Queen's Pawn

by Victor Canning

  ‘Mr Vickers and he’s got it with him.’

  ‘Sensible man. Now tell me, and I do wish you’d do this without much hesitation, what is Mr Vickers’ first name?’

  ‘Bob. That’s for Robert.’

  ‘Thank you. Bob for Robert. Now, since you’re no longer interested in the police or the porter coming here, try and answer a few more questions with, shall we say, the same promptness. All right?’

  Belle stood up. ‘I think I will have that brandy.’ She went to the sideboard and began to make herself a drink.

  Behind her Benson said, ‘Don’t bother to do one for me. I don’t drink and I don’t smoke. Just like Mr Sarling. Did you sleep with him often?’

  ‘I have in the past.’

  ‘Did he leave you any money?’

  ‘Twenty thousand pounds.’

  ‘I’m happy for you. Did he ever come here?’

  ‘No.’

  Belle came back to the chair with her brandy. As she sat she could hear Miss Saunders in her bedroom.

  ‘But he knew you had this flat?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Knew about Mr Vickers?’

  ‘If he did he never told me.’

  ‘And he never met Mr Vickers?’

  ‘Not that I know.’

  ‘You’re a loyal girl, aren’t you?’

  ‘No. Now that I know you’re not going to rob me or beat me up, I’m just anxious to satisfy you and get rid of you.’

  ‘You’ve recovered fast. Tell me—your name is Vickers. But it’s inconceivable that his should be Vickers, too. What is his name?’

  Belle looked at him over the top of her glass. ‘You say you’ve met him. What name did he give you?’

  Benson laughed quietly. ‘The name he gave me was Tony Applegate—but, of course, I knew it wasn’t his real name. What is his name?’

  ‘Why do you want to know all this? Why are you so interested?’

  ‘It would take too long to tell. But just as we don’t mean you any harm, neither do we wish him any. All we want really is to meet him again and talk some business. Now, what’s his name and where—when he’s not here—can we find him?’

  Stubbornly, Belle said, ‘I’m not telling you anything. And don’t try to make me or I’ll scream my head off.’

  ‘All right. I’m not going to try to make you be disloyal. In fact, I approve of your loyalty. However, perhaps you’ll do something for me.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘When Mr Vickers gets back, or if you know how to get in touch with him—just say I called and I’d like him to get in touch with me. Mr Benson wants to hear from Tony Applegate. Clear? He’ll know how to get hold of me.’

  ‘You’re going to have to wait. He’s gone abroad for six months.’

  Benson shook his head, smiling. ‘No, that won’t do.’

  Miss Saunders came back into the room. Belle saw at once that she was carrying the repaired Cunard brochure in her hands.

  Ignoring Belle, Miss Saunders handed the brochure to Benson. ‘There’s nothing but this. There’s a page of notes inside.’

  Benson opened the brochure, flipped through a few pages and then coming to the notes began to read them.

  Belle watched him. Something had gone wrong. Something had gone very wrong. She was sure of this. Although these two didn’t frighten her now, she knew they could and would if they were given cause. But already deep inside her was her own fright. Through it she was telling herself to keep her head, not to do or say anything which Andy wouldn’t have wanted her to do. But how could she know, how could she guess what was the right or wrong thing to say or do? She saw Benson’s left hand come up and rub his chin, a big, brown hand, manicured, a plain gold ring on it. He suddenly looked up over the brochure and smiled at her.

  ‘You’ve read these?’ His hand flicked brochure and notes.

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Who tore them in half?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Who stuck them together?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I did.’

  ‘Just because?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘They’re not really important to you?’

  ‘No.’

  He stood up and began to move towards the door. ‘In that case I’ll take them.’

  ‘You can do what you like with them. They mean nothing to me.’

  Miss Saunders smiled. ‘Except that you keep them by your bedside.’

  Benson said, ‘We’re sorry to have bothered you. Please forgive us. And don’t forget to let Mr Vickers have the message. Tell him we’ve taken the brochure. He’d want to know that.’

  They went out, leaving her sitting in the chair, and she stayed there knowing that she had done everything wrong, must have done everything wrong. Damn the brochure. Why had she kept it?

  She got up suddenly and went to the telephone. She rang. Raikes’s number in Devon. From the far end the call sign churred away, grinding and boring like some animal noise at the far end of a dark tunnel. She let it ring for half an hour and there was no answer.

  That morning Raikes had taken some more of the canisters up on the moors and exploded them. He had left before the morning post had arrived. On his return just before lunch the post had been waiting for him. With it was a letter from Mary Warburton. It read—

  Darling Andy,

  You must not be upset if I keep this brief and very factual. In the last few days since telling you about the gynaecologist’s report I have made up my mind. I know that your loyalty and affection for me will be making you deny in your heart the decision you would really want to make … and one day would make. To help you I am making it for you. When you read this I shall be well on my way to Cyprus to stay with friends. I have told my parents the truth and they entirely agree with what I am doing. They have nothing but kindness and understanding for us both. I am setting you free from our unofficial engagement. No matter what you may feel reading this—I insist on it.

  Love, Mary.

  For a time he had sat there re-reading the letter. Then he had got up and made himself a drink and stood staring out of the window and slowly there had moved into him a sense of relief. The logic of his true desires had been inescapable. Everything Mary had said was right. He would have fought for a while against breaking away from her, but in the end he would have done it. With the sharp charity of a woman who loved and understood him, she had done it for him. For the way of life he wanted, was determined to have, he had murdered Sarling, was already planning to rid himself of Belle, and would eventually have dispossessed himself of Mary. He faced the truth about himself frankly and accepted it. But where with Sarling—and with Belle when the moment came—he could be devoid of feeling, the break with Mary left him disturbed. Largely, he knew, it was a form of self-pity—and that for him was an unusual emotion. Mary would have been so right for him, for Alverton, for the life he had planned. Now, he had to find someone else.

  He had walked out to his car and driven off. It was Mrs Hamilton’s day for shopping in Barnstaple and she had left him to get his own cold lunch. He had driven to Exeter and gone to the cinema. He had got back about seven, had a couple of drinks and a meal and then, unable to stay in the house, had gone for a long walk. Coming back late he had let himself into Alverton. Manor with his key, and had wandered round the house. Another woman, not Mary, would now be mistress here. He sat on the window ledge of his old bedroom—which was in process of being repapered, the wallpaper a close match to the one he remembered from thirty years before. Beside him on the seat he had found a crumpled sheet of the Daily Mail in which some workman had brought his sandwiches and a headline had caught his eye. Below was an account of the turbine difficulties which had beset the new Cunarder, Queen Elizabeth 2. Angrily he had reached out and crumpled up the sheet. It was almost as though Sarling had suddenly come into the house.

  He had walked back late to his own house, his feet loud on the frost-bound
road, the hoar hanging in grey plumes from the bare willow and beech branches. From the pine plantations across the river had come the sharp call of a dog fox.

  He walked into the hall to hear the telephone ringing in the sitting room. By the time he reached it, it had stopped.

  Standing by the telephone he suddenly realized that the last thing he wanted to do for the next few days was to be here, in Devon, near Alverton Manor, near anything that would remind him too openly of Mary. He went upstairs, packed his case and drove through the night to Taunton.

  He caught the 2.30 a.m. train, not caring that it was a slow one and was at Paddington by seven o’clock. To the cab driver he gave the name of his club, but half-way there he changed his mind and gave the Mount Street address and he knew exactly why he had changed his mind. There was no point in mooning about and feeling sorry for himself about Mary. Sooner or later he would find another Mary. But the problem of Belle remained, and the best antidote to his present disappointment was work and planning. Before he and Berners could dispose of Belle she had to be out of the flat and all trace of Mr and Mrs Vickers wiped clean. His first step was to get her to take another flat, another flat in which he would promise to join her—though he never would—and from which she would one day soon walk out to her death.

  He let himself in with his key, put his case in his bedroom and went through the stocking- and underwear-draped bathroom into her bedroom. She woke as he came in and stared at him as though he were some part of a fading dream still with her. Then, as he sat on the edge of the bed, she threw her arms around him, buried her face in his shoulder and began to sob. He knew at once that something had happened. After a little while she calmed down and he began to get the story of Benson’s visit from her.

  She was sitting opposite him, wrapped in her dressing gown as she had been for Benson. Her hands cradled a mug of coffee which he had made and now, with all her incoherence over, he was beginning to think clearly and sort things out. Mary was gone now, pushed back into the dark fringes of his mind. There was only this. Benson had been in this room. Benson, like Sarling, and like Belle, had to be dealt with. Perhaps, he thought, this was some irony of the gods. He was going to get what he wanted, but they weren’t going to let it be easy. Perhaps sometime in all these years he should have recognized their power and poured a libation to them, made some acknowledgment of his luck and success. Perhaps in all these years he and Berners, without knowing it, had been pushing their luck and had become too arrogant of their powers … God, now he was thinking as his mother used to. Bad luck to her had been as real as rainfall. Never bring hawthorn in flower into the house. Never put a pair of shoes on the table. Never walk under a ladder. Touch wood. Spilled salt over the left shoulder. A saucer of milk in the dairy for the little men … All right, he would acknowledge that in all he and Berners had done there had had to be some luck. But now there was this … and clear thinking had to run before luck.

  He said, ‘Now don’t get fussed up. The whole thing has a simple explanation.’

  ‘Oh, Andy … I tried not to say anything … Like, well you know, the wrong thing.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I know. But let me explain it. All he wanted to do was to get in touch with me. I’d been in touch with him about a delivery of gold bullion. Time and place of delivery and price and so on and I was to get in touch with him again after a few weeks. Well, I never did, because no gold bullion was ever going to be stolen. Now, he wants to know why. Why I haven’t got in touch with him. Why he isn’t going to make a fat profit out of some robbery I’d planned. He’s just a business man not wanting to lose a good deal.’

  ‘You really think it’s like that?’

  ‘How else?’

  ‘But they know about Sarling?’

  ‘Sarling made the contact for me—but he wouldn’t have done more than that, wouldn’t have said anything about where the gold was coming from. Damn it, he only told me at the last moment. If he had told anyone else about it, or about forcing Berners and myself to steal it, don’t you think he would have said so in the car that night? That would have saved him. I wouldn’t have murdered him if anyone else had known about it. No, it’s more likely that Benson read about Sarling’s death, knew he was connected with me, waited for me to show up and then, when I didn’t, came along here to find out why. So, now I tell him that the whole thing is off and that’s the end of it.’

  ‘Oh, Andy, I do hope so.’

  He stood up, turning away from her to look out of the window. In her dressing gown, hair loose, bare feet rubbing against one another, her face blotchy from sobbing and emotion, she looked like nothing. And every time she said Ok, Andy a sour irritation filled him. In the darkness, as he held her body, making love to her, she was without personality, just woman … all the same in the dark, as Benjamin Franklin had said. But in daylight there were times when he ached for her to be gone … dead and gone. But until she was he had to be for her what she wanted.

  Turning back to her he smiled, moved over and put a hand on the warmth of her thin neck under the sweep of auburn hair.

  ‘There’s nothing to worry about.’ He came round and faced her. ‘But tell me; why did you keep that brochure and repair it?’

  ‘Oh, Andy, you’re not cross about that.’

  He felt the muscles of his jaws tighten but he smiled, put out a hand and touched her knee, reassuring her. ‘No, but I’m curious to know why. You read it?’

  ‘I skipped through it.’

  ‘You knew what Sarling wanted me to do? Rob the Queen Elizabeth 2?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then why didn’t you get rid of it?’

  She hesitated for a moment and then said, ‘Well, I suppose … Well, you really want to know?’

  Of course, he wanted to know. What the hell did she think he was asking for?

  ‘Of course I do.’

  ‘I mean the really real reason?’

  ‘Yes. The true reason.’

  ‘Well, I thought you might have been angry about it. Just torn it up and thrown it away because it came from him. But with him out of the way I thought you might begin to think about it… Oh, I know it’s stupid, but I wanted you to do it because that way it would mean that maybe I could help and we’d be together longer… I didn’t want to lose you. I wanted you with me as long as possible … There, I’ve said it.’

  ‘Belle …’ He took her hand and held it, knowing that all she needed was the word and the contact. He stood up, bent and kissed her and said, ‘You’d better get dressed.’

  As she went back to the bedroom, Raikes picked up the telephone and dialled a number. It rang for some while before it was answered.

  A man’s voice said, ‘Yes?’

  Raikes said, ‘ Tony’s back and wants an appointment.’

  ‘Which Tony?’

  ‘The Applegate one.’

  ‘I’ll ring you during the morning.’

  The line went dead.

  Raikes went back to his chair, dropped into it and picked up the copy of The Times which he had bought at Paddington Station. Opening it, skipping through it, his eye was suddenly caught by a headline. QE2 Ready for Sea by March. From our Scottish Correspondent—Glasgow, Feb. 5.

  Without any emotion, his mind half moving ahead to the coming Applegate appointment, planning it, knowing exactly what line he would take, he read the report:

  The turbine trouble that caused delivery of the Queen Elizabeth 2 on New Year’s Day to be cancelled has been diagnosed by engineers at Clydebank, and they hope to have the ship ready for sea again next month.

  Mr Graham Strachan, managing director of John Brown Engineering (Clydebank) Ltd., said at a press conference in Glasgow today that he expected the turbine rotors to be returned to the ship at Southampton by March 7. The installation and preparations for new sea trials could be completed in a further two weeks.

  He said a design fault had been made by Pametrada, the organization set up to centralize turbine research and design, which was dis
solved just over a year ago.

  Pametrada had been producing a standard turbine design for about 35,000 h. p. where the QE2 required 55,000 h.p. The turbine as built might have coped with the demand but there were external faults in the arrangement of steam pipes and the fitting of couplings which caused vibrations. Six rows of blades on the turbine rotors had been affected, and some blades had broken off.

  Mr Strachan said that the blades at the point of stress were being replaced by others about one-tenth of an inch thicker, and the steam pipes were being rearranged and the couplings realigned.

  Pametrada had been excellent turbine designers with over 400 successful sets of machinery at sea. The design fault could happen to others and, no matter what precautions were taken, it could happen again.

  Mr Strachan said that he hoped the ship would be given sea trials of about nine or 10 days, although this was a matter for Upper Clyde Shipbuilders. The engineers, he said, would want to open the turbines and inspect the blades after the trials.

  An official of Upper Clyde Shipbuilders said tonight that until their experts had completed assessments they were unable to give a date either for trials or delivery.

  Cunard, who have cancelled all scheduled sailings and cruises for the liner, said they would make no comment until they had received a full report from Upper Clyde Shipbuilders1

  Two hours later the telephone rang.

  A man’s voice said, ‘ Benson. Room 97. The Ritz. Ten o’clock tomorrow morning.’

  It was the same room. But the flowers this time, instead of being chrysanthemums, were freesias, their red, purple, white and gold blooms reminding him of the caps the flower fairies wore in some childhood picture book. Benson was alone, a tall, dark-haired, composed man, friendly, moving with the unconscious grace natural to some big men and establishing at once an unoffending permissiveness of speech as though, apart from business, they knew one another well.

  He said, ‘ Your Miss Vickers is very loyal—though I should have thought hardly your type.’

  Deciding to feel his way, to show no edge unless their meeting should call for bluntness, Raikes said, ‘Well, you can’t have everything in a woman. But why didn’t you give me a ring? You frightened her, walking into the flat like that.’