Gently Continental (11 page)

He goes. Shelton lights a cigarette. He is only too conscious of having fumbled that one: he searches his brain for some twist, some gimmick to raise his stock a little with Gently. Suppose, he says, Gordini's lying, and Mrs Breske, she's lying – collusion, in fact – a mutual alibi – giving Gordini opportunity . . . Miss Breske would need to be in it too, Gently says, if Gordini was not to be locked out of the hotel. I'd say that checked pretty well, Shelton said, I don't trust that girl further than I could throw her. Yes, it adds up, a little family conspiracy, with the Eyetie lover as hatchet-man. He'd probably do anything for Mrs Breske – and every Eyetie can use a knife. But what was it about? Gently says. Shelton hisses smoke, says, Does it matter? If he's a Nazi uncle with a nasty secret or some other chiseller trying it on? It'd still be nice to know, Gently says, especially as we don't have any, what you might call, proof. Yeah, Shelton says, hissing still, but it's a nice idea. I like the idea. And he frowns profoundly over his idea as though he, if not Gently, can appreciate its significance, as if he sees a hundred subtle correspondences, each worth a tumbril-load of proof. No Eyetie lover-boy with curls can make a monkey of English Shelton. Fetch Klapper in, he says suddenly, ringingly, in a tone that proclaims his mind is made up.

Klapper comes then behind, fourth and lastly, Franz Klapper, from Ischl he, town whose name alone is affront sufficient to tease Shelton: one does not find a vowel supporting such a train of consonants in countries respectably placed with Greenwich. But Klapper, coming last, and it appears grudgingly, has a quality denied to his predecessors, namely that he alone, like the grass growing, wears and ornaments his national dress. It sits upon him. He is born to it. Not the alpenhorn outside is more truly Austrian. Aryan Franz, blond, loose-limbed, gentian-eyed, fair-cheeked, strong of bone, springy of step, he walks in off the mountains. He is Austria: you could engrave him for a stamp or a coin, set him to music for a national song, carve him in stone for a monument. He is sifting snow and spring blossom and heroism and a waltz and the sleeping valleys and the gay towns and the mirror lakes and the white sun. That is, until he opens his mouth. Then Shelton pins him in a moment. It needs not Gently's delicate ear to assess the origin of Klapper's English. Where, Shelton demands, did you learn English? And Klapper is suitably, encouragingly, confused. He moves his square shoulders awkwardly and would rather not understand Shelton. But he does understand him, so at last he says, Sure, when I was in the States. So you've been in the States? Shelton purrs. Yes, Klapper was over there for a while. Doing his job there are chances for travel, and Klapper enjoys seeing the world. When were you there? Shelton says softly. For the last two years, until January. Then Klapper felt restless for a breath of Europe and he came first to London, afterwards here. Two years, Shelton says, making it sound damnatory, and certainly Klapper takes his meaning: if a sojourn in the States is not precisely criminal, still, it can be to nobody's credit. And you were in one place? Shelton murmurs. Yes, no, that is to say, in several situations, as, a season at the Waldorf-Astoria, then other places, that is usual. But in one town? Yes, in one town. Which was? Klapper babbles it out: New York. New York, Shelton smiles, isn't that a coincidence, Clooney coming from New York and all? Why, Shelton says, reducing New York to the size, if he knew it, of barbaric Ischl, you probably ran across him while you were over there, in a couple of years you'd meet lots of people. Did you meet him? Klapper wants to escape, his eyes dart this side and that of Shelton. Did you? Shelton repeats, in a wild surmise. And Klapper, in a panic, blurts out . . . Yes! Yes! It explodes among them! It explodes in Shelton! He can scarcely speak! Not daring to look at Gently, he sits crouching, hearing triumphal music on the hills. Yes, Klapper said, Yes, in answer to Shelton's question, Yes, as a result of Shelton's technique and Shelton's handling, Yes, he'd said, Yes, Yes. No statesmen, labouring to gain approval at a convocation of all nations, wrought from Russia that sacred word with such brave joy as Shelton now knew. Well, well, he says, when he can say anything, well, Klapper, well, well, and looks almost lovingly at Aryan Franz, who, notwithstanding, seems far from well. But fancy, Shelton continues, fancy your not telling us you were acquainted with the late Clooney, especially, Shelton says, when we've been breaking our necks two days trying to find out who in hell he was – that, Shelton says, wasn't very nice, Klapper, not, as we say, very co-operative, in fact, Shelton says, we may throw the bloody book at you, just for that if for no other – and, Shelton says, you can put your shammy trousers on it, if there is some other, we shall find it. Then he breathes in and out with great ferocity, and Austria wilts before the man. Now, Shelton says, who was he? But sir, I don't know! Klapper exclaims. If I knew anything I would tell you, sir, I sure would, I want to co-operate. Yes, it looks so like it, Shelton says. Where did you meet him? What was he doing? Sir, Klapper says, he was only a customer, I just don't know anything about him at all. He comes, he and one or two others, to the restaurant I work at for a while – that is Cassidy's, off Fifth Avenue – a few times he comes there. And you wait on him, talk to him, Shelton says. No sir, no, Klapper says, they never sit at my table, I never spoke to him at all. There are three, four of them come in together, one is an Irishman called Pat, one is a little dark man called Toni, then there is Mr Clooney, who they call Heifiz. Who they call what? Shelton yaps. Klapper winces, says, Heifiz, sir. That surely is what it sounds like, though Klapper didn't pay much attention. Heifiz, or Heifitz, the
z
German. Or possibly Heifetz, Gently suggests. Or possibly Heifetz, Klapper allows, willing to keep the matter open. Heifiz, Heifitz or Heifetz is how the others referred to Clooney, while they ate and drank, not inexpensively, in a toney joint off Fifth Avenue. And that was his first name, Shelton pursues. Klapper thinks no, sir, it was just a nickname, as for instance the fourth man, in appearance Armenian, was always referred to as Abdul: Pat, Toni, Heifiz and Abdul, they were all nicknames, Klapper opines. So what sort of people were they? What sort? Did they seem like honest citizens? Klapper wrestles with this one, says, It sure is difficult, I never could tell with Americans. They dress and act, you know? – without taste, without manners. Maybe you're talking to a millionaire, maybe a hoodlum fresh out of Sing-Sing. Unless you're born there, Klapper thinks, you goddam cannot tell the difference, and with regard to Pat, Toni, Heifiz and Abdul, he would not like to venture an opinion: except they were noisy, rather ugly men, who it would have been no pleasure for Klapper to have served. But you served Clooney here, Shelton snaps, how come you said nothing to him about having seen him before. Sir, he is a stranger, Klapper shrugs, I had no desire to be familiar with him. But you said nothing to anybody, Shelton snaps. Nobody has said to us, Klapper knows him. What was all the mystery about? Sir, he just meant nothing to me, Klapper says. He wriggles his shoulders and then explains: I sure didn't want to get mixed up in this. I didn't have anything important to tell you, sir, and I thought you would certainly know all about him. It's just I've seen him before, nothing else. I don't know anything about who killed him. And neither does he, for all Shelton can extract in half an hour of sinewy question: he finishes up where he began with those shadowy figures dining in Cassidy's. Pat, Toni, Heifiz and Abdul, a brood of mixed nationalities, foreign to Klapper, who actually saw them, and hopelessly foreign to Shelton, who didn't: foreign and worse, because over the rawness, the primary colour of their alienship, was scumbled this secondary glaze of Americanization, levelling, greying-out, rendering shapeless. Wouldn't it have been better, after all, if Shelton had failed to uncover this tantalizing glimpse, which leaves Clooney, Wilbur or Heifiz, even more enigmatic than before? Pat, Toni, Heifiz and Abdul. They dance like motes before Shelton's eyes. He has got them, but doesn't know what to do with them. Or maybe they have got him.

A
FTER LUNCH THE
Great Man is to be seen on the cliffs, wandering lonely there, if not like a cloud, at least like some roving demi-god. The reporters mark him; they would wander with him if they could overcome their shyness, in the manner of disciples following a peripatetic philosopher, to grave his words upon their memory. But shy they are, or perhaps unchosen. They wander apart, below on the beach. He wanders above, aloof, unchallenged, his words unspoken and so un-graved. What does he know, moving so slowly in the fire-blue sky, hidden now by scenting gorse, now marching large on stony hillock, along the crumbling cliffs northward, while all the larks sing? He has been telephoning, this is known, and the calls were trunk calls. To Whitehall? To Grosvenor Square? Rumour stays not the question. But there was matter worth transmitting, and this surely irks the reporters, so that, though shy, still they will not let the Great Man from their sight, and follow, from the common sands, his heavenly motions aloft, his slow, sightless, mindless motions, informed, heavy with news. He has it, they are certain, what they can print in explosive type in the late editions, and they may not, cannot, and on all counts will not, let this seminal figure stray from view.

He wanders, and above the pill-box stops to take a bearing. He looks outwards into a jewel of arching sky and splendid sea. The sun twinkles in a corner and floods the jewel with far blaze and shows illimitably blues strained with gold grey and green. And pressing behind him like firm hands is the gorsey heat of the cliff-top within which the larksong, a trembling spirit, wreathes, to be felt more than heard. And centrally in that jewel (because thus he has placed it, where the heel of the compass ethereally sweeping from north to south shall rest) lies the concrete lump, tilted and burying, hooking its rusty claws savagely, exposing broken surfaces, weathering but obdurate, and moulded surfaces, their purpose lost. All below him lies that lump and in the lump Stody's theorem. The lump, descended thunderously, had blundered clear of the still-scarred cliff. You cannot drop a pebble on it. You must needs throw the pebble. Neither can you drop a body on it. You must needs throw the body. Throw a body? The theorem requires it: must be thrown to reach the lump: must be picked up, or, if alive, grappled with, and thrown or hurled, say, three yards. A notable feat on a dark night! Yet the theorem requires it. Clooney limp or Clooney kicking, he would need to be heaved three yards. Had Clooney then been inflated with hydrogen? Or was his heaver no mortal man? Had the Devil himself descended on Clooney and whirled him, with supernatural precision, thence? The Great Man perhaps considers the Devil along with another dozen surmises, which cannot help including Brother Fred's concept of a walking, running or leaping American; for the Great Man and Brother Fred are one in seeing clearly what is set before them, and, while not entirely discounting the Devil, alike prefer the obvious answer. A leaping American? With limbs whirling, furiously from the dewy brow, in perfect darkness, or near enough, towards the invisibly murmuring and spreading sea: frantic to do, yet coolly accurate to choose his spot within feet, sans marker, sans light, sans any view of the lump below. Did he do it by the stars, this leaping marvel, astrally guiding himself to oblivion? The Great Man retires with measuring steps. He halts but five strides from the brow. He sees now below the dejected reporters and the combers washing, but the lump he does not see. And where it is below the mute cliff-line stretches faceless and unbroken, grassed thinly, a smooth extension offering direction to no man. Even in the staring light of noonday, how could Clooney have hit that bugger head-on? Or less than the Devil, who could have heaved him so irresistibly and correctly? Yet, with the coin suspended, one remembers again the bruises and the twenty-two cuts, and the obvious, about to proclaim itself roundly, retires a little, still to wait. A mystery here! Not what was done, but how in the Devil it could be doing.

The Great Man's figure shrinks further but does not wholly disappear, and the watchers, kicking the dried bladder-wrack, know he ponders the spot where the hat was found. Stody has marked this spot: at first with a twig, but later with a finely-fashioned stake: it stands boldly beside a gorse-thicket and bears his signature in indelible pencil. The spot is pleasant. It is a sort of haven protected by the thicket from the sea-breeze, an odorous sun-trap, inviting for lovers, exquisite for picnics and such traffic. The breeze sifts among the gorse and stirs the sweetness of ten thousand blooms, each straining its yellow hood in the high heat of afternoon. What terror of death could harbour here? Only Stody's stake insists on it. The dried grass meekly refuses to bear evidence in support. Here was the hat, Stody insists, inferring, Here Clooney was thrown down and tortured, but the spot, speaking in its own language, allows this assertion no reality, saying instead, These things are pictures less in truth than a humming bee. Two kinds of reality? Ah, but, define the term. If Clooney's agony is unreal then no bee hums. All is real or none is real or all and none are real/unreal: make-believe is come again, and that's an attitude, mark. The spot and Clooney, raw essence, equally turn their backs on labels. They are modes of feeling, to use words. We, not they, contradict. But here this Man selects his mode, though aware of its illusory character, and while not preferring it to other modes, which he acknowledges, yet pursues it with single mind: among the gorse, with bees humming, he insists with Stody on Clooney dead. And what sees he, pursuing his mode? Nothing more revealing than the stake. There is nothing to see, not the ghost of a print, not a shred of material caught in the gorse. Stody has been here many times, Shelton, Williams have both been here, the reporters, to a man, have gleaned on their heels, spurred on by fame to make discoveries. But the hat was all, and the position of the hat, and the fact that the hat was lying on its crown: was, was here, and was thus, period, is the whole story. Why then does the Man stand so long and so dreaming at the spot? What new intelligence has he brought, to extract fresh matter from the gorses?