VISITORS TO THE CRESENT

by MARY HOCKING

  There was a noise in the hall. Jessica opened the sitting-room door. A woman was standing in the passage. At first Jessica thought that it was a complete stranger; then she recognized the woman as Mrs. Crawford who helped in the antique shop, a big, rather blowsy woman with dyed blonde hair whom Jessica had always thought singularly unsuited to the job. Now that she came to think of it, one of the reasons why she had not visited the shop had been her dislike or this woman. The woman looked at Jessica quickly and turned away again; there was something rather shifty about that look. Her face had the buttoned-up expression of a person on the verge of being unpleasant who has made up her mind not to be deflected.

  ‘I want to see Mr. Saneck,’ she said.

  ‘He’s not here,’ Jessica answered. ‘Isn’t he at the shop?’

  ‘I stopped there on my way down,’ the woman answered. ‘But it’s in darkness and no one came when I called.’

  ‘What about Mr. Vickers?’

  ‘There was no answer from his flat.’

  Jessica said, trying to hide her impatience:

  ‘Is it important? You will be seeing Mr. Saneck in the morning.’

  ‘No,’ the woman said. ‘I won’t be seeing him. That’s what I came about.’

  Her manner was hostile. Jessica guessed that she did not approve of her relationship with Edward. But this had been going on for some time now; the woman could hardly be giving in her notice, if that was what she was doing, on that account.

  ‘Is anything wrong?’ she asked.

  ‘I had the police round last week.’ The woman stared accusingly at Jessica. ‘That Sergeant Hicks from Potter Street. He was most officious, I thought, and some of the questions he asked were downright impertinent. But I let that pass.’ She had given them all a chance, she implied. ‘But now, when I get home tonight, what do I find? A man helping my boy Billy to mend his scooter; very nice, and I will say he made a good job of it. But it seems he had been asking questions about the shop, too.’

  ‘What kind of questions?’

  ‘The same kind of questions as Sergeant Hicks was asking.’

  ‘You mean he was one of the local plain-clothes men?’

  ‘Billy knows most of the local men and he says he wasn’t one of them. He reckons he was a newspaper man. But why would a newspaper man be interested in a small burglary in Holland Park that took place over a week ago?’

  ‘It seems odd.’

  ‘You think so, do you?’ The woman looked at Jessica grimly. ‘Well, I think so, too. And I don’t want any more to do with it. So I won’t be at the shop tomorrow, or any other day. And I’d be glad if you would tell Mr. Saneck he can send my wages round to me.’ She dropped something on the hall table. ‘And there’s my key.’

  Jessica, with along habit of honesty, put the key on the bookcase in Edward’s room and went upstairs to her study. She sat by the window and watched for Edward to return. By nine o’clock she had come to terms with her sense of honesty. She went back to Edward’s sitting-room, took the key from the bookcase, and went out into the street.

  The shop was still in darkness. She walked up and down in front of it until a bus had moved off and the passengers it unloaded had gone some way down the road. Then she let herself into the shop. She had to pick her way carefully across the showroom because there were any number of small tables, stools, and bric- a-brac arranged in unlikely places on the floor. She wondered whether any of Edward’s customers had ever broken a leg in this room.

  The door at the far end of the showroom was open and she went into the back of the shop. It was dark; but there was a sound somewhere below her, as though furniture were being moved about. A gust of musty air told her that a cellar door was open. After a while her eyes became more accustomed to the darkness and she saw the outline of the door. There was a flight of steps leading down. It was cold; the stairs were narrow and the treads were worn. She put her hand to the wall; it felt damp and dirty. Was it so very important that she should see Edward just now? She was about to turn away when she heard a sound as though a door had been opened below. She began to edge down the stairs, groping against the wall.

  The stairs twisted and a room came into view. There was a light somewhere at the far end of the room and she could see furniture piled high on every side, with little channels between it that seemed to come to an end suddenly, like a wrong turning in a maze. The noise of furniture being moved about had ceased: it was so quiet that she thought she must have imagined it. She was at the bottom of the stairs now; the furniture rose high all around her and she could not decide which of the narrow channels to take. She supposed it must be Edward and Vickers down here; yet she was reluctant to make her presence known. Suddenly, a voice that she did not know spoke from the far end of the room.

  ‘I didn’t lock that cellar door. Does it matter?’

  It was Vickers who answered: ‘Yes. We’ve had visitors lately.’

  Jessica crouched behind a large bookcase while the man, who was evidently a stranger, blundered across the room, losing himself once or twice in the maze of furniture and cursing softly. She heard him run up the stairs and turn the key in the lock. She hoped that he would not lose himself on the way back and come in her direction; but the distant light guided him and he went back the way he had come. As he passed along one of the adjacent alleys, she had a brief glimpse of broad shoulders and a very large head. She had never seen him before.

  As he joined Vickers, the light at the far end of the room fanned out and she guessed that a door had been opened wider. The two men began to talk.

  ‘I only want to use it as a last resort,’ Vickers said. ‘You’re far more noticeable in an out-of-the-way place like that than staying in the middle of London with half a million other people.’

  They must be continuing an interrupted conversation, Jessica thought, because what they were saying did not make sense. For this, she was profoundly grateful. She had suddenly become very anxious to take Harper’s advice: she wanted to get out before it was too late, before her innocence was impaired. The stranger’s voice was muffled. Then she heard Vickers, quite clearly, saying:

  ‘Bell Cottage, Isleworth.’

  That, at least, didn’t seem to be important. If only they would stop talking now. Please, she thought desperately, please don’t burden me with your secrets. She wanted to put her hands over her ears, but she knew that she must listen to every movement. If these men came on her now, she had no doubt that they would be merciless. Yet, much though she feared physical harm, her fear of being unwittingly involved in their activities was greater. She tried to close her mind to their conversation by concentrating on edging forward into the labyrinth of furniture. Perhaps she might find a door leading up to the yard at the back of the house. But as soon as she left the stairs, she lost her bearings completely. Once, she almost knocked over an ornate, oval-shaped mirror that was leaning against a Regency chair. A moment later, something caught in her hair, and, thinking of bats, she almost screamed; but it was only the tassels of a lampshade. Words came to her here and there, not very reassuring, but blessedly unconnected; she thought she heard ‘machine-gun’ once, and something about a barge. But on the whole her perilous wanderings occupied her mind very satisfactorily. Then Vickers said sharply:

  ‘Almost time.’

  After that, there was silence. She was grateful to have been spared any knowledge of what they were doing. But the silence was more frightening than anything else had been. She decided to work her way back to the stairs. She would leave by the cellar door; they would realize when they found it unlocked that someone had been with them, but there would be other visitors they would suspect rather than her. She prayed that the stranger had left the key in the lock. There was another noise now, but her mind brushed it determinedly to one side. The main thing was to get out. She must have lost her way in the maze of furniture, because she suddenly found herself in a narrow avenue that led to an inner room. She drew back quickly. But not before she had seen quit
e clearly what Vickers was doing.

  III

  At half-past ten that night, Jeremy Holt called on his sister. They were both too distressed to notice the strangeness of the other’s appearance. Jeremy had been drinking with friends at a pub in Chelsea, but it was not this that was responsible for the huskiness of his voice.

  ‘I’ve been talking to Jimmy Heaton,’ he said without preamble. ‘He does know that man Harper. But it’s very unlikely that he would be investigating an ordinary burglary. He’s in the Special Branch.’

  Jessica said nothing. She was staring at the carpet, apparently fascinated by the pattern; she looked more than ever as though she were isolated in a world of her own. At that moment, he came very near to striking her.

  ‘Do you realize the implications of that?’ he shouted. ‘They deal with some very odd cases . . .’

  ‘Vickers is a spy,’ Jessica said in a cold, flat voice.

  ‘That isn’t funny,’ he said angrily.

  She went on in the same tone: ‘He has a transmitter and he taps out little messages.’

  He stared at her incredulously.

  ‘I saw him,’ she said, and at last she raised her eyes from the carpet. There was such desolation in her face that the warmth of anger drained slowly from him.

  ‘You . . . saw him!’

  ‘But he doesn’t know.’ She explained the circumstances. ‘The other man went out first and left the door unlocked, so I managed to get away.’

  ‘But this makes you a witness.’

  ‘Yes.’ She passed her hand across her eyes. ‘I’ve been sitting here wondering what to do. Try to help me, Jeremy.’

  It was rather late, he thought bitterly, to turn to him for help. For years she had gone her own way, wilfully sure of herself, faintly contemptuous of the things for which he stood. Yet now that she was in trouble, she demanded advice without hesitation. And how could he possibly refuse? She had trapped him by confiding in him.

  ‘You had better tell me all about it,’ he said coldly. ‘We can work out what you are to say to the police.’

  ‘The police?’ She looked surprised, even a little impatient, as though he had introduced something irrelevant into the conversation. ‘No, no, Jeremy. I’m not asking for legal advice. I just want to talk to you about Edward.’

  ‘Edward?’

  ‘How can I help him? How can I make him understand . . .’ Jeremy got to his feet.

  ‘Fetch your coat,’ he said. ‘Now, at once! We’ll go to the police station and you can tell the whole story. I’ll brief you on the way. There’s a chance they won’t think that you are implicated if you do something about it immediately.’

  Her face assumed the mulish look he knew so well.

  ‘I’m not going to the police until I have seen Edward.’

  ‘Then I shall go.’

  ‘No.’ She looked at him calculatingly; she knew her brother well, but she had never used her knowledge before. ‘If you do that I shall lie and lie and lie, Jeremy. It will be very embarrassing for you politically.’

  He sat down again, perhaps a little more hurt than she realized. She went on, speaking more gently:

  ‘I must work this thing out for myself . . .’

  ‘Work this thing out for yourself!’ he repeated. ‘Yourself, that is really the operative word, isn’t it? A moral problem affecting you and you alone which must be resolved to your satisfaction before you take any action.’

  ‘It sounds very selfish put that way,’ she acknowledged with a patient humility which he found infuriating. ‘But no one else can decide for me what is the right thing to do.’

  ‘You must be mad! Don’t you understand the position you will put yourself in? I don’t ask you to consider my career – although you are quite right, I do worry about it as any normal, adult person would. But what about you? Have you no sense of self-preservation?’

  Suddenly she was inexplicably angry. ‘I don’t want any more talk of self-preservation!’ It was as though he had touched a nerve. A new uncertainty began to trouble him.

  ‘How much of this did you know already?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘How can I believe that? You are so close to Edward.’

  She shook her head. ‘That’s finished. And I was never close to Edward.’

  ‘Finished? Then why . . .?’

  ‘Jeremy, don’t you understand? I can’t dissociate myself from Edward at a time like this. I can’t simply rush off to the police without speaking to him, trying to help him. Suppose it was you and Phyllis, how would you expect Phyllis to behave?’

  ‘There’s no comparison,’ he answered bitterly. ‘Phyl and I aren’t complex, super-sensitive people like you and Edward. We can’t claim a mysterious exemption from the accepted standards of behaviour.’

  Downstairs a door opened and there was the sound of running feet on the stairs.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Jessica said to Jeremy as he jumped up from his chair. ‘It’s only Paddy. She won’t trouble us.’

  But the words were no sooner said than there was an urgent rap on the door. Jeremy opened it and Paddy rushed into the room.

  ‘Jessica, do you know where Edward has gone?’

  Jeremy moved away from the door and she seemed to notice him for the first time. She looked taken aback, but did not make any move to withdraw.

  ‘It’s important,’ she said. ‘George wants him.’

  ‘Why does he want him?’

  ‘He was supposed to be at the shop this evening – a business appointment or something – and he didn’t turn up.’

  Jeremy said to Jessica: ‘Edward must look after himself.’

  ‘But that’s just what George is afraid he can’t do,’ Paddy interposed. ‘He’s been a bit under the weather lately and George thinks he may have wandered off somewhere. He wants to find him before he runs into any trouble.’

  ‘In other words, Edward has disappeared?’ Jeremy asked.

  Paddy nodded, and Jeremy said: ‘Oh, my God!’

  There was silence while each reflected on the reasons why Edward Saneck must be found.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ Paddy said eventually.

  ‘Why not report the disappearance to the police?’ Jeremy suggested acidly. ‘It is the usual thing to do, I believe.’

  ‘They are the bastards that got him in this state,’ Paddy flared. ‘That’s ridiculous!’

  ‘No, it isn’t.’ Paddy turned on Jeremy. ‘He’s had a bad time lately. A police superintendent came here a few days ago; he was investigating the death of some man who killed himself in Cambridge. Edward had only met the man once, but George thinks the super, tried to make out that Edward had been blackmailing him.’

  ‘Do you mean to tell me . . .?’

  ‘No!’ Jessica intervened sharply. ‘Edward would never . . .’

  ‘Of course he wouldn’t!’ Paddy agreed. ‘So you wouldn’t want that swine to get his hands on Edward again, would you, Jessica?’

  Jessica, caught between Paddy and Jeremy, said nothing.

  ‘If Edward is innocent why should he have anything to fear?’ Jeremy persisted.

  ‘Innocent!’ Paddy spat out the word. ‘You’re a solicitor, aren’t you? You know the way the police bitch up evidence to suit themselves.’

  ‘The police can be victims of that kind of thing, too.’

  ‘That I’d like to see!’

  ‘The very sight of an official arouses the witch-hunting instinct in a certain type of person.’

  ‘What about Podola?’

  ‘Podola shot a . . .’

  ‘What does it matter about Podola!’ Jessica cried distractedly. ‘It’s Edward we are concerned with.’

  ‘But you don’t want him to go the same way, do you?’ Paddy asked persuasively. ‘So you will tell George as soon as you hear from him again, won’t you?’

  Paddy and Jeremy waited. Jessica looked at them and said:

  ‘I think Edward should be given a chance to make his own decis
ions.’ She turned to Jeremy. ‘It might be better for you if you didn’t hear any more of this.’

  ‘I think so too,’ he muttered. ‘I’ve had as much as I can stomach.’ He went out without another word. Jessica crossed to the window. Soon he appeared below and she watched him as he got slowly into his car. Was he going to drive straight to the police station? Somehow she doubted it. He would tell himself that there was the chance that none of this would be very important because the net was closing in anyway. Perhaps he was right.

  Paddy was still in the room. She was definitely hostile. She was also looking rather ill; for the first time, Jessica noticed how ravaged the young face had become beneath the heavy make-up.

  ‘Have you any idea what this is all about, Paddy?’ she asked.

  Paddy shook her head.

  ‘And it doesn’t matter to you?’

  ‘No.’

  But Paddy’s voice was not as defiant as it would once have been. There was a note of hopelessness now.

  ‘It doesn’t matter, Jessica,’ she said. ‘So don’t bother to tell me.’

  Across the distance of the room, Jessica regarded her with reluctant respect. There was nothing for them to say to one another and they both knew it. Paddy, like Jeremy, went out of the room without a word.

  Jessica was frightened by her isolation. There was only Harper now, and she would not throw in her lot with him yet. But she thought of him almost with longing; he was the one person connected with these dreadful events who seemed still to have a footing in a safer, saner world. But he was no longer a representative of authority; he had become a man, vulnerable, by no means immune to danger. The thought that he, too, might lose his balance was more than she could bear.

  Chapter Eight

  I

  Only three weeks had elapsed since the burglary at Cedar Crescent, and within another week it would all be over. Yet the calm of the next two days seemed endless to the people who were involved. It was as though they had been abandoned at the moment of crisis, left stranded on a strange shore. They began to yearn for another glimpse of their visitors who alone could release them.