VISITORS TO THE CRESENT

by MARY HOCKING

  As he worked at the toy, he prayed to whatever gods there be: whoever pushes this man too far, may it not be me. Yet he knew the odds. You may say you fight for the weak, but in the fight the weak are destroyed along with the destroyer. A Vickers seldom goes down alone; he takes the innocent with him. He put the toy to one side with a final admission of defeat and picked up the letters.

  He read them through slowly, understanding the sergeant’s comment. Surely, he thought as he read the flat, rather bookish prose, Saneck could never have imagined that these were written by his wife? Had he found it necessary to cling to an illusion all these years, or was there some deeper, more complex reason which had compelled him to accept these miserable fakes?

  There was a knock on the door and the sergeant looked in.

  ‘The Assistant Commissioner wants to see you, sir,’ he said. ‘He’s been reading the papers.’

  Harper put down the letters and went out with a feeling of relief, hoping that the interview would be sufficiently uncomfortable to cloud his pity for anyone but himself.

  The sergeant took one or two of the morning papers back to his own room. He was not as philosophical about their content as Harper had been. As he slammed one down, he said to a colleague:

  ‘Never! Now, if it had been MacLeish on his own, I wouldn’t have been so sure, but . . .’

  He saw the warning in the other man’s eyes and turned quickly. MacLeish was standing in the doorway, his face scarlet. It was too late for withdrawal. MacLeish held out his hand and the sergeant gave him the papers without a word. MacLeish went out of the room.

  He went slowly up the stairs. They had told him that Harper was with the Assistant Commissioner and he guessed that the interview would be a long one. He would be secure in Harper’s room for a time. And he needed time. Since he had been in the office he had heard men talking; each, in his own way, had passed the same verdict. The solidarity of opinion behind Harper was impressive; it cut MacLeish like a knife. He had been angry many times in his life, but never before had he been deeply hurt.

  He sat down at Harper’s desk and stared at the picture of Desmond Ames being hustled into a car; then he turned to the article on police methods which appeared on another page. There was no reference to the Ames affair, but the connection was obvious. The writer was careful to stress that this kind of thing applied to only a few officers, and having thus covered himself he lashed out with some venom. MacLeish read the article through once and then began to read it again. There was a knock on the door. He put the paper down on the desk hurriedly. He said to the man who appeared in the doorway:

  ‘Superintendent Harper has gone to see the Assistant Commissioner.’

  The man hesitated, his eyes on the desk. He edged into the room, his face assuming a false grimace of sympathy.

  ‘Not very pretty,’ he murmured picking up the paper and turning to the article with a certainty that betrayed familiarity. ‘But what can you expect? When a reporter gets in his way, he just walks over him. If the Force ever appoints a public relations officer. Superintendent Robert Harper’s name isn’t likely to be on the short-list.’

  He could not disguise the gloating in his voice. MacLeish waited, watching the man with a fixed, avid longing. Now, perhaps the resounding affirmation which he so much needed would be forthcoming. He had never thought that he would want a testimonial from this man. The other glanced up at him and was surprised at what he saw.

  ‘You don’t want to let some little swine of a reporter get you down.’ He tossed the paper aside. ‘No one will believe it anyway. Harper’s a contrary blighter, but he’s the last man . . .’

  MacLeish turned away and went across to the window.

  ‘How is Harper taking it?’ the other man asked.

  He did not like Harper and he wanted to hear that he was taking it badly. He did not like him, and yet he could not doubt him. MacLeish felt dry, withered with bitterness. The other man, imagining that his silence was inspired by loyalty, made a few insincere protestations and went out. MacLeish remained by the window staring out across the Embankment with a slightly incredulous look on his face.

  Of course, the stuff in the paper was contemptible; he had been angry when he first read it at breakfast, but he had been convinced that to anyone who knew him it must seem fantastic. The armour of his self-righteousness had still been intact. But now . . . He had always considered himself much superior to his chief as a man of principle; it was a bitter blow to find that to the men who knew them both it was Harper’s integrity which went unquestioned; worse than that, it was Harper’s integrity which now shielded MacLeish. He felt an intense hatred for Harper, as though he had robbed him of his most priceless possession.

  He was still standing by the window when Harper returned. The two men looked at one another. Harper was grey with weariness. MacLeish thought, without pity, that he had never known a case to take so much out of the man. Of the two, Harper was the more dominant personality; now, for the first time, MacLeish sensed weakness. He wished that he understood the weakness, because he felt a furious desire to revenge himself, to find the chink in that once inflexible armour and drive deep.

  ‘This is a fine time to be window-gazing!’ Harper snapped.

  ‘I was reading our press notices.’ In his present mood, MacLeish must inflict pain on himself as well as others.

  ‘Oh those!’

  Harper picked up the papers and dropped them in the wastepaper basket. He sat down at his desk and looked across at MacLeish. MacLeish saw something of his own feelings mirrored in Harper’s face: Harper badly wanted to hit out at someone. MacLeish noticed, too, with the sharpened intuition that unhappiness seemed to have given him, that Harper was trying to fight this particular impulse. Harper collected a few papers into an unnecessarily neat pile, and when he spoke he had ironed the irritation out of his voice.

  ‘Any news of Vickers yet?’

  The mention of Vickers brought a sudden release; MacLeish thought of him with something that was almost joy.

  ‘I’ve got a hunch about Vickers,’ he said. ‘I think I know how to handle him.’

  He began to talk very quickly, hardly knowing what he was saying. Harper watched him dourly, warned by the hint of desperation in his voice. When MacLeish had finished Harper sat quietly for a few moments. MacLeish waited, feeling the blood throb in his wrists, almost unable to bear the strain, imagining that Harper was deliberately playing with him. Harper’s voice sounded stubborn, although not unfriendly, when he said eventually:

  ‘Vickers wants violence and I don’t intend to oblige him. I’m not going to play stage manager in a holocaust of his designing. I want him brought in quietly, legally, without a mark on him. I want him handled as gently as an Aldermaston marcher.’ He looked across at MacLeish. ‘I don’t think you’re the man for that job, do you?’

  MacLeish could barely trust himself to speak, but he managed to force out the words:

  ‘I want to get him.’

  Some of the old mockery came back into Harper’s voice.

  ‘A personal duel? This is the police force, my lad; not Denham studios.’ He made the mistake of adding: ‘If you take things too personally, you’ll have a bad tumble.’

  And MacLeish, seeing his opening at last, thrust hard.

  ‘Aren’t you the one who is personally involved? I want to get Vickers because it’s my job. But you’re concerned with protecting Saneck.’

  Harper was not the man to allow a subordinate to speak to him in that way, but MacLeish was full of a wild recklessness now. He watched the angry flush darken Harper’s face and he waited, almost with longing, for the violence of his anger. But nothing happened. The muscles round Harper’s jaw bunched and his mouth tightened. He looked down at his desk while the colour gradually ebbed from his face. MacLeish watched in amazement, aware of a struggle against violence as intense as his own desire for it. While Harper crouched forward over his desk, MacLeish knew that all the man’s strength was going in
to subduing his temper. It seemed to him incredible that Harper did not intend to hit back; he wondered how far he could go with the man at this moment. When finally Harper spoke, it was as though nothing had passed between them.

  ‘You had better go after Saneck. The last we heard, he was in Hampstead. Grieves can give you particulars.’

  ‘Do you want him handled like an Aldermaston marcher, too?’ The jibe failed to flick a response. Harper answered in a voice that was dry as dust:

  ‘Handle him your own way.’

  MacLeish went out. As he walked down the stairs the exhilaration faded, leaving him uncertain as to whose had been the triumph in this short, bitter battle. He did not go to Grieves, instead he went straight out. He walked slowly away from the Yard. He felt tarnished. The thing that was most important to him had been taken away from him, the image which he had of himself was shattered. He felt the need to avenge himself, wildly, spectacularly, and it was not Saneck who would satisfy that need.

  III

  It was early afternoon and the police had finished in the house. But it would never be the same again. Burglars were bad enough, the loathsome feeling that other hands had been pawing your belongings; but this methodical, calculated searching was worse. As he looked around Jessica’s study Jeremy experienced a shrinking feeling in his flesh as though he himself had been stripped. In fact, he had come uncomfortably near to that, he thought, glancing down at the paper beside him on the couch. ‘Jessica Holt, the writer, sister of Mr. Jeremy Holt, a partner in the firm . . .’ He closed his eyes and pushed the paper to one side. A stop must be put to this before the damage to his reputation was irretrievable.

  ‘They were very polite,’ Jessica said, ‘but terribly efficient.’

  She seemed further away than ever, sitting back in her chair, so still, her face wearing the absorbed expression that over the years he had come to hate so much. Now she is working this out, he thought, examining the experience, analysing her reactions with that pitiless candour which drains all human emotion from her. He gripped the edge of his chair with his hands. There was one evasion of which, despite her honesty, she would always be guilty. But this time, she must not be allowed to get away with it. He waited. She looked across at him and he saw that her eyes were not as calmly reflective as he had imagined; they had the glazed look of a person slowly recovering from shock.

  ‘I feel so bewildered,’ she said. ‘I always thought that the law “took its course” in some other world than mine. Usually, as a writer, I have had an interest in the law-breaker rather than in the law itself – the individual is so much more interesting, I suppose. But now . . .’

  He remained motionless, his eyes cold and angry, while she went on unravelling the tangled skein of her thoughts.

  ‘But now I really have to think about it, I find that it is not as simple as that. Law and order are a part of the fabric of my life, a necessary part. If the structure is weakened, it must be repaired, where it rots it must be renewed. If that doesn’t happen, the whole thing may come down. It’s almost a primitive reaction, a question of survival . . . something to keep out the darkness.’

  He did not answer and she said, almost apologetically:

  ‘You think that sounds very abstruse, I suppose.’ Suddenly she shivered and he realized, in amazement, that she was afraid. ‘You don’t know Ames, if you did you would know what I mean about rottenness.’ Then, after a moment, very softly: ‘And if you knew Vickers, you would understand the darkness.’

  Jeremy began to be afraid, too. This might not be as easy as he had anticipated; it seemed that, after all, something had awakened her.

  ‘And just what do you imagine you can do about Ames and Vickers?’ he asked.

  ‘Very little. But at least I can testify against them. I know enough to prevent Desmond Ames taking the stand as a “police victim.” ’

  A little sigh of relief escaped Jeremy. He stood up.

  ‘Oh, is that all! For a moment I thought that you; had got hold of some really vital information.’ He took a chair and sat down close to her. He spoke slowly, as though he were talking to a sick child:

  ‘Now listen to me, Jessica. The situation is very different now from what it was when we last talked. Then you were in possession of information which might have been important from the security point of view; but now the authorities have all the evidence they need for a conviction. There is nothing of importance that you can add to it. As for these allegations about the treatment of Ames, you needn’t trouble about them. It’s all a part of the game, and policemen have broad shoulders. The thing that you have to do is to get out of the country quickly and stay away until the unpleasantness has died down.’

  She looked at him, in the old, half-pitying way, and said wearily:

  ‘That won’t solve anything, Jeremy. I shall have to face this thing some time or other.’

  A gleam of malevolence brightened his eyes. He said softly:

  ‘Do you realize just what it is you have to face?’

  She looked tired, puzzled, incapable of understanding. He persisted:

  ‘You pride yourself on your honesty. It is important, therefore, that if you are to make this grand gesture you should do it in the full knowledge of what is involved. Don’t you agree?’

  She seemed to shrink from him a little.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘So you are going to face things?’ he said in the same soft, smooth voice. ‘You are going to stay here in this little room and think out your problems, find out what sort of a person you are, what you stand for, define your sense of values, your responsibility as an individual to society. That is the kind of thing you have in mind, no doubt?’

  ‘You make it sound like a crime, Jeremy.’

  ‘Let me tell you something, my dear. You will, in fact, have to think these things out. But not in quite the way you imagine. For once, you will have to forget your reticence, your delicate sensitivity, your hatred of vulgar publicity. You will have to blazen out your views, your actions, your beliefs in a court of law before a gaping gallery and a pack of avid newspaper-men ready to distort every high-minded little phrase. And, what is more, you will have learned counsel to help you – just in case there are certain things you find it rather difficult to talk about in public.’

  She turned her head away and suddenly he leant forward and put his hand under her chin, forcing her to face the light.

  ‘Look at the court, my dear. You aren’t in your own home now, among your own exclusive kind of people. You mustn’t think that special concessions will be made to your shrinking sensitivity. After all, who are you? You are a woman who kept a house in Holland Park – a district not so very far from that sink of iniquity, Notting Hill. You had a Pole for your lodger and you became his mistress. Then, one day, you decided you had had enough of him; perhaps you became bitter – or jealous. You knew a thing or two about him, and all of a sudden it occurred to you that it was your solemn duty as a good citizen to inform on him.’

  ‘No, no!’ She put her hands over her ears, but he forced them down.

  ‘They have a desperately bad case, Vickers and Ames and Saneck. There will be one course open to their counsel – to discredit the prosecution witnesses. And in that respect, my dear, you will be particularly vulnerable to attack. Are you quite so concerned now about the reputation of those worthy policemen?’

  ‘It isn’t true,’ she protested. ‘It won’t be like that.’

  ‘You wanted to face things, didn’t you, Jessica? You are an

  intelligent woman. Can’t you see the picture you will present in court? When they convict Edward Saneck, as most surely they will, you will have helped very materially. There won’t be a woman in the country who won’t feel contempt for you.’

  ‘It’s not true!’ He watched her writhe under his strictures as he had so often writhed under her unspoken criticism; he enjoyed the agitation of the smooth features, the breakdown of that tranquil assurance. ‘I know nothing of Ed
ward’s part in all this,’ she was protesting. ‘Nothing. I shall tell them how much he cared for his wife, how often he wrote to her . . .’

  ‘How corrupt and evil are his associates. Rottenness, darkness. Remember?’

  ‘No . . .’

  ‘You won’t choose the words, Jessica. Counsel for the prosecution will choose them for you. Do you really believe that you can testify against Vickers and Ames without harming Edward?’

  ‘I hadn’t thought about it that way. I hadn’t . . .’

  ‘No! Of course you hadn’t thought of it. You don’t live in that kind of a world, do you, Jessica?’

  He got up and walked across to the bureau. There were some drinks there and he poured out a brandy. It was a rather theatrical gesture; victory was close and he was beginning to savour it.

  ‘And you’ll be finished as a children’s writer. But that need not worry you. Because the Sunday papers will offer you good money for the story of your life with Edward – provided it is sufficiently sordid.’

  When he came back to her she was leaning forward, shuddering violently. He put his arm around her shoulders.