Paris Spring

by James Naughtie

  ‘You’re sure that’s all?’ Abel wasn’t letting go.

  ‘There’s the question of loyalty.’

  ‘What she was doing, you mean?’ Abel said.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And what do you think?’

  Flemyng said, ‘I’m trying to believe.’

  ‘That she was mostly still the reporter, working at her trade?’ Abel gave no hint about what he might think.

  ‘She told me she was on to something. A story.’

  ‘What do you believe?’ Abel said.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Flemyng, quietly. His eyes were closed.

  The warmth of La Coupole was far behind them. The lines on his face were dark and deep again, and one hand lay against a shoulder, as if he wanted to go back to work on his scar. Abel leaned across to touch him lightly. ‘You can tell me anything, you know.’

  ‘Can I?’ Flemyng said, looking directly into his eyes. He pushed his glass aside. ‘We both have secrets. We’ll never know everything.’

  Abel said, ‘Sure.’

  ‘Can’t know,’ Flemyng said. ‘Too dangerous.’

  ‘We have to keep some things to ourselves,’ Abel said. ‘We’ve always known that.’

  ‘The deal.’ Flemyng said it as if it were a full stop.

  But Abel went on. ‘Without that, we wouldn’t be who we are.’

  ‘You still think we’re lucky?’ Flemyng said.

  ‘Of course. You too.’

  ‘Most of the time,’ said Flemyng.

  ‘And the rest?’

  ‘I suppose that’s what troubles Mungo.’

  To make the break, he stood up. ‘Excuse me for a minute or two.’ Abel watched him speak to the waiter, then swing downstairs to the lavatory.

  When he came back, the table had been cleared and coffee was poured.

  Flemyng began. ‘You’re right about the streets. I’ve been telling London for weeks. This place is trembling. They’re scared – old men who can’t believe it. Won’t.’

  Abel said that Flemyng had always had an attraction to chaos. ‘So long as it’s not in here,’ he said, putting a finger to his temple.

  ‘Not chaos. The unexpected.’

  ‘The same applies,’ Abel said. ‘Not in your head.’

  ‘I’ve never liked the feeling that I’m losing my bearings. Whereas you…’

  Abel started to laugh.

  ‘… never seem to mind. You’ll fly blind into a storm.’

  ‘I suppose that’s true,’ his brother said. His laughing stopped, and when he caught his brother’s eye he looked as serious as Flemyng.

  *

  Maria had decided to spend the evening alone, but called first at the bureau on the way back to her apartment. A colleague would file about the troubles on the Left Bank, and stay late to update his story for the morning. He was talking to the police on the phone when she walked in, trying to establish a figure for the numbers they had on the streets for whatever the evening might bring, and whether more riot squads were coming, scribbling on a long yellow pad as he listened. She would be lead correspondent on Saturday, and had a word with Jacques, who would keep the office open through the weekend and, unusually, remain at his post. He had established a makeshift larder in the back room, as if for a siege, with four bottles of wine, a bunch of long sausages and salami dangling from a coat hook in a string bag, and a round of ripe cheese, which was already making its presence known. He was reading from a chattering teleprinter with a glass in his hand and a cloud of smoke above him. Blowing another plume, he told Maria without turning that a back-up reporter was on his way from New York. They were ready for whatever the city might deliver.

  She walked away. Kristof was in her mind until she reached home. By the time she climbed to the first floor, Quincy had taken over.

  Opening the door, she put her bag on the settee in the bedroom and, as if preparing for the arrival of a guest, checked each room so that she could settle happily for the night with everything in its place. Nothing seemed wrong. She had learned that, for her, a calm state of mind came from her surroundings. Outside, she was drawn to confusion, but at home there should be order and familiarity. That comfort sustained her. When she had arranged a nest of cushions on the sofa she opened the deep bottom drawer of the desk with a key from her pocket, and took out the brown leather-covered case that Kristof, unwittingly, had brought back to her mind: Quincy’s portable Smith-Corona.

  No one had mentioned its absence and nor had she. Neither Flemyng nor Abel knew it was there, and the police had no reason to suppose that Quincy had visited the apartment in the days before she died. It was hers alone.

  The secret made Maria light-headed.

  Placing the portable on the centre of the desk – she lined it up neatly as if it had to occupy a space that had been prepared for it – she ran a hand over the leather, enjoying the smoothness and then finding the little blemishes and torn corners that spoke of the Smith-Corona’s adventures on the road. The brass zip was strong, and she could see where it had been sewn and repaired to prolong its life and keep everything safe inside. Pulling the zip gently round the sides of the case, she lifted back the upper part to reveal the homely machine, stone-grey with dark-green keys, with only one deep scratch to be seen and a taut ribbon threaded between the spools. On the roller there was an indistinct jumble of inky letters, traces of the last stories Quincy had written, and Maria was visited by a cloud of melancholy.

  She touched the top row of keys, running a finger from q to p. Pushing the silver return lever with her left hand, she slid the carriage easily to the right until the bell rang. The mechanism was smooth, and she could see that Quincy had cared for her machine. The type hammers had been oiled, and a few keys had been replaced. Maria placed her hands on the sides, holding it firmly and feeling its weight as she lifted it an inch or two from the desk.

  As she did so, the typewriter came away from its cocooning case and, by the luck of the light, she saw that in the black lining underneath there was another zip, a thin one that was easy to miss because it was the same colour as the cloth. She stood quite still.

  The lining was attached firmly to the case – it seemed to have been recently sewn in – and she had to fold back a tiny flap on the left-hand side to find the tag for the zip. But when she pulled, it slipped across easily and made an opening. Before pulling the zip all the way, she undid the two clips behind the typewriter and detached the machine from the case, placing it at the back of the desk.

  The giddiness that she had felt on touching the keys had gone. She was conscious of nothing but the empty leather-bound case in front of her and when she pressed her hand on the lining she felt the outline of something inside. She knew that it was a thin sheaf of paper, lodged neatly in the pocket of the lining. When the case was closed there was no sign that it contained anything but a sapphire-grey Smith-Corona Super-5, manufactured in Groton, NY, robust companion to a generation of reporters, with a scuffed label underneath that marked it as the property of Grace Quincy, giving the phone number of the magazine where she kept a desk in New York. Maria began to move with a slowness that gave weight to every one of the few seconds it took her to open the pocket she had found.

  Pulling the zip fastener carefully as far as it would go to the right, she slid her hand inside. The sheets were rough, like the copy paper piled up around her own office that rolled out of the wire-service teleprinters. Using both hands she eased out the pages that were inside the case. Trying not to look at them too soon, she turned away from the desk and took a few steps towards the low table and her nest of cushions. There was no scramble, no rush. She was in slow-motion.

  The room was quiet. The Friday-night traffic seemed to have melted away. She could hear the clock in the hall, and little else.

  Taking the cache of paper, she separated the sheets with care, laying them in sequence on the table. There were ten.

  With deliberation, she rose, went to the kitchen and poured herself a glass
of white wine. She locked the front door of her apartment and removed the key. Returning to the table, she looked at what lay before her – some typed paragraphs and lists, and pages of pencilled notes in Quincy’s handwriting. There were a number of French names, notes of arrangements for meetings, and she saw from the three pages written in German that Quincy must have been a fluent speaker, which Maria wasn’t. One sheet consisted of a drawing – a pencil caricature of Quincy - which she put to one side.

  She closed her eyes.

  Then, forcing herself to take it slowly, Maria began to read.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  ‘I hope you remember that Will Flemyng and I have history.’

  Freddy Craven raised his champagne glass. ‘Certainly, Pierce.’

  ‘A good one, broadly speaking,’ said Bridger. ‘Boy Scouts together, as it were. It compounds my distress.’

  They were alone on Bridger’s terrace, Craven leaning on the balustrade and looking into the sun. It was just after one o’clock, the Sunday traffic building up beneath them and the surface of the river in the distance alive with streams of light. The skyline was sharp and bright. Craven wore a white jacket with a yellow handkerchief in his breast pocket, a spotted blue cravat that tumbled out of his shirt, and rumpled trousers that didn’t match, but he had shoes well polished enough to suggest that he might still be a man about town. ‘Will has often spoken about you,’ he said. ‘We’ve knocked around a little, as you know.’

  ‘Vienna, Berlin and so forth,’ Bridger said.

  ‘World’s end,’ Craven replied.

  But Bridger was in head of chancery mode and, although just back from church with the ambassador and with a glass in his hand, not willing to let the conversation float away. ‘It’s where we are now that concerns me.’

  ‘Me too,’ Craven said, as if he wanted to be helpful.

  ‘This is an affair with no shape, a pudding without a theme. Except that our embassy is under threat.’

  ‘Steady on, Pierce. Strange goings-on, a background noise from the streets. But threat?’

  ‘I chose the word with care,’ Bridger said. ‘First of all, there is a murder investigation in which you and Flemyng have turned up, God knows why. And secondly, your number two has unleashed the dogs in London with his talk of leaks and shadowy networks. Freddy, we’re being watched.’

  ‘By our own side, so you think that’s worse,’ Craven said.

  ‘I am commanded to keep this place shipshape and that is what I shall do.’

  Perhaps because he realized that he might start an argument with the old man, and in his own sitting room, Bridger stayed quiet for a moment and dropped his voice.

  ‘Freddy, can you help?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ Craven said.

  Bridger counted out his problems on his fingers. ‘We have the business of Grace Quincy and the unfortunate connection with the embassy, however loose it may be. Bolder’s rumour-mongering has frightened the horses, I can tell you, and, just to add spice, we have our lords’ and masters’ belated interest in the bloody streets of Paris. They’re looking our way. In normal times, I would cry hallelujah, because we’re at the centre of things. But we’re swimming in uncertainty. There is no pattern I can see, and I hate it. I sense a crisis but can’t describe it. Murder, Freddy, is not my business.’

  Craven watched a man struggling for handholds in a storm.

  ‘I am in the same position,’ he said.

  He kept an arm attached to the iron rail as he turned around, conscious of his frailty, and made a point of meeting the gaze of Bridger, who was turned out for parade and hadn’t loosened his tie or cast his jacket since morning service. Craven acknowledged to himself that he played the part well. His blond hair was turning gold at the right time, and he looked fit in his tall frame. His smooth-skinned face retained its charm, his blue eyes full of life, and the cut of his jaw was sharp. His voice was musical, never sounding off-key, and he moved with grace despite his bulk. If I went to Harrods and asked for an ambassador, Craven thought, they might well come up with Pierce Bridger.

  ‘I share your discomfort,’ he said, to begin.

  ‘A crisis usually unfolds piece by piece. Snakes and ladders, really. You jump ahead, then slide back down, but you have to press on. This is different, because there’s no path to follow. And we have a tumult out there, around us, that makes it even more difficult. We can’t know whether we’re dealing with a difficulty of our own making, inside ourselves – have we missed something, taken a wrong turning? – or if this wildness in the streets has thrown everyone off balance. Priority telegrams from every embassy you can name, telling the same story. Everyone’s confused. So we tell stories to make sense of the world. It’s what men always do. And we have to remind ourselves that they may not be true.’

  Bridger said that, as the younger man, he was affected by Craven’s observation. ‘My problem is, Freddy, that I have to know what the embassy faces. Danger? A leak? Something in the papers? A murder inquiry that comes to our door? I know a crisis when I feel one.’

  Craven stepped away from the rail. He could sense the tension in the man. ‘You’ve summed it up rather well, my boy, if I may say so. All I’m trying to do is to walk through all this trouble, pick up such information as I can along the way and discard all that is irrelevant or wrong. What’s left will lead us to the truth.’

  Bridger drained his glass. ‘Ariadne and her bloody thread.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Craven. ‘I’m holding on like billy-o.’

  He thought back to the arrival of Bridger’s invitation late the previous day, delivered by Wemyss, who explained unnecessarily that Craven’s apartment was on his route home. He had spent Saturday morning with the ambassador concocting an assessment of the troubles, and had been assigned by Bridger to be messenger. ‘We must talk,’ the handwritten note had said. ‘Grizelda will conjure up lunch, but she will let us have time to ourselves.’ Wemyss said he would pass on the reply, and Craven said he would be with the Bridgers, on time, by one.

  He had risen earlier than usual on Sunday, lifted by the flow of events that seemed to him to be moving towards a climax, however mysteriously, and walked along the river for refreshment. There was a cascade of bells on the hour, and he wondered if Flemyng had taken himself to church. Craven never did, except on embassy parade, but he had always had a touch of envy for Flemyng’s easy Catholicism, which seemed to come and go with the seasons but persisted as background music that never quite stopped. ‘When I go to church, which isn’t terribly often, I never feel on duty,’ he had told Craven more than once. ‘I’m not under orders, just tuning in.’ Craven suspected this might be one of his Sundays.

  He had taken time over his coffee and the newspapers at the café where he had a regular table, piecing together the story that Bridger would try to get out of him.

  Now, at the Bridger home, a sharp note had been sounded from the beginning. ‘Freddy,’ he had said as he poured the first glass, ‘we are on different sides of the shop. No one understands that better than I do. But on this one there is a need for frankness.’

  Having raised his shared history with Flemyng, making it sound like a guarantee of propriety, he said he realized Flemyng had been shaken by Quincy’s death. ‘And I may tell you, that event is the cause of considerable agitation in London, personified by Ingleby on the European desk. He’s panting like a bitch on heat.’

  ‘And you can’t satisfy him?’ Craven said.

  Bridger smiled. ‘That’s beyond my capacity, Freddy. I need your help.’

  Turning inside again, he led Craven by the arm to one of two deep sofas facing each other in front of the fireplace. They sat across a shiny lacquered table on which Grizelda had placed another bottle in a silver ice bucket, and could see each other’s reflection against its painted forests of bamboo. She waved from the door as they came in, then disappeared, closing it quietly behind her.

  ‘The reason for the disturbance is that London is aware of our connection
with this murder. Remote, as we hope, but a link nonetheless. They know, of course, that Flemyng had lunch with her the day before her death – when he told me, you can imagine how I felt. Concerned. You will appreciate that I simply had to dictate the note I copied to you. I couldn’t let it lie. I hope you agree that it was written in a way that would limit interest in London.’

  Craven said nothing, and Bridger ploughed on.

  ‘I had to admit that the police had found reason to inquire about him, and about you, because your names had been found in her things. Naturally, that has caused concern because of your positions here, which has no doubt found its way to high places. Unfortunate all round, because her death is also a matter of comment in the public prints. They get excited about one of their own. If the embassy were mentioned, there would be all hell to pay. Edward Abbott – whom I’ve known for some years, I should say, and who has some standing – wrote about her death last week. Responsibly, I must say.’

  ‘And again today,’ said Craven, who had read an airmail edition of one of the London papers at the café.

  ‘My point exactly,’ Bridger said. ‘Keeps the pot boiling.’

  ‘He had nothing new to say, you’ll be pleased to know,’ Craven said.

  But Bridger had reached his cruising speed, and wasn’t slowing down. ‘On its own, the fact that we’re part of a murder investigation might be manageable, even with Flemyng wandering around cemeteries, at the dead of night for all I know. But I’ve also got the residue of Bolder’s mess to clean up. Why didn’t he stay south of the river in that ghastly new tower block of yours instead of blundering around? They ask me if he’s right that there’s a network feeding material to the Russians that we know nothing about, which is what he seems to be hinting, or if he’s just blethering. How do I choose? And let me tell you where it leaves us.

  ‘I have an embassy in which two members of this station are on police files in a murder inquiry, and the other is peddling stories without anything to back them up, and may be a fantasist. Stirring up a potential hornets’ nest with the French, just when they’ve got themselves in a terrible stew, and all our energy is required to keep up with politics here, a contagion that is spreading to London. God save us, Freddy.’