The Clocks

Hardcastle said gloomily that this case was the devil! He asked if I would be seeing my French or Belgian friend in London.

‘Probably. Why?’

‘I mentioned him to the chief constable who says he remembers him quite well-that Girl Guide murder case. I was to extend a very cordial welcome to him if he is thinking of coming down here.’

‘Not he,’ I said. ‘The man is practically a limpet.’

***

It was a quarter past twelve when I rang the bell at 62, Wilbraham Crescent. Mrs Ramsay opened the door. She hardly raised her eyes to look at me.

‘What is it?’ she said.

‘Can I speak to you for a moment? I was here about ten days ago. You may not remember.’

She lifted her eyes to study me further. A faint frown appeared between her eyebrows. 

‘You came-you were with the police inspector, weren’t you?’

‘That’s right, Mrs Ramsay. Can I come in?’

‘If you want to, I suppose. One doesn’t refuse to let the police in. They’d take a very poor view of it if you did.’

She led the way into the sitting-room, made a brusque gesture towards a chair and sat down opposite me. There had been a faint acerbity in her voice, but her manner now resumed a listlessness which I had not noted in it previously.

I said:

‘It seems quiet here today…I suppose your boys have gone back to school?’

‘Yes. It does make a difference.’ She went on, ‘I suppose you want to ask some more questions, do you, about this last murder? The girl who was killed in the telephone box.’

‘No, not exactly that. I’m not really connected with the police, you know.’

She looked faintly surprised.

‘I thought you were Sergeant-Lamb, wasn’t it?’

‘My name is Lamb, yes, but I work in an entirely different department.’

The listlessness vanished from Mrs Ramsay’s manner. She gave me a quick, hard, direct stare.

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘well, what is it?’ 

‘Your husband is still abroad?’

‘Yes.’

‘He’s been gone rather a long time, hasn’t he, Mrs Ramsay? And gone rather a long way?’

‘What do you know about it?’

‘Well, he’s gone beyond the Iron Curtain, hasn’t he?’

She was silent for a moment or two, and then she said in a quiet, toneless voice:

‘Yes. Yes, that’s quite right.’

‘Did you know he was going?’

‘More or less.’ She paused a minute and then said, ‘He wanted me to join him there.’

‘Had he been thinking of it for some time?’

‘I suppose so. He didn’t tell me until lately.’

‘You are not in sympathy with his views?’

‘I was once, I suppose. But you must know that already…You check up pretty thoroughly on things like that, don’t you? Go back into the past, find out who was a fellow traveller, who was a party member, all that sort of thing.’

‘You might be able to give us information that would be very useful to us,’ I said.

She shook her head.

‘No. I can’t do that. I don’t mean that I won’t. You see, he never told me anything definite. I didn’t want to know. I was sick and tired of the whole thing! When Michael told me that he was leaving this country, clearing out, and going to Moscow, it didn’t really startle me. I had to decide then, whatI wanted to do.’

‘And you decided you were not sufficiently in sympathy with your husband’s aims?’

‘No, I wouldn’t put it like that at all! My view is entirely personal. I believe it always is with women in the end, unless of course one is a fanatic. And then women can bevery fanatical, but I wasn’t. I’ve never been anything more than mildly left-wing.’

‘Was your husband mixed up in the Larkin business?’

‘I don’t know. I suppose he might have been. He never told me anything or spoke to me about it.’

She looked at me suddenly with more animation.

‘We’d better get it quite clear, Mr Lamb. Or Mr Wolf in Lamb’s clothing, or whatever you are. I loved my husband, I might have been fond enough of him to go with him to Moscow, whether I agreed with what his politics were or not. He wanted me to bring the boys. I didn’t want to bring the boys! It was as simple as that. And so I decided I’d have to stay with them. Whether I shall ever see Michael again or not I don’t know. He’s got to choose his way of life and I’ve got to choose mine, but I did know one thing quite definitely. After he talked about it to me. I wanted the boys brought up here in their own country. They’re English. I want them to be brought up as ordinary English boys.’ 

‘I see.’

‘And that I think is all,’ said Mrs Ramsay, as she got up.

There was now a sudden decision in her manner.

‘It must have been a hard choice,’ I said gently. ‘I’m very sorry for you.’

I was, too. Perhaps the real sympathy in my voice got through to her. She smiled very slightly.

‘Perhaps you really are…I suppose in your job you have to try and get more or less under people’s skins, know what they’re feeling and thinking. It’s been rather a knockout blow for me, but I’m over the worst of it…I’ve got to make plans now, what to do, where to go, whether to stay here or go somewhere else. I shall have to get a job. I used to do secretarial work once. Probably I’ll take a refresher course in shorthand and typing.’

‘Well, don’t go and work for the Cavendish Bureau,’ I said.

‘Why not?’