Copyright

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by Collins, The Crime Club 1954

Destination Unknown™ is a trade mark of Agatha Christie Limited and Agatha Christie® and the Agatha Christie Signature are registered trade marks of Agatha Christie Limited in the UK and elsewhere. Copyright © 1954 Agatha Christie Limited. All rights reserved.

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Agatha Christie asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780008196363

Ebook Edition © March 2017 ISBN: 9780007422296

Version: 2017-04-11

Dedication

To ANTHONY

who likes foreign travel as much as I do

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Also by Agatha Christie

About the Publisher

CHAPTER 1

The man behind the desk moved a heavy glass paperweight four inches to the right. His face was not so much thoughtful or abstracted as expressionless. He had the pale complexion that comes from living most of the day in artificial light. This man, you felt, was an indoor man. A man of desks and files. The fact that to reach his office you had to walk through long twisting underground corridors was somehow strangely appropriate. It would have been difficult to guess his age. He looked neither old nor young. His face was smooth and unwrinkled, and in his eyes was a great tiredness.

The other man in the room was older. He was dark with a small military moustache. There was about him an alert nervous energy. Even now, unable to sit still, he was pacing up and down, from time to time throwing off a remark in a jerky manner.

‘Reports!’ he said explosively. ‘Reports, reports and more reports, and none of them any damn’ good!’

The man at the desk looked down at the papers in front of him. On top was an official card headed, ‘Betterton, Thomas Charles.’ After the name was an interrogation mark. The man at the desk nodded thoughtfully. He said:

‘You’ve followed up these reports and none of them any good?’

The other shrugged his shoulders.

‘How can one tell?’ he asked.

The man behind the desk sighed.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘there is that. One can’t tell, really.’ The older man went on with a kind of machine-gun volley abruptness:

‘Reports from Rome; reports from Touraine; seen on the Riviera; noticed in Antwerp; definitely identified in Oslo; positively seen in Biarritz; observed behaving suspiciously in Strasbourg; seen on the beach at Ostend with a glamorous blonde; noticed walking in the streets in Brussels with a greyhound! Hasn’t been seen yet in the Zoo with his arm round a zebra, but I dare say that will come!’

‘You’ve no particular fancy yourself, Wharton? Personally I had hopes of the Antwerp report, but it hasn’t led to anything. Of course by now—’ the young man stopped speaking and seemed to go into a coma. Presently he came out of it again and said cryptically, ‘Yes, probably … and yet—I wonder?’

Colonel Wharton sat down abruptly on the arm of a chair.

‘But we’ve got to find out,’ he said insistently. ‘We’ve got to break the back of all this how and why and where? You can’t lose a tame scientist every month or so and have no idea how they go or why they go or where! Is it where we think—or isn’t it? We’ve always taken it for granted that it is, but now I’m not so sure. You’ve read all the last dope on Betterton from America?’

The man behind the desk nodded.

‘Usual Left Wing tendencies at the period when everyone had them. Nothing of a lasting or permanent nature as far as can be found out. Did sound work before the war though nothing spectacular. When Mannheim escaped from Germany, Betterton was assigned as assistant to him, and ended by marrying Mannheim’s daughter. After Mannheim’s death he carried on, on his own, and did brilliant work. He leaped into fame with the startling discovery of ZE Fission. ZE Fission was a brilliant and absolutely revolutionary discovery. It put Betterton tops. He was all set for a brilliant career over there, but his wife had died soon after their marriage and he was all broken up over it. He came to England. He has been at Harwell for the last eighteen months. Just six months ago he married again.’

‘Anything there?’ asked Wharton sharply.

The other shook his head.

‘Not that we can find out. She’s the daughter of a local solicitor. Worked in an insurance office before her marriage. No violent political affinities so far as we’ve been able to discover.’

‘ZE Fission,’ said Colonel Wharton gloomily, with distaste. ‘What they mean by all these terms beats me. I’m old-fashioned. I never really even visualized a molecule, but here they are nowadays splitting up the universe! Atom bombs, nuclear fission, ZE fission, and all the rest of it. And Betterton was one of the splitters in chief! What do they say of him at Harwell?’

‘Quite a pleasant personality. As to his work, nothing outstanding or spectacular. Just variations on the practical applications of ZEF.’

Both men were silent for a moment. Their conversation had been desultory, almost automatic. The security reports lay in a pile on the desk and the security reports had had nothing of value to tell.

‘He was thoroughly screened on arrival here, of course,’ said Wharton.

‘Yes, everything was quite satisfactory.’

‘Eighteen months ago,’ said Wharton thoughtfully. ‘It gets ’em down, you know. Security precautions. The feeling of being perpetually under the microscope, the cloistered life. They get nervy, queer. I’ve seen it often enough. They begin to dream of an ideal world. Freedom and brotherhood, and pool-all-secrets and work for the good of humanity! That’s exactly the moment when someone, who’s more or less the dregs of humanity, sees their chance and takes it!’ He rubbed his nose. ‘Nobody’s so gullible as the scientist,’ he said. ‘All the phony mediums say so. Can’t quite see why.’

The other smiled, a very tired smile.

‘Oh, yes,’ he said, ‘it would be so. They think they know, you see. That’s always dangerous. Now, our kind are different. We’re humble-minded men. We don’t expect to save the world, only pick up one or two broken pieces and remove a spanner or two when it’s jamming up the works.’ He tapped thoughtfully on the table with his finger. ‘If I only knew a little more about Betterton,’ he said. ‘Not his life and his actions, but the revealing, everyday things. What sort of jokes he laughed at. What made him swear. Who were the people he admired and who made him mad.’

Wharton looked at him curiously.

‘What about the wife—you’ve tried her?’

‘Several times.’

‘Can’t she help?’

The other shrugged his shoulders.

‘She hasn’t so far.’

‘You think she knows something?’

‘She doesn’t admit, of course, that she knows anything. All the established reactions: worry, grief, desperate anxiety, no clue or suspicion beforehand, husband’s life perfectly normal, no stress of any kind—and so on and so on. Her own theory is that he’s been kidnapped.’

‘And you don’t believe her?’

‘I’m handicapped,’ said the man behind the desk bitterly. ‘I never believe anybody.’

‘Well,’ said Wharton slowly, ‘I suppose one has to keep an open mind. What’s she like?’

‘Ordinary sort of woman you’d meet any day playing bridge.’

Wharton nodded comprehendingly.

‘That makes it more difficult,’ he said.

‘She’s here to see me now. We shall go over all the same ground again.’

‘It’s the only way,’ said Wharton. ‘I couldn’t do it, though. Haven’t got the patience.’ He got up. ‘Well, I won’t keep you. We’ve not got much further, have we?’

‘Unfortunately, no. You might do a special check-up on that Oslo report. It’s a likely spot.’

Wharton nodded and went out. The other man raised the receiver by his elbow and said:

‘I’ll see Mrs Betterton now. Send her in.’

He sat staring into space until there was a tap on the door and Mrs Betterton was shown in. She was a tall woman, about twenty-seven years of age. The most noticeable thing about her was a magnificent head of auburn-red hair. Beneath the splendour of this, her face seemed almost insignificant. She had the blue-green eyes and light eyelashes that so often go with red hair. She was wearing no make-up, he noticed. He considered the significance of that whilst he was greeting her, settling her comfortably in a chair near the desk. It inclined him very slightly to the belief that Mrs Betterton knew more than she had said she knew.

In his experience, women suffering from violent grief and anxiety did not neglect their make-up. Aware of the ravages grief made in their appearance, they did their best to repair those ravages. He wondered if Mrs Betterton calculatingly abstained from make-up, the better to sustain the part of the distracted wife. She said now, rather breathlessly:

‘Oh, Mr Jessop, I do hope—is there any news?’

He shook his head and said gently:

‘I’m so sorry to ask you to come up like this, Mrs Betterton. I’m afraid we haven’t got any definite news for you.’

Olive Betterton said quickly:

‘I know. You said so in your letter. But I wondered if—since then—oh! I was glad to come up. Just sitting at home wondering and brooding—that’s the worst of it all. Because there’s nothing one can do!’

The man called Jessop said soothingly:

‘You mustn’t mind, Mrs Betterton, if I go over the same ground again and again, ask you the same questions, stress the same points. You see it’s always possible that some small point might arise. Something that you hadn’t thought of before, or perhaps hadn’t thought worth mentioning.’

‘Yes. Yes, I understand. Ask me all over again about everything.’

‘The last time you saw your husband was on the 23rd of August?’

‘Yes.’

‘That was when he left England to go to Paris to a conference there.’

‘Yes.’

Jessop went on rapidly:

‘He attended the first two days of the conference. The third day he did not turn up. Apparently he had mentioned to one of his colleagues that he was going instead for a trip on a bateau mouche that day.’

‘A bateau mouche? What’s a bateau mouche?’

Jessop smiled.

‘One of those small boats that go along the Seine.’ He looked at her sharply. ‘Does that strike you as unlike your husband?’

She said doubtfully:

‘It does, rather. I should have thought he’d be so keen on what was going on at the conference.’

‘Possibly. Still the subject for discussion on this particular day was not one in which he had any special interest, so he might reasonably have given himself a day off. But it doesn’t strike you as being quite like your husband?’

She shook her head.

‘He did not return that evening to his hotel,’ went on Jessop. ‘As far as can be ascertained he did not pass any frontier, certainly not on his own passport. Do you think he could have had a second passport, in another name perhaps?’

‘Oh, no, why should he?’

He watched her.

‘You never saw such a thing in his possession?’

She shook her head with vehemence.

‘No, and I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it for a moment. I don’t believe he went away deliberately as you all try to make out. Something’s happened to him, or else—or else perhaps he’s lost his memory.’

‘His health had been quite normal?’

‘Yes. He was working rather hard and sometimes felt a little tired, nothing more than that.’

‘He’d not seemed worried in any way or depressed?’

‘He wasn’t worried or depressed about anything!’ With shaking fingers she opened her bag and took out her handkerchief. ‘It’s all so awful.’ Her voice shook. ‘I can’t believe it. He’d never have gone off without a word to me. Something’s happened to him. He’s been kidnapped or he’s been attacked perhaps. I try not to think it but sometimes I feel that that must be the solution. He must be dead.’

‘Now please, Mrs Betterton, please—there’s no need to entertain that supposition yet. If he’s dead, his body would have been discovered by now.’

‘It might not. Awful things happen. He might have been drowned or pushed down a sewer. I’m sure anything could happen in Paris.’

‘Paris, I can assure you, Mrs Betterton, is a very well-policed city.’

She took the handkerchief away from her eyes and stared at him with sharp anger.

‘I know what you think, but it isn’t so! Tom wouldn’t sell secrets or betray secrets. He wasn’t a communist. His whole life is an open book.’

‘What were his political beliefs, Mrs Betterton?’

‘In America he was a Democrat, I believe. Here he voted Labour. He wasn’t interested in politics. He was a scientist, first and last.’ She added defiantly, ‘He was a brilliant scientist.’

‘Yes,’ said Jessop, ‘he was a brilliant scientist. That’s really the crux of the whole matter. He might have been offered, you know, very considerable inducements to leave this country and go elsewhere.’

‘It’s not true.’ Anger leapt out again. ‘That’s what the papers try to make out. That’s what you all think when you come questioning me. It’s not true. He’d never go without telling me, without giving me some idea.’

‘And he told you—nothing?’

Again he was watching her keenly.

‘Nothing. I don’t know where he is. I think he was kidnapped, or else, as I say, dead. But if he’s dead, I must know. I must know soon. I can’t go on like this, waiting and wondering. I can’t eat or sleep. I’m sick and ill with worry. Can’t you help me? Can’t you help me at all?’

He got up then and moved round his desk. He murmured:

‘I’m so very sorry, Mrs Betterton, so very sorry. Let me assure you that we are trying our very best to find out what has happened to your husband. We get reports in every day from various places.’

‘Reports from where?’ she asked sharply. ‘What do they say?’

He shook his head.

‘They all have to be followed up, sifted and tested. But as a rule, I am afraid, they’re vague in the extreme.’

‘I must know,’ she murmured brokenly again. ‘I can’t go on like this.’

‘Do you care for your husband very much, Mrs Betterton?’

‘Of course I care for him. Why, we’ve only been married six months. Only six months.’

‘Yes, I know. There was—forgive me for asking—no quarrel of any kind between you?’

‘Oh, no!’

‘No trouble over any other woman?’

‘Of course not. I’ve told you. We were only married last April.’

‘Please believe that I’m not suggesting such a thing is likely, but one has to take every possibility into account that might allow for his going off in this way. You say he had not been upset lately, or worried—not on edge—not nervy in any way?’

‘No, no, no!’

‘People do get nervy, you know, Mrs Betterton, in such a job as your husband had. Living under exacting security conditions. In fact’—he smiled—‘it’s almost normal to be nervy.’

She did not smile back.

‘He was just as usual,’ she said stolidly.

‘Happy about his work? Did he discuss it at all with you?’

‘No, it was all so technical.’

‘You don’t think he had any qualms over its—destructive possibilities, shall I say? Scientists do feel that sometimes.’

‘He never said anything of the kind.’

‘You see, Mrs Betterton,’ he leaned forward over the desk, dropping some of his impassiveness, ‘what I am trying to do is to get a picture of your husband. The sort of man he was. And somehow you’re not helping me.’

‘But what more can I say or do? I’ve answered all your questions.’

‘Yes, you’ve answered my questions, mostly in the negative. I want something positive, something constructive. Do you see what I mean? You can look for a man so much better when you know what kind of a man he is.’

She reflected for a moment. ‘I see. At least, I suppose I see. Well, Tom was cheerful and good-tempered. And clever, of course.’

Jessop smiled. ‘That’s a list of qualities. Let’s try and get more personal. Did he read much?’

‘Yes, a fair amount.’

‘What sort of books?’

‘Oh, biographies. Book Society recommendations, crime stories if he was tired.’

‘Rather a conventional reader, in fact. No special preferences? Did he play cards or chess?’

‘He played bridge. We used to play with Dr Evans and his wife once or twice a week.’

‘Did your husband have many friends?’

‘Oh, yes, he was a good mixer.’

‘I didn’t mean just that. I mean was he a man who—cared very much for his friends?’

‘He played golf with one or two of our neighbours.’

‘No special friends or cronies of his own?’

‘No. You see, he’d been in the USA for so long, and he was born in Canada. He didn’t know many people over here.’

Jessop consulted a scrap of paper at his elbow.

‘Three people visited him recently from the States, I understand. I have their names here. As far as we can discover, these three were the only people with whom he recently made contact from outside, so to speak. That’s why we’ve given them special attention. Now first, Walter Griffiths. He came to see you at Harwell.’

‘Yes, he was over in England on a visit and he came to look up Tom.’

‘And your husband’s reactions?’

‘Tom was surprised to see him, but very pleased. They’d known each other quite well in the States.’

‘What did this Griffiths seem like to you? Just describe him in your own way.’

‘But surely you know all about him?’

‘Yes, we know all about him. But I want to hear what you thought of him.’

She reflected for a moment.

‘Well, he was solemn and rather long-winded. Very polite to me and seemed very fond of Tom and anxious to tell him about things that had happened after Tom had come to England. All local gossip, I suppose. It wasn’t very interesting to me because I didn’t know any of the people. Anyway, I was getting dinner ready while they were reminiscing.’

‘No question of politics came up?’

‘You’re trying to hint that he was a communist.’ Olive Betterton’s face flushed. ‘I’m sure he was nothing of the sort. He had some government job—in the District Attorney’s office, I think. And anyway when Tom said something laughingly about witch hunts in America, he said solemnly that we didn’t understand over here. They were necessary. So that shows he wasn’t a communist!’

‘Please, please, Mrs Betterton, now don’t get upset.’

‘Tom wasn’t a communist! I keep telling you so and you don’t believe me.’

‘Yes, I do, but the point is bound to come up. Now for the second contact from abroad, Dr Mark Lucas. You ran across him in London in the Dorset.’

‘Yes. We’d gone up to a show and we were having supper at the Dorset afterwards. Suddenly this man, Luke or Lucas, came along and greeted Tom. He was a research chemist of some kind and the last time he had seen Tom was in the States. He was a German refugee who’d taken American nationality. But surely you—’

‘But surely I know that? Yes, I do, Mrs Betterton. Was your husband surprised to see him?’

‘Yes, very surprised.’

‘Pleased?’

‘Yes, yes—I think so.’

‘But you’re not sure?’ He pressed her.

‘Well, he was a man Tom didn’t much care about, or so he told me afterwards, that’s all.’

‘It was just a casual meeting? There was no arrangement made to meet at some future date?’

‘No, it was just a casual encounter.’

‘I see. The third contact from abroad was a woman, Mrs Carol Speeder, also from the States. How did that come about?’

‘She was something to do with UNO, I believe. She’d known Tom in America, and she rang him up from London to say she was over here, and asked if we could come up and lunch one day.’

‘And did you?’

‘No.’

‘You didn’t, but your husband did!’

‘What!’ She stared.

‘He didn’t tell you?’

‘No.’

Olive Betterton looked bewildered and uneasy. The man questioning her felt a little sorry for her, but he did not relent. For the first time he thought he might be getting somewhere.

‘I don’t understand it,’ she said uncertainly. ‘It seems very odd he shouldn’t have said anything about it to me.’

‘They lunched together at the Dorset where Mrs Speeder was staying, on Wednesday, August 12th.’

‘August 12th?’

‘Yes.’

‘Yes, he did go to London about then … He never said anything—’ she broke off again, and then shot out a question. ‘What is she like?’

He answered quickly and reassuringly.

‘Not at all a glamorous type, Mrs Betterton. A competent young career woman of thirty-odd, not particularly good-looking. There’s absolutely no suggestion of her ever having been on intimate terms with your husband. That is just why it’s odd that he didn’t tell you about the meeting.’

‘Yes, yes, I see that.’

‘Now think carefully, Mrs Betterton. Did you notice any change in your husband about that time? About the middle of August, shall we say? That would be about a week before the conference.’

‘No—no, I noticed nothing. There was nothing to notice.’

Jessop sighed.

The instrument on his desk buzzed discreetly. He picked up the receiver.

‘Yes,’ he said.

The voice at the other end said:

‘There’s a man who’s asking to see someone in authority about the Betterton case, sir.’

‘What’s his name?’

The voice at the other end coughed discreetly.

‘Well, I’m not exactly sure how you pronounce it, Mr Jessop. Perhaps I’d better spell it.’

‘Right. Go ahead.’

He jotted down on his blotter the letters as they came over the wire.

‘Polish?’ he said interrogatively, at the end.

‘He didn’t say, sir. He speaks English quite well, but with a bit of an accent.’

‘Ask him to wait.’

‘Very good, sir.’

Jessop replaced the telephone. Then he looked across at Olive Betterton. She sat there quite quietly with a disarming, hopeless placidity. He tore off the leaf on his desk pad with the name he had just written on it, and shoved it across to her.

‘Know anybody of that name?’ he asked.

Her eyes widened as she looked at it. For a moment he thought she looked frightened.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, I do. He wrote to me.’

‘When?’

‘Yesterday. He’s a cousin of Tom’s first wife. He’s just arrived in this country. He was very concerned about Tom’s disappearance. He wrote to ask if I had had any news and—and to give me his most profound sympathy.’

‘You’d never heard of him before that?’

She shook her head.

‘Ever hear your husband speak of him?’

‘No.’

‘So really he mightn’t be your husband’s cousin at all?’

‘Well, no, I suppose not. I never thought of that.’ She looked startled. ‘But Tom’s first wife was a foreigner. She was Professor Mannheim’s daughter. This man seemed to know all about her and Tom in his letter. It was very correct and formal and—and foreign, you know. It seemed quite genuine. And anyway, what would be the point—if he weren’t genuine, I mean?’

‘Ah, that’s what one always asks oneself.’ Jessop smiled faintly. ‘We do it so much here that we begin to see the smallest thing quite out of proportion!’

‘Yes, I should think you might.’ She shivered suddenly. ‘It’s like this room of yours, in the middle of a labyrinth of corridors, just like a dream when you think you will never get out …’

‘Yes, yes, I can see it might have a claustrophobic effect,’ said Jessop pleasantly.

Olive Betterton put a hand up and pushed back her hair from her forehead.

‘I can’t stand it much longer, you know,’ she said. ‘Just sitting and waiting. I want to get away somewhere for a change. Abroad for choice. Somewhere where reporters won’t ring me up all the time, and people won’t stare at me. I’m always meeting friends and they keep asking me if I have had any news.’ She paused, then went on, ‘I think—I think I’m going to break down. I’ve tried to be brave, but it’s too much for me. My doctor agrees. He says I ought to go right away somewhere for three or four weeks. He wrote me a letter. I’ll show you.’

She fumbled in her bag, took out an envelope and pushed it across the desk to Jessop.

‘You’ll see what he says.’

Jessop took the letter out of the envelope and read it.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, I see.’

He put the letter back in the envelope.

‘So—so it would be all right for me to go?’ Her eyes watched him nervously.

‘But of course, Mrs Betterton,’ he replied. He raised surprised eyebrows. ‘Why not?’

‘I thought you might object.’

‘Object—why? It’s entirely your own business. You’ll arrange it so that I can get in touch with you while you’re away in case any news should come through?’

‘Oh, of course.’

‘Where were you thinking of going?’

‘Somewhere where there is sun and not too many English people. Spain or Morocco.’

‘Very nice. Do you a lot of good, I’m sure.’

‘Oh, thank you. Thank you very much.’

She rose, excited, elated—her nervousness still apparent.

Jessop rose, shook hands with her, pressed the buzzer for a messenger to see her out. He went back to his chair and sat down. For a few moments his face remained as expressionless as before, then very slowly he smiled. He lifted the phone.

‘I’ll see Major Glydr now,’ he said.

CHAPTER 2

‘Major Glydr?’ Jessop hesitated a little over the name.

‘It is difficult, yes.’ The visitor spoke with humorous appreciation. ‘Your compatriots, they have called me Glider in the war. And now, in the States, I shall change my name to Glyn, which is more convenient for all.’

‘You come from the States now?’

‘Yes, I arrive a week ago. You are—excuse me—Mr Jessop?’

‘I’m Jessop.’

The other looked at him with interest.

‘So,’ he said. ‘I have heard of you.’

‘Indeed? From whom?’

The other smiled.

‘Perhaps we go too fast. Before you permit that I should ask you some questions, I present you first this letter from the US Embassy.’

He passed it with a bow. Jessop took it, read the few lines of polite introduction, put it down. He looked appraisingly at his visitor. A tall man, carrying himself rather stiffly, aged thirty or thereabouts. The fair hair was close cropped in the continental fashion. The stranger’s speech was slow and careful with a very definite foreign intonation, though grammatically correct. He was, Jessop noticed, not at all nervous or unsure of himself. That in itself was unusual. Most of the people who came into this office were nervous or excited or apprehensive. Sometimes they were shifty, sometimes violent.

This was a man who had complete command of himself, a man with a poker face who knew what he was doing and why, and who would not be easily tricked or betrayed into saying more than he meant to say. Jessop said pleasantly:

‘And what can we do for you?’

‘I came to ask if you had any further news of Thomas Betterton, who disappeared recently in what seems a somewhat sensational manner. One cannot, I know, believe exactly what one reads in the press, so I ask where I can go for reliable information. They tell me—you.’

‘I’m sorry, we’ve no definite information about Betterton.’

‘I thought perhaps he might have been sent abroad on some mission.’ He paused and added, rather quaintly, ‘You know, hush-hush.’

‘My dear sir.’ Jessop looked pained. ‘Betterton was a scientist, not a diplomat or a secret agent.’

‘I am rebuked. But labels are not always correct. You will want to inquire my interest in the matter. Thomas Betterton was a relation of mine by marriage.’

‘Yes. You are the nephew, I believe, of the late Professor Mannheim.’

‘Ah, that you knew already. You are well informed here.’

‘People come along and tell us things,’ murmured Jessop. ‘Betterton’s wife was here. She told me. You had written to her.’

‘Yes, to express my condolences and to ask if she had had any further news.’

‘That was very correct.’

‘My mother was Professor Mannheim’s only sister. They were very much attached. In Warsaw when I was a child I was much at my uncle’s house, and his daughter, Elsa, was to me like a sister. When my father and mother died my home was with my uncle and cousin. They were happy days. Then came the war, the tragedies, the horrors … Of all that we will not speak. My uncle and Elsa escaped to America. I myself remained in the underground Resistance, and after the war ended I had certain assignments. One visit I paid to see my uncle and cousin, that was all. But there came a time when my commitments in Europe are ended. I intend to reside in the States permanently. I shall be, I hope, near my uncle and my cousin and her husband. But alas’—he spread out his hands—‘I get there and my uncle, he is dead, my cousin, too, and her husband he has come to this country and has married again. So once more I have no family. And then I read of the disappearance of the well-known scientist Thomas Betterton, and I come over to see what can be done.’ He paused and looked inquiringly at Jessop.

Jessop looked expressionlessly back at him.

‘Why did he disappear, Mr Jessop?’

‘That,’ said Jessop, ‘is just what we’d like to know.’

‘Perhaps you do know?’

Jessop appreciated with some interest how easily their roles might become reversed. In this room he was accustomed to ask questions of people. This stranger was now the inquisitor.

Still smiling pleasantly, Jessop replied:

‘I assure you we do not.’

‘But you suspect?’

‘It is possible,’ said Jessop cautiously, ‘that the thing follows a certain pattern … There have been occurrences of this kind before.’

‘I know.’ Rapidly the visitor cited a half-dozen cases. ‘All scientists,’ he said, with significance.

‘Yes.’

‘They have gone beyond the Iron Curtain?’

‘It is a possibility, but we do not know.’

‘But they have gone of their own free will?’

‘Even that,’ said Jessop, ‘is difficult to say.’

‘It is not my business, you think?’

‘Oh, please.’

‘But you are right. It is of interest to me only because of Betterton.’

‘You’ll forgive me,’ said Jessop, ‘if I don’t quite understand your interest. After all, Betterton is only a relation by marriage. You didn’t even know him.’

‘That is true. But for us Poles, the family is very important. There are obligations.’ He stood up and bowed stiffly. ‘I regret that I have trespassed upon your time, and I thank you for your courtesy.’

Jessop rose also.

‘I’m sorry we cannot help you,’ he said, ‘but I assure you we are completely in the dark. If I do hear of anything can I reach you?’

‘Care of the US Embassy will find me. I thank you.’ Again he bowed formally.

Jessop touched the buzzer. Major Glydr went out. Jessop lifted the receiver.

‘Ask Colonel Wharton to come to my room.’

When Wharton entered the room Jessop said:

‘Things are moving—at last.’

‘How?’

‘Mrs Betterton wants to go abroad.’

Wharton whistled.

‘Going to join hubby?’

‘I’m hopeful. She came provided with a convenient letter from her medical adviser. Complete need of rest and change of scene.’

‘Looks good!’

‘Though, of course, it may be true,’ Jessop warned him. ‘A simple statement of fact.’

‘We never take that view here,’ said Wharton.

‘No. I must say she does her stuff very convincingly. Never slips up for a moment.’

‘You got nothing further from her, I suppose?’

‘One faint lead. The Speeder woman with whom Betterton lunched at the Dorset.’

‘Yes?’

‘He didn’t tell his wife about the lunch.’

‘Oh.’ Wharton considered. ‘You think that’s relevant?’

‘It might be. Carol Speeder was had up before the Committee of Investigation of un-American Activities. She cleared herself, but all the same … yes, all the same she was, or they thought she was, tarred with that brush. It may be a possible contact. The only one we’ve found for Betterton so far.’

‘What about Mrs Betterton’s contacts—any possible contact lately who could have instigated the going abroad business?’

‘No personal contact. She had a letter yesterday from a Pole. A cousin of Betterton’s first wife. I had him here just now asking for details, etc.’

‘What’s he like?’

‘Not real,’ said Jessop. ‘All very foreign and correct, got all the “gen”, curiously unreal as a personality.’

‘Think he’s been the contact to tip her off?’

‘It could be. I don’t know. He puzzles me.’

‘Going to keep tabs on him?’

Jessop smiled.

‘Yes. I pressed the buzzer twice.’

‘You old spider—with your tricks.’ Wharton became businesslike again. ‘Well, what’s the form?’

‘Janet, I think, and the usual. Spain, or Morocco.’

‘Not Switzerland?’

‘Not this time.’

‘I should have thought Spain or Morocco would have been difficult for them.’

‘We mustn’t underestimate our adversaries.’

Wharton flipped the security files disgustedly with his nail.

‘About the only two countries where Betterton hasn’t been seen,’ he said with chagrin. ‘Well, we’ll lay it all on. My God, if we fall down on the job this time—’

Jessop leaned back in his chair.

‘It’s a long time since I’ve had a holiday,’ he said. ‘I’m rather sick of this office. I might take a little trip abroad …’

CHAPTER 3

‘Flight 108 to Paris. Air France. This way please.’

The persons in the lounge at Heathrow Airport rose to their feet. Hilary Craven picked up her small, lizard-skin travelling case and moved in the wake of the others, out on to the tarmac. The wind blew sharply cold after the heated air of the lounge.

Hilary shivered and drew her furs a little closer round her. She followed the other passengers across to where the aircraft was waiting. This was it! She was off, escaping! Out of the greyness, the coldness, the dead numb misery. Escaping to sunshine and blue skies and a new life. She would leave all this weight behind, this dead weight of misery and frustration. She went up the gangway of her plane, bending her head as she passed inside and was shown by the steward to her seat. For the first time in months she savoured relief from a pain that had been so sharply acute as almost to be physical. ‘I shall get away,’ she said to herself, hopefully. ‘I shall get away.’

The roaring and the revolutions of the plane excited her. There seemed a kind of elemental savagery in it. Civilized misery, she thought, is the worst misery. Grey and hopeless. ‘But now,’ she thought, ‘I shall escape.’

The plane taxied gently along the runway. The air hostess said:

‘Fasten your belts, please.’

The plane made a half-turn and stood waiting its signal to depart. Hilary thought, ‘Perhaps the plane will crash … Perhaps it will never rise off the ground. Then that will be the end, that will be the solution to everything.’ They seemed to wait for ages out on the airfield. Waiting for the signal to start off to freedom, Hilary thought, absurdly: ‘I shall never get away, never. I shall be kept here—a prisoner …’

Ah, at last.

A final roar of engines, then the plane started forward. Quicker, quicker, racing along. Hilary thought: ‘It won’t rise. It can’t … this is the end.’ Ah, they were above the ground now, it seemed. Not so much that the plane rose as that the earth was falling away, dropping down, thrusting its problems and its disappointments and its frustrations beneath the soaring creature rising up so proudly into the clouds. Up they went, circling round, the aerodrome looking like a ridiculous child’s toy beneath. Funny little roads, strange little railways with toy trains on them. A ridiculous childish world where people loved and hated and broke their hearts. None of it mattered because they were all so ridiculous and so prettily small and unimportant. Now there were clouds below them, a dense, greyish-white mass. They must be over the Channel now. Hilary leaned back, closing her eyes. Escape. Escape. She had left England, left Nigel, left the sad little mound that was Brenda’s grave. All left behind. She opened her eyes, closed them again with a long sigh. She slept …

When Hilary awoke, the plane was coming down. ‘Paris,’ thought Hilary, as she sat up in her seat and reached for her handbag. But it was not Paris. The air hostess came down the car saying, with that nursery governess brightness that some travellers found so annoying:

‘We are landing you at Beauvais as the fog is very thick in Paris.’

The suggestion in her manner was: ‘Won’t that be nice, children?’ Hilary peered down through the small space of window at her side. She could see little. Beauvais also appeared to be wreathed in fog. The plane was circling round slowly. It was some time before it finally made its landing. Then the passengers were marshalled through cold, damp mist into a rough wooden building with a few chairs and a long wooden counter.

Depression settled down on Hilary but she tried to fight it off. A man near her murmured:

‘An old war aerodrome. No heating or comforts here. Still, fortunately, being the French, they’ll serve us out some drinks.’

True enough, almost immediately a man came along with some keys and presently passengers were being served with various forms of alcoholic refreshments to boost their morale. It helped to buoy the passengers up for the long and irritating wait.

Some hours passed before anything happened. Other planes appeared out of the fog and landed, also diverted from Paris. Soon the small room was crowded with cold, irritable people grumbling about the delay.

To Hilary it all had an unreal quality. It was as though she was still in a dream, mercifully protected from contact with reality. This was only a delay, only a matter of waiting. She was still on her journey—her journey of escape. She was still getting away from it all, still going towards that spot where her life would start again. Her mood held. Held through the long, fatiguing delay, held through the moments of chaos when it was announced, long after dark, that buses had come to convey the travellers to Paris.

There was then a wild confusion, of coming and going, passengers, officials, porters all carrying baggage, hurrying and colliding in the darkness. In the end Hilary found herself, her feet and legs icy cold, in a bus slowly rumbling its way through the fog towards Paris.

It was a long weary drive taking four hours. It was midnight when they arrived at the Invalides and Hilary was thankful to collect her baggage and drive to the hotel where accommodation was reserved for her. She was too tired to eat—just had a hot bath and tumbled into bed.

The plane to Casablanca was due to leave Orly Airport at ten-thirty the following morning, but when they arrived at Orly everything was confusion. Planes had been grounded in many parts of Europe, arrivals had been delayed as well as departures.

A harassed clerk at the departure desk shrugged his shoulders and said:

‘Impossible for Madame to go on the flight where she had reservations! The schedules have all had to be changed. If Madame will take a seat for a little minute, presumably all will arrange itself.’

In the end she was summoned and told that there was a place on a plane going to Dakar which normally did not touch down at Casablanca but would do so on this occasion.

‘You will arrive three hours later, that is all, Madame, on this later service.’

Hilary acquiesced without protest and the official seemed surprised and positively delighted by her attitude.

‘Madame has no conceptions of the difficulties that have been made to me this morning,’ he said. ‘Enfin, they are unreasonable, Messieurs the travellers. It is not I who made the fog! Naturally it has caused the disruptions. One must accommodate oneself with the good humour—that is what I say, however displeasing it is to have one’s plans altered. Après tout, Madame, a little delay of an hour or two hours or three hours, what does it matter? How can it matter by what plane one arrives at Casablanca.’

Yet on that particular day it mattered more than the little Frenchman knew when he spoke those words. For when Hilary finally arrived and stepped out into the sunshine on to the tarmac, the porter who was moving beside her with his piled-up trolley of luggage observed:

‘You have the lucky chance, Madame, not to have been on the plane before this, the regular plane for Casablanca.’

Hilary said: ‘Why, what happened?’

The man looked uneasily to and fro, but after all, the news could not be kept secret. He lowered his voice confidentially and leant towards her.

‘Mauvaise affaire!’ he muttered. ‘It crashed—landing. The pilot and the navigator are dead and most of the passengers. Four or five were alive and have been taken to hospital. Some of those are badly hurt.’

Hilary’s first reaction was a kind of blinding anger. Almost unprompted there leapt into her mind the thought, ‘Why wasn’t I in that plane? If I had been, it would have been all over now—I should be dead, out of it all. No more heartaches, no more misery. The people in that plane wanted to live. And I—I don’t care. Why shouldn’t it have been me?’

She passed through the Customs, a perfunctory affair, and drove with her baggage to the hotel. It was a glorious, sunlit afternoon, with the sun just sinking to rest. The clear air and golden light—it was all as she had pictured it. She had arrived! She had left the fog, the cold, the darkness of London; she had left behind her misery and indecision and suffering. Here there was pulsating life and colour and sunshine.

She crossed her bedroom and threw open the shutters, looking out into the street. Yes, it was all as she had pictured it would be. Hilary turned slowly away from the window and sat down on the side of the bed. Escape, escape! That was the refrain that had hummed incessantly in her mind ever since she left England. Escape. Escape. And now she knew—knew with a horrible, stricken coldness, that there was no escape.

Everything was just the same here as it had been in London. She herself, Hilary Craven, was the same. It was from Hilary Craven that she was trying to escape, and Hilary Craven was Hilary Craven in Morocco just as much as she had been Hilary Craven in London. She said very softly to herself:

‘What a fool I’ve been—what a fool I am. Why did I think that I’d feel differently if I got away from England?’

Brenda’s grave, that small pathetic mound, was in England and Nigel would shortly be marrying his new wife in England. Why had she imagined that those two things would matter less to her here? Wishful thinking, that was all. Well, that was all over now. She was up against reality. The reality of herself and what she could bear, and what she could not bear. One could bear things, Hilary thought, so long as there was a reason for bearing them. She had borne her own long illness, she had borne Nigel’s defection and the cruel and brutal circumstances in which it had operated. She had borne these things because there was Brenda. Then had come the long, slow, losing fight for Brenda’s life—the final defeat … Now there was nothing to live for any longer. It had taken the journey to Morocco to prove that to her. In London she had had a queer, confused feeling that if only she could get somewhere else she could forget what lay behind her and start again. And so she had booked her journey to this place which had no associations with the past, a place quite new to her which had the qualities she loved so much: sunlight, pure air and the strangeness of new people and things. Here, she had thought, things will be different. But they were not different. They were the same. The facts were quite simple and inescapable. She, Hilary Craven, had no longer any wish to go on living. It was as simple as that.

If the fog had not intervened, if she had travelled on the plane on which her reservations had been made, then her problem might have been solved by now. She might be lying in some French official mortuary, a body broken and battered with her spirit at peace, freed from suffering. Well, the same end could be achieved, but she would have to take a little trouble.

It would have been so easy if she had had sleeping-stuff with her. She remembered how she had asked Dr Grey and the rather queer look on his face as he had answered:

‘Better not. Much better to learn to sleep naturally. May be hard at first, but it will come.’

A queer look on his face. Had he known then or suspected that it would come to this? Oh, well, it should not be difficult. She rose to her feet with decision. She would go out now to a chemist’s shop.

Hilary had always imagined that drugs were easy to buy in foreign cities. Rather to her surprise, she found that this was not so. The chemist she went to first supplied her with only two doses. For more than that amount, he said, a doctor’s prescription would be advisable. She thanked him smilingly and nonchalantly and went rather quickly out of the shop, colliding as she did so with a tall, rather solemn-faced young man, who apologized in English. She heard him asking for toothpaste as she left the shop.

Somehow that amused her. Toothpaste. It seemed so ridiculous, so normal, so everyday. Then a sharp pang pierced her, for the toothpaste he had asked for was the brand that Nigel had always preferred. She crossed the street and went into a shop opposite. She had been to four chemists’ shops by the time she returned to the hotel. It had amused her a little that in the third shop the owlish young man had again appeared, once more asking obstinately for his particular brand of toothpaste which evidently was not one commonly stocked by French chemists in Casablanca.

Hilary felt almost lighthearted as she changed her frock and made up her face before going down for dinner. She purposely went down as late as possible since she was anxious not to encounter any of her fellow-travellers or the personnel of the aeroplane. That was hardly likely in any case, since the plane had gone on to Dakar, and she thought that she had been the only person put off at Casablanca.

The restaurant was almost empty by the time she came into it, though she noticed that the young Englishman with the owl-like face was just finishing his meal at the table by the wall. He was reading a French newspaper and seemed quite absorbed in it.

Hilary ordered herself a good meal with a half-bottle of wine. She was feeling a heady kind of excitement. She thought to herself, ‘What is this after all, but the last adventure?’ Then she ordered a bottle of Vichy water to be sent up to her room and went straight up after leaving the dining-room.

The waiter brought the Vichy, uncapped it, placed it on the table, and wishing her good night, left the room. Hilary drew a sigh of relief. As he closed the door after him, she went to it and turned the key in the lock. She took from the drawer of the dressing-table the four little packets she had obtained from the chemists’, and unwrapped them. She laid the tablets out on the table and poured herself out a glass of Vichy water. Since the drug was in tablet form, she had only to swallow the tablets, and wash them down with the Vichy water.

She undressed, wrapped her dressing-gown round her and came back to sit by the table. Her heart beat faster. She felt something like fear now, but the fear was half fascination and not the kind of flinching that would have tempted her to abandon her plan. She was quite calm and clear about that. This was escape at last—real escape. She looked at the writing-table, debating whether she would leave a note. She decided against it. She had no relations, no close or dear friends, there was nobody to whom she wished to say goodbye. As for Nigel, she had no wish to burden him with useless remorse even if a note from her would have achieved that object. Nigel would read presumably in the paper that a Mrs Hilary Craven had died of an overdose of sleeping-tablets in Casablanca. It would probably be quite a small paragraph. He would accept it at its face value. ‘Poor old Hilary,’ he would say, ‘bad luck’—and it might be that, secretly, he would be rather relieved. Because she guessed that she was, slightly, on Nigel’s conscience, and he was a man who wished to feel comfortable with himself.

Already Nigel seemed very far away and curiously unimportant. There was nothing more to be done. She would swallow the pills and lie down on her bed and sleep. From that sleep she would not wake. She had not, or thought she had not, any religious feeling. Brenda’s death had shut down on all that. So there was nothing more to consider. She was once again a traveller as she had been at Heathrow Airport, a traveller waiting to depart for an unknown destination, unencumbered by baggage, unaffected by farewells. For the first time in her life she was free, entirely free, to act as she wished to act. Already the past was cut away from her. The long aching misery that had dragged her down in her waking hours was gone. Yes. Light, free, unencumbered! Ready to start on her journey.

She stretched out her hand towards the first tablet. As she did so there came a soft, discreet tap on the door. Hilary frowned. She sat there, her hand arrested in mid-air. Who was it—a chambermaid? No, the bed had already been turned down. Somebody, perhaps, about papers or passport? She shrugged her shoulders. She would not answer the door. Why should she bother? Presently whoever it was would go away and come back at some further opportunity.

The knock came again, a little louder this time. But Hilary did not move. There could be no real urgency, and whoever it was would soon go away.

Her eyes were on the door, and suddenly they widened with astonishment. The key was slowly turning backwards round the lock. It jerked forward and fell on the floor with a metallic clang. Then the handle turned, the door opened and a man came in. She recognized him as the solemn, owlish young man who had been buying toothpaste. Hilary stared at him. She was too startled for the moment to say or do anything. The young man turned round, shut the door, picked the key up from the floor, put it into the lock and turned it. Then he came across towards her and sat down in a chair the other side of the table. He said, and it seemed to her a most incongruous remark:

‘My name’s Jessop.’

The colour rose sharply in Hilary’s face. She leaned forward. She said with cold anger:

‘What do you think you’re doing here, may I ask?’

He looked at her solemnly—and blinked.

‘Funny,’ he said. ‘I came to ask you that.’ He gave a quick sideways nod towards the preparations on the table. Hilary said sharply:

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Oh yes, you do.’

Hilary paused, struggling for words. There were so many things she wanted to say. To express indignation. To order him out of the room. But strangely enough, it was curiosity that won the day. The question rose to her lips so naturally that she was almost unaware of asking it.

‘That key,’ she said, ‘it turned, of itself, in the lock?’

‘Oh, that!’ The young man gave a sudden boyish grin that transformed his face. He put his hand into his pocket and, taking out a metal instrument, he handed it to her to examine.

‘There you are,’ he said, ‘very handy little tool. Insert it into the lock the other side, it grips the key and turns it.’ He took it back from her and put it in his pocket. ‘Burglars use them,’ he said.

‘So you’re a burglar?’

‘No, no, Mrs Craven, do me justice. I did knock, you know. Burglars don’t knock. Then, when it seemed you weren’t going to let me in, I used this.’

‘But why?’

Again her visitor’s eyes strayed to the preparations on the table.

‘I shouldn’t do it if I were you,’ he said. ‘It isn’t a bit what you think, you know. You think you just go to sleep and you don’t wake up. But it’s not quite like that. All sorts of unpleasant effects. Convulsions sometimes, gangrene of the skin. If you’re resistant to the drug, it takes a long time to work, and someone gets to you in time and then all sorts of unpleasant things happen. Stomach pump. Castor oil, hot coffee, slapping and pushing. All very undignified, I assure you.’

Hilary leaned back in her chair, her eyelids narrowed. She clenched her hands slightly. She forced herself to smile.

‘What a ridiculous person you are,’ she said. ‘Do you imagine that I was committing suicide, or something like that?’

‘Not only imagine it,’ said the young man called Jessop, ‘I’m quite sure of it. I was in that chemist’s, you know, when you came in. Buying toothpaste, as a matter of fact. Well, they hadn’t got the sort I like, so I went to another shop. And there you were, asking for sleeping-pills again. Well, I thought that was a bit odd, you know, so I followed you. All those sleeping-pills at different places. It could only add up to one thing.’

His tone was friendly, off-hand, but quite assured. Looking at him Hilary Craven abandoned pretence.

‘Then don’t you think it is unwarrantable impertinence on your part to try and stop me?’

He considered the point for a moment or two. Then he shook his head.

‘No. It’s one of those things that you can’t not do—if you understand.’

Hilary spoke with energy. ‘You can stop me for the moment. I mean you can take the pills away—throw them out of the window or something like that—but you can’t stop me from buying more another day or throwing myself down from the top floor of the building, or jumping in front of a train.’

The young man considered this.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I agree I can’t stop you doing any of those things. But it’s a question, you know, whether you will do them. Tomorrow, that is.’

‘You think I shall feel differently tomorrow?’ asked Hilary, faint bitterness in her tone.

‘People do,’ said Jessop, almost apologetically.

‘Yes, perhaps,’ she considered. ‘If you’re doing things in a mood of hot despair. But when it’s cold despair, it’s different. I’ve nothing to live for, you see.’

Jessop put his rather owlish head on one side, and blinked.

‘Interesting,’ he remarked.

‘Not really. Not interesting at all. I’m not a very interesting woman. My husband, whom I loved, left me, my only child died very painfully of meningitis. I’ve no near friends or relations. I’ve no vocation, no art or craft or work that I love doing.’

‘Tough,’ said Jessop appreciatively. He added, rather hesitantly: ‘You don’t think of it as—wrong?’

Hilary said heatedly: ‘Why should it be wrong? It’s my life.’

‘Oh yes, yes,’ Jessop repeated hastily. ‘I’m not taking a high moral line myself, but there are people, you know, who think it’s wrong.’

Hilary said:

‘I’m not one of them.’

Mr Jessop said, rather inadequately:

‘Quite.’

He sat there looking at her, blinking his eyes thoughtfully.

Hilary said:

‘So perhaps now, Mr—er—’

‘Jessop,’ said the young man.

‘So perhaps now, Mr Jessop, you will leave me alone.’

But Jessop shook his head.

‘Not just yet,’ he said. ‘I wanted to know, you see, just what was behind it all. I’ve got it clear now, have I? You’re not interested in life, you don’t want to live any longer, you more or less welcome the idea of death?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good,’ said Jessop, cheerfully. ‘So now we know where we are. Let’s go on to the next step. Has it got to be sleeping pills?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, I’ve already told you that they’re not as romantic as they sound. Throwing yourself off a building isn’t too nice, either. You don’t always die at once. And the same applies to falling under a train. What I’m getting at is that there are other ways.’

‘I don’t understand what you mean.’

‘I’m suggesting another method. Rather a sporting method, really. There’s some excitement in it, too. I’ll be fair with you. There’s just a hundred to one chance that you mightn’t die. But I don’t believe under the circumstances, that you’d really object by that time.’

‘I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about.’

‘Of course you haven’t,’ said Jessop. ‘I’ve not begun to tell you about it yet. I’m afraid I’ll have to make rather a thing about it—tell you a story, I mean. Shall I go ahead?’

‘I suppose so.’

Jessop paid no attention to the grudgingness of the assent. He started off in his most owl-like manner.

‘You’re the sort of woman who reads the papers and keeps up with things generally, I expect,’ he said. ‘You’ll have read about the disappearance of various scientists from time to time. There was that Italian chap about a year ago, and about two months ago a young scientist called Thomas Betterton disappeared.’

Hilary nodded. ‘Yes, I read about that in the papers.’

‘Well, there’s been a good deal more than has appeared in the papers. More people, I mean, have disappeared. They haven’t always been scientists. Some of them have been young men who were engaged in important medical research. Some of them have been research chemists, some of them have been physicists, there was one barrister. Oh, quite a lot here and there and everywhere. Well, ours is a so-called free country. You can leave it if you like. But in these peculiar circumstances we’ve got to know why these people left it and where they went, and, also important, how they went. Did they go of their own free will? Were they kidnapped? Were they blackmailed into going? What route did they take—what kind of organization is it that sets this in motion and what is its ultimate aim? Lots of questions. We want the answer to them. You might be able to help get us that answer.’

Hilary stared at him.

‘Me? How? Why?’

‘I’m coming down to the particular case of Thomas Betterton. He disappeared from Paris just over two months ago. He left a wife in England. She was distracted—or said she was distracted. She swore that she had no idea why he’d gone or where or how. That may be true, or it may not. Some people—and I’m one of them—think it wasn’t true.’

Hilary leaned forward in her chair. In spite of herself she was becoming interested. Jessop went on.

‘We prepared to keep a nice, unobtrusive eye on Mrs Betterton. About a fortnight ago she came to me and told me she had been ordered by her doctor to go abroad, take a thorough rest and get some distraction. She was doing no good in England, and people were continually bothering her—newspaper reporters, relations, kind friends.’

Hilary said dryly: ‘I can imagine it.’

‘Yes, tough. Quite natural she would want to get away for a bit.’

‘Quite natural, I should think.’

‘But we’ve got nasty, suspicious minds in our department, you know. We arranged to keep tabs on Mrs Betterton. Yesterday she left England as arranged, for Casablanca.’

‘Casablanca?’

‘Yes—en route to other places in Morocco, of course. All quite open and above board, plans made, bookings ahead. But it may be that this trip to Morocco is where Mrs Betterton steps off into the unknown.’

Hilary shrugged her shoulders.

‘I don’t see where I come into all this.’

Jessop smiled.

‘You come into it because you’ve got a very magnificent head of red hair, Mrs Craven.’

‘Hair?’

‘Yes. It’s the most noticeable thing about Mrs Betterton—her hair. You’ve heard, perhaps, that the plane before yours today crashed on landing.’

‘I know. I should have been on that plane. I actually had reservations for it.’

‘Interesting,’ said Jessop. ‘Well, Mrs Betterton was on that plane. She wasn’t killed. She was taken out of the wreckage still alive, and she is in hospital now. But according to the doctor, she won’t be alive tomorrow morning.’

A faint glimmer of light came to Hilary. She looked at him inquiringly.

‘Yes,’ said Jessop, ‘perhaps now you see the form of suicide I’m offering you. I’m suggesting that you should become Mrs Betterton.’

‘But surely,’ said Hilary, ‘that would be quite impossible. I mean, they’d know at once she wasn’t me.’

Jessop put his head on one side.

‘That, of course, depends entirely on who you mean by “they”. It’s a very vague term. Who is or are “they”? Is there such a thing, are there such persons as “they”? We don’t know. But I can tell you this. If the most popular explanation of “they” is accepted, then these people work in very close, self-contained cells. They do that for their own security. If Mrs Betterton’s journey had a purpose and is planned, then the people who were in charge of it here will know nothing about the English side of it. At the appointed moment they will contact a certain woman at a certain place, and carry on from there. Mrs Betterton’s passport description is 5ft. 7, red hair, blue-green eyes, mouth medium, no distinguishing marks. Good enough.’

‘But the authorities here. Surely they—’

Jessop smiled. ‘That part of it will be quite all right. The French have lost a few valuable young scientists and chemists of their own. They’ll co-operate. The facts will be as follows. Mrs Betterton, suffering from concussion, is taken to hospital. Mrs Craven, another passenger in the crashed plane, will also be admitted to hospital. Within a day or two Mrs Craven will die in hospital, and Mrs Betterton will be discharged, suffering slightly from concussion, but able to proceed on her tour. The crash was genuine, the concussion is genuine, and concussion makes a very good cover for you. It excuses a lot of things like lapses of memory, and various unpredictable behaviour.’

Hilary said:

‘It would be madness!’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Jessop, ‘it’s madness, all right. It’s a very tough assignment and if our suspicions are realized, you’ll probably cop it. You see, I’m being quite frank, but according to you, you’re prepared and anxious to cop it. As an alternative to throwing yourself in front of a train or something like that, I should think you’d find it far more amusing.’

Suddenly and unexpectedly Hilary laughed.

‘I do believe,’ she said, ‘that you’re quite right.’

‘You’ll do it?’

‘Yes. Why not?’

‘In that case,’ said Jessop, rising in his seat with sudden energy, ‘there’s absolutely no time to be lost.’

CHAPTER 4

It was not really cold in the hospital but it felt cold. There was a smell of antiseptics in the air. Occasionally in the corridor outside could be heard the rattle of glasses and instruments as a trolley was pushed by. Hilary Craven sat in a hard iron chair by a bedside.

In the bed, lying flat under a shaded light with her head bandaged, Olive Betterton lay unconscious. There was a nurse standing on one side of the bed and the doctor on the other. Jessop sat in a chair in the far corner of the room. The doctor turned to him and spoke in French.

‘It will not be very long now,’ he said. ‘The pulse is very much weaker.’

‘And she will not recover consciousness?’

The Frenchman shrugged his shoulders.

‘That I cannot say. It may be, yes, at the very end.’

‘There is nothing you can do—no stimulant?’

The doctor shook his head. He went out. The nurse followed him. She was replaced by a nun who moved to the head of the bed, and stood there, her fingers fingering her rosary. Hilary looked at Jessop and in obedience to a glance from him came to join him.

‘You heard what the doctor said?’ he asked in a low voice.

‘Yes. What is it you want to say to her?’

‘If she regains consciousness I want any information you can possibly get, any password, any sign, any message, anything. Do you understand? She is more likely to speak to you than to me.’

Hilary said with sudden emotion:

‘You want me to betray someone who is dying?’

Jessop put his head on one side in the bird-like manner which he sometimes adopted.

‘So it seems like that to you, does it?’ he said, considering.

‘Yes, it does.’

He looked at her thoughtfully.

‘Very well then, you shall say and do what you please. For myself I can have no scruples! You understand that?’

‘Of course. It’s your duty. You’ll do whatever questioning you please, but don’t ask me to do it.’

‘You’re a free agent.’

‘There is one question we shall have to decide. Are we to tell her that she is dying?’

‘I don’t know. I shall have to think it out.’

She nodded and went back to her place by the bed. She was filled now with a deep compassion for the woman who lay there dying. The woman who was on her way to join the man she loved. Or were they all wrong? Had she come to Morocco simply to seek solace, to pass the time until perhaps some definite news could come to her as to whether her husband were alive or dead? Hilary wondered.

Time went on. It was nearly two hours later when the click of the nun’s beads stopped. She spoke in a soft impersonal voice.

‘There is a change,’ she said. ‘I think, Madame, it is the end that comes. I will fetch the doctor.’

She left the room. Jessop moved to the opposite side of the bed, standing back against the wall so that he was out of the woman’s range of vision. The eyelids flickered and opened. Pale incurious blue-green eyes looked into Hilary’s. They closed, then opened again. A faint air of perplexity seemed to come into them.

‘Where …?’

The word fluttered between the almost breathless lips, just as the doctor entered the room. He took her hand in his, his finger on the pulse, standing by the bed looking down on her.

‘You are in hospital, Madame,’ he said. ‘There was an accident to the plane.’

‘To the plane?’

The words were repeated dreamily in that faint breathless voice.

‘Is there anyone you want to see in Casablanca, Madame? Any message we can take?’

Her eyes were raised painfully to the doctor’s face. She said: ‘No.’

She looked back again at Hilary.

‘Who—who—’

Hilary bent forward and spoke clearly and distinctly.

‘I came out from England on a plane, too—if there is anything I can do to help you, please tell me.’

‘No—nothing—nothing—unless—’

‘Yes?’

‘Nothing.’

The eyes flickered again and half closed—Hilary raised her head and looked across to meet Jessop’s imperious commanding glance. Firmly, she shook her head.

Jessop moved forward. He stood close beside the doctor. The dying woman’s eyes opened again. Sudden recognition came into them. She said:

‘I know you.’

‘Yes, Mrs Betterton, you know me. Will you tell me anything you can about your husband?’

‘No.’

Her eyelids fell again. Jessop turned quietly and left the room. The doctor looked across at Hilary. He said very softly:

‘C’est la fin!’

The dying woman’s eyes opened again. They travelled painfully round the room, then they remained fixed on Hilary. Olive Betterton made a very faint motion with her hand, and Hilary instinctively took the white cold hand between her own. The doctor, with a shrug of his shoulders and a little bow, left the room. The two women were alone together. Olive Betterton was trying to speak:

‘Tell me—tell me—’

Hilary knew what she was asking, and suddenly her own course of action opened clearly before her. She leaned down over the recumbent form.

‘Yes,’ she said, her words clear and emphatic. ‘You are dying. That’s what you want to know, isn’t it? Now listen to me. I am going to try and reach your husband. Is there any message you want me to give him if I succeed?’

‘Tell him—tell him—to be careful. Boris—Boris—dangerous …’

The breath fluttered off again with a sigh. Hilary bent closer.

‘Is there anything you can tell me to help me—help me in my journey, I mean? Help me to get in contact with your husband?’

‘Snow.’

The word came so faintly that Hilary was puzzled. Snow? Snow? She repeated it uncomprehendingly. A faint, ghost-like little giggle came from Olive Betterton. Faint words came tumbling out.

Snow, snow, beautiful snow!

You slip on a lump, and over you go!

She repeated the last word. ‘Go … Go? Go and tell him about Boris. I didn’t believe it. I wouldn’t believe it. But perhaps it’s true … If so, if so …’ a kind of agonized question came into her eyes which stared up into Hilary’s ‘… take care …’

A queer rattle came to her throat. Her lips jerked.

Olive Betterton died.

The next five days were strenuous mentally, though inactive physically. Immured in a private room in the hospital, Hilary was set to work. Every evening she had to pass an examination on what she had studied that day. All the details of Olive Betterton’s life, as far as they could be ascertained, were set down on paper and she had to memorize and learn them by heart. The house she had lived in, the daily woman she had employed, her relations, the names of her pet dog and her canary, every detail of the six months of her married life with Thomas Betterton. Her wedding, the names of her bridesmaids, their dresses. The patterns of curtains, carpets and chintzes. Olive Betterton’s tastes, predilections, and day by day activities. Her preferences in food and drink. Hilary was forced to marvel at the amount of seemingly meaningless information that had been massed together. Once she said to Jessop:

‘Can any of this possibly matter?’

And to that he had replied quietly:

‘Probably not. But you’ve got to make yourself into the authentic article. Think of it this way, Hilary. You’re a writer. You’re writing a book about a woman. The woman is Olive. You describe scenes of her childhood, her girlhood; you describe her marriage, the house she lived in. All the time that you do it she becomes more and more of a real person to you. Then you go over it a second time. You write it this time as an autobiography. You write it in the first person. Do you see what I mean?’

She nodded slowly, impressed in spite of herself.

‘You can’t think of yourself as Olive Betterton until you are Olive Betterton. It would be better if you had time to learn it up, but we can’t afford time. So I’ve got to cram you. Cram you like a schoolboy—like a student who is going in for an important examination.’ He added, ‘You’ve got a quick brain and a good memory, thank the Lord.’

He looked at her in cool appraisement.

The passport descriptions of Olive Betterton and Hilary Craven were almost identical, but actually the two faces were entirely different. Olive Betterton had had a quality of rather commonplace and insignificant prettiness. She had looked obstinate but not intelligent. Hilary’s face had power and an intriguing quality. The deep-set bluish-green eyes under dark level brows had fire and intelligence in their depths. Her mouth curved upwards in a wide and generous line. The plane of the jaw was unusual—a sculptor would have found the angles of the face interesting.

Jessop thought: ‘There’s passion there—and guts—and somewhere, damped but not quenched, there’s a gay spirit that’s tough—and that enjoys life and searches out for adventure.’

‘You’ll do,’ he said to her. ‘You’re an apt pupil.’

This challenge to her intellect and her memory had stimulated Hilary. She was becoming interested now, keen to achieve success. Once or twice objections occurred to her. She voiced them to Jessop.

‘You say that I shan’t be rejected as Olive Betterton. You say that they won’t know what she looks like, except in general detail. But how sure can you be of that?’

Jessop shrugged his shoulders.

‘One can’t be sure—of anything. But we do know a certain amount about the set-up of these shows, and it does seem that internationally there is very little communication from one country to another. Actually, that’s a great advantage to them. If we come upon a weak link in England (and, mind you, in every organization there always will be a weak link) that weak link in the chain knows nothing about what’s going on in France, or Italy, or Germany, or wherever you like, we are brought up short by a blank wall. They know their own little part of the whole—no more. The same applies the opposite way round. I dare swear that all the cell operating here knows is that Olive Betterton will arrive on such and such a plane and is to be given such and such instructions. You see, it’s not as though she were important in herself. If they’re bringing her to her husband, it’s because her husband wants her brought to him and because they think they’ll get better work out of him if she joins him. She herself is a mere pawn in the game. You must remember too, that the idea of substituting a false Olive Betterton is definitely a spur of the moment improvisation—occasioned by the plane accident and the colour of your hair. Our plan of operation was to keep tabs on Olive Betterton and find out where she went, how she went, whom she met—and so on. That’s what the other side will be on the look-out for.’

Hilary asked:

‘Haven’t you tried all that before?’

‘Yes. It was tried in Switzerland. Very unobtrusively. And it failed as far as our main objective was concerned. If anyone contacted her there we didn’t know about it. So the contact must have been very brief. Naturally they’ll expect that someone will be keeping tabs on Olive Betterton. They’ll be prepared for that. It’s up to us to do our job more thoroughly than last time. We’ve got to try and be rather more cunning than our adversaries.’

‘So you’ll be keeping tabs on me?’

‘Of course.’

‘How?’

He shook his head.

‘I shan’t tell you that. Much better for you not to know. What you don’t know you can’t give away.’

‘Do you think I would give it away?’

Jessop put on his owl-like expression again.

‘I don’t know how good an actress you are—how good a liar. It’s not easy, you know. It’s not a question of saying anything indiscreet. It can be anything, a sudden intake of the breath, the momentary pause in some action—lighting a cigarette, for instance. Recognition of a name or a friend. You could cover it up quickly, but just a flash might be enough!’

‘I see. It means—being on your guard for every single split second.’

‘Exactly. In the meantime, on with the lessons! Quite like going back to school, isn’t it? You’re pretty well word perfect on Olive Betterton, now. Let’s go on to the other.’

Codes, responses, various properties. The lesson went on; the questioning, the repetition, the endeavour to confuse her, to trip her up; then hypothetical schemes and her own reactions to them. In the end, Jessop nodded his head and declared himself satisfied.

‘You’ll do,’ he said. He patted her on the shoulder in an avuncular manner. ‘You’re an apt pupil. And remember this, however much you may feel at times that you’re all alone in this, you’re probably not. I say probably—I won’t put it higher than that. These are clever devils.’

‘What happens,’ said Hilary, ‘if I reach journey’s end?’

‘You mean?’

‘I mean when at last I come face to face with Tom Betterton.’

Jessop nodded grimly.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That’s the danger moment. I can only say that at that moment, if all has gone well, you should have protection. If, that is to say, things have gone as we hope; but the very basis of this operation, as you may remember, was that there wasn’t a very high chance of survival.’

‘Didn’t you say one in a hundred?’ said Hilary drily.

‘I think we can shorten the odds a little. I didn’t know what you were like.’

‘No, I suppose not.’ She was thoughtful. ‘To you, I suppose, I was just …’

He finished the sentence for her. ‘A woman with a noticeable head of red hair and who hadn’t the pluck to go on living.’

She flushed.

‘That’s a harsh judgement.’

‘It’s a true one, isn’t it? I don’t go in for being sorry for people. For one thing it’s insulting. One is only sorry for people when they’re sorry for themselves. Self pity is one of the biggest stumbling-blocks in the world today.’

Hilary said thoughtfully:

‘I think perhaps you’re right. Will you permit yourself to be sorry for me when I’ve been liquidated or whatever the term is, in fulfilling this mission?’

‘Sorry for you? No. I shall curse like hell because we’ve lost someone who’s worthwhile taking a bit of trouble over.’

‘A compliment at last.’ In spite of herself she was pleased.

She went on in a practical tone:

‘There’s just one other thing that occurred to me. You say nobody’s likely to know what Olive Betterton looks like, but what about being recognized as myself? I don’t know anyone in Casablanca, but there are the people who travelled here with me in the plane. Or one may of course run across somebody one knows among the tourists here.’

‘You needn’t worry about the passengers in the plane. The people who flew with you from Paris were business men who went on to Dakar and a man who got off here who has since flown back to Paris. You will go to a different hotel when you leave here, the hotel for which Mrs Betterton had reservations. You will be wearing her clothes and her style of hairdressing and one or two strips of plaster at the sides of your face will make you look very different in feature. We’ve got a doctor coming to work upon you, by the way. Local anæsthetic, so it won’t hurt, but you will have to have a few genuine marks of the accident.’

‘You’re very thorough,’ said Hilary.

‘Have to be.’

‘You’ve never asked me,’ said Hilary, ‘whether Olive Betterton told me anything before she died.’

‘I understood you had scruples.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Not at all. I respect you for them. I’d like to indulge in them myself—but they’re not in the schedule.’

‘She did say something that perhaps I ought to tell you. She said “Tell him”—Betterton, that is—“tell him to be careful—Boris—dangerous—”’

‘Boris.’ Jessop repeated the name with interest. ‘Ah! Our correct foreign Major Boris Glydr.’

‘You know him? Who is he?’

‘A Pole. He came to see me in London. He’s supposed to be a cousin by marriage of Tom Betterton.’

‘Supposed?’

‘Let us say, more correctly, that if he is who he says he is, he is a cousin of the late Mrs Betterton. But we’ve only his word for it.’

‘She was frightened,’ said Hilary, frowning. ‘Can you describe him? I’d like to be able to recognize him.’

‘Yes. It might be as well. Six feet. Weight roughly, 160 pounds. Fair—rather wooden poker face—light eyes—foreign stilted manner—English very correct, but a pronounced accent, stiff military bearing.’

He added:

‘I had him tailed when he left my office. Nothing doing. He went straight to the US Embassy—quite correctly—he’d brought me an introductory letter from there. The usual kind they send out when they want to be polite but non-committal. I presume he left the Embassy either in somebody’s car or by the back entrance disguised as a footman or something. Anyway he evaded us. Yes—I should say that Olive Betterton was perhaps right when she said that Boris Glydr was dangerous.’

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