Slow Burner

by William Haggard

  William Nichol met his guests at the door. ‘I’m glad you’re early,’ he said, ‘and you’ve brought your clubs, I see.’ He glanced inquiringly at Major Mortimer. ‘We could borrow a set for you,’ he suggested. He did not wish to play a threesome, but he was hospitable.

  Mortimer shook his head. ‘I shall sleep,’ he said. ‘By the fire, if I may. I have more than a little to make up.’

  They went into the house together and Nichol’s housekeeper took the bags with a smile. ‘You will need coffee before you go to golf,’ she said in her careful English. ‘I have put it in the saloon.’

  Thank you,’ Russell said, ‘that was very thoughtful.’

  They went into the comfortable living-room. Coffee and milk, separately, were on electric warming plates. There were sandwiches, freshly cut. ‘We might miss lunch, if you agree,’ Nichol proposed, ‘and if sandwiches will keep you going. Gretl is enjoying herself having something of a fling with dinner. Is that all right?’

  ‘It is perfect,’ Russell said. He added, smiling, that in any case he didn’t think he could do justice, not proper justice that is, to two of Gretl’s meals on the same day.

  They returned as a light mist was blurring the early evening. Mortimer was in an arm-chair in the living-room. He was still rosy from sleep. Before him, on a low table by the fire, were a silver tea-pot and the remains of a dish of crumpets. There were also some very un-English looking pastries.

  ‘Gretl has been trying to spoil my appetite for dinner,’ he explained. ‘I’m not too happy that she hasn’t succeeded.’ Nichol and Russell helped themselves to tea. They settled by unspoken consent to the matter before them.

  ‘We weren’t entirely successful last night,’ Russell began, ‘nor entirely unsuccessful. We arranged that a man called Percival-Smith should visit this house at Dipley. It turns out to be owned by a Mrs Tarbat who is kept by three young men in Bluchers. Smith got in easily enough and did nine-tenths of his search. And nothing to show for it. Then the lady woke and took a pistol to him. No, she didn’t shoot him, but rather the reverse. Not to put a point on it she made him a proposition.’

  ‘Good gracious. And what did he do?’

  Colonel Russell seemed surprised by the question. ‘If you will forgive so old-fashioned a phrase,’ he said, ‘he behaved like a gentleman.’

  ‘I see,’ Nichol said. He had contrived not to smile.

  ‘Which of course is just as well, since he will have to return. As I was saying, he did nine-tenths of the job—the outhouses and the whole of the downstairs floor without interruption, and a spare bedroom and a boxroom upstairs. You will have gathered that he had exceptional opportunities of inspecting Mrs Tarbat’s own bedroom. He visited, as you would expect, the bathroom. But he missed the attic, and that is important. However, we must be reasonable. You cannot without appearing forward ask to examine the lady’s attic upon no better reason than that you have shared her bed. Nevertheless this attic is important, since Smith noticed that there was a ladder to it and no dust around the edges of the trap in the ceiling. Yes, we must find out about that attic. And quickly. So Smith is going back on Monday. And through the front door this time.’

  ‘Next Monday? Tomorrow?’

  ‘Of course, why not? He can’t be much over thirty.’

  ‘I see,’ William Nichol said reflectively. ‘I see. You don’t lose much time,’ he added.

  ‘We can’t afford to. And you must give us some sort of instrument this time—something to pinpoint this whatever it is.’ Nichol nodded. ‘That can be done. It can be quite small. And if the instrument indicates the attic, what then?’

  ‘I have told this Smith that he may say who he is.’

  ‘He will ask to see the attic?’

  ‘He will.’

  ‘And if Madam refuses?’

  ‘I have the utmost confidence in Percival-Smith.’

  Nichol, now, allowed himself to smile. ‘It doesn’t sound misplaced,’ he said. ‘And Mrs Tarbat sounds charming—much too nice for rich young bankers.’

  The three men fell into a silence which Mortimer finally broke. ‘The Commission meets tomorrow. I believe at eleven o’clock. We had hoped to have something definite by then.’ William Nichol shrugged. ‘I don’t think you need worry too much,’ he suggested. ‘We are supposed to be scientists, you will remember, not men of action. We shall mill over the scientific possibilities—and impossibilities. And we shall get nowhere. Probably we shall discuss the political implications too, though we shall not know the facts.’

  ‘And may not know them even tomorrow night,’ Russell said slowly.

  ‘But surely if Percival-Smith is successful . . .?’

  ‘If Smith is successful there will still be a long way to go. We are assuming, and confidently for my part, that he gets into Mrs Tarbat’s attic and finds something. We shall still want to know who put it there and above all why. Leave the why for the moment and consider the who. Smith will naturally ask Mrs Tarbat. And my own money is firmly on the chance that she won’t tell him.’

  ‘I suppose not,’ Nichol said slowly.

  ‘I’m pretty sure of it. Consider. Either she is a party to this affair or she is not. If she is a party it is very long odds indeed that she won’t tell—not yet, at least; not until we have something to use against her. And if she isn’t a party, if this something is a plant which she knows nothing about, then I am going to assume that it was a man who planted it. In which case she has equal though rather different reasons for not talking. She is a kept woman, remember—Mortimer tells me a highly respectable one. But like all kept women I expect she entertains an acquaintance or two. I hope I don’t sound cynical, by the way. She sounds the nicest sort of woman, but Percival-Smith is himself evidence that she isn’t exceptional. And if it was a man who did the plant the last thing she will want to do is to admit to unauthorized male visitors.’

  Nichol nodded. ‘Which leads us?’

  ‘Which leads us to wondering who would be likely to have made the plant. Prima facie it must be some sort of scientist. Prima facie again, and if you will forgive me, it is likely to be a scientist au fait with Slow Burner.’

  ‘You are asking me whom I might suspect?’

  ‘I am afraid I am.’

  ‘You are entitled to ask the question.’ Nichcl’s voice was reluctant. He hesitated. ‘I agree it would have to be a scientist,’ he said at length.

  ‘No doubt of it, I’m afraid.’ Russell sighed. ‘Then we are driven to look for motive.’ His tone became ironic. ‘Motive is the policeman’s bread and butter,’ he explained. ‘Motive and suspicion. What is your fancy on the score of motive?’

  ‘Money, perhaps, but much more likely politics. Or a mixture of both.’

  ‘Very like . . . But you will remember that I spoke also of suspicion.’

  There was an uneasy, and unhappy silence. Nichol broke it with an evident decision. ‘You are entitled to ask,’ he repeated. ‘It is an odious question, but it is a proper one. I will spare you the necessity to put it in terms.’ He hesitated again. ‘Ellis Parton,’ he said finally.

  Silence fell upon them again while Nichol reflected miserably that all suspicion was of the devil. Nobody was suspect, everybody was suspect—almost every subordinate physicist upon his staff. He thought of them with a sudden distaste. He thought of their laborious competence, their cocksure materialism. It was a foolish man who analysed his relations with his colleagues too closely but when, as now, it was necessary, how uncomfortable to discover that beneath the tolerance, beneath the knowledge that you had to be careful if you did not want to seem patronizing—that beneath all this, the careful words and the excellent intentions, you simply loathed their guts. William Nichol was shocked. To discover that he disliked these people he regarded as a defeat; to be asked to suspect them was a degradation. Of course they could be suspected, nearly all of them. They were children, political adolescents. Take a clever boy at sixteen, he reflected, and put him into a laboratory for
the next seven or eight years. What emerged inevitably was a materialst, a materialist within an intelligible definition, a man who would assume without question that the methods of science could be applied to human societies. It was frightening how one could deceive oneself . . . Of course they were suspect. They were detestable perhaps, but they were detestable children. Impossible to pursue them for their childishness. Suspicion—a witch hunt! It was a disgrace, a personal, and intimate ignominy. It was intolerable, but he had been forced to recognize that it was necessary . . . Unclean, unclean.

  Russell’s cool voice recalled him. ‘We can leave it at that,’ he was saying. ‘We must leave it at that. For the moment.’

  William Nichol rose with an evident relief. He looked at his watch. ‘We have been talking too long,’ he said. ‘We have barely time for a drink before Gretl comes to tell us that her dinner is spoiling.’

  Charles Russell, next morning, rose early, for he had slept abominably. He had lain awake listening to the mysterious noises of the countryside and considering the talk of the evening. The cool voice of a house after midnight had judged it, and the judgement had slain sleep. It had been quite good talk, he thought, but it had got them nowhere. He had tossed uneasily until just before dawn; then abandoning the struggle, slipped into a dressing-gown. But early as he was he had not outrisen Gretl. He was aware of her voice, gutturally melodious, outside the bathroom. Tea, it had told him, he would find outside the door. On a table, it had added. He bathed and shaved and slipped quietly into the kitchen. Gretl was busy at the stove. She turned, inspecting him with concern. ‘You have slept badly?’ she inquired.

  ‘Very badly, I’m afraid.’

  Gretl considered him before she spoke again. ‘You are a gentleman,’ she said finally, ‘an officer of an appearance most distinguished. There is no occasion to sleep badly.’ She spoke with a perfect respect, but it was evident that she spoke as a woman.

  ‘Thank you,’ Russell said. ‘It is very kind of you.’ His voice was without reproof. He thought it was very kind indeed. He discovered that he was stroking his admirable moustache. He turned to the stove. ‘Would that be coffee?’ he asked.

  ‘But of course. Tea is for the awakening.’

  Charles Russell drank his coffee, declining with regrets the food which Gretl had prepared. She did not protest, he noticed; she did not press him. A peaceful woman, he thought, serene in her station.

  Mortimer joined him, for they had arranged to leave early. He gulped his coffee, heavy-eyed. They slipped from the warm house, starting the car quietly. Nichol was coming to London, but later, and they were considerate men.

  Driving back to London on a road unusually clear, Russell was grateful for the sharp air of the early morning. It cleared his head, and soon he turned to Mortimer beside him. ‘We have a long day before us,’ he suggested.

  ‘And a very frustrating one.’

  Russell raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Sir Jeremy,’ Mortimer said deliberately, ‘isn’t an easy man to deal with.’

  Russell did not comment directly. ‘But he has nothing against us for the moment, I telephoned to him yesterday morning, of course, before we left. Bates has a cottage in the country, you know; he keeps a wife there. But he hadn’t gone to it—he wouldn’t if there was anything of importance unsettled. So I telephoned to his flat. He didn’t precisely say that I ought to be staying in London myself, but he contrived the impression that it was a matter for my conscience whether I did so. And so it was. Nothing can happen until tonight, so I went to the country.’ Charles Russell chuckled. ‘Where I had an admirable dinner and an appalling night,’ he added.

  But Mortimer was still considering Sir Jeremy. ‘What did he say about Dipley?’ he inquired.

  ‘Almost nothing. He was evidently disappointed, but he wasn’t openly critical. I told him we were trying again tonight.’

  ‘And how did he take that?’

  ‘He wished us luck. Very properly. Very correctly. Very dryly. He told me to report results at once. To report, you observe.’

  ‘He isn’t an easy man,’ Mortimer repeated.

  ‘But he’s a great public servant.’

  ‘I wonder,’ Mortimer said slowly.

  ‘That is practically irreverent.’

  ‘But he does make things difficult, doesn’t he? My instinct as a policeman is to use such powers as exist.’

  ‘Which are excellent instincts—for a policeman. Sir Jeremy evidently judges otherwise.’

  ‘But damn it, look where he lands us. We have to put a burglar-man into Mrs Tarbat’s house. And why? Because we couldn’t get a search warrant. That’s fair enough: I know we couldn’t get an ordinary search warrant because it isn’t against the ordinary law to have atomic emanations coming from your house. It may be incredible, but it isn’t unlawful. But you know as well as I do that there are special powers. There’s the Nuclear Security Order . . .’

  ‘Which has never been used.’

  Then why not invoke it?’

  Charles Russell shrugged. ‘We’re not Permanent Secretaries,’ he said shortly.

  ‘But we’re sensible men, I hope. And what’s going to happen if we do find something? What’s going to happen if Mrs Tarbat won’t talk? Can we grill her? Can we even arrest her? I doubt it—under the ordinary law, that is.’ Major Mortimer was as near excited as he ever allowed himself to become.

  ‘Sufficient unto the day, my dear fellow. And for today there’s work to do—security work, orthodox policeman’s work. Check everybody again—everybody at Colton and the other Centres. Start with Parton, of course.’

  ‘To tell you the truth I’ve already done so. Doctor Nichol hated mentioning him, but of course he isn’t the only person to have wondered about Parton.’

  ‘Quite so. And I wasn’t as forthcoming myself about him as I might have been. There’s quite a file, as you know. Quite a file . . . and nothing, really. There are a dozen the same, though perhaps Parton’s the most striking. Nothing . . . everything. There wasn’t any point in mentioning it: you could see Nichol hated the whole thing. He would have asked us questions, and we haven’t got a case. Not his sort of case, that is. Just the same, start again on Parton.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  ‘And take the small fry too—technicians, clerks—the whole establishment. I know you’ve just done it, but do it again. And their households too, Nichol’s own included. You dropped a brick about his housekeeper, by the way.’

  ‘I’m afraid I did,’ Mortimer admitted. His tone was repentant.

  Charles Russell was silent, recollecting the incident. The three of them had been at table, and security, security generally, had somehow come up as a topic. Russell, deliberately, had treated it lightly: he had been almost facetious. It was always the least suspect, he had suggested, who in the event was responsible. That was a convention of fiction, if not the fact. Take Gretl, for instance—what did Nichol know of her?

  ‘Enough,’ Nicol had said. ‘I hope you’ll agree that she’s a very good cook. Will you have a little more duck?’

  ‘No, thank you. I should like to, but I cannot.’

  They had disposed of minestrone and were engaged with roast duck. There were three duck to the three of them. Gretl owned the sound opinion that gravy was an excuse, and a bad one, for lazy cooking, and she had sent the birds to the table smooth and brown. To carve them with a knife was a formality. There had been separate plates for the green peas and for the salad. The three men, comfortably without women, had taken their fingers to the birds and spoons to the delicate peas.

  But Nichol had pursued the subject. ‘What are you worrying about?’ he had asked.

  ‘I wasn’t worrying—I was making conversation. But since you insist, what do you know about Gretl, really? What do you know of her private life, for instance?’

  ‘Again, quite enough. She’s a remarkable woman. When she came here I was worried about what she would find to do in an English village. The best she could
hope for, I thought, was the vicar’s wife. Provided, that is, she had had something to eat here first before she went to tea at the Vicarage. She eats like a horse, you know. But not a bit of it. Do you know where she spends her spare time? At the Bear, and playing darts at that. She’s extraordinaly good, they tell me, though I gather she’s too tactful to win all the time. She has dozens of friends and the village is genuinely fond of her. A farmer on good land wants to marry her, but she tells me she doesn’t think it would be appropriate. The word is her own.’

  They had all laughed. ‘Protective colouring,’ Russell had suggested, ‘clever protective colouring. Obviously a very dangerous woman. Doesn’t she ever leave the village?’

  ‘Certainly she does. Once a fortnight. She goes to London to speak her own language, she explains. She takes a room in Guildford Street. When she comes back she’s quieter than usual and she hums a good deal.’

  ‘Who is he?’ Russell asked idly.

  ‘Naturally I haven’t asked her.’

  ‘He’s the wine waiter at Bernardo’s,’ Mortimer said unexpectedly. ‘Nothing against him at all.’

  Nichol, for a moment, had looked annoyed. He had seemed about to say something, but had changed his mind. He had laughed, but when he spoke it was to Russell. ‘You’re infernally thorough, Charles,’ he had said.

  ‘We have to be.’ Charles Russell had sounded apologetic. He had intended to.

  He returned to Mortimer beside him. ‘Yes,’ he said again, ‘check the housekeeper; check them all.’ He smiled a little grimly, reflecting that that was what security was. You checked and checked and double checked. Mostly nothing came of it, but occasionally, very occasionally, a recognizable pattern, something significant, emerged. But with Gretl, of course, that was absurd. Her background was impeccable. Why shouldn’t she have a lover of her own race? Charles Russell shrugged a little irritably.