The Ebony Tower-Short Stories - John Fowles

by John Fowles

  1. Suicide. No body. No predisposition, no present reason.

  2. Murder. No body. No evidence of private enemies. political ones would have claimed responsibility publicly.

  3. Abduction. No follow-through by abductors. No reason why Fielding in particular.

  4. Amnesia. They're just lost, not hiding. Doctors say no prior evidence, not the type.

  5. Under threat to life. No evidence. Would have called in police at once, on past evidence.

  6. Threat of blackmail. No evidence of fraud or tax-dodging. No evidence of sexual misbehaviour.

  7. Fed up with present life. No evidence. No financial or family problems. Strong sense of social duties all through career. Legal mind, not a joker.

  8. Timing. Advantage taken of Parsons's afternoon off (warning given ten days prior) suggests deliberate plan? But F. could have given himself longer by cancelling board meeting and one with agent--or giving Parsons whole day off. Therefore four hours was enough, assuming police brought in at earliest likely point, the 6.35 failure to turn up for his surgery. Therefore long planned? Able to put into action at short notice?

  The sergeant then wrote a second heading: Wild Ones.

  9. Love. Some girl or woman unknown. Would have to be more than sex. For some reason socially disastrous (married, class, colour)? Check other missing persons that period.

  10. Homosexuality. No evidence at all.

  11. Paranoia. Some imagined threat. No evidence in prior behaviour.

  12. Ghost from the past. Some scandal before his marriage, some enemy made during wartime or legal phases of career? No evidence, but check.

  13. Finances. Most likely way he would have set up secret account abroad?

  14. Fox-hunting kick. Some parallel, identification with fox. Leaving hounds lost? But why?

  15. Bust marriage. Some kind of revenge on wife. Check she hasn't been having it off?

  16. Religious crisis. Mild C of E for the show of it. Zero probability.

  17. Something hush-hush abroad to do with his being an M.P. But not a muck-raker or cloak-and-dagger type. Strong sense of protocol, would have consulted the F.O., at least warned his wife. Forget it.

  18. Son. Doesn't fit. See him again.

  19. Logistics. Total disappearance not one-man operation. Must have hide-out, someone to buy food, watch for him, etc.

  20. Must be some circumstantial clue somewhere. Something he said some time to someone. Parsons more likely than wife? Try his Westminster and City friends.

  After some time the sergeant scrawled a further two words, one of which was obscene, in capitals at the bottom of his analysis.

  He began the following week with Miss Parsons. The daughters, Francesca and Caroline, had returned respectively from a villa near Malaga and a yacht in Greece and the whole family was now down at Tetbury Hall. Miss Parsons was left to hold the fort in London. The sergeant took her once more through the Friday morning of the disappearance. Mr Fielding had dictated some fifteen routine letters, then done paperwork on his own while she typed them out. He had made a call to his stockbroker; and no others to her knowledge. He had spent most of the morning in the drawing-room of the flat; not gone out at all. She had left the flat for less than half an hour, to buy some sandwiches at a delicatessen near Sloane Square. She had returned just after one, made coffee and taken her employer in the sandwiches he had ordered. Such impromptu lunches were quite normal on a Friday. He seemed in no way changed from when she had gone out. They had talked of her weekend in Hastings. He had said he was looking forward to his own, for once with no weekend guests, at Tetbury Hall. She had been with him so long that their relationship was very informal. All the family called her simply 'P'. She had often stayed at the Hall. She supposed she was 'half-nanny' as well as secretary.

  The sergeant found he had to tread very lightly indeed when it came to delving into Fielding's past. 'P' proved to be fiercely protective of her boss's good name, both in his legal and his political phases. The sergeant cynically and secretly thought that there were more ways of breaking the law, especially in the City, than simply the letter of it; and Fielding had been formidably well equipped to buccaneer on the lee side. Yet she was adamant about foreign accounts. Mr Fielding had no sympathy with tax-haven tricksters--his view of the Lonrho affair, the other Tory scandal of that year, had been identical to that of his prime minister's. Such goings-on were 'the unacceptable face of capitalism' to him as well. But at least, insinuated the sergeant gently, if he had wanted to set up a secret account abroad, he had the know-how? But there he offended secretarial pride. She knew as much of Mr Fielding's financial affairs and resources as he did himself. It was simply not possible.

  With the sexual possibilities, the sergeant ran into an even more granite-like wall. She had categorically denied all knowledge before, she had nothing further to add. Mr Fielding was the last man to indulge in a hole-in-the-corner liaison. He had far too much self-respect. Jennings changed his tack.

  'Did he say anything that Friday morning about the dinner the previous evening with his son?'

  'He mentioned it. He knows I'm very fond of the children.'

  'In happy terms?'

  'Of course.'

  'But they don't see eye to eye politically?'

  'My dear young man, they're father and son. Oh they've had arguments. Mr Fielding used to joke about it. He knew it was simply a passing phase. He told me once he was rather the same at Peter's age. I know for a fact that he very nearly voted Labour in 1945.'

  'He gave no indication of any bitterness, quarrel, that Thursday evening?'

  'Not in the least. He said Peter looked well. What a charming girl his new friend was. ' She added, 'I think he was a tiny hit disappointed they weren't going down to the Hall for the week. end. But he expected his children to lead their own lives.'

  'So he wasn't disappointed by the way Peter had turned out?'

  'Good heavens no. He's done quite brilliantly. Academically.'

  'But hardly following in his father's footsteps?'

  'Everyone seems to think Mr Fielding was some kind of Victorian tyrant. He's a most broad-minded man.'

  The sergeant smiled. 'Who's everyone, Miss Parsons?'

  'Your superior, anyway. He asked me all these same questions.'

  The sergeant tried soft soap: no one knew Mr Fielding better, she really was their best lead.

  'One's racked one's brains. Naturally. But Jean still hardly believe what's happened. And as for trying to find a reason 'An inspired guess?' He smiled again.

  She looked down at the hands clasped over her lap. 'Well. He did drive himself very hard.'

  'And?'

  'Perhaps something in him... I really shouldn't be saying this. It's the purest speculation.'

  'It may help.'

  'Well, if something broke. He ran away. I'm sure he'd have realized what he had done in a very few days. But then, he did set himself such very high standards, perhaps he would have read all the newspaper reports. I think 'Yes?'

  'I'm only guessing, but I suppose he might have been deeply shocked at his own behaviour. And I'm not quite sure what...'

  'Are you saying he might have killed himself?'

  Evidently she was, though she shook her head. 'I don't know, I simply don't know. I feel so certain it was something done without warning. Preparation. Mr Fielding was a great believer in order. In proper channels. It was so very uncharacteristic of him. The method, I mean the way he did it. If he did do it., 'Except it worked? If he did mean it to?'

  'He couldn't have done it of his own free will. In his normal mind. It's unthinkable.'

  Just for a moment the sergeant sensed a blandness, an impermeability in Miss Parsons, which was perhaps merely a realization that she would have done anything for Fielding--including the telling, at this juncture, of endless lies. There must have been something sexual in her regard for him, yet there was, quite besides her age, in her physical presence, in the rather dumpy body, the pursed mouth, the s
pectacles, the discreetly professional clothes of the lifelong spinster secretary, such a total absence of attractiveness (however far back one imagined her, and even if there had once been something between her and her employer, it would surely by now have bred malice rather than this fidelity) that made such suspicions die almost as soon as they came to mind. However, perhaps they did faintly colour the sergeant's next question.

  'How did he usually spend free evenings here? When Mrs Fielding was down in the country?'

  'The usual things. His club. He was rather keen on the theatre. He dined out a lot with friends. He enjoyed an occasional game of bridge.'

  'He didn't gamble at all?'

  'An occasional flutter. The Derby and the Grand National. Nothing more.'

  'Not gaming clubs?'

  'I'm quite sure not.'

  The sergeant went on with the questioning, always probing towards some weak point, something shameful, however remote, and arrived nowhere. He went away only with that vague hint of an overworked man and the implausible notion that after a moment of weakness he had promptly committed hara-kiri. Jennings had a suspicion that Miss Parsons had told him what she wanted to have happened rather than what she secretly believed. The thought of a discreetly dead employer was more acceptable than the horror of one bewitched by a chit of a girl or tarred by some other shameful scandal.

  While he was at the flat, he also saw the daily woman. She added nothing. She had never found evidence of some unknown person having slept there; no scraps of underclothes, no glasses smudged with lipstick, no unexplained pair of coffee-cups on the kitchen table. Mr Fielding was a gentleman, she said. Whether that meant gentlemen always remove the evidence or never give occasion for it in the first place, the sergeant was not quite sure.

  He still favoured, perhaps because so many of the photographs suggested an intensity (strange how few of them showed Fielding with a smile) that gave also a hint of repressed sensuality, some kind of sexual-romantic solution. A slim, cleanshaven man of above average height, who evidently dressed with care even in his informal moments, Fielding could hardly have repelled women. For just a few minutes, one day, the sergeant thought he had struck oil in this barren desert. He had been checking the list of other persons reported missing over that first weekend. A detail concerning one case, a West Indian secretary who lived with her parents in Notting Hill, rang a sharp bell. Fielding had been on the board of the insurance company at whose London headquarters the girl had been working. The nineteen-year-old sounded reasonably well educated, her father was a social worker. Jennings saw the kind of coup every detective dreams of--Fielding, who had not been a Powellite, intercepted on his way to a board meeting, invited to some community centre do by the girl on behalf of her father, falling for black cheek in both senses... castles in Spain. A single call revealed that the girl had been traced--or rather had herself stopped all search a few days after disappearing. She fancied herself as a singer, and had run away with a guitarist from a West Indian club in Bristol. It was strictly black to black.

  With City friends and Parliamentary colleagues--or what few had not departed for their holidays--Jennings did no better. The City men respected Fielding's acumen and legal knowledge. The politicians gave the impression, rather like Miss Parsons, that he was a better man than any of them--a top-class rural constituency member, sound party man, always well-briefed when he spoke, very pleasant fellow, very reliable... they were uniformly at sea over what had happened. Not one could recall any prior hint of a breakdown. The vital psychological clue remained as elusive as ever.

  Only one M. P. was a little more forthcoming--a Labour maverick, who had by chance co-sponsored a non-party bill with Fielding a year previously. He had struck up some kind of working friendship, at least in the precincts of the House. He disclaimed all knowledge of Fielding's life outside, or of his reasons for 'doing a bunk'; but then he added that 'it figured, in a way'.

  The sergeant asked why.

  'Strictly off the record.'

  'Of course, sir.'

  'You know. Kept himself on too tight a rein. Still waters and all that. Something had to give.'

  'I'm not quite with you, sir.'

  'Oh come on, laddie. Your job must have taught you no one's perfect. Or not the way our friend tried to be. ' He expanded. 'Some Tories are prigs, some are selfish bastards. He wanted to be both. A rich man on the grab and a pillar of the community. In this day and age. Of course it doesn't wash. He wasn't all that much of a fool. ' The M. P. drily quizzed the sergeant. 'Ever wondered why he didn't get on here?'

  'I didn't realize he didn't, sir.'

  'Safe seat. Well run. Never in bad odour with his whips. But that's not what it's all about, my son. He didn't fool 'em where it matters. The Commons is like an animal. You either learn to handle it. Or you don't. Our friend hadn't a clue. He knew it. He admitted it to me once.'

  'Why was that, sir?'

  The Labour M. P. opened his hands. 'The old common touch? He couldn't unbend. Too like the swindler's best friend he used to be.' He sniffed. 'Alias distinguished tax counsel.'

  'You're suggesting he cracked in some way?'

  'Maybe he just cracked in the other sense. Decided to tell the first good joke of his life.'

  Jennings smiled; and played na•ve.

  'Let me get this right, sir. You think he was disillusioned with Tory politics?'

  The Labour M. P. gave a little grunt of amusement.

  'Now you're asking for human feeling. I don't think he had much. I'd say just bored. With the whole bloody shoot. The House, the City, playing Lord Bountiful to the yokels. He just wanted out. Me, I wish him good luck. May his example be copied.'

  'With respect, sir, none of his family or close friends seem to have noticed this.'

  The M. P. smiled. 'Surprise, surprise.'

  'They were part of it?'

  The M. P. put his tongue in his cheek. Then he winked.

  'Not a bad-looking bloke, either.'

  'Cherchez la femme?'

  'We've got a little book going. My money's on Eve. Pure guess, mind.'

  And it really was a guess. He had no evidence at all. The M. P. concerned was a far more widely known figure than Fielding a pugnacious showman as well as professional Tory-hater--and hardly a reliable observer. Yet he had suggested one thwarted ambition; and enemies do sometimes see further than friends.

  Jennings next saw the person he had marked down as theoretically a key witness--not least since he also sounded an enemy, though where friend was to be expected. That was the son, Peter. The sergeant had had access to a file that does not officially exist. It had very little to say about Peter; little more indeed than to mention who he was the son of. He was noted as 'vaguely NL (New Left)'; 'more emotional than intellectual interest, long way from hardcore'. The 'Temporary pink?' with which the brief note on him ended had, in the odd manner of those so dedicated to the anti-socialist cause that they are prepared to spy for it (that is, outwardly adopt the cause they hate), a distinct air of genuine Marxist contempt.

  The sergeant met Peter one day at the Knightsbridge flat. He had something of his father's tall good looks, and the same apparent difficulty in smiling. He was rather ostentatiously contemptuous of the plush surroundings of the flat; and clearly impatient at having to waste time going over the same old story.

  Jennings himself was virtually apolitical. He shared the general (and his father's) view that the police got a better deal under a Conservative government, and he despised Wilson. But he didn't like Heath much better. Much more than he hated either party he hated the general charade of politics, the lying and covering-up that went on, the petty point-scoring. On the other hand he was not quite the fascist pig he very soon sensed that Peter took him for. He had a notion of due process, of justice, even if it had never been really put to the test; and he positively disliked the physical side of police work, the cases of outright brutality he had heard gossip about and once or twice witnessed. Essentially he saw life
as a game, which one played principally for oneself and only incidentally out of some sense of duty. Being on the law's side was a part of the rules, not a moral imperative. So he disliked Peter from the start less for political reasons than for all kinds of vague social and gamesplaying ones... as one hates an opponent paradoxically both for unfairly taken and inefficiently exploited advantages. Jennings himself would have used the simple word 'phony'. He did not distinguish between an acquired left-wing contempt for the police and a hereditary class one. He just saw a contempt; and knew much better than the young man opposite him how to hide such a feeling.

  The Thursday evening 'supper' had arisen quite casually. Peter had telephoned his father about six to say that he wouldn't be coming home that weekend after all. His father had suggested they had a meal together that evening, to bring Isobel along. Fielding wanted an early night, it was only for a couple of hours. They had taken him to a new kebab-house in Charlotte Street. He liked 'slumming' with them occasionally, eating out like that was nothing new. He had seemed perfectly normal his 'usual urbane man-of-the-world act'. They had given up arguing the toss about politics 'years ago'. They had talked family things. About Watergate. His father had taken The Times line on Nixon (that he was being unfairly impeached by proxy), but didn't try seriously to defend the White House administration. Isobel had talked about her sister, who had married a would-be and meanwhile impoverished French film director and was shortly expecting a baby. The horrors of a cross-channel confinement had amused Fielding. They hadn't talked about anything seriously, there had been absolutely no hint of what was to happen the next day. They had all left together about ten. His father had found a taxi (and had returned straight home, as the night porter had earlier borne witness) and they had gone on to a late film in Oxford Street. There had been no suggestion of a final farewell when they said good night to him.