The dead Carol waved a wand over memory. A magic wand, quickening a second memory—a secret memory—which revealed innumerable incidents long forgotten. Tiny, trifling incidents: an unfamiliar tone in her so-familiar voice; an April change of mood; disappointment, suddenly distorting expectant features; a child-like gesture; an unfinished sentence. Trivialities—each magically evoking a faded hour of a forgotten day.
If I had loved Carol, I could not be more obsessed by her. Everything is transformed into a theme for remembrance. Everything emphasises the lack of her, the need for her. I had dreamed that her death would bring deliverance. She is dead—and I am ringed by an emptiness, echoing and re-echoing her name, until nothing exists but my aching loneliness.
The extent of my obsession was shown by the fact that I almost forgot my appointment with Haimes at Scotland Yard and, when I remembered it, I remained totally uninterested in his reasons for wanting to see me. The possibility that he had become suspicious—that he had discovered something which implicated me in Carol’s death—did not interest me in the smallest degree, and this indifference persisted when I found myself in his room.
I arrived before twelve o’clock and, as he did not appear till a quarter past, I had time to consider the possibilities of this second meeting, but, nevertheless, I did not explore one of them.
Nothing had altered in Haimes’s room. Nothing ever does alter in a government office. A day comes when its occupant departs for ever, and another official sits at his table, but, quite often, even that does not represent change.
At last the door opened and the massive Haimes appeared.
“Sorry to keep you, Mr. Arnold.”
“That’s all right. I’m in no hurry.”
He sat at his desk, glanced at a note pinned to the blotting-pad, then offered me a cigarette.
“Well, before I start, anything to tell me?”
“Not much,” I replied. “I expect you know you have some amateur collaborators: Erskine Singleton, and a man called Mervyn Maitland. Incidentally, Antony Lawless thinks that I shall discover the murderer.”
I paused, but, as he said nothing, I went on:
“Perhaps I’d better make one thing clear. I was confused at our last meeting and I told you certain things which, at the time, I thought were true, but, actually, they were not.”
“Such as?”
“I told you I visited Carol periodically for one purpose—and one only—but, in fact, I often spent whole Sundays at her flat.”
“Odd sort of thing to forget, isn’t it?”
“Very. But I’m an odd sort of person. When she was alive, I resented my dependence on her, so I persuaded myself that her attraction was wholly sexual. I’ve discovered that it wasn’t. However—strange as it will sound to you—it is perfectly true that I knew very little about her circumstances, because I wasn’t interested in them—then.”
“But you are now?”
“Very interested.”
He glanced at a sheet of paper, then said casually:
“By the way, the man who sold Enigma was Frank Phipps. Does the name convey anything to you?”
“Nothing. I didn’t benefit from the sale, so I wasn’t particularly interested. Have you found out who bought Enigma?”
“Not yet. Would it surprise you to hear that the person who gave a good price for the picture paid cash for it?”
“Cash?”
“Yes. I’d rather you kept that to yourself, and we might have another word about it later. Are there any questions you’d like to ask me?”
“Only one. Is there any reason to think that the student who committed suicide was the murderer?”
“No evidence. That student was a very sensitive young man and it doesn’t do to be too sensitive nowadays—as you know.”
He put his cigarette in an ash-tray, then leaned back in his chair and gazed at the ceiling.
“Now, tell me this, Mr. Arnold: Would you say that. Carol was a very tidy person?”
“Yes.”
“Exceptionally tidy?”
“Yes.”
“So, if you found anything of hers—say, a drawer—in a state of muddle, you’d be surprised.”
“Very surprised.”
He was about to speak when the telephone bell rang. For some minutes he was engaged in a conversation to which he contributed chiefly monosyllables.
At last he put the receiver down and turned to me.
“The obvious difficulty in this case—in which we are both so interested for very different reasons—is, of course, that so many people visited Carol’s flat. She was pretty decent to a good many very different types. I’ve learned a lot about her since I saw you last and——”
“What sort of things?”
“Well, she wasn’t the type you’d expect from her way of life. Not by a long way. She was generous and she helped people who would never be in a position to do anything for her. Incidentally, so far as I can discover, she was intimate only with you and one other man.”
“Was the other man Harry Ambrose—who has just been killed in Antwerp by a flying bomb?”
“That’s the man.”
“I thought I was the only person in the world who knew that Ambrose and Carol were lovers.”
“My main point is that the murderer might be any one of twenty people—or more.”
Almost immediately he went on:
“But this is what I want to stress. You may have wondered why I told you that Enigma was paid for in cash. And you may have wondered why I asked you whether Carol was an exceptionally tidy person. I’ll tell you. Everything in the least exceptional is important in this case. Very important. I want you to let me know immediately if you discover anything which seems unusual. No matter how trifling. It is something trifling which will put us on to the track of the murderer.”
He paused, then said slowly:
“If only you’d gone to her flat when you got her letter.”
Before I could speak, he went on:
“You said you were confused at our last meeting, so perhaps you were a bit hazy about the letter she wrote you. On the chance that was so, I’ll read it to you.”
He unlocked a drawer, took out Carol’s letter, then read:
Max,
I have telephoned three times, but there was no reply. If you get back to-night and are not too tired, please come and see me.
Why didn’t you tell me you’ve been ill? I’ve only just heard. You can’t have been alone for weeks with only a daily woman to look after you! Why didn’t you telephone? Did you think I’d be no good as a nurse? I expect you thought that—but you might have given me a trial.
If you can, do come round, I can’t think why, but I’ve been restless all day and—to-night—I do not want to be alone.
I shall wait up for you.
Do come, if you can.
I do not know how long the silence lasted, but eventually he said:
“Although she says she ‘can’t think why’ she was restless, it seems certain that she had a very definite reason for wanting to see you. She may have thought it was a ridiculous reason—so ridiculous that she did not want to write it—but she had one. I’m convinced of that. You told me at our last meeting that she wasn’t nervous in that flat—and she can’t have been, or she wouldn’t have left those doors ajar so frequently. But she was nervous that night. She left the doors ajar, because she was certain you’d come. Perhaps she had seen someone on that Tuesday of whom she was afraid. Anyhow, something happened. I’ve no doubt about that.”