We’d already put away enough for eight: an enormous, chicken mousse in aspic, stuck about with truffles and pimento; great steaks dressed with foie-gras; glass after glass of neat Bols. Tholen, who looked like a working framer, ate at a great rate and smoked between mouthfuls. After he had drawn in, the smoke seemed to come out of everywhere, nose, mouth, ears, even, you imagined, his pockets.
I said: ‘‘Have you any more information about Buckingham?’’
‘‘We have had much communications with Jakarta, but. there is still some difficulty in the way of full cooperation.’’ Tholen looked uneasily at his companion.
Van Renkum frowned at his cuff-link, ‘‘ What Inspector Tholen means is that the feeling between our country and Indonesia is not yet all it should be. We feel that the full, independence of the Dutch East Indies was seized from our hands while we were in bad straits after the war—a blunder made by the United Nations, because the Indies were not ready; Leave a tottering child without its reins and it will fall—no doubt into the arms of Communism. They feel, the Indonesians feel, that what we gave we, gave grudgingly and with ill-will. So if we ask co-operation on internal matters we do not always receive it.’’
Tholen nodded vigorously. ‘‘But now one of my men to Jakarta a week since was sent, to look into this for us; Yesterday he leaves on his way home, so tomorrow we shall know more.’’
Martin at last broke his silence. ‘‘We know about Buckingham in Java. What we want to find is where Buckingham is now.’’
‘‘Yes. But in police work it is often what-has-gone-before which tells what-is-to-come. We hope for a full description of Buckingham to add to yours, Commander Coxon; perhaps some sure means of identification, perhaps, who knows, a photograph. Already our man has cabled news. We know how Buckingham meets Dr. Turner. In three, four months of late last year and early this a ship, the Peking, has been running arms from the Philippines. There is a port in Java held by the Dar-ul-Islam. These are Moslems in revolt against the central Government This Buckingham owns the ship. But in February she is holed by a Government plane and beached. Buckingham loses everything.’’ Tholen turned his hairy face on me. ‘‘Your brother is a very kind man, helps the down-dog, is of a strong and charitable friendship. His assistant is fallen ill. This Buckingham makes himself useful. So. No doubt this Buckingham has no money and Dr. Turner pays his fare home. But in Amsterdam Dr. Turner dies and this Buckingham disappears. It seems that he does not fly on anywhere else. Perhaps yet we shall find him.’’
‘‘And the girl Leonie?’’ I said.
‘‘No foreign-born woman enters or leaves Holland with that name. It is perhaps a pet name. If of course she is Dutch that is a difference. Among Dr. Turner’s friends here there have: been many inquiries and about his two other visits last year, but so far nothing.’’
The cheese was brought After a bit. I gave up, but the other three persevered to the end.
Van Renkum said: ‘‘There is one other matter, Mr. Turner. How far did your brother go in the first atomic experiments? I hesitate to mention it, but these days the strangest things can happen. Diplomats disappear and your best friend takes a plane to Russia.’’
‘‘He s been out of touch for twelve years. Anything he knew then would be practically prehistoric. But of course his sort of brain would be an asset to any country if he chose to use it.’’
‘‘That’s what I wondered—whether any pressure could have been brought to bear on him to do something that he was not prepared to do.’’
Martin accepted the cigar offered him by Van Renkum. ‘‘Do you know a man called Jodenbree?’’ he asked.
There was a flicker of a glance between the two Dutchmen. Tholen said: ‘‘A man who lives in the Oudekerk-splein? Do you meet him last night?’’
‘‘Yes.’’
‘‘He is not a good character. He has influence in all that district. Do not accept his friendship.’’
‘‘I don’t think it was being offered.’’
Tholen said: ‘‘Tomorrow you must meet my man coming from Jakarta. You must also see the evidence. I will have an interpreter for you.’’
Martin persisted: ‘‘What about this man Jodenbree. Have you questioned him?’’
‘‘Yes. But of course he has witnesses that he was far away on that night’’
‘‘Which suggests that he was not’’
‘‘It does not follow. If there is ever trouble, Mr. Jodenbree has the witnesses that he was elsewhere. On his part it is just an insurance.’’
‘‘How does he live? Does he draw money from those girls?’’
‘‘He has property there.’’
Martin lit his cigar. He shook the match out impatiently. ‘‘I’m only an observer, as you know, trying to help Mr. Turner. I’ve no axe to grind. But the more I see of this the less I’m sold on it. If Grevil Turner had shot himself in his hotel bedroom . . suicide, yes, you’d accept it there. But not how it happened and where it happened. Not in that district. Not among men like Jodenbree. Turner’s death has been rigged to look like suicide. Somehow, for some reason, he was killed. If that woman hadn’t seen it happen and called the police, he’d have disappeared altogether. Weeks later he’d have been ‘found drowned’ and the verdict would have been death from misadventure …’’
‘‘But the testimony of Hermina Maas is that——’’
‘‘She was fool enough to talk when everyone else was afraid to talk. But she realised in time that she was in danger and made up the suicide story. Even now she lives in terror of her life.’’
‘‘And the letter found on him?’’
‘‘It doesn’t convince me of anything.’’
‘‘And the manner of his death?’’ said Van Renkum coldly.
‘‘God knows. God knows. Held under water perhaps. There are ways that will fox the pathologist even yet.’’
A gleam of sun fell on the tree-lined canal outside.
Tholen said: ‘‘It may yet be as you have said. I do not think so, but we may find it so. In the meanwhile I think there is much danger if you, either of you, act on your own. You understand me?’’
‘‘Oh yes.’’
‘‘It would give me pleasure to have the promise from you not to act on your own.’’
I said: ‘‘ I don’t feel I can give that.’’
Tholen looked at me. It was a careful look, weighing up. ‘‘I am sorry, Mr. Turner.’’
‘‘I’ll not look for trouble,’’ I said. ‘‘But my time is short. I feel I must use it as I think fit.’’
As we left the restaurant Van Renkum drew me aside. ‘‘I have word from Count Louis Joachim that he’d like you to dine with him before you leave Holland. Would tomorrow evening suit you?’’
‘‘Thank you,’’ I said. ‘‘I shall look forward to it.’’
Martin and I strolled back up the Leidsestraat among the crowded bicycles and the noisy trams. He had become uncommunicative again, and all the food and drink had sapped me of initiative.
When we were nearly home he said: ‘‘Well, that doesn’t leave us much sea-room, does it?’’
‘‘You mean Tholen’s attitude?’’
‘‘Yes. Behave or I take the necessary steps.’’
‘‘What steps can he take?’’
‘‘Probably he’ll have us tailed. This is Powell’s doing. There simply wasn’t any point in our coming over if we have to be in leading-strings all the time.’’
‘‘I’m sorry you feel that way,’’ I said.
‘‘Well, don’t you?’’
‘‘What I mean is, I should be sorry to feel you were losing interest because we were now in the eye of the police.’’
‘‘I’m not losing interest in the very least.’’ he said. ‘‘Rather the opposite. But I’m losing a belief that we shall do any good this way.’’
‘‘Then what way is there?’’
‘‘I don’t know.’’
‘‘Boets has got nowhere so far?’’
/>
‘‘No, but he’s our best hope.’’
‘‘Anyway, there are only two more days,’’ I said.
‘‘And then you’ll go back to America?’’
‘‘I suppose so.’’
‘‘At least you can’t reproach yourself with anything left untried.’’
‘‘I can’t congratulate myself on anything worthwhile done.’’
‘‘Did you get the impression that Tholen and Van Renkum were being particularly frank with us?’’
‘‘No. It seemed to me that they headed away from your questions about Jodenbree. I suppose he couldn’t have some sort of protection, could he? That sort of thing doesn’t happen in Holland?’’
‘‘Well, I don’t know. I suppose it can happen anywhere.’’
We walked on for a time in silence. He said: ‘‘If you do go back to America with this thing unsolved it will still mean a lot to you?’’
I shrugged. ‘‘It’s not a matter of choice.’’
He nodded. ‘‘I know; that’s the trouble. One isn’t always able to choose.’’
In the early evening Martin had a cable from his mothe. There had been a burglary at their bungalow. It was a long cable and he smiled sourly.
‘‘My mother occasionally still sees herself as the helpless young bride needing someone to depend on, and me as a husbandsubstitute. But she’ll get over it.’’
At dinner he told me more about himself. His father had been the younger son of a Scottish peer and Lottie Bernstein, the actress, and had himself become a theatrical producer. ‘‘ He did very well for himself and was quite a hit with the ladies. Too much of a hit, because his constitution hit back and he died at thirty five. I don’t remember him much, but I used to go up and stay with the old man, my grandfather, Lord Callard, in Fife. He was an old devil but a blue-blood to his finger-tips. My mother was a teacher at a kindergarten when Dad married her.’’
Towards the end of the meal he reverted to the cable he’d had, and decided to wire telling his mother to phone him in the morning. She could do this from a neighbour’s house.
While he was sending this I walked round again to the Hôtel Grotius to see the receptionist who’d spoken to Grevil’s woman caller. I’d been once before but she was off duty. This time I found her. Grevil’s friend, she said, had given her name when she called, because it had had to be phoned up to his room; but she hadn’t the least recollection of what it might be, or whether it was even a married or an unmarried one. She’d a vague idea that it was a foreign name and short, possibly English. The lady she said was pretty and seemed to speak her English with slight difficulty.
‘‘Do you mean that she spoke it like a foreign language?’’
‘‘Well, I think several times she hesitated over a word.’’
Another receptionist remembered Grevil coming into the lobby the day before with a fair girl and a man, and they had gone into the bar for drinks, but the bar-tender didn’t remember them.
I walked home feeling that not one fact of any value had come out of our efforts so far. Trying to discover what had happened three weeks ago was too much like clutching at a part-deflated balloon—no sooner did you grasp it than the surface slipped away. Even the police were shifty. And time was running out.
The following morning while we were at breakfast Mrs. Coxon rang, and Martin came back after speaking to her to say he thought he should go back after all. The old lady wasn’t so young as she used to be, and there was some trouble over the insurance. I suggested to him that a couple more days wouldn’t make much difference, but after a certain amount of hesitation he said he felt he should go.
I half wondered if he was using the cable as an excuse to drop our. You could see he was a man of impulse, and he had probably made up his mind quite suddenly to take the trip to Holland, certain he could do something fairly impressive for me. But his nine-year-old contacts hadn’t come up to scratch, and his enthusiasm had begun to run out. And the moment Tholen came into the picture, Martin saw his own uses as limited.
It isn’t an unusual experience to meet people who promise—in all good faith—more than they can perform. Anyway, I could hardly blame him, for the responsibility for his coming had been mine.
He got a seat on the twelve-thirty plane, and I went with him to the airport. Before he left he said, seeming to see into my thoughts: ‘‘I’m sorry that I haven’t been able to help more. Believe me, it hasn’t been for lack of the wish to. Perhaps you would have managed better on your own.’’
‘‘How could I have? It was a forlorn hope, anyway.’’
‘‘There may be developments yet. If for any reason you don’t come home—if anything turns up here and you need me, do wire me and I’ll come back …’’
‘‘I will.’’
He stared at me steadily for a second. ‘‘ Whatever comes out of this, I think it might be worth our keeping in touch. What do you say?’’
‘‘By all means.’’
‘‘Let me know before you go back to the States. And if you have any thoughts after you go back there and think I can help you, write me. I still think the suicide explanation is a phoney one, and I should still be glad to help you prove it.’’
‘‘Thanks,’’ I said. ‘‘I’ll remember that.’’
When I rode back from Schiphol I felt rather lost, missing his companionship. I’d known him only a few days, but from the beginning knowing him had meant something. Perhaps, I thought, I should have been prepared to throw the thing up at this stage and go home too. Perhaps I wasn’t quite normal on this issue at all. I was still letting the thing mean too much to me, but what I’d told Martin was the absolute truth. I wasn’t able to choose. That much was a legacy of the past, of all me past right from being a kid of seven.
In the city again I called on Tholen. He had a disappointment for me. The man they had sent to Jakarta had cabled that he needed three or four more days. Now he would not be home until next week. Tholen seemed rather more agreeable this morning. If I had to leave when I said I must he promised to send me the report by letter.
I spent a good bit of the day having the full police and medical evidence read to me by a polite young policeman with blue eyes and a baby skin. I got back to the hotel early and wrote a letter to Dr. Pangkal whose address I’d had from Tholen. Grevil usually made personal friends of his assistants, and it seemed to me that Pangkal might be more willing to give his confidences, if he had any, to Grevil’s brother than to a Dutch police official. Then I began to change for my dinner with Count Louis Joachim.
I was half through when Boets’ wife came upstairs and, as far as I could understand it said there was someone below for Commander Coxon. She only spoke about six words of English and Boets was out; but I signed for her to bring the caller up.
I put on my jacket as a young man was shown in. He was pale and thin, with very thick rimless spectacles and a look as if he hadn’t ever seen a joke or been at ease in company. He wasn’t badly dressed and looked like a junior clerk or something.
‘‘Commander Coxon?’’
I hesitated. ‘‘ Well?’’
‘‘You are Commander Coxon?’’
I nodded.
The young man looked round the room as if he expected be stabbed in the back.
‘‘Sir, a Mr. Lowenthal informed me that there was information you wished to purchase. Sir, you know him?
I nodded again.
‘‘You wished to know about a certain lady who left the country on the thirtieth of March.’’
To hide my expression I bent to pack up my cigarettes. ‘‘Yes, I do.’’
‘‘Well, I have it. I was promised two hundred guilders.’’
I would have given a thousand. ‘‘Yes, I’ll pay that—if the information is what I want.’’
‘‘May I have the money then.’’
‘‘When you have told me what you have to tell.’’
We looked at each other, but I stared him down. After a minute he fu
mbled in his pocket and fished out a piece of paper.
‘‘She left Holland on March the thirtieth at 21.15 hours in K.L.
flight No. 341 for Rome. Her address is Rome was given as Hôtel Agostini, Via Quirinale 21.’’
I offered him a cigarette but he shook his head. ‘‘Thank you, sir, I do not smoke.’’
‘‘And is she still in Rome?’’
‘‘That of course I do not know.’’
I lit my cigarette. ‘‘And her name?’’
He stared at me through his thick lenses. ‘‘Her name?’’
‘‘Yes, of course.’’
I thought he was going to ask me for more money, but he didn’t. Instead he glanced at his piece of paper again. ‘‘ Helen Joyce Winter.’’
‘‘Mrs. or Miss?’’
‘‘Mrs.’’
‘‘British?’’
‘‘Yes, sir.’’
‘‘And the man?’’
He blinked. ‘‘The man, sir?’’
‘‘Wasn’t here a man with her?’’
‘‘I do not know, sir. To the best of my knowledge she travelled alone.’’
I thought: Helen, Helen, Eleanora, Leonora, Leonie.
‘‘Have you any other information?’’
‘‘No, sir.’’
I took two hundred-guilder notes out of my pocket-book and handed them to him. He blinked at them with his head bent over them suspiciously, then folded them in his quick narrow nervous fingers. The notes crackled as they disappeared.
I said: ‘‘Would you like a drink?’’
‘‘Thank you, sir, I do not drink.’’
I didn’t want to let him go, but when I questioned him he didn’t seem to know anything more at all. He’d come to sell one definite piece of information, and if he’d had more it seemed pretty certain that be would have been willing to sell more. As it was, his only interest now was to escape with the money. As we went down the stairs Boets mountainously shuffled in with an inquiry and perhaps a protest on his lips; but I made a face at him behind the young man’s back and saw the fellow away.