The Little Walls Read online

  Perhaps it would happen yet. Early days. All I felt tonight was a higher dissatisfaction at what I’d been told and a mild savagery at the manner of the telling.

  My more sensible self told me it wasn’t Arnold or Grace’s fault that they were apparently sitting back and accepting what I wasn’t willing to accept. I hadn’t identified the body. I hadn’t been there personally and heard the eveidence of the women who said she saw Grevil jump into the canal. I hadn’t seen the note from the other woman. Two weeks of build-up, details adding on bit I by bit like a miser’s interest, had brought them to this way of thinking. In their shoes I should by now probably have felt the same.

  But at present I just wasn’t willing to go along with them. There’d always been a particular link between Grevil and me. The elder by ten years, he had done far more for me than the average father and done it in a more comradely way. Arnold, four years older still and a bit out of range—and already pretty well preoccupied trying to take his father’s place in another way, in a business suddenly short of its founder—had never meant much to me at all. Grevil was the done.

  And Grevil was brilliant. Intellectually he stood a head above his plodding persevering elder brother and his rash unreliable younger one. A first-flight scientific brain—switched from its first choice to archæology nine years ago—had gone along with an unusually stable sense of values—unusal in the mid-twentieth century anyway. These days it’s unfashionable to be religious–that’s unless you happen to be literary Catholic—but Grevil was never afraid to be unfashionable in an unfashionable way. He had gone about his own life certain in his own beliefs, but never making a show of them; and his worst enemy couldn’t have called him prig.

  And now he was gone, soon after his fortieth birthday, drowned indecently in a muddy canal; and the long narrow-head set on its rather slanting shoulders, and the sallow face with the alert eyes and sharp amused mouth, were already changing themselves into bacteriological compounds which might be pretty exciting to the chemist but were very unsatisfactory for the people who remembered him.

  ‘‘I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.’’ Some American poet had written that Maybe we all had to come to it. But what I was not resigned to was the wanton useless waste of a fine life barely half spent

  But what did I propose to do about it? I might carry on a perfect vendetta of inquiries and kick up hell with the polios, but it wouldn’t put one stone back where it had been. All I could hope to do was some sort of justice to his memory, and perhaps in the process recover some of my own peace of mind.

  I picked over the newspapers Arnold had given me an; hour ago. They didn’t help much. ‘‘British Archæologist Found Drowned in Holland’’ ‘‘Woman’s Testimony in British Scientist’s Suicide.’’ And one of the picture papers had of course got hold of his earlier career: ‘‘ British Atomic Scientist Meets Mystery Death in Amsterdam.’’ The most detailed account was in the Guardian: ‘‘Grevil Prior Turner, the English scientist, who was found drowned and on whose death an inquiry is being conducted in Amsterdam … Medical opinion is that the body had been in the water about three hours … no evidence of violence … shortly before midnight a woman from a house overlooking the canal saw a man fall … Dr. Turner is belived to have brought back valuable archælogical material which is at present being studied in the Rijksmuseum … Educated at Winchester and New College … distinguished physicist while still in his twenties … turned later to ethnology and archæology … his book last year on the significance of the dolichocephalic skull …

  I chucked the papers in a heap and turned to the letters Grace had given me. They were much the usual thing, comments on weather, conditions in the country, progress of his work; they went with the minor domestic interchanges usual between husband and wife. Nothing to set the world on fire. Only one thing was noticeable—that the man Jack Buckingham, whoever he might be, had been in the picture for at least a couple of months and that his name constantly recurred. Grevil mentioned him first as ‘‘a lone white man, a surprise to come across in Surabaya, particularly one of his calibre. I don’t yet know what he’s doing here and he looks a trifle down on his luck; but what a pleasant fellow to talk to! I hope to see more of him.’’

  In the next letter things had moved on. Dr. Pangkal, Grevil’s Indonesian assistant, had fallen ill and Buckingham was helping in his place, Buckingham was ‘‘a keen amateur archæologist himself and has visited several of the principal European sites.’’ More than this, they were preparing to move camp some thirty miles on Buckingham’s suggestion, to a place called Urtini, where they were going to make excavations in a river-bed. All the later letters Grace had given me were dated from Urtini except the last. In one he wrote: ‘‘I don’t know what I should have done in Pangkal’s continued absence without Jack Buckingham. Did I say he had a good brain? Perhaps good isn’t the right word. He’s very much anti many of the things I care most about. All the same I would take a bet with anybody that—to quote Hopkins—the motion of this man’s heart is fine. Anyway, whatever one things about him personally, and even if one ignores the emergency of Djandowi, his help and companionship have been quite invaluable.’’

  I searched in the earlier letters for some previous reference to the emergency at Djandowi but found none.

  The last letter of all said: ‘‘ It’s a relief to be up in the mountains for a day or two after that snake-house heat. J.B. has come along too. I hold him in increasing affection; and it’s queer the sense of affinity there is—knowing each other so short a time and finding so much to share. I have persuaded him to come home with me, and have invited him to stay with us for a few weeks while he gets on his feet and looks around. Hope you don’t mind. I’m sure he’ll not be much trouble, and I’m certain you’ll instantly take to him. Most people seem to.’’

  In the end I gave it up and got into bed, I wondered if Buckingham would in fact be able to help us at all when he was located. I wondered why he had not come to see Grace or made any attempt apparently even to write. Were any efforts being made to trace him or had the police of two countries already put away the file of Dr. Grevil Turner, F.R.S., who had come to a nasty end while the balance of his mind was disturbed? I didn’t know. I meant to find out.

  Hours later when I finally went to sleep I dreamt that I was standing beside the tree of life, and it looked green and flourishing. But when you looked closer it was rotten, rotten at the heart, and I looked beyond it into the canal and a man’s body was stuck in some sluice-gates. At first I thought it was Grevil and then I thought it was my father, and sometimes it seemed, to be neither and sometimes both. The water that gushed over the body was the bright mud yellow of corruption.

  Chapter Two

  My contacts with officialdom weren’t worth a commissionaire’s salute; but the name of Grevil Turner still meant something, and after two useless interviews I sat down on the Friday morning in the office of a Colonel Powell who worked on the less fashionable side of Whitehall. Powell was a tall grey-visaged man near sixty whose face looked as if it had suffered a good deal of wear and tear keeping the Empire together. He was abrupt and rather stiff, and probably fundamentally shy.

  He said: ‘‘The case certainly hasn’t been dropped, Mr.Turner. We’re satisfied that it has been handled—and is being handled—very competently by the Dutch police. We have kept in touch with them throughout, and I can assure you that neither they nor we will consider the case settled until at least two people have been traced. Whether we shall trace them is another matter, but that’s our chief concern at the moment’’

  ‘‘Have you any leads on them up to now?’’

  ‘‘No. A Mr. Jack Buckingham certainly arrived on the K. L.M. plane with Dr. Turner and registered at an hotel. But he stayed only two nights and then moved on. No one of that name has since left the country. He may of course be living with friends in Holland and have omitted to register, but he has certainly not come forward in answer
to the broadcast appeal. With the woman we have still less to go on. A Christian name—though an unusual one—nothing more.’’

  ‘‘Have you a copy of the letter she wrote?’’

  ‘‘We have the letter itself, if you’d like to see that.’’

  A minute later, with a queer feeling of putting my fingers on something unclean, I was staring at the message which had been found in Grevil’s pocket The envelope was plain and untorn, the.notepaper bore the heading Hôtel Grotius. Both were wrinkled and faded, but the ink of the letter, which I think had been written with a ball-pointed pen, had run surprisingly little. It was a woman’s writing, clear and the letters well formed, but, I thought in a hurry—particularly the last part.

  ‘‘This is just to say that I am leaving today. This time everything must be over between us, please believe me, it’s really and truly the end. I came along this afternoon meaning to face you, but at the last I’ve suddenly funked it What is there to say except what has been said before—and except goodbye?

  ‘‘My dear, it’s been rather a bad mess from the beginning—my fault every bit as much as yours. My fault that there ever was a beginning. Oh, I know there have been times—I don’t deny them—but they don’t make up for what goes with it—at least they don’t for me. Everything that’s happened these last two days makes the same point over again.

  ‘‘If you still feel any friendship for me, please don’t follow me and please don’t write.

  ‘‘I’m very sorry.”

  ‘‘Leonie.’’

  I handed the thing back. ‘‘ Her English is good.’’

  ‘‘So is that of many Dutch people. But probably she’s not Dutch.’’

  ‘‘Have you reason to think that?’’

  ‘‘Well, we’ve a rough description of a woman who called to see your brother on the afternoon before he died, given us by the receptionist of the hotel. Er—here it is: ‘Spoke to me in French, then in English. About twenty-four or five, fair hair cut short, grey-green eyes with some brown in them, shoulder-bag, Englishor American-style coat. Slight build, about five feet six or seven. Dr. Turner was engaged and she said she would wait. I do not know if she saw him, for I was busy with new arrivals.’ It gives us a little to go on but not a great deal. She may not even be the woman.

  ‘‘And this other woman who says she saw him jump into the canal?’’

  Colonel Powell rubbed a finger down his leathery cheek. ‘‘ Hermina Maas? A lady of easy virtue. But there seems to be no particular reason to doubt her testimony.’’

  ‘‘Not unless she had something to bide.’’

  ‘‘What could she have to hide?’’

  I went and stared out of the window. You had an excellent view from here of the comings and goings of the London County Council.

  Powell said: ‘‘Your brother hadn’t been robbed, and there were no marks of violence on the body except a cut hand and a bruise on the forehead which could have come about in falling. The Dutch doctor said the bruise was not severe enough to have caused a loss of consciousness.’’

  I said: ‘‘Why was the body three hours in the water if this woman saw him go in?’’

  ‘‘Apparently she saw it happen from her window, and by the time she got into the street he had disappeared from view. She told the police and they began a search.’’

  ‘‘And this man Grevil met in Java, who travelled back with him; could anyone on the plane describe him?’’

  ‘‘One of the air hostesses gave us some material to go on, but it was all rather un-predse.’’

  ‘‘There’ll obviously be other sources.’’

  ‘‘Not so obviously. Between ourselves, we shouldn’t be displeased to trace Buckingham. That’s if he’s the person we think he is. There’s a man called Buckingham been in trouble two or three times in the Near and Far East since the war. He first appeared running Jewish immigrants into Palestine; there was a good deal of notice taken of him there because in the end he fell foul of the immigrants themselves. Then there was trouble in Cairo, and later we heard of him in Bangkok, He probably knows that a number of people would wiser to interview him if he showed up, and not solely about Dr. Turner’s death; so that will make him a less easy fish to net’’

  ‘‘Is he an Englishman?’’

  ‘‘We don’t know. He travels on a British passport, trouble is that almost all his activtities have taken place outside our range of contacts. We have one fairly reliable description of him, but it isn’t definite enough to help us when there’s all Europe to search.’’

  Someone was stoking the furnaces in St Thomas’s Hospital. I said: ‘‘I want to go to Holland on Sunday. Can you give me the name of the man in charge of things over there.’’

  I could tell I was being thoughtfully looked over. ‘‘Is there any special point in your going at present, Mr. Turner?’’

  ‘‘There is, I think, to me.’’

  Colonel Powell got up and twisted his pencil round in his fingers. ‘‘The investigations in Holland are not yet complete. Our Dutch friends are doing all they can, and we’re giving them full co-operation. I think, if you’ll permit me to offer an opinion, that it might be a mistake to intervene personally at this point. Later perhaps you could go over and see Tholen …’’

  ‘‘Later will be too late. I’ve only a short time in Europe. And anyway I’d prefer to know what exactly is being done.’’

  He frowned at his pencil. ‘‘I don’t think the final; conclusions we reach are likely to be very different from what they are now, do you? Everything points to your brother having killed himself as a result of this unfortunate love affair which had gone awry.’’

  I came back from the window. ‘‘ Everything points to it, except Grevil’s character. I think I knew him well. It’s possible that I knew him better than anyone else. I mean to find out.’’

  ‘‘Of course I never met Dr. Turner. But from what I’ve been told I gather he was an impulsive man, wasn’t he? Given to sudden decisions. Prone to periods of high spirits and depressions. Given to unusual decisions sometimes.’’

  ‘‘Such as?’’ I said, getting that dry feeling in my throat

  ‘‘Well, it was unusual to say the least for a young physicist rapidly coming to the front rank to abandon his work suddenly in nineteen forty-two and to join the Army and serve in the ranks.’’

  ‘‘He could see where his physics were leading—towards the discovery of the atom bomb. He suddenly felt he could have no hand in it.’’

  ‘‘A gesture perhaps, but a rather unavailing one. To throw away his whole career——’’

  ‘‘Evidence surely of being the one sane man.’’

  Powell glanced at me. He could see I was angry. ‘‘Well, it’s a matter of opinion, isn’t it. But the quixotic sacrifice remains. It doesn’t seem altogether out of bounds that a man who for a principle threw away his life’s work might, on another occasion, throw away his life.’’

  A clerk came in with a sheaf of papers. He was a little pimply chap and looked as if he would be no loss to the world at all. When he went out neither of us spoke. It seemed to be rather a deadlock. Eventually I said more equably: ‘‘I’m afraid that what you’ve told me makes me more than ever sure I want to see things for myself.’’

  ‘‘What I’ve told you about Buckingham?’’

  ‘‘Yes.’’

  Powell flipped through the papers. ‘‘Very well. Sir Derek asked me to help you in any way I can. You say you want to go to Holland?’’

  ‘‘Yes, if you please, I’d like a letter to the man in charge over there.’’

  ‘‘Inspector Tholen. Very well.’’ He pulled a sheet of paper abruptly towards him and began to write on it. After a minute he stopped and stared at the end of his pen. I thought there was something wrong: with it, but there wasn’t. He said: ‘‘ It might just’’ possibly be worth your while meeting Martin Coxon before you left.’’

  ‘‘Who is he?’’

  ‘‘The one ma
n we know who has met Buckingham. But it’s a very old scent’’.

  ‘‘I’d like to.’’

  ‘‘He lives in Rye. That’s if he’s at home. Perhaps we can find out for you.’’ Powell pressed the thing on his desk and spoke into it.

  There was another long silence. Powell finished his letter, read it through, blotted it with one of those semicircular pads, put it in an envelope, handed it to me. Then the thing clicked again and a voice said that it wasn’t known whether Commander Coxon was at home, and as he wasn’t on the telephone there was no quick way of finding out. Should they send a prepaid wire?

  ‘‘No, thank yon,’’ said Powell when I shook my head. He switched off and stared at me thoughtfully. ‘‘Coxon’s one of those men who couldn’t settle to civilian life after the war and went foraging for himself. Quite a few did. We employed him ourselves once or twice, but he hadn’t quite the temperament for our work and so we’ve rather lost touch with him recently. Apparently he met Buckingham near Jaffa in the spring of ’forty-eight We haven’t inquired too closely what Martin Coxon was doing off the coast of Palestine at that time, but I suspect he was turning a faintly illegal penny himself.’’

  The moment of irritation was gone now, and he was talking to smooth off the edges. I knew well enough that I’d been ‘‘pressing”, as a golfer would say, all through this interview, and he’d been aware of it but not of its causes. I was annoyed with myself for having so obviously risen to the bait. Because if Arnold and Grace had come to accept the coroner’s verdict as a true one, what hope was there that a stranger like Powell would do otherwise? Why resent it when he followed the natural line?

  Perhaps it was because I hadn’t realised before how glib, assumptions can seem when they’re made on surface evidence and without an inner knowledge at all.

  All the same, I had to take myself in hand and try to see this as a detached problem, not as a key to old conflicts and old loyalties.