The Little Walls by Winston Graham

  ‘‘I seem to have heard that before.’’

  ‘‘Well, it’s true.’’

  ‘‘If I left this as it is now, I shouldn’t be a very happy companion to myself.’’

  ‘‘I don’t know that. But——’’

  ‘‘Do you believe this Buckingham is a dangerous man?’’

  ‘‘In a way … Very.’’

  ‘‘According to what you tell me, you couldn’t betray him if you wanted to—because you’ve no idea what happened. All you could tell me is his real identity—is that it?’’

  ‘‘Yes, but that would lead to much more.’’

  ‘‘Perhaps in some ways I already know more about him than you. The name Buckingham isn’t new. He’s been in scrapes under the same name before. And unpleasant scrapes, the sort that leave a bad flavour in the mouth … Leonie, it’s your turn to believe me now. I’m not lying to you.’’

  She looked at me. ‘‘No, Philip, I didn’t suppose you were.’’

  ‘‘You didn’t know that, though?’’

  ‘‘Not in so many words. But I never supposed his past to be blameless.’’

  ‘‘It’s probable he’s a murderer. You realise that?’’

  She put her swim-suit on the seat beside her, folded it, didn’t speak.

  I said: ‘‘Yet you still shield him.’’

  ‘‘If that’s what you call it.’’

  ‘‘Well, what do you call it?’’

  She said: ‘‘Stop it, Philip, stop it! I’ve told you as much as I can. If you want to call in the police, then call them in. They won’t learn any more from me. I can’t say any more. I can’t!’’

  Her lips were quivering.

  ‘‘All right,’’ I said. ‘‘Leave it at that. There’s just one last thing I want to ask, but you needn’t answer if you don’t want. Do you still care about him?’’

  After a pause so long I thought she’d given up, she said: ‘‘Yes, I still care about him.’’

  When I got back to the hotel there was a letter for me from Java which had been forwarded on. I expected it was from Pangkal, but I shoved it in my pocket unopened and went in to Martin’s room to find him just finishing his breakfast. Between mouthfuls he was jotting down notes or something on the back fly-leaf of his Cervantes.

  I was feeling pretty low.

  When I had explained what had happened he shut the book and put his pencil away. His chair scraped on the bare floor as he pushed it sharply in and went to the window. He said sombrely: ‘‘God knows, I wonder if we’re not wasting our time here. What truth can we get out of either of them if they don’t want to talk?’’

  ‘‘We’ll see about that.’’

  ‘‘The threat of the police won’t cut much ice. You know, it still seems to me that if there is anything to be made out of this mess it will be in Holland. I can’t get away from it. Your brother’s death took place on Jodenbree’s doorstep. On his doorstep——’’

  ‘‘We may finish up there yet. We’ve got to tidy up this end first’’

  The morning was perfect after the storm. The curious effect of getting up very early once in a while is to add another complete period to the day. I let Martin go on to the beach because I had to call at the bank about my dollars, and even then I was down on the beach myself by eleven-thirty.

  I went to our usual spot and saw da Cossa lying sunbathing with Jane, out there was no sign of the others. I stopped some distance from the sun-bathers, but Jane heard the crunch of stones and raised her head and coo-eed. I waved, back and made gestures to say I would join them later, having no intention of doing so. Da Cossa had looked up but made no welcoming sign.

  I suddenly spotted Martin and Leonie sitting on some rocks across the bay. They had evidently just swum there, because you could see their skins glistening. I stripped to bathing-trunks but decided not to join them. Perhaps he might in some roundabout way get information out of her that I’d failed to get. I didn’t put it beyond him.

  I lay back for a bit, letting the sun soak in. I felt rotten inside, and tried to persuade myself that it was entirely because I was making so little progress in what I’d come about. Most things I did seemed to block their own exits.

  Perhaps I was taking too much on myself. If there was good in the world it wasn’t my sacred mission to preserve it; if there was evil I was not born to root it out. The universe would continue on its usual messy disunified course without caring twopence for the moralities, and I had best give up trying to make a unity of it. Rather irrelevantly it seemed to me then that I always either asked too much or gave too little. At selling jet engines or helping Arnold I would get by because I was fitting into a ready-made groove like millions of other people, not trying to organise a world of his own, as a true artist must.

  Leonie had said twice that I had my own life to live. But what exactly was my own life? What were my own concerns? San Francisco and the Midlands seemed equally remote, and what went on there shallow and unreal. This thing had come to stand across my life—all of it, Grevil and Buckingham, and now Leonie—and now Leonie—so that everything else was overshadowed.

  After a bit the sun seemed to relax things, and I half dozed, glad to forget the disappointments and the failures. I dreamt I was on a beach in England, and staring into a pool in which the depth and the colours constantly changed. After a time I thought it was Leonie’s eyes and I could hear her voice saying: ‘‘If I could bring your brother to life again. But I can’t, I can’t. He’s still in that Dutch canal.’’ And now I could see Grevil’s body floating in the depths of the pool. I stirred suddenly and looked up from the pool, and saw Grevil walking towards, me across the sand, but instead of his feet making no sound there was the steady crunch as of breaking bones. I sat up, really awake this time, and saw a tall Italian woman who had passed close beside me, her feet rattling the pebbles.

  The scene hadn’t changed. The sun-bathers had not altered their positions. Leonie and Martin were still sitting on the rocks. I remembered the letter from Java and fished it out of my pocket. It was from Dr. Pangkal, in answer to the letter I had written him from Holland. Still a bit drowsy, I began to read it.

  ‘‘Dear Sir,

  ‘‘I thank you for your letter reaching me recently. The death of your honourable brother will have brought grief upon all who knew him. So it has upon me, and I submit condolences to you and to your family. A noble man in whose name research will continue.

  ‘‘You question me in some length referring to Mr. Jack Buckingham who helped him during my lamentable disease. I append hereunder such information as I can submit to you. I should say that I have already faced police inquiries emanating from Amsterdam, but these have lacked goodwill on both sides.

  ‘‘Mr. Buckingham joined our party since four days in advance of my illness, and these days were all that I saw of him. Your honourable brother met him in the home of a Dutch planter in Surabaya, and they returned together I to our camp, where my first meeting was with him. He came without gear, his explanation was that he had lost his ship in a tropical storm off the coast and is alone the survivor. His manners are full of goodwill and grace and he tells of matters archæological in enthusiasm and intelligent fashion. In this he is an amateur and has not any of the learning of Dr. Turner, but his knowledge is widespread in the field, from Toltecs to Tiryns and from Indonesia to Easter Island.

  ‘‘But what they talk of thatiirst night, and long into the night, for I hear it through to where I sleep, is Mr. Buckingham’s claim of having found fossils in Urtini river-bed 30 miles south of Trinil site. He is not able to convince me, but Dr. Turner feels that this story shall be examined, more so because our now investigations are less good. So on the successive days we move camp. Here, as we are to set off, an attempt is made in the early morning by outlaws, regrettably of my race, to steal the provisions and two jeeps. When Dr. Turner arrives all becomes ugly, for no fight is shown by the bearers and it may well be that he is kidnapped for a ransom. But Mr. Buckingham
here shows himself resource and ruthless and shoots dead the two ringleaders and the rest flee.

  ‘‘The next day we arrive at river-bed and sufficient is seen to show that Mr. Buckingham is unmistaken. I think it is much later than the period we seek, but Dr. Turner disagrees. There are several disputed finds, and here I am ill, the fever strikes very severe and soon I am taken to hospital.

  ‘‘You ask me about Mr. Buckingham. I have the impression that he is English; he spoke before us as if it was so—but he spoke several languages with an appearance of ease. In conversation with Dr. Turner he referred by name to places and peoples to which my scientific education does not give me the key. I am twenty-eight, Mr. Turner, and from fifteen to nineteen I spend all my time in the bush fighting the Japanese, and from nineteen to twenty-two it is the Dutch. This is a grave loss for any man.

  ‘‘I know nothing of the many weeks your honourable brother and this man work together in my illness, but it will try to describe him to you in the best ability that I can.

  ‘‘I am always in error surmising a European’s age, and this more when bearded, but he might be forty. Perhaps he is younger. He is tall in build, and spare, perhaps seventy-seven or eighty kilograms, and of above middle height for a European, perhaps 1.75 metres or a little more. His hair’ is nearly black and straight, his complexion to my thought noticeably pale, his face is long with strong bones, his eyes looking brown in the sun, black out of it, like olive stones, deeply put in, very handsome but seldom smiling. He wears a small black beard on chin only and cut to a V. His forearms are hairy and he has two moles on the left forearm about nine and eleven centimetres above wrist. His teeth are his own, but somewhat stained from tobacco smoke, both eye-teeth have been filled and the tooth behind the eye-tooth of the left side of the mouth is missing. There is unevenness of flesh and bone on his face so that if the light strikes sideways peculiar shadows are created. When he smiles the sadness goes from his face and warmth and sympathy are in it. But sometimes I think it like the devil smiling, flattering to deceive, do you say.

  ‘‘Many people he impresses, and Dr. Turner is much taken of him, often to an exclusion—not intended I am sure—of myself. I query if your letter about him, and this Dutch detective coming, means that your honourable brother came to hurt because of him. He has a good singing voice and sings songs I do not know. Dr. Turner called them German Leader, I think.

  When he sings his hair falls over his eyes and he pushes it away with the two first fingers of his right hand.

  ‘‘This, I regret, is all I can give you for description of this man. I trust you will excuse because since I am ill and that is bad for the memory.

  ‘‘Sir, I send you my respectful greetings and deepest condolences on your honourable brother’s death.”

  ‘‘Yours faithfully, Gani Pangkal.”

  ‘‘P.S.—I am not certain whether it was the left or right upper bicuspid that was missing.’’

  I folded the letter and put it back in the air-mail envelope. The paper crackled in my fingers as I folded it again and stuffed it in the back pocket of my trousers and fastened the button. I folded the trousers and laid them beside me with the shirt and sweater. Jane had finished grilling her back and had now turned over to face the sun. Da Cossa was sitting up and tossing pebbles into the water. From this distance they made a tiny plop-plop-plop.

  Someone’s head was bobbing in the water quite near the shore. It was Leonie’s. She had been swimming in while I was reading and had left Martin, who was following her, well behind. Presently she got to her feet and walked in, putting her arms up to take her cap off. She saw me, hesitated a second and then came across, shaking out her hair.

  ‘‘I didn’t see you come down,’’ she said.

  ‘‘About ten minutes ago.’’

  ‘‘What’s the matter?’’

  ‘‘The matter?’’ I said. ‘‘Nothing.’’

  ‘‘You look pale.’’

  ‘‘I’ve just been to sleep—had a dream. Perhaps that’s it.’’

  She smiled and sat down a little behind me, partly in the shade of a rock. She never took off the thin gold bracelet that she wore on her wrist. ‘‘ What was it?’’

  ‘‘I dreamt that good was evil and evil was good, and that nobody could tell the difference.’’

  ‘‘I don’t believe you.’’

  ‘‘No, you’re right. A dream would never be as contrary as that. It take real life to make the grade.’’

  She stared at the black head slowly coming nearer. Then she bent and began to unlace her rope-soled shoes. Her shoulders were golden in the sunshine. There was a smear of tar on her ankle.

  I said: ‘‘We’re coming to dinner tonight, aren’t we?’’

  ‘‘Oh?’’ she glanced up. ‘‘Oh yes, I believe so.’’

  As Martin came in, she climbed to her feet again—I thought a bit defensively—stood very quietly against the cliff watching him.

  Martin in bathing-trunks didn’t quite confirm what Martin in clothes suggested. The impression made by the long delicate bones in his face, the shadowed eyes, the hint of ill-health in his colour, was blown off-stage altogether. His powerful, easy-muscled figure was as delicate as a newly-commissioned cruiser. There was over-tenseness somewhere, strain and a runt of nerves, but it didn’t alter the complete picture.

  He said: ‘‘Not to swim in the lead o’ th’ current were almost to sink. You’re a trifle too fast for me in the water, Mrs. Winter.’’ He sat down on the stones, scattering droplets. For a second his eyes flickered cautiously across us. ‘‘Strange I never was as much at home in the water as on it. At a pinch I can do half a mile, but that’s about my limit. Not swimming, Philip?’’

  ‘‘Any minute now. Will the boat be all right in the main harbour, Leonie? I feel responsible for it.’’

  ‘‘Oh yes. Charles is back. He’s sending a man down to pick it up … I must go and change.’’

  She walked towards da Cossa and Jane. Martin’s eyes followed her.

  ‘‘So Charles is back. That’s Sanbergh, isn’t it?’’

  ‘‘That’s Sanbergh,’’ I said, watching him push his black hair away. It was all there that Dr. Pangkal in his jealousy had acutely observed, even to the moles on the forearm. The original hunch, scarcely more than a wisp of suspicion at first and twice since discarded, had been right after all.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Perhaps when you live with death at your elbow, as Mme Weber claimed she had been doing for the past fifteen years, it comes natural to need other company to relieve the tête-à-tête. So having the means to do it, she filled her house with guests and added as many outsiders as she could decently fit in. There were twelve at the dinner party, and Charles Sanbergh was there when we got there. I introduced Martin and watched their meeting with an interest quite different from what I might have had yesterday.

  Sanbergh said to me: ‘‘I hope you enjoyed the Grotto this morning, Mr. Norton.’’

  I looked at him, expecting sarcasm and enmity, but didn’t find it.

  ‘‘Thanks. It was impressive—and rain-proof. Your boat was safe?’’

  ‘‘Yes. Please don’t hesitate to ask for it again if you need it any time.’’

  ‘‘Thank you very much,’’ I said, foxed now at this apparent change of front. It would be too ironical if for, some reason he now changed his attitude towards me. ‘‘You must see Sanbergh’s yacht,’’ I said to Martin. ‘‘I imagine the sea is the first woman in both your lives.’’

  Sanbergh smiled obligingly, his mouth curling up. ‘‘Happily our mistress has no locked doors and no other appointments, so jealousy is out of place.’’

  ‘‘It doesn’t at all follow,’’ said Martin. ‘‘I’m jealous of any man with the money and the freedom to exploit her. I’ve always found the sea a harlot; she gives her best to the highest bidder.’’

  Just before we went in to dinner I caught Martin’s eve and he turned his thumb down. It was an agreed signal.
I’d wondered what he would do about the agreed signal. All day since reading that letter there’d been a queer taste in my mouth, like copper, like blood. Every now and then I was caught by a rush of anger, burning and blackening. This afternoon I’d had another letter—from Inspector Tholen—but so far had been quite unable to make up my mind about it. For the moment decision was suspended; all I could do was wait and watch.

  We dined and wined expensively. Towards the end, talk turned on petty theft which, according to Mme Weber, was practically unknown on the island; normal sins, she said with a raffish smile, were rare, Tiberius having left a legacy of abnormality which had never quite died out.

  Da Cossa said: ‘‘I never understand what is meant by abnormality these days. Has not psychiatry shown all behaviour to be a series of simple variations on the same theme.’’

  It was a good enough red-herring, but I didn’t suppose anyone in that company would rise to it However, both Sanbergh and White began to say something, and after a second White got the floor. He’d been quiet tonight, probably still suffering the dying kicks of yesterday. ‘‘ Well, d’you know, I’m prejudiced against that view. I earn my living in the courts, and time and again I see psychiatry explaining away this crime or that so that there’s nothing, no behaviour it hasn’t got the answers for and the excuses for. And that’s a thoroughly bad thing.’’

  ‘‘Why is it a bad thing?’’

  ‘‘Because the criminal stands there and listens to the medical evidence explaining that, poor guy, the beastly crime he’s just committed isn’t really his fault at all, and you have to unload the blame on his father or his mother who did this or didn’t do that when he was rising three. It doesn’t always wash with our judges, but it’s bad in any case because it sends a man up—when it does send him—with a feeling that he hasn’t done anything wrong at all but that society has misunderstood him.’’