’ said Harvey. ‘You’ll find her alone because I’m going down to my cottage to work.’

He then rang Stewart Cowper in London but found he was out of the office. ‘Tell him,’ said Harvey to the secretary, ‘that I might want him to go to the United States for me.’

He had been in his cottage half-an-hour when he saw the police car going up the drive, with the two security men from Paris. He wished them well of Auntie Pet.

Harvey had brought his mail with him, including Edward’s letter.

In his old environment, almost smiling to himself with relief at being alone again, he sat for a while sorting out his thoughts.

Effie and Nathan in a commune in California: it was quite likely. Effie and Nathan in Paris, part of a band of killers: not unlikely.

He began to feel uneasy about Auntie Pet, up there at the house, being questioned by the security men. He was just getting ready to go and join them, and give his aunt a show of support, when the police car with the two men inside returned, passed his cottage, and made off. Either they had made short work of Auntie Pet or she of them. Harvey suspected the latter. Auntie Pet had been separated from Uncle Joe for as long as Harvey could remember. They lived in separate houses. There was no question of a divorce, no third parties, no lovers and mistresses. ‘I had to make a separate arrangement, Uncle Joe had once confided to Harvey. ‘She would have made short work of me if I’d stayed.’

Harvey himself had never felt in danger of being made short work of by his aunt. Probably there was something in his nature, a self-sufficiency, that matched her own.

He wondered how much to believe of what she had told him. He began to wonder such things as why a news supplement from California should be shown on a main network in Toronto. Auntie Pet wasn’t likely to tune in to anything but a main network. He wondered why she had felt it necessary to come to France to give him these details; and at the same time he knew that it was quite reasonable that she should do so. It would certainly be, for her, a frightful tale to tell a husband and a Gotham.

And to his own amazement, Harvey found himself half-hoping she was wrong. Only half-hoping; but still, the thought was there: he would rather think of Effie as a terrorist than laughing with Nathan, naked, in a mountain commune in California. But really, thought Harvey, I don’t wish it so. In fact, I wish she wasn’t a terrorist; and in fact, I think she is. Pomfret was right; I saw the terrorist in Effie long ago. Even if she isn’t the killer they’re looking for, but the girl in California, I won’t live with her again.

He decided to get hold of Stewart Cowper later in the day, when he was expected back at his office. Stewart would go to California and arrange to see a re-play of the programme Auntie Pet had seen. Stewart would find out if Effie was there. Or he would go himself; that would be the decent thing to do. But he knew he wouldn’t go himself. He was waiting here for news of Effie. He was writing his monograph on the Book of Job as he had set himself to do. (‘Live? — Our servants can do it for us.’) He wouldn’t even fight with Ernie Howe himself; if necessary, Stewart would do it for him.

He opened Edward’s letter.

Dear Harvey,

The crocs at the zoo have rather lack-lustre eyes, as can be expected. Perhaps in their native habitat their eyes are ‘like the eyelids of the dawn’ as we find in Job, especially when they’re gleefully devouring their prey. Yes, their eyes are vertical. Perhaps Leviathan is not the crocodile. The zoo bores me to a degree.

I wish you could come over and see the play before it closes. My life has changed, of course. I don’t feel that my acting in this play, which has brought me so much success, is really any different from my previous performances in films, plays, tv. I think the psychic forces, the influences around me have changed. Ruth wasn’t good for me. She made me into a sort of desert. And now I’m fertile. (We are the best of friends, still. I saw her the other day. I don’t think she’s happy with Ernie Howe. She’s only sticking to him because of Clara, and as you know she’s pregnant herself at long last. She claims, and of course I believe her, that she’s preg by you. — Congratulations!) Looking back — and it seems a long time to look back although it’s not even a year — I feel my past life had a drabness that I wasn’t fully aware of at the time. It lies like a shabby old pair of trousers that I’ve let fall on the bedroom floor: I’ll never want to wear those again. It isn’t only the success and the money, although I don’t overlook that aspect of things — I don’t want to crow about them, esp to you. It’s simply a new sense of possibility. One thing I do know is when I’m playing a part and when I’m not. I used to ‘play a part’ most of the time. Now I only do it when I’m onstage. You should come over and see the play. But I suspect that possibly you can’t. The police quizzed me and I made a statement. What could I say? Very little. Fortunately the public is sympathetic towards my position — brother-in-law, virtually ex-brother-in-law of a terrorist. (Our divorce is going through.) It isn’t a close tie.

I’ve almost rung you up on several occasions. But then I supposed your phone was bugged, and felt it better not to get involved. Reading the papers — of course you can’t trust them — it seems you’re standing by Effie, denying that she’s the wanted girl, and so on. Now, comes this ghastly murder of the policeman. I admire your stance, but do you feel it morally necessary to protect her? I must say, I find it odd that having left her as you did, you now refuse to see (or admit?) how she developed. To me (and Ruth agrees with me) she has always had this criminal streak in her. I know she is a beautiful girl, but there are plenty of lovely girls like Effie. You can’t have been so desperately in love with her. Quite honestly, when you were together, I never thought you were really crazy about her. I don’t like giving advice, but you should realise that something tragic has happened to Effie. She is a fanatic — she always had that violent, reckless streak. There is nothing, Harvey, nothing at all that anyone can do for her. You shouldn’t try. Conclude your work on Job, then get away and start a new life. If your new château is as romantic and grand as Ruth says it is, I’d love to see it. I’ll come, if you’re still there, when the play closes. It’ll be good to see you.

Affectionately,

Edward

Harvey’s reply:

Dear Edward,

That was good of you to go to the zoo for me. You say the zoo bores you to a degree. What degree?

I congratulate you on your success. It was always in you, so I’m not surprised. No, I can’t leave here at present. Ruth would be here still if it were not that the place is bristling with the police — no place for Clara whom I miss terribly.

As to your advice, do you remember how Prometheus says, ‘It’s easy for the one who keeps his foot on the outside of suffering to counsel and preach to the one who’s inside’? I will just say that I’m not taking up Effie’s defence. I hold that there’s no proof that the girl whom the police are looking for is Effie. A few people have ‘identified’ her from a photograph.

Auntie Pet has arrived from Toronto wearing those remarkable clothes that so curiously bely her puritanical principles. This morning she was wearing what appeared to be the wallpaper. Incidentally, she recognised Effie in a recent television documentary about a police-raid on a mountain commune in California. She was with a man whose description could fit Nathan Fox.

I’ve been interrogated several times. What they can’t make out is why I’m here in France, isolated, studying Job. The last time it went something like this:

Interrogator — You say you’re interested in the problem of suffering?

Myself— Yes.

Interrogator — Are you interested in violence?

Myself— Yes, oh, yes. A fascinating subject.

Interrogator — Fascinating?

Almost anything you answer is suspect. At the same time, supermarkets have been bombed, banks robbed, people terrorised and a policeman killed. They are naturally on edge.

There is a warrant of arrest out for my wife. The girl in the gang, whoever she is, could be killed.

But ‘no-one pities men who cling wilfully to their sufferings.’ (Philoctetes—speech of Neoptolemus). I’m not even sure that I suffer, I only endure distress. But why should I analyse myself? I am analysing the God of Job.

I hope the mystery of Effie can be cleared up and when your show’s over you can come and see Château Gotham. Ruth will undoubtedly come.

I’m analysing the God of Job, as I say. We are back to the Inscrutable. If the answers are valid then it is the questions that are all cock-eyed.

Job 38, 2—3: Who is this that

darkeneth counsel by words

without knowledge?

Gird up now thy loins like

a man; for I will demand of thee,

and answer thou me.

I find that the self-styled friends and comforters in Job are distinguished one from the other only by their names. Otherwise, they are identical in their outlook. I now suspect they are the criminal-investigation team of their time and place. They were sent in, one after the other, it now seems to me, to interrogate Job, always on the same lines, trying to trip him up. He could only insist on his innocence. They acted as the representatives of the God of the Old Testament. They were the establishment of that theocratic society.

It is therefore first God’s representatives and finally God himself who ask the questions in Job’s book.

Now I hope you’ll tell Ruth she can come here with Clara when the trouble’s over, and have her baby. I’m quite willing to take on your old trousers, Edward, and you know I wish you well in your new pair, your new life.

Yours,

Harvey

PART THREE

ELEVEN

‘So the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning.’ It was five days since Stewart Cowper had left for California. He had telephoned once, to say he had difficulty in getting the feature identified which Auntie Pet had seen, but he felt he was on the track of it now. There definitely had been a news item of that nature.

‘Ring me as soon as you know,’ said Harvey.

Meantime, since he was near the end of his monograph on Job, he finished it. The essay had taken him over three years to complete. He was sad to see his duty all ended, his notes in the little room of the cottage now neatly stacked, and his manuscript, all checked and revised, ready to be photocopied and mailed to the typist in London (Stewart Cowper’s pretty secretary).

The work was finished and the Lord had blessed the latter end of Job with precisely double the number of sheep, camels, oxen and sheasses that he had started out with. Job now had seven sons and three daughters, as before. The daughters were the most beautiful in the land. They were called Jemima, Kezia and Kerenhappuch which means Box of Eye-Paint. Job lived another hundred and forty years. And Harvey wondered again if in real life Job would be satisfied with this plump reward, and doubted it. His tragedy was that of the happy ending.

He took his manuscript to St Dié, had it photocopied and sent one copy off to London to be typed. He was anxious to get back to the château in case Stewart should ring with news. He hadn’t told Auntie Pet of Stewart’s mission, but somehow she had found out, as was her way, and had mildly lamented that her story should be questioned.

‘You’re just like the police,’ she said. ‘They didn’t actually say they didn’t believe me, but I could see they didn’t.’

He got back to the château just in time to hear the telephone. It was from the police at Epinal.

‘You have no doubt heard the news, M. Gotham.’

‘No. What now?’

‘The FLE gang were surrounded and surprised an hour ago in an apartment in Paris. They opened fire on our men. I regret to say your wife has been killed. You will come to Paris to identify the body.’

‘I think my wife is in California.’

‘We take into account your state of mind, Monsieur, but we should be obliged if—’

Anne-Marie was standing in the doorway with her head buried in her hands.

L’Institut Médico-Légal in Paris. Her head was bound up, turban-wise, so that she looked more than ever like Job’s wife. Her mouth was drawn slightly to the side.

‘You recognise your wife, Effie Gotham?’

‘Yes, but this isn’t my wife. Where is she? Bring me my wife’s body.’

‘M. Gotham, you are overwrought. It displeases us all very much. You must know that this is your wife.’

‘Yes, it’s my wife, Effie.’

‘She opened fire. One of our men was wounded.’

‘The boy?’

‘Nathan Fox. We have him. He was caught while trying to escape. Harvey felt suddenly relieved at the thought that Nathan wasn’t in California with Effie.

The telephone rang when, finally, he got back to the château. It was from Stewart. ‘I’ve seen a re-play of the feature, Harvey,’ he said. ‘It looks like Effie but it isn’t.’

‘I know,’ said Harvey.

He said to Auntie Pet, ‘Did you really think it was Effie in that mountain commune? How could you have thought so?’

‘I did think so,’ said Auntie Pet. ‘And I still think so. That’s the sort of person Effie is.’

Anne-Marie said, ‘I’ll be saying good-bye, now.’

TWELVE

Edward drives along the road between Nancy and St Dié. It is the end of April. All along the way the cherry trees are in flower. He comes to the grass track that he took last year. But this time he passes by the cottage, bleak in its little wilderness, and takes the wider path through a better-tended border of foliage, to the château.

Ruth is there, already showing her pregnancy. Clara staggers around her play-pen. Auntie Pet, wrapped in orange and mauve woollens, sits upright on the edge of the sofa, which forms a background of bright yellow and green English fabrics for her. Harvey is there, too.

‘You’ve cut your hair,’ says Harvey.

‘I had to,’ says Edward, ‘for the part.’

It is later, when Clara has gone to bed, that Edward gives Harvey a message he has brought from Ernie Howe.

‘He says if you want to adopt Clara, you can. He doesn’t want the daughter of a terrorist.’

‘How much does he want for the deal?’

‘Nothing. That amazed me.’

‘It doesn’t amaze me. He’s a swine. Better he wanted money than for the reason he gives.’

‘I quite agree,’ says Edward. ‘What will you do now that you’ve finished Job?’

‘Live another hundred and forty years. I’ll have three daughters, Clara, Jemima and Eye-Paint.’

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