‘Are you sure it was Effie? Are you sure?’
‘I remember her well from the time she came when you were engaged, and then from the wedding, and I have the wedding-photo of you both on my piano, right there in the sitting room where I go every day. I ought to recognise Effie when I see her. She was naked, with her hair hanging down her shoulders, and laughing, and then pulling her consort after her out of the extramarital bag, without shame; I am truly sorry, Harvey, to be the bearer of this news. To a Gotham. Better she killed a policeman. It’s a question of honour. Mind you; I always suspected she was unvirtuous.’
‘You always suspected?’
‘Yes, I did. All along I feared the worst.’
‘Are you sure,’ said Harvey, very carefully, ‘that perhaps your suspicions have not disposed you to imagine that the girl you saw on the television was Effie, when in fact it was someone who resembled her?’
‘Effie is not like anybody else,’ said Auntie Pet.
‘She resembles her sister,’ said Harvey.
‘How could it be Ruth? Ruth is not missing, is she?’
‘No. I don’t say it could have been Ruth. I only say that there is one case where Effie looks like somebody else. I know of another.’
‘Who is that?’
‘Job’s wife, in a painting.’
‘Job’s wife it could not be. She was a foolish woman but she never committed adultery in a sack. You should read your Bible, Harvey, before you presume to criticise it.’
Harvey poured himself a drink.
‘Don’t get over-excited,’ said Auntie Pet. ‘I know this is a blow.’
‘Look, Auntie Pet, I must know the details, every detail. I have to know if you’re absolutely sure, if you’re right. Would you mind describing the man to me?’
‘I hope you’re not going to cite him as co-respondent, Harvey. You would have to re-play that news item in court. It would bring ridicule on our heads. You’ve had enough publicity.’
‘Just describe the young man she was with, please.’
‘Well, this seems like an interrogation. The young man looked like a Latin-Mediterranean type, maybe Spanish, young, thin. I didn’t look closely, I was looking at Effie. She had nothing on.
Auntie Pet had not improved with the years. Harvey had never known her so awful. He thought, She is mistaken but at least, sincere. He said, ‘I must tell the police.’
‘Why?’ said Auntie Pet.
‘For many reasons. Not the least of which is that, if Effie and her friend are in California and decide to leave, — they might come here, for instance, here to France, or here to see me; if they do that, they could be shot at sight.’
‘That’s out of the question. Effie wouldn’t dare come to your house, now. But if you tell the police how I saw them, the story will go round the world. And the television picture, too. Think of your name.
Harvey got through to the commissariat. ‘My wife has been seen in California within the last few days.’
‘Who saw her?’ ‘My aunt.’
‘Ah, the aunt,’ said the police inspector.
‘She says she saw her in a youth-documentary on the television.’ ‘We had better come and talk to your aunt.’
‘It isn’t necessary.
‘Do you believe your aunt?’
‘She’s truthful. But she might be mistaken. That’s all I have to say.
‘I would like to have a word with her.’
‘All right,’ said Harvey. ‘You’ll find her alone because I’m going down to my cottage to work.’
He then rang Stewart Cowper in London but found he was out of the office. ‘Tell him,’ said Harvey to the secretary, ‘that I might want him to go to the United States for me.’
He had been in his cottage half-an-hour when he saw the police car going up the drive, with the two security men from Paris. He wished them well of Auntie Pet.
Harvey had brought his mail with him, including Edward’s letter.
In his old environment, almost smiling to himself with relief at being alone again, he sat for a while sorting out his thoughts.
Effie and Nathan in a commune in California: it was quite likely. Effie and Nathan in Paris, part of a band of killers: not unlikely.
He began to feel uneasy about Auntie Pet, up there at the house, being questioned by the security men. He was just getting ready to go and join them, and give his aunt a show of support, when the police car with the two men inside returned, passed his cottage, and made off. Either they had made short work of Auntie Pet or she of them. Harvey suspected the latter. Auntie Pet had been separated from Uncle Joe for as long as Harvey could remember. They lived in separate houses. There was no question of a divorce, no third parties, no lovers and mistresses. ‘I had to make a separate arrangement, Uncle Joe had once confided to Harvey. ‘She would have made short work of me if I’d stayed.’
Harvey himself had never felt in danger of being made short work of by his aunt. Probably there was something in his nature, a self-sufficiency, that matched her own.
He wondered how much to believe of what she had told him. He began to wonder such things as why a news supplement from California should be shown on a main network in Toronto. Auntie Pet wasn’t likely to tune in to anything but a main network. He wondered why she had felt it necessary to come to France to give him these details; and at the same time he knew that it was quite reasonable that she should do so. It would certainly be, for her, a frightful tale to tell a husband and a Gotham.
And to his own amazement, Harvey found himself half-hoping she was wrong. Only half-hoping; but still, the thought was there: he would rather think of Effie as a terrorist than laughing with Nathan, naked, in a mountain commune in California. But really, thought Harvey, I don’t wish it so. In fact, I wish she wasn’t a terrorist; and in fact, I think she is. Pomfret was right; I saw the terrorist in Effie long ago. Even if she isn’t the killer they’re looking for, but the girl in California, I won’t live with her again.
He decided to get hold of Stewart Cowper later in the day, when he was expected back at his office. Stewart would go to California and arrange to see a re-play of the programme Auntie Pet had seen. Stewart would find out if Effie was there. Or he would go himself; that would be the decent thing to do. But he knew he wouldn’t go himself. He was waiting here for news of Effie. He was writing his monograph on the Book of Job as he had set himself to do. (‘Live? — Our servants can do it for us.’) He wouldn’t even fight with Ernie Howe himself; if necessary, Stewart would do it for him.
He opened Edward’s letter.
Dear Harvey,
The crocs at the zoo have rather lack-lustre eyes, as can be expected. Perhaps in their native habitat their eyes are ‘like the eyelids of the dawn’ as we find in Job, especially when they’re gleefully devouring their prey. Yes, their eyes are vertical. Perhaps Leviathan is not the crocodile. The zoo bores me to a degree.
I wish you could come over and see the play before it closes. My life has changed, of course. I don’t feel that my acting in this play, which has brought me so much success, is really any different from my previous performances in films, plays, tv. I think the psychic forces, the influences around me have changed. Ruth wasn’t good for me. She made me into a sort of desert. And now I’m fertile. (We are the best of friends, still. I saw her the other day. I don’t think she’s happy with Ernie Howe. She’s only sticking to him because of Clara, and as you know she’s pregnant herself at long last. She claims, and of course I believe her, that she’s preg by you. — Congratulations!) Looking back — and it seems a long time to look back although it’s not even a year — I feel my past life had a drabness that I wasn’t fully aware of at the time. It lies like a shabby old pair of trousers that I’ve let fall on the bedroom floor: I’ll never want to wear those again. It isn’t only the success and the money, although I don’t overlook that aspect of things — I don’t want to crow about them, esp to you. It’s simply a new sense of possibility. One thing I do know is when I’m playing a part and when I’m not. I used to ‘play a part’ most of the time. Now I only do it when I’m onstage. You should come over and see the play. But I suspect that possibly you can’t. The police quizzed me and I made a statement. What could I say? Very little. Fortunately the public is sympathetic towards my position — brother-in-law, virtually ex-brother-in-law of a terrorist. (Our divorce is going through.) It isn’t a close tie.