John Bingham - A Fragment of Fear

“Bit of a mess in here. Sold the contents of the flat, lock, stock, and barrel. Sorry to go, but there you are. Still a British colony in Portugal, I’m told. Hope to make a few friends in time. Miss the Hampshire trout-still, can’t be helped. Given up shooting anyway. Like to see ’em alive, rather than dead. Don’t mind eating ’em, though.”

He began to fill a Lovat Fraser-type pipe from an old-fashioned, black leather tobacco pouch.

“About Mrs. Dawson,” I said.

“Lucy Dawson-it’s simple enough. Got in touch with me when I was Governor of Parkway Prison, up in the Midlands. Asked me to keep an eye open for intelligent young first offenders who might do all right when they came out-given a chance. Not many, just ones I felt sure about-as far as you can ever feel sure of that type. Said she couldn’t handle many. Maybe one or two a year, not more. Think she was in touch with one or two other Governors, also with a women’s prison.”

He paused to put a match to his pipe, and sucked in and blew out big clouds of smoke, tamping the glowing tobacco down with his forefinger as though his finger was heat proof.

“How did she find them jobs, Colonel Pearson? Can you tell me?”

“That was the trouble. Always is. Especially with these types. She wanted special types who might really make their way in the world, given a chance. Field was limited. Couldn’t ask banks to take ’em on, could you? Nothing like that, if you see what I mean. But she succeeded all right. Wonderful woman.”

He shook his head admiringly.

“She just went around, you know-interviewing people who might help. Heads of firms. People like that. Nobody knew, except the Governor of the prison, and the head of the firm. She depended upon me, or whatever Governor she was dealing with. It was a tricky do, I can tell you. But it worked.”

“No failures?” I asked.

“None, as far as I know. And she kept in touch, you know. With them and with me. Had a card from her shortly before the tragedy. Sent a wreath, as a matter of fact, for old times’ sake.”

“You sent a wreath?” I repeated. “There was only one wreath.”

He took his pipe out of his mouth and stared at me in astonishment.

“Only one wreath? None from all those others?”

I shook my head.

“But that’s awful!”

The disillusion on his face touched me.

“People forget,” I said uneasily. “Time passes. People forget.”

“That lot wouldn’t forget. I told you, she kept in touch with them.”

“Perhaps they didn’t read about it-or didn’t know where to send a wreath.”

He clutched at the last possibility.

“That’s probably it-they didn’t know where to send a wreath. Otherwise I wouldn’t understand it, not after all she’d done for them.”

He sounded pathetically relieved by the thin excuse I had put forward.

“Why did you sign the card with the wreath as from the ‘Stepping Stones’?”

He walked across to the windows and looked out.

“Oh, that-the ‘Stepping Stones’-well, that was just a little name we invented. Stepping Stones to a fresh start, that sort of thing. Just a nickname for ourselves.”

“She died near some stepping-stones in Pompeii.”

“Did she? Odd coincidence. Were the police getting anywhere by the time you left?”

“I doubt it.”

I was wondering whether to tell him of the things which had happened to me. I heard him say, without looking round:

“If this damned young chap doesn’t come in the next half-hour I’ll be gone. I suppose I could leave the guns with the porter downstairs and put a note on the door. Young chaps these days seem to have no idea of punctuality.”

I decided not to do so. He was leaving in half-an-hour, leaving the country and, as I saw it, the danger in London which surrounded him.

I thought: let him go in peace, unworried and undisturbed. Let the old boy go and live in the sun in comfort and at ease, for his last years.

He turned and came back to the fireplace and knocked his pipe out in the grate, and immediately began to refill it from his worn pouch.

“You know,” he said thoughtfully, “that woman was a bit of a saint, in some ways.”

“Was she?” I said. “Was she indeed?”

“I’ll tell you why. You could use it, you could put it in your book or article or whatever you’re writing. She helped these types though it must have gone right against the grain.”

“Because of what she had suffered at the hands of crooks? She and her parents and her husband and so on?”

“You know about that?”

“They told me at the hotel.”

“She thought that nothing was too bad for the average criminal. You should have heard her sometimes-hang ’em, flog ’em, lock ’em up for life, all that. It was a bit extreme, really. I think she did this work as a sort of sop to her conscience. Psychological, you know,” he added solemnly. “That’s what it was, in some way or other, psychological-not that I believe much in that sort of damned nonsense.”

He was at his pipe again, clouds of smoke billowing round his face.

“God knows what I’ll have to smoke in Portugal,” he muttered.

Then, reverting, he said: “She was a great disciplinarian with herself, too, mind you. I believe she took up this work like some people have a cold bath in the morning-unpleasant, but good for the soul.”

“Do you have a cold bath in the morning?” I asked.

I wanted something to say, to keep the conversation going, to keep his mind off the time and the thought of last-minute things to do.

I was afraid he was going to look at his watch and say, well, would I excuse him, and I didn’t want to excuse him, because what might seem a simple theory to anybody reading about it afterwards was not at all simple to me at that time, and in that place; and edging up to it as I was, with a feeling of astonishment and excitement, it was not easy to sort out a number of questions which occurred to me. I heard him say:

“Do I take a cold bath in the morning. No, of course I don’t take a cold bath in the morning. Damned nonsense, if you ask me. Do you?”

“No, I don’t.”

“I should think not indeed.”

“These jobs she found for them,” I asked. “What sort of jobs were they, in what fields?”

Now, in fact, he did glance at his watch.

“In what fields? Oh, I forget now-engineering, chemicals, building, ship-repair firms-that sort of thing.”

“Catering?”

“Catering? Oh, yes, that, of course. Catering and the hotel business.”

“Could you give me any examples of how they have got on?”

“Oh, I couldn’t give you any names, anything which would enable you to identify them, that would be out of the question. And now, I’m afraid, if you’ll excuse me-”

“I’m not asking for names,” I said rapidly, “just sort of examples.”

He began to move slowly towards the drawing-room door.

“Well, I think I can tell you this, without being unethical-I know of one assistant manager of a big engineering firm who is, well, one of our boys, so to speak! And an English export manager in Switzerland, and a hotel manager in the south of France, and one in Italy, and one here-in England, itself-on the south coast, though she’s a manageress.”

He stopped by the door and looked at me knowingly.

“She always told me how they were getting on. There were no secrets of that sort between Lucy Dawson and me,” said this simple soldier.

I had to go now.

There were other questions I would have liked to put to him, but he wanted me off the premises. I followed him to the front door, listening to him muttering about his guns and unpunctuality.

Yet as we were about to say good-bye, and after I had thanked him, he unwittingly provided what seemed to me to be the main startling clue to the whole affair.