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Olive Betterton said quickly:
‘I know. You said so in your letter. But I wondered if—since then—oh! I was glad to come up. Just sitting at home wondering and brooding—that’s the worst of it all. Because there’s nothing one can do!’
The man called Jessop said soothingly:
‘You mustn’t mind, Mrs Betterton, if I go over the same ground again and again, ask you the same questions, stress the same points. You see it’s always possible that some small point might arise. Something that you hadn’t thought of before, or perhaps hadn’t thought worth mentioning.’
‘Yes. Yes, I understand. Ask me all over again about everything.’
‘The last time you saw your husband was on the 23rd of August?’
‘Yes.’
‘That was when he left England to go to Paris to a conference there.’
‘Yes.’
Jessop went on rapidly:
‘He attended the first two days of the conference. The third day he did not turn up. Apparently he had mentioned to one of his colleagues that he was going instead for a trip on a bateau mouche that day.’
‘A bateau mouche? What’s a bateau mouche?’
Jessop smiled.
‘One of those small boats that go along the Seine.’ He looked at her sharply. ‘Does that strike you as unlike your husband?’
She said doubtfully:
‘It does, rather. I should have thought he’d be so keen on what was going on at the conference.’
‘Possibly. Still the subject for discussion on this particular day was not one in which he had any special interest, so he might reasonably have given himself a day off. But it doesn’t strike you as being quite like your husband?’
She shook her head.
‘He did not return that evening to his hotel,’ went on Jessop. ‘As far as can be ascertained he did not pass any frontier, certainly not on his own passport. Do you think he could have had a second passport, in another name perhaps?’
‘Oh, no, why should he?’
He watched her.
‘You never saw such a thing in his possession?’
She shook her head with vehemence.
‘No, and I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it for a moment. I don’t believe he went away deliberately as you all try to make out. Something’s happened to him, or else—or else perhaps he’s lost his memory.’
‘His health had been quite normal?’
‘Yes. He was working rather hard and sometimes felt a little tired, nothing more than that.’
‘He’d not seemed worried in any way or depressed?’
‘He wasn’t worried or depressed about anything!’ With shaking fingers she opened her bag and took out her handkerchief. ‘It’s all so awful.’ Her voice shook. ‘I can’t believe it. He’d never have gone off without a word to me. Something’s happened to him. He’s been kidnapped or he’s been attacked perhaps. I try not to think it but sometimes I feel that that must be the solution. He must be dead.’
‘Now please, Mrs Betterton, please—there’s no need to entertain that supposition yet. If he’s dead, his body would have been discovered by now.’
‘It might not. Awful things happen. He might have been drowned or pushed down a sewer. I’m sure anything could happen in Paris.’
‘Paris, I can assure you, Mrs Betterton, is a very well-policed city.’
She took the handkerchief away from her eyes and stared at him with sharp anger.
‘I know what you think, but it isn’t so! Tom wouldn’t sell secrets or betray secrets. He wasn’t a communist. His whole life is an open book.’
‘What were his political beliefs, Mrs Betterton?’
‘In America he was a Democrat, I believe. Here he voted Labour. He wasn’t interested in politics. He was a scientist, first and last.’ She added defiantly, ‘He was a brilliant scientist.’
‘Yes,’ said Jessop, ‘he was a brilliant scientist. That’s really the crux of the whole matter. He might have been offered, you know, very considerable inducements to leave this country and go elsewhere.’
‘It’s not true.’ Anger leapt out again. ‘That’s what the papers try to make out. That’s what you all think when you come questioning me. It’s not true. He’d never go without telling me, without giving me some idea.’
‘And he told you—nothing?’
Again he was watching her keenly.
‘Nothing. I don’t know where he is. I think he was kidnapped, or else, as I say, dead. But if he’s dead, I must know. I must know soon. I can’t go on like this, waiting and wondering. I can’t eat or sleep. I’m sick and ill with worry. Can’t you help me? Can’t you help me at all?’
He got up then and moved round his desk. He murmured:
‘I’m so very sorry, Mrs Betterton, so very sorry. Let me assure you that we are trying our very best to find out what has happened to your husband. We get reports in every day from various places.’
‘Reports from where?’ she asked sharply. ‘What do they say?’
He shook his head.
‘They all have to be followed up, sifted and tested. But as a rule, I am afraid, they’re vague in the extreme.’
‘I must know,’ she murmured brokenly again. ‘I can’t go on like this.’
‘Do you care for your husband very much, Mrs Betterton?’
‘Of course I care for him. Why, we’ve only been married six months. Only six months.’
‘Yes, I know. There was—forgive me for asking—no quarrel of any kind between you?’
‘Oh, no!’
‘No trouble over any other woman?’
‘Of course not. I’ve told you. We were only married last April.’
‘Please believe that I’m not suggesting such a thing is likely, but one has to take every possibility into account that might allow for his going off in this way. You say he had not been upset lately, or worried—not on edge—not nervy in any way?’
‘No, no, no!’
‘People do get nervy, you know, Mrs Betterton, in such a job as your husband had. Living under exacting security conditions. In fact’—he smiled—‘it’s almost normal to be nervy.’
She did not smile back.
‘He was just as usual,’ she said stolidly.
‘Happy about his work? Did he discuss it at all with you?’
‘No, it was all so technical.’
‘You don’t think he had any qualms over its—destructive possibilities, shall I say? Scientists do feel that sometimes.’
‘He never said anything of the kind.’
‘You see, Mrs Betterton,’ he leaned forward over the desk, dropping some of his impassiveness, ‘what I am trying to do is to get a picture of your husband. The sort of man he was. And somehow you’re not helping me.’
‘But what more can I say or do? I’ve answered all your questions.’
‘Yes, you’ve answered my questions, mostly in the negative. I want something positive, something constructive. Do you see what I mean? You can look for a man so much better when you know what kind of a man he is.’
She reflected for a moment. ‘I see. At least, I suppose I see. Well, Tom was cheerful and good-tempered. And clever, of course.’
Jessop smiled. ‘That’s a list of qualities. Let’s try and get more personal. Did he read much?’
‘Yes, a fair amount.’
‘What sort of books?’
‘Oh, biographies. Book Society recommendations, crime stories if he was tired.’
‘Rather a conventional reader, in fact. No special preferences? Did he play cards or chess?’
‘He played bridge. We used to play with Dr Evans and his wife once or twice a week.’
‘Did your husband have many friends?’
‘Oh, yes, he was a good mixer.’
‘I didn’t mean just that. I mean was he a man who—cared very much for his friends?’
‘He played golf with one or two of our neighbours.’
‘No special friends or cronies of his own?’
‘No. You see, he’d been in the USA for so long, and he was born in Canada. He didn’t know many people over here.’
Jessop consulted a scrap of paper at his elbow.
‘Three people visited him recently from the States, I understand. I have their names here. As far as we can discover, these three were the only people with whom he recently made contact from outside, so to speak. That’s why we’ve given them special attention. Now first, Walter Griffiths. He came to see you at Harwell.’
‘Yes, he was over in England on a visit and he came to look up Tom.’
‘And your husband’s reactions?’
‘Tom was surprised to see him, but very pleased. They’d known each other quite well in the States.’
‘What did this Griffiths seem like to you? Just describe him in your own way.’
‘But surely you know all about him?’
‘Yes, we know all about him. But I want to hear what you thought of him.’
She reflected for a moment.
‘Well, he was solemn and rather long-winded. Very polite to me and seemed very fond of Tom and anxious to tell him about things that had happened after Tom had come to England. All local gossip, I suppose. It wasn’t very interesting to me because I didn’t know any of the people. Anyway, I was getting dinner ready while they were reminiscing.’
‘No question of politics came up?’
‘You’re trying to hint that he was a communist.’ Olive Betterton’s face flushed. ‘I’m sure he was nothing of the sort. He had some government job—in the District Attorney’s office, I think. And anyway when Tom said something laughingly about witch hunts in America, he said solemnly that we didn’t understand over here. They were necessary. So that shows he wasn’t a communist!’
‘Please, please, Mrs Betterton, now don’t get upset.’
‘Tom wasn’t a communist! I keep telling you so and you don’t believe me.’
‘Yes, I do, but the point is bound to come up. Now for the second contact from abroad, Dr Mark Lucas. You ran across him in London in the Dorset.’
‘Yes. We’d gone up to a show and we were having supper at the Dorset afterwards. Suddenly this man, Luke or Lucas, came along and greeted Tom. He was a research chemist of some kind and the last time he had seen Tom was in the States. He was a German refugee who’d taken American nationality. But surely you—’
‘But surely I know that? Yes, I do, Mrs Betterton. Was your husband surprised to see him?’
‘Yes, very surprised.’
‘Pleased?’
‘Yes, yes—I think so.’
‘But you’re not sure?’ He pressed her.
‘Well, he was a man Tom didn’t much care about, or so he told me afterwards, that’s all.’
‘It was just a casual meeting? There was no arrangement made to meet at some future date?’
