Philip Kerr - The Other Side of Silence

“I’m not so sure myself. Mostly I just answer stupid questions. Steal the occasional piece of lingerie from a guest’s room. Throw away a room key now and then. Look after a gun or two. Dispose of a bloodstained dress. The usual stuff. But now and then I try to help people out.”

I’d spent the evening doing quite a bit of that already. Julia Rose’s gun and the key to Spinola’s apartment were safely in my jacket pocket, and as soon as Julia’s green dress was in the hotel incinerator, she’d be in the clear. I wasn’t even looking for a tip.

“Is that what you’d call your role here? Helping out?”

“Sure. I’m a sort of go-between. A human fender, like you see dangling off one of those nice white boats in the harbor down the hill, to stop the paintwork getting scratched against the dockside pontoon or another boat. Only I’m hanging between Maugham and the blackmailer.”

“How did you get that job?”

“I answered an ad in the Nice-Matin . Wanted: Dumb German. Look, it doesn’t matter. But years ago, in Berlin, I was a cop. So this kind of thing isn’t exactly new to me. People have been disappointing me for a long, long time.”

“You certainly give that impression.”

“It’s my face, I know. I worry I’m on my way to looking like Somerset Maugham.” I shrugged. “I don’t know why, but I feel sorry for the old man. Almost everyone around him is looking out for themselves and their bank accounts.”

“And you’re not?”

“No more than is normal for a guy like me.”

“Is he going to pay the blackmailer?”

“It looks that way. Some people are flying down tomorrow from the Foreign Office in London to help verify the tape recording.”

“The Foreign Office? Goodness. It certainly sounds serious.”

“It seems to be.”

“Not to mention dangerous. One reads about this kind of thing in the Sunday newspapers. Demanding money with menaces requires-well, menace, doesn’t it?”

“Usually. That’s certainly true in this case.”

“So please, be careful.”

“I think I’m in no danger. But I’ll let you know for sure, the day after tomorrow.”

“No, really, Walter, if I can help in any way, please don’t hesitate to ask.”

“Sure. But I really don’t see what you can do.”

“You don’t have to hide your hand from me. Is it that you think I can’t be trusted? We are sleeping together.”

“I know you’re itching to write this biography and I will introduce you to him when all this is over, perhaps in a couple of days. But I can’t betray his confidence. He’s not a bad fellow, I think. I mean, for an Englishman.”

“I thought the Germans were supposed to admire the English.”

“That’s just a story put around by a lot of guilty Englishmen who stay awake nights worrying about how they dropped bombs on children in Dresden and Hamburg.”

“You started it.”

“Strictly speaking, it was Neville Chamberlain who started it.”

We were seated at the table on the terrace. In the dark we could hear some wild pigs snuffling around in the trees behind a wire fence. They came down from the hills in the dark to forage. Many locals regarded them as a nuisance but Anne was fond of them. There was even a nice bronze of a wild boar on the sideboard in her drawing room. She was fond of describing me as her own pig, which suited me very well.

“Come with me, sanglier ,” she said. “I want to show you something.”

We left the terrace and crossed the garden to the guesthouse. The wild pigs heard us and ran away, squealing a little. They were French, after all. Meanwhile, Anne switched on the light to reveal a large room that had been perfectly set up for a writer. There were pots full of pencils, lots of bookshelves, several filing cabinets, and, on a table, a pink Smith Corona Silent Super typewriter. Next to this was a smaller pink portable, lying on its open carry case. It looked like the sweet daughter of the larger one. Against one of the walls was another table on which stood a Hallicrafters shortwave radio. Anne was a keen listener to the BBC World Service, where she got most of her news.

“This is my office,” she explained. “Where I do my writing.” She touched the big pink Smith Corona and a ream of paper next to it fondly, almost as if she were wishing she could sit down and start work right then and there.

“Nice. Very nice. I like it a lot. Yes indeed. You know, I think I could write in here myself.”

“I’d like to read that book.”

“Not a book. Too long. Your horoscope, perhaps.”

“And what would my horoscope say?”

“That there’s going to be a handsome man in your life. You just met him. He’s a little older than you’re used to, perhaps, but you’re going to want to see a lot more of him. Hopefully naked. Just as soon as you’ve told him exactly what’s bothering you.”

“You’re good. You should write for a magazine. As a matter of fact, there is something bothering me. The fact is that I owe you an apology. I haven’t been entirely honest with you, Walter.”

“I read that in your horoscope, too.”

“No, really. I am sorry but I haven’t been honest at all.”

I felt the sincerity of what she had said, but it made me uneasy all the same, as if she’d played me like a hand of cards. Not that it mattered, particularly. I always liked my women a bit slippery. And it wasn’t as if she’d used me to get close to Somerset Maugham. When first she’d approached me I hadn’t even known the old man. All she’d wanted was some lousy bridge lessons. Besides, she didn’t know my real name, so I was hardly in a position to feel aggrieved at her lack of honesty.

“That’s not exactly an exclusive club, Anne. I wouldn’t worry about it too much.”

“When I told you I had an offer of fifty thousand dollars from Victor Weybright to write Maugham’s biography, I didn’t mention that I’d already signed the contract.”

“Congratulations.”

“The fact is, I’ve been working on the old man’s biography for several months. I’m sorry, Walter, but I probably know more about Somerset Maugham than you do. Than you’ll ever know.”

While she spoke Anne pulled out one of the drawers in the cabinet, removed one of the red envelope files, and handed it to me. There was a printed title in the corner that read “MAUGHAM, SYRIE nee Gwendoline Maud Syrie Barnardo.”

“These are my research files. For example. This is all about his wife, Syrie.”

“I thought he was- I mean, I didn’t even know he’d been married.”

“When they met, she was Mrs. Wellcome, the wife of a wealthy American pharmaceutical manufacturer. They married in 1914. It was probably Syrie that put him off women for life. They divorced in nineteen twenty-eight. But she never married again so he was obliged by the terms of his settlement to support her financially. She died last year. And not a moment too soon as far as Maugham was concerned. By all accounts he hated her. I think he felt she’d trapped him into marriage. That she’d used him as a way of getting rid of Henry Wellcome.”

Anne showed me another file. It was titled HAXTON, GERALD FREDERICK.

“This name I recognize,” I said. “He was friend and companion number one, I think. Another homosexual Englishman. It’s something to do with the weather they have in England, I expect. They can hide a lot in that fog. Anyway, he sounds like a piece of work.”

“He was. Only he wasn’t English, he was American. From San Francisco. Maugham met him during the first war when Gerald was with the American Red Cross. He visited England only once, for less than a week, in February nineteen nineteen. He went to London, hoping to see Maugham, but was picked up and deported. Never went back.”