The Blackmailer, page 7
‘Why do you have a midget?’ he asked.
‘I found him in Paris,’ she replied. ‘After Anthony died—my husband—my mother-in-law gave me some money to go abroad for a holiday, and she suggested that I should stay with various people, to take my mind off it. So in Paris I stayed with some people I didn’t know very well—he was assistant military attaché, and his wife was very pretty and we went to lots of parties and I hated it more and more—oh, well, that’s neither here nor there. Jean-Claude was a relation of their cook’s, and he was always hanging round, muttering and complaining, which is what he does all the time. One day I got into conversation with him, and it was rather comforting to find someone who hated everybody even more than I did. He told me how he hated the French, they were so mean—he’s French himself, of course, and terribly mean—so I offered him a job in England. That’s all.’
In spite of her warning, Thomas was taken aback by Jean-Claude’s usual ferocious manner.
‘Are you sure he’s safe?’ he asked, when the midget had gone downstairs.
‘Oh, he has a heart of gold really,’ said Judith. ‘At least I suppose he has. I know very little about him, considering we live in the same house. He never goes out or sees anyone. I tried to make him at first, but he says he doesn’t want to. I think food’s the only thing that interests him—it’s the only thing he talks about with any enthusiasm. He has a little stool so that he can reach the stove. I’m terribly fond of him really, but I’ve no particular reason to suppose he likes me, except that he stays here.’
The dinner was certainly delicious, but Thomas was in that particular respect not the perfect guest he was in almost every other way. Food to him was merely a necessary means of subsistence. The house in general, though, delighted him. He noticed everything, and after dinner, examining her books, asking her about her life, he talked so much she wondered, much as she liked him, whether he would ever go.
‘You’re getting tired,’ he said at last. ‘I’ll go at once. I’m sorry I’ve talked so much—I don’t usually. I really don’t.’
She was sitting on the sofa with Bertie beside her. ‘I’ve loved it, really,’ she said.
‘Do you go out a lot, what do you do?’ he asked. ‘No, I ask too many questions, don’t I? Do you have lots of lovers, though, being a widow, I mean?’
‘Not at the moment, no,’ said Judith, smiling.
‘You don’t mind my asking, do you?’ he said. ‘I mean, I was just interested. Do you not because you think it’s wrong?’
‘I don’t really want to,’ said Judith. ‘I suppose I may suddenly feel a tremendous need for a lover one day—in which case it will be time enough to consider the moral problem, don’t you think?’
‘Could it be me?’ he said.
‘Who be you?’ she asked.
‘When you need one, I mean,’ he said. ‘A lover.’
‘Oh,’ said Judith. ‘Don’t you think I should be a bit old for you?’
‘No,’ he said.
Seeing that she had offended him, Judith said: ‘Oh well, I can’t say I anticipate its happening in the immediate future—this tremendous need, I mean—so I don’t think we need worry for a bit.’
‘Oh, that’s all right,’ said Thomas. ‘I don’t mind how long it is. I must go now. Would you like me to put Bertie out for you first, then you needn’t get cold?’
‘That’s a wonderful idea,’ said Judith, touched. ‘Go on, Bertie.’
According to his nightly custom, Bertie rolled over very slowly and lay with his feet in the air and his eyes shut. Thomas picked him up and carried him, hot and heavy, out into the street.
It was not until over a month later that Baldwin Reeves asked Judith for some more money.
He had been into the office several times since she had had lunch with him, and his friendship with Hanescu was advancing rapidly, strengthened by the fact that he had obtained for the latter an invitation to a very promising party. Fisher was impressed by him, Miss Vanderbank thought him awfully attractive. When Judith told Feliks that she had reason to believe he was an unpleasant character and that she herself was particularly anxious never to see him again, Feliks showed little sympathy.
‘This is not like you,’ he said. ‘Do you think I can’t look after myself? For Heaven’s sake, I’m an unpleasant character myself. Perhaps that’s why I like Mr. Reeves. If you don’t like him, you needn’t see him. But he can be useful to us you know—he’s got a lot of contacts.’
Judith had resigned herself to hearing from time to time that cheerful voice in Feliks’s room, and to passing him occasionally in the outer office. Fortunately his interest in her seemed to have waned; he confined himself to a polite greeting. She kept The Times Literary Supplement and the Bookseller for reading in the lavatory on the days when he arrived.
She saw Thomas Hood once or twice. He brought his friend David Weitzmann to dinner, a bright-eyed witty boy, the violence of whose opinions about everything she found rather tiring. Thomas’s gentler enthusiasms and smaller problems seemed to her much more sympathetic than this boy’s sophisticated definiteness; in fact she found herself enjoying the slightly unusual relationship she had with him. Sometimes she felt patronising, often flattered, sometimes he made her feel nostalgic for a time which she had in fact not enjoyed, a time when life had seemed so important and so unfair, when one had worried about one’s soul. There were not, after all, so many years between them, but he was at so different a stage that she sometimes felt there were far more. He was simpler than she had been, and more impatient; yet he could on occasions, just as she was on the point of an indulgent laugh, make an observation of such ruthless penetration that she felt she had misjudged him. He could be silly, but even that she rather enjoyed.
One evening she sent Jean-Claude to see a French film at the Classic cinema. From time to time she would insist on his going out, and she found that the cinema was the outing he least disliked. Her first thought when in answer to a knock she opened the door and saw Baldwin Reeves was that he must have known Jean-Claude was out. The thought that he might have been watching the house for days was so disturbing that she let him come in and follow her into the drawing-room before she could protest. She finally told herself that it must be a coincidence: but all the same she did not like to ask him.
He was looking pale, and, rather to her relief, did not greet her with the joviality he affected in the office.
‘I’m afraid I must ask you for money,’ he said without preliminaries.
‘Why?’ she asked.
‘The £500 didn’t go far,’ he said. ‘I had a lot of debts.’
‘How much do you want?’ she asked.
‘I should like £100 now, and another £300 by the end of the month,’ he said.
‘I refuse to give it to you,’ said Judith.
‘Right,’ he said, apparently unsurprised.
He drew a large unsealed envelope out of his pocket. ‘I shall post this as soon as I leave this house.’ He put it back in his pocket and picked up his hat.
‘I should like to see it please,’ said Judith.
‘Certainly.’ He handed her the envelope. ‘Incidentally, I have plenty of other copies.’
She pulled a thick document out of the envelope. Some newspaper cuttings and photographs fell to the floor. She saw a faded picture of Anthony wearing battle dress, leaning against a tank and laughing. She felt sick. Unrolling the document she found a covering letter to James Blow of the Sunday News. She skimmed through it. ‘Sensational exposé . . . name surely not forgotten . . . built up as a hero . . . the scandalous war . . . discomfiture of many people in high places . . . my own reluctance . . . public should know . . . fully documented.’ The next page was headed ‘Anthony Lane—Hero or Coward?’ and several pages of typescript followed.
She handed the envelope back to him.
‘I completely fail to understand how you can write anything so appalling,’ she said.
‘Yes, it’s nasty isn’t it?’ he said. ‘I shall try to keep my own name out of it if possible, but I may not be able to.’
She found that he had, quite gently, pushed her back into a chair and given her a cigarette. She looked at him as he lit it.
‘You behave so fantastically,’ she said. ‘That it’s quite impossible for me to know what to do. I should like now to have hysterics and throw things at you, but you’re so calm, so unlike what you really must be, that I can’t do anything. I’m simply bemused.’
‘I’ll explain myself. It’s quite simple.’ He had bent down to light her cigarette and now stayed crouching in front of her, talking quickly and rather breathlessly, ‘I’m conceited. Rightly or wrongly, I believe myself to be exceptionally talented. All right, I haven’t done much so far. I’m thirty-one. I spent nine years in the Army because in 1946 when I signed on for another seven years I was twenty-one and I hadn’t a penny. My parents were dead, I had no idea what had happened to my brother. I couldn’t afford to qualify myself for a career. So I stayed in the Army and read for the Bar. Now I’m a barrister and doing all right. I’m known to be clever, I’m beginning to be heard of, in another year or two I shall begin to earn some money. I’ve had articles in weekly papers that get noticed, I know a lot of people, I’ve fought one election and by the time I’ve enough money I shall be in Parliament. Already there are people who think of me as a hopeful young Tory. I make speeches, I talk, I write—it doesn’t get reported much yet, you wouldn’t have heard about it—but it’s all building up to something. You see?’
He was now sitting on the floor looking up at her as if with the greatest anxiety that she should understand him.
‘Now, I’ve got to have money. Not a great deal, but some. Without money I can do nothing, I can get nowhere. You might as well be dead as be poor. I’m making a bit, I shall make more. I manage, just, but I need more. You’ve got some, I know, because of the Lanes. The Lanes are still very rich—I found that out. I know that even apart from whatever Anthony left you you can always fall back on them. I have a means of making you give me some of that money. Frankly, I don’t want to publish that stuff about Anthony. I liked him. I hated him, and envied him, but at the same time I liked him—one did. But I shall publish it. Don’t make any mistake about that. I shall send this envelope off tonight, unless you give me the money.’
He stood up, and began to walk about the room.
‘All right, you say it’s a filthy thing to do. It’s blackmail. It’s wicked. I shall go to Hell. But I don’t believe in Hell. Or Heaven. I’m not a Christian at all. I don’t believe in immortality. I don’t believe in anything. Except myself. So why should I conform to the Christian ethic? I believe it’s all here on earth, in one life, and that we are what we make ourselves. So I want to make myself something big, something powerful. For that I want, at the moment, money. To get money, the easiest way at the moment—apart from working for it, which I do as well—is to blackmail you.’
He stood looking at her as she sat hunched in her chair, then he turned away and began to walk up and down again.
‘At first I rather enjoyed it. I hadn’t known at all what it was going to be like, and I found myself enjoying it. Now I don’t enjoy it so much, partly I suppose because the novelty’s worn off, partly because I like you much better than I thought I was going to. Also I had anticipated having you much more in my power, and that I should have enjoyed.’
After a pause, Judith asked: ‘What was your object in coming to my office, making me have lunch with you, making friends with Feliks. Was that all power politics too?’
‘Partly,’ he answered. ‘Partly I wanted to talk to you. You say how can I take someone I am blackmailing out to lunch. I say why not? I don’t know many women like you; I find them frightening, and the small hold I have over you means I needn’t be so afraid.’ He sat down opposite her. ‘So you see the whole thing is perfectly simple.’
‘And when you have power?’ asked Judith.
He smiled. ‘I shall exercise it with as much reason and judgment as I shall by then have acquired.’
‘It all sounds very dangerous to me,’ said Judith. ‘And the result, I should have said, of rather indiscriminate reading.’
She was pleased to see him flush; but all the same there was something impressive about his self-confidence, his energy—she had felt it all the time.
‘Nobody ever has enough money,’ she said. ‘So I presume you will go on blackmailing me for ever.’
‘No, no, certainly not,’ said Baldwin. ‘Only in real necessity.’
‘What a comfort,’ said Judith. ‘Well, I will give you £100 tomorrow if you come here at seven o’clock. I can’t give you any more.’
‘I must have the other £300 by the end of the month,’ said Baldwin.
‘I haven’t got it,’ said Judith.
‘Then you’ll have to ask the Lanes.’
‘That’s out of the question.’
He went towards the door. ‘I’ll be here at seven,’ he said.
‘You’ve got to help me, Feliks,’ Judith said the next morning. ‘You’re always saying you’re my only friend.’
‘My dear, there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you.’
It was one of Feliks’s mornings for looking literary. Leaning back in his chair, with his feet on his desk, he was dangling an untidy manuscript in one hand and had a pile of several more beside him. He was wearing a tweed suit which was rather too big for him, a big floppy bow tie, suede shoes, and a pair of very large horn-rimmed glasses which Judith had never seen before. He was smoking, with apparent distaste, a pipe.
‘I don’t know about that,’ said Judith. ‘I asked you to stop seeing Baldwin Reeves and you paid no attention at all.’
‘Ah, but that was for your own good,’ said Feliks. ‘Obviously I can’t do anything that would jeopardise our mutual business interests.’
‘Whatever the reason?’ asked Judith.
Feliks took his feet off the desk. ‘All right, tell me,’ he said.
‘He’s blackmailing me,’ said Judith.
‘Oh, don’t be absurd,’ said Feliks. ‘I never heard anything so ridiculous. My poor darling, what can you conceivably have done to be blackmailed about?’
‘It’s nothing to do with what I’ve done,’ said Judith.
After a moment’s thought, Feliks said: ‘Anthony?’
Judith nodded.
‘Good Lord,’ said Feliks. ‘I suppose he was queer.’
‘No, of course not,’ said Judith. ‘Besides, how could anyone blackmail me if he had been? No, I can’t tell you what it was, but it was something some people might be quite interested to know, and which his family would be horrified either to be told themselves or to let other people know.’
‘Tell the police,’ said Feliks.
‘I can’t,’ said Judith. ‘All he’s got to do is post the story off to a newspaper. He’s got it all ready.’
‘It’s really news, is it?’ said Feliks. ‘The police might stop it being published.’
‘I don’t think they’d have any right to,’ said Judith. ‘And if they did, you know what journalists are—they’d have seen the story—it would get about. Someone would be bound to print it one day. What’s to stop them?’
‘I suppose you’re right,’ said Feliks. ‘They made such a fuss about him, of course. He really was a hero. It’s extraordinary how people still remember—there was a story about him only the other day in some paper I read. And I suppose he really wasn’t a hero at all?’
‘Something like that,’ said Judith.
‘I never really saw him in the part of course,’ said Feliks. ‘Well, well, well.…’
‘Don’t just sit there and grin,’ said Judith. ‘What am I going to do?’
‘God knows,’ said Feliks. ‘You’ll have to pay him, I suppose, if you don’t want the story to get out.’
‘Of course I don’t,’ said Judith. ‘Surely I ought to defend his reputation if I can? And besides, his mother would probably die.’ She paused. ‘I thought perhaps—if you talked to him, without of course letting him know I’ve told you, but just asking him to leave me alone. I mean he might pay more attention to you, being a man—and he says he wouldn’t do it unless he was so poor—I mean he’s not completely brutal—I suppose.’
Feliks frowned. ‘Is there any point in my making an enemy of him?’ he said. ‘We mustn’t underestimate him, you know. He knows a great many people. He could do me a lot of harm.’
‘Oh, but.…’ Judith started, then stopped. ‘Then you can’t think of anything?’ she said.
Feliks looked embarrassed. ‘My dear, I can’t honestly say I can. I’ll think about it. I really will.’
Judith went back to her room, sat down and cried.
Before long Feliks burst in. ‘I’ve had a brilliant idea,’ he said. ‘Jimmy Chandos-Wright!’
‘What about him?’ said Judith.
Jimmy Chandos-Wright was a rich retired criminal whose memoirs they had recently published.
‘Have him bumped off,’ said Feliks, delighted with himself.
‘Oh,’ said Judith. ‘D’you think so?’
‘Of course,’ said Feliks. ‘Jimmy’s boys would do a job like this as easy as kiss your hand. I’ll ring him up.’
‘Well, but someone might find out,’ said Judith.
‘Are you kidding?’ said Feliks. ‘They’ve done hundreds of these jobs. They don’t get nabbed.’
He hurried out of the room, leaving Judith dazed at her desk, and came back a few minutes later to say he had arranged for Jimmy Chandos-Wright to come into the office next week.
‘There, you see,’ he said triumphantly. ‘The whole problem solved.’
‘Yes, but I don’t know that really . . .’ Judith began, doubtfully.
‘Talk it all over with him, that’s all,’ said Feliks. ‘You’re committed to nothing.’
Halfway out of the room he turned back and, putting a hand on her shoulder, said, ‘Don’t worry. You know there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you, don’t you?’ He kissed her on the fore-head.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I know.’
