"I want to interview a certain Mme. Yvette Peugot who was working in the Pasteur Inst.i.tute in Paris in 1945 and 1946. Not next week, not to-morrow, but now. This afternoon. Can you fix it, sir?"
"I can fix anything, Cavell," the General said simply. "Less than two hours ago the Premier put the entire resources of all the services at our disposal. He"s as windy as h.e.l.l. How urgent is this?"
"Maybe life-or-death urgent, sir. That"s what I"ve got to find out. This woman appears to have been on very intimate terms with MacDonald for about nine months towards and after the end of the war. It"s the one period of his life about which information is lacking. If she"s still alive and traceable she may be able to fill in this period."
"Is that all?" The voice was flat, disappointment barely concealed. "What of the letters themselves?"
"Only read a couple so far, sir. Seem perfectly innocuous though not the sort of stuff I"d care to have read out in court if I had written it."
"It seems very little to go on, Cavell."
"A hunch, sir. More than that. It is possible that a page has been abstracted from the security dossier on MacDonald. The dates on those letters correspond to the missing page- if it is missing. And if it is I want to find out why."
"Missing?" His voice crackled sharply over the wire. "How could a page from a security dossier possibly be missing. Who would have-or have had-access to those dossiers?"
"Easton, Clandon, myself-and Cliveden and Weybridge."
"Precisely. General Cliveden." A significant pause. "This recent threat to Mary to let her have your head on a charger: General Cliveden is the only man in Mordon who knows both who I am and the relationship between myself and Mary. One of the only two men with access to security dossiers. Don"t you think you should be concentrating on Cliveden?"
"I think Hardanger should be concentrating on Cliveden. I want to see Mme. Peugot."
"Very well. Hold on." I held on and after some minutes his voice came again. "Drive to Mordon. Helicopter there will fly you to Stanton airfield. Twin-seat jet night-fighter there. Forty minutes from Stanton to Paris. That suit you?"
"Fine. I"m afraid I"ve no pa.s.sport with me, sir."
"You won"t require it. If Mme. Peugot is still alive and still in Paris she"ll be waiting for you in Orly airport. That I promise. I"ll see you when I return-I"m leaving for Alfringham in thirty minutes."
He hung up and I turned away, the bundle of letters in my hand. I caught sight of Mrs. Turpin by the open door, her face expressionless. Her eyes moved from mire down to the packet of letters in my hand, then met mine again. After a moment she turned and disappeared. I wondered how long she had been there, looking and listening.
The General was as good as his word all the way through. The helicopter was waiting for me at Mordon. The jet at Stanton took exactly thirty-five hair-raising minutes to reach Orly airport. And Mme. Peugot, accompanied by a Parisian police inspector, was waiting for me in a private room there. Somebody, I thought, had moved very fast indeed.
As it turned out, it hadn"t been so difficult to locate Mme. Peugot-now Madame Halle. She still worked in the same place as she had done in the later months of her acquaintanceship with MacDonald-the Pasteur Inst.i.tute-and had readily agreed to come to the airport when the police had made plain the urgency. She was a dark, plump, attractive forty, and had readily smiling eyes. At that moment she was hesitant, unsure and slightly apprehensive, the normal reaction when police start taking an interest in you.
The French police officer, made the introductions. I said, wasting no time, "We would be most grateful if you could give us some information about an Englishman whose acquaintance you made in the middle forties-"45 and "46, to be precise. A Dr. Alexander MacDonald."
"Dr. MacDonald? Alex?" She laughed. "He"d be furious to hear himself described as an Englishman. At least, he would have been. In the days when I knew him he was the most ardent Scottish-what do you call it?"
"Nationalist?"
"Of course. A Scottish Nationalist. Fervent, I remember. Forever saying, "down with the old enemy"-England-and up with the old Franco-Scottish alliance." But I do know he fought most gallantly for the old enemy in the last war, so perhaps he was not so terribly sincere." She broke off and looked at me with an odd mixture of shrewdness and apprehension. "He-he"s not dead, is he?"
"No, madame, he is not."
"But he is in trouble? Police trouble?" She was quick and clever, had seized at once on the almost imperceptible inflection in my voice.
" I"m afraid he may be. How and when did you first meet him, Madame Halle?"
"Two or three months before the war ended-the European war, I mean. Colonel MacDonald, as he was then, was sent to examine a munitions and chemical factory that had been run by the Germans for years at St. Denis. I was working in the research division of the same factory-not from choice, I a.s.sure you. I did not know then that Colonel MacDonald was himself a brilliant chemist. I took it upon myself to explain to him the various chemical processes and production lines and it wasn"t until I"d finished the tour of the factory that I found out that he knew far more about it than I did." She smiled. "I think the gallant colonel had rather taken a fancy to me. And I to him." I nodded. Judging from the highly combustible tone of her letters she was considerably understating the case.
"He remained for several months in the Paris area," she continued. "I don"t quite know what his duties were, but they were mostly of a technical nature. Every free moment we had we spent together." She shrugged. "It"s all so long ago, it seems another world. He returned to England for demobilisation and was back inside a week. He tried to find employment in Paris, but it was impossible. I think he eventually got some sort of research job with the British Government."
"Did you ever know or hear or suspect anything shady or reprehensible about Colonel MacDonald?" I asked bluntly.
"Never. If I had I would not have a.s.sociated with him." The conviction of the words, the dignity of manner, made it impossible not to believe her. I had the sudden hollow feeling that perhaps the General had been right after all and that I was just wasting valuable time-if, on bitter reflection, my time could be called valuable-on a wild-goose chase. Cavell returning home with his tail between his legs.
"Nothing?" I persisted. "Not the slightest thing you can think of?"
"You wish to insult me, perhaps?" Her voice was quiet.
"I"m sorry." I changed my approach. "May I ask if you were in love with him?"
"I take it Dr. MacDonald didn"t send you here," she said calmly. "You must have learnt of me through my letters. You know the answer to your question."
"Was he in love with you?"
"I know he was. At least he asked me to marry him. Ten times at least. That should show, no?"
"But you didn"t marry," I said. "You lost touch with him. And if you were both in love and he asked you to marry him, may I ask why you refused? For you must have refused."
"I refused for the same reason that our friendship ended. Partly, I"m afraid because, in spite of his protestations of love, he was an incurable philanderer, but mainly because there were profound differences between us and we were neither of us old enough or experienced enough to let our heads rule our hearts."
"Differences? May I ask what differences, Madame Halle?"
"You are persistent, aren"t you? Does it matter?" She sighed. "I suppose it does to you. You"ll just keep on until you get the answer. There"s no secret about it and it"s all very unimportant and rather silly."
"I"d still like to hear it."
"No doubt. France, you will remember, was in a most confused state politically after the war. We had parties whose views could not have been more divergent, from the extreme right to the very furthest left. I am a good Catholic and I was of the Catholic party of the Right." She smiled deprecatingly. "What you could call a true-blue Tory. Well, I"m afraid that Dr. MacDonald disagreed so violently with my political opinions that our friendship eventually became quite impossible. Those things happen, you know. When one is young, politics become so terribly important."
"Dr. MacDonald didn"t share your Conservative viewpoint?"
"Conservative!" She laughed in genuine amus.e.m.e.nt. "Conservative, you say! Whether or not Alex was a genuine Scottish Nationalist I cannot say, but this much I can say with complete certainty: outside the walls of the Kremlin there never existed a more implacable and dedicated Communist. He was formidable formidable."
One hour and ten minutes later I walked into the lounge of the Waggoner"s Rest in Alfringham.
CHAPTER TEN.
I"d had a phone call put through from Stanton airfield and both the General and Superintendent Hardanger were in the lounge waiting for me. Although it was still early evening the General had on the table before him the remains of what appeared to have been a pretty considerable whisky. I"d never before known him to have his first drink of the day before nine o"clock at night. His face was pale, set and strained and for the first time ever he was beginning to look his age, nothing I could put my finger on, just the slight sag of the shoulders, the indefinable air of weariness. There was something curiously pathetic about him, the pathos of a man with a broad and upright back who had suddenly, finally felt the burden of the weight he was carrying to be too much.
Hardanger didn"t look a great deal better either.
I greeted them both, collected a whisky from old shirtsleeves, who was safely out of hearing range, and gladly took the weight off my feet. I said, "Where"s Mary?"
"Out visiting Stella Chessingham and her mother," Hardanger said. "More broken wings for her to mend. Your surly friend behind the bar is just back from driving her there. She wanted to give them what sympathy and encouragement she could. I agreed with her that they must both be feeling pretty grim after young Chessingham"s arrest, but said I didn"t think it either necessary or wise. This was before the General came down. She wouldn"t listen to me. You know what your wife is like, Cavell. And your daughter, sir."
"She"s wasting her time," I said. "On this occasion. Young Chessingham is as innocent as the day he was born. I told his mother so at eight o"clock this morning-I had to. she"s a sick woman and the shock might have killed her- and she"d have told her daughter as soon as the van called for Chessingham. They don"t need either sympathy or consolation."
"What!" Hardanger leant far forward in his seat, face dark with rising anger, his big hand threatening to crush the gla.s.s clasped inside it. "What the devil are you saying, Cavell? Innocent? d.a.m.n it all, there"s enough circ.u.mstantial evidence--"
"The only evidence against him is the fact that he very understandably told a lie about his driving and that the real real murderer has been sending him money under a false name. To throw suspicion on him. To buy time. Always to buy time. I don"t know why it is but it is essential for this murderer to buy time. He buys time every time he throws suspicion on everyone else, and he"s so outstandingly clever that he"s managed to throw suspicion on practically everyone: he tried to buy time when he kidnapped me this morning. The thing is, he knew murderer has been sending him money under a false name. To throw suspicion on him. To buy time. Always to buy time. I don"t know why it is but it is essential for this murderer to buy time. He buys time every time he throws suspicion on everyone else, and he"s so outstandingly clever that he"s managed to throw suspicion on practically everyone: he tried to buy time when he kidnapped me this morning. The thing is, he knew months months before the crime-money was first paid into Chessingham"s account at the beginning of July-that it was going to be necessary to buy time. Why? Why buy time?" before the crime-money was first paid into Chessingham"s account at the beginning of July-that it was going to be necessary to buy time. Why? Why buy time?"
"You fooled me, d.a.m.n you," Hardanger said harshly. "You trumped up this story--"
"I told you the facts as I had them." I was in no mood to placate Hardanger. "If I"d said he was innocent, would you have arrested him? You know perfectly well you wouldn"t. But you did, and that has bought us time, because the murderer or murderers will read their evening papers and be convinced that we"re on the wrong track."
"You"ll be saying next that Hartnell and his wife are being framed, too," he said gratingly.
"As regards the hammer, pliers and mud on the scooter, of course they are. You know that. For the rest, Hartnell and wife are guilty as charged. But no court"s ever going to convict. A man"s blackmailed into having his wife shout and wave at a truck. d.a.m.n all criminal about that. All he"ll get is a couple of years on the entirely unrelated charge of embezzlement-if the Army choose to press the charge, which I doubt. But again his arrest is buying us time: the murderer"s planting of hammer and pliers were another method of buying them them time. They don"t know we haven"t bought that one. Another point in our favour." time. They don"t know we haven"t bought that one. Another point in our favour."
Hardanger turned to the General. "Were you aware that Cavell was working behind my back, sir?"
The General frowned. "That"s pitching it a bit strongly, isn"t it, Superintendent? As for my being aware-d.a.m.n it all, man, it was you you who talked me into bringing Cavell into this." Very adroit indeed. "I must admit he works in a highly unorthodox fashion. Which reminds me, Cavell. Dig up anything interesting about MacDonald in Paris?" who talked me into bringing Cavell into this." Very adroit indeed. "I must admit he works in a highly unorthodox fashion. Which reminds me, Cavell. Dig up anything interesting about MacDonald in Paris?"
I didn"t answer for a moment. There was something offhand, strangely indifferent in his manner, as if his mind was on other and more important things. I answered in kind. "All depends what you call interesting, sir. I can give you with certainty the name of one of the men behind it all. Dr. Alexander MacDonald. And beyond all doubt he"s been a top-flight Communist espionage agent for the past fifteen years. If not more."
That got them. They were the last two men on earth ever to go in for goggling, but they went in for it all the same. Just for a second. Then they stared at each other, then back at me. I told them in a minute flat what had happened. Hardanger said, "Oh, dear G.o.d!" very quietly and left to call a police car.
The General said, "You saw the police radio van outside?" I nodded.
"We"re in constant touch with the Government and Scotland Yard." He fished in an inside pocket and brought out two typewritten notes. "The first of those came in about two hours ago, the second only ten minutes ago." I looked at them quickly and for the first time in my life realised that the phrase about blood running cold might have some basis in physical experience. I felt unaccountably cold, icy, even, and was glad to see Hardanger, back from ordering his car, bring three more whiskies from the bar. I knew now why both the General and Hardanger had looked so ill, so close to desperation, when I"d come in. I knew now and could understand why my trip to Paris had been a matter of relative indifference to them.
The first message had been delivered at almost the same time to Reuter"s and A.P. and was very brief. The florid style was unmistakable. It read: "The walls of the home of the anti-Christ still stand. My orders have been ignored. The responsibility is yours. I have taped a virus ampoule to a simple explosive device which will be detonated at 3.45 this afternoon in Lower Hampton, Norfolk. The wind is W.S.W. If the demolition of Mordon has not commenced by midnight to-night I shall be compelled to break another ampoule tomorrow. In the heart of the City of London. The carnage will be such as the world has never seen.Yours is the choice."
"Lower Hampton is a hamlet of about 150 people four miles from the sea," the General said. "The reference to the wind means that the virus would cover only four miles of land and then be blown out over the sea. Unless the wind changed. The message was received at 2.45 this afternoon. Nearest police cars were rushed to the area and all people in the village and as many as could be reached in the area between the village and the sea were evacuated to the west." He broke off and stared at the table. "But that"s rich farming land. There are many farms and few cars. It was not possible to reach them all in time, I"m afraid. A hurried search was made in Lower Hampton for the bomb, but it was worse than the needle in the haystack. At 3.45 precisely a sergeant and two constables heard a small explosion and saw fire and smoke coming from the thatch of a disused cottage. They ran for their car and you can just imagine how they took off."
My mouth felt as dry as ashes. I washed some of the ashes away by draining half a large whisky in one gulp.
The General went on: "At 4.20 an R.A.F. bomber, a photo-reconnaissance plane, took off from a base in East Anglia and flew over the area. The pilot was warned not to fly below 10,000 feet, but it"s a clear evening up there and with the kind of cameras they have in the Air Force to-day there was no trouble in making a close reconnaissance. The entire area was photographed-from two miles up it doesn"t take long to photograph a few square miles of territory-and the bomber landed half an hour after take off. The pictures were developed within minutes and examined by an expert. That second paper shows his findings."
It was even briefer than the first. It read: "Over a wedge-shaped area, with its point at the village of Little Hampton and its base two and a half miles of sea-coast there are no discoverable signs of life, either around houses and farm buildings or in the fields. Dead cattle in fields estimated between three and four hundred. Three flocks of sheep, also apparently lifeless. At least seven human bodies identified. Characteristic postures of both men and cattle suggest death in contorted agony. Detailed a.n.a.lysis following."
I finished the second half of my whisky in a second gulp. I might as well have been drinking soda pop for all the taste or the effect it had. I said, "What"s the Government going to do?"
"I don"t know," the General said tonelessly. "Neither do they. They will make a decision by ten o"clock to-night- and now they"ll decide even faster when they hear your news. It completely alters everything. We thought we were dealing with some raving crackpot, however brilliant that crackpot: it seems instead, that we"re dealing with a Communist plot to destroy the most powerful weapon that Britain-or any other country for that matter-has ever had. Maybe it"s the beginnings of a plot to destroy Britain itself, I don"t know, d.a.m.n it all I"ve just come to the thought and I haven"t had time to think about it. Could it be that the Communist world is planning a showdown with the West, that they"re convinced that they can strike so hard and so savagely that there"ll be no possibility of retaliation? Not, that is, once Mordon and its viruses are out of the way. G.o.d only knows. I think I"d rather be dealing with a crackpot any day. Besides, Cavell, we don"t know that your information is correct."
"There"s only one way to find out, sir." I rose to my feet. "I see the police driver is there. Shall we have a chat with MacDonald?"
We reached Mordon in eight minutes flat only to be told at the gate that MacDonald had checked out over two hours previously. Eight minutes later we pulled up at the front door of his home.
Dr. MacDonald"s house was dark and deserted. Mrs. Turpin, the housekeeper, should not have been gone for the night. But she was. MacDonald had also gone, not for the night but for ever. Our bird had flown.
MacDonald hadn"t even bothered to lock the door when leaving. He"d have been in too much of a hurry for that. We made our way into the hallway, switched on lights and looked quickly over the ground floor. No fires, no still warm radiators, no smell of cooking, no cigarette smoke still hanging in the air. Whoever had left hadn"t left by a back window as we had come in by the front door. He"d left a long long time ago. I felt old and sick and tired. And foolish. Because I knew now why he"d left in such a hurry.
We went over the house, not wasting time, starting from the attic dark-room. The battery of expensive photographic equipment was as I had seen it before, but this time I was seeing it in a new light. Given sufficient facts and sufficient time even Cavell could arrive at a conclusion. We went over his bedroom, but there were no signs of hasty packing or hasty departure. That was strange. People going on a journey from which they have no intention of returning usually take a bare minimum of supplies to tide them over, no matter what their hurry. An inspection of the bathroom was equally puzzling. Razor, brush, shaving cream, toothbrush-they were all still there. MacDonald"s old colonel, I thought inconsequentially, wasn"t going to be any too happy when he arrived to identify MacDonald and found no one left to identify.
Even more baffling was the kitchen. Mrs. Turpin, I knew, used to leave every night at six-thirty when MacDonald arrived home, leaving his dinner prepared. MacDonald had been in the habit of helping himself and leaving the dishes for his housekeeper the following morning. But there were no signs whatsoever of any food preparations. No roasts in the oven, no pots of still warm food, an electric stove so cold that it couldn"t have been used for hours.
I said, "The last of the plain-clothes men on the search job would have been gone by half past three at the latest. No reason why Mrs. Turpin shouldn"t have got on with the cooking of dinner for Dr. MacDonald-and MacDonald strikes me as a character who would be very huffed indeed if he didn"t find his chow ready. But she prepared none. Why?"
"She knew he wouldn"t be wanting any," Hardanger said heavily. "From something she heard or saw this afternoon she knew our worthy doctor wouldn"t be wanting to linger too much around these parts after she"d told him what she"d heard or seen. Which argues connivance at or at least knowledge of MacDonald"s activities."
"It"s my fault," I said savagely. "That d.a.m.n" woman! She must have heard me telephoning the General about going to Paris. G.o.d only knows how long she was standing there in the doorway, watching me, seeing the letter in my hand. But I didn"t see her because she was on my blind side. She must have noticed that and the limp and told MacDonald by phone. And what I was talking about. He"d have known straight away that it must have been me, limp or no limp. It"s all my b.l.o.o.d.y fault," I repeated. "It never crossed my mind to suspect her. I think we should have a talk with Mrs. Turpin. If she"s at home, that is."
Hardanger moved off to a phone while the General accompanied me into MacDonald"s study. I moved over to the big old-fashioned knee-hole desk where MacDonald"s correspondence and photographic alb.u.ms had been discovered. It was locked. I said to the General, "Back in a minute, sir," and went outside.
There was nothing in the garage that would be of any use to me. Backing on the garage was a large tool-shed. I switched on the torch and looked round. Garden implements, a small pile of grey breeze-blocks, a pile of empty cement sacks, a work-bench and bicycle. No claw-hammer, which was what I was looking for, but I found the next best thing, a fairly heavy hatchet.
I went back to the study with this and crossed to the desk just as Hardanger came into the room.
"You going to smash that desk open?" he demanded.
"Let MacDonald object if he feels like it." I swung the axe twice and the drawer splintered. The alb.u.ms and the doctor"s correspondence with the World Health Organisation were still here. I opened the alb.u.m at the page with the missing photograph and showed it to the General.
"A photograph our good friend didn"t seem to care to have around," I said. "I have more than a vague, obscure feeling that it may be important. See that scratched out caption, something about six letters, some town certainly, starting with TO. I can"t get it. With any other kind of paper or with two different kinds of ink it would have been easy for the lab boys. But white ink on white ink on this porous blotting paper stuff? No good."
"Not a chance." Hardanger gave me a suspicious look. "Why is it important?"
"If I knew that I wouldn"t worry about what the caption was. Did you find our dear Mrs. Turpin at home?"
"No reply. She lives alone, a widow, as I found out from the local station after I"d called her number. An officer has gone to check, but he"ll find nothing. I"ve put out an all-stations call for her."
"That"ll help," I said sourly. I went quickly through MacDonald"s correspondence, picking up replies from his W.H.O. correspondents in Europe. I knew what I was looking for, and it took me only two minutes to isolate half a dozen letters, from a Dr. John Weissmann in Vienna. I handed them across to the General and Hardanger. "Exhibit "A" for the Old Bailey when MacDonald"s en route to the gallows."
The General looked at me, his face old and tired and expressionless. Hardanger said bluntly, "What are you talking about, Cavell?"
I hesitated and looked at the General. He said quietly, "It"ll be all right now, my boy. Hardanger will understand. And it"ll never go any further."
Hardanger looked from me to the papers and then back to me again. "What will I understand? It"s time I understood. I knew from the beginning that there was something I couldn"t touch in this d.a.m.ned business. You accepted this job with too much alacrity in the first place."
"I"m sorry," I said. "It had to be this way. You know I"ve been in and out of a few jobs since the war-Army, police, Special Branch, Narcotics, Special Branch again, security chief in Mordon, and then private detective. None of it really meant anything. I"ve been working for the General here non-stop for the past sixteen years. Every time I was heaved out of a job-well, the General arranged it."
"I"m not all that surprised," Hardanger said heavily. I was glad to see he was more intrigued than angry. "I"ve had my suspicions."
"That"s why you"re a superintendent," the General murmured.
"Anyway, about a year ago, my predecessor in security in Mordon, Easton Deny, began having his his suspicions. I won"t go into the where and the when of it, but he came to the conclusion that certain highly secret items in the bacteriological and virus line were being smuggled out of Mordon. His suspicions became certainties when Dr. Baxter approached him privately and said suspicions. I won"t go into the where and the when of it, but he came to the conclusion that certain highly secret items in the bacteriological and virus line were being smuggled out of Mordon. His suspicions became certainties when Dr. Baxter approached him privately and said he he was convinced that certain stuff was going astray." was convinced that certain stuff was going astray."
"Dr. Baxter!" Hardanger looked slightly stunned.