‘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?’