John Bingham - A Fragment of Fear

She nodded equably.

That’s one of the things about modern life. Murder means nothing, unless it affects you personally. In Anglo-Saxon times, when peasants were thin on the ground, murder was a serious matter. It was the loss of a pair of hands to the community. The hue and cry was raised, and everybody by law had to drop what they were doing and bring the criminal to book. Things are different now, because there are so many of us. We can afford losses.

“Seen her picture?” I asked.

She was looking at the menu, preoccupied. She nodded. I said:

“That was the woman on the train from Burlington and Brighton.”

She put the menu down and took off her dark framed spectacles, and stared across the table at me, her face magnolia-pale in the lamp light.

“Are you sure?”

“Certainly I am.”

“You must go to the police, darling.”

“I’ve been.”

“What did they say?”

“Various things. They said she had never made a complaint against me, for one thing.”

“But what about the-?”

“What are you having as a first course?”

A waiter was standing by her shoulder. We chose our food and the waiter moved away.

“They said the man who called on me wasn’t a police officer,” I went on. “They hardly believed a word I said, except that I had been in the train with her.”

She stared down at the table cloth, picking at a roll of bread with her left hand.

“Didn’t you ask them for help or advice, or something?”

“More or less, yes.”

“Well, I mean, what did they say? They can’t have just said, ‘we don’t believe you,’ they must have said something, put forward some theory. I mean, this is serious!”

I shrugged and ordered a carafe of red wine from the wine waiter.

“They kind of skated around things.”

“They can’t skate round them, darling.”

“Well, they did.”

“Didn’t you press them for heaven’s sake?”

“What for, sweetheart?”

“Well-investigations. And protection.”

“Investigations of what? Protection against what? A message typed on my own typewriter which I can’t produce? A ’phone call from an unknown man? Thugs who didn’t attack me? People who come into my flat and aren’t seen? Old ladies who won’t co-operate? Men who hire policemen’s uniforms-if he did hire it?”

She didn’t answer, and did not have to, because the spaghetti bolognese arrived. She bent over it, but after a few seconds she gave me one of her quick, silent, secretive looks.

“Don’t go and get all withdrawn,” I protested. “You don’t understand.”

“No, I don’t understand. Something ought to be done. You ought to have demanded it.”

“Look, to the police a crime has two motives-a money motive in one form or another, or a sex motive of some sort. They asked, in effect, if I could supply a motive for them to work on. And I can’t. If money or sex comes into it, it’s so well hidden that I can’t begin to see it.”

She bent down and picked up the evening paper which I had placed on the floor by the table, and looked at the picture.

“There might be a sex angle, from what you told me,” she murmured. “I suppose it’s possible.”

I hesitated, thinking over what she had said.

“There might be,” I conceded reluctantly. “I suppose there just might be, in a twisted sort of way. But I doubt it.”

“So do I,” said Juliet.

“Individual jealousy perhaps? A coincidence.”

Juliet nodded. I said:

“You should have seen her, darling, all overwrought and preoccupied with her own sad world. I think she almost forgot why she had been told to travel with me, I think at the end she almost forgot to give me the envelope. I think they had some sort of hold on her at one time, but now-”

I paused, trying to work it out, trying to think it through.

“Now she was almost free,” said Juliet in such a low voice that I could hardly catch the words.

“Her tragedy, her grief and her sorrow, which seemed to her pointless-had liberated her.”

In that cheap Italian restaurant I had caught a faint gleam of something valuable. Juliet had caught it, too, and was looking at me with shining eyes.

The waiter arrived with the next course.

You can’t go on thinking about the Infinite with a grilled sole and chips in front of you. The moment passed. But I often recall it with a whiff of the old excitement. It has been a solace to me at times.

“That’s why they killed her,” said Juliet.

“Because she was free, or overwrought, or both, and couldn’t be trusted.”

“And might talk,” added Juliet. “And might talk particularly to you.”

She had put on her glasses to eat her fish, and the dark frames contrasted with her pale skin.

“About what, for God’s sake?”

Juliet shook her head. We were back to square one. We ate in silence.

“That’s why they may kill you, if you go on, darling, they’re afraid of what you might discover,” she said at last.

I guessed she had been using the seconds to gather her self-control. She gave me one of her fleeting glances over the top of her spectacles, and then looked down again.

“Oh, rot!” I said, and laughed. “This is a civilised country.”

“That’s what she thought. Maybe Mrs. Dawson thought Italy was a civilised country, too. Both strangled. A sort of roving executioner?”

She had pushed aside her food, and put down her knife and fork. I saw her upper lip trembling. I said:

“Look, if they’d wanted to do me in, they could have done so two or three times already.”

She shook her head violently.

“I’m sure they don’t want to kill you! Why should they? — you’re so silly sometimes. Killing people is dangerous.”

“Well, then, there you are!”

“But they will in the end-in the end they will, if they can’t frighten you enough.”

“Do you want me to be frightened enough? Is that what you really want?”

“I don’t want it. But I could love you just as much, darling. You understand that? I want us to be happy and-unfrightened, and undead. I just want you to pretend to be frightened.”

“And give in,” I said. “Is that it?”

“And give in,” she said. “If you’ve got the courage to.”

“I don’t think it’s fair to put it that way.”

“I don’t suppose you do.”

We stared across the table at each other, defiantly, each a little hurt.

“I’ll think it over,” I said at length.

I could feel bits and pieces of emotion churning around inside me, Irish combativeness, Boer obstinacy and tenacity, and the cool Anglo-Saxon tendency to compromise. To be of mixed blood is a mixed blessing.

“I’ll think it over,” I said again.

“That means you’ll just go on as before.”

She looked helplessly round the restaurant, adjusting her glasses, as if somewhere she might find aid and inspiration.

“It’s silly,” she murmured. “The world is full of ideas and things to write about. I think you’ve become obsessed with this idea.”

“That’s not the point.”

“What is the point?”

“I just don’t like-being pushed around, that’s all.”

“That’s what I mean. Obstinacy, or pride, or something men seem to specialise in-it’s made you obsessed.”

“I said I would think it over. Anyway, I can’t do anything at the moment. It’s all one way. I can’t telephone anyone, I can’t write anywhere. I’ve got no contact.”

“You will have-they’ll try and bend you, and if you won’t bend, they’ll just lose patience, they’ll just-”

She didn’t finish the sentence. I asked her if she wanted fruit or coffee, because one had to say something.