Other Paths to Glory (4 page)

For half a minute he stared at the paper - his own paper. And his own typewriter, or one exactly similar. And even his own thick black ink for the signature.

His own signature.

‘B-but - ‘ Momentarily his thoughts overran his tongue, coming out incoherently as he met the policeman’s steady gaze. ‘But - I didn’t write this.’

‘You didn’t write it, sir.’

It was the tone again, rather than the words, which pointed to the man’s meaning. He wasn’t asking a question; he wasn’t even echoing a statement. He was making an unthreatening sound to give Mitchell a last chance to admit something perfectly plain, something that had been plain from the very beginning.

‘But it is your signature, isn’t it, sir?’

Another gentle question, almost apologetic. Only now Mitchell understood what had been happening to him and around him, and was desperately aware of the nature of that knowledge: so far from setting him free it merely showed him the bars of the trap into which he’d tumbled. There’d not only been something wrong with his mother’s reactions from the start, there’d also been a rumbling and unnatural sequence to the young policeman’s questions. A strange caution which he had mistaken for kindliness.

But the poor devil had come to check up on a likely suicide, only to be faced by the suicide himself - Phlebas the Phoenician indeed! - who’d surfaced again en route from the river bed to the psychiatric bed at the General.

‘My signature?’

Must answer.

‘Yes - I mean
no,
damn it!’ Steady now. ‘I mean, Constable, it looks like my signature, but it isn’t. Because I didn’t write it.’

Now, for the very first time, the young policeman did look rather disconcerted - and so did Mother, Mitchell saw with a quick side-glance. Disconcerted and even in some crazy way disappointed, Mother was, because her tragi-happy ending was going wrong.

And as for the poor copper, he had an awkward loony on his hands now who refused to accept defeat, and come quietly.

Only the loony didn’t feel like playing games.

‘I c-can’t prove I didn’t jump in the river, unless someone saw what happened, which isn’t likely,’ he said carefully. ‘But I can damn well prove this -
this
is a pack of lies.’

The policeman seemed half-hypnotised by the paper fluttering under his nose.

‘Could I have that note back, sir, please?’

‘By all means. You’ll need it for the name - Professor Emerson, who allegedly thinks my work’s no good. All you have to do is phone him up - 326 - 21242 - and he’ll tell you. Only he won’t tell you that.’

In any other circumstances that would have been game and set, if not quite match.

Except in his dilapidated state Mitchell didn’t feel ready to celebrate any victory, but was only relieved that he was about to be taken seriously at last.

And then the awkwardness of the lengthening silence in the kitchen began to disturb him, draining his confidence. Inside his damp clothes he was chilled, yet he could feel the warmth of the boiler on his face. The overall effect was of an unwholesome clamminess - Phlebas being warmed up.

More silence.

‘What’s the matter?’

His mother spoke, unwillingly.

‘It was in the paper this evening, Paul - in the
Evening
Mail.
‘

‘What was?’

‘The fire. Then you haven’t seen it?’

‘Seen it? Seen
what.
Mother?’

‘Professor Emerson’s house was burnt down today - it was on the local news on the radio too. He - ‘

‘Mrs Mitchell - !’

This time she beat the policeman down.

‘He died in the fire, Paul.’

TO HIS SHAME
, Mitchell experienced a shock-wave of selfish dismay before he registered sorrow. Then cold commonsense came to his rescue, rationalising the selfishness. It wasn’t just that the living always jostled the dead out of the way, but that Charles Emerson’s death was a thing too stunning, too unacceptable, to take in.

What was real was the awkward present, in which there was no Professor Emerson now to bear witness to a truth that would have nailed that lying piece of paper for the clumsy forgery it was. One word from him would have done that - but now all he had was Mother, who had opposed the Hindenburg Line project from the start, and who saw his parting from Valerie as a direct and tragic consequence of it.

In fact, it was no longer clumsy: he saw, as he stared into her distraught eyes, that the clumsiness had been transformed by this hideous accident and her own imaginings into a diabolical cleverness which was about to enmesh him if he didn’t think quickly. They were both staring at him, waiting for him to react. And the more they stared, the less he knew what to say or do, so that silence built up in the stuffy kitchen like leaking gas searching tor a spark.

It was the policeman who fumbled finally for the safety valve.

‘What would Professor Emerson have told me, then, sir?’

The gentle voice was back - the loony was being humoured again. So the loony had better be damn careful.

‘He would have told you that my research is going fine,’ he said deliberately. ‘He is - he was very pleased with the way it was shaping.’

‘Indeed, sir?’

Indeed … but that was too vague to carry conviction. Policemen needed facts.

‘Have you ever heard of the Hindenburg Line, Constable?’

God! Don’t let him ask if it has anything to with railways!

‘I can’t say that I have, no.’

Mitchell breathed a small sigh of relief.

‘It was a system of German defences in the 1914-18 War - defences in depth, miles of barbed wire and pillboxes and strong points, almost impregnable.’

The policeman nodded.

‘Like the Siegfried Line - in the Second World War.’

‘Ah - yes … that’s right.’

What am I doing, trying to explain the Hindenburg Line to a policeman? Only a loony would
do that!

‘Yes, sir?’

Mitchell decided to cut his losses.

‘Well, that’s what I’m going to write a book about.’

Silence again.

‘That’s very interesting, it sounds.’

The policeman nodded encouragingly.

‘And you were talking about the Hindenburger Line to Professor Emerson this morning.’

‘That’s right. We discussed some of my ideas, and he said they seemed to make sense-‘

That didn’t sound right.

‘ - that I was on the right line – ‘

That sounded even worse: the right line on the Hindenburg Line, change here for the Siegfried Line, the Maginot Line and all stations to Waterloo and Trafalgar Square, and don’t forget to jump in the river on your way home.

‘What time would that have been, sir?’

Mitchell frowned.

‘Time?’

‘How long were you with the professor?’

‘How long?’

Mitchell realised he was repeating the words stupidly.

‘I suppose about an hour. I caught the early morning bus to Parley Green, so I got there about 9.10 – just over an hour that would leave.’

‘Before what?’

‘Before I caught the London train. For God’s sake, what’s all this got to do with -‘

Mitchell stopped. Abruptly as he saw, appalled, exactly what it had to do with: the loony had visited the professor, and now the professor was dead in the ashes of his house.

‘
Constable!
’

Mother’s voice bit into the latest in the sequence of disastrous silences like a sharp sword drawn quickly in his defence.

‘My son has been standing here in his wet clothes answering questions for far too long. And there’s no need for you to waste any more of your valuable time anyway, because it’s all been a false alarm - and now I can see that it’s all been my fault, too, because I didn’t understand his note and - ‘

‘Mother - ‘

Mitchell saw too late that she had made the same terrifying deduction and was reacting with her usual disregard for the real world around her. The young constable was no longer her ally, but an enemy to be dismissed or, failing that, ignored.

Her suicidal son had returned, and if he’d burnt a few houses and outwitted a few would-be murderers or gone for a swim in the black river en route, that was nobody’s business except his and hers.

The effect was totally disastrous, but before anyone could react to it the front door knocker hammered out.

‘Now, who could that be? Paul, dear -‘

She looked at him for a moment, balancing the need to separate him from the Law against his bedraggled appearance.

‘No, I’d better go. But don’t you say one word until I get back, dear.’

The policeman watched her out of the room impassively before flipping open his notebook.

‘Well now, Mr Mitchell … there’s just one more point. I believe you are acquainted with a Miss Valerie Newton, is that correct?’

Mitchell nodded. There was at least some hope that Valeric would ridicule the contents of the note; under ordinary circumstances he would have depended on it, but he no longer had any confidence in anything going right. It could just as easily be, on this losing streak of his, that her career had gone sour and that absence had made her heart grow fonder again.

‘
You do?
’

A murmur of voices in the hall drew his attention away from the question, his mother’s voice and a male one he couldn’t place.

‘You were engaged to her - is that right?’

He pulled himself back to the question.

‘No, it isn’t right. We were-‘ he mustn’t say
good friends:
that was always taken as a euphemism for extreme intimacy - ‘we were very friendly. But the idea of an engagement was my mother’s, not ours. We were just friendly, that’s all.’

He frowned. Put like that there was a basic untruth in it, because they had been more than friends. It was just that modern language hadn’t caught up with modern relationships. But at least the policeman belonged to his own generation, and this might be his only chance to undo some of the damage Mother had certainly done.

‘There simply wasn’t - ‘

He broke off guiltily as he saw his mother appear in the doorway. Naughty Paul caught in the act of speaking to the policeman.

‘Dear, there’s a gentleman who insists on seeing you,’ she said quickly, with an emphasis which suggested that this was one time when any intrusion ought to be welcomed. ‘He’s a Doctor er - ‘

‘ - Audley,’ supplied a voice from the passage behind her.

There was nothing much left now, thought Mitchell, which really could be said to be surprising except maybe that Audley himself seemed remarkably unmoved by what he saw as he came into the kitchen: the presence of the policeman and his own appearance together apparently rated no more than one slightly raised eyebrow.

‘Mr Mitchell,’ Audley’s head bobbed. ‘You must forgive me again for intruding. I’m afraid I must break my promise.’

Mitchell stared at him. He couldn’t recall any promise.

‘What do you want?’

‘To talk to you again.’ Audley’s eyes shifted momentarily to the policeman. ‘Has there been some kind of - accident?’

‘No accident.’ Mitchell was suddenly very tired of questions. ‘No accident.’

The policeman stirred.

‘You’re a doctor, sir?’

‘Not of medicine.’ Audley didn’t look at the policeman as he spoke. ‘No accident?’

‘Two men tried to kill me, that’s all.’

‘Paul-‘

‘I was about to take a statement from Mr Mitchell,’ said the policeman heavily. ‘If you’re not his doctor then I’m afraid your business will have to wait until I’ve finished, sir.’

‘And I’m afraid it won’t wait,’ replied Audley equably, reaching inside his coat with his left hand. He drew out a small black folder and handed it to the policeman, his eyes never leaving Mitchell’s.

‘Tell me what happened, Mr Mitchell.’

Mitchell swallowed nervously. Whatever it was, the black folder had stopped the policeman dead in his tracks - he was staring at it with a look of frozen concentration.

‘I m-met two men on the weir footbridge. They - one of them knew my name. Then they threw me into the weir, or they tried to.’

‘Tried to?’

‘Well, they did. But I got stuck under the bridge, where they couldn’t see me.’

‘And they thought you’d drowned?’

The man was quick. And what was more, there wasn’t a shadow of disbelief in his voice.

He nodded.

‘I waited until they’d gone.’

The policeman cleared his throat.

‘May I speak to you privately, Dr Audley?’ he said.

‘I think you’d better, Constable - ?’

‘Bell, sir.’

‘Constable Bell. Perhaps we could use another room, Mrs Mitchell? And your son could get out of his clothes into something dry while I’m talking to the constable.’

Mother took a step forward, facing up to Audley resolutely.

‘Will you kindly tell me who you are, Doctor - Audley? And what you’re doing?’

‘Ministry of Defence, Madam,’ Audley accepted the black folder from the constable, but tucked it back into his pocket without showing it to her. It seemed that he considered the one answer covered both questions, and that the policeman’s deference was confirmation enough of its truth.

‘And what has that to do with my son?’

Audley looked down at her for a moment, as though undecided about his reply.

‘Madam,’ he said finally, with a gravity which only just fell short of pomposity, ‘it seems that someone wants your son dead. Consequently he needs defending. Constable Bell and I will discuss how best that may be achieved, Have I your permission to use your telephone?’

‘But - ‘ She compressed her lips suddenly as though she had decided to put her mouth under restraint. Mitchell knew the expression of old, just as he recognised her dilemma: she had realised at last that what had happened could neither be shrugged off nor ignored, but that meant she must either accept or deny his story in the certain knowledge that she was opening the door to nightmare whatever she did. She simply didn’t know what to do.

‘The phone’s in the sitting room, Dr Audley,’ he said, resolving her dilemma for her.

‘Down the hallway on the left. I’ll show you.’