Chapter 20

I had expected the inspector and Detective-Sergeant Sparrow to come and see me, but they didn’t even telephone. A picture postcard turned up unexpectedly from Tooley. It was the view of a rather ugly temple in Katmandu and she had written on it, “I am on a marvellous trip. Love, Tooley.” I had quite forgotten that I had given her my address. There was no reference to Christmas (the season, I suppose, had passed unnoticed in Nepal), and I felt the more proud of her casual remembrance.

When Boxing Day was over I drove to the Crown and Anchor a little before closing time in the afternoon. I wanted to see the flat in case the inspector turned up with his search warrant. If there were any discreditable remnants of Wordsworth still lying about the place I wanted to remove them, and I carried a small week-end case with me for the purpose. All my working life I had been strictly loyal to one establishment, the bank, but my loyalty now was drawn in quite another direction. Loyalty to a person inevitably entails loyalty to all the imperfections of a human being, even to the chicanery and immorality from which my aunt was not entirely free. I wondered whether she had ever forged a cheque or robbed a bank, and I smiled at the thought with the tenderness I might have shown in the past to a small eccentricity.

When I reached the Crown and Anchor I looked cautiously in at the window of the saloon bar. Why cautiously? I had every right to be there – it was still opening time. The day was grey with a threat of snow and the customers were all pressing against the bar to get their last refill before three o’clock. I could see the back of the girl, who was still in jodhpurs, and a large hairy hand laid against it. “Another double,” “pint of best bitter,” “double pink.” The clock stood at two minutes to three. It was as though they were whipping up their horses on the last straight before the winning post, and there was a great deal of irregular crowding. I found the right key to open the side door and climbed the stairs. On the second landing I sat down for a moment on my aunt’s sofa. I felt as illicit as a burglar and I listened for footsteps, but of course there was only the buzz and murmur of the bar.

When I opened the door of the flat I found everything in deep darkness. I set an occasional table rocking in the hall and something Venetian tinkled into fragments on the floor. When I drew the curtains the Venetian glasses had no glitter – they had gone dead like unused pearls. There was a scurf of correspondence on the floor among the broken glass, but it consisted mainly of circulars and I didn’t bother to examine them for the moment. I went into my aunt’s bedroom with a sense of shame – yet hadn’t she asked me to see that all was in order? I remembered how meticulously Colonel Hakim had explored the hotel room and how easily he had been outwitted, but I could see no candles anywhere, except in the kitchen, where they were of a normal size and weight – presumably a genuine precaution against an electric failure.

In Wordsworth’s room the bed had been stripped and the hideous Walt Disney figures had all been put into drawers. The only decoration left was a framed photograph of Freetown harbour which showed market women in bright dresses with baskets on their heads descending some old steps towards the waterfront. I hadn’t noticed it when I came before – perhaps my aunt had hung it there in memory of Wordsworth.

I returned to the sitting-room and began to go through the post. One day my aunt might send me a forwarding address, but in any case I wanted to save anything remotely personal from the scrutiny of Woodrow and Sparrow if they came. My old acquaintance Omo had written, and there were various bills from a laundry, a wine-merchant’s, a grocer’s. I was surprised not to find a bank statement, but remembering the gold brick and the suitcase stuffed with notes, I thought that perhaps my aunt preferred to keep her resources liquid. In that case, it seemed to me wise to take a closer look among the dresses she had left behind, for it would be dangerous to leave cash about in the empty flat.

Then among the bills I came on something which interested me – a picture postcard from Panama showing a French liner on a very blue sea. The card was written in French, in a tiny economic script to take full advantage of the small space. The writer signed himself with the initials A.D. and he wrote, so far as I could make out, what a concours de circonstances miraculeux it had been to find my aunt on the ship after all these years of a triste séparation and what a calamity it was that she had left the boat before the end of the cruise and not given him a longer chance to live over again the memories they shared. After her departure A.D.’s lumbago had taken a turn for the worse and the gout had revived in his right toe.

Could this possibly, I wondered, be Monsieur Dambreuse, the gallant lover who had kept two mistresses in the same hotel? If he was alive, then perhaps Curran was alive too. It was as though my aunt’s crooked world were destined to a kind of immortality – only my poor father lay certainly dead in the smoke and rain of Boulogne. I admit that a pang of jealousy struck me because on this voyage I had not been my aunt’s companion. It was to others that she now recounted her stories.

“Forgive us coming in without ringing, Mr. Pulling,” said Detective-Sergeant Sparrow. He stood back to allow Inspector Woodrow to precede him according to protocol into the sitting-room. The inspector was carrying his umbrella, which looked as if it hadn’t been opened since I had seen him last.

“Good afternoon,” Inspector Woodrow said stiffly. “It is just as well we have found you here.”

“The door being open…” Sergeant Sparrow said.

“I have a search warrant,” Inspector Woodrow told me before I could ask him, and he held it out for my inspection. “All the same we prefer a member of the family to be present at a search.”

“Not wishing to make a commotion,” Sergeant Sparrow said, “which would be disagreeable to all, we were waiting in our car across the street till the manager closed the bar, but then seeing you come in, we thought we could do things on the quiet without even the manager knowing. Much nicer for your aunt because there would have been a lot of gossip in the bar tonight, you can be sure of that. You can’t trust a barman not to talk to his locals. It’s like husband and wife.”

While he spoke the inspector was busy examining the room.

“Looking at her mail, eh?” the sergeant asked me. He took the card out of my hand and said, “Panama. Signed A.D. Now you wouldn’t have an idea who A.D. is?”

“No.”

“You see, it might be an alias. Interpol doesn’t get much cooperation in Panama,” the sergeant said, “except in the American zone.”

“Keep the card, Sparrow,” the inspector said, “nonetheless.”

“What have you got against my aunt?”

“You know, sir, we err on the side of kindness,” Sergeant Sparrow said. “We could have charged her over that Cannabis affair, but seeing what an old lady she was and the coloured man taking off to Paris like that, we let her be. The case wouldn’t have stood up well in court anyway. Of course we didn’t know a thing then about this undesirable connection of hers.”

“What connection?”

I wondered if they had arranged their two parts beforehand: the sergeant being told to keep me occupied while the inspector searched the flat, as he was now doing.

“This man Visconti, sir. An Italian as you might surmise with a name like that. He’s a viper.”

“All this glass,” the inspector said. “Curious stuff. It’s like a museum.”

“Venetian glass. My aunt worked once in Venice. I expect a lot were gifts – from her clients.”

“Very valuable? Collectors’ pieces?”

“I wouldn’t have thought so.”

“Works of art?”

“It’s a matter of taste,” I said.

“Miss Bertram knew a lot about art, I daresay. Any pictures?”

“I don’t think so. Only a photo of Freetown in the spare room.”

“Why Freetown?”

“Wordsworth came from there.”

“Who’s Wordsworth?”

“The black valet,” Sergeant Sparrow said. “The one who took off to France when we found the pot.”

They trailed from room to room and I followed them. I thought that Woodrow was less thorough in his search than Colonel Hakim. I had the impression that he expected nothing and was only anxious to make a formal report to Interpol that every effort had been made. Every now and then he tossed me a question without looking round. “Has your aunt ever mentioned this fellow Visconti?”

“Oh yes, many times.”

“Is he alive, would you say?”

“I don’t know.”

“Any idea if they are still in contact?”

“I wouldn’t think so.”

“The old viper would be over eighty by now,” Sergeant Sparrow said. “Nearer ninety, I’d guess.”

“It seems a bit late to be chasing him even if he is alive,” I said. We had left my aunt’s room and entered Wordsworth’s.

“That’s one of the troubles of Interpol,” Sergeant Sparrow said. “Too many files. It’s not real police work they do. Not one of them has ever been on the beat. It’s a civil service. Like Somerset House.”

“They do their duty, Sparrow,” Woodrow said. He took down the photo of Freetown harbour and turned it over. Then he hung it up again. “It’s a good-looking frame,” he said. “Cost more than the photograph.”

“Italian too from the look of it,” I said, “like the glass.”

“Perhaps given her by the man Visconti?” Sergeant Sparrow asked.

“There’s no indication on the back,” the inspector said. “I had hoped for an inscription. Interpol haven’t even a specimen of his signature – leave alone fingerprints”. He consulted a piece of paper.

“Have you ever heard your aunt mention any of these names – Tiberio Titi?”

“No.”

“Stradano? Passerati? Cossa?”

“She’s never spoken to me very much about her Italian friends.”

“These weren’t friends,” Inspector Woodrow said. “Leonardo da Vinci?”

“No.”

He began to go through the rooms all over again, but I could tell that it was only for form’s sake. At the door he gave me a telephone number. “If you hear from your aunt,” he said, “if you ever do, please ring us at once.”

“I promise nothing.”

“We only want to ask her a few questions,” Sergeant Sparrow said. “There’s no charge against her.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“It is even possible,” Inspector Woodrow said, “that she might be in serious personal danger. From her unfortunate associations.”

“Particularly from that viper Visconti,” Sergeant Sparrow chimed in.

“Why do you keep on calling him a viper?”

Sergeant Sparrow said, “It’s the only description Interpol has given us. They haven’t so much as a passport photo. But he was once described as a viper by the Chief of Police in Rome in 1945. All their war records were destroyed, the chief’s dead, and we don’t know now whether viper was a physical description or what you might call a moral judgement.”

“At least,” the inspector said, “we now have a postcard from Panama.”

“It’s something for the files,” Detective-Sergeant Sparrow explained to me.

When I double-locked the door and followed them, I was left with the sad impression that my aunt might be dead and the most interesting part of my life might be over. I had waited a long while for it to arrive, and it had not lasted very long.