‘She was arrested for shop-lifting,’ said Harvey.
‘Why did she do that?’
Harvey put down the identikit and gave Chatelain his attention. ‘I don’t know that she did it. If she did, it does not follow that she bombs supermarkets and kills policemen.’
‘If I was in your place,’ said Chatelain, ‘I would probably speak as you do. But if you were in my place, you would press for some indication, any indication, any guess, as to where she is. I don’t blame you for trying to protect your wife. You see,’ he said, leaning back in his chair and looking away from Harvey, towards the window, ‘a policeman has been shot dead. His wife is in a shop on the outskirts of Paris where they live, a popular quarter, with her twelve-year-old daughter who has a transistor radio. The lady is waiting her turn at the cash-desk. The child draws her mother’s attention to a flash item of news that has interrupted the music. A policeman has been shot and killed in the eighteenth arrondissement; the name is being withheld until the family can be informed. The assassins, two men and a girl, have escaped. The terrorist gang FLE have immediately telephoned the press to claim the crime. The main points of the news flash are repeated: a policeman killed, leaving a wife and two daughters aged fourteen and twelve respectively. Now this lady, the policeman’s wife, is always worried when she hears of the death or wounding of a policeman. In this case the description is alarmingly close. The eighteenth arrondissement where her husband is on duty; the ages of their daughters. She hurries home and finds a police car outside her block of flats. It is indeed her husband who has been killed. Did she deserve this?’
‘No,’ said Harvey. ‘Neither did the policeman. We do not get what we merit. The one thing has nothing to do with the other. Your only course is to prevent it happening again.
‘Depend on us,’ said the policeman.
‘If I may say so,’ said Harvey, ‘you are wasting efforts on me which might profitably be directed to that end.’
‘Any clue, any suggestion …’ said Chatelain, with great patience. He almost pleaded. ‘Are there any houses in Paris that you know of, where they might be found?’
‘None,’ said Harvey.
‘No friends?’
‘The few people I know with establishments in Paris are occupied with business affairs in rather a large, multinational way. I don’t believe they would like the FLE.’
‘Nathan Fox is a good housekeeper?’
‘I believe he can be useful in a domestic way.’
‘He could be keeping a safe house for the gang in Paris.’
‘I don’t see him as the gangster type. Honestly, you know, I don’t think he’s in it.’
‘But your wife … She is different?’
‘I didn’t say so.’
‘And yourself?’
‘What about myself? What are you asking?’ Harvey said.
‘You have a connection with the gang?’
‘No.’
‘Why did you hang baby clothes on the line outside your cottage as early as last spring?’ said Chatelain next.
Harvey was given a break at about seven in the evening. He was accompanied to a café for a meal by the tall young Parisian inspector with metal-rimmed glasses, Louis Pomfret by name.
Pomfret spoke what could be described as ‘perfect English’, that awful type of perfect English that comes over Radio Moscow. He said something apologetic, in semi-disparagement of the police. Harvey couldn’t now remember the exact words. But he recalled Pomfret remarking, too, on the way to the café, ‘You must understand that one of their men has been killed.’ (‘Their’ men, not ‘our men’, Harvey noted.)
At the café table the policeman told Harvey, ‘A Canadian lady arrived in Paris who attempted to reach you on the telephone, and we intercepted her. She’s your aunt. We’ve escorted her safely to the château where she desired to go.
‘God, it’s my Aunt Pet. Don’t give her any trouble.’
‘But, no.
If you think you’ll make me grateful for all this courtesy, thought Harvey, you are mistaken. He said, ‘I should hope not.
The policeman said, ‘I’m afraid the food here is ghastly.’
‘They make a good omelette. I’ve eaten here before,’ said Harvey.
Ham omelettes and wine from the Vosges.
‘It’s unfortunate for you, Gotham,’ said Pomfret, ‘but you appreciate, I hope, our position.’
‘You want to capture these members of the FLE before they do more damage.’
‘Yes, we do. And of course, we will. Now that a member of the police has been killed … You appreciate, his wife was shopping in a supermarket with her son of twelve, who had a transistor radio. She was taking no interest in the programme. At one point the boy said —’
‘Are you sure it was a boy?’ Harvey said.
‘It was a girl. How do you know?’
‘The scene has been described to me by your colleague.’
‘You’re very observant,’ Pomfret smiled, quite nicely.
‘Well, of course I’m observant in a case like this,’ said Harvey. ‘I’m hanging on your lips.’
‘Why?’
‘To hear if you have any evidence that my wife is involved with a terrorist gang.’
‘We have a warrant for her arrest,’ said Pomfret.
‘That’s not evidence.’
‘I know. But we don’t put out warrants without reason. Your wife was arrested in Trieste. She was definitely lodging there with a group which has since been identified as members of the FLE gang. When the police photograph from the incident at Trieste noticeably resembled the photograph we obtained from you, and also resembled the identikit made up from eyewitnesses of the bombings and incursions here in France, we call that sufficient evidence to regard your wife as a suspect.’
‘I would like to see the photograph from Trieste,’ said Harvey. ‘Why haven’t I been shown it?’
‘You are not investigating the case. We are.’
‘But I’m interested in her whereabouts,’ Harvey said. ‘What does this photograph from the police at Trieste look like?’
‘It’s an ordinary routine photograph that’s taken of all people under arrest. Plain and flat, like a passport photograph. It looks like your wife. It’s of no account to you.
‘Why wasn’t I shown it, told about it?’
‘I think you can see it if you want.’
‘Your people at the commissariat evidently don’t believe me when I say I don’t know where Effie is.’
‘Well, I suppose that’s why you’ve been questioned. You’ve never been officially convoked.’
‘The English word is summoned.’
‘Summoned; I apologise.’
‘Lousy wine,’ said Harvey.
‘It’s what you get in a cheap café,’ said Pomfret.
‘They had better when I ate here before,’ said Harvey. ‘Look, all you’ve got to go on is an identikit made in France which resembles two photographs of my wife.’
‘And the address she was residing at in Trieste. That’s most important of all.’
‘She is inclined to take up with unconventional people,’ said Harvey.
‘Evidently, since she married yourself.’
‘Do you know,’ said Harvey, ‘I’m very conventional, believe it or not.’
‘I don’t believe it, of course.’
‘Why?’
‘Your mode of life in France. For an affluent man to establish himself in a cottage and study the Book of Job is not conventional.’
‘Job was an affluent man. He sat among the ashes. Some say, on a dung-heap outside the city. He was very conventional. So much so that God was bored with him.’
‘Is that in the scriptures?’ said the policeman.
‘No, it’s in my mind.’
‘You’ve actually written it down. They took photocopies of some of your pages.
‘I object to that. They had no right.’
‘It’s possible they had no right. Why have you never brought in a lawyer?’
‘What for?’
‘Exactly. But it would be the conventional thing to do.’