The Only Problem

by Muriel Spark

  There were people behind Harvey. He glanced round and was amazed to see four men facing towards him, not looking at the other pictures as he had expected. Nor were they looking at the painting of Job. They were looking at him, approaching him. At the top of the staircase two other men in police uniform appeared. The keeper looked embarrassed, bewildered. Harvey got up to face them. He realised that, unconsciously, he had been hearing police sirens for some time. With the picture of Job still in his mind’s eye, Harvey had time only to form an abrupt impression before they moved in on him, frisked him, and invited him to descend to the waiting police cars.

  Harvey had time to go over again all the details of the morning, later, in between interrogations. He found it difficult to get the rest of his life into focus; everything seemed to turn on the morning: the time he had stopped at the village shop; the drive to Epinal; the thoughts that had gone through his mind in front of the painting, Job visité par sa femme, at the museum; the moment he was taken to the police car, and driven over the bridge to the commissariat for questioning.

  He answered the questions with lucidity so long as they lasted. On and off, he was interrogated for the rest of the day and half the night.

  ‘No, I’ve never heard of the FLE.’

  ‘Fronte de la Libération de l’Europe. You haven’t heard of it?’

  ‘No, I haven’t heard of it.’

  ‘You know that your wife belongs to this organisation?’

  ‘I don’t know anything about it.’

  ‘There was an armed robbery in a supermarket outside Epinal this morning. You were waiting here to join your wife.’

  ‘I’m separated from my wife. I haven’t seen her for nearly two years.

  ‘It was a coincidence that you were in Epinal this morning visiting a museum while your estranged wife was also in Epinal engaged in an armed robbery?’

  ‘If my wife was in Epinal, yes, it was a coincidence.’

  ‘Is that your English sense of humour?’

  ‘I’m a Canadian.’

  ‘Is it a coincidence that other supermarkets and a jeweller’s shop in the Vosges have been robbed by this gang in the last two weeks? Gérardmer, La Bresse, Baccarat; this morning, Epinal.’

  ‘I don’t read the papers.’

  ‘You bought one this morning.’

  ‘I give no weight to local crimes.’ If Effie’s involved, thought Harvey, plainly she’s in this district to embarrass me. It was essential that he shouldn’t suggest this, for at the same time it would point to Effie’s having directive authority over the gang.

  ‘I still can’t believe that my wife’s involved,’ said Harvey. He partly meant it.

  ‘Three of them, perhaps four. Where are they?’

  ‘I don’t know. You’d better look.’

  ‘You recently bought the château. Why?’

  ‘I thought I might as well. It was convenient.’

  ‘You’ve been a year at the cottage?’

  ‘About a year and a half.’

  ‘How did you find it?’

  ‘I’ve already explained —’

  ‘Explain again.’

  ‘I found the cottage,’ recited Harvey, ‘because I was in the Vosges at that time. I had come here to Epinal expressly to look at the painting Job Visited by His Wife by Georges de La Tour. I had heard through some friends that the château was for sale. I went to look it over. I said I’d think about it, but I was struck by the suitability of the cottage to my needs, and took that on in the meantime. The owner, Claude de Remiremont, let me have it.’

  ‘How much rent do you pay?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ Harvey said. ‘Very little. My lawyer attends to that.’

  (The rich!)

  This interrogator was a man of about Harvey’s age, not more than forty, black hair, blue eyes, a good strong face, tall. A chief-inspector, special branch; no fool. His tone of voice varied. Sometimes he put his questions with the frank lilt of a query at the end; at other times he simply made a statement as if enunciating a proved fact. At the end of the table where they sat facing each other, was a hefty policeman in uniform, older, with sandy hair growing thin and faded. The door of the room opened occasionally, and other men in uniform and ordinary clothes came and went.

  ‘Where did you learn French?’

  ‘I have always spoken French.’

  ‘You have taken part in the French-Canadian liberation movement.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You don’t believe in it?’

  ‘I don’t know anything about it,’ said Harvey. ‘I haven’t lived in Canada since I was eighteen.’

  ‘You say that your wife’s sister has been living with you since last October.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘With a baby.’

  ‘Yes. My wife’s baby daughter.’

  ‘But there was a woman with a baby in your house for a year before that.’

  ‘Not at all. The baby was only born at the end of June last year.’

  ‘There was another infant in your house. We have evidence, M. Gotham, that there was a small child’s washing on the line outside your house at least from April of last year.

  ‘That is so. But there wasn’t any baby, there wasn’t any woman.’

  ‘Look, M. Gotham, it is a simple trick for terrorists to take the precaution, in the case of discovery, to keep a woman and a child in the house in order to avoid a shoot-out. Rather a low and dangerous trick, using a baby as a cover, but people of that nature —’There was no baby at all in my house, nobody but myself,’ Harvey explained patiently. ‘It was a joke — for the benefit of my brother-in-law who came to visit me. I brought some baby clothes and put them out on the line. He obviously thought I had a girl living with me. I only put them out a few times after that. I told my brother-in-law that I did it to keep women from bothering me with offers of domestic care. As they do. They would assume, you see, that there was a woman. I suppose I’m an eccentric. It was a gesture.’

  ‘A gesture.’

  ‘Well, you might say,’ said Harvey, thinking fast how to say it, ‘that it was a surrealistic gesture.’

  The inspector looked at Harvey for rather a long time. Then he left the room and came back with a photograph in his hand. Effie, in half-profile, three years ago, with her hair blowing around.

  ‘Is that your wife?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Harvey. ‘Where did you get this photograph?’

  ‘And the woman you are living with, Ruth, is her sister?’

  ‘Mine Jansen is her sister. Where did you get this photograph of my wife? Have you been ransacking through my papers?’

  The inspector took up the photograph and looked at it. ‘She resembles her sister,’ he said.

  ‘Did you have a search warrant?’ said Harvey.

  ‘You will be free to contact a lawyer as soon as you have answered our questions. I presume you have a lawyer in Paris? He will explain the law to you.

  ‘I have, of course, a French lawyer,’ Harvey said. ‘But I don’t need him at the moment. Waste of money.

  Just then a thought struck him: Oh, God, will they shoot Ruth in mistake for Effie?

  ‘My sister-in-law, Ruth Jansen, is, as you say, very like her sister. She’s caring for the baby of nine months. Be very careful not to confuse them should you come to a confrontation. She has the baby there in the château.’

  ‘We have the baby.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We are taking care of the baby.’

  ‘Where is she?’

  The sandy-faced policeman spoke up. He had a perfectly human smile: ‘I believe she is taking the air in the courtyard. Come and see out of the window.’

  Down in the courtyard among the police cars and motor-bicycles, a large policeman in uniform, but without his hat, whom Harvey recognised as one of those who had escorted him from the museum, was holding Clara in his arms, wrapped up in her woollies; he was jogging her up and down while a young policewoman was talking to her.
Another, younger policeman, in civilian clothes, was also attempting to curry favour with her. Clara had her chubby arms round the large man’s neck, enjoying the attention, fraternising with the police all round.

  ‘Is she getting her feeds?’ said Harvey. ‘I believe she has some special regular feeds that have to be —’

  ‘Mine Jansen is seeing to all that, don’t worry. Let’s proceed.’

  ‘I want to know where Ruth Jansen is,’ said Harvey.

  ‘She’s downstairs, answering some questions. The sooner we proceed with the job the sooner you will be able to join her. Why did you explain your baby clothes to your brother-in-law Edward Jansen in the words, ‘“The police won’t shoot if there’s a baby in the house”?’

  ‘Did I say that?’ said Harvey.

  ‘Mme Jansen has admitted it,’ said the inspector. Admitted it. What had Edward told Ruth, what was Ruth telling them downstairs? But ‘admitted’ was not the same as ‘volunteered’ the information.

  ‘You probably suggested the phrase to her,’ said Harvey. The old police trick: Is it true that he said ‘The police won’t shoot …’?

  ‘Did you or did you not say those words last April when M. Jansen came to see you?’

  ‘If I did it was a joke.’ ‘Surrealism? ‘‘Yes, call it that. ‘‘You are a man of means?’ ‘Oh, yes.

  ‘Somebody is financing the FLE,’ said the inspector.

  ‘But I am not financing it.’

  ‘Why do you live in that shack?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter to me where I work. I’ve told you. All I want is peace of mind. I’m studious.’

  ‘Scholarly,’ said the inspector dreamily.

  ‘No, studious. I can afford to study and speculate without achieving results.’

  The inspector raised his shoulders and exchanged a glance with the sandy-haired policeman. Then he said, ‘Studious, scholarly … Why did you buy the château?’

  ‘It was convenient for me to do so. Mine Jansen thought it desirable for her to have a home for herself and the baby.’

  ‘It isn’t your child.’

  It was Harvey’s turn to shrug. ‘It’s my wife’s child. It makes no difference to me who the father is.’

  ‘The resemblance between your wife and her sister might be very convenient,’ said the inspector.

  ‘I find them quite distinct. The resemblance is superficial. What do you mean — “convenient”?’ Harvey, not quite knowing what the man was getting at, assumed he was implying that an exchange of lovers would be easy for him, the two sisters being, as it were, interchangeable. ‘They are very different,’ said Harvey.

  ‘It would be convenient,’ said the inspector, ‘for two women who resemble each other to be involved in the same criminal organisation. I am just hypothesising, you understand. A question of one being able to provide an alibi for the other; it’s not unknown …’

  ‘My papers are in order,’ Harvey said now, for no reason that was apparent, even to himself.

  The inspector was very polite. ‘You maintain your wife financially, of course.’

  ‘I’ve given her no money since I left her. But if I had, that wouldn’t signify that I was financing a terrorist organisation.’

  ‘Then you know that your wife is an active member of the FLE, and consequently have refused to supply money.

  ‘I never knew of the existence of the FLE until now. I don’t at all know that my wife is a member of the group.

  ‘And you give your wife no money,’ the policeman said.

  ‘No money.

  ‘You knew that she was arrested in Trieste.’

  ‘I didn’t know until the other day. Nobody told me.

  ‘Nobody told you,’ stated the inspector.

  ‘That’s right. Nobody told me. I’m studious, you see. I have arranged for people not to bother me, and they don’t; rather to excess. I think someone should have told me. Not that it would have made any difference.’

  ‘Your wife knows where you live?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You have written to her?’

  ‘No. I left her two years ago. Eventually she found out where I lived.’

  ‘How did she find out?’

  ‘I suppose she got it out of someone. She’s an intelligent woman. I doubt very much she’s mixed up with a terrorist group.

  ‘You must have had some reason to abandon her. Why are you so eager to protect her?’

  ‘Look, I just want to be fair, to answer your questions.’

  ‘We know she’s an activist in the FLE.’

  ‘Well, what exactly have they done?’

  ‘Armed robbery and insurrection in various places. Of recent weeks they’ve been operating in the Vosges. Where are their headquarters?’

  ‘Not in my house. And if my wife is involved in these incidents —which I don’t admit she is — isn’t it possible she has been kidnapped and forced to join this FLE? It’s happened before. The Hearst case in the United States …

  ‘Do you have reason to believe she has been kidnapped?’

  ‘I don’t know. I have no idea. Has anyone been killed, injured, by this group?’

  ‘Injured? But they are armed. They’ve collected a good deal of money, wounded twelve, damaged many millions of francs’ worth of property. They are dangerous. Three men and a girl. The girl is your wife. Who are the others?’

  ‘How should I know? I’ve never heard of the —’Nobody told you.

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘It’s time for lunch,’ said the inspector, looking at his watch; and, as he got up, he said, ‘Can you explain why Nathan Fox disappeared from the château last night?’

  ‘Nathan Fox. Disappeared?’

  ‘Nobody told you.

  ‘No. I left my cottage at nine this morning.’

  ‘Where is Nathan Fox?’ said the inspector, still standing.

  ‘I have no idea. He’s free to come and go … I don’t really know.’

  ‘Well, think it over.’ The inspector left the room.

  Harvey’s cottage was in darkness when he drove back at four in the morning. He was tempted to go in and see what had happened to his papers, his work; had they been careful or had they turned everything upside down? Later, he found everything more or less intact with hardly a sign of a search; he had suspected that at least half the time he was kept for questioning had been for the purpose of giving the police leisure to continue their search at the cottage and the château; much good it had done them.

  He didn’t stop at the cottage that early morning, but drove up to the château. A police car was parked at a bend in the drive. Harvey tooted twice, softly and quickly, as he passed it. Friendly gesture. The light was on in the porch. He let himself in. Ruth came out of the living room in her dressing gown; she had been sleeping on a sofa, waiting for him. ‘They brought us back at half-past six,’ she said. She came to hug him, to kiss him. ‘Are you all right?’ they both said at the same time. Clara was sleeping in her carry-cot.

  The first thing that struck him was the colour in the room. There was nothing new, but after the grey and neutral offices, hour after hour, at the police headquarters, the blue of Ruth’s dressing gown, the flower-patterned yellow sofa, green foliage arranged in a vase, the bright red tartan rug folded over Clara’s cot, made a special impact on his senses. He smiled, almost laughed.

  ‘Do you want to go to bed? Aren’t you tired?’ Ruth said.

  ‘No. I’m wide awake.’

  ‘Me, too.’

  They poured whiskies and sodas. ‘I simply told them the truth,’ Ruth said. She decided she couldn’t face her whisky and took orange juice.

  ‘Me, too. What else could one say?’

  ‘Oh, I know you told them everything,’ Ruth said, ‘I could guess by the questions.

  Harvey quoted, ‘“The police won’t shoot if there’s a baby in the house.”‘

  ‘Yes, why did you bring that up?’ said Ruth. ‘Was it necessary? They’re suspicious enough —’
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  ‘I didn’t suggest it to them.’

  ‘Well, neither did I,’ said Ruth. ‘The inspector asked me if it was true you’d made that remark. I said I believed so. Edward told me, of course —’They’re quite clever,’ Harvey said. ‘How did they treat you?’

  ‘Very polite. They were patient about my au pair French.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘Two plain-clothes men and a glamorous policewoman. Did you see the policewoman?’ said Ruth.

  ‘I saw one, from the window, playing with Clara.’

  ‘They were very decent about Clara.’

  Harvey’s interrogators had been three, one after the other, then starting in the late afternoon with the first again.

  Ruth and Harvey described and identified their respective policemen, and in a euphoric way compared a great many of their experiences of the day, questions and answers. Finally Ruth said, ‘Do you really think Effie’s in it?’

  ‘Up to the neck,’ said Harvey.

  ‘Can you blame them for suspecting us?’

  ‘No. I think, in fact, that Effie has chosen this district specifically to embarrass me.

  ‘So do I.’

  He sat on the sofa beside her, relaxed, with his arm round her. She said, ‘You know, I’m more afraid of Effie than the police.’

  ‘Did you tell them that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did they come and look round the château while you were at the headquarters?’

  ‘I don’t think so, because when they brought me back they asked if they might have a look round. I said, of course. They went all over, attics, cellars, and both towers. Actually, I was quite relieved that they didn’t find anything, or rather anyone. It would be easy to hide in this house, you know.’