While he searched for soda water, I looked round the room and derived no satisfaction from doing so. The massive Victorian furniture evidently considered that it had come down in the world, and convinced you that you had done the same. On one wall was a coloured print, depicting a ramrod gentleman bowing with immense patronage to an upholstered lady.
“I’m sorry, Max, there’s no soda. I should drink it straight.”
He sat in the chair opposite mine, then went on:
“Carol—in a Chelsea café! Did we talk! Went to her flat and stayed so late that I ended up by sleeping for a couple of hours on the sofa. She was my one link with my old life. D’you wonder we talked? We’d plenty to remember—and plenty to forget.”
“Had she altered a lot?”
“A lot! In one way it was tragic, but all the same I found her more interesting than the pampered Carol had been. Deeper—broader! But she was queer in some ways.”
“What sort of ways?”
“She knew to a penny what her father owed at his death. Mark had kept a list of what he owed, but none of what was owing to him. Carol knew the amount to a penny. Not that she had any romantic dreams of repayment, but, after talking about a holiday she’d had abroad, she would say: ‘You paid for that trip, Harry.’ ”
“I suppose you asked how she lived?”
“I did. And she said she was a prostitute. Not on the streets, but a prostitute all the same. She also said it was a reserved occupation. She wasn’t melodramatic. She spoke quite casually.”
Almost immediately, he added:
“She was proud in the old days—very proud. Not in a cheap way, but she put a value on herself. So it couldn’t have been funny to be humiliated as she must have been often enough.”
“I don’t suppose it was.”
“Not that she ever talked about that. And she never talked about the men she knew. Never! I wouldn’t have known you knew her if it had not been for Enigma. All she ever said about you was that she sat for you sometimes. She did talk about Lawless, but everyone knew that he knew her, because he told everyone so.”
He put his cigarette out, then said:
“She wouldn’t take money from me. I told her I’d find her a job, but she wasn’t interested. It meant no end to me to be with her. We met almost every day. I half-forgot she was the Carol I’d known when she was a girl. She was a woman, and women have always meant a hell of a lot to me. And, God knows, she was attractive enough. Maddening!”
“Yes—maddening.”
“All the same, nothing was further from my mind than sex. That shows you what the mind’s worth. I never thought about it. Not with her. Not with Carol. Well, one night, in her flat, I felt like hell about the war—and what it was going to be like afterwards—and the suffering of poor bastards everywhere. I looked up. There she was, sitting cross-legged, opposite. The next moment, she was in my arms—with her heart beating against mine.”
“That didn’t surprise her a lot, did it?”
“Nothing surprised her! Well, I woke at about three in the morning and put on the light by the side of the bed. There she was, asleep. I leaned on my elbow and looked at her. Mark Norton’s daughter! Carol.”
He shot to his feet, pushed the chair aside, then began to pace the room.
“Now, I know what I’m going to say will sound damned stupid. Believe me, I know it! In view of what’s going on in the world, what the hell did it matter whether Carol was my mistress? Well, it damned well did matter—to me! It brought home what this murderous war had done to me more than anything else had ever done. Wait a minute,” he shouted, as if I had protested. “I knew what was happening all over Europe—and what was going to happen all over Europe. I knew death and torture were everywhere—and that famine and pestilence came nearer every day. I knew that humanity was being shovelled into the bottomless pit. I knew it. But I didn’t realise it. I couldn’t realise it. Perhaps I daren’t realise it. Anyhow, I didn’t.”
“That’s right enough. If you realise it, you go mad.”
“It’s too big to realise. But it wasn’t too big to realise that Carol, whom I’d known as a child, was a woman in a flat and that I was sleeping with her. My wretched tuppeny-ha’penny human brain could take that in! And it just rammed home what had happened to me—and to the world I had known!”
He stopped near my chair.
I know, Max, that most people would think I was crazy to carry on like this. Mervyn would, for one. Mervyn—who has affairs in exactly the same way as he smokes cigarettes! Well, I’m not Mervyn! I’ve been through hell about this—through absolute hell!”
Then, before I could say anything:
“I just don’t understand people who have little lust affairs which don’t mean a thing to them. I’ve had affairs all my life, but I’ve never had one—not one—which didn’t mean something. I like women. I need them. And they’ve been generous. And, till this happened, I hadn’t a memory which hurt.”
“Did Carol know you were having a bad time?”
“She knew, all right.”
“And what did she think?”
“She thought I’d got it all wrong. She said the pre-war Harry, and the pre-war Carol, were dead. And there was no good digging in the débris looking for them. She said you don’t have one death—you have several. She told me that the life she lived when her father was alive seemed like something she’d read in a half-forgotten book.”
Then he added, almost to himself:
“Anyhow, I asked her to marry me.”
“You asked her to—marry you?”
“Yes. She wouldn’t, of course. But I did ask her.”
He went back to his chair, sat down, then said:
“You don’t know how decent she was to me. Awfully decent! And—ever since her death—I keep discovering things about her.”
“What sort of things?”
“Oh, I don’t know! I used to think she was unselfish. I was wrong. She hadn’t a self—and that’s different. Then she wouldn’t let me worry. She had all kinds of ways of pulling me out of it. Anyway, I couldn’t get on without her, and that’s all there was to it. Her companionship became everything to me.”
After a pause, he went on:
“We often woke in the night and talked for hours. I reminded her how, when she was fourteen, she had to stay in bed for a fortnight and live on slops. I went to see her nearly every day and used to plan outings we’d do when she was well again. When she was allowed to have her first poached egg on toast, I took it up to her room on a tray. I’d forgotten about the poached egg, but she reminded me.”
Then, suddenly:
“Christ, Max! I keep seeing her body—with a knife in her heart.”
“So do I.”
“Do you think a lunatic killed her?”
“That’s Antony’s theory.”
“Yes, but what do you think?”
“I expect it was a lunatic.”
“Well, she certainly knew a pretty mixed crowd—café pick-ups, dancers in cheap night-clubs, and some down-and-outs. I don’t think she had many lovers—and Lawless certainly wasn’t one of them.”
He began to talk about Lawless, but, although it was evident that he liked him, it was also evident that he did not regard him as a very remarkable person.
Suddenly he said:
“I went to the police, of course. Saw a fellow called Haimes.”
“I saw Haimes. I should think he’s pretty good at his job.”
“D’you know, it’s odd, but I keep going over what I did on the night she was murdered. There was a fog, so I stayed in—and was damned miserable. What were you doing that night?”
“I didn’t get in till eleven, then I went to bed.”