Sir Clinton swung the car into the by-road which Roca indicated.
“And then, by some little accident, the dream turned into a nightmare. Curious, is it not?”
His voice had gradually taken on a tone of irony, as though he wished to guard himself from ridicule by sharing in the jest himself.
“Even now I cannot recall precisely what led up to it. It seems strange, doesn’t it? that one can’t remember the beginning of an affair which changed one’s life. Things happen like that, it appears. Anyhow, Marcelle and I quarrelled over some trifle, some little thing or other. We were both over-sensitive, probably. You know how it is. She broke off our engagement and I was too proud to give in. Things slipped out in anger, of course. They always do. It’s quite common. I must have hurt her feelings badly. She refused to speak to me again—a very ordinary lover’s tiff, as you see. It happens every day.”
He paused again and examined the landscape.
“I think those must be the Bale Stones just round the turn of the road,” he pointed out. “Yes, there they are, on the other side of the hedge. That’s most convenient.”
Sir Clinton pulled up the car and waited for a cue. He was quite prepared to listen to the rest of Roca’s story. A certain stoicism in the man’s voice had touched him during the narrative. No Englishman would have told such a tale to a stranger; but Roca had managed to tell it without alienating sympathy. There was something more than a little pathetic in his attempt to cover his real feelings with a mask of irony; and that saved him from any appearance of lachrymosity.
Roca seemed to overlook Sir Clinton’s tacit offer to hear the rest of the tale immediately. Instead of continuing, he opened the door and stepped out of the car; so Sir Clinton had no choice but to follow him. The doctor walked over to the hedge and inspected the megaliths in what seemed a very casual manner.
“Very interesting,” he commented in a tone which almost suggested boredom.
“I think we can get into the field,” Sir Clinton pointed out. “There’s a gap in the hedge farther down.”
He moved off along the road, and Roca followed him perforce. But when they reached the standing stones, it was evident that Roca’s interest in them was entirely superficial. Sir Clinton, who was always thorough, made a careful inspection of the relic; and, for his own amusement, endeavoured to guess at the uses to which the temple had been put. Roca watched him taking rough bearings of the temple axis and examining the whorl markings on the altar-stone; but the whole affair was obviously of no direct interest to the doctor. When Sir Clinton had satisfied his curiosity, Roca showed no reluctance to return to the car; and soon they were on the road again.
“Suppose we go a bit farther out?” Sir Clinton proposed. “It’s rather early to turn home again.”
He started the engine and then turned to Roca.
“And the rest of your story?”
The doctor nodded, waited till the car was on top gear, and then took up the thread of his narrative where he had dropped it.
“Where was I?” he began. “Oh, yes: I was telling you about that lovers’ quarrel. It was the first we had ever had—and it was the last. She never spoke to me again. She wrote once, but that comes later. I met her in the street and she refused to recognise me. So very ordinary, wasn’t it?”
He glanced at his cigar and, after deliberate consideration, threw away the stub and drew his case from his pocket.
“I forgot to tell you, I think,” he continued, “that Marcelle was a pretty girl—beautiful, in fact. Of course every lover thinks that of his Dulcinea, else why should he desire her? It is by no means remarkable. But it was not to me only that my little Marcelle was beautiful. When we walked together, I saw other men admiring her, and—what is perhaps more significant—I saw admiration in other women’s glances. She was, in fact, what you English call ‘rather out of the common.’ Very pretty, very gentle, and so forth, you understand?
“We quarrelled, and she refused to see me. Both of us were deeply wounded over this trifle which I have forgotten; and each of us was proud. Then another man appeared, a compatriot of my own. It was all so ordinary. She was hurt and angry over our quarrel; her self-respect must have been ruffled by the things I said without meaning to say them. I suppose the other man was cleverer than I, and he caught her ‘on the rebound’ as I have heard it called. It happens so often.
“At last I was worn out with the ache of my longing for her. As you say in your language, I put my pride in my pocket and went to the place where she stayed. I was very full of penitence and ready to do anything if I could only get her back once more. It must have happened thousands of times last year to different people.
“You can imagine me climbing the stairs—she lived on the third floor—and how I felt that each step was bringing me nearer to my dreams again. Very funny, indeed. I rang the bell, and her landlady came to the door. ‘Mademoiselle Marcelle has left here. She was married on Tuesday and has gone away.’
“One does not describe these things, you know. If one’s audience cannot picture them for itself, no description would make them clear. I went away like a man in a nightmare, praying that I might wake up to real life again. I tried to throw myself into my other dream—the great career of usefulness, you remember—but now that dream seemed very faint and small, like a picture away down a long dim gallery. The reality had gone out of it. It never came back.
“I made inquiries in a dull sort of way. One cannot help being curious to know what has happened, after one has been badly shattered. She had, of course, married this compatriot of mine—Ramon Zarrilla was his name; and they had sailed almost immediately for my country. And that was all.
“Time passed. Most men have the strength of mind to get over these things, but I suppose I have less tenacity than the usual run. Or perhaps more tenacity—it’s difficult to say. You are a very good listener, Sir Clinton.”
The late Chief Constable refrained from comment. He could see that it was a case of now or never, and he kept silent lest he should break the chain of thought in Roca’s mind. The doctor glanced at his face, and seemed to be encouraged by its expression.
“Time passed,” Roca went on. “I turned back to my work, but it had now become a mere mechanical task. All the joy had gone out of it. That also is a fairly common experience, I think. Then, at last, there came a letter from Marcelle. There was no address, and from the writing I could see that she was very ill.
“It was another common story—though less common than the rest. After her marriage she and her husband had sailed for the Argentine. They had touched at Montevideo and transhipped there to the Mihanovich. You do not know the Mihanovich, Sir Clinton? She starts about ten o’clock at night. Very gay indeed, the Mihanovich, decked out with illuminations like an Eastern bride with her jewels. She is well known on the Rio del Plata, steaming through the night.
“I have often imagined what happened. It was not in the letter, of course, except for a hint or two. The Mihanovich gets in at eight in the morning. The illuminations have all gone out. It is time to think of everyday life, to plunge into business and leave romance behind. Bread and butter, as you English would say. I picture my little Marcelle there at the rail, beside this husband whom she has taken in a fit of pique, watching Buenos Ayres coming closer and closer. Then the disembarkation on a strange soil, the people about her speaking an unknown tongue, the loneliness creeping on her and making her more and more dependent upon this husband. A drive to a station, tickets procured, which she never sees and which would mean nothing to her even if she had been permitted a glimpse of the name of the station on them. Then a long train journey, another station crowded with an alien people, another taxi, a house. Home at last!”
Roca bit savagely at his cigar, and waited until he could recover control over his voice.
“Home?” he continued. “Well, hardly that, perhaps, unless one calls a prison ‘home.’ You can guess the rest, Sir Clinton. The awakening, the revolt, refusals—then the
‘discipline treatment.’ My little Marcelle learned it all. She was not an easy case for them; she caused them a lot of trouble. But of course the system wins in the end. She was much too valuable a consignment to waste. And so, at last, a shameful surrender. Then, months of the life you know about . . .”
He broke off with a gesture which left the rest to Sir Clinton’s imagination.
“Typhoid released her in the end. She wrote to me from the hospital. I sailed by the next boat, but of course I was too late. She died very soon after she had written her letter to me.”
Roca glanced again at Sir Clinton’s profile, and as he continued his voice took on again the tinge of irony which had faded out during the later part of his narrative.
“I arrived too late. Naturally I made some inquiries, but one learns little. The Centre can afford to pay for people’s silence when it requires it. I made very little fuss—in fact, I posed as an acquaintance of some relation of hers, someone who had only a casual interest in the case at all. I had been thinking hard on the boat, you see. I had nothing else to do, during the voyage.
“There was nothing to be done from the outside. The Centre talks freely enough when you get inside; but it keeps quiet so far as outsiders are concerned. I could pick up nothing of any value. And I meant to get my information by hook or by crook. I owed this Ramon Zarrilla—and others—a debt, and I hoped to pay it in time. Of course he had vanished from the scene almost as soon as he had delivered the article, handed over the Franchucha to her new owners. I could not get on his track from the outside.
“That was how I became 7-DH, Sir Clinton. I knew that the League of Nations was taking a hand in the game. They had an organisation for procuring information—a set of spies, if you like to call it that. Playing a lone hand, I did not see much chance of tracking down the men I wanted to find; but, if I enrolled with the League, I would have the help of their machinery when I wanted it. I would have access to the information which they were gathering together from all quarters. A man working single-handed can do very little with the Centre; but it was different when I came into touch with the League’s people. A bit of news here, a scrap of information picked up yonder: they all began to fit together and help me to work back along the trail which led from the hospital to Paris. The agent 7-DH proved invaluable to Dr. Esteban Roca, I can assure you.
“That was how you happened to come across me in Paris. You see, 7-DH was especially useful because he was a medical man. People will talk to a doctor more freely than to any other kind of man—except a priest, perhaps. And 7-DH was known to be a broken-down doctor who had just missed prison for some affair or other. He’d been just a shade too clever for the police, it appeared. Everyone knew that on the best authority, because 7-DH made rather a boast of it himself. Of course, that case had finished his practice in decent circles; so he had come down a bit in the world and gone among people who weren’t so particular—and so on.”
“You took me in completely when I saw you,” Sir Clinton admitted frankly.
Roca acknowledged this with a gesture.
“I must have been successful,” he said, without a trace of boasting in his manner. “I became quite a valuable character among the group of the Centre. There’s no general organisation of the Centre; but they play into each other’s hands; and with my reputation I got myself passed on from one caftane to another. Who would suspect the broken-down doctor, who was so useful when he wasn’t drunk? Sometimes it was handy for a souteneur or a madame to have a medical who could be called in and who wouldn’t chatter. After my experiences, I can quite imagine that doctors may be useful even in hell. And, of course, through the other people I scraped acquaintance with the group of commissionnaires. They interested me most, naturally. A false marriage is one of their habitual methods for procuring a beefsteak . . .”
“Beefsteak?” Sir Clinton demanded. “Slang, I suppose?”
“Yes. Same thing as ‘article,’ or ‘package’ or ‘remount.’ Argot of that kind is useful when it comes to writing or telegraphing, you understand. I continue. I supposed that I should find my friend Zarrilla among the commissionnaires eventually; but by and by I got on a fresh track. Behind the main machinery of the Centre stood a handful of men—prosperous fellows who seldom take a direct part in the business itself. They do the planning and supply the capital, mainly. My information, bit by bit, began to point in that direction. It was very difficult to get evidence without exciting suspicion; and I took pains to avoid that. It was very slow. These fellows, you understand? are quite well camouflaged. They all have some ostensible business to account for their existence—they are importers, or something of that sort—and their positions would stand a fair amount of examination if it were carried through without definite suspicion at the back of it. My friend Zarrilla was one of that group, apparently.
“It was very slow, oh, so slow. But the other day, quite by chance, I got some information which seemed worth looking into. And, of all places, it pointed to this little village here as the spot where I might learn more. Someone here knew the facts that I wanted to know—after all that time! So I have come across to look for him. And now I run across you, Sir Clinton. It is really a very restricted world.”
“It wasn’t by any chance this man Quevedo who was killed in a motor-smash the other day?” Sir Clinton demanded.
“Quevedo? No, I never knew anyone with that name,” Roca replied.
Sir Clinton scrutinised the doctor’s face, but Roca seemed to attach no importance to the question or the answer. For a few moments there was silence. Then Sir Clinton took the bull by the horns.
“Frankly,” he said, “I can see your point of view. It would be no great loss to the world if your friends of the Centre were quietly put out of it. But bear in mind, Dr. Roca, that the English law has a very long arm and a very firm hand. It doesn’t recognise private revenges. I shouldn’t advise you to run the risk of executing justice on British soil if I thought—well, that the police would catch you at it. Think that over.”
Roca’s smile did not include the expression in his eyes when he acknowledged the advice.
“I take it that our talk has been confidential. Your recognition of me forced my hand, isn’t that true? Otherwise I should hardly have wearied you with my story.”
Sir Clinton had given his warning and saw no reason to labour the point. He was about to dismiss the subject, when a thought struck him.
“Have you any friends in this neighbourhood, Dr. Roca?”
Roca shook his head.
“None among the population, at any rate,” he said. “One of my friends . . .”
He broke off abruptly, as though he had made a slip.
“Is it not time that we were returning to Raynham Parva?” he inquired, as if to cover his mistake.
Sir Clinton had sized up Roca and was quite sure that there was nothing further to be gained by fishing for information. In a short time, he dropped his companion at the Black Bull and turned his car towards Fern Lodge. But as he drove along the street, he was evidently perplexed. An obvious suspicion had lodged itself in his mind, despite the doctor’s denials; and it had grown stronger during the interview.
The murderer of Quevedo had known where to find the jugular vein without fumbling; and Roca was a medical man. The incident by the roadside on the night of his own arrival at Raynham Parva suggested more than a little when it was connected up with the operations of 7-DH. And Roca’s one mistake in the course of the interview threw some light on the possibilities in the case. If Roca had a confederate who nosed out information for him, then the doctor himself need not have appeared at Raynham Parva in order to secure previous knowledge of Quevedo’s movements on that fatal night. And Roca had admitted the existence of a friend whom no one had identified.
“H’m!” Sir Clinton mused. “That doctor’s a cool card; and I can’t say I’d blame him much if he’s taken the law into his own hands. Any man gets outside the normal decencies when he utilises a girl’s
trustfulness in order to trap her and send her down into that hell; and if Roca was keen on this girl, I can’t pretend to condemn his methods too much. Something with boiling oil in it wouldn’t be too harsh treatment for gentry of that sort. All the same, I wish Roca hadn’t made that slip. It’s going to give me a pretty little moral problem to solve in the near future, I’m afraid.”
But a more immediate puzzle was in his mind just then. He could not understand Roca’s behaviour at the Bale Stones. Why had the doctor been so manifestly anxious to visit the monument; and yet, when he reached it, shown not the slightest interest in it? Sir Clinton had no key to the riddle.
Chapter Nine
THE CYPHER TELEGRAM
As he drove along the main street of Raynham Parva, Sir Clinton caught sight of Constable Peel on the pavement; and something tempted him to pull up.
“Well, Peel,” he demanded as the constable came to the side of the car. “How’s the investigation going? Got on the track of your homicidal friend yet?”
Constable Peel seemed uncertain as to how he should take this remark. He glanced dubiously at Sir Clinton, as though not very sure of his ground; but his love of hearing his own voice evidently overcame his scruples almost immediately.
“The sergeant’s working away, sir,” he confided in a slightly acid tone. “But I haven’t seen much in the way of results—and that’s a fact. He’s been out on several wild-goose chases, so far as I know; and that’s about all. This new foreigner here, the one at the Black Bull, he gave him a fine set back, from all I’ve heard.”
“Dr. Roca, you mean?”
“That’s him. Ledbury, he went off to see this doctor; and he came back with a flea in his ear, he did. I saw that for myself. Ledbury didn’t report that conversation in full to me, you may take your oath—I beg pardon, sir! I mean he said nothing about it. But I heard a few things from the Black Bull people. There’s one or two of them that hears a lot more than visitors think.”
Nemesis at Raynham Parva (A Clinton Driffield Mystery) Page 11
