Gently Continental (12 page)

He comes out of this dream. Another approaches him. The reporters are alert and apprehensive. Has one of them, less shy than his fellows, braved the Great Man's displeasure? But no, the newcomer is quickly recognized: is Stephen Halliday, the doctor's nephew: their ruffled feathers sleek again and they fall into surmising. Stephen Halliday ranks not over-high in their private list of hot suspects. They watch him, seeing his mouth move, but hearing naught save the fret of the sea. I wanted to talk to you alone, Stephen Halliday is saying, facing Gently across the stake, there may be nothing in what I have to tell you, and it's rather embarrassing to tell you at all. Is it to do with Clooney? Gently says. Stephen says, Well, it's up to Gently to decide, it's, in a way, a psychological matter, but, really, he thinks he ought to mention it. Right, carry on then, Gently says, and Stephen Halliday makes as though he will; but instead, for some moments, he stares at the stake, though all the while speech is straining at this throat. Then he comes out with it, saying, It's Frieda, saying it in a forced, low tone, as one might admit to some embarrassing disorder which may no longer be concealed. And he lets it hang there, the bare name, as though merely to mention it tells all, and Gently, being cognizant of the concept, Frieda, can flesh the bones without further prompting. And Gently can, so it seems, for he makes no reply. With Stephen Halliday he silently considers the name thus sounded, like a key in music. Frieda, Miss Breske, sullen Frieda: like thunder rolling on the cliff-top, a black cloud, muting the larks, sealing the scent in the blooms of the gorse. It may be nothing, Stephen says, but already he has made it too much. By speaking the name, and in that tone, he has given the matter a violent twist. He has moved it bodily. It will never again return to its aspect of a moment before. He has turned it a little into the light and the light can never now be dispelled. And he is too conscious of having done this, standing there, his eyes on the stake, conscious and confounded that through him, and so simply, the revolution has taken place. He did not mean it. He was adding a little, a very little to Gently's stock: then that little was suddenly much and an avalanche descending. He had snapped his fingers and brought the roof down.

GENTLY

When was this?

STEPHEN

Oh . . . more than a year ago. I hadn't met Trudi, you understand. Trudi was away at a school in Hertfordshire. Trudi's a good deal younger than Frieda.

GENTLY

Tell me about it.

STEPHEN

I simply met her, you know how it is. I was down from Edinburgh on the long vac and mother, uncle, we all dined here. Uncle knows the Breskes of course, a G.P. knows everyone. So we had our coffee in the parlour along with all the gash furniture.

GENTLY

How far did it go?

STEPHEN

Oh, hell . . . all the way, I suppose. Frieda has no morals, you know: none. She just hasn't developed a moral sense.

GENTLY

And this went on till you met Trudi?

STEPHEN

You make it sound so damned odious. But it wasn't like that. Frieda wasn't in love with me, it wasn't a question of love between us.

GENTLY

What was it a question of, then?

STEPHEN

Of, of sex, I suppose you'd say. She made a point of letting me know she was willing, and, of course, I was; so that was that. I mean, when you're my age you
want
sex. It's a hellish great thing and you want to know about it. Women gnaw at you, all women. Any woman will do. It isn't love.

GENTLY

And with her it was the same.

STEPHEN

I don't say that. Not quite the same. It isn't the same with women, you know. Sex is always a means with them.

GENTLY

She taught you that?

STEPHEN

Now you come to mention it. Yes, that's something I learned from her. Before then it didn't really come home to me, perhaps I didn't want to believe it. You like to think . . . oh, I don't know! Of course, I'm as romantic as hell. I'd like to think women come to it on the same footing though of course they don't. Perhaps not even Trudi.

GENTLY

And what was sex a means to with Frieda.

STEPHEN

Oh, power. That's her god.

GENTLY

She wanted you to marry her?

STEPHEN

That was her target. God help me if I'd ever fallen for that.

GENTLY

You were never actually engaged.

STEPHEN

No. My Scots canniness saw me through. I think people like Frieda always overreach themselves unless they're dealing with positive fools. She tried the old pregnancy trick, you know? Imagine that – with a medical student! I offered to do the tests myself, and of course she had to cry off. God she was furious.

GENTLY

I can well imagine it.

STEPHEN

She's rather frightening when she's angry. Doesn't get hysterical, doesn't shout. It just burns away inside her.

GENTLY

When was this incident, Mr Halliday?

STEPHEN

At the end of the long vac. Now I think of it, just before Trudi came home – yes, it was. Just before.

GENTLY

And when Trudi came home . . . ?

STEPHEN

Look, that was the end of it, that business about the pregnancy. Frieda knew she'd shot her bolt, there were no more get-togethers after that.

GENTLY

Frieda quietly faded out.

STEPHEN

Yes – no. In effect, yes. If you'll only listen to me—

GENTLY

You may be sure I'm listening.

STEPHEN

Well, that's entirely what I've come to tell you.

And once more Stephen hesitates, as though again weighed down by a word of thunder, such a word as, when spoken, may chain-react to infinity. He stares aslant at the thicket gorse of the tender pod and nesting spines, the spicy gorse, always glad, where (X) Clooney's hat has rested.

STEPHEN

Actually, it could have been quite innocent. I mean, one is apt to imagine things.

GENTLY

What sort of things, Mr Halliday?

STEPHEN

About people's motives, of course. For instance, you see a man looking into a car and at once you think he's a thief, but he may be only the owner of a similar car, or perhaps he's considering buying that model.

GENTLY

You caught Frieda looking into a car?

STEPHEN

Not exactly into a car. They had some rats under the floor in a storeroom. She asked me to get her something to poison them.

GENTLY

After . . . Trudi came home.

STEPHEN

(Nods.)

GENTLY

And you suspected a connection.

STEPHEN

Yes, I did. Don't ask me why. I thought she was aiming to do us in.

GENTLY

Trudi and you.

STEPHEN

Yes.

GENTLY

Well, your uneasiness is understandable. Did you give her the poison?

STEPHEN

Not bloody likely. And she didn't ask for it again, then.

GENTLY

(Looks inquiringly.)

STEPHEN

Oh yes. She had another try three weeks ago. And the rats are there, that's a fact, because she took me in and showed me. So I gave her some sodium bic crystals done up in a jar labelled arsenic, and presumably they did a good job, because I've heard no complaints.

GENTLY

You think she used them?

STEPHEN

(Shrugs.)

Anyway, that's what I had to say. Maybe it's a lot of damned nonsense on my part, but I felt it ought to go on the record.

GENTLY

Why, Mr Halliday?

STEPHEN

Why? Because I'm afraid of her, that's why.

GENTLY

You afraid of her?

STEPHEN

Because of Trudi! Frieda hates her, don't you see?

Does Gently see? His eyes rest on Stephen with no particular focus, so that he seems rather to be listening to some far-off sound than to be hearing Stephen's words. Is it the cries of children below, or the piping scold of sea-swallows? Or is he so far beyond and behind those words that his hand is on the root to which they are the flower? Perhaps after all his eyes are seeing, through Stephen, whole tapestries of deed and secret enactment. Why? he says. Why?

STEPHEN

But I've just told you why!

GENTLY

Why should Frieda be dangerous to Trudi now? Isn't that what you're asking me to assume?

STEPHEN

Yes, but—

GENTLY

No. Listen to me. It's over a year since you met Trudi. During that year Frieda is apparently resigned to Trudi's taking you from her. If there is anything in this notion of yours that Frieda had murderous intent, then plainly she gave up the idea when you refused to supply her with rat-poison. But now you say she's at it again. So why? What's happened to stir her up afresh?

STEPHEN

How should I know—

GENTLY

Who would know better? You are in Miss Trudi's confidence.

STEPHEN

But damn it, it might be something Trudi didn't know about. There's no knowing the way Frieda's mind works—

GENTLY

No, Mr Halliday. It is something you know about. You are so certain the threat is to Trudi. A new element has come into her relationship with Frieda, and recently. What?

STEPHEN

I just don't know!

GENTLY

Oh, Mr Halliday. It was Clooney, wasn't it?

STEPHEN

I tell you—

GENTLY

Don't bother to protest what isn't true. The facts are really self-evident. Clooney was living here off the Breskes. They supplied him with pocket-money and board. It follows he had some hold over them, was privy to something to their prejudice. And he was friendly with Trudi but not with Frieda. There's no point in denying any of this.

STEPHEN

You'll say next that Frieda killed him—

GENTLY

Of course. You take the words out of my mouth. I am not likely to believe Frieda would want to poison her sister when Clooney presented such an obvious target. And when the sodium bic made no impression she turned to other, surer means. But she couldn't have killed him herself. Who can we implicate along with her?

STEPHEN

You – you're taking the mickey now.

GENTLY

Am I going too far?

STEPHEN

You don't believe me, do you? You think I'm just trying to shop Frieda.

GENTLY

I certainly do think that. And then I ask myself the reason. And I remember that Mr Halliday has no alibi, and that his interest is tied up with Trudi Breske's.

STEPHEN

Oh my God!

GENTLY

For example, if Clooney is planning to squeeze the Breskes dry, then it is going to make a difference to what Trudi Breske brings to her future husband.

STEPHEN

You don't –
believe
what you're saying!

GENTLY

Why not? People kill for less.

STEPHEN

But good God man, I wouldn't! Can you see me as a killer?

GENTLY

That's stuff for the jury. I deal in facts. Just now you're placed rather queerly, Mr Halliday. If you do know what hold Clooney had on the Breskes this would be a good time to tell me.

STEPHEN

But it can have nothing to do with, with the other.

GENTLY

Let me judge.

STEPHEN

No! I tell you . . .

He hangs his head and tells Gently nothing, that is to say, in words. But who can ever tell nothing to this luminous-eyed, omniscient man? He knows too much. All combinations, all permutations of the facts are simultaneously present and under review in the quiet laboratory of his brain. Give him a word, and it fits. Give him a silence, it fits no less. Everything is there Advance or withdraw, you cannot escape from his net. Stephen Halliday, sinewily intelligent, with the spiritual toughness of a born surgeon, is lost, and knows he's lost, and feels humility and strange admiration. Danger he doesn't feel. He knows he's innocent. And that too Gently is fully aware of.

GENTLY

So why don't you tell me.

STEPHEN

I can't. It's a matter of loyalty, that's all. If I knew anything about who killed him, do you think I wouldn't tell you?

GENTLY

Your loyalty doesn't extend to Frieda.

STEPHEN

Because, damn you, I'm scared of what she might do. I
am
scared. I can't protect Trudi. And Frieda is kinked. You must know that.

GENTLY

Frieda must have a cogent reason . . .

STEPHEN

All right, all right, that's understood. For a person like Frieda, a cogent reason. A reason like people have killed for less.

GENTLY

Which you're not going to tell me.

STEPHEN

No. I promised. And it doesn't matter. Because you know. You've asked the right questions and got the right answers and the proof is probably on the way. And if I can guess that, then Frieda can guess it, and if she's going to act . . . don't you see?